#this was literally supposed to be a low-effort fanfiction i DIDN'T dedicate a ton of time and headspace to

[thedawningofthehour]

I also like cupcakeslushie's au but other than donnie living with draxum I don't see the similarities. your draxum is WAY too nice

When I first started writing the fic, @cupcakeslushie's au (I felt like I was talking behind your back if I didn't tag you lol) was also in its very early stages. Donnie hadn't been introduced in the proper comic itself and it was mostly just asks and little blurbs she had posted. So I literally had less Draxum to work with. (also she has made some changes to her Draxum portrayal, his insanity via empyrean was not revealed yet, which...doesn't really explain anything on my end, no)

The biggest inspiration was probably the restraint scars on Three's arms and legs, that's probably what gave me the brain worms for The Table in the first place. Also I was not...planning to make Draxum this good of a father. Like, I knew I wanted him to see Galois as his son and have some complicated feelings about that, but he was originally much worse. Much colder, very high expectations, still good at praising his kid but would also not hesitate to do a 180 if Gale ever fell short. I also planned for him to be much more manipulative and physically abusive, and I briefly considered adding a SA element. (I am very glad I didn't go with that idea) But I was never totally satisfied with that, it just made things too...straightforward, I guess? Just good vs. evil, very little nuance to the story. AUs where Draxum is just evil generally work because he's a driving force behind the story, so it doesn't really matter if he's basic. But I knew I wanted Draxum to have more complexity to his actions, so he had to be much more likable for the audience to consider his validity. Cue Marxist, environmentalist goat-dad who read like a hundred parenting books for this.

Plus I just really enjoyed writing their more soft moments. Draxum is such a hard character, but through Book 1 of doth we see that armor slowly chip away, and now Gale is one of the few people he allows to see in his 'true' form. The removal of Draxum's helmet in chapter 20 of doth is both a metaphor and literal-he's discarded the hard shell that keeps him separated from everyone else, but also he literally did not take that thing off until Gale came into his life.

Also, my original plan was for the 'cracks' in Gale's memories was a little different, and that's where the Three influence would have come in. I don't want to elaborate on that too much because I think I am still going to do something with that idea starting in a few chapters, but it's going to be a much smaller thing. What I originally had planned would have taken over his arcs completely and made them something else entirely, and that's no longer what I want.

So in short...yeah, this is like when fanon takes a character and twists them until they're unrecognizable.