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graveyardsmash2023-04-03 04:02 pm
Event Wrap-Up/Handwaving
Fast moving events always leave a few things by the wayside! Busted your elbow during the event? Got to it a little too late after being kidnapped by fur-bearing-trout enthusiasts? Or did you show up perfectly in time, but now have a little more on your plate than you can handle before you get to tagging around next month? No matter why you need it, this meme is here for you.
1. Post a top-level comment with a little summary of what your character accomplished during the event. If you'd like, make mention of any specific plans you would like to wrap up, or about your schedule, or whatever information you feel you need.
2. Comment to other folks's toplevels to discuss any threads you need to wrap up, handwave, can't backtag, or even last-minute plans, I can't stop you, I'm not your dad.
3. Relish in knowing your plans are secure, complete, and easily referenced in the future.
4. Repeat for other events as needed, and help yourself to some freshly simmered trout.
no subject
Checking in about:
- is there something real big you are hoping/planning to hit Gladion with, vibes-wise, so I can start mentally rotating it and/or help walk the thread there
- is there anything you specifically want to have Beat pick up from Gladion, either from him dropping it in the thread or some kinda handwaves memory nugget Beat walks into elsewhere
no subject
HONESTLY I have never done a memshare before so I'm really not sure. I think my biggest desire was to just put someone in Beats shoes and make them feel horrible. Let them have a peek at all of Beats failures and let them feel them for themselves. For Gladion, the losing Rhyme was actually the biggest failure on Beat's part. It didn't just make him feel like a bad brother finally (on top of all the other things he's /bad/ at), but also piled on was the fact she sacrificed herself to save him, which he had previously failed to do when pushing her out of the way of the car (another thing she did better than him). Plus joining with the Reapers meant he'd never go home again. He agreed to hunt and erase players simply because it meant he could keep calling her Noise up. An obsession and it made him feel like he could let her live again. If you want to use any of that to fuck with Gladions brain, interposing Lillie or etc once out and he remembers her....
... Hmmm... Is there anything you want to share? I don't know anything really about Gladions canon/point.
no subject
HM. WELL. There's nothing I'm specifically jonesing for - I think he's starting to open up on his own more in ways that'll make him be less cagey with Beat - but let me ramble a bit and if anything here interests you, point at it.
Regarding Lusamine: obviously there's...lore here. One of the reasons Gladion keeps Beat at arm's length regarding his mom is that he gets the impression that she treated him well Until That Point, while he did not have the same experience, and he nurses some regular resentment about that as well as some..."well you just don't understand what's going on so why bother trying to explain it" chuuni bullshit too. So, he could get some memories of Lusamine as Gladion remembers her, the good/bad/complicated or a combination. I think it's distinct from his own parents' abuse in the sheer level of control Lusamine had over Gladion and his environment and how he responded to it by drawing into himself because there wasn't anywhere to go to get away from it until he left left.
Regarding Gladion more generally: he ran away from home at 13 and lived in a motel for a year while training/rehabilitating his stolen Pokemon superweapon buddy. It was kinda rough and sheds some light on Gladion's...various things. The value he puts on independence. Some of his loner tendencies/difficulties with unconditionally relying on people. The bond between him and Silvally. For some reason this paragraph is short but there's a lot of different stuff under this umbrella actually.
Before and after that: whoops his upbringing wasn't just high-pressure, Lusamine and her family are actually STINKING fucking rich and Gladion's really strict sense of personal responsibility comes in part from the amount of real money and power and mass-life-ruining potential that's bound up in his weird family's drama. This is another reason he's distant with Beat about Lusamine and other things; he really loathes the idea of walking away from things he sees as his responsibility (even when he does it anyways), and has a hard time accepting Beat's attitude about things like that. Could share memories/feelings along these lines, some of the sense of responsbility he was raised with, or moments from "cleaning house" at the Aether Foundation after Lusamine goes into a jellyfish coma and he has to step up and deal with some of the aftermath. This is a little more abstract? but could also double as Lusamine lore because...haha there was some shit. I'd want to check with Kibi before showing him the freezers full of Pokemon but yeah there's some shit
Pokemon stuff: OOOR he could just get to see an honest to god Pokemon battle or two or three. There's a tournament early in his canon I could just hand you pages from, straight from canon, ez handwave and he gets to see Slightly Younger Gladion being incredibly embarrassing.
no subject
So a little of Lusamine via Gladions memories (however altered they may be by Gladions mindset) might be good. The rich thing will resonate hard with what he knows of Josh's life, with the control. And really turn him off of Rich Parents like damn, y'all. His parents weren't rich, just controlling until they couldn't, then nagging.
And let him see those pokemon battles, lets see wee baby Gladion
no subject
ANYWAYS
Here's the Pokemon battles, sorry for length. He is at peak chuuni here. He has a plan to save the world and stop his evil mom and he is fully convinced it's going to work because he's the main character. And he is about to get his absolute shit rocked
LUSAMINE STUFF: do you want me to go ahead and give you a summary here, or try to work it into the thread after the Beat scrungle buffet, or both
no subject
and that's up to you, prolly a quick summary we can work together would work, my brain is balking so hard at tags
no subject
the emotional abuse/controlling parent cws go in here
We can give him (parts of) a day in Gladion's life circa 11 or 12 years old or so?
He lives in a mansion; here's an exterior, here's an interior, you may sense a theme, his room was like this too. There were some personal touches, but they were all "approved-of" things like photographs of Pokemon, and everything had to stay in order. No expectation of personal space or control over his belongings; if something provoked Lusamine she'd come in and rearrange things or place/remove stuff. Any stuff he REALLY wants to keep, books and things he doesn't want her to toss out, he has really elaborate hiding places for.
He's homeschooled, a mix of book work and lessons around Aether Paradise itself on the Foundation's operation; no need to bore Beat with memories of sitting and doing his math assignments or whatever, but if he did do it it'd be sorta good sorta bad because it gives him time to himself but also if something provokes Lusamine she knows exactly where he is. All moot because Beat deserves a walk around the rest of the place - the tradeoff there is that Lusamine doesn't start shit in public, but there are so many more things for her to get provoked about if he's Doing Activities, and everyone in this facility is her employee and most of them don't understand what mentions of his Activities to her will/won't provoke her.
Aether Paradise is a whole fucking thing! The visual theme continues. Can't really get too cuddly with the Pokemon because they're being rehabbed for release to the wild. He has a Pokemon of its own but it's a Porygon, basically a robot with no personality, he got it because it's sort of relevant to Ultra Space research but also sort of because Lusamine can't screw with it or use it to screw with him if it doesn't have feelings.
He probably follows this guy around for a certain amount of time. This is Faba! He's a pain in the ass! He does not ever shut up and it's a combination of trying to flatter Gladion, negging Gladion (in a way where he thinks he's being subtle), bragging about his own accomplishments, and being a living info leak on the weird dimensional experiments the Foundation is running at his mother's behest. At some point Gladion probably gets rescued by Wicke for lunch and this is good because Wicke has a brain.
In general, Gladion is very closed-off and kind of emotionally worn down, because he kind of spends his life waiting for Lusamine to take issue with something about his life and just totally overhaul it, and in the short-term he's just trying to minimize the chances of her doing that by staying out of her way and doing what she wants. The way he dresses, talks, acts, what he shows interest in, where he goes, and so on. He doesn't act like a punk actually!! He's internally tired and resentful but externally acts kind of...stiff and sarcastic at worst, usually just kinda compliant. Things like Wicke's intervention give him some space to breathe, but he barely recognizes it as being that because he is just...on guard all the time.
The time he gets to spend with Lillie is also limited, and has been getting more and more limited over the last year, and when they are together they still have to Behave Properly because Lusamine is usually nearby and gets weird about Gladion not being a good influence (or various phrases that are kind of code for "don't you two start conspiring against my will").
They have a Wretched Family Dinner in which he has to act very nice and agreeable and say what he did today but in a way that doesn't make Lusamine "Mad Because He's Not Taking Things Seriously" or "Mad Because He's Showing Too Much Drive And That Means He Might Do Unauthorized Things" and etc etc.
...I get to the end of this hypothetical day and realize that I've given you a day with minimal Lusamine exposure, which makes it a pretty good day for Gladion but not that much direct POV on her, just the shadow of her presence!!! UHHHHH god. Direct confrontations with Lusamine are like. Standing there with her and a Foundation employee and the employee is innocently describing something you did and you are dissociating from your dread because this is going to get you in trouble for some ridiculous Lusamine reason. The actual being in trouble which is an argument you don't even try to rise to because you won't win and you just wait to see what kind of restriction she's going to put on your Movements and Activities. Getting baited into arguing back against one (1) thing and that was a trap because now she's going to verbally shred you, not about you being A Disappointment necessarily but usually more about how you're impossible and cruel and manipulative and don't love her and probably don't love your sister and etc etc etc..........
it's bad bro
no subject
Yeah Beat will sort of vibe hard with the parent expects you to do as your told thing, but be shocked at how extreme Lusamine took it with Gladion. Especially since Lusamine dug deep into the gaslighting thing, while Beat's parents just eventually Gave Up and dumped him like a hot potato. It WILL remind him of how Lusamine was at first here, until she began to mellow out when she realized Beat was very pliable, because he was so desperate for a parent to show love to him, that he couldn't differentiate between love and manipulation.
He is so buying Gladion some hot dogs and just sitting with him after like dude.
no subject
But at the same time he's trying to Not Be Like That so there's sort of a balance? Closing off but then tentatively opening up about certain things in certain ways?
It might be good to thread their first significant interaction after all of this (whether it's hot dogs or something else or just waiting until dog park) bc I'm having a tough time explaining the vibes without pulling up specific things he might say, but that's your call. I can also just keep nerd rambling if you don't mind Imagining A Thread through this format.
no subject
it can totally happen in the dog park if gladion wants to come early and help beat set up, they can have an awkward talk