some headcanons about dio's mom under the cut 💖
her name was maria leigh brando (leigh being her maiden name). she was a working class englishwoman of british and italian descent, raised by her single father following her mother's death at a very young age. she was their only child, and her father never remarried.
dio's good looks come from his mother. her hair, which she wears in a braid, is the same brilliant shade of gold as his. they share the same dimpled, mischievous smile, and thick, dark eyebrows that contrast strikingly against their more delicate features. they both possess a fearsome glare when angered; although dio did not inherit his mother's blue-gray eyes, but dario's amber hues.
her father cherished maria as the only remnant of his late wife. the two were very close, and he worked long hours to support them, pushing himself to provide for her the best he could. he spent what little free time he had playing with her, then teaching her how to read and write, and even teaching her chess. when she grew older, he sent her to live with her aunts to learn "womanly virtues" - but she would return every weekend to play chess with her father and help him tidy up the house.
when she was in her late teens, maria got a job as a barmaid. there, she met dario brando, a sleazy alcoholic over a decade her senior.
she married him hastily after a drunken tryst led to dio's conception. even then, he was verbally abusive, and she had many reservations. but she was terrified of the social stigma of becoming an unwed mother - and so despite the escalating abuse, she went ahead with the marriage. shortly before the wedding, her beloved father fell ill. he never got to walk her down the aisle, and died shortly after of cholera.
maria adored her son, and clung to him as the only good thing to come from her marriage. in her grief, she coped by showering him with love. she told dio often how brilliant he is and how proud she is of him, taught him chess and encouraged his interests in reading. she always spared whatever remained of her meager earnings to buy him books and sweets.
shortly after dio's birth, dario became physically abusive - and despite his much greater strength, maria always fought back. most of dio's formative memories involve chaos and violence: broken wine bottles shattering around him, drunken threats hurled between both of his parents, furniture crashing and the sickening thud of his mother's body hitting the floor.
maria suffered through the worst of the abuse in silence, too proud to cry in front of her son. she tried her best to protect him from his father, often shielding him from would-be beatings with her own body. she would encourage him to spend as much time as possible outside of the brando residence, sending him away whenever dario would return home in his drunken stupors. little dio would seek out other street kids to fight - in part to take out his anger, but with the eventual goal in mind of growing stronger, so he can defend his mom.
as dario's drinking worsened, he drove their family into debt, forcing maria to take additional jobs to survive. dario's beatings grew worse, and more frequent. as exhaustion took over, so too did depression and lethargy, and she soon succumbed to a drinking habit of her own. although she took great pains to hide it from her son, the change in his mother was painfully obvious to him.
she fell ill of a "wasting disease" shortly after dio's eleventh birthday, and died soon thereafter. without maria, dario drove the two further into debt, quickly wasting what little remained of their savings on alcohol, and selling nearly all of their possessions to pay rent at the boarding house they were forced to move into. dio spent as much time away from their room as possible, living on the streets for days at a time. he survived by stealing food, picking pockets, betting on and getting into fights, and playing chess in pubs for money.
dio vehemently believed that his father's boozing and philandering hastened her untimely death, but it wasn't until dario pressured him to sell maria's favorite sunday dress for drinking money that he resolved to kill him.
(of dio's many, many, many crimes, i'll forgive him this one....dario was a piece of shit with zero redeeming qualities and deserved so much worse than poison.)
even to this day, dio thinks often of his mother, and remembers her with a mixture of fondness and deep sadness. she was one of the only people in his life who he genuinely loved. he struggles to say the phrase "i love you" to anyone else since her death - his subconscious won't let him.
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somebody's probably already talked about this but i cant get that fucking mountain goats post outta my head and ive been talking to myself about love as a central theme of frankly most art but especially the art i love the most and i got to undertale and i need to talk about it
god it's all about love. wanting love, not wanting to lose it, grief, hope, determination, it's all fucking love in like 8 different hats. it's the monsters' love they show you (the mercy they show you) that allows frisk to help them get their freedom, it's the player's love for them that brings mercy in the first place, it's all fucking love.
flowey only got his power to reset from dying with his sibling after an act of love for them and you know what he did? he spent years of his life interacting with the people and world as much as he could, in as many ways as possible. he loved being with them and wanted to experience everything because everything was worthwhile to him because of love. and that greed for love led to oversaturation, led to boredom, led to him hurting people to feel anything in that absence of love. he never stopped loving chara, y'know? he was always looking for someone else to play with, someone who could make him feel like nothing had happened. so much so that he follows frisk throughout the underground, insists on keeping them and you there as much as possible, both bitter and needy. and he has to admit that frisk isn't chara to move on. you're not them. they're gone. asriel's gone, too, or will be after this. it's love for chara that leads him to break the barrier, as it was for asgore to try and stop you, and for toriel to take you in at the beginning and the end. it was the desire for love that kept him from letting go, and that caused him to harm so many, as it was for alphys, undyne, asgore, toriel, etc. him, arguably more than anyone else, hurt people out of desire for love and grief over it. and it's him acknowledging that desire and letting it go when it hurts people that sets everyone free.
it is love that makes you go back through the underground, calling papyrus and undyne and toriel in every room just to see their different responses. it is love that leads you to check everywhere before finally ending the game. it is love that leads you back to where your friends are standing, talking about how they've been changed by you, about how the love between you has led to this. it's love that makes you end it to see them happy, and curiosity (which in this case is often just greed for love) to some extent.
and it is love and greed for it that brings you to the reset screen. and flowey, whose desire for love almost consumed everything, that kept the people he loved from their happy endings, from their futures, that asks you to reconsider. having seen all you have, having seen his mistakes, and how happy your friends are now, are you willing to put your desire for love above their happiness? above their freedom? will you make the same choice as him after seeing what harm it caused, after finally getting what you wanted? because whatever reason for resetting you have, it'd probably boil down to love in some way. love for the characters, for the game (experience or lore), etc.
flowey's downfall, to some extent, was in the apathy that came from overconsumption. instead of cherishing the life he had, he had to know the rest. he couldn't let it lie, couldn't find peace about it and move on. he had one life, as do you, as do (in theory) these characters, one you would at that point snatch from them by resetting. flowey's asking you to think twice about whether or not you want to control them, to play with their lives for your own happiness. even if it is out of love.
because it always is.
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liam: actually you can’t move on past your trauma because it’s part of you you can’t just put it down and get over it
also liam: extended scene of caleb coming to terms with the fact that frumpkin isn’t his frumpkin, the cat he had as a kid that he was trying to cling to, and one way or another, once they’re finished with aeor, he will release the familiar, thereby both symbolically and physically releasing the hold the past has on him
I love that liam does these little character bits because a lot of the players only play off each other which like that’s fine and great but liam’s little solo bits give such a.... a richness and depth to his characters. like. I don’t know what fjord’s thinking!! I don’t know how he’s coping because travis doesn’t like....invite the audience/the other players into fjord’s head. and that’s not a bad thing at all because yknow his character is entirely made of observable action. the other characters don’t know what’s going on fjord’s head so the players and the audience don’t get to know either.
anyway idk I just think it’s so interesting how on talks liam will be like “oh yeah he loves his friends but if the right temptation comes along who knows” but when it comes down to the decisions he makes in-game, it’s nearly always on the side of healing. like part of that is narrative expediency and some of that is knowing that it’s a game and a show and there’s no way they’re beating an archmage with three of them on little to no spells, but also....he left. he countered trent’s counter instead of staying to kill trent (which he obviously couldn’t have done but yknow trauma or whatever). I thought that was gonna be It yknow, one or the other, but he let it go.
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i must say that your tags are always a quiet extension of you that i appreciate reading, always little footnotes of thought that still have your sparkle and character in the words. it's like that moment when you're having an understanding with a friend and then you nudge them to give them That Look — that 'hey, you're gonna be alright, okay?' look — with a small silent nod. you're sweet in that way, as you always have been. love you, lilo dear.
(are you well? rested? nourished? happy weekend — if it's cold where you are as it has been for me, bundle up! don't get sick now~)
— your eternal sunshine ♡
🥺🥺
The way my heart jumped when I got a few lines in. Like, wait a second? Is it…? OMG it is!! I’ve missed you so damn much 😭😭❤️
Ah, leave it to you to make me feel all warm and cozy with your message. I didn’t realize anyone paid much attention to my tags, but I love that you did. And I love you too ❤️
I’m alright, been eating well lately and getting enough sleep. It’s a bit chilly today but tomorrow is supposed to be warmer. Maybe a bit of sunshine too ☀️ More importantly, how have you been?? I hope you’re eating well and resting enough? Drinking water and keeping warm? Having a good amount of chicken nuggets and hot chocolate?
Sending so many hugs and kisses and warmth your way. Don’t forget to bundle up too and stay healthy always ❤️
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talking about polyamory with my boyfriend is hard. Probably not because of any obvious reasons.
No, it's hard because my entire life I had to fight for relationships. I had to fight against people ticking me off as weird due to my autism. I had to fight against my anxiety making paralyzing me in new situations and missing the first few times my new classmates would socialize during breaks. I had to fight my disphoria, making me acutely aware that other people's perception of me is very different from how I see myself. I had to fighty depression, because my day has less hours, and everything takes more hours and I've stopped being a high energy kid at age 3, knowing nothing but lagging behind my whole life.
And these issues all compound! My Autism makes it hard for me to figure out when it's appropriate to ask other people to meet them! My Anxiety makes me a lot less likely to risk embarrassment, so I wait until first contacted or seeing clear signs! My depression makes it even less likely for me to meet people, since I can't manage having to fold the clothes or shop groceries if I'm meeting someone later that afternoon!
And my entire life, this has isolated me. People aren't best friends with someone that needs half an hour just to send a message. people aren't best friends with someone that needs a whole day or two as a break between days where only one activity is happening. they are less likely to invite you if they forget you're there and they're more likely to forget you're there if you have trouble speaking in group settings. The only reason me and my boyfriend could date so much was because I literally just went to his place. Even once I left home and lived on my own, we could see eachother only on the weekends, and that's because I basically just came over to have dinner, sleepover, and watch stuff most of the time.
The everyday tasks of life wear me thin. And even now that we life together, it certainly doesn't help that he just doesn't do some everyday tasks. He isn't used to a tidy living space, he has ADHD and all the executive dysfunction problems himself. But then when he still wants to do something exciting in the afternoon, but I'm still recharging from task 1, so that I can go to task 2, all while trying to figure out if task 3 can be done today.
And you know? I do think I could polyamory and have a great time. but I'm also so aware of all the hurdles I face in every relationship. People want to do stuff. And the more time you have for stuff, the more you become a part of their life. And my boyfriend and I are already nesting partners, but just living doesn't build the relationship. But I just don't want him to spend less quality time with me just because I can't do as much. I don't want to become the boring partner, the one he just lives with, the partner that he has to babysit when doing something new, the partner doesn't associate with fun
It's just, I can't even fall back on my family, the person closest to a best friend is too busy and social and anxious herself to have much time leftover for me. He is literally the only person in my corner, but if I can't keep up with his other people that's it. Even if I get other partners myself, unless I have incredible luck, I won't find a deep connection like this one so soon again. I have spent the first 20 years of my life living alone in a house full people, I don't think I could go through that again and come out alive
Because then the thing to look forward to was what comes after. Making my own life with someone I love. But now? there's a working Life in a bunch of months. but other than that? this is as far up as it'll go for whoever knows long
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