Sexuality: Straight / Panromantic
Aurelia experiences attraction.
But she does not fully understand it.
She did not grow up with examples of healthy affection. She learned love the way someone studies a ceremony â quietly, from the edges. Watching humans hold hands in lantern light. Listening to softened voices through tent canvas. Observing how people choose each other even when it complicates their lives.
She memorizes these things.
She treats romance like choreography.
But the framework she was raised within twisted the meaning.
To Aurelia, love has always resembled devotion.
Total. Absolute. Singular.
She was shaped to believe that loving someone means centering them. Protecting them. Obeying them. Placing them slightly above herself â not because she feels small, but because that is the only form of attachment she ever saw modeled without punishment.
Love equals loyalty.
Loyalty equals worth.
If she is loyal enough, attentive enough, selfless enough â she will not be abandoned.
Aurelia does not naturally understand balance.
Smooth over conflict before it breathes
Offer herself completely before knowing if itâs safe
Confuse self-erasure with affection
She does not mean to overwhelm.
She is trying to secure stability.
Her fear is not rejection alone.
It is becoming unnecessary.
And for someone whose mind is already fraying at the edges, feeling unnecessary feels dangerously close to disappearing.
What Growth Looks Like for Her
Aurelia is not incapable of change.
She is observant. Reflective. Deeply empathetic.
Patience instead of dominance
Gentleness instead of control
Acceptance instead of ownership
Reassurance without condescension
She will begin to recalibrate.
The first time someone stops her from kneeling â emotionally or physically â and says, âStand with me,â something inside her will shake.
The first time a disagreement doesnât end in abandonment, she will quietly rewrite a rule in her mind.
The first time someone asks what she wants and actually waits for the answerâŚ
The Love She Becomes Capable Of
Once she understands that love is not worship â
Her devotion doesnât disappear.
It becomes fierce instead of fragile.
Steady instead of desperate.
Protective without self-destruction.
She will still hold her partner through nightmares.
She will still listen carefully for tension in their voice.
She will still treasure closeness deeply.
But she will no longer shrink to keep it.
And that is when Aurelia becomes truly powerful as a partner.
Not because she worships.
And is chosen back.
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Pom Pom
Gender does not matter to him. Structure does not matter. Presentation does not matter.
The only requirement is this:
If you accept her â and by extension his family â you are safe in his world.
If you do not⌠you are observed.
Pom Pomâs love is intense. Instinctive. Protective in a way that feels almost feral despite his stitched softness.
He was not made from innocence.
He was made from vigilance.
From hunger.
From survival.
From the need to see the blow before it lands.
So when he loves someone, he does not relax.
He learns your routes.
He memorizes your habits.
He knows which door you prefer, which lantern you avoid, which days your smile thins at the edges.
He appears in places you did not expect anyone to be.
Behind curtain folds.
Perched on wagon wheels.
Very still beneath bleachers after the crowd has left.
To others, it feels invasive.
To Pom Pom, it is simple logic:
If I see everything, nothing can hurt you.
His attachment can become unhealthy.
Surveillance mistaken for care.
Proximity mistaken for protection.
Silence mistaken for trust.
He guards love like a perimeter.
He believes if he stops watching, something will be taken.
Because that is how he was born.
But beneath the learned behavior â beneath the too-wide smile and the hovering presence â there is something painfully sincere.
Not because you are useful.
Not because you are strategic.
But because you are part of the tent now.
And if he ever manages to break free from the âactâ that hardened into personality â if he learns that love does not require constant vigilance â
Still protective.
Still loyal.
Still the first to stand between you and harm.
But he would ask before following.
He would sit beside you instead of behind you.
He would trust that you will come back without checking every shadow.
He would choose to stand in the lantern light with you.
Not hide in the rafters, guarding love like itâs a war he canât afford to lose.
That choice would mean he finally believes he doesnât have to earn his place by watching.
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Puppeteer does not experience romantic or sexual attraction.
Love, to them, has never been an emotion. It is a mechanism.
In life, they watched affection used as currency â marriages arranged for alliance, devotion performed for advantage, intimacy wielded as leverage. What others called love, they recognized as structure. As influence. As control disguised as vulnerability.
They learned early that attachment creates weakness.
Desire creates predictability.
And predictability can be exploited.
So they chose not to want.
They do not crave closeness.
They do not seek companionship.
They do not hunger for touch.
Love, in their worldview, is inefficient.
It clouds judgment.
It diverts focus.
It threatens long-term architecture for momentary comfort.
If they speak of love, it is strategic.
If they offer affection, it is calculated.
If someone believes they are loved, it is because Puppeteer decided that belief would produce a desired outcome.
They are not heartbroken.
And to them, that is strength.
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Batsby loves in a way that feels⌠chosen.
He is capable of attraction regardless of gender â what draws him in isnât presentation, but spirit. Strength. Conviction. The way someone carries their scars.
Love, to him, is not control.
Not devotion.
Not surveillance.
He has already loved once â deeply enough that even death did not sever that bond. And because of that, his love carries weight. It is not impulsive. It is not careless. It is not easily earned.
Batsby is mated for life.
That is not a metaphor to him. It is instinct. It is bone-deep. When he gave himself to his partner, it was not with the expectation of seasons â it was with the expectation of forever.
Even with his lover gone, that bond does not feel broken. It feels⌠unfinished. Quiet. Carried.
So while he is capable of attraction â capable of appreciating strength and spirit in others â it would be very hard to earn that depth of attention from him again. Not because he is cold. Not because he is incapable.
But because he has already given that part of himself once.
When Batsby chooses someone, he does so fully.
He protects.
He supports.
He stands beside.
It is the kind that survives loss.
The kind that carries grief without turning bitter.
He does not fall often â and truthfully, he may never fall the same way twice.
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Flutura does not experience romantic attraction.
Not because she is cold.
Not because she is incapable.
But because romance simply does not register for her the way it does for others.
She can care deeply. Fiercely, even. She can bond. She can protect. She can attach.
But she does not feel the pull of partnership. She does not long for devotion or intimacy in that way. The language of romance feels⌠distant. Observational. Like watching something beautiful that was not made for her.
Flutura interprets connection as independence.
She values chosen closeness â friendships, alliances, bonds built on respect and shared strength. But she does not want to be someoneâs âother half.â She does not want to be centered in someoneâs identity, nor center someone in hers.
Love, to her, is not fusion.
She may struggle with others projecting romance onto her care. She may need to clarify that deep affection does not equal romantic desire.
She does not flirt with intention.
She does not nurture with seduction.
She does not protect because she longs to possess.
When she stands beside someone, it is because she chooses to stand there â not because her heart demands exclusivity.
Romance, to Flutura, looks like surrender.
And surrender is something she does not survive.
After losing her parents to hunters for their wings ,
after forcing her sister to eat what remained in order to live ,
after losing that same sister without sound or warning ,
after losing the Angel in a pattern that echoed the past â
Her mind learned a quiet rule:
Attachment invites vulnerability.
Vulnerability invites loss.
She will not build her life around something that can be taken.
But once understood, she is incredibly stable.
She does not leave because feelings fade.
She does not cling because feelings intensify.
She does not become jealous.
She does not demand exclusivity.
She does not reshape herself to be chosen.
She simply remains â because she chooses to.
Her love, when it exists, is deliberate.
Measured.
Enduring.
Controlled.
It does not burn hot like obsession.
It does not collapse under rejection.
It does not fracture under distance.
Like glass under stage light â fragile in appearance, unyielding in structure.
Flutura does not reject romance out of bitterness.
She simply does not feel it.
And in a circus built on distorted devotion, desperate attachment, and hunger disguised as love â
She is the only one whose affection does not consume.
And that, in its own way, is a kind of strength.