#why is boothill so squishy

[authormorganlawson]

watching me play genshin is just watching me run through the desert being mad that i have trouble seeing sand pupas and also just me yelling, "whERE'S ALHAITHAM AND KAVEH???" or just me exploring somewhere i absolutely should not be yet

watching me play hsr is just watching me kick my feet and giggle as ratio, aventurine, and moze get stuck in an endless follow-up loop, before i start screaming at boothill to stop dying every ten seconds

[an-unloving-god]

Scar has been feeding me with buggy behavior Ajay headcanons that I decided to make canon for like two days and now I'm going to make it everyone else's problems

Right out of Scar's magnificent walnut wrinkled brain I give: Ajay being a bug

Bug ( Sting ) behavior: Growing up no one directly told Ajay that they weren't normal, so there are timed when Ajay runs straight into uncanny valley.

- They might tilt their head just farther than a human should be able too, smile slightly too wide and show off their fangs, or stretch beyond what human mobility allows. Their eyes also occasionally reflect to show a hexagonal array, much like a flys eye pattern.

- Ajay will occasionally communicate through clicks and buzzes, which confuses everyone.

- They have a strange tendency to be drawn to artificial lights such as lamps and will get tired/fall asleep immediately if they get too cold.

This is why their containment cell is typically kept dark and warm, which makes them happy anyway. This is also why Yanqing will avoid using ice moves around them unless they've annoyed him.

( /hj on that last sentence, Yanqing wouldn't actually knock them into a sleep just for being annoying because last time he did it Ajay got scared shitless so he stopped )

But Jenny does have multiple pictures of Ajay walking face first into lamps on the Zhuming. And Aventurine/Ratio have the time of their lives walking with Ajay in the city where artificial lights are everywhere ( Penacony was fun ). Of course they've gotten use to this and can resist it easily, but sometimes the urge calls. Especially if they're tired.

- Mr. Pan-Pan is a squishy ingenium red panda that lights up whenever Ajay squeezes him hard enough. Close friends and family may look at the squishy panda, but no one is allowed to touch their panda lest they get frowny and upset. ( Once Mr. Pan-Pan broke and Ajay sadly brung him to Boothill for fixing. This was when they were like 7. They only let him touch Mr. Pan-Pan because they knew he had an engineer partner and wanted her to fix it. )

- Ajay can also go invisible and cause hallucinations from the fibers their wings can let off. They don't actually do this often and it's rare for them to think about it. But this has caused some very long games of hide and seek when they were a child, Aventurine made sure they stuck with tag after that.

---

The latent bug instincts that one day kicked in and then never went away: Ajay thought that Jenny was gonna eat them after they got married. They literally didn't bring that up until years later when they two were on their honeymoon. ( blame Scar )

- Ajay thought that they were gonna have to fight Yanqing for food for survival and will hang up his swords in high places because they want to keep them safe. Both of these things may have caused an argument at some point.

- Ajay tends to prefer being in groups of their friends or family. Especially when they're molting, hibernating, or just because. And if they don't have a person nearby then a Sting is probably accompanying them somewhere, who knows.

- Ajay has a keen sense of navigation and situational awareness. This is mainly why they were able to lead the Nameless on a wild goose chase on Penacony without getting lost, and when finding Aventurine. They rarely ever get lost unless they're in a new area and sneaking up on them is extremely difficult.

- Ajay will occasionally cook more food than necessary and wraps it up for later. Everyone saw this as normal until they realized that they do this on instinct and they accidentally stocked the Astral Express kitchen for a full month. Yanqing no longer has to worry about food but Holy Shit does his sibling cook at inhuman speeds.

This gets funnier during the winter when this habit doubles. Jing Yuan and Fu Xuan both struggled with storing the food and needed to call Aventurine and Ratio, the only two who are used to this. Ajay blows the IPC's allowance on sustenance and makes it everyone else's problem. ( They want their family to be fed for the winter 🥺 )

- Ajay's buggy instincts is what causes them to love working.

- Ajay's buggy instincts also cause them to want to help out constantly. Which Crocaval finds wonderful. Until she remembers that Ajay doesn’t know SHIT about mechanics and now they're chewing on a wrench.

Okay that's it I think