#who taught this adhd kid how to shoot lasers

[cincidious]

be more specific next time, child

[storytell]

@mckiingbiird​ asked

Talk about Twain? ^^

congratulations! i have SO much to say about twain! this is going to provide the longest answer possible out of any muse you could have picked just because twain has so little in canon and i’ve developed him so much. he’s my longest standing muse ever so there is too much about my portrayal to say without somewhat of an organization so i am right now without warning implementing a new feature into these ramble asks known as Sections. so now that i’m a little more coherent. sections.

just so you know by the way i really am not joking when i say this is over 10 paragraphs long. read at your own risk. however long you think this post is i can guarantee you it is longer.

this was for a meme i did but i literally can’t answer any more of these because i’m too ashamed by how little i have for every other muse in comparison to twain.

part I: timeline.

my twain was born just after the end of (or during the final days of) the war everyone’s always talking about in canon, and it genuinely didn’t have much of a direct impact on his life. he has six siblings (five older, one younger), and of those six there were three siblings he was closest with: orion, henry, and pleasant. orion and henry were the two oldest, and given that their dad was terribly abusive and their mom was, in twain’s own words, a coward, they did most of the work to provide for the family. although twain always thought orion and henry were mean, because they always played tricks on him. pleasant was twain’s confidant; she was the older sister he could go to if he needed something to cry about.

growing up, twain was always a troublemaking kid, and there were only so many schools in or around their town that he could get expelled from before there weren’t really many options left. in the summer before he was scheduled to go to his last year of middle school, this--among a variety of things such as the abuse of his father and a general feeling of wanting to run away--caused him to formulate a plan where he would run from home, which he did shortly before school started at the age of 13. i know i have the age he ran away listed as 14, but he tends to lie and say he actually ran away a year later.

he traveled for around a year on his own, meeting a lot of different people from a lot of walks of life, before meeting a man he would come to refer to as “uncle”, possibly under the instruction of that man. i should note that my personal hc for the identity of “uncle” is natsume souseki, but this doesn’t really have any bearing on much of anything and i tend to not mention it at all in threads where “uncle” comes up because it’s not the most significant thing. anyway, “uncle” taught him how to do many things to survive on his own, including shooting guns without his ability, making fires, cooking food over an open flame, etc. he was the first real father figure twain ever had, but he and twain eventually parted ways when twain had just turned 17.

twain did a bit of freelance work afterwards--initially he sang and played guitar on the streets for pocket change, but after he killed a man trying to kidnap a girl he didn’t know, something within him clicked: he knew he wouldn’t mind doing something like this for a living, after his initial bout of panic. his career as a freelance hitman was very short-lived, but it got him enough money that for the few hits he did, he was able to stay at nice hotels and do fun things. he never really used any of it, though, too used to not having any money at all and attached to the lifestyle of not having a home to come back to. the first time he ever splurged on himself wasn’t even anything fancy; it was an olive garden.

to the man who sat himself down at the table and bought one of every food item, the place was probably less than nothing. but to twain, so used to being poor and never having enough, it seemed like more than he could have ever asked for. and so, after very little negotiation, began twain’s contract with the guild. at the time, not-yet-eighteen year old twain was the youngest member of the guild’s ranks, but he was definitely not the least talented. he rose quickly through the ranks of the organization, becoming the chief gunman/sharpshooter and a fellowcraft of the guild after just over a year of being employed.

from there, things are probably predictable, given everything that twain is. he makes friends in the guild, begins spending the ludicrous amount of money he’s being paid for his services, and generally does what’s fun for him. he discovers a love for minecraft (more on that later) and rollercoasters, and goes on travels he never would have been able to without the security of the money he’s being paid. then, after a few years of relative normalcy, the guild goes to yokohama, and you know what happens from there.

post-canon is where things begin to get a little bit foggy for me. i do technically HAVE a mainverse idea for what happens to him, but the catch is that i almost never use it. for post-canon stuff, i tend to use one of any number of verses where he’s stayed or been caught up in yokohama, because it’s just a lot easier. but my actual mainverse headcanon unaffected by roleplay relationships i want to have is this: twain goes back to america. he unintentionally gathers a bunch of lost kids and, using his travel money, he provides for them while they all travel. and that’s it. maybe in the future he becomes successful from the tales in his success diary. maybe not. who knows?

part II: traits with basis in canon.

i don’t need to repeat that we see very little of twain, but i just did anyway. because we get very few glimpses of him, there’s not much we know outside of shallow character traits. because it’ll make things easier to talk about, here are the core traits i noticed in twain that i’ve had to build off of, and then different paragraphs talking about how i’ve built off of them.

we rarely see him anything but energetic, but he does have his quiet moments.

he’s very friendly, and tends to invite people out to do fun things with him.

he is very competitive, but NOT a sore loser.

he does things to impress others. notably, one of his canon likes is “praise”.

he’s very self-confident, but not to the point where he thinks it’s impossible to beat him, as demonstrated when he’s not angry about atsushi’s victory.

he’s very flippant about taking a life.

following orders is not his top priority.

we rarely see him anything but energetic, but he does have his quiet moments. a couple of my headcanons have stemmed from this--the first is the most obvious one and that is that twain has ADHD. this didn’t come directly from his energetic attitude and rather from a combination of multiple traits, but it also happened because i was projecting. the other headcanon that’s stemmed from this combination of facts is that twain is smarter and more introspective than most people give him credit for. this has backing in the scene where he shoots at atsushi from the moby dick; instead of shooting at atsushi, he diverts his aim to the oil truck in front of him.

he’s very friendly, and tends to invite people out to do fun things with him. there are a lot of things i can talk about in this regard, but i’ll start here: twain genuinely likes to meet and make friends with new people. despite his occupation, he loves hearing others’ stories and tends to ask them about them. along with this and somewhat in tandem with the introspective part of the first hc, twain also pays a lot more attention to how people act and what they like than everyone tends to think he does. this actually has basis in my dive into the real life author mark twain, as he was notably famous for being able to pick up on people’s mannerisms, accents, and ideologies well enough to flawlessly represent them on paper (he claimed he could “read human character as well as he could read the mississippi river “).

he is very competitive, but NOT a sore loser. from this trait, i’ve sort of developed the idea that it’s very rare for twain to actually get angry, and he tends not to argue with people. he’s very quick to forgive if he knows he was in the wrong and tends to say sorry first after arguments, but at the same time, if he knows he’s right and shouldn’t be the one apologizing, he’ll cling onto that until the day he dies. also, this has spawned the smaller and less significant hc that twain likes to do competitive activities like laser tag or mini golf for fun, especially since you don’t necessarily have to know the people you’re doing those things with.

he does things to impress others. notably, one of his canon likes is “praise”. there’s not really much to say here in terms of how i’ve built on this, but one notable thing is that i attribute this trait to the lack of praise he got from his parents growing up, and how lonely he felt even when he was traveling with “uncle”. he likes when people are impressed by him because he’s impressed by himself, and when he doesn’t get the reaction he expected it puts a little bit of a damper on his confidence. temporarily.

he’s very self-confident, but not to the point where he thinks it’s impossible to beat him, as demonstrated when he’s not angry about atsushi’s victory. speaking of confidence, i actually have a whole journey laid out about twain’s journey with arrogance v. confidence and the overabundance of arrogance to make up for a lack of confidence in his earlier years. when he first ran away, he had a very troubled and hateful mindset, and outwardly portrayed that he believed himself to be the best of the best while really thinking he was terrible and a burden to his family. it was only through meeting so many people and the guidance of “uncle” in his more formative years that he began to develop a genuine sense of self confidence and, by the time he hits 20, everything good he says about himself is genuinely true. this said, he is also very aware of his flaws (for example, he definitely knows he isn’t too smart or careful or focused), but he doesn’t view them as detriments to his character and instead chooses to believe that without his flaws, he wouldn’t be himself.

he’s very flippant about taking a life. this trait actually was what caused me to think about how he took his first life. i’ll walk you a little through the things he felt when he did: he was angry, at first, then terrified, then secretly glad, and then sooner rather than later he genuinely felt nothing about it. as he’d go on to carry out hits for various people and the guild, that feeling of initial panic would become smaller and smaller every time, until the lives of the people he had to kill didn’t really matter to him. that said, it’s important to me that he still values connection and friendship with other people, so he definitely does. i believe these two traits can coexist when done properly; he values the lives of people and the stories they have to tell, but all life ends someday anyway and nothing is lost by the end of that life sooner than it would have ended otherwise.

following orders is not his top priority. this is, i think, where i get the idea that twain is a free spirit. it is this that has sort of shaped twain in every way, whether it’s getting expelled from every school in his area or going overboard on a mission where his target should have been left alive. i think his top priorities are having fun and having a good story to tell later, and while letting atsushi die wouldn’t have fallen under something fun, twain’s anticipated victory definitely would have been a good story to tell others.

part III: traits with basis in how mark twain was in real life.

an unashamed love of cats. it doesn’t come up SUPER often, but i like to remind people from time to time that my twain absolutely adores any and all cats, and had plenty of them himself before the guild arc. this comes from rl mark twain being obsessed with cats to the point where he’d have up to 19 cats at once, and would straight up rent cats while he was traveling so he never had to be without cats.

traveling. speaking of traveling! this not only comes from rl twain’s travels, but also the love for adventure displayed by huck and tom in their books. bsd twain really wouldn’t be a good adaptation of the soul of mark twain without acknowledging his travels. i think there were hints to this in the show, but definitely not as much as i would have liked. my twain is a restless soul and not only likes seeing new placed, but meeting new people.

unashamed acceptance. this actually stems both from the central ideas of several of twain’s novels as well as a quote and his love of traveling. my twain used to be a terrible person; he came from a conservative family and had no internet access beyond the one TV that they had, so it’s not like he was very informed. it was traveling and meeting so many people that caused him to develop the accepting nature he has today.

utter devotion to objects of his affection. i’m assuming because everyone reading this is probably a normal person, they DON’T know the intimate details of twain’s relationship to his wife. well i personally do. while there were undoubtedly some problems between them, there is one thing i choose to input in my relationships involving twain: he genuinely bent over backwards to get her to love him. he would do literally anything for her. and that’s a huge big part of how i portray twain in all of his relationships because i input that aspect of “willing to do anything for his partner, even if it wasn’t what he might have wanted to do beforehand, just so he can be happy with them”.

profanity and sex. i don’t know how much you know about twain’s other works that aren’t his most popular, but he was known for being very prolific and obscene in certain works, to the point where he made a joke about the word ‘damn’ being in used in substitution of the word ‘very’. for his time, he was also very obscene and made a lot of references to not only sex but other things that were considered taboo subjects among the respectable like, i kid you not, farting. because of this, my twain curses a LOT. and i can’t exactly explore this much since i myself am a minor and don’t know how far i can really go, but he is very in tune with sexuality and basically this man has a lot of sex.

comedy. to put things plain and simple, RL mark twain was basically a touring standup comedian for a good portion of his life. i attribute this fact to why twain is the funniest person in the guild and always tries to keep things light and fun. 

bouts of depression. i should say this now: my twain doesn’t have depression. but, since i didn’t want to ignore the fact that the real author more than likely DID, i felt i should include my twain’s suicide attempts just before and just after leaving home, when he felt he was at his lowest.

the river. the river not only serves as a motif for twain’s most famous story, but also his actual life. if you know anything about rl mark twain, you know he was a steamboat captain for a little while. my twain definitely was not (although i have thought about giving him a steamboat captain au just for fun), but nevertheless a large portion of his initial journey away from his home took place on a river, to parallel both huckleberry finn and his actual life.

thoughts on war and humanity. since i don’t write serious things with twain a lot, it’s difficult to incorporate this into most threads with him. rl mark twain was personally affected by the civil war and did all he could to avoid fighting. he never actually enjoyed conflict. my twain was NOT affected by the war, as it was just ending when he was born, however he still has a lot of thoughts on militarization that i won’t elaborate on as i’m trying my best to keep this blog free from subjects that could genuinely affect anyone’s wellbeing. as for humanity, my twain largely shares his counterpart’s view that human beings can be very greedy and selfish, but that kindness is the greatest weapon and gift one can have. his views are very complicated so it would definitely not hurt to ask him directly about them wink wink nudge nudge.

confidence and natural magnetism. i’ve already spoken about my twain in regards to confidence, but there is some of it that is based in how mark twain in real life was--and no doubt in how tom sawyer acts in every book that features him. he was once quoted as calling himself THE american. despite all this, however, i take from rl twain his natural magnetism and ability to somehow make people like speaking to him despite that he should very much come off as arrogant; with my twain, there’s really just something about him that feels as though he wants to get to know you.

curiosity about science and new technology. because of his counterpart’s interest in science and friendship with nikola tesla, my twain has a deep love for new and exciting technology, and it’s actually because of this that i have the hc that he discovered a love for video games after having enough money to actually purchase a setup to play them. he’s really interested in things like cloning and genetic altering even if he doesn’t really understand the actual science behind them and i’m very confident that if he had watched phineas and ferb his favorite character would be dr. doof.

part IV: miscellaneous.

favorite color: orange. not only is it the color of his hair, but it’s also the color of fire and a very bright and friendly color. favorite food: italian, but he’s not a picky eater and will settle for anything. he specifically enjoys good NY style pizza, but doesn’t think chicago style pizza is bad either. favorite song: american pie by don mclean. “uncle” introduced him to it. favorite movie: it honestly depends on the day. recently he’s had a strange obsession with night at the museum. favorite game: minecraft. this is the part where i explain later: it was the first game he actually played after buying himself a good enough computer to play games and he fell deeply in love with how beautiful of a game it was. he gets very emotional about the idea that for him, minecraft is a game meant to be shared with other people and for you to showcase just what you can do. he has a hardcore world that’s been up since he was 18! favorite non-alcoholic drink: lemonade. favorite alcoholic drink: whiskey. favorite season: summer, with fall as a close second. favorite holiday: halloween. he loves to dress up. this year he says he plans to dress up as the cowboy from night at the museum, but that will probably change. favorite musical: currently, newsies. but he’s also been known to like falsettos, bonnie and clyde, and 35mm. favorite place: anywhere there’s something new to see. favorite animal: coyotes! biggest fear: as strange as it may seem, he genuinely actually doesn’t have any real fears. the only thing he’s afraid of is the kool aid man because his brothers convinced him that it was filled with the blood of kids who didn’t like kool aid and he’s never been able to shake that fear from him.

MBTI type: enfp. enneagram type: 7w6. hogwarts house: gryffindor. i actually have had thoughts before about putting him in hufflepuff or slytherin, but his unashamed bravery and willingness to run headfirst into any situation with no fears as well as his BLATANT disregard for rules makes him more of a gryffindor than anything. ilvermorny house: thunderbird. it favors adventurers, and i’m sure if you’ve gotten this far you know twain loves to adventure. patronus: honestly, probably some kind of hawk or falcon. tma entity: hard to say, but i tend to have him aligned with either the eye or the vast. the eye because he likes to watch and observe and hear others’ stories, and it’s a great way to play off of twain looking through a scope to snipe people in canon. and the vast because he’s a thrill seeker and loves the feeling of falling, and also believes that in the grand scheme of things not much is very important. PJO godly parent: hermes for sure, but i have experimented with the idea of it being apollo, dionysus, or athena. hunger games district: 7. i already have this established in the hunger games au for him that i?? just kinda have for some reason. divergent faction: dauntless. i don’t even like divergent by the way, i was just kind of trying to think of other categories i would sort twain in. i think he’d definitely be divergent tho tbh.