#mothergrub everything fucking hurts

[folykill]

holy fuck kuprum had better get hive soon

[isroselalondebisexual]

this one's a bit of a loaded question, but what do you think the kids swapped with their patron troll would be like? like rose in kanaya's place, jade in karkat's place, dave in terezi's place, and john in she-who-must-not-be-named's place. they're all trolls ofc

Rose Maryam, a troll of moderate wealth and status, whose lusus is a Virgin Mothergrub. Well, we know from how Kanaya spoke of her and the brief times we saw her that Mamagrub was a very loving lusus. She comforted Kanaya when she was crying over getting her heart broken and Kanaya told a story of how she and Mamagrub just stayed in for troll-christmas and read stories. Mamagrub is, then, likely to be a more authoritative parent, as much as a weird alien bugmom can be. Rose would probably act somewhat less recklessly than she does in canon, more used to there being consequences to her actions and used to the potential for deadly consequences thanks to her culture. She’s very strong, with quick reflexes, used to having to fend off zombies from her desert home, but I doubt the experiences would be particularly traumatizing because her lusus is right there to make sure she’s okay and zombies are just oogie boogie scary monsters. Probably still has very similar interests, mirroring Kanaya’s own interest in Rainbow Drinker Trash Fiction and whatever passes as troll-goth, which I have firm reason to believe is actually light-centered but that’s a different post. Her role as a Seer of Space- okay, so, full stop, I imagine Space to be the ULTIMATE in Seer aspects, so I’m a little biased- but her role would be p much The Storyteller. Much like Calliope in canon, she is the one who sees not the timeline, but the STORY. The WHOLE. Space, by my understanding of it, is very interested in the WHOLE, and less interested in the PARTS. So Rose can’t really say “do x thing for y result” but she can say “This is our current goal for the moment, we need to work towards that.” Breeding the frog would be… fun… She’d honestly probably need help with that task, if I’m being wholly honest. Rose would, of course, be ENAMORED with the aliens they end up running into, and Kanaya, who I’m assuming would take the role of Light player in this scenario, would fit perfectly with Rose’s Alternian-goth aesthetic and the two of them would generally just continue being soulmates like they are in canon.

Jade Vantas, a mutant troll with incredibly low funding and pretty much no status, whose lusus is an anthropomorphic crab. She’s already pretty punchy in canon, but raised by Crabmom, she’s likely gonna end up with her particular apple not falling far from that tree. Not to mention the constant injustice of her society being shoved in her face, the stress of having to keep herself hidden, she’s gonna wind up pretty snippish! Would absolutely lie about her blood color, though, not hide it. She’d pass herself off as a rust, do absolutely everything she could to make sure the people around her saw her as a rust blood and not suspect her as a mutant. Stays away from games that could make her bruised or bleeding, but if she DOES accidentally get bruised, well, it’s CLOSE ENOUGH, right, no one should stare too long because it’s a reddish hue. She’s gonna make social connections first because she likes having friends, but second because she knows her chances of surviving go up exponentially if there are people who are like, actually important, who care about her. Angrily feels that there should be more worth placed on her own life, but feels deeply insecure due to her own place in society. Her lusus, while cantankerous, does love her though, and while they do have a mutual back and forth of caretaking, Crabmom is somewhat more intelligent than Bec the magic dog so Jade has better met emotional needs. Still ridiculously smart, but with less access to resources Jade’s intelligence is going to be more of a “known in theory not in practice” variety. Being able to alchemize a lot of shit during the Game is gonna be SO FUN for her. Her role as a Witch of Blood would be focused on her ability to use her bonds with her teammates to accomplish their goals. Jade’s gonna end up a little master-mind-y, and she’s the one who’ll take Rose’s “This is our goal now” and go “Okay, here are the people who need to work on that and here’s how” so she ends up sort of the leader? More like team manager, maybe. She knows her friends well, knows their strengths, and can accurately direct them. The fact that her friends will actually listen to her, even after learning her true blood color, and still love and respect her, will be very affirming for her and help her with her insecurities! Being really irritated all the time will need some work, but once removed from the society that makes her frustrated that’ll slowly simmer down.

Dave Pyrope, middle class, raised by a dragon egg. Probably ends up doing something cocky because he puts forth a “hot shit” persona and gets himself injured lmao. He’s chilly, but not cold blooded, and he can get away with some shit but he’s not invincible. Probably for the best that he lives in a goddamned tree tbh. He’s still a sweet boy though, he just craves that validation a little too hard and does stupid shit for attention. His Dragondad isn’t really around to give him all the attention he needs, especially in his more formative years, and even after Something Dumb makes him wake up on his moon when he can talk to Dragondad, Dave still wants ATTENTION dammit. Also I just realized that all the patron trolls were on Prospit, I just realized that. Anyway, Dave does indeed put forth a coolkid persona because it’s something he thinks is going to make people like him, and he’s kinda lonely out in the middle of a forest by himself with only a giant egg for company. That, and it’s Alternia, and signs of weakness can get you killed, so he wants to seem impenetrable and aloft and put out “don’t fuck with me” vibes even though Dave is, admittedly, pretty easy to fuck with. His role as Knight of Mind would start out as him closely guarding his own mentality, shielding it from others’ eyes so they do not know what he’s truly like. He would think, based on his classpect, that this is the right and true way for him to act, that makes sense, and become briefly even more entrenched in his own coolkid persona. But then going past that, he would need to understand that guarding one’s mind can be good, yes, but he’s not actually doing himself any favors by locking his true thoughts and feelings up. Rather, he needs to protect his mind, and the minds of his friends, by encouraging openness and honesty between them. He needs to come to terms with the fact that nothing is going to be clear cut and logical, that everything is messy and the smartest, most pragmatic thing to do when dealing with brains- these things that house all our messy thoughts and emotions and spur our behaviors- is to cultivate them. Dave has to learn how to productively manage psychology, his own and those around him, and accept his own personality. This is something Latula never did. Something Latula ended up failing to do, which is why, even millions and millions of sweeps after her death, she still puts forth her coolkid persona and uses her fake persona as a shield. Karkat remarked on it in canon, and a Doomed Dave in this verse would be a Dave that follows in canon Latula’s footsteps. They have to be honest.

John Serket, upper middle class, with a nasty nasty lusus. He’d get the demand to kill other trolls and feed them to Spiderdad, and honestly? I don’t think he could. I think he’d refuse and he would die, Spiderdad would die, or Spiderdad would have to go get his own damn food, possibly abandoning John. Or maybe Spiderdad would scream in John’s brain until he DID kill somebody. But John, he’s not the kind of person who would take it well. He’d be numb for the start of it, yeah, he wouldn’t feel anything about the warm corpse still bleeding body heat, even as he chucked it into Spiderdad’s web, and I don’t think he’d feel anything in the shower or as he went to sleep that day, even though he wouldn’t be able to stop THINKING about it I don’t think there’d be an emotional connect. Until the daymares. He wouldn’t stop thinking about it, and the guilt and disgust and horror would sink in slowly, slowly, slowly, building and building inside him until he’s sobbing on his kitchen floor and choking on his own breathing because what the FUCK did he do?! Oh god he killed somebody. I could imagine John making the decision that, since he has proven he can kill a troll, he can defend himself, and he can’t do that again, he cannot kill another troll to feed Spiderdad ever again. John would likely use his mind control powers to prompt Equius (or, whoever he’s living next to, idk how trollswaps really work either) into using his STRENGTH into causing a minor avalanche, effectively killing Spiderdad, because how dare he force John to kill, he didn’t want to do that, yeah he’s Cerulean but he never wanted to hurt anybody! And then, of course, comes the guilt of killing his own lusus, of forcing his neighbor to do the dirtywork, of using his powers against a FRIEND and John hadn’t wanted to ever do that either. He’s a list of broken promises to himself. So anyway very traumatized. John’s also likely to end up a very ANXIOUS person, in this kind of swap. A lusus who didn’t really love him, when a lusus is SUPPOSED to be the one creature in a troll’s life that they can KNOW values them, would leave its mark on his psyche, and the mantra that the people who you love/who love you will make demands, demands that come at deep personal detriment, is gonna fuck him up too, regardless of whether John kills his lusus or his lusus just starves or his lusus sticks around but keeps SCREAMING at John to do things for him. Literally all of those options are gonna leave John jittery and utterly anxious as a person. He’s gonna be the type of person who gives into demands very, very easily, and see requests from his friends as things he really can’t back out of, or else it’ll make him the bad guy, a terrible friend, a selfish greedy lazy person who doesn’t pull his weight, no matter how often he says “yes” it’ll never feel like enough to justify a “no.” He and Jade would end up working very closely, because Jade is the one issuing out orders and John responds quickly and without much argument. Like as not, John is gonna be the one helping Rose breed the frogs. As Heir of Luck, which I sorta discussed in my John Lalonde post, he’s a very lucky dude, and breeding frogs would probably go REALLY well for him! But given his different life situation, John Lalonde and John Serket are pretty different people with pretty different goals. John Serket’s personal quest would be more about becoming bright, as a person. John’s natural disposition is to be friendly, cheerful, playful and even somewhat childish. He was stripped of that, by his lusus and his society as a whole, but now he has a chance to play a Game with his friends free of his lusus, free of his old planet and it’s culture, and to truly bloom as a person he has to shuck all the things that were unlucky about his past life and embrace the things that WERE lucky. He’s got good friends, a solid inborn set of morals, and a laugh as brilliant as the dawn. He’s a cheery sunny boy with a lot of love in his heart, so his quest is to really, truly shine.

[victoriousinpink]

>Get caught, dipshit.

>You’re way too trusting. You just took some random bronzeblood who looked almost vaguely similar to your mate at his word and gave him money to take you somewhere safe and didn’t think twice? Didn’t ask any questions? How old are you, Clorad, that you assumed this was a solid plan? You should be ashamed.

You’re laying in a pile of hay, staring down the barrels of four different revolvers, which are just as concerning as, say, any other weapon, when you’re laying down and got surprised by them. The trolls holding them are teal and lower, with the pinius stitched into their clothes like the ‘sheriff’ from before. Hell, maybe he reported you.

“By order of the lord Pinius, we place you under arrest for malicious treason.” Says one, hauling you up by the collar of your shirt. Rude. “We will now take you to his royal chambers for him to do with as he pleases.”

Better let them get it on with. They handcuff your hands behind your back, a little tighter than you’d like, and shove you out of the stable. There’s the “sheriff” and the bronze. They were working together. Fuck them both, terrible hicks with their poorly made leather and abuse of the Alternian Common Language.

Now, handcuffs. You used to get out of these all the time, before you decided magic shows were a low form of stage entertainment and focused on acting. Can you still do it?

This wagon is even more cramped than the last one, filled as it is with other apparent prisoners; mostly lowbloods, but there’s a few indigos shackled to the walls too. It’s dank and sweaty, and you swear they find new bumps along the way, because it feels like your teeth rattle out. The other prisoners glare at you, like you’re to blame for being pink too, and you nearly let yourself get annoyed enough to start a “not all Tyrians” discussion, but remind yourself that they probably know that and don’t have to like or trust you just because they logically are aware that you, at least, are not capable of being the Tyrian ruining their lives now, but that the one who did has soured their opinion on it.

It’s a long, hot ride, with the sun peering over the horizon by the time you choke in fresh air and stumble into a long wooden hallway. Must be new money. You wonder how long this Tyrian’s been causing trouble, to have trolls scared of him but not have any proper palace. Or maybe he’s bucking tradition. Either way, it’s clean, which you appreciate. You never really realized how much... Excrement, generally, is/was just everywhere in this time period. It’s disgusting, and worse that you’re not even wearing proper shoes for it.

The hallway is long, and leads you to a dining room, with a table laden with more food than the imposing troll should or likely could eat on his own. Pinius, the pink, sits alone at the head, taking bites of an undercooked mothergrub steak that leave blood dribbling down his chin and neck into a napkin-bib tucked into his shirt. The light catching it makes it shine purple, from where you stand.

Pinius is tall, taller than you (though you’re beginning to accept that you might just be short for your caste), and muscular, with horns like two serrated blades curling down over his face and casting odd shadows and tan lines. His hair is cut short and oiled into a small, ugly ponytail and he’s wearing what you assume passes for finery in cowpoke times, some kind of long-sleeved shirt in alternating shades of rust that fits too tight about the shoulders, like he took it off someone else, and black slacks. He has your true sign stitched into his shirt, too, and you have to assume you’re too early in the line for it to have branched into different stylized variations, like your own.

His face is square, and his eyes are just barely coming in pink--

Wait, a wriggler? They let a wriggler do all this? You’re definitely holding that against this town. That’s just sad.

You and the other prisoners stand in a line until, gulping and making entirely too much noise for an adult of his physical capacity to make while eating, he finishes his steak and stands to glare down the line at you, in the middle between the indigos, one of whom is shaking from the exertion of trying to spark their voodoos.

“You gotta be kidding. This is the other pink?” He asks, walking over and wiping his face with his shirtsleeve. “Bet you didn’t even put up a fight, huh? Real soft, aren’t you? With that get up--” He waves a hand at your pajamas, which have pink polka dots on them and say ‘cutie’ on the ass, because everything is the worst. “Looks like you been sleepin’ with Blache.”

A wave of exhaustion washes over you. Not physical, but mental. You’ve already dealt with one power-mad asshole this week, can’t you just have a single day to chill? “No, just horses. I’m not from around here.” You don’t say ‘and I wanna go home’ because you’re trying to seem cool, even if your slippers have axolotl faces felt-glued onto them.

“Well, no one’ll miss you, then.” He chuckles, unholstering a gun that looks very different from the ones the trolls collecting you had; and you realize that must be why they dropped them into a lockbox before leading you all in, to make him secure. “Makes it easy on me.”

Handcuffs, handcuffs. You never used the trick ones, because by the time you learned there were trick handcuffs, you had figured out how to get out of real ones. Your grown up hands are too big, though, and it doesn’t help that your knuckles don’t fold in the way they did before you broke your hand your first perigee in the mine. Maybe they’re weak, though. If he’s just stealing clothes, they probably aren’t the best quality, right?

You twitch your wrist sharply, clenching your jaw as the cuff bites into your wrist, and it snaps, almost silently. The indigo beside you collapses, half-unconscious and half-sobbing.

“Aw, come on now. If you don’t beg where’s the fun in it?” Pinius asks, tapping the bandage on your forehead where Giggle’s gun broke the skin with his own. “You ain’t even tryin’ to live?”

This place blows. “I bet you get off on this shit, huh?” You ask, and he blinks a few times, apparently not expecting that. 

You grab his wrist and duck, barely managing not to get a wound in your shoulder, and kick his knee inwards. It snaps decisively, and Pinius crumples, shrieking. You take the gun from his pain-weakened hand and kick his other hand, knocking a short knife he must have stored in his boot away and breaking his wrist.

He starts to speak and you shoot him, between the eyes. He lands with a wet thud, and you feel distant. The guards, after a moment of silence, split into two groups; those who want to loot and leave, and those deciding to defend their late lord’s honor. The second group is easy enough to take down, since they all have only blunt weapons and the room is narrow. Somewhere in the back of your pan you notice the shades of green and blue painting the walls and consider it pretty.

Once enough of the zealous idiots pile into the hall that the others have to climb, they start to scatter, and you just take the keys from one of their waists. Your handcuffs fall with a too-loud clatter over the different sounds of trolls trying not to be scared by you. One of the younger ones is looking at you like you’re a hero, so you uncuff them first, and ask the others to not kill you, because they’d lose and you don’t want to hurt them.

Now, search the house. The gun seemed to reload on it’s own and, when you look it over, you think it’s a hard-light tool somehow augmented onto a regular six shooter. You have to assume this is at least part of why he was in power so quickly, but if they have hard light tools and rudimentary weaponry with them, they have to have transportalizers; light bending techniques are all derived from teleportation tech, anyway.

It’s not here, in the bloody dining room, or in a bedroom where you send a cowering maid on her way. In the kitchen, at the smell of the food on the servants’ table, you come back to yourself and gag, vomiting onto the floor and scaring them into a corner; you can feel blood drying on your hands and face as you send them hive. The cellar has vegetables and nothing much else, besides another spot of mess from seeing a turnip and bothering your morally-upset stomach some more.

The last room in this, really, small hive is an office. There has to be a transportalizer, or at least, there has to be some information about a big town with transportalizers. There has to be. You’ll fucking cry if not. You almost send a text to Muralist to ask for thoughts and/or prayers, but you don’t want to get his hopes up just yet, so you take a deep breath and hope really fucking hard.

In the office, beside a large desk with nothing on it, is a transportalizer, covered with a sheet. Thank the clown gods. Thank every power that be. You can leave this shitty, shitty timeline.

It’s an old model, meant for transporting large packages more than trolls, but you’ll be able to use it; they had the same models on the mining planets. You’ll feel sick and dizzy, but you’ll get there whole. You can leave. Thank you, ridiculously overused plot devices are legitimate. Thank you.

If you can help it, you’re not even going hive for at least a day. You’re going to relax, away from work, away from assassins, away from the crushing loneliness of your palace--

Just. Send someone a message, idiot.

[isroselalondebisexual]

Heya! If you're still doing trollswap stuff, how do you think John Peixes (there's a Jade and Dave Peixes and I wanna see this boy as tyrian), Rose Ampora (Idk I like Rose as seadweller purple but! that's just me), Jade Leijon (Dog girl...turned cat girl? :0, also Jade as a Witch of Heart is an interesting concept to me!), and Dave Maryam (Idk, Dave as a jadeblood would be cool, especially given that I think the jade caste is female majority?)

John Peixes, raised with as much wealth and power as a troll can have, with a lusus that makes demands but also loves him. Tbeh the idea of John using his power to hurt others is laughable, but I absolutely think that he’s the kind of person who would take advantage of his station to make sure that he’s first in line to see whatever cool new movie/game/interest of his that’s coming out. Is he going to burn down your neighborhood for the sake of a selfie background? No. Is he gonna post hella untagged spoilers for that movie you were looking forward to? You bet your ass. He’s well-intentioned over all, he likes all the warmer castes and has opinions ranging from “I mean what they’re up to is kind of not my business” to “they’re all so funny” depending on the mood of the night, a little condescending but never out of any malice. Nobody’s sure what to make of him because on one hand, it sorta sounds like he could have ideas for radical social reform in that he’s NOT mean to warm bloods and that’s usually how treason presents itself, but on the other hand he’s like… really endearing and his jokes are genuinely funny so most people actually really, really like him and are pretty pleased to be able to say “yes this one is our heir. He’s a little dumb but by god he’s doing his best.” There’s a sort of mutual back and forth of him looking at all of his subjects and going “aw cute” and them looking at him and going “fuck he’s adorable.” It’s possible that John, after maybe getting prompted from Rose or smth, uses his charm and social media presence (he’s got a sizable following, but no one is obligated to subscribe to his various channels) to start up a system where if someone in an area next to you dies, you can inform the heir and his orphaner and those lususes are donated to the cause of “Keep my horrorterror lusus from killing everyone by screaming.” He really doesn’t like killing things, it leaves a bad taste in his mouth and he gets. Weird. When he has to deal with death. So he’s really, really grateful he has a moirail like Rose to help take care of him! As Heir of Life, he’s got a pretty ridiculously high sense of empathy, especially considering the society he was raised in, and sometimes it can get so overwhelming he just shuts down. He’s compassionate, and interested in fixing things, but he isn’t sure how to DO that, aside from just, well, being himself. Taking things as they come to him. The universe is vast and cold and uncaring and he’s only one person in the midst of it all, and he knows that even though he was hatched into a position of pretty high political power, he’s still only ONE troll, and all trolls are killable. So he finds his balance by doing what he can, with what he has, where he is at. His quest is to embody the idea of giving his all, and he is truly awakened when he comes to the conclusion that what he has to give is enough. He is kind enough, tries hard enough, he is good enough just as himself, always bettering the situation around him to the best of his abilities and letting the rest of the universe sort itself out.

Rose Ampora, the most powerful and wealthy troll in Alternia except for one, who she is conveniently pale with. I think she’d be pretty similar to Rose Peixes in that she is driven and ruthless. She is second to no one, she’s top of the hemospectrum, a princess, royalty, she’s smarter, stronger, faster, better and she likes it that way. Her lusus is pretty lax, all things considered, content to go along with whatever she asks Seahorsemom to do, and it’s sort of frustrating that her lusus doesn’t share the same drive as she does, but convenient too, because that means whatever she wants, Seahorsemom will agree to, or at the very least acquiesce. If Rose starts misbehaving, Seahorsemom isn’t likely to enact any discipline, so Rose sort of has the run of the hive. Rose can be pretty mean when she wants to be, convinced of her own authority and superiority and raised on a violent, unfair planet in the deep waters of a violent, freaky ocean. Razor sharp and whip-fast reflexes are necessary to survive the deep sea, and transfer over into her everynight life and conversation styles. John is her best friend, and is the calm to her storm. He’s the one who tells her when she’s being too mean, or when someone wasn’t really trying to pick a fight with her, the one who laughs at other people’s jokes and clues her in that she shouldn’t be tensing up and reaching for her needles, the one who soothes her down and blurs the sharp edges on her, and she’s really, really grateful she has a moirail like John to help take care of her! As Seer of Hope, her goal is to stop focusing so much on the bad, on the violent way things were, she needs to stop thinking that all and any words thrown her way are threats or veiled mockery, and instead try to look towards the good, the prospects of the new world, the way things can become better without having to fight fang and claw for it. She’s always wanted better, you know. Always wanted to be better, herself, better, for her moirail, better, always trying, always clawing desperately for better, but she’s so focused on the negatives that that became impossible for her. As Seer of Hope, she must learn to change her perspective. Also, somewhat unrelated note, but violet Rose would be the best dresser Alternia has ever seen. Just sayin. She’s a disaster at all times always but that sure as hell doesn’t mean she needs to look like one.

Jade Leijon! Raised in a cave in the middle of the woods by an oversized, two-mouthed housecat who loves her! Pounce always seemed pretty spunky, from how Nepeta described her, so Jade still has a high-energy lusus that she can go out gallivanting about with! Jade, I can’t really see being a huntress, which may frustrate Pounce bc go!!!! Hunt!!!! It’s for food!!!!! We are cats!!!! But Jade is very likely content to just eat normal troll food and keeps her rifle on her for protection reasons. Of course, if anything in the forest decides that Jade is prey, it’s gonna lose that fight, and she’ll eat that, but she doesn’t like, go out of her way to hunt things. Having an affectionate cat for a lusus probably means Jade has a good understanding of “tell me to stop touching you and I will” but ALSO is the type of person to get aaaaaaaaaaaaall up in your personal space just like, casually, because she loves you and why wouldn’t she be here!!!! What do you mean you’re busy on the computer no you’re not, it’s time to cuddle with Jade now! Very likely still has her vast variety of interests, but her attention is more apt to flit between them, getting bored with something means immediately dropping it and going to something else. So he’s very smart and very impassioned about her interests, she just has a very non-linear way of going about it! Still super duper friendly and the local sweetheart of everyone, good at finding the way people like to communicate and successfully mimicking the other person’s communication style. This leads to her not being entirely sure of what her own personality is, because she’s a pretty big people pleaser and she feels like she puts on a different “mask” every time she talks to a different person, but really all that means is she’s very in tune to the emotions and personalities of the people she’s engaged with and very skilled at context-based decisions! As Witch of Heart, this is only emphasized, as she is the kind of person who is able to change emotions and the way her soul operates to best fit the needs she is presented with! Her nuanced capabilities are what let her really flourish as Witch of Heart, though sometimes the things that seem obvious to her make her come off as, paradoxically, emotionally distant. OBVIOUSLY her friends feel x way about y things, why are they making everything so complicated??? It’s simple, couldn’t be plainer, her friends are so silly and they can be sorta dumb sometimes, wow! But in reality Jade is the one who has that emotional clarity, and her friends aren’t being dumb, they’re just dealing with feelings and thoughts that are really complicated to them, despite seeming simple to Jade. She’s got a little bit of trouble with understanding that her experiences are not universal- there are some disconnects she’s gotta work through- but she’s deeply caring and very smart so it all works out for the best in the end.

Dave Maryam! So you said that the jadebloods were a female-majority caste and what immediately came to mind was “Dave is trans confirmed” so Dave is trans, confirmed. He lives alone in the desert, with a mothergrub for a lusus and we know the mothergrub really loved Kanaya and was very close to her so Dave has a good lusus, always blessed as a concept 10/10. I imagine he’d actually be really sick of the cold, since deserts get fucking chilly at night, and so he’s more of a daytime person, despite not really knowing why. Obviously he’s not a rainbow drinker, John, that’s absurd. Like how Dave in canon is all “lmao obviously I’m not gay” until he takes the time to figure out that yeah, yeah he is, despite overwhelming signs, that’s Dave with his own rainbowdrinking nature in this. Jade thinks he’s dumb and doesn’t understand what the issue is here. Dave thinks maybe SHES the dumb one, how about that! They’re dumb children and I love them. Isolation is exceedingly not-fun, and Dave can’t really get into photography cause there’s not a lot to photograph out here in the middle of nowhere. Not a lot of shit to die for him to put in jars, either. The ruins he lives close to are very interesting, though, so he ends up something of an archaeologist, digging up those ruins, trying to decipher them, funneling endless hours into those weird rocks and carved frogs and cryptic symbols because it’s one of the only things for him to DO out there in the middle of nowhere. He creates a VAST wealth of comics, also because art is one of the only things he’s able to do out there in the middle of nowhere, and the responses he gets from people who read (but generally don’t fully understand) his comics might be empty and artificial but so is the flimsy validation he gets from seeing his follower count rise and the notes go up. As Knight of Space he is similar to Dave Harley, in that he upholds the balance of the universe and needs to breed the new one, which STILL just means he’s the weird frog dad now. It’s interesting for him bc he always knew he was gonna be working with weird babies of one sort or another, and he was pretty comfortable with the role of fatherhood being something he would eventually assume, but instead of bug people he’s just got. Like. A bunch of weird frogs. Jade come check this out these things are NASTY lol. He enjoys them, but doesn’t form as close of an emotional attachment to them, because he’s been conditioned by Alternia and the structure of how his species reproduces to know that while they’re temporarily in his care, he must eventually set them off to go do their own things (like, say, becoming the universe, for example). His role as a father of these weird paradox frogs is the method by which he protects the universe and it’s existence, which is something that makes him feel incredibly important and gives him a sense of wholeness, which he deserves.