#i didnt reblog that list with the intention of an ask game but ya'll are welcome to it if you'd like

[lewis-winters]

51 and 56 of the character building prompts for Natalie Morse?

oh sure! (anon is talking about this post)

51. What’s a phrase they say a lot?

either "thank ya, kindly" or "in two shakes of a lamb's tail"

56. If they’re scared, who do they want comfort from? Does this answer change depending on the type of fear?

ooohhhh so natalie's childhood is riddled with a lot of emotional neglect, and from a young age she was forced to learn how to self soothe (i.e., kicking the wall next to her crib so it can rock hard enough for her to go to sleep), so whenever she was afraid (and looking at her tumultuous upbringing + the fact that she's a trans woman in an isolated environment during a time when being any shade of queer was illegal) she would turn inward and try and find comfort within herself. but all that time, obviously, she wanted comfort from her guardians talia and shoshana. they would never give it to her, though. they could barely pick her up when she cried as a baby, and emotionally neglected her her whole childhood, she lost trust in their comfort a long time ago. sometimes, she'd seek comfort from her best friend margie sanchez, but margie's brand of comfort was distraction that bordered a little too much into dismissiveness, sometimes, so nat didn't seek hers a lot. everybody else she grew up around she was too shy to hide behind-- by the time she was 13 or 14 she'd been taller than almost everyone in her house, and since she was, effectively, "the man of the house" by virtue of being amab, she didn't really get the full comfort of sisterhood that she so badly wanted until she started living as a woman most of the time. she'd wanted comfort too, from her older half-brother, simon, but he wanted nothing to do with her and nat always did make herself scarce every time she knew she wasn't wanted.

after some well deserved healing tho, her primary sources of comfort are arthur benjamin foster (creation of @hellofanidea) and floyd talbert. she's also very soothed by dick and by bull, both for different reasons. seeing as she was raised around violent men who often did harm to women who raised her or who were around her (i.e., she was raised in a brothel), dick, with his gentle nature and steadfastness, was one of the few men she felt safe around from the get go. bull came later, during a rather traumatizing night in nuenuen, and it surprised her, especially since all her life she's relied on her height to intimidate men out of hurting her, and because of that men bigger than her make her very nervous. bull made her nervous at the start, but later on, she learns that he's not like that. she's seen first hand how gentle he can be, and that night in nuenuen proves it. she seeks him out a lot after that.

i'd also like to say she's soothed by nix, who'd somehow taken a very brotherly role in her life, especially after her own brother abandons her for bigger dreams. though the comfort she gets from nix is less comfort and more like. cynical solidarity. they'd both be like "fuck this sucks let's be miserable together" and it works sometimes. other times tho it might make them feel worse (before it could get better). ya know, that special kind of comfort the sibling closest to your age might give you? like that.

when she returns home and starts living as a woman full time (or mostly full time, since it was still Very Much Illegal then), she found comfort in her people, especially when confronted with the ugly truth that was american society's systemic queerphobia. her primary go to for comfort in the area of Struggles of Trans Women in Mid-Century America is Cleopatra Asantewaa, an african-french trans woman. she was one of the soldiers who'd settled in rhineland-palatinate, germany after world war i and subsequently found herself in Tiergarten, Berlin, learning about her queerness from Magnus Hirschfeld and his Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. she was very lucky to have been in france, and then subsequently escape to new york once the nazi regime took over. Natalie learns a lot from her and a lot of her internalized transphobia is soothed when they exchange ideas.