#((can i answer one of these without adding 947337585 words while i edit))

[hopetune]

hc + 😃

thematic headcanons (accepting!) | hc + 😃 for a happiness-themed headcanon

i've been mulling over how to answer this prompt and honestly i think two words can sum it up pretty nicely: simple and real. it doesn't take much for robin to feel joy. while she does have her own wish, her happiness ultimately does not need some grand design. she is happy seeing birds fly, playing games, singing to children, being with others, helping others, eating sweets. like you don't need to go to great lengths to put a smile on her face. she's happy and grateful for many things in this world! so that's simple explained. but why real? well i make the distinction because she is aware that a lot of the joys in this world can be fake. she hails from penacony, after all—a planet known for sweet dreams that don't exist in reality. i think, especially after she leaves penacony, robin comes to sincerely appreciate all that exists in the real world. so she doubly appreciates knowing that her joy is tangible and exists even without needing the dreamscape to conjure it up for her.

on a slightly related note: i feel like this is why she enjoys shopping so much. having something she can hold that is a physical manifestation of her joy. i think she particularly enjoys trinkets (she is not Plushies_are_Best for no reason!) that serve no use but hold great sentimental value for her. she'll buy just about anything that sparks joy or brings up any good memories. (i want to emphasize the memory thing since memories are something intangible... so i feel like, in her little trinkets and doodads, she gives these memories a physical vessel to live in... something that, when she holds or sees, she'll be certain that whatever memory it's attached to is real)

she definitely goes crazy at tourist shops. i can imagine she's sent sunday a lot of things over her journey through the cosmos. she's also mentioned having way too much random shit in her room. she's an anik-anik girlie! (i don't know if there's any equivalent thing for this in your guys' sphere, but in my country, there's a concept known as 'anik-anik' which is something like holding onto your possessions as a way to curate nostalgia and memories. i'm not explaining it very well but here's an article on that.)

on this note! i emphatically believe that robin is a great gift giver. i feel like it's her way of sharing that tangible joy. in one of her train dialogues where she mistakes pom-pom for a rabbit doll, she offers to send them a gift as an apology.

not to say that she's materialistic! i don't think she chases these things because she's money-oriented or particularly concerned with owning worldly possessions. i just think that she prefers to have something concrete to attach her abstract feelings to. something simple and something real! 

ADDENDUM: I JUST REMEMBERED SOMETHING WAUGHHH

with regards to robin preferring physical objects!!! she has a voiceover line where she mentions how music is preserved on physical records that goes like this in english:

wiki screencap since i don't have robin rip

but anyways! she mentions how "the feelings they left behind are eternal" and i think that really captures how i feel about her collecting physical items really well. since they're, well, physical, they exist in the plane of reality. they won't slip past your figurative fingers so easily. and i think that's why she so often chooses to preserve her joy in the form of physical objects. this uh doesn't really add anything new to my point, i just wanted to add this here since it was one of the things that made me think about robin preferring physical stuff, i just forgot to add it here in the first pass LSFBDGFJKFG