Always, I Love Explaining My Thought Processes

Halt to Ferris, all the time: You know, when I was your age *proceeds to describe what he did 7 minutes ago*

Halt's Brain Damage

I mentioned Halt's head trauma in an earlier post, and said that I would elaborate on it. Well, this is my elaboration. Keep in mind, I am not a health care professional, I am only certified to perform first aid. I am only speaking from what I have witnessed in someone who has had a similar condition from a motorcycle accident, and from what I find and cross-reference in my internet search on the matter.

Halt, as we know, has suffered MANY blows to the head - a lot of which could have been fatal if not for the intervening hand of Lady Luck and some very conveniently placed Plot Armor™. Now something that both the characters in the books, and probably a good portion of the readers either don't know about or haven't considered is the resulting brain damage - or more specifically, the damage done to Halt's gray matter.

For those of you who don't know (no shame), gray matter is tissue in the brain that is largely responsible for motor functions, emotions, and memory. Gray matter cells are known to be the longest lasting cells in the body, but they do tend to degenerate and die as people get old. There are other things that can speed up the process of gray matter cell death, most notably Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, and traumatic brain injury.

I have a friend who was once in a bad motorcycle accident that resulted in a metal rod and screws being put into his wrist, and a sudden increase in gray matter cell death brought on by the head trauma. He was a teacher of mine and currently has a wife, daughters, and grand daughters, and he is just over fifty years old. I had the same class with him all year for 4 years (JROTC), and during that time, I was able to see how the condition affected him as time passed. He does make jokes about it, and is very open with it. I also asked him if it would be okay to post this beforehand, don't worry. The symptoms that Halt experience in my headcanon align with this because it is my closest experience with it.

Obviously, these characters don't know what gray matter is, but that doesn't mean it won't affect Halt, and some of these symptoms are things that Halt experiences in the books. I'll give examples of that too.

One of the symptoms of gray matter damage is difficulty controlling emotions. Now you may be saying, "But Void, Halt practically patented the ability to control emotions," and you're right. However, we all know that Halt has a pretty quick temper that can lead to some rash decisions - and this seems to get slightly worse as the books go on. One of the biggest emotions that people with damaged brain matter have issues dealing with is anger - closely followed by sadness and feelings of emptiness (AKA signs of depression).

Another symptom of gray matter damage is memory loss. The only example of this I can think of off the top of my head (that doesn't include when he was poisoned which is a whole other type of trauma) is when he had extreme trouble finding the correlation between the red hills and Redmont in book 7. Then again, it was a stressful situation and no one can be expected to notice everything. Not to mention that he was the only one to make the connection at all. This one and the next one are more for angst potential then as current existing evidence. Imagine really quick as Halt gets older that the memory loss starts slow - forgetting that he already told someone something, forgetting where he put something, etc. Small stuff. But later, it gets worse. He starts to forget meeting new people, important past events, how to cook certain things, or even just trailing off in the middle of a sentence - unable to remember his original purpose for speaking, almost as if a sort of fog has started blocking things out. A lot of times, he'll know that he knew it at some point, but sometimes, he doesn't remember that he knew that thing in the first place. Sometimes gentle reminders will work, and other times, entire stories, recipes, and tasks will have to be completely re-hashed with him.

The final symptom I'm going to cover in this already too-long post is how gray matter damage affects fine motor skills and language. I'm fairly certain that there is an example of this somewhere in the books, But I would have no clue where to look. We're going full angst potential on this one boys. Again, it starts small - some slight tremors in his hands here, a troublesome button there. Then, it gets worse as the years pass. Having difficulty tying knots, writing getting more and more difficult, cutting his hand while trying to prepare food, dropping his mug of coffee for no apparent reason, sometimes slurring his speech, forgetting certain words from other languages, not realizing that he had reverted back to Hibernian in the middle of a sentence because his brain temporarily stopped being able to comprehend Araluen speech.

Halt doesn't want to tell anyone that the changes in his behavior that he can't seem to control frighten him. He's never been genuinely afraid of his own mind before up until he could no longer control what happened. It was a type of fear he was unfamiliar with, but couldn't stop from growing every time he failed to tie a knot, or someone told him about an event he couldn't remember. Everyone else was afraid too, but they toned down their own fear whenever they saw that desperate look in Halt's eyes that he couldn't quite hide, the one that begged for any confirmation that he wasn't crazy.

What the hell. I just wrote an entire essay. You know those posts that say, "In this essay I will discuss..." but they never get to the essay? Yeah, that but completed. This was born from the fact that Hal't has had a bunch of head injuries and I immediately thought 'haha brain damage go brr' and proceeded to write that in essay form. If you've made it to the end of this monstrosity, more power to you.

I'm going to try to go into a coma now.

hey so. whenever i read fics on ao3. 80% of the time i see your user in the kudos. even in other fandoms outside of hazbin. politely, are you in my walls.

Short answer? Yes.

Long answer? Yeeeees.

hey, is the same anon who asked about the playful punishments series! that’s not selfish at all, don’t worry! i also write, so i completely understand lol i don’t love writing characters who aren’t my favorites either. completely valid!!

thank you so much for the headcanons!! 💜

Thank you, love you, you're literally so sweet😭🥺

Me, looking at you in my inbox:

If you want to can you please make a lee Alastor and ler Zestial fic?

Only if you want to! No pressure

Did someone say lee!Alastor and ler!Zestial? *I say, showing up the the party 6739327 years late with spiked eggnog while blasting Paris Paloma*

jokes aside, I'm so sorry this took so long lol - I worked on it, then it just kind of died in my drafts for a little bit. BUT it is here now, and I hope it's worth the wait

Settling Nerves

Alastor... isn't doing too great since the extermination, and an old friend takes notice. Zestial has known Alastor for a long time, and despite the Radio Demon's recent "sabbatical", Zestial still remembers an effective tactic for calming the deer sinner. Even if he doesn't know exactly what's wrong yet, Zestial's determined to lend a helping hand

This is a platonic sfw tickle fic - if that's not for you, no worries, just keep scrolling lol

Reblogging this bc they've been practically invading my ask box and to show any followers who are uncertain that there's nothing wrong with reporting the blogs/delete the asks. Don't let someone scam you bc they stole a sob story from someone living through real crises

I would really like this trend of donation scammers sending anons to stop. I block them yet they still send anons. It's very annoying.

AAAAAAAAAAAA HOLY SHIT I LOVE IT

Honestly don't even worry about the line art being messy, it gives it kind of an ethereal quality that's dope as shit. And I love the sketch of Alastor having his panic attacks, you captured the emotion really well!!!

your mind is beautiful and I love you for it, thank you so much for this

RAHHHH IM BACK WITH ART

some drawings from the very talented writer @void-occupation's fic "hidden hurts" GO CHECK IT OUT THE WRITING IS SUPER GREAT!

here are the promised drawings!

alastors tree:

(side note: I just realized how this reminds me of that one tree in my neighbor Totoro, also so sorry void the lineart is a bit messy lmao)

and another scene from the fic as a doodle!

once again! go check out voids work! (hope you enjoy! ⊂((・▽・))⊃)

Halt, frustrated: Oh fuck me!

Crowley: I thought you'd never ask

Alastor's Animal Noises

I won't call this an unpopular headcanon, just one that is slept on.

So, everyone knows about Alastor making deer noises, both in canon and fanon. In the show he canonically makes little fawn squeaks when Rosie hugs him (which lives in my head rent free at all times) and does the elk scream a couple times throughout the show. Fanon is just as up in arms about this trait of his, and I think it's great.

But.

What if he ALSO made alligator noises? HEAR ME OUT - trust me, you won't regret it.

So.

When you really think about it, there are a large amount of traits that Alastor has that would make it logical for him to share traits with an alligator as well as a deer. These include: teeth/habit of eating sinners(cannibalism) (alligators are known cannibals), place of origin being Louisiana, persistent presence of bayous in his life (near his home in the living world, supposedly where he hid his victims, where he died, and the bayou in his room), ambush predator (makes you feel at ease by being unassuming then strikes before you even realize the danger), and his temper (appears calm until he's NOT) just to name a few.

Despite what people tend to think, alligators actually make a TON of different sounds, though there's a few main ones I'll talk about.

First one is the territorial growl.

I feel like Alastor could make this sound when he's being territorial (obviously), threatening, or protective (as rare as that is). He begins making this sound a lot more often the longer he stays at the hotel because he begins to see it as his territory, and the residents as his people (not that he'd ever admit that lol). Also, I feel like hearing this loud, bass-feeling noise from this rail-thin deer man would be a bit jarring, especially if you'd never heard it before

Second sound is the defensive hiss.

This is a sound Alastor would make if he's feeling threatened. I'm thinking scenarios where he's annoyed/mad/anxious are when he'd hiss, because they're all scenarios where he'd be trying to get something or someone to leave him alone. It's a very different yet very similar sound to a cat's hiss. They can mean similar things, but hearing an alligator hiss is significantly more threatening, which fits Alastor's character. Also, it means he can still sound terrifying when he's the one who's scared (if he manages to make a distressed gator sound rather than a distressed deer sound that is lol)

And of course, we can't forget the mandatory cute sound, the baby swamp puppy chirps.

If he gets to make fawn noises, you bet your ass he's gonna make swamp puppy laser sounds. The scenarios where he'd make these noises are a lot more rare, but they definitely exist. He wouldn't ever admit it, but he sees Rosie as a mother figure, and just as he tends to greet her with fawn squeaks, Alastor will subconsciously start doing little baby gator chirps when he's looking for her and can't find her. His instincts are to call out to her so she can find him - the same way baby alligators do with their mothers - and the side effect is that he makes cute little laser chirping noises without even realizing it. He has a tendency to do it when he's looking for anyone he likes who is older than him. Zestial finds it charming and the few times it happened to him, Husk refuses to talk about, a lot of mixed feelings brought up by the fact that the man who owns his soul has given him at least somewhat of a parental role subconsciously.

anyways, these were just my thoughts on it, feel free to add on your own or use it as inspiration for your own work (let me know though, I want to see it!!!!) (putting this in the lee!alastor tags to feed the imaginations of my friends there who are always starving for more things)

If you asked Alastor, he'd say he was fine. That was the easiest answer. The answer that kept others from worrying about him. That didn't make it the truth.

The truth was he'd been broken for a long time, and an eroded pillar could only stand for so long without inevitably collapsing.

OR

I was watching tiktoks and saw one (1) edit with the song "Forwards Beckon Rebound" and this idea immediately put a gun to my head and forced me to write it at 2 AM with no planning. READ THE TAGS, HOLY SHIT. This is the darkest shit I've ever written, I'm not playing