#and talking

each dash is its own thing. for hank ( he / they / it / she is reserved. ) :

- hank is G01 / generation 1 grunt, but a particularly strange one in the sense that they are not a grunt. hank is a script. i headcanon hank as being the cannoneer / cannoneer script in the original marshmallow madness and how they are shown in the magiturge arena mode ending. i am on purpose ignoring that he was mentioned to be a G02 by swain.. hank is a script and as such behaves differently than everybody else because they were never intended to be a person or an entity. hank as the cannoneer script was intended to just be that, a placeholder with a face in the very early stages of nevada's creation and the nowhere. i started to lean into this headcanon a lot more when i saw a clip of krinkels answering a question regarding why the maker scribbles out hank in the cave drawings, with him saying "because he's a strange one. he's a very strange one. not really a.. not really a one with the identity as the maker understands it." ..i just think it'd be funny if hank was never meant to have an identity in the first place and was a function first before being a person. it's why hank is so down the straight and narrow about getting the job done, you gave him something to do and he will do it. i like to describe hank as being an extension of the machine itself as a script.

- hank's height, width and depth changes subtly to drastically with each time he dies and comes back. i like to keep his base height at 6'2" but if you were to linger around them for long enough, you might notice every so often that he seems a bit shorter than usual or a bit taller, or he has a bit more or less muscle somewhere. it's just a result of supply of material to sew him back together.

- hank harbors no sense of physical attraction to anybody in the sense of finding anyone 'hot', 'cute', 'pretty', 'sexy', etc. they see absolutely nobody as attractive in that sense and the most you will ever see in terms of complimenting appearances is with how much 'cool factor' there is to something.

- hank sees red. for them there is not really a black and white, a good vs evil, a grey area. everything is red in that everything and anyone can be a tool. it's not really a 'sees red and gets angry / violent' thing. everybody looks the same to it on a moral / alliance / loyalty point. it has no issue turning on you if you get in the way or alligning with you if you can work to the same goal it has.

- for awhile, hank behaved very npc like or average grunt like before the whole punching the boombox guy. a whole lot of no particularly violent activity until that incident and it being like the switch flip of 'oh wait. i dont really know why but i think ive done this kinda killing people thing before ( marshmallow madness ) but im really really enjoying it,' like it might be a natural thing hank knows to do. - almost all of hank's outfit is a diy project it works on when it is bored, parts are stolen during missions ( homes / clothing stores ) or straight from the garbage. in a sense that's how hank is gradually building an identity for themself.

∙ hank has no issue with dying itself, but it's a matter of what circumstance and how they die that will determine if that irritates it enough to come back. ( i.e some stupid rug pulling bullshit or getting a kill stolen by dying to something stupid. )

- much of hank's skin is discolored or outright not the same shade or tone as their original skin since they're a hankenstein of various people's body's now ( haha ). they're also missing some certain parts that don't particularly bother them. its more like accessory and so long as they have the necessary parts that won't cause them complications, it frankly doesn't give a shit if something is gone.

for sheriff ( he ) : - go my transgender bear. - sheriff self medicated with alcoholic and as a result, over the years became a functioning alcoholic. this is entirely based on the line of 'pass the whiskey' he has and also the whole.. debacle he's been put in. he smells always vaguely of whiskey as a result of this. he feels a bit braver drunk but y'know.. reality backhands him in the face again and he focuses.

- sheriff and jeb are not friends. at best they are aquaintances, allies by circumstance not by goal. sheriff is afraid of jeb and worries about pissing him off as it might mean he loses an ally and potentially gains an enemy if he doesn't comply with his orders ( i.e assisting jeb in plans like lending his men to deal with hank ). at this point in time, jeb seems wildly unstable and too zeroed in on his savior bullshit for sheriff to feel comfortable speaking up at all about not wanting to deal with this stuff anymore. sheriff was a normal guy first that had no intention of getting involved with this stuff in the first place until jeb pulled him into it with fear as a motivation. jeb isn't a friend, just a 'friendly-face'. - sheriff has gotten better at hiding his fear / non-fighter nature at least with the way he talks. the fear and the desire to live is always there but the way he presents himself feeds into how he is perceived. at the end of everything, sheriff is always running away from the site of conflict if he's in an unsafe spot or at a disadvantage. covering up his fear makes him appear very cocky and arrogant - sheriff's hair is long as well as his beard, it is like a mane. it's his pride and he tries his best to keep it well maintained but he's.. too stressed to keep it up all the time. there are some curly and wiggly looking hairs ( i don't know the right term for it ) sticking out, and some parts tangled and thick. he feels weird if he were to ask anyone of his men to brush it out. - sheriff is a lot better at fighting and defending himself at this current point in time ( mpn2 and ahead ) but he is held back by the fact he is worried about dying or getting injured in general. he's afraid of taking a risk and would much rather use traps and a whole lot of walls in the way. - sheriff likes to hum, whistle and sing quietly to soothe his nerves. unfortunately, given his desire to uphold a strong image, he overthinks that being heard humming or singing, even quietly, around any of the MERC units will have him perceived as too soft or an oddity. for this reason, he is usually found whistling little bits when he's actually roaming the MERC buildings and his humming and quiet singing is for when he's patrolling the industrial sector walls on his own. - he carries a level of care for the MERC under his leadership but has a confused relationship with his individuality and being a part of a group. he was a guy first and foremost and because of the responsibility that was put onto him by jeb to protect these people he feels an obligation to forego his feelings and emotional needs. as a result he doesn't really.. interact with them on a super friendly level as much as he would say, a stranger with a friendly chat. he sees them as just people to be protected, a group and not individuals. he can separate himself from them but he also cant. - the nutrient slop in a can he's been eating for so many years has dulled his sense of taste a bit. if you gave him something that tasted real, even as greasy as a goddamn burger his face would light up. hot food does things to your mind and you dont realize it until you've had it again. - sheriff and the industrial sector represent each other. with large walls and many defenses to protect himself but with unfortunate cracks and weak points created over time. there can be so many barriers but many pathways, many vents for someone to crawl through and find the weak point.

ok. go my old man yaori.

their entire relationship is a push and pull. - their relationship (?) is a secret for as much as they are capable of keeping it a secret. sheriff desperately wants to keep it a secret because he fears that his men ( MERC ) finding out could potentially get him exiled or worse killed for being a 'traitor'. he also doesn't want to lose that sense of safety and togetherness, a stable foundation for him to stand and walk on. it's why he kicks himself in the head about the whole thing because he knows he shouldn't be getting involved like this. - as i mentioned before, hank feels no physical attraction to anybody and that applies to sheriff as well. it feels nothing in terms of 'wow he's cute' or 'he's hot'. the times that it can be mistaken that hank finds something about sheriff that is cute in terms of physical appearance is for different reasons. for example.. sheriff blushing and hank responding positively to that is not because hank finds that image to be cute but because he understands that image to be a positive thing. if : sheriff is blushing, then : i did something good, since i understand blushing as something that happens when someone is flattered. it elicits a positive reaction from hank because he understands it as something good and beneficial, rather than it being found personally cute or pretty. - hank thinks that sheriff did have a sort of glow up and that he looks 'cooler' now ( i.e you don't look like a wimp anymore ) however he thinks that the absolute layering of clothes, body armor and ammo looks tacky as hell. he gets why sheriff is wearing all that but it could have better days. they do find the leather chaps sheriff wears to be the one thing that kind of look cool, so it has taken the liberty of messing with them a bit, with permission, to make them look a bit cooler. it likes leather. on the topic of what sheriff wears, hank also doesn't like what he's wearing because it makes sheriff obnoxiously annoying to fight in close combat. it'll swing at sheriff and feel the padding and get a bit irritated because he really is just layered in protection, no satisfaction that it normally gets from feeling the injury caused in a fight. ..hank knows that it'd be better to leave not too many injuries, but that doesn't stop it from being irritated when they trade punches and it can feel a bruise on the highway while sheriff likely hasn't gotten something so serious. it's the kind of bullshit it doesn't like. hank wears body armor and padding too but not nearly as much. - they're both at around level terms of fighting capability, it is their personalities and style that make the difference. hank does not like sheriff's style of fighting in the presence of other people watching whatsoever as he thinks it's cowardly and unengaging. he's always at a distance, rapid fire, itchy finger. it's like dealing with a turret with self awareness and a mouth to run insults at you. the bullshit bullshiiiit he doesnt like. it's why hank prefers the little spats they get in. - hank's biggest upside in their situationship is how direct and to the point they are, it really hates the dancing around the topic sheriff does. if sheriff is being particularly dodgy about something or acting differently or avoidant, hank asks directly what is going on. it figured out relatively fast that sheriff's cowardly avoidant nature applies to just about anything and it has to adapt to that. sheriff's biggest downside is his reluctance to vocalize his needs as he doesn't entirely perceive hank as a person yet, still seeing him partially as the man in the posters, meaning he doesn't believe hank is capable of accommodating, being affectionate, or being considerate of his needs.

- sheriff hates vocalizing or articulating anything that seems like proof to the world or himself of his affections towards hank. something simple as wanting to have an embrace, he does not want to say it. it's acknowledgement of his affections, and he doesn't want to acknowledge it. he would rather outright go for the hug or for hank to initiate it first. on the same note, neither of them say i love you to each other. hank doesn't particularly care.. it just sees it as another expression of affection and it doesn't find words to be as fun as actions. sheriff doesn't say it for the reasons above and it feels way too intimate for him anyway. it's like saying 'yes, hank j wimbleton most wanted person in nevada who has killed many many and killed me once as well, i lovey wovey you'. he feels stupid saying it. it's 3 words but he hears a lot more. - sheriff still maintains a grudge for having been killed by hank many years ago, it's sort of shallow now though. he already got even with hank at the start of this snowballing situation, as they had a spat and he shot them dead. - hank is the grounded one in the situationship, more mentally stable and.. decisively stable than sheriff. he often has to be very blunt so sheriff stops rocking around, thinking too hard about something. - they don't talk to each other that often but on the chances they do, they do have some.. detailed conversations on things. it can range from something mundane as guns, what attachments they like on theirs to .. more delicate topics.