#surrogate grandpa

[xxlittle0birdxx]

I have this headcanon for Game of Thrones — canon-compliant and AU/fix-it — that Davos Seaworth basically becomes everyone’s surrogate grandpa.

Need a sympathetic shoulder to cry on? Davos has it.

Someone had a baby? They receive a rattle/teether that he’s carved for them.

There’s always at least one kid at the Red Keep, running around, swinging a toy sword Davos made for them.

Getting married and you need a parental person? He’s already written a lovely, heartfelt toast for the feast.

After a couple of years, no one finds it strange to see a knot of children bellowing sea shanties at the top of their lungs. Davos can usually be found enthusiastically applauding them, while wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.

[dont-hug-me-its-yuri]

Coffin and Choo Choo would be like the old lady and her mom from the chocolate with nuts SpongeBob episode

[sillyzombiedelusion]

So actually now doomed not-dad & not-son dynamics for Joffery+Sandor and Aegon+Criston are swirling around my mind

[jesterraconteuse]

You don't understand there's a part of me that wants Alfred Pennyworth to never age but there's another part that's like

As Alfred grows older his body grows tired and everyone notices. And for Bruce that's his surrogate father. For everyone else that's Grandpa. Immediately there's a secret boot camp in the Batcave for everyone to start learning how to better care for themselves. Selina Kyle assisting of course.

There's already disability accommodations for Barbara so they just need to tweak and add some stuff. They've learned from her needs and start researching on how to care for the elderly for Alfred specifically.

On paper he's still a butler but really everyone (who lives or stays for a long time in Wayne manor) makes sure they learn how to do the hardwork for themselves. Most of his job is just to be there for them honestly. They insist on doing things for themselves.

But Alfred is Alfred. So he knows what's going on. And he's so deeply proud of them. He doesn't let him do anything he insists he can or wants do himself. He's still his own person after all, and they gradually learn his boundaries and patterns.

Bruce keeps paying him but not in a way you'd pay a butler usually. More in a way where you'd send money to your retired parents.

Do you see my vision?

[kacievvbbbb]

I love how extreme found family is in one piece. Like they took supernatural line of "Family don't end in blood" and actually made good on it. Because it's not just that the crew found each other even before that only really very briefly Robin, Usopp and Luffy could say that anyone biologically related to them raised them.

Like Luffy had Garp and that's his grandpa but he also had Makino and Shanks and the red hair pirates and they were a family unit and he also had Ace, Sabo Dandan and the bandits and they were a family as well and it's never who mattered more to Luffy or who actually raised him cause they all did. It'd be hard to put him in a nuclear family structure because so many people fill the same roles in his life in different ways and that's great like Kung Fu panda said "that doesn't mean less for one parent it just means more for Luffy"

And that's the thing I think sometime fandom can get very obsessive with trying to pin down who is whose surrogate father/mother how do they fit in the nuclear family structure and while that's fun and there's nothing wrong with head cannon characters that way I also think it's important to remember that not every relationship needs a title or definition sometimes you are just family and that's valid too.

Ace had Luffy and Garp but he also had the whitebeard pirates and his pops same with Sabo and the revolutionaries

Zoro with Kuina and his old kendo master, that was maybe more of a rivals, mentor mentee relationship than whatever Mihawk Zoro and Perona had going on but it's all family none the less.

Chopper with Hiririluk and Kureha. Perona and Moria, Usopp with the little village boys and Kaya. Shanks and Buggy with the Roger Pirates. They might not all have had defined roles with each other but it was still family.

Just like Sanji, Nami, Franky and Law and their more defined Surrogate familes

And people like Vivi Robin Usopp and Shirahoshi who had/have their biological parents/family that love them and raised them.

It's nobody that I've just mentioned properly fitting squarely into any of these categories because it's all complicated family is complicated and its messy and it's big and everyone in your family might not have even met but it's family and it doesn't end in blood and for some people it never started there either.

[leclerc-s]

karma - part eight

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a very special guest here at imola 🐾🐶 baby leo meeting auntie lily and auntie kika for the first time 📸 - francesca.cgomes

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redbullracing pre-race vs post race at imola (charles' version)

tagged: charles_leclerc

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charles_leclerc QUICK SOMEONE SCREENSHOT THIS SHOWING SUKI LIKES ME BEFORE SHE UNLIKES IT!!

sukiwaterhouse it was a slip of the finger lechair charles_leclerc 🫵 caught lacking in 4k!!!

maxverstappen1 where's my version??

redbullracing slow your bulls mr. verstappen, it's coming charles_leclerc you just can't compete with my pretty face. maxverstappen1 they're using you for likes klootzak redbullracing what can we say, the italians love charles leclerc charles_leclerc WOW!! I'M TELLING KIMI! redbullracing boss-man said, 'i don't care. stop bothering me.'

user1 they way the stands were decked in ferrari red but they were chanting and screaming for charles will forever be engraved in my brain

user2 as an italian myself, we may not support red bull but we will 100% throw hands for charles user3 amen sister

user4 the italians once again proven that they will never not be normal about charles leclerc.

olliebearman to quote arthur, 'he's on that king shit’ ❤︎ by redbullracing, natalia_leclerc, sebastianvettel and other

user5 not seb liking that 😂 user6 that's his surrogate son. he'll support when he can.

landonorris i think this might be the first time i've stood on the italian podium and they've cheered so loud for a non-ferrari driver

georgerussell63 haven't you heard? he's their princess diana. alex_albon the italians are feral for charles leclerc charles_leclerc what can i say, i'm just that likeable. carlossainz55 that's debatable landonorris no, please don't do this. i can't be involved in this. natalia_leclerc I KNOW YOUR JOBLESS ASS ISN'T TALKING BITCH!! sukiwaterhouse only i can bully charles! bensantos_ruiz so now that you've lost your seat this is the tactic you're going to use? very mature carlos. carlossainz55 when your brother-in-law can stop hiding behind your 'father' and his little guard dog, i'll be mature. bensantos_ruiz i know the man who constantly hides behind his father and family name isn't fucking talking. it would just be a shame if someone (me) spilled all the gossip on your family, like that pr girlfriend of yours. i know you also didn't insinuate my sister was a bitch, when you're the biggest one of them all.

natalia leclerc added four people

natalia leclerc welcome my children

natalia leclerc + charles

oscar piastri-leclerc oh so he was serious about the adoption thing?

ollie bearman-leclerc they never joke about anything. i told them i didn't want to stay in my hotel for the monaco grand prix weekend and suddenly i'm staying the week with them. charles leclerc you said, 'the bed is going to fuck up my back. it sucks.' charles leclerc and so like the responsible parents we are, we invited you to stay with us.

logan sargeant-leclerc oscar picked the most unserious couple to be his grid parents.

natalia leclerc you're apart of this too florida boy

logan sargeant-leclerc i have grid parents now?? what about jenson??

ollie bearman-leclerc this also means you've gained grid grandpas (nat's dad and a secret second one iykyk) and grid uncles (nat's brother, enzo, and arthur) charles leclerc jenson doesn't count because he's not on the grid anymore. he's like your adopted dad.

ollie bearman-leclerc like seb is with you?

charles leclerc OLIVER!

natalia leclerc no, no, let him speak!! he's right, even my dad think so too!!

oscar piastri-leclerc yeah, even logan and i know that charles

logan sargeant-leclerc this is like oscar denying that mark is his grid dad, or does that not count because mark's not on the grid?

ollie bearman-leclerc see, oscar can't even deny that, we ALL know it's true. ollie bearman-leclerc we've been over this logan, mark is his adopted dad. like jenson is with you. duh.

charles leclerc sebastian is not my grid dad

natalia leclerc charlie, you do not want to start this argument

charles leclerc NAME ONE TIME!!

ollie bearman-leclerc yesterday when sebastian reminded you to have breakfast because you ALWAYS forget natalia leclerc today when sebastian came over with lunch because we didn't have any groceries. natalia leclerc which, for the record we did, but you told me, 'no amour, stay in bed. we can cuddle and order in food.' oscar piastri-leclerc during bahrain when you complained how thirsty you were and seb handed you like three water bottles. logan sargeant-leclerc in australia when you said in an interview that you could go for some tim-tams after the race and seb came back with like 5 packages. oscar piastri-leclerc SEBASTIAN WAS THE ONE WHO STOLE MY TIM-TAMS? FOR CHARLES?

natalia leclerc shall we continue??

charles leclerc non, i get your point.

logan sargeant-leclerc next time make sure we don't have receipts.

oscar piastri-leclerc your other grid parent is lewis, no i will not elaborate.

ollie bearman-leclerc i will. i saw the tweets. kimi giggled when people said he was the brocedes divorce child. so technically you have a half-brother charles leclerc ollie, what on earth are you going on about now?

natalia leclerc obviously the f1 family tree? that we helped start after suki started the rumor that we had a secret child aka oscar

oscar piastri-leclerc so why the heck was i not adopted sooner? i was already being called your child charles leclerc that's because nat kept talking about you to suki and riley when you two met back in 2020.

logan sargeant-leclerc so by association edward cullen knows who oscar is?

ollie bearman-leclerc oh my god, that is so not fair

oscar piastri-leclerc i can't believe you guys care so much about twilight

natalia leclerc it's peak cinema oscar!!

oscar piastri-leclerc that's debatable ollie bearman-leclerc it is not! name another movie soundtrack that hits like crack just like twilight does

charles leclerc were you even born when the first twilight movie came out?

ollie bearman-leclerc i was 3 but that doesn't matter charles! logan sargeant-leclerc i just googled it, and i would've been a month away from turning 8. so how the fuck do you know the release date off the top of your head oliver? ollie bearman-leclerc that's not important logan!

natalia leclerc i will not stand for this twilight slander oscar. i'm calling a movie night. and we're watching twilight

oscar piastri-leclerc can't we watch harry potter instead? i prefer that over twilight.

charles leclerc ME TOO!!

ollie bearman-leclerc this is why suki hates you charles... and nothing will ever top the twilight soundtrack

logan sargeant-leclerc dare i say the hunger games?

ollie bearman-leclerc OH MY GOD! HOW COULD I FORGET??

natalia leclerc and now he's going to talk about how gale should've died instead of finnick for the next 45 minutes. sam had the riveting experience of through a ollie yap session about the hunger games.

logan sargeant-leclerc he's not wrong!! charles leclerc what??

ollie bearman-leclerc FATHER HASN'T SEEN THE HUNGER GAMES??

ollie bearman-leclerc this is embarrassing, we can no longer be related.

charles leclerc I'M SORRY I WAS BUSY RACING AS A TEENAGER OLIVER!!

natalia leclerc booo 🍅🍅!!!

oscar piastri-leclerc something tells me charles lives in a harry potter bubble

natalia leclerc you'd be correct. he was OBSESSED growing up.

charles leclerc lies. i was not obsessed.

logan sargeant-leclerc based on the fact that i can google you and harry potter and find multiple videos of you talking about harry potter and multiple pictures of you in harry potter costumes or poses. i would say, yes, you were obsessed.

natalia leclerc does george still have the picture??

charles leclerc DO NOT SPEAK OF THAT PICTURE!!

ollie bearman-leclerc well no the curiosity is killing me, what is this picture we are speaking of?

charles leclerc mon cœur, please don't do this. natalia leclerc ollie it's the greatest picture ever. i swear you'll love it. i just have to convince george to send it to me. oscar piastri-leclerc i, too, am now curious as to what this picture even is logan sargeant-leclerc my curiosity has also been peaked.

charles leclerc i've been betrayed by my own wife and kids

liam lawson changed ollie bearman's name to ollie bearman-leclerc

ollie bearman-leclerc LMAOOOOOO!!! LEO JUST BIT CHARLES FOR BEING NEAR NAT!!

ollie bearman-leclerc IJBOL!!!

sebastian vettel what the heck do those letters even mean?

liam lawson laughing my ass off and i just bust out laughing

sebastian vettel kids these days will be the death of me.

max verstappen leo is making me proud.

charles leclerc you're just mad that the admins love me more than you.

daniel ricciardo that's because one of you loves media and the other doesn't.

natalia leclerc i don't even know why leo even bit charles.

arthur leclerc ah, this reminds me of the time charles threatened to bite nat's ex-boyfriend.

charles leclerc literally shut up?

yuki tsunoda like father like son

ollie bearman-leclerc i would never bite someone yuki!

ollie bearman-leclerc my brothers logan and oscar would also never do this. i think.

max verstappen you were serious about that?!

charles leclerc of course, they are my sons.

natalia leclerc congrats seb, you're a grandpa of 4!

ollie bearman-leclerc and step-dad of 1 if we count kimi!

ollie bearman-leclerc antonelli not our team principle.

sebastian vettel i really don't want to know

daniel ricciardo trust me, as someone who went down the f1 twitter rabbit hole, you really don't want to know.

liam lawson don't worry seb, we'll ask george to make a presentation so you can understand.

sebastian vettel please don't.

ollie bearman-leclerc too late grandpa.

kimi räikkönen HA!

natalia leclerc added 5+ people

natalia leclerc welcome people. i'm pregnant. goodbye.

mark webber why the hell am i here? and how did she get my number?

oscar piastri-leclerc jeez i wonder who could've possibly given her your number.

ben santos-ruiz please tell me charles already knew and this isn't how he found out.

max verstappen based on the way he looks i'm going to say no.

ollie bearman-leclerc I'M GOING TO BE A BROTHER?!

mark webber who's going to tell him? santiago ruiz don't you fucking dare webber. sebastian vettel leave him alone mark.

jenson button congrats?? i'm so confused.

charles leclerc WHERE IS MY WIFE??

oscar piastri-leclerc depends do i get to pass you into turn one tomorrow?? charles leclerc OSCAR JACK PIASTRI-LECLERC!! WHERE IS MY WIFE?

jenson button oh my god. this is the most drama i've been involved in recent years. i love this

ollie bearman-leclerc that's a lie because according to twitter you hate danica patrick. jenson button hate is such a strong word, it's more like dispise.

oscar piastri-leclerc i, hypothetically, saw her run past mclaren and into the mercedes garage.

charles leclerc LEWIS!

lewis hamilton i'm not a snitch.

max verstappen we are now down a driver. i repeat we are down a driver. he just disappeared.

oscar piastri-leclerc maybe i can win tomorrow now.

charles leclerc i hope carlos rams into you tomorrow logan sargeant-leclerc that's not very live, laugh, love of you charles. ollie bearman-leclerc 😧😧

jenson button wait, did she just find out that's she's pregnant?

natalia leclerc well, leo bit charles the other day which i was telling pascale, suki, and riley about and then i started talking about how i was really craving some stroopwafels and my plans to sneak into max's drivers room to steal some, which is weird.

mark webber why is that weird? santiago ruiz she hates stroopwafels... max verstappen which i think is blasphemy, but whatever.

natalia leclerc THEN! i started talking about how emotional i've been lately and how i hate the way fish smells, which is a bummer because i love eating fish.

charles leclerc WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GO?

natalia leclerc AND! according to suki, who just had a baby a few months ago, i was experiencing pregnancy symptoms, so we sent someone out to get a couple pregnancy tests, i took them, and voila!

charles leclerc WOMAN! WHERE ARE YOU?! THIS ISN'T FUNNY!!

logan sargeant-leclerc as apart of my mission of dethroning leo as the favorite child, i come to report she is with lily in alex's driver room, carmen is also with them.

benjamin santos-ruiz natalia, i swear to god if you move from where you're at

natalia leclerc 🫡 staying put, got it.

santiago ruiz i swear i did a better job at raising them.

sebastian vettel we know, they just met charles and went off the walls.

charles leclerc THIS ISN'T MY FAULT.

lewis hamilton kill me now.

ollie bearman no can do grandpa

lewis hamilton i don't think i like you very much bearman. ollie bearman 😧😧

liked by natalia_leclerc, logansargeant, olliebearman and others

redbullracing people of the internet, we present to you, your 2024 monaco grand prix winner. CHARLES LECLERC DOES IT!! oh, and did we mention it was a leclerc double podium?

tagged: charles_leclerc, arthur_leclerc, oscarpiastri

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bensantos_ruiz before someone, the sainz family, says that my dad hates charles or something, please let it be known that my dad hasn't stopped crying since charles won.

maxverstappen1 favoritism, yet again.

redbullracing listen sir, you've got multiple wins in monaco charles_leclerc yeah max, let me shine! maxverstappen1 no ❤️ people will accuse me of going soft. oscarpiastri this coming from the man who cried last night when he realized charles was going to win monaco? liamlawson40 i can't defend you anymore max. danielricciardo YOU WERE THE FIRST ONE TO MAKE FUN OF HIM!!! liamlawson40 eh potato, potahto!

sukiwaterhouse i guess i'm proud of you or whatever

natalia_leclerc you literally cried with me. charles_leclerc admit it, you actually like me! sukiwaterhouse you're growing on me like mold charles_leclerc i'll take it!!

fernandoalo_oficial felicitaciones charles!!

user7 and i guess this is all the conformation we needed to know fernando was team charles and not team carlos user8 please, this old man has been on charles side since he said, 'it is frustrating to give your everything to a team only for you to get nothing in return.' user9 fernando was a lecfosi confirmed.

user10 ABOUT FUCKING TIME THEY GAVE HIM THE WIN HE DESERVED!!

natalia_leclerc words don't even begin to describe how proud i am of you 💙

charles_leclerc je t'aime tellement 💙💙 bensantos_ruiz believe me, he's well aware. the fact that he kissed you with tears running down your face and snot on your nose amazes me. natalia_leclerc the snot part is not fucking true! oscarpiastri slander on mother will not be tolerated olliebearman dishonor on you! dishonor on your cow! logansargeant what they said! bensantos_ruiz oh my god

mrsamclaflin congrats charles!

charles_leclerc thank you sam! olliebearman JUSTICE FOR FINNICK! logansargeant ollie no!

user11 RED BULL MANAGED TO DO WHAT B*NOTTO FAILED TO DO!!

user12 s*inz family found screaming in a ditch somewhere. ♥ by ben_santosruiz, natalia_leclerc, olliebearman and others

user13 the family that likes shady comments stays together user12 currently screaming because they liked my comment but also so true bestie.

natalia_leclerc, bensantos_ruiz, and olliebearman posted new stories

post monaco win duties ❣️ mon amour is a monaco grand prix winner brother is going to regret this tomorrow so much 😂 enjoy it charlie, you only win monaco for the first time once this is not appropriate behavior to have in front of your children!

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¡leclerc-s speaks! i actually don’t know what i’m doing with this story but i’m having so much fun with it either way. the plot of the fic was lost long ago. fun fact: originally i was going to go with a post monaco pregnancy but that was too corny so i decided, what if she just finds out on quali day instead to add to the humor. logan, oscar, and pato are my pookies and i will find a way to include them in any story.

¡disclaimer! this is in no way making assumptions about the people involved in this story, this is all fake. it is a fanfiction please don't take any of what is said seriously. this is all for entertainment purposes and as a creative outlet for me. enjoy!

[antimony-medusa]

hi saw your daddy kink post discussing the phenomenon of giving grown characters surrogate parental relationships, and I understand where you’re coming from, but i really feel like it’s just a matter of the circles you run in, and the assumptions that you might make because of that. you mention how platonic reads of these dynamics are more uncommon than kinky reads, which i just don’t think is the case, and I think that arguing that people don’t even realize that they’re writing a kink is a little bit bizarre, and sort of assumes that you know more abt them than they do by projecting your own experiences onto them.

it isn’t inherently sexual to crave protection or a parental relationship that you may have missed out on, and it is certainly not universal. in my own family, my “grandpa” isnt my biological grandfather (nor do I really consider him to be my grandfather), but he’s my mother’s surrogate father and has been since she was in her twenties. an adult. he sees her as a daughter. she sees him as a father. there’s absolutely nothing kinky about it. and anybody who automatically assumes that must have their mind deep, deep in the gutter and/or the stranger side of the Internet. really, i find it a bit of a strange argument to randomly post in the first place—as if it’s a problem that so many people enjoy non romantic and non sexual relationships, and that these people must, in fact, have a daddy kink that they are unaware of.

that said, i do absolutely agree that fans bringing any part of that into phil’s chat is weird and they should Not do that, and that infantilizing characters is also very weird, and personally i dont even see him as being father figure to anybody on that island except his eggs, wilbur, and MAYBE an argument could be made for tubbo (which other cc’s on the island have joked about), but to each their own and all that.

sorry this is so long. TLDR, i get where ur coming from in terms of “warning , some people might read your stuff differently than you want here” but really not everything is a kink and paternal dynamics can easily happen in regards to adult characters, particularly young adults, without there being any inappropriate connotations. i know nothing i said will change your mind, obviously it’s set, but ykno diff perspectives and all that. hope ur doing well

Thank you for the ask! I see you were on mobile, I believe. :D I am also going to push the character limit with this response, I fear.

I agree that it isn't inhernetly sexual to go after a parental relationship that you missed out on, and there are many such cases. I'll even go so far as to say that it's not inherently kinky to go after a parental relationship that you missed out on, because there is such a thing as non-sexual kink, and heaven knows that MCYT writing is full of non-sexual kink. Lots and lots of stuff that is platonic that is kinking on fear, or being drugged, or kidnapping, or hypnosis, or familial relationships, etc— there's lots of people who aren't doing that. There are tons of people out in the real world (and in fiction), who are simply just expanding their family as an adult, and that's awesome. When I was in college there was this older couple who kind of adopted me and invited me over for thursday dinner, and they were awesome. There was nothing untoward going on there.

But look. I am an emduo fan who likes to see my guys be murdery, and because of that, I've ended up reading a bunch of Dark SBI. I've ocassionally gone "this cannot be what everyone is doing" and I've read stuff tagged as "family fluff" that I find recommended. I am aware of where the genre is going, particularly with the rise of "dadbur" and "dadnoblade" interpretations.

And look, you have just got to trust me on this one. People are writing stuff that in any other fandom I would be recommending they put kink tags on the work so that people who liked that trope could find it and people who didn't like it would avoid it, but that comment in DSMP would just lead to people getting doxxed, so I just grit my teeth and go "i guess that's baked into Dark SBI or Tooth Rotting Fluff now, I sure hope that doesn't hit anybody's triggers".

Like I PROMISE you. The first draft of this response included excerpts of fics that I've read and I was like "can YOU pick the ship fic from the /p fics here"? But I have a horror of ever leading to someone getting cancelled on twitter, so nothing that could possibly be identifiable of these writers. But like—

Some of the ways that Tommy gets treated in the narrative are almost indistinguishable from a bodice-ripper romance. Some of the tropes being used— within DSMP we've all clasped hands and agreed to interpret it being platonic, but in any other fandom, you are going to start getting comments that you might not want to get. The tag is FULL of stuff that is DD/LB in everything but name. Maybe my mind is in the gutter here, but if you move out of this fandom, you are going to move into circles where a lot of people's minds are in the gutter, and you are going to get a very different response from your comments!

And I was talking about daddy kink here specifically, because I see that one come up a lot and it's gotten egregious lately, but this also applies to dehumanization, and fearplay, and predator/prey, and "instincts" (in every other fandom that's gonna get people in a mashup of A/B/O, Hypnosis, and sometimes Agere responding to it), and kidnapping/drugging, AND the way a bunch of "piglin instincts" stuff is just a BDSM au now where the Brute (dom) needs to be callmed down by their Runt (sub). The SBI tag is super kinky right now. And I don't have a problem with that idealogically, write your truth, but a) please don't bring that up in front of the streamers, b) if you move to another fandom you have got to be prepared that not everyone is doing their kink platonically.

Like I'm assuming that people don't know what tropes they're playing into, they're just building them from first principles, because the other alternative is that they are deliberately and knowingly writing kink and posting it in the & relationship tag with insufficient trigger tags, and I prefer to believe that people don't know.

I'm glad we agree about people bringing that into Phi's chat, or Pol's, or Luzu, or any of the other streamers that people have decided is So Old. A lot of people aren't comfortable even being assigned dad, as we saw with Felps, so bringing it even further is just— uh oh, no.

I do not have a problem with people liking non-romantic and non-sexual relationships. I find it a bit odd that much of the fandom can't concieve of a non-romantic and non-sexual relationship without making it familial and specifically lately father-son— don't you have close friends?— but I am fully in support of gen writing. I primarily write gen! I'm an avid commentor on gen fics!

But some of the tropes at play in the fandom are kinky, there is no way to avoid that. The fact that they are set in a familial relationship doesn't negate that. Some of the ways that the DSMP characters get treated would be distinctly non-familial if you ever brought it out of that context. And I am just warning people, if you bring it out of that context, be prepared for the response you get.

You cannot take DSMP tropes and apply them one-to-one in other fandoms, with other streamers swapped in, and expect them to be read the same way. Like i'm sorry, but that's just true. If you are posting the same sort of stuff that for Cellbit & Phil that you would post for Tommy & Phil, people will assume that you have a daddy kink, because usually when a relationship between a adults that are actually similar in age is refered to with paternal language it's a kink thing. That is how the broader internet works. (And anon, if I had a daddy kink, would I be complaining about the fact that I can open any SBI fic and have about a 40% chance of hitting it and I'm seeing signs of this appearing in QSMP? I assure you I'm not "projecting [my] own experiences onto them" here.)

[vodrae]

I still don't know what to do with the information that Dick and Bruce are more brother than father and son.

That Alfred calls Dick his son in his will.

But in the same era of comics we see him getting officialy adopted and calling Bruce dad

But when Jason Todd first occurs with a copy/paste of the flying grayson story he was ready to adopt him.

But everybody youger than him in the family is his sibling BUT Damian with whom he has the same relationship than with Bruce.

So Tim, Cass,Duke... have a brother with two dads and one of them is their grandpa.

And one of his long term relationship, wife in multiple stories, is the surrogate mother of his sister.

And he has a surrogate sister who's Tim's ex. Queer coded with Cass. So they are....Close.

Is Dick Julia Pennyworth's brother ?

You know what ? He's their godmother.

[cosmiclion]

Some ppl have shown interest in my lil self indulgent YOI AU (tl;dr if u haven't seen my previous posts: the only difference is that Viktor and Yurio are half siblings -on their mother's side, so that each keeps their respective last name- and the parents aren't around anymore by the time Yurio is 6 so he spends half his off time with Viktor and the other half with Nikolai), so I made more art of it bc it brings me joy 👉👈 And then I felt like writing a lil something to go with the piece bc why not, I very rarely write but when I do it's so much fun. Text under the cut.

-------------------------------------

“I did great, right, Vitya?” the little blonde boy asked excitedly as the silver haired teenager crouched down before him to pull up the zipper of his parka. A brown standard poodle pranced happily around them.

The older boy smiled fondly. “You were amazing, Yurochka.” He squeezed his cheeks and chuckled at the noise of indignation that came in response. “I’m sorry, mama and papa couldn’t come to see you skate today either. But grandpa took a lot of photos and videos to show them.” He adjusted the hat on the kid’s head before standing up. “Now come on, let’s not keep him waiting.”

Little Yuri’s eyes lit up at the sight of Nikolai near the exit and he dashed towards the man, Makkachin trotting after him and Viktor following close behind. The kid talked their ears off during the short walk to the car and during the whole ride, through mouthfuls of the pirozhki his grandfather had brought, proudly boasting about every new thing he could do on the ice now. Seated next to him on the backseat to keep an eye on his greedy dog, Viktor just listened and nodded along, trying and failing not to let his mind drift off.

At only 17, figure skating genius Viktor Nikiforov was under an enormous amount of pressure that had nothing to do with any competition. Even for someone who spent as much time away as he did, it was hard to miss that things had been going not so great at home. He had left in pursuit of his dreams long before Yuri was born, only to come back sporadically and spend short periods with his family before going away again, but he had to be blind not to notice just how starved for attention his younger brother was and just how absent his mother and her new husband were.

For a long time now, Nikolai had been putting in the work of being there emotionally for Yuri since his parents barely had time for him and his brother said hi to him only through video calls more often than not, so the least the latter could do to make up for it was to spend as much time with him as possible during the off season. At least Yuri didn’t seem to resent him, if anything he seemed to admire him more and more, and the teenager had gotten used to having the kid following him around like a duckling when they were together. At only 17, figure skating genius Viktor Nikiforov felt like a surrogate parent.

Suddenly, a finger poked the whorl on Viktor’s hair. “You’re distracted!” Yuri protested.

Viktor hadn’t even noticed that Yuri had taken his seatbelt off and stood up on the seat. “Sorry, sorry. Now please sit back down, that’s dangerous.”

Yuri obeyed but narrowed his eyes as Viktor re-adjusted the seatbelt. “You get distracted a lot. And you often forget things. Are you getting old?”

Viktor gave him a half offended, half amused look. Nikolai snorted a laugh from the driver’s seat. “If Viktor is old where does that leave me? Ha! But do listen to your brother, having to keep my eyes on the road is enough responsibility.”

“Sorry~!” Yuri sang almost innocently. He dug into the paper bag he was holding and took out another bun before resuming his incessant chatter. He talked so fast that Viktor wondered whether he actually needed to breathe. “If you’re getting old does that mean you’ll retire soon? Can you coach me? Will I be just as good as you? Will I be better than you? Will I win a gold medal? Don’t answer, I bet I’ll win a gold medal soon! Just wait and see, I’ll win my own gold medal one day!”

Yuri’s enthusiasm was almost contagious. Viktor ruffled his hair, earning himself another noise of indignation. “Of course you will.”

-------------------------------------

Some notes:

-I mentioned before that I couldn't find any official data on whether Nikolai is Yurio's maternal or paternal grandfather, but for this AU I'll assume the latter, so he and Viktor aren't related. -I almost deleted the whorl poking part, it's such a special thing between only Yuuri and Viktor that I felt like I was defiling something sacred lol. But then I thought that it'd be cute if Viktor's hair just had that effect on people. -At first I worried I had made Yurio too ooc but... he's 5 yrs old here, tbh most kids are the same at that age, just give him some time to develop his characteristic personality. Also I think it'd be both hilarious and tragic if he was a sweet adorable bby who loved his big bro before turning into an edgy teenager who hates everything ☠️

[abbysimsfun]

Sims In Bloom: Generation 2 Pt. 46 (Home to Henford)

Everett and Spencer Pancakes had worked hard on their marriage, but they still struggled in Oasis Springs so far from their families.

Then one day, Everett's phone rang. His hometown parish - the 400-year-old church in Henford-on-Bagley where he'd grown up listening to the scripture of the Watcher - needed a new priest. Though their sons were young for such a big move, they jumped at the chance for Greyson and Jett to grow up in their childhood paradise.

They moved in with Spencer's parents, Eric and Alice, at her childhood home in Old New Henford. With Lydia now in Brindleton Bay with the Goths, Spencer's parents had plenty of room for Everett, Spencer, Greyson, and baby Jett - and their dog, JJ, too!

Their first day back, Everett's twin sister, Malia, dropped by to visit and share some happy news. "Jamar and I are expecting!"

Everett knew his sister and her husband, Henford's young, successful doctor, Jamar Scott, had been trying for over a year. "That's fantastic!" Everett beamed, and Malia practiced holding infants by spending the rest of the afternoon entertaining baby Jett.

Spencer's work was primarily in Selvadorada and the only thing that kept her in Oasis Springs was the sun and Everett's old job, but being back with her family again meant everything to her. Not just having her parents, but her older sister Olivia lived with her own family just up the road on Old Mill Hill. Olivia's youngest was close in age to Greyson, and Spencer wanted their families near as they raised their own sons.

"I never realized how much I needed you until we unpacked our bags," Spencer admitted to her mother in the family room, while Jett snuggled with his grandpa Eric on the sofa. "Hopefully now that I'm home I can stop second-guessing everything I do as a mom."

Alice looked at her daughter with a generous smile. "You didn't need to come all the way home for us to know you're a good mother. Your boys love you, and we love them almost as much as I know you do."

Spencer dearly loved her sons, but she worried her ambition was too obvious. That maybe her sons knew she itched to fly to Selvadorada and immerse herself in her work, thousands of miles away from them. The way her sons and her job competed for her time left her overflowing with guilt, but now that she was home, she was more hopeful about the future than she'd been in years.

Everett's grandmothers, Agatha and Agnes Crumpcakes, were getting older. He was glad to be closer to help his father and stepmother take care of them. He felt a responsibility to his family as the eldest of his siblings, even if he was only five minutes older than Malia.

She was going to have a baby, Kash lived in Brindleton Bay with his husband, Wolfgang (Munch!), and Elizabeth was still in high school. Leaving his church and parishioners in Oasis Springs had been difficult, but being home with his family, and at the pulpit of his hometown church, felt like the choice he should have made when he and Spencer married five years earlier.

Everywhere they went they saw familiar faces, and their return began to heal Everett and Spencer's marriage even further.

They were home again, just in time for their dear friend Heather to bring Conrad to Henford to meet her loved ones... ->

<- Previous Chapter | Gen 2 Start | Gen 1 Summary | Gen 1 Start

NOTE: The baby is Jett, Heather and Everett's biological child that she delivered as a surrogate. So far he looks like Heather. He even had her hair colour, but I darkened it because I'm already sick of it repeatedly showing up in Neal's descendants.

NOTE 2: Three days without Conrad and today without Heather, I know that's bold strategy, but I wanted this post to stand alone because a) I had to set up why they left the desert before Heather visits, and doing it in the same post was a little too verbose, even for me, b) that gorgeous church build needed to get some featured screen time, and c) we haven't seen Jett since he was born and the pic with his Aunt Malia above is the clearest one I have of him as an infant. Heather and Conrad (and Ash!) are all back tomorrow!

WCIF Henford's Church: Escombe Church in the Sims 4 Gallery by @simstruhistory/TeaWithTash (beautiful build, cc-free, and there's more historical content at their page!) This is a historical recreation of the real Escombe Church in England and I think it's got a perfect Henford vibe. It doesn't actually fit in Henford in my main save but I want to use it again to stage some funerals in the future and maybe weddings, too. I've referenced the 400-year-old church in Henford a couple times but never showed it because it didn't exist (*whispers*I didn't wanna build it) until I saw this one showcased here on simblr!

I'm so, so grateful to creators with build skills, mod skills, CAS skills, all skills, saving me time to do the Sim stuff I really enjoy. 🤗

(Also I'm not a spiritual person, but I have Lumpinou's Rambunctious Religions mod installed because I was playing Ultimate Decades for a while, and just because I'm not religious doesn't mean some of my sims can't be!)

[callsign-dexter]

Our Little Girl Masterlist

Summary: 2 months after the Uranium Mission, Jake and Bradley confessed their love for one another because 'the sexual tension is too much'. They dated for 1 year and got engaged on their 2-year anniversary of dating and on their 4 year they married. After their honeymoon they decided they wanted to add to the small little family, they talked about adoption but Jake's identical twin sister, Dakota, said that she would be the surrogate for them with Bradley being the donor. 9 months later you, Y/N Carole Bradshaw-Seresin, were born.

Warnings: fluff, angst, plane crash, car crash, wrist grabbing, bruising, blood, death of a loved one, pregnancy, inaccurate medical talk, swearing

Pairings: Maverick x Iceman, Carole Bradshaw x Nick Bradshaw, Jake Seresin x Bradley Bradshaw, Jake Seresin x Daughter!Reader, Bradley Bradshaw x Daughter!Reader, Bob Floyd x OC!Judy Floyd, Y/N Bradshaw-Seresin x OC!Mason Floyd

Masterlist

A/N: Can be read as stand-alone. Ages range.

This awesome banner is brought to you by: @callsigns-haze ! Thank you so much!

Welcome Our Sweet Girl

Meeting Everyone

Feeding Time Adventures

Welcome to Parenthood

First Family Vacation

Thunderstorms

Traveling Adventures

Mocking Pops

Daddy Don't Go

Pops is Hurt

Nightmares

Deployment Surprise

New House

Prank Wars

Deployments and Slugs

Goose and Maverick babysitting? What could go wrong?

Lake House

Grandpa Ice

First Swear Word

Halloween

Daycare Mishaps

Baking with Grandma Carole

Cookout

Family Game Night

First Huge Fight:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

First Boyfriend

First Breakup

In Love with My Bestfriend

Love's Awakening

"Wait. What?!"

Lake Trip and Secrets Revealed

Love's Unexpected Gift

The Gift of Love's Arrival

Career Path? Navy

Pilot or WSO?

Home for Christmas? Doubt It

Our Little Girl's Wedding

Aircraft Mishap

The Unseen Battle

Alternate Universes

Welcome Our Sweet Girl

[thefirstknife]

Hiya! Little break from the bird grandpas and the toxic yuri: I am here to ask about Jaren Ward and Shin Malphur. I wanted to ask, how come Jaren's Ghost went to Shin instead of raising Jaren? Seems very odd to just abandon your perfectly good Guardian and become his son's surrogate Ghost. Actually, how is that even possible? How can a Ghost heal and revive a Guardian who isn't their own???? I'm so confused... (´。＿。｀)

Jaren's Ghost went to Shin because Jaren got killed by Thorn which unfortunately makes it impossible to get him back up. Thorn (the original Thorn from Dredgen Yor) was capable of taking the Light away because it was a weapon infused by Hive magic and Darkness, essentially. So after begin shot and killed by Dredgen Yor, Jaren was very much not perfectly fine; he experienced a final death.

We're not entirely sure how (if?) a Ghost can just pick another person. A lot about Shin is super unique so he's hard to use as an example. Shin already had a Ghost before, as he died and was rezed as a baby, but his original Ghost died which allowed Shin to continue growing up and living normally without knowing. But Jaren's Ghost noticed that he'd been touched by Light before and eventually just returned to Shin after Jaren died. Jaren's Ghost was spared on purpose by Dredgen Yor to motivate Shin to come after him as revenge. I have a lot of links to stuff to read about Shin in this post.

We genuinely don't know if Shin and Jaren's Ghost function as a usual Guardian-Ghost duo. Obviously Shin can use the Light (as he's famous for his Golden Gun), but that might be because he's had it before and is clearly compatible with it. Other than that, it's very much unknown how they work together. I remember years ago there were some hints on reddit from the writer that Jaren's Ghost doesn't work exactly the same as a Ghost would normally. Someone might possibly have links to that somewhere, but since none of this is really in any official lore, we don't truly know how any of it works.

[grimescum]

inspired by @gogoosecross !! pardon all the blank space. i have a hc that he and seras do yoga together sometiems. surrogate grandpa and weird autistic granddaughter bonding ❤️

i know the jack o trend was a while ago but im a guilty gear fan so i can do it whenever i want

[quintessenceofdust88]

Ok ok but I've been thinking about parents bucktommy and I have ⭐⭐⭐ headcanons ⭐⭐⭐ to share:

they choose the surrogate route and Buck is the bio daddy;

they end up with a baby boy who's the spitting image of Buck and name him Leonardo Robert Kinard (and yes Bobby cries when they tell him)

he's Leo for the family bc it's very Italian and I hc Tommy of Italian descent

the decision to not add Buckley is, actually, Buck's ('to be honest I wouldn't be a Buckley if I could choose')

Eddie is there for them every step of the way; both Tommy and Buck freak out and worry about not being good dads, but try to hide it from each other, going to Eddie for reassurance. He manages to get them both out of their heads;

Christopher is chosen as godfather, and Eddie, Buck and Tommy cry a lot more than Chris when he accepts

When Leo is a baby, his favorite lap to fall asleep in is Athena's, and she can spend hours rocking him to sleep;

Jee-Yun is crazy about her little cousin; she wants to take him everywhere including her school's show-and-tell

To be fair, so is Chim. He loves that he gets to be the fun uncle and loves to call Leo 'mini-Buckaroo'

When Leo gets older, he loves to go to the 118 station with his daddy; the 217 with Papa is fun too, but only on 118 can he get candy from his grandpa Bobby secret stash

Leo loves all his firefam family with all his heart, but aunt Karen is definitely his favorite ('Daddy, she works with rockets!!!!')

He shares Tommy's love for movies, and his Papa starts him on the classics very young. At 5 years old, he can quote Princess Bride and Star Wars. On movie days, Buck is happy to provide them with snacks and play in his phone cuddled up against Tommy

Wow this got out of hand but I have so many feelings about them as parents ughhh

Should I turn this into a series of one-shots or-

[organizationhimself]

just kinda having some thinky thoughts about how dark road totally rewired eraqus's character and what a phenomenal job they did.

like here's your problem you have. you need to take this cloistered old man who raised his students in the jedi way, somehow put up with Old Man Villainy being That Way presumably on the regular, lost every last iota of his shit and turned on the Apocalypse Child he adopted as well as his surrogate son who was infested with The Evil (which the series has long established as not necessarily being good or bad without context) to say nothing of the headtrip he gave his direct heir, and you need to reduce him to a version of himself as a child that is. like. fun. someone who has a genuine friendship with xehanort and is regarded by xehanort as someone who is a "sly fox," i.e. not the sort of buffoon who tests for mastery of the keyblade by child-proofing some orbs of light.

where do you even begin?

YOU TRAUMATIZE THE UNGODLY HELL OUT OF HI--okay i'm getting ahead of myself, let's start with principles.

because eraqus is principled. he believes really firmly in the light in a way that's nearly sora-adjacent in its intensity, but the thing is that sora has this flexibility that eraqus was simply not raised to appreciate. yes, nomura, we understand you like the bright sunshine one and the wry brooding one, you did it with sora and riku, god knows what you did to axel's spine to fit him into the sunshine kid's mold next to isa as brooding anti-crybaby, and now we're doing the same thing to eraqus. ok. i love it when you're optimistic, let's do it.

so first we need confidence. easy; he's a smug little rich kid. worked for riku didn't it? (source: kh1 manga, and the fact that you cannot convince me anyone can maintain a kid with that build on a budget) but we also need to see how dark road changed him as a person. let's contrast his uptight stick-up-his-ass future with a present day class clown who doesn't take things seriously; a headstrong fighter who jokes that he'll just run away. and hey speaking of emotional damage, let's start easing into the inevitable terrible, horrific, unspeakable traumas we're going to visit on this defenseless creature with a little one as a treat:

HIT HIM RIGHT IN THE GRANDPA.

and there you go! we now have a source for eraqus's rejection of the darkness that is not simply a function of his career as a jedi keyblade master, but has an actual personal experience he can point back to in order to say "hey, darkness is the pits!! here is why." it sets the stage early for him to be already butting heads with xehanort, who takes a much more flexible look at the worlds and the way they work and is more willing to view things from the perspective that he is not an authority on the moral peculiarities of whatever world he is currently inhabiting.

xehanort is also a child of destiny [citation needed]. an isolated visitant who was born for finer things but never slept a day in his life without waking up with sand in his mouth until he reached out and took his fate in his bare hands and let it drag him all the way to scala.

where he met the blueblooded child of a keybearing legacy thousands of years in the making, just like his.

and suddenly what you have are unwitting equals. we're ready to set them both up at the chess board; eraqus's legacy is plain, he moves first and he makes no apologies for it because it's his birthright. but xehanort's half of the board is still buried in shadow, implied but never stated, never surrendered to eraqus's probing questions or revealed by his moves, but already aimed at a clash with destiny, fated, inevitable.

shall we say, already written.

and this is brilliant!! now we have a source for our "sly fox," a reason for xehanort to be extremely familiar with the way eraqus thinks (and not to star wars on main but the obi-wan kenobi series did something really similar to this narratively by using anakin and obi-wan's familiarity with each others' fighting styles to predict the actions they would take in a situation, and i will actually never be over it in my life, absolutely stealing it for a xehaqus fic sometime, just shamelessly mugging ewan mcgregor in the street for that solid gold good shit). not only that, but we also have an explanation for xehanort's motivations as described by kh3. he is not looking at the fight from the perspective of one of the pawns; he is looking at the fight as a player, deciding which pawn gets taken. selecting which rook to sacrifice in exchange for the queen.

and eraqus is opposite him, doing the exact same thing (sort of, kh3 was a little cerebral with that), but there's an important difference here that we'll come back to later on.

so, okay. we have a vague outline in the shape of a sunshine kid now. he has confidence tied to his role in society, his legacy gives him perspective, his trauma ensures that he will one day calcify against the darkness with such emphasis that he will unwittingly pad the therapy bills of an entire generation. so far so good.

but uh, yeah, his kids? he fights them? like okay, axel has his differences with his kids too but he's not trying to kill them (mostly). eraqus really definitely for real is, and ven is defenseless. so that'ssss...hard to square with the sunshine kid we're building, nomura, how do we explain that? we really can't handwave it as amnesia this time, we're not working with ansem the wise here.

(BALDR. BALDR IS HOW--

ok but wait wait wait, before we even get to baldr, there's something we can do:

make eraqus impulsive.

and i mean impulsive. make eraqus spoil for a fight with so much unmitigated howler monkey energy that he will fight his friends just to vent. (this isn't even a unique thing, riku and xion and even sora do it all the time, and we're not here to talk about ven's crimes against miners but it's clear that violence is a spoken language in kh.) eraqus is fluent, so we're making it so that all of eraqus's intensity and passion can be focused on a single point if xehanort pushes exactly the right switches in his head.

and then, y'know, yeah. make baldr slaughter all of his classmates, several of them right in front of him, because of unchecked darkness and baldr's own inability to see past his own grief and resentment for long enough to understand that all he's really doing is inflicting his own suffering on other people in a murderstorm of nihilism and bitterness. unrelenting trauma conga line, check.

and now we have almost all the elements. eraqus's principles can't allow him to accept darkness, both because his grandfather was lost to it and because it left him (by all accounts a bourgeois slacker at the bottom of his class, someone vidar doesn't even consider as a candidate for one of the lights despite what baldr has to say about eraqus as a light source) one of the only survivors of an event that completely resculpted his life and community. time to pack him off to the jedi temple land of departure to be least okayest teacher of the year, right?

well...no. we need eraqus to wait.

because he doesn't take on students. and doesn't, and doesn't, for decades. first he fights xehanort, and as we have established he is spoiling for that fight (white moves first!). and then when xehanort finally visits him to drop off that half-dead kid he found (ven was like that already shhh), he's kind of like politely like "oh, you have apprentices. they seem...bright," like he's congratulating eraqus on finally reaching a life stage that eraqus should have hit approximately 50 years ago, and eraqus is like "yeah yeah whatever shut up anyway YOU'VE got one too now right." (yen sid talks about the role of "seeker" like it's a different thing from "keyblade master" so that's where i'm extrapolating this distinction from, but regardless i don't think anyone ever seriously expected xehanort to take on students.)

my point here is that eraqus waited until the last possible opportunity to take on students. to carry on the legacy that was so important to him as a child, and to re-experience the closest thing to the camaraderie he had as a keybearer-in-training that he could ever have back. that is how impactful baldr's actions were for eraqus.

i'm veering completely into speculation now but i think eraqus was terrified. how could he not be? his class wasn't even taking the mark of mastery and still got decimated by it. how could he risk going through that again, but from odin's perspective this time? what guarantee would he ever have to avoid the same tragedy his master had failed to prevent?

so, NOW we know why eraqus's mark of mastery was a handful of light pinatas and a duel. (i like to think xehanort felt a certain level of professional embarrassment for him and wanted to make it just a little more like a real challenge.)

(this is a sidebar and i'm going to talk about my other blorbo for a second but terra has a beautiful dream of being a sly manipulator. that's why he doesn't worry about investing himself in villain schemes, because he assumes he'll see the snare coming before he gets his head caught in it, but it's never coming from directly in front of him like he expects. so this is a dream that will never come true, but he has it, and i think given what we knew about eraqus as early as blank points, its only possible source is a master who was strict and exacting, but--very occasionally--also a sly fox who secretly delighted in his students' nascent abilities to surprise and outwit him.)

back to the trauma, we also have, obviously, the explanation for eraqus's attitude towards terra, and later ven. terra is a tragedy in slow motion that eraqus has seen happen before. baldr was unable to control his darkness; it overwhelmed him, and eraqus does not have the context that xehanort does, that baldr was in some ways a product of his own darkness-shunning society. even if eraqus does have that context, i can't really see him agreeing with it--and even if he at one point agreed with it, he would have gotten that context from the same guy who last showed up at his house talking about kicking off the apocalypse for the vine.

so like. eraqus has never seen any damn thing in his whole life that doesn't confirm his bias against the darkness. does that make him innocent of parenting Incorrectly? no, he is a Bad Dad. does it explain his hopelessly unsuccessful parenting strategies? yes, it does.

what it reinforces is also that eraqus didn't want to have to fight terra and ven. the original bbs is honestly not very good about establishing this: he cries one Sad Tear. yawn. still child abuse, asshole! the stakes in bbs are also not very well established, because there's approximately six people in it and some of them are just the same guy over again, so we don't really have a sense that terra being taken over by the darkness is like...gonna mean something to eraqus that is sincerely worth the personal cost of killing him. since we're clearly no longer worried about ven, there aren't other students to protect (besides aqua, but she's a really hard sell on the "needs to be protected from terra with so much urgency he must not live another moment" front). there is no immediacy to ven's status as Apocalypse Child; if anything vanitas seems like the obviously more important threat, and maybe eraqus should be less concerned about weeding out students and more focused on vetting friends like Old Man So Clearly The Villain My Guy. bbs eraqus is just genuinely hard to like as a character.

but now we have dark road context.

and white moves first.

eraqus is not seeing terra or ven in that moment, he's seeing baldr. he's seeing the summoning of kingdom hearts that almost was, and he is gripped by meticulously prearranged, bone-deep, irrational, traumatized, unbridled impulse. the emotion must vent. the thing he was powerless to stop has returned to haunt him and he must resist it. he knows what will happen if terra strikes him down here and heads back out into the worlds in search of other hearts, other lights. he knows.

but terra resists, using the full spectrum of his strength without remorse, and it is only when eraqus's keyblade is ready to fall from his hand that he realizes the truth:

My own heart is darkness.

and when this happened in the original birth by sleep all i could think was yeah star wars dad!! nailed it your heart IS darkness you fuckin dillweed, about time!! what took you so long!!

but after dark road, this context is completely changed. eraqus is not just realizing that he fucked up.

he is realizing that he fucked up the exact same way baldr fucked up.

that he let his own grief and suffering cloud his judgment and guide his blade to strike out at his loved ones. that instead of finding a way to live with what's already happened to ven, what was long ago fated for terra, he turned his resentment outward and gave that darkness leave to consume them both whole.

but unlike baldr, eraqus regrets it.

it is that moment that xehanort cuts him down anyway, not because eraqus can't be saved the way baldr couldn't but because xehanort is cleaving away the last of his own attachments to the world so he can follow through with the rest of his plans, and i am SO NORMAL ABOUT THI

but okay anyway. eraqus has exactly one move left.

he can't see the board. unlike xehanort, he has no extra pieces of himself he can just bandy about; the warriors of light must assemble without any of his direct input, chasing the echoes of eraqus's students and pushing and pulling in reaction to xehanort's steady advance through the center. he has only one chance. he can't afford to waste it.

the kings are meeting in the middle of the board. the stalemate will come any moment, when they're both out of moves and out of time, leaving the fate of the worlds undecided.

and it is at this moment that eraqus pulls the same penultimate move that xehanort himself used on baldr, confronting him with the first victim his darkness ever struck down. eraqus almost doesn't have to say anything, at all, because xehanort has to know what it means. has to know what it says.

xehanort resists. the world is too far gone. too many horrible things can happen in it; it must be reset. not purged and filled with darkness, like baldr wanted, but returned to a state that can never mutate into the conditions that made baldr exist in the first place. that doomed all their classmates to die. it's too late.

For us, perhaps...but not for them.

and now we go back to the distinction.

the thing that makes xehanort's chess game different from eraqus's is that, for xehanort, it's only chess. the pieces he's moving have ceased to exist in his mind as individuals. they are pawns on a line of white and black squares, and they may weave away from his will here or there but they cannot be swayed from their march.

eraqus never forgets.

and it's actually eraqus's capacity for forgiveness that i haven't even touched on yet. this isn't a word i ever expected to associate with him, but eraqus spends dark road forgiving. five minutes after any altercation he's already forgotten about it. name-calling. arguments. rejection. opposition. full-on fighting.

murders.

when xehanort kills baldr, eraqus is still calling out for him to stop. when xehanort later strikes out at him with darkness (the thing eraqus is scared of the most!!), permanently disfiguring him, eraqus has already forgiven him before seeing him the next time in person.

he does not forget that baldr is a person in spite of his darkness, and eraqus doesn't want him to be killed for it. that terra is a person in spite of his darkness, and eraqus doesn't want to see it consume him. that ven is a person in spite of the darkness that was cleaved from him, and eraqus doesn't want to see it return.

(if you think about it the real tragedy is that we were robbed of him looking aqua in the eye and telling her that she isn't tainted forever, that it did not take her, and even if it had, that will always, always matter less than her finding her way back. i refuse to believe terra was not already made aware of these facts.)

but he also does not forget that xehanort is not a faceless player in the skies, impossible to convince of the significance of a pawn; he remembers that xehanort, too, is still a person.

this point is important because eraqus's last move is not a checkmate (I KNOW HE SAYS CHECKMATE but it is not checkmate), but it is calculated to produce something else: a concession. he doesn't need the board to support his win or xehanort's loss; he needs the player on the other side to put down the pieces and follow his beacon out of the dark.

and that is how nomura shows us our sunshine kid at last, fully formed, as he takes xehanort's burdens from him and spirits them both well beyond the reach of the board.

anyway yeah microwaving him in my brain along with axel (and also roxas and terra because if i don't collect all my blorbos AND their hot mess dads i'll never fill out my pokedex).

[skele-bunny]

New follower here, and new Ghost fan in general, hasn't yet been a year since I became a fan, anyway, with all of the Ghoul Kit content you have made it has me wondering,

Who was the first couple to become parents, and what was Sister Imperator's reaction?

MIST/DELTA/PEBBLE/ZEPHYR WERE. I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL AND EVERYONE CAN FIGHT ME ABOUT IT!!!!!!!

In my personal interpretation, it's hard for ghouls to conceive as their bodies are not adapted to the topside as much as they'd like for them to be. They haven't evolved to include that possibility, so their body still takes the environment as unknown and unsafe. But it's not impossible!

Mist was the carrier and as a water ghoul, she was able to have a clutch. It was kind of planned, also not kind of planned. All four of them had agreed that if they had children, it's something everyone wants but if it doesn't happen, then it simply doesn't happen. Then not even a month later, tadddaaa! Triplets!

Alpha joined the poly later on in Mist's pregnancy but was still super excited and happy about it. They honestly all were.

Buuuutttt. On the dark side, it opened the higher-ups eyes to the possibility it could happen. They could potentially breed their own ghouls in the ministry if they had the volunteers, or even surrogates. Obviously for a "better cause." Higher-ups started poking and prodding at Mist and keeping up-to-date with her pregnancy and it pissed him off bad. Sister Imperator was the first non-ghoul to see Mist, without her consent, just a day after giving birth.

She made some undertones in her comments about how "fulfilling" the kits will be "for future use." How Mist has opened the Clergy's eyes.

It made... All of them nauseous... She eventually left but definitely started keeping track of certain things in private. Nothing cruel ever happened to the triplets or any of the parents besides them be gawked at or fawned over by fellow ghouls. Papa Terzo was obviously super fucking happy!! Spoiled them all rotten and loved being a grandpa, just showing off the kits and pictures on his phone like; "LOOK AT MY GRANDKITS!!!!!"

But TLDR; It made Sister's mind start thinking about expansion and change. And when she's thinking about expansion and change, it's never had a good outcome now has it?