So... gaster x player,,, my best friend Harvey ( @sourblood9 ) and I have been going insane over our thoughts and takes so.. MANY DOODLES AND INFO BELOW!!!
FIRST OFF CREDITS TO HARVEY CAUSE THE IMAGE ABOVE IS A REDRAW (with.. creative liberties..) OF XYR ART (I'll link if they post it)
So,, CoreStrings!! (Coined by Harvey cause we didn't find another name). W.D Gaster x an amalgamation of any identity the "player" could possibly have. We've really only been referring to it as soul or player. We kinda just thought "Hey what if he went coocoo over the player?" And realized we were rewriting billford BUT PPFFFFF ITSS FIIINNNEEE
I am,, not good at sentences and explaining,, qnd I'm tired and likely sick.. SO HERES DOODLES..!!!!
The insanity stemmed from Harvey asking me to draw them again, the scenario is whatever you want it to be!
Brainstorming how the soul/player works
And the rest of my insanity.. !fun!!!
There's lot more we thought up, I'm just not in the mood to put it all properly into paragraphs. But hey! If this does well, just say the word and I'll gladly expand!
all of your wips sound so cool! i'm really interested in 'soren magic puppet guardian' and 'lynsmouth's 'families',' if you mind sharing some stuff about either of those :)
Sorry for taking so long to get to this! I wanted to be able to give you a good quality answer and have either been busy with other stuff or haven't had the energy to address this yet!
(To anyone wondering, this is an ask from this tag!)
Fair warning: this is going to be LOOOOOONG!
"Soren Magic Puppet Guardian"
So! This (as were all of my threads, haha) was a very on-the-nose name. Soren Ula--the dad of Freya, the MC of Sun and Shadow--is a well-renowned merchant. He owns a massive shipping company that spans most of the world, but what few know about him is that he's both an avatar (an agent of a god) and a faerie!
I've yet to explain what exactly faeries are in my writing, so I'll give a quick explanation! Faeries are almost sub-gods--powerful creatures that technically aren't even "creatures" so much as they are sentient clouds of magic. Most create physical bodies for themselves, but few leave the Faewildes and even fewer attempt to live "normal" lives.
Soren is a faerie of the ocean. Meaning, he is lowkey an actual god of oceans. In-story he's mentioned to have powerful ocean magic--that's because he is the ocean in many ways. He's just long-since taken on a human form to the point that he doesn't even feel dysmorphic in the form he lives in today (which is unheard of in faeries! They always have some aspect of "themselves" on their physical body, or they'll feel detached from and/or uncomfortable in it)!
The reason I explain this faerie business? If you haven't been able to tell, faeries are incredibly powerful creatures with both their own magic and minor reality-warping abilities within The Real World. (The Faewildes is also Real, but... not "the Real World". Just accept that for now, haha.)
(Skipping Spoilers!? 👀)
When Soren found Freya, his long-lost daughter, in Drønhals, he immediately set to getting her a home in the area. He had a vast amount of wealth from his work and he was long-since known to be an avatar of Levebol, so he had little to no problems doing so.
Except... he'd built a life in the time since he'd lost his family. He had his company, he had his work with Kieran Caron, and how many questions would be raised if he suddenly stepped down from it all?
No. As much as he wanted to stay with his daughter, it would be dangerous for him to. And as much as he'd tried hiding his involvement with Caron, it was entirely possible that people could find it out, track him down, and then find her. And she was just a little girl! Not even five!
(Yes, you are reading that correctly. Long-lost daughter. Implications of at LEAST decades passing. And yet she's not even five years old yet? 🤔🤔🤔)
No, he couldn't stay with her. He'd do anything to protect her... including practically abandon her.
Except, Soren didn't have to abandon her, even if he left to pretend everything was exactly as it was before. He still had power, even if it was nowhere as much as he used to. So he created a magic charm with a little bit of his soul in it.
Literally.
This "charm", containing both some of Soren's soul and a good bit of his magic, is capable of creating a "puppet" of sorts that's more of a semi-tangible hologram. Thanks to it having a bit of his soul (something literally only possible thanks to him being a faerie), he's able to "consciousness-switch" with it, letting him, well... be an actual guardian for his daughter.
Or, well, y'know. The closest thing to a guardian you can be when you're essentially puppeteering a robot from thousands of miles away to take care of her.
Long story short! Freya grew up with a "magic puppet guardian" of Soren that he could use to simultaneously always be by her side and, yknow... literally never be there for her. It's caused a LOT of complexes in Freya, and is also the main source of the tension in her relationship with him.
When she was younger, she liked it--it was like having her father with her at all times! And she lovesd her dad! But by her teenaged years it turned into resentment for being a sort of half-measure of his in order to "be there for her". She's actually not aware that he did it to basically minimize the likelihood of Bad People™ noticing her and going after her to hurt Soren, but... tbh it wouldn't change her feelings much on the matter if she did know.
In fairness... it's not like he was never actually there. He'd spend time with her in the form of the puppet whenever he didn't have anything else to do in His Real Body on the Slumbering Serpent (his ship). "He"/the puppet would take care of her in small ways, driven on by the small bits of his consciousness within it to carry out tasks he wished he could do. And, hey! He'd sometimes be able to stop by and spend a few days to a week in his real body whenever the trade routes allowed for it! But, yknow... didn't much make up for the fact that, besides what was essentially a zombie a majority of the time, Freya grew up completely alone (and oh boy there's more to that).
The "puppet" wasn't always active by the way--the charm could be manually disabled/enabled, and the puppet and its magic would withdraw into it as commanded. Whiiiiich is what turned into the case in Freya's mid teens, as she started getting angry with Soren and her whole situation. 😅😭
In case you were wondering! Yes, Soren could see/hear/feel/and everything else through the puppet and charm! When he wasn't "possessing" them, though, it was very faint sensations, like the tiniest of breezes across the cowlicks on your head. Freya personally wondered on more than one occasion if he ever used it to eavesdrop on her (as she ALWAYS kept it with/on her), but he never actually did.
What? He's already basically neglecting her, he didn't need to make her resent him for also invading in her personal business and giving her trust issues!
(Don't worry, though, she got those anyways. 😙👌)
Don't get me wrong--he didn't avoid eavesdropping just because he didn't want to give her trust issues. (Just.)
He also did it as a sign of respect for his daughter! Y'know, because he loves her!
Note: Freya lost the charm at sea during the shipwreck that destroyed the Slumbering Serpent in the first chapter of Sun and Shadow. Who knows where it is now, what will come of it, or if it'll ever appear elsewhere again?
I mean, probably not, right? After all, it got lost at sea! It would be ridiculous for it to end up on land!
... like Freya did. 🤔
Aaaaaand... I think that about does it for "Soren Magic Puppet Guardian"! 😄
This was a LOT, so I think I'm actually going to leave this post here, haha. If you'd also like to hear about Lynsmouth's "Families", please send me another ask! Hope you enjoyed reading and/or that this was as satisfying as you hoped it would be! 😊
