Kith

Arthur Loser

I really hope no one else has done this

originals under cut

Something just occured to me. Circling through each beautiful moment in the campaign, I noticed a pattern. Gillion never initiates hugs. Every time, no matter if he is the one consoling or the one being consoled, he never is the first person to offer an embrace. And I think it says something.

When Jay wants to hug Gill, she always asks first. She opens her arms as an invitation and always gives him a clear sign that she wants to be close to him. And any time she offers, anytime Gillion gets permission, any time he feels like he is allowed one, he clings to her desperately and fully, starved for it, finding himself unable to let go too quickly, savoring it like he isn't sure when he is going to be allowed to have another.

Chip's hugs are unprompted and usually done with just as much desperation. They are completely controlled by emotion, and are a form of a language that Chip uses when love and appreciation cannot be expressed by words anymore. Chip never asks for hugs, he takes them. He needs them, so he is scared to ask like Jay does, cause asking means risking to be denied. It is safer to steal it. In contrast Jay is still asking cause she is still afraid of taking love for granted.

But they both, in the end, ask for hugs and comfort in their own ways. Gillion doesn't. He wants it, he needs it so often, but he never dares to ask for it. Cause he still treats love as a reward that he needs to earn, that he is not allowed to ask for, that can't be had, unless he does something that makes him worthy of being loved. Affection and love is a currency and Gill was taught that he needs to fight for it. That it's something he should never dare to request on his own.

How many times on their journey did he need to feel someone else's body close to his, but his lips were sealed, suffering in silence, thinking he Has not done well enough to be given the privalage of being comforted? How many aches and worries did he swallow down and burried deep inside? How many old wounds is he trying to fill with every single hug he receives, when someone else offers it to him? When he dares to take it, when he grips their clothes in an iron grip, trying to make the best out of it before it's gone? Cause who knows when someone allows him to have that again?

The only person Gill ever hugged first was Edyn, the first time in Allport. It was done with the same ferocity of a hurt child, of a little boy who Has been going through hell and his sister is his only remedy. The only person that always lets him have love for free. The only one he knows he can hug for sure. One who for so many years has been the only source of comfort.

The rest of the world is uncertain and even with Chip and Jay, Gill still strives to fulfill the unsaid cryteria of when he is worthy of their affection.

But I know that with enough reassurance and care, he will be able to ask for love himself and start treating his crew as people he can fall back on. And just so you know, the moment in which Gillion is the first one to hug Chip or Jay is going to make me cry like a little baby.

_______

Edit: more thoughts occured

Did you notice that Jay always seems to match Gill and Chip when it comes to hugging? She never asks Chip for hugs and takes them the same way Chip does, no matter if she is the one seeking or offering comfort. And the same goes with Gill. Regardless of whether she is the one in the need of comfort or she is the one comforting, she always verbally communicates a desire to hug first. Like she kinda feels that this is what Gillion needs from her to accept it.

So maybe Jay is actually always trying to search for the most effective way to get a hug, to increase her chances. She believes she has to, cause she cannot take love for granted anymore, not after Ava's death. She took her for granted and now she is gone. So now Jay struggles to freely express her own desires and instead clings to all the ways that she thinks guarantee her the affection she needs, an act of desperation in its own right. A silent plea for acceptance.

Each Captain on this ship treats each embrace as a treasure to savor and protect. It's a result of their past and their fears, but also a proof of unyielding love they have for each other. It's beautiful and one day the same love that they still dread to take, will heal them.

ok but what if these wire things are how showfall keeps control over them without a mask...

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

Malam is the malevolent version of the Lorax send tweet

LISTEN fish and chips is NOT mutual pining to me, it is one-sided on Chip's side. Not because Gillion doesn't love him back, but because Gillion accepts whatever love he is given and it doesn't occur to him to expect or demand any more. Gillion is very happy to be in a romantic relationship with Chip, but he's also happy to just be friends/family/whatever queerplatonic familial closeness Albatrio have going on. There's no pining on Gillion's side, because Gillion has already got a family he never would have expected to be blessed with, and it doesn’t occur to him to expect anything more than what has already far exceeded his expectations.

And this is where the angst comes in, because as we know, Chip:

hates himself and thinks he's a burden on everyone around him and thinks he’s unworthy of love

puts Gillion on a pedestal and thinks he’s this wonderful perfect paragon who Chip can never come close to measuring up to

has internalised homophobia and a crippling shame at the thought of ever revealing his dependence on others

So on the one hand we have Chip, with all these internal reasons why he can never bring himself to make the first move, because he thinks Gill would be disgusted at his presumption for thinking someone as amazing as Gill could possibly deserve someone as awful as Chip - and on the other hand we have Gillion, who is never going to make the first move because it would never occur to him to expect more love than he’s been granted, and would likewise consider it a presumption to demand more after he's received so much more generosity from the crew than he could have ever imagined, and probably expects Chip to someday find his true love and live happily ever after with them with Gill's blessing. So what do they do in this situation? Chip fantasises about Gillion being in love with him and making the first move, then feels disgusted at himself and beats himself up for feeling that way about his friend. Then Gill deliberately ignores any hints Chip might make that he likes Gill, because Gillion must be misinterpreting human behaviour again because in Gill's mind there’s no way Chip would be flirting with Gillion, Gillion never even considers that he might fill that role, because surely Chip is destined for another, a human from his own world. Then Chip interprets Gillion's intentional obliviousness as rejection, and a confirmation of all his negative beliefs about himself.

Suffer.

It just occured to me that Stan technically canonically liked to draw, so here's my take of what Stanley's sketchbook would have looked like had he never gave up on art :]

Stanley first found this sketchbook left behind in a dumpster next to a library. The rings that once held the pages together were broken and warped, so he instead fashioned himself a jury rigged binder by weaveing one of his shoelaces through the holes in the side. In the end, it was essentially just a stack of barely held together paper, but he was still satisfied with it.

Pencils were easy enough to snag from the store since they fit so easily inside his pockets; but he had to settle for the shitty stubby pink erasers that barely did its job on the end of the pencils if he made any mistakes.

Stanley wasn't much of a poetic guy, and he didn't do the kind of art that had deep symbolism or meaning behind them. He was more the kind of artist that just drew what was in front of him, plain and simple. Had he been younger, he might have been able to fill in this cobbled together sketchbook in a matter of days, page after page filled to the brim with creatures and adventures of the wildest dreams.

Well, Stanley wasn't exactly a sprightly young child anymore with a boundless imagination to take inspiration from, but 10 years was a long time to be on the road and moving around, so there was plenty for him to draw.

(My primary goal was just to make these pages look as realistic as possible, but I did add in mini backstories in each of the pages' image description, if you feel like reading that :])

A colored version of this post. 💛

[copic markers and colored pencils]