0:/MISC/RETROSPRING ARCHIVE/INFINITY AU

Since Retrospring is ending service in 2025, I've created this archive of every question I've answered.

Questions have been separated into three categories. The questions are listed in chronological order (newest -> oldest) within each category.

※ The questions on this page are related to my modern-fantasy Thistle AU which I call ∞ / infinity.

INFINITY AU

Q:︎ What does Thistle usually eat in Infinity au?

A: cw: disordered eating

not enough and nothing exciting. he subsists off caffeine and granola bars and soylent and a short list of food items that are 1)easy 2)filling 3)bland. he doesn’t feel hunger correctly and eating anything too exciting in flavor or richness upsets his stomach because of his constant anxiety and stress levels, so he’s become nervous about branching out from his safe food list. it’s gotten worse because he’s been eating alone for a few years so any mealtime habit he had formed is gone.

falin’s started bringing some of thistle’s safe foods with her though and she leaves them out for thistle or just puts them in his hand so he’ll eat it because its there. ganbatte falin share the berries (ritz crackers)

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Q:︎ i saw there was two red dragons— who was the previous one?

A: they are a humanized version of the red dragon that eats falin LOL

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Q:︎ I'm slightly confused, in your infinity au is the winged lion literally called "the lion" or does it have a name?

A: yuppp it’s just “the lion” ! i’m considering giving it a name but haven’t thought much about it yet. similarly, the red dragon is only called that too or just “red” or “dragon”. the dragon is transgender though so you know how it is with names (guy who named itself 11 speaking)

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Q:︎ IDK if you have talked about this before, but how did Freinag die in the modern au? Assassination or old age (or whatever!)? Since him having such an abrupt and tragic death seemed to have such an impact on Delgal and Thistle (even though he does seem pretty old when he dies in the manga, lol)

A: it was assassination 😱 with a whole dragged out homicide case where the person who ordered the crime was never found and the guy who committed it took the fall. needless to say the murder and the (probably public) trial messed up the family and gave them some problemz

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Q:︎ this is really random, but I'm curious— how old is everyone in your ∞ au?

A: some of these are vague bc i’d want to make a detailed timeline before committing to a number!

- thistle is late 70s-80 (so like ~16)
- falin is her canon age of 23 (other characters like laios marcille etc are also their canon ages)
- yaad is 14 or 15 (im thinking like, a sophomore in high school)
- the winged lion looks like it is in its 40s (no one knows its age in years lived or what race it even is. i intend to refine its design but i humanized it from a lion -> one of the ancient people in DM)
- delgal is in his early 60s and eodio is late 30s

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Q:︎ how popular would you say thistles band is in your infinity au?

A: it’s known among people who frequent the venues they play at, so it’s “popular” in their local scene. infinity au is set in the 2000s before the big social media boom so they only have like a myspace page lol but to put it in perspective: if instagram or twitter existed then his band would only have like 1k followers.

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Q:︎ I know you've posted about the sound of Thistle's music in infinity au, but are there any specific singers you think would sound similar to him or Yaad vocally?

A: THIS WAS FUN... thistle was tricky because his voice acting in jp&eng left an impression on me so i needed the singer to have the same vibe. he sounds serious but young, and it feels like he purposefully uses a lower vocal register than his relaxed, natural voice, probably to sound intimidating / older than he is. it is a distinctly feminine voice though, and he has a LOT of emotional range.

https://danielalalita.bandcamp.com/track/ten-a-raz-n-1
https://uboa.bandcamp.com/track/inside-outside

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yaad's voice is naturally soft compared to the affected softness thistle can put on, and his voice sounds higher to my ear. i think he'd also have a more low-key singing style. church choirs would be fighting each other to have yaad join them.

https://virginbabylonrecords.bandcamp.com/track/etude-for-twelve-fingers
https://peturben.bandcamp.com/track/svarthamar

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Q:︎ What sort of "payment" is the modern au Lion expecting exactly..?

A: i haven't decided yet! i'm still working out a lot of details as i go. themes i want to keep intact from canon are violation + consumption + discarding thistle for a 'better opportunity'. and for my own ideas, i want the payment to be the finale of the play that the lion has replaced thistle's reality with

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Q:︎ in one of your last asks you mentioned the lion trying to "groom Thistle into obedience" i agree with this ofc, but how does it fit into what the lions role is in your modern au?

A: i think backstory is needed here so i’ll begin with how they met: remember months ago when i said thistle is a historical performance researcher? it’s relevant again! thistle sporadically holds lectures at the conservatory he attends and the lion (not a student, just someone who randomly popped in to listen) listens to one of these lectures and approaches him after. the lion compliments thistle and praises his knowledge and that’s all well and good but the most impactful thing the lion does is it engages with thistle about his research interests on the same academic level. thistle’s research is niche and he’s been isolated from his peers at the conservatory due to this factor, his age, and his personality. he’s barely on speaking terms with his family. he has no other friends. he’ll deny it if you ask, but he has been starving for conversation and human connection. they exchange contact info and begin talking more and at first the topics are only academic until they start becoming personal. thistle mentions things about his personal life, his fears, his dreams. the lion lends its ear, says it understands. the lion introduces thistle to the 1000 year old play “infinity” during one of their later talks - it’s the lion’s obsession and it becomes thistle’s too. the lion in particular is fixated on recreating scenes and music from the play in real life and it starts suggesting ways thistle can make this happen while framing it all as thistle’s idea and beneficial to thistle. this is when thistle starts thinking about creating a band inspired by the play.

the lion’s goals involve ingratiating itself with thistle, lovebombing him and making itself the primary person thistle talks to aka classic isolation tactic “i’m the only one who understands you and can give you what you want”, and then introducing the play. it all comes back to the play. the lion wants to recreate it, literally, and it targets thistle as its partner and instrument in realizing this desire. it wants thistle to center the play in his reality too. the way the lion treats thistle is basically an abusive relationship where it is trying to groom thistle into the role it wants him to inhabit and the longer it goes on the more paranoid and uncomfortable thistle gets but he doesn’t cut things off because he thinks he needs all the services the lion provides (for free)! but it’s not for free. the lion will expect payment in the end.

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Q:︎ hi do you have a masterpost or anything like that to help finding your band au stuff? i wanna read all the bits but i dont know where to find them

A: i’m organizing it all on tumblr! i made a masterpost here which contains links to all the retrospring questions ive answered about this au , and i’m slowly uploading my drawings to the ∞ tag on my blog. my 1000 random tweets on the subject arent archived anywhere though

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Q:︎ How much have the Winged Lion and Falin seen/interacted with eachother in infinity au?

A: A LOT! more than falin wants. the winged lion is the band's drummer as well as its manager, so she sees the lion during every practice, every concert, and also at random times outside of that hanging around thistle. it wasn't an instant dislike - the lion is very charming, friendly, and kind - but she really, really does not like the lion's relationship with thistle. the only thing reassuring her is that thistle himself doesn't trust the lion.

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Q:︎ in your recent answer about Thistle and Falin in the band au, you mentioned Thistle 'repressing something terrible', and i'm really curious what that is (eyes emoji)
this may not be what you mean or your intention at all, so apologies if not (and feel free to just ignore this if the subject matter is too heavy) but between the obvious implications of human trafficking in how Thistle was available to be found by the advisors and brought to Freinag, his status as an exotic conversation piece/something of a pet at court, and the way he's simultaneously expected to shoulder adult responsibilities and behave like an adult without being given the respect of an adult, it's very easy to read sexual abuse into his backstory, whether at Freinag's hands or someone else's before he came to court. i think that sort of trauma fits really well with a lot of his behaviors as well, but i haven't seen a lot of people discussing that possibility, so i was curious if that's what you were thinking here or not!

A: The best answer I have here is that while that wasn’t my exact intention, it’s not not my intention. Like you said, it’s easy to read csa into his past, I’d had the same thought when lining up how he was so conveniently Procured and then treated in his early childhood, but I don’t want to incorporate sexual abuse in this au because I’m not able to address it w/the care I want. Maybe I’ll change my mind at some point, but that’s where I’m at right now.

“Repressing something terrible” — when I wrote that, I was thinking about Thistle’s relationship with the rest of his family, how he’s trying to justify how he is treating them to himself and the abandonment and emotional neglect and parentification he experienced growing up which explains his behavior. I mentioned offhand that when I began adapting canon to this modern setting with no fantasy excuses, things started looking really grim. What we call allegories to xyz in canon became Just xyz. The scope of violence is smaller but more realistic.

Thistle’s control over his family in the present day is emotionally and financially abusive. He feels like he has no other choice except to tighten his grip because people leaving him is not an option he can deal with. This reaction is informed by his childhood: he has a fear of being abandoned or seen as out-of-place, he was brought into the household on a whim and Freinag treated him like a doll, a novelty, and no one around him understood how old he really was so he was always playing catch up with the adults or having to act younger than he felt. Delgal becomes the most important person in his entire life, the locus of Thistle’s self-identity, and the person who relies on Thistle for his emotional needs (they're codependent, your honor). All this messed him up! The boiling point is Eodio who never trusted Thistle and confronted him about his influence over the company and Delgal. During that argument, Thistle lashed out in anger and seriously hurt Eodio—and permanently fractured his relationship with Delgal. That’s when he really began scrambling to keep everything in his control and also when Delgal’s health began declining. Thistle in the present day is very much repressing the fact that Delgal will die! He’ll die, and then who will Thistle be? What will Thistle do?

I’d also like to address the lion in the room. I read the Winged Lion as an allegory for an abusive partner — it molds the person it chooses into someone it can control and then devours them. It showers them with gifts and then takes it all away in a sudden act of violence. In canon, this is because it is a demon with an insatiable appetite for a very rare meal who thinks that meal is an equivalent exchange for the wishes it granted. In a mundane setting…the writing is on the wall. It’s a manipulative person who is trying to groom Thistle into obedience, giving him everything he wants and leaving that blank space of “what do you want in return” hanging over his head. It’s never behaved inappropriately towards Thistle, but he is wary of it happening.

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Q:︎ What bands do you think sound most like what your modern day au band sounds like?

A: if you know of any experimental noise and/or metal bands with female vocalists then that is around where i'm imagining it! i give up on naming a single band or a specific genre because thistle isn't staying within the same sound himself.

here's a playlist that i threw together just now. i put a lot of musicians i love because this au is, after all, self-indulgent.

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Q:︎ Im curious about what is Falin doing in your modern au,,, in a tweet you said that when Thistle talks about her sounds like he is talking about a dog made me giggle, This girl and the teenager she cares deeply about, she takes him out because he was lonely, gives him all her fries, thats her little guy..

A: She’s chilling! Falin sacrifices herself at the bar by staying behind to pay the tab as the rest of the party drunkenly loads into the uber she called. She pays but falls asleep at the bar. Thistle finds her there and wakes her up while calling her “dragon” and berates her for missing the show and leads her into the back room to pack up the band’s equipment. So, suddenly Falin is part of a band! And has to go to practice several times a week! Congrats?! Thistle is just lucky that Falin is a metalhead who already knows how to play bass guitar.

The circumstances for how this happened are more comical than canon, but since she replaced the Red Dragon as Thistle’s bassist she sees a lot of his life behind the scenes and becomes very concerned for this punk-ass kid who is repressing something terrible while being taken advantage of by his manager WHILE ALSO taking advantage of his own loved ones. Falin isn’t a mind-controlled chimera so she acts on her concern and tries to help Thistle (although he does not let himself be helped easily, or at all).

He’s not especially nice to her but he does feel responsible for her because she “belongs” to him as a member of the band. He absolutely eats all her fries. Oh Thistle…your relationships are so healthy and normal…

I haven’t decided what she does for a day job. Maybe a part-time student at the local college. She is dating Marcille who hates metal but bravely attends every concert that Falin asks her to.

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Q:︎ sorry entertainer (the cover by sasami) is such a thistle song imo...i can see him performing it in your modern au hehe

A: YESSSS ok i love sasami but i never listened to the album this one is on more than like twice LOL

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Q:︎ What do you think Thistle would wear in modern au?

A: these thoughts are based in the context of my own modern au. messy incoherent formatting bc i’m thinking thru it as i type

i start by considering what he wears in canon:
jester outfits -> uniform, clearly signals thistle’s role, given to him by someone else. much more feminine and cute than any other golden kingdom character’s clothing. he is proud of this clothing but didn’t dress in this style after shit went sour in the dungeon, at that point he wore practical clothes- his hooded cape + very plain tunic + pants + boots.

with modern clothes i kept the same silhouette as his canon clothes, so a top layer that is long + long sleeves underneath + tights or skinny jeans. i dont think he is comfortable showing skin, and most of his tops have long sleeves or turtlenecks. later in the manga, after he’s told what happened to delgal, thistle changes from his plain clothes to one of his old jester outfits - it feels like he did it to comfort himself and return to smth familiar, so that’s where i got the idea for my thistle to wear delgal’s old baggy hand-me-down tshirt for similar reasons

my thistle was formally adopted into the melini family so there’s no like, jester clothes here lol. instead he’s given a wardrobe of expensive, high quality clothes that reflect his status as the child of a rich family. i think freinag bought him cuter and girlier clothes from day 1 because it suited thistle & thistle liked them more than other styles when those were offered. but it’s like, yeah he likes that style but i think he was kind of treated like a doll which is nottttt great. also i think thistle struggles balancing his preferred presentation while also wanting to be taken seriously by the old bastard tallmen around him. when he gains more control over the melini’s company, he retires a lot of his cuter dresses for more formal mature stuff

in modern settings i like to put him in lolita clothing because its feminine and cute and kind of a “costume” the way his jester clothes were - theyre not normal clothing and they signify he belongs to a subculture. he stands out when he dresses that way and i think he prefers being cute and only dresses more plainly/masc when he’s like losing it a little LOL. his “band” outfits are all haphazard and thrown on without any care or planning . he doesnt enjoy that type of style and he doesnt enjoy being in the band. even though its His band so he could leave if he wanted

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Q:︎ I really liked your interpretations of Delgal and Eodio wives so I was wondering how they are doing in your modern au,,, i was thinking abt asking this so much i just got courage

A: SRY FOR THE INCOMING DEPRESSING ANSWERS

parvaneh (delgal's wife) has already passed in this au. i wish i could keep her around but i need delgal completely isolated.

eodio's wife maryam divorced him due to the turmoil within the family & company and how it changed eodio. they married really young and their relationship just couldn't withstand pressure, and maryam became disgusted with the society that eodio lived in (she came from a normal family and the melini family is in control of a massive corpo that has political influence). yaad doesn't live with maryam (she doesn't have full custody and lives outside of his school's district), but he is allowed to visit her on weekends. thistle really does not like it when yaad stays the night there, but it is court mandated so his hands are tied. oh, also this doesn't mean that eodio has custody either - it was granted to delgal and THISTLE. and delgal ain't doing much these days so it's really just thistle.

i want to be clear that maryam wasn't able to fight for full legal custody of yaad because of thistle, and she didn't have the resources to drag the case out in court. it's awful and unfair! thistle is not a good person when it comes to how he uses the power he has to control and keep the people he thinks are 'his' around.

there's distance between yaad and maryam when he visits because she wasn't around to raise him after his toddler years, but there aren't like, hard feelings. yaad is too sympathetic to hold a grudge like that and maryam just worries endlessly about what kind of person yaad will grow up to be raised in that environment. internal sigh of relief every time they meet and he's still the kind child she remembers

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Q:︎ I really like modern au yaad's friends being the kids from the golden kingdom! Have you given them names? Their view on thistle is so funny... poor yaad being forced to listen to experimental noise by his geriatric ass uncle..

A: they're still nameless!! i'm so sorry!! i mentally refer to them as "cat face girl" and "guy who almost ran over our heroes with a horse cart". in this AU he almost ran over laios during a driving test.

yaad suffers so much...i think his taste in music isn't much friendlier to people outside a scene though. i have a really strong impression of him as being super into free/avant-garde jazz - it's the kind of stimulating music that would keep your mind intact if you're stuck forever in one place.

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Q:︎ omg thx for the modern au info.. the melinis running a business equivalent to quaker oats in this au is a bit funny if you ignore all the depressing lore about it! i personally would love to love to read a 1hr lore dump (i would read a 300 page book on this au..) so thistle lives on his own? you mentioned how he was under drinking age, but is he a young adult in this au since he never froze time? elves mature at 80 which is around 16 in human years, taking that into account i wonder what the drinking age for them is lol! so this thistle has been through a lot as well huh.. pulling him aside and showing him a really good k-rock album and changing his life forever

A: The juxtaposition just makes it funnier!

Yeah, he lives in his own apartment, bought and furnished with the family money. He’s a teenager in this AU! Around ~16/80. To explain my perspective: I view the ages of maturity in DM with the understanding of like, they are considered an adult at 16 in this medieval setting, but in our modern society adulthood would be at 18.

If I was going by USA legal drinking age, an elf having to wait until they were 21/105 would be kind of scary LOL. Let’s just say it is 18/90 like most of the world. I don’t want to think about this too hard though — none of it matters because as we all know, Thistle thinks drinking is stupid and people who drink are stupid. He's not going to try to order anything in the first place!

The city they live in for this AU has a majority tallman population which leads to some ignorance about elves, but there are also laws in the country that establishments have to abide by - so Thistle can get away with some things because he is 80 entire years old, like he can take over a company through nepotism power, force of personality, and decades of knowledge — but he can’t get away with other things, like the legal drinking age for elves being 90 (as I’ve decided in this moment…) I hope that makes sense! Maybe it is troublesome for bouncers to keep track of like 5 different drinking ages, but it is the world they live in.

Please introduce him to some good k-rock, he needs to stop listening to only experimental noise on loop after spending hours practicing scales to perfection on a 500 yr old lute...

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Q:︎ i love your modern au thistle so bad. what's delgal doing, is he alive in the modern au? what about eodio? where do thistle and yaad live? how did thistle meet the others? (excluding yaad because that answer is obvious) sorry i just love this au so much, it speaks to my soul. you don't have to answer any of these questions here, in-fact you probably will sometime in the future! i love your comics so bad, every time you post art i'm like a cat rushing over because i heard the automatic feeder turning on to give me cat food.

A: TYSMMMMM this made me very happy to receive :’) I can answer these, it’s mostly background info that I’ve already thought too much about. I could have written so much more but I need to cut it off here or I’d be typing for another hour LOL

Delgal is alive! But he is not doing well. His condition is the source of 90% of Thistle’s daily stress. Eodio is also alive, but estranged from the family. Let me rewind a bit…

The Melini family run a massive corporation - I’m taking inspiration from Succession’s WayStar RoyCo which felt like a modern version of a historical hereditary monarchy to me. Except the Melini are not totally reprehensible human beings the same way that the Roys are, and it is also not a media empire, I think it’d be like a major food manufacturing company. Golden Kingdom Cereals…or whatever the fuck LMAO

The circumstances of Thistle joining the “kingdom” are similar to canon, but here Delgal’s father was specifically like “I want to adopt an elf child!” so that is what happened. Freinag is the type of carefree and careless rich person who would pursue an interracial adoption on a whim. Differences from canon are that Thistle is an official member of the family in the line of succession, he is in people’s wills and family trees and Freinag’s name is on his amended birth certificate. He has a sense of security in his position here that I doubt he ever had in canon.

Thistle and Yaad don’t live together - this is because Thistle moved out after a really bad fight with Eodio over company politics. I wanted to keep the fight because it feels like an important turning point in Thistle’s dynamic with the rest of the family…That fight and Delgal’s passivity afterward led to Eodio distancing himself from the family, Eodio and his wife’s divorce, and Yaad’s abandonment to a regiment of nannies (plus Thistle — not a nurturing figure at all, but at least he is there..?) They don’t have family dinner together anymore.

Thistle stops by the house often, near daily, to check on Delgal and Yaad. Delgal is not really present - he was already struggling before Thistle and Eodio’s fight, but afterward he became incredibly depressed and turned-inwards. Thistle supervises Delgal’s care by micromanaging the people hired to look after him, Thistle manages a lot of the daily operations of the company that Delgal used to take care of, Thistle does his own music research and studies at the conservatory…his head is cracking open a little from juggling it all! The band is like, his one escape! I made a note on a drawing that Thistle was wearing Delgal’s old T-shirt — he wears it a lot during his off-hours, it has become a comfort object to him and he is very attached. There’s no magic or dungeons in this setting (but the fantasy races still exist + their lifespans), so Thistle’s being forced to confront his loved one’s mortality in a very immediate way that canon Thistle was able to postpone.

I think all of this might be a little depressing. But it is what it is…