Happy Being Happy
from @jegulus-microfic's prompt, domestic (156 words)
ahhh this one is really cute actually. give me more elderly queer joy!!!
James looks out at Harry running around in the grass with his kids. He enjoys the simplicity of a happy family playing on a summer day. He basks in the way the sunlight calms his aching bones.
And he looks over at his husband, greying and wrinkled, and still even more beautiful than the day James met him back in 1972. Regulus smiles at him and James notes the smile lines on his face. James brought those to him.
He leans over and kisses Regulus, hearing an eewwww! from one of the kids, and chuckling to himself. Regulus’ eyes still sparkle in the sun just as they always have. And right now, in 2023, James could not possibly be more happy with the path his life has taken.
He leans down and nuzzles Regulus’ neck and bathes in the warmth, from the sun, and from the love of his life, and is just happy being happy.
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How children and aging are depicted in LittleBigPlanet + Sackboy's canonical age
I've been wanting to write this post for a while now! This topic i find rather interesting as i'm in that turning point in life of being a newborn adult lol
I'm going to apologize beforehand though for my lack of knowledge about LBP PS Vita in case it had some relevancy to this post. It is the only full release i haven't played :( I'd also like the apologize for the strange pacing in this post- there's a lot to go through and otherwise I'd never get it done.
Do sackpeople age?
Yeah!
Perhaps the earliest* and obvious example are the child portrait stickers of the Creator Curators in LBP2. Most of them (aside from Eve) are used in the first proper level Rookie Test, in pictures of Larry giving flowers to Victoria and Avalon, Clive and Higginbotham graduating. In LBP3, there's a sticker of Newton as a baby in Nana Pud's hands. Sackboy: A Big Adventure has a prequel comic called "The Gathering Storm" starring Scarlet which depicts her as a child.
What do sackfolk look like growing up?
Considering baby Newton fit into Nana Pud's already small hands, babies must be really tiny.
SABA has the first example of a child in the games physically with the Death Stranding costume. Baby...
Wait, a baby sackperson is just a tiny sackperson?
*So this means that the Mini Sackboy item from LBP1 is a baby... (Yeah, it's not a plush. It's alive. It blinks.)
It's a fact that sackpeople use their children as fashion accessories. How delightful yet incredibly strange!
Child Scarlet is a little shorter than the shoulders of a standard sackperson. (She's the only example we have, so excuse the brevity... well there's Hildur, but I'm not sure if she counts as a sackling)
What about a teenager?
As previously established, there is a portrait of Avalon, Clive and Higginbotham graduating, though it's not specified whether they're graduating from high school or college, which would make them either roughly teenagers or young adults at that time. Clive is shorter than the other two in the past yet is about their height in-game, so it's more likely they were teenagers and Clive hit his growth spurt after graduation. A series of promotional videos released for LBP1 called "Life in LittleBigPlanet" state that a fully grown Sackperson is 8 centimeters tall.
Newton is said to have flunked out of the Popit Academy after one semester. Completing term 1 of Popit Puzzles will land you this neat graduation outfit.
It's also unspecified in-game whether the Popit Academy is a high school or a college, but considering its logo and what was described of Newton, it's definitely a college. (I am unsure of the system in England, but here in the US if you fail a semester of high school you just continue as usual and make up what you missed as additional work, instead of being kicked or dropped out.)
Newton's insecurities lie in his belief that he'll never live up to his father, and flunking out played into that. This is what led up to him wanting to use the Titans, to prove his potential to the world, and letting Bunkum's residents (including himself) make better use of its creativity. Of course there's no time range or limit to attend college, but most people tend to pursue it directly after high school, and coupled with Newton's bruised pride and desperation, let's assume for the sake of this post that Newton attended college straight away and is a young adult.
Most of the other sackling characters can easily be identified as adults or elders.
But what about .... YOU? Or, well, Sackboy... er...
The player vs. the character
It's a bit hard to define the separation of a character that's intended to be an expression of you versus yourself, because that separation is defined by yourself as well.
Let's say that the aspects of Sackboy that AREN'T decided/customized by the player are what is hard canon about him: This includes the official story levels, as you don't have a choice but to proceed, and less noticable things such as his personality and actions in the tutorial videos+ ads, and what's in his wardrobe (which is every single costume piece in the game. doesn't mean he wears it though. I wonder how cold he usually is).
Now, without you, who is Sackboy? He's a heroic sackling that has gone on many death-defying adventures across the globe and beyond. He's silent, gender non conforming and has a neverending amount of PlayStation cosplays. He goofs around with the narrator and knows how to use all game mechanics.
And, without your input, how old is he?
How old is Sackboy?
We've sorta already answered this question.
Sackboy is a physically fully grown sackling, as he is 8 centimeters tall. This would make him a teenager at the very youngest.
He has attended and graduated from Popit Academy, a college, which edges him into potential young adult or just general adult territory. (Teenagers can also attend college of course, but that's less common)
Having mentioned his wardrobe before, he has a lot of things that children typically wouldn't wear, including the aforementioned graduation outfit, facial hair, wedding outfits, fishnets, a speedo...among more
In SABA, he can wear piercings and a cute choker!
I'm not going to demonstrate this for obvious reasons, but there is even official art of him with genitalia. Go look at Media Molecule's Flickr if you really want to see it. Hell, knowing that and Mm's sense of humor, his name is rather inappropriate too. (I try to ignore this for the sake of my remaining childhood innocence.)
The Twitter is weird
There are a few tweets by the official LittleBigPlanet twitter that "state" Sackboy's age. These are actually referring to the franchise's age at the time they were posted. (Remember that LBP1 was released October 2008 and do some simple math)
(The GIF says "Happy 12th Birthday Sackboy)
Sackboy: A Big Adventure is weird
Sackboy is definitely NOT a child- why, after a decade of this being established, does he sound like one in SABA?
To help explain this decision, this game can be described as a "soft reboot". It doesn't retcon or change anything about the past, but it presents it in a new way for new and/or unfamiliar audiences. (aka marketability.)
Sackboy was completely silent before and now he's shouting "YEAH! WOOHOO!" every 3 seconds. His voice is very high pitched, youthful and would come off to most people as a child's voice.
I tried to look into his voice actor in the past, but the only other thing they are credited for is Tearaway. It's possible they were credited under a pseudonym, but either way we don't know how old they are or how they are typecast.
Why does Sackboy, a grown man with cock and balls, sound so much like a little boy?
THATS BECAUSE SACKBOY IS CANONICALLY TRANSGENDER HAPPY PRIDE MONTH🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
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It wasn't much of a secret that Hollis enjoyed to drink. Probably a bit too much for his own good but it was how he coped with his life. Plus, it wasn't like he was much of a bother to anyone. He just kept to himself, drank, and went home. Much like tonight. Hollis had gotten himself decently buzzed off countless glasses of whiskey and found himself wandering back to his apartment. Alone. Like always. He attempted to stay up for a bit and eat something to help soak up the booze, however, that didn't happen. Instead, he just laid down on his couch and fell into a much needed sleep. He would be alright in a few hours. He always was. One of the few benefits to being a werewolf, he assumed.
Hollis had fallen into a pretty decent sleep and he probably would have stayed there until morning...however, he was roused from it when there was a loud banging at his door. A lot of people knew where he lived. He was one of the first floor, second door on the left of Lunar Heights. The owner had given him a pretty good spot considering he was a cripple. But that also meant that he was easy to find. Not that he really minded. If someone needed something, he would be there.
Pushing himself up from his couch, Hollis rubbed at his eyes for a moment and realized that at some point in the night, he had taken off most of his clothes. Yeah, that tracked. With a shake of his head, he grabbed his jeans from the ground and slipped them on as he limped towards his front door, zipping them up and buttoning them. Unlocking the door, he threw it open, his brows furrowed, "What's going on?" He asked.
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