#the dichotomy of Murphy and Tango is made clearer each time I write them next to each other hahaha

[typosandtea]

♞ — What does your muse believe happens after death? Do they believe in an afterlife and why/why not? If they do, what do they imagine this afterlife to be?

♕ — What does leading a ‘good’ life mean to your muse? Are they satisfied with the choices they make?

♡  — How would your muse define love? Do they believe in soulmates? Do they believe this definition of love is achievable?

For Murphy and Tango ?

Thanks for the ask Bleu!!!!!!!! These are very thoughtful prompts ^_^ (sorry this has taken a while i've wanted to answer properly but haven't had the collective brain cells available rip) @romaniwasteland [PROMPTS ]

♞

What does your muse believe happens after death? Do they believe in an afterlife and why/why not? If they do, what do they imagine this afterlife to be?

Murphy:

Oh how dearly Murphy hopes that there is a heaven like they taught is sunday school when she was a little girl, she clings to the thought with all her being. A place of plenty with no suffering to be found. She has lost so so many people in her years, and doesn't want to think about them being gone forever.. she is not religious but does wonder about heaven and such. Is certain that she has encountered ghosts, and has conflicting thoughts on the afterlife, much more so after meeting much of the wasteland. What is a soul? who decides who gets one? are they necessary to live? synths are made so do they not have one? Or is one granted to them by god when they gain sentience? Is sentience a requirement for a soul? can robots gain a soul, curie and cosdworth and Ada are all sentient so? Supermutants and ferals were people once, do they still have a soul? or was it stripped from them as their humanity was? What makes a person? being human or a soul or something else? She is sure some humans she has met have lost their souls, but they are still people. Does Nick have his own soul or did he inherit Nick's soul? Would that matter? Does she still have a soul? Is it a whole or just a grotesque amalgamation as she feels she is? these are the questions that keep her up when shes trying to sleep..

Tango:

Avoids thinking about death. That's a can of worms and a half, considering they are mostly dead. Hasn't processed the death of a close friend at their hands years ago and doesn't want to think about it at all. Spent much of their life alone, so didn't have to engage with death other than for survival, also hasn't really been exposed to traditional western concepts of heaven / hell/ afterlife outside of people using them in common speech. ie 'send them back to hell' or 'must be heavenly / divine' so doesn't really get what it means. Very wasteland attitude of welp they're gone now.. guess they wont be needing this. No real rites or customs were common in their group they grew up in. Burial was optional and reserved for those close, else take the stuff and leave the body, or move it far away if its at camp. The body will feed something in the wasteland.. This was what everyone expected, looting wasn't taboo at all. They didn't even bury their own decapitated corpse, just looted themselves and left feeling very weird about that whole situation.

♕

What does leading a ‘good’ life mean to your muse? Are they satisfied with the choices they make?

Murphy:

Murphy's opinion of herself rarely aligns with reality, and this is no exception. A good life can be measured in the impact you have on those around you, but she is blind to the good shes done and focuses on the damage. thus she doesn't believe that she has lived a good life. despite this there is only a few things she would change if she got the chance. For example she thought about if she never joined the BoS, she wouldn't have had to deal with Maxon and the many hard choices they ask sole to do, but.. then she wouldn't have met Danse, Haylen and Rhys… or had access to the knowledge and resources that have been so critical to her helping others when she can. (shes a massive overthinker) she would change who was holding Shaun before they were frozen and mutated, Nathan would have done a better job than she has done she is sure of it..

Tango:

Gonna be real with you, Tango avoids introspection like the plague.. forcing them to answer this question will probably result in a vague 'be happy I guess?' and if you asked them are they happy with their life you would get the sad crying cat meme response .. as for choices they've made? By god they would change so many but not the ones you might expect. They wouldn't change the series of events that lead them to becoming tango, because they know that they've survived so much that they otherwise wouldn't have, (they have pissed off alot of powerful people over the years). The biggest thing they would change is their murder of Bones, their business partner (and friend, but good luck getting them to admit that they had friends)

♡

How would your muse define love? Do they believe in soulmates? Do they believe this definition of love is achievable?

Murphy:

Love.. she was in love once. What else could she have been to have some fond memories of distant battlefields and long suffering injuries? How dearly she misses Nathan, not that wretched thing that he was mutated into. People and all forms of relationships are so important to her, but she doesn't believe in soulmates. Shes seen people once so sweetly in love grow apart, or be torn apart.. what cruel force of fate could entwine destinies just to shatter them into a thousand razor sharp shards of grief? No, she'd rather believe that nobody is cursed with loss, and that she might one day be brave enough to love around the shards. (what she doesn't realize though is that grief can dull over time, perhaps even shift into those precious memories that she holds dear)

Tango:

They are aro/ace and very distrusting and EXTREMELY cynical. Absolutely thinks soulmates a scam of some sort. Deffiently in the love=lust boat, because obviously nobody actually cares about anyone else (← WRONG, like I cannot emphasize how wrong they are!, also is rather self centered and struggles to see things from others perspectives). Does Not Get what people are on about with love and why it makes people do stupid shit, and doesn't believe they will ever achieve that, not that they want to with their understanding of it.