#the problem with supermassive giving us blank npcs is that i IMMEDIATELY want to write novels about them every time

[queenofbaws]

Do you have any headcanons for Kaylee and Caleb? I'm writing a fic about these two and the way you wrote Kaylee in my last ask was so fascinating cuz it's like the complete opposite of how I write her and now I'm just really curious about how you interpret them in your works.

kdjfhsjdkfh oh man, DO I EVER!!! honestly, a HUGE reason i started writing like wringing blood from a stone is because after playing the quarry, i just had...too many hackett headcanons and needed to put them all in one place, but ahhh i'd be thrilled to talk a bit about how i headcanon the hackett kids!!!

(fair warning, i am POSITIVE this will end up being a long, rambly jumble, haha!)

before i split them up, i just want to say that genuinely i think the most important piece of how i characterize the hackett kids is...they're best friends. while we see some (read: a lot) of friction between the rest of the hackett fam, in my heart of hearts and soul of souls, kaylee and caleb are best, best friends who would do anything for each other and always have each other's backs. i think they fight sometimes, like siblings do, but they never stay mad, and a lot of the time they rely on each other to balance each other out and keep each other in check in an otherwise dysfunctional household.

them being besties is just really important to me personally 😭

kaylee - athletic, considerate, lonely, defiant

so, obviously with kaylee, we get...just about nothing, right? very, very little. we have tidbits like travis saying she's one of the kindest people in the world, we have constance's explosive response to losing her, and we have the letter she writes to constance. for me, a lot of how i picture kaylee comes from that letter - she wants to tell people about what's going on with the family, she thinks the world will understand if only they can stop keeping it a secret, and she keeps having nightmares about the fire.

she does not, however, mention feeling any kind of guilt (past "wishing it never happened"), which i think is a very important thing to note for the hacketts in general, BUT is sort of the key aspect that i find so fucking INTERESTING about kaylee specifically. she wants out. she wants to be free of all this. she wants to be anywhere else but in hackett house...

and she's fucking angry. PERSONALLY, i don't get the sense that she's angry AT anyone in particular - she's not BLAMING constance in her letter, even acknowledges that the family's just trying to keep them all safe - but boy, she's MAD, and for me, all that stuff mashed together formed the image of a girl with a hell of a chip on her shoulder. that isn't to say i don't think she's still kind, or sweet, or any of that - i do! i do, in fact, think she's very likely the hacketts' buoy, so to speak - but i also think she's probably got...one hell of a temper on her.

so in my head, kaylee is sort of a wildcard, and a risky one to play, at that - she's the baby of the family and (judging by constance's...everything) is probably used to being spoiled to a certain degree, her desire to get away from the life they're living combined with her kind/helpful nature leads me to believe she's probably something of a people-pleaser, or at the very least, quick to try and make friends with, say, the campers/counselors...and if you cross her, she might forgive you, but she will not forget, and she probably won't feel too bad about doing whatever it takes to get even.

(sidenote: a LOT of how i headcanon kaylee aaaaaaactually depends very heavily on how i headcanon chris. i imagine the two of them are very, very, very similar. people love them! but watch out! there's something not entirely pleasant hiding juuust below the surface, if you go poking around.)

caleb - brooding, responsible, sensitive, creative

oh caleb. OH caleb. my sweet summer child.

i don't want to reduce how i characterize him by saying "whatever kaylee is, he's the flipside," but it's not TERRIBLY far off. it's not totally right, it's just not totally wrong either.

i think the trait that i hinge caleb's characterization on the most is, uh, guilt. when i think of caleb, i think a lot of guilt. different kinds of guilt, too - guilt because of what happened with silas, guilt because he was the one to bite chris and kaylee and make them sick, guilt that everything the family is going through comes from something he did when he was too young to really think it through, and just your plain old run-of-the-mill eldest sibling guilt that we're ALL dealing with and definitely not projecting onto fictional characters, right? right???? ;P hehehe

what he and kay definitely have in common, at least insofar as i see them, is that anger. that temper. i think all the hacketts have it, i just think they present it differently. so while i imagine kaylee is more prone to sudden outbursts, i feel like because of his guilt, a lot of caleb's anger is the quiet, slow-burning sort that he mostly turns inward, at himself...until the full moon. then you better watch out, you better watch out, you beTTER WATCH OUT, YOU BETTER WATCH OUT...

outside of that, though, i imagine him to be the quieter sibling, and the more even-keeled. he's sort of kaylee's edit function, and is very used to being the one who gets to cash the checks her mouth writes. since he's the older of them, he wants to be the more responsible, and he's always trying so, so hard to prove himself to the rest of the family. because of that guilt.

(sidenote related to my previous sidenote: a lot of how i headcanon caleb is, SURPRISE, based on how i headcanon travis. maybe it's just for my own fic-writing motivations, maybe it's a healthy dollop of that projection i mentioned before, but i very, VERY much imagine that the caleb - kaylee dynamic echoes the travis - chris dynamic...but since we don't REALLY see travis and chris interact much, this is just headcanon inception, huh??????)