HAPPY BIRTHDAY PENACONY!! please hear me out, i've been obsessed about them for more than ~6 months now and they could've had so much SFW potential.
Why else would Yodenn and adult artists draw them together right?
I know I'm being annoying about them but my stupid brain is just severely brainrotted over themmm 😭
Some more resources about them
AO3 Ship Manifesto (Indonesian)
Original Presentation Twitter Thread (Bluesky Mirror)
I Should've Shipped Them Earlier (Twitter only)
Character Design Similarity Diagram (Bluesky Mirror)
See this post on: Twitter, Bluesky
My socials are at the bottom of the image if anyone would like to contact me! Reddit DMs should be open as well. I'm not active as much on Tumblr, so my apologies.
More Than Just A Top: Exploring Gallagher x Woolsey Beyond Rule 34 Images of Gallagher Bottoming
CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of heavy NSFW (no explicit images) and fetishization of PoC.
If you are a minor and/or are uncomfortable with such content, please don't read further. This post is also quite long.
You may have seen NSFW artwork of a certain dark-skinned blonde buff scarred man topping Gallagher.
Here I explain how Woolsey is more than just Gallagher's top, and how can you explore Gallagher x Woolsey outside of NSFW.
Disclaimer
No links to NSFW content will be provided, nor any sexually explicit images will be posted in this thread.
As someone who consumes adult media, I do think that they are hot to look at, but there has to be balance in not just the NSFW side, but also SFW media of GallaWool.
I appreciate and enjoy the content I have seen, and this thread is in no way bashing any NSFW artists who have drawn them.
Please don't harass artists to draw bottom Woolsey/sfw of Gallawool. Likewise, please do not harass people who prefer top Woolsey, or are okay w/ switching.
Any other ships mentioned in this thread are for statistical purposes only and are not meant to start any ship wars. All charts here use data gathered from February 10, 2025.
1) Introduction
GallaWool (Switch: Woollagher) is the romantic pairing of Gallagher and Woolsey from Honkai: Star Rail.
The earliest known SFW artwork of them together is by Yodenn_4 on Twitter, dated February 18, 2024, 12 days after 2.0's release when they were introduced.
The earliest known NSFW artwork of them together is dated March 1, 2024 with a focus on Gallagher.
Their emoji pair I personally use for them is 🥃🐺, but you can use 🥃🕶 if you think it suits them more.
While the Yodenn_4 artwork is arguably not ship art, people often draw popular ships even in non-romantic context, such as pairing two characters from their most popular ship.
For example, an post of 4 characters in one artwork may have Dr. Ratio, Aventurine, Blade and Dan Heng next to eachother in that order, or a post advertising fanmade merch where Mydei and Phainon are next to eachother alongside other characters.
2) Gallagher's Muse
Woolsey is an NPC who can be found in Golden Hour and Dream’s Edge. Talking to him and giving him Aideen Tokens will direct you to a Clockwork quest in that specific area.
He is voiced by Cory Yee and is in 2.2’s Trailblaze Mission, specifically "Heaven is a Place on Earth" after Aventurine's interrogation.
3) Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery
People have caught on to how Gallagher & Woolsey's outfits were similar. You can argue that this is because Woolsey is one of Gallagher's 52 "blueprints", and Gallagher is meant to blend in with the crowd.
Sunday's dialogue with Gallagher in "A Walk Among the Tombstones" solidifies this fact. Canonically, only the scars is related to the two.
However… let's imagine beyond dialogue, shall we? Sunday also mentions two key things: the "gray vest" and the "Hound Emblem".
As far as I know, there are no other Bloodhound Family members who share two of these other traits. I can't find any info regarding the Bloodhound uniforms for supposed "senior members".
In fact, Hanunue wears a coat and there are no other Bloodhound NPCs wearing such uniforms.
This one is a bit of a reach, but Gallagher's Character Story: Part 1 mentions "a scar etched across his face". The thing is, Gallagher never had a scar on his face, not even in his beta leaks.
If we take all this information… Gallagher, I'm sorry, but the closet is glass 😭
4) Artwork Imbalance
Why did I mention all of this? Because around Penacony's release, there was a fair amount of NSFW artwork of Gallagher bottoming for Woolsey.
The ratio (SFW:Top W:Bottom W) is 2:21:0 without artwork made by/for me, 47:23:4 otherwise (45:2:4 difference).
You can argue that Gallagher is the playable unit, therefore more people know him. And that's okay! The character who is bottoming is often the focus of the artwork and it's nice to look at.
However, seeing as there has been ONE SFW GallaWool art before all this has me thinking.
If people have made the visual correlation between Gallagher and Woolsey, and the game practically confirmed their correlation, surely there's people that ship them, right?
Turns out I was practically the only one, and I was too busy drooling over Woolsey until later in 2.1 😭
There are minors who enjoy this ship as well and even some people who can view NSFW don't want to, or are able to see such content all the time.
5) Heteronormative Dynamics in Relationships
I want to preface this that if you prefer Woolsey topping, that's okay. However there are bound to be fans that would much prefer Woolsey bottoming, or people who don't care if they switch or not.
We’ll use Aventurine x Ratio for this example, another popular MxM pairing consisting of a “hunk” (Dr. Ratio) and a “twink” (Aventurine).
While I think it is generally okay for people to ship a pairing regardless of who tops or who bottoms, this is an observation I have seen.
Point being, in the NSFW space, switch for all. You’d expect that for a hunk like Woolsey, you’d have people who want to top him because he’s attractive, and yet there is little to no artwork or fanfiction of him bottoming.
You can argue that other NSFW media of NPCs barely have content of them bottoming if at all. And you'd be right!
I've seen this with multiple NPCs, whether it be Wagner, the Eremites, and even the Natlan Tribal Warriors. The only exception is Cyrus from Mondstadt, who is often seen bottoming for Wagner.
6) Sample Descriptions
I obviously can't post them here, but 2 of the images I know have Woolsey's head completely out of frame, while 3 have Woolsey's face partially blocked by Gallagher (including one artwork that was a trio of Caelus, Gallagher and Woolsey in that order).
7) Racist Norms in Pornography
A friend of mine from an adult circle hypothesized that GallaWool isn’t as big because Woolsey isn’t white. 20 days earlier, another friend thought that the “headless top Woolsey” phenomenon was racist.
Testing this theory, I queried gay content with the "dark-skinned" tag on R34. More often than not, the dark-skinned character was either topping, or getting head from the light-skinned character.
As such, I've also seen this happen when looking at artwork of Alhaitham. He is most often seen bottoming for the Eremites, who have darker skin in-game.
Other people I have talked to also mentioned how Elphaba is often depicted as the more “masculine” person in her ship with Glinda from Wicked in fanworks.
It is important to note that Elphaba was played by Cynthia Erivo in the 2024 movie, who is a black woman.
As another friend of mine mentioned, many people have a habit of fetishizing "BBC," based on a stereotype that black men have larger genitals than white men, and also attribute other perceived traits associated with blackness as more masculine. (CW for fetishizing imagery!)
8) It Could've Been Great
Yodenn's artwork and several people's tweets proves that it’s not only NSFW artists that figured out their visual connection. 2.1 proved to us that Woolsey and Gallagher’s character designs being similar was by intention and not by mere coincidence!
Personal aside: I wonder if had I shipped GallaWool after release, would the ship become roughly as somewhat popular as another Gallagher ship, Ga||ah!||. I feel a sense of regret that I didn't ship them sooner, as I was more of a Woolsey self-shipper back then.
9) Media Counterarguments
"But Woolsey is not as popular, all we know is that he is 1/52 of Gallagher’s blueprints!"
You can argue this, yes, but you can take a look at similar buff/DILF npcs like Micah, Oleg and Hoolay and they don't have as much artwork as well. ESPECIALLY the first two, and people will generally prefer Borisin Hoolay due to the furry community's following.
All three of them explicitly appear and have their own roles in the main story. Micah is literally whiter than a god damn sheet of paper, mind you!
Likewise, it is true that people will want to focus on Gallagher, and people will often draw their artwork focused on the character who is bottoming as I have mentioned earlier - in this case, Gallagher, since he is the playable unit.
"Woolsey is bigger than Gallagher!"
This is true – you can look at their models and conclude that Woolsey is indeed more muscular and slightly taller.
To bring up a popular ship, bottom Gallagher/top $und@y fanworks exist, despite it being the less popular dynamic (but it exists for the people who do prefer it). Therefore, "people not wanting to see the bigger guy bottom" is out of the question.
In conclusion, I have reasonable suspicion that people mostly drawing Woolsey to be a top stems from this whole stereotype of black men having bigger dicks and being more "masculine" in general, alongside the heteronormative tropes of the “twink” bottoming for the “hunk”.
10) Ship Counterarguments
"It’s a Playable x NPC ship!"
Argelite (Argenti x Velite) was a fairly big ship back in 1.6. You can argue that Argenthill (Argenti x Boothill) has very much superseded them, but this point still stands.
"They didn’t even interact!"
Ga||ah!|| (Gallagher x B00th!||) has been shipped by a good amount of fans due to the implication that Boothill was meant to be the suspect instead of Firefly in the Trailblaze Mission “Sleepless Night”.
11) Exploring SFW Dynamics
Angst: Gallagher’s true nature and disappearance can be the basis for any angsty storylines between the two, especially if Gallagher has been written to be an official Bloodhound member. Besides, it gives you an excuse to play Mr. Loverman again while crying in your bed because you emotionally depend on a homosexual ship (same).
Toxic Yaoi: The “real cop / fake cop” dynamic can be used here as well. While this can feed into tropes, someone who is unaware of this ship may be introduced via these tropes and thus can be introduced to other ways of shipping Gallagher and Woolsey.
Boss & Employee: Gallagher’s actions for Penacony weren’t in ill intent. Similar to Penelope from Criminal Minds, he could be written to be an official Bloodhound Family member. A man who can blend in with his surroundings is a great asset for the police!
Buddy Cop: You can use the "Harmony/Enigmata" dynamic instead where the two solve a crime/defeat criminals and have them learn about each other in the process!
Fluff: As with any other ship, you can think of wholesome scenarios, such as domestic fluff or slice of life fanfics.
There’s probably even more things I haven’t even realized yet, and so many AUs to explore, such as crime AUs, detective AUs, roleswaps and many more!
12) Afterword
Thank you for reaching the end of this thread, I hope you liked it!
Being the CEO of a rarepair (especially a ship only people hear out in NSFW ways) sucks so bad especially when you happen to like NPCs more because you like buff hairy men.
I also have other threads dedicated to them (namely the original slideshow and my pinned), but I feel like I needed to focus the elephant in the room, being the artwork imbalance.
I also have other threads on my gimmick Twitter dedicated to them (namely the original slideshow and the Penacony 1st Anniversary post, which is also on Tumblr), but I feel like I needed to address elephant in the room: artwork imbalance.
I'm really sorry for my minor friends as I didn't want to talk about this, but I feel like this was necessary!
⚠️ MINORS BEWARE: NSFW headcanons under the cut! ⚠️
🔁 Reblogs appreciated so people can realize this ship's potential!
Please share your headcanons in the reblogs or replies 🥺 Need more Woolsey enjoyers.. sigh
SFW headcanons:
Gallagher is the "sub" of the relationship. He's clingy towards Woolsey and he likes to treat Woolsey (like meals and stuff).
Woolsey does like being treated this way by Gallagher, but he's rather shy and doesn't know how to reciprocate his feelings so he ends up being a blushing mess.
Likewise, Woolsey is the "dom". He's the protective big guy. In fact, he's the one that promoted Gallagher to a real Bloodhound Family member.
Despite their dynamic, they still care for eachother. If Woolsey was in a tight spot, Gallagher will use his glowing claw immediately on the threat.
Gallagher forgets Woolsey's not a sweet tooth. Imagine how awkward it is if Gallagher tried to give him chocolate... now who will eat it?
Is Gallagher fake? Yes. Does Woolsey care? No! Despite being basically 1/52 of Gallagher's blueprint, Woolsey sees him more as than just that. He doesn't care that he's just a dream creature - he already practically lives in the Dreamscape, his job needs him to. But if he could find a way to make Gallagher a real entity, he would.
⚠️⚠️ NSFW HEADCANONS BELOW ⚠️⚠️
NSFW Headcanons 😈
Pet play. Gallagher's the pet of course. Woolsey can, and WILL call him a pup, or any other variations of the word. They're BloodHOUNDS, after all.
Gallagher almost exclusively bottoms. The only time he tops is if he's really, really, REALLY itching for Woolsey (he goes hard), or if Woolsey lets him (service top).
Woolsey once "punished" Gallagher for being a fake Hound ifyouknowwhatImean. UGH YES BITCH PUNISH THAT FAKE HOUND.
I mean... I wrote a fic about it on AO3... (WARNING! It does have 'enforcement punishment' themes so SORRY IF YOU'RE UNCOMFORTABLE! I tried to make it a happy ending and made it so that Gallagher realized he had it coming.)
I made this headcanon before I asked a friend to make a SFW fanfic where Woolsey promotes Gallagher to a real hound, so I'm just gonna think that they like to roleplay this scenario after promotion.
And honestly? Before I shipped them I always kept seeing GallaWool NSFW (often times Woolsey is untagged). It makes me feel mixed because yes, they ARE hot, but also... can we have SFW stuff too?
Woolsey will just tease you for even glaring at his tits (i mean come on... those buttons are STRUGGLING!!)
HANDCUFFS!!! YAY!!!!!!
Idk I just need people to see the potential GallaWool has...
