Victor likes Josh a lot! Obviously, they've gone through a lot of shit, both together and not, so that's a bonding experience right there. There's actually a little bit of guilt on Victor's side, too, because the last time Josh and Victor were in Camp at the same time, Victor was at the height of his PTSD and Josh was at the height of his X-Force stuff, so Victor didn't know about that and kept acting like his life was the worst ever omg and then he found out about X-Force and oh man Josh :(
VICTOR AND JOSH ARE TOTALLY BESTIES! Like after the news came out at the school that Josh used to be a Reaver, it seemed like a lot of the kids avoided him for awhile (especially the ones who he made friends with initially, of which Victor is one) or just never hung out with him again until after M Day, but Victor... didn't stop being his friend. And Josh always appreciated that, that Victor gave him a second chance instead of treating him like a pariah because of his mistakes. And Vic and Josh always seemed to get along super easy, so Josh has always really liked Anole and definitely cares about him.
Josh I think tries to help Vic with his PTSD as best as he can, and as much as he feels he is allowed to, because Josh hates seeing his friends hurting and doesn't want them to suffer, so he tries hard to focus on making sure they're okay. And Josh is totally okay with never talking about his problems or his involvement in X-Force, because it's all seriously messed up but he also... appreciates that some of them know that, about what's happened/happening to him? But ultimately, he just feels really terrible that all this awful stuff happened after he left the island so he WASN'T THERE FOR THEM when they especially needed him, so he feels guilty as hell and is probably trying to compensate for it a little by being kind of a mother hen at them.
He...kind of does. He knows Julian was considering himself leader before, pre-Schism update, so it's fairly reasonable to think he still does! It's just that pre-update Vic was kind of okay with the idea of them being a "normal" X-Men team in Camp with a leader and so on and such forth, but post-Schism he is just...completely disgusted with the thought of having a team leader because that way lies fighting with each other instead of taking care of the giant sentinel bearing down on everyone.
Uhhhhh...I can't think of a question that we haven't already discussed. ANYTHING YOU THINK I SHOULD KNOW, re: Julian?
HAHAH yeah the Schism update was when I folded in part of the Legacy stuff too, so Julian was just "I can't be any kind of leader because I'm a horrible person". And then X-23 made it really clear that Julian hates himself a lot so I rolled with it. \:D/
And yes! There's a bit: Julian's been hammered enough about what's going on and people thinking he's a ticking time bomb that he's ... pretending to be more okay. He's still miserable as hell but he's trying, so he has like. a checklist of stuff he has to do each day, so his room is actually clean and he has showers and stuff. Also he, Santo and Cess are running around at night rescuing kittens from trees and doing Good Deeds for shits and giggles.
So does Victor get tired of explaining to people just how terrible the 616verse is?
No, because...he doesn't really do that much. Ever.
SEE BELOW, re: his attitude toward adults (or...you're up on canon I'm sure you can work it out) so the only time he ever really talks about 616verse, he's doing it because...well, Camp has explicitly shown a scene from it so it's pretty obvious how sucky it is.
When it was just him in camp, Julian just never bothered because what was the point? People never got it, thought he was exaggerating for attention and told him to take a teaspoon of concrete and harden up. He already judges himself pretty harshly for being severely depressed (though his own take on it is that he's being pathetic and needs to suck it up) so he doesn't really need to hear it from other people. But for the other mutants, that's very different. They're his friends, though Julian is messed up enough that he doesn't really want to call them that, so people need to understand why they are the way they are, and if there is an adult who can help them then he wants to find them for their sake.
If it was just him, he wouldn't be bothered. Sometimes he doesn't even think he can be helped. However, his friends are different and he's got a hierarchy of who needs some kind of outside help in degrees of urgency, and with Josh and Victor both in camp, they are the top two on his list. He is genuinely afraid that either one of them will do something very drastic to make everything stop, and this belief is not really helped much by Sofia (whose opinions he trusts implicitly) basically going "these dudes are fucked up bro". He knows that he's kind of not in the right space to do anything, though he doesn't really understand why (he knows that he's severely depressed, he just doesn't know what to do with that knowledge now) so he is trying to find someone who can help them even in the short term so that he can get himself sorted out, work out how to self-actualise enough to fix his own depression and then take it back and help his friends out.
It's a really terrible series of decisions rooted in desperation and despair, really, by a teenaged boy who doesn't know how to fix a situation he never created and whose own issues are actually making everything worse but this being Julian Keller, he won't give up. So he'll keep trying, keep battering his head against people's preconceptions, until he finds the person who gets it and will help the others. He gets really frustrated when it becomes about him, because he is just I'M NOT THE PROBLEM HERE, THEY ARE, THEY NEED YOU GO AND HELP THEM.
This is why he has gotten all up in every adult counsellor's business giving them the side-eye too. He's trying to gauge what levels of threat they are to their counsellee and whether they can help or just not make things worse.
Victor and Julian are bros and will (hopefully) always be bros.
BUT NOW! Victor has a lot of things going on. Both related and unrelated to the "special mistletoe" (because everyone believes that, Julian).
NON-MISTLETOE RELATED:
Victor talked about feelings! Victor doesn't talk about feelings unless it's in an incredibly dismissive way. Julian has already promised more feelings will happen, and Victor is already 100% for sure going to do everything in his power to never talk about feelings with Julian again. At least, not his feelings. See, Victor is keenly aware that Julian is super fucked up, so he does not want to add his own fucked up-ness to Julian's list of Things. On top of that, he does not ever want to be seen as someone that can't be counted on by his friends when it comes down to it, and he kind of thinks Julian is sort of thinking that already, after the dragon crop circle thing, so he is double against talking about his feelings. So: talking about Julian's feelings = A+ talking about Victor's feelings = F----
ALSO he is not sure if Julian was serious about Sofia knowing about/being worried about him not being okay, but he's really not okay with it either way. Because either she knows he's not okay which is sad because she's from so far in the past that she shouldn't have to worry about that crap or he was joking about it because he thinks it's So Obvious which wouldn't be okay either because Victor really does try to act like he's okay most of the time.
MISTLETOE RELATED STUFF:
I am actually sort of working out where Victor is on this right now so this may be rambly and even contradict itself sometimes just bear with me (this applies with the above stuff too, but especially so here)
All right, so. Victor really enjoyed both the make out and the dry humping, and is keenly aware that he should feel a whole lot worse about it than he does. And then Julian started acting so cavalier about it after the fact and he doesn't know if he actually thinks that it was mistletoe induced dry humping or if he thinks that if he acts like it's not a big deal then it isn't a big deal.
Then there's the possibility that he enjoyed it more than he let on himself. Victor is like. 9...1% sure Julian is 100% straight. He's 80% sure that Kinsey Scale rating from back when was just fucking with Julian, but he's also 100% sure that wasn't any sort of mistletoe induced dry humping. And even if it was, that sure as hell wasn't a mistletoe boner. Both times.
So yeah, Victor really enjoyed it. Especially when Julian was topping but he's not sure if he enjoyed it because it was Julian or because letting someone else take control for a bit is a really good feeling when you're constantly trying to make sure everything (seems like it) is okay, or some combination therein.
So, to conclude: He's never going to talk about his depression to his mostly straight friend that he maybe has feelings for.
I need some sort of essay on the same topics back.
Okay, so first up the mistletoe because that is how I roll.
There is pretty much no chance that Julian will ever, ever admit to any kind of sexual attraction to a dude. He is the most heterosexual dude in the world so help him god. He's basically chalked up anything that would suggest, imply or state that he could maybe find any dude attractive to be camp fucking with him. Every time. It is a truly impressive piece of denial, tbqh, given that i am a terrible person and toss him into these situations all the time.
That said, it is kind of annoying/disturbing him a bit that he does get into these situations and he does respond because it is just HE'S NOT A GIRL GODDAMMIT SELF. He acts cavalier about it because it's how Julian rolls; if he can act cavalier about something that troubles him, you better believe that he is going to take that route. He's not sure if he believes that it was mistletoe or not but he is kind of if I keep saying it it becomes true, so it's one way to avoid any kind of awkward feelings. Though really Julian would strongly self-identify as being heterosexual anyway but I am getting off topic.
So! Making out with Victor! He is adamant that it was camp screwing with his head. If he was pressed, he would admit ultimately that he found the tongue pretty damned hot and topping Victor was immense fun, but he would be quick to add that that was just because camp made him do it and he wouldn't ever do it normally. Victor hasn't really made him question his sexuality because he is so firmly denying it that there's nothing to question.
Now onto Feelings Crap. Julian has decided that Victor and Josh are the most screwed up of all of them, just in different ways. He doesn't know how to fix either of them, but his reasoning is that the more he gets Victor to talk to him about things, the more he can try and work out just what actually is the problem and then fix it. He hates talking about feelings for feelings' sake; it's honest to god him trying to diagnose what the issue actually is so that he can go out and fix it. He's a fixer! That's how he works! Which is how it came up with Sofia; Julian trusts Sofia's perspective on people's issues because she's as much a people person as he is, and she has the advantage of being clear-sighted enough to be able to say whether he's right or not.
He does think it's blatantly obvious that Victor is Not All Right At All, but that's because Julian is really good at reading people (it's how he knows what buttons to push to piss people off, and how he gets his team so devoutly loyal to him) and he hasn't quite worked out yet that that's his particular gift and not ... that everyone can read people that well. So he is kind of "well obviously you're not all right, Vic, seriously, cut this shit out and take five to get your head sorted out" and then we can work on everyone else. And by "we", I mean "Vic and Sofia" because Julian is not functional so much as having made his dysfunction work for him in this specific circumstance. If pressed, his coping mechanisms would pretty much splinter around him because they're not great.
I know I said this in IRC, but Julian ... isn't that sure that he can be fixed. He's changed so much, he can see that in the way that Sofia looks at him and the way that everyone else looks at him when he can tolerate talking to them that ... yeah. He thinks he's too fucked up. So he's decided that that's fine, whatever, he doesn't care. But he can see how Vic could be helped and so he's ... determined to make that happen.
SO YES. DID ANY OF THAT MAKE SENSE.
Also how many shitfits would Vic flip if he found out that Julian considers him that much a risk to himself?
I don't think he'd flip shits. He'd probably be upset and maybe a little hurt about it, but then he'd...probably talk about feelings again lol and explain to Julian why, as long as there is one other person around, he will never break if just because he refuses to be a burden.
Uhhhh...oh! What would Julian do/think/feel if Victor and Sofia did swap Julian mistletoe stories?
IT DEPENDS ON THE STORIES. If they are about how awesome he is, then that's okay. If they are about how terrible he is, then he'd be pissed off and mortified. He cares less about what Victor has to say than Sofia because he actually cares what Sofia thinks about his kissing technique. I'M SORRY VICTOR. :(
If Victor could go anywhere for a day, where would he go?
No clue. I was going to get to the point where I just do a random number generator and whatever canon it throws up on the new list is where he's going. HE COULD END UP GOING TO EQUESTRIA.
Does he view it as running away from his responsibilities that Julian doesn't want to go back to the school or Utopia?
Yes. Go to Equestria, Julian. No one there has hands, either. You'll fit right in.
No. Part of that is because he knows Julian's super depressed so if he thinks that will help him be less depressed then that's a good thing, and the other part is that Victor wouldn't assume that his thoughts/feelings/situation should be applied to everyone at the school.
Does Julian believe that basicallyeveryone in mutantcabin is sincere when they say they care about him/want him to be happy or does he think they're just saying it so they can feel better about themselves since they tried to help the fuckup?
It really depends on how Julian feels on any given day but the answer is "both". When he's having a good day then he thinks that maybe they're sincere, maybe they mean it and maybe he's not alone. When he's having a bad day, he thinks that they can' possibly mean it and that it's a sop for their own egos; if push came to shove he is pretty sure that no-one would come to help him. This balance is shifting somewhat because people do try in camp, beyond what they do in canon because apparently everyone in canon are a bunch of assholes. So the repeated efforts by everyone has been shifting the balance for him. He does start to believe it a little, but mostly he's just good at fronting on his good days. Bad days he does not give any fucks.
Vic likes Rachel a lot! He actually knew the old Rachel, too, and they bonded over Shakespeare and acting so that's sort of transferred because even though he knows she doesn't remember that, he still does :3 Plus Rachel is just fun to be around and helps him focus more on the "normal" things like acting and just being a teenager, which...yes.
TOSH:
Victor is in a...weird place, wrt Tosh. He has this thing with adults in Camp where he tries to keep things REALLY CASUAL and jokey and light so that he doesn't ever ever ever have to talk to them about serious things and that's...a lot harder with Tosh, since she's seen him having nightmares and has seen the scars and so forth. He still tries his best, though, poor guy.
SOFIA:
Victor feels REALLY BAD for Sofia, getting stuck here and having to learn about everything that goes down. Plus knowing someone's future is just awkward. So he actually tries to take the same route with her he does with adults, and tries to keep it light. It doesn't work as well as it does with adults, because no matter when she's from, Sofia is one of them so she deserves answers to her questions. So he'll be completely honest with her about serious things, he just will never bring them up himself.
Any differences/changes/pokevolutions on yours to mine since the last time?
Like I said to Tosh, Victor does this thing with adults where he puts on this really disinterested, light, sarcastic voice and acts like nothing really bothers him "oh yeah i went to hell three times you know whatever" because in his mind, adults are not reliable. It's pretty hard for him to keep that up with Peter, because he's talked with Josh and Julian so he...kind of knows what's up. Still, Peter seems...kind of okay, as far as adults go, so he will be quietly encouraging of Josh and Julian having serious talks with Peter and he will be quite open to keeping his mask up with Peter in the future. :)
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We are bros for now and always, Mulan.
Reverse?
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Josh I think tries to help Vic with his PTSD as best as he can, and as much as he feels he is allowed to, because Josh hates seeing his friends hurting and doesn't want them to suffer, so he tries hard to focus on making sure they're okay. And Josh is totally okay with never talking about his problems or his involvement in X-Force, because it's all seriously messed up but he also... appreciates that some of them know that, about what's happened/happening to him? But ultimately, he just feels really terrible that all this awful stuff happened after he left the island so he WASN'T THERE FOR THEM when they especially needed him, so he feels guilty as hell and is probably trying to compensate for it a little by being kind of a mother hen at them.
We are bros 4 lyfe, Captain Shang.
Do you have any other questions for Josh?
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Uhhhhh...I can't think of a question that we haven't already discussed. ANYTHING YOU THINK I SHOULD KNOW, re: Julian?
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And yes! There's a bit: Julian's been hammered enough about what's going on and people thinking he's a ticking time bomb that he's ... pretending to be more okay. He's still miserable as hell but he's trying, so he has like. a checklist of stuff he has to do each day, so his room is actually clean and he has showers and stuff. Also he, Santo and Cess are running around at night rescuing kittens from trees and doing Good Deeds for shits and giggles.
So does Victor get tired of explaining to people just how terrible the 616verse is?
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SEE BELOW, re: his attitude toward adults (or...you're up on canon I'm sure you can work it out) so the only time he ever really talks about 616verse, he's doing it because...well, Camp has explicitly shown a scene from it so it's pretty obvious how sucky it is.
How about Julian, does he get tired of it?
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When it was just him in camp, Julian just never bothered because what was the point? People never got it, thought he was exaggerating for attention and told him to take a teaspoon of concrete and harden up. He already judges himself pretty harshly for being severely depressed (though his own take on it is that he's being pathetic and needs to suck it up) so he doesn't really need to hear it from other people. But for the other mutants, that's very different. They're his friends, though Julian is messed up enough that he doesn't really want to call them that, so people need to understand why they are the way they are, and if there is an adult who can help them then he wants to find them for their sake.
If it was just him, he wouldn't be bothered. Sometimes he doesn't even think he can be helped. However, his friends are different and he's got a hierarchy of who needs some kind of outside help in degrees of urgency, and with Josh and Victor both in camp, they are the top two on his list. He is genuinely afraid that either one of them will do something very drastic to make everything stop, and this belief is not really helped much by Sofia (whose opinions he trusts implicitly) basically going "these dudes are fucked up bro". He knows that he's kind of not in the right space to do anything, though he doesn't really understand why (he knows that he's severely depressed, he just doesn't know what to do with that knowledge now) so he is trying to find someone who can help them even in the short term so that he can get himself sorted out, work out how to self-actualise enough to fix his own depression and then take it back and help his friends out.
It's a really terrible series of decisions rooted in desperation and despair, really, by a teenaged boy who doesn't know how to fix a situation he never created and whose own issues are actually making everything worse but this being Julian Keller, he won't give up. So he'll keep trying, keep battering his head against people's preconceptions, until he finds the person who gets it and will help the others. He gets really frustrated when it becomes about him, because he is just I'M NOT THE PROBLEM HERE, THEY ARE, THEY NEED YOU GO AND HELP THEM.
This is why he has gotten all up in every adult counsellor's business giving them the side-eye too. He's trying to gauge what levels of threat they are to their counsellee and whether they can help or just not make things worse.
So has anything changed with Victor and Julian?
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Victor and Julian are bros and will (hopefully) always be bros.
BUT NOW! Victor has a lot of things going on. Both related and unrelated to the "special mistletoe" (because everyone believes that, Julian).
NON-MISTLETOE RELATED:
Victor talked about feelings! Victor doesn't talk about feelings unless it's in an incredibly dismissive way. Julian has already promised more feelings will happen, and Victor is already 100% for sure going to do everything in his power to never talk about feelings with Julian again. At least, not his feelings. See, Victor is keenly aware that Julian is super fucked up, so he does not want to add his own fucked up-ness to Julian's list of Things. On top of that, he does not ever want to be seen as someone that can't be counted on by his friends when it comes down to it, and he kind of thinks Julian is sort of thinking that already, after the dragon crop circle thing, so he is double against talking about his feelings. So: talking about Julian's feelings = A+ talking about Victor's feelings = F----
ALSO he is not sure if Julian was serious about Sofia knowing about/being worried about him not being okay, but he's really not okay with it either way. Because either she knows he's not okay which is sad because she's from so far in the past that she shouldn't have to worry about that crap or he was joking about it because he thinks it's So Obvious which wouldn't be okay either because Victor really does try to act like he's okay most of the time.
MISTLETOE RELATED STUFF:
I am actually sort of working out where Victor is on this right now so this may be rambly and even contradict itself sometimes just bear with me (this applies with the above stuff too, but especially so here)
All right, so. Victor really enjoyed both the make out and the dry humping, and is keenly aware that he should feel a whole lot worse about it than he does. And then Julian started acting so cavalier about it after the fact and he doesn't know if he actually thinks that it was mistletoe induced dry humping or if he thinks that if he acts like it's not a big deal then it isn't a big deal.
Then there's the possibility that he enjoyed it more than he let on himself. Victor is like. 9...1% sure Julian is 100% straight. He's 80% sure that Kinsey Scale rating from back when was just fucking with Julian, but he's also 100% sure that wasn't any sort of mistletoe induced dry humping. And even if it was, that sure as hell wasn't a mistletoe boner. Both times.
So yeah, Victor really enjoyed it. Especially when Julian was topping but he's not sure if he enjoyed it because it was Julian or because letting someone else take control for a bit is a really good feeling when you're constantly trying to make sure everything (seems like it) is okay, or some combination therein.
So, to conclude: He's never going to talk about his depression to his mostly straight friend that he maybe has feelings for.
I need some sort of essay on the same topics back.
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There is pretty much no chance that Julian will ever, ever admit to any kind of sexual attraction to a dude. He is the most heterosexual dude in the world so help him god. He's basically chalked up anything that would suggest, imply or state that he could maybe find any dude attractive to be camp fucking with him. Every time. It is a truly impressive piece of denial, tbqh, given that i am a terrible person and toss him into these situations all the time.
That said, it is kind of annoying/disturbing him a bit that he does get into these situations and he does respond because it is just HE'S NOT A GIRL GODDAMMIT SELF. He acts cavalier about it because it's how Julian rolls; if he can act cavalier about something that troubles him, you better believe that he is going to take that route. He's not sure if he believes that it was mistletoe or not but he is kind of if I keep saying it it becomes true, so it's one way to avoid any kind of awkward feelings. Though really Julian would strongly self-identify as being heterosexual anyway but I am getting off topic.
So! Making out with Victor! He is adamant that it was camp screwing with his head. If he was pressed, he would admit ultimately that he found the tongue pretty damned hot and topping Victor was immense fun, but he would be quick to add that that was just because camp made him do it and he wouldn't ever do it normally. Victor hasn't really made him question his sexuality because he is so firmly denying it that there's nothing to question.
Now onto Feelings Crap. Julian has decided that Victor and Josh are the most screwed up of all of them, just in different ways. He doesn't know how to fix either of them, but his reasoning is that the more he gets Victor to talk to him about things, the more he can try and work out just what actually is the problem and then fix it. He hates talking about feelings for feelings' sake; it's honest to god him trying to diagnose what the issue actually is so that he can go out and fix it. He's a fixer! That's how he works! Which is how it came up with Sofia; Julian trusts Sofia's perspective on people's issues because she's as much a people person as he is, and she has the advantage of being clear-sighted enough to be able to say whether he's right or not.
He does think it's blatantly obvious that Victor is Not All Right At All, but that's because Julian is really good at reading people (it's how he knows what buttons to push to piss people off, and how he gets his team so devoutly loyal to him) and he hasn't quite worked out yet that that's his particular gift and not ... that everyone can read people that well. So he is kind of "well obviously you're not all right, Vic, seriously, cut this shit out and take five to get your head sorted out" and then we can work on everyone else. And by "we", I mean "Vic and Sofia" because Julian is not functional so much as having made his dysfunction work for him in this specific circumstance. If pressed, his coping mechanisms would pretty much splinter around him because they're not great.
I know I said this in IRC, but Julian ... isn't that sure that he can be fixed. He's changed so much, he can see that in the way that Sofia looks at him and the way that everyone else looks at him when he can tolerate talking to them that ... yeah. He thinks he's too fucked up. So he's decided that that's fine, whatever, he doesn't care. But he can see how Vic could be helped and so he's ... determined to make that happen.
SO YES. DID ANY OF THAT MAKE SENSE.
Also how many shitfits would Vic flip if he found out that Julian considers him that much a risk to himself?
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Uhhhh...oh! What would Julian do/think/feel if Victor and Sofia did swap Julian mistletoe stories?
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If Victor could go anywhere for a day, where would he go?
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Home. He hates it 99% of the time, but he'd see going anywhere else as running away, and he won't do that again.
Have you figured out where Julian's going for his day?
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Does he view it as running away from his responsibilities that Julian doesn't want to go back to the school or Utopia?
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No. Part of that is because he knows Julian's super depressed so if he thinks that will help him be less depressed then that's a good thing, and the other part is that Victor wouldn't assume that his thoughts/feelings/situation should be applied to everyone at the school.
Does Julian believe that basicallyeveryone in mutantcabin is sincere when they say they care about him/want him to be happy or does he think they're just saying it so they can feel better about themselves since they tried to help the fuckup?
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What's Victor's daily routine?
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Vic likes Rachel a lot! He actually knew the old Rachel, too, and they bonded over Shakespeare and acting so that's sort of transferred because even though he knows she doesn't remember that, he still does :3 Plus Rachel is just fun to be around and helps him focus more on the "normal" things like acting and just being a teenager, which...yes.
TOSH:
Victor is in a...weird place, wrt Tosh. He has this thing with adults in Camp where he tries to keep things REALLY CASUAL and jokey and light so that he doesn't ever ever ever have to talk to them about serious things and that's...a lot harder with Tosh, since she's seen him having nightmares and has seen the scars and so forth. He still tries his best, though, poor guy.
SOFIA:
Victor feels REALLY BAD for Sofia, getting stuck here and having to learn about everything that goes down. Plus knowing someone's future is just awkward. So he actually tries to take the same route with her he does with adults, and tries to keep it light. It doesn't work as well as it does with adults, because no matter when she's from, Sofia is one of them so she deserves answers to her questions. So he'll be completely honest with her about serious things, he just will never bring them up himself.
Any differences/changes/pokevolutions on yours to mine since the last time?
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Reverse?
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What is the Professor's favorite and/or least favorite thing about camp?