#normally i would put a readmore on this but i feel like this one is important to address

[wooahaes]

I totally understand your point and where those asks are coming from about the things you can't stand in fics, but there's a difference between hating a certain expression like "she released a breath she didn't know she had been holding" and being triggered over things like y/n being described as small, having long hair and stuff. The writers are most likely writing from their own characteristics (or if not, things that they'd like to have)

That's personal preference and if you'd like to see something specific represented, why don't you write it yourself? (And I absolutely don't mean this in a condescending way, I'm genuinely saying you should try writing it yourself, why not?)

hi anon! i'm going to assume you're new here since it'll explain that last part since i occasionally do write fics with chubby readers or fem readers that are tagged as such since i like seeing myself represented <3 i always tag them as being a chubby reader so that people who don't want to read that kind of thing can avoid it since it's not applicable to everyone and some people just aren't interested in reading it

also, before i really go into it... i'd very much appreciate it if you didn't throw around the word 'triggered' in such a manner. we're having a discussion on my blog. if i've gotten a little too heated, then that's my bad, but this is nothing like being triggered by something (trust me, being sent into a breakdown over an actual trigger is not fun and a thousand times more stressful/upsetting than getting a little heated during a discussion).

i think the thing is... my anons have all been pretty nice about the things they're talking about? i genuinely brought up the point of writing pet peeves in terms of phrases or things that people see in writing since i like creating a safe place to talk about things. i'm very much a white woman though, so i try not to comment too much on things like my first anon brought up of writers talking about reader visibly blushing aside from the fact that i try to avoid physical descriptors like that due to it alienating darker skinned readers. it's usually because of these comments (so far not aimed at me, but general grievances with reading fics) that i try to avoid any physical descriptions in my fics--reader doesn't turn red or blush in a visual sense, but their face will get warm or they'll get flustered by a statement. it's a more universal feeling that people can agree to rather than worrying about the color their face is, plus it's more inclusive of people who don't visibly blush.

my other anon said that they feel self conscious so it bothers them when writers specifically talk about showing off curves (which not every person has, by the way--i've known people who are rectangular in body shape and lack any curves, doesn't make them any more or less a person deserving of respect). this is easily something a writer could warn for, too. describing reader as petite or dainty or tiny is also something that alienates the readers and rarely gets a warning for.

if i may be so bold, i don't think you fully understand my point and my anons points. reader fanfics are meant to be an inclusive medium because you're intentionally writing a more blank slate than you would an original character. it's one thing to write something like a personality or giving your reader likes/dislikes and writing reader as someone petite. i... simply can't ever be petite (i can lose weight, yes, but i won't ever be tiny and petite because my body simply isn't like that). dark skinned readers can't just become lighter.

it's okay to write a reader from your own characteristics. it's okay to romanticize your skin tone or your body. it's not okay to not warn people about it when they don't fit that mold. if you're going to exclude readers, then the nice thing to do is warn them before they start reading your fics. i warn people when i write chubby reader fics, i've seen poc writers warn when they're writing a poc reader... why can't people with long hair or smaller body types do the same? why would people viewed as deviations from that mold be the only people who have to warn people? i'm not saying you can't write a reader who's petite, i'm saying you should tell your audience when you do. it helps readers find material that fits them better rather than walk into a fic and be taken out of it because reader's described with things like "your slim body" or noted to be blushing red.

and as i've said, i've written a lot of fics. some of them feature a chubby reader because i do like to write my own representation sometimes. most of the time, i leave those details out because i don't see a point in them. i write for myself sometimes, but i also like writing for other people and giving them a place where they can feel safe in romantic fics where they're loved no matter who they are or what they look like. sometimes i start ideas with a chubby reader that i later cut out because their body type didn't actually matter to the story i'm telling (even though i could have just kept reader chubby--why alienate people when it isn't relevant to the plot?). i've had ideas start out neutral that changed because i wanted to tell a story a specific way.

personal preference isn't an excuse to not tell your readers what you're writing. i'm willing to bet every single anon i've had so far wouldn't have these complaints if they were given a proper warning before they read the fic (because then they likely wouldn't have engaged with something they can't relate to unless they were just down to read the writing and not imagine themselves as the reader).

[fulgurbugs]

What would the travelers Pokémon teams be?

I can totally see Alfyn having a Blissey. Therion seems like he’d have a Gengar, potentially.

ok. upon literally hours of deliberation and team building (i actually already had ones for the OT1 travelers but decided to revisit them and change a few picks) me and my bestie @snailcruncher have settled on some teams. i will be going in depth on reasonings for these so prepare for a long post lol. im gonna put it under a readmore because really im not joking about how long it is

we also came up with some ideas/lore for why some of these would be picked in a pokemon AU setting, so i’ll be explaining any of those thoughts if they’re relevant too.

Ophilia:

one of the only teams left untouched, I think this is a good batch for her. i’m imagining a scenario where the sacred flame takes the form of a pokemon, and it’s a lampent. frosmoth and togetic felt just like… the right vibe. Lapras and Ampharos both have associations with guiding, so they’re in. Audino is a notable healing pokemon, and it feels in line with her personality as well.

Cyrus:

Alakazam for mr high iq smart guy. duh. oranguru for his role as a teacher, and Runerigus would be a late acquisition to his team in his ch4. Flareon, Glaceon, and Jolteon for the 3 scholar spell types. i also think him having 3 eeveelutions could also be kind of like, they’re really good for demonstrations for single-type stuff, as well as being popular with others. people might come up to him and be like omg you have a flareon i love flareon pleaseeee tell me more (flirtily) which of course would go over his head and he would start telling you flareon facts. I feel like Cyrus would excel in double battles.

Tressa:

Meowth: the pay day signature pokemon. this is as close as i can replicate to tressa randomly finding money. Skwovet (she can now take her pet squirrel with her in a pokeball)

Gyrados for sure. one, she lives along an ocean, so she should definitely have a water type, two, i’m imagining a scenario where she buys a magikarp cheap, seeing the potential in it, then raises it into a real powerhouse. just like her!

carbink: really funny scenario me and the bestie came up with that instead of eldrite the treasure was diancieite. the carbink is from the same cave. tressa did try to evolve it with the diancieite. it didn’t work.

pidgeot… felt like she needed a flying type (wind magic rep) and i feel like she’d gravitate to the humbler normal types… doesn’t get much more straightforward than pidgeot. Dhelmise… maybe it used to be captain leons, maybe she fished it out of the harbor in rippletide herself. either way, she thinks it’s cool

Olberic:

Aegislash: sword form, shield form…. this pokemon itself is the unbending blade. obviously i have given him several other sword based pokemon, too.

gallade, escavalier, and sirfetch’d badically all fit this. they’re knight-like, so they feel fitting i think to him.

as for conkeldurr and garganacl, they feel kind of… solidly built. like him. ( ⬇��� garganacl pick lore)

Primrose:

almost all of her pokemon can learn some kind of dance though their level up. Oricorio is the obvious choice, dragonair reps dragon dance, beautifly reps quiver dance, and lilligant… well they can learn so fucking many. we couldn’t decide on which one to give her, so we ended up giving her both. they’re her backup dancers or whatever.

mawile just feels very primrose to me. its cute or pretty or whatever, and you might underestimate it… but watch out. it bites.

Alfyn:

he feels like a guy who loves a big fluffy dog. and stoutland has also been used in games for its ability to sniff out items, so it feels like it’d be a good pick for an apothecary looking to sniff out herbs and such. Comfey is an obvious pick, i mean its signature move is. floral healing. meganium also has mentioned in its dex entries its healing and calming properties. it’s also a cool as fuck dinosaur so i think alfyn would like it.

chatot. does this even need explanation

we also wanted to give him an ice type, and settled on cubchoo. it has a perpetually runny nose… even Alfyn can’t fix it, try as he might.

as for leavanny, we had some trouble picking the last slot on this team. we were looking through friendship evos, and leavanny caught my eye. it’s dex entries mention that it’s very gentle, it also shows no mercy to foes who target young pokemon. seems fitting… we decided alfyn got it as a swadloon (maybe it could be taught to use its sewing abilities to dress wounds?) and it evolved during his ch3.

Therion:

I think Krookodile, mimikyu, and klefki are quite obvious picks, so i won’t go too in on them. Ninjask and Shedinja…. Ninjask is super speedy, so it felt right to give one to therion, but also i feel like.. he’d keep the shedinja around. even with 1 hp and one billion weaknesses… it’s still a part of his team. it and ninjask were born from the same nincada. he couldn’t abandon it like that.

and applin lol. something about therion gives me “guy who’s going for a cool as fuck hydrapple and ends up with an appletun actually”

H’aanit:

If anyone’s allowed to have legendaries, it’s the hunters. Chien-pao is as close as we can get to a snow leopard. and yeah maybe it’s a little evil but H’aanit is built different. Decidueye feels like an obvious pick, and spirit shackle is a great signature move for the h’aanit vibe. trapinch for. leghold trap. kilowattrel is literally a thunderbird. and ariados… well, it has the ability sniper, to reference hunter’s crit boosting abilities, as well as having some trapping moves like webs. for the Hunters, I’ve left their last spot blank, but this just means like, a “flex” spot that would be different each time you battled them. H’aanits got boxes of options to choose from.

now, onto the OT2 ones!

Ochette:

I’m sure you can see what i’m going for here. it’s just the closest i could get to Akala/mahina and her 3 story beasts. and again, like H’aanit, the last spot is “flex” not empty, so imagine her bringing some different new bullshit to every battle.

Cassti:

i wanted to do a few things with Castti: obviously, give her some healing-y mons, but also a few oddball picks that might have you looking twice. picked Shiinotic because of its ominous dex entries, and then. toedscruel because i realize shiinotic actuallt doesn’t get spore i think? and i think castti “put em to sleep right in the street” florenz should have a mon with spore. (edit. i actually just cant read the bulbapedia tables and shiinotic does get spore. anyways she gets two spore mons i guess cuz what if she’s gotta knock out two people at the same time. or whatever. dustox emits toxic powder from its wings, which seems like it could be something castti would want to keep on hand for poison axe. these three might seem a little weird tho, and reinforce her bad first impression in canalbrine, even though i’m sure they’d all be very well behaved and nice. Blissey and Arboliva are straightforward healing picks. I feel like these would be common for apothecaries to have in general.

and then galar-slowking. poison-activated brain nonsense. i feel like she acquires this one post-amnesia. they feel a kinship with each other.

Throné

Throné’s team is half-blacksnakes dedicated, half catered to herself. Every blacksnake has a seviper or an ekans, as well as probably most of them also having other grunt-esque pokemon, like zubats and such. throné’s taken care of hers, though, and friendship evolved it into a crobat.

chose furfrou because i think throné would like a prissy little dog she can dress up cutely. milcery, which she’s waiting on evolving until she can figure out what alcremie form she wants, and a shade-cherrim.

oh, and zangoose, of course. the natural enemy of sevipers. one appeared to her right after she left new delsta. what a sign, right?

Osvald:

Osvald we had some interesting stuff to work with, I think. we decided that most of his pokemon were newly acquired after his prison escape- not on purpose. they seem to just take a liking to him and start following him around.

the avalugg helped get him out of the frozen water at cape cold, and then stuck with him.

the teddiursa.. also just stuck with him. we wanted to give him something that felt a little oddball for him… so this doesn’t evolve. it stays cute and unevolved forever.

the shuppet was found hovering around the ruins of Osvald’s house. he was reluctant to take it, but if it was formed out of some semblance of his desire for vengeance… he has to be responsible for it.

the Indeedee is the only one of osvalds old pokemon, out of this lineup. since indeedee are so helpful to people, it was kind of a family pokemon acquired after elena’s birth (dex mentions they’re good at babysitting.) Osvald could probably also trust it with simple lab assistant tasks like moving stuff around. was a very beloved pokemon within their family. anyways, following his sentencing, clarissa managed to get ahold of the indeedee and took care of it all this time. when osvald returns, it’s clear it wants him to take her with him.

the drampa was acquired after the events of montwise, having shown up and basically just forced itself to go with osvald. somehow it seems to know what’s going on and who it can trust…

and slowking.. well, smart guy needs a smart pokemon. it’s another one that took a shine to him, though at that point he was getting used to this happening.

Partitio:

Talonflame: partitio’s aptitude for fire magic and the “chickadee” nickname made this an obvious choice for an ace. I can imagine a young partitio’s first pokemon being a fletchling, for sure.

bramblegast. the funny tumbleweed. put it on the team immediately.

Milotic: Paritio picked up a feebas. having a knack for seeing the potential in pokemon, he wasn’t wrong, and now hes got this thing. it’s very popular with other people, though it seems an odd pick for partito at first glance to strangers.

armarouge: ok this one’s a little convoluted so i will explain it later. kind of vibes based pick tho lol. revavroom kind of. uhh. steam engine. (we can pretend)

there ain’t a more partitio pokemon out there than gholdengo. everyone say thank you scarvi for giving partitio most of his team.

Agnea:

hey, it’s another oricorio! i think you can guess why.

volcarona: learns fiery dance, but we thought up even more lore on this one. the larvesta was a family pokemon. mostly belonging to Garud (we ended up deciding that the Bristarnis had a lot of bug types, who help out with the sewing stuff and larvesta does give a little bit silkworm, lol..)

anyways, part of his blessing for sending agnea off was telling her to take the larvesta, who also turned out to be a dazzling star in the end too… after a lot of hard work.

altaria and leafeon rep dragon and swords dance. i just feel like they’re good picks for her energy, too. lunatone reps the moonstep. I’ve also opted to give her a sunny cherrim, which i think would be cute contrasted with Throné’s gloomy one.

Temenos:

temenos has quite the oddball lineup for a cleric. but hes kind of an oddball cleric so i think it works.

Absol. man. a lot of shit happens to temenos. this absol is stressed tf out 24 fucking 7. sorry man.

Clefable: felt like we had to give him a healer-adjacent pokemon and this one evolves with a moonstone. feels fitting for mr night-ability mistral tbh.

Lokix. alright. another scenario based pick. Temenos caught this thing on the pilgrims way as a nymble at like level 2. probably rustling in the metaphorical tall grass, crick is all “get behind me, it could be dangerous” and then. lvl 2. nymble. doesn’t even need to be fought to be caught. and then temenos is all hey crick, it’s a “crick”et pokemon! (we’ll ignore that the dex says grasshopper) he’d keep it just to mess with crick, but it ends up sticking around.

Houndoom. well, temenos is the pontiff’s hound, so we did need to pick a dog for him. it’s a houndour in the beginning, houndoom by the end. probably evolved in a moment of crisis (in ch4?) the yamask is from crackridge.

wooloo. this is actually Crick’s. it wasn’t helping with the little lamb allegations… after the events of stormhail, Temenos takes it in.

Hikari:

Kingambit: i mean. come on. gotta get a kingambit for the future king.

Gardevoirs dex entire mention that it is dedicated to its trainer/cause to the bitter end, and would do anything to protect it. perfect for Hikari.

Morpeko and Zweilous. some literally two-faced pokemon. (maybe he feels a little bit of a kinship with them in that way) i also really wanted to give Hikari a pseudo-legendary, and i think that his zweilous would probably evolve just in the nick of time to kick some ass against mugen. Hydreigons might be notoriously destructive, but something about the personalities merging into one brain in evolution seems to have mellowed Hikari’s out. it’s remarkably personable, for a hydreigon.

lucario: i really wanted to give him a pokemon that learns copycat, and lucario fits that bill. plus, he definitely needed a fighting type.

Cerudelge: formed from bitterness of old cursed armor, but also an extremely skilled sword fighter… one of hikari’s aces.

I also like to imagine that a lot of hikari’s pokemon are quite difficult to deal with (his ceruledge in particular is quite belligerent and mean) but they all have utmost respect for him as a trainer, once they’re on the battlefield. but onlookers sometimes worry… how the hell does he deal with it all?

other notes about some of the picks :

Partitio’s amarouge. Paritio picked up a. charcadet later on, and hikari personally warned him that it might be difficult to deal with. (his charcadet and later ceruledge were super hard to train for him) of course, partitio did end up in possession of the cool nice armor that evolved it into the better mannered and nobler armarouge… but honestly, even his charcadet was far better behaved.

paritio and tressa both get those shitty fish that get cool. must be because they both have an eye for a diamond in the rough.

agnea and throné’s cherrims are best friends. throné rarely got to see her cherrim sunny-form until she left new delsta… she wonders if maybe it was upset about being so nocturnal before, with the blacksnakes.

castti and osvald, team mom and team dad somehow both ended up with slowkings. everyone’s a little concerned about castti’s, though…

after the events of his story, Osvald leaves indeedee and teddiursa with clarissa and elena. the teddiursa and elena in particular take to each other very well… when osvald finally is able to return to elena’s life, the teddiursa is really much more her pokemon.

also. H’aanit and Ochette and far and away the best battlers of both groups. i know i only have them with one flex spot, but you can imagine that they’d swap out a lot more for whatever they need to do to build a good team. they’ve got loads more options than everyone else.

you know that thing about giving someone an applin in galar? therion did trade it over to alfyn at one point. but really they have joint custody of that thing. which definitely ended up as an appletun.

we also had some npc aces sprinkled in there, so here’s some other thoughts, just as bonus!

Malaya: Pawmot (revival blessing), rapidash.

Elena: Abra

Harvey: Hypno, Bacephalon

Pala: Kricketot (formerly belonged to her and agnea’s mom)

Roque: Metagross

Kazan: Husuian Braviary

Ori: Chatot

Trousseau: Glimmora

Cordelia: ….ferrothorn

Erhardt: Aegislash, Hisuian Samurott

Z’aanta: Zamazenta

Juvah: is literally a solgaleo

Darius: Scrafy/Pangoro

Simeon: Malamar

Esmeralda: Mismagius (wanted to give her something with perish song)

Mattias: drifblim? darkrai?

Lucia: Hatterene

Miguel: Grimmsnarl

Werner: spectrier

Mugen: Kingambit. mirror match with Hikari, but mugen’s has supreme overlord while Hikari’s has defiant.

Kaldena: we couldn’t pick but maybe she goes like lusamine mode and fuses with something.

Claude: Cradily. (uh. literally fossil pokemon)

Dolcinea: belive it or not, also an oricorio. also, solrock. but her oricorio is the prettiest.

veronica: she has somehow acquired the worlds first and only female gallade through the power of lesbianism.

Crick: … wooloo….

I do wanna make some drawings for these ideas, but this post was literally already one billion miles long and has way too many images, so it’ll probably be a separate post. thanks for the ask! and sorry for talking so much, but i fucking love making pokemon teams so much it’s insane.

and a big thank you again to my bestie @snailcruncher who helped me with a lot of these picks (and did basically all of the npc picks thank you so much i love you). tysm for pokemon octopath brainrotting with me for like 4 hours.

[nocturnalnewsiestrash]

I'm in my feels about how the way ghosts interact with the world and each other affects Edwin and Charles as sensory seeking and sensory avoidant neurodivergents.

While it's already hard to understand the dynamics of ghostly interactions with their environment at play I'm pretty sure of these things. So we know that Edwin and Charles don't feel items and other alive people the same as they would alive. It's a different touch-based-sensory-less experience(?) at least that's what we know. And we know that they can feel other supernatural beings and each other, differently. I'm in the camp of its basically the same as normal human sensory touch but that could be argued a bit. However we're sticking with that both for the sake of this post and cause I want to.

This analysis got long as shit so readmore it is

Now we see Edwin being very touch avoidant with relatively everyone (besides Niko and Charles) and we see Charles being touch seeking with just about everyone. This makes sense to me under the fact that they as neurodivergent beings both have their more usual "resting state" on the touch-sensory-acceptance scale where Edwin generally rests at the sensory avoidant side and Charles rests at the sensory seeking side.

The implications though of how the fact that you can't really feel things through touch the same way as you would alive really gets to me though. Because you might think that without the sensory part of touch there wouldn't be anything to activate the neurodivergent avoidance right? Well obviously this is not the case for Edwin as we see him from the beginning tolerating touches from Charles and no one else. Then we gain Niko too as someone he appreciates the touch of. And if he can't really Feel the alive people, like Crystal, the same that means that the new ghost touch sensory experience also triggers the touch avoidance. And we see Charles practically touching anyone and (anything) who will let him which means the ghostly touch also triggers touch seeking. So does this mean that under DBDA dynamics neurodivergence finds a way to still be sensitive to sensory experiences under any circumstance? Both in avoiding and seeking it? Does this mean that it's more of a mental thing than the actual 5 senses of it? This is so interesting to me because I've often thought that having the ability to turn off and on sensory capabilities would be LOVELY for my mental health (I have ADHD) I'm not so sure that's true anymore because my brain would just adjust and find ways to avoid and seek THAT new feeling. The feeling of the absence of feeling.

Now the difference between ghost-alive touch/ghost-environmental object touch and ghost-fellow ghost or other supernatural being touch is also interesting to me in sensory seeking terms. Because we also see Edwin enjoying Charles touch specifically and at first we could assume that he only likes touch under ghostly sensory feelings. And us neurodivergent people often have our people that we have more spoons to handle the touch of than others. Which also has very adorablely soft implications of Charles being Edwin's Safe Person including sensorily. But then we see him enjoy Niko's touch too which means that he can also find his sensorily safe person in alive interaction sensories terms. And obviously we see Charles being sensory avoidant too when he's out of spoons for that, like when he bats Edwin's hand away when Edwin attempts to comfort him at the lighthouse. And we see Edwin also sensory seek in, as George put it, craving Charles' touch after their hug in episode 5.

Now I'm fairly certain that they feel things in Hell the same as they would between other supernatural beings and as they did when alive. Which after 70 fucking years of that, I don't even KNOW how I would feel about touch as an already sensory avoidant person if I was in Edwin's shoes. Genuinely an unfathomable part of the experience for me. But clearly Edwin still can handle touch just more specific about it. No different than a regular neurodivergence experience really. Which just gives me so many emotions because Edwin baby boy I knew you were so so strong but 🥺 how did you handle this so well too 🥺. I don't know how you did it. He has so much credit for how he's handled (well everything, but specifically this) so well under these circumstances. Someone pls tell him he deserves more credit than he gives himself.

Anyway my Edwin hell emotions aside, i saw someone mention awhile ago (I would credit them but I don't remember who) that Charles and Edwin wear their gloves so often specifically to avoid having to think about the fact that they don't have the normal human sense of touch anymore which is just so something. Because that in and of itself is its own sensory avoidant behavior. Avoiding the fact that they're not really experiencing a specific flavor of sensory anymore? Could this be true for their many layers of clothing they don to possible keep from feeling that they can't feel the environment the same? Like wind/the snow in ep1, the temperature, and other elements? Sensory avoidance too. A supernaturally charged type of sensory avoidance but still. Sensory avoidance. Plus how we see them lose their layers and gloves when they're in their office bubble alone? Their home? Their comfort space where they have the spoons to relax? And possibly have the spoons to handle the new (well new as a relative term) different type of touch sensory experience that is their ghostly existence? Cause in THESE terms Edwin's sensory seeking in the form of rolling up his sleeves and placing his legs propped up upon the couch arm to experience this new type of environmental feel more fully. And Charles is sensory seeking in the form of Touching Everyone of His Magic Bag Items (and doing classic neurodivergent rearranging and setting up just to take back down play but that's beside the point) and fidgeting by throwing (and consequently touching) the ball in ep1. Which IS in line with how when we're more emotionally comfortable we have the spoons for being more comfortable with other things like more touch and more audio and more visuals as neurodivergents. These are the environmental and worldly items based touch. But we also see them touching EACHOTHER more within their office comfort zone, which means they also feel more sensory seeking in the way we're familiar with in their home bubble. And having the spoons for being more emotionally vulnerable there too but that's not really the point of this post.

In conclusion, how Edwin and Charles still act as touch-sensory seeking and avoidant neurodivergent individuals after this long as ghosts really enamors me. I didn't really go into analyzing the other 4 senses have changed for them but we know they can see and hear the same so those sensory seeking levels wouldn't change, and smell and taste are too things they mentioned they don't have anymore as ghosts but they HAVEN'T touched on how smell and taste senses would work between them and other supernatural entities like. I can't really comment on how the minute differences between ghost on alive and and ghost on ghost feelings would differ without knowing more. Like perhaps this would be touched on more in season 2? Like the taste of eachother hmm? Much to think about. Anyway yeah this was my neurodivergent reading of their touch based sensory seeking, I probably didn't consider some things, so I would love to hear your input on this too!

[baalzebufo]

HIII. can i just say. absolutely ADORE your gravity falls stuff!! i'd love to hear more of your headcanons (especially abt gideon) (that's my SON)

yes yeeees i was part of the Original Wave of Gideon Enjoyers back when like, episode 4 aired and it was about ten blogs who didnt hate his guts. i mean, i still want to throw him out a window, but I also think he has really interesting character stuff going on that some people just didnt wanna look at bc they hated him! which like, fair, he's a villain, but that freaky little dude will always be one of MY faves, haha

this post got. very long im sorry I had to put a readmore here haha but I haven't had an excuse to infodump about this for ages so here's a couple Things I like Thinking About... also a doodle I did the other night to break up the wall of text below

ok ok to start i LOVE him so much as a foil to dipper (and to an extent ford too) as examples of what the journals/that kind of power and information can do to people. its why im so adamant that he does actually have albinism, even if its not Technically Canon. dipper and ford both have a like, 'physical oddity' about them (birthmark, sixth finger) i think it makes sense for gideons to be his albinism as something that set him apart. all three are 'weirdos', were ostracised to an extent by the world, had that longing for something special or important, and then found it. and its what they DO with that which sets them apart

especially as a foil to dipper like... from time to time in the show, he gets a bit gung-ho about abusing the journals power for his own gain. but he has friends and family to reign him back in. he has more of a moral compass about not wanting to hurt people, generally. dipper never became like gideon did

this is getting into headcanon territory here but, my general summary of gideons childhood is an isolated one. only child, fairly sheltered, had some medical complications early in life which led to a lot of time on his own in hospital, attended school briefly and was subjected to significant bullying. and without a real support network outside of his parents who were very doting to the point of spoiling him because hes their Little Miracle he wasnt exactly well-adjusted even as a kid

but basically, that kid ends up finding this journal and learns about spells and evil artifacts and suddenly he has the power to make people like him. not only that but Fear him. he goes from feeling powerless to an absolute ego-trip. and his only close relatives would never tell their little boy 'no' about something, so they're not disciplining him in any way. its a perfect storm for a disaster to happen

it stems from this childish desire to go 'look at me im important and special and everyone likes me' and hes become so embittered already by people being dicks that he doesnt care if he hurts people on the way

that only really changes when mabel shows up and is the first person in town to approach him from a like... normal level. shes nice to him but not in the overly-saccharine and doting way his fans are, just in the way a girl who wants to be friends is. she treats him normally and is nice and he thinks she's pretty and that ALSO becomes a perfect storm of 'well shes nice to me and i like her so i must be in love with her and she is with me!' and, of course. kid who has never heard the word No before. so the later rejection becomes a HUGE sticking point and grudge to the point of being flat-out murderous

later in life with a little Introspection i think he'd realize it was less love and more just. basically imprinting on the first person to be normal and kind at him in years

UM. I should wrap this up i have so much in my brain. gideon was one of my earliest roleplay muses i'd write and draw with my pals, so I subjected him to a LOT of personal characterization stuff and also making a thousand AUs for fun. (aus always come in two flavours either its 'im going to make you marginally more well-adjusted' or 'im going to make you so, SO much worse')

ive got a soft spot for con-men and fake psychics and generally shitty little weasels and gideon just stormed into the show being a jerk with an aesthetic i adore and i was like ahhh. i want to punt him. hes my favourite.

ok im going to shut up now. last minute headcanon. gideon got into wood carving in prison art therapy because using a knife to stab something in a non-murder way helps soothe his urges. he whittles little people figurines

✨

[liedownquisition]

Jason Todd's timeline and "Age"

So, there's a lot of discussion of Jason Todd's age esp as relative to other sidekick vigilantes, particularly Tim and Mia. I believe the exact words are usually something about a "grown ass man beating up/trying to kill teenagers."

DISCLAIMER: This particular post is specifically regarding the "grown ass man vs teenagers" statement, I have posts regarding the "tried to kill them" portion and other stuff like "seriously Jason Todd is like being shot by a marshmallow gun compared to what goes on directly before and after him in these incidents, also you don't bitch about the right stuff, also a lot of you prop up characters who are Objectively Worse, and no that's not hate on your fave it's just me calling out hypocrisy". It just takes time to find digital copies of the panels I'm using. NOTE I AM NOT JUSTIFYING HIS ACTIONS. I'm just saying y'all blow it out of proportion for petty character hate. Like, shit, they're superheroes. Jason's soooo fuckin' tame. He's not even framed as a big deal to the teens it's only the adults that think it's that much of a problem.

Courtesy readmore post cut:

Now, to start off, we all know Jason died at 15 & a few months off from 16 (if you want me to dig up panels, sure, but I figured at this point that wasn't in question). Tim at this point is somewhere between 12-13, and we have this panel in Lonely Place of Dying which takes place a few months later:

So that's a ballpark of 2-3 years between Jason and Tim.

But Tim's age is really fucky and they keep de-aging him tbh. We can extrapolate that his confrontation with Jason was between the ages of 16-17 bcs it's after the arc where he has his incredibly shitty 16th birthday in Robin Vol2 #116 and before Red Robin where he's stated to be 17. This would put Jason between 18-19 at the time. (If you really want me to find panel sources for Tim's birthday and his age in RR then, sure, but I don't think they're necessary. I used it more as a guidepost for Jason's age, since we have a clear idea of what the age gap is.)

At least, on paper.

Mia for her part I've had a hard time finding like, on panel mentions of her age and if anyone can direct me to it being explicitly stated I'd love that. I'm rereading old comics but it's a LOT of comics to hunt down & dig through. To my understanding she was fifteen when Ollie first met her, and there's at Minimum of about a year and a half between that to her meeting Red Hood, more likely at least two? because there's at least few months between that and her joining the Titans, the Doctor Light stuff, then One Year Later, and then returned to Star some 3 months after Ollie came back to run for mayor? And then Jason not too long after. So, two years feels safe. Puts her at 17-ish, Jason at 19-20

Once again, I specify: on paper.

People would happily point out at this point that the upward stretch of a 4 year age gap is a "huge gap in maturity." And yeah, under normal circumstances, I'd agree.

But, and this is going to get contradictory bcs I found Two different timelines (BOTH written by Winick, lmao), and depending on how you read it it could be up to three different possibilities. Let's Start with Batman Annual #25: Daedalus & Icarus.

Timestamp before Jason's resurrection, which is pretty well known at this point:

Next, him waking up from a coma afterwards, when he escapes the hospital:

Now the above could be interpreted as either 1 year after he died if we're assuming that it's using the same "start" point to count as the resurrection (unlikely), or one year after he came back (more likely).

Next, the timestamp right before a guy recognizes him and sells him out:

And, finally, the timestamp before being put in the Pit:

That is, count it up, between 3-3 1/2 years where Jason was dead, in a coma, or otherwise not particularly... cognizant of the world around him. His ass is NOT developing emotionally, socially, or mentally like this, which pretty handily bridges the gaps there. Taken at face value, Jason's maturity level is going to be, unironically, younger than Tim's in the wake of these setbacks.

Now, if we go to Lost Days issue 1, it doesn't specify how long he was dead, nor how long he was in a coma, so we'll just carry those two over, what we DO have is this from just after Talia brought him home:

This puts him as being on the streets for five months, so we're at just shy of two years so far. And then we have this:

Which is right before Talia puts him in the Pit.

So, in summary: 6 months dead, 1 year coma, 5 months on the street, and something like 1-1 1/2 years with the League which...

Actually puts us on almost the exact same timeframe either way. 3 to 3 1/2 years. It just changes whether Jason was on the streets or with the League for longer.

And is utterly incomprehensible because comic timelines are a freaking nightmare.

If we're being generous, then that would put Jason at a minimum of 19, maybe toeing the line of 20 for UTRH, again, on paper, because like hell are you convincing me he did less than a year's worth of training abroad throughout Lost Days. Yeah maybe they trained him in fighting while he was catatonic, muscle memory and all that. But the other teachers that we KNOW of? The bombs, guns, probably something to get him up to date on handling all that tech we see him using, Egon, potentially arguably All-Caste if you want to draw from n52...

but you'd have to knock at least a year and a half off of his internal/personal development from death & coma, at minimum. Maybe you could argue he was somewhat developing while in his "the lights are on, but nobody's home" phase, you can't say it's at the same level as a normal person might when going about their day to day life, and it's difficult to measure. But he's not hitting the kind of milestones that he should be for his age. I wouldn't put him at anything less than two years behind. So if we use our upper estimates on Jason, and lower estimates on both the developmental setbacks and Tim/Mia's ages that gives us:

Jason toeing 20, mentally 18, fighting Tim at 16. 2 year gap, kind of stretching the physical age gap if we assume Tim had just barely turned 13 when he showed up to be Robin. - OR LESS

Jason maybe 21, mentally 19, fighting Mia at 17, two year age gap again. Honestly, still not that big of a difference - OR LESS

And, to be frank, that's not even counting the mental development issues that come from the intense physical trauma from dying - and I swear to fuck don't give me the "He's not the only one who died he's not special" speech.

HOW MANY OF THE OTHERS YOU'RE USING AS A GOTCHA LOST, *GESTURING AGGRESSIVELY ABOVE*, LITERALLY MULTIPLE YEARS OF THEIR LIFE.

Not counting adults, of course. Barry lost years, Hal lost years, Ollie I think also lost a couple years? but A) they came back still adults, bodies pretty much the same. B) While Jason's body didn't go through a magic growth spurt in canon, it did still grow esp while with the League.

I'll eventually get around to Titan's Tower & GA#72 (tbh, there are other people who've already done Titan's Tower and it'd probably be better than what I do, so I'm more going to focus on the latter, but there IS a specific part of the former that drives me nuts that I don't see brought up a lot), and maybe if we're feeling spicy all my issues with UTRH starting with how Winick is just as guilty of retroactively writing Jason as being inherently a bad penny since his Robin days as any of the other "modern" writers. Like, bud, Severe enough Head Trauma is legitimately enough to change someone's personality, not to mention trauma. It wouldn't hurt your narrative for that eerie difference, the Shade of What Once Was if you're really going for RH being Like that.

Final addition: I swear to god if you use my post to start up some kind of petty-ass ship war or flame other characters I will immediately turn off reblogs and replies I am Not Dealing With That Shit, please and thank you.

Anyways, @glitter-stained, your interest made me decide to actually put the work in now to pull it up rather than passively gather stuff to dump whenever discourse pushes me over the edge so, here ya are. Looks like you did have it closer on the mark than I did.

[minimujina]

ɪ ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʜᴇʟᴘ

scara drabble turned emotional, not clickbait🔥had to put a readmore cause it got long, i didnt fkn plan this

thinking violently about taking care of scara’s wounds even though he’s not human and they’re literally going to fix themselves (let’s just. go with that. since idk how his body actually works LMFAOO). and he doesn’t even have the heart to tell you the first time you see him lightly injured—he tries to, really, but he can hardly get a word in with how firmly you insist on patching him up. he can’t find it in himself to interject with the real reason he’d be fine without your help, because good god you’re just so stubborn—and normally he wouldn’t give a lick about something as trivial as the feelings of a sentimental human, but there’s a part of him that finds it.. sweet, the way you care so much. even though it’s actually for no reason. even though this “purpose” you’ve found—following him around to take care of him when he gets hurt—is actually pointless in a way. even though he could spare both you and him extra work by telling you.

he just cant find it in himself to be the one to deflate you. he could deflate anyone, anyone at all—but not you. never you. somehow, you’re special. there is something about you that makes insults catch in his throat and ugly comments die before they even become a wisp of a thought.

your earnest gaze as you rush for him when his porcelain skin has been blemished—that, in particular, feels strangely familiar to him, but he does not know why. and your unabashed naivety irks him in a way, but it’s also one of the sole reasons he could not possibly ruin the moments between you two where you are touching him so gently and so lovingly, the only sounds being being the rustling of bandages and the chirping of insects, his leg bouncing violently and stomach playing jumprope at the feeling of your soft fingers ghosting over his artificial skin and his artificial wounds. your palms are sweaty as you work and your breathing is a bit loud, but he could not possibly care about anything less. things that would piss him off if done by anyone else—existing, for example, or any of the former mentioned “imperfections”—could pass very easily if the person was you.

and then there’s the selfish part of him, the part that can’t tell you because he would then be forced to forfeit those special moments of intimacy he had not experienced the likes of since his first breath of life. he wants you so selfishly; he sees no reason to squish your good, false faith while losing you in the process. that’s just a lose-lose scenario. what would he gain in return—a real relationship? pah. with relationships come suffering, and the fact that it is all entirely out of his control makes his empty chest convulse a bit.

he figured it’s alright to live a little white, harmless lie. it meant he could be close to you, it meant he could keep you around without being blatantly obvious about his affection (read: he could beat around the bush for as long as possible). he could avoid his feelings while still reaping the benefit of your presence.

but oh, trust me, it will certainly bite him in the ass eventually. he can’t run forever. you’ll get tired; you’ll think he’s sick of you. that he hates you. that he doesn’t want you around—he doesn’t need you.

and it’s true, actually, that he doesn’t need you.

however, there is a point to be made about relationships out of need versus relationships out of choice.

wouldn’t it be such a beautiful thing for him to finally stop pretending he only has you around because of necessity? if he makes it known that no, this is a choice that i am making—i am choosing to love you—his chest will be left wide open in all its empty glory, where there is no heart, but instead a vulnerable child. he’d be left with nothing but the hope that you will respond with grace, and that terrifies him.

and no, he is certainly not sick of you, nor does he hate you. he wants nothing more than you, than your presence. he wants everything to do with you. he wants you more than anything he’s ever wanted in his miserable, pathetic life, if it could even be called a life.

but does he need you? no.

and you know what’s so fascinating? he has not needed you all this time, and yet he’s kept you around. isn’t that interesting?

he chose you from the beginning with the guise of necessity. he pretended that it was because he needed it, needed you, needed your help—because somehow the idea that it was a choice made entirely of his own volition, for literally no reason other than he liked you, is absolutely mortifying. the last time he made such a choice, it destroyed him.

how is he supposed to justify keeping you around if he doesn’t even have a reason for it other than the butterflies in his artificial stomach? how can he justify it with his mere feelings?

his feelings make him weak. his feelings are the reason he was cast away in the first place.

it’s so much easier to pretend he’s detached. but detachment means he will only ever feel your artificial touch on his artificial skin, and nothing more. your well-intentioned hands on his fake skin, on his fake wounds. the porcelain cracks are spreading quickly, and he will do nothing about it.

the saddest part about all of it is the fact that he thinks he has to justify his feelings to anyone at all. he does not know what it means to do anything without immediately thinking about how to explain it should someone question him.

what he needs is not you. what he needs is to stop treating you like you’re a ghost from his past who will echo the aches and pains of all the people who hurt him. he can choose you in his mind, but if he holds you at an arm’s distance and does nothing about that choice, it will then mean nothing.

what he needs is to stop wishing he could have you without exposing himself in the process.

if he is to have you, he will be vulnerable with you. there is no choice in that matter. but what he does not understand is that such vulnerability is not dangerous if it’s you he’s with.

so that’s the one thing that you can do to help him—you must not only tell him, but show him, that you are not going to leave him at the drop of a hat if he is anything more than apathetic. that’s it. your only job will be to show him you are safe. that’s all you can do.

and then you must wait for him to believe you.

it’s not your job to fix him. and he can’t sit around and wait for someone to be his savior, the yin to his yang, the angel who will purify his sin. you cannot be any of that. nobody can.

but what you can be is his safe place, his heart, his joy, his lover. you can be—you are—the only one who is able to receive his angst and transform it into understanding. you can choose to love him, not because you need him, but because you want him, amidst all of his angst and suffering.

so that’s his job—realizing it’s possible that you could ever choose him, not of need, but of want, despite everything about him that is less than desirable. despite how difficult it will be. he already knows he’s chosen you, that’s not the hard part—he doesn’t have difficulty believing the lovability of others. the hard part is believing the lovability of himself.

and even when he finally accepts that you want him, even after he tells you the reason he does not need you to fix his injuries, you are still there to lovingly wrap a cloth around his fake, weeping skin.

he does not need you, and yet you remain, because you’ve made your choice—it doesn’t matter whether he needs you or not. he will have you because you chose to give yourself to him.

you will take care of his body not because you need to, but because you want to. you will love him simply because you can.

it’ll take him some time to understand that, but he’ll get there, i promise. please do be patient.

[taytrashmouth]

Just finished rewatching game of thrones and the Jon snow obsession has been reborn.

This is a long one!

TW: rape, abuse, crying, murder, etc, all normal GOT stuff.

Jon snow x reader.

:readmore:

Looking at the empty walls of the stone cell I’ve been trapped in for weeks I can’t help but feel that these walls of winterfell that I’ve known for so long are no longer the walls I call home. This is a prison.

I pushed myself back against the furthest wall as I heard the keys rattle in the door. The chain around my waist felt heavier than normal.

As the door opened I felt a tear escape my eye…Ramsey

“You’re not excited to see me?” He pouted and wiped my cheek.

I tried to hide my fear and pain and sadness but I knew he could see through my act.

“I’m going to meet with lady Bolton tomorrow.” He sat down in front of me.

I thought about Sansa….I thought about when we were little, how we would sneak into the kitchens after everyone was asleep, how we’d laugh and talk, how we would dance in the snow outside and go for long walks in the snowy hills. She was bigger now, more mature. The last time I saw her was at the wedding…she got locked in Ramseys room and I got locked in a cell. I heard people talk of her escape through the small widow towards the top of my cell, I’d never been that relieved in my life.

Sansa never treated me as her handmaiden, only ever as her friend.

“Her bastard brother will be there too…” Ramsey spoke.

I couldn’t help my reaction, I let out a gasp and tears fell from my eyes.

Jon was alive.

“I want you to come with me to meet with them tomorrow…”

I looked up at him and frowned, there was a catch, Ramsey was insane, he liked to play games.

“You see… I know that Jon cares for you…and lovers should always be reunited at the end of every story.” Ramsey smiled as he touched my cheek, I tried to move away but he held me still.

“But I’m afraid this story doesn’t have a happy ending…” he pouted. “Jon will have to see what I’ve done with you.” Now he smiled.

He began to untie my dress, I tried to move away but he held me down and the chains were too heavy. After not being fed for a week I could barely have the strength to push him off.

He grabbed my hands and held them high above my head as he sucked hickeys into my neck, and put bite marks all over my skin.

Eventually I stopped screaming, I just accepted him inside of me, I cried and looked away, knowing there was nothing I could do. I thought of everything that wasn’t Ramsey. Then eventually I didn’t think of anything at all, I didn’t even feel as though I was in the room anymore. I was somewhere deep inside my own mind, somewhere I couldn’t even place.

I felt Ramsey hit me and become rough but I just lay there in the cold cell…hopeless.

When he was done he had his guards unlock the chains around my waist and wrists, and lead me to a room in the castle….Aryas old room.

They locked me in there for the rest of the night I had a bath and scrubbed my skin till it was raw and red trying to get Ramsey off of me…

I put on the dress that was laid out on the bed, it showed off my shoulders and my sides, exposing the bruises and scrapes all over my body. I brushed my hair that had grown a lot since I last saw myself. I tied it back into a braid exposing my face and neck like Ramsay instructed

I looked at my thin figure, I could see my own ribs. I looked awful. I drank the soup that was left on top of the dresser.

And I waited…to see Jon again, to see Sansa.

I walked out of the dining hall to see Jon hitting a training dummy repeatedly with his sword.

“I think it’s dead.” I smiled as he turned around.

He smiled softly, something he didn’t do often. “What am I missing?” He asked gesturing back into the hall

“Ned’s angry because Arya flicked food at Sansa.” I spoke. He laughed under his breath. “So nothing new?” He smirked.

I shook my head.

It was quiet for a moment, the music from inside distant. The air was cold.

I had liked Jon since I was about 10, he often caught Sansa and I in the kitchens late at night and instead of telling Ned, like Robb sometimes did, he would join us.

But I’d never say anything, I couldn’t…technically he was a stark, and technically I was a prisoner, a Greyjoy. Although the starks had never made me feel like a prisoner.

“Why so frustrated?” I asked him.

He looked down at his sword and the blisters he’d caused on his hand.

“A lot on my mind, my lady.” He replied.

“I am no lady….just a handmaiden, My lord.” I spoke back, knowing he only ever wanted me to call him Jon.

He smiled to himself. “Just Jon.”

“Okay….just Jon, may I have this dance.” I asked as the band began to play another song that could be heard vaguely through the closed doors to the dining hall.

“Anything for you, princess.” He spoke slowly and made his way over to you. Putting his sword against the stone walls of winterfell.

“I am no-“ you were interrupted when his finger pressed to your lips. “You are to me.” He whispered.

He valued me, always. He never treated me like less, in fact he always treated me like more, like royalty, like a princess.

I smiled up at him. He placed his hands on my waist and i put mine on his shoulders.

“I must warn you, just Jon I’m not a good dancer.” I spoke.

“I know, I’ve watched you dance with sir Cedric Mormont a few years back, and sir Jamie earlier tonight.”

I playfully smacked his arm and he smiled.

“I’ll tell you what princess y/n Greyjoy…I’m not that good either.” He smiled.

We swayed and laughed when Jon jokingly spun me around, or when I tried to lead. We ran around the castle walls for about 3 hours before lady Katlin caught us.

We both froze when she saw us.

“Sansa was looking for you y/n.” She spoke firmly. Glaring at Jon.

“My lady- I-“ you stumbled.

“It was me! I wanted to try on Robb’s armor, see what it was like, to be a knight. I had lady Greyjoy assist me putting it on-“ Jon interrupted. He never lied, but he was protecting me.

I glanced worriedly at him.

“Typical.” She whispered under her breath, and shook her head. My blood boiled. “Y/n get to Sansa’s chambers immediately, Jon… out of my sight.” She spoke loudly.

I quickly walked off to Sansa’s bed chamber, thinking about Jon the whole way there.

“Where we’re you?” Sansa spoke.

“I’m sorry, I-I was with Jon.” I blushed.

She squealed. “Tell me everything.” She spoke, handing me her hairbrush as she sat down at the dresser.

It was like having a permanent best friend, I was only two years older than Sansa.

I carefully undid the intricate braids in her hair and brushed her copper locks.

“We danced…sort of.” I smiled.

“Was he any good?” She frowned.

“No.” We both laughed.

We giggled and spoke until she had to go to bed. Laughing about Jon and how she was to marry prince Joffrey.

You walked along the empty passages towards the servants quarters. Through the snow covered courtyard. 

I was pulled from the happy memory when the lock to the chamber rattled and Ramsey and two of his guards entered.

I dropped the soup onto the floor, my hands must have been shaking.

“Oh clumsy are we? You’ll need a new dress I suppose.” Ramsey pouted.

Tears filled my eyes.

“Luckily I have the perfect one for you.” He smirked and held out some purple material…open back.

He wanted Jon to see my pain, to see that I belonged to him. I shook my head and tears fell from my eyes.

His guards grabbed my wrists and shoved me onto the bed, i sobbed when they began to tie my hands to the headboard. They ripped away the gown I was wearing and I could no longer see Ramsey, and that scared me more than anything.

“This will hurt darling.” I could hear the smile in his voice. And I screamed and sobbed as a hard whip hit my back, digging into my spine, I felt blood pour down my back.

It hurt again and again, 20 times he hit me, 20 times I screamed and 20 times I did not prey for help, I wished for death.

He left me tied there, facing the wall, bleeding.

I cried for a long time until I fell asleep from exhaustion. Naked and beaten.

The morning was a rush, Bran had fallen from the tallest tower and hadn’t woken up. Lady Katlin was devastated and Ned had informed Sansa and I we were leaving for kings landing tomorrow. He had been offered the position of hand of the king.

He also informed me that Jon was to become a man of the nights watch.

I walked as fast as I could to his room, my dress blowing behind me in the wind. I tried desperately not to cry.

I shoved his door open and there he was packing his things.

As he turned to me I slapped him, hard.

“Were you not going to tell me!” I yelled, the tears began to fall.

He swallowed hard and looked down, and then at me…my face.

“I didn’t know how-“

“Lies!” I screamed, tears falling like snowflakes.

“I love you! And I didn’t know how to say goodbye to the one thing! The one good thing in my life! The only thing that matters!” He yelled too now.

You cried harder.

“You are the only thing keeping me from going! But I can’t love you, n/n….I can’t! I’m a bastard, and I refuse to force you to burden that name too. You are going to king’s landing tomorrow, you’ll meet a Duke of something there and you’ll grow old in a castle, and have beautiful daughters and strong sons.” Jon was crying too, he held my shoulders.

“No-“ I shook my head. “I don’t want that…. I love you Jon snow. I will never love anyone else. I want to run away with you, I want to carry your children, I want to grow old with you!” I sobbed.

He shook his head, and pressed his forehead to mine.

“I don’t care if you’re a bastard- it’s a stupid title. Like king or queen it’s just a name. But you’re so much more than that you’re brave and kind, loving, you’re funny and smart and-“ he kissed me, gently but passionately.

For a moment everything made sense. All the stars aligned and the puzzle fit together beautifully.

But then I pulled away.

“I love you.” We stated at the same time, we both laughed lightly.

There was a heavy silence after that. I knew I had to go to kings landing, and he knew he had to go to the wall, to make something of himself.

“Promise me.” I spoke slowly as he held my cheeks. “Promise me when I see you again you’ll kiss me, like you just did, promise me that someday we’ll grow old together. Promise me-“ I choked and he kissed my forehead. “Promise that I’ll see you again.”

He nodded. “I promise.” He knelt to the floor and kissed my hand, “ I promise I’ll come back for my princess.” He spoke.

I smiled through the tears as he stood.

“Promise you’ll write to me…every day.” He whispered as we hugged. I nodded.

“Promise you’ll write back.” He chuckled and nodded against my head.

That was goodbye.

I rode with Ramsey on his horse, my back aching and my lips blue. I was freezing in the revealing dress. Bruises, gashes, hickeys, scars and deep wounds covered my body.

We stopped after a long ride. I saw horses approaching in the distance. My heart sunk, I didn’t want Jon to see me like this. What if he had moved on.

I must have looked terrible because Sansa took in a sharp breath before demanding my release. There he was, Jon…my Jon.

I almost smiled when I saw him, almost.

He looked older, a fuller beard and darker eyes, he was taller. He was handsome.

He looked devastated when he saw me. I looked down at the floor, not seeing the tears fill his eyes.

They debated the war that was to come, tomorrow. And Rickons release.

I began to shiver.

“Give her a coat she’ll freeze!” Jon yelled. His voice was husky and sad. I looked at the anger on his face.

Ramsey smiled.

“Jon don’t-“ I tried to explain it was just one of his games but Ramsey hit me, across the cheek.

Jon’s horse jerked forward as he drew his sword but his men held him back.

And then we rode away, at the perfect angle for Jon to see my back.

Ramsey threw me back into my cell, I cried…I didn’t want Jon to fight- I feared Ramsey would win.

I felt my heart sink…I had imagined seeing him again for so many years and it broke me to know that might’ve been the last time.

Last I saw him he was 16, only a boy. I was 15, a young girl who knew nothing of the world outside winterfell.

I knew not of vicious fighters like sir clegane or horrible woman like Cersei. I wouldn’t have imagined such an unfair ruler as Joffrey. Or such an abusive leader as Ramsey.

I wouldn’t have ever imagined seeing Theon like that….like reek. Ramsey told me he’d to the same to me if I disobeyed him. Another Greyjoy to his collection.

I hadn’t looked death in the eye the last time i saw Jon and yet now I had seen so much of it, it all seemed insignificant.

I heard of Jon’s battles, I even heard of his death. Seeing him again was like seeing a ghost. I wasn’t the same girl he left at winterfell but I had the same heart.

“You’re going to take someone’s eye out.” I smiled across the courtyard as I saw Jon and Robb attempting to sword fight in the snow, they kept slipping on the ice.

“That’s the point my lady.” Robb smiled.

“It’s not that simple.” Jon huffed.

“Can I have a go.” I asked gesturing to their swords.

They both chuckled until they realized I was serious.

“The arena is no place for a lady.” Robb spoke, he looked a bit sympathetic though.

I frowned.

Jon was about to speak until Theon called them to lunch.

That evening when I was lying on my bed I felt something shake me awake.

“Jon?” I frowned in the dark. He nodded.

“Come on.” He pulled me out of bed.

“Where are we going?” I asked but he shhhhed me.

“You’ll see, it’s a surprise.” He whispered.

He dragged me out to the courtyard, where he lit a bunch of candles.

I smiled.

“Jon it’s beautiful.”

“Like you.” He responded, both our cheeks flushed.

“You sure you’re ready?” He asked me, changing the subject.

“For?”

“You’re greatest opponent.” He smiled and threw me a sword which landed on the floor in front of me. I smiled.

“Thank you.” I looked at him. He nodded.

He spent the rest of the night trying to teach me how to fight, and by 4AM I could have a basic spar with him.

He quickly blew out all the candles and lead me back to my chambers.

“Was I any good?” I asked.

He nodded as we walked.

“Are you just saying that?” I asked again.

He smiled. “You were better than Theon let’s put it that way.”

I smiled.

Ramsey chained me up and dragged me outside of winterfell with Rickon. We both got a bad hit when I hugged him, I was so relieved he was alright.

I watched as Ramsey explained the rules of his stupid little trick, how rickon had to run across the field to Jon. It was too easy. There was a catch.

I watched as he began to run and I watched Ramseys men began to load their crossbows.

I began to scream. “Nooo! Stop!” I screamed and they hit me, but I didn’t stop, I had to warn him.

Jon began to ride towards his brother… holding out his hand. But there it was, another stark gone.

My own scream was silent in my ears, I couldn’t hear anything as I watched him fall to the floor.

I sobbed. I watched Jon loose his horse and begin to take on an entire army by himself. I screamed again.

I felt Ramsey pull at my chains and drag me back to winterfell. Leaving the battle of the bastards. His war that he wasn’t even fighting.

Leaving the carnage. He took me to the courtyard. He put me on the execution platform and tied a rope around my neck. He explained how if Jon came to save me, the floor would disappear and so would I.

I waited, I saw the bodies pile up through the windows in the castle walls. I watched the giant break down winterfells gates. I smiled and cried when I saw him….just Jon.

“You’re too late.” Ramsey smiled and pointed at me. Jon’s face dropped he was covered in blood.

“No!” I yelled as I watched one of Ramseys men move to pull the lever.

Jon began to run towards me, as a red haired man threw an axe at the soldier. It killed him as he pulled the switch. I closed my eyes and took in a sharp breath.

I opened my eyes, Jon had caught me. I smiled as a tear ran down my cheek. He looked at me, examining my face.

His red hair friend cut the rope and jon put me down.

Ramsey began to load his crossbow.

“Jon.” I said and pointed at Ramsey.

His hands left my hips, and I almost missed his touch.

He used some debris as a shield as Ramsey fired arrows at him, he grew closer and closer to him.

I watched as Jon beat him up. A part of me liked that Ramsey would die here, today. A part of me knew it was wrong.

“Stop!” I let out. Jon looked at me and then at Sansa, still punching. And he did, he stopped.

He walked off into winterfell.

I ran across the courtyard to Sansa and we held each other. Tight.

“Are you okay?” I asked her. She laughed.

“Are you?” She scoffed.

We quickly decided Ramsey should be reunited with his pets. He didn’t deserve to live. Not even as a prisoner.

Later that evening I found myself in Aryas old bed chambers attempting to stitch up some of my cuts. I heard a knock at the door and looked up.

Jon.

“Hello.” I spoke.

“Hi.”

I slowly stood up.

It wasn’t long before his lips were on mine. We kissed for a long time, passionately. A kiss that made up for all our time lost.

We pulled away breathless, both crying.

“You stopped writing letters.” I spoke, he smiled.

“You stopped writing back.” He answered.

He hugged me, gently. I hugged him back as tightly as I could.

“You’re taller.” I smiled.

“You’re shorter.”

We both laughed.

He sat me on the bed and helped me stitch up my wounds. He held my hand tightly as he poured alcohol on my back.

We spent hours catching up.

We both sat on the end of the bed, my head on his shoulder.

“I thought you were dead.” I told him. “Twice.”

He chuckled. “You gave me a few scares too.”

“How was the wall?”

“Cold.” He looked down at me. I laughed.

“Is it true? The whitewalkers?” I asked more seriously now.

He sighed. “Unfortunately.”

“I’ve fought them, they’re too strong. I fear we won’t win this battle. But I’ll make sure you’re as far south as south goes-“

“No!” I interrupted, shaking my head.

Tears brimmed in his waterline.

“I’m not leaving again….I just got you back. We’re going to grow old together, remember?” My voice broke. “Even if you’ve found someone else-“

“There’s no one else.” He brushed his hand over my cheek.

“If you fight, I’ll fight.” I spoke.

“You did have a really good teacher.” He stated. I playfully nudged him as he smiled.

“I love you…just Jon, I always have.” I finished.

“I love you too, princess y/n Greyjoy.” He kissed me again gently.

“Snow.” I corrected and he frowned. “Queen y/n snow.”

A smile took over his whole face.

“If you’ll have me, that is? King Jon snow.”

[jounosparticles]

this feels really odd to ask but but what do you think the hunting dogs' thoughts are about death? specifically if they die and how? cause I feel like all of them share a variation of "I will go down guns blazing and with glory"

fukuchi definitely feels it and I feel like jouno as well. they've both had rough and violent lives so I feel like they've always thought death was just right around the corner.

I don't know about the rest of them though. teruko I feel shares the thought but not as intense as the other two, and I dont know about tecchou and tachihara.

anyway. it's a neat thought to me :3

ohhh i’ve been thinking of the best way to answer this for DAYS. this analysis will be long so ill put it under a readmore.

the hunting dogs and death - analysis

overall, it is shown that they can die. i assume due to their abilities and bodily enhancements that they do not die of injuries very easily. it makes me wonder how disease hits them? partially mechanical bodies may not respond to illness as well as natural bodies would? or maybe the opposite and they can heal more so internally? anyways here's my thoughts on how each hunting dog perceives dying!!

fukuchi

i see fukuchi as fairly self-preserving up until the end. he can't die in battle because he needs to make sure the decay of angels plot carries out.

remember that he was warned of this at nine years old. he had to spend his life preparing for this. he likely grew very wary of living recklessly and became great at fighting very fast and young; i assume that's why he went through dojos to fight as a child.

under no circumstances could he die until the world was safe.

i imagine he put on a selfless face and was willing to take serious harm in order to protect the peace, but i highly doubt he was ever willing to sacrifice his life until his plan worked out.

here we see his thought process and how things need to fall into place. his participation was essential because in no other situation would fukuzawa be the one able to get access to the one order. if fukuchi had died beforehand, the war would play out as the amenogozen warning claimed.

he had to leave the world to fukuzawa, the man he could trust most before facing his own demise.

of course, at this point in the series he has been killed since that was the final goal of his plan. a noble death for a fantastic hero.

jouno

im actually a little conflicted on his perception of death. i believe jouno is willing to sacrifice his life if absolutely necessary but is probably more self-preserving than the others. i believe he likely uses his confident and slightly arrogant attitude to hide this self-preserving mindset. someone who comes off as intimidating or nonchalant during battle is more likely to throw off the enemy whereas appearing nervous or angry will make them seem vulnerable. i believe jouno also sees himself as very strategic and able to get out of situations easily if needed. he's a quick thinker from what we've seen thus far.

lets look at when he confronted fukuchi.

he starts off very confidently accepting the offer. we know this is a facade but him immediately trying to throw fukuchi off guard seems so show he's pretty confident in his next move.

but when this doesn't work, he immediately tries to flee. this is fairly unique for a fight in bsd, many characters will often fight until they either get what they wish or they're too injured to move. despite jouno having an ability that could dodge fukuchi's, he still chose to try and escape instead of continuing to fight. this is a very normal human reaction to have but not one you see as often.

and at a disturbance, he begins to panic and needs to ground himself by reassuring himself instead of fighting back. he's not willing to put his life on the line to stop a global terrorism and his own escape is seen as a victory, which i see as him being more self-preserving. this all took place before the sword was set on fire, so it wasn't as if he had that threat to escape yet.

however, there's a chance he just didn't know how to fight the amenogozen; but his ability was definitely one of the best to fight against fukuchi with.

still, he's smart and made sure to plan adequately in case he was injured in the battle against fukuchi. he wants to keep himself safe, but he's still smart enough to take precaution.

i think jouno has probably been through a lot in his life and wants to spend a while living happily, making him more afraid to die than the others. this is even shown when he took teruko being angry as a threat while fukuchi laughed over it.

(as a small note, fukuchi's line in the anime was "haha. it seems our gremlin is angry today" which makes more sense in this context).

so tldr i think jouno would only go down if absolutely necessary and otherwise is fairly self-prioritizing.

tecchou

i believe tecchou would sacrifice himself if it brings justice.

however, he seems to see himself as one responsible for judgement, so i imagine he gives every single fight his all.

regardless of him acting as judgement, it's been shown that tecchou is willing to die if he fails at his work.

here he promises that if he were to fail he would commit seppuku (killing oneself via slicing through your stomach--an honourable death for a samurai fighter (which lines up with irl tetchou coming from samurai lineage)), which is an incredibly agonizing way to die. regardless, he is fully willing to do it if it is for peace. this shows a confidence in death and commitment to his sense of justice to an extreme manner.

and when he found himself in a situation where he was in the wrong, he immediately admitted defeat and asked his opponent to kill him.

he admits defeat, says his wrongs and is willing to accept the consequences.

he even jumps to the harsh conclusion that he isn't worthy of his title as a hunting dog. the stark white in his eyes show that his mind isn't corrupted and that he is doing what he believes is proper justice. incredibly noble.

luckily he was spared-and likely learned a lot about justice not always being as black and white as things appear.

overall, tecchou is a very noble fighter and is willing to put his life on the line for justice. he doesn't seem to fear death and will embrace it if he feels it is earned or deserved.

tachihara

i have less to say about tachihara than the others. i see him as the type that will go down over what's right and that's shown during his fight with fukuchi.

he isn't willing to fear death or beg for forgiveness. he will go down if it is worthy.

we also see that he keeps a argumentative spirit towards the enemy despite the circumstances. he will put down his opponent even in the moment of death, he just has the confidence to.

this panel also shows that he's more willing to die than to be defeated. he doesn't want to harm anyone and be controlled so he tries to kill himself first.

overall, he's a strong fighter who isn't afraid to sacrifice his life for what he believes in. his orders make him who he is, and if the orders are to win he either will or he will die trying.

(of course that last part doesn't really count when he was posing as a mafioso because he couldn't blow his cover by easily surviving everything).

teruko

much like tachihara, teruko seems to be very willing to put herself on the line to keep people safe. this is shown almost immediately in her introduction.

if ordered, she is willing to die. she's incredibly dedicated to her job and would go down if it saves people.

she's willing to go to drastic measures to keep herself alive as well, destroying her eardrum and continuing to try and fight sigma despite being under the directed resonance guns (which were made to destroy people like her). she didn't run, and she did absolutely everything she could have done in order to win.

she seems to also pride herself in fighting and being hurt in battle, likely to show her resilience and ability to do whatever it takes if it saves people.

she even goes on to call the hunting dogs "society's servants" and refers to the enhancement surgeries as "searing order into their own bodies."

this immense dedication makes me strongly believe that she would have no problem sacrificing herself if it is for the best. she killed fukuchi despite really caring for him, so i can see her being willing to put herself into that situation as well.

tysm for the question!!!!! this was super fun to read through the scenes again and try to piece together a logical guess on them all.

[eggcats]

I'm still (always) thinking about my Housewife Vox AU, so here are my sexuality/history/etc headcanons for Alastor and Vox in it

(I kind of have more for Alastor here, bc almost all of my Hazbin ships involve him so he's the one I've thought about more - I kind of keep similar headcanons no matter what ship I'm thinking of, tbh).

I'm also going to write Alastor being in a rut in this AU, because those fics are always fun, and he will be having sex but it'll be more in a "my mate is aroused and I must please them" kind of way, if that makes sense? I kind of see him as sex-neutral/positive asexual, even in a rut, but the rut makes him a little (lot) more feral and in less control of his instincts. (This is why, before he got into a relationship with Vox, he's never really been affected by the sexual aspects of a rut, because he's only interested in sex as far as his mate is).

(I know my fic kind of tiptoes around any possible consent issues, but I think having Alastor react like this kind of solves it in a way, because he's only interested in making his mate feel good so if Vox didn't want something or began to not like it, Alastor would immediately stop to comfort his mate. However, since he's never before had ANY of his deer/demonic instincts really show before, none of them are sure how he'll react this time, hence the concern).

(I don't mean this in a way to insult any other Alastor-rut fics, trust me I love them, this is just how I'm writing mine here).

I put a readmore here bc I realized how many words I was writing and didn't want to clog your dash, lol.

Alastor:

Asexual - is generally so uninterested he has never masturbated or even considered doing so; knows and understands sex (in a baseline level) but doesn't know anything further as he never wanted to engage or see it; still is only interested in it in a way to experience/watch Vox enjoy himself, wouldn't engage on his own otherwise

Possibly aromantic - the line between "romantic love" and "this person belongs to me" is essentially the same to him, could not tell you the difference (side note: neither can I)

Doesn't know either of those things

Just thinks "I'm the only normal motherfucker alive/in hell when it comes to relationships" and has not had a single question in regards to himself since

Doesn't really understand the difference between being friends/roommates and being in a relationship (hence when he found out that Vox liked him, he was like ah, okay. I don't need to change anything here, since he thinks we're in a relationship, this must be what people DO in a relationship. No need to mention any of this to Vox, surely)

When eventually I do make him have sex, he doesn't really have a preference in position. Generally, I'll include him as the more dominant partner (especially with Vox), but that's more because that's what VOX wants, and Alastor is being intimate for Vox. He has no real preference on who tops and who bottoms, as long as Vox is enjoying himself (and Alastor gets enjoyment out of the act when Vox is)

The same applies to dancing - Alastor teaches Vox how to swing dance, but once Vox learns and becomes more comfortable, a lot of their dancing has them constantly switching the lead and following position, based on whatever they feel like doing at the time

Despite living in the 20s/30s is fairly open minded about a lot of things relating to gender and sexuality, because he lived in the vice district in New Orleans and was exposed to a lot of that (either growing up, or living there as a serial killer, or both).

Some parts of me think that after he murdered his father when he was only around 13-15 (another headcanon of mine), his mother needed a way to make money and so they moved to the vice district, and so Alastor knew and grew up with sex workers and cross-dressers and saw how they were treated by police/society, and so has no issues with them.

Living there when he was a serial killer was also useful, because no one bothers anyone to avoid the risk of setting the police on you.

He doesn't know a lot of more modern terms for things, but Vox wanting to wear a dress doesn't concern him, nor does being in a relationship with a man, since those were things he not only had experienced/seen when he was alive, he's also been in hell for 20 years which is, as a whole, a lot more open minded about things. (I did try to keep him ignorant of more modern things, tho, like he doesn't know anything about things he would have only seen/experienced in hell because he doesn't care about people or relationships, really).

Probably some form of autistic (same, bestie) and takes a lot of cues about how their relationship should be from Vox (which is why he originally didn't feel the need to change his behavior even when he found out Vox was interested in him, because it didn't occur to him at all, and only discovered Vox was sexually interested when it was shoved in his face - however, now that he knows, he's taken a much more active/possessive role in their relationship, including a sexual aspect)

--

Vox:

(Previously) closeted bisexual

Grew up/lived/married/died in middle Americana, white picket fence, 2.5 children, all the houses looking identical, 1950s desperate housewives edition, the whole shebang

DID have a cult, but I'm thinking less Manson, and more "televangelist who extorts his flock for money/power" - this is why he has his hypnosis powers (he doesn't really have them/have discovered them yet, but that's because he's never really had a chance to explore his powers in any real capacity - he basically showed up in hell and then was kidnapped and wifed up immediately)

Did have a wife and children, but wasn't interested in either of them - had them more so because he "had" to and it would look bad for his image, not out of any attraction or love to his wife

All of this contributes to him doing everything he can to try to hide his attraction to Alastor, because he had to do so in life

He's Really Bad At Hiding It tho, because living with Alastor (who, even before he learned Vox was interested in him, has very little boundaries to physical space and just grabs and touches him all the time) is different than being a little attracted to your neighbor

Also, no one in hell calls him out on it, so he never quite realizes how obvious he comes across

Does eventually start his side of the media business, with the help of Alastor, to combine both radio and television to take over the airwaves entirely - becomes the Television/Video Demon, to complete the Radio Demon

Stops Alastor from murdering any and all other media demons/demons who have similar powers over the airwaves, and instead makes deals for their souls to work for him - this is where a lot of his initial power/dealmaking comes from as he rises to also be an Overlord; even when Alastor is the one who finds a media demon he basically just kidnaps them and drops them at Vox's feet like a cat presenting a half-dead mouse to it's owner

--

(Note: I'm aware that Alastor is canonically asexual and he's still in my AU, and I've heard back and forth about him being canonically aromantic and I'm unsure if you'd classify him as aro here too. I'm ace, and I think (maybe?) I might be on the aro spectrum, but regardless I kind of write Alastor like how I'd see relationships/would develop into one in a similar way. I'm not interested in sex or anything, and I've been interested in people/relationships very rarely (and those I am, once I become close friends I'm usually like, oh cool, yay), so I'm kind of using myself as a baseline to figure out how Al feels about things here.

That being said, I don't agree with people harassing other creators who DON'T make Alastor ace or aro in their fics or art, bc it's fan content and so it doesn't matter. Changing a sexuality in a fanfic isn't the same as Actual Erasure and it's wild that people claim that, because I've been reading fanfic since I was 13 and I PROMISE you none of those characters were as queer as I was reading them, lmao. Despite all evidence to the contrary, when they grew up Naruto and Sasuke did NOT fuck nasty in the Hokage office, no matter how much they should have.

Sorry rant, over.)

[chaotikanvas]

Ok, ok, so incoming ramble about the Glamrocks that I keep thinking about under the readmore! 

Disclaimer: I can’t promise too much structure to this since I’m just putting some thoughts down, but hopefully it’s still an enjoyable read or something to think about ghfdkñkjgh

—

SO!

A while ago, when I was first planning my first ever fic for SB (which has been thoroughly planned but not written and I haven’t talked about it here at all but that’s! Beside the point!), I started really wondering how the glitch/virus worked (I will keep referring to it as virus as I think it fits a bit more).

And I was so happy that the DLC seemed to be in line with what I was thinking or at the very least it supports my headcanon in a way!

(And oh gosh this is gonna take setting the scene a bit at first so bear with me)

So, I’d like to make a note first of all, that I’m not entirely convinced Glitchtrap is gone, because the end to the princess quest 3 minigame means Vanessa gets freed from possession (via opening the door). There is not a fight with him as a boss that seems to deactivate or get rid of him once and for all, at least. But what happened to him is entirely guesswork on my part. Also, while the DLC implies very strongly that all the other endings are not canon and more stories Gregory drew himself, there are still elements from those endings that I feel cannot be discarded, and they help understand the story. (The blob does exist after all and that is only discovered in the Burntrap ending, and it is my belief that the friend that has the schematics for the underground mentioned by Gregory must be Vanessa, because Freddy seems to have only vague recollections of the place when Vanessa had him clear the way for her before, and also he is not capable of accessing all areas of even the main pizzaplex)

(Also, I squint a little wondering if they changed their minds on which ending was the true ending because the Burntrap ending is the one that has animated cutscenes and a cgi ending image. I actually like that Princess Quest is the canon ending now, since Vanessa gets to be free, but it does come with some inconsistencies. But anyways!!!)

So taking all of that into account! To me, the way the virus works, and considering that there must be a supernatural element to it due to the existence of Glitchtrap, has to do a lot with it locking away the “consciousness” of the animatronics. Much like in the way Vanessa’s true self was locked away actually! In past games, the animatronics only seemed to act outside of their programming due to possession of some kind, but these specific ones seem to actually have self-awareness. I have no doubt that the way they were programmed influences their personality, but the DLC has really emphasized that they are not actually just limited to their functions. 

They have true intelligence! Not a surprise, since Freddy was clearly self-aware since SB, but I like that it seems to be a confirmation of it being the case in general and not just an exception. And I believe this because there are animatronics that are able to snap out of it after Cassie interacts with them. They do seem to think things are normal like any day in the pizzaplex, at first (Eclipse and Roxy) and it would seem like this means they are not truly sentient, but considering that Sun was aware all this time that things were very wrong, and that Moon would attack Cassie if not rebooted, and that Roxy later awakens, realizes the danger and goes to rescue Cassie from the Mimic, makes it clear to me that their self-awareness is the real deal. 

So not only would the virus have to infiltrate the robot’s systems, but it also would have to fight against the “consciousness” of the animatronics to gain control. While we know the Burntrap ending didn’t happen, I think when we see Burntrap trying to take over Freddy is a good visual representation of what might have happened over a long span to the other animatronics.

Ok, ok so! With all that said (again gfkjh)! I’m getting to the main point of this post, which is that I cannot stop thinking about the little backstory we got for Monty and what might have happened with Bonnie!

The damaged model of Bonnie we find in Ruin makes it clear to me that yes, it must have been Monty the one who destroyed him. The scratch grooves that join with the hole in his chest do match with the marks we have seen on other spots, (I thiiink Monty’s room has them), and we know the claws are the characteristic associated with Monty.

(And here I make a sidenote acknowledging some buts, because I went back to read the SB messages, and according to those, Monty only received the upgraded claws to play the bass, which means Bonnie was already gone by then. One of the messages states clearly that Monty received modifications only after being moved to the position of bassist, when Bonnie was out of commission, so either Monty already had really strong claws or it's a bit of an oversight there, but I digress!)

But! Even with that clear evidence, and here it’s where I admit it’s more speculation on my part, I find it a bit hard to believe Monty, the real Monty, at least, would destroy Bonnie just like that. Which makes me think Monty must have been one of the first, if not THE first of the band being infected with the virus. I think it’s a generally accepted headcanon that the virus alters the glamrocks personalities in a way that some of their main character traits are twisted in a destructive way. 

Now, Monty already clearly existed back when Bonnie was in the band. He had his own (large!) area even though he wasn’t part of the main band. The DJ is large and has his own section too, but he seems confined to it and was bought from outside the plex. And Monty seems to have been able to roam around anyways, so I think that probably means the higher ups were counting on Monty being a main animatronic in the future. (I have to wonder if the whole one man band thing from the backstory was something he did do for a brief time at the start, but admittedly that could have been added just in the cardboards). 

With all this in mind, Monty was probably the newest addition, a newcomer in a place that already had the four main animatronics. Almost known by no one in the public and without an established personality in a franchise he’s never been part of before. One of the messages says Monty could be more popular than Bonnie, after Bonnie’s disappearance, which makes me think he was mostly a side attraction, and nowhere near as known as the main glamrocks. Why mention that he could be more popular if the audience was as aware of him as the band right?

So, I think the main trait programmed for Monty’s personality is ambition. The backstory in his ride seems to hint at that. A young Monty with his own little music business, looking in amazement at the Glamrocks and dreaming of one day reaching their level. It would make sense to have one of the robots have this as their main trait, since kids would relate to the big dreams. And it seems to fit with other main traits from the other Glamrocks: Roxy seems to have been made with self-confidence in mind (winning races and having a beauty salon) which might be for encouraging kids, Chica is obviously all for being chipper and energetic and enjoying food (useful in an entertainment establishment that wants kids to indulge and get their parents to spend their money when they’re having a good time), and Freddy is meant to be nice and fatherly and the approachable gentle main face of the franchise.

(Though I am a bit sad Chica gets pushed aside a bit in regards to explicitly showing what she’s really like)

(As a small parenthesis from all this, I want to say that the Pizzaplexes troubles with the virus (or at least the more worrying behavior of the animatronics) are likely relatively recent before Gregory’s arrival. Could be months or a couple of years, don’t know how much exactly, but the fact that there are old messages all around, how some of those help give Gregory hints to where he can find stuff that is still there, how Bonnie’s Bowling Alley has not been rethemed to get rid of the evidence of his existence, Freddy’s hurt over Bonnie being gone sounding (at least to me) still fresh rather than from that long ago, and the message about the disappearances makes me think it can’t have started a decade ago or something like that)

Anyways! 

The Monty “rise to fame” story from the ride establishes that Bonnie “gave” his bass to Monty in order to have him join the band, though that Bonnie cutout is obscured. If they really wanted to make it seem like Monty had retired, why not make a cutout with the most important part of the story clear? They made one with Roxanne styling Monty’s hair! So maybe the plan had been to establish that (in the “in universe” narrative for the animatronics) Bonnie would be the Glamrock that took Monty under his wing and teach him the ropes of being a star? Though probably not with the plans of having him be a Glamrock at all, but maybe appearances with a Glamrock would increase the chances of the new gator attraction succeeding (again, speculation on my part, I know).

Coming back around Monty likely being the newest addition, him still not being established as a popular character would maybe mean that he was an easy target to spread the virus. Way more attention would be paid to the main stars, I think, so I think the probability of him being infected from almost the start is high. And with his main trait being ambition, and Bonnie maybe having been planned to be a sort of pathway to him being more known, it wouldn’t surprise me that by the time the incident happens, the virus has already twisted Monty’s ambition into jealousy and aggression and so he ended up destroying Bonnie that one day. Was Bonnie summoned by Monty? Did Bonnie go to Monty out of his own will because he noticed something was wrong? (which ouch if that was the case. It could very well be even that Vanny noticed that Bonnie noticed something was off and had Monty dispose of Bonnie in order to not have any secrets exposed) Who knows! But this is mostly what I think happened.

And why am I so convinced Monty would not have done this without the virus’ influence? Well… Mostly because of Roxy.

In the main game, Roxy is such a bully. Many of the phrases she says are outright cruel, and at a point where Gregory has done nothing to her yet. But in the DLC we see Roxy as she was meant to be. Encouraging. Lifting a child’s spirits up. Assuring them that they are fantastic how they are. 

We know that Cassie is a lonely child. A bit of an outcast who probably spent a lot of time in the plex while her dad worked. We know that her friends did not show up to her birthday and she treasures Gregory as a friend for being there when she was down. Cassie, seems to me, is the kind of child that would be an easy target for bullying. Insecurities and loneliness seem to be main struggles for her, which is why, if Roxanne was already a bully without the virus, why would she be Cassie’s favorite? Why would she be so nice to this kid that obviously needs the confidence boost Roxanne was made to provide? One of Roxanne’s literal lines in SB towards Gregory is “I bet you don’t even have friends!” Knowing that Roxanne knows this is an issue for Cassie, it seems even more brutal that if she’s in her right mind she would use that as an insult when chasing after Gregory. The Roxanne we see in Ruin is so kind. She is a source of comfort for Cassie, soft spoken, and making sure she feels like number one, instead of being self-obsessed (even if it’s born out of extreme anxiety over her own image). 

So if there is such an extreme change from a virus riddled Roxy, why would Monty’s extremes not be the same? We know not even Freddy is exempt from this sort of change though this one is more evidence from the books (slight not too consequential book spoiler and can’t quote from which book exactly it was, but I remember there was an off handed mention of Glamrock Freddy fighting over a plushie with a kid and then feeling dejected when people got angry at him, so it seems if Freddy was ever truly infected, his change of personality would entail being a spoiled main star?).

And it makes sense! Because Freddy considers all the Glamrocks his friends! We know Chica cares for him, because in the intro to SB she takes a step towards him when he malfunctions. And in the base SB game it looks like Freddy is just in denial about his friends (with the arcade minigolf game even having the famous Freddy in a trashbin course to hint at Monty’s jealousy, which you know could very well a real danger with what happened to Bonnie) (and now that I’m writing that it makes me squint a little at that arcade, since it’s very heavily implied the arcade in Sun and Moon’s room infected them so hmmmmmmm, but I digress), but honestly, seeing Roxy acting how it seems she’s supposed to act right before Cassie turns her off as the final node, really makes me think that the true selves of the animatronics are pushed back by the virus to replace them with a caricature of themselves that will obey Vanny’s commands. I mean, the Glamrock Freddy body is completely headless, and doesn’t even appear in the AR world! I don’t know whether it “attacks” because it’s what it would do if infected, or if it is simply leftover code from the way Freddy hid Gregory in his chest, but there sure as heck isn’t anything resembling a consciousness in there. Besides, we know Vanny was invisible to Freddy.

And if consciousness really is pushed aside by the virus, then it would explain why Monty is like that right now. (At least if my speculation of him being the longest with the virus is true) He would know nothing but anger and at this point he is acting like all he knows how to do is attack. Monty’s mind seems to truly be absolutely gone by now. :(

But aaaah this is getting way too long now fkjdghkjf

I guess I just want to talk about Bonnie a bit more, because we don’t have that much more about him that I can form any conclusions about. I do love the poster in his room! The fact that he really was this close to Freddy! They saw each other everyday and Freddy still decided to write a heartfelt message for Bonnie, that Bonnie decided to hang where he would see it clearly everyday! It really seems that Bonnie cared for Freddy just as much and that makes me so happy! It makes it all the sadder to know how heartbroken Freddy is over Bonnie’s disappearance…

Also I am incredibly confused by the whole wetfloor bot stuff! I don’t know if it’s implied that Bonnie’s “consciousness” somehow managed to transfer to the small bots (or why children screams can be heard from them), and if he managed to stay present through them after all. The little bots never really try to harm or sound alarms on Gregory unless shot at I think, so there’s that to think about! Or maybe Glamrock Bonnie was able to connect himself to them but not transfer? Kind of as long as there are any functional he too would be able to hang on? (Or did someone did that for him and it wasn’t himself who did?) Because deactivating the ones where we find Bonnie makes Bonnie’s eyes go dark. But why?? This I really have no idea about!

There’s also that one floorbot that remains beside a pile of Monty’s merch! And if Bonnie is looking or controlling the wetfloor bots that could mean a lot of things!! If Bonnie is in control, is the bot gathering the merch? Is it a negative thing? A sort of attempt to just collect the merch so it can’t be found ever again like Bonnie himself was? Or maybe, if Bonnie did have the most contact with Monty, did he get to know the real not-virus-infected Monty, and saw the merch as a way to remember someone that was briefly a good friend before things went terribly wrong? Hmmmmmm…

Well, I think that’s all I have! Just wanted to get my thoughts out there! It’s not very organized but if you made it all the way to here, thank you for reading!

[sith-shenanigans]

For the ask game where we send you an NPC, Talos Drellik? (I am totally not jumping up and down at the thought of following up on some tags/replies you left a while ago about Ahene and Talos, not at all)

aaaa it makes me so happy that you liked the tags and were not annoyed by the tags (let me put this under a readmore because it’s going to be extremely long)

Okay! So! Bearing in mind that this is a living work and Hoth is a long way away and I don’t know all of what will change—

There is a very not-entirely-normal dynamic here because it doesn’t progress in intensity so much as progress in what, precisely, the intensity is made up of.

Ahene’s first introduction to Talos is along the lines of “do you really want to talk to that guy? He’s strange,” and this endears him to her immediately. Ahene’s second introduction to Talos is walking into a Reclamation Service camp and not feeling like she’s home.

(She does, in fact, think of the camp outside the Rakatan ruin where she largely grew up as being “home.” She also often thinks of herself as not having a home. Or of the ruin itself being home, and the camp not.)

It is important to know, here, that Ahene’s relationship to her trauma is much more in the “continues to be attracted back to it and to things that remind her of it” category rather than the “avoid all reminders forever on pain of flashbacks” category. She actively enforces these reminders on herself whenever she feels she’s acting too much like she’s free—early on, it’s because she believes she isn’t, even if she and her master are the only ones who know that. Later on, it’s because a lot of her self-image is tied up in not being a “typical Sith,” and in her mind, her ability to treat herself harshly is proof she isn’t one (isn’t Like The Others). She hasn’t forgotten who—or what—she really is.

By and large, she feels safer in unsafe situations. She understands hierarchical relationships better than equal ones. She doesn’t know how to be a person, and she’s terrified she’ll forget how to not be. Obviously, this makes her kind of hate being a Sith, but it also makes her kind of prefer being a Sith—the social dynamics are very, very easy for her, even if she doesn’t feel she deserves the loyalty she gets for it.

Back on Tatooine, she worked with a Reclamation Service crew, and it was the most familiar thing she’s done since Korriban, except that this time she was a Sith to them. Which was simultaneously awful and “hey, the terrible thing that happened to you? You’re going to exist in proximity to it forever but it can’t hurt you anymore.” (Which, to someone who keeps trying to yank on her own trauma to prove it can’t hurt her…) Then everything went terribly wrong and Silthar got very badly injured, and they were depending on her, and she has never been able to avoid feeling responsible under those circumstances.

But there’s still this given hanging over it that the responsibility is unrequited. People will be grateful to her as a Sith that helps and protects them—more grateful than she thinks she deserves for doing what she perceives as bare-minimum decency towards anyone she has power over—but if she had been below them, they wouldn’t have treated her the way she treats those below her. She wouldn’t have been one of their people. She would have been one of their tools.

(The greatest exercise in loyalty, in her mind, is to give it without caring if it’s returned. She still loathes the Empire for not returning it towards its people, almost as much or even more than she hates it for what it did to her planet, because if it took care of them then she wouldn’t have to do it—but that’s because Imperials believe they’re doing something good. She doesn’t. She just takes care of them anyway, because it may not be the right thing to do, but it still makes the galaxy a little more just.)

By the time she gets to Hoth, though, she’s just having an awful time. The inquisitor story in the game only has things get really bad at the start of Act III, and before that you’re kind of fine? But Ahene is not fine. Ahene is also aware that she’s not fine. It might have started subtly, but at this point she’s just trying to sell herself on the idea that she can handle it until Thanaton is dealt with and then she can let the ghosts go and everything will be, if not fine, relatively fixed enough that she can spend about a week curled into a little ball in the corner of her ship until she can function normally again.

But, you know, for the most part, the ways she’s Not Fine aren’t externally visible yet. There was an incident on Quesh where she used the ghosts’ power and kind of halfway lost control and partly life-drained Cineratus, but because she didn’t stop at the station to get anybody inoculated, the only one who actually saw that was Khem. And she didn’t really… explain that. She hasn’t told anyone that she feels hollow all the time and barely gets physically hungry and hears the ghosts talking to her even when she isn’t alone. She can hide it. She can handle it. She doesn’t have enough of an advantage yet. This is enough this will be enough she can still put a stop to it.

So she arrives on Hoth, and she shows up at a Reclamation Service camp expecting for it to feel normal again—enough that it’s easy to slot into the proper role, that she doesn’t have to think about it. She knows the responsibility and the resentment, the fact that something about it always seems safer than anywhere else she’s been.

It doesn’t feel normal. It feels just a little bit like she hates everyone there.

(Or, more accurately, like somebody does. Ahene hates like hell freezes over—rarely, slowly, and with a sort of cold contempt that burns mostly in how impersonal it can be. But the spirits in the back of her mind know how to hate, and they’re much too happy to share.)

Talos looks at this Sith Lord, who appears to be unusually scruffy and looks like she’s developed dark side corruption without the glowing eyes, and—unlike Andronikos, unlike Silthar, unlike Sarnova, unlike Zaril—doesn’t come to the conclusion that someone needs to parent her. She’s moved a bit past giving off that energy. Instead he comes to the conclusion that she’s about to deliver the most fascinating problem he’s encountered this year, which is (because Talos is Talos) really what he finds ideal in a Sith.

Ahene looks at this strange, mostly fearless little archaeologist, and discovers that she is not immune to being treated like a totally reasonable and decent individual who is here for the love of history despite every indication otherwise. Many people make this discovery around Talos.

Their early interactions are still… fascinating. His aura of “everyone I talk to is fundamentally a decent fellow” can only do so much, especially since his version of “rationalizing” all the terrible things about the Empire is sweeping them all into a bucket of “things I can’t do anything about” to hyperfixate on archaeology. Ahene keeps him at arm’s length like she’s learned to do with most people. Ahene gets sucked into talking shop with him. They discover, to Talos’s delight and Ahene’s pleased-despite-herself annoyance, that they share a sense of humor. He treats his probe droids better than some people treated her, and exactly the same way that other people treated her. She gets attached to them too.

Somewhere in there—either before they find Horak-Mul or after, though I’m leaning towards before—he asks about her first dig.

She tells him it was the Verios ruin. The face he makes tells her everything she would have needed to know about Darth Kelshrin’s reputation with the Service, if she hadn’t already been aware.

Delicately, like someone trying to thread a conversational needle with as few actual words as possible, Talos suggests that you hear things about that dig, and they aren’t very good. People don’t like to talk about it, if they manage to get reassigned.

She says that she’s one of the reasons that people don’t like to talk about it, and watches him struggle to reconcile that with her entire demeanor for a moment, then clarifies that she was one of the children they had—probably still have—doing probe-work.

Because of course it does, this horrifies him. She shrugs and comments that she hadn’t realized Kelshrin was that much of an outlier; haven’t there ever been slaves on any of your digs? Talos starts to protest that yes, but none of them were children, and comes to the mid-sentence conclusion that actually, she doesn’t care.

His mouth clicks shut. They sit in silence for a little bit.

When he next speaks, he tells her that he’s sorry he wasn’t there.

She says that most people would have put an ‘and’ in the middle of that sentence. They would have found it absolving, that they weren’t there. And he makes a face, and says that yes, that’s true, but still—he wishes he’d been there. That perhaps he could have done something, if he had been. That at least he could have been—better than the others.

I’m sure you would have been, she says, touching his shoulder, in a voice that would be a threat if any of the bitterness were directed at him. It isn’t a threat. It’s just that half of her doesn’t believe him, and doesn’t blame him, and the other half wants to believe him—and hates so very much that someone like him existed this whole time, and never came for her.

They don’t talk very much about that part of her background, after that. She never makes a secret of what she was—it’s the first thing anyone knows about her anyway, the trash apprentice who brought back the Dark Temple expedition—but while she’ll talk about the ruin like it’s simultaneously a deathtrap and a lost home, she doesn’t tell him about the Service camp. It’s their armistice; it wouldn’t be fair.

She doesn’t blame him for what happened to her childhood. He doesn’t look at her like he’s afraid of her when she loses control of the ghosts’ power, when he walks in on her having snapping arguments with thin air, when the ghosts’ memories and personalities start leaking in and she reacts to something he said about the Great Hyperspace War like she was there.

It’s difficult not to care deeply about someone who sees you at your absolute, utter worst—half-dead, half-possessed, still suffering from a Horror Hunger despite knowing that there are few things she needs less than other people’s life energy—and treats it like it’s simply something that’s happening, and no more terrifying than any other serious illness.

He’s the one she goes to one night, when she needs to tell someone how terrified she is to die. He’s the only member of her crew she doesn’t feel some need to be strong for.

(He is, maybe, the person she tells that she thinks she could exorcise the ghosts. That she hasn’t tried, because she’s scared that it would work.)

It’s important that—by this point—he doesn’t feel like he has to be strong with her, either. He doesn’t have to pretend that he doesn’t notice how bad things are, or keep up a cheerful front through it, the way he nearly always does. It’s not that his cheerful front is insincere—it’s not that he’s lying—but that’s how he’s always dealt with his emotions, the same as Ahene deals with them by scrunching them up into a little ball and taking another step no matter what. They aren’t people who know how to seek comfort in other people, most of the time. Talos doesn’t have childhood trauma the way she has childhood trauma, but he did very much grow up in an abusive environment that he generally dismisses as “not so bad as all that” with a wave of his hand. So it’s… something, that they can be scared together of what’s going to come.

(This could so easily be read as romantic. It is not remotely. It’s also not remotely parental on Talos’s part. It’s just a very unlikely bordering-on-queerplatonic friendship.)

When Ahene walks out of the Dark Council chambers on Korriban with Thanaton’s body (Teneb Kel’s body) in her arms and a title she didn’t ask for or want, Talos makes sure the body ends up in a cryostasis tube until it can be properly entombed. When they head for Dromund Kaas right after, because the planet is being invaded, when she makes for the Dark Temple immediately when they arrive in the aftermath—Talos waits for her at the Dark Temple approach.

When she calls him and asks him to get another stasis chamber and never breathe a word of it to anyone, he does it, because they would trust each other with anything.

Up to and including the body of the Emperor’s Voice.

(The next couple months, she barely remembers, because she was under so much pressure and so much of the same kind of pressure that her dissociative memory issues cropped up again and turned it into a soup of events that 2V had to record and summarize for her. But Talos quite frequently knew what she was doing better than she did, at least when it came to the fact that she suddenly had to run the Reclamation Service. This has always been a team effort. Between her and all her crew, but still especially between the two of them.)

[npc opinions]

[huntershowl-moving]

SHIPPING INFO // ANSWER THE FOLLOWING FOR YOUR MUSES SO PEOPLE KNOW HOW SHIPPING WORKS ON YOUR BLOG.

WHAT IS YOUR OTP FOR YOUR CHARACTER(S)?

i don't have one particular otp — big ships change depending on the Era hellhound is in!

HOW LARGE DOES THE AGE GAP HAVE TO BE TO MAKE IT UNCOMFORTABLE?

nothing illegal obviously — other than that, aside from long-lifespan characters whose mental maturation is slower, i generally stay away from with 10+ year age gaps when the younger muse is under 20. just feels like a weird power dynamic i guess?

ARE YOU SELECTIVE WHEN SHIPPING?

yes! ships on this blog cannot be pre-established — i tend to lose interest fast if they don't build up naturally, either through lots of ooc plotting or through writing. on top of that, seph is ... piiiiicky. she has very specific Types. generally, ships with very gentle, soft, mentally well-adjusted characters are possible, but transient — seph falls out of love after a point, but remains staunchly protective of them.

the long and short of the matter is she's a freak, and you kind of have to match that to be compatible as a long-term partner. but even then they don't always line up perfectly! idk. seph's weird. simultaneously very easy to ship with and very hard to ship with.

WHO ARE OTHER CHARACTERS YOU SHIP YOUR CHARACTER WITH?

oh i've got lots of good ones going on right now!! pls forgive me for gushing. focusing on currently heavily-plotted and/or written ones for this bit bc otherwise it will be pages and pages!! if i forgot someone you have full permission to impale me on a pike i am SO SORRY. (all of these will be under a readmore at the end of the post for length!)

there are more sort of beginnings/potentials for ships that haven't been explored yet which i haven't included here, but i'm truly excited to see where each and every one of them goes!!!

DOES ONE HAVE TO ASK TO SHIP WITH YOU?

yes absolutely hahaha — at least communicating ooc about it is necessary! i'm much more comfortable shipping with partners i mesh well with as a mun and have an easy time talking to.

ARE YOU SHIP-OBSESSED OR SHIP MORE-OR-LESS?

LOOK I. LISTEN. LISTEN... IM FERAL FOR SHIPS. FERAL. even though seph is picky about them — and i promise it's not personal if it doesnt work, it truly is just her dumb creature ass being unable to normal.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SHIP IN YOUR CURRENT FANDOM?

N/A for this blog, but as a fun trivia fact, i'm deep in satosugu hell rn

FINALLY, HOW DOES ONE SHIP WITH YOU?

it's all vibes babey. we just start writing their non-romantic dynamic buildup, and if it clicks (or even if u just think ur character would have a crush!) we talk about it ooc and plot some more, then plot some more and before u know it, the angst hammer looms over ur head

Tagged by: @bearratic (thank youuuu!!) Tagging: (points) do it

ship gushing below. <3

@vsagis' villain izuku— i had to put u first bc u kickstarted this shipping renaissance. seph and izuku clicked instantly and started a long-term trajectory that i don't think either of us writers expected. they're just freak enough to match each other, just soft enough to genuinely care. we're really putting these two through the horrors(tm) and watching them fall hopelessly, horribly in love. <3

@spiritcrown's pasha — how could i not mention pasha!! i was so happy to see you back, because pasha and seph's relationship was soooo formative for seph's development wrt romance. seph is absolutely, completely and utterly devoted to pasha. they worship at the altar of her. they would bend heaven and raise hell for her.

@crowshoots' jesper — UAHGHGBBHBH INCOHERENT CRYING NOISES. the first thing seph noticed about jesper was extremely respectable fighting skills, but even then they were definitely uhhhh touch and go for a while there before they started to simmer down and. pin each other down and — one thing led to another and jesper's being antagonized by her antagonists and they're too deeply in love to go back!! i love them. i l

@crowgreeds' kaz — HHHHHHHHH god. hi siri i know ur not around the dash much but idc im writing u into this. kaz and seph both have such a darkness in them that the other recognizes and not only feeds, but when necessary, balances. they're ruthless and violent and mean but at the same time, they have such a softness for each other that they both thought was dead. also, you're the recipient of probably the best rp reply i've ever written (that fucking. hellhound kill description. my GOD im feral for seph protecting him)

@tewwor.... goose is2g we really have the creatures ever. litho — FIRST SHIP!!!! FIRST SHIIIP i still cant believe it took 4 irl years for them to finally admit their stupid feelings. now they're soulmates and there's no turning back. he's the reason seph likes poetry in every verse. the softest snarkiest ship. probably the closest to a true YA-style soulmate seph has. she hasn't forgiven him for all the twilight jokes though tough luck jie & ricochet — the boys... the absolute chaos trio... i never expected seph and jie to fall for each other but honestly i should have. he falls so neatly into her "equally feral" type. ricochet is so calm and seph is kind of intoxicated by that. sheathed claws kind of vibe. just love these three their dynamic balances itself so well

@spungolden's dio — two femmes raised as weapons with deeply suppressed emotions, chillin in a murder alley, five feet apart cause theyre not g— (theyre gay. theyre so gay) these two are so sweet they sometimes make me tear up. they skipped the trauma stage and went straight into lesbian domestic fantasy with only occasional murder.

@chaoslulled oh boy(s). toji — brutally in love. they saw and embraced each other's monster, refused to shy away, and now they somehow revolve in this strange orbit of violent and incredibly soft with each other. i think he's the first of the current ship lineup that seph has in-thread said the L-word to. this ship was so easy to jump right into, the chemistry was like lightning in a bottle. satoru — one of the most genuinely unexpected slowburn ships i've stumbled into. these two read each other for filth INSTANTLY as lonely motherfuckers who, in some way or another, had loved and lost. they haven't even gotten to the oh-shit moment in the slowburn yet but i'm lookin forward to it yakuza sukuna — THE PAIN. THE SUFFERING. AUHHHGHGGGG HOL YOU'RE FUCKING KILLING MEEEE. these two are mirrors in the worst possible way. they've got their throats stuck under their boss' boot heels; they've been disfigured, they've had their siblings used as leverage, they've been made into muzzled dogs. despite hating each other at the start, they can't not recognize that, and it's led to this fierce protectiveness that isssss whoops evolving into feelings. i'm sure nothing will go wrong

@eraserisms' shota — AHHHHHHH god okay most of this ship has been pure plotting vibes and responses to memes, but i truly cannot wait to get into writing more of them because they own my heart and soul. i think they know each other to the marrow in a way that's not super common for seph, and the gentleness and caution with which they're starting to explore revisiting their care for each other is heartbreaking in the best way

@sasouken BEE!!!! ok chronologically(??): deku — so precious and wholesome from the start. your honor he's just a little guy with a big dumb crush. when i tell uuuuuu some of our plotting has literally made me tear up a little??? the absolute bleeding heart on this boy??? HURTS ME??? one day they'll hold hands casper — slated to be our angstiest dynamic, i just Know it. two motherfuckers who love their siblings, inextricably involved in a tangled web of crime and violence. two people who have lost so much and don't want to lose anyone ever again. i will die i WILL satoru — such... a different vibe than i was expecting in an amazing way?? his dynamic with seph is so fuckin sweet? so much physical touch born of trust and comfort. also again: her first ever fwb (for now), which is truly a wild thing to experience. sukuna — i .. . dont even know what to say about this one. (affectionate). he unlocked an entirely new dimension of freak in seph's psyche and attraction style that i couldn't comprehend before we started writing them but retrospectively makes so much sense. what the fuck is going on with these two i have no idea but i am OBSESSED with it. also writing them getting down nasty has been extremely fun, i'm enjoying it a lot

[normalestenstars]

do you have any personal favorite responses? ones that make your brain itch? or responses that make you go "they are SO wrong"

i'm going to assume you mean overall, so i will stick to the form responses for the sake of simplicity. though, i will say i found the responses to least normal form more interesting as people tended to be more opinionated/divided about their answers

this answer got a bit too long, so i put it under a readmore

Favorites from normal

i made a post about this some time ago, but whoever wrote "He's just a closeted gay teenager" for tomoya killed me

Favorites from not normal there is a lot

Tied btween Ibara and HiMERU tbh because HiMERU is doing something deeply insane and caused all of his own problems and made several other people's problems worse in the process. However, Ibara is a teen business major and that alone signifies he has issues.

Wataru instills a fear in me that the other characters do not. Yes, Mayoi be in the vents and stuff but like, hell stay there. when i go to piss at 4am in the morning and its pitch dark and i see something go by in the corner of my eye its wataru.

do you think i would be a shuP if he were normal in the slightest?

Honestly my choice was based entirely on the fact that I can put a name (or multiple) to everyone else's problems but when I think about Tsumugi all I can do is just hold him up and go "there's something wrong with him"

look i think himeru will win but considering how much mamas completely unwillingness to cope with anything ever has impacted both double face and just about every other story shes in i like had to. like at least himeru is capable of having friends without having a complete meltdown over the idea

he freaks me out. a little too willingly weird ((about himeru))

The other characters have their quirks, but Tsumugi clears the "says things that have made me audibly go 'what the fuck?'" bar. For everyone else, their freakiness might as well be Tuesday, you know?

He’s very interesting to me personally ✌️ like you cannot be in his situation and be very normal, i thinks. Hope he gets worse or better, either would be fun to watch ((about himeru)) ^^^ really like this one. lol

something is wrong with him like. deeply. unfixably i fear ((about madara))

honestly. let me preface this by saying crazy:b is my favorite group, but if you called himeru some sort of freak you probably got a chuckle out of me. like genuinely, what's wrong with this guy

Favorites specifically from the who should be on the least normal poll section

eichi is the only one who can truly contest tsumugi’s weirdoness and honestly he takes the cake. all the cake. every last slice. and others may try, but none truly hold a candle to these goobers. a match at best. maybe a sparkler if we’re feeling festive. eichi’s weirdo behavior is natural and genuine. his lack of normalcy has no pretense and is integral to his existence. he is the ensemble star and hes soooo weird about it. he should sweep the whole poll. every poll. weirdest in every unit.

Brain itchers all coming from the least normal form

apparently natsume once told sora that he's making bombs??? when he was clearly baking??? and that he'd have tsumugi give out the "bombs" so his reputation doesn't get ruined??? what story is this 😭

WHOEVER WROTE THIS ↓↓↓ YUZURU RESPONSE... CAN I GET THE ESSAY I'M BEGGING PLEASE where are you i only read gang 🥺🙏 LISTEN!!!!!! YUZURU FUCKING FUSHIMI!!!!!!! IS INSANE!!!!!! as a wataruP I am so incredulous that he won over Yuzuru. Because Yuzuru is SO MUCH LESS NORMAL!!!!! I already left an essay I wasn’t expecting to leave in this response… so consider yourself spared the Yuzuru essay given that he wasn’t one of the main options and that…. I am planning to scream about Yuzuru fushimi’s insanity in my own post bc HE MAKES ME INSANE. But just know. He should be here

a handful of people keep/kept mentioning whatever happened in raison d'être with the graves AND I DON'T!! KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS!!! I'VE ONLY READ NEVERLAND 🥺 IT'S MY ONLY VALK STORY OTHER THAN STEAMPUNK MUSEUM AND ANTIQUE LEGEND 🥺🥺🥺

Misc. thoughts because it looked weird if i didn't indent this section

as for responses i didn't agree with, this is a hard question to answer because i don't know enough about a third of the cast to strongly disagree. not to mention, i personally think that even if i knew it would be extremely rude of me to share and pick apart people's responses in front of a sizeable audience, so i will not. the last thing i want is for people to feel judged and ostracized over some silly enstars poll, and i personally do not enjoy how hostile this fanbase is to casual fans

like for example, i personally think chiaki is the weirdest ryuseitai member, but many people would disagree on that, right? and it's really not that big of a deal, because i understand why/how people come to that conclusion. some of these questions are really subjective, and are ultimately up to interpretation. just because i understand the text differently doesn't mean that another fan's opinion is inherently wrong. i think that's partially the fun of enstars in that there really is no explicit answer to some things, and it's up to the reader to draw their own conclusions

it hasn't come up often enough to address it, but i only feel bothered by people's responses when they overlook writer's biases and how that bleeds into the writing of some characters, like the amagis and adonis, somewhat mayoi, etc.

anyway, my sincere apologies if this feels like i'm personally lecturing you 🙇 i understand your interest in wanting to know this, but i do not want people to feel bad over mostly subjective opinions. on top of my own understanding of the text versus theirs, yknow?

i guess i could address the polls? for the normal unit polls i personally think hiiro, shinobu, hinata, and nazuna should have won their respective polls. i don't think niki should have won either but i'm not sure who should take his place 🤔. as for the least normal polls i think tatsumi should have won. but outside of these opinions, i do not wish to address actual written responses

[scummy-writes]

finally, FINALLY finishing @xxsycamore's ship chart after what? over a month? I didn't write out the fillables for longer answers due to CSP making the text unreadable, so it's in the post! I'll put it under a readmore, especially since I'll start rambling vaguely. @dododrawsstuff is who drew Constance's portrait in this!

Constance:

Green flags -> Patient, Tries at least once,

Red flags -> Will get drunk at times when unable to handle emotions, Stubborn, will hide issues

Gilbert:

Green flags -> coaxes her to think on her own, encourages her not to become like him, deeeeeep underneath his layers of clothes he does very much care about a lot of people enough to {*long winded rant*]

Red Flags -> Look at him.

How did love change them? Gilbert was willing to put his plans for a damn revolution on hold, due to*waves*, but him. For Constance she gained more confidence and self-love in a very odd way. Found a voice again, so to speak.

How do you imagine their bad end? Together or separate? Separate... Gilbert -> ⚰️, Constance forcing herself into a life she didn't much want in the way of quashing hopes and dreams to be 'normal'. ...Ok ok it's not that creative, but sue me. Constance's whole thing is about how she lets others step on her all the time until she can't take it anymore or learns better. She's not fleshed out and won't be for another year.

Together? hm... I am unsure. I feel like it would be a simple thing of her not living up to expectations, something that would kill them both quite literally.

What is the perfect story event for them? One where Constance can get away from the palace and people who know Gilbert a bit to learn more about him in a 1:1 setting and without a crazy amount of judgement. So like an island event- ashjbfsdfs kidding, but there are a few events about Gilbert strongarming Mc into a date, so.

If the other didn't exist, who would they end up dating? Gilbert -> ⚰️, Constance... I want to say Rio but also don't because it seems like a mean answer. I think she would either live alone or get with someone who seems decent enough and isn't crazy important to her.

i had this in my drafts for so long and Im tired of it being intimidating... orz the reality is that I haven't given Constance a coherent storyline, but this was fun to think about. Maybe in a year I can redo it.

[triangle-strategy-notes]

what do you think happens with Avlora in the non conviction endings?

Words cannot describe how excited I got when I saw this ask!! I think SO MUCH about what Avlora does in all of the different endings hahaha. Thanks for the question! <3

In general, my personal thoughts are that the Liberty/Benedict ending would eventually play out similarly to the Golden/Serenoa ending, Morality/Frederica would involve Avlora getting involved in Svarog's civil war, and Utility/Roland would probably have Avlora considering a rebellion of some type for a while but ultimately putting her sword away to focus on rebuilding the Aesfrosti community.

But if you're interested in more details/reasoning, I wrote up some of that as well! Don't worry about the readmore I wrote a normal amount about it :) it's a normal amount I promise. I only wrote a normal amount. I promise it's just a norma

Liberty/Benedict Ending

With Liberty ending, tbh I feel like story-wise it really feels weird that Avlora doesn't come back, given how it's essentially the Golden/Serenoa route except Aesfrost and Glenbrook are on good terms, which seems like it'd be a point in Avlora's favor.

But as far as looking at her reasons for staying away, here are a few possibilities:

— She didn't feel Cordelia needed her as badly since Glenbrook was now fighting a war on only one front (vs. the three in the Golden/Serenoa route) and she wasn't willing to risk her life by returning to face Glenbrook's judgment.

— She felt betrayed/demoralized by how Cordelia handed over her throne and went along with the whole alliance to Gustadolph. (Some reasoning along the lines of "Why exactly was I risking my life to stage a coup d'etat if Cordelia was just going to hand her power over as soon as things got inconvenient?")

— She didn't trust Serenoa and Benedict after they suddenly usurped Roland and allied with Aesfrost. She also canonically isn't a fan of Benedict's morals to begin with, so there's that.

— Or, (most likely explanation in my mind) she saw that Glenbrook was trying to secure an alliance with Aesfrost and felt that publicly swearing fealty to Cordelia would aggravate tensions between the two.

Depending on what you think her reasons were, there are a lot of different explanations for what she's up to during the time period between the Chapter 17 decision and the end of the game. Theoretically she might just be hiding out somewhere, or if you want to imagine her doing something more interesting it's possible that she'd quietly reach out to Cordelia and/or would try to track down Roland in order to make sure he's safe for Cordelia's sake.

Either way, I do think Avlora would eventually come around and rejoin Glenbrook once the war cools down and the alliance becomes less strategically important.

Benedict's treatment of Cordelia does kinda suck, and I think Avlora's worry for her would outweigh any other doubts she might have. Roland's absence from the castle would probably make the decision easier too, since Avlora a) doesn't have to worry about Roland's grudge against her and b) knows that Cordelia doesn't have Roland to protect her.

Morality/Frederica Ending

I like thinking about this one a lot :) I take a lot of my headcanons from Little Queen of All Things Forsaken on Ao3. I don't want to spoil the fic a ton for anyone who hasn't read it and wants to, but the basic premise centers around the question of "what if Cordelia stayed behind to rule Glenbrook when Roland and everyone else ran off to Centralia?" Which if that's the case, I would definitely assume Avlora would eventually decide to return and serve at Cordelia's side.

I'd imagine Avlora would essentially become the Dawnspear of Cordelia's reign, where she serves as both a political figure and the head of Cordelia's Kingsguard.

(^^ also this conversation would be really funny to me in the context of her literally taking his job)

BUT, if we're assuming Cordelia is recruited and goes along to Centralia with everyone, I think Avlora would wander around for a long while trying to figure out what she should do. Tracking down where Cordelia went is technically an option, but Avlora was never directly informed about Centralia. To add to that, rumors for sure would slowly filter in from Hyzante about the explosion that killed Idore, and it'd be easy to assume others died in the blast as well.

And even if Cordelia did manage to survive the escape, how much time is Avlora willing to spend looking? How far might the Roselle have fled? Since Avlora's not currently serving as Aesfrost's general, she doesn't have a boat, or supplies, or really any resources whatsoever. Is she really willing to throw her life away to search for someone who might very well already be dead?

I think eventually she'd catch wind of Svarog starting a civil war against Gustadolph and would join Svarog in that effort. Given Benedict serving as an advisor to Gustadolph, it seems possible-to-likely she'd lose the fight like she lost against Wolffort, and at that point would either be killed or would run off again and just try to live a normal life somewhere.

Or maybe she'd finally go "welp. guess I've officially got nothing to lose!" and go try and track down Cordelia. Another fic I really love is somewhere, beyond the sea which is Serenoa/Frederica-focused but also has a really cool bit about Avlora coming to Centralia.

Utility/Roland Ending

I think Avlora would be absolutely horrified at what Glenbrook + Hyzante do to Aesfrost. Like her entire nation is just. Gone. She was willing to oust Gustadolph, willing to join Cordelia, willing to take up a sword against people she once knew and worked with, but I don't think she ever expected the consequences to be the literal destruction of Aesfrost in its entirety.

The image of Avlora (or really ANY Aesfrosti) going back to Ironstone and finding the entire city buried beneath an impenetrable layer of blackened slag is haunting.

And given the history of conflict between Hyzante and Aesfrost, watching Hyzante take over all of Norzelia has gotta be. a whole thing for Avlora. However she felt about the Saintly Seven before, she definitely hates them now. I also can't see her ever wanting to associate again with Roland or Serenoa after hearing about their role in what happened.

(Though honestly I think the person she'd be the most furious toward would be Svarog. His duty, like hers, was to protect Aesfrost, and instead he completely destroyed what little they might have had left.)

I feel like she'd spend a good while thinking about revenge against Hyzante in a "as the last semblance of anything like a leader that Aesfrost has, I'm obligated to avenge that which was destroyed" type of way. Possibly even to the point of actually trying to put together a resistance. But with the way Hyzante crushes people's spirits and manipulates resources to encourage 100% obedience, I feel like she would really struggle to gain ground in that respect.

You could also imagine that she runs into Frederica at some point in all this, since both of them would likely be on the outskirts of society and/or wanted criminals. I don't know for sure whether I could see them fully joining forces (mostly just think they'd butt heads over specific goals and methods for fighting back against Hyzante), but they'd for sure have a lot to talk about.

As far as Cordelia goes, I think Avlora wouldn't really want to blame her for everything that happened. Like Avlora would be aware that Cordelia wasn't innocent in it, but on some level I think she would just sort of mentally go "it cannot be Cordelia's fault because if it was her fault then it was also my fault. We were both just following orders. We were both doing what our nations demanded of us." And also I think she likely would consider Cordelia to be the closest thing to a friend she has left, and as a result would have a hard time giving that relationship up.

Their dynamic in the Wolffort Wedding extra story cracks me up and I also think it would be in-character for Cordelia to hunt Avlora down as soon as she hears rumors that Avlora is still alive. If that happens then I wholeheartedly believe Cordelia would take one look at Avlora (wearing the same clothing she had on when she fell into the Norzelia River more than a year ago) (hasn't eaten in a week because she's avoiding the Hyzantian ration handouts and won't accept any from other displaced Aesfrosti) (generally stressed out of her mind and regularly daydreams about throwing her life away on an assassination attempt on Idore) and Cordelia would just go "okay yeah no I'm going to nurse you back to health and you're going to like it."

Roland would probably catch onto this at some point and I do imagine he'd try to attack or otherwise apprehend Avlora (he might feel a little bad about it because Cordelia obviously cares about her, but he's also tied himself inexorably to Hyzante at this point and not apprehending the last bastion of the Aesfrosti army would go against everything he's committed himself to). But assuming Cordelia's a little older and has had time to recover from the war, I think she'd put up a fight to the point that he'd back off and turn a blind eye to Avlora so long as she doesn't try anything too aggressive.

Getting deeper into "this is just me writing fanfiction" territory, I'm a sucker for "veteran gets to lay down their sword" arcs and I think it'd be nice to see Avlora eventually distance herself from plans of revenge and instead focus her energy on supporting the remaining people of Aesfrost as a sort of community leader, possibly with Cordelia's help.

I also really love the idea that Avlora would run an orphanage at some point. Working with orphans would be a good way of satisfying Avlora's desire to protect those who are otherwise alone, and it's also just funny/sweet to imagine General "There is nothing more agonizing than a child glaring at you through tears" Avlora trying to, for example, get a three-year-old to do something they don't want to do. Her personality and values as a character lend to her being a pretty big pushover with kids while simultaneously not having any frame of reference for "how to gently coax a child to do something" and I think it'd be a good and humbling experience for her :)

[jerreeeeeee]

there's nothing inherently wrong or unhealthy with a platonic relationship being the most intimate and important in someone's life (whether that person is also in a romantic relationship or not). this has been said before but people still treat it like its true. ESPECIALLY that a prioritized platonic relationship belies “codependency” even though no one would bat an eye at the exact same dynamic if it were romantic, because of the idea that a prioritized platonic relationship is somehow immature/unhealthy and something to grow out of/move on from.

the idea that the twins just go, well, you've been the person i felt safest loving and trusting in my entire life, our souls have been bound by fate and magic and our love for one another is one of the strongest bonds in the multiverse, transcending death and unimaginable loss, the motivation behind everything we’ve ever done, but since we're both in romantic relationships now and the story is over, the reasonable and in-character thing to do would be to split up and have separate nuclear families because that's the "healthy thing" (read: expected thing). there's no other form of a domestic happy ending than a marriage and typical nuclear family. you're everything to me, my entire world, my heart, see you later.

ok this got too long i'm putting it under a readmore.

(also why i don't really like the idea that taako adopts angus. "parent" is not the only important, loving role an adult can play in a child's life but people feel that need to shove everything into a nuclear family. also taako has too much going on to be the good parent that angus needs anyway. and magnus and lucretia are right there (separately, to me; they don’t have to be partners—romantic or platonic—to ‘coparent’ together). but this is another post <- this is actually a fan fiction i’m writing, kind of)

i just find that frankly silly. i truly believe that the twins live together for the rest of their lives and are always each others' most important person (before anyone kills me i do think barry is there too. they also both love him so much. capacity for love INCREASES there’s no need for a replacement or a “moving on” it’s an addition). there's not any reason they wouldn't live together other than that it’s not “normal?” but why would they give a shit about that. their prioritization of one another isn't the unhealthy thing about their relationship. they do have other stuff going on that's actually codependent, but i think they eventually work past it and come to have a healthier (yet no less close) relationship. actually this post was originally just supposed to be about those codependent tendencies but i felt like i needed to compensate by clarifying that there are only a very specific few things abt their dynamic i find unhealthy and that by and large they’re fine, actually.

the main thing is, as is so succinctly put in this post—they aren't able to communicate about big, important decisions. not to say they never communicate about anything, i think they actually do communicate effectively about a lot of things—warning i’m going into a complete tangent here—i see a lot an idea that they’re not siblings who hug or really verbalize affection at all which is crazy to me (<- personal opinion alert) like they’re closed off and distrusting (taako more than lup, but she’s certainly not exempt from their trauma) to other people and the world at large but they have always always been each other’s exception, each other’s utmost safe place, the one person they could be absolutely comfortable around, who they never have to be afraid of. that’s one of the things i find so compelling about them, that they trust each other with their entire selves. they have no reason to ever feel defensive around each other. oh to be known so entirely and intimately and never feel ashamed or afraid of judgement or abandonment. augh. so i do think they hug.

also—i don't think they "don't know how to be a person without each other" like that's certainly not true for lup and i don't really think it's true for taako either. they have their own distinct personalities and identities they just also both inform each others’ lives. they're an integral part of each other's identity the way your family or best friend or partner or most important person in your life is but again i think that's fine.

but back to the topic at hand anyway they DO hide their misgivings from each other when it comes to huge shit with world-changing, life-threatening consequences lol. when it comes to, like, turning herself into a lich, or leaving to recover her dangerous magical artifact, lup feels like she needs to be entirely decisive and confident for taako, and when it comes to his sister turning herself into a lich, or proposing a dangerous magical artifact plan, taako feels like he needs to be unflinchingly supportive and loyal for lup. and those both backfire obviously. because they trust each other so completely that they don't trust each other enough to not trust each other. weird paradox.

but really its not a lack of trust in each other its their own insecurities projected onto each other. lup second guesses herself but feels like she can’t express that uncertainty so she’s alone with her doubts which increases the pressure and stress and creates a feedback loop that only makes her more insecure. and taako feels like he doesn’t have anything to bring to the table other than backing up lup and is afraid doubting her would hurt her which means he never has an opportunity to find out he does actually have good ideas and that lup would listen to him constructively. but it manifests in lup “not trusting taako” to have her back even if she doubts herself and taako “not trusting lup” to take criticism even if his idea is good.

and honestly i think the solution to this just comes with… not being in those lifethreatening situations anymore. the universe was saved and they have normal (magical fantasy world) lives. so now when they’re hiding things from each other the stakes are a lot lower. and when the stakes are lower they’re able to express uncertainty because they don’t feel that extreme and terrifying pressure anymore. lup doesn’t have to make impossible decisions and stick to them despite any doubt because she doesn’t have the survival of entire worlds on her back anymore. taako doesn’t have to always agree with lup and uncritically support her every choice because he’s not the only thing holding her together from oblivion anymore. so they're able to express doubts and nothing falls apart and they're actually stronger for it. and they’re already doing so much work on fixing their relationship just from being separated and kinda grieving for a decade too, so they eventually work past that.

and also because they have to face those insecurities and their consequences. lup got trapped in umbrella limbo for a decade and taako had his life destroyed. if lup had been able to overcome her need to put everything on her shoulders and expressed uncertainty, if taako had been able to overcome his blind loyalty and expressed doubt, would they have gone through with the relics? would they have even gone through with the lich plan? they realize only afterward that they should’ve talked about it, and so they learn from their mistakes.

another tangent—isn’t it so crazy how, by any standard, lup should be the strongwilled, passionate, heroic protagonist and taako her cynical, pragmatic, yet loyal sidekick? and yet he’s the protagonist and she the supporting character in the actual narrative? so subversive and intriguing. i cant believe this was all masterfully and purposefully written. anyway. (<- in the in-universe metanarrative version of the story, lup [and honestly, probably davenport] is the tragic ghost who haunts the narrative and lucretia & barry are the morally gray protagonist foils, and tres horny boys are supporting characters/comic relief who go on to have their own semi-important b-plot arcs that ultimately serve to further the protagonists’ arcs. btw.)

back to the twins. i also think they don't only grow post-canon, i think they grow a LOT during the century, because in the beginning, they're coming from a life where they have been not only the most important people in each other's lives, but the ONLY people in each other's lives. and now they're suddenly faced with more people, which they handle fine individually, more or less—lup is faster to warm up to the others, but even though taako's attitude is very much that he only cares about him and his, he is capable of expanding the people who are "his" (eventually). but they've never had to bring other people into their dynamic with each other before.

i don't think either of them are possessive, their relationship is built on deepest mutual respect and love and trust and "possessiveness" is kinda antithetical to that, but they can both be jealous on occasion. although there is a difference—lup is the only one who will outwardly display jealousy (and maybe a better word than jealousy would be insecurity), again because of the dynamic earlier: taako must always support whatever decisions lup makes without question. so when taako dies one cycle and all of a sudden merle and magnus and everyone else grieve him too, lup perhaps feels a sense of ownership over grief (not over taako himself, but over loving taako, just because no one else ever really has before, and she’s never had to think about the possibility that he might love other people too) that she initially may not challenge but does eventually let go of, because it's actually a good thing that other people love him now, and bringing new people into their family doesn’t make their love for each other any less. and taako has a similar experience but tbh i think its a little easier for him bc, like, who wouldn’t love lup, and lup loves other people way more freely than taako does (still not super freely, its a low bar). not that lup thinks taako is unloveable OBVIOUSLY (taako does think he’s unloveable tho) i just think they have different attitudes abt it, like they both have the moments of “but you don’t love them like i do!!” which is true, no one loves them like they do, but taako’s more willing to let that shit go bc he just doesn’t care as much what the others do as long as they don’t fuckin bother him about it. like lup sees the others equate (as she sees it, but oc they’re not actually grieving At Her) their (comparatively shallow) grief to her world-shattering loss of her twin brother, best friend, only family, soulmate, silly rabbit, and she gets angry about it, but taako’s reaction is more like, “ok they’re stupid. who cares.” meanwhile and more importantly, all of a sudden lup is falling in love with barry, but taako's not one to throw a fit or demand that he's the only one who can love lup nor the only one lup can love. she’s made her decision. he just gives barry advice and lets it quietly hurt and draws distant, because he has a deep seated fear of abandonment that is now, for the first time, clashing with his unshakable trust in lup. and their relationship irrevocably changes but maybe not for the worse, because taako has, for the first time, doubted lup, a disruption to their typical (codependent) dynamic. but, of course, in the end his fears are unfounded and lup pulls him back in, because their capacity for love increases—of course lup still loves him just as much and yknow what, so does barry, and so does the rest of the crew. so he doubts and fears and is proven wrong. and so they grow and change, and their world increases from two to seven.

but that doubt doesn’t really go away for a long time, exacerbated and strained the more lup keeps secrets (especially with barry) until it reaches a head when lup finally doubts taako and does truly abandon him. but again, of course, never on purpose and never forever, they find their way back to each other despite everything and, again, come away stronger for it. the idea that the twins’ relationship is never as close again after story and song is so fucking tragic and heartrending but really i just think its unrealistic. because the rift between them is what caused their pain in the first place, of course they wouldn’t just shrug and move on. they would do anything for each other, including a lot of difficult emotional work and healing. for a little while they do have to deal with the reality that they’re not as close as they were. but they can be again. it just takes time and effort.

but anyway just to drive my point home—we mostly see taako's side of it since he is the protagonist in the real world narrative, but lup is always, always positioned within that narrative as the most important person to him. (and even then, lup says as much for taako! she loves barry of course but she loves taako so much he’s her heart!!) when thb see their lives after the hunger in paloma's prophecy, taako sees himself cooking with lup. she's textually representative of healing and joy in his future, and she's the main character present in his epilogue too. she's his greatest loss and his greatest love, positioned in exactly the same place as julia and merle's kids. there are a myriad of love stories going on in balance and a myriad of love stories involving taako that are all beautiful and significant in their own right but i really do think the main one in his life is lup!!

well all that to say they’re my favorite little critters ever and i’m studying them under a microscope forever. how do you end posts