Love you! Also he/him for Balam because I said so.
38. What memory do they revisit the most often?
Balam doesn’t have a lot of his pre-canon memories- only what he’s painstakingly researched from letters, Thangam, and Asra. But even so, the memories he revisits on purpose are almost always those of fondness and affection- if he doesn’t catch himself he can easily drift off into a daydream about how Portia kissed him good morning or Nahara made him chai in the morning. He defaults to those feelings for comfort and gets super excited about love, no matter how long he’s been in it.
39. How easy is it for them to ignore flaws in other people?
Depends on how he’s feeling about them at the moment, tbh. He’s working on managing his tendency to go from idealizing to hating people, but on the whole, as a person, there are some flaws- aloofness, cruelty, that sort of things that he picks up on and immediately puts distance from, but most other things, he notices, but lets slide. He generally deliberately gives people a lot of breathing room to learn and grow and is quick to accept when they’ve changed. He knows he’s needed that too.
40. How sensitive are they to their own flaws?
Very, but he tries not to dwell on it too much. Balam’s truly the king of overcompensation, though, so he puts himself through the paces to “make up” for his percieved flaws, rather than wallowing in them.(The wallowing happens when he’s weepy drunk. Pre-canon, the first time he saw it, Asra was baffled by how he went from sunny and confident to crying on his shoulder about how he’s worthless and disgusting and sorry in the span of half a bottle of rum.)
41. How do they feel about children?
Balam likes kids! Thangam is fairly younger than him and they were always best friends, so he’s used to seeing kids as friends, rather than Tiny Problems. He’s not the best with babies, though, he thinks he’s too loud and excitable to keep them calm and they involve a lot of domestic work that he's terrible at, but kids and teenagers often find that he’s easy to talk to and is down with all of their interests.
As for raising one himself, he’s not against it, if he’s absolutely sure about the time-and-inclination aspects of everyone involved. He’s not about to let a kid have a childhood like his own, and if that takes a village, so be it.
42. How badly do they want to reach their end goal?
Balam’s mad-ambitious, both in terms of tangible career goals and personal growth goals, so. Pretty badly. It was always a bit of a problem. Balam puts off being kind to himself till he reaches The Next Milestone, and that’s something he’s working on, with his partners’ help.
