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waywardsalt · 3 months

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Can you please tell more about your redeemed Bellum that hangs around with the main cast in post-canon? Or, like, your hum!Bellum ideas in general?

Ooooh, I have a lot I could say about Bellum. I'll go a bit off this ask and just talk about him in the context of post-ph and some other aus, since he's fun and because most of them share the common thread of him being in human form often. This will probably be messy, but I'll divide it into sections to force myself to stick to one topic at once to keep this from devolving into what might as well be a transcript of a discord dms infodump.

(there should be a keep reading just under here- there are a few thousand words under the cut- if it's lower than it should be then idk, even while drafting this i had issues with it moving further down than i put it)

Human Bellum Basics (mostly design stuff)

It's less of a human Bellum au sort of thing, and more like a design for what if Bellum had a human form that he could change into. Kind of like Oshus having his human form while actually being a whale, it's the idea that Bellum can switch between his human form and his demon form at will, and I have spent... way, way too long trying to figure out this design.

I can't quite remember why I decided to give Bellum a human form (could've been anything from doing it for the hell of it to for shipping purposes) and it took AGES to decide on his final design.

Describing it would take a few paragraphs, so there's art! Commission pieces by @roskii specifically, he's great, he did great, check him out. (i dont know how to make these smaller :)))))) enjoy)

Half of it is directly taken from his demon design, he keeps the tentacles (not always present, he manifests them at will and tend to have much less reach when he's human), his eye, his teeth, his hair color (kind of), and half of it is more... brought in by ideas related to Bellum in general, with some vague references to that demon design; specifically him being scarred all over is a mixture of the idea of him as a violent and almost warlike creature, while also vaguely referencing the markings on his demon body (in the earliest drawing I ever did of a human Bellum design, he did just straight-up have those markings. That picture no longer exists, I'm sure).

As a basic reference, I suppose, in the second image, the character to the right of Bellum (Damien Fletcher) is an oc of mine, and therefore a character I designed (totally worth mentioning tho that with both Damien and Bellum while I did technically design them and gave roskii my notes for how they look, he also took some small liberties with their designs and... ugh theyre great im keeping them), so those two could provide some insight to my character design sensibilities, even if they're just a small fraction of the (mental) character designs I have.

Bellum is made up of pieces of his canonical design, pieces that I think make sense considering what we know about him, and just pieces of other character designs. He has more or less the same haircut as Joker/the protagonist from Persona 5. His hair has been like that for a while, but seeing Joker's hair helped me figure out specifically what I wanted.

It's been... hard, trying to give him a humanoid design, I've seen a bunch of other human Bellum designs, looked at other Zelda characters with both human and inhuman forms, took inspiration for what I could do and how and what parts could be carried over. His hair is easy to explain, it literally is meant to look like he does as a demon. Easy. It is absolutely directly inspired by that bitch from Tokyo Ghoul. I'm not looking up the character name I don't care about Tokyo Ghoul.

I keep him having sharp teeth, I've transposed those markings on his bodies as being scars (which I'll elaborate a little more on later), kept his eye and that he only has one main eye (there is nothing under the eyepatch. It's just smooth. If you've seen The Goonies, it's like what's going on with One-Eyed Willy. That's probably where I got it from tbh), the yellow and black color scheme is further kept with a yellow tank top-esque shirt and black pants and boots, and while they're not constantly present he still has access to his tentacles.

He's not human, just pretending to be.

Leading me to some other little details, such as his lack of ears. And nails. And. Other things not visible that he didn't bother with. He pretends to be human, but doesn't care enough to look truly human- though he can pass as human. When he does bother to actually look human, he does have nails and ears, and changes his eye to a human one, with a color of choice. He goes by 'Warren' when actually pretending to be human. It doesn't mean anything in particular it's just a play on how 'bellum' is latin for 'war'. But, most of the time, he's not really trying. A sense of lack of real care is something I try to communicate with his humanoid design, hence him having generally baggy and plain clothes.

The 'war' thing about his character I think is decently expressed in game with him having an army of sorts with the phantoms and him just coming off as sort of violent but strategic. He also seems very scrappy, mostly attacks with direct contact including just straight up running into Link, and seems to put a lot of stock into sheer force and just fucking killing you at any cost after a certain point, but seems genuinely wary and cornered once someone is shown to be capable of actually posing an actual threat. I like the idea of human Bellum being a bit of a brawler in a sense, fighting with his bare hands and just being incredibly violent when he fights like a human, really only breaking out his more supernatural abilities when he just wants to get shit over with.

Part of the fun with Bellum is that there isn't much to him, so I'm taking a lot of liberties with him. His loose clothes are something that won't really get in the way of him fighting and do the bare minimum, and the boots he wears have metal toes for just a bit of extra ways to hurt people. He's built but still soft in places, not intended to be a muscular as Damien, he's intentionally designed his own human form to be a bit unassuming, so I've kept that he's made of a lot of circular shapes, his face is meant to be a bit of a round shape, his hair gives a round shape, and though he's fairly tall (he and Damien are 6 feet tall btw Linebeck throws off every post-ph cast height comparison) I think of him being a bit... small? If that makes sense? His clothes help with that, they're slightly oversized, and his posture isn't great; He's a bit like a delinquent, starting fights intentionally for the sake of violence and putting little effort into his appearance.

His scars are technically cosmetic. They aren't results of injuries; technically nothing but the Phantom Sword and things like it can hurt him. His scars are references to the markings on his demon body, and just further reflection of him being a creature all about violence and conflict. They aren't totally consistent between the times he uses his human form, but some of the bigger ones are, most notably the scar across his face.

I'll be honest. My earliest human Bellum designs were some Tumblr sexyman shit and I've been trying to ditch that SO BAD ever since. I think I've done well. The scar across his face is a big one. An added imperfection, a massive facial blemish that isn't really conventionally great to look at. His nose specifically has been though some development stages, at first I kept switching between different full nose shapes, then brought in the facial scar and decided that he'd be missing a chunk of that nose, then, decided, fuck it! I can't decide on a nose shape, so he gets no nose at all. I think it works pretty well and I like it.

I really tried to get in a lot of his personality to the design, and I don't want to go into all of it in this section, so just keep in mind that a lot of his design has been influenced by the way I've decided to write him, and some stuff I've already mentioned might be made a little clearer when I get into that. As a quick aside, he's pale partially because I've intentionally made him look halfway similar to Link, and partially because I figure he does not get a lot of sun; you literally meet him in what is effectively a basement, and from the way he operates, probably hasn't made himself seen in a while by the time the events of the game happen. He can't get sunburns, but, as he cannot change a lot of extremely major things about his human form, he can't manually change his skin tone in a major way, and it's likely that when he was considerably younger and newer and spent time in the sun, his skin tone would be closer to Oshus's, so a bit more tan.

In the Context of Phantom Hourglass and Post-PH

Moving swiftly on, as there is pretty much no real info about Bellum's background, I have taken matters into my own hands and decided a lot of it for myself in headcanon; Bellum is technically Oshus's son. Not in the traditional sense, but he was created by Oshus and can very much be considered his child, and to an extent, Ciela, Leaf, and Neri are all also Oshus's kids due to them being created by him (yea even considering Ciela calling him 'grandpa', in her and my defense she lost her memories and he is old as a human), therefore making (in some terms) Bellum to be Oshus's son and the brother of the three spirits. I think it's an interesting dynamic, to have Oshus be the one responsible for Bellum's existence, and for the three spirits you travel with and help you defeat Bellum to be closely related to him.

Oshus himself (when you get the hourglass in ph) says that the sand of hours is made of force gems of the ocean king (whatever... that wording means)- which then suggests that at the end of the day, all sands of hours are derived from the power of the ocean king, and Bellum dissolves into that sand at the end of the game, and I am standing in front of a wild-looking conspiracy cork board trying to piece this all together. I find it interesting if Oshus was the one who created Bellum before he created the three spirits.

(This is a topic for another post/fic but Leaf and Neri were neglected so bad in ph and it would be interesting to see more of how they feel abt Ciela before she gets her memories back and how they feel abt... anything else ig. I think they're neat, too, and I like tying the spirits together with Bellum in this way)

In Phantom Hourglass, it's strongly suggested (mostly through dialogue) that it's been a decent amount of time since Bellum defeated Oshus and took over the Temple of the Ocean King and created the Ghost Ship (though I suppose it could be possible that the Ghost Ship's existence precedes Bellum taking over that temple and defeating Oshus), but things across that sea are relatively calm, despite the new influx of monsters and the Ghost Ship making most people too afraid to sail. No one knows it's Bellum, though, and people do know about the Ocean King, so I wonder if Bellum is known about at all by the general public, or is a being that's more or less completely unknown? My personal theory is that he's vaguely known in some sense, as an obscure deity, and that he was behind the collapse of the Cobble Kingdom, since they were aligned with the Ocean King and Bellum appears to be his direct enemy and would likely then target the allies of his enemy.

Bellum seems to do a lot of behind the scenes stuff, never been seen until the end of the game and not even being mentioned until halfway through. As I think I've said before, he's practically won by the time he comes across Link and Tetra, the Ghost Ship going out and collecting people for him while he sits at the bottom of the temple and drains anyone who might be heading directly for him. He doesn't even seem to concerned about hunting Oshus down for good, and I suspect he likely doesn't even know about Ciela being split apart, so (asides from my idea that gods/spirits/stuff like that only being able to be sealed away, only properly killed under certain circumstances) I bet there's a level of confidence that he's got things under tight enough wraps that he's good to do whatever he wants.

Aaaand then he panics when he realizes how much of a wrench in his plans Link is, throwing two sea monsters at him and causing earthquakes, he's a procrastinator, I think. That, or he underestimated this kid. Both are very possible. Either way, it's interesting to look at what he's done and caused, hiding away the spirits and beating back the Ocean King, taking over his temple, creating the Ghost Ship to roam indefinitely, screwing with the Yook and wiping out pretty much all of the Isle of Ember, and likely being the reason behind the increased number of monsters. If you really look into it, while most characters don't really seem to realize, things are kind of fucked at the start of Phantom Hourglass, and it's interesting how Oshus himself seems powerless and even dissuades Link from giving it a shot, even if he secretly wants him to go and handle things.

With my idea of Bellum being a sort of technical relative to Oshus and the spirits, it opens up a handful of new avenues for motivation beyond just being after securing control and a steady stream of prey, I enjoy the idea of it being a matter of him becoming more and more ambitious, far beyond the station he was created for; going off of his name and ability to create phantoms, I imagine Oshus created him specifically to be warlike, perhaps initially with the intention of having him as a more violent protector of the realm, maybe to keep monsters in check or maybe just as a secondary deity for the world of the ocean king; I'll admit, I'm still a little foggy on what Bellum would've been initially created for, the spirits are easy to figure out, but I do figure it was something not as passive as just representing something, I imagine it as a deliberate opposite to Oshus himself to account for his weaknesses. Either way, I figure a part of Bellum's motivation involves him wanting more than he was given access to by Oshus, and deciding to fully wage war against him in a sense. The short and silly version is that Bellum is Oshus' shitty disowned son. Oshus isn't entirely innocent in whatever I decide caused Bellum to turn on him and the spirits, but Bellum does suck: that is important. The Cobble Kingdom looks like it's been destroyed for a while, I figure that was Bellum's first major target when he started outwardly going after Oshus and hunting the humans of the realm.

In Post-PH, he's the group's pet evil squid on a very very very short leash until he starts behaving himself and having a character arc.

Effectively, Bellum doesn't die at the end of Phantom Hourglass, instead being broken down into the sand of hours he's made of and being sealed inside the Phantom Sword- after all, after the final boss, the sand Bellum turns into goes into the Phantom Sword. I imagine that the Phantom Sword, after breaking and restoring Oshus, turns into the hourglass for Link to keep, while Oshus and the spirits keep the remaining sands, therefore keeping a hold of Bellum. (A bit like Oshus just being left alone after Bellum defeating him, they can't really kill Bellum so they just keep an eye on him while he's in a weakened state) They kind of just keep him prisoner at the bottom of the Temple for a bit, and Oshus finally decides to send him to Link's world as a punishment, since he's at his weakest and Oshus wants to get him to learn some lesson, it's a work in progress. Bellum is grounded in Post-PH.

It's basically that 'the villain when you unlock him as a playable character' bit, where he's quite a bit weaker than he is in Phantom Hourglass, though mostly for the sake of keeping things balanced, so Bellum can't break everything for everyone. He's still powerful, he still accesses his demon form, can't be conventionally killed or injured, and move through walls and turn people to stone, the whole deal, it's just that his demon form's size is impacted (i hc that the size of his demon form can be manipulated at will, but the largest size is dependent of how much power/stored life force he has. he's small at the start of post-ph, but his human form isnt impacted at all. i imagine that for beings like oshus and bellum, their human form is a like a 'low power mode' kinda thing) So Bellum is the Post-PH crew's fourth member, the swabbie on the ship and pet sea monster when they need it and when he has the energy for it.

Bellum is kept mostly in line by a vague fear of Link and his general fear, respect, and curiosity about Linebeck. Linebeck is usually the one holding onto Bellum's leash. Bellum is decently civil with the group from the start, since he's weak and unable to return home until Oshus permits it or he gathers enough power to make that trip, and works mostly as a fighter- when he wants to. The earliest limitation I came up for him, since he's the member with the highest chance of breaking things, is that he will just straight-up choose not to help. He decides he's busy, decides it's not his problem, or other limitations, such as his involvement likely to cause more problems that they solve, since he's rather destructive when fighting.

He's the least sociable most of the time, for obvious reasons, but can pretend, and has the least... casual skills to offer to the group, hence why he gets stuck as swabbie (also general disrespect/as a punishment for the ph thing) and it takes a while for him to properly warm up to the rest of the group. He and Linebeck start off on decent terms and get closer through them just initially trusting each other, he and Link take the longest to get used to each other for... obvious reasons, it takes a lot of fighting together and seeing that they can rely on each other and they learn to be decent with each other just by existing in the same space, and things with Damien start off half decent, Damien was not present during Phantom Hourglass (obviously) and doesn't have the full context of how much he sucks, but it starts decent, gets worse when he learns what happened, and then gets good again because Damien's kind of amiable in general and sees that Linebeck thinks he's fine.

SO! To actually address your question about him being 'redeemed'- he does have a bit of an arc that I'm still mentally workshopping. He isn't entirely redeemed, as the group's general morality is a big off-kilter when Link isn't looking or is willing to get a little gray with things, and there's not really a whooooole lot of atonement Bellum can do in terms of the volume of bullshit he pulled in the past. It's less him atoning or w/e for the bullshit he's done, that's not entirely feasible, it's more him just. being forced to Be Decent and learn some actual kindness and think about more than just his own survival, he's essentially forced to actually appreciate life and the world, it's more him actually... experiencing the world for a reason other than consumption and war and conflict and doing what he's been told, he's effectively just on this long voyage with Linebeck, Link, and Damien, going with them from island to island and seeing what's up. I'm going to try and keep empathy out of it, so he's not really relating on a visceral level, more just choosing to be kind and take gentler paths to solving problems and interacting with others. He's also the group gremlin.

The way I write Bellum is definitionally inspired by other characters, Power from Chainsaw Man comes to mind in how he has a kind of shitty brat attitude at times, he'd fling vegetables across the room because he's a piece of shit who likes live meat. He's got his shitty messy delinquent loser side, where he causes problems and acts like some asshole teenager, and he's got his more serious, calm, almost professional seeming side that reminds the group that he's a few centuries old at the least and practically a god in his own right; generally outside of Post-PH I would pick one of these two sides to focus on for aus, but in Post-PH I need to figure out how the two of them work with how Bellum generally operates.

He's interested in Linebeck and initially decides to go along because he wants to figure him out, but grows to enjoy the rest of the group and that curiosity expands to involve the world as a whole; he experiences things like art and music, where he can't just brute-force his way into a satisfactory outcome and has to learn and find his own style, he reads books and listens to stories and sees the different ways humans live on the seas and I want his arc to, in some part, be about him just finding meaning in the world beyond what he does to secure survival, and the other members of the group introduce him to those other facets of life that he has access to, has had access to. The other part is the group getting Bellum to see most living things as more than just prey for him to hunt and consume, but that generally goes hand in hand with the prior point, as he actually enjoys life and figures out what he likes beyond the basic things he was created for.

He can't fall back on just smashing through everything or creating phantoms, since he's far too weak to do either effectively at the start, and I intend to just force Bellum into basically just being a human character with some unusually powerful magic at his fingertips, first just wanting to build himself back up to what he was in Phantom Hourglass, then just getting to see things in a new light. I'm not sure how to explain it or even what I'll want to do when I get to it, but that's the general gist of his arc, I think.

Other than that, he's just the fourth members of the crew with a serious knowledge of... a lot of things as a centuries-old demon and the hardest hitter in the group who can't and won't cook for shit and kind of just learns to actually live without constantly gunning for those bare necessities long after he's gotten them. I don't want it to be 'he learns to be human' because he... isn't human, but just him appreciating life and seeing some value in it, especially as something with as much power as Bellum, it's a bit messy and I'm still figuring it out, but I've got the general direction figured out.

Bellum is effectively the ship's best defender, and ends up fitting into the group as a friend and with his own specific role with the other individual members of the group. Linebeck kind of kickstarts his arc for him and connects with him the most and Bellum generally stays the closest with him, but Damien and Link help him see other little corners of life, as well as other characters he has to interact with, and I think I want Bellum's side of the story to have the most outstanding mundane-ity to it- there's absolutely meant to be a slice-of-life aspect to Post-PH, but I want the biggest points of Bellum's arc to be comparably the most mundane. It's the little things with him. The others have little things, too, but... I'm not sure how to express the difference, but I promise there is a difference.

Outside of Post-PH, though, when Bellum is present in a big way, his arc either tackles a similar idea in a different way, is just about something entirely different, or he doesn't have an arc at all, either due to not being a big enough part of the story or just straight up not being present.

In the Context of AUs

Bellum is only present in a handful of aus, either fully present as a character, halfway present, or just being referenced. When he is present in an au, he's usually some kind of major character, and he's notable in the crimson king au, the space au, the murder mystery au, and the horror au and one of my 'ruined hyrule' aus. (the horror and ruined hyrule au will be put together for this bc bellum's role in both are very similar) (for reference, here's my au explanation post)

In the horror au and ruined hyrule au, Bellum serves juuuust about the same role, just with different capabilities, contexts, all of that, but it's more or less the same thing. He's frequently present, but usually not acknowledged, and is very close to Linebeck in both, and the two of them pretty much rely on each other to live due to circumstances out of their control; they didn't really go into this whole thing liking each other, but have been more or less forced to become each other's friends due to proximity and just. Needing the others' presence in order to survive. In both, Bellum usually is a character who knows more than the others, but doesn't bother sharing that information since it's either not totally relevant or he just doesn't want to, and he tends to be protective of Linebeck, half because he needs him in order to live, half just because he's ended up liking him. (there is. more to say. but since i may actually write one of these aus [likely ruined hyrule bc the horror one has to be visual and it is VERY plotless rn] i'm not gonna go into much more depth since it would require spoilers lol)

Can't say a whole lot about the space au, either, since the story of that one is still a work in progress, and Bellum isn't particularly a major character, though he is important to some B-plot stuff. Without digging up too much world building and background and general story stuff and important plot bits, he's got a fairly close relationship to Linebeck in this au, as a general beneficiary and friend, and he actually tends to mind his own business and just wants to hold his own position; he's not really antagonistic or anything, but definitionally morally dubious even if he doesn't really directly do a whole lot.

In the Crimson King au, though, Bellum is one of the main characters, and a bit different than in ph-related stuff. He spends a lot of time in his human form, only switching to his little demon form a handful of times, and usually just for fun. He plays the role of Linebeck's closest friend and beneficiary, practically being the reason why Linebeck is able to do any of the things he does in the story, helping him from behind the scenes at times and balancing that business with Linebeck with his more outward appearance as a mostly normal guy working for the person who runs his section of the city... who also happens to be him. The vague politics in this au would take a bit to explain in full, but Bellum in this au spends a lot of time keeping his actual identity under wraps, the basic premise being that he's decided to integrate himself into current mortal society like a normal person to see what trouble he can cause, how he could sustain himself while keeping things stable, and to see just how far he can go- essentially, the only danger he faces is if others figure out what he is, but even then, he knows he could very easily cut his losses and go back to what he's done best.

He's not very active in the main plot, mostly giving Linebeck assignments and pulling strings behind the scenes in order to help and keep him safe, but Bellum does occasionally meddle directly in Linebeck's situation whenever it relates to him, when he needs something extra done, or, later in the story, when he gets a bit worried about Linebeck. His general arc is essentially him owning up to the fact that he does, in fact, care about Linebeck's well-being. Crimson King Bellum is fun, because he can't really just be 'violent demon', and I just like the supporting role I've got him in. He's Linebeck's rich friend who hires him to kill people for him. It's fun.

How I Like to Write Him With Linebeck

Of course, Bellum is going to have stuff with Linebeck, both in aus and in post-ph. Bellum has interactions and relationships with other characters, but the dynamic(s) with Linebeck tend to be the most diverse and important.

With aus: There’s usually a general sense that Bellum is above Linebeck, both in the power sense and in the sense that he’s typically his boss or in charge of him, but in a handful they are on equal footing (specifically, the modern school one, where they’re just classmates.)- the most common dynamic is usually along the lines of Bellum hiring Linebeck to kill people for him. Bellum is typically someone that provides Linebeck with things like payment or equipment or safety- in the Crimson King au, he gives Linebeck a fair amount of money, and supplies his equipment and gives him a place to live when he does jobs for him.

I like to imagine there's a level of... recognition? Not empathy, trying to keep that to a minimum... He's almost gentle with Linebeck, and is uncharacteristically merciful towards him. In post-ph, Linebeck survives being possessed and this marks him as notable to Bellum, since most people he possess die very soon after being released, so he's initially motivated by curiosity and a desire to observe Linebeck when he acts less violently- that curiosity is the biggest reason why he's cordial with Linebeck across my aus as well.

With Phantom Hourglass-centric stuff (which is what I'll mostly just talk about here, since it's kind of the 'base' for all other Bellum and Linebeck stuff I do), Linebeck and Bellum start on halfway decent terms, I'm planning a Bellumbeck fic sometime in the future, which is a bit less focused on that actual fight and more on whatever's going on between Linebeck and Bellum. I'm still trying to pin down exactly what I want with Linebeck and Bellum's dynamic.

I’ve fallen back into shipping them, (Still iffy on ship name lmfao, Bellumbeck is taken by the game and ‘Linebellum’ is lame imo, so I’ve been sticking with just ‘bellum x linebeck’) but it’s not really typically romantic/sexual, though there are some aspects of both, it’s still kind of abstract and easier to define with example stuff rather than just trying to explain it in a concise paragraph.

They both go out of their way to effectively research each other before properly meeting, starting as just trying to find advantageous information, but eventually just doing research out of curiosity, especially on Linebeck’s end, hunting down any material that so much as alludes to Bellum while Oshus refuses to say anything extra on the topic. They have a mutual interest and curiosity about each other.

With Bellum, its a similar curiosity with how Linebeck survives being possessed, and a general interest in him as a person, as Bellum doesn't really care much about the world beyond how it can serve him, but felt the need to look into Linebeck. A lot of the time, Bellum starts with the intention of exploiting Linebeck in some way, then ends up actually caring about him, he usually goes through variations of the same arc regarding Linebeck. It works with Linebeck for me since I tend to read and write him as fairly morally gray, so he's more willing to reciprocate Bellum.

(There's also the whole bit with Linebeck being kind of a monsterfucker and having a thing for being tied up and just a handful of like. sexual stuff on Linebeck's end, but we're talking about Bellum's perspective here we can't be focusing on Linebeck)

Bellum primarily operates with survival on the mind, and at odds with anything that might get in his way, and secondarily treats mortal creatures as something to study. When his attempt to use Linebeck fails, he shifts to that studying, and therefore has some respect for him due to his survival. They both focus quite a lot on survival, and don't have the most interest in making connections, seeing most relationships as transactional. They understand each other; Bellum sees Linebeck's mind when possessing him, and therefore knows a great deal about him.

There are similarities between them; not-great relationships with their fathers, a strong desire for survival at any cost, generally low empathy and a habit of mostly viewing others for how they can be used, curiosity about anatomy, a higher tolerance for things like blood, gore, things that would likely make others squeamish, they both hate Ciela...

(As an aside to that last one, an idea I've decided to integrate into my ph stuff and may touch on in a future fic is that Linebeck calling Ciela 'sparkles' gives her a strong sense of deja-vu before she gets all of her memories back; it's something Bellum would call her, when he was more cordial with the other spirits)

Bellum hangs around on the ship, and he hangs around Linebeck the most, to the point of being annoying, but learns what boundaries are and ends up respecting them decently. I lean more into... things just working out, Bellum more or less being put in a situation where he chooses to change things up and be a bit kinder, starting with the guy he's decided was the catalyst for all of this.

He gets along well enough with Damien (damien ends up in that shipping, too, considering that he's already dating linebeck by the time bellum sorts his own feelings out, so in post-ph, bellum ends up being a sort of on-and-off polycule member), he is eventually friendly with Link, often because Linebeck likes him as well. It takes a very long time for he and Link to warm up to each other, so they'll likely end up in situations where they must rely on each other at the start of things.

Bellum is… very not used to social stuff or acting human, and isn’t even very used to his human form at the start, so he does spend that time with Linebeck while he figures things out, as well. Linebeck's not the best role model for decent social interaction, especially since he works on dismantling his own mask and figuring himself out for a bit at the start of post-ph, but he's the only person Bellum tolerates and respects at that start.

Bellum eventually gets roped into helping Linebeck cook, follows him around for ship maintenance, watches him patch up wounds, and just ends up as a crew member that can kind of fill any basic role, but he’s not making it much further than swabbie.

I haven’t actually written a ton of interaction between them yet, but what I have written always comes off as casual, almost humorous, they joke around with each other and Bellum is detached and unserious at times, but very capable of switching to dead seriousness. A lot of the time, Linebeck tends to take things more seriously at face value, but Bellum is more prone to joking around due to the fact that very few consequences mean anything to him.

He and Linebeck are typically close in one sense or another in most things where they're included, and I generally consider all dynamics between them to fall under the ship umbrella, because I don't consider it strictly romantic (though it usually ends up being vaguely like that), just more that there's some kind of intimacy between them at some point. It's a relationship whose dynamic I think is interesting given the... lack of actual interaction between them, but with just enough interesting conclusions that can be drawn.

I guess it's similar to the general stuff I have about Bellum, kind of just scraping ideas together from canon and then following whatever threads can be connected to them, while trying to make sure it still has roots in that canon. It's similar to my personal 'design philosophy' or whatever for my aus.

I've also considered making their relationship parasitic in someway, as a sort of homage/callback/reference to their canonical relationship, but it's not entirely a direction I really want to go in, and I feel like some aus get decently close.

Final Points

I think Bellum's really neat, so considering the general lack of information or depth to him, I've been playing with expanded ideas and building up my own ideas for him, specific within the context of Phantom Hourglass and a post-ph setting, while many of my other ideas with him tend to then derive from that.

His (human) design is one I've spent a very long time figuring out, trying to mix his demon design in with more human traits, trying to keep him distinctive without getting too complicated, and trying to have that design represent him decently with a fair bit of reasoning behind a lot of that design. It's something Bellum himself controls to a certain degree, so it's in a bit of a crossroads between portraying him based on his character, and being something he uses to come off as generally innocuous.

I've got a decent idea of what Bellum's whole deal is in Phantom Hourglass and afterwards, and I use him in a fair number of aus, often in tangent with Linebeck, whom I often give him some kind of intimate relationship, be it romantic or some other form of closeness, based off of ideas for ways they would interact and why.

Bellum's fun! He's fun as he is, and he's fun to build off of and develop further than what we see in the game. And giving him the ability to shift into a humanoid shape gives even more room to play around in. I don't know when I first came up with the idea, but I've had ideas for a human form Bellum for quite some time now, I've just only recently really started solidifying a lot of it. Even between the time when I got the ask and finished it, I came up with new ideas.

But for now, these are the broad strokes! Not just about post-ph humanoid Bellum, just about my ideas for him in general, though it all really relates back to that one in particular, honestly.

He's surprisingly fun to speculate about! I didn't really expect Bellum to end up as one of my favorite LoZ characters, but I guess any character can end up as your favorite if you spend enough time thinking about him. At the end of the day I think he's funky, and he's fun to use in a post-ph setting.

#asks #goopi-e #bellum #long post #salty talks #linebeck #he's important <3 #phantom hourglass #post ph #i have like no excuse for why this took so long. initially it was bc i was waiting on that bellum commission but then like #the day i wrote this (+ the prior) tag i bought and played fallout new vegas for a few hours. it fell in with my other writing projects lol #i think rn myb iggest issue w/ post ph is that everyone seems to revolve around linebeck a bit much #idk if thats. terrible a breaker i mean hes their captain hes kinda the main character he's the one link (heh) between all of them #bellum probably has the biggest arc bc hes the shittiest at the start and everyone is already kinda partway through one #like i think links is gonna be abt him disconnecting from being a hero and just enjoying life on his own terms and doing non hero things #linebecks is uh. trauma recovery. among other things. like everyone has trauma recovery as a part of it but linebecks is the big one #damiens is... man idk hes just There i think his is gonna have smth to do with his relationship w/ linebeck and the others #damien is just some fucking dude hes not too terribly traumatized or has this huge place in the world he's jsut some trans guy #it kinda sucks that a lot of the stuff i think up for him relates to linebeck like i want him to have his own thing but i made him too...#hes too ok with things!!!!! hes just some fucking guy!!!! maybe i can have him just figure out his place in this larger world hes exploring #anyways bellum needs to be nerfed in a handful of different ways bc otherwise hes a get out of jail free card in a lot of contexts #ughhh this took too long im sorry but i just kept coming up with new stuff id practically classify this as a fic #this took a while to plan and this fucking thing is also so long and it still doesnt really cover everything #not even bc i havent fully figured out what i want to do with him like theres just stuff im uncertain on how to explain in a concise manner #the whole thing between link n bellum is kinda simple. they hate each other and then have to work together and decide that theyre decent #damien is just. pleasant most of the time. so hes kinda chill with bellum. he's had experience with minor gods n deities #his weird thing is that he is technically normal but he is on good terms with a lot of supernatural/godly beings #theres def a lot of random minor gods n spirits n supernatural creatures all over the great sea with the absence of larger gods' influence #kinda lost the point of the og ask so i hope thats ok

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butchviking · 1 year

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could you elaborate on your idea of treating dysphoria with therapy. i guess you don't have it figured out yet because if you did you would've already therapied the dysphoria out of yourself. but like. what are your ideas? where do you think dysphoria comes from? how could one fix it with therapy? conversion therapy gets a bad rep, how different or similar is your idea of fixing dysphoria with therapy from the spooky idea people have of conversion therapy? anything else you want add

oh i sure the fuck don't have it figured out. i have no kind of education or training or qualifications in anything like that i am just another dysphoric dyke on the internet. i just wish anyone who IS in that field seemed 2 b listening lol

so im not aware of any standardised therapy to target dysphoria in any way, but ive known & heard from soooo many detrans/desisted/reidentified/etc women that therapy has either hugely helped w their dysphoria or in some cases they've been able to eliminate it entirely. a lot of the time ppl talk like dysphoria is smthn that is just ingrained into you as a person, something you're born with and something that - unless u transition - u will eventually die with. but that's not true! there are often very real causes that can be found out and dealt with. fr example a lot of women have identified the main cause of their dysphoria to be childhood trauma, often abuse and very often sexual abuse (it doesn't take a genius to figure out why this would lead to someone hating/resenting/feeling wrong in/being disgusted by their body. doesn't take a genius to figure out why they'd want to be male instead.) and i mean. listen talking with a group of women anyway there's usually a lot of trauma. but talking with a group of transmascs is like. jesus fucking christ there is so often so much awful shit that has happened to them. (in fact this def applies to transwomen too tbh, ive known a looot of transwomen w a history of sexual abuse. not as many as transmen but definitely higher than the general male population). physical abuse (or witnessing the physical abuse of a mother) can be another cause; that feeling of never wanting to be a scared helpless little girl again and wanting to be strong and able to defend yourself - things that are usually associated w men. these thoughts aren't usually conscious, its not like u think "i want to be a man bc i blame my body for what was done to me and i feel like if i could get out of my skin and be something more powerful i'd be safe and happy" - but thats what ppl often find out in therapy, and after coming 2 terms w that they find they don't have to take it out on themselves anymore and they manage to make peace with their body.

for a lot of women their dysphoria was caused by simple social restriction - ive no doubt in my mind that a huge reason for mine is not being able to be topless in public or have my shirt unbuttoned or jesus christ even just. just fucking EXIST without them having to be an ISSUE. i weaned myself off binding years ago and for a long time i managed 2 get to a place where i didnt even think abt my chest that much. and then some guy makes one comment abt how i never wear bras and its like. oh god i had tried to forget that you people can SEE them. and that sent me into a lil spiral for like a month lol 👍 pair that w going to mcr nj and forgetting to wear a bra the first night and finding my movement severely restricted due to not wanting my tits flying everywhere and i came back from that trip like. can someone just fuciing cut them off. (mcr PLEASE stop transing my gender im not strong enough...) (actually i was going to say that after that trip i wore a binder for the first time in years but i think im getting my timeline mixed up. i think that was before the show actually. bc i distinctly remember that i packed it for the trip 'just in case' and that was after i'd already worn it once around the house & once to a wedding) and obviously idk what the solution is for me there but i think a combination of therapy & lifestyle changes could help me get at least somewhere. i know that for other women lifestyle changes have been a huge factor - living & being around only women has been so healing fr a lot of detrans/dysphoric ladies & ive read some really moving things abt the impact going to womyns land has had fr some. misogyny in general can really wear down how u feel abt ur body over time, without u ever necessarily attributing your feelings to that. and when i say 'misogyny' im also including the simple existence of gender in that! to be born and to be separated into a category based on your body and to have that be something thats supposed to dictate how you live your entire life - you have a vagina so you have to wear this and act like this and people will have these expectations of u and you're limited by these restrictions and if you step out of line, if u dont do femininity or dont do it well enough, you will be punished. by god of course u grow to hate your body and your role in the world. of course u wish u could be a man and just fucking. live and breathe and exist without all these stupid fucking made-up rules & requirements! for a lot of ppl, recognising that & recognising that the problem doesn't lie with them, but with a society that made them feel that way, is huge. & after that realisation they can begin a process of forgiving their body. turning the blame out from where they've internalised it. & this is definitely why so many detrans/desisted/reidentified women get so hard into feminism. that's what brought me to radblr in the first place & started my own process of reidentification!

now obv i can't cover every possible cause of dysphoria here bc its as many & varied as ppl are. and listen im on mobile so i cant see how long this is but jesus christ i know it must be fucking long. and its still going to get much longer! so there is one last obvious cause of dysphoria that no-one likes to talk abt, but which is probably THE most concretely linked: being gay! for at LEAST hundreds of years (im sure there are some ladies around here who could attest to older sources tbh, it could be millenia for all i know) lesbians have written about feeling like they're a man's soul in a woman's body. sexual inversion theory was the default belief for how and why people were homosexual for a long, long time. and that theory is so completely alive and well. im not even going to say any more on this one. it's obvious and i think almost every single butch lesbian (& plenty of non-butch lesbians) feels this at SOME point. the proportion of homosexuals in the transgender population is definitely higher than in the general population. however even if ur het that can induce dysphoria too, cause u get ppl who say they don't want to date men as a woman, they want to do it as a man - which a lot of ppl put down to gay fetishisation but i don't think its all about that. i think its abt wanting to be on equal footing. so no-one is safe really!

ok. so what is the difference between this and conversion therapy. conversion therapy in my mind is smthn that seeks to 'correct' your behaviour/identity, rather than smthn with the goal of alleviating distress. like i don't think any of the stuff ive talked abt should b done w the goal of making someone not identify as trans anymore - idk identify how u want i guess. the identity isn't really the thing that matters. u don't even need to identify as trans in the first place for any of that stuff to b helpful - it's all abt lessening the distress u feel w ur own body. and the main thing 'trans conversion therapy' means 2 me is trying to force gender conformity on someone. like trying to get them to accept their assigned gender role. to get a gnc female who identifies as transmasc to ditch not only the identity but the gnc behaviours & presentation and accept their 'place' in the world as a woman. and gender (a word which to me is synonymous with the phrase 'gender roles' like they dont exist separately that is literally what gender is. its roles.) is my greatest enemy in the world FUCK gender and i don't ever ever think anyone should b forced to abide by it. i think it is the greatest evil on this planet. to me, the comparison of therapeutic dysphoria treatment to conversion therapy is like. say if someone was gay, and was severely distressed by being gay. they couldn't accept it and they hated it and they were depressed about it. this person would definitely benefit from therapy to help them ACCEPT the fact that they're gay and to help them feel comfortable with themselves about it. which is very very different from a 'therapy' which aims to make them not gay anymore. u know?

now im not going to pretend i know or even believe that everyone's dysphoria can be alleviated or erased with therapy. i have no idea how many ppl this would work for. maybe it would help 5% of ppl, maybe it would help 50%, or 95%. honest to god i have no idea. and sometimes figuring out the root causes of your dysphoria doesn't really do jack shit. there's a lot of things in my life i could point to that explain mine. but the trouble is that knowing that doesn't make it go away. it's a mental illness & it's as complicated & often stubborn as any other. chances are that therapy would help some ppl and not help others. and if u try it out & it doesn't help & u still think transition is the right path, then cool! if that's an informed choice and a medical risk/commitment you're willing to take then honestly i believe in giving ppl that right. but like i said the other day, the big thing is that without the OPTION of psychological treatment, there's really only the option of transition. well that's not tru actually, because some people do choose to simply live w their dysphoria, much as one might live w many other mental illnesses. i feel like that's also not an option spoken about often. u can actually just live with it. learn to manage it rather than try to cure it, let it ebb & flow. a lot of the time that will suck, but what mental illness doesn't? for many ppl, learning ways to manage & live w their dysphoria is a more sensible choice for their lifestyle than transition, which basically makes u a lifelong medical patient. for some ppl it's better than taking the health risks. sometimes u just gotta power thru.

anything else i want to add - yes, of course there is. there's a million things i could probably add. i could talk abt this for hours. actually i probably have bc i kept coming back 2 this on breaks at work so im sure ive put a couple of hrs into it by now. i didn't even mention eating disorders and how commonly comorbid they are w dysphoria; how it's all just different forms of body dysmorphia (but as many ppl have said, when an anorexic tells a doctor their body is wrong the doctor tell them no, your mind is wrong, and you need psychological treatment. not so with dysphoria.) the transwomen ive seen basically turn into plastic surgery addicts always seeking more and more changes bc they don't reach the end-point they'd imagined, where they're happy w their body now, bc the discomfort always came from inside their head and their body was never really the problem. the transmen who plan on just taking hormones but not getting top surgery, or vice versa, and then end up doing both AND getting phallo and often still finding themselves unsatisfied at the end. the unrealistic expectations people often have in the first place when starting transition, and the doctors who, instead of being realistic and helping patients to manage their expectations, promise the absolute world - leaving ppl completely mentally unprepared if things don’t go so well, where perhaps some therapy beforehand could have helped them accept what they’re getting into. the studies showing that although ppl REPORT being happier after transition, their life satisfaction scores on assessments aren't actually any higher than before. but i just got home and got to my computer and it turns out this reply is already. my god. over 2,000 words long. and holy shit even viewing it on desktop it’s enormous. so u gotta know when to quit i guess.

thank u so much for asking this. y’all know how much i love to talk abt this topic. i know everything is split into ‘sides’ on this sometimes, like it’s just some discourse, but it’s real people’s real lives and it’s so so important to me for everyone to see that. i want trans & dysphoric ppl to have more options, and to know about the options that they do have. there may not be any standardised dysphoria therapy but as i say, many women HAVE had life-changing results with other kinds of therapy, and there are many professionals out there who will absolutely work with you to the best of their ability if you want to get to the bottom of your dysphoria and come up with ways to lessen it or manage it. unfortunately, there are also many who will run for the hills because they don’t want to endanger their licence or reputation by being branded as conversion therapists. and i want feminists who see this as a solely political issue to see the humanity here and to recognise that dysphoria is a very real and often very debilitating mental illness that can’t always be cured by just explaining to someone that gender is made-up and bad. and no-one is a traitor to the female sex or an inherent misogynist for the choices they make to deal with that mental illness and live their happiest life.

and im. so sorry for all of ur dashboards. but hey, if u can scroll past 79 images per day of my chemical romance, then im sure u can scroll past this too if it’s of no interest to u. i hope not tho. if u read this all then god bless i am so thankful. everyone have a wonderful day <3 i am going to go have a nice big glass of mead bc it’s been a long night & all this thinking make hal head hurt. peace ✌️

#ask #anonymous #that's 2500 words. thats literally an entire essay. thats insane. llisten.. i just hve a lot of feelings ok :(#and. a lot of opinions.#trans #← tag just so i can find this in future. i spent so long on it i feel like i shouldnt let it just get lost in the archive lol

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