Hello everybody!! I am! finally going to share the long promised Halvah lore!!
for those who may be new, hi hello, I’m Raven, and this right here is Halvah, my most beloved precious squeaky toy OC
This is gonna be a bit long, as well as require some content warnings, so under a read more this shall go!
[ Content Warnings: Eye trauma, emotional manipulation, stalking and harassment, toxic and controlling family dynamics, blood and injury ]
First off, let’s back things up to 2014 tumblr, so that we can get into world lore.
( For those who already know world lore and would like to skip this section, look for the line of 🍰 emojis that will signify transitioning into Halvah’s story specifically )
In 2014, an OC community that would soon be named Gay Dessert Anime ( GDA ) popped up. There’s actually a fandom wiki that explains the basics of how it formed, but there hasn’t been an update since the first couple months of existence, so it’s VERY far from up to date with some lore and characters.
The concept of GDA is simple: humanized desserts!
The lore has always been a little loose to allow for creativity, but it was always universal that the dessert gijinkas were considered a normal part of human life, and that the purpose of the desserts is for their dessert counterpart ( of which the gijinka and literal dessert were able to physically coexist at the same time in the human world ) to be eaten. As long as the dessert was enjoyed, this was of no issue to anyone involved.
Sometimes the dessert gijinka helps in the bakery that made them, sometimes they just kinda vibe. It all depended on the story each individual creator gave their OC!
Sometimes the dessert gijinka helps in the bakery that made them, sometimes they just kinda vibe. It all depended on the story each individual creator gave their OC!
There’s also a dessert world that the gijinka goes to when not physically in the human world! Sometimes called the dessert neighborhood, it’s a place that ONLY desserts are able to go—it’s literally impossible for non-desserts.
I could honestly go super into all the tidbits I remember, but I told myself for my current purposes I just need to explain the basics
🍰🍰🍰
But! This is my boy Halvah, a confection of the very same name ( 14 year old me had just recently tried a Joyva halvah bar for the first time, and couldn’t get enough )
While the art is slightly outdated ( drawn in 2022 ), this IS his current reference.
He used to always exude a very aloof air, acting standoffishly polite ( think rather curt interactions that, word wise, weren’t necessarily bad, but tone and body language strongly suggested a desire to end the conversation ) with anyone who tried to interact with him.
To some extent, this is still true about him, but the deeper truth is that he’s just very socially inexperienced, and past experiences—some of which he doesn’t fully remember, due to a rather spotty memory prior to a certain period—have lent themselves to his outwardly cold nature, which is generally more of a protective front.
He’s definitely still reserved, but in a way that’s more awkward than icy now, and his sad boy vibes tend to shine through more.
Now! Backstory!!
One of the things about GDA, is that dessert recipes are very significant in the characters existence. Every creator treats this differently, depending on what works best for their character ( some not focusing on it at all! ), but one of the tidbits that was considered “word of god” ( the term used for universe guidelines by the person who sparked GDA ) was that, if a recipe gets changed enough, it changes things about the character—sometimes erasing them all together!
I’ve definitely taken creative liberties here to make this part of his backstory work, particularly concerning the real world history of the different halva varieties and how those recipes are passed down and altered, but!! Halvah’s recipe is very old, and each time it changed hands, there was enough alteration that sometimes he lost a chunk of memory, or other times he ceased to exist altogether, until someone else made a variation that was once again close enough to the original to bring him back. Because of this, he carries around a journal to catalogue his life, and use for reference next time he pops up with missing chunks!
I like to think of it as almost like a ship of Theseus situation, with some components changing just slowly enough over time that he’ll pop up as one of the later variations, rather than the very first—especially considering that available ingredients and the quality of them is sure to have changed drastically over the centuries.
His biggest loss of memory, however, actually came with his current recipe!
See, there’s a few different classifications for dessert types. The ones I’m going into here are homemade vs industrial, which basically means “desserts made by a single person or family” vs “mass produced, pre-packaged” types. In all prior incarnations, he’d been considered homemade, but when he came back most recently, he was industrial, and the ingredient alterations there fucked with his memory worse than any other recipe change he’d gone through.
( Fun fact: recipe changes—as well as research error circa 2014, on my part lol, which led to some joking with friends—is where this lil sketch popped up from! )
So, basically, he pops back into existence in the modern world after having ceased to be for a bit in the 1800s—so, of course, all the technological advancements, as well as the culture shock, are pretty jarring. Plus, y’know, weird memory, and what he DOES still remember isn’t super pleasant.
Enter Dominic!
Dominic is a chocolate raspberry cake, that’s pretty popular at the bakery that makes him. He’s polite, outgoing, and somewhat lively. He’s also hiding a decently sized well of anxiety, and his relationships with both his baker and his brother ( a cherry pavlova flambé, named Flambé ) is rather negative. While he enjoys the work he does at the bakery, the controlling and emotionally hurtful environment he’s in has him taking extended trips hiding out in the dessert world, with his residence there being a relatively small hideaway, which he refuses to disclose the location of to Flambé.
It’s during one of these trips that he stumbles across the newly rematerialized Halvah, who is VERY lost, confused, and acting the part of the semi-feral cat you found in the rain ( a situation not helped by the ACTUAL rain ).
After some coaxing, he convinces Halvah to go back to his place with him so that he can get cleaned off, change into dry clothes, and regain his bearings. This ends up as a bit of an indefinite stay situation, until they’re able to figure out where, exactly, Halvah’s automatically designated residence is now located.
In that time, there’s an adjustment period where they have the weirdest desire to be friends mixed with an intense dislike of each other. This is actually almost entirely due to generally well-meaning social blunders and culture differences on both parts! Dominic also experienced an instant attraction to Halvah that’s not quite romantic, but something exceeding platonic as well, and he fumbled a lot of early interactions with Halvah due to it. Halvah, meanwhile, without proper societal context, and a couple centuries outdated English, was misreading a lot of their interactions, and was pretty sure he was being made fun of.
Over time, however, and perhaps after a couple minor altercations that ultimately helped them realize they were misunderstanding a LOT, they started to trust each other enough to actually communicate more candidly, and they ended up being each others favorite person. Things were looking up, for both of them, in ways they hadn’t for a long time.
Alas, it couldn’t last.
With Dominic spending less and less time at the bakery, and his baker unable to go to the dessert world herself to drag him back, she sends Flambé to find him.
What she doesn’t realize, as she was never actually really involved in knowing her desserts personalities outside of the ways she controlled them, is the type of danger Flambé poses to those who get in the way of a given objective.
Dominic has the right personality to naturally attract friendship, so by all means, he should have more friends. And he has had a plethora of acquaintances in the past, but when he thought they were starting to turn into genuine friendships, they’d suddenly break it off with him, often giving vague reasons, or none at all.
What he doesn’t realize, is this is because Flambé scares them off if it starts to seem like they’re a distraction to Dominic’s bakery duties.
Dominic, as the most popular dessert at the bakery, is held up to very high standards by his baker, who nitpicks just about every aspect of him. Flambé, who is not as popular, receives far less attention from her, and he resents Dominic for this, and would simultaneously do just about anything to get their bakers approval. Never mind the fact that being the center of her attention hasn’t really done Dominic much favors.
As such, when she instructs Flambé to try and keep his brother in line with the bakeries interests, he takes it to any extreme he needs to. He searches Dominic’s things, manages to find his diary—which had actually been well-hidden—and takes his next steps from there.
However, the script ends up switched a bit from Flambé’s usual “threaten the friend” formula, when Halvah shows a stronger loyalty to Dominic than past relations. Instead, he tries to convince Halvah that Dominic isn’t trustworthy. It doesn’t work, but it does plant seeds of doubt that he can’t quite push away, especially when he asks Dominic about Flambé, and Dominic, suddenly frantic, runs off to confront Flambé without explanation to Halvah.
The confrontation between brothers doesn’t go well, and, now knowing that Halvah’s safety is on the line, Dominic agrees to go back to the bakery and never meet Halvah again, on the condition that no harm comes to him.
And so, Dominic disappears, with no explanation. Halvah doesn’t accept this, and searches for Flambé to confront him. Flambé, predicting this, and also being the type to get a power trip out of holding any kind of control over someone, lets himself be found, and continues his original story of Dominic not being who he thought, as well as twisting the truth and saying that Dominic left so he could be rid of Halvah.
Halvah remains firm in his disbelief, so Flambé makes his getaway to leave Halvah alone to ruminate on what’s he’s said.
The next time they meet, Halvah demands to know what happened to Dominic, to be taken to him. He’d tried to do some digging, and, though he hadn’t gotten enough to find Dominic, he’d zeroed in on enough details to rattle Flambé.
So, Flambé decided it was time to get serious.
Drawing on a statement from Dominic’s diary about how much he loved the color of Halvah’s eyes, Flambé attacked—leaving Halvah severely wounded, and taking with him one of his eyes in a jar of preservatives.
When Halvah was next rebaked, his wounds were healed without a trace, but his eye stayed gone.
He still hadn’t given up on Dominic and finding answers, but he was left reeling, emotions a mess and unsure how to proceed. As such, his searching had slowed, tho not stopped, as he tried to sort though recent events.
Meanwhile, Flambé, having always been jealous of Dominic, realized he took joy in the way that he could still interact with Halvah, but Dominic couldn’t. It gave him a sense of satisfaction, to be able to have something Dominic wanted but couldn’t have.
So, rather than be content that Dominic and Halvah’s relationship wouldn’t present an issue anymore, he started to actively seek out and harass Halvah, turning into a game of cat and mouse. Halvah becomes hyper-vigilant, and more reclusive, as he tries to dodge Flambé interactions. Flambé only becomes more obsessed. He reads new entires in Dominic’s diary whenever possible, always being sure to return it exactly how it was left in its hiding spot. This leads to one particular confrontation that ends up being Halvah’s breaking point, as Flambé mocks him with things he’d told Dominic in confidence—things he can only assume Dominic had told Flambé himself.
He goes home that night with new scars and a shattered resolve.
Enter Modern, Halvah’s inverse.
For a quick run down, there’s a mirror world for desserts that contains the alternate version of that character, aka Inverse Desserts. What they represent for the original dessert varies per creator, with not every creator having chosen to give their oc one, but the concept was basically “different coloration and different personality”.
Modern, for Halvah, was born when all these recent traumatic events with Flambé started to take place. His personality is far more playful, and cheery. He’s also severely protective of Halvah, and WILL stab a bitch.
So when the breaking point encounter happened, Modern offered to take over, and let Halvah rest a while. Halvah accepted, and they switched places.
With Halvah gone from the regular world, and Modern not being a suitable replacement, Flambé ends up having to accept that it will be a while yet before he sees Halvah again. Especially with Modern making his distaste strongly known, the multiple stabbing attempts—some successful!—standing testament to that.
He doesn’t expect Modern to take the necessary steps to find a new residence, relocate Halvah’s things, and go completely off the grid.
When Halvah returns, his aloof, cold air has shifted to one that is reserved, awkward, and fearful. He struggles with trust, but he’s been incredibly lonely. He goes a little more of out of his way to speak to others, even makes a few friends, though they eventually drift apart.
He doesn’t know what to believe anymore, but he does know that he doesn’t want to be hurt again. To say he recovers is a lie, but, away from Flambé, his worry and hyper vigilance start to ease.
Then, Dominic comes back.
Backing things up a bit, Dominic has been pretty much confined to the bakery, and areas of the dessert world that Flambé designates acceptable for him to keep an eye on him. The environment is miserable, and, with no friends, and the negative words of his family, he stagnates.
Then, one day, he discovers a shocking truth—his recipe doesn’t actually belong to his baker! She stole it, used it for her own business, and then developed a plethora of negative and complex emotions about how it ended up being more popular than the dessert recipes that were actually of her own creation.
He confronts her, storms off, and returns to the dessert world, ready to take his life back.
It’s pure lucky coincidence that Halvah actually happened to be in the area that day, and they run into each other. Dominic had imagined a lot of reunion scenarios, but none of them involved Halvah running away, afraid of him. He’s so stunned that he doesn’t pursue, which is when Flambé turns up.
Dominic connects the dots. He demands to know what Flambé did.
Flambé, thinking he still has the upper hand, that he can still manipulate Dominic into coming back, makes a mistake: he takes the opportunity to gloat. To tell Dominic about how he couldn’t protect Halvah. He shows him Halvah’s preserved eye, and tells Dominic it’s his fault for ever thinking he could be involved with another person without consequence.
Dominic is devastated, but, after all the revelations of the day, his mind feels clearer than ever, and he refuses to bow to further manipulation. Especially knowing Flambé never kept his word of not harming Halvah.
He strikes a nearby steam pipe, and the vapors hit Flambé and extinguish his flame. Dominic makes his getaway. He has someone he needs to amend the situation with.
He ends up finding Halvah in a back alley, unintentionally cornering him.
Halvah is ready to try and bolt past Dominic, but Dominic manages to momentarily placate him by returning his journal ( which he’d thrown at Dominic in his earlier panic as an escape tactic ), and promising answers, if Halvah was willing to hear him out. Halvah cautiously accepts.
They do a bit of a tense Q&A first, which leads into Dominic’s proper explanation of events from his side. He starts off collected, but as the story goes on he starts to ramble, going off on side tangents. It’s messy, but raw in just the right way for Halvah to be convinced he’s telling the truth.
With the air cleared, they’re not necessarily okay—they’re both still too hurt for that—but now they’re once again starting to feel at ease with each other. They hug, and have a bit of a proper breakdown.
Fast forward to now, they’ve settled back into the comfort they used to take in each other, and being close again. There’s still hiccups, which were especially frequent in the initial period after their reunion, but they’re good. They haven’t seen Flambé since the day they reunited, and they’re healing.
Will that change? Maybe! But for right now, we’re all caught up on the lore! If you’ve stuck with how long this is and read through, tysm!! I hope you found some form of intrigue/enjoyment as you read. I am always open to questions and conversations surrounding my OCs, so if there’s anything y’all wanna know, please do shoot an ask ( much preferred over DM, in my case, unless it’s concerning smt you would much rather keep in DMs ^^ ) or hop into the comments here!
And thank you again!! to close out this post, here is a ( very fitting ) retro anime style lil thing I made of the boy a few months ago :3
