~/ Nat / 24 / Fae/Faer /~ Greetings, Fellow Adventurers! This is where I'll be posting most of my Venturiantale stuff from here on out! The fandom is still alive even after everything that’s happened! It’s bittersweet, staying with this fandom, but even by the point where things came out, Taleblr was incredibly independent and went further than the channel alone. I do not support the brothers actions in any way shape or form, and if you ask me the characters are more ours than theirs and have been for awhile. “Sister” blog with the AMAZING @overanalyzingtaleblr and Sideblog for @Nat-Without-A-G
How would you guys feels if I did like, a master post every week about certain characters or groups? Like, either I choose randomly or I answer a request, but I still have it come out consistently on the same time and same day (probably around noon on Saturday). It’ll just be focused on whatever I think is important or cool, and if there’s a request I’ll be sure to answer that well as soon as I can. ^^
If possible I’ll include some things of my designs as well… anyways, my ask box is open! I’ll probably just post the one I did for the TT this Saturday and work on a new one this upcoming weekend <3
Checking in to ask how yall are feeling about the Personal Spencer Lore posts I’ve been doing! They’re not done yet, I still have more things and details I want to impart, but I wanna vibe check the current direction and see if anyone has any thoughts/critiques/ideas/etc from what I currently have :)
I’d also love to hear any of Your Spencer headcanons— whether or not they work with My Personal ideas!
Where I last left off, Spencer— already weak from his resurrection— has been essentially made mortal after Billy sacrificed him to attempt to resurrect Maxwell. Due to not fully understanding how the human body works, Spencer essentially gets into a bit of a death loop due to his own inability to take care of himself. No one realizes they need to be concerned for him yet because he’s been fine living off styrofoam before this point, so why would that change out of nowhere?
~ ~ ~
So any point after Maxwell’s return in my lore, Spencer Acachalla is like… Kinda like Lester in the Apollo Trials? He has access to some slight degree of power and in a literal sense IS just a depowered god, but he’s practically a human. Wasting away in the Acachalla’s basement attempting to feed on the residues of power from the interdimensional portal upstairs is a bit of a fools errand, but it’s all that he can do if he doesn’t want to admit defeat.
Coming back from the dead frequently can have consequences— I interpret it as kind of losing a piece of yourself. Usually you just become increasingly fragile, quicker to die from smaller injuries, but I think you can come back from that with time. Same for anything that gets chipped off your memory or soul— respawns essentially take a piece of your health to bring you back, and you can Get whatever you lose back by just taking care of yourself. That being said, Spencer mostly just enters a bit of a haze for a bit and is mostly just mad at everyone.
So he gets buried in the garden before the Acachallas flee the house for a few months for unrelated reasons. Tbh, can’t fully say if it’s Because of his bad attitude— Sally did it and she plays rough— but I can say he was pissed when he came back. Argued with Sally for a bit, tried posturing that she would be sorry because he was a god. Wasn’t the first time he had mentioned that, but Sally asked back what kind of god dies from being buried in dirt? What kind of god NEEDS to breathe?
And that’s about the point where Spencer starts realizing he’s essentially mortal and has been for a little bit.
Before he largely waved all the weird human stuff off as Billy did something to him, or he’s not actually dying it’s something else, or he’s just feeling his weakness, or yadda yadda the universe hates him, or he was just worse at taking care of his vessel. Plus it wasn’t like he wouldn’t “die” before all of this, it was just more like something that affected the body, not him. Instead of being something for him to puppet, he had become reliant on his body to Exist. Which. Freaked him out a bit. He quickly finished the argument by blowing up and slinking back to his space in the basement to mope collect his thoughts.
And I think this is about the time that Gertrude hones in that Spencer is Not doing as well as she thought he would… and was maybe more like the other kids than she thought.
Previously, I tried to explain how Spencer went from weakened god to practically mortal. I’m now going to explain where Spencer messed up.
Heads up this one is going to mention a lot of bodily suffering including starving and chronic pains. All you really need to know is Spencer is bad at taking care of a human body and winds up dying like 20 more times as a result. If that ain’t your thing, I think the next post’s summary fills in the gaps well enough :)
The long and short is… The Mighty Spence has never had to take care of a physical body before. He has never had to feel in the way that people do, both sensory input in general but also pains and discomfort. Despite now living in a mortal body and being dependent on it, Spencer did not understand hunger, exhaustion, thirst, weakness, brain fog, muscular atrophy, disease, fatigue, migraines, starvation, memory loss, so on and so on and so on. Prideful being that he is (and still pissed at Billy) he never once attempted to ask for help and mostly just. Turned back to “hibernating” (I haven’t mentioned yet but I think Spencer got bored with just doing Nothing so now he just plays World of Warcraft instead) and focusing his energy on siphoning power from the leylines until he was back to normal.
Thing is though, he could do that without issue before because his body was in stasis. Now, if he doesn’t drink water for an extended period of time, it’s gonna have CONSEQUENCES. Spencer very quickly enters a continuous and confused cycle of sudden deaths, where he’ll die of a condition or disease or some other ailment and won’t tell anyone and won’t ask for help. Coming back from the dead wouldn’t always put Spencer at peak condition either, meaning that whatever else was nothing him by the time of a death probably would be the next to kill him.
Mostly out of denial, he very much refused to acknowledge that this is because he was more mortal than god at the moment. He would try to overpower his own suffering, or ignore it, or chew on styrofoam and cardboard to ignore the aches. Every time he dies he loses a little more of the power he’s been trying to scrape for himself, meaning he becomes more mortal every time he dies. He’s drifting farther away than what and who he is, and as far as he’s concerned, there is Nothing he can do about it. By the time anyone else in the house realizes he’s not as self-sufficient as they thought, he’s effectively lost a piece of himself.
Previously we established what Spencer’s pseudo-godhood presents itself as, what he needs to be doing to maintain and gain more power currently, and why he stays with and expresses an interest in the Acachallas as a unit. Now, I want to talk about Spencer essentially becoming mortal (all of this is my own version of the story, you don’t have to take it as gospel!)
~ ~ ~
Spencer wanted to try to understand what each of the Acachallas were capable of, and whether or not they were worth ingratiating himself with. He already had a bit of a general idea for Papa, Gertrude, and Sally, but he was struggling to catch what all Billy was capable of, especially since Billy himself had NO idea! All he knew for sure is that Billy could raise the recently-deceased/undo deaths that happen near him or something, but he was curious if Billy could do more than that. (Especially if Smigglebugs as a family carry a historic reputation…)
So, when Spencer found out Billy and a collection of friends were going to a graveyard to try to raise one of Papa’s relatives, Spencer figured he could learn more if he managed to tag along. Before this point, the family wasn’t being haunted by Maxwell at all, but Papa still mentioned him on occasion in a way that seemed to haunt him. Billy wanted to see if he could use his revival powers on the dead to help bring peace to Papa. Spencer wanted to see how far he got before it went horribly wrong
Spencer was barely apart of the family at this point, he was more like a weird roommate who would yell at everyone, so he wasn’t about to start asking questions when Billy let him tag along. He wasn’t necessarily invited, but when he confronted Billy, he was allowed to join with no issue. It wouldn’t have been the first time Spencer joined in for some kind of crime with the rest of the family, but this was more like hanging out with Billy and his friends. He had done stuff like this with Sally too, but those tended to be more… fun than what Spencer was expecting from this.
… Spencer did not know he was only brought along to be a sacrifice. Billy and his friends knew they needed some kind of life to be fed to bring back a soul, and reasoned the basement dweller would be fine anyways. They also kind of found him annoying— whatever the case! Spencer is brought to Maxwell’s grave to help dig and is shot dead by Billy. This sacrifice came with immediate consequences— including Billy being the first Acachalla killed by Maxwell and a small zombie army being raised (local police handled those tho). That being said, all of this was much, much larger than either Billy or Spencer could have expected.
Essentially, Spencer couldn’t Really die before this. His body wasn’t alive, just preserved, and his soul isn’t dependent on his body to survive. Respawns would only apply to him if there was a disconnect between his host body and soul long enough for it to register as a fresh death, and even that wasn’t frequent.
That being said: If the ritual done to raise Maxwell and Spencer were the same, Maxwell should have gotten Spencer’s body. Part of that ritual does link the sacrifice body as a host for the recipient— but Maxwell doesn’t pilot Spencer’s body. Instead, Billy kinda pushed the two together.
By weakening the Spence to a point where it barely has any real power left to maintain a corpse, making the body respawn, WHILE conducting a ritual that includes a step of binding a soul to a body— Spencer essentially wakes up human. He has been weakened to a point where he can barely siphon energy from the leylines under the Acachalla house, and instead of preserving his body, he was now more of a resident of it— and it was keeping HIM alive this time. He wasn’t fully human, but… he might as well have been one.
In other words:
Anyways if you ever wonder why Maxwell and Spencer both have beef with Billy it’s entirely to do with this. Also Spencer and Maxwell mmmmay be kinda soul linked now.
Also, more info on how this affected Maxwell below
Additionally: in my canon, Maxwell Acachalla is not a vengeful spirit, no matter what he has led himself to believe. He WAS previously peacefully at rest, even if he fits a lot of the criteria otherwise. It ties back to this sacrifice; while Spencer was weak for a god, he would have been very powerful compared to a normal human. Sacrificing a human life usually isn’t enough to fully wake a spirit at rest— remember all that I said about energy earlier? It’s like how it takes more work to start a car engine than it does to keep it on— what happened to Maxwell is the ~life force~ equivalent of blasting an air horn in a sleeping person’s ear.
When Spencer was sacrificed, I’d say it was divided between ever soul laid to rest in that graveyard, and that was divided AGAIN via Billy’s ritual to predominantly feed into Maxwell. If Maxwell was like anything or anyone else in this world, it would be the Soup family, with their weird living ghost properties. Literally, Maxwell could be considered alive if we don’t consider life to include a heartbeat.
Alongside Spencer’s power, tho, Maxwell also kinda was pushed into taking on some of. The unfettered rage of an undead god? So Spencer mellows out a bit, and Maxwell is now carrying more anger than he ever experienced in his life, and has NO idea how to direct it, because he can’t even explain what he’s mad at. He wants someone to help him understand, but anyone talking to him for too long pisses him off, and he has to figure out why so he can justify getting rid of them. (Papa recognizes Maxwell’s changed from when he was alive, but thinks he deserves it so he hasn’t actually realized that Maxwell is acting out of character.)
Return of the Spencerposting, because I’m no longer doing homework period and finally have the energy to think and post this stuff again.
Where we last left off, Spencer Acachalla is a weakened god living in the basement of Acachalla’s house, attempting to siphon what power he can through a leyline the foundations were built on top of. He has been there for a long, long time— longer than Gertrude, even— and only creeps out of the basement to investigate what’s happening when he realizes the increasing members of the household aren’t leaving anytime soon. He’s trying to vet the new members (Gertrude, Billy, Sally) to varying levels of success, and trying to see if any of them can be used to his advantage in his weakened state. Moving on, I want to talk about the nature of Spencer as a being, because it’s about to be irrevocably warped and that change is important.
~ ~ ~
When I say Spencer is a weakened God, I do mean that he could not currently survive without a host body, and said body essentially a puppeted corpse being maintained and given an illusion of life through having something inhabit it and magically freeze it in time… but he’s not taking care of it, really. Since the body was killed to give him life, it really doesn’t have anything else left for Spencer to take from it unless he like. Inhabited it for real, but then he’d be severely limited in what he can do since he’d have to be keeping a body alive all the time, too, and wouldn’t have as much of a metaphysical presence.
Also, Spencer’s host body seems to be about 12 or so, and admittedly Papa and Gertrude should’ve been more concerned about that. Both being from long-living species themselves meant that neither actually really took note at how Spencer didn’t seem to age. They both registered that he was alive and didn’t seem to be dying anytime soon, so he’s fine to just do his own thing actually. Maybe he was some non-human thing that just looked like a kid but was actually perfectly fine managing itself.
What’s worth noting is that it takes energy to gain energy. In order to covet power from the world or life from magic, you need to have the ability to take it for yourself. In the same way that a parasite needs to suck the nutrients out of their host or a plant needs to drink water through its roots, and people need to eat, drink, chew, digest, etc. in order to gain energy from food. For Spencer, that energy is power, and that power is everything. Just existing near an area with a lot of magical energy isn’t enough for him to benefit, he needs to be able to knock it off its original course and take it for himself. A lot of what he was doing in his early years at the Acachalla house was just sitting in the basement, slowly pulling power from the leylines for as long as possible. Because again, taking this magic takes effort. It took time for him to even be able to siphon away even a negligible amount of power for himself consistently.
Normally, he wouldn’t have to worry about this. Gods predominately gain their power from worship and offerings from their followers, and they usually have the ability to pull energy from anywhere in the cosmos they can reach, or from deaths during wars done in the gods name, or even become a part of a galaxy themselves as to not obstruct an ecosystem. That being said, the Mighty Spence was revived in a weakened state, and while he had many followers who gave their life for his being, he really didn’t have any left afterwards. By the time he returned, the Mighty Spence was merely considered some old forgotten deity with traditions that died out a bit later than expected for a belief of its caliber. In order to reach a point where he isn’t reliant on the Acachalla family house, he either needs to find a more powerful leyline that is accessible to him, or he needs to gain a collection of worshippers.
The first one would be difficult considering how much of the world has become private property— not to mention how many people would jump at the chance to dissect a weakened god— and the second one would be challenging given Spencer’s social skills (or lack thereof). So he chooses to stay in the basement, and while he tries to chase away the family on occasion, they are a consequence of this choice that he is willing to accept. A consequence that may come with a boon of its own, seeing how much magical power seems to be contained by at least three of the family members (Gertrude is just a standard gingarian as far as Spencer is concerned), and he’s willing to explore that to its natural conclusion. He’s really hoping that conclusion is either him gaining followers or taking their power for himself, but y’know, anything works, totally, yeah…
So obviously, things go HORRIBLY wrong for him very fast.
One of these days I need to get back into posting about the minor characters I’ve basically turned into OCs bc I’ve gotten wayyyy too attached to Maloney and his extended family—
I hope they live a happy life being as babie as possible
Also, funny how they adopted all of Toast’s mannerisms seeing as the last word we got about the origins of CBF was that they were a fucked up clone of Johnny Toast sent back in time and fused with cardboard boxes or something
This isn't in reference to the trans issue, but I personally don't like Sue because people tend to blend Islamophobia into her. The haha her head covering is a hijab and oh she bombs people. Its ehhhhh.
ok so ngl in my memory (which is notoriously Not The Best but all I have) this is my first time encountering hijabi Sue as a headcanon. And uh.
y. yeah I’m with you anon.
lowkey what’s getting me is that Sue isn’t one of the acachallas geared predominantly towards explosives— which I know isn’t saying a lot bc the channel loves explosives, but Sue’s weapon of choice is more frequently a handgun. like it feels like people are going out of their way to double down on a connection between Islam and bombs from the way this ask is phrased and I really hope y’all aren’t doing that shit. Even if they aren’t the point does still stand in that Sue’s model is from Trouble in Terrorist Town and I really feel like steps need to be taken to distance her from that if we’re going to be making headcanons like that in good faith.
Also I’ve had a couple people mention that the reference to explosives here may have been about her character and not what the person with this headcanon leans into, WHICH. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was what this anon intended! If so; shit my bad I didn’t mean to lowkey invalidate your point because you would still be right and aaaaaaaa
When I say Sue isn’t predominantly geared towards explosives out of the Acachallas, I mean Sue was only responsible for a video ending via nuke Once. Other than that, she’s got a bit in what may be the same video (idk tho) where she’s obsessed with a “shampoo” that is actually a Davy Crockett, so it’s valid to interpret she likes the explosive and is calling it shampoo as a mistake. Or it works really well as a shampoo for her idk— POINT REMAINS!
As much as I harp on it, this isn’t just about explosives. Sue’s bit of being clumsy to a point of being a threat to herself or others very much opens the door to directly associate her with mass-scale destruction. If you want headcanon Sue as a hijabi to reference her mask, my personal recommendation would be to find some way to reframe her problems. Make it more personal or emotional, like she makes a lot of mistakes that don’t necessarily lead to things breaking but still cause problems (inconveniently just too late to everything? forgetting to tell people important information? says things that she doesn’t realize is hurtful meaning it as a compliment?), or you can say she IS still a bit dangerous, but only really to herself and fragile items (too clumsy for her own good? poor eyesight and no glasses? inconvenient narcolepsy or some chronic disorder?), or you can lean into her fast reflexes in her backstory video and say she’s easily frightened (jumping into others or hitting things she shouldn’t when startled? maybe you can keep her headshotting people by accident, but that may be pushing it). I’m mostly trying to keep down destruction / deaths of others, but I know this is a reoccurring bit for her because the chaos around her can be funny. 🤷 I could also suggest she can sense/is drawn to chaos like an absol, or suggest she’s dealing with Milo Murphy’s Law and everything that can go wrong around her happens to often without her involvement— who knows! Just suggesting means to keep something I consider a defining trait without keeping. Explosives.
I’m sure there is more you can do if you want to emphasize that your version of Sue can exist without having an association to blowing things up, these are just what I can think of off the top of my brain. This is all just some things to consider, examine, and work to distance from if someone wants to continue with making Sue hijabi. If we have any Islamic members in the fandom and they disagree or think I’m out of line, I’ll gladly cede the point to them. I’m not an authority on anything other than like… general lore stuff and I’m mostly just rambling here, lol.
yeaahh, i think some long, long steps need to be taken about sue as a character. at the stage she’s currently at, she’s still just as thorough of a transmisogynistic caricature as she was in the actual yt episodes, just with a nicer label slapped on. if anything, seeing the exact same tropes done being actually Labeled as transfem feels… kinda worse lol?
i do wanna say, though, that im not judging anyones who’s done this personally, and when your source of inspiration is so thoroughly bigoted its only natural some things will leak through, especially when 99% of this community isnt transfem (🥲) and might have a harder time immediately identifying whats harmful and what isnt. idk. theres no judgement and i dont think anyone is a bad person or a transphobe, i just hope people see this and take it as a learning opportunity and a chance to better their stuff and lean away from the frye’s bigotry thats so thoroughly weaved into her character and her origins.
I’m at work atm so I’ll keep this quick, but yeah I agree more steps need to be taken & I don’t have any reason to believe anyone who feels this stuff applies to them means harm!
Ultimately we do have to remember that Sue’s character, when it comes to being rep, hit rock bottom and started digging. Getting rid of the big stuff doesn’t remove everything, and there’s a lot of things I think the fandom need to consider but may not have the information needed to do so.
I’ll explain some of what I know about Sue’s history both in text and things said by the fryes/possible irl context later today, because I think there’s some things that have become popular fanon without fully trimming where it came from! I’ll hide it under a ReadMore & tag it, so anyone who doesn’t want to see it won’t have to!
