#bobby dawn is from solace . he's a televangelist from solace

[maxdurden]

in the world of spyre, how much do we know about high court? like it's a predominantly (if not completely) human nation. it seems like worship of sol/helio is important. is it like,,, a theocratic ethnostate oorrrr???

and it would be completely high fantasy bs, right? i mean, solace is the only nation with arcano-tech, right?

[maxdurden]

share your buddy dawn hcs pretty please..

OKAY, buddy hcs (or at least some of them, i am trying to be so normal you can’t imagine. this guy lives in my head rent free)

a lot of my hcs about buddy also involve his family, just because the family stratification that happens in southern evangelical families is SO fascinating to me.

SO: buddy is a southern grandma’s boy. if you’ve lived in the south you know this guy. his grandma helped raise him, he calls his grandma ‘mimi’ and, to his grandma, he’s essentially the second coming of christ, he can do NO wrong in her eyes. buddy and pamela dawn have the kind of enmeshed relationship that would simply blow your mind

as an addendum to this: buddy dawn calls his grandma ‘mimi’ and his grandpa ‘pawpaw.’ if you are his friend, the whole family will invite you to participate in this naming tradition. this will make you uncomfortable but there’s no way out of it without seeming rude (this is a struggle i know well as a yank living in the south)

on the topic of pamela dawn, i think she’s like such a Matriarch, at least as much as one can be in that kind of misogynistic social system. i think she clings to what power she can grab and is incredibly vindictive (but never direct) about it. i think she was probably just as enmeshed and close with buddy’s dad (think #boymom) and probably HATED buddy’s mom, regardless of how good of a mom/person she was

we don’t know a lot about buddy’s parents, but my vibe is that they’re dead. if they weren’t, it doesn’t make sense to me that they would let bobby and pamela move away with their son (there are other hcs i’ve heard on this topic that are equally interesting, such as buddy’s mom and dad having a different idea of sol/helio worship and being pushed out of the family). my vibe is that they died on a mission trip. this explains why bobby didn’t just revivify them, but it also adds to the themes of legacy and family name that buddy has to contend with. like imagine if your grandpa is The Sol Televangelist Of All Time and your parents were martyred on a mission to the mountains of chaos?? oh the crushing pressure of familial expectations (and helio didn’t even choose you as his chosen one)

buddy’s legal name is robert. this one has no real evidence (in fact i feel like it’s likely that there’s no more to his name, at least canonically, than just buddy), but it makes sense to me that a man like bobby dawn would be obsessed with passing down his name and legacy. so i think it’s likely that his dad was also named robert (maybe called robbie or rob)

OR

buddy’s name is specifically NOT robert, and that’s exactly why he got the nickname buddy. this hc is a bit more convoluted, but here’s the gist: imagine buddy’s mom didn’t name him robert despite all the familial pressure to do so. of course there’s nothing bobby or pamela can really do, but they can give this kid a nickname that’ll stick for the rest of his life. plus, buddy has always seemed like a kind of condescending nickname to me and i think that would piss off his mom even more (which tbf is what i think pamela’s goal would be). but, if buddy’s legal name isn’t robert, i don’t have any super strong contenders for what his legal name would be

(i could get into a whole thing about hcs i have about his parents good god)

i think buddy grew up listening to his grandparents' old records! this means he was raised on old gospel and old country and that’s still the majority of his music taste (it doesn’t help that he’s not allowed access to most tech, especially tech from solace, so the influences he’s pulling from are relatively limited)

this is already. so. long. so i’m going to stop myself now lmao. but thank you for asking!!!!! i ALWAYS have thoughts about this fucking guy so thank you for the ask!!!!!!