I think that both Tenna and Spamton talk shit about themselves cause they hate themselves but I think that Tenna self-depreciates in a way that he wants to hear from others that he isn't awful and all and he's worried that these negative thoughts are true and he's like a puppy that needs reassurence while Spamton on the other hand self-depreciates in a way that he disguises it as a joke or he talks about traumatizing things that happened to him like it's nothing and he also believes that these negative thoughts are true but he doesn't want others to pity him or anything.
Sorry for the delay on literally anything I can never stick to one piece/idea before finishing them istg
There’s so many other things I need to be drawing instead but…idk I’m just in an ANGSTY/melodrama sorta mood rn I just gotta ANGST/melodrama it out you know???
Hoping to at least get something done this year tho (still can’t believe it’s already May perhaps I’m already cooked chat 😭🙏)
Edit: fuck-…you SEE that’s what I mean my brain apparently still thinks it’s FUCKING MAY ITS PRIDE MONTH YOU GOD DAMN AAA—
"Since when did you get so comfortable
living in someone else's shadow?"
A tragedy in slow motion, as to how everything went wrong.
Lucca has always been the forgotten son. He was the first born and only son, therefore making him the heir in the eyes of society; but behind closed doors, he was always delegated to a lesser role, with little to no power. This was because when he was three years old, his mother died, his father was cast out of the family by his grandmother, wherein she gained control over the family assets and land holdings. And his grandmother hated him, simply for the reason that he looked like his father, an abhorrent drinker and gambler who she blamed for her daughter's death.
His grandmother would scold him, even beat him with her cane when she thought he had misbehaved... she never gave him the care and attention that she gave to his little sister. By that logic, he should have hated his sister, too. But his sister was one of the only people who didn't forget about him, who looked after him when he had nowhere else to turn. As children, they only had each other to rely on, and this was when Luna gradually began taking on more responsibility, filling in a pseudo-mother role since they had no mother at all. (Talking him down, sewing up his clothes when he got into fights, finding him when he ran away into the woods... it wasn't as if Luna knew what having a mother was like, but she just wanted to look after her brother, especially when he was too afraid to go to their grandmother.)
As years passed, it became clear that his role in the family was to be a puppet, mainly with his grandmother pulling the strings. Again, as the only son he was the 'legitimate heir'; but that was only on paper. It was just to save face with social norms among the nobility. Secretly, his grandmother was the one who held all the power, the influence, the control over their finances... and during this time, she was also teaching her granddaughter everything that she knew, grooming her to take up the mantle of head of the family once she was gone. As women, they could only rule from the shadows, with wit and cunning, and that's exactly what Luna aspired to be--to be strong and unwavering like her grandmother.
It was during their teenage years when the siblings started to drift apart. Not completely, but enough to where they each went their own paths. Luna began learning from a huntsman down in the village on how to track, how to shoot with a rifle and how to work alongside hunting dogs... Lucca was thrust into a military position, courtesy of their grandmother, as she thought it would teach him discipline. It did, and it didn't. He was athletic, but he had a temper and was hardly a team player. He learned how to use a polearm, which became his weapon of choice in combat. He also killed more than a few trainees when he let his anger get the better of him... this was a recurring issue.
When he was seventeen, his grandmother had him engaged to a young heiress from a neighboring province. Even when he tried to fight and speak against it, he had no say in the matter. His grandmother had made the arrangements for him, and that was that. He cursed her out, and that was the last time they ever spoke to each other. The next day, he was shipped off to live with his soon-to-be wife, where he would live with her on her family's estate for the next six years. And he hated every minute of it.
When he was twenty-three, his grandmother finally died. His wife, whose company he loathed to be in, died the year before from smallpox. Truth be told, he couldn't bother to remember her name, as she bored him to tears and he spent as much time off the estate as he could. It was when he received news from his sister about their grandmother's passing that he left her family behind, without so much as a word of goodbye. He was glad to be rid of them. And now, with that witch of a woman gone, he thought he could finally take the reigns of power back for himself... but it wasn't that simple. Luna had taken control of the family assets and land holdings in their grandmother's stead, but kept Lucca on paper as the de facto 'head' of the family. Again, he was just a puppet on a string. Luna granted him far more leniency and treated him with respect, even letting him weigh in on important decisions, but he still had a lingering animosity towards her, that she was just picking up where their grandmother had left off, leaving him with nothing and making him feel worthless.
That's when it started... the idea that he was worthless. That his sister was dealt the better hand. That she always had it better than him, and everything he wanted was taken away from him. That's when the hatred started.
Seven years passed. Both he and his sister fell victim to a coup staged by their uncle, their father's brother, in an attempt to claim revenge. They were both led to separate locations under false pretenses and then murdered in cold blood. Lucca's body was fed to the dogs. Luna's body was tied up and weighed down with heavy stones, before being tossed into the river. Decades later, after their souls were judged and sent to Hell, they were among the chosen few that were resurrected and made to serve as crossroads demons.
The siblings knew about each other and how they had both been resurrected, but Lucca turned away from his sister the first chance he could. He didn't care about family or blood anymore... he just wanted to walk his own path, without anyone stringing him along. And he did, for a time. For the next two hundred years, he did his job and made contracts when he was summoned. He didn't have the wit or cunning that his sister did; any humans straddling the fence on whether or not they wanted to sell their souls, he bought them through fear. He was resurrected under the sin of wrath, which amplified his demonic presence, making him more monster than man...
More and more the monster bleeds through, always smiling like he wants to eat you... that was his existence.
Until he met her.
The details for him are... fuzzy. The cruel fact of the matter is, he doesn't remember much from that time, other than he was happy. He remembers the emotions he felt more than anything, and how he desperately wanted to hold onto them... and it was all thanks to her.
Noel. A girl from the southern countryside of France, of all places. She sold her soul to him to cure her village of an epidemic. And to him, she was as bright as the sun.
It all came crashing down when he had to take her soul. The laws of death, by the contract he had forged with his own hands, demanded it. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. Everything good, everything that ever gave him purpose in life had been taken away from him by someone else...
He couldn't let it happen again. Not to her. They tried to run... but they didn't make it far. Hell was owed a soul, and Death had a right to claim it. So Death sent their agents after them, extensions of the Horseman themselves given shape and purpose: grim reapers.
He remembered the pain. The pain of being pinned down to the ground with stakes, how they cut off his left horn, torturing him for information on where he had hidden her. He screamed, he bled out, but he never once broke down and betrayed her.
... Still, it wasn't enough. It was never enough. The reapers eventually found her, and beheaded her, with one clean swing of a scythe.
It was in that moment he felt like had his heart had been swallowed up. He felt hollow. He was ready to give up, and let the emptiness consume him. What was the point... if he couldn't keep even one thing that made him feel whole? That made him feel like less of a burden? Who gave him a name that was filled with hope?
Noel gave him the name Lucca, by the terms of their contract. And now, she was gone. It was the only thing he had left of her, and he would take it to his grave.
... The time between the reapers dragging him off, to when he was made to stand in front of the circle of Nine, he couldn't say. He wasn't there, mentally. His body slumped over, his eyes dulled, his hands and feet bound in chains... he was a shadow of his former self. Not the monster resurrected under the sin of wrath, but a shell of a man, ready to receive his punishment and just put an end to it all.
He was worthless. He was nothing. He wasn't even angry enough to fight back... he just wanted to stop thinking. And maybe, just maybe if there was a God, he would be allowed to join her.
But someone stopped him. And that someone was his own sister.
Before the princes and the judges laid down their final verdict, Luna forced her way into the court, speaking on her brother's behalf. She had heard about the trial purely by chance, and ran down to come and help him. Because despite their differences, and the different paths they had taken: they will never not be family. They will never not be blood. And he was still her brother.
Unfortunately, he didn't see it that way.
He saw it as the meddlings of an arrogant woman. He saw it as his perfect little sister taking everything away from him, again. He was sick and tired of having to relive the same moment, having her there to remind him that he was just a pawn, the forgotten son. The son who looked just like his deadbeat of a father, the son who had everything taken away from him, the son who was angry and hated everyone around him...
He didn't remember hearing the verdict. He was expecting them to hand him a death sentence, but instead, they were dragging him down deeper into the pits of Hell. Not to the fire, but to a cold, desolate cell, surrounded by the wails of the damned.
From the moments leading up to his sentence, to the years of isolation in that cell: his mind turned to madness. All of his rage focused onto a single point: his sister, for doing this to him.
His sister had always lived in his shadow, while she was the one pulling the strings...
