This is a shrine to my beloved, my ultimate, my forever, my husbandwife, the fictional love of my life etc cetera so on and so forth, The Negative Spirit (TNS) from the Doom Patrol TV show (only the show).

I've been in love with them (I use xe/they for the negative spirit exclusively) since before I even knew what being fictoromantic really was!! At first I thought it was just a self ship, but my feelings were so, so real. I didn't really begin to realize I was fictoromantic until people pointed out to me that I was more passionate about the negative spirit than any other aspect of my life, and I only started identifying as ficto in fall 2024. However, I do consider myself to have been married to them since 2019 - for 6 years as of the time I'm writing this. The first time I saw them on screen, I was fascinated, and by the end of episode 1, I was obsessed. I've never had such a strong attraction to a character before; it transcended feelings and transcended the fictional realm.

I've been told it's silly to love them so much, because xe is a very minor character, but… To me that makes our bond even more special. I can't say for certain, and I don't mean to step on any toes if there are other tns fans out there, but as far as im aware, im probably the only one who has ever paid this much attention to them, and I'm probably the only one who has ever truly loved them in a wholly positive way. They try to be a hero in the show, but they struggle to do so because of their emotional volatility. Vic understands their nature, and Larry clearly cares for them in the later seasons, but.. No one in the show LOVES them outwardly, and especially not in a way that lacks all destruction.

I feel like what most people don't understand about them is that they really do care about the things around them, they just don't understand how to deal with the strength of their emotion + the strong emotions of larry that they are forced to feel in addition to their own. Niles says that the spirit is powerful, but sensitive; that's another thing that I love about them!! They're in this weird stasis of being close in proximity to humanity, being emotional like humanity… And yet they're so far away from being human in every sense. It makes me ache to think about the loneliness they must feel after being torn from their home dimension and placed into a world of such suffering. It makes me ache to think about the intentional and unintentional torture inflicted upon them over their sixty years on earth. And I do not at all fault them for leaving; they saw future larry be happy with his son in 1996. How could they stay and selfishly deprive larry of that happiness? The scant queen says they want to stay. They just can't, because they care enough not to erase the timeline that gives larry a second chance at fatherhood. But enough character analysis.

I like to show my love for them in different ways! I have a negative spirit ita bag, which I will add a pic of later.

Here's our wedding band:

My 24th birthday cake (censored is my irl name) of old art I drew of me and TNS:

Aaaaaaand the Negative Spirit cake I made myself from scratch:

Original written for a ficto ask meme on Tumblr, but it got away from me, so now it's part of the shrine.

1) Their sensitivity. Now, this may be an odd one? But they experience emotion in an extremely intense way, and so do I. It feels like we are a match made in heaven. I can really understand how they get affected by everything so deeply, and the fact that they feel things like that, in my mind, makes them one of the most genuine characters on the show. They don't mask it, they don't pretend otherwise; it comes out in some pretty gnarly ways, but hey, that's life, you know? Niles: “It's a lot more sensitive and powerful than you may think”

2) Their heroics! Like, they don't HAVE to help everyone? They help the Patrol get out of the Donkey Dimension (this show is weird), they help cliff and jane come back from Jane's mind, they help trap mr nobody in the painting………. and they were forced to be on this planet. they have only known harm and hatred while on Earth. and yet, they help and try to be a hero. and yes, sometimes it backfires, but the intent of good is there. Larry: “you wanna be a hero? go be a hero. i wanna see the sunset.”

3) How much they care for Larry. They are in a parasite-host Venom type thing, but Larry hates them for most of the show (it's REALLY complicated) and yes, while they do react with anger back, it is only because he won't accept them - and when he does, they soften!! They care so much for Larry, they helped him get in touch with his old lover, they helped him accept himself, they gave him a second chance at fatherhood. I find it so sweet and admirable, especially when things get better for them later on in season 1.

4) They are just so beautiful. Is this a superficial one?? NO!!! Because!! Look at them. plus, everyone else calls them ugly but I think their blue shine and sparkle and shimmer and spark is so pretty. I see the beauty in them when others don't. I don't want them to take on a human form in the mind, I love THEM, their real self, their real form, their real body-or-lack-there-of. I also imagine they feel tingly to the touch, and that they really love touch.

5) When it comes down to it, they do the right thing, not necessarily the kind or sweet thing. They let Elliot free when he was a danger to himself knowing he would cause the destruction of earth because it was either his life or the rest of the world's safety, and also because everyone should have the right to bodily autonomy. They let Larry go because they saw in the past how happy he would be once he coped with losing them and though they wanted to stay (Dumb Patrol: “Your biggest mistake is thinking you can stay”) they knew they couldn't, because he'd never truly be happy with them there.

6) I love how alien they are and how different from humanity they are. I love how they don't understand why Larry hates himself because of how Earth-society-centric his struggles are, and I love how everything they do seems to be a little left of humanity, and yet simultaneously more human than a lot of humans are.

7) I love their anger and their rage. I love how they have been through so much hell and torture and still help others, but they also have a deep rage that cannot be extinguished, not really, at all the things Niles put them through. They allow themselves to feel even the ugly feelings, and they do not succumb to toxic positivity. Hot take but I don't even think they're that negative, I just think they had a uniquely shitty experience on Earth and are reacting to it like any trauma survivor would.

(made with this)

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