#krebble lore

so obviously he's skinnier, but he still retained a decent amount of muscle from decades of building it. he just can't use it very well anymore because his nerve endings are a little fried and it's hard for him to make his limbs work; he's just really, really stiff. on most days in prison, towards the beginning at least, he could force himself to try and do some sort of calisthenics exercises to at least attempt to maintain his strength and also as a form of giving himself control and a routine. he would also hoard his potatoes and then pretend to be sick in order to convince sam to give him more to try and keep his weight up, which only half-worked. his hair in prison was NASTY, greasy and matted as hell, so realistically he would shave it all off asap but so sue me drawing him with long hair is kinda fun. his hair is entirely gray, with only a few streaks of white left. he's much paler, of course. and I found out the other day that apparently with severe scurvy/collagen degradation, even years-old scars can reopen, because scarring is actually a continuous process that needs to be maintained to keep scars closed. so if you were wondering why his scars are so much redder and fresher-looking, that's the answer :)

cdream in my au deals with the torture itself 'fine'--former gladiator, former soldier, he's been through pain a thousand times (that's what he tells himself, anyway). quackity doesn't do a whole lot that's especially new to him. does he LIKE it? no (masochism reserved only for punz). but can he, for the most part, keep a straight face? yeah. what really starts to get to him is the humiliation of it. it doesn't help that quackity of all people is torturing him, someone whose ass he could flay alive if he was free, and that the person allowing the torture is a guy he so foolishly trusted. quackity figures out after a couple of weeks that what cdream really can't stand is being laughed at, so he makes absolutely sure to do it whenever possible. it makes dream lose his mind until he exhausts himself from anger, and that's when quackity steps in. as he gets weaker, quackity starts taking off the chains after baiting him into exhaustion, just to really drive the point home.

eventually, dream's hatred of being humiliated plus really starting to get sick of the constant pain overcomes his desire not to give in, and he starts addressing quackity as 'sir' and becomes very bland and submissive in his responses to him. quackity likes this, because finally dream is showing some respect, and doesn't like it, because he thinks it's secretly an act, and also dream still doesn't act like he's in enough pain.

-blaze hybrid. in my AU shulkers, spiders (the big mob), scorpions (like the spiders, there are also very large scorpions which live in the Nether, but they’re rare)  and blazes all have a common ancestor in these ancient dinosaur/scorpion/arachnid/crustacean-like creatures. pretty much every mob and hybrid is descended from mythological creatures which no longer exist or are nearly extinct. for instance, sirens used to be around, and they were like enormous sea creatures which were similar to various species like eel or anglerfish, but they slowly faded out. Now the only trace of them is in some aquatic hybrids, like cPurpled, an anglerfish hybrid.

-anatomy: he’s got the tail, of course, claws, small chelicerae which he can retract inside his mouth if needed, tiny extra eyes, very strong bones, and exoskeleton plating on his back around his tail and small scaly patches around his body. cSapnap also has those spines, which vibrate with sound waves and help him track things. most of his spines are big like that, but some are so small as to be mistaken for body hair. like actual scorpions, his eyesight is pretty poor. he does okay in the Nether, since it’s more monochrome and familiar to him, but even after years of living in the Overworld the colors still tend to be too bright for him and blur together a lot, especially if he’s moving quickly, so he relies instead on his ears (he has human ears with heightened hearing), sensing vibrations, and his sense of smell, which again is very good like an actual scorpion’s. he hates the smell of lavender. cSapnap can strike multiple times with his venom, usually between 8 and 12 times, depending on the dosage. it takes him 2-3 days to replenish his venom. his venom is paralytic, not lethal, but in a high enough dosage it could damage brain function enough to kill. if his victims survive (in the Nether, he mostly used it to immobilize powerful prey, like large hoglins) it causes lasting headaches, nausea, and sometimes vision problems. even though he’s not particularly tall, he’s pretty strong, and is good at using his tail in a fight. even if he doesn’t use his venom, that thing is solid exoskeleton plating, and it’s not very pleasant to be whacked over the head with. he could also inject venom with a bite, but it’s more difficult to do and it’d be a smaller dosage because the venom sac in his tail is much larger than the two in his mouth area. some blaze hybrids have the ability to spray venom. and most, but not all, have the ability to breathe fire.

-yeah, he can’t breathe fire. not even a little bit. he can make a hell of a lot of smoke, but he can’t breathe fire. like any other blaze hybrid, he is used to and needs constant, overwhelming heat. that wasn’t a problem in the Nether, but now that he’s in the Overworld he’s constantly chilly at best. he likes to make himself underground dens and surround himself with campfires; it reminds him of his Nether burrows and actually makes him warm for once. other blaze hybrids would be uncomfortable but fine due to their internal furnace, but not cSapnap. when Sapnap was very young, he accidentally tried eating one of the baby Nether scorpions, before he really understood what was going on, and it took a chunk out of his tongue. it doesn’t impair him except when he’s speaking, but it was a problem for him in the Nether because it meant he couldn’t mimic the accent of the rest of his colony. for these two reasons, lack of fire and an odd way of speaking, he was heavily ostracized growing up in his colony.

-blaze hybrids don’t care who their parents were. blazes give birth to offspring and then the whole colony raises them. blazes grow quickly but mature slowly, meaning Sapnap looked fully grown, similar to how he does now, at around ten, but mentally he was closer to eight. in the Nether, different species tend to keep to themselves, but within those species they are fierce divides between different regional groups. Sapnap, for instance, grew up in the basalt deltas with his colony, which is one of three large colonies that live there. colonies in different regions of the Nether look different, speak their own languages or dialects (there is a common blaze language, but each colony speaks it slightly differently, as well as their own personal regional language), and have different cultures. they also tend not to like one another very much and prefer the others within their colony or region. each blaze colony is a lot like its own little hive, with queens and workers who all share intimate communication. the colony is more important than family, the colony is everything. which is great until along comes a blaze like cSapnap who has no fire and can’t speak the language properly because of his missing tongue. no one actively ostracizes him, but he also never gets invited to anything, he’s never spoken to unless he speaks first, and even if everyone is polite to his face, he can tell that he makes them uncomfortable. that he disturbs them. the worst part of it is that his colony doesn’t even hate him, they just simply don’t care about him. one day, he tries tagging along on a hunting trip. he has a decent time, thinks things are going well, and then when he tries to meet back up with the rest of his group they’ve left. he returns to the colony, wants to know why they abandoned him, thinking they did it on purpose. so it really fucks him up when they genuinely, honestly tell him that they forgot about him. they just forgot.

he’s not good enough to care about, he’s not important enough to be hated. and when he finally can’t stand living in constant silence and leaves, no one stops him. no one’s sad that he’s gone, but no one celebrates, either. no one cares.

-so this sticks with him for the rest of his life for forever. extreme fear of abandonment, of being uninteresting, of being useless, that people are only pretending to like him, that he has to hide everything that he perceives to be ‘wrong’ with him or everything will go to shit. he has bipolar and autism.

-eventually, he meets cBad, who he immediately likes because cBad is also ‘strange,’ although he’s never been ostracized for it as ghasts are more solitary creatures and don’t judge like blazes do anyhow (i hc cBad as a ghast hybrid with vitiligo. he was light gray with grayish/black patches when he was younger, and they slowly spread until he only had little white and gray speckles left). cBad, unlike most ghasts, is not a very solitary creature at all. he likes cSapnap very much, thinks he’s a cute little baby, and takes him in. cSapnap instantly goes about trying to make cBad like him as much as possible, including doing his best to get rid of his blaze accent and mimic cBad’s instead, which is a little easier because Bad’s ghast language contains less hissing and is easier to do with his tongue. 

-cSkeppy is a fish hybrid who got rich off pyramid schemes and paid to have his three (3) scales removed and diamonds embedded everywhere as a fashion statement. he tells everyone he’s a diamond hybrid and wears diamond chains around his neck to hide his gills. not because he hates being a hybrid or anything, he just wants people to think he’s naturally made of diamonds and also those scales were reallyyyy itchy. cSapnap despises him at first because he wants him to stop trying to bang his dad but finally grudgingly accepts him. cSkeppy is like an awkward stepdad trying to connect with his husband’s kid from a previous marriage except there was no previous marriage cBad just found that thing in a dumpster and now this blaze kid who looks like a full grown man and could definitely kick his ass doesn’t think he’s good enough for his dad.

I know a lot of people have him being a teenager around the first l’manberg arc, but personally i like it much better when he’s already in his twenties. this makes cWilbur’s constant infantilization of him even more infuriating when he’s a grown ass adult, and it makes cFundy even more upset to see his dad treating cTommy and cTubbo (who are like fifteen or even fourteen at the time) as more capable and adult than him. it also twists the knife in a little bit deeper when cWilbur elects first cTommy and then cTubbo as president without even LOOKING at Fundy. I also think it adds to the theme of him never getting to belong anywhere–because of how Wilbur infantilizes him, he either feels insecure around other adults or they treat him like a child (or both, one begetting the other), but he can’t fit in with the kids like Tommy and Tubbo either because he’s too old for him. not that his age means he gets any respect from them, because nobody respects Fundy, least of all his own freaking dad. like broooooo every time i think about cFundy it makes me lose my shit the way he’s treated like a useless toddler by everybody. and this is exactly why he switched sides so suddenly with cSchlatt, because in my AU cSchlatt saw him just the same as everybody else but recognized him as easily manipulatable. all he had to do was offer Fundy a little respect, treat him like a man and not a boy, and Fundy was hooked. when Fundy wrapped back around to hating Schlatt, he felt extreme shame for having been so easily hoodwinked and told himself he wasn’t gonna care about anyone anymore. he’s not great at that, but he does his best to act that way outwardly. 

he loves Yogurt so so much and is also so so scared for them. he’s heard all Wilbur’s drunken rants throughout his childhood about cPhilza. he knows Phil told himself he would be a good father, despite his father and childhood. he knows Wilbur told himself he would be a good father, despite his father and childhood. and now here Fundy is telling himself the same thing, except unlike his dad and granddad, he barely believes it. years of being treated as useless have led to deep-seated belief and fear that he is useless, which only exacerbates his worries about how Yogurt will grow up. part of the reason he forms a shaky relationship with Phil, cTubbo, and cRanboo is because he wants Yogurt to have somewhere to go if he turns out like everyone else in his family. he doesn’t think Phil was a good dad either, or a great granddad, but he seems to have changed and at any rate, if Fundy was bad enough for Yogurt to leave then Phil would have to be better for him, right? Wilbur never left Phil, after all, but Phil was the one who left him, so maybe Phil’s not good. in that case Yogurt can fall back on Tubbo and Ranboo. and Tubbo and Ranboo have a kid of their own, who seems to be pretty happy. Yogurt can have a friend his age, something Fundy never had. maybe Yogurt will like having a friend so much that they’ll want to leave Fundy. no, no, can’t worry about that. 

Fundy has a mild form of schizophrenia with mostly auditory hallucinations (his chat) and occasional visual hallucinations. he has extreme insomnia, and when he does get to sleep, he has recurring nightmares. while living in Las Nevadas he confided in cQuackity about his issues and cQuackity set him up with sleeping pills that knock him out for about eight hours each night, so that’s pretty solid. Quackity might even be able to find him some schizophrenia meds, but Fundy would never ask. he’s never told anyone about his hallucinations, not even cNiki (who he misses but also avoids). cQuackity also got him some antidepressants, which he appreciates. Las Nevadas actually has a pretty solid pharmacy, and it tends to do steadier business than the casino in the off months. 

and of course he is transgender. he’s always gonna be transmasc to me. he uses he/him pronouns and actually might not be a full guy (he would probably lean more towards he/they and transmasc nonbinary if he got comfortable with it) but after so much constant infantilization he feels like he needs to be manly in order to be treated as a real man. nobody on the server ever misgendered him or was transphobic to him, but the infantilization made him feel like a little tiny kid, and a bit like a girl, too. he also doesn’t like to wear bright colors or colors of any kind really because it reminds him too much of that stupid little crayon-colored uniform that NOBODY else had, not even the literal children six-plus years younger than him. the infantilization affected his self-image so badly and continues to do so more and more over the years. 

he’s also gay, and yes, the Dundy wedding was canon, and yeah, it totally fucked him up. he actually did have genuine crush on cDream (like half the server did for some reason, forbidden fruit i guess?) and he was genuinely excited about the wedding, in part because he just wanted to be with cDream, and in part because he thought that being with someone like Dream who commanded so much respect would have to rub off on him, right? people would take him more seriously then, right? and then cGeorge literally stole Dream from him right in front of EVERYBODY at the stupid enormous wedding venue that he’d commissioned just for Dream with all the fancy things that he’d spent so much time on. months and months of work, so much effort from him, for George to ruin it all like it was nothing to him. in front of everyone, including his dad, including Tommy. it really, really hurt to be thrown away so blatantly like that, to be treated like just another stupid little joke for the billionth time with an extra dose of public humiliation, when he’d thought he was actually having something serious. it did not help that there were a lot of jokes from all sides afterward about how incompatible he and Dream were and how ridiculous they’d have been together and so on and so forth. it honestly ruined romance for him a bit to have his first serious relationship (or so he thought) get turned into a hilarious joke after he poured so much effort into it.