#giving them a strained siblings dynamic is so perfect!!!

[fumifooms]

Chilchuck’s wife and family - Facts, theories and headcanons

I want to keep this as a sort of masterpost on Chil’s family situation if I can, but if we get a lot of information on it (in the additional content that Kui is gonna make) that renders this more or less useless I probably won’t update this anymore. If you find other crumbs of information or I've said anything factually incorrect please do tell me! I'm planning to edit this as we go since I want to compile most if not all of the information and pages we get about this topic on here, and if I just wait to post it perfection paralysis will nip this in the bud. It focuses a lot on Chilchuck and Chilchuck's wife relationships, but the daughters and Chilchuck's own parents and siblings are talked about as well.

CW/disclaimer: This post talks about messy family dynamics and such, there’s no outright abuse I’m implying anywhere, but alcoholism and neglect are mentioned and discussed. I’m not here to demonize anyone! I love every character involved and I just want to theorize about the topic as a layered issue that involves complex characters. Also, I try to use very transparent language as to when I’m citing or analyzing canon information and when I’m giving a personal interpretation or headcanoning.

Abbreviated table of content:

Timeline and circumstances

Possible strains on the marriage

The hair question. Confirmation on what his wife looks like?

Other family dynamic & post-canon theories & headcanons

Parenting style + misc in a reblog addition (new)

Let’s start with the facts, shall we?

Timeline and circumstances

So, we see that Chilchuck and his wife are childhood friends, and they married at 13 years old and had two children in that same year. Since half-foots reach the age of maturity at 14, they seem to be what we'd call teen parents. It's a bit debatable though, since Laios says the age of maturity for tallmen (humans) is 16 instead of 18 or even 21, so what's considered to be the age of maturity is a cultural thing and isn't fully reliable when we want to compare to our irl understanding and what developmental stage it perfectly aligns with. Also, during the succubus chapter Chichuck says that his daughters were all now of age to be independent, and Chilchuck's wife leaves to live with Flertom, which would mean that Puckpatti was independent at age 10 and lived away from home as well (since she's the third/last daughter). Ah yes another interesting thing to note is that we don’t know the pregnancy periods for the races, since Meijack and Flertom were born the same year. It could be tight timing or it could be something else, but I don’t think they’re twins, they keep talking about them being the oldest and the middle child, them being twins is definitely the sort of thing that would get mentioned.

Him starting working on the island notably happens just one year before his wife leaves him. I don't remember the other instances of him mentioning it though I feel like it happened, but since he started working at the Island's dungeon, working as a dungeon diver and then forming the half-foot guild, that probably means he started being away for longer periods of time and having a less reliable schedule on when he'd be coming back home. It is said that he went back home somewhat regularly iirc, though he usually ends up sleeping at the half-foot guild quarters. I'm not sure if Kahka Brud is also where he lived with his family, or just since he rented someplace new after she left him. He and his timeline state that he was born in a small village "northeast of the island", which he left at 14 one year after being married, but it isn’t stated where they go after so it’s unsure how far his home was from the island if it wasn’t in Kahka Brud. We don’t know when his father died so if that factors in to him leaving his village we have no clue.

Chil also says that he hasn’t seen or spoken with his wife nor daughters since the incident, which would mean he's gone 4 years without contact with his family during the events of canon. I don't remember if Chilchuck is said to exchange letters with his daughters, beyond the initial one from Flertom saying her mother was with her, so I've been assuming he hasn't.

He also says "For about ten years I’ve been travelling to dungeons in various areas and doing work" which considering he’s turning 29 that year would mean he started around 19 years old? The panel also gives details what sort of work he’s been doing. Either way it’s confirmed that Chilchuck travels for his work a lot.

In addition, since Chilchuck has the seal of approval of the bicorn + says so himself, he has always stayed faithful to his wife. So that means that unless he's had previous adventures before he was 14 and got married, he's never dated anyone else in his life, nor had romantic or sexual encounters/experiences with others in his 16 years of marriage right up to canon (year 514). I feel it’s safe to say that it’s implied that during all these years starting from when they were married, Chilchuck's wife was a housewife whose main job was taking care of the kids and the house.

Marcille's take on what happened is unreliable, as Kui even takes the time to directly say so in the Adventurer's Bible, so I don't want to use it as a baseline even if it offers some insight on what could have happened (her feeling out of place, leaving to test his love, etc etc).

What Chilchuck says seems to be accurate though since it pertains to his perspective of the events! Unlike how Marcille's theory flows, Chilchuck was aware that something was off before she left since she "suddenly fell into a bad mood".

Piecing everything together, my theory: Chilchuck and his wife were childhood friends and have always always sort of danced around of each other, the classic movie love story with childhood sweethearts, until they ultimately confessed and got together. While dating, Chilchuck's wife becomes pregnant and they're both unequiped to deal with the situation but decide to marry, either a bit forced in order to cover it up or hopeful to make the best of it. They make it work as they can and Chilchuck works to provide for the family while she takes care of the home and the kids, which means that even though he's not a deadbeat father (he cares, he was at least a bit involved in their lives and raising them since for example he knows how to braid hair after all) he ends up being rather absent from home. It only gets worse over the years, especially when Chilchuck starts working further and further away from home and coming home less often, and since Puckpatti left home Chilchuck's wife is alone at home most of the time, never knowing when Chilchuck would be coming and if to prepare the table for two instead of one, or even if he'd be coming back at all since his work is dangerous. The humdrum and lifestyle would get to her, they've grown into different people in these 10 years of marriage and she doesn't feel the spark or feels valued & seen anymore, so she leaves. He feels confused and betrayed which turns into anger so he doesn’t try to reach out and mend things, and with the way he says they’re estranged and he moves away I think he’s avoiding his family somewhat.

Possible strains on the marriage

Tfw all your daughters are independent and your husband is gone to work almost all the time and he barely even tells you that he loves you, is there even a reason to stay together anymore? Every day it’s just you and an empty house and chores to do, wondering if you have to cook for one or for two today.

Alright it’s analysis and theorizing time! Although there are more facts down in this post if you care about Chilchuck's wife's appearajce, Chilchuck's parents & siblings or the kids, the essential facts so to speak were all in the first part.

We don't see Chilchuck showing any discontent with his wife through the manga so I'm assuming that he was content in his marriage, happy with his wife, and with how he stayed faithful to her even in the 4 years after she left (and never stopped calling her his wife. Which also shows a weird stubborn attitude since he wasn’t planning on reaching out to her and mend things but I’ll put aside the possible entitlement/coping mechanism for another time) I think he truly loved her and still does. Since she left him and not the reverse, I'm putting a lot of emphasis on his wife's side of things. Especially since we do see how Chilchuck is at work quite a bit but never see how he is at home. I’ll be sounding harsh towards Chil on this but he’s pretty much the only party we can criticize since we don’t know her, I still side with Chil on the leaving issue though, he’s justifiably pissed if she left without a word what the hell even.

Alcoholism and health

Chilchuck’s favorite food as listed in the Adventurer’s Bible is beer, and it’s shown that he’s prone to drinking until drunk whenever he gets the opportunity to. A cheerful drunk is still a drunk. (Extra reading: if interested here's a oneshot FMA fanfic by a friend that goes in depth about this very topic that really illustrates what sort of family dynamic that can bring about. It’s not dunmeshi but it’s a good read.) Chilchuck is also canonically underweight, starving himself for a strict weight management diet (Extra reading: you can look at a short compilation post about that here). Did you know under eating makes one irritable? And this is on top of Chilchuck sometimes/regularly coming back home with "horrible injuries", since Marcille guesses it and he acts like she’s dead right on everything that far.

It’s rough seeing someone you love mistreat themselves, not being able to shake them out of that and having to stay to see them wasting away. It’s rough seeing them put their work above their own health. Putting their work even above their family. Putting alcohol over family time. It's not that simple, but there's always that element when asking someone you love to tone it down with things like alcohol or such, that if they refuse, then it feels like they value that thing more than they value your feelings or opinions. That they love alcohol more than they love you.

You know how there’s often this thing of "Well I’m providing everything for this family, so whatever else that I do you don’t get to complain." I do think that it’s something they’d have argued over a little bit, not that he’d say it that way, but the essence of it. "Chilchuck, you’re drinking a lot of alcohol often, I’m worried maybe you should ease up on it." "This is what I want to do in my free time, give me a break.", "Dear, your mood gets worse when you’re hungry, I really think you should stop dieting-" "Would you rather I die in a trap because I was too heavy?", "Honey I don’t like when you work so far away from home for so long" "Well what else can I do, do you have any better idea?". That sort of thing. Even if not being passive agressive or snappy, or even spoken upon, these situations can cause tension, or a feeling of powerlessness or imbalance in the relationship. Although I personally feel like they were both rather passive in their relationship (thus having little arguments), which itself can be a problem since yes they let each other live but they grew more distant and less communicative as a result, more on that later. Content and tolerating, rather than happy and fulfilled.

Workaholism and long distance

Spending a lot (or even a majority?) of time away from home for years and years obviously can strain relationships in many ways. Besides becoming more distant, both with his wife and his daughters, there's just that side that maybe you grow apart or you end up not knowing them all that well. Like the fictional dialogue excerpts I wrote just above, the way Chilchuck puts work above most things can by itself be the source of a lot of unhealthy habits and strains that could not only hurt himself but his relationships too. Devoted doesn’t mean attentive, even if Chilchuck 100% devotes himself to only her romantically and works in the goal to support her that doesn’t transfer into being there for her, even when he physically is.

An absent father isn't necessarily a deadbeat father, but an absent father is absent. And alright, we don’t know what his schedule was like exactly, but he was busy and traveled around, I think it’s fair to assume that if we were to make comparisons it’d be like parents irl who are often on work trips. We don't know what Chilchuck's wife's social circle is like, but regardless of how big or small or supportive it is it would be easy to get lonely I think. Besides raising the kids undoubtedly falling more onto her shoulders as well. Managing a household can be very hard and tiring even when not alone, I can imagine she felt like she missed the support of Chilchuck either as help or comfort oftentimes. We know very little about her, but I don't get the impression that she'd build up resentment over it except maybe her ‘falling into a bad mood’, but exhaustion? Absolutely.

It’s also implied imo, even beyond Chil not often being at home, that they rarely go out together. And that could very well be part of why she was mad after the outing. In Marcille’s theory she says that her wife felt out of place amongst all the cool adventurer coworkers, and if it’s a rare time that they go out together and it was supposed to be about her meeting his coworkers… I feel like what could have happened was that she felt out of place yes, and even moreso if she ended up not participating in conversations much because of it and no one really seemed to care, and the evening was all Chilchuck and his coworkers chatting it up as always and she was an outsider, if she sort of just faded into the background, if it felt like nothing would have changed wether she was there or not... If she felt like her presence didn’t matter on this special outing that rarely happened, it could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for her to want to leave, definitely. He finally comes back after a long work travel and they finally go out and this is what their quality time is like? The outing that was supposed to be about her & them both ended up being all about him, and once more she was supposed to just orbit around him and his life without complaint or her own selfish wants like a devoted wife. With how Chil said that she got mad "all of a sudden" on the way home and he didn’t know why, plus that he was probably drunk (which may very well have made the whole thing worse), I feel like it supports that he didn’t pay her much attention during the evening, not that I’m assigning him ill intent at all, I’m sure that for him, it was a casual and fun night out and he didn’t think it'd been unpleasant or alienating for her.

That night

And all of this speculation in order to try and figure… What happened? Why did she leave? I've already gone into it a fair bit, but this is where I discuss it fully in depth.

We can’t rely on Marcille’s theory. Neither in the why she felt so out of place enough to want to leave, nor if her intention when leaving was to "test" him. I definitely agree that the reason why she left is layered and that the night/outing was the straw that broke the camel’s back more than the cause perse, but besides that it’s hard to say how much of it was impulsive and how much was because nothing else had worked to fix their relationship, or how long she'd been thinking of maybe leaving him.

Personally my favorite interpretation isn't that she found herself to be boring surrounded with Chilchuck's adventurer coworkers, or her reason for leaving is super centered around insecurity and if Chilchuck even loves her anymore, but that she sees how rich and eventful Chilchuck's life is and at the same time realizes how stagnant her own life has been. Chilchuck has adventurers for coworkers and they go out to bars and spend evenings together chatting it up, while she always does the same house chores every day and waits, and wonders, uncertain about when her huband would come back, and waits some more. She has a sort of passive role in her own life that gets pulled in one way or another by the people around her at their whims and needs, which is also a recurring theme in the manga: having a passive role in your own life, or a role that's devoted to others. Like with Falin who's always following her parents' directives or following Laios around, being the party's healer and eventually sacrificing herself for Laios and Marcille (she also doesn't seem to think much of marriage, as seen with Shuro proposing to her and her not having answered yet, which fits with how she was supposed to have an arranged marriage in her hometown too; a loveless marriage isn't something alarming to her). Izutsumi too, whose whole arc is about her gaining freedom and figuring out how to use this empowerment for herself and what she wants.

So she'd sit there, not knowing anyone except Chilchuck and not being able to follow their conversations about dungeons, and think about how this is a world she's totally apart from. How she knows so little of the world compared to him. She'd realize that while she's always waiting for Chilchuck to come home, dedicated to him and their family, Chilchuck's world doesn't stop and end at where and when he sees her, that while she's waiting he's living and experiencing things and being self-fulfilled. She's so passive and devoted and her tasks seem almost senseless now that the house is empty except for her, and in that time he's formed half-foot unions and she understands so little of what his life has become outside of her sight. This isn't a diss on Chilchuck or his attitude, I just think that it'd make her ponder about happiness and lifestyles, what's worth it and if she's content with her life. I think she'd find that her and Chilchuck aren't on the same page anymore, and probably they don't communicate much or even that they don't know how to communicate with each other anymore.

Other factors

They really do seem to be on different pages and not know how to communicate with each other well, since for example Chilchuck thinks that on the way back home she "suddenly" fell into a bad mood and seemingly left it alone, or otherwise they didn't talk until he knew what was wrong. Or like how she left and Chilchuck never reached out to her to talk or mend things, just like she never reached out either. According to Marcille it could be that she wanted to "test his love" and see if he'd even care if she was gone, but Chilchuck just got angry that she left like that and never reached out to her, so if that's true they definitely have incompatible expectations or ways to deal with things like that. Maybe she thought of leaving as something he should react to by trying to win her back, but Chilchuck did nothing and let her do her thing, and tbh if that were me I'd also have waited on her to reach out because I figure out that if someone leaves me they want space from me idk. He seems to be rather passive when it comes to interpersonal relationships and how they can mess up, made an analysis post here that talks about it, so the way he reacted by not reacting doesn't feel surprising, maybe she didn't know/remember that part of him, or wanted to shake him out of that tendency. He has no clue why she left, and there are just so many misunderstandings here that it's impossible to know what happened and how she felt and what she wanted for the future.

Also, we’re shown that younger Chilchuck, when he started dungeon crawling, is much more "innocent" and optimistic, less closed off on himself and bitter, and maybe he hasn't even developed his famous "sarcastic retorts" and "abusive remarks" yet as is plastered on all his character introductions and stats. Chilchuck has definitely changed a lot over the years, and some would argue not for the better. Staying with someone for so long has implications that they'll change and be different of course, but signing up for marriage with someone can still leave you questioning that choice decades down the line when they're so different

We get to see his freckles fade in sync with his corruption arc /j

Tfw when you can’t recognize the man you fell in love with.

The hair question

Edit 1/13/2024 leak!!!! Things aren’t officially confirmed but this is a safe bet. You can still read this section to see my reasoning to thinking she had black hair prior to this tho haha

It's not all that important rationally, but the community's been split on the topic: is Chilchuck's wife blonde or not?

Kui highlights Chilchuck being attracted to blondes a grand total of three times, and many assume that his wife is blonde due to this. However, the only vision we see of Chilchuck's wife is Marcille imagining herself as a halfling, so it's up for debate! Flertom has black hair, and that's mostly been the key clue that has people arguing.

I'm not an expert in genetics but black hair is a dominant gene, but it also doesn't mean a black haired parent can't have a brown haired kid, or that two brown haired parents can't have a kid with black hair. As long as one of the parents have it in their genetic code from somewhere in their family tree, it's possible, if not maybe unlikely.

People have been taking Flertom having black hair as evidence that Chilchuck's wife has black hair, but it could be Chilchuck that has the gene and could pass it on. Although...

That seems unlikely. We don't know what Chilchuck's elder brother's hair color was, and his elder sister does have a darker brown hair color, but in the case their parents had black hair or the gene for it, it seems highly unlikely if not impossible for the dominant black hair gene to miss this many amount of time in the gene russian roulette game.

And so I shall now call a witness to the stand, and you reader shall be the judge… Dandan.

You know, this guy? He makes appearances throughout the whole manga, but only has one spoken line in an easy to brush over flashback iirc. He's most often seen hanging out around Chilchuck and other half-foots, but it's unsure how far back he and Chilchuck go.

Now. Remember how Chilchuck and his wife are childhood friends? What if, and hear me out, what if Dandan is related to her. A cousin, or a sibling. Or maybe he's Chilchuck's cousin, even, if we go the reverse route.

The chapter cover

Look at the chapter cover below! We see each member of the main party at a table that's meaningful to them and their history, mostly showing themes of family, community and routine. Laios and Falin sharing a meal by themselves, Marcille at a meal in the cafeteria at the magic academy, Senshi by himself cooking in the dungeon, Izutsumi with Inutade at the Nakamoto household, and... Chilchuck, surrounded by much more mysterious and unknown characters and surroundings.

The only face we see besides the infant is a young one on the left which strikes me as looking a ton like Chilchuck! I doubt it's Meijack or Puckpatti, or someone else, especially since Chilchuck left his hometown pretty early which must make family gatherings harder (and routine is implied with the others’ panels). If it were Meijack I think Kui would have drawn it to more closely match her too, and have her usual freckles. I also don't think it's just Chilchuck and his own family, since if that's Chilchuck the only sibling with black hair he could have is his elder brother and the infant in the middle is clearly, well an infant.

My thoughts are that the table is shared with family friends, or at least members of the community. The elderly person implies that either there's extended family or it’s a gathering, especially if Chilchuck's grandparents don't live with them. Community is implied to be very important with half-foots imo, and if Chilchuck is from a small hometown like he says that would surprise me even less. Childhood friends are often brought together as friends because of circumstances, such as proximity or their families being friends! Doesn't that kid almost off-panel on the right, with a Flertom-like hairstyle and black hair, look to be the same age as the Chilchuck on the left? 👀

Also… Notice the dragon plush she’s holding?

Passed down from mom to daughter? The "most likely belonged to his daughters" is interesting too

If he is related, Dandan could be the infant. I suppose he doesn't end up mattering all that much in the end if you theorize that the Flertom-like kid is his wife on its own though haha. But wether or not you think that this is convincing enough, it's all we have on the topic for now.

Ah yes! Lastly, I've seen the sentiment around that his wife should be blonde, that Chilchuck's taste for blondes, if not the thing that brought them together, should be an acquired taste from loving his wife. That if that's not the case, then Chilchuck's type being blondes is either out of place or insuting or unromantic, etc etc. I can't help but disagree! I think, especially with how Chilchuck and his wife are domestic and all about knowing each from a young age, familiarity etc etc, that it would be so sweet if she wasn't his type! Loving someone so deeply, even if they aren't an idealized type... Which is a common theme/story & character beat in Dungeon Meshi.

Family dynamic theories

Meijack is the most capable, takes after her father the most, seems to have her own business as a locksmith but has a stable steady life. Flertom is the most social, she works at a tavern which seems stable and is ambitious with marriage plans, she has a caring side to her since she sent her dad a handmade gift. Puckpatti is the most upbeat, though she has the most unstable lifestyle, seemingly doing odd jobs.

His daughters do seem well adjusted, which encourages me in that their family seems amicable on the whole and (at the very least) decently functional. We don’t hear what they think of Chilchuck but presumably none of them are on bad terms with him or each other. Flertom does say that "half-foot men are stingy" which, gee, I wonder what half-foot man would have made taught her that- though it does also seem to be a racial stereotype in general, with how for example Namari also says to "steer clear from stores with half-foot clerks".

Flertom seems to be the only one who reached out after their mother left (the only one who's mentioned to have done so at least), and it's because she was the one who took in her mother. It’s not implied that they exchange letters regularly too iirc, it possibly was the only letter they've exchanged since then. I wonder if the daughters even know the full story, if their mother told them all about it or very little. Maybe some are pretty out of the loop, or more distant.

It strikes me that they don't seem to be very close. We're not shown anything that leads us to believe they don't like their father, but I think they're so used to him being absent for work that such distance is normal for them and they don't really long for a deeper relationship or to see him often. They were already out of the house and it seems like they didn't see each other much at that time either so for them it would be just a bit less than the regular amount of Dad time. It's been 4 years Chilchuck what are you doing... But yeah! From what we see they seem mostly unaffected, almost indifferent, not that we can truly tell. I imagine Flertom is the one most attached to Chilchuck with how she sent him a handmade cowl, and I think he rubbed off the most on Meijack teachings wise (besides her attitude, she’s also the one who still wears braids, and we see that Chilchuck braids hair). It makes sense, since they're oldest, and on the contrary I think Puckpatti is the one that knows her father the least. It'd fit the timeline with him working away more while she grew up imo.

Wouldn't it be interesting then that she's the one that Chilchuck says is carefree, in the official translation "doesn't treat life real seriously"? That she's the most optimistic, the most go-with-the-flow, out of the bunch? To me that sounds like a result from her being the youngest and Chil being the most often at work, thus her getting raised by her mother without as much involvement from Chil. Far be it from me to say Chilchuck would raise his daughters to be unhappy btw, not at all, we just all know what down-to-earth values he wants others to have so he doesn't have to worry about them.

Although… Puckpatti spotted?? Seems like he wants to stop her from buying something? His heart meter for her is full <3 (Note: I’ve seen it be argued that this could be his wife. I disagree, since the "stop them" and way that the long haired one is off-center compared to everyone else gives the sense that it’s many of his daughters, and the fact that it’s styled after a dating sim doesn’t mean it’s romantic love as we see with the others. Otherwise imagine being her wife and he tells you not to buy stuff when you go shopping together rip)

Headcanons time:

When naming the daughters, together they choose a pool of names they’d like but only one has the final say, and they alternate between who that is. Chilchuck sticks around more near the end of her pregnancies, and he hasn’t missed any of their births. I don’t have any opinions on who named who right now, but there could be some interesting stuff to theorize with Puckpatti, like them taking extra care picking the name together because they settled on her being their last daughter for fluff, or it was supposed to be Chilchuck but he was so busy that he ended up not picking in time and she was the one to name her for angst.

Actually scratch that I have a new theory : What if it’s actually customary for each parent to pick one half of their half-foot kid’s name? So then each would have chosen half of each girl’s name… And this could be why Chil calls Puckpatti Patti instead of Puck which is her first name, because he’s stubborn since Patti was his pick lmaoooo. Pattipuck doesn’t have the same ring to it alas, his wife was so right

Chilchuck liked to do activities with the girls when they were young. He's not opposed to relaxing at home with them perse, but he likes to do workshops with stuff like arts & crafts to develop their agility some. I don't think they'd do much outings to places like restaurants or theatres for money reason, and I don't think Chilchuck is much of an outdoors type, but he could accompany them to nice fields to play in, or in winter places to play in snow and sled, and organize some activities at home. He's not home very often so when he is he likes to take it easy as a break from work and values the time he gets with his family.

Chilchuck would sometimes work from home as a locksmith, say, unlocking a chest for a customer. In those times, Meijack would take interest and watch him work, even handing him the tools he needs as he goes. In this way, Chilchuck taught her a lot about the work of a locksmith over time. He's also the one that would oil door hinges or do renovation around the house- when he's available.

Like the plushies under his table in his home that we see in illustrations, Chilchuck has a lot of mementos from his daughter (and his wife) he keeps around. Sometimes they take a bothersome amount of place, but throwing anything out isn't something he's seriously willing to consider. Flertom's the most artistic and she used to help with sewing clothes back together, so he has a cheap ceramic mug painted by her when she was really young and small embroideries around.

Imo Meijack would be the most distant in the present. Flertom makes efforts for her parents and is pretty involved, and Puckpatti's distance is more out of being a bit airheaded and being busy + not having a great grasp on time or what's a normal amount of family contact, but Meijack's the one who knowingly and intentionally keeps some distance. I think she’d be the least optimistic about their family situation, and although she’d be hopeful when Chilchuck reached out to them again she’d be a but hesitant. I think Meijack would hold some grudges, being the one most critical of their parenting, both grateful to her dad for working so hard for them and saddened that he wasn't in their life more. Since Flertom was born in the same year I think it’s possible that Meijack was pushed aside a bit to take care of the younger baby more, out of necessity rather than lack of love. Her mom probably needed a lot of help around the house too. Flertom wasn’t blind either, and she cared about & noticed her mom’s emotional states, but she’s on the whole more hopeful and forgiving.

This is my most far fetched one but it is a hc after all, but I think it'd be interesting if one of them had food hoarding tendencies/stress. I like to think it's Flertom, because she's the middle child and would get told that her older sister and younger sister are "growing and need the food" so she wouldn't be allowed to take as much refill or such, add that to them not having much money to frivolously spend on food and that makes a kid who's worried about not eating to her hunger and tends to be possessive over food (I'm projecting). Differential treatment is inevitable in families with many siblings, and it can manifest in small or big ways, maybe they realize it maybe they don't. Working in a tavern has helped eased that tendency of her though, and while she does diet a bit she always leaves a meal feeling satisfied.

When they were younger, Flertom was a real firecracker, loud and spirited with some troublemaking tendencies! She was the daughter that got in trouble & got scolded the most. You can still see slivers of it now that she’s an adult, but she’s much more poised and diligent. She has much more acquaintances than friends, but she has a couple of best friends and usually gets along well with most people. Puckpatti was always a bit head in the cloud, very kind if not gullible, and tended to make friends somewhat easily but didn’t keep them for long, preferring to keep meeting new people and not keeping in touch well. She isn’t super talkative but tends to ramble when she does. Meijack is very introverted, she has more trouble making friends, she has a good handful though they don’t meet up often, her friendships tend to last and she’s close to them. She’s grown more confident over the years, less repressed and more quiet. Meijack as the big sister tended to be the listener for her younger sisters who had more social mishaps. Flertom has dated once before and it only cemented to her that she was going to have very high standards from then on.

Meijack wears thigh-high boots because she hates when sand, dirt or snow gets in her shoes. She wears practical clothing but avoids anything frilly or flashy. Puckpatti also dresses practically, but she does enjoy pretty clothes, it’s more out of necessity and due to not having enough money to indulge. Flertom has a social stable job and she loves prettying herself up (especially as she’s in search of a husband) so she’s the one who gets the most and nicest fashionable clothes and accessories.

Chilchuck is hinted to have had a rather dysfunctional family himself (alcoholic father, distant siblings, etc). So he doesn’t really have the best model on how to raise someone and such. I imagine it was a sort of neglectful home situation, where the kids are encouraged to be independent. If they didn’t have to work or help around much, then free range parenting sort of thing. We do see how the family has full and warm feasts, where someone cleans his mouth with a rag, so it’s not like he didn’t have a caring circle or a tragic childhood though! I don’t remember if it’s explicitely stated, but he’s heavily implied to having grown up poor, as most half-foots, and I just think it's the hardened hardworking family type of childhood where just like he does with others they instill somewhat harsh life lessons in him, which in turn encourages him to indulge in the simple pleasures of life like alcohol and sex, or at least women’s beauty and crass jokes. We do see he seems more optimistic when he's younger in flashbacks, so a bunch of his harsh view on the world is still likely learned and earned rather than taught. I still think he inherited many flawed views from how his father acted, like his attitude about excessive drinking not being a big deal and worth it. That work hard play hard, enjoy life die young mentality he has, shown mostly in the "alcohol" section of his Adventurer's Bible profile, could very well be partly a result of the general poverty half-foot communities are that he grew in as well, like how he doesn't hope for things to be as best as they could be and contends with good enough. As far as I remember, his mother is never mentioned, but I doubt it implies she was out of the picture. She was probably a regular sort of mother that took care of the home as well and was still around when his father died. It looks like there’s a good age gap between one sibling to the next, that could be interesting to dig into too.

A part of Chilchuck’s character is that he takes responsibility for safety and actions of people around him and is very often looking out for them to not do faux-pas wether socially or literally with stepping onto traps. The way he says "I’ve got three people to think of here" makes me think that’s also how he’d think about having to provide for his family, and that could be a source of stress and insecurity for him. Caring for others is a pretty integral part of his character and we see time and time again that his family is very important to him, in any case.

Post-canon

This pic has so much to say!! It’s the ‘thank you for reading’ double page spread where they’re going to a big dining table at the castle with Laios and the main gang. First family gathering in 4 years perhaps?! I’ll say, not feeling very hopeful that his wife isn’t in this, not even implied to be just off-panel with a hand or anything… I imagine before this he still talked to them at least a bit and figured their family situation out, but I think this is still in the early stages of reconnecting. Haha imagine being one of them and receiving a letter saying "Hi it’s been a while… I want to introduce you to my ex-coworker the king and his friends, you up for that?" I don’t want to reconsider all my hcs for this yet, but this pic does seemingly show an eagerness from all the daughters to reunite and reconnect! Meijack’s could be seen as more hesitant, but I think it’s just awkwardness from meeting so many new people, of high status no less. Chilchuck does seem awkward and somewhat self-conscious though, and while that could be just from say Marcille and the others meeting his daughters and him not knowing how to act, I think that also shows that Chilchuck is unsure how to act around his daughters too. Can’t blame him, I’d be stressed too. Anyways, the daughters are all dressed up! Puckpatti even brought flowers! And I doubt it’s just for Senshi, or just to be in with the king. Oh also also, Puckpatti chides Meijack here, seemingly on manners?, so that implies new/different family dynamics there~

We know with the succubus chapter that he does plan on reaching out to his wife again and shooting his shot, and when Marcille was dungeon lord he told her she could help think of a plan to make up with her together at which point Marcille showered him in gifts and flowers intended for her and his daughters. So we do know that whatever happens and however it happens, Chilchuck definitely will at least reach out to her to win her back or worse case scenario get closure on the situation.

-

These are his plans before it’s revealed that the Island is… Well, not an island but the golden kingdom, so the news that Laios is king and that might have changed them a bit, but I think he’s still gonna stick around to help with the half-foot guild for a while.

My personal ideal post-canon Chilchuck life is that after around a year or two of helping around in the golden kingdom, especially regarding half-foot working rights, he gets his shop and finally settles down. He prioritized the whole half-foot guild because there are changes to attend to and people to help, but also used that to procrastinate a bit on getting in touch with his wife again. He does send a letter though, and when she replies they then meet face to face. They explain how it was like on their end, their grievances and their feelings, and they do reconcile. But… It’s been 4 years and his wife has frankly moved on. She’d rather they stay as friends, and Chilchuck has mixed feelings on it but is ultimately fine with it. He was halfway resigned to not reconciling with his wife in canon after all. But no longer do they have cut contact! They get together with the girls for the holidays and the ambiance is nice! He starts exchanging letters more regularly. He also gets a second family of clingy asses with Izutsumi and the main gang and so though he lives alone in his shop he’s well surrounded and well loved, and his daughters visit to check up on him every so often.

I really like the… Maturity of Chilchuck’s plotline, if that makes sense? To me the ending that fits the most is him and his wife reconciling, but not getting back together. I like that they could still be adults about it and at least amicable even after divorce, and that that wouldn’t be treated as a tragic ending. In the end, they were childhood friends and teenage parents, they rushed things a bit and I genuinely think they’re just not that compatible. If not then, at least having it be a gradual process, getting back together and making it work until they’re truly comforatble with each other. Destroy the relationship to better build it again stronger!

Although, his arc in the manga is to allow himself to form connections and be optimistic, which would fit well with him and his wife getting back together. I def think Chil would get healthier post-canon which could fix the issues they had in their relationship though. Like for one he starts eating more, which improves mood & irritability & health, and also after the whole half-foot guild he plans to settle down with a shop so it wouldn’t be long distance or unstable anymore which would definitely give his wife some peace of mind. If they still do some long distance at first while he gets the half-foot guild stable, it’d be really cute if he sent pressed flowers with his letters to her… That could make a nice fic concept, like over time all the pressed flowers and exchanged letters hehe (oh shit that’s a nice title)

My post-canon timeline is Chilchuck lives a nice life living alone in his house except his friends all visit him and care and even tho he likes living alone it’s also bittersweet and every corner of his life is haunted by mementos of the ones he loves and the moments he had with them. But then it’s also like the shared duty of everyone to pass by his shop when they can and keep the old man company and sometimes that means many people come at the same time like if both Meijack and Marcille came the same day~ Cozy life, no regrets except a lil regrets still. That’s it that’s all I want.

Misc

I didn’t know where to put this, so new category time! Family truly is a central theme of Chilchuck’s character. His reaction to learning more about how life gets made is so awed by the wonder of the world. Life indeed…

The implication of this page is that Chil didn’t know about the science side of how procreation works, though of course he did know about the practical side of it. This is speculation, and we have no clue how widespread the information of how reproduction scientifically works lol, but I think it’s fair to think that half-foots’ education especially in smaller communities is handled by the parent, school of life style, or if there are schools then the education is very general and it probably ends early. I think this is supported by how for example half-foots’ jobs we’ve seen are based on experience rather than knowledge, like being a locksmith. Of course any job has its fair share of specialized knowledge to learn, but jobs you learn on the fly pretty well. This sort of dynamic contrasts a lot against elves many tallmen communities, like with the magic academy, where education and knowledge are valued almost above experience, this is what the mandrake chapter was all about after all. Poorer communities tend to have poorer education systems as well irl, it’s a whole issue.

So I already said my piece about his wife not being blonde and it being nice and romantic because literally you don’t need someone to be a beauty ideal to love them and that’s fine and normal and even more romantic imo. But!! I do have an headcanon, now that his wife’s appearance is all but explicitly confirmed. While their hair is blonde, yes their hair is wavy and the ‘main’ one has deep-set eyes, not unlike his wife! Now this is a ‘which came first the egg or the chicken’ question, but while most people seem to be assuming that he got with his wife because she was his type, since they’re childhood friends I feel like it’s his love for his wife that shaped his preferences in that deparment. Like ok he loves golden hair and hers is black, but isn’t it so much more romantic that he has so much love and devotion for his wife and has stared lovingly at it so much over the years, that it’d become his ideal? He loves her eyes <3

Conclusion

Reminder that I’ve got more stuff in a reblog addition now. What I've got left to add at some point:

Compile more info on Chilchuck's father and his other family

Reread the manga and catch details like exchanged letters & his work schedule. Reword some things to repeat myself less maybe

A buddy is planning to make a name analysis post for everyone, and I might have more to say especially about the daughters once I know what possible meaning their names have

Other stuff I may be forgetting about

And thus I leave you with a lil web weaving I made about Chil & his wife’s relationship~ And this is where I’d put panels of Chilchuck’s wife… IF THERE WERE ANY

Should we call Chilchuck's wife Mrs. Tims... We don't know dunmeshi marrital traditions though, and half-foot already have somewhat complex naming conventions... I hate that we don't really know if the daughters' last names are Chils or Chilz. Oh yeah the last names change each generation, that’s odd right? But in english it sounds like saying Chil’s, like, [father]’s, so I think this also supports how half-foots communities tend to be tightly knit and live in the present, for them to be like "Ooh so you’re [father]’s little one eh? I know who that is and this is insightful as to who your family is to me!". Iceland’s a place where last names are like this, though I don’t know about pros and cons of it in that context

Ah and I have a bittersweet spotify playlist about her and Chil too, here if ya want. That’s it the post is over

[dotthings]

Since I just rewatched 4x14 "Sex and Violence" let me revisit a few things. I really really like this ep, it's darkly psychological and it's a great ep on Sam and Dean's relationship, as well as having bi Dean subtext.

The first victim murders his wife

The second victim murders his mother

The third victim, Dean, the siren tries to goad into killing his brother

So the siren manipulates some people into harming a romantic partner, or manipulates them into harming a family member, a platonic bond. The siren gets off on the violence, the power, of driving someone to that extreme.

Sam and Dean are on different paths this season. Dean misses his brother and he's lonely. They're drifting apart, mistrust is growing between the brothers. The siren takes a male form, FBI agent Nick, to entice Dean. To give him someone who is like-a-brother. But Nick isn't like Sam. Nick is a lot like Dean. He's excited about the Impala, he's knowledgeable on classic rock, he laughs at Dean's jokes. Nick is the siren purposefully honing in on the loneliness in Dean, but in so doing, creates someone who is sort of like a brother but isn't Dean's brother. They aren't brothers. What the siren is playing upon is Dean's wish for a companion who understands him, who he can connect with, and it doesn't have to be his brother.

"I gave him what he wanted and it wasn't some b*tch in a g-string, it was you" is the text. Textually, Nick is using Dean's loneliness due to his slowly growing estrangement from Sam, and giving him a substitute for that.

Nick, along with being a companion, is a potential romantic and sexual partner, which a brother wouldn't be. Those scenes with Nick and Dean in the car...for one thing the siren innately operates in a seductive way and that actor really seems to be leaning into that, and Dean is...Deaning the way he sometimes does with men he's not related to. The way they're looking at each other in the car scene. This is the subtext.

And it's so weird to me that people get attacked or mocked or have had hate threads made about them on twitter dot com just for analyzing all this (I've been trolled for it, other bi Dean fans could probably tell similar horror stories). Even recently, I know it's still been going on -- a few weeks back, some bitter Sam stan tried to claim that if you let in the subtext on bi Dean, that must mean that you are validating w*ncest and that's just not how this works.

In fact it can be both about the platonic sibling bond, and bi Dean subtext (with Dean/Nick as the unspoken potential). The episode is mainly, and most overtly, about the brothers and their strained bond and how the siren preys on that. And I have a lot of feelings about Sam and Dean in this episode. It hurts. It's poignant. That is a platonic bond on the series and one that I really love. At the same time, the bi Dean subtext, the dynamic he has with Nick, the actual seduction siren Nick is playing on Dean, can co-exist with the brothers and their sibling bond troubles. Sam is not a potential romantic or sexual partner for Dean. Nick is. And yes that can be a layer, it's called subtext, while it is ostensibly about Nick filling that loneliness in Dean because Sam and Dean are drifting apart.

We also need to put this in context of the season. This ep isn't about Dean and Cas, but it is in S4 and falls at a time when Dean is drawn to a male companion--an angel, who is not related to him. Who gets him in ways nobody else Dean knows does. An unexpected kindred spirit where Dean never expected to find that. Cas isn't like Nick, Cas is weird, and he doesn't know pop culture and he doesn't know music and he doesn't care about classic cars like Nick does. Nick is an illusion, a seduction, the siren creates The Perfect Person for Dean to get close to. Cas, otoh, is the real deal. He's authentic. The connection between them isn't a seduction, it's Cas being Cas, Dean being Dean, and Cas goes against his orders from Heaven due to his growing attachment to Dean. Cas is making Dean feel a whole lot less lonely in S4 where Dean and Sam are drifting apart and Sam is wading into dangerous waters and isn't listening to Dean. So Sex and Violence isn't about Destiel, but Sex and Violence, Dean and Nick, exist not only in the context of Sam and Dean's relationship, but what's forming between Dean and Cas as well (even if Sam and Dean are obviously most directly relevant as the context).

Scrubbing all that out, and trolling and mocking anyone for unpacking it and making their case for the bi Dean subtext is really weird and it's anti-art and it's anti-interpretation. There's nothing wrong with saying "huh, that's an interesting take, hadn't thought of that. Not sure I see it, but carry on *shrug*" and move on.

Instead, for years, there are stans who attacked subtext and attack analysis of subtext, who laugh at it and call people insane, and are still doing it recently.

This analysis of Sex and Violence is old news, but I hope my revisiting maybe adds something to the discussion of this ep. bi Dean discussion is still going on to this day about it and so is the trolling, and I refuse to be silenced on perfectly reasonable subtextual analysis because some people feel a need to throw immature tantrums. It's utterly unhinged, in a bad way, that some people have been so aggressive about actively trying to silence discussion of bi Dean in Sex and Violence.

[abla-soso]

Idk why but I don’t think the blacks are a perfect happy family as much as their fans like to depict them as. Nyra and daemon got married before their spouses funerals were even over. Like I can’t imagine how the kids would have felt like their parent just died and before their bones could even burn their cousins were married to one another.

Also daemons daughters were introduced to the family as jace and lukes fiancés not as their stepsisters. Daemon doesn’t even show care towards his daughters he legit left one of them to be raised by her grandparents while he took the other to dragonstone. I think it might also be implied that rhaena might still not have a dragon which is fucked up cuz dragonstone has dragons and we saw that daemon got eggs prepared for his newborn children with nyra so in the 6 years they were all there he didn’t give rhaena a dragon egg.

I also can’t imagine how jace Luke and Joffrey might feel seeing their younger siblings with blonde hair and purple eyes wishing that they had those so they wouldn’t be called bastards continuously. Interestingly jace and luke call daemon by his first name and their relationship with him seems kinda strained atleast to me.

The black kids also seem quick to anger while the greens kids are quick with their words. Take that table scene for example with Aemond poking(?) at the black kids by calling them strong and jace was so quick to anger and resort to violence and he fell so easily into aemonds provocation.

The black kids just seem to have a lot of anger/resentment in them and are quick to resort to violence. Atleast that’s how I see it. I think it would be interesting to look more into this dynamic of theirs.

I don't get the "happy family" vibes either. It's just another baseless headcanon that Team Black stans deluded themselves into believing it's true.

Rhaeynra is sweet and loving to her kids, but that's the only "happy" part. They still had to endure living with the stigma of being bastards because of her. She still spoiled them rotten and taught them to be cruel to people they don't like (They jumped on a kid they previously bullied for shit and giggles, beat him up, took his eye, watched unfazed as their mother demanded the kid to be tortured, and they spent years openly mocking him. They are anything but "good").

Rhaenyra is occasionally kinda nice to Daemon's daughters, but not enough to not steal their inheritance, lol.

And Daemon? The neglectful father? The abusive husband? No one is having "happy, healthy family fun times" with him.

[dulcewrites]

With Aemond doting on Alaena, I feel so sorry for Daella. She never got this version of Aemond, I wonder if Aemond's affection for Alaena will make Daella jealous or angry she didn't get that treatment? Would Aemond's behaviour towards Alaena affect sisterly bond between Daella and Alaena? Does Aemond even realise he is doing the same thing Viserys did, but in reversed way? Favouring the youngest kids and treating firstborn in ill manner?

daella would be more envious of the environment/conditions the twins grow up in, than the twins themselves. Everyone else is living in a gritty drama while the twins give sitcom energy lol. Daella would more than likely take that out on Aemond, maybe even Cass, before her siblings. She sort of struggles with it already with alaric, who is very vocal about his love for both parents, namely his dad. Daella and Cass sort of have a silent understanding when it comes to it if that makes sense. Just because they have a strained relationship with Aemond doesn’t mean they need to include everyone on their misery. Daella doesn’t get any joy out of her siblings possibly feeling the way she does. Just like Cass doesn’t get any joy out of her kids possibly resenting their father.

But ofc there would be jealousy there. Like there was a time it was just the three of them (d, a, and c). Things were well enough to the point that even Cass thought something genuine could be there. Aemond was very involved with daella for a time. Then years later they finally settle into this little foursome post losing everyone, and their family unit gets rocked again.

Daella and Alaena’s relationship would be interesting. There quite an age gap there. Who even knows if daella will be in the castle by the time Alaena is old enough to sus out what a family dynamic even is. their relationship would also hinge on what type of person Alaena grows up to be. Daella would probably be described as ‘spirited’ or a ‘problem child’ by others (mind you she’s just traumatized). There may be a disconnect if Alaena grows up to be the ‘perfect princess’. But overall, I see daella taking her sister under her wing partly bc cass would not let anything else but that happen. also bc she knows how hard it is being a girl, especially a girl in a royal family.

As for the viserys and Aemond comp. I think Aemond tries very hard in older age. He is relatively self aware about how bad things have gotten which I don’t think viserys was. Or he was and just didn’t care. Which I guess you could say is a point in Aemond’s favor, but he is also the person who put himself in this position. He is trying to break a cycle and for that he is commended I guess. But just bc you want something to happen doesn’t mean everyone has to fall in line. Especially if you have hurt them in the past.

[youareunbearable]

Thinking about an Age Swap!Grandchildren of Finwe, and I want to share with you a snippet :)) I just think that a lot would change about the dynamics of Finwe's house if the ages were reversed:

-----------

No matter how hard we try, history can never perfectly repeat itself a second time. History is built on relationships and experiences and reactions and feelings and so many many different perspectives. But most importantly, history is built on chance. A roll of a dice. Coincidence.

Within the story we know, it was a coincidence that Maedhros, the natural born leader and tragic villain of the feared Sons of Feanor, was the eldest of Finwe’s grandsons. His birth and upbringing and personality and his relationship set the stage for the story that unfolds. 

But what if he wasn’t? What if that dice role landed differently? What if instead of the eldest, he’s the youngest of Finwe’s grandchildren? Instead of Maedhros, Fingon, and Finrod being the eldest of their siblings, it’s Ambarussa, Argon, and Galadriel? 

Feanor and Nerdanel’s first birth being Ambarussa would change everything.

They are worried at first about having twins, but don’t worry too much and continue their travelling, knowing that when the time is close they will have a home back in Tirion either with Finwe, in Formenos with Miriel’s kin, or in the small hamlet nestled between the two cities with Mathan and Nerdanel’s kin. It isn’t until Nerdanel is in her third trimester and Feanor is kicking open Finwe’s palace doors in Tirion, stressed and about to break down in tears over how Not Well his pregnant wife is. Finwe is matching his energy and settles his daughter in law into the nicest guest suites, and even calls in some Maiar healers from Lorien to attend her.

This all may seem overboard, but this pregnancy is Not Going Well for Nerdanel. She is weak, can hardly keep down food, has terrible pains, and is plagued by nightmares of flames and sea winds for her final weeks of pregnancy. Feanor is one hairbreath away from pulling his hair out himself and sobbing at her bedside. The Maiar share some looks with each other, but tell the new parents that this can be normal, as twin pregnancies are typically hard, especially for your first time. This doesn’t calm Feanor down, if anything it makes him fret even more.

The birth goes as expected. She does end up having to have a C-section but it's quick and the Maiar perform admirably enough and there are no worries about infection or any further complications. Nerdanel is still sleeping off the poppy seeds they gave her, so Feanor gets to name their twin sons first.

The eldest, the twin with the lighter ginger puff of hair, he names Nelyafinwë. Feanor isn’t above the petty glee the snub of the name gives him. As his wife rests and he holds his sons close to his chest, he takes a moment to delight in the affront the name will bring to his half-siblings. He gives his son a quick kiss on the forehead, ignoring the lingering afterbirth that covers him, and whispers his new father-name into his perfect little ear.

The younger twin, with slightly darker hair and all his fathers love, is a little harder for Feanor to name. His birth was harder for Nerdanel, for it was after he was removed she had a slight haemorrhage, but was easily healed by the Maiar performing the C-section. Feanor loved children, he and Nerdanel joked about wanting half a dozen, enough to fill both of their workrooms with apprentices. But this pregnancy was hard, and it scared them both. Feanor would clutch both of his sons to his chest and stare at his sleeping wife, who looked so pale and worn. It was then he took a deep breath and pressed a kiss to his youngest’s forehead and named him Telufinwë. For as much as he longed for children, he didn’t have the heart to put more strain on his wife.

It is a while yet before Nerdanel wakes, so Feanor just holds his children and paces with them around the room, keeping one eye on his boys and another on his wife. Once she begins to stir, he is at her side, relief slamming into her mind via ósanwe.

They both share time just finding peace with each other. Pride, relief, excitement building between them the more Nerdanel wakes all until she is demanding to meet her sons. Her eldest, Nelyafinwë, is placed into her waiting arms and she kisses his brow and tears up. Her Mother Vision fills her sight and all she can see is her twins, all grown up and laughing and running through the woods, Laurelin’s light making their long braids look like pure copper wire swinging behind them. Ambarussa, she will name him when the vision finishes, breathless and delighted at seeing her sons grown and healthy. 

Feanor, charmed at the name, bends down to pass her younger son to her. Once the child settles into her arms, however, she goes rigid from the scene of her Mother Vision. It holds her trapped, held hostage as she feels the ghostly heat of flames all around her. She almost doesn’t see her son at first, with his copper hair and Feanorian red robes, but there he is, foot entangled amongst some sailing rope at the ship he is on burns all around him. He screams as the flames crawl up his limbs and she screams with him.

Feanor calls for the Maiar and for his father before she even takes the breath to scream. He can feel her terror through their bond, the anguish that claws at them both. When Finwë and the Maiar come bursting into the room, they are just in time to hear Nerdanel scream, “My son, oh not my son! The flames! The flames!” Before the Maiar put her into a forced sleep. 

Everyone is shaken. Finwë has a steadying grip on his eldest son, while Feanor clutches the twins to his chest, staring horrified at his wife. Nolofinwë and the rest of Finwë’s children crowd the doorway, heavy silence covers them all. No one will say anything, but all are thinking about Miriel. 

It’s then, that Feanor whispers, that young Telufinwë was not given a mother name. 

Nerdanel takes a long time to heal, especially since Feanor refuses to let her go to Lorien, afraid that if she goes, she will never come back. So she stays home, with her apprentices and her parents and many sisters and their families all visiting and helping out as they can. Feanor is so thankful that he has his wife’s family to help him with the twins. For his mother-in-law and sisters-in-law to help take over some mother roles when Nerdanel is overcome, just so their boys won’t know the pain of only having one grieving father taking care of them as he did.

As Nerdanel recovers, the twins are almost exclusively called Ambarussa. While it is a little confusing if one is trying to differentiate the two, they are hardly separated enough for that problem to really arise. 

But Nerdanel does heal. Once she is well enough Feanor breaches the topic of a mother name for their youngest. She holds little Telufinwë close to her chest, this infant that is already more than a month old, and gives him the name Umbarto. It feels like a Doom settled over his young head, but she refuses any alternative names Feanor offers. No one blames the twins for insisting to both be called Ambarussa as they grow up, nor does anyone, not even Nerdanel’s kin, call the youngest Ambarussa by his mother name.

[wingsyliveblogs]

Here are some additional thoughts on Episode 7 after rewatching! I don’t have much to add onto what I’ve already said in previous posts, but I do want to touch on a few of the characters who aren’t Amity in this episode. Namely, Amity’s siblings and Luz herself. 

Under a cut for length! why are all my analysis posts getting to be so long

Yes, I will admit that I tend to refer to these two as “Amity’s siblings” because I keep forgetting their names. If I’m remembering right, though, they’re Emira and Edric! 

While I was first watching through the episode, I wasn’t sure what to make of these two... in a way, I think, it’s similar to how Amity was trying to figure Luz out at the time. Were they just irresponsible teens who generally meant well and would come through when it counted? Were they actively malicious and deceiving Luz into helping them do something really bad? In the end, my opinion on them has landed somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

From what I’ve seen of them in this episode, I think both of them are the type of people who prioritise goofing off and having a good time above anything else. They don’t go out of their way to deliberately hurt others, but they don’t seem to spare much concern for anyone’s boundaries or feelings - not even their own, as seen when Emira brought up Edric’s allergy to milk, and his response suggested that he didn’t consent to her giving that information out to a stranger but that he also didn’t really care. They thought that Luz trying to act cool was funny, but they didn’t make a big deal out of it, even if they did make fun of it a little. 

They’re also a little bit stubborn and convinced that they’re in the right, regardless of what they’re doing; in this, they share a bit of a familial resemblance with Amity herself. They don’t think that broaching Amity’s privacy will be really, really bad for her - they’re sure that what they’re doing to her is good, and they can’t be convinced otherwise. Their attempt at retaliation is incredibly petty, but could also have been very harmful to Amity if she didn’t shut them down when she did. 

Judging by what Amity says in her diary, most people get along with Emira and Edric, and think that they’re “perfect”, and Amity sees herself as the only one who can really hold them accountable. Meanwhile, the other two see her as an annoyance, and do everything they possibly can to upset her in return. I imagine that what was shown in this episode was just scratching the surface of an incredibly strained relationship. It’s a little bit similar to the dynamic between Eda and Lilith (one party is a stickler for the rules, the other will take any opportunity to break them) but funnily enough, even though Episode 5 involved an actual physical fight between Eda and Lilith, I would almost say that I felt more affection between them than there was between Amity and her siblings, even though their own conflict never escalated that far. 

Maybe I’m being a little harsh on our local Cool Teens, and I think I’ll need to see a bit more of them before I can really be sure, but... I suspect that Luz herself realised in this episode that they might not be quite as cool as they initially seemed. They’re friendly, but they’re also reckless and pretty irresponsible, not to mention insensitive - while I don’t think they’re bad people, they could stand to learn a bit of empathy. 

It’s become more and more evident in the last few episodes that Luz has a hard time disagreeing with, or saying no to, people she admires or cares about. I’m not sure if this comes from her previously having had a hard time connecting with others, if it has something to do with Luz being in a new place with all sorts of interesting new people that she wants to impress, or if it’s just the Relatable Teen Experience of wanting other people to think you’re helpful and/or cool, but it’s definitely something she struggles with. 

In Episode 6, Luz risked the safety of the Owl House because she couldn’t bring herself to deny her friends a chance to have fun, and got in trouble for that. Fortunately, since she has good friends, they acknowledged that they shared responsibility for what happened, and things worked out pretty well. To be honest, in that episode, it felt more as if all three of the kids were being bad influences on one another to some extent, but Luz was still the one who tried to play the voice of reason, before ultimately going along with what the other two wanted.

In Episode 5 and Episode 7, the consequences of Luz being pressured into doing something that she wasn’t fully on board with were the same: she inadvertently hurt Amity, and had to go after her and apologise for what happened. In both cases, the people putting pressure on Luz (Eda and Amity’s siblings respectively) either didn’t notice or didn’t care about what they’d done, so the responsibility fell on Luz alone to make things right, even though she never intended for things to turn out the way they did. 

I think the main issue here is that Luz finds it difficult to stand up for herself and her own feelings, to some extent, though she’ll stand up for others without hesitation. The result of this is that it’s easy for her to defend her friends, even against people she’d prefer to get along with, but when she doesn’t realise immediately that someone else will be hurt by her inaction, she hesitates to do anything until it’s too late. I think it’s most likely just coincidence that, so far, the “someone else” has consistently been Amity, but part of me does wonder if it’s actually an intentional pattern. 

Since Luz’s tendency towards impatience was highlighted in Episode 2, but took a backseat in later episodes, I’m curious to see whether this trait will be explicitly addressed in future episodes, or if it will be something that leads Luz into trouble occasionally, but otherwise isn’t much of a problem. Everyone has traits like that, after all! 

[pridewon]

1. What is your favorite trope to rp? 13. Is there one trope you can’t stand? 20. Do you need music/noise to write or do you prefer silence?

waves around a giant foam finger to celebrate being a big fan of the pridewon blog idk if you've heard of it

@pontevoix (munday memes)

pridewho, never heard of ‘em, who’s that loser.

1. favourite trope to rp? okay here is the thing, i love tropes with all my heart, but mostly insofar as i’m allowed to play with them, and give them a lil twist (especially when it comes to romance-related tropes). with that being said, my top absolute favourite trope of all times is probably siblings with a strained relationship - which may or may not explain why i latched onto the miya twins like a feral kitten to be honest. bonus points added to the fact that they are twins, another trope that i love while simultaneously hating the whole mystification of twins in popular media, but the fact that the miya twins are not your typical, stereotypical “speak in unison and can read each other’s minds” twins, and that i have consistently had rp partners who were more than willing to embrace them as brothers who happened to be twin, rather than as a single entity (blows kisses to cassi and saturn my beloveds) made this dynamic my absolute favourite to write about on this blog. the big brother/sister trope (actual older sibling or found) is a very close second.

13. a trope i can’t stand? again, my main issue with tropes is when they are really tired and cliché and sometimes even problematic. the latter i flat out ban from my blog and don’t tolerate from myself or rp partners, the former... i try to avoid them (but no one’s perfect) and obviously everyone is allowed to do/like whatever they want/like! so i suppose it’s less tropes i can’t stand and more trope i’m not interested in. to name one, i suppose “unhppy character with a really sad and tragic backstory and you just keep adding to the horror again and again and again” which, after a while, kind of turns into a pity party and weird tragedy fest? like i get it, your character is sad and unhappy and had a rough life, but i always find it... kind of weird when people revel in it like “wow this character has already lost their entire family... what if i make them lose their friends in gruesome circumstances, and also their right arm and left leg and then they’re also betrayed by their s/o who then aLSO DIES and they get TORTURED and -- “ like okay, that’s a bit much for me mate. but then again - people are free to do what they wanna do, whatever floats their boat. it’s just not my cup of tea, an after experiencing a fair bunch of such rpers in a previous rp community, i would rather avoid it (thankfully it’s a very hard trope to justify in the haikyuu universe bhvf). 

20. music/noise or silence? it largely depends on when i write and what happened during the day. generally i like to have music while i write, but i also have sensory processing issues, that happen to be mostly of the auditory variety, so if i write after work during the week, i’m usually already in sensory overdrive from office sounds and discussions, and... “silence” is not really silence because the neighbours’ dogs/the birds outside/street noises/my laptop are providing background noise anyway. after a workday, that’s usually more than enough to keep me focused while not straining my last remaining braincells.

[icharchivist]

Can I just say, I really love this blog's reading of Lucifer and Belial as brothers or the Seven Dragons as siblings

I know they're not human and their relationships are very different to what humans would experience, but picturing them in this way brings me joy. Especially because sibling relationships can be complicated. I too would probably kill my sibling for slighting me, but I would also kill for them, y'know

Belial and Lucifer really fit this golden child and scapegoat child dynamic, Belial can do nothing right and Lucifer can do no wrong. I know it makes his feelings for Lucilius a bit incest-y, but it's only an approximation to help understand his desperate desire for love. Meanwhile Lucifer was really isolated by Lucilius' favoritism. It's a lot like those dynamics can play out irl

Also the mental image of the two of them doing sibling things like stealing food or ominously hovering in the doorway to the other's room is weirdly nice. I hope they get a chance to reconcile and do more stereotypical sibling things together

Same with the dragons. Picturing them as a large family, with Orologia the parentified beleaguered oldest who stepped up for their deadbeat dad and Lu Woh and Fediel as second in line having petty squabbles, with Galleon and Wilnas being the middle children, trying to find their place in the world and Wamdus and Ewiyar as the babies of the bunch who mostly just want to play, it just instantly adds a fun dynamic to them in my head and endears me to them

I guess I just really like applying sibling dynamics to incredibly powerful non-human creatures who literally control reality

omg nonny 🥺🥺

I'm so happy that this type of reading bring you so much joy!!! i love it so much too <333

Like obviously it's still mostly my interpretations and people are free to interpret them as anything else imo, and i do think it's important to remember that they're not mortal species and doesn't work by human reasoning.

But as for those dynamics in particular, i think they're so much more interesting to read as siblings to start with.

Because yeah, as you say, siblings relationship can be messy and complicated and there's not really a one shoe fit them all type of siblings dynamic, and i think there's a lot of dynamic that can be explored with those in particular.

you sum up perfectly why i read those dynamics as siblings honestly.

Belial and Lucifer really do have this dynamic of golden child/scapegoat child, for instance. And i think it's why i really want them to make up, down the line, in a perfect AU, despite the attrocities Belial put Lucifer through, because at this point the strain on their relationship comes from a tierce party and i do think they deserve to navigate those feelings with the proper understanding of it all.

For Belial's feelings for Lucilius, this is where i put the "obviously they're not humans so you can't fully put a human reasoning on their dynamics". Lucilius did create them but he wasn't a parent of any kind to them, and i do think that Belial's feelings can be as complicated as both romantic love, and the yearning for the love of your creator, without specifically being about the family love he could yearn for.

I do think this reading still exist in a thematic extend but it's in situation like that where i think it's really important to draw the line with how they're not human so yaknow! (esp with how in comparaison i don't think any of the angels really work with a "they're related" reading to this extend despite also being created by Lucilius. None of them have a deep affection to him to justify this reading, and meanwhile i wouldn't even read any of the other dynamics as siblinglike. Even the Tethraches give me more the impression that they're coworkers who eventually ended up liking each other enough that when their company closed down they kept in contact, but while they're probably close friends, i can't read them as a family. and especially not with their relationship with Lucifer with how high they put him in the hierarchy)

But still the stories of those two do have a lot of thematic of how it is to share the love of a parent, a creator, a person even, except that this "sharing" is not divided equitably (... as in, one gets everything, the other gets nothing). Those thematics are easier found in families, and in term of how it affects Belial and Lucifer i do think the reading of them as siblings really bring it closer to home, even if Lucilius' parental figure there is only thematic.

but god yeah i love the mental image of Belial and Lucifer just being petty siblings with bad blood in between them but clear love as well, so it's just. Constantly a sort of bickering or some type.

For the dragons, it's probably even more controversial to say since since they are more representation of concepts and stuff, but i do think that there is a reading there that creates such a compelling family dynamic once you put it into use. Exactly the one you describe. And i feel like it's not a conventional approach to depicting a family, but with it being such a big one, it's one i find really compelling. And i think especially with the dragons being this intricately linked to Bahamut, and resenting his abandon, it can echo MC's own search for their father, which also brings some interesting reading imo.

I do think it's a bit of case-by-case scenario, but those really works so well in that regard.

and i really do think the family dynamics that can be explored out of it are super interesting on their own rights, so i do tend not to go onto other possible readings.

I don't want to come out as "it's the only possible reading", but, yeah, with it being my blog, i can decide that this is the reading On My Blog At Least ahah

but i'm so glad you like it so much!! it makes me so happy to hear you're enjoying the madness <333

take care!!

[lillaskiten]

Hey everyone is coming in with their hot star wars take let me join in

Ok so rey and kylos forcebond is genuinely a compelling plot device for two characters on completely different sides with a tangled family history (especially in a series that looves to look at legacy) the thing is that we have two movies backing us up on the fact that kylo is a fucking monstrous asshole. Then we're to believe rey has fallen in love with him despite how he's treated her and the heinous things he did. Simply ludicrous. Sharing a head will make you feel for a person but that's not the same thing as love!

All I'm saying is kyle and rey should have been metaphorical siblings thank you for coming to my ted talk

[thespoonisvictory]

ok so firesnap made this very good post earlier today about the problems with niki and wilbur’s dynamic, and I have so much brain rot over it it’s getting it’s own separate post.

my general thesis for it is that I don’t mind niki having less going on as a character in s1, it’s that it’s not expanded on in s2 that’s the kicker.

In s1, even pre election, we get a lot more for Niki than is generally credited. Her relationship with Wilbur is central to her character, but that makes sense, because that’s her hook into the story: Wilbur wants her to join because they are friends. Cool! While it’s initially a bit awkward, their cc dynamic immediately gives a sense of warmth and closeness to their relationship that Wilbur doesn’t really have anywhere else. He’s close with Tommy, sure, but in a more mentor/sibling way, and it fleshes him out a bit more to see him bond with someone else. Leading up to the election, we also get more key traits of Niki’s character

1. She’s kind and compassionate, shown through her general demeanor, but also through the creation of her bakery and her deep care for Fungi.

2. She’s very independent, and doesn’t rely on others to form her opinions. We can see Wilbur is probably her closest friend, but she befriends Eret and basically demands that Wilbur be ok with it because it’s her choice, and literally runs against him in the election. It’s an interesting depth to her character that doesn’t really get brought up, and while it is related to Wilbur, it’s still individual development and characterization

3. She’s very vocal about her beliefs, even at a cost to her safety. She is the one to make the giant flag showing her alliegance, she is the one to be most vocal and aggressive towards Sapnap during the pet wars, she’s vocally against Schlatt before nearly anyone else.

None of this stuff is dependent on Wilbur, or is weakened without it. Wilbur is the catalyst for her joining, but her character is still well established without him and enriched with him. This isn’t your typical “woman only exists in the context of a man” to me, because, well, Niki is a strongly characterized firecracker of a character who has strong individual moments and arcs (in s1 at least...). 

Throughout Pogtopia, while there’s definitely room for her to do more, especially post festival, I’m not mad about her character then, either. We see strain placed on both Niki and Wilbur as he’s forced to leave her behind, her anger with her treatment under Schlatt, and her stress upon seeing Wilbur’s deterioration. We’re reminded that she’s close to Wilbur, and Wilbur’s kindness to her serves the narrative purpose of reminding us that he is very much still the same person from before, and maybe could be again. It’s not the show stopping arc that other characters have, but it isn’t trying to be. s1 is very much Wilbur’s story with other arcs added in, and Niki being less “important” doesn’t bother me.

What s1 is for Niki is good setup. It’s quite common in media for side characters to be introduced earlier in relation to main characters, and to be more strongly developed later. The best example I can think of is Nico Di Angelo from the Percy Jackson series, or Jaime Lannister from asoiaf. If you left Nico after the third/fourth book, or Jaime Lannister after the first, they would come off as incomplete and a bit one dimensional, but when they start to shine, they really start to shine. Jaime in particular comes off as a plain villain until we get his pov in the third book, and suddenly he’s getting development galore.

s1 sets Niki up perfectly for that: she’s got a strong personality, a set of beliefs and distinct worldview, and a close relationship to a key player who just died, not to mention the beginning of her building her Secret City to keep refugees safe. It could’ve included her more, for sure, but what’s there is a solid base.

In the beginning of s2, we have a Niki forming new relationships (Puffy, namely), navigating the world without her narrative crutch (Wilbur), and generally being in the perfect spot to begin coming into her own as a character, espeically with the Secret City stuff.��I’ve talked extensively about the opportunities for her character: being part of the egg arc, getting involved with Eret, being in the new l’manburg cabinet, actually exploring a spiral arc.

But instead, it’s all just... dropped. Call it cc!niki being busy, not being communicated with, etc etc, the fact of the matter is there. Niki as a character completely drops off, and has been kind of fumbling since to find her footing as a character. Unfortunately, that leaves her relationships with Wilbur as the only throughline of consistency, and suddenly Niki goes from a character who started off Wilbur-centric but was veering off in her own direction... back to Wilbur-centric again.

I don’t hate what’s shown! I think it could really work, but the issue is that Niki and Wilbur’s s1 relationship was never built up to carry Niki through three seasons, it was a catalyst for the existence of her character and a nice grounding bond for both of them to have. It’s not that the s1 stuff is bad, it’s that the follow up offered was never carried out, so instead of:

s1: Wilbur heavy with relationship to Niki in the background and s2: Niki heavy with relationship to Wilbur in the background

we get:

s1: Wilbur heavy with relationship to Niki in the background and s2: Niki’s barely there and it’s mostly central to Wilbur.

There’s something very sweet about the Wilbur Niki dynamic that really appeals to me. I like the way Niki’s confidence contrasts with Wilbur’s insecurity, the idea of loyalty to a place through a person, the intimacy of being the last person someone trusts and of course the concept wearing each other’s clothes. The festival scene alone is one of my favorites ever (just like the brain rot over Niki defending Wilbur on inauguration day vs him defending her at the festival... chefs kiss). It’s a good relationship that sets up Niki to be a strong solo character, as well as s1 lore in general setting her up. 

But that relationship never should have been the entirety of her character, and that’s why it feels lopsided. It all comes back to s2 failing to deliver on Niki as a character, but I don’t think it’s the fault of the Wilbur Niki interactions or dynamic

tl;dr: s1 Niki, and Wilbur and Niki’s relationship is good and should be kept, we just needed to add more solo Niki in later seasons

[blorbologist]

hmmm top 5 favourite cr campaign moments? 👀 from any campaign or from ur choice

!!

This is Long because I Cannot not gush

1) The Cathedral in Campaign 2! The fucking AESTHETICS, the DRAMA, Caleb smashing the window, Yasha nearly killing Beau, Pumat Swole, the shift from glorious cathedral and stained glass down into the bowls of the building, Matt and Ashley's HDYWTDT. It's beautiful and hits so emotionally hard and I simply adore it

2) All of The Fancy and the Fooled, but lets say the party + After especially. Fancy formal dress Mighty Nein is Divine, for one! The Bjreaus jamming out to the Ruby of the Sea's performance while Beau trips balls, locking out the creepy fuck on a balcony 2 electric boogaloo, the maneuvering to get Essek out of there and confront him, and the incredible Shakespeare Liam fuckin OBrian brought when Essek was finally cornered? "You were not born with venome in your veins, you learned it"??? Hi hello?? And ofc Welcome to the Mighty Nein ;;;;;

Also, Fancy and the Fooled was the first episode I ever caught live, and I watched it with @insyndiar, so itll also be special to me for that reason <33

3) The conversation with Syldor in Heredity and Hats. Everything - Laura fuckin Bailey's incredible emotional range, "If I could pull the blood of you from my veins and give it back, I would. I want no part of you", the contrast between Vax and Vex, how Tal tests the waters for titling at intervals prior during the conversation, The Title, "So good sir, despite your relationship with her, do watch your manners", the Literal Mic Drop. The meaning of the moment too, with the Twins confronting their father and letting him have it, and how it ties into Percy and Vex's convo the night before and he found just the perfect way to support Vex in this time (and show he loves her because Oh Shit he Loves Her). And how giddy she is to bring up her new title for the rest of the episode!!

Ok this is getting hard now Fuck

4) Can I just put all the moments between Imogen and Laudna after storm nightmares here? Hell lets include those nightmares, too. The panic and fear and frustration Laura brings to the table, every time, every fucking time, the imagery, the desperation. And how Laudna is so gentle and supportive and just *there* and their dynamic is so soft and strained and im. So excited for Imogen's first nightmare after their fallout last episode because i love them but they need a dose of Angst

5) The Hag. Just. What everyone offered, how much we can speculate about those that didn't get to offer anything? Beau had me devastated, because she was regressing and Marisha was so cmearly mourning potentially losing her character,,,, Yasha going in right after Beau bc she just realized she loved her not long ago, NOTT OFFERING TO RESTART THE WAR?? FUCKER?? And of course Jester's incredible fucking power play because Laura Bailey wins at D&D

Honorable mentions:

- Saying bye to Frumpkin :c because my childhood cat was a white tomcat and he just left one day (keep your cats inside people please). I started bawling 30 minutes into the 7 hour episode boy it was A Time

- Nonagon final battle, just. Holy shit. Everything. Marine layer, Beau's double nat twenties, 'Caleb they need you', almost got a mind controlled Essek, the heals the love the fear the horror visuals ughhh

- Kaylie revealing her identity and Scanlan's reaction

- 'darling take off the mask' 👁👄👁

- the escape from the King's Cage

- inviting Essek for dinner and the hot tub

- "do you want to talk before or after"

- Sunken Tomb :))

- Jester wingmanning Yasha / Beau tripping on Yasha / The Poem

- I could beee herrrr Beacon

- Vex testing out the broom (especially when Percy freaks out over it being unsafe)

- Wall of Fire

- Three orcas chasing Avantika

- Keg <33

- when Beau and Caleb act like siblings, or Vex and Vax do <3

@fatal-blow fuck u <3

[whatgaviiformes]

Fic: Firefly’s Glow - Part 5/?

Chapter 1: Part 1 | Part 2 Chapter 2: Part 3 | Part 4   Chapter 3: Part 5 You are Here From the Beginning: FF | AO3 Summary: Imprisoned by the Hood, Gordon dreams of his oldest brother and of fireflies - but of course the Hood had to steal that memory too, in addition to his baldric, his boots, and Virgil’s face. What else could he possibly steal? He discovers the answer is quite a bit, and Gordon has to learn to navigate his new world, its new dangers, and the overbearing presence of his brothers’ desire to help what they can’t fix.

This part ~ 905 words - Enter Virgil, stage right. 

——————

“Gordon’s alive.”

Two words. But the best two goddamn words Virgil had ever heard in his life. Relief surged through his tense muscles and the grip around his heart loosened, though the knots in his shoulders remained with the reminder of the agonizing hell of the past few hours. Timed with precision, he raised his left hand for his co-pilot’s high five.

It was a beat later than usual.

Right, he remembered, because it was Alan and not Gordon beside him.

“What happened?” Virgil demanded. “Is he alright?” There was something in the way that Scott spoke, a timbre that he couldn’t quite place.  It wasn’t fury or fear – but it was something. “Are you alright?”

“What? Yeah, I’m fine.” Scott replied. “Uh - he’s alive and standing. But… Virg, can you hurry? We need you.”

That sounded worrisome. “Scott?”

“Just get here.”  The comms went dead, intentionally that time. So, he did what any other worried brother would do. He listened, pushing Thunderbird Two just that bit beyond her limits to get to his siblings.

Thunderbird Two tore over Montana where the Rocky Mountains dipped into wide-open plains. The ranch, as it came into view, looked innocent enough. But just as their own Gran Roca home had a hidden belly of bunkers for their equipment testing, John and EOS had already run scans on the farm area to reveal the labyrinth of tunnels and chambers below the surface.

He warned his siblings accordingly. The site was more than met the eye.

Keeping a wary eye out for movement around the main house, Virgil landed his steadfast girl near to her agile sister.  Then, he and Alan scrambled out of their seats to meet up with Scott and figure out what the hell was going on.

Scott was waiting for them outside the landing zone of Two, but nearby enough to bound over as they stepped foot onto the grassy flatlands. And he appeared to be alone.

Virgil knew the strain in Scott’s face as well as he knew his own paints tubes and could read which expressions were focus, which were stress, and which had the names Virgil, John, Gordon, and Alan written in tension lines (he was self-aware enough to know he definitely was included in that list). This was… different, as strange as the tone earlier, and the fear in his gut coiled painfully tighter from the not-knowing.

“Where’s Gordon?”

Alan grabbed him by the arm. “Virg-”

But his eyes were undeterred in their query for a clue in Scott’s face, meeting an unfamiliar dullness to those electric blues as they flicked downward – not to avert, but with a request to follow.  

Oh f–

 Virgil inhaled sharply and felt Alan’s grip tighten around his forearm.

“Gordon!”

Well, it was better than the alternative - in that anything would be better than the fact that five minutes ago they all thought Gordon was dead. The pulse in Scott’s carotid visibly throbbed, and now that Virgil was looking, it was obvious there was a stiffened tilt in his neck to give Gordon more room as he tucked himself in closer, clutching onto Scott’s uniform collar like it was the only thing keeping him standing.

“Oh man, G!” Alan exclaimed. “Who’s the short stuff now?”

“Alan,” Scott started, about to tell him off.

Gordon interrupted at nearly the same time, his voice inexplicably diminutive for his usually dynamic personality. “Still you, Sprout.”

Scott explained the circumstances around how he found Gordon, filling in details from what Gordon told him earlier of the story around his capture.  Virgil growled low in his throat, getting angrier the more he found out about the ordeal. He hated this; hated what this man had done to his family.

“How do we fix this?”

“We need to know what he was injected with,” John advised. “Gordon? Anything you can tell us?”

He shrugged. “It was blue. It hurt when I was hit with it, but that could’ve been the force of the dart. It knocked me out after.”

“We need Havoc to tell us.” Scott exclaimed. “Kayo, you here? I knocked Havoc out and secured her around the side of the house. Maybe she’s knows-”

“I’m here, Scott,” came Kayo’s voice. “But I’m afraid Havoc is not.” In that moment, the rumble of take-off reached their ears. The Chaos Cruiser darted into the sky away from them.

Hope fled as quickly as it came, and for a beat comms were quiet and the world still.

John sighed but was the first to break the painful silence. “Scott, Kayo, we should still search the facility. See what you can find.”

“FAB. Stay where you are, Kayo, and I’ll meet you. Virgil, can you-”

“I got him, Scott. Go.” Virgil leaned in and reached out for his brother.  “Come on, Gordo, I’d like to take a look at your injuries.”

“What about me?” Alan called out beside him, directing the question to Scott.

It was Gordon who answered. “Come with us, Al. Save me from how boring Virgil is in doctor mode.”

It would’ve been a normal Gordon comment under normal circumstances, the typical brotherly rub that he’d heard many times over and would not have thought twice about. But these were not normal circumstances.

This time, it triggered Virgil’s own version of Squid sense. Something – well everything – was off with Gordon.  

Because when Virgil had reached for his brother, Gordon had hesitated

End Note - if you haven’t seen yet @godsliltippy​ made some amazing artwork of last chapter - here, and it’s so perfect. Go give it, and her, some love.

[gisellelx]

Faces

Carlisle x Esme 2200 words

for @needahugfromesme

Faces

Fall, 1934 Amherst, MA

It was an utterly ordinary afternoon. Rosalie and Edward had recently returned from university, and the sounds of their bickering rose up the stairs. Why the two of them did not find their peace elsewhere, she didn’t know. She might send them off to hunt, she thought. Perhaps in different counties.

Yet there was something familiar about the way the two of them had fallen into rhythm as siblings. Edward, older and younger brother at once. Rosalie, full of disastrously-won wisdom and always aggrieved, unwilling to listen to Edward’s point of view. There was no sign that they would ever be the partners Esme’s husband had once imagined, hoping that a woman might solve the same hole in Edward’s heart that Esme herself had solved in his. And yet there was a camaraderie in their arguments and insults, a rhythm to their family dynamic that somehow made it more whole. They were true siblings—occasionally quietly bonded over the latest news from Chevrolet, more often sniping like children about closed bedroom doors.

Carlisle, though—he was more difficult. Rosalie had snapped at him before he’d left for work. Her resentment knew no bounds, exacerbated by the knowledge that even in his moment of profoundly foolish savior-complex, he had been thinking of Edward, and the pain that still burned in his own heart, two years after their prodigal son had returned…

Esme wasn’t sure Rosalie would ever forgive him.

She wasn’t sure Rosalie should.

Her husband didn’t know how to relate to a daughter, Esme understood. His son had completed him so fully—unlocking with his gift the centuries of solitude which made Carlisle Cullen who he was. Like everything of importance Carlisle did, he had turned Rosalie it rashly, without regard to her effects on anyone else.

Rosalie was just strong enough to force him to pay the price for that.

Esme recalled her husband’s slumped shoulders as he exited the house after the latest round of berating from his daughter. The look in his eyes of utter defeat.

“She’ll cool off,” Esme had whispered to him hours before, but she hadn’t—as usual, she had taken her discomfort out on Edward. And as Esme listened to the voices reaching a fever pitch downstairs—a back and forth which grew increasingly intense but did not reach a point where she needed to intervene—she selected charcoal, her hand flying across the paper on her easel before she even knew what she was beginning. As so many times before, it was her husband’s face her fingers brought to mind. She had drawn him how many dozens of times in the ten years between the time she had met him and when she had awoken to this new life. The high cheekbones, the square jaw, the singular lock of utterly unruly hair at his temple which seemed to exist only to prove that there were some things Carlisle Cullen could never control. She had forced herself to recall those features over and over, to render them in more permanent forms—charcoal, pencil, oil pastel. Over and over she had drawn him until his face had been committed not only to the memory of her mind but also the memory of her fingers.

She had never planned to have a daughter. She had known, somehow, from the moment she felt the first strange sensation in her abdomen. Not a kick or a flutter or any of the things that her girlfriends had told her to expect, but instead as though some of her internal organs simply…flipped over. She had touched her own belly in awe, and had known right then, without thinking, that it was a male child. Perhaps a daughter would have softened her husband, but she knew, somehow, that a male child was in greater danger. That he would not be protected; that he would be pushed, that the expectation upon his barely-formed shoulders would be impossible. It had been that conviction that had put her on the Great Lakes train, whisked her to a state she’d never seen before,  and which later drove her from her cousin’s to the very northern tip of the country.

Then her son had been born, with his tiny squalling body and his perfect smell, only to be ripped away fewer than two days later. And she had reached out in despair and found not her son, but the gentle face she had sketched for  a decade, staring down at her.

Today, as she laid out the roughest of her husband’s familiar form, Esme was not fully aware that somehow, she had softened the beautiful severity of his cheekbones, that she had added subtle curvature to the sharpness of his jaw. But she had done so, and it wasn’t Carlisle’s face which was emerging.

It had been an entire year, now, that their family of three had been a family of four. And a scant single score of years that the hardened bachelor and his beloved son had welcomed any feminine presence into their lives. She had worried about being a bother to them both, and she knew, that sometimes, she was—the way Edward’s eyes would narrow from time to time, the way Carlisle shadowed him when he was upset.

And so she tried. She tried to reach to Rosalie. She tried to bridge the shared elements of their past, only to be met with the coldest of shoulders. This family, Rosalie seemed to say, was the world of the men. Rose hated Carlisle for his hubris, hated Edward for his gift, and if she didn’t hate Esme, it was only for Esme’s shared experience of these two things.

So, as she thought of her daughter, listened to bickering give way to quiet conversation, and then to silence, and then to the gentle chords of a sonata, the cheekbones softened, the jawbone became subtler, the high forehead became heart-shaped with a widow’s peak. The nose became thinner, the lips softer, and the single unruly lock of golden hair became dozens, spilling onto shoulders which sloped more gently.

It was difficult for vampires to get fully lost in work, and so she heard when the front door open and close. Edward was still playing, and wherever Rose had moved to—her bedroom, if the distance to her scent was to believed—she was quiet. So Esme knew that her husband was home even before she heard a briefcase drop gently to the floor and before the waft of smoked cinnamon made its way to her nose. She had a split-second to consider this fact before warm lips had buried themselves where her neck met her collarbone.

“What are you drawing,” her husband muttered, and she shook her head.

“Nothing.”

“It’s never nothing.” He stepped back and appraised the easel, reaching out with one hand. She laid down her charcoal and smacked his arm playfully.

“It isn’t nothing. But I’m not finished yet. Go bother the children.”

He sighed. “They’re fighting.”

“They’ve been fighting all afternoon. It’s quieter, now.”

Her husband chuckled, pressing his lips to her neck again. “I apologize for leaving you alone all day with that.”  

She shook her head. “Edward plays impromptus when he’s angry with Rose. It’s good background.” It had been Fauré , today—the impossibly fast descending scales across the keyboard, sounding like water. Esme had never bothered to learn the details of classical music before, but now it was impossible not to—she marveled at times at the way her mind was able to store the names of styles and composers and even the actual beats of the music itself. She hadn’t cared, before, but with Edward, it became a thing about which one cared. To love Edward was to love his piano, and that meant that all of them learned to understand it.

“Give me another half-hour?” she asked.

Her husband nodded, kissing her neck again and then disappearing. The piano stopped mid-phrase, and she heard only one-sided murmurs which told her that Carlisle and Edward were engaged in one of their desperately intimate conversations. If she strained, she could hear them, no doubt, but she chose not to, letting her hand bring shape to the face whose provenance she now understood. She kept the long eyelashes, and the light-hued eyes. She made the lips ever so slightly fuller, and drew the slightest hint of a bosom at the bottom of the page.

It was longer than a half hour before Carlisle returned. From the subtle addition to his scent, it seemed likely he had been sitting with Edward at the piano, having one of their near-silent conversations. Edward could read Carlisle’s mind, of course, but after a decade and a half, it often seemed that Carlisle could read Edward’s almost as surely. They often sat in silent companionship, Edward plying, Carlisle listening, bonded by their thoughts and impenetrable by either Rosalie or Esme.

Carlisle kissed her before even bothering to look at the easel. She let herself fall into the kiss, the way her husband’s supple lips moved against her own. It was only several minutes later that he seemed to remember what he had intended to inquire after, and pulled away to appraise the drawing. His head cocked to one side as he gazed at it, his mouth falling open slightly in recognition.

He had revealed this sad fact in their very first conversation. She, half-delirious from the laudanum, he, trying bravely to keep his demeanor professional. Yet she recalled it with her hazy, opiate-influenced human memory, nearly with the same crystal clarity that he did. As she’d asked after his name, and after receiving his title, asked his first name, which he had, to his own surprise, volunteered.

“I’ve never met a Carlisle before,” she’d told him, and he’d only smirked.

“Nor I an Esme. One wonders why you are not a Mary, or a Margaret.”

And she’d returned his smile and his gentle banter. She had inquired where the unusual name had come from, and he had answered that perhaps it was his mother’s maiden name, and then she had asked after his mother, eliciting the same pained, faraway look that graced his features now as he explained how and when she had died...

“Not knowing what your father looked like,” Esme offered as he stared silently, “I wasn’t sure which of your features to subtract, but…”

The gulp was audible. “No,” her husband said quietly, “I imagine this is about right.” Another deep swallow, then: “What brought this on?”

She shrugged. “I’m not even sure myself.” Involuntarily, her right hand opened and closed, feeling the ghost of the charcoal still in her fingers. She sighed.

“Rosalie,” she said quietly.

Carlisle shot her a quizzical look.

“I suppose I was thinking about Rosalie. And how you left with her still angry.”

There were two stools in her studio, one before each easel, both unnecessary in the strictest sense, but they encouraged the right posture for sweeping her arm across wide paper or canvas. Carlisle pulled the second one near her and sat down, his lips suddenly pressed tight.

“She hates me,” he muttered.

Esme nodded. “Sometimes, yes. You don’t always make it easy for her.”

He thrust a hand into his hair, and the unruly lock fell through his fingers. When he spoke again, his voice was clipped with frustration. “I just want her to be happy.”

“You can’t force people to be happy, Carlisle.”

To her surprise, he chuckled. “You’d think that after what happened with Edward, I’d know that.”

She laughed in answer. Two years on, their mercurial son was beginning to recover from his shame and anger. Gentler songs came from the piano more often than not, and every now and then, even an original composition. Slowly, month by month, arpeggio by arpeggio, he was coming back to them.

“I suppose…” she began. When she hadn’t finished her sentence a moment later, Carlisle prodded.

“You suppose?”

She gestured. She had drawn the woman with the same tired but indulgently kind eyes her husband had. Eyes that suggested that whatever the person being looked on was wont to do, they would be forgiven. They would be loved.

“You have a daughter now,” she said gently. “I thought it might be helpful for you to remember that once, you had a mother, too.”

Her husband’s thin lips pressed together even more tightly, and she saw his adam’s apple move yet again. She stood up, brushing the charcoal off her fingertips against her skirt as she leaned in to kiss his cheek. She laid a hand on his shoulder briefly, then went down the stairs.

It was nearly two hours of listening to the piano later, watching Rosalie read and pretend not to care what Edward was playing, before Esme bothered to creep back up to her studio. The door was still open a crack, and the air was still thick with the smoked cinnamon that was her husband’s scent as she peeked inside.

Carlisle sat alone in the utter dark, his legs crossed, the moonbeams shading in through the window making his skin a translucent blue white as he gazed up into the portrait’s kind, pale eyes. Slowly, his hand crept from his side to reach out, the pad of his finger tracing the jawline she had sketched. And then it hung there, index finger outstretched, as though it was not the strong, assured hand of a surgeon but the beseeching hand of a child, reaching, desperately, across space and time.

Quietly, Esme pulled the door closed and went to find her daughter.

[that-was-anticlimactic]

kai from tlok or hakoda, maybe even bumi ii?

hello, my beloved :) jeg siger undskyld (i apologize in danish) for the uh. belated response. work got uh. a lot. and then i got far too invested in sds for my own good anD THEN I MOVED lol aNYWAYS here's all of them as a treat:)

kai

how i feel about this character: i absolutely adore him. i think he has a lot of really good moments--especially when everyone thought he was dead but then he wasn't and rather than saving himself, he risked his life to save the people who, essentially, saved him from a rough life on the streets. not to mention that this was probably the first time they realized people cared about them. like, the group was so happy to see that he was alive, and before he joined the air acolytes, he probably didn't have anyone who would have mourned them. he shows so much courage and passion when he gets invested in something and i love them for it.

all the people i ship romantically with this character: kainora my beloved !!! and like shipping him with pretty much anyone but jinora and maybe ikki would be. weird and kinda gross tbh. but he and jinora balance each other out yet aren't afraid to encourage the other and have fun together and that's just. that's so good.

my non-romantic otp for this character: mako and kai !!! like... they both have a lot to learn from each other and i love them for that. it's after mako realizes that bolin is old enough to take care of himself, he fixates on kai as his younger sibling to try and make up for that and to feel needed and able to protect someone because he sees bits of his younger self in kai. and it's kai showing mako that he doesn't always need to be the big brother, that he can depend on other people but also loving having an older brother figure and not knowing how to process that so they act out because that's all they've ever known... it's messy and weird but it's them and their odd sibling-esc relationship and i love it<3

my unpopular opinion about this character: idk if this qualifies as unpopular but demiboy he / they kai rights !!!

one thing i wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: i wish we got more backstory for him--like, that we learned more about his life as a child and that they explored the mako and kai sibling-esc relationship more but's it's all good--i can always headcanon :)

~

hakoda

how i feel about this character: hakoda my beloved !!! ngl, at first i didn't like hakoda because he seemed like the perfect person for awhile--swt chief loved by everyone, best warrior ever, can do no wrong... and that bothered me a lot when i first watched the show two years ago ??? anywas, i love he now. he's a good dad and the love he has for his kids is extraordinary and heartwarming and i love it and him<3

all the people i ship romantically with this character: bato !!! sometimes i forget that bakoda isn't canon... like... genuinely i forget that it's a fannon ship. that is how deeply i ship bakoda.

kyoda is obviously wonderful too! bakoda just holds a special place in my heart. but i wish we got more kyoda scenes in flashbacks or something because they were adorable.

my non-romantic otp for this character: hakoda & sokka, hakoda & katara are my two biggest ones. i mean,,, that reunion hug at the end of boiling rock ??? like,,, yes that family is everything to me. plus, as much as i love the possibility for great dynamics and healing with hakoda being a father figure to zuko, there are more fics under the tag 'hakoda & zuko' than there are with both watertribe siblings which is just. very sad. so i feel like zuko's possible relationship with him gets more attention than hakoda with his kids. like... don't get me wrong, i love the hakoda and zuko dynamics... but like. sokka and katara...

also hakoda and toph. i feel like they'd get along really well and would be too powerful for this world.

my unpopular opinion about this character: that... hmmm... idk if i have an unpopular opinion about him... yeah, i can't think of any oihgvhj

one thing i wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: i wish we had more scenes with hakoda and his kids, but that's me being greedy. i also wish canon would just admit that bakoda is canon already p l e a s e they !!!

~

bumi ii

how i feel about this character: oh boy, where do i staRT !!! i love bumi ii. he is my 1.5 favorite lok character and i absolutely adore him. i wish we got more of him--i do. and that is me being greedy because i think we got more of him than kya ii, but still. he is everything i love in a character--feels useless compared to the others because he can't bend, feeling disconnected an unimportant in his own family because they're all super powerful benders and he's just... he's just bumi ii, the nonbender. acting out for attention because, at this point, even negative attention is better than constantly being overshadowed. and despite the resentment he may feel towards his siblings for being "better" and "more important" than he is, he's still a big brother at heart and would do / sacrifice anything for them.

all the people i ship romantically with this character: no one !!! bumi ii is aroace thank you and goodnight <3

my non-romantic otp for this character: bumi ii & izumi. i just,,, i just feel like they would get along so well??? like. i cannot describe it, but in the gaang's kids crew, they are the best friends. izumi is one of the first people he comes out to as aroace and bumi ii is the first person izumi comes out to as nonbinary. they find solace and peace in each other and understand parts of the other that no one really understands.

bumi ii & sokka also. they have so much in common and they deserve to be besties. bumi ii needs reassurance from someone who understand being the resident nonbender, and sokka needs someone who recognizes and verbalizes that he's amazing and someone worthy of looking up to.

also, naturally, bumi ii & his family. i mean, the sibling relationship was a bit strained, but the three care about each other so much even though they don't get along well. bumi ii is used to looking out for them and taking the blame if kya ii or tenzin did something bad because he wants to protect his siblings the best he can and he may not have magic bending powers, but he can do this. and bumi ii's relationship with aang and katara is definitely better than how they made it seem in the show--change my mind. aang may accidentally give tenzin more attention due to, ya know, airbending, but there is quite simply no way that aang or katara would ever neglect a child as much as the show made it seem. the kataang parents are good parents and i stand by that.

my unpopular opinion about this character: bumi ii has tourette's !!! he got it from his uncle sokka and actually, i headcanon that he actually doesn't curse or say vulgar things a lot because he has some form of coprolalia and always has to curse / say vulgar things against his will, so he does his best not to curse if he isn't being forced. also aroace bumi ii rights.

one thing i wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: i so desperately wish that bumi ii had tourette's in canon... y'all have no idea... i also hate the way that the show had him join the military like ??? that's just weird and i just. did not like it that much ??? so i wish it happened differently. no. you know how i wish it happened? since he has coprolalia, he struggled to find jobs willing to hire him. the other sailors didn't care that sometimes he yelled inappropriate things--it didn't matter to them.

and, lastly, may i suggest reading never been in love (and it's all good) by my bestie @zukkaclawthorne ! it is an aro bumi ii fic about him coming out and it's the content we don't deserve but cherish <3

[becasbelt]

okay I know different headcanons get thrown around all the time about beca and chloe's respective family dynamics and relationships, but have we yet considered:

beca coming from a broken home, dad having walked out on them when she was just a kid, leaving her and her mother to become two sarcastic and emotionally unavailable women who throw themselves into seperate fixations- beca with her music and her mother with her job.

yet despite this, beca's parents know everything about beca; there are no secrets. they know exactly what she wants to do with her life (even if her father doesn't approve initially), what kind of shit she got up to in high school, that she's gay. beca feels absolutely no need to lie to her parents, and for the most part they accept her for as she is.

chloe, on the other hand, having a fantastic relationship with her family and essentially having everything that someone like beca has never known: happy and stable parents, siblings that chloe talks to frequently, a support system that she could fall back onto if she ever had to move back home.

it seems that way on the outside, but that's only because chloe has had years of ignoring her reality.

chloe's parents love having their perfect family, the family that everyone looks at and thinks, "that's the kind of family that I want to have." as a result, chloe's family isn't the most... genuine one.

there are so many secrets between chloe and her parents that it gives her anxiety having any kind of conversation with them, lest she let information slip by accident. they don't know that she went to school halfway across the country so that she could be her own person, they don't know the real reason why she stayed in school so long (she earned a second degree as her explanation for that), and they definitely don't know that she was attracted to women because heaven forbid they find out she isn't the picturesque daughter they had always envisioned her to be.

to chloe it's amazing how casually beca's family act with one another, even if it's sometimes strained. because even if beca's family doesn't function like a normal family, it still feels more authentic than what she's grown up with all her life.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

what are your top ten favorite things from ANf? this ones a toughie.

Oof, okay, sure. Top 10 favorite things about ANF... I can think of 10 things, uhhh...:

10. Tripp vs. Ava

Yeah, I know-- why would I put this on a favorites list? Well, because it’s actually pretty good, and what I mean by this is I enjoy the twist of it all. 

This isn’t the first vs choice we’ve been presented within this series. In s1, we had to pick between Carley and Doug, and whoever we didn’t pick died. In s2, we had to pick between Jane and Kenny, and whoever we didn’t pick died. 

So when we get to ANF, you’re thinking that this is just another situation where whoever you pick will live while the other one will die. But then Joan’s like “Haha gotcha bitch” and murders the one you pick to live. It’s a slap in the face and I love it. 

Though it does kind of suck that Joan is literally the most boring antagonist in twdg. This is the only interesting thing she pulls, but at least it’s a good one. 

9. Javi and Gabe’s father/son relationship

This one is so low on the list because there was still a lot to be desired with this relationship, but what we did get was enjoyable. I know Gabe gets a lot of shit but his relationship with Javi is really nice and I wish they had focused on it some more. 

Like when they’re breaking in to steal the group guns and Javi’s giving Gabe a bunch of advice on who to trust and it’s super good! Or when Gabe tells Javi that he wants to be like him?? that he sees Javi as a father figure?? It left me wanting more! Why focus on the dumb shit with Kate when you could focus on Gabe and Javi’s relationship and growth??

8. Ava knocking Tripp down on his ass with a single punch

Ava is my queen. Her knocking the beast of a man known as Tripp down with a single punch is my favorite thing. 

I just... what else is there to say? 

7. Muh boy Conrad

I love Conrad so much as a character, but I also love the fact that there are so many opportunities to get him killed... which I realize is an odd thing to say about a character I enjoy, but I like it because it’s different than anything twdg has done. 

I do get why I a lot of people don’t save him because of the situation with Clem, Gabe, and Javi..... but I’m willing to keep him alive to finish his arc rather than kill him off. Even if Gabe and Clem are all pissy at me afterward. 

Also, javirad is OTP but y’know. 

6. Tripp and Javi’s bromance

What can I say? I love a good bromance, and these two got it. If I can’t have an actual romance between these two, I’ll settle for a bromance. I enjoy the talk they have about romance and love, it’s super sweet. And I love their dynamic and chemistry. Super good... until Tripp fucking dies but that’s the way these things tend to go. 

5. Multiple button presses

Auuuuuughhhhh I love multiple button presses. ANF did it perfectly with the buttons appearing on the actual walkers and I love it. I wish TFS had kept more of these in, but they only had one at the end when AJ stabs a walker a bunch of times in the barn. 

Yeah, it’s a bit dumb but I don’t care. I get a strange joy out of the multiple button presses. Don’t judge. 

4. David Garcia

Yeah, I know... not a lot of people love David and I get it, but damn it, he’s a bitch and I love him. 

I love him as an antagonistic character, his voice acting is terrific, he has so many compelling moments... I just wish ANF wasn’t a mess so it could’ve given David the total treatment he deserved.

I enjoyed the strained sibling relationship he has with Javi [most of the time] but GOD they really ruin it by throwing Kate into the mess. If they took Kate out of the equation, we could’ve had a story about two brothers reconnecting in a broken world while dealing with a corrupt community and taking care of Gabe and Mariana. 

But no. Sigh. 

Anyway, David’s a jerk but I like him anyway. 

3. Multiple endings 

Yeah, I like that there’s many different endings depending on what Clementine you get and who you choose to go after. I usually have Clementine come with me to get David and Gabe, which results in Kate getting killed and turning into a walker, but there are way more endings that it. I like that. 

I mean, why not give it multiple endings if you’re never gonna revisit these characters, y’know? 

2. The opening of ep1

Despite what a mess it is, ANF has the greatest opening in the entire series. Everything about it is perfect-- introducing us to Javier, finding out that his father is dead and he wasn’t around, David’s anger, his father turning into a walker and a baby Mariana wanting to bring him a cup of water, them discovering their father before he attacks..... every thing is SO DAMN GOOD.

It’s actually insane that it’s this good, because the rest of it is a mess. 

1. Javier Garcia 

Surprised? Well, you shouldn’t be. Javi’s my favorite character to come out of ANF and he’s a fantastic playable character. I love Javier Garcia more than he loves pudding, and that’s saying something. 

He’s entertaining, he loves his family, he’s strong and good with a bat, he’s got great hair, and he’s so damn likable. Oh, and bisexual. He’s canonically bisexual and that’s neat. 

We don’t talk about Javi enough. We should fix that.