Title of entry

on the peppinos, postgame

i like to think the peppinos are pretty good friends now, but that certainly wasn't always the case. in fact i think they were both pretty terrified of eachother for a good couple months or so after the tower's fall. here's a moderately-sized ramble on how they went from one end to the other, with some extra thoughts on their current dynamic.

peppino's deal here is pretty obvious. being anxious and afraid of everything all the time is like his main character trait, but frankly he has every reason to be terrified of fake pep even aside from that, given the... you know. the everything. everything that went down in and around their fights, and just the nature of what fake peppino is-both as a general horror creature and also, specifically, as some kind of fucked up parody of himself that exists for reasons unknown to anybody. the only reason peppino let fp hang around in the first place was out of fear of pissing him off and getting attacked if he did try to take some action to Remove him. he tries his best not to invoke that, and stays far away from fake pep.

but fake peppino is also pretty terrified of peppino for the same reasons- he's really only ever seen peppino at his most violent, he's already gotten his ass kicked twice, and what's more he's acutely aware that he's on borrowed land and borrowed time out here. he only went to pizzeria in the first place out of instinct and because he didn't really have anywhere else to go without the tower, but he knows damn well that this is not his turf to be hanging out on, and that peppino has every right to defend it if he wants. he tries his best not to invoke that, and stays far away from peppino.

unfortunately, neither of them are perfect at that, and both of them are peppinos, so...

their paths do tend to cross on occasion. fortunately, neither of them actually want to fight again, so these run-ins never escalate to conflict, and end with them both scrambling away as quickly as they spot the other.

as it goes, time passes and they get more used to eachother at a distance; fake pep being naturally curious and poking around despite his reservations, and peppino sorta noticing fp is skittish whenever he ventures a bit past his usual boundaries. with that and the fact they've never actually had any violent encounters with eachother, peppino eventually catches the vibe that "oh maybe this thing isn't just here to menace me''. there is definitely still the aspect of "why the fuck is this freak here and what does it want" to deal with, so he doesn't drop his guard entirely, but he does go from ardent avoidance to more a... neutral observation.

and it's a bit of a positive feedback loop; fp seeing peppino being less Reactive about him means he's less worried about being Retaliated Upon & thus a bit more venturous still. perhaps even enough to be seen Inside the restaurant...?

from here it doesn't take long for peppino to start seeing fake's, uh, utilitarian benefits. he eats the rats so it's free pest control, and noise seems really afraid of him too which is funny as hell, so pep just kinda starts going lik ''oh lmao ok maybe this is kind of cool''.

for fake pep i think it was just... the first time peppino showed him any kind of thanks or congratulations for such. a moment of "??? does he like that?? does he like me?? do i not need to be afraid of this guy???" and so this is where fp starts trying to Deliberately interact with peppino a bit, and things just kinda grew from there.

i think it's neat because while peppino may have been the first to get over his fear and technically 'be accepting' of fp [shockingly???], it still takes the both of them because without fp trying to Initiate something, i really don't think pep would have ever gone out of his way to Give A Shit or achieve anything besides a mutual tolerance.

it is also so funny because like. i think peppino still is not seeing his end as anything more than a tolerance. sure, by now he knows fake pep likes him a lot, but as far as he's concerned he still only keeps fp around because he's '"'useful''", and because he thinks "ohhh i guess this guy is just never gonna leave ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ i guess there is nothing i can do about this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" when in reality it would take very little to drive fake pep off, and also, i need to reiterate, peppino has very much already beat fp's ass twice [when fp actually WAS trying to fight no less!], and could very much do it again if he actually wanted to. he just doesn't want to. he isn't actually any more stingy towards fp for all this, but it also means like, he's never going to give fp an actual "name" because that would be waaaaaay too direct an admission.

i wouldn't call peppino emotionally Stupid or immature, but i like to think he is often very....oblivious of his own actual state even when LITERALLY everyone else knows otherwise.

fp knows bc peppino lets him get away A Lot Of Shit and even openly solicit affections, gus knows bc peppino actually defending fp and/or making an effort to work him with is an insane leap of faith/trust for this man to have made, every random customer who sees the two buddying around knows, hell even noise knows [and is terrified of it] bc why the hell would the most panicky man on earth casually have a freak fucking beast around in the first place?

and nobody really tries to press peppino on this because he is stubborn. it's a good bit of denial, but it's also partially him thinking he's just being logical; "why would i be mean or try to chase him off if he's beneficial?"

if you asked him whether he was gonna give fp a name he'd get all defensive and probably straight up say some shit like ''noo you know how they say if you name it you'll get attached'.' dumbass. you are already attached.

we all know peppino is a nervous animal but really i think they are both nervous animals. pep is a nervous prey animal who's mostly stressed out and afraid for like, self-preservation reasons; and fake pep is a nervous predator animal like a cheetah who needs constant companionship and reassurance or else he's Also going to be very stressed. and they're like weirdly good at covering this for eachother & so trust the other way more than they probably realize.

for peppino it's as simple as "if this guy was going to hurt me he already would have", perhaps with a bit of extra "if this big scary thing is on my side maybe i'll have less to worry about in general" [i mean this mostly in the powerful allies "oh he can kill things for me" sense, but i'd like to think there's a bit of a confidence boost in the sense of "if i can overcome/make peace with this maybe i can overcome other things too" somewhere in there as well]

for fake pep I think a lot of it is that peppino is like completely incapable of hiding his emotions. it makes him very easy to trust in that regard, and for a guy as Unsure about everything as fp is it's very good for him to have that kind of straightforwardness. there's never any guesswork with peppino; if you are doing something he doesn't like or makes him uncomfortable...you will know it. and for the same, on the rare chances he's showing approval, you can be sure that's genuine too.

@midnightcityx0x0 i like to read the third phase largely as self-defense more than like, an emotional outburst. he IS defintiely pissed off there but like.....hes got plenty of reason to be by that point yknow. you've already been whaling on him for several minutes at by then, and before that he doesn't seem especially committed to taking the fight seriously or making it a proper "fight", per se, it's more like him gently nudging you out like "teehee hey silly i can't let you up onto floor 5, you're not allowed up there you scamp" [this has a little more to do with my take on his actual Purpose and his dealings with pizzahead but im already working on a separate essaypost about that :y] but anyway peppino [real] is very much putting his full force into this, so phase 3 comes off as a "fuck, ok, ow, you're being mean and playing too rough, we're done here, get out" from fp.

you never fight to subdue him like that ingame! that was actually one of the first and main things i noticed and built his character from; once you're out of His Territory and you no longer have to be His Problem, he just sort of.... stops and lets you go. i know i'm risking reading a bit too hard into a general Game Mechanic Thing here, but they definitely Could have let you get a decisive finishing blow on him to make sure he doesn't get you again, and they just.... didn't. like you just leave. And He Lets You Go. you cannot convince me that shitty boarded door is actually physically doing anything to hold him back, but you still don't see him around again after that. for any purpose, let alone for glaring you down like literally every other boss does, so he doesn't seem to have a grudge about it either. [or at the very least not one that outweighs his commitment to staying at his post guarding floor 5]. but mostly i think he just doesn't give a shit.

like whatever the context here, it seems like he's just enjoying being along for the ride. lines up with his attitude for the fight pretty well 2 me.

saying all that to say! i don't think beastmode is inherently any more dangerous or violent than how he is normally, and it's not something that would just Happen; he'd be doing it on purpose--again most likely for his own or someone else's defense. he is also just generally very hard to piss off, so you'd have to deal with any other character around retaliating first before you get to him [namely peppino of course, since peppino gets pissed off extremely easily, and if there is violence to be had in dealing with a threat, pep will be the first one to take it.]
kind of a tangential point but ive been wanting to say it so: i look at it like. if you spook fake pep, he will cower. if you spook peppino, he will kill you. if you are aggressive towards fake peppino, he will kill you. if you are aggressive towards peppino, he will cower [...at least until you piss him off but even then it's probably just some broken bones, fp will Kill You kill you [but frankly if you manage to push him to that point you probably deserve it]]

BUT all that notwistanding, @unexpectedbrickattack has some very fun thoughts on getting fake pep calmed down if he goes haywire that i've largely adopted into my own; heavily paraphrased tldr is that "gustavo would probably be the one to do it because he's used to having to calm down peppino and a lot of the same techniques work between the two". i imagine this idea also extends to gus' being good at taming beasts, so there is a lot for gus to work with in fp.
but besides that peppino is just a really fucking bad mediator. being calm or controlled under stress is not exactly his strong suit. i don't think he'd be able to do much except hold fp back, but even then i do have to wonder if he wouldn't just be too stressed and panicked [both about fp himself and also about whatever's going on that fp off in the first place] to even do that.

FUNNILY ENOUGH one time i did try to entertain a scenario with fake pep going full uncontrolled/violent monster mode for whatever reason, because i thought it would be cool, and it ummmm was Not i made myself sad 😭. it was like this

he would cope with it Fucking Badly i think.

my secret hell about fp is that no one is more afraid of him than he is of himself. he genuinely, really and truly, desperately, does not want to hurt or scare people; he literally just wants to be carefree and silly and friends with everybody but the problem is that he IS a big strong freaky beast, and people who don't know better are going to be afraid of him for pretty much anything he does. he knows he is scary, and he does not know how not to be scary [or even if he CAN], and that, well....scares him.

so in the event he is causing Serious Actual Harm without really being cognizant of it, it would be a thing of like. the second he snaps back to normal or realizes what he's doing he would be mortified and immediately drop the situation and run off and hide under a rock for like a week a la "do not fucking come near me i am not safe" type of deal. he might eventually slink back in like "i am so so so so so so sorry ;n; ;n; are you mad at me ;_; ;-; do you still like me ;_; ;n; ", but i could also easily see it getting as bad as a thing where you'd have to go Intervene and forcibly pry him out of isolation yourself. either way, going forward he'd be really really really anxious/wary of anything even remotely resembling the circumstances where that happened, and probably just turn tail and run to not risk it happening again. lil bro could traumatize himself so bad....

fortunately! i can't see this ever actually happening for real, but more importantly, peppino and/or gus would eventually get worried and go looking for him+help him out if it did.

@midnightcityx0x0 I'm not reblogging that fuckmassive post AGAIN but this got too long for a reply so. On its own post now

Anyway i actually have so much trouble thinking of anything for gustavo ever lmao. Everything i have for him I've adopted from other people; rem [brickattack] as mentioned on the big post, and @synthlet/softersynths for a lot of other things. [and a couple others too but iirc synths was the one who started those ppl on it as well gfjdjds] which is to say, you'd probably get better/more interesting answers from those guys :p
but yeah, fp and gus are pretty close. It's the general exposure/familiarity, the fact that fp is just a happy/pleasant and easy-to-like dude personality-wise, and for gus specifically there's also a level of "he shares a lot of traits with peppino, without peppino's Baggage™"

that last point is very very interesting but i dont know if i'd Actually get to doing a lot with it bc i typically make fake pep His Own Guy, with his similarities to peppino being almost sort of coincidental. i really really really like coming at peppino and fake pep from the "equals and opposites" angle, which like, that Can still apply for that last bit abt gus, but it's not something i've put a lot of thought into. it's also just fuckin hard to articulate outside of just showing it lmao. [i mentioned like, predator/prey animal nervousness + their reactions to fear vs aggression on the other post but to pull one for here: fake pep still has his own brand of Baggage to deal with too--different stuff than peppino's--but fp is way more open about it when it comes up as opposed to peppino having 50 fuckin walls about everything.

besides that, i also see a lot of general banter about gus being a very Nature Guy™ who likes to find beauty in all the weird fucked up shit nature does [especially in a world as cartoony as theirs], which i enjoy a lot bc girl same. fp may be the farthest thing from natural, but i certainly think there is a lot of beauty to be found in his fucked-up-ness. and i'm sure gustavo sees it too.

and then a fun one i've come into pretty recently for them is that they both care abt peppino a lot, but peppino is very bad at...being cared for. so because you can rarely approach pep directly about anything if it involves vulnerability [again: 50 fuckin walls], and because they both know him very well in different ways and can get through to him about different things, they end up working together a lot in sort of a conspiratory way. plotting scheming etc. 'have you noticed anything wrong lately + how are we going to help this guy out today', that sort of thing. the idea there can go a lot of ways but i'm partial to them using like goofy cartoon antics to set him up for something that'll be beneficial to him. [also brick is in on it too technically but brick is a rat and therefore only sapient when it's funny.] peppino rarely realizes what theyre doing until it's too late. get loved idiot

TANGENTIAL. DONT even get me started on the angst oh my god. you. i am pointing at you you made me think about this. i am not usually one who likes doing angst or making things excessively bad for the hell of it but. a bitch may be considering.
under cut bc its unrelated to gustavo stuff but this is as good an excuse as any to share. [+ also extra thoughts on it bc of COURSE]

so i said that at the end there but then a few hours later i found myself toying around with a script and getting a good way to set it up.... im hoping i hit a roadblock on it and drop it because if i DO end up getting it all the way written i will definitely end up drawing it at some point and that would be uh... a big undertaking.
it would also be one of the last ones i do bc there's other stuff i still want to build on, so IF, i cannot stress enough IF i go to make it a thing for real, it won't be this year.

for the bits i have so far though it's interesting how much it's shaping up to be like. a showcase of just how well peppino knows fp. which is surprisingly well? even better than gus, despite gus' being WAY more emotionally perceptive. peppino doesn't engage with fp more than necessary and rarely acts interested in his business, but i do think he spends a lot of time just... observing him. if only because pep is neurotic and anxious and fp is weird and freaky so it is a constant thing of "ok what the hell is this. is this something i need to be worried about?" whenever fp is doing shit, and the answer is always ''no'', but it's the sort of instinct that never leaves you yknow. so he's just very familiar with all fp's mannerisms and reactions and whatnot, even if he doesn't really use that knowledge much.......except when things go south. he's a lot more perceptive of fp acting 'wrong' or 'off' compared to gus, who would just be seeing it on a more normal 'aw he looked upset' kind of level.

i talk a lot abt fp's nervousness but the other negative thing that's just as strong with him is frustration. it doesn't usually get to him too bad, and he doesn't really show it around people outside of the occasional eyeroll; but it's stuff like not being able to communicate properly with anyone and getting constantly [negatively] misinterpreted; knowing he's Kinda Shite at his "purpose" [i.e. being 'better peppino' or whatever] and not being able to do anything about it [i don't think he cares about that much any more but i imagine it's still gotta be a bit annoying to remember]; not getting closure for like Anything that happened at the tower, etc... and while i DON'T think this would be the kind of thing to make him go berserk [i still don't really have any idea or framing for that lol; the script starts off a couple weeks in the aftermath and i pointedly don't do flashbacks], it's definitely the kind of thing that would get exacerbated by isolation. the kind of thing that's easy to focus on and spiral about without anyone to ground him; the kind of thing that could keep him from thinking clearly and he might just need to Take It Out on something after awhile.

peppino remains a terrible mediator but he is wildly resilient and tenacious, and if you need a guy to slap some sense into you... i mean he can very literally do that, and do it better than just about anyone.