And the backstory I made tf up for him if anyone wants to read it plus my analysis of him as a character.
This is my design for him. looks ridiculous 💔💔💔
These are the clothes I imagine he would perform in. He also has a cleft lip, I think this kind is called unilateral incomplete. Not sure how well I drew it so if anyone was curious abt what it was there you go
Okay I’m going to paste my HCs about him under a cut because this is long and I would feel bad flooding the tag
By the way, only the last part of this write up is actually written somewhat well/in a more narrative way. I was just doing a quick write up months ago but I got overly excited half way through and went nuts, but couldn’t carry that energy back to the beginning.
I promise if you can get through the sloppy stuff the last part might actually be worth it. It’s still sloppy but I had fun. I tried to clean it up but eh. I’ll just mark when I started going nuts so the tonal whip lash is more palatable. Enjoy the shit I made up about my stupid chudling. Tell me what you think about my brain diarrhea
The premise of my HC backstory for him is that Rusty took care of his mother from a young age because she was suffering from huntington's disease after they immigrated to the counties.
Huntington’s is a cruel disease, and it does not kill quickly. It’s a slow and degenerative death.
His mother was a refugee from the Korean War- a stowaway, as was he- leaving him unable to ask for assistance when his mother changed.
He was conceived not a long time before his mother left but months before they would arrive. he would never know his father, not even his name , only that he was unlike his mother- white, not “oriental”.
And he, as a result, was treated as neither by both sides- all except for his mother.
When he was 9 He worked on the docks to a small, dirty little pier fair. He’d sweep up droppings from small unseen life, clean up piles of sick, and sift through thin sand under the docks for lost change to supplement his paltry salary.
but, as all children do, he’d sometimes slack off to watch the shows. He wished he could walk on the tightropes or swing from the trapeze- he wanted to fly too.
His mother scared him. she didn’t recognize him sometimes, and he couldn’t recognize her at all, but he was crushed with the guilt of wanting to leave her, because without him, she would die, and if he stayed, he would grow up to become like her.
For context, Huntington’s disease is a genetic disorder and if one of your parents has it the chance of you interesting it is very high.
Rusty’s mom also became erratic and sometimes aggressive- something that can happen to people with Huntington’s disease.
She would have episodes of rage and extreme confusion. Rusty didn’t understand why his mom changed, and he would often climb onto the roof of the house. He was terrified of heights but more scared of his mother.
(This is the part where I got too excited and actually started seriously writing)
One day, there was a great cargo ship that docked near the fair. He stared at it blankly. His hands were wet with spittle from trying to help brush her teeth, and there was a deep convex wound blossoming on his right.
She had cried today when she saw what she had done, a thin pink discharge coating her teeth like cheap veneers. He wished she had yelled, not beg for him to hug her while he stood inanimate and still, urine tricking down his leg and his bitten hand thumping like a second heart.
He boarded in secret and was a stowaway in all forms.
He slept among the cargo, in the freighter’s ice cold stomach and laid there, smothered and compact in the dark, laid to rest by the ships metronome sway.
And so he drifted into a world so similar yet different, infested with life of all shapes and sizes, some so spectacular that they could make crowds roar, and others so abhorred and aberrant that they would likely find themselves out of place even in the most exotic menageries.
And still there were others, children of all creeds, tongues, and complexion. They would stare at him with their little dormice eyes, heads popping up and disappearing as soon as they had emerged, like puppets in a shooting gallery. But when under the spotlight and draped in ridiculous costumes that hid the gaps between their ribs, they were brilliant and spectacular- they glowed, and Rusty- Rusty glowed too.
there were lights, sword swallowers, fire breathers, and funambulist- human canon balls, tigers tamed by wild children with whips, roaring audiences, and man dressed in purple- a companion to the diminutive doll-man perched on his lap.
And so he drifted deeper into Nowhere. And then I didn’t write the end but he got trafficked into the fuckinb carnivale and now gets bullied by borderline geriatric gay men.
Rusty’s back story mainly focuses on themes of escapism, abandonment, and the fear of growing up. He’s trapped in between two looming hells- growing up in the nowhere to become as morally bankrupt as any other adult, or to live in the waking world with the possibility that he could die a slow, degenerative death.
Because of this, Rusty is mainly motivated by desperation and feeling like he needs to escape. Similarly to how the devs said that the monsters lack goals but more follow these base urges, pretty much their id, rusty feels that pull too, deep in his tummy, and it’s got him guthooked.
But how do you escape two, almost certainly inevitable fates. Would you choose the certainty of becoming a monster and retaining your autonomy, or would you wait years, building up a life that you know has a very real chance of being dismantled by an incurable illness?
If rusty has survived my idea is that he would have become a Houdini like magician for the funfair, being locked up in absurd contraptions and escaping them on stage. He never stops running, never stops writhing away, always escaping.
He’s very much a “chew your own leg off to escape the bear trap” type character
And every time he escapes he ends up in another hell, another trap, out of the frying pan into the fire and then back again.
He was born as a result of an escape, and he died the same way. Even if he never got the chance to inherit her illness, he may be more like his mother than he will ever know.
Rusty is a sad character. Some people strongly dislike him for what he did to noone, which I understand, but I genuinely think it was due to desperation and some serious lack of foresight (my idiot chud son) At the end of the day though, he did end up using her, and I do think that part of him knew that and still did it. Rusty effectively threw her under the bus, and, intentionally or not, used her as bait.
At the same time though, Rusty likely suffered abuse for years at the hands of the ringmaster and dummy, along with maybe even the other performers to a lesser extent. I don’t think it’s fair to treat him as a villain like some people do to him (to a much lesser extent) and six
I see him in a similar boat to six in some ways. Even though he’s a teenager (I HC him as 16) he’s lacked a proper social structure for what can be assumed to be a massive chunk of his life, so he’s definitely way more immature if that makes sense. He hasn’t had time to grow in a way that wasn’t induced by trauma and pain. The environment of the carnivale itself is perfect for breeding resentment between performers, and Rusty is the star.
People often want to think they’d do the right thing in high stakes situations, but just one split second decision can turn you from victim to villain in the eyes of others.
It is incredibly hard to predict how we will react in life or death situations, and I feel very bad for Rusty despite all his flaws.
I also feel for noone too since she never even got a chance to process Rusty’s assumed death. Not to mention she never seemed to realize that she was essentially being manipulated by him- after all, it seems like Noone is used to that kind of treatment from not only her peers, but the adults around her.
They’re both deeply traumatized children, and Rusty is my idiot chud son.
It's not open yet, as I'm still figuring out character designs, and more importantly, the song. It'll be an animation about Rusty from The Sounds Of Nightmares (my boy doesn't get enough attention T^T) to either Circus of the Dead or Carousel.
What Song Should I use?
Circus of the Dead by TryHardNinja
Carousel by Melanie Martinez
Voting ended onSep 25, 2024
When I am ready for participants, I'll post links to the Discord, Google Doc, and any other resources for the project, along with putting a video on YouTube. So keep an eye out if you're interested!
I wanted to draw Rusty dying but got carried away and made this. Issue is it’s not like you can tell it’s him since it looks more like a red spikey smear, but I like it so I will be trying again. It’s more of a surreal depiction rather than literal
Its legs are actually kind of short/stocky and it’s partially digitigrade (walks on its toes like a cat or dog sometimes) which helps it absorb shock when it lands since it’s a performer.
Similarly to a primate, it has a thumb on its foot, but since it usually wears shoes during performances, it’s very weak and has a low range of movement as it just isn’t used super often
It’s femoral neck (the part of the femur that stick out from the hip) is enlarged and thicker than it is in a human, and is actually a separate joint in itself, making it have a high range of movement in its legs. It’s greater trochanter is also larger in order to for it to be a better anchor for more muscles.
It has more articular cartilage than a human would along with a much better range of movement for each joint.
Its teeth are very uniform, but it has larger canines in the back which have to be regularly filed down as they grow fast, similar to rodent teeth. Letting the canines grow is not harmful, just unsightly.
Its bite force is very high and so is the range of movement for its jaw.
It can pull back its lip like a monkey to show off its teeth (look up pictures, it’s terrifying)
It has more vertebrae than is considered normal in mammals.
Its shoulders aren’t actually that big, it’s just the little suit it wears
It is a mixture of organic and non-organic, think chucky from child’s play I guess
It has very good depth perception but poor peripheral vision
Similarly to a bird, it has separate balance sensors in its head and pelvis (this is why birds can keep their heads in the same place while their bodies move)
I like the design I made a lot but I want to change the clothes, also it looks a lot of Glen/da from seed of Chucky which was not intentional but I think it works
It’s really gay, that also wasn’t intentional but I think it’s funny
I like the implication in TSON that the dummy is the one controlling the ring master(man in the purple suit) or that they’re essentially one and the same, or maybe they’re swingers
. I think it essentially craves attention and reacts poorly when others receive more than it does. Perhaps it hated rusty so much because his tightrope act was very popular and basically saw him as competition and once he tried to escape, it attacked because there wouldn’t be any consequences to doing so as rusty had done something worth punishing. Or maybe it’s just kinda bitchy? Idk, I hope we see it in game, I’ll definitely draw more of this beast with additional hcs
Also do you think it has a tiny dummy like those “pet pet” toys they used to make so your pets pet could have a pet? I forgot what they were called
I accidentally made him fruity as hell but he did spend like half of the episode sitting on a guy’s lap while heavily breathing so I think it’s par for the course
When I finish coloring it ill put some hcs and thoughts when I post
‘I like my design a lot but I’ll probably change the clothes at some point
I think he might be friends with Dorthy (THAT MEANS HES A FAGGOT)
Anyways, what I’m trying to say is that Rusty has every right to be homophobic
