#“𝘐 𝘣𝘦𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘯.” / “𝘖𝘩‚ 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯'𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘦.”

[fullscoreshenanigans]

"Lackluster" is really interesting in the context of 04man internalizing a sentiment openly shared by the scientists in regards to him and how that would contribute to him lashing out negatively on top of his original's dedication to perfectionism I'm assuming he inherited. The struggle of striving for that while knowing he would never be the original and hating that for everyone who knew the original, he would never be free of his shadow (not entirely 1:1 but some overlap with Emma losing her memories in canon).

Lackluster in the narrative automatically condemning him is disheartening given the ever-prevalent themes of identity and personhood that come with clone storylines in general, but also with TPN rejecting the idea of the mass production farm children being any less deserving of life than the premium farm children and Emma being…Emma. I have such a hard time seeing her use that adjective in reference to the value of any living being with the focus on intrinsic, fundamental worth as opposed to a person's character being determined by their actions/choices. (This is also how Ray operates and is one of the personal issues I have with the framing of some angsty takes about his relationship to Isabella. It's not their shared blood and attributes alone that bring him grief; it's that, from his perspective, he proved he was her son by actively choosing to use the children around him for his own gain and believed he deserved to die for it. "This is the best way…I used them." Very pointed in his word choice.)

This is also me being burnt out on the worst handling of a clone storyline in recent memory for me in the form of VLD's clone Shiro/Kuron throughline. It completely ignored the life this character had built with the team he became a part of and all the active good he did for the sake of forcing him to fill an antagonist role because Evil Optics™ and they couldn't figure out any other way to get rid of him. Incredibly disappointing and lazy, devoid of any nuance for the common themes of the throughline in the name of adhering to the 80s lion line-up.

Can you tell us more about #Brown Eyed!Norman? =)

For sure, anon! This all started with @fullscoreshenanigans' post [https://www.tumblr.com/fullscoreshenanigans/735265331344474112/this-makes-me-insane-for-giving-me-ideas-so?source=share] about Norman having brown eyes instead of these piercing blue ones we all know and learned to love (or not, how this posts shows (●ˇ∀ˇ●). From the second I saw these edits, the idea of a Norman with brown eyes taking over the place of „the original one“, playing around with the idea of Norman actually being cloned in Lambda 7214, like we all assumed when the particular chapters dropped back in the day.

Some major points this AU contains for me(!):

brown Eyed!Norman is one (!) clone of og Norman, as perfect as one can be, but developed with the flaw of having brown eyes instead of blue ones

Norman was slowly dying due to the experiments performed on him in Lambda, so genetic material was collected and several copies of the genius boy prepared

BE-Norman‘s number is actually 22194-04, due to him being the fourth clone being bred, and he regained consciousness after Norman as well as the other three experiments died due to… unforeseen circumstances ¬_¬

to prevent to be replaced too (he was a lackluster copy after all, because of his eye colour) 22194-04 killed the rest of the clones due to cutting off their life support. One could argue he didn’t even commit murder because they weren’t alive yet, but… he knows what he did and couldn’t care about it too much

to fool the rest of the cattle children being held prisoner in Lambda, the new Norman used blue contact lenses the scientists gave him before to conceal this flaw of him. No one of his underlings noticed, of course not – how could they, when he was William Minerva, God of the cattle children and destroyer of all demonkind?

of course the charade began to grumble when Emma, Ray and the rest of his family arrived at Paradise Hideout; from the start, they had the feeling something was off about him, but couldn’t really pinpoint what

lacking memories, changes in behavior and preferences and of course their heart telling them that’s not their Norman led Emma and Ray to investigate Norman’s private rooms. There Emma stumbled across a pack of blue contact lenses… and being caught in the act from Norman, he then finally starts spreading the facts about himself and of course their beloved friend not being in this world anymore, but merely replaced by a lackluster copy…

I have to say, it’s not a fully developed story, but more of an idea, playing around with some fucked uped ideas and story bits. Maybe I will do more with it in the future. Maybe not. But be sure, anyone jumping on this bandwagon is very welcome to add their own takes and ideas!

Thanks a lot for asking!