#kinds of identities yknow? but im getting off track

[daily-vessels]

Heya, do you think vessels only go by they/it?

I mean, do you think they can change pronouns? Would any of them be willing to change? Or are all of them like "no gender no problems"?

this ask was sent awhile ago,,, and for the record i (aka the mod) am unlabeled/fluid/some sort of. non gender identity.

i know this is talking about lore-wise or the vessels personally, but i think it really depends more on author’s intent.

i feel like this came of out a certain discussion/debate around having gendered pronouns for the vessels.

my opinion is that the main vessels (aka hollow and the knight) should, at the very least, have it/its or they/them pronouns.

they’re the main characters of the game, and giving them gendered pronouns feels like erasure (and goes against the lore of the game, with hornet literally being called “the gendered child”)

for the vessels here, the main point of the blog is to give them each their own personalities and stories. make them an individual. some of the vessels are based on in-game ones, and some are just ones i made up on the spot.

but in short, yes!

for ocs and vessels with little to no in-game personality, i think that people should be free to headcanon any sort of pronouns, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

but it comes to a point of WHY you are headcanoning it.

does it relate to the vessel’s headcanoned personality? does it relate to you? or is it just flat out removal of someone with it/its or they/them pronouns? again, it’s fine to headcanon! but it all comes down to WHY.

one last thing, i like showing under-appreciated identities in my stories. fluid identities or a lack of identities are very close to me, and i’d like to represent that!

so maybe one or two of my headcanoned vessels may have gendered pronouns, i’d rather have a majority non-gendered cast for… my own sake, i guess.

tldr: yes, vessels can have gendered pronouns, but it really depends on if the author’s intentions are well-meaning.

sorry this is so long! i have a lot of thoughts

[homestucky]

ok ok this is like not anything new but still since i havent been on here i havent fully ranted about this yet. big long rant incoming

re the epilogue (spoilers etc)

ok. i have onl y read meat. but fucking? dirk? dirk? ok? dirk??

no.

i am aware of what happens in candy. i know he dies.

i also know in the version i read, in meat, he becomes his ultimate self, all versions of dirk. as many people have said, this includes AR, this includes bro, this includes even to some degree, LE. its an interesting idea ill give you that. but its also.... shitty and not backed enough by well, anything?

so heres my personal rant about the shitty things in Meat.

when i first finished it i couldnt help but think. was the dirk narrative even necessary? on the one hand it was meant to be the MAIN PLOT and it defined the narration etc, but.... it honestly didnt seem to have any importance. i know it was likely  a set up to imply future stuff like making the next sburb or whatever but like

who CARES? why on earth would that be interesting or important? maybe im crazy but like, the ‘b plot’ which was mostly about character relationships and jobs in earth c, was compelling and enjoyable. the narrative with john ‘not important and not the main character anymore’ egbert had details and conclusions ACTUALLY RELATING TO HOMESTUCK, THE COMIC I LIKE AND WANTED TO READ AN EPILOGUE FOR. it was tragic and frankly very upsetting! im not saying i liked it!! but the tragedy felt compelling and significant. 

i appreciate that dirk as narrator IS BIASED so him saying that these narratives are less important is inherently like. not to be trusted but. just. i cant help but feel like you could have cut the whole ‘main dirk reality affecting’ narrative OUT 

and that seems to me maybe like... not good? if such a central part of your narrative has almost no bearing on homestuck or anything anyone cares about?

but im sure there are other people who found it compelling and necessary. thats fair. cant relate but you do you. there are other issues. 

me saying that the dirk narrative felt weirdly isolated and insignificant sounds pretty weird given that it put jade into a coma, manipulated kanayas mind, effectively killed rose and destroyed rosemary right? WELL that brings me on to the next thing. people have noted that meat barely passes the bechdel test. and hey, sometimes things like that can just be a coincidence or unlucky. but the repeated erasure of the female characters minds, motives, identities and autonomy was????  a little too consistent to dismiss. like ok terezi was still her dope self in a lot of ways. jane kinda did some stuff (under dirks direction, and only shitty stuff but . whatever). 

(sidebar: ofc it doesnt make sense to talk about calliope and roxy in the context of the female characters in Meat but either way they were very in the background. like cool an all, and i always love roxy. and i respect they were mostly just minding their own businesses??? which is fair)

 i just. urgh. homestuck has such a genuinely good track record of giving female characters genuine motivations and powerful abilities etc. the fact that almost ALL the female characters involved were working for or manipulated by DIRK. DIRK of all people. is like... is this even based off the real comic? idgi????

roses loss of autonomy.... rose is such an important character. and she goes along with everything dirk says because dirk is suddenly all OP and ‘theyre basically the same person anyway’ like i get that there was some magic bullshit going on or whatever but at the end of the day rose was still written as weak and passive. dirk as strong and skilled and decisive. i get the undertones.. hes a prince of heart. a destroyer of souls, and identities. he messed with kanayas identity , destroyed roses, repeatedly ignored roxys and calliopes, and god i wont even get started on jake yet. but that doesnt make it satisfying to read. or even really feasible.

so theres a possibility im missing something. but im confused about WHY dirk is allowed this power. in the narrative its waved off as a kind of ‘i guess because im like a prince of heart or whatever and im just super good at managing identities and being a strong boy’ like ok if theres some implication somewhere that that is MEANT to be a bogus explanation id be interested to know because it sounds pretty goddamn bogus. why would this happen to dirk? why? literally? one reason? one that makes sense? because there arent any i can think of. why, in the new universe, would dirk, a prince of heart, manifest into a narrative controlling supergod. and fucking WHEN has dirk showed any actual capabilities in this area before?? he KINDA sucked at it in the game. dirks an idiot! hes smart and capable in like, some ways but. its like

why is dirk so powerful suddenly -> its because hes become super ultimate dirk -> ... ok why -> uh because like. hes just so naturally inclined towards being a great manipulator yknow..... canonically.... uhhhh

it just. canon dirk to epilogue dirk is the most ridiculous leap character wise, skill wise, arc wise, personality wise, with minimal reasonable explanation. 

which brings me on to the next thing. so i roasted dirk and said he wasnt strong enough to be able to manipulate things this well. well, obviously through some other means dirk HAS been afforded this power. but what about his personality? its obviously gonna be warped with self importance and knowing how things ‘have to be’. but hes heartless, cruel and hateful. in some ways it seems like canon dirk levels of ruthlessness, especially when it shows that he is actually doing something dumb and petty like his treatment of jake. that shows that he STILL has emotional connection to people as dirk. he also seems to care about some people, like dave and roxy, and cracks jokes and wants to have ‘fun’. this makes the ways in which hes so warped and cruel seem even worse. maybe on the one hand im giving dirk too much credit, everyone knows he has the potential to be a real bastard. but i dont think that was the trajectory he was on when we last saw him. and if this is truly due to him just.. becoming other versions of himself too including LE and bro and stuff..like. i dont see how it could have gotten that bad without say, roxy or dave noticing. 

‘oh they didnt notice because hes just so good at hiding’ why on earth would i believe that!! dave especially this is kinda insulting for. dave is shown to have an almost supernatural ability to detect danger. partially this might be timeline stuff, knight stuff, but also notably im sure his upbringing is involved too. he was trained to be hypervigilant. who was he trained to be hypervigilant for? bro. bros manipulation and traps. near the end of the epilogue we show that dave IS capable of detecting the mindfuckery thats happening. how would that not set off 1 million alarm bells? theres literally apparently a twisted dirk-bro mutant INSIDE HIS HEAD telling him what to do. i just. know that scene was played for comedy and romance but at the very least thats gotta like???? mess with u if ur traumatised? and thats like , why i think dave should have had an inkling abt what was going on!! this is exactly the thing he hates and fears and was traumatised by! and it just going under his nose n him not even knowing , and still pretty recently being all buddy buddy with dirk seems just stupid and infeasible to me. maybe this is me being naive or kind of a stretch but i just feel like daves danger instincts would have been kicking up a whole assed ruckus that whole time. 

also kind of unrelated but i associate sunglasses with strider style toxic masculinity and hiding things so like. ok transitioning or changing gender presentation is one thing but roxy apparently permanently wearing sunglasses makes me NERVOUS

and ill probably wrap up this mighty rant soon but i wanna also say jake was done so fucking dirty. i know he was like, meant to be, because for some reason god dirk just hated him? like ok petty much. but. urgh jake is such an interesting character with a lot of potential and while i appreciate that him being manipulated by someone who may reasonably have a problem with him may make him do stupid and embarrassing stuff, all the narrative seems to have taken a backward step in how hes represented. jake isnt stupid, dirk clearly knew this in canon and he maybe was the only one even including jake. and there was some acknowledgement of this near the beginning of the epilogue. but then for some reason it goes back on itself. everyone still thinks jake is just completely stupid, including the embittered superdirk. so yeah i guess hes upset with jake or whatever but. its still dissatisfying to be like oh yeah jake isnt stupid he actually has a complex set of motivations and potential etc BUT over the X number of yrs on earth c no one else has realised this yet?? hmm. then his narrative is just gonna end up with him being a total joke and essentially becomes as stupid and incompetent as his worst critics say he is. feasible given the mind control ? yeah. enjoyable to read or having any kind of satisfying bearing on anything? nope!

so anyway. i feel like any criticism i have could be argued back with ‘but oh it has to be this way’ or ‘mind control!!’ or ‘not everything has to be nice and happy !!’ but like. dude. there are flaws. many of them. and seeing characters just get shat on is never gonna be good writing. 

[meggannn]

LOL YOUR ROOMMATE?? I can't stop laughing omg

god did i ever share the full story of what happened with my housemate last year? i think i bitched about her a little bit but here’s the full write-up of my six months with that housemate. unedited and probably full of errors and discrepancies sorry cause im going off entirely from memory

i’ve now moved out of this apartment, but i was there for a year with three other girls. two of them i got along with fine, and we introduced ourselves to each other before we moved in because that’s common courtesy to see if we get along right? but basically before any of us could talk or interview candidates for the last spot in the apartment, this girl, i’m making up a name and calling her emily, this random girl named emily basically came in and signed on for the spot on the lease without talking to any of us. uh, okay? so we eventually all get in a group chat and talk and introduce ourselves and plan to move in. day one:  emily moved in before me and i moved in a few hours later. i walk in and see the kitchen and she’s already covered the fridge with magnets and pictures and paper clippings featuring…. herself. like, a few of them had her friends, but most of the pictures were of her. basically. am i crazy or is that fucking weird? so from the get-go she just seemed……. if not privileged (which i also knew she was later), then definitely some sort of weird type of entitled but i couldn’t tell if it was maybe just cultural differences? (she was russian but had grown up in the states. idk)

anyway. she had this boyfriend who would come over occasionally, it was no problem since we didn’t talk and just waved hi to each other occasionally. but from the first week she and another housemate who lived on the far end of the apartment were both having trouble sleeping because someone else on the floor was blaring their tv loudly all hours of the night in the room next door. after several weeks of not being able to sleep through the night, they’d pretty much had enough and managed to track down whose apartment it was, and it turned out to be this elderly black woman’s apartment. i don’t really know if the woman understood why they were so upset because i think she might have been going slightly senile as well, so i think maybe the tv, or the volume, was something she wasn’t entirely aware she was doing? but the other housemate, i’ll call her veronica (who is more chill but was still upset) understood that this was probably not a fight they wanted to pick. veronica noticed that the elderly woman had a middle-aged male visitor, who looked like family, come visit the woman a few times a week and take care of her/take out the trash etc, so veronica decided to wait until she saw the visitor again to talk to him about lowering the volume or turning the tv off, or maybe getting his relative headphones or something. but emily, like….. kept pushing it every single night. every single night for the first month or so she’d stomp across the floor and rap on the door loud enough to wake up the entire floor (the walls were thin and it wasn’t a big building). and most of the time the woman didn’t respond, but there was one notable time someone else got fed up enough to wake up at 2am and yell at emily (deservedly so) for waking up the whole hall. all of which i heard very clearly because my room was next to the main door to out apt.

things escalated when i overheard emily talking to her friend on the phone about the situation and then she mentioned that in retaliation, she went over in the middle of the night and put vaseline on the woman’s door handle. i was kind of stunned and disgusted that a grown ass adult (she’s at least a few years older than me, i’d guess late 20′s/early 30′s?) would do something like that???? but anyway a few nights later iirc, once again in the middle of the night, i was woken up by a shouting match down the hall because apparently the male relative had come back to check in on who he said was his mother, and HE WAS PISSED, UNDERSTANDABLY SO, AT FINDING MY ROOMMATE IN THE MIDDLE OF PUTTING VASELINE ON THE FLOOR CREVICE UNDER THE DOOR. LIKE. THAT’S NOT JUST PETTY BUT REAL FUCKING DANGEROUS TO DO TO AN ELDERLY WOMAN. he basically shouted at her and she kept talking about how she can’t sleep for months because of the noise, and whatever, but she stomped back to our apartment and they had this argument loudly at the door (remember, my room was right next to the front door). i listened to it for a couple minutes wondering if she would like, acknowledge what she did was wrong? and it became clear that she was so focused on the noise she wasn’t listening to this dude, so i came out and i tried to be a voice of reason. the guy was understandably really pissed that she would do something like that and i apologized for her and said she was wrong to do that (she had stomped off back to her room meanwhile) and he seemed grateful to talk to someone who wasn’t batshit crazy in the meantime so he mentioned that he had grown up in this building all his life before moving out so it hurt to see someone treat his mother this way who had lived here for 50 years or something. and after that i was just thinking like, jesus, this is so not the kind of fight you want to have with a family like this as a white woman in a gentrified apartment complex. like at some point you need to realize this is not your fucking place and if you must settle things, do it civilly or just dip out entirely.

i think emily eventually apologized and he accepted and they found out that the tv wasn’t even coming from the woman’s room at all, but from someone on the floor above who THEY also had had problems with for months.

veronica was away on a trip i think during this climax, but before, while it was still escalating, i was talking with veronica and veronica mentioned she and emily had bitched about the noise to each other often, but veronica said she drew the line when emily basically started making her complaints race-themed ever since she found out the elderly woman was black. etc the complaints turned from “it’s too loud” to “this neighborhood is so ghetto” and “that’s what black ppl are like” and stuff like that. veronica wasn’t cool with that, so she planned on handling any other complaints herself directly so she could resolve things like a normal person, but ever since veronica mentioned that i knew emily was a pos

emily also complained about people partying/drinking on the street outside till ~11pm, which imo isn’t too unreasonable, like normal people do, and basically being too loud or whatever. on some level i get it cause she had to go to sleep early to go to work early, but also at some point i was just wondering how she functioned as a human being in the real world

ANYWAY THE STORY I TELL AT PARTIES IS THIS ONE, THE ONE IN WHICH SHE LEAVES (i will try to keep this as short as possible while still giving you all the details you need to understand just how fucking weird it was):

in early november, emily group messaged everyone asking if her boyfriend could come live with us. to her credit she said she wouldn’t do it unless everyone was ok, and she waited to hear back from all of us. i was out of town at the time but i remember being really put off by this idea and i was going to say no, when i noticed that my two other housemates had ALREADY said yes in the chat. just like that. i was stunned. what? like, no follow-up questions or “we dont even really know him” or “how is this gonna work”? were they fucking insane?

i messaged her privately saying i really wasn’t comfortable with it, for xyz reasons. among those being 1) rent, because nowhere did she offer to split the rent five ways instead of four (they were basically going to split her room between them, which, no). 2) fridge/living space, which was small enough with four people to one apartment as it is, and 3) just overall “i dont fucking know him” atmosphere. she messaged back saying she understood, and i got to asking why this was so important to her to do now, because she mentioned she wanted to do it “asap” if we’d said yes.

and this is where my “no” turned into “hell fucking no.” she told me this:

in response to my question of if she’d want to put him on the lease, she said no, she wouldn’t want her boyfriend on the lease in case “something happens so she could just tell him to leave” (raising my question: what, exactly, do you expect to happen? maybe the landlord, who lives in the building, finding out someone’s living here illegally? bc THAT WOULD DO IT FOR ME)

she was marrying him in december which is why she wanted it to happen “soon” so they wouldnt be living apart. i asked why she couldnt just wait until the lease was up to do all this, to which she said:

her boyfriend’s green card (he was russian) had expired so he was now paying month to month and that’s when i realized, oh. bitch he’s using you for a green card marriage and you’re trying to inconvenience all of us instead of owning your life like an adult, or something

at some point during the conversation she like tried to bribe me with a couple hundred extra dollars per month “to cover the cost of the extra utlities/wifi/inconvenience,” which i politely declined. this was when i said basically “look i never got the sense you particularly liked living here (massive understatement) and i think that it’d work out best if you moved out, which you’re clearly already planning to do”

and she did start looking immediately. at some point while she was looking i overheard her talking to veronica mentioning that he was a huge fan of putin and she’d asked him to like, politely, stop?, lmao because she didn’t like his entire yknow politics, and he basically said “i’m sorry, i can’t betray my personal/national identity, i just really believe in putin” or whatever the fuck and i thought to myself, this bitch is marrying him anyway for some godforsaken reason

i don’t know why i hoped that she would be any more considerate moving out than when she moved in, but somehow i was still surprised when the sublet she picked out was someone she never introduced us to or mentioned before, she literally just said “hey here’s your new housemate and when she’s moving in” and dropped us a phone number and facebook page.

one last thing: while emily was moving out, veronica mentioned to me that she was really pleased i stood up to her because she felt massively uncomfortable with the situation too. i asked why she didn’t say something, and she said she talked to emily privately airing out her problems, and emily had managed to talk her into accepting that sort-of bribe privately off message, and emily told her ‘just say yes’ in the chat, so she did and was kind of kicking herself for it after. (our other housemate was off doing fuck knows what at this point; she was gone for weeks on end leaving us to take care of her guinea pigs for her with little to no warning.)

but then, veronica says, the big thing that astounds her is that this wasn’t even the same boyfriend who she’d had when she’d moved in. six months had passed by this point. SHE HAD BEEN DATING GREEN CARD GUY FOR LIKE, THREE MONTHS WHEN SHE DROPPED THIS ON US

and then she moved to fucking harlem, one of the yknow most diverse neighborhoods in the city known particularly for its black heritage, so i guess have fun honey

(her replacement somehow turned out to be just as bad as she was, so you can imagine why i was eager for my lease to end in may)

[sacroms]

( i’m late aF.. two day canada day celebrations fucking me up, nice ! )

hey guys, i’m kat !! 20, from the nt.. i’m a uni student and i’d say more abt myself, but i’m trying to post this quickly out of pure shame for being almost a whole 24 hours late; basically y’all — and me — have waited long enough dgsjk so below you can read up on st. joan’s resident icy brat romy, a bitch who overworks and doesn’t know how to chill long-term !! plots page is HERE — need a bit of editing tho — for your reading pleasure, stats and.. this blurb you’ll read below !

⌈ BAE JOOHYUN, SHE/HER. ⌉ THE DYNAMO.┊✧* ·  ˚  ━━━━ TWENTY-TWO year old, SAEROM “ROMY” CHO, is a spy-in-training at saint joan’s. i wish they’d stop listening to KELELA. i’ve heard they can be SEDULOUS and UNEQUIVOCAL when they want to be. they’re skilled at MULTILINGUALISM and not the greatest at UNDERWATER SPECIAL OPERATIONS. anyways, i hope they’re ready for the real world. ( kat, +18, she/her, n/a. )

honestly she is.. fucked sgjfsgdkl

i’ve used a variation of this muse a couple of times so.. this’ll be fun i’m sure sgdfj

this is her as popular vines

so saerom cho, daughter of a former mi6 operative and just.. an average baker ksfgjdkdgf from orléans, france

me: it's bc i thought it’d be cool for her to be there bc of the connection to the school

my conscience: fuck off, you just want her to have a french accent without projecting your patriotism this time, you hag 

me: .. yknow actUALLY it’s a cute homage to the Cutest parisian i know, [redacted] - i 

FKSKFKSL

has a younger sister who’s still in hs, they’re close or whatever dgsfjdgf

won’t go too into detail abt her bg rn aside from her former spy mother !

so her mom had been an agent for mi6 for some time before an injury on a mission rendered her incapable of maintaining her post, and took up an alias to protect herself in case her identity posed the risk of being identified by those the agency was investigating ( tho she didn’t attend st. joan’s so romy’s not a legacy, js )

anyways romy didn’t know abt this until a few years back, not that her mom was discreet abt where she worked before she lived a domestic life, but the job itself

and it’s how she came to be interested in this line of work as well — not enough to get involved JUST yet

it was when a representative from st. joan’s met her one day, knowing of her mom’s bg, to ask her to join the school. romy laughed in their face immediately

bc she didn’t trust them, that is, but turns out they were legit !

and.. initially she declined, or rather, said she’d think abt it. bc how was she capable of any of this ?? aside from being multilingual and an athlete in high school ( gymnastics with a couple of years of track under her belt ) not.. to sell herself short or anything but anyways

brief bg info abt her stint in those sports — she was suPER involved in them, but with gymnastics it was a whole other level of investment. i say she’s v driven and hardworking now, but she’d bust her ass in the sport on top of her education, the poster child for reckless devotion and ambition ( this is especially important for later )

but temptation got the best of her and soon enough she begins attending st. joan’s !

do you see how half-assed this looks ?? fucking slow ass here rushing to present something mediocre GSJSDFGKL

she’s been here since she graduated from secondary school and has become — in her opinion — well-trained in most areas taught at the academy

.. except underwater special ops, a bitch has a fear of large bodies of water. or being submerged for longer than she thinks she can handle. so imagine her failure fearing ass having THAT issue ! she hates it !

uh.. yeah let’s do some quick personality points instead, my dumb ass is Struggling

personality and other shit

she is.. a mess rly

inflexible, independent, charismatic, etc

most of her actual personality is further down oops dsfgjklfg

kinda detached ?? like she doesn’t want too many distractions and she deems relationships as the fucking Worst for it.. just trying to be level-headed by not taking up too many hobbies, social obligations, etc, while not destroying her social life ?

idk it’s hard to explain, she’s an enigma even to me in that area

only dated once. when she was like eighteen. with some dusty dude she quickly ditched.

not.. super sexually active either ( rip ?? )

in whatever she’s applying herself to, she’s domineering and blunt, v strict on herself though she’s slacked off a bit over the years.. so imagine how self-disciplined — in the worst of ways — she was when she was younger and involved in gymnastics

with a rigorous work ethic like hers, her being captain of gymnastics team implied that she’d be strict too with what little power she has.. but she was kinda chill overall ?? and the same could be said here at st. joan’s, gives 120% in almost everything she does

uh.. her attitude carries over with her fellow trainees tbh. she has no time for people who are Committed to their future job but show poor performances bc of laziness, distractions, etc. even more so for those who lack in commitment as well so brace your kids for hurricane romy ??

call her ice queen. try it. try it. GKFDJKGDSF

she rly just has a hard shell where it matters, aka her career and school and stuff, but is a semi-precious gem overall

kind of dramatic and a meme ngl, curses quite a bit, whips out french far too often — especially if she’s shit-talking bc you made an ugly choice but is trying to be a Supportive Friend

unwinds with the usual netflix and wine, but also dance

oH also is fluent in french, korean, english and italian ( spent some time during her summer breaks in different parts of europe, but italy was a staple for the family ), but is also knowledgeable in portuguese, and a bit of another couple of languages

ok idk what else to say rn, accept this pls

KDFJGSKFL uh, let’s end this disaster there. if anyone wants to plot, im me !! ( ps, if you prefer d*scord like yours truly, just ask for it or send me yours ! )

[issuedsideways]

okay!! so our protag of course in the eScape fic, and our sole pov character, is tony. tony has DID which is a canon-compliant text-supported headcanon. no one needs to agree with me but TEXTUALLY this is absolutely an interpretation i can back up with comics sources.

anyway, so. tony's spent the past [amount of time] as Mark One, who must be gently poked and prodded by the rest of the system (in the 13th floor scene w friday) into accepting that he's tony stark, they're all tony stark. he's still not sure he's human, but he can accept that regardless of whether or not he's a backup he's tony stark, yknow? maybe the original is dead but he's still kickin'. so!

now, he makes some Choices and his life quickly splits into two halves that cannot, by any means, overlap. they can't touch, no one can even catch on that he's living two lives!! so. when you are a person with DID, which tony is, and you have two completely separate lives with different personal facts, different motivations, etc... well. you split! so fresh in the beginning we've got this sort of hazy... lets call him main!tony. main!tony is wobbly because he's not been out in a while, also he's been going through the whole... identity crisis anyway. sense of self? nooot great. im not going to specify where main!tony goes, if he becomes one of the new two or goes dormant or??? because again this is not going to be textually explicit, but over time we end up with two versions who are, admittedly, kind of warring with each other.

irl!tony is, well, in the real world. he's patching things up with jan. he's working so hard to be better for stark unlimited. hes trying to keep track of what riri's up to, maybe. he's sincerely trying. he wants to clean up arno's mess, and fuck did he leave a goddamn mess. he wants to clear his family name a little. he tries HARD with jan. he tries not to focus too much on how not-real he feels. i have to sort out who all he's going to connect with, of the rest of the cast. andy? carol? minimally, she killed him but it "didn't stick" - but she still did.

eScape!tony is a little less collected. he's trying to escape (ha ha) the mess in the outside world. he wants to have a brother -- for real this time -- and he wants to know him. he wants to spend some time somewhere where he FEELS real. he likes inventing in the eScape. he likes just being there. he slowly falls for arno, through a series of... it's arno's fault, really, and we can blame his brain damage, truly, and it's in this fake space where it doesn't really MATTER anyway, and he's already putting so much effort into not getting caught being there at all so theres already the rush of misbehavior, so why not? why not. his brother loves him.

the fun part of course is that irl!tony and eScape!tony have COMPLETELY different motivations, which they get to "argue" about at length. being completely torn and completely unsure how to process that? ideal. perfect. being completely torn because in the eScape all he cares about is arno, to the point that he keeps considering breaking up with jan, but in the real world he's so over the moon about jan that he's only thinking about breaking up because of the guilt from the cheating, not because he's no longer interested. but those interests shift SO wildly depending on who he's with, to the point that it's sincerely atypical (it's the DID babey!!!) and he really sincerely doesn't know whats up or why he feels the way he does or how to CHOOSE because the choice always feels obvious.

oh, ohh, oh. i need at least one point on each end where it's like "i'll break up with [arno/jan] that's just the only correct course of action" and then he goes to do it in person but he CANT because he's switched. irl!tony decides to carefully extract himself from spending time with arno but once he's in there, he can't make himself. eScape!tony decides to break it off with jan because he's cheating anyway, he doesn't care about her as much, it's a ticking time bomb anyway, just end it. but once he's out in the real world, the desire to end it with her is gone completely. he doesn’t WANT to break up with jan (but he knows he’s running on extremely borrowed time). the back and forth on this would be....... ideal. the guilt. the confusion. the fact that each of them actually really sincerely has a preference and thinks they can make decisions for the other one because they don’t realize they’re not 100% the same!!! 

when i started plotting this i didn’t realize it’d literally just be self indulgent bullshit but it........ is. 

[brawla]

What was his childhood like with his brothers and a single mother, and how did he come out to them? Was he well received? How does it affect all his relationships in life, given the time period?

GH okay i can talk in depth about this so its going under a cut. warnin for talk abt dysphoria, blasphemy (only kind of vaguely referred to), vague implications of nonphysical abuse and potential misgendering/transphobia/etc

so like… he was born a fraternal twin which wasnt so shocking to the family dynamic bc there was already a pair of twins But after having a total of 9 kids and One of them being born biologically female you kinda fixate on that yknow? so. elliot was most definitely Pegged to be the odd one out from the start but he kinda never really was. he played in the same way that his brothers played and loved getting dirty and being a general nuisance and he was, in essence, already One Of The Boys by like age 4. i should note also his oldest brother is 10 years older and most of them have like a ½ y age difference

inserting this bit right here to clarify the dog incident happened when he was 6 and four of them were playing in a dry canal n there were wild dogs hiding in the underpass (and up until then hed only known dogs as nice creatures) so he goes to pet em yadda yadda arms and legs get fucked up real bad. forearms are still wicked sensitive and scarred up but his knees recovered merely because he ran. they didnt have money for hospital bills so he was kinda useless for a while though

so anyway. despite her child obviously being a “““tomboy”““ she still attempted to force him into frilly dresses and do his hair all nice and when he was Really young he didnt super care but eventually noticed the difference in how his mom allowed his brothers to behave vs how she allowed him to behave and it upset him??? and granted this was more when he was like 8 or 9 and it was less “elli go play” and more “elli help me with dinner” even though she often didnt include anybody else in that request. so he starts cutting his own hair and disobeying openly and gets kinda mean because of it (thus his inclusion in being a Town Terror with the other brothers) uhh

they fought a Lot as kids bc margaret wasnt the Best at keeping them in line especially when shed get more concerned with sleeping with other men/going out for the nice bc once chase (oldest) was old enough to technically be in charge shed just kinda Leave sometimes an pray they didnt set the house on fire. because of that it was “im trapped in a house with all my brothers lets wrestle and scream until the neighbors call the cops on us because somebody might be dying” but at the end of the day they still had that Sibling Bond that rose above anything else

moving back onto the Trans Narrative: he realizes somethings up mid/end of middle school and hes not sure how to put it into words but he doesnt Feel Good anymore. doesnt like hearing his deadname or being the singular “girl” of the family. his twin, owen, is like, his first Go To for comfort and owen doesnt know either but he doesnt really Care. one time he tries to tell his mom but she waves him off and tells him never to bring it up again and… he Doesnt. goes through his first couple years of high school horrifically depressed and just barely passing year to year if Even passing until the very beginning of junior year he just Stops going. owen and some of the more fraternal of his brothers, when older, are kinda the only thing that keeps him grounded and ultimately he feels Useless ages 16 to 18

spy is his first contact bc he knows his mom who kinda just laments about how useless this kid who used to be so excited to play baseball with his brothers and run around and race freely is all of the sudden, please make him stop. and spys reluctant but also Guilty and has him flown out to nm for various hit and run jobs and elliot doesnt really realize what hes been thrust into at first but it gets to a point where doing Anything (even Crime) feels so good he doesnt care. inducted officially into the team when hes 19 or 20 and also has his name legally changed within that time period (jeremy is his “formal” name his mom insisted upon when he informed her this was a thing that was happening and she couldnt do anything about it, but if addressed by his actual name hed much rather hear elliot except in Official or as previously stated, formal, settings). voila The Scout is born

he technically comes out to the family when hes like 18/19 and already living out of home and he comes back to visit for a gathering where a lot of people are there includin some of his brothers’ dads. and nobody really knows what to do (mom im trans and also stronger than you so dont try any shit) bc most of them are religious and all of the boys were raised christian even if they were just going to church for the sake of going to church. and like… over time they adapt… margaret pulls the whole “this is all my fault my babys going to hell” thing for a while and makes it about her and some of his brothers do the same (william, the second oldest and michael, one of the other twins are the only two who are like “absolutely not youre disowned never speak to me again” and disallow their kids from seeing him EVEN THOUGH his nieces and nephews love him the Most) but eventually they kinda Get It. and dont Agree with it but cant bear to just leave their baby brother behind. so. its like. they fuck up the pronouns a lot but still Vaguely try. he doesnt talk to them a lot and wishes honestly hed never said anything and just moved out and lived stealth (hes stealth in tfi). he sends money home bc despite all his mom did and said to him bc deep down he still cares but. yknow. he avoids them if he can

SORRY THAT GOT LONG onto other tidbits

he never did baseball in school but played recreationally with the boys every time he got the opportunity to but he did run track when he got to eighth grade/high school and was really fantastic at it. hed run and began exercising initially as a way to beat his brothers but his mom makes some off-handed comment about how its good hes finally doing that, he could bear to lose somea that chub, nobody likes a fat girl (hes 12!) and is like Ah. and hes less self conscious about his weight now bc hes accepted the fact most of his weight is muscle and hes naturally curvy partly bc hes pretty and partly bc hes a runner. hes very very secure in himself and his identity even if he cant just tell people hes trans

he probably wouldve continued religiously if he hadnt been told by multiple sources that the “behaviors” he engaged in would upset god and get him banished to hell for life so he stopped going to church when he moved. of course, god only confirming he was his gift to the earth made him (silently) rub it in his familys face and he stopped uhh. believing in what was taught at churches simply bc he was convinced hed met god and proved all of them wrong? anyway

at the age and place he is he tends not to make lasting relationships with many people, at least romantically, because hes positive one of these days hell move to a place people dont know him and hell have had surgery and suddenly fit in with the cis and be able to settle down then. god knows he has the money for it; but for where hes at he tends not to care, not to tell anybody, n probably hasnt uhhh yknow Bonked for several years which is whatever he lives. He Lives. i think thats all i have to say on this IM SO SORRY but. this ask is very important to me