#to try and convince Tevye to join the institute

[cosmicknives]

Like. Continuing on because I have Thoughts about Shaun but it’s all just the weird way my original thoughts about Tevye worked out to make him a fascinating character to roleplay with.

Like, Tevye had (has) dad issues, parent issues in general because his parents both sucked a lot. He never thought he’d be a good dad because he only had Pres’s dad as a reference and he had a lot of baggage he was terrified would fuck up his child. But he had Pres and he was also excited to be something his father never was, a good father.

Pres is also equal parts excited and terrified because she knew herself and while she had a nurturing side (Tevye being her decade long pet project), she …never related to people in that typical mothering way (Tevye being her pet project). The pair were excited because they did think they brought out each other’s best qualities buuuuut you know, they both had baggage.

Shaun is just honestly Tevye’s nightmare come true. It’s a bit easier to swallow tho since Pres isn’t around to see it and because Institute technically raised him so Tevye can blame them.

But there’s also other Shaun. A synth child created to honestly just fuck with Tevye, and that makes his skin crawl so much. Because that was Tevye. Tevye was conceived because his older brother died suddenly and tragically young, and instead of processing their grief, his parents just went ‘this can’t be our legacy we need a new child’.

So they had Tevye, after making years of trying and lots of money thrown at fertility treatments. And Tevye never lived up to those very idealized and grief-stricken memories of the dead six year old that was his older brother and his parents always took that out of him.

So, ending up the main quest with Shaun sending other Shaun to Tevye, note tapes on his chest like ‘lol sorry for messing with you my bad enjoy this child I made and specifically reprogrammed to be a replacement. c:’ almost caused Tevye to straight up abandon other Shaun on the spot. He was sick to his stomach, as me as player just stared at that holotape for a few minutes like ‘what in the living fuck?’.

It was the perfect cherry on the sundae of that disaster that was Father and I still love it dearly. c: