I Like To Imagine That If Someone Else Other Than Him Tries To Endanger Ida. Bastion Becomes Incandescent

I like to imagine that if someone else other than him tries to endanger Ida. Bastion becomes incandescent with rage. The thing is he’s not normally an angry person, or really that sadistic either, ghoulish and predatory sure, he enjoys hunting and eating. Gets excited at the thought of sinking his fangs into something, enjoys the whole process of devouring people etc and sure people can get really distressed and hurt when he’s hunting them, but it’s not really the goal for him so much as the inevitable consequences of a creepy spider monster being hungry and trying to eat you. He’s not a deliberate tormentor unless torment will get you in his jaws and once you’re his he generally doesn’t try to drag things out unnecessarily. But if someone went after Ida? That would be a different story. He would be very pissed and honestly quite scary. I think he’d have that calm rage that isn’t actually remotely calm but appears that way on the surface. Intellectually he’d probably have some inkling that he was being cruel beyond what was usual for him and that maybe torturing someone who’s already going to be his prey is just pouring salt in the wound, but he’d have such little experience with being angry and scared on someone else’s behalf that I don’t think he’d be able to find the breaks and it would be the person who decided to threaten Ida’s problem.

I know I treat Bastion like a cute smol bean in some of my posts and tags. I’ll be honest, on one level he kinda genuinely is that. Like he’s very sincerely in love with Ida, even if he wouldn’t be able to resist devouring her, there’s nothing else he’d allow to get in the way of treating her well. If he makes other friends, which once I’ve gotten his and Ida’s story more solidified to the point I can branch out and work on other characters for them to interact with he just might. I can imagine he’d also make a very dependable friend as long as what you’re depending on isn’t him sparing you. But that’s the thing he’s also a predatory monster that doesn’t know how to go against his hunger because at a very fundamental level he IS his hunger. So despite having things about him that are endearing. He’s very much not a safe person to be around. Ida is alive because she’s a good survivalist, with an innate talent for understanding puzzles, excellent reflexes, instincts and a good bit of genre savvy mixed together. Most normal people who enter the Manor do NOT come out without intervention from Ida or the OCE. Ida is alive because she’s scarily good at what she does. Not because Bastion is sparing any effort in trying to claim her. I think it’s important to remember that when they talk they’re usually in “safe” parts of the Manor, the parts of the Spiderweb that aren’t “sticky” so to speak. She is conversing with his human avatar which is under geas to not harm “guests” but Bastion also IS the Manor and the dangers inside it. He’s really not safe. Despite Ida treating him so casually in the snippets I’ve shared.

If a pred with anxiety needs to eat a specific prey to calm down is that prey an “emotional support prey”? Or “comfort food”?

Imagine a predator and prey in a world where preds are legally allowed to eat prey if a pred and prey are alone, after the prey is ingested privately it’s up to the pred if they want to show off their catch or stay in to digest. But eating prey must take place privately. Imagine that two individuals in this world, a predator and prey manage to strike up an unlikely friendship. Always in public of course, the prey knows better than to be alone with a predator even a predator they’re friends with. Usually the prey always found preds more scary than alluring, they aren’t the sort of prey that’s fascinated by the preds that show off their catches. But their pred friend is different something about them is undeniably alluring and the thought of being their prey is something they don’t dislike. But they don’t have a death wish so naturally, they do their best to not be alone with their friend. But one day they find that they are alone with them, “well” they think to themselves “I guess that’s it” it doesn’t occur to them that their friend might spare them, in this world a prey doesn’t have the luxury of assuming that and they’ve seen how their friend looks at them, they know their friend wants to eat them. At first it seems like that’s what’s going to happen that their friend really is just going to gobble them up, as scared as they are the prey is still enraptured by the thought on some level. There’s something exciting, thrilling about the prospect that they’re not leaving this room as anything more than prey, they’re almost looking forward to it when the pred pulls away!? B-but don’t they want to eat the prey!? eh!? Don’t leave the prey hanging like that! Naturally they don’t say any of that they just say “B-but why?” Their pred friend chuckles and says “I know you want me to eat you and I want to aswell. But what you seem to have missed my friend is that I’m waiting for you to ask me yourself.”

I really love when a pred in willing fatal isn’t going to digest the prey just yet for whatever reason, and the prey says something sassy or teasing that makes the pred respond by reminding the prey that they’re in the pred’s stomach. Like the stomach compresses suddenly and roughly or growls ominously. Essentially reminding the prey that it might be safe now but very soon it won’t be.

Me thinking about the fact that Bastion would definitely call Ida a good girl while digesting her.