cherub fanfiction/au idea:
caliborn and calliope get raised by someone other than gamzee and basically someone incredibly patient and caring is responsible for raising them when caliborn is awake, and someone who doesn’t give one shit is responsible for when calliope is awake.
caliborn gets all the affection and attention a child could possibly need and good behavior gets rewarded rather than him, kind of naturally, being nasty getting punished. and calliope gets treated badly for no reason no matter how hard she tries.
would be interesting to see what kind of people they would grow up to become.
caliborn has a lot of admirable qualities that people just never gave him reputation for because he wasn’t using them for something “good”.
but can u imagine, if someone would have seen the potential he has, and praised him when he did something that, he was proud of i guess, and just had the patience to teach him what are good and rewarding goals to put his mind to.
he has the strongest will out of everyone in homestuck, never gives up until he gets what he wants, doesn’t let it affect him when literally everyone is talking shit about his art. but, he does care i guess what people say, like him being aware of having a “learning disability” because people think he’s stupid, and then his growth is also stunted bc he killed calliope before he could predominate over her in a normal cherub way, but still he just keeps pushing forward anyway and proves people who think he can’t do something wrong.
it’s actually something that he’d deserve to be commended for. but nothing he ever does gets acknowledged because from the start it was kind of “him against everyone else”, he is the “bad” cherub. but like. neither good nor bad cherubs are meant to be social creatures and yet calliope was, and caliborn too addressed gamzee as “honk friend” or whatever. so maybe he should have been given the chance to be accepted instead of be antagonized from the get go. u know like, “everyone’s already saying ur the asshole, so u become the asshole”. but i wonder how things would have gone if he just had, at least someone who raised him, see something good in him.
and calliopes story would be an interesting one too i guess. actually, everything about their lives would be more equal in an au like this.
caliborn being a brat who does what he wants and struggles with being considerate of other’s emotions, is still gonna be an outsider for that reason. except he has at least one shoulder to lean on, someone who he knows is always gonna be on his side because they simply actually love him.
and calliope, is gonna be an outsider too, but the kind who tries hard to be everyone’s friend, being a total people pleaser, and still gets rejected and bullied, but mostly i guess “used” for how far she will go to be accepted. like i said she was raised by someone who doesn’t care so i guess that would make her become rather insecure, and “trained” to do whatever it takes to get some love and affection, and when she does, it’s like a reward to her, regardless of what she had to do for it.
still sounds like she would definitely be a “better” person than caliborn at this point. but growing up like that, basically never learning how a balanced relationship is supposed to look like, but with every person who shows her just a speck of love in exchange for, something that wasn’t worth being done, making her further develop that exact habit - it’s bound to result in an inability to find genuinely caring people, because genuinely caring people will want to love her in exchange for love. and she basically can’t do that because she was literally taught that it doesn’t bring her love.
calliope’s life would probably be a very slowly but steadily downhill leading road. making her go from “i just wanna be ur friend” to “i need u to love me and I’ll do what it fucking takes to make u love me” so i could see her seriously hurting people at some point.
i feel like it’s an au where u would really, really wish both cherubs to be the “surviving” one. following their lives from toddler to an age of being ready to naturally predominate over the other. so u grow to really love both of them bc u see the world from their eyes, u really understand why they do anything they do.
oooo and ok. what if. the time for predomination comes just when they are Both going through a phase of extreme struggles, both being seriously beaten down emotionally. caliborn still of course being the emotionally “stronger” one, but, in this au he spent his life being taught to love and be loved. so he actually struggles with the thought of his sister dying because of him.
she has learned that she is never good enough.
he has learned that he can be forgiven and loved even when he’s being awful.
resulting in both of them, kind of seeing something that they really hate, in themselves.
so at that point when they should be stronger than ever, they actually both become as weak as ever, because neither of them feels like they’re the one “deserving” to live.
for all of their life up to this point they knew that This Moment would be their first huge milestone, that at this time “winning over the other” or “losing to them” would mean Everything, determining life or death for them. but then they don’t know anymore if to “win” is really “winning over the other”.
actually ok, idea to make this more interesting: caliborn loses whoever it was who raised him, thus losing the person he had this incredibly close bond with. that is why he’s going through a really hard time and for the first time rly feels alone. and in a way, is being tested, whether he has learned to become good enough of a person to not be antagonized by everyone.
at the same time calliope feels absolutely worthless, and hopeless. so she basically Decides to give up - to her “winning” becomes to “lose to him”. and it’s a very “self” focused goal. She, wants a way out, She, has noone to live for, She wants to die.
caliborn on the other hand has spent his life learning to not focus on just himself, and is at this point mostly struggling with thoughts of “doesn’t she deserve it more than i do”. so in contrast to calliope, his goal is Not one focusing on himself. but to him “winning” becomes to “make her win”. he does not hate himself like calliope does though, he just at this point prioritizes her life. ideally he’d definitely want to live, this is just what he struggles with in a scenario of “one of them Has to die”.
so. idk i feel like this could lead to them developing a really special bond during that time. would be interesting to see how far either of them will go to “win”. if caliborn let calliope die, it would just prove to himself that he’s still putting himself over even someone who he thinks really deserves to live more than he does.
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