#they're also not happy about his choice of public persona but KNOW it's (mostly) an act.

[total-drama-brainrot]

I'll be honest all I can think of is P!Noah's family react to his tv persona.

Like, they know the littlest of their family is a little unhinged but they know he's not bloodthirsty so they're just a wee bit confused.

(And since Noah has, like, 8 sisters I just like to imagine the rest of their giant family is COMPLETELY normal. Like, they have their own individual quirks like anyone else but they're just normal people.)

If you can't tell one of my favorite dynamics is gremlin x just some guy but in this au it's multiple "just some guy“s and it's platonic.

And they've never actively troed to real P!Noah in either btw. They're perfectly content with their little adrenaline junkie baby brother.

Though it does make me wonder how they react in the P!Noah getting stabbed ask

No, see, this is a part of the AU that I actually have some thoughts for.

P!Noah's whole schtick wouldn't be achievable without the showrunners being aware that he's not really gonna do anything to permanently harm the other competitors- it'd be a PR nightmare to justify having an actual loose canon on the show risking the safety of the other teens. So, at the very least, the producers would know that a lot of his threats of violence or otherwise concerning behaviour are an act. (Or an exaggeration of his wilder tendancies.)

Thankfully, canon has its' own subtle little explanation for keeping someone so 'dangerous' around - Izzy's audition tape(s). In those, Izzy states that she'll do her best to "not be boring", which is probably the line that cemented her inclusion in the show. She's kept around as a conflict starter and an audience engagement device, since her antics are so entertaining to watch.

In a similar vein, in p!Noah's audition tape he explains that he's only auditioning for the show out of boredom, and he mostly sees the whole experience as a relatively quick cash grab - after all, he's wicked smart and plenty talented; it'd be child's play to outperform the other contestants (keep in mind, pretty much all of the OG cast were under the impression that Total Drama was going to be something more akin to a talent-based competition at an island resort). He explains that he's not really interested in the show itself, but it could be fun to spend his summer somewhere new where people don't know him or his eccentricities.

At this point in time, Noah's already got his gameplan planned and set; he's already presenting himself as the stoic and somewhat egotistical bookworm, which honestly isn't too far from his actual personality. Save for his psychotic tendancies, that is. Of course, Noah really is smart - smart enough to know that if he came in guns blazing to an audition tape for what is at it's core a social game, he probably wouldn't be picked.

And then the video is interrupted by one of his siblings, who points out that Noah's idea of "fun" generally consists of tormenting the people around him, providing examples of his more daring pranks from a seemingly endless list.

Then more of his siblings join in, all the while Noah stares towards the camera with a smug smile, which only grows wider - unnaturally wide, with hints of unusually sharp teeth poking from stretched-thin lips - as they share transgression after transgression. The tape ends without elaboration, nothing but a still frame of Noah's sinister smirk.

These pranks themself start off pretty tame sounding, like rigging water balloons full of vinegar above doorsteps. They quickly devolve into Noah cutting the breaks on his teacher's car after recieving an unfair grade, mowing down his classmates on a renegade bumper cart during a school trip to a theme park, and things along those lines. Chris, and more importantly the producers, feel a sense of sadistic kinship with the little psycho after hearing about his dangerous endeavours, and cast him on the spot.

So he's chosen to compete for a similar reason as Izzy; to wreak havoc in an entertaining way, and hopefully to kickstart drama.

His family are fully aware of this, though they don't fully anticipate the gleeful sort of vigour Noah has towards tormenting his castmates whilst remaining undetected... by the castmates. They do, however, expect Noah's sly grins and menacing smirks he throws towards the cameras before each successful prank he pulls off with Izzy. And the blank, uncannily empty stares he fixes towards the audience from the background of challenge footage - as if Noah himself can see through the lens into their souls.

After all, they've dealt with him for his whole life. They know his tricks, they've lived his tricks. The whole family has become accustomed to their baby brother who doesn't fully understand concepts like morality and empathy and, as such, can be a little silly sometimes. And they all know just how committed Noah can be to things he finds fun and interesting.

Their first bout of genuine surprise is during one of his later confessionals, when Noah gets too into the persona he's cultivated and starts portraying himself as violent and out for blood.

In Noah's head, he's just upping the ante of his metasocial game. For his family? They know he isn't nearly as violent as he's portraying himself as.

Sure, he's a little impulsive and thrill-seeking, but he's never had a fascination with blood or sharp objects of whatever else he tries to claim in the confessional. When Noah gets home from his stint on Island his siblings are lining up to berate him for his act - doesn't he realise how dangerous portraying himself as an unstable lunatic for the world to see is?

He justifies that anyone who believed his act is an idiot. It's reality TV - anyone with half a brain knows that things are exaggerated for entertainment purposes. He was just giving the editors something good to work with.

Noah is promptly dogpiled by eight irate older siblings.

(I'm also a big fan of "gremlin & just some guy", in this case it's gremlin & many exasperated some guys who aren't afraid of the gremlin. The rest of his family are perfectly normal people who just so happen to know how to deal with somewhat morally bereft hijinks and tomfoolery thanks to their youngest member. P!Noah has an incredibly healthy home life, he's just like that by design.)

As for the stabbing ask; I'm not sure if I want that little scenario to be "canon" to this AU, (and if it is, it'll be re-written with things like context in mind, as opposed to the shitty sleep-deprived drabble I wrote way back when) but if any of his family witnessed Noah being stabbed on international TV the whole brood would be storming the network's headquaters and/or chasing down the Jumbo Jet to get to him. He's The Baby™, you can't stab The Baby™. (Though, inwardly, they'd all agree that it was karma in action. Noah was tempting fate by playing around with knifes for so long, it was only a matter of time before someone got stabbed.)

#this ended up way longer than i thought it would #summary: p!noah's family know he's a bit of a freak but they love him anyway. #they're also not happy about his choice of public persona but KNOW it's (mostly) an act. #noah's audition tape is 30% actual audition and 70% his criminal record being put on blast #imagine owen steeling himself to meet a family of nine noahs only to be met with eight of the nicest normalest people he's ever known. #izzy's excited to meet the mudaliars and they take one look at her and collectively think “oh no not another one” #total drama #psycho!noah au #silly ideas #others' ideas #long post #replies #kinda drafty in here (posts from the drafts) #👈 this ask is from almost a month ago.

[silver-wield]

First of all, Happy Holidays, if you celebrate

I was replaying the Honeybee Inn scene to study A (I'll get to that in a moment) but I was wondering since you're really good at reading C's expressions, was he in SOLDIER mode during the performance? We see him try and resist up until the last second then he looks down and closes his eyes for a second and then looks back up and I know that had to be his decision to go through with the performance but was wondering if something else happened there as well.

And back to A, my original reason for playing this section over again, it was another rebuttal to the whole "she's the mature girl Claudia is referring to" thing C*erith's try to argue. First, we see her entering after the performance begins, so I'm wondering if she snuck in instead of waiting outside. Or she's really bad at time management. Everyone else was seated before the performance began. Then we have A laughing, cheering, and giving C thumbs up when it is obvious that he is not enjoying this. He even gives her this "really?" look. And then afterwards when he asks her to refrain from commenting on his appearance, she does so anyways.

Meanwhile T stops commenting on C's appearance when he tells her to move on, she also asks if he actually wants to go through with the plan whereas A tells him that's the plan like it or not. I feel that if T had been the one going around Sector 6 with C, she would've tried to think of other plans to get to Corneo once she saw how uncomfortable C was with dressing in drag. I doubt she would've been cheering and laughing like A was.

It's obvious which one is actually the mature one of the two.

So these are everything I did on Cloud at the honeybee inn, and yeah, some of it is a bit dated thanks to the new info we have from the ultis but it's mostly on point.

The main difference is it wasn't so much real Cloud Vs soldier boi as it was him thinking about how Zack would just do the thing, so he did the thing. I'm not sure what that falls under since we're also told he can't remember Zack but then there's times he copies him, so maybe it's a bad translation and it doesn't mean he thinks about Zack specifically and consciously, but he gets the sensation he's the type of guy who'd dance in public if it means completing his mission, which is to save Tifa.

He even says to her in JP later that everything he did wasn't a choice, so I think it means he's deep in his persona and justifying to himself that to save Tifa this is what he has to do. Then when he reunites with her in the dungeon his true self is all "that's so not cool 😭"

As for Aerith it's in the ultis she did this to enjoy herself. She's repeating to Cloud that it's to save Tifa because that motivates him, but she just wants to have fun 😑

#final fantasy 7 remake #ff7r #ffviir #cloud strife #final fantasy 7r #final fantasy viir