(this a bit of a ramblin question so its divided a bit,,,,sorry in advance!) what is the science ladies actual relationship with their respective souls? more vaguely,,,, what do u consider those souls as? the souls are supposedly the culmination of a persons being but humans are more,,,, not split but a combination of things? the body and the soul together make a person,,, maybe u could say that the soul provides the emotion and the body the intent,,, (1)
(Okay, I'm away from my computer dogsitting for a couple days, so forgive me if the formatting gets wonky- I'm on mobile;;;)
Oh no, this is an excellent question-! Hell yes, I love this kind of train of thought. Basically, what kind of connection to Maddy & Ava have with their saved human souls, ‘n what are those human souls, period, yeah?
Okay, first off, worth mentioning - as far as ‘interpretations of what souls are’, I can go a lot of ways, they’re just a lot of fun to theorize about. For the purposes of this, though, I’m gonna stick with one of my top interpretations:
Basically, souls are the culmination of your being, right? But you’re right, humans are a big ol’ melting pot of traits and experiences and such - so trying to say any person is ‘one trait’ is kinda off. People use/display all of them in different ways, at different times, and so on-
So, for these purposes, I like to think that the soul trait is determined by that person’s cumulative intent.
Within it are tied all the emotions and things that build that intent. So a soul is effectively concentrated intent, good or bad or neutral... 'tinted' by the trait that their intent largely aligns with.
So while a soul with no body (see, the captured souls Maddy & Ava have…) aren’t exactly… people, per se, they are alarmingly close. So basically, it’s the person’s primary approach to life, and within that, sort of echoes of their emotions and so on that informed that intent. A soul long separated from its body isn’t really a ghost, nor is it just a bunch of memories made solid; it’s basically all the intent, the impact of that person, past, present, and future.
It’s a heady thing to have around all the time; even more so for a monster to be around a human soul in concentrate like that, so to speak.
Think about it this way - you know when you see a person really in their element? When they just have that sort of… energy about them, an energy that just feels like them - maybe it feels like passion, maybe it’s just that thing that you can always associate with being so very them.
Now imagine if you could distill that, distill every single moment that could ever pass like that in their life, and put it in one lil heart-shaped container, and you could feel all of that energy of all those moments at once and then some.
That would be… pretty intense, right?
So really, the Perseverance soul Maddy has and the Kindness soul Ava has aren’t exactly… people. But they’re damn close, and the souls react to things around them too - that much intent is basically built in with how that person would have reacted. Plus they’ve got… ghosts of emotions, almost. And the more time Ava and Maddy spend around them, well…
They’re genuinely going mad too, of course - extreme overexposure to unadulterated soul magic, on top of everything else. They were already tipped over that edge before they were around the soul all the time, and now… well, that hole only gets deeper.
They absolutely talk to the souls - and it looks about as ‘mad’ as it sounds. They have deep bonds with these souls, frankly, and there’s a reason trying to tamper with them would be a death wish…
As time goes on, the thought starts to creep up on both Ava and Maddy.
If they can do this much with soul magic…
What if… they could get a new vessel for these souls…?
… a dangerous thought indeed, but one that can’t quite be escaped, as it turns out...
Basically, these two girls lowkey love, highkey have an obsession with their protected souls. Ava's is straight up a yandere equivalent, really, or as close as you could get in this situation.
The souls, extremely accustomed to them, literally react to them, to their words, to actions- but again, its that cumulation of intent, with an echo of emotion. There's a lot to imprint on there, but... it's definitely a strange and twisted sort of connection that Ava and Maddy covet/treasure above all else but their protectiveness over their sisters.
