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gkt-tummyaches · 3 months

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what are your thoughts on the siblings' relationships between each other?

i think i've already talked about some of this in other posts but idk how detailed i went with them, so sorry if some of this sounds a bit repetitive

beware. hc heavy, like usual ! "[hc]" in places that aren't canon-compliant whatsoever 🫡

i think out of all three trios - the powerpuff girls, the rowdyruff boys, and the powerpunk girls - the puffs have the best support system for each other. it doesn't necessarily make them the closest, i actually hc that a lot of their differences gradually make it harder to get along over the years until certain character arcs help overcome obstacles that had impeded on their relationships with each other. in this regard, i also think the puffs are the group to experience the most change overall.

blossom and bubbles probably started out a lot closer during childhood because buttercup was at the height of her tomboy era (an era that never really ends, ofc !!) and they didn't have a lot of overlap in the activities they enjoyed doing. it's not necessarily a negative thing, either; their love and support for each other was a lot less complicated during childhood, and even if buttercup split off more frequently to hang out with her dudebros, bubbles and blossom still had a place for her when she came back.

however, because of how i think each of them grow up individually, it's actually bubbles who kind of splinters off from the group in their teen/young-adult years.

this is mostly because of how blossom and buttercup find their sense of selves more 'easily'. blossom becomes a steady, unmoving pillar of ice; she's still loving and compassionate, but she's generally sharper and colder in demeanor even when she's being sincere. blossom is also somebody who tries to be pragmatic and keep her cool, which is why buttercup and her butted heads a lot as kids; as an adult, she becomes almost… inaccessible for more emotional needs.

buttercup doesn't need blossom for emotional support. she never really has. imo she learned in her tween years how to self-manage, or which friends to choose to confide in: friends who weren't blossom. for the two of them, it's an understanding - blossom will always be there for whatever issues her sisters may have, but sometimes just sharing ice cream is better than trying to get blossom to give you a pep talk.

likewise, buttercup has her own things she sucks at helping people with. fitting in, making friends, dealing with loneliness… are some pretty big ones. she's never had a problem with confidence or approaching people - at least, not in the same way bubbles has.

which leaves bubbles without the supports she really needs. bubbles, who has the emotional depth and vastness of the ocean, who has always just wanted harmony and to be liked. for people to get along. sure, there are instances where she can turn to her sisters for help or advice or support, or even the professor, but none of them really connect with her after a certain stage in her life.

somewhere during adolescence, blossom and buttercup land with both feet on the ground, but bubbles is left adrift. her sisters know who they are, or who they aspire to be. they don't reshape themselves to suit other people, and yet, people still come to them.

the thing with kind, loving kids like bubbles is that sometimes they don't have the thicker skin to withstand how mean other kids can get in middle school, high school, college, etc. this isn't to say bubbles can't stand up for herself or doesn't know when to put her foot down - out of all of her sisters, i think she's the most stubborn and passionate when it comes to things she cares about.

it's just to say that the heroic reputation definitely got to her, when it didn't get to her sisters. so bubbles drifts away from them because she doesn't really know who she is, what she wants to be; she keeps changing and acting different. one week she's the soft-spoken neighbor, the next day she's a bright and energetic cheerleader, maybe next month she'll be an aspiring artist. she's trying to be whatever shape fits the mold of expectation and - at the time-frame i indulge a lot of my content in - it's not working out for her.

eventually the puffs will regain the closeness they had as kids. i just think they're the most prone to fluctuation; two sisters aren't prepared to be emotionally vulnerable, and one of them is too much so, and they all need to work on themselves before they can really work on relationships with other people. and that's a constant growth, which imo ultimately benefits them in the long run. but for now they're a little complicated.

that's not to say the ruffs aren't complicated, because they definitely are as well.

it's more to do with how they grew up than anything by nature. in my hc brick was kind of prized as the son with the most potential, and that snowballed into a lot of deluded lines of thinking that inevitably led to him being a problem-starter with an ego-feeding martyr complex.

not to put all the blame on brick for the dysfunction of he and his brothers, but he's certainly responsible for most of it. boomer's not exactly any help, though; it's him and brick who butt heads most often as children, and as they get older, things continue to worsen.

this is mostly because of brick's refusal to acknowledge when he's at fault, as well as his unwillingness to change in general. boomer's patience has always been relatively thin (perhaps a surprise to some [hc]) so it would only be a matter of time before brick makes him snap. that's an event that results in boomer rarely being home the same time brick is unless to sleep, driving the wedge between them even deeper.

where's butch in all of this ? well, he's the rope-toy that his brothers keep tugging back and forth between them. he's on brick's side, obv - no, he's on boomer's side ! so on and so on.

in reality, butch is just trying to keep things… civil, at the very least. ik a lot of fandom tends to hc butch as more hot-headed and argumentative, but i like the idea of him being somebody who seems like he's just going with the flow, while in reality having a lot more to do with the current state of social situations than people realize: as such, i think he tries to mediate for his brothers when he can.

secretly, butch is on boomer's 'side' most of the time. not that it's really his fault. brick isn't exactly the easiest to get along with and while butch rarely retaliates, that's not to say brick hasn't hurt him or his feelings before. as i said in this post - there is a lot that brick has to apologize for.

problems with brick aside, there's also the factor that i don't think he and boomer would've ever achieved absolute closeness anyways solely because of their personalities. brick is kind of a helicopter-friend, and i think that kind of approach (especially the more pressuring form that brick takes on sometimes) would really get on boomer's nerves. boomer's incredibly independent and seeks out company when he feels like it.

whereas, butch has always embodied more of a mellow presence suitable for most company. he's a shoulder to lean on, always has an ear to listen to somebody's troubles - it's how he can keep his relationship intact with both his brothers without a huge falling out. he tends to keep a lot of his personal troubles to himself (i enjoy him being the real martyr parallel to brick's martyr complex lmao).

this doesn't rule out butch's ability to be angry, though. there's certainly a lot of witheld resentment and hurt he's held on to - maybe just because he doesn't know how to let it go - and one of these days he'll inevitably lose his composure. in my hc it'll result in him lashing out irreversibly and essentially kicking brick's ass back into gear, but that will be a while off.

for now, they love each other at a complicated distance.

saying the punks love each other at all is a questionable statement. brute split off from her sisters as soon as she relieved them of oppressor plutonium's hold and very rarely looks back. it's a wonder she remembers to send her sisters money and pay their rent [hc], to the point that brat suspects it's an automated payment that brute actually forgot about or isn't concerned enough about to follow up on.

brat and berserk are lumped together, sure, but they're hardly close. brat feels like she was burdened with responsibility when it comes to berserk. they're worlds apart from each other in terms of maturity and independence; brat loves berserk more than brute, but it's almost,, a friendship as opposed to the unconditional love that siblings are supposed to have for each other.

there's no support system to speak of for the punks. brat is an isolationist at heart and doesn't have the patience or social battery to keep up with berserk, who in turn has no solid role model to look up to and resorts to extremes to gain attention. they are diametrically opposed.

unlike for the puffs and ruffs, there's zero resolution for the punks among themselves. they reach out to other people, make friends that way, but are never - and were never - particularly close to each other as sisters.

sort of like an opposite to the puffs, how they seem to have a constant draw to each other in the end. the punks are flipped magnets constantly repelling away from each other.

the taste in friends they have is a lot different, too. berserk seeks out people who remind her of brat (ie; her friendship with boomer, her crush on blossom - both two people are aloof and hard to get close to, and whose attention is hard-earned but worth it once you get it).

brat in general is a bit of a social chameleon, but ultimately goes for soft-natured, kind-hearted people - people who are very different from than her sisters (ie; billy and kristen, two normies who are entirely unrelated to the turbulence of brat's day-to-day life.)

and then there's brute, who seeks out no one. (with rare exceptions.)

TL;DR: from 'best relations' to 'worst', it goes puffs, ruffs, and punks. each of them complicated in their own way, and the concept of unconditional love getting more unfamiliar in the same order.

for my own sake there's also a trend across the groups where 1 person is distinctly apart from the rest in some way: bubbles mentally, brick emotionally, and brute physically.

i just have a thing for patterns. there are even more but it'd end up being confusing to talk about - and it's kind of irrelevant, i just felt like pointing out the one mentioned above.

// 😅 sorry for the delay in replying to this one, i've been a bit busy. i'm hoping this all makes sense without going to deep into my hc backstories / series of events throughout, because i don't have any idea how i'd actually get into it, so this will have to do for now. thank u for the ask !! 💚 i also go into my hcs for the ppnkg's relationships with a bit more [hc] context here if you're interested ! i also did not proofread this + i wrote it on my phone, pls forgive any super noticeable errors </3