#typical philip wittebane abuse actions

[edoro]

Do you have any more Thoughts about Phillip making a grimwalker of himself? And maybe what that grimwalkers relationship with Hunter would be like?

oh i DO have more thoughts! thank you for asking!

this might be a little unorganized because i'm just kind of dumping my character ideas and what vague concept of a plot/life trajectory i have here, bear with me

so, first of all, i think this grimwalker predates Hunter by a lot. the idea of Hunter and a Philip grimwalker being raised together and interacting is a lot of fun, but the au with Wik/William has that covered imo so i went in a different direction

so my idea is that the two grimwalkers are the ones who Philip has when he first ascends to power as Belos. he makes them the same age, approximately 5 or 6, and what he tells them is that they had to live elsewhere in secret while he took power so no one could use them to hurt him, but now he has this big castle and a secure foothold and they can come live with him, and he tells them he's their father and raises them as twins.

the Caleb grimwalker is named Artemis. per my transfem Caleb headcanon, she's one of Philip's more successful unethical gender experiments - he more or less force femmed her and just raised her as a girl from the start, and while this has historically resulted in some Very Weird Dysphoria and been a contributing factor to the betrayal of several early attempts, it actually works out okay with her because she is in fact a girl, although sadly not really the sturdy farmbutch that Philip wants her to be.

(she's more of a reserved femme type - presentatio-wise, very good Puritan girl fashion, long full skirts and high-necked, long-sleeved blouses in sturdy knits and basic colors, enormous long hair that she usually keeps either up for running around or loose when she's attending meetings etc - not a lot of jewelry or ornamentation, but she has some fancier clothes for Special Occasions

personality-wise she's dutiful, serious, thoughtful but very headstrong and stubborn. she takes her role as princess seriously and genuinely believes that one day she will inherit the throne, so she sees herself as having a duty of care to the people of the Isles - kind of the 'best possible outcome' of a belief in monarchy here, where she sees herself as a superior kind of person and believes this gives her a responsibility to care for and guide those below her and do what's best for them.

as she grows older she learns to temper her impulses, and thinks her decisions through very carefully. after all, she's been taught her whole life that Her Actions Have Consequences, so, if she's going to do or say something, then she needs to be aware of and okay with the potential consequences. this means she's thoughtful but also means that once she's made up her mind, it's almost impossible to change it, because she's already considered every angle and decided she's okay with whatever she can imagine happening as a result.)

the Philip grimwalker is named Mortification-Of-The-Flesh, because Philip is not a subtle man. they call him Morty for short. he's the whipping boy, of course, so his life sucks so incredibly bad because he's the one designated to Suffer For Artemis's Sake.

(and also more than a little for Philip's sake too.)

Morty is a twitchy haunted mess of a recluse with absolutely apocalyptic amounts of rage simmering just beneath the surface at all times. he treats Philip with terrified obedience and respect bordering on worship, is wholeheartedly devoted to Artemis (who is, after all, the entire purpose for his own existence), and is a rude, sarcastic, nasty little shit to absolutely everyone else if he ever interacts with them.

his needs are provided for the same as Artemis's, but of course he's dressed in a much plainer, more ascetic style - lots of black and grey, you know. Philip keeps his head shaved to encourage humility. he's not given a staff or taught how to use magic or how to defend himself at all - that's Artemis's responsibility.

(she's not quite raised as a soldier the way, say, Hunter is later, but she is shown how to use an artificial staff and given combat training, and does eventually get given the position of Golden Guard, i think. in her case it's a lot more "personal bodyguard/caretaker/assistant to the Emperor" rather than the all-around gopher position we see Hunter have.)

he's punished frequently and harshly for any misstep on his sister's part, and he never really gets used to it or quite figures out how to disengage from himself while it's happening. really, his suffering is the point, so if you look at it that way, it would be wrong of him to, right? Artemis watches his punishments and is responsible for patching him up afterwards, to really drive home the lesson that this is her responsibility.

they are... very codependent. they both sort of see Morty as, basically, part of her. not even quite like they're both one person or conjoined in some way, but like he's one of her limbs, something that has no independent will of its own and could not function or exist separately from her, and which ultimately exists only to be controlled and used by her. totally healthy normal sibling relationship here!

Morty's very angry a lot of the time. he has an interesting status - barely even a person in his own family, but he exists to be punished for them, not for anyone else. since he isn't really an independent person and he doesn't really have any autonomy and he exists as the living embodiment of Philip and Artemis's penance, then he can't really get in trouble for anything he does to anyone else, right?

so he's just kind of an asshole and a terror to most other people. the castle staff and coven heads stay out of his way. this is easy because he likes to keep to himself anyway.

he lives a very aimless sort of life, just drifting around the castle or trailing after Artemis. he picks up a lot of gossip, i imagine, and shares it with her, and he's her errand boy whenever she wants to get something done without being seen to have done it herself.

i think these two make it into their early to mid 20s.

at some point, something happens, i'm not exactly sure what, but it's a bit of a lightbulb moment for Artemis. she realizes that Morty is, in fact, An Entire Separate Person, and furthermore that this whole whipping boy arrangement is extremely fucked up, and mulls that over for a bit and comes to the conclusion that it should stop, but when she tries to present this idea to their father, well, it does not go very well to say the least.

this earns Morty a ferocious punishment, and to really drive the point home, Philip makes Artemis be the one to inflict it. she does learn a lesson here, but not the one he wanted: she learns that perhaps her father is wrong and is not as reasonable as he likes to act, and decides that she and Morty need to get out of there. (and maybe she can go spend some time living amongst the common people, learning how they see things, etc etc...)

so that's a whole thing, she does the like Mulan plot-relevant haircut, dresses them both up all incognito and takes some money and goes. they end up wandering for a bit and then finally settle in a city a ways away from the castle, and get taken in by some good samaritan who recognizes they need help and offers them a room to rent and work at their business.

they have, oh, maybe a year or two of freedom, but of course eventually Philip catches them. :o) he kills both of them, burns down the shop/apartment, and has the person who housed them captured to publicly execute and Make An Example Out Of - see what this vicious wild witch did to his poor dear children?

he made sure to keep a bit more distance between himself and the next couple of grimwalkers, and he never made one of himself again.

[edoro]

#‘​all rectangles are not squares but all squares are rectangles and this is one developmentally disrupted square’ op thank you SO MUCH #for putting this into words

#I love this so much I actually predicted baby Philip would be nonverbal and it’s the one thing hollow mind really vindicated for me

#so yeah give me more ‘early intervention for philip’ aus

#this boy needs sign language and anger coping skills

#I feel like this is a good place to also bring up how clumsy baby Philip is

#why do I feel like luz in particular would be very wary of him stumbling/falling and getting hurt (via @therealjanejackson)

yeah, honestly, the sentiment i’ve seen floating around that Hollow Mind somehow disproved the idea that Belos is extremely traumatized is weird - like, just personally, all of the people Like Him who i’ve had the misfortune to be personally acquainted with have all Been That Way because that’s how they respond to profound and chronic childhood trauma that occurred early enough it just sort of really disrupted their ability to form attachments and relationships to other people in a ‘normal’ way

(the rest of this got incredibly long and is just me kind of rambling mostly about The Emperor’s Autism and a little bit about The Emperor’s Trauma so under a cut it goes to spare your dashboards)

(which you know is where our handy little saying comes in - most people who are traumatized do not go on to act like Belos, but everyone i’ve ever met who acts like him is absolutely doing it because they’ve been traumatized, which is not an excuse but it’s good to understand the actual reason behind the behavior)

and my personal projection about his motives and personality aside, like, we literally see the dude and his brother playing while some kind of mob violence occurs a couple dozen feet away? things like “witnessing violent community persecution/vigilante mob executions as a child” don’t suddenly stop being traumatic bc the person they happen to grows up to be a bad person

(and the fact of his upbringing just uh really implies a level of physical and spiritual abuse as just kind of the default, and it definitely Means Something imo that we see his brother but we never see their parents even in a background shot, so, you know...)

but also yeah like. he’s so autistic the Wittebanes are SO autistic. Hunter is way too autistic for his uncle-who-is-technically-genetically-his-brother to be neurotypical. and you just KNOW Hunter got the “raised by undx’d autistic guardian” experience 

where they do so much of the exact same shit and have so many of the exact same problems but because Belos thinks this is Just Normal, he tells Hunter that, so Hunter also has no idea that his behavior and feelings and sensory experiences aren’t typical.

(definitely think that Belos has arranged his entire life around meeting his own personal sensory needs - that castle is so big and open and dim and quiet

which, some of that is definitely the intimidation factor, but this is also a man who spent years living in a cave and tbh i’m about 80% convinced he just built the castle around the cave lair, so, you know, i’m extrapolating a bit about what he might like in his personal environment

probably finds the Owl House wildly overstimulating on top of the constant mental overload of 400 years’ worth of cartoon villain actions stuffed into that 6 year old brain)

also yeah i love that you brought up how clumsy baby Philip is - his gross motor control and proprioception are just hot garbage, kid is staggering and stumbling around all over the place and blithely bouncing off walls and furniture

it’s fine, he’s fine, he barely even notices - can definitely see Luz being concerned about it, and tbh everyone finds it a lot more concerning that he just legitimately doesn’t seem to notice/care/react to giving himself visible injuries...

given the enduring fixation on like, childhood symbols - the mask, the witch-hunt games made tragically real, the thing where he’s cloned his brother 20+ times to be his living security blanket/stress toy - i see him as very much the “needs things to be the same, hates transitions and abrupt changes” type of autistic

he seems to love his routines and complex bureaucratic systems and familiar personal symbols/objects and Everything Being Just How He Wants It

as an adult and especially an adult who exerts a ton of control over his sensory environment he is able to be significantly more flexible and has greater emotional reserves to cope with being upset about this sort of thing - he’s got quite a lot of fine control over his face and tone and mood, but one definitely gets the impression it’s very much an intentional effort all the time

stuck in 6 year old brain, though? frustrated about the whole situation, frantic to get back to his plans which are so close to being ready, furious and humiliated by his own helplessness and the need to keep up the ruse of just being a child? mentally and physically overwhelmed and overstimulated? Oh Boy Is He Gonna Be Exhibiting Some Behaviors. 

feel like he’s the kind of guy who ate like, four (4) foods all the time and those were The Only Foods He Could Eat. then he ended up in a whole different dimension where he couldn’t even digest half the food there anyway and boy was that a nightmare.

and now his taste palate has gotten reset to 1600s colonial foods! what fun! feel like Eda’s gonna shrug and say “he’ll eat when he’s hungry” after he spurns everything she offers and then with dismay realize like, two days later, that apparently no he won’t and oops gotta figure something out here

just an endless process of “lmao of course the Emperor’s inner child is a fucking brat - oh no wait there’s like some legit emotional/developmental issues going on here, huh”

get in losers we’re reparenting Philip Wittebane, maybe it’ll improve him somewhat as a person

thinking SO hard about that “Babybel gets transported outside of his own mindscape with Luz and Hunter and ends up stuck in six year old form” concept

i want him to have adult Belos’s memories and knowledge but he’s physically occupying the body and brain of a small child so like his cognitive development level is really lagging behind what he’s used to (which wasn’t a problem in the mindscape where it runs on dream rules, but unfortunately,)

he’s scheming but he’s also having a hard fucking time because like you will never. ever convince me. that Philip Wittebane is not a deeply traumatized man. all rectangles are not squares but all squares are rectangles and brother? this is one developmentally disrupted square.

so anyway he’s got four hundred years of being fucked up and evil crammed into a six year old brain and he’s furious and terrified and overwhelmed and going to get put in shitty mindbaby jail for sure.

serenely choosing to interpret the fact that he never said anything in Babybel form but then immediately would not shut up in Belos form is because he was nonverbal for a very long time in childhood* and therefore, not possessing several centuries’ worth of verbal communication workarounds**, he can’t talk to anyone in the Owl House

they give him a big sketchbook and a bunch of colored pencils and markers, because if there’s one thing the Owl House has in abundance it’s craft supplies

he spends a while being profoundly frustrated by six year old motor skills and total lack of most of the artistic muscle memory he’s used to but starts to work something out that doesn’t totally disgust him

i just want him to without really thinking draw a familiar face, look at it, and get hit with 400 years of missing (and recreating and raising and programming and using and being betrayed again by and murdering) Caleb but, and this is the crucial part, with the emotional and cognitive capacity of a six year old

and burst into furious tears

(*people were not, i think, kind about this)

(*actually there are a couple of notable occasions as Belos where he gets confronted with something he clearly doesn’t have either a preplanned speech or a well-oiled social script to respond to and just. does not say anything.)