#tldr: what if fandomised found family....... but fucked up.... (welcome to my twisted mind) + the love is there and its the problem

[im-smart-i-swear]

funky guys rant below

the more i think abt it the more confused i become abt what exactly to call the kind of relationship all the funky guys have. like i guess found family, in the way the term is used in fandom, describes it well.... but idk as someone who goes way back w the trope & who used to forcefully cram characters i liked into neat family shaped boxes, the term does carry a kind of... weight to it? one might even call it cringe, but i feel like its more of a frustration with pidgeon-holeing and fandomisation as a whole. i think i just read one too many fics where characters in a found family start calling eachother siblings and mom and dad and uncle and honestly that kinda feels sorta. culty, even, to me rn?

which one the other hand thematically speaking does kinda fit - not literally as a cult but more in the way theyre all so codependent and struggle to find a life outside of these dynamics. these ppl DO love each other bc they HAD to to survive and stay relatively sane but also that means this is not a very healthy arrangement. i think that rigid language might fit here thematically bc it represents them all unconciously replicating all the flaws and problems a regular family would have instead of trying to make something better. they (mostly tashi) are falling back on what they know abt how ppl who love each other should act and view each other. which also on a more meta level is just me being rlly fascinated with the fandom idea of a found family and deciding to kinda. bring the idea as far as i can? showing what fucked up dynamics could sprout if you threw a bunch of traumatised freaks together and forced them to play house lest they die in the wilderness alone.

like. when i started dabbling in trying to write for this au, i quickly found that describing them all as a family felt kinda. weird? it just didnt feel right. it felt trope-y, fandomised, flanderised (which is really funny if you consider that this au is in many aspects just that, as much as id like to pretend otherwise). and i have to wonder how much of that is the term not fitting in-universe, and how much is just me looking back at my younger self's less nuanced takes and wanting to have nothing to do with them?

in the end, in-universe, as much as it kinda cringes me out i think the funky guys do very much describe themselves as a family & as siblings - partially bc they do love each other platonically very much and thats just the only term they really knew to describe what they are, and partly for convinience bc its way easier to tell ppl theyre just a bunch of siblings than itd be to 1. explain the whole clone thing and 2. delve into the complexities of all of their relationships in great detail.

and also bc i think describing it as a family makes them more eager to stick together? i think tashi does very much weaponise that, either conciously or subconciously ('we are family, you cant leave!! im your big brother, i know whats best for you')(the thing abt tashi is that hes very good at reading ppl AND hes got separation anxiety AND is a bit of a self righteous idiot and this results in him being kinda manipulative and guilt trippy at times, esp when hes in distress.)

so like. the thing im trying to get at is. the love was there, the love IS still there, and thats kinda the whole problem! they all trapped themselves in this rigid form of relationship, but also around the stickbug mind control arc it all starts to kinda fall apart(sticks Whole deal, webby turning 18, soup wanting to branch out and develop new relationships, buds crippling guilt making them kinda an asshole, tashi getting progressively worse and worse to be around as he falls apart, and ryou being 13 and stuck in the middle of all of it) and none of them rlly know how to handle it.

i dont rlly have a solid idea to what happens after the mind control stuff, aside from the kuro stuff and the fact stick and een do definetely move out again after stick recovers. but the rest? its kinda one big vague 'its slowly and painfully and messily gets better'. this story has always been about making the best of a shitty situation, i think. about people forming deep meaningful bonds but still being messy and stupid and hurting each other, and abt how you can never turn back time and fix all the shit you did wrong in the past, but maybe, if the love is there, if you still want the love to be there after all of that shit, maybe you can try again.