some more Invincible / Eleanor Grayson asks (Comics Spoilers!)
Here are a handful more asks I got about Ellie's role and lore, but these ones specifically have comics / future plot spoilers either in the ask themselves or in my answer, so I'll hide them behind a read more so I don't spoiler any show-only fans (: thank you for all the questions!! I'm genuinely so honored people like my OC enough to discuss lore and stuff, and I LOVE getting questions to explore the ideas I have for her o7
Questions below:
[ @miki-13 ]
I'M SO GLAD YOU CAUGHT THIS... From the SECOND I made my Bad End!AU for Ellie, this was exactly where I figured her story would go. Absolutely I think Thragg would want Ellie as a wife/consort/queen/whatever else Viltrumites have as official relationships. Not only because she's a strong Viltrumite in her own right (even if she has human DNA, Thragg in the comics still says that he's impressed by just how Viltrumite Mark truly is, so I think he'd still definitely respect Ellie for her strength too), but also because Ellie being a direct descendant of Argall is good for him (he respected Argall and searched for the heir for a long time, even if he gave up and decided he was better fit to lead because he'd earned it) AND good for the Viltrumites as a whole (the others all respected and worshipped Argall as well, and learning that Thragg had found the heir, returned her to her 'rightful home', and then married her/had kids with her all meant he was cementing himself even more in the role as the rightful ruler of Viltrum. And what's even better for him is the fact that Ellie doesn't want to lead, she doesn't want to be a ruler, so it's not like he even has to fight her on authority/her trying to be "more in charge" than he is.
I think Thragg wants Ellie as his wife/to have his own kids with no matter what, as soon as he finds out that she and Mark are related to Argall. But in most universes, including the main one with our Mark and plotline, she wants nooothing to do with all of that and absolutely tells him to piss off with that whole idea... but in the Bad End!AU specifically, she's more beaten down emotionally from losing everything and everyone she loved due to her own betrayal of them, and she's way more depressed and wouldn't fight him as much. Especially because she would be thinking that maybe if she married him, she could have more sway over what happens to Earth and its people, and she'll do anything she thinks is necessary to protect the people she loves - that's the whole reason she betrays Earth and joins the Viltrumites to begin with in this AU. It would be a marriage of convenience, not love - it'd absolutely be tragic, depressing, and dark. And it's absolutely where her story would go in this AU.
[ @bloodyhornylesbian ]
Well... it's not good! That's for sure, lol. The basics is that almost everyone feels incredibly betrayed by her, personally hurt, and furious. I think there are definitely varying degrees of it, though... to be specific, I think Robot might be the most willing to think that it was reasonable of her and she's only doing what she thinks is right - he doesn't agree with it, he wants to defeat the Viltrumites just like everyone else does, but he's one of the less 'emotionally loyal to Earth' characters out there and he also agrees with her "the ends justify the means" mentality. While Cecil has this mentality too, he's way way too emotionally invested in Earth and humanity as a whole to not be furious with what he sees as her betrayal.
Cecil is the angriest and the most terrified of this development I think. Definitely blindsided too, I think out of everyone who could have 'defected' to the enemy's side, Mercy would NOT have been high on his list of possibilities - he always saw her as too loyal to Earth, too loyal to the people she loves. The issue is that her love and loyalty are exactly WHY she would join the Viltrumites in the Bad End!AU, because she thinks it's the only way to save them by pleading their case from inside the system rather than fighting what she thinks is a hopeless war - brought on by witnessing the destruction and death that the Invincible war and Conquest left on Earth... she realized that two teenage Viltrumites (and 1 child Oliver) are just no possible match for an army of older, more experienced Viltrumites... and obviously, at this point she has no idea about the fact that there are less than 50 Viltrumites left, she still thinks there's a whole planet of them out there, just like everyone else does. I think Cecil would try like hell to talk her back to his side - he's probably thinking "she was reasonable enough to talk it out after the first betrayal (Mark hating and abandoning the GDA), surely she's reasonable enough to talk it out again...?"
Mark is furious in the moment, and considering the Bad End!AU starts shortly after Mark healed from the Conquest fight (at least enough for him to be moving around, he was probably still in casts), he was so emotionally defeated from all the death and still reeling from the shame/fear/horror of seeing versions of himself destroying his home and family, that he didn't even try to reason with her. He basically saw this as Chicago 2.0 - but back then he'd trusted his father and first assumed something had to be controlling Nolan to make him act this way, but at this point he's so exhausted and hurt and "learning from his mistakes" that he doesn't assume the best for Ellie. Especially since at this point in the story the twins are almost not on speaking terms, what with their disagreements about a lot of things, Ellie moving away from home and not visiting, her choosing to still work for the GDA after Mark felt betrayed by them, and Ellie's unjustified anger towards Oliver when he first came to Earth. It was almost too easy for Mark to swing... so he swung. They fought. Neither of them wanted to fight, neither of them want to hurt each other... but they were both reeling with intense emotions (anger from Mark, shame in Ellie, grief in both of them) and it just came out as violence. Mark gave Ellie that scar over her face, and then she fled Earth because she saw their fight was just doing more damage, and why would she hurt the planet more when she was betraying everything she believed in to try and save it? And, come on... betrayal, massive scale death and destruction, injuring each other, and then his family fleeing in the fight's aftermath... like father, like daughter, amiright folks? Chicago all over again.
Oliver... I would actually have to think more on that one. Oliver is a tough one for me to imagine how he'd be feeling in the aftermath, because, even though he does care about Earth to a degree, he also blatantly states that humans are beneath Viltrumites because of how weak they are and how much they kill each other, and he said that maybe Nolan had been right all along. So I'm torn on how he'd feel about Ellie not being loyal to Earth (in the way other people would consider loyal, at least) - but no matter what, he feels betrayed that she left. Even if he might not care about humanity much, he cared about his sister, and he's hurt she left him just as easily as she left everyone else.
Debbie... whew, boy. I think in this AU she would be blaming herself for everything, just like how she felt responsible for not seeing "the truth" about Nolan before he killed so many people in Chicago. Maybe she could reason herself out of the Nolan-guilt because he's a grown man who had ulterior motives before he ever met her, but Ellie? Debbie's daughter? Debbie raised that girl, Debbie taught that girl about the value in life and love, Debbie feels responsible for pushing her away after Nolan left, Debbie thinks the 'slow erosion' of her daughter's bright spark was her own fault. She knows she can't keep up with hero life, she says as much in the show to Mark and Oliver, but she wanted so so hard to try to remind her kids that they weren't just heroes - that they were people too, and needed to take care of themselves both physically and emotionally. And she can't help but think "where did I go wrong?" for losing her own daughter in that way.
I'm gonna leave it to just those ones, since those are her closest relationships. Maybe I'll do another post eventually talking more about personal character-by-character reactions, but I won't keep it here since this post is already getting super long lol.
Moving on, I also got a lot of asks that have to do with super late game comics spoilers, such as the following:
I briefly mentioned it before, but I basically write Ellie's story and her involvement in the plot as the show comes out, episode by episode. I've already read the comics and I can think vaguely about how Ellie would feel about future plotlines and incidents, but the thing is that 1) the show is deviating from the comics, so I don't want to make solid plans about how Ellie will react to comic things when they might not even be included in the show and, 2) Ellie is getting more character development as the show progresses, so if I answered a late-game question at the moment it would be a "how does current 20 year old Ellie feel about this thing that happens years in the future". I need to progress her story so I know how she develops, how her personality changes as she experiences the show's plot, before I can decide for sure how she would feel and react to specific situations that happen later in the comics.
Instead of specific answers for right now, I can give you a general basis of what her personality is like no matter what: she hates needless bloodshed, she values life very highly, but she does have a "the ends justify the means" mentality if she thinks it's necessary or if it'll do more good in the long run. She'd rather talk things out than kill someone, but she'll absolutely still kill if ordered to by someone she chose to follow. She hates being in a leadership position because she'd rather be a follower than have other peoples lives on her shoulders in that way, being in the field is easier and more comfortable than being behind a desk. She holds grudges for a very long time. And above all else, she loves her family deeply, she's a very emotional person and it's what drives her every action.
You can use all that to theorize about what she'd be thinking and doing in the late future of the story, but I'll avoid getting into specifics until those things start to happen in the show o7
