#ya might call it

[bringinghometherain]

You know what trope I wanna see more of? Couples who have been married forever who are estranged but still in love but estranged. You know me better than any other person on earth. I haven't seen you in three years. I never stopped loving you. If I have to spend another minute in your presence I will murder you. I'm hurt and I need you right here with me. God you're such a dumbass. You're the only one I trust to do this job. I want you out of my sight.

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

As per usual, it’s DP crossover with (probably) DC, although you could probably adjust it for other fandoms

ANYWAYS

A little kid and his mother are trick or treating in another city, perhaps at some kind of event rather than knocking on doors, and the kid is dressed as Phantom. It’s very adorable, with his little ghost-shaped bucket and clearly homemade and already stained costume—listen, white only works if you can just fly over street grime or phase it out of your clothes—and his slightly I’ll fitting wig. The kid is SO happy to be out and about dressed as his favorite, and maybe even showed it off to Phantom back in Amity Park before his family left.

The hero, insert whoever you wish here, is probably in civvies and just enjoying the event. The kid, meanwhile, is so glad when people ask who he is so he can explain, and so- the hero gets to hear ALL ABOUT the local town hero who is probably pretty small time despite the kid’s clearly exaggerated stories. The hero certainly never heard of him, but the kid’s mom confirms that Phantom really was the town hero, despite some mixed reviews of the poor guy.

“Did you manage to show him your costume?” the hero asks.

“Yeah! We went down to the cemetery to leave flowers and I got to show him my costume.”

Wait. Cemetery? Maybe it was part of theme, because Phantom had to be named that for a reason, but… it sounded like…

The kid ignores the suddenly VERY still hero and instead turns to his mom. “Momma, do you think we should bring him candy? He doesn’t get to trick or treat like we do, and I can work super hard to get him a bunch!”

The kid’s mom just smiles. “We could, but maybe we should bring him something homemade. I bet he’d like something more filling, teen boys like him have a hollow leg.”

The kid wrinkles his nose. “Like Vernie with the pizza bagels?”

“Like your cousin, yes. We can make some cinnamon rolls and take them to his memorial, maybe bring some of the apples from your grandpa’s garden…”

The hero is pretty much forgotten as the two-part family wanders off, not quite intentionally forgetting the hero is there so much as the hero somewhat accidentally ended the conversation when they just froze and didn’t ask anything further.

Not that the hero didn’t want to. But they’d learn something very serious.

One—there was a small town hero they’d never heard of. Two—that hero was apparently a teen. Third—most pressingly, the teen hero was both beloved enough to have kids dressing up as him and dead enough to have a grave.

This… might require some phone calls.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Hi!! Your Cherik is so good and gorgeous 🤩🤩 If you don't mind wanna try to draw some Fall of X Cherik please?

thank you so much !!

i have a couple of ideas relating to the fall of x period specifically since theres. A Lot i wanna play with, so i hope this lil thing may be a satisfactory start :]]

and the obligatory bonus:

[fuzz-onyx]

something interesting I found

haven't seen anyone else come across this yet, so I'm posting here for lols, semi-spoilers for warframe 1999, but cut most of it out for this one little tidbit that I think fans of Eleanor might like :3

something something insert bi-panic here

[actuallyjustabiscuit]

Uuuuuuuuuh

…

I don’t like what this is implying

[slow-reader-reads-books]

Lesbingyuan au where it’s the normal set up of post extras Bingge dimension traveling into another universe to find his own Shen Yuan. Except the world he arrives in (and is stuck in, can’t opt out of this gender journey) is a slightly genderbent one.

(hidden under a read more bc this turned basically into a wonkily grammatically tensed mini-fic)

Our darling Peerless Cucumber is a 20 something self-proclaimed straight girl with untapped soft butch potential, and is currently recovering from the harrowing trauma of the sunk cost fallacy. She’s spent a lot of time spending money on, reading, and participating in the online fandom of Proud Immortal Demon Way, and she’s currently also dealing with the fact that all her hard work in making herself heard to Great Master Airplane was seemingly for nothing. You see, Shen Yuan had the brilliant idea to create an account that appeared to be a perfectly demographically targeted straight male fan of YY novels who could critique Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky as his fellow but also his better and be listened to and receive great accolades from all frequenters of Zhongdian Literature and be validated for her hate of his writing.

“Airplane’s stupid pen name is a dick joke, I guess I gotta make mine one too… Just to, you know, seem legit and like we have common ground.”

What this charade accomplished was very little, but Peerless Cucumber did become very infamous for three things. One, his nitpicking (“It’s hardly nitpicking if it harms the integrity of the whole story1!!”). Two: his Luo Binghe fanboying (“As a protagonist he’s clearly just a cut above the rest when it comes to soul and wit, the story just rarely ever shows it off”). And three: his skipping of the steamy scenes (“I highly doubt this near identical scenario that also happened twenty chapters back but with a different wife of the week with this exact same cliffside flower giving off the same aphrodisiac mist to Bingge and new wife below will now suddenly be of any plot consequence for the next arc. It didn’t last time either, SKIP!”).

His fervent online activity garnered him the reputation of being an Airplane anti-fan, but also the assumed personality of a submissive simp who hates the easily dominated women that populate Luo Bingge’s harem. 

“lol thats why he must like mingyan so much. she never let bingge push her down. cucumber-bro must want a girlfriend who’ll chain him up and whip him! hes a pervert just like the rest of us, just a worse type kek.” 

Shen Yuan, when looking at such reply comments, gets shiver-inducing flashbacks to when her meimei left her BL comics out for everyone and the Buddha to see. She accidentally witnessed frightening scenes of thin, long-limbed men pushing each other down, tying each other to beds and cracking whips on skin until they shed blood, tears and semen, the shou begging for the gong to stop and the gong never listening. 

Shen Yuan tries to put such things out of her mind if only to preserve in amber the precious, innocent image of her meimei she knows to be true, but also secondarily to focus on the insulted male pride she’s supposed to be feeling after being accused of being a wussy submissive deviant in bed. That sort of accusation requires an in-depth 10,000 character response in order to remain in character as a straight male YY novel connoisseur.

Shen Yuan, as Peerless Cucumber but also as her true self, was undoubtedly straight. Staying in character, Peerless Cucumber made sure to extol the beauty of characters like Liu Mingyan— “She’s an intelligent and cold beauty and is written with a clear and vivid personality! A true equal for our Bingge on the battlefield and in matters of the heart!” As well as occasionally Ning Yingying— “She’s not the boring choice, you all just don’t know the special value a loyal shijie character brings, even if she does lose 99% of her personality to that one singular trait…”

But don’t get it twisted! This is a part of her performance! In real life, logged off and touching grass and breathing fresh outdoor air, she’s your run-of-the-mill average girl who is just a part of the pack. 

Her goals in life are simply not ambitious, is all. If there was a competition with ten available spots to win, she’d have no qualms placing tenth and simply feel honored to have participated. If there are ten girls and nine of them bag a good boyfriend, Shen Yuan doesn’t mind being the tenth who gets unlucky. She’s just kind to her meimeis and jiejies like that! As if she’d take that away from them! They'd probably been wanted those boyfriends for a long time! 

Shen Yuan is hardly a sore loser, and she knows the great importance of girl code and female friendship.

So, Shen Yuan being the normal average and totally straight and cisgender girl that she is decides to wallow in her Airplane-induced misery by going to a con, donning her homemade Mobei-jun cosplay. She worked hours of her life learning how to sew just for this project to the point her family thought she was finally thinking about settling down and learning wifely skills. 

Unfortunately for her ignorant family she’s actually just investing in a really elaborate excuse to cross dress. Well, it’s not really crossdressing, it’s just cosplay! Cosplay is totally different and not about taking on the gender of a character, but their larger identity! She didn’t want to explain this to them, and internally felt afraid and hesitant about it, as if they’d view her as weird for wanting to do this, so she didn’t bother to try at all.

So, Shen Yuan in her 160 centimeter/5 foot 3 inch glory decked out in dark blues and blacks, fur lining the shoulders of her outfit for style points, and wearing a long white wig styled mostly loose but with a few thin braids, chances upon a particularly striking Luo Binghe cosplayer. Not just any Luo Binghe cosplayer, but the best one! He’s tall, must be over 180cm/6 foot but also svelte and willowy in surprising ways. His hair is long and flows down his back from a ponytail ornamented at the base with a thin metal guan. Parts of his cosplay seem very benign, but others seem meticulously crafted and exquisite in quality, especially that sword at his hip! Just looking at it intimidated her, yikes! Job well done, cosplayer!

This Luo Binghe also had the most beautiful and delicately boned face she’d ever seen, eyes dark and deep and highly reflective like that of a lake on a dark and starry night. The cosplayer’s voice was also deeply melodic and enchanting.

This cosplayer… is also a woman! Shen Yuan nodded to herself internally, yes that must be it! No man looks like this in reality, this is a fellow female sufferer of Proud Immortal Demon Way impersonating a fictional man for similar psychological reasons as her. A surge of female loyalty spawns in Shen Yuan’s chest, and she doesn't even bother resisting the urge to walk over and strike up a conversation with this Luo Binghe.

She spat out her name in quick order and immediately started on the topic of female character writing in the novel. The Luo Binghe cosplayer was looking at her quietly and with a heavy amount of gravity, ink-brush eyebrows sitting elegantly low above her eyes in attentive focus. What a good listener this lady is, Shen Yuan thought. She can’t remember when someone last listened to her this closely. She hypocritically chooses to not pay attention to that train of thought any further. “In a world like Proud Immortal Demon Way,” Shen Yuan began with slight smarm, “who would choose to be a woman? I certainly wouldn’t if I wanted to see the interesting parts of the world that drew me into the story in the first place. A male protagonist can explore it freely, but the female characters are all locked away in either the marriage bedroom or the highly isolated harem palaces. Great Master Airplane clearly didn’t eat enough walnuts as a child, he must have some sort of brain deficiency when it comes to writing proper characters— ” 

The tall Luo Binghe cosplayer suddenly spoke up. “Choose?” “Hm? Yeah, I mean, in a world like that, there’s basically no choice, yeah? Gotta serve the narrative and readers and all. But the real world doesn’t have a narrative, we only have ourselves and each other to guide us. So we just do what we want, figure it out as we go. Like us two! We wanted to dress up as these male characters from this asinine story and attend this con and we figured out how to do it! We’re kindred spirits, you and I, we’re zhiyin!” “So when you leave this con, you will also choose to take this manner of dress off and wear something else?” “Obviously. Though, my go-to outfit is just a big t-shirt and sweatpants, or athletic shorts. This kind of thing is the extent of me dressing up.” Shen Yuan didn’t notice, but the Luo Binghe cosplayer’s eyes mildly glazed over in irritated confusion at the unfamiliar terms. Nor did she notice the slight expression of planning that developed in that gaze, as if they were imagining a future shopping expedition to find an outfit Shen Yuan would want to dress up in that wasn’t a facsimile of Luo Binghe’s right hand man.

“I… also want to leave this con and wear something else.” “The busyness getting to you, huh jiejie? You must have gotten here a lot earlier than I did, you poor thing. I guess this is it, it was nice talking to you—” “I don’t have any other clothes with me, and am unable to go back home. Can you help this poor one, jiejie?” “Jiejie—” Shen Yuan coughed. “Am I… wait you can’t go back home? Did your ride ditch you or something, aiyah what a scummy thing to do! I do have extra clothes on me, though I don’t think they’ll fit you. But let’s go find out. I guess if I have to take care of you like this, it does make me feel like a jiejie. Your height made me assume you were older than me, haha.”

Shen Yuan laughed, and the Luo Binghe cosplayer rapidly relaxed and took on an easy smile. “An innocent mistake. Jiejie must often be assumed to be younger than her actual age.” Shen Yuan hummed absent-mindedly. “Eh, not really. I’m only 22, and I think I look it. It’s you who looks like a jade immortal, uh, meimei.” She stuttered when she realized she hadn’t yet caught the other cosplayer’s name, and for some reason it felt weird to just call her Luo Binghe without her also LARPing along as Mobei-jun. Shen Yuan by this point had taken the tall meimei’s hand, it pale and slender much like the rest of her, and had been pulling her along towards the public bathroom to make use of her backpack’s change of clothes, walking along the wall to avoid foot traffic. However, the moment she had finished her sentence and called the other one meimei, the Luo Binghe cosplayer suddenly slammed her free hand on the wall and yanked hard on the one Shen Yuan was holding, pulling her in close to herself, caging her in from behind. Shen Yuan squeaked and found herself crowded against the wall. Her back was encased in a warm and dark heat and she could see above her that jade-white hand curled tightly in on itself, heel practically grinding against the wall. It looked like it was trembling slightly. An earth-shatteringly tight grip squeezed the fingers of her still held hand to the point of hurting slightly. Shen Yuan winced at the sensation.

Shen Yuan heard sharp, heavy breathing above her. Not knowing what to do nor quite what was going on, she squeezed back the hand that was keeping hers hostage and leaned back slightly. Comfort is what she’s doing this for, right? Feels like the reason she’s doing it. 

Shen Yuan felt the other cosplayer jolt behind her. After a tense beat, a forehead slowly dropped onto her shoulder. Shen Yuan was wearing fur along the top half of her outfit as a part of her Mobei-jun cosplay, but nonetheless she could feel the vague contour of the other’s nose through it, burrowing deeper into its warmth. Shen Yuan now felt awkward for only bothering with faux-fur for her cosplay. But with that face resting upon her shoulder and an odd sense of vulnerability wafting off of her, a sharp sense of broad awareness filled Shen Yuan's mind mysteriously. Her mind filled up with sensory information on the one behind her, naturally taking note of every detail with ease.

“Meimei…” the Luo Binghe cosplayer trailed off, muffled slightly by Shen Yuan’s cosplay, but also seemingly by her own emotions being stuck in her throat. “Can I really be jiejie’s meimei?” Shen Yuan didn’t really know what to do or how to respond, so she simply continued to lean her weight back onto the other. She then pulled on the elbow that led to the hand positioned above her until it was brought down far enough for her to grab properly. Shen Yuan took both hands in hers and placed them in front of her in a comfortable position. They were slightly cold, so she rubbed at them with her thumbs.

The Luo Binghe cosplayer picked her head up and looked down at the sight with watery eyes and a warbling lip. Both of her hands were cradled in that grip, gently held in front of the shorter’s stomach in a tender and intimate fashion. Their arms were bent parallel and their front and back slotted together in a way that, to the taller one, felt predestined.

“Can you, what kind of question is that, of course you can. But, I’d like to have your name too, if you don’t mind? Only calling you meimei sounds like I’m calling out to my real little sister.” Shen Yuan laughed and looked up over her shoulder nonchalantly. 

Somewhere in the distance, she can hear people giggling and snapping pictures of the two. She felt a twinge of embarrassment. Of course this moment looks compromising from the outside, they’re cosplaying Luo Binghe and Mobei-jun!

Shen Yuan was suddenly working very hard to maintain a cool poker face in front of her very tall and newly minted meimei.

Bringing up her real little sister and then suddenly being thrust into this type of self-aware of cringe violently and nonconsensually summoned forth invented images of a dog blooded BL scenario that wouldn’t be out of place in her real meimei’s leisure literature.

Fellow con goers, please have mercy on us two women and don't be thinking of what I'm thinking! We’re merely having a pure hearted, early friendship bonding moment! Skinship is very much common and normal between people like us, disregard the kabedon! Totally normal female friendship is blossoming here, get your homoerotic dog blood tropes out of our personal lives!

“This one is called… Qiu Bingbing.” Her voice hitched and quavered with some sort of ineffable, delicate emotion. “Bingbing, ah? Written with the same character as Binghe, meaning ice? And Qiu, is that with the character meaning the autumn season or the character meaning a grave mound?”

Qiu Bingbing hummed and nodded lethargically to the first question and spoke up for the second, hesitating slightly. “Qiu as in autumn.” “What a pretty name, “autumn ice”. You fit the bill of Luo Binghe perfectly, but with a name like that it’s nearly a pity to go by something else. You’re a miraculous find in a place like this, Bing-mei.” Shen Yuan complimented with abandon, eager to make her new friend feel good, and turned around. Still holding one hand, she impulsively took the chance Qiu Bingbing’s still bowed head offered and patted it softly.

She did that for a while, not paying attention to anything else. A euphoric smile opened on Qiu Bingbing’s lips. She was lost in the moment too. 

The rest of the world fell away. As long as Luo Binghe, no, as long as Qiu Bingbing can worm her way into every crevice of Shen Yuan, she’ll be fine. He before was always grasping at any semblance of peace and security only for it to slip through his grasp like sand, but she’s found it. She’ll nestle in and hibernate inside Shen Yuan’s veins and she’ll never let go. She will never.

“Let’s go get you those clothes. Good thing I like them oversized, they should be mildly presentable on you, even if they aren’t anything girly.”

“I can live without anything girly, anything of yours will do.”

“That’s good to hear, let’s go then.”

[demonkinguwu]

Vanessa Doodles before work™️

My interpretation of canon Vanessa + her w Snatcher + Someone wanted to hug he <3

[gunnrblze]

Hesh and Elias-a loving father-son duo-except what if Hesh was angry at his father for so so so many things instead.

Perhaps it’s a little selfish, he thinks, or perhaps it’s long overdue for Hesh to bring up his father’s parenting methods.

To say he cares about and loves Logan is an understatement, that’s not to be questioned, but why he was gifted the daunting task of looking after his little brother for the majority of his life, when he himself was trying to grow up makes him angry.

He has so much anger and he struggles to pinpoint its origin. Maybe he was born with his fists shaking and nostrils flared.

He snaps at Elias one day on base after the man gets stern with him. Maybe after Logan gets hurt on a mission or somethings fucked over their plans to find Rorke. Hesh seethes because he tried. He tried and he continues to try and help Logan whenever possible. They’re a pair, a duo, brothers.

But Hesh isn’t a god, as much as he sometimes wishes he could be. He can only do so much, he can only reach so far. Why does it never feel good enough? Why does he feel a gnawing sense of guilt when Logan gets hurt, as if the kid didn’t sign up for the job right alongside him? He might as well have hurt his brother himself with the way he feels to blame.

He accuses Elias, of favoritism. Of something just short of neglecting Hesh emotionally growing up. He remembers it all too well.

Logan cried, he was soothed. Logan got in trouble, he was given a talking to and nothing more. Logan was acting out after mom died and Elias had so much grace for him, but Hesh wasn’t allowed to be a brat when life got hard.

He had to be a good older brother, a good son who kept himself and his little duckling in line because Elias was gone far too much to do it himself.

Elias is a little startled. Not by his son’s irritation, the pain he could see in his eyes, no. He’d unfortunately had to see it before, had to try and sleep at night knowing he couldn’t take it all away from him. Did he make the right decision persuading his boys to join the army in the first place? The thought made him sick sometimes.

No, he’s startled by the accusations. That he favored Logan, that he ignored Hesh’s feelings after he got to a certain age. He couldn’t deny that he wasn’t present at home sometimes, but he wanted to find an excuse. Wanted to crawl out of the hole he’d dug his family into, whether he had much choice or not.

Like birds of a feather, Elias was getting irritated at his son now. Their mirroring emotions made Hesh do a double take, as if he saw his very future in front of him now. Clear as day.

Elias was defensive, like most in his position usually were. He couldn’t understand where it was coming from. Why Hesh seemed to be so upset all a sudden. As if overnight his eldest son decided to get mad. As if the last couple decades didn’t have any impact.

Hesh could feel the heat scorch his cheeks, teeth grinding and threatening to be crushed under the force of his clenched jaw. He’d always had to hold it together. He was tired of holding himself together. Tired of feeling like an observer in his own family rather than an active participant.

Exhausted, after having been molded into a soldier by the Lieutenant in front of him, long before he ever enlisted.

Elias wasn’t sure he’d ever seen David behave like this. Yelling until his voice went hoarse, spitting accusations and what he couldn’t believe were insults in his face. His son, unraveling before him.

He let it happen.

Elias Walker wasn’t a passive man but he stood there and let his son scream at him. Not like the petulant child he used to be, no. Like the man he is.

The room was silent after Hesh finished, save for his heavy breathing and whatever sound he was making whilst trying to hold back a sniffle. He wouldn’t dare let the tears in his eyes fall, afraid his dignity would dissolve with it.

Hesh’s head felt foggy. Clouded by rage, upset, and something that felt similar to grief. That feeling he could never identify, searing a hole through his heart and not bothering to patch itself back up.

He looked his father in the eyes. Really looked at the man in front of him. Confused by his silence. For once, the image was unrecognizable. It felt foreign, as if he were shielded behind a pane of glass.

Time felt frozen, until Logan swung the door open. He too, stilled. As if no one knew what to do, Logan could tell by the red of his brother’s cheek and the set of his father’s jaw, that there probably wasn’t anything to do.

Hesh stared down his little brother though, eyes practically begging him to say something in his defense. To open his fucking mouth for once and speak.

His father merely dismissing them both made his gut sink. Knowing all too well, that this hadn’t solved it. If anything, it’d only drive the little wedge further between them.

David swore he could feel it splintering his skin as he walked away, not bothering to even look at his younger brother at the moment.

Too afraid he’d start resenting him, too.

[buryam-soul]

Musings on Cyno/Alhaitham/Candace + language

.

Candace tells Cyno he sounds like a textbook when he speaks in the desert tongue. More identifiably rainforest than passing merchants or even some scholars. Cyno confides that Cyrus never told him from where in the Sands he's even from; no tribe to seek out, no dialect to learn from, no folktales or traditions to even remember.

Candace starts helping him learn the Aaru dialect since. "Lending" it to him. Maybe Aaru Village wasn't the home he was born in, but she made sure it was the second home he was always welcome in.

.

Cyno taught Alhaitham simple Matra code when he was Acting Grand Sage. "Status check", "ok", and so on, in case of emergencies. Alhaitham first uses this in the Grand Sage office after a long day; stress had stolen from him speech and sign and writing, leaving behind weak taps and scratches of "escape needed".

Cyno starts asking "status check" more often since. Still in code. Even after he returned to being Scribe, even during meet ups with friends, an escape to silence can still be necessary.

.

Alhaitham asks Candace why she writes to him in Vedanagari script in personal letters. Her calligraphy is more stilted compared to her writing in Deshret script. Candace admits she craved a connection her father who was an Akademiya scholar; she couldn't spend much time with him growing up due to her Guardian training.

Alhaitham starts writing more letters to her since. Longer letters. About the Akademiya, calligraphy, and maybe someone who knows what it's like to seek your parents through written word.

[sergeant-angels-trashcan]

The most toxic thing about the CoD fandom is how some of yall will be talking about what an old man Price is and then be like "he's 37" and if that's not like getting slapped in the face by a fresh trout I don't know what is

[zentriii]

local plant dad supports his child's transition !

[aroacewxs]

rui says in his island panic ss that he can't identify birds by their call yet. i say that he'll learn to do it within a month's time anyway light work no reaction and casually drop it in conversation one day. As he does

[stevetwisp]

I know not what possessed you to make muffins(derpy)Xchrysalis art in 2024, but may whatever divine powers that are out there bless you for doing it, it's so charming and lovely

with most good things, it started as a joke but i am now writing a 13+ part comic series about them

the most recent comic i just posted is part 4 and parts 5-10 are already completed and coloured i just have no idea what kind of schedule i should upload them in or if i should dump them on ko-fi or patreon LMAO

[moeblob]

I am really tired of a situation rn.

[holysheithyall]

A faint memory

[rustedleopard]

What do you think clover's family was like?

This is such a broad question that I wish you were a teeny bit more specific. Like, do you want a summary of canon or my personal headcanons or what? Eh, you know me by now, I'll talk about everything.

Canon Supported Answer: We don't know what Clover's life was like on the Surface besides it being implied to be Not Good. Starlo's lumpy and uncomfortable couch brings back unpleasant memories, yet they can fall asleep on it in seconds during nap time. Seeing the dirty dishes in Ceroba's sink/the Steamworks kitchen reminds them of their duties back home/that they never did the dishes without being told. Their hat was tattered and decomposing (as pointed out by Ace). They accept Martlet's offer to take them in in every version of a Neutral Run, even if it's an aborted No Mercy Run where they were gunning down every monster in sight, AND there is no option to deny it. They abandon their mission to seek justice for the five missing children and live with Toriel in every timeline that Flowey doesn't interfere in. In the Pacifist Run, somewhere in the Ketsukane estate (the kitchen, I believe), there's a line of flavor text that comes up about Clover wondering how everyone back home is doing but they also don't really care all that much. Heck, the fact that they chose to jump into a mountain that children were known to go missing in in the first place speaks volumes by itself.

There's little things too, like how Clover moves without making a sound, how they eat inedible stuff like packing peanuts and gunpowder, the fact that they're willing to take food out of the garbage, the way that they can just... give themself up at the end of a True Pacifist Run, etcetera, that could either be just a character quirk OR something that stems from their life on the Surface (why not both?). I could go on, but at a certain point I'd just start reciting half the flavor text in the entire game. I do think it is important to note that 1.) Clover is not very forthcoming about their life on the Surface. Everything you learn about them you learn from the flavor text. I think the only time they ever get asked about it is when Ceroba is accompanying them, and whatever answer/response they gave her (I imagine it was a Look™) had her backpedaling. So they're intentionally close-lipped about it. And 2.) You never learn any specifics about it. Who's raising them? Do they have parents? Siblings? Are they an orphan? What was an average day like for them? And on and on. This is the point where you can make up whatever you want about their life on the Surface, and so long as it takes into account what comes up in the game, you can come up with something solid. And this is the part that leads to.....

My Headcanons: Woof. Okay. I don't think too deeply about every little defining moment about their life on the Surface because I treat it more as scaffolding for their character. So don't expect a complete breakdown of every aspect of their Surface life. But here's the jist of it:

Clover was born to a single mother. Their father walked out on her just before they were born because their mother and father had a rocky relationship and their father wanted to bail before a baby would "trap him into the relationship" (they weren't married or even engaged, so it was easy for him to just... Leave. He never comes back). All the anger and resentment for the failed relationship that their mom felt rebounded onto Clover, because now she's stuck raising a baby she doesn't really want unless she's with their father and they're raising them together. Clover was supposed to be the baby that glues the relationship together, not what tears it apart. Their mom became negligent of them as a result.

As Clover got older, they would make bids for attention and affection like pretty much every child does, but their mom never reciprocated. They'd keep doing it over and over and holding onto hope that their mom would look at them and be the mom that she's supposed to be, but that hope would diminish each time they were met with coldness or outright indifference. Their hopes of building a connection with their mom evaporated when their stepdad entered the equation. Their stepdad saw their presence as competition/a reminder of his girlfriend's/wife's previous relationship and is an insecure enough man to let that bother him. So he really helps to push Clover further into the margins of the family/ruin their life. "Clover is old enough to walk home from school, they don't need their mom to pick them up." "Clover knows how to fend for themself, you don't need to end the night early to go back home and make them dinner. Stay with me a bit longer." "Clover doesn't need their own room. It's the responsibility of the older sibling to make sacrifices for the sake of their younger sibling. They can sleep on the couch." (Did I mention that they have a younger stepbrother? Because I hc that they do.) And on and on and on. They hate their stepdad and mentally call him "Mom's boyfriend/husband" instead of Dad. They don't really care for their younger stepbrother either, because (even though it wasn't intentional on the baby's part on the account of the baby being, well, a baby) he was leveraged as a wedge between Clover and the rest of their family.

They had to learn how to do things for themself like cook or clean or sign their own permission slips or bandage their own wounds or etcetera because they learned that they can't rely on others to help them. This fostered a strong sense of independence in them. It also made them a bit... odd in personality in a way that made making friends difficult (idk how to say that in a polite way; neglect does change your personality though). They wake up for school on their own, make lunch for themself and eat breakfast and do their morning routine then walk to school, do their studies, if it's a shit day they'll get into playground scraps with kids who are bullying other kids, they walk themself home and let themself in with the key that their mom gave them because the door is locked otherwise, they make their own dinner and do their homework without any help, they watch their Westerns on the TV, they tuck themself into bed. They skitter around the margins of the domestic sphere that is their mom's and stepdad's and stepbrother's lives like some sort of cockroach because that's the way that they've been made to feel. Their parents never hit them. Despite that, they were able to deeply wound Clover without ever raising a hand against them.

And part three of this post: How Do I Imagine Clover Feels About This? Well, I imagine that they feel nothing for their family. Not in a nonchalant fashion, but in the depressing "I can't even muster up the ability to care about you" manner. Feeling hate and anger takes effort; in a strange roundabout sorta way, feeling negative emotions means that you do care because you have some expectations that you want to be met and that anger is you trying to fight for them/your situation to be better. In contrast, feeling nothing is far worse because you no longer care anymore. You've accepted your circumstances. Why get mad about something bad that their family did to them? They're meeting the expectations that Clover has set for them, which are in the dirt. Whatever coals of anger or outrage they had within them have burnt to the ashes, there's nothing left to spark. They wanted their mom to be a mom to them but that was years ago at this point; they've moved on. They wanted a dad to be there for them, but he was never in the picture and the closest thing they have is the man that their mom settled with. They know that their familial situation is BAD, but because their family is all that they've ever known, they don't quite get the extent of how bad it is.

That's why they're fine with marching up a mountain known for having kids go missing in it: they have a mission, justice needs to be enacted. And if they die/go missing on this mission, so be it. It's not like there's anyone waiting for them back home.