#like just factually a man I haven't been on speaking terms with since I was seventeen has no leg to stand on whatsoever wrt to what I have

[agnesandhilda]

my father is an olympic gold medalist in the sport of emotionally tormenting women

[winterywitch]

I just want to say that I really admire the depth you put into your OC's and your confidence in talking about them! I'd like to learn more about them, but I'm on mobile and it isn't letting me search the tags, so... are there any W@tchtower Grotto characters you haven't talked much about that you'd want to talk about?

oh!! ;-; gee thank you.......................

uhhhhhhh gee idk why but it feels like i dont have an actual comprehensive post on who/what nana actually is bc most of my friends know him very well already? so here’s that

hes like... early 30s?? in terms of appearance/maturity, hes the godking of the country in midnight

nana is uh... certainly a rebel at his core thats one way to put it, a lot of core things about him for better or for worse challenge the status quo. he thinks this is a good thing 100% of the time, like he’s some kind of radical rebelling against an oppressive norm on every single norm he challenges. (its not)

he is RIDICULOUSLY people-smart, hes likely an empath and could easily be called a genius when it comes to reading people and understanding how people tend to work.

if he were a dnd character he’d be a sorceror, he casts from charisma not intelligence [though he is certainly NOT lacking in that department]

hes definitely considered the leader of his little commune of kings [involving desiderius, hachi and kyuun], those three tend to defer to him and seek him out for advice [well. they mostly Used to now its just hachi that does that last part]

he sees himself as a teacher and guide to people, which isnt inaccurate necessarily!

hes very good to his people, his country as a whole is doing pretty well financially, there’s a vibe there of everyone taking care of one another! not to mention the fact that its lovely visually

he’s right about most things and he’s comfortably aware of the fact that he’s right about most things. but hes open to being corrected! he cant possibly be right about everything ALL the time!! he just has to consider you an authority on what youre talking about, which is something he very rarely considers other people to be, or he might just ignore your correction. but sometimes he wont, which makes you feel kinda silly for pointing out his tendency for hypocrisy! how confusing. it’s hard to keep up with this one.

he, like all of his colleagues minus desiderius, thinks he is the only Good King while all the others are complete messes who dont know what theyre doing or are just flat out bad people. but like, yknow, its a fucked up dysfunctional family! that’s totally normal, right??1/11

something about him just makes you think “theres a guy who knows his shit,” its probably his sturdy [outward] confidence, his [appearance of] wisdom, his [very real] intelligence and his long list of supporters that make you think that about him

his hair is weird as shit! there are ‘stars’ in it that glow, not BLINDINGLY bright but i mean yknow, they do glow, and where theyre embedded in his hair theres increased physical sensitivity. pulling on this guy’s hair fucking HURTS, even petting it can be uncomfortable if youre not really really careful. not to mention a fucking haircut, good lord (haha)

his parents were kind of like... very emotionally shallow, they were the sorts of people to be like Oh I’m Fine ^_^ at everything, and in subtle and hard-to-detect ways, they would punish nana for showing emotion of any kind (for example, laughing at him when he would cry at sad things as a child). because of this, he is now very open about his emotions and embraces them as something he should listen to and follow rather than only relying on cold logic as his parents tried to have him do. (its a lot more sinister in practice than it sounds, because yeah most of the time it is innocent like this but at the same time, he takes his own feelings VERY seriously and if you hurt them, even if it’s just by having boundaries, he will identify you as someone mistreating him or even abusing him depending on how close you are]

[heres where we get into The Shit, big tw for abuse, csa/pedophilia and “marital” sexual abuse/assault]

his closest friend and advisor arya kurosawa has been his best friend since they were both teenagers. they met when arya was 14 and nana was 17 [in terms of appearance/maturity are what those ages refer to, they were both immortal] and they got along very well.

of course by very well i mean on top of getting along very well, nana has ALWAYS had an inherent, base-level disrespect for arya’s boundaries. it’s been there since they were teens, and it mostly manifested in nana pressuring arya to do [mostly innocent - but the pressure and coercion made them not so innocent] things he was scared to do.

they were inseparable pretty much ever since they met and VERY, very in love with each other

they definitely were a romantic item by the time nana inherited the throne from his mother, and the age gap was definitely concerning but it only grew more concerning as nana’s mental/appearance age rose because he was growing up emotionally and psychologically and arya’s... stagnated.

when nana was in his early 30s so to speak, arya was stuck at 14-15 or so. and like... they didnt really see anything weird about that, they figured “well we both met when we were kids so its not like nana is a pedophile or anything, why question something so good?”

to someone who didnt know better wrt age gaps in romantic relationships and pedophilia, the relationship between those two would have looked completely normal and healthy. there was certainly an appearance of mutual respect, support, love and commitment

nana could only treat a 14-15 year old so much like his equal. to be totally honest, even since they were teenagers, nana treated arya like his inferior, like a student that needed to be taught, and that dynamic only grew/got worse as nana aged mentally.

but at the same time arya also taught nana so many things! see? nana wasn’t some condescending prick! obviously everything is fine. there were a lot of ways sometimes in which ARYA was the adult and nana was the child ^_^ so it’s equal, right?

arya certainly didnt know any better, nana was the love of his life and that was all there was to it. he knew [because of nana] that any discrimination they might face due to their ages in this relationship was simply unfounded, cruel bigotry from a species of essentially cavemen who were afraid of fire. he knew he was progressive for his time, in a couple decades probably everyone else would come to their senses too!

long story short, one day arya very quickly, almost violently realized EXACTLY everything that was wrong. nana’s condescending behavior had come to a head and someone arya considered a playful rival had forced him, very painfully, to face the truth of what this relationship was: abuse from a man who should know better, taking advantage of a boy who didnt.

arya couldnt exactly love nana after realizing this. and it really fucking sucked. he really wanted to go back to the way things used to be, he wanted to “undiscover” what he’d discovered, but there was no way back and he felt so broken and dirty and ungrateful and bratty and selfish for suddenly feeling this way.

nana on the other hand noticed arya very suddenly averse to being touched or held or even looked at. for a while, he was very understanding about this - what that playful rival did was essentially cast a spell and at first he thought arya was just sick or physically not well or something, and that he’d get better soon.

he didn’t.

nana didn’t know what to do. suddenly arya was neglecting him, acting like he was terrified of nana. he’d never been like this before, what happened? it’s incredibly painful and confusing, losing the love of your life like that; one day you’re everything to them, and the next they’re flinching every time you raise your hand around them. nana had never hit him or abused him verbally... in fact, it was nana who HELPED ARYA gain the strength and courage he needed to become independent from his emotionally abusive parents. so why was nana suddenly the bad guy? he had no idea what happened, why, how to fix it, or anything like that.

eventually he snapped, unable to take being deprived of love and attention like this, so he just took whatever he wanted, physically, not caring what arya thought of it.

he knew it was wrong. he knew he’d definitely crossed the line into objectively unforgivable actions. but he was almost too afraid to stop and relinquish this power over arya, because then he had to A.) lose arya, and B.) be held accountable for his actions. both two very terrifying things he saw no personal gain in.

that went on for a long time, until nana sort of... slowly realized he was feeling weaker and weaker, more prone to physical weariness dizziness, severe headaches and nausea, and he didn’t put 2 and 2 together until it was too late.

arya had figured out how to start poisoning him and getting away with it.

by that point, nana realized not just what was happening and why, but also that he unquestionably, factually deserved this pain and much, much more. that realization was too much for him, it sort of broke him psychologically for a very long time, leaving him completely helpless to whatever revenge arya decided to take on him

[it was all physical and psychological torture, but arya was certain NEVER to stoop to his level and sexually abuse nana. he couldnt even think of sleeping with nana “consensually” anyway, it made him horribly sick to even consider]

eventually after a long-ass time of this, arya just got sick of looking at nana and couldn’t even be around him anymore without feeling absolutely god-awful, so he just abandoned nana, leaving him to fester in his broken body and mind

and y’know, stuff happens after that, but thats all there really is to the most prominent phase of nana’s development in THIS story. i also play him in his phase of development after that last bullet point [roughly 200 years later], where he’s fucked up in all kinds of ways and totally deserving it, but also trying to... not really redeem himself or anything like that, he knows that’s not really a thing, but rather to make himself useful to good people who want to do the right thing, in a dnd campaign

nana goes through a SHIT TON of changes, to the point that each phase of his development has his own individual profile on toyhou.se, he’s become a Big Trauma Coping Character for me and somewhat an experiment in redemption arcs, seeing what exactly should happen and how to make “redemption” arcs seem not cheap or forced

here’s the one i talked about in this post though

http://toyhou.se/335049.nana-of-the-stars