would love to hear abt unholy gift
GOOD!!!! goodgoodgood uuhhhh hold on lemme get something from discord to feed the brain worms :)))) (everything i add here on tumblr will be in blue and bolded though bc i do need to put some clarifications)
you know the 4 basic defense mechanisms - fight, flight, freeze, fawn? well guess what each of them can be applied to 4/5 main charactrs for my au >:) (my main characters being sarah, thatcher, ruth, dave, and toonbriel who i have renamed as eden. i originally had jonah be a part of this cast but i decided to kill him off like in canon. he's a super cool ghost now though!) sarah is fight, dave is flight, thatcher is freeze, and ruth is fawn
sarah is fight because she is extremely stubborn and does not back down until she believes herself to be a "winner", whether she's fighting alternates or justifying why she's just so obsessed with her brother's death. she taught herself to fend for herself after mark died, even if it pushed away her loved ones. dave is flight because he tries to deny everything happening around him. he at first denied his nephew's death, then he denied sarah's growing anger issues as well has her cutting him off for a good few years. then he denied thatcher's alcohol problems, and the thing he couldn't take the most was ruth being held captive by puppet. how could someone who took so much initiative just give up and give in to something that has hurt her? he tries denying everything around him until it eventually gets to him. thatcher is freeze because he just can't think during stressful situations. during his job, he was taught to fight, but outside his job he can't think straight when faced with difficulties. he's tried fleeing with alcohol, but the urge to curl up and cry always took over him, leaving him helpless. he gives himself time to think but no way to get out of the hole he keeps digging himself into. ruth is fawn because of how she was raised. she was raised with the thinking that a woman like her shouldn't be taking as much initiative as she does. and again, her job has taught her to fight, but outside of that she simply gives in and tries pleasing others so she doesn't have to face the consequences of standing up for herself. it especially became prominent when she was held hostage by puppet. she learned to just do what he said and maybe, just maybe, he'd set her free. but the more she gives in, the more he tries to keep her in his grasp
and for context on ruth: at some point (dont know when yet bear with me) ruth gets a call from the vol 333 alternate (who i call puppet) who has now made it his entire personality to stalk, imitate, and eventually want to kill the real thatcher, and he asks if he could stay over for a few nights because he "hadn't been feeling too well." ruth gladly obliges and it turns sour real quick because overtime she realizes she's been taking care of an alternate who ends up devolving into an entity of pure rage and power-hungry tendencies that he's willing to literally overthrow gabriel. aaaaaaand it's just bad. i'm not gonna say too much on it though bc i still need to develop a few things :) just know that she does end up getting out of that situation but not without a few scars of her own to tell her story...