Alden Vacker - Tumblr Posts
For all you animators out there please make this
“The Coming Out Song” by Ally Hills except it’s Sophie singing to a very confused Alden and Della (while doing some pretty insane choreography woah did she just backflip off an Alicorn? Of course she did) while Biana emerges from an actual closet
WAIT THERES PLAYLISTS????
SHANNON MAKING ME FEEL THINGS by putting tied together with a smile in the exile playlist, PROBABLY FOR ALDEN. AH.
NO IM SOBBING
Warning: blood, war, death, etc
Sophie forgets that elves are actual living beings sometimes.
She’s been awake for over 36 hours and all she can think about is the possibility of her friends/family dying. She’s the Moonlark, it’s her inherited duty to protect.
So she starts making a plan. Writing down names and marking them with a bright red X. The easiest way to defeat the Neverseen is to eliminate them.
But the plans become increasingly more violent, more blood, more sacrifice.
She picks out the easiest plan, hiding away the rest, and calls Team Valiant.
They step into her room and she begins to explain the plan. She’s far too tired, the kind of tired that settles into your bones and fogs your brain, to notice as the horror appears on their faces.
Stina leaves before Sophie can even finish the plan. This is the first time Stina hasn’t run off yelling but the way the door slams says enough. She wants to be strong enough to be part of this team but not if it means the violence Sophie describes. Stina is rude and ruthless but just a kid. She runs home and curls into a ball by the unicorn pens. She’s too scared to share those plans with her family so she watches the foals chase their mother. She sees so much life, in the unicorns and in the mirror every morning, how could she take that away?
Stina resigns for Team Valiant the next morning.
The slamming door knocks papers onto the floor, all the worst plans finally on display. Dex bends down and collects all of them. He views them with more calm than a child should manage. He can’t hate Sophie for them because he understands the strategy. He’s a technopath, he sees the entire world through science and mathematics. He hates how he agrees with them.
He’ll organize them and set it off to the side. He’ll spend the entire day with Sophie, they don’t talk and she sleeps through most of it. In the many hours when her eyes are closed, he’ll walk over to her desk and read through the worst plans. Again and again and again and again. He tried so hard to find holes in the logic.
He doesn’t cry until he gets home and walks right into a prank the triples planned. They wait for him at the top of the stairs and cover him in glitter. It’s silly and juvenile but Dex just breaks. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, covered in gold, and sobbing. The triplets freeze for a second before running away. They come back with the rest of their glitter and cover themselves in it. It makes a mess, the entire stairway is absolutely covered. It makes Dex laugh through his tears.
As the Dizznee family stands, covered in glitter the color of sunrises on the beach, the color his last invention lit up as, Dex finally finds the flaw in Sophie’s plan. These idiots in front of him cannot be reduced to a single statistic, they are worth so much more.
Biana sobs when she first sees the plan. She can’t even bring herself to move, just waits for the tears to ruin her mascara and turn her eyes bloodshot. In her head she knows this is war and she’s been a good little soldier this whole time. She has learned the commands fight, break, and heal over a hundred times. She can perform them with extreme efficiency. This is the first time she’s heard ‘kill.’
She cries because if Sophie really asked her to, she would. She has learned that Sophie knows what’s best when it comes to these situations and Biana would do anything to protect her family.
She waits for the tears to dry before leaving. Gives Sophie a smile and pleasant goodbye. She light leaps home and sneaks into her brother’s room. He’s not in yet so she waits on his bed. He’s her older brother, surely he can protect her from this.
When he enters the room, he’s covered in blood. He had been outside training with Grizel. It’s a small cut but the red is alarming against his thin white tee shirt. He looks so frail in this moment that Biana can’t bring herself to force this unsettling news upon him. He calls her a loser and tells her to leave. She tells him that his cologne smells like dinosaur poop. They’re both laughing when the door closes behind her.
She passes her dad on the way to her own room. He makes some half hearted comment about how important family is. How ‘everything will be alright.’ Biana knows it’s a lie. She’s known for a long time but she can’t tell if her father knows. She refuses to burden him with this new knowledge.
Biana decides that he’s right, it is her job to protect her family. It’s how she will uphold the Vacker legacy. But her hands still shake when she holds a knife. She won’t kill anyone, yet, not while better ways still exists. She’ll call Sophie in the morning, plan something better. She’ll think of her brother’s laugh and father’s doomed optimism and realizes that any death might take these qualities away.
Wylie is the oldest member in the room. This is the first time he notices how much of a difference this can make. Sophie mentions her plan and suddenly they all look so young.
He can’t even blame Sophie for thinking about all this violence, he’s been there. When his mom died he punched the mirror in his room, until his reflection was cut into a million tiny pieces and blood dripped from his knuckles. When his father was exiled, he dreamed about unfortunate things happening to the council. Nothing as violent as Sophie but enough that he isn’t surprised. Trauma and fear can destroy a person.
He doesn’t waste any time lunging across the room and pulling Sophie into his arms. She bursts into tears immediately. He tells her about his family and how much their lives mean to him. About how death destroys so much. He asks her if it’s really worth it. She crying so hard she can’t even utter the word ‘no.’ He know though and that’s all that matters.
He looks over her head at all the other children in the room, Stina running, Dex panicking, and Biana sobbing. For the first time he wonders if this is the reason he was placed on Team Valiant. His coworkers are so young, so full of life. He must make sure they don’t forget that. They have such wonderful futures ahead of them.
Later he’ll visit Stina. He’ll find her a job where she can still help the Black Swan but at a distance that makes her comfortable. He won’t let her feel guilty for leaving. He knows it’s what’s best for her health.
He’ll find Dex and Slurps and Burps, reminds him that there is so much more to him than the technology he creates. He’ll offer real human connection, a way to pull Dex away from the metal objects that consume him.
He’ll pass Biana at the mall. He’ll follow her through a few stores holding her bags. He tries not to notice the delicate way her hands run over fabric, tries not to imagine her using the same elegance when wielding a knife. She’ll talking about what clothes are in, how Wylie should change his hair. He’ll tell her that this is the future she should focus on, following her fashion designing dreams, instead of a future where she wasn’t enough to protect those that matter.
Nobody mentions the plan again. It’s stored in Sophie’s dream journal, a somber reminder of being a broken and terrified child.
They will find another way to best the Neverseen.
There is a future out there for each of them.
we can argue day and night whether or not Alden and Della were emotionally abusive, if the Vacker kid's lives really were perfect, if Fitz was just born with the coping mechanisms he has, or if they were created etc...
But here's the thing. When you take into consideration WHAT is valued in the lost cities, what is expected of imperfect people, all of the boundaries and barbed wire around what makes someone 'good'- nobody, and I mean NOBODY is coming out of that world emotionally unscathed.
Lord Cassius is not the only elf in the lost cities who cares about the status of himself and his children, and keeping up appearances. We know he has a warped view of his desire for Keefe to succeed being a form of love. We know how he has pathologized his self-absorbed need to keep his ego intact. He's a piece of shit. But part of the reason is that he values what his world has taught him to value. Prestige, sophistication, power etc...
There's a reason Mr. Forkle had to keep his twin a secret his whole life. A reason the Song Twins were rejected. Why Stina was raised to bite before assessing the danger. Because they were born 'imperfect' to their 'perfect' world's standards. They were born with the short stick. The scorn built in. There's a reason the school, Exullium, exists. For rejects, for people who don't meet the standard. Bad matches, being talentless etc... because their world rejects people who are 'chips' in the facade.
which means, that regardless of what you value, your world will punish you for anything that doesn't meet their quota. Sure, there's elves who choose their values over expectations (Dex's parents) but there's still a lifelong social punishment that comes with it.
Which means the threat of this punishment hangs over every elf's head. Which means that there are undoubtedly elves who adhere to values they don't agree with, solely out of fear of the consequences of choosing what they actually care about. This is their world. This is their lot in life.
And good luck trying to kill out this way of thinking and running the world, when elves live forever, and the people in power are the oldest elves in the world.
Now- imagine you're the Vacker's. You are the spitting image of what perfection is thought to be. You are renowned, watched- YOU ARE THE STANDARD. But even the Vacker's know they aren't perfect. Which means that regardless of how they feel about any of it, if they want to avoid scorn- they have to meet impossible requirements.
And to some parents, loving their kids means 'saving them' from that scorn. Which means heaping the expectations of the world onto their kids tenfold.
standards that are inherently abusive.
I don't think the Vacker's could come out the other side anything but emotionally abused. because the standards of their world. Because the standards they are held to, are so unrealistic, and the punishment for not meeting them is so heavy, the only way to meet them is to die a million deaths and not let anyone see that you are a corpse. You either become exactly what the world wants, or you fall, and everyone watches when you hit the pavement, and then they remark how ugly you look, and how you failed to even be appealing in death.
But guess what- that is your fate. Because it is impossible. And this type of pressure doesn't make diamonds, it creates kids like Fitz Vacker, who's fall from grace was inevitable. Because the standards were always impossible. No soul could meet them.
You can't come out of a world like that without some measure of emotional damage. It's a cycle.
Some elves choose to fight the power, but that resistance is futile when the power is literally ancient, with a relative scale for justice, and an 'objective' scale for judgement.
it just so happens that the Vacker's response was to melt their gold exactly into the shapes asked of them, regardless of how wrong it felt, and how much it hurt.
We have so many random details of Alden's love life for literally no reason lol.
He was in love with a woman who fell for his close friend, complicating his friendship with both and ultimately leaving him heartbroken. He dated Alina but ended up breaking it off, leaving her heartbroken. He eventually meets his future wife at the age of 300 or whatever (never specified), all set to marry 200 year old Della, when Alina comes crashing into the wedding, begging him to take her back. He rejects her and marries Della, the woman he loves.
It's so unnecessary but I love it lol. His life was legit a young adult romance movie.
the vacker family and their fucked relationships with food <3
tw: eating disorders
Alden - He's mostly okay (in this aspect), but sometimes forgets to eat because he gets so wrapped up in his work, or he'll get up to eat and then end up watching the fish for half an hour before sitting back down. Usually he only misses one or two meals a week, but the longest he went was like 45 hours, and nobody noticed, since they only have meals together when other people are over or for special occasions or holidays.
Della - she's had an eating disorder since she started dating Alden, which wasn't Alden's fault, more like Della thought she couldn't be good enough to be in the Vacker family. It spiraled out of control a few months into their relationship, and was really bad for a year or so, but now she manages it. She has a certain amount of calories she allows herself to eat in a day, and measures food out very carefully, never eating anything if she doesn't know what went into it. She fasts all day once or twice a week. During family gatherings, parties, or other events, she lets herself eat anything she wants, especially to keep up appearances, as long as she throws up not long after. Edaline noticed once, but Della told her it must have been something in the food. Eda worried for a while, but years went by and she eventually put it in the back of her mind.
Alvar - He hated himself since he was a kid, and he noticed Della's eating habits, and how little she ate, and picked up on that in his early teens. He tried to force himself to eat less and less, then he started binging late at night, then he felt terrible about it and made himself throw up. At some point he started doing this nightly, and somehow found comfort in this routine, despite how much it hurt and how bad it was for him. He sought help from Elwin once he started the elite levels, since it had been messing with other parts of his life. He slowly got mostly better, but he'd sometimes binge and purge on bad nights. Once, Keefe walked in on him forcing himself to throw up after Alvar had snuck a bunch of food, while Keefe was with the Neverseen. He was having a bad night because he thought a little too much about his family and how he can never go back.
Fitz - Like Alvar, Fitz also observed his mom, and over time started to become obsessed with his weight, especially after the attack in flashback, where he was unable to eat much for a long time and ended up losing a lot. He weighed himself after going back to Everglen, and the stress with Alvar being there made it hard to have an appetite anyway. That was the lowest weight he was, and when he noticed he'd gained after starting to eat more normally, he freaked out and started eating less. Biana was the only one who noticed, and she started to get concerned. Fitz admitted to her that he was trying to lose weight, but he had it completely under control. Spoiler alert: he does not.
Biana - She doesn't really have an eating disorder, but she often diets and tries to limit her food intake, because she never sees herself as good enough, pretty enough, etc. She tends to overeat when she's stressed, and then tries to make up for it by eating less afterwards. She used to try to force herself to throw up, but never succeeded, and eventually decided it wasn't worth it. She's been doing better now than she used to, now that she has real friends who she can talk to, and who love her for more than what the world sees her as.
i need more baker fitz appreciation
Can we just talk about how Alden Vacker would NOT be homophobic
not to mention how much more painful it becomes when u add Alden and Della
biana being closet with fitz who looked up to alvar who favoured biana............. what if i exploded them
Vacker Hc
Russian Della-Egyptian Alden
The Vacker kids all have diff skin tones since they're mixed (Alvar lightest-Biana Darkest)
one thing i need to know is dellas maiden name, like do her kids even know her side of the family. What was her life like before Alden.
I made something :)
I think one reason Alvar joined the neverseen wasn't only the Vacker Legacy but also the fact his parents had more children (Fitz and Biana) Hes says this somewhere in Flashback BUTTTTTT
Having more then one kid in Elven Society is taboo, ESPECIALLY since the age gap proves that Alden and Della weren't initially going to have more then Alvar but for some reason that changed, immedialty all heads turned to the 11 year old since why would Alden and Della, beloved by Elven Society randomly decide to have more kids. It showed that Alvar, at least in society's eyes was, not enough and failed. Fitz and Biana's existence was a proof of Alvar's failure to be the perfect son, to the point that Alden and Della HAD to resort to more kids. And don't think Alvar didn't know this since Elves are SHADY. I know these people had Alvar crying at night from all those side eyes and whispers. In a way Alvar could never truly love his siblings. At least until he lets go of his pain ig. In conclusion Alvar hates his famiy for betraying them.
Alden to Alvar when he was younger /j:
@alden-dendrick-vacker
@alvar-not-vacker
🥺🎉
I think Alden is a/the leak. I mean think about it his wife and kids are in the black swan and all of them trust him a lot, most likely they’ve let a couple important things slip. He’s one of the councils most trusted emissary’s ( or at least he was I forget if he still is). He’s a telepath if his wife and kids won’t tell him something he could easily slip into their minds and find what he wants.
this take may be too hot for most of you but Alden Vacker and Carlisle Cullen have the same vibe and you cannot prove me wrong
kotlc sht theories #3
Second Forkle dies, super emotional scene of him being planted next to his brother.
Because emotion
Like the fact that Forkle 1.0’s tree literally leaned over as if waiting for someone is so foreshadowing Forkle 2.0’s death.
He is also a very questionable character who could be killed off as an apology for the decisions that he has made.
His death would also have a super large impact on all the characters, as he is the main leader of the Black Swan, and has obviously assisted Sophie and her friends numerous times. He is also the principal of Foxfire, so that would also be a huge thing they would have to deal with.
kotlc sht theories #4
Alina is Fitz’s mom
Vacker thing about one dad, two moms and Fitz was the one to tell Sophie about this. Could be the real Vacker legacy????
He is a Telepath (Telepathy is rare) and his siblings are Vanishers (Vanishers are common); Alina was higher on Alden’s list
Obviously matchmaking has problems, but the whole genetics thing is still the determiner for abilities, and lists do have some proof behind their accuracy.
Also very possible that Alina could've beguiled Alden into it, playing on the fact that Alvar wasn't the son Alden wanted, and Alina may have promised that she could give him a better one?
Although what would her motivation be? And now she's a Councillor? Can you imagine if it turns out not one but TWO Councillors have secret children that would be insane.
Fitzroy (the name) means the bastard son of a king
it makes sense but please no 😭😭😭😭
kotlc sht theories #5
if my previous theory is true (alina is fitz's mom) -> i need a della villain arc
She mentions being mistreated by humans, and one of the Neverseen’s main things is putting humans in a Sanctuary.
She’s a really good fighter
People have mentioned how Alden always seems to be in the way of the Black Swan’s plans, and Della could totally influence his decisions since they’re always described as a happy couple (which makes Alden cheating very unlikely but Alina is a beguiler...?)
She is a very powerful Vanisher and she kind of implies that she is hiding her true power in her husband’s shadow, kind of like Gisela…?
She is the only Vacker not injured by the Neverseen (idk if Shannon could even plan this far though tbh-)
But both Alden and Della aren’t in Stellarlune at all… which is kind of weird if this is going to be a huge plot point but uhm
(But like apparently Shannon doesn’t know how to outline a story so 💀)
I really don’t want this to happen, but if Alina does turn out to be Fitz’s mom I’m gonna need a Della villain arc to make up for it.