#polyship au

i wanted to give quill a cute little formal outfit for like a masquerade ball because he's my favorite little guy (dont tell my other oc's)

this video is a a part of the polyship au A.K.A. the PSAU -- a part that i HAVEN'T written yet. the series however is 18+ despite this video not being so.

For some lore reference points, if some aspects make no sense at all:

+ this is an alternate timeline within the PSAU itself where Ink grows attached to Killer, but once Nightmare finds out he's either given the decision to never interact with Killer again or spend as much time as he wants with him, at the cost of Ink instead choosing to work for Nightmare. Ink chooses the latter.

+ Nightmare keeps control of Ink by limiting his paint supply severely. Ink is only allowed the minimal amount of red and blue paints, just enough to keep his body functioning; and red and blue both represent anger and sadness, which is negative feelings that Nightmare continues to use to keep gaining strength.

+ the human in the video is known as "the creator," which was once Ink's friend at an earlier point in time. However, now the creator is more attached to Nightmare than Ink and doesn't really care that he's being literally abused and tortured for Nightmare's gain; and Ink has forgotten about the creator almost entirely, so he doesn't really comprehend the betrayal very well, but doesn't trust them anymore.

Dye is a shipkid for Killer and Ink in an AU of mine I previously dubbed the Polyship AU or PSAU for short, which was a kind of catch-all title for a collection of stories I had set in the same multiverse. (I later wanted to rename it to Fractured Prism...)

I actually made this animatic a few years back that kind of covers the story of Dye's parents specifically. I'd never made a shipkid before so Dye was genuinely my first attempt, but he has a special place in my heart for it.

Basically, Ink got roped into working for Nightmare after hanging out with Killer too much. Ink chose to make this decision as opposed to avoiding interaction with the AU because he had been friends with a creator who convinced him to make his own choices and become his own character. That whole thing in itself is a long story that has been subject to like 4 revisions so I'm gonna leave it at that for now.

Dye happened on complete accident, but Nightmare "allowed" him to exist, if you will, because he had plans to craft Dye into a tool for his own misdeeds going forward. However, Nightmare goal was to keep people ALIVE so he could farm them for negative emotions, meanwhile Dye's "talents" resided in spiking fear before ultimately killing them (even though he didn't intend to.) Nightmare considered this to be a "failed experiment" of sorts, so he threw Dye out into the multiverse on his own at age 4.

During this time, Dye didn't really know how to fend for himself or... do anything by himself, really. Not beyond the awful "training" he'd gotten through Nightmare. This led him to basically greeting people through stabbing, to which he found a fascination with the different "colors within people's bodies" (the different colors of magic or blood that would ooze out when he stabbed someone.) He found out that ingesting this "made his eyes do funny things," (they gained eyelights and, instead of dripping with black ooze, the "tears" turned iridescent.) You can see the difference in his ref here:

Anyway, this cycle happens repeatedly as he keeps stumbling through portal after portal, until he somehow stumbles into Sunny's ( @tatatale / @asksunflower ) flowerfield AU. Here, he is willingly adopted by Sunny (as in, Sunny accepts Dye as his son) and unwillingly adopted by Breaker!Killer ( @murmur-utdr-au ) (as in, Dye clings to Breaker and Breaker wants no part of it but plays along with anyway. Dye calls Breaker his "knife buddy.")

By the way, when I tag those two, they're my friends and I RP with them! That's how Dye is connected to them :D

You also may have noticed the floating white circle in front of Dye. He functions similarly to Flowey-- in that, he has no SOUL (illustrated by the translucent white circle) but is living purely with Determination (illustrated by the red outline). Because of this, he has extremely muted emotions, although they are not entirely nonexistent. Notably, when he is young, he is terrified by seeing black ooze or paint or the like because he wrongly assumes it will be Nightmare appearing to hurt him. Which... he doesn't actually remember, because on top of having a horrible memory thanks to Ink, Dye has repressed pretty much all of his time living in Nightmare's castle. All he remembers is the fear it brought him, and that fear can be triggered by the slightest reminder.

As Dye gets older, though -- which, this part is more just planned out as opposed to actually executed in any form of writing -- he is able to work through those things to not have such panicked reactions to the things that trigger him. This is also beneficial, considering the fact that Dye's magic default takes the color black, because that is the color you get when you mix all of them into one.

His memory continues to fail him, however, and he doesn't retain most events from his childhood as a whole. There is even a point where his parents manage to escape the castle -- "thanks" to an unfortunate combination of help from @tatatale's Error (Neon) and that same creator from earlier.

Despite the fact that he gets support and plenty of help from Sunny and Breaker, though, he doesn't really change all that drastically from his morality as a kid into when he becomes an adult. This is made worse when he meets his younger-older brother (uh. due to different timeflow in the flowerfield vs Nightmare's castle, Quill out-ages Dye by 10 years.) and re-meets his parents. His parents dote on Dye completely-- and Quill is convinced that Dye is the sole reason for the good in his life being ripped from underneath him.

This is also what Dye looks like at age 18, btw:

Dye is also meant to be a foil to his brother, Quill. I've been trying to keep this as focused on Dye as possible, but they are inherently very linked by design.

Dye values doing things as he pleases and freely, while Quill is more rigid and prefers stricter plans and schedules. Dye is pretty laid-back and apathetic, meanwhile Quill is very stubborn and passionate. Dye is able to charm all different kinds of people for whatever reason, but Quill is basically a repellent to all both in magic and just general personality. And, most importantly-- Dye doesn't really find much value in life at all, his own or others; meanwhile Quill has immense value in life, the good and the bad alike.

In this way, the two are sort of supposed to flip-flop their roles. Dye is set up to be a victim-turned-antihero type story, but he ends up having a corruption arc that he is never really punished for, in part due to everyone feeling bad for him. Quill, on the other hand, has a similar setup, but is more "oh this guy is definitely going to be the villain" -- only for HIM to end up as the conflicted antihero with a redemption arc. He is still very much a victim, but he's basically thrown under a bus by many around him.