#I've said before that I don't really intend to go into any sort of romantic subplots with this story and that's still the case.
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Empty Names - 18 - Mom Energy
Author's Note: Of the main cast Eris is the only one with a real social life. Let's take a look at that. Honestly though, this one kind of got away from me and is almost like three different chapters smashed together. "Eris has a social life," followed by "Eris recounts the most recent monster-of-the-week mission," and then wrapping up with "Eris has an existential crisis due to healing magic going weird."
Had some fun with one though, bringing in Sarah from the side story "There Are No Dogs At The Dog Park" and then adapting A Dream About Waking And Sleeping into this episode's monster-of-the-week plot.
See the tags for more spoiler-y commentary.
Word Count: 15,071
Content Warnings: Memory loss, fears of being a bad friend, lewd jokes made in poor taste, brief mention of past aphobia, scars, blood, fantasy violence, child endangerment, implications of potential accidental personality alteration via magic. Not sure if the community label filter is really necessary on this post, but I figure better safe than sorry.
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“So then,” Eris says, sliding aside the remains of her quiche, “Road turns to me and tells me to throw him. Swear to God, his armor grew handles when he said it. But this is Road we’re talking about and adrenaline was running high so I yeet him across the crypt chamber at the flying vamp mage, no questions asked. Stake goes in the heart on impact, the two of them crash to the ground, portal closes, and everyone goes home happy.”
As blood-themed as the story she just finished was, for once Eris isn’t wearing red. The gradual consumption of her wardrobe by that portion of the spectrum had always been a matter of practicality rather than taste. Easier to hide the stains that don’t wash out that way. Eventually it got to the point where grabbing a random article of clothing from her closet was more likely to be sanguine than not, and it just wasn’t worth the effort to consciously pick out something else for casual wear, even when she wasn’t expecting a mess.
But today’s the morning after a full moon, and for the past couple of years now that’s meant putting all that aside for a day. On this particular morning it’s white slacks and a teal button up shirt. Never mind the North American Lycanthrope Sanctuary Association volunteer staff t-shirt hidden underneath. At least it’s not the same sweaty one she wore all last night.
Sarah, one of the regulars at the Sanctuary, is seated across from her, human again until the next full moon and dressed in jeans and a green sleeveless blouse. Contrary to popular belief, lycanthropy itself rarely has any noticeable physical effect on those affected by it outside of the night of a full moon, only whatever autogenesis picks up on as having been internalized as part of their identity. If Sarah’s canines are more pronounced than average, it’s a subtle thing unlikely to be noticed unless one is looking for it, and if the modest muscle gains she’s made since first meeting Eris are easier to maintain than for most people, she’d still had to work enough to get them in the first place to be proud of the effort. The increased preference for meat over time had been a conscious choice to get more in touch with the newfound side of herself rather than a dietary compulsion.
Eris had been the one to give Sarah the tour of the NALSA facility when she showed up for her first full moon a few years back. They’d hit it off well enough that the next time they met they exchanged contact info to keep in touch online between moons. From there it quickly turned into a monthly event to look forward to. Sarah would spend the night running wild with the other werewolves while Eris would spend the night working with the rest of the sanctuary’s human staff to make sure everyone stayed safe until the sun came up, and then they’d both catch a couple hours of sleep, grab a caffeinated beverage, and then go get brunch in what was left of the next morning.
Sarah swallows the last strip of bacon from her plate as Eris finishes her story. “Well, that’s definitely some kind of coordination going on there,” Sarah says with a southern twang that’s recovering after years of being buried. “Sounds like being on a team’s been treating you well.”
“They’re good people,” Eris replies, leaning back in her chair. “Okay, Sullivan goes out of his way to be an ass, but he’s barely around and everyone else is cool. Road’s Road, you know Lacuna and I are tight, and Ashan’s growing on me more than I expected for a mage. Hope you don’t mind that I invited him out here next time. God knows that kid needs socialization.”
“I always wanted to meet a wizard.”
“I’ll tell him you said that. Maybe it’ll get him to actually accept the invitation. I would’ve brought him with me last night, but he’s currently deep into learning how to use the laptop I bought him a couple days ago and I wasn’t about to step in between him and Lacuna’s attempts to teach.”
“Ah, I was wondering what she was up to when you mentioned she wouldn’t be making today. But I gotta ask, why did you buy the wizard a laptop?”
“I was going to get him a phone, but it wound up being complicated to get him anything other than a prepaid burner, what with him being legally dead and all.”
“You left out the part about him being undead.” A look of realization dawns on Sarah’s face. “God, it is so weird that I can say that with a straight face these days.”
“Says the woman who was playing fetch with a tractor tire last night.”
Sarah’s face goes red at the memory that Eris knows is more clear than it would have been a year ago. “Look, you try having your brain rewired to compulsively chase prey and then try talking to me about resisting when a big, round, biteable thing rolls by.” Her tone is indignant, but she’s smiling as she says it. It’s nice to see she’s gotten comfortable enough with her situation to joke around about it. “And it’s not playing fetch. If I had hands when it was like that to throw it again myself I would. I’m not bringing it back to you, I’m telling you to serve me by making it chasable again.”
She got the hang of staying mostly lucid in a half-way form for minutes at a time three months ago. She could absolutely throw things herself if she wanted to and she and Eris both know it.
Eris laughs. “Are you sure it’s a wolf you’re turning into and not a cat? But in all seriousness, Ashan’s not undead, he just had some screwed up stuff happen to him as a kid that I think he’s just recently realized how bad it was. Not my place to say, so let’s just leave it at ‘wizard bullshit.’ I got him the laptop because I thought it might help him adjust to being back on Earth seeing as he’s been in a quasi-medieval fantasy world since he was literally a child. We’ve got a lot of downtime between jobs so I figured he could spend some of that browsing the digitized sum of human knowledge to catch up on what he’s missed out on. Browse some wikis, read some books that aren’t spellbooks, watch some movies, learn what memes are, maybe find a podcast he likes, that sort of thing.”
“You wanted to help him reintegrate into normal Earth culture so you got him on the Internet,” Sarah says incredulously, “instead of taking him out to see things and interact with people firsthand.”
Eris gives that a moment to sink in before blurting out “Damn, Lacuna’s rubbing off on me. Look, I’m working up to it. He’s taken this long just to open up to us and I’m still not sure if he even has any interests or hobbies that aren’t directly tied to being a wizard. I learned my lesson early on with Lacuna about throwing a shut-in into the deep end too soon, so I’m taking it slow this time. And besides, it’s giving him and Lacuna the chance to do the most talking they’ve done so far that wasn’t somehow work-related, so that’s some socializing right there that they’re both getting in.” Eris does a quick mental calculation. “I should probably give them a call later to check in.”
“Worried they’ll blow something up? You said Lacuna has a ‘mad science lab’ now” Sarah says with finger quotes. “A mad scientist and a wizard left together unsupervised like that, who knows what could happen.”
“I hadn’t been until you said that. Before I was just concerned about them getting so caught up in what they’re doing that they forget to eat again.”
“Not mutually exclusive,” Sarah starts to say when she sees Eris’s hand drift toward her phone. “Relax, I’m kidding. They’re mostly responsible adults, they’ll be fine. Jeez, it’s like you’re a mom who just adopted a second kid or something.”
“I am not,” Eris says, balking at the idea.
“Right, because fussing over how much they eat, trying to keep them out of trouble, and encouraging them to get out more and make friends isn’t totally the mom friend thing to do.”
“You’re reading too much into it.”
“Am I? I’m not criticizing, but you’ve literally admitted to buying a box of protein bars for the express purpose of handing them to Lacuna when she gets hungry. If that’s not mom energy I don’t know what is.”
“First off, until recently, I hadn’t had to do that for over a year, and secondly, if Lacuna’s any kind of pseudo family member to me, she’s more like a sister.” Like a younger sister despite being older, she refuses to concede aloud.
Sarah shrugs. “I’m just sayin’, one instance of picking up the first nerdy introvert who comes along and latches onto you then getting super protective of them is a quirk of circumstance, but twice is a pattern. Not a bad thing necessarily, so long as you don’t go overboard with it. Honestly, I find it endearing at times.”
Eris knows that Sarah’s found it annoying at other times though. But for now, she’s more preoccupied with thinking back to all the times she’s tried to approach and handle Ashan the same way she’s done previously with Lacuna. Should she have? Just because Lacuna responds well to it, that doesn't mean Ashan will or has been. Is Lacuna okay with their dynamic? She did go all that time without telling Eris about the risks she took with the data theft. Sure there was the NDA geass, but Lacuna hadn’t been under that yet when she ventured into the more dangerous part of Crosssherd seeking out a loan shark. Is the fact that Eris is more concerned about that than she wants to admit a sign that she’s been smothering her best friend?
She shakes off the thought and counters, “And what about you? I’ve hardly given you that same treatment.”
Sarah scoffs. “I had my shit together when we first met. I might have been new to the whole werewolves and magic bus stops thing, but I was hardly looking for someone to come sweep in and take care of me. Between you and me, I was the one who…” she hesitates, suddenly realizing that she’s strayed into waters supposedly under a bridge. “Well, you know.”
“No, I guess you weren’t,” Eris says, trying not to tense up.
Sarah had asked Eris out some time back, and Eris had turned her down. That sort of conversation is always uncomfortable and it had been made doubly so by Eris’s explanation that she expected her monster hunting hobby to kill her young and thought it would be selfish to get romantically involved with someone when it would just end with them being left painfully alone. It was bad enough already that she’d let Lacuna get as close to her as she had. Eris counted herself fortunate that she and Sarah had been able to salvage their friendship, but had been low-key dreading the topic might come back up again today. Between it being as close to an anniversary of that unfortunate conversation as you can get with lunar cycles and the fact that being on a team now theoretically upped her odds of survival (despite in practice having nearly gotten her killed twice already), if there were ever a time for Sarah to ask again it would be now.
The moment hangs.
Eris drags out finishing off the remains of her coffee.
Sarah pokes at a crumb of meat on her plate with a fork.
“Aaanyway,” Sarah starts. Eris snaps back to eye contact at the sound. “Like I said, it sounds like being on a team’s been treating you well, so maybe now you can share that load of worrying about everyone.” Sarah hesitates. “And maybe you can let someone worry about you for once.”
“Sarah, I -”
“I mean you’ve got friends who care about you too, and not just with having people to watch your back out there. As good as that is to have. For instance, I’ve been meaning to ask since we both got in yesterday: How’s your leg doing?”
“My leg?” Eris asks. The question blindsides her enough to displace worries about wherever else Sarah might have been hinting at.
“Yeah, it got torn up pretty bad last month. You were back on it in the morning of course - I’m still jealous of that regen you’ve got going on by the way - but later you sent me a photo saying you thought it might scar. You sounded weirdly excited by the prospect.”
That doesn’t sound right.
“Huh, must have slipped my mind after it healed up,” Eris says with feigned nonchalance. “No new scars here, I’m afraid to say. You know how it is with me.”
No new scars besides the burns from Logos that Lacuna healed away, at any rate. Of her hunts since their last meeting that she’d regaled Sarah with today and yesterday, the story of having half the front of her body and face burnt off was one that she’d conspicuously omitted. It takes a Hell of a lot to make Eris black out, but she’s choosing to count the jarring jump in memory from grabbing the miniature sun to waking up on an infirmary bed as a blessing.
“But that’s enough of me,” Eris says, “I’ve hardly heard a thing about how you’ve been doing.”
Sarah shrugs. “What can I say? Same old same old. But work gives me moon days off so I shouldn’t complain too much.”
Eris gives her a conspiratorial look. “But you’re going to.”
Sarah grins wide enough that Eris knows she’s trying to show off her fangs, such as they are. “I’m a werewolf now, but I’m still working customer service, only now the customers include witches and fairies. You bet your ass I’m going to.”
Eris flags a waiter down, orders another coffee and settles in to listen to Sarah recount a particularly weird encounter with a sphinx and some kind of spider lady. Sometimes she wonders which of them actually has the more dangerous job.
*******
That evening, after having said goodbye to Sarah for the month, changing back into her usual red tracksuit, and calling to check in on Lacuna and Ashan, Eris is sitting on a barstool at 121813.
“Twelve eighteen thirteen” is the generally agreed upon pronunciation of the bar’s name, although what the name means is less agreed upon. The three most popular theories are that it’s either a date (usually speculated as December of 1813), a scriptural reference (which scripture is a whole other debate), or a leftover address from before one of Crossherd’s major layout shifts. Lacuna had suggested it might be a tarot thing when Eris told her about it. The Hanged Man, the Moon, and Death. An ominous spread, according to Lacuna, but Eris figures it makes as much sense as anything else.
In any case, Fitzgerald Wilhelm von Harkenstein IV, the establishment’s clockwork owner, proprietor, and bartender always seemed to get too much of a kick out of the speculation to give a solid answer. Make what jokes you like about a bartender with no taste buds, but Fitzy had drink mixing down to an art. Then again, he claims to be at least as old as the city of Crossherd itself, so Eris figures he had plenty of time to practice if nothing else.
For over a century now, 121813 has served as the closest thing to a centralized organization for American monster hunters. Other parts of the world had holy orders, secret societies, and grand lodges stretching back generations, but in these parts everyone figured that a couple dozen thrill-seeking assholes who all frequent the same bar was good enough to get the job done. Most hunters usually work solo, but the bar is a good place to brag about kills, show off trophies, swap rumors on potential quarries, and put a band together if you get word on something really nasty.
It’s not peak hours yet and regulars are still trickling in, but there were already a few familiar faces there to greet her when she walked in twenty minutes ago.
Golden-eyed Gretchen who had taught Eris German and how to wield a spear.
Bai of the braided beard who had taken over Eris’s old garbage collecting route when she signed up with Road’s new venture and ever since has been alternating between thanking her for the job referral and complaining that he couldn’t take his axes with him on shift.
Wyatt, whose eyepatch is actually an AR visor to aim assist his crossbow and adjust for weight and aerodynamic differences on specialized bolts.
The green-haired enby twins, Loreghaste and Lornegna, who favor halberds and hammers respectively but both carry swords as backup sidearms.
Chuck in his ill-fitting trenchcoat, a relative newcomer to the game who’s already earning a reputation for going off on insufferable rants about the superiority of katanas.
The grim-faced Preacher, who never shares his name for fear of theft, never touches a drink that isn’t water, and never hides his disdain for everyone else’s choice of archaic weaponry for the sake of sport when guns are so much more efficient at completing the important work of slaying beasts.
Old Vic, the elven immigrant from off world who’s always down to party like the college kid his face looks the age of.
Plus a handful of others that Eris either isn’t all that close to or doesn’t recognize at a glance. High turnover rates have always been an unspoken truth amongst the monster hunter community. It’s been said that there are five fates that await hunters.
One: You die early from a stupid mistake, biting off more than you can chew, or just plain bad luck.
Two: You finally catch up with that one monster that was your reason for taking up the hunt to begin with and if you survive you walk away, vendetta done.
Three: You have your first near-death experience, confront your mortality, and make the wise decision to get out.
Four: You have your first near-death experience, confront your mortality, and realize you’re hooked on the hunt that will surely kill you one day more than you are on living a long life.
Five: The hunt gradually becomes your whole life and personality until one day you hit a tipping point that causes autogenesis to kick into overdrive, transforming you into a monster yourself in need of putting down by your former comrades.
Everyone at the bar tonight - except maybe Chuck and the other newbies like him who still think they’re invincible - has long since made their peace with the idea that they’ll probably be dead by forty. Fifty tops. Other than Old Vic, of course, who’s at least twice that age, but rumors that he’s already secretly met the fifth fate have been flying around since before Eris ever found Crossherd and 121813. Having been on a funerary hunt with him herself and seen what a hunter consumed looks like, Eris doesn’t put any stock in that speculation.
She hasn’t been in here since joining up with Road, and for the moment she’s content to nurse her drink and take in the old familiar ambiance rather than partake in the ever-present banter just yet. Or she would be if the glass didn’t feel oddly cold in her hand and the polished bartop didn’t somehow feel rougher than it should be when she traces her finger along it. Normally she’d chock it up to having been away for awhile, but after what Sarah said about her scar she can’t shake the feeling that something is off. Now that she’s thinking about it, it’s not the first time she’s noticed things feeling subtly different than some subconscious part of her brain is expecting when she touches them. Almost like her sense of touch has been dialed up slightly ever since the incident with Logos. More disturbingly, she has a blister on the edge of her palm from her last workout and weapon practice session and she can’t place why it disturbs her. On the one hand, that sounds like a reasonable and normal thing to happen, but on the other hand it doesn’t make sense to still be there a couple days later with how fast she heals. And she knows she’s still healing freakishly fast given how she shows no sign of the beating she took on the most recent mission. But beside that there’s the nagging feeling that it’s something else that is on the tip of her tongue and refusing to solidify into anything articulable.
Eris decides to talk to Lacuna later about it. She had warned Eris to watch out for unexpected side effects from that custom healing ritual. If anyone can narrow it down, it’s Lacuna. Funny to think that, but she really has come into her own lately and Eris is proud of her for it.
The thought gets Eris stuck on the other uncomfortable truth Sarah had touched on earlier. Has she been infantilizing her best friend? And now Ashan too for that matter. That might not have been what Sarah meant, but the idea won’t quite go away now, no matter how much she tells herself she doesn’t believe it.
As much as she’s found herself wanting to help Ashan and thinks he deserves a better hand than he’s been dealt, at the end of the she knows that he’s tough enough to deal with all the shit he’s been through and come out the other side just fine, with or without her help. But that doesn’t mean it’s not still good to try to be kind and be there for him if he wants it even if he doesn’t need it.
As for Lacuna… Eris tells herself that what she’s been feeling lately is worry over a specific issue and not a general statement of either of their characters. On the surface, ever since she got her lab Lacuna’s been the happiest and healthiest Eris has seen her in a long time. But over time little things have started to add up that have her increasingly concerned. Canceling therapy. Backsliding into forgetting meals when she’d worked so hard over the past year to stop doing that. Gradually spending more and more of her nights in the bed and breakfast above the office instead of going home. Break room trash cans filled with energy drink cans and bags of green tea and chai after having been so proud of kicking the habit entirely. The stark contrast between her fears and uncertainties in the early days of the new job and the uncharacteristic matter-of-fact-ness Eris was greeted with upon waking up covered in disfiguring burns. A few days ago Eris could have sworn Lacuna actually flinched when she got close to her.
There’s something big eating at her best friend, but the couple of times Eris has tried talking to her about it, Lacuna's either casually brushed it off as being nothing or been outright evasive. And while Eris knows Lacuna is a grown-ass woman capable of making her own decisions and dealing with the consequences, that doesn’t make the worries go away. And friends should worry over each other when something is so obviously wrong. Shouldn’t they? She supposes the best she can do at this point is be there to catch Lacuna if she falls.
Eris sighs and turns to the monster hunter seated on the barstool to her left. “Be straight with me Vic. Do I have mom energy?”
“Eris!” the elf gasps in a show of mock scandalization. “You can’t just tell people to be straight. And even if you could, you should know that I could never.”
“Whatever happened to ‘your terms for sexuality are nothing more than a modern human social construct’?” Bai pipes up from the other side of Old Vic.
“When on Earth, do as the humans do, my dear,” Old Vic replies. “Especially when doing the humans.”
“Ha hah, you’re a real comedian,” Eris says dryly, “but really, serious question.”
Old Vic throws his head back and laughs. “Eris, my dear, don’t tell me that that’s what you’ve been brooding about since you walked in here.”
“I do not brood.”
“And that’s exactly what made it so intriguing to watch. But if it makes you feel better, I would say that you only have ‘mom energy’ in the sense that you give off - as the kids put it these days - dommy mommy vibes.”
The ensuing snickers from everyone in immediate earshot - including the bartender- has Eris wondering what possessed her to ask that of Old Vic of all people. She’d blame the drink, but she knows from experience that with her constitution it’s painfully expensive for her to get even slightly buzzed and she hasn’t dipped that far into her budget yet tonight.
Out of the corner of her eye she catches Wyatt smirking and struggling to hold in the next burst of laughter.
“Got something to add?” Eris asks against her better judgment, knowing full well that she’s about to hear something even dumber than Old Vic’s original joke.
“Step on me mommy,” Wyatt barely gets out through fits of giggling.
“God, it’s like I’m friends with a bunch of middle schoolers.” Eris turns around and locks eyes on the nearest table that she knows is close enough to have been eavesdropping. “Gretchen, help me out here,” she calls out to the one other woman in the bar in hopes of some solidarity.
The moment Gretchen turns around from her conversation with the Lor twins wearing a wicked grin that brings back too many memories, Eris knows she made a mistake.
“No Vic,” Gretchen says with agonizing slowness and delight, “I wouldn’t say that Eris gives off those vibes at all.”
Eris suppresses a groan. Some people... You allow them to tie you up one time and they never let you hear the end of it.
Eris had met Gretchen shortly after finding her way into Crossherd for the first time and she’d been the one to introduce Eris to 121813. Not long after that, Gretchen became the first woman Eris had ever dated and her only attempt at dating that didn’t crash and burn after just a couple of weeks. The eventual breakup had been - as far as Eris could ever tell - mutual and amicable, even if Gretchen’s disposition towards her since unpredictably alternated between friendship and melodramatic rivalry. The latter always struck Eris more as Gretchen doing a bit than a genuine competition of egos. At least it kept things interesting, even if it occasionally meant moments like this one.
And still a better outcome than her other miserable attempts at dating within the monster hunting scene. Hookups following cooperative hunts weren’t uncommon but Eris had quickly realized that wasn’t for her and more than one fragile ego - and face - had wound up getting bruised after failures to comprehend that physical attraction just plain wasn’t a thing she felt for anyone without a certain threshold of emotional intimacy being met first. (A threshold she’s been very careful not to cross with Sarah.) And as much as learning there was a term for that (demisexual) helped her understand, no one else ever seemed to get it. The reputation that she started to get back then was half the reason she almost exclusively kept to working solo up until now.
Eris tries not to look put off as she glances around to see if anyone remembers that she and Gretchen used to be together back in the day. She catches a gleam in Bai’s eye as he makes the connection and puts together the implication of Gretchen’s words. She glares at him, daring him to say something. It’s enough to make one of the newbies unfortunate enough to wander into her line of sight to reconsider coming up for another drink order and retreat back to his table.
“Ah, we’re all just ruffling your feathers for being gone too long, my dear,” Old Vic cuts in. “If you must have a serious answer, then no; nobody here thinks you’ve gone soft for getting yourself a support crew and we all know you could kick any of our well-toned asses. Yours truly excluded, of course.”
That’s not what Eris had meant with her question at all, but at this point she’s just glad to have a topic change when Wyatt speaks up.
“So what is it like working with Road full time?” he asks. Eris recalls that Wyatt is one of a number of monster hunters who survived his first encounter with the supernatural due to Road’s timely intervention.
“A lot less time chasing down rumors and false leads, but a lot more sticking around to deal with the cleanup afterwards. And a lot more dealing with people. Road’s as good in a fight as everyone says - they’ve beaten me and our wizard two-on-one twice now - but that’s where they really shine. You remember what it was like when Road saved you on your first day Backstage?”
“I do,” Wyatt replies. The hesitation in his affirmation speaks volumes of the fear and confusion from that life-changing event that most every hunter is too proud to admit. Feelings that Eris has seen Road help people through time and again now.
“Well, they’re like that with everyone. And any time we need to get somewhere without a direct bridge from Crosssherd they’ve got a ride lined up from someone they’ve helped before, eager to repay the favor. Between handling most of the prep and followup themself, I don’t know where they find the time to sleep. It leaves our wizard and I with a lot of downtime where we’re basically getting paid to workout, train, research, spar, and rest, but we’re also on-call to drop what we’re doing and head out at a moment’s notice.”
With how often Road is in and out of the office, Eris honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they’re handling the more minor jobs they get leads on alone without telling her and the others. It feels wrong to say that aloud though. Too much like an accusation.
“You’re telling me you’re sparring with a combat-capable wizard on the reg?” Bai interjects. “I call bullshit. Normal people don’t fight mages. Not if the mage has any skill.”
Eris spreads her arms. “What can I say, I’m built different.”
Further debate on the fightability of mages is interrupted by the arrival of a decent-sized group of hunters, at least one of which seems to be celebrating coming off a successful kill. Eris joins everyone else in listening to the victorious youth - a newcomer to the bar that she doesn’t recognize - brag about his hunt and the fight at the end of it. When the kid (God, did she look that young when she got started?) starts showing off the tooth he took as a trophy Eris and Bai share a knowing look. Definitely a Crossherd sewer gator and not a muck dragon, but best to let the kid have his moment and then pull him aside later to break it to him gently in private.
And then one of the newbie’s buddies spins him around and lifts up his shirt to reveal the claw marks on his back.
“Scar check!” someone shouts.
“Scar check!” someone else echoes.
“Scar check!” Gretchen adds to the growing chorus.
It’s a tradition almost as old as the bar. One person shows off a new scar or injury that they expect to scar and then everyone else starts joining in and shouting out where they got their own wound. Scars were viewed as the truest sort of trophies around here. Indisputable signs that you’d really been out there, danced with death, and come back alive. Everyone had a few and it was generally considered poor form to show the same one off too much, even if it was your most impressive one. Only the newbies didn’t have at least a handful of small but permanent scratches.
Only the newbies, Old Vic, and Eris.
Everyone was willing to concede that Old Vic really was just that good (or had some manner of secret elven healing magic), but Eris had actually had to get someone to stab her in front of the whole bar to convince everyone that it really was just that hard for something to leave a mark on her in the long term. “Built different” she likes to boast, but she’ll never admit that she usually feels left out during these spontaneous exercises in camaraderie. As far as she’s been able to figure out, it’s pretty much just curses and magic poisons that leave behind anything visible, and that’s all they do.
So Eris just has the two scars to her name. A bite mark on her ankle from when she accidentally found out she’s immune to lycanthropy, and a puckered circle on her side from an ectoplasmic musket ball shot at her by a hateful civil war ghost.
Built different. Different enough to sit out of the scar check most of the time.
It’s fine though. She can still watch and congratulate everyone else.
“Clawed by splintercat!” elicits appreciation for the clean parallel cuts.
“Gored by a hodag!” draws out excited whoops.
“Kicked by a nightmare!” is met by good-natured ribbing about the resemblance to a clothes iron burn.
“Carried off by a snallygaster!” drops into offers to buy drinks.
“Duelled a crossroads demon!” earns dual high-fives from the Lor twins.
“Top surgery!” is greeted with joyous laughter and congratulatory applause.
“Bitten by a joint snake!” is commiserated with over how annoying those critters are.
“Wrestled a Jersey devil onto a church fence spike!” gets a rare word of approval from Preacher.
“Escaped the hunter of hunters.” chills the room and sets the crowd whispering.
“Zapped by a rogue paratech drone!” is followed by jokes about robot uprisings.
“Burned by a salamander!” sparks an argument about whether it looks hot or cool.
And around it goes until Eris realizes that all eyes are on her, expectant.
“Well E,” Gretchen addresses her with the nickname only one other person has the right to, “got anything for us this time?”
“Well since you ask,” Eris draws out, returning her smirk, “I’ve got a little something I picked up on my last job with Road.” The name drop gets everyone’s attention. Hunters band together when they get word on something really nasty, but when something truly weird or intelligent gets involved, they call Road. “I don’t know if it’ll stick around or not yet, but it’s fresh enough that you lot tonight are lucky enough to catch a glimpse before it’s gone.”
Everyone starts crowding in to get a closer look as Eris slowly begins rolling up her left sleeve.
“Vamp bite!” she proclaims as she suddenly yanks her sleeve back the last couple inches to reveal her newest memento writ in flesh.
Stunned silence across the bar.
“Eris, my dear,” Old Vic speaks up, “we all love our resident goddess of mayhem, but did you get in a fight with a toddler?”
“Yeah, yeah, get it out of your system, ya chuckleheads,” Eris says, waving her hand in a rolling motion at the ones dumb enough to laugh at Old Vic’s comment. She knows an invitation to show up the losers who don’t know the top dogs around here well enough when she sees Old Vic set one up for her. “It doesn’t look like much, but the story behind it makes up for that.”
“And are you going to tell us, or leave us to our imaginations?” Gretchen asks, already knowing the answer.
“I dunno,” Eris drawls, “you gonna buy me a drink? It’s a long one.”
*******
“Alright,” Eris begins, drink in hand and straddling the chair she’s spun around to sit in backwards, “may as well start at the beginning and get the boring stuff out of the way to begin with for those of you who lack context. A couple months back, Road asked me to join up with a new venture they were starting. And if any of you are too new here to know who Road is, just ask anyone else. Everyone knows Road. Anyway, the whole point of this venture is to help people affected by things Backstage that no one else will bother with because it’s not technically a masquerade breach, and nine times out of ten, that means there’s either a monster or a mage causing problems and needing put down. Hence yours truly.
“At the moment we’ve just got a small field team of Road, myself, and a wizard who goes by Ashan Glassheart. Some of you might have heard of him, given that he’s been handling the convention circuit for the past few years. I know calling him the nicest mage I’ve ever met is a pretty low bar -” every hunter that’s worked with a mage in the past laughs - “but he’s off-world trained so he knows his stuff and goes out of his way not to blow up his own teammates. Meanwhile, we’ve got my buddy Lacuna handling remote tech support, overwatch, and lead finding for us.
“Anyway, I’m out getting groceries at the corner market - on Sixth and Triskelion, Bai, you know the one; run by the lizardman, Mr. Arzochi - when I get a call saying we’ve got a job lined up that could be time sensitive so I should head straight there instead of heading back to the office for a briefing. Mr. Arzochi offers to hold my order for me until I get back - great customer service, that guy - and I start booking it to the address provided for the best bridge out of Crossherd.
“See, we’ve got a website now so people can come to us asking for help instead of us needing to find them and we just got our first intentional client through that. Apparently some single mom living in a quiet suburb up north found out her house was built on top of a buried vampire lair and now she had bloodsuckers and animated skeletons crawling out of her basement. Or so the frantically worded help request made it sound like.
“Fortunately, there’s a direct link out of Crossherd to the town in question so it wasn’t half an hour later when I’m standing outside the door of an unassuming cookie-cutter house with Road handing me stakes and going over strategies for getting victims and living thralls out safely while Ashan’s drawing glowing shapes in the air and confirming that the whole place is just absolutely saturated with necromantic magics. Some wizard jargon about unhallowed ground, leylines, and liminal tearing.
“Judging by the blacked out windows, we assume that the vampire’s already in control of the house itself and take room clearing positions as I try the doorknob. It’s locked, but just as I'm about to force it the door swings inward to reveal this little girl, eight, maybe nine years old. No, not the one who bit me, I’ll get to that. So her eyes go wide and I’m standing there blocking out the sun trying not to scare her when Road steps in and gets down on one knee to look the kid in the eye. He - Road was in guy mode that day - tells her that we’re the people her mom called to help with the basement. The girl catches on and calms down, asks us to wait a minute, closes the door and comes back with her mom who’s about my age and looks pale and haggard enough to have been fed on regularly, but doesn’t have that absent, far away look and voice that thralls get.
“Still, the mom looks relieved to see us and recognizes Road’s voice from the phone so she invites us in, locks the door behind us and introduces us to the vampires. And no, it wasn’t a trap.
“Okay, another quick round of names to help keep things straight going forward. Not real names though for the sake of client privacy. So for now let’s call the mom Brynn and her daughter Clair. The two vampires waiting in the darkened living room looked to be about the same ages, and were dressed modern enough - probably sharing clothes with Brynn and Clair - but of course were way older. Like, Vikings getting lost on the way to Vinland old as it turned out, but we’ll get to that. We’ll call the older looking one Sigrid and the younger looking one Hild. There were also seven animated skeletons wandering the house doing chores, but I couldn’t tell them apart and I don’t think they were sapient so I’m not going to bother naming them.
“Introductions are made, Ashan asks to check to verify there’s no mind control or compulsion going on, Sigrid says she didn’t even know that was a thing she might be able to do, the tests come out clean, Brynn sends the kids upstairs, the skeletons follow, and then we finally get an explanation to clear up the misunderstanding that’s had us all on edge this whole time.
“Starting way back at the beginning, the gist of it all is that sometime circa one thousand AD, someone over in Europe heard tell of a place discovered north across the sea, all the way west of Greenland, and got the bright idea to ship off and lock up creatures that wouldn’t die properly as far away from anyone else as possible. Far from everyone else except, you know, the people who already lived there but, hey, tale as old as colonialism, am I right? So they sent over a boatload of undead and a couple of mages to keep them bound, built a crypt, interred the undead, sealed it up, and then built a church on top. And then support for the project from back home dropped off, the Vikings stopped trying to keep up an outpost for the church-crypt-prison keepers to get supplies from, and the locals got fed up with invaders burying necromantically-infused corpses on their land.
“Something went down at that point, but it’s not clear what, only that one winter night Sigrid woke up, climbed out of a stone coffin with no memory and found herself in the ruins of an abandoned church. Hild woke up not long after that and the skeletons along with her. As far as Sigrid knows, Hild’s mute. Never heard a word out of the kid - and I use the word ‘kid’ loosely here - despite having basically adopted her. Sigrid found some writing detailing what the place was and a ritual to keep the undead in that place dormant and sealed. She did the ritual, spent the winter alone with her and Hild surviving on animal blood from the surrounding woods, and then found herself tired enough to return to her sarcophagus at the end of the winter. That waking up for the winter kept repeating, but with an exponentially longer gap each time, until one day she went to sleep and woke up centuries later with a house on top of her and the woods replaced by a town.
“Sigrid was able to cobble together some limited translation magic and explain all this to Brynn, Hild and Clair made friends, and Brynn agreed to help them through the winter. None of them knew jack about anything Backstage, nothing modern anyhow, but it turns out you can just buy blood off the internet and have it delivered.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting to the exciting part, cool it. Do you want ‘We went down to the basement and punched some skeletons the end’ or do you want a proper story? You’ve gotta have some context for these things. Have some buildup. Gradually raise the tension. Sprinkle in some mys- yes Chuck, we all know vampires don’t work on seasonal hibernation cycles like that. It was our first big hint something was weird. Now are you lot gonna keep interrupting or can I keep going?
“Yes Vic, you’re a real comedian.
“Now for those of you paying attention, you probably picked up on the obvious detail that it ain’t winter outside right now. That’s the real reason Brynn finally started looking for outside help. Keeping a pair of vamps fed for the winter is one thing, but indefinitely is a whole other beast. Worse than that, Sigrid suspected that the usual re-sealing ritual wasn’t working anymore and that whatever else was downstairs was starting to wake up. She said she could feel things moving beneath her when she tried to sleep for the day and Hild had been acting even weirder than normal lately, breaking off with her games with Clair and the skeletons and staring off into space for minutes at a time.
“You got it. That’s what we were there for.
“Oh, and I should probably mention, Brynn and Sigrid were trying to hide it, but it was obvious to anyone with eyes they had it hard for each other. Grade-A sapphic pining in the face of knowing fate will never let them have it coupled with still getting their heads around the idea that it was okay for them to like women. It’ll be relevant later.
“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.
“Moving on to the fun parts now, Sigrid takes us down to the basement while the others stay up top, shows us the ragged hole in the floor with stairs down to her crypt, and leads us down to where she normally does her sealing ritual. You see, there were actually two levels to the crypt, the upper level where Sigrid, Hild, the skeletons, and five other vampires she never let wake up were kept, and a lower level past a stone door she’d never opened where the really dangerous prisoners were imprisoned. There’s some brief debate on whether to reattempt the sealing ritual with a proper wizard on hand, but Sigrid was all out of the blood to use as components for it and Lacuna - she’d been listening in the whole time via comms - said that creating a custom replacement without the need for blood would take longer than Ashan was estimating the weakened seal would hold for. So we decide to set up a temporary ward to prevent passage out of the crypt and then fully break the seal so we can go down and permanently deal with whatever was down there.
“Road goes up to to the basement and unpacks his dufflebag to give me my spear - I’ve got an enchanted ice spear now, I’ll bring it with me next time - pull out a glyph–inscribed metal card, and set out a miniature drone that Lacuna remotely connects to and sends downstairs with us. It’s a pretty cool little gizmo, like a toaster-sized robo crab with a projector mounted on top. Anyway, Road puts the card on top of the stairs where it starts to play a recording of Lacuna’s voice chanting an incantation to project a selective pass through barrier so we can still get out if we need to. Afterwards, Ashan does some wizard shit to the door that makes a big flash of red light and sets the whole place rumbling for a few seconds.”
Eris takes a dramatic pause to lean forward and grow a slow grin. “And then four of the five occupied sarcophagi open up. Out crawl four blood-starved vampires, too feral from hunger to reason with. The first one leaps at me and I impale it midair. The spear’s enchantment freezes the poor bastard solid by the time gravity catches up and brings it to the ground. Vamp number two makes the mistake of going for Road who just dances around its attempts to claw him and paralyzes it one limb at a time with that fancy beam sword of his. Once it falls he stakes it for good measure and leaves it there to deal with later. Meanwhile, the third vamp is trying to get Ashan while he’s still reeling from the backlash of breaking the seal. It lunges for him and then jerks to a halt with its fangs an inch away from his neck when Ashan recovers and conjures up a bunch of chains around it, making it easy pickings for me to stake. Unlucky vamp number four catches the scent of easier prey upstairs and tries to beat a retreat while we’re all busy only to run headlong into Lacuna’s ward and fall tumbling backwards. Road catches it before it breaks its neck and it repays that kindness with biting his neck. Turns out Road’s jacket can shift forms faster than a starving vampire can move, so it just scrapes its teeth on hard plating while a freshly-armored Road pulls it into an embrace as part of pressing a stake into its heart. Opening up the the fifth sarcophagus to check, we found another vampire with a stake already in its chest whose wood hadn’t quite rotted away with age yet. We left it be.
“So, yeah, it was a nice warmup before the main event downstairs. Of course, Road being Road, he was insistent that we leave the vampires ‘alive’ but neutralized rather than dragging them out into the sun, burning, or beheading them to finish the job. I’m pretty sure he’s with them at a rehabilitation center right now, working on getting them fed enough to be lucid for a chance at integrating with modern society, Backstage resources and all.
“But I’m getting ahead of myself. Warmup done, I roll aside the inscribed stone slab that was still physically blocking off the lower crypt after Ashan had broken the magic seal on it and we descend. And for those of you struggling to keep track, ‘we’ in this case includes Sigrid and Lacuna’s drone who were there for ritual support but weren’t really combatants. Sure, Sigrid had the strength, speed, and reflexes of a well-fed vampire, but she was no trained fighter and wasn’t super big on doing violence. Even hunting down deer and rabbits in the woods to feed herself and Hild back in the old days never sat quite right with her.”
Eris leaves out the detail that what disturbed Sigrid about the bloody hunt was how good it felt in the moment. She suspects she’s not the only one here at the bar that feeling is a little too relatable for.
“The second staircase goes down deep, well into the bedrock,” Eris continues, “with enough clean, precise angles that it was obviously carved out by magic and unworn enough that you could tell no one had taken the trip up and down since its construction. We find another inscribed stone door at the bottom but Ashan verifies that whatever enchantment was on it broke when he broke the seal from upstairs. On the other side we find another crypt, way bigger than the first. At least a hundred sarcophagi laid out in neat rows with a ceiling high enough that whatever mage carved it was obviously showing off. Close to half of it was filled floor-to-ceiling with rubble. At first we figure it was an old cave-in but then we notice the ragged hole on the far side of the chamber and realize we’re looking at the debris from an excavation. An excavation most likely carried out by whatever used to be in the sarcophagi.
“That’s right, they were all open. Most of them, though, were still occupied. If you can call being filled with mounds of pulsating flesh that are barely recognisable as having once been human as ‘occupied’, anyway. All of those had these fleshy tendrils coming off them - so dark red they were almost black - trailing away like roots or cables down that tunnel that obviously hadn't been part of the crypt’s original construction, so you know there had to be something effed up going on back there.
“The tunnel turns into a maze on us pretty quick, but there’s a definite directionality to the pattern of the meat roots covering every surface and following those seemed to lead to some kind of center. A couple minutes in of taking it slow and keeping our eyes and ears peeled we hear this super gross squelching sound coming from around the corner. This eight foot tall amalgamation of smushed-together corpses rounds the corner and immediately goes aggro on us. Probably knew we were coming from all the meat roots we couldn’t avoid stepping on. It definitely had enough of those coming out of its back as a tempting weak point to go for. ‘Course, that was easier said than done with it taking up almost the full width of the tunnel and swinging around eight arms to grab and pummel you with if you tried to squeeze around it.
“On top of that, it had some sort of weird damage transfer thing going on so that anything we did to hurt it would instantly heal and then replicate the wound on the flesh covering the tunnel. I’d stab it and frost would appear on the wall instead. Road would slice it and meat roots on the ceiling would go limp and droop down. I’d straight up punch a hole in its chest and when I pulled my hand out the hole would seal shut and vessels on the floor would burst and spray ichor up at us. Adding insult to repeated blunt force trauma injury, it turns out that Lacuna’s drone is basically useless without a flat surface to project onto and the meat roots all over the place weren’t real conducive to that.
“Seeing that just beating the crap out of this thing until it falls over isn’t working, Ashan tosses up a barrier blocking off the whole tunnel to give us all a second to breathe and shift tactics. Up until that point he’d been rapidly conjuring up small shields that would disappear after blocking a hit or two so that Road and I wouldn’t get punched in the head too much. I tell him I can handle it and that he should focus on going on the offense, so he folds his barrier around the corpse golem that’s already started slamming itself into it and then drags the magic-wrapped monster burrito to one side so Road and I can get to the exposed tendrils coming off its back.
“It’s the sort of maneuver that we really should have opened with, but hindsight is twenty-twenty. It had its flaw though in the form of the hole he left open for the tendrils. I’m sure there’s some BS magic mechanics explanation for why he couldn’t just snap it all the way shut and sever them himself, but that meant there was space for the monster to escape when its flesh started to goddam liquify and start oozing out of the hole to reform. Seeing we’re about to have a problem again, I fling myself on top of the reforming flesh pile and leave Road to cut the tendrils. My reward for that is four sets of jaws emerging from the congealed slurry to bite me and bone fragments assembling themselves into limbs to try to hold me down while the rest of its mass flows out to engulf me.
“Quick show of hands, who all here’s been dunked in sewage before? Okay, and who’s fought zombies or hung around long enough after a hunt for the quarry to start putrefying? Right. Now imagine combining those two smells, filling the sewage with bones, and having it actively try to crush and suffocate you. Rank does not begin to do the stench justice.
“Fortunately, Road cuts the amalgam’s connection to the tunnel walls quickly, causing the mass around me to shudder. That doesn’t deanimate it - it was already dead and more of a puppet or golem than a proper undead, so ‘kill’ isn’t the right word - but it stops regenerating. I start tearing it apart from the inside and less than a minute later I’m standing in the middle of the tunnel picking viscera out of my hair while scattered bits of gore uselessly pulse and twitch. Thank God for overly-fastidious wizards with cleaning spells or I’d still be in the shower trying to get that smell out.”
While her audience laughs at the half-joke, Eris’s mind lingers on what she must have looked like for Lacuna, watching from multiple angles through the comms and drones as she burst out of that mess, clothes stained with dark blood and ichor dripping down her face. From the time she got her mouth free enough to breathe without inhaling undead meat and fluids to the time she made eye contact with the crab drone’s camera she’d had the same feral grin she knew she always had after a kill. Ever since she’s been waiting for Lacuna to say something. Dreading it, really. If she hadn’t just imagined Lacuna involuntarily flinching away from her the day before this last job, what must her friend think of her now that she’s had an unfiltered view of her in all her gorey glory?
She can talk to her about that later. Right now she’s still got a story to tell.
“Moving on down the tunnel system, we don’t encounter anything else until we reach the central chamber, a big roughly hemispherical cavern with other tunnel openings all around. In the center, all the meat roots had converged and woven themselves into a cocoon. A cocoon that looked to have been freshly split open by the time we got there.
“Hovering in the air above it and faintly glowing red we see this vampire mage who’s gone all in on the demonic bat look. Big wings that he doesn’t even seem to need to fly, pointy ears, long clawed hands, black sclera, red irises, weirdly echoing voice, the works. He sees us and he must have been a wizard, because he immediately starts monologuing at us. And it’s all in some old proto-Norse dialect with off-world loan words so I don’t understand a lick of it.
“That said, I don’t need to parse the words to know an evil gloating asshole stroking his own ego when I hear one, so I cut him off mid-sentence by hurling my spear at him. I nail him right through the chest, but he’s got the same damage transfer hacks going on as his creation we killed earlier, without even needing the physical connection, so he just pulls the spear out and casually drops it like the smug bastard he is and calls for the rest of his creations to start streaming in from the other tunnels.
“I’ll save you the blow-by-blow of the ensuing melee or else we’d be here all night, but I’ll paint you the broad strokes of it. Me, Road, and Sigrid - surrounded like this, she didn’t have much choice but to join in - back to back to back against over a dozen constructs of fused-together undead in various shapes and configurations. Vampires, ghouls, revenants, you name a variety of walking dead originating out of Europe and chances were a specimen had been blended up and thrown into the mix. Meanwhile, Ashan’s running interference to block and lock down any magic the vamp mage tries to throw at us. That includes the vamp mage trying to open up portals, both to escape and to let in minor demons that he’d contracted out from some hell-type dimension or another.
“Now, most of you here are lucky enough to have seen me and/or Road in action before, and a few of you are unlucky enough to have seen two mages go at it, so I’ll let you extrapolate out what the next several minutes looked like based on how fighting against just one went. At least in that chamber we had proper room to maneuver, so getting around behind the amalgams to cut their puppet strings was easier. Up until the vamp mage would slip a spell past Ashan and plug one of his creations back in to start regenerating again. While there was technically a limit to how much damage the vamp mage and his minions could offload until there were no more meat roots in reserve to take it, it was a pretty high limit and we were looking at a battle of attrition. I’m pretty good at those, but I was starting to have my doubts that Ashan could hold up. He’s got this thing with drawing on ambient heat as a power source and everyone down there capable of breathing was puffing out fog clouds.
“Oh, and did I mention that the vamp mage kept up his villain monologuing during the fight? At the time I figured he was just running on a magic system heavy on verbal spell components, but later the others filled me in that was only about half of his blabbering. If anyone’s curious, the gist was that he’d been awake off and on for centuries, had fed on all the other undead in the crypt to grow his power, used the husks of his fellow prisoners as labor to carve out tunnels in the shape of a ritual circle, and stuck himself in the middle of it to hibernate until his transformation was complete and the seal on the crypt finally faded in full. Now our breaking of the seal on the crypt had woken him up again and accelerated his plans for escaping and taking vengeance. I’m not sure he quite grasped the idea that everyone who banished him and locked him up down there is long dead.
“So yeah, uber vamp, sworn vengeance, corpse golems, grand melee, wizard duel, portals threatening to open, battle of attrition, yadda yada. That finally breaks when Lacuna finally finds a good, flat, tendril free, spot on the wall to steer her little robo crab that everyone forgot about over to. She starts projecting a ritual circle on the wall, plays the pre-recorded incantation, and before anyone realizes what’s happening the whole room floods with conjured sunlight. You’d need to ask a mage what makes it so special compared to the lights Ashan had made for us to see by, but it was as good as the real thing for making vamps burn and the amalgams and meat roots all over the walls, floor, and ceiling, were at least seventy percent vampire in composition. Watching all that light up in a wave of smokeless fire was maaaagnificent.”
Eris smiles at the memory of the spectacle. That moment was the second proudest she’d ever been of Lacuna.
“That should have been the end of it,” Eris goes on, “but of course it wasn’t. Same as Road was pulling Sigrid back into a side tunnel and Ashan was conjuring up a mostly opaque barrier to keep her from burning the vamp mage had sequestered himself in his own little ominous floating sphere of darkness hovering ten feet off the ground. So I’m left standing there alone considering how best to reach the vamp mage and pull him into the light before Road gets the chance to remind me to take him in ‘alive’ when the light suddenly goes out and I hear Lacuna scream into my ear through the comms earbud.
“I’ll be honest, when she didn’t respond right away after I asked what happened I kinda snapped. I gave throwing my spear at the vamp mage another go and this time it stuck. I followed up with a running jump to grab the portion of the haft that was sticking out of the black sphere and dragged the bastard out of his safety bubble. I slammed him into the cave floor like a hammer head onto an anvil, climbed on top of him, and started going to town on his face.”
Flashes of fear and rage resurface with the memory, causing Eris to stumble in her narration. The way she had figured at the time, either he’d hurt Lacuna and needed to pay or something else had happened and she needed to finish things up here and get back to the office as quickly as possible. The next few minutes (or was it just seconds?) trying to finish him off were fuzzy, but she had some vague memory of Road trying to pull her off before she could kill him. What Road didn’t realize is that was her being nonlethal with a powered-up vampire. If she’d wanted him dead she would have gone straight for ripping his head off. Too bad she hadn’t been thinking clearly enough at the time to just stake him. Would have saved them all a lot of trouble.
“When he realized he couldn’t throw me off him he tried necromancy. I could feel him trying to grow spikes from my bones. Heating up my blood in hopes of boiling it. Skip beats on my heart in an attempt to stop it. Willing me to rot from the inside out.” Eris laughs, more showy bravado than genuine pride. “But you know me, I’m built different and autogenesis is a helluva drug when it comes to magic resistance. The only reason I stopped beating the everliving tar out of him when I did was I heard the kid scream next.
“Turns out that the vamp mage had some kind of connection to Hild and with the seal gone he’d been able to use that connection to mind control her from all the way down in the crypt. He’d used her skeletons to take Clair hostage, coerce Brynn into physically disrupting Lacuna’s ward up in the basement, and bring Clair down to where we were to use as a human shield. A dirty ploy, but an effective one at getting us to stand down. Breaking an actively-maintained ward had hurt both Brynn and Lacuna but not killed either of them, so Brynn catches up and wanders in just in time to see the vamp mage opening up the hell portal Ashan had been keeping closed so a new round of minions could file in to keep us busy.
“Now obviously, letting a vampire go free with a hostage just means that hostage is getting eaten later rather than sooner but that doesn’t make getting that hostage to safety any less tricky. Fortunately, hearing Lacuna’s voice come back online to confirm that she was okay, just pretty out of it, calms me down enough to notice Road whisper something to Sigrid and then give me enough of a look that I catch onto the gist of his plan. I then get Ashan’s attention and have him start translating trash talk for me to get the vamp mage focused on us. Not exactly my proudest moment, but I’m pretty sure I taught Ashan and the kids some new swear words.
“Distraction in place, Sigrid breaks off from where we’ve all been lined up to go give Hild a tearful full-body hug and whisper something in her ear. That’s enough to break Hild out of the near-trance she’d been in this whole time to have her skeletons let go of Clair and start attacking the demons. Road moves in to intercept the vamp mage before he can grab Clair himself while Brynn scoops her up to get her to safety. New problem is we’ve now got exits blocked by demons, multiple non-combatants to keep safe, more minions filing in, and a very angry vampire mage who’s already started to recover from the beating I gave him. I don’t even wanna know what kind of price he paid to contract those kind of numbers for summoning.
“Somehow though, he looks at all of this, does the tactical calculus, and concludes that Hild is the biggest threat - or maybe he was just mad at her breaking free - so he points a hand at her and his fingers extend, shooting across the room. Road realizes what’s happening in time to parry it enough to keep it from taking off her head, but the vamp mage still manages to rip a gash in Hild from jugular to heart.
“Here’s the thing about vampires that makes them so annoying to kill: Short of beheading or burning, they can recover from basically anything so long as they have the blood. So pro-tip, if you find yourself fighting a vampire without a stake and you don’t think you can get a killing blow on them, hit them someplace that they’ll bleed a lot. And it has to be external bleeding. A decent size cut’s harder for them to recover from than broken bones or ruptured organs. Get them in the heart or jugular and they’ll bleed out nearly as fast as a human if they don’t get the chance to feed in the next minute or so.
“On the flip side, if you’re ever trying to save a vampire, the number one most important thing is to give them something to drink; the fresher and stronger the better.”
Eris holds up the child-sized bite mark on her wrist for everyone to get a good look at again. Damn, but does it feel good to watch the realization dawn on her audience’s faces. Especially the ones who’d laughed at it earlier.
“Now I’ll be real with you,” Eris says after everyone’s had a moment to ogle, “for most of the rest of this I was a bit loopy from blood loss, but I promise I’m not exaggerating when I say Hild started making whole skeletons out of the ash of the corpse golems that had burned earlier and ripping new boney minions of her own out of any demon that fell. The things drinking your fill in fresh human blood for the first time in a millennium will do for you I guess.
“Still, it turns out that closing a fully open summoning portal that things are actively passing through is harder than keeping a partially formed one from opening and Ashan was already near his limit back before Lacuna dropped her sunshine bomb on the room. With splitting his attention between that struggle, trying to keep the vamp mage from opening an escape, and maintaining bubble shields around himself, Sigrid, Brynn, Clair, me, and Hild, that was leaving just Road and the skeletons to fight both the mage and his minions. Not good numbers and we were back to a battle of attrition. Road’s good - the best even - but even he can only be in so many places at once and Hild’s ability to keep reforming her frankly fragile skeletons was only going to last as long as I could keep serving as a blood battery.
“And then the whole place starts shaking. We’d only burnt away the meat roots in that central chamber and now the rest were writhing and contracting in an attempt to collapse the surrounding tunnels. The classic ‘if I can’t escape then no one can’ gambit.
“The thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that the whole time this round two of fighting is going on, Lacuna’s been frantically searching a digitized library of spells and rituals and calling out descriptions over the comms to ask if it’s something any of us think can help. She’s not trained on how to properly recover from the backlash of an interrupted ritual, much less two at once, so she wasn’t in any condition to cast anything else herself, but she could still provide words and glyphs for others to do so. To be honest, I’m pretty sure we were all basically tuning her out by the time the walls started shaking, but just as Road is starting to give the order for everyone to retreat back up to the surface she cuts in claiming to have found a - and I quote - ‘spell to conquer evil’.
“But then she reads the description and sees that it requires - and again I quote - ‘a threefold declaration of love hitherto unspoken,’ and apologizes for getting our hopes up. And that’s when I realize I’m apparently the only one with working eyes because I have to point out to everyone that we’ve got the capacity for that right in front of us. Sigrid and Brynn for each other, Brynn and Sigrid for Hild and Clair respectively, and Clair and Hild for one another. The love of partners, mothers, and sisters. Eros, Storge, and Philia for those of you who read your classics. Threefold love, and let’s throw in some Agape loving God for making people more willing to make declarations of repressed love when they think they’re about to die.
“Lacuna projects the words to read up for the spell on the wall, Ashan provides the magical oomph, to make the spell go, vows are made, and we get a whole new, somehow even brighter wave of light bursts out, this time from the four of them, banishing the demons, sweeping away the meat roots even in the outer tunnels, and stunning the vampire. He’s still floating like twenty feet in the air though and already starting to twitch again.
“So then,” Eris says, standing up to pantomime the final act of the tale, “Road turns to me and tells me to throw him. Swear to God, his armor grew handles when he said it. But this is Road we’re talking about and adrenaline was running high so I yeet him across the crypt chamber at the flying vamp mage, no questions asked. Stake goes in the heart on impact, the two of them crash to the ground, portal closes, and everyone goes home happy.”
*******
“Good story earlier, E” Gretchen says to Eris some hours later on her way to join the gradual exodus of hunters from the bar, “didn’t get the chance to say that earlier with everyone else lining up to fawn over the savior of children and spotter of true love.”
“Thanks,” Eris replies skeptically. Is this sarcasm or flirting? God, she hopes it’s sarcasm. She has enough ambiguous advances to turn down on her plate with Sarah already.
“The manticore stinger scar’s still my favorite though,” Gretchen continues in a tone that makes flirting the uncomfortably more likely possibility. “You should consider showing it off again sometime.”
“Sure, I’ll th-” the non-answer catches in Eris’s throat.
She doesn’t have a scar from a manticore stinger. She doesn’t even remember having had a potential scar like that. And it’s not something she would forget; manticore venom hurts like having your veins replaced by rose vines with vibrating thorns. Wait. Why does she know what it feels like when everything she’s heard about it calls it instantly fatal? Why does the thought of it make her jaw clench and fingers curl? It’s just curses and magic poisons that leave lasting scars on her. But both of her scars (potentially all three now) are from curses. So how does she know poison will do it? But there’s no way she could forget something like that happening to her.
Right?
Why does everything feel like her hands are too soft?
“I’ll catch you later,” Eris finishes her sentence as calmly as she can.
She tries not to run out of the bar.
*******
Among the subfolders in the photo app on Eris’s phone there are two labeled “Scars: Potential” and “Scars: Real”. The second most recent photo in “Scars: Potential” is from a month ago. It’s a set of ragged claw marks running down her left thigh with what might possibly be a partially-obscured bite mark mixed in. Her text message history confirms that she sent the photo to Sarah two days after the previous full moon.
She doesn’t remember getting injured, taking the photo, or the conversation.
Now she’s standing undressed in her apartment’s bathroom, gripping the edge of the sink and breathing hard as she rapidly looks back and forth between her mirror, her body, and one of the four photos in the “Scars: Real” folder. The photo shows a ring of puckered flesh just below her right breast with finger-length tendrils radiating out from it tracing along the paths of veins. Squint at it with the right mindset and it looks almost like a flower surrounded by vines. The scar’s an unnatural shade of dark purple standing out against brown skin. It’s matches in the “Scars: Potential” folder taken over the course of the weeks prior to the final version show the scar as being practically vibrant in its hue and surrounded by heavily inflamed skin.
Most importantly, it’s not there anymore.
“What the Hell?” Eris gasps yet again as she continues to run fingers over smooth skin while staring down the spot in the mirror where she should be seeing a scar.
She tightens her grip on the edge of the sink and accidentally cracks the ceramic. The buckling of the countertop topples her phone into the bowl. The sound snaps Eris out of her obsessive staring and prodding enough to look down at what she just did and swear. She lets go of the broken edge of the sink and picks up her phone. Too late she realizes she’s bleeding from the soft skin on her palm. Now she’s smeared it on her phone case. It’s not the first time it’s gotten blood on it but she swears again anyway.
Then she freezes.
Why are her hands soft?
That makes no sense.
She should have calluses.
She must have had calluses.
Where the Hell are her calluses?
Why did it take her this long to realize what was wrong?
Her grip on her phone shifts subtly and she nearly drops it in surprise. Running her fingers along the rubberized texture of its case feels different now somehow. She looks at the open palm of her other hand and something about the way it catches the light has changed slightly. The blister that’s been there for the past couple of days is suddenly gone. She traces the pad of her thumb back and forth across the tips of her fingers and finds that while it doesn't feel right, it’s the closest to right that it’s felt in weeks.
“What the Hell?”
She touches where the scar should be and memories that make no sense to have been forgotten come rushing back.
Sun hot enough to cook eggs on the dashboard. An Arizona truck stop. Rumors of a big cat prowling the desert and attacking truckers and tourists who stop there too late at night. Killing time waiting for nightfall by practicing along with a language learning CD snagged from a clearance bin. An empty parking lot beneath a moonless night sky. Climbing out of the cab and watching the desert. Feeling the temperature drop. The feeling of being the only person on Earth. Lingering in a space only ever meant to be passed through. The howl of an almost-human voice that almost sounds like a song. The weight of a tire iron in her hand. Stepping out beyond the edge of the pavement. Stopping just at the edge of the furthest lamplight. The twilight border between known and unknown. A whistled tune to announce her presence. Eyes in the dark. A growl that almost sounds like words. Circling. Blurring the line between predator and prey. Claws and teeth. The crack of a tire iron against a skull that almost looks human. A whipcord whistling sound through the air. A step too slow. Blooming pain. The feeling of veins replaced by rose vines with vibrating thorns. An inhuman growl from a human throat. Hands preventing a tail from ripping a stinger free. A slow extraction from a chest. A quick insertion into a neck. The loss of a tire iron. Seven minutes slumped against a door, trying to work up the strength to open it. Three days in the bed in the back of a truck cabin. Angry voicemails threatening unemployment. Coughing up blood. Engine noise going quiet. AC cutting out. Sips of hot water. Knocking on the door from a concerned stranger. A declined offer of a ride to the hospital. A request to siphon gas. The passing of years. An impossible city. A new job. A kindred spirit. A wonderfully wicked smile beneath golden eyes. The feeling of another’s hands tracing a familiar shape. The comparison to a flower.
This time Eris does drop her phone. This time she grips the edge of the sink with both hands. This time it’s a different curse she mutters between ragged breaths.
She starts to look up, catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror, bolts upright, and looks down at herself. It’s fainter than in the photo, but there’s now the barest outline of what might look like a flower if you squint at it in the right mindset.
“Sis,” Eris whispers to a friend that isn’t there to hear it, “what did you do to me?”
*******
In the past fifteen minutes since Eris knocked on Lacuna’s door hard enough to chip the paint and wake the neighbors, she’s watched her best friend’s face change from terrified to concerned to embarrassed to anxious to worried to confused and now to utterly horrified.
“Oh goddess, I am so sorry. I swear I didn’t think that would happen. I knew there might be complications but I didn’t think that even could happen. I’m sorry. I should have seen this coming. I should have run more simulations. I shouldn’t have needed to. It’s so -”
“Sis -”
“- obvious in hindsight. Not even hindsight, it's just obvious. How could I be so stupid? I’m sorry. I promise this was an accident. Maybe if I - No that would be worse. I swear I -”
“Hey -”
“- can make this right. Or maybe it’s already showing signs of abating. This is what I get for not taking a baseline model first. Please don’t be mad. I’m so, so, sorry. I just -”
“Lacuna!”
Lacuna flinches at the not-quite-a-shout and goes quiet, shrinking back into the round papasan chair seated in her apartment’s living room.
“I’m not mad at you,” Eris lies. Maybe if she keeps still enough and keeps being slow and deliberate enough with her words and breathing it will become true. “I believe you that whatever this is was an accident and I’m not going to hold it against you.” That part is probably true. “Now please slow down for a minute and tell me what you think you did to me and what we need to do to fix it.”
Lacuna wraps her arms around herself and takes a series of trembling, drawn-out breaths. Her wide eyes show little sign of the sleep Eris woke her from. When she starts speaking again it’s slow and halting, and her fingers continue to drum on her upper arms in a rolling motion.
“Right. Sorry. So… Two things. Probably two things. But they’re kind of related. So maybe one thing.”
Eris resists the urge to tell her to get on with it. The patience that she’s learned since befriending Lacuna is wearing thin tonight.
“This is mostly an educated guess, but back when we healed your burns after the Logos mission. Remember how I said we were sort of hacking autogenesis to work for us?”
Eris nods. “Making my belief that I could walk away from the blast unharmed stronger than my and Logos’s combined belief that it should have killed me.”
“Yeah. That. Close to it anyway. Because the core theory of the Autogenesis Principle is that it makes your perception of yourself override baseline reality. Like we’ve talked about, that’s probably why you heal so fast normally. So I set up the ritual to temporarily sharpen and amplify that perception. Remove any doubts or distractions and absolutely focus on your idea of who you truly are. But since I never took an initial scan of when you were uninjured, we were pretty much going based on memory”
“And so, what, I lost focus and parts got left out?”
“Maybe? More likely that I did. It was configured to mostly be based on you, but since I was the one casting the ritual, some of my perception of your body slipped in too. And. Well. I didn’t know that you had those scars that you said were missing. Or maybe I was because on some level I was thinking of that all as being freshly grown flesh that we were replacing the old with? I don’t know. But when we found you your… Those were the parts of you that took the brunt of it. You were…”
“I was what?”
“I-” Lacuna bites her lip and puts a hand to her mouth. “Probably best I don’t say. Perception and everything. But trust me. It was… bad. If you were anyone else I don’t think you would have survived.”
Just built different.
“Fine.” Eris says even though it isn’t. “So the scars you didn’t know I had didn’t get put back when we healed me. That tracks, but why did it make me forget about them?”
“I’m not entirely sure, and that’s the scary part. It might have been a flaw in the ritual itself that caused some leakage between us or maybe left some of what was supposed to be a temporary perception adjustment linger around longer than expected. Or it might be because no one fully understands how autogenesis works and causing a shift in perception cascaded into forcing other variables into place to align with that. I’m not sure which one’s worse.”
“Okay so, those are both bad,” horrifying, if Eris is being honest with herself, “but what do we do about it?”
“For now? Maybe nothing? You said that when you realized something was off your memory came back and then the scar started to reappear. And that remembering the calluses caused you to remember the scar? There’s precedent for removal of memory alterations to cause a cascading effect. That’s something I read when I was researching how to help with Ashan’s tattoo. Not a tattoo, but you know what I mean. If we give it a little bit of time it should all work itself out and go back to normal. Probably. And if it doesn’t, we go find someone who knows more about this than me.”
“If it’s going to wear off, doesn’t that mean the burns are going to come back too?”
“No. That’s a little bit different. It’s a technical thing that I could explain better after sleeping properly, but I’m ninety-seven percent sure that we’ve got that part pretty well solved. Even before the ritual, you didn't remember the blast itself since you blacked out, and you weren’t even conscious for seventy-two hours between waking up in the autodoc bed and getting the additional healing. In the grand scheme of things, the time that you spent in that particular condition didn’t have much time to imprint on you or get internalized. Not unless you were taking that all a lot harder than you were letting on. It was part of the reason I proposed the ritual almost as soon as you were awake.”
“Fine,” Eris says. It still isn’t. “Fine,” she says again to convince herself. “I’ll assume and act like it will work out how we want, try not to think too hard about it, and it will happen, the same as any other autogenesis bullshit. But what about my calluses?”
“What about them? Same as the rest I guess.”
“No, I mean it’s not like we’ve never shaken hands before and I’ve literally dragged you into doing things in the past. You might not have seen all of my scars, but you should have an idea what my hands feel like.”
“Oh! That might be the whole ‘new flesh’ thing I mentioned earlier.”
“Or?” Eris drags out the word. “I sense an ‘or’ coming.”
Lacuna looks at her lap, trying and failing to hide the red creeping into her face.
“You’re always gentle about it though,” Lacuna practically whispers. “Compared to what I know you can do anyway. Holding hands. Arm around my shoulder. Pats on the back. Hugs. Even when there’s force behind it, it’s… comforting.” She laughs, embarrassed; a short puff of breath that’s almost more of a gasp. “I guess I think of your touch as… soft? I’m sorry. That’s weird of me to say. And also really messed up of me to have forced onto you, even if it was on accident.”
“Sis…”
“No, I mean it. It’s bad enough when normal people try to make others into the versions of them they have in their heads instead of who they really are. We’re lucky that ritual was only meant for long term physical changes and that I’m not enough of a real mage to even be able to make lasting mental changes. You're my best friend, E. I don’t want some weird idealized caricature my subconscious made up. I want you.”
Lacuna sniffs and Eris puts a hand on her shoulder before another torrent of “I’m sorries” starts pouring out. She’s not sure she can deal with more of that tonight, especially if they turn into tears.
“Hey. It’s gonna be alright. You fucked up - no sugarcoating that - but it happens to everyone sooner or later. Important part is you’re owning up to it, you’re trying to make it better, and you know how not to in the future. You’re my best friend too, and whatever happens, we’re still cool. I know who I am and no mad science lab accident is going to change that.”
Does she though? Was she always this forgiving? This protective? This quick to swallow her anger?
Eris tells herself that’s just part of caring about someone.
But if Lacuna ever did accidentally change something about her mind, would either of them even be able to tell?
Eris tells herself that being able to ask that question means she’s still her.
<-Previous Chapter Masterpost Next Chapter->
#writing#original fiction#urban fantasy#web novel#WIP#Writeblr#Empty Names#writers on tumblr#my writing#emptynameswriting#To clarify: Eris is both demisexual and biromantic. It just happens that she's only really had even marginal success with women so far.#I've said before that I don't really intend to go into any sort of romantic subplots with this story and that's still the case.#But as I was writing this one the fact that Eris is *actively avoiding* romance seemed like an interesting aspect of her to touch on a bit.#That one time Eris let Gretchen tie her up didn't last long because she kept accidentally breaking whatever binding material was used.#Absolutely ruined the mood. But it makes for a funny comedy sketch to imagine gradually escalating from rope to industrial steel cable.#Not why they broke up though. That was due to an argument over whether the Fourth or Fifth Fate of Hunters is the better way to go.#Gretchen thought that one of them turning into a monster and being put down by her lover would be tragically romantic.#Or even better: They both turn at once. Eris was horrified and still half-suspects she'll have to lead Gretchen's funerary hunt one day#The accidental memory and scar erasure was the only part of this chapter in my original notes for it.#That and having a drone project a ritual glyph while out on a monster-of-the-week mission.#I actually got a little bit uncomfortable while writing and thinking through in the implications of the incident on Eris and Lacuna's trust#Canonically Eris's personality HAS NOT been modified by Lacuna at this point. NOR has there been *intentional* memory modification.#But the fact that it's even a question would be a strain on any relationship.#Meanwhile Lacuna is absolutely dancing around the fact that Eris did briefly go “Fifth Fate” at the end of Chapter 15 but doesn't remember.#Fitzy the clockwork bartender is very loosely based on and named after the D&D character of an old friend of mine.#Loreghaste and Lornegna are based on/named after my Bloodborne and Monster Hunter: World characters respectively.#Keeping track of tenses got a bit wonky this chapter. Especially with Eris's regaling of her last mission with Road and company.#Things to go in an editing pass that I'll probably never do.#I worry a bit that I made a mistake with the jokes from Old Vic and Wyatt but then I figure any ickiness there is sort of the point.#Eris is uncomfortable with it too.
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Me bitching about Last Twilight again
Trying to verbalise why Last Twilight is losing me, beyond what I said last week, because when it started, I could barely stand to wait to watch until I had stopped working, and now it takes me days to finish an episode. At this point, the main reason I intend to watch the rest of the show is that there are only two episodes left.
The first phrase that came to mind is, "This show is lying to me."
Which is ridiculous. Of course it is! That's what fiction does! And there's fiction that cheerfully and deliberately feeds you the most outrageous nonsense and makes you go along with it.
But there's also fiction that tells you, "This is a genuine human emotion." And even though you KNOW you're watching actors, you believe it.
Last Twilight is telling me "This is a genuine human emotion," but I DON'T believe it, particularly because it's terrified of actually giving me any complexity.
The introduction of Day's dad last week (or, well, technically the week before) was a particularly blatant example. Nothing about those interactions felt real. It wasn't even really about Day's dad at all; it was a way for Day to sort out his feelings about Night. And now they're all sorted out and Day forgives Night, who doesn't get to verbalize his own feelings about the accident in the slightest (though Mark Pakin does his best with a minute of facial journey), because this part of the storyline is over now.
Mhok was always more of a boy scout with an image problem than an actual bad boy, but by now, all of his issues are sorted out or brushed aside, because obviously he can't get to be the one to need support, ever. Everything is about Day, which is unfortunate, because Sea isn't a strong enough actor to carry the show. Especially not since the only thing about Day is his blindness, and of course the romance.
Which, I'm sorry, but the romance lost me on that mountain top. I know a lot of people liked it, but it was such contrived sentimental tripe for Day to lose the last of his vision at the most romantically meaningful moment. Plus, like I said before, I don't buy these two as lovers.
(Sidenote: Even though Moonlight Chicken was a better show, I wasn't entirely happy about how Heart only existed when Li Ming was there. So shouldn't I be happy that Day gets more scenes with several people? But I guess what I'm looking for is balance, and reciprocity, each of the characters in the romantic couple being there for the other. I think, though it isn't my favourite in other ways, A Tale of Thousand Stars actually dealt with that better. And both ATOTS and MLC let their disabled characters have more facets to their characterisation.)
(Though really, when it comes to disability exploration in the QLs I've seen, Sleep With Me is where it's at.)
Originally, I was happy about Aon's inclusion as a blind guy who has his shit together, but as it turns out, that's ALL he is. His entire job in this show is to happily show "cool things you can still do while blind". That's not characterisation, it's a rehabilitation pep talk in human form.
Day's mom got to break out of her frown for five minutes. Really, for most of the show, you could just have stapled a picture of her on the wall with the words "Don't do that!" written on it, and cut to it intermittently, and it would have accomplished the same thing. I guess it's good she got to vary her routine a little, but I wouldn't exactly call it nuanced, yet.
Porjai… I don't want to be too harsh on Porjai. She's okay. But she's a side character, and as such, gets tugged along into whatever she needs to be for the other characters.
The final couple of episodes will determine how I feel about the whole thing. Especially now that we're getting the transplant. If the surgery fails, or is only partially successful, and depending on how that is handled, I'll probably still give the show a passing grade. But if we get last-minute healing, I'm done.
At least that disgusting rumour about Mhok dying and leaving his eyes to Day can finally be put to rest.
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Hullo Tacky, will you tell us about writing Take the Moon? What parts came most easily or hardest? Which lines brought you joy?
Hello Anon, thank you so much for this interesting ask.
I had a bit of a hard time writing this one, actually - i wrote it while away from home due to a family emergency, which was weird enough, and also i don't think i've ever felt that level of self-doubt about anything i've written before. it was very hard to get any sort of objective read on that fic, for some reason.
I actually had about 5k of this written already and it was meant to be a long fic. but when i realised i wouldn't have time to write something new for wireless i changed my idea and dusted this one off, intending to just polish it a bit and submit. Ended up writing 10k more in a frenzy over the space of three days (that is a lot of writing for me, i'm very slow). i also completely lost confidence as i was going along, and it was only thanks to @maesterchill and @makeitp1nk that I managed to push through.
That said, the fic is so different to how it was supposed to be, but i wrote so much so quickly, that i think maybe it needed to turn out like it did. I wrote a lot of it from personal experience and was trying to capture how sometimes worry and love act as counterbalances to each other, neither tipping the scales over, but co-existing on a precarious sort of even keel.
in terms of the bits i like - i think i like the wolfy bits? harry nuzzling draco's underarm hair, and thinking that if he had claws he'd grab onto draco with them. also i liked writing the wedding which wasn't a real wedding at all but i wanted to make really romantic: “Husband,” Harry mouthed in a constant loop, eyes alight with something he couldn’t remember now without shame. Umm I did enjoy writing the sex scenes, such as they are - my kind of smut, slightly towards the dirty side of M. The bit where Harry turns up at the Muggle childcare facility in his auror robes and has to sweep them behind him when the unpleasant manager makes him sit in a tiny toddler chair - that felt like the right blend of poignant and ridiculous. And the supermarket scene (i chose a Sainsbury's to mix it up from my normal Big Tesco focus 😂) which felt very familiar and vivid to me.
In short, this fic is very personal to me and as a result makes me feel very vulnerable. So i have really cherished the nice comments on it - i'm glad anyone gave a chance to my melancholy little fic about a fake marriage between a wolf and lawyer, and their blended family of an orphaned metamorphagus and a neurodivergent toddler.
Oh Take the Moon is here btw - it's 15k and i hope is tagged fairly comprehensively.
#lovely anon#i have a sneaking suspicion about your identity anon#anyway whoever you are this was such good fun and i'm glad i thought about this fic#it makes me feel less nervous#drarry#drarry fic#take the moon
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For the gets real fanfic writer ask: 🎈💞💋💌
Have a nice day!
Ooh, I'll have to go see what these are! Apologies in advance for if I accidentally answer the wrong emoji (I've done that before)!
🎈describe your style as a writer; is it fixed? does it change?
It does change, I know/think it has changed. People used to said was a bit poetry-like, and they don't say that any more so it's not just me who thinks that. BUT this is not a bad thing! These days I worry a lot less about individual words but that means I'm able to write longer fics (especially in the past year or so) and I feel less awkward with explaining plots and whatever. I do still overthink the words a bit (maybe? writing is ABOUT overthinking words, isn't it? so it's probably fine?), and I'm sure nobody else cares whether I do this or not but I do stop and spend several minutes going "I need a word that starts with this letter and it has this many syllables and ideally ends in a sound like this one." Because it's a poem! Except not!
I also like alliteration and puns! And using words that kind of rhyme but they also don't! I have also got better at smut in terms of it's now a lot easier for the reader to work out who's put what where due me being less vague and more willing to just call a cunt a cunt. :D
💞what's the most important part of a story for you? the plot, the characters, the worldbuilding, the technical stuff (grammar etc), the figurative language
The characters! That's the whole point of fanfic for me, as I am not vastly into worldbuilding stuff generally. As a general rule I won't a write a character into a fic if I can't 'hear' their voice in my head. (Possibly wrongly, I tend to consider canon characterisation work 'good' or not based on how quickly I feel like I can replicate the character's voices myself.) And when reading fic the thing most likely to put me off is if the characters don't sound like themselves. They can do things that seem a bit odd for them, or extreme, but they have to sound like themselves while they're doing them.
💋when you leave comments on a fic, do you want to hear back from the writer?
I have done this one here earlier :)
💌share something with us about an up-and-coming work (WIP) that has you excited!
The next chapter of what I lazily refer to on tumblr as 'The AU' is part 5 but after THAT it's chapter 6 which is where the murdering starts! I have vastly oversold the murdering aspect of this fic (at least in terms of the number of murders) but I do feel like this is where things finally start to kick off. This particular murdery bit is actually what I was referring to here when I said things had gone a bit darker than intended.
It's entirely possible that half the readers will just nope out of the story once the killing starts but that's a them problem not a me problem, and if people can't appreciate a spot of surprisingly-romantic murder then... well they're probably very well-adjusted members of society, now that I think about it?
And also I like the last line of the entire fic. I wrote that bit months ago and I still like it, and I think that's a good sign. The final scene sets out how things stand now that [SPOILER], and various people feel emotions about various things, and then I just sort of... do this face: 😉 Not me myself, obviously, but like. The story. If the story had eyes and a face. (Nobody is allowed to say they're disappointed when they get to that last line, btw. You all have to pretend you think it was really good and a wise choice on my part. You're also not allowed to ask what happens after that, because I'm not letting this thing get any longer than it already has to be.)
#replies#writing ask meme#i hope i answered the correct emojis!#there i go setting the reader up for disappointment i'm so thoughtful like that#fic related
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Kaito momota
Hello there! I so rarely get any Danganronpa asks, so this is very exciting! Thank you so much for sending this in! 🥰
I apologize for the confusion on my part, as I realize now that I currently have two games going: the "bye bye writer's block headcanons" and the "penny for your thoughts asks," so I'm not entirely sure which one your ask is intended for. Sorry about that! 🙈😅 Since you don't have any heart emojis accompanying Kaito's name, I'm going to assume that it's for the ask game rather than a request for headcanons. That said, if you would like me to write some headcanons about Kaito for you, I am more than happy to give it a try (though I think I should let you know that I haven't actually played V3 before so most of what I know about Kaito is from Danganronpa S as well as some videos I've seen and the wiki). If you still do want headcanons, please just send in another ask or reply to this one with some heart emojiis that correspond to the type of headcanons you'd like (i.e. childhood, angst, friendship, alternate unvierse ect.) as, at the moment, I'm only taking headcanon requests specific to this game that I made. Thanks! 💕
Now onward to my thoughts on Kaito...
ROCKET MAN!!! 🚀I love him, seriously!! He just has this absolutely wonderful golden retriever energy. Though he might be a little exuberant and might have some more wild and impulsive ideas at times, at the end of the day, he seems so incredibly devoted to his friends and willing to do whatever it takes to protect and take care of them. I do want to be upfront with you again, and let you know that I actually haven't played through V3 myself (yet?) (A/N: I've seen videos and read the wiki so I know the basic plot points (and all the plot twists so I'm not worried about spoilers), but I don't have the game myself, so I haven't played it) so I am not super confident that my perceptions and interpretations of his character are entirely accurate (at least outside of Danganronpa S). That said, Kaito is one of my favorite characters in Danganronpa S! I, honestly, wasn't expecting that, but I got super attached to him and his upbeat, optimistic, and encouraging attitude as well as his friendship with Shuichi and Maki! It's all just so wholesome, and I really love their interactions with each other. They make such a wonderful trio! Friendship for the win!!💛
[A/N: As much as I love platonic relationships and usually tend to/prefer to interpret most relationships between fictional characters in a platonic sense, I will admit (in the interest of full candor) that I was definitely picking up some more romantic vibes between Kaito and Maki in Danganronpa S. I've heard that's a sort-of popular(?) ship, and I can definitely get behind it, at least from what I've seen of them. (I'll admit I've even read a fluffy fanfiction about them getting their happy ending because I want all the good things for them, even though I know how it all works out in V3 *cries* They deserved better! 😭). But I still think I love their friendship with each other most of all! 💛 Really Kaito's friendships with everyone are just so, so wonderful!].
Anyway, Kaito is great! I really enjoy all of his appearances in the Danganronpa S game, and his character makes me actually really curious about V3 (and I kind of want to play it one day, thanks to him). He's just such a fun guy and seems like a genuinely good-hearted person--very devoted and very encouraging to his friends. I want to be his friend. Forget about being an astronaut, he should be "The Ultimate Friend" in my opinion! 🥰 I'm (partially) kidding, but really, there's something just inherently wholesome and incredibly likable about Kaito, and he's a really interesting character.
When I saw this ask come in, the song "Cecilia and The Satellite" by Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness instantly came to mind as a Kaito song (and not just because of all the space references though those are an added bonus 😁). I think the more adventurous and impulsive spirit of the singer are very fitting for Kaito, and, ultimately, the song really speaks to how deeply he cares about others (like his friends) and wants to take protect and look after them.
"If I could fly, then I would know
What life looks like from up above and down below
I’d keep you safe, I’d keep you dry
Don’t be afraid, Cecilia, I’m the satellite
And you’re the sky"
Cecilia And The Satellite - YouTube
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Ep 3 of The Last Of Us was at least more interesting than last weeks episode. Ironic that the most fun I've had with the show so far is when I catch a glimpse of just how Joel was living his life the last 20 or so years. That being said they made one vital error that made me not be able to emotionally care about the characters spotlighted in this episode. They made Frank really unlikeable at the beginning and they rushed his romantic and sexual relationship with Bill. Like I get that in the apocalypse when you haven't seen another human being for a long time emotions can be heightened and the need for human contact can be so great that you aren't exactly going to be taking people out on 2 or 3 dates before you fuck them but come on ONE day? Not even a full day? For someone so paranoid like Bill I just couldn't buy that, at least give them a week or two. Also I didn't like how Bill seemed just so scared when they were about to sleep together for the first time (after knowing each other a couple hours maybe) like why the fuck was the actor told to play him that way?! It made me uncomfortable and made Frank seem like a predator and I didn't like it. Also Bill was right, Frank should not be using up his fuel just to mow the lawn and shouldn't have been inviting Joel and Tess to them without Bill's permission, just because it ended up working out doesn't change the fact it was a huge risk in the middle of the fucking apocalypse.
Overall though with some minor tweaks I'd have probably liked this episode more than Ep1 but because of the botched beginning to that relationship I ended up only caring about how Joel reacted to what happened to them because so far the only character I've managed to create any meaningful connection with is Joel. I feel like a better way to give us Frank and Bill's story would have been for Joel and Ellie to actually meet them in person first, let us get to know them through the characters we are meant to care about and THEN show us their story (and eventual joint suicide which I'm just gonna say it coupled committing suicide because one thing bad happens to one of them wasn't romantic when it was Romeo and Juliet and it isn't romantic now. Also bad case of bury your gays when one of those characters is apparently alive in the game so.....)
All that being said this episode was pure padding in a series that really didn't need it. The Last Of Us game is long. The cutscenes alone are almost 4 hours, that's almost 2 movie lengths, the season is only 9 episodes and they've already speedrun to getting Joel and Ellie meeting in Episode 1. Like I now know the creator who's helping on this show was the one with more or less full creative control of TLOU2 so he must really want to get to his story by Season 2 but considering I know most fans while they might like Part 2 most will agree its not as good as Part 1 (which is why Naughty Dog continue to milk Part 1 for all its worth) I figured they'd try to pass Part 1 out to at least 2 seasons on which case padding episodes like this would have been expected and necessary but they aren't. They clearly intend to finish this season with the end of the first game. They're apparently casting for Abby right now so next season is going to be Part 2 (poor Pedro Pascal they can't let his handsome face catch a break its either getting smashed in or hidden by a helmet these days).
Also why are they now telling us how many miles they are outside if x y or z place when in Episode 1 Joel and Tess just sort of teleport from inside the Quarantine Zone to wherever Ellie is without even showing us A. How they got there and B. Where Ellie even was in relation to where they started. Either locations and distances matter or they don't cause genuinely I laughed when Joel just appeared where Ellie was cause I was so confused I didn't know if they were in the same place this whole time or if someone had moved and we just weren't shown how it was all so bad it was comical.
Also what the fuck was Ellie doing to that Infected in the basement? Genuinely question like she's acting like one of the kids who'd burn ants it's quiet unsettling.
And lastly for the dudebros who'll tell me im a toxic gamer purist, I haven't played The Last Of Us. I understand changes have to be made. I'm not against Ep3 existing as I said I was at least less bored in this episode cause I decided I did actually kinda like Bill and thus what happened to him mattered to me. BUT I find it odd that such a short series based on quite long source material (I'm aware plenty of the gameplay material can't translate to television very well) needed padding but as padding goes this wasn't terrible.
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AoB Chapter 32 - Analysis
So, this is my entry for @carewyncromwell challenge for the Orion Fan Club.
I have tons and tons of unreleased content for him but that's unreleased for a reason and will come to you at some point, so I figured, I'd work with something I've published already.
I picked a chapter from my multichapter fic "An Art of Balance" on Orion and my MC Lizzie. The chapter is almost exclusively told from Orion's perspective, and I think there are a lot of good moments that show my take on his character in here.
I picked out the most poignant ones and did a little commentary on them - a director's cut, if you want to put it that way.
If you want to read the chapter in full, you can do so here 💛
Tagging the lovely @kc-and-co who was my biggest supporter from Day 1 and loves Orion (almost) as much as I do, as well as the other members of the OFC (some of which I don't know yet, but would love to!):
@thegoldenbuccaneer @lgvalenzuela @anthamariemayfair @smarti-at-smogwarts @rayraelleaizawa @the-emerald-dynasty @indigobackfire
If I tagged you wrongly, sorry!! I just copied the list from the og post 😅
Orion was glad when the light that was filtering into their dormitory gradually got lighter as the beginning of the day crept up on them. Different than usual, he had been sleeping uneasily for the whole night, and not at all for the last hour or so. He had been going over all the necessary statistics Murphy had drilled into him, trying to remember their most important strategic points for the day. He was wondering if they were as prepared as they should be.
So, it is the day before the final match of the year, and Hufflepuff (my Orion is in Hufflepuff, lol, forgot to mention) is playing for the Quidditch Cup this season. I picked this part, the very beginning of the chapter, because it shows that Orion isn't all he portrays to the world. He wears a calm and confident mask to reassure his team, when he's not half as calm as he makes himself out to be. Setting an example for the people he's supposed to guide is more important to him, however.
Another point we see here is that Orion's preparation for each and every match is meticulous. He has his best friend Murphy by his side for strategic discussions. In my head, Orion strikes a perfect balance (pun not intended) between having a specific plan and then adapting it on instinct. You can't go into a match without any idea on what to do - that's just not how sports work, and I'm peculiar about my sports, sorry.
He could hear Everett tossing and turning on the other side of the room, quietly swearing and impatiently fluffing his pillow every now and again. Orion made no move to signal his teammate that he was awake as well. Ever since their confrontation on the day after the Slytherin match they had spoken even less than before, but it wasn’t like Orion minded much. Despite them having shared a dorm for six years now, he and Everett had never been able to form a real connection.
Jason Everett is a side character I created for this fic. He is in Orion's year, the new Beater on the team, and a sort of wanna-be romantic rival to him, at least that's how Everett sees himself. But that's only on the side.
Orion hears Ev tossing and turning and purposefully ignores it. He doesn't want get into conflict when he doesn't absolutely have to, and he doesn't see the point in wasting his time and energy on someone unbalancing him. While I do think Orion strives for harmony, it's not like he doesn't have his likes and dislikes in people, and especially in my story, Everett did some really mean things regarding Lizzie, who isn't merely Orion's love interest, but has been a very close friend to him for years.
That being said, it's not like Orion tries to change Ev to make him fit the team or anything. He selected him for a reason in the beginning of the year, and he fully acknowledges and accepts the fact that every person is different and not everyone is always compatible.
But still, Orion hadn’t forgotten how he had felt himself on the day of his first final, back when he had been the new kid on the team. He had been in a terrified state for most of the day until the game had begun. Even after playing for so many years, he still felt unusually agitated before the last match of the season; imagining how nervous Everett must feel right now, Orion felt a touch of sympathy for him. All of the showing off and aggressiveness was merely hiding a deep insecurity and wish for appreciation, and Everett knew that Orion could see behind his facade.
A point that is very important to me is always to make my characters/the characters I borrow from canon relatable. And I never found the idea that Orion has always been this serene and ever in control of his emotions guy. No, in my canon becoming the way he is now has been a gradual development, and I think he was very nervous when he first played Quidditch as a 12 yo boy. He still is nervous, not as much, but he can control and hide it better.
But even though he has all this experience, and doesn't like Everett very much on top, you can still see one of Orion's major strengths coming to the surface here - his empathy.
Orion is deeply empathic and has no troubles getting into someone else's shoes, which is why he always tries to see the best in the people surrounding him and is very sympathetic and can see beyond his personal stance on Ev into what's really going on.
He couldn’t help but feel guilty at being partly to blame for this discontinuity. The feelings he had developed towards Lizzie had been a catalyst for many of the changes his team had had to endure. But despite the obstacles lining their way, they had come out on top, ready to take the final step towards their goal. Smiling fondly at the picture of what he considered his family, Orion felt overwhelmingly proud of what they had achieved. It had shown once again; with enough trust in themselves, everything had fallen into place in the end.
Falling in love with Lizzie when it's a very complicated situation, and thereby unbalancing himself and his whole team weighs greatly on Orion. He takes his position as captain very seriously, and sees the team not only as his main circle of friends but as his family. He feels responsible for them and the conflict between what he sees as his duty and what he himself wants is a conflict that's hard on him. Orion isn't used to his heart and mind not being balanced and focused on the same thing.
Another thing we can see just a tiny glimpse of here is something that is a major point in my idea of his character - his unbroken trust in the universe, fate, whatever you want to call it. It's Orion's greatest strength and flaw at the same time.
Being dealt a bad hand in his life with being orphaned and always the odd one out, learning to accept that everything happens for a reason and eventually everything will turn out fine helped Orion cope and make a way of his own.
On the other hand, the line between trusting into fate and blatant fatalism is a thin one, and sometimes Orion shows the tendency to accept things as "fate" when he could very well change them, even though it might be tough or seem impossible.
Judith was already there, of course; much like him, the dark skinned Hufflepuff Beater was a dedicated early riser. She was sitting at the mostly deserted Ravenclaw table with her boyfriend, both of them engaged in a quiet conversation. Orion was more surprised to see Lizzie and Skye sitting a bit further ahead at the Hufflepuff table; both of his fellow Chasers were known for enjoying sleeping in. But then again, they were probably just as anxious as he was. Lizzie was rapidly bouncing her foot while she was stirring her tea to an extent that her whole frame seemed to be shaking; the nervous energy she was radiating was palpable and rubbing off on Orion by simply looking at her.
Orion is an early bird, change my mind. If he can help it, he never misses a sunrise and strongly believes that if you begin the day by greeting the sun and are thankful for what you have, you will go through the day with the right energy. And yes, in all stories and AUs I do Orion is a dedicated yogi.
Again, change my mind.
Others, like Judith, preferred isolating themselves and their thoughts from fans and well-wishers by meditating in a quiet place on their own. Orion wished he could have done the same but as the team’s captain it was his responsibility to make sure everything and everyone was properly prepared. He wasn’t concerned about his seasoned teammates; although everyone was nervous, he knew all of them would come through. The only one truly worrying him was Everett.
This plays into what I said in the beginning - Orion puts his team before himself, always, even when it goes against what we wants/needs himself. He would prefer to prepare himself and his mindset, but he knows others need his help with exactly that, so there's no way he'd let them cope on their own.
He got up from his seat and tried to shoulder past him, but Orion was having none of it. He got hold of Everett’s shoulder with a strong grip, the intensity of which clearly surprised the Beater. If one member of the team was unbalanced, all of them were; Orion was determined to make him listen.
Like I said, Everett and Orion aren't friends, far from it. But they're part of the same team, and no matter what, Orion's team is his family, with all that it entails. And as a member of the team, Orion feels directly responsible for Ev - not only because one unbalanced player unbalances the whole team, but because he genuinely wants everyone to have the right approach and mindset.
As we can see here, Orion instinctively knows how to handle someone like Ev, who doesn't respond to Orion's usual way of dealing with problems.
He isn't afraid to use measures that aren't exactly his nature if he feels like his is what the other person needs to understand because - again - Orion has a lot of empathy.
He knows the thing Everett understands and respects is strength, so he shows them just that. Orion is more than the eccentric and always soft and contemplative hippie, and that's something people tend to forget. He worked hard to be where he is, and if it calls for it, he can show the world that he is tougher than everyone thinks.
“We’ve never been friends, you and I, and I acknowledge that sometimes people are too different to form a connection on a common ground,” Orion began and Everett grunted in confirmation; at least in this point they had the same opinion.
“But I remember my first season finale,” Orion continued regardless. “It was back in our second year and I was terrified. The final match of the season is the highlight of our year, the pinnacle of everything we have worked for; being afraid to not close this chapter of our journey in a satisfying way is something that scares me every year over and over again and there is no shame in admitting so.”
We see his empathy here again, and his willingness to open himself up to someone he doesn't particularly like, because it's for the good of the team. Again, the team comes before himself.
Something that's very important about Orion, I think, that he doesn't have any of this toxic masculinity bullshit many other characters (not only in the HP universe, in general) have. He has no problem in showing his insecurities and admitting weakness, at least not when he feels he is in an environment where he feels secure and surrounded by people he trusts.
If that is not the case, he'll react very, very differently, but that's a story for another day and the sequel ^^
The collective nervousness radiating off both teams was tangible and the hot summer air heavy with their silence. None of his teammates was speaking, everyone caught up in their own thoughts, blind to the beautiful day surrounding them. Even Orion himself couldn’t appreciate the warmth of the sun upon his skin for its beauty itself; instead, he was thinking about how to adapt their strategy should they be forced to play against the sunlight.
The match is almost here, and Orion - who is usually very attentive and appreciative on the small details surrounding him - is focused.
As much as I think he likes to daydream and let his thoughts wander, when it calls for it, he can channel all his mind and heart onto the thing that matters most at this exact moment, which is what makes him the player and captain he is.
“How did you like my speech?”
Lizzie didn’t look up as Orion walked up to her; suddenly, she was even more busy fiddling with her gloves. She felt herself blush at his question, though; she didn’t have the slightest idea what the speech had even been about.
“It was good,” she mumbled evasively, trying not to lose her face. “I feel thoroughly vivified.”
“Really?” he smirked. “I had the impression your mind was elsewhere, Chaser. But don’t worry,” he laughed at her guilty expression, “while I do try to speak out of the moment, even I have to admit that this was one of my weaker speeches.”
We've switched perspectives here and it's actually Lizzie telling the story now, but I think there's some really good points in this part, too, so stay with me (if you're still reading, I know this is long and I'm geeky, sorry).
This ties in with what I said before - Orion is attentive, so very attentive. He didn't notice Lizzie was distracted because he's in love with her, he would have done anyway. She's his friend, fellow Chaser, and part of his team, and Orion can sense when someone is not listening to his moment of vivification.
That being said, he fully knows how convoluted his way of thinking can be and doesn't hold a grudge at anyone not making sense of him, as long as he has the impression that they're letting themselves getting inspired. He has enough confidence in himself and his abilities as a leader of this particular team that he can take it with humour that Lizzie of all people wasn't listening to him.
“Well, if that’s the case, I’ll let you in on a little secret of mine,” he told her, eyes suddenly sparkling mischievously. He smiled at her surprised face as he quickly undid the buckles on his right arm protection, much quicker than when Lizzie had tried and failed to do the same, and pushed back the sleeve of his robes. Her smile turned into a little laugh as her eyes fell onto Orion’s own necklace being wrapped several times around his wrist.
“That’s against the rules, Captain,” she chuckled.
“We don’t have to play by all the rules, do we?” he grinned back at her. He nodded towards her hand. “Come on, take your glove off.”
First of all, you're not allowed to wear jewellery in contact sport. That's a major, major, MAJOR pet peeve of mine whenever I see it, so my kids aren't allowed to either. Like I said, I'm peculiar about sports.
That being said, the idea that Orion finds a way around this rule to still wear his necklace even during house matches was an idea I had almost from the get go.
The necklace is an integral part to him and his talisman. In Art of Balance I headcanon that the necklace contains the birthstone of his mother, and it's one of the only things he still has of her. But not only does the necklace has a personal value to Orion, but we know he is very fond of Divination and I also think Astrology in extension.
Something that's always said about sportsmen is how superstitious they are, and I think that ties very nicely with Orion's view of the world and the universe.
Another thing this little exchange shows is that Orion isn't always the boring, nice and good guy. He has a cheeky and mischievous side, it's just that he guards it very, very closely and close to no one gets to see it.
Just as he has his own way of thinking, he was his ways and methods to make things work the way he wants them to work.
Oof, what a monster of a post.
Sorry, but you know me, I can't keep things short per se, and if it comes to Orion doubly not, not sure what you expected 😂
If you read up to this point, thank you very much and I hoped you found reading it as interesting as I did writing it!
I'm super curious to know if you agree/disagree with anything I said? Tell me in the comments or send me a message, I'm super willing to discuss!!
#hphm#hogwarts mystery#orion amari#quidditch#orion fan club#lizzie jameson#art of balance#aob#analysis
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Well I got at least two people interested (@esmeralda-anistasia and @deathsmallcaps) so why not.
Quick disclaimer: I understand that some fans can be very sensitive to this topic and take general criticisms as personal attacks and jump to the defensive. Please don't justify your ships to me if you have that reaction to anything said in this post. It's not my business and if I'm honest I really don't care. Your experiences are not mine and will not change mine and nothing I'm about to say is meant to be read as an insult.
Okay onto the rarepairs in question!
I was ten years old when the episode Zuko Alone first aired and Ursa fascinated me. She was so elegant and sweet, and yet the implication was that she was also capable of assassination. Her disappearence and the fact everyone involved kept pretty hush-hush about her gave her character an air of mystery and Zuko's memories involving her made him a great deal more interesting and sympathetic (i still rolled my eyes every time he showed up and thought he didn't deserve all the cute moments with Mai until The Day of Black Sun, and even then still thought Jet was cooler in every way, but you can't please them all). She had quickly become a favorite character and I've held onto that adoration for about 15 years now.
I also really wanted her to kiss Hakoda.
They had compatible personalities and deserved some luck in love after all the heartbreak and trials, and they both loved their children despite having to leave. Ursa was never treated as dead, just gone. She could have been anywhere and there was nothing to say she couldn't have crossed paths with Hakoda and his men.
There was also something about it I didn't quite have the words or media exposure to explain. Often, in fandom or canon, if a relationship is biracial, the partner who is fairer-skinned and/or of the dominant or invading culture, who the audience sees themselves in, is the man and the one who is darker-skinned and/or marginalized or colonized is the woman (heteronormativity got a head start on this one). There's a lot of ugly "taming the savage" rhetoric in this, usually paired with blatant misogyny that's supposed to be in the woman's favor (like suggesting that a woman could only be complicit in this culture because it was what she was told and didn't know any better). The woman's family and friends who oppose this are depicted as unfairly prejudiced against this strange man as if their distaste for people who can be or have been responsible for things like genocide or subjugation is the same as the other side seeing these people as deserving of genocide or subjugation for the crime of not being like them. Sometimes it's the other way around, where the partner seen as "more civilized" is the woman and the one seen as "less civilized" is the man, in which case the woman is often abducted or otherwise the man's defining feature is his brutishness. This supposed brutishness is both intimidating and attractive to the oh so delicate if a bit repressed captive/wife (as well as the audience) and can manifest as being fiercely protective of her, which is how he shows his affection if there is a language barrier between them. And if you grow up Native, this is easy to pick up on and often in the back of your mind, because at least 90% of your media representation likely has some aspect mentioned above.
(Man that was a lot of academic style analysis)
But the dynamic between Hakoda and Ursa wouldn't leave room for any of that. Hakoda, as an absent parent backstory, is defined by having to leave despite how much he loved and would miss his children. Ursa, as an absent parent backstory, is defined by the crime she was willing to commit for her children (for Zuko specifically, but how long would it actually take for Azula to shoot her mouth off at the wrong place and time and also be targeted by Azulon?). Ursa was the one whose willingness to kill sent her fleeing into the night. The culture of her nation betrayed her and made her choose between her own safety and that of at least one of her children. Hakoda is charismatic and a good leader, but he is also soft spoken and understanding, and above all else, gentle. He isn't here to hurt innocents. He's here to see to it that the next generation of his people will not fear invaders or raids or even know that snow can be black from soot. And he's someone Ursa can finally feel safe around and confide in, and she could be the same for him. Someone he doesn't have to be the leader for, to whom he can admit that he just wants to be home and let the tears fall.
I'm honest enough to admit that one of the reasons I liked The Search was that Ikem wore his hair a lot like Hakoda did and that was close enough to it being canon for me.
Another one is Jin/Smellerbee. Something about their personalities strikes me as being so wonderfully harmonious and I like to imagine Jin, smooth-talking and streetwise but still the most genuine person, being the one to sit Smellerbee, who never really got a chance to think about these things, down and explain that anything she might be is okay. That it's okay to not be in love with a guy friend who gave her a purpose and loyal companionship. That it's okay to like girls. That she can have more than one partner. That it's okay to be different from what's considered normal and proper and not have an easy word to describe it. And eventually she'd realize it's true. And eventually she'd realize that she wasn't teasing when she called her beautiful in a wild sort of way.
I also like to think that Smellerbee clearly has more specialized fighting skills and is very good at what she does but Jin is strong enough to bench press her no problem. And Smellerbee acts all tough (because she is) but blushes whenever Jin calls her cute or pretty because she's not used to it.
Sometimes Longshot is involved too. Not as a third wheel or the exact same kind of partner, more like a ghibli style relationship with Smellerbee. Like is it a gentle romance? Is it an intimate friendship? It's love and they know that and don't have to define it by others' perception. And Jin gives Longshot kisses so he doesn't feel left out, which gets him a bit bashful because she really could have anyone, she already has Smellerbee of all people, and she still finds him deserving of a peck on the cheek. They probably all bunk together.
This actually started from a fic I wrote but don't intend on posting more than snippets of. Basically, i was tired of a lot of fanfic tropes, especially those having to do with friends to lovers and soulmates (this world is not kind to aromantics and the last thing I wanted in my escapism was romance being established as a level up for relationships), so I wrote something to actively subvert all of them. Jet and Smellerbee were each convinced they owed the other a romantic relationship after all they'd been through together, even though neither actually wanted it, because that's how all the stories go. So after he dies, she remembers all those times that would have been romantic if either was actually interested, but were instead just uncomfortable because it was entirely social convention and no feeling. But then she comes across Jin, who she's never met before, but who takes her in her arms and reassures her and sympathizes with her, and in this tiny apartment in this seedy side of town, she feels safe. She seeks permission for every touch and kiss and tells her this encounter doesn't have to be anything she isn't comfortable with. And when Smellerbee has to leave, Jin insists she take a candle to light her way, and winks when she says she can return it the day after. She gives her an excuse to visit again. And Smellerbee blushes and accepts it.
And then there's Teo/Haru and Teo/Ty Lee. No special reason I just think both would make a cute couple and want Teo to be happy. He's a good boy, more people should love him. Let him impress people with wheelchair tricks and get smooched.
#response#i also just think Jin has a string of admirerers in ba sing se#and the si je defaille daydream scene from mozart l'opera rock is just an average tuesday for her
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✨ good morning from a chaotic aro ✨
ah, lesbian aro panic (?) under the cut ~
I've had a wonderful past weekend.
Not sure what to make of all of this yet, so i guess that's why I'm talking about it here.
I have a gay cuddle friend. I'm so happy about that. She is sweet and cute and a lesbian (like me), and we just enjoy each other's time and presence.
Prior to becoming cuddle buddies at all, we talked about our queer identities together. She knows I'm aromantic, she knows I'm a bit ace. I know about quite a bit of her queer journey as well. We have become close based on those things, and just enjoying being with each other.
Lately, that enjoyment has spread into physical affection.
I really don't mind this. The only time I would ever be nervous about this is if I was: a) uncomfortable touching someone, which in this situation I'm not; or b) afraid that someone had unspoken intentions behind said physical touch that I didn't align with.
I'm pretty sure my friend understands my intentions. And I'm pretty sure her intentions are similar to mine. We have both explicitly agreed upon being touch starved and affectionate people. I think we both appreciate each other's presence in all this, and I think we are looking at this for exactly what it is right now, which is a real relief to me.
There are bits of worry in me about her needs, and whether she is expressing her desires. However, I also want to trust that she will express it if she needs something else, or if she is confused about something. I'd like to believe, with prior evidence, that I've helped to cultivate a space where we can be honest with each other about our desires and needs. It might be hard for both of us because we are recovering people-pleasers, but I think we are both trying to approach this with a healthy awareness.
All that said.
I'm really happy.
I haven't had someone to cuddle with in a long time, y'all. I miss that. Cuddling is my comfort. It grounds me and helps me feel safe. I have tons of pillows and plushies. I have to be hugging a plushie to fall asleep. I have to have a pillow supporting my back to fall asleep. I know this about myself, and considering my aromanticism, it can be kind of hard to find people who are willing to do these sorts of things with me without expecting a romantic relationship out of me.
So far, things have been so nice with this friend. We went to the city together on a day trip and had such a fun time. On the train ride home, we fell asleep leaning against each other. It was just so natural and normal. Even though I hadn't really ever experienced that before outside of a romantic context, it made me so happy to experience it. It felt absolutely right.
More recently, we had a sleepover. We originally intended to bake edibles, get baked ourselves, and she would sleep on the couch that night. But instead, as it came time for bed, while high, we both decided that nope, we are sleeping together in the same bed. And legit, that was so lovely. That was the most wonderful thing. I have been needing that and wanting that for so long. It felt so good to cuddle and comfort each other and snuggle in a little bit closer. It felt so lovely to doze off and wake up snuggled a little closer to each other than we started. I adore that feeling of closeness and neediness and comfort. It makes me feel so fulfilled and understood.
And now, I just want more chances to hold her and cuddle with her and let her hold me.
I don't know where any of this will go. I don't know how she's feeling about these things, and part of me does want to check in with her and see how she's doing (I also want to give her a chance to say something on her own; I don't want to assume she's uncomfortable or wanting more until she says otherwise, namely because that isn't my job to predict people's comfort — a.k.a. people please).
I do wonder if things will eventually lead to sex. I have no idea if they will, and I'm okay either way: whether they do or they don't. I think we have a lot of chemistry already so it is entirely possible it could lead in that direction naturally. Part of me is nervous about that, but considering how comfortable I feel around her physically, I'm actually more looking forward to it as a possibility, rather than dreading it. I still want to make sure that she feels comfortable too, because I have noticed she struggles to be assertive about things. But, our friendship is also still quite young, so perhaps she is still getting to know me, and will gradually feel more comfortable telling me things as time goes on.
All I know is, right now, I feel really happy that I have someone who I can hug and it doesn't have to mean anything we don't want it to mean.
We can be friends who cuddle, friends who fall asleep together, friends who hold hands, even friends who have sex. We can be friends who dress up as Gomez and Morticia because we are gay and enjoy being queer as fuck together (yes this is an idea we had and it's the best fucking idea ever). We can be friends who want to go to prom together (also to be visibly queer af together) even though we've both long since graduated. We can be friends that flirt, friends that are there for each other, friends who love each other and dote on each other, friends who maybe even experience attraction for each other. We don't have to be anything we don't want, and I love that.
Considering all the rough times I've been through lately, I'm really happy to share this bit of happiness and hope with you all, especially as an a-spec person. So, thank you for reading and I hope this gives you some comfort and hope. Regardless of what it is you desire from life and your relationships, regardless of your needs, I know there is a place for you. I know there are people who will accept you and care about you, people who will respect you, and you will find a place where you feel comfortable, if you haven't already found that place.
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"The promised land, I think I can meet her there".
This article argues that it's unreasonable to see the line as a romantic gesture from Cloud, and that an alternative interpretation of the line as a comment concerning the impending doom is more likely.
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People try to use this to prove that Cloud wants Aerith ever since 1997. Now lets be clear here, this interpretation is patently absurd as soon as you think about it for more than 2 seconds. Do you really think for a second that Square would end the game with Cloud randomly telling Tifa as they're about to die, "you know what I want to tell you before we die? I don't love you and I'm glad I'm dying so I can be with another woman in the afterlife"?
They wouldn't, this is the most unreasonable story interpretation I've ever heard, whatever that line is meant to mean, it wouldn't be that. Let's be clear here, the only people who think that this line is a genuine argument in favor of Clerith, are people who are already Cleriths.
They see the line, and find it to be in line with their beliefs, and it is. The problem is that that's not how science is done. The question isn't whether or not a piece of evidence is in line with your point of view, it's whether it disproves the opposite point of view, which in this case it doesn't. (Also see: "The Wittgenstein test")
It should be noted that arguments like these do not do Cleriths any favors, because in addition to proving nothing, they show something fundamentally problematic about the Clerith view of the story. In order to believe that this line in incompatible with a Cloti interpretation of the story, there are a number of tangentially related positions that you'd have to defend.
1: It's impossible to want to be reunited with anyone except if you love them romantically.
2: Cloud is an absolute asshole who would dump a woman he just had sex with, just as they're about to die.
3: Tifa is the worlds biggest simp.
4: This is how SE wants you to see their characters.
In one fell swoop of a bad story interpretation you've undermined the importance of all other forms of love, you've undermined the importance of Clouds character arc concerning guilt. You've basically trampled on those who suffer from mental health issues by simplifying their issues into love cliches, you've made a villain of Clouds character, made a mockery of Tifas character, and revealed that you don't understand basic storytelling.
This is the fundamental problem with these arguments that cause many of us to develop a distinct distaste for Clerith as a ship, because when Cleriths attempt to argue in favor of it, it often comes in the form insults towards all characters and stories involved. You could have a story about Cloud loving Aerith, but if defending said story requires you to argue that Cloud would leave a girl with two children, one of which is dying, for no other reason besides being lovesick, then that does a disservice to the characters, the story, and the franchise in general. In a sense, by trying to defend Clerith like this you're insulting the entirety of Final Fantasy.
Are there people who are assholes? Yes, are there people who get straight up "pumped and dumped"? Yes. Is that the sort of hero that SE is trying to show us? Obviously not.
(for more information regarding this I advise you read: Insane hobbits article where he touches on the differences between clean and messy narratives)
If SE wanted to end the game with Cloud proclaiming his love to Aerith in some way, they wouldn't have Tifa hanging on his side while he's doing it, and she wouldn't respond with "yeah, lets go meet her" like the universe biggest simp. So what is actually said? Well, I am not a translator, but as far as I can tell Japanese doesn't have pronouns and the line generally refers to meeting people in the promised land, which includes Tifa in the people going, and it's not specifically about Aerith. Is Aerith included? Of course, she's probably even the main person to meet there, she's certainly singled out as the person talked about by certain supplementary materials, but it's not a romantic sentiment, it's a tragic "we're about to die" sentiment, meant to convey a more generally positive message about being "reunited" with those who have died.
The more likely paraphrasing for this scene is:
"Cloud asks for an answer from the planet, the planet reveals the lifestream, Cloud and Tifa realize they're about to die.
Cloud muses that he thinks he gets it now, they're all going to die and be reunited in the lifestream, both with each other, as well as those who have died, with Aerith being the most obvious and recent example."
So is there any evidence for this? Well, for one there is the storyboard for the scene:
c「帰るぞティファ」
t「え？」
c「俺達も帰ってからやることがあった。まだ…あの山の向こうを見てない」
t「うん…帰ろう」
Cloud: "I'm going home Tifa"
Tifa: "What?"
Cloud "We had something to do after we got home. We haven't seen the other side of the mountain yet ..."
Tifa: "Yeah ... let's go home"
"the other side of the mountain" is a reference to the mountains of Nibleheim, where Tifa believed the dead went. In other words, this is either a reference to them going home because they have stuff to do, which ties into the general idea that Cloud and Co had to live in order for their sins to be forgiven, as is evidenced by:
“I’m going to live. I think that’s the only way I can be forgiven. All sorts of things… happened.” ~Cloud in case of Tifa.
Or more likely it's be a reference to how they're about to die. Neither interpretation says anything about this scene being intended to be a romantic sign towards Aerith. Now, of course, the line was changed, and intentions can change during development. But if we're unsure on what the meaning of a line is, then going back to the storyboard is a pretty good way to get context.
Page 27 of the FFVII Ultimania omega:
"They're talking about", confirming that this is a mutual discussion, and not Cloud in isolation.
Page 203 of the FFVII Ultimania omega:
Provides context for the intended ideas the line is meant to convey. It calls back to earlier concepts concerning death not being the end, and is something Cloud and Tifa talk about together.
From: Final Fantasy Art Museum movie card
( https://twitter.com/dorobbongie )
These are not prescriptive canon, but descriptively they can give us some indication of how we're supposed to interpret the line.
Also reinforces the idea that the final line is meant as a more inclusive statement concerning reunions after death.
Taking these points into consideration it becomes unreasonable to take the "I think I can meet her there" as a shipping line between Cloud and Aerith.
If it were:
SE wouldn't have hung Tifa from Clouds hips.
Wouldn't have had Tifa agree with the idea.
Wouldn't have done it as the two were about to die.
Wouldn't have the storyboard refer to a shared journey beyond the mountains.
And most importantly, SE wouldn't have followed it up with Cloud commenting moments later that he's going to live in order to atone for his sins, and that things would be different now that he has Tifa. Clearly meeting again in the afterlife was more of an immediate danger rather than an immediate goal:
As Tifa looked away from the sky towards the ground, she was fearful of the future. However, Cloud beside her chose to smile gently. It was a smile that she hadn’t seen before during their journey. Cloud noticed her gaze and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Cloud, you’re smiling.”
“I am?”
“Yeah.”
“It all starts now. A new…”
Cloud looked for the right words.
“A new life.”
“I’m going to live. I think that’s the only way I can be forgiven. All sorts of things… happened.”
“That’s right…”
“But when I think about how many times I’ve thought about how I was going to start a new life, it’s funny.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve always failed everything.”
“That’s not funny.”
“After this … I think I’ll be okay.”
Cloud was silent for a long time before he spoke again.
“Because I have you this time.”
“You’ve always had me.”
“What I mean is kind of different,” Cloud answered with another smile.
-Case of Tifa; revised; released with ACC.
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thank you "thelifestream.net" for some of this information, as well as Kagesakura (https://otp-oasis-heavenxearth.tumblr.com).
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🎶Music Playlist - Quartzstreak
Part: 1 (current), 2, 3
The link to the playlist is here
🥀 - Additional Note: The playlist will just be songs connected to my OC, both to their story or because I believe it fits for them, and I'll mostly just explain why if I've got the brain cells for it. This character, in particular, is an oc for an oc x canon sorta story which in this case involves another character's canonical story that may or may not (most indefinitely it will though...) lead to a big spoiler.
The following songs will just be for un-major parts to their story:
Creature - Half•Alive: There's just something about Creature by Half•Alive that resonates to me as 'Quartzstreak's vibes'. I guess when listening to it, it sort of gave me a deep-thinking vibe. It's calm and the lyrics make me feel like I'm exploring somewhere I've never been before. I guess in a scenario-case, it's how Quartzstreak felt when arriving on Earth. It also fits nicely with any scenario that correlates with her having some sort of memory dream she has when sleeping. The song can also correlate with how Quartzstreak feels about herself. Creature is also one of the many songs I'd consider to hear throughout Quartzstreak's backstory.
Innocence - Madeon, ft. Aquilo: Listening to Madeon, makes me feel a sort of bliss and distanced feeling of thought. Which is sort of the theme for most of the song that fits Quartzstreak's aesthetic. Although, I additionally chose the song since it was one of the meanings of a white rose, which is the flower Quartzstreak aligns herself to.
Forget - Pogo: Need I say more? It's got a numb and peaceful feeling that sort of "glitches" in and out when I listen to it. I kind of imagine it to be a sort of audio/song I'd hear while Quartzstreak is trying to recollect through all of her memories, past, and present. With the inclusion that the song name is "Forget", Quartzstreak has the exact tendency/issue to forget a lot, intentional or not, so the match fits in both name-wise scenario-making material-wise.
Without You - Avicii: Quartzstreak would've liked Avicii songs as equivocally as she would with Philip Philips songs (not just because they were my childhood songs or anything-- *shifty eyes*). She'd probably enjoy the song since it is one about letting go of someone you love let it be platonic or romantic and whether it's through losing them due to going down different paths or-- in her experience, perishing through a battle or war, whatever the interpretation is. It's just how she feels toward it really, that brings out her greatest interest.
Raging Fire - Philip Philips: Quartzstreak would unironically listen to Philip Philips, and not just because it was one of the songs I'd listen to back when I was a kid. It just has that free and determined spirit, that makes you really feel like you're on fire (in a passionate and positive way). She'd probably dance to this too and if the opportunity strikes, she probably would've gone as a holoform to a concert for this song.
So! We've reached the end! Well... Your end, or maybe not! Although as I've mentioned this "keep reading" part contains the spoilers for the in-canon parts of the show since if you can remember from before... This is an oc x canon character, which greatly involves a major thing that happens-- to said, canon character. This could also be spoilers to other AUs I will be mentioning in the future so be warned or unless you again, don't intend on watching the show, have seen it, or don't necessarily mind spoilers so don't let me stop you if you really want to!
Daniel in The Den - Bastille: I believe this song resonated with me in accordance to Quartzstreak, through the lyrics, specifically
"And for every king that died. Oh, they would crown another"
This would've been Quartzstreak's perspective, upon hearing about The Council on Cybertron after the Caste System was implemented, having no idea how devastating it was for the cons before finding out and only dwelling into the further realization that the cons never did remove the problem, they replaced it.
Additionally, the lyrics, "And felled in the night by the ones you think you love. They will come for you"
This is towards her feelings of betrayal towards fighting the more familiar Autobots in the war, such as Arcee or Optimus. But on another hand, the ones you think you love could have also meant Jackedwheel, who she suspected within herself to harbor feelings for only to become betrayed and nearly offlined.
Dear Daphne - Clara C: OooOOoo anyways, this song connects with Quartzstreak to an AU! With the Wilted Flowers AU, and as its name probably suggests. This is just a song that would align well with, Quartzstreak's death in the AU, where both sides of the faction would have an entire full view of her dying. I think it'd be a time where Dreadwing would've been alive to develop a further closer friendship with her (with the additions of this relationship being prior to their courtship between Quartzstreak and Dreadwing). The scenario would've probably taken place out in a field with Megatron's only full intention at the time to be just to spend as many assets and hit the Autobots where it hurt the most (let's just say... it sort of did for most Autobots, familiar with Quartzstreak at the time). During this time, Jackedwheel would've made his move to execute Quartzstreak and finish the job of assassinating her in the middle of it all, successfully doing so but not without having to be killed as an act of vengeance from Dreadwing after the battle. Quartzstreak would've been shot by a critical blast, just enough to be struck twice, one that took out her arm, and another through the abdomen. The lyrics prior before would've been Sundrive's last words to Quartzstreak that would've been carried out too late,
"Put him down. That clown of a thing you call a man. Put him down. Put it down,"
And for the lyrics after the first verse, "Stay with me. Your eyes are rolling to the back of your head. Stay with me. Remember the things that I said. Til then I'll be holding your head
Your head"
This part would've been Knockout saying this to her, begging her to stay alive until they could get her back to the Medical Bay. Not only is it painful for him to watch someone he considered a close friend die agonizingly while all he can do is sit and watch without the correct items to fix her. He can't help but, additionally, feel a sort of dread, fear of being left alone again, without Breakdown, and now, without Quartzzstreak.
#spotify playlist#playlist#oc playlist#music#song#original character playlist#original character#oc#quartzstreak (oc)#tf oc#transformers oc#transformers original character#tf original character#oc songs#long post#tfp oc
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Okay... going on a bit of a Schneider x Avery rant for a little bit. I've been reading some of your old posts about them and honestly I really do think they're endgame. If the show were to continue, I think season 3 would've been the closest we ever see Schneider to the family, but I think Avery (bc she doesn't have that much character development) would pull him back to the outer circle for season 4. I don't think they would've brought her back for the finale if they weren't endgame.
(cont) Schneider just barely makes the cut for family in this show. I mean I love him, but the show is about Penelope and her family. If they made too much noise between Penelope’s best friend’s love interest, who has no connection with the rest of the family, it would distract from the main characters too much. Nikki, Schneider’s only other “love” interest had a connection to both Penelope and Alex. But Avery’s there just for Schneider and I’m afraid it would stay that way.
hi anon!! i had to wait a while before answering this one because i knew i would need coherent thoughts and that hasn’t been working so well for me lately
you make two important points here, so i’ll start with the schneider side of it. i agree that s3 was the closest that we’ve ever seen schneider to the family, and that makes sense because honestly even as s3 progressed the storylines for everyone in the family, schneider kind of had the biggest, most consistent arc. (i think alex’s was the next biggest/most consistent. elena and pen and lydia’s stories were more episodic in s3 and sometimes connected more to previous season events than the preceding episodes.)
the showrunners/writers had been planning to address schneider’s sobriety for a while and talked a lot with the actor while they worked on it, and i think they handled it really well. but in my opinion, that all builds up to cementing schneider’s place in the family. not just pulling him into the circle, but making it clear that he belongs there–in a way they aren’t likely to go back on.
we went from penelope shutting the door in his face in 1.13 when he’s telling her they’re like family, to elena joking about him NOT being family in s2 and him telling a comatose lydia that they’re his family while punctuating his grief with jokes…to the entire family rallying around him in 3.12 after they were all a bit more distant earlier in the season.
elena is the first member of the family to actually direct the word ‘love’ his way! penelope tries to make it clear that he’s important to her just as he is and that he needs to fight his addictions not just for his sake but because of her family, especially the kids! schneider interrupts his big romantic reunion with avery to focus on lydia officially claiming him as an alvarez!
this snippet of an interview todd grinnell gave after s3 mentions the tension between any future schneider would have with avery, and his ties to the family. i don’t know how much the plans for a potential s4 might have changed over time, but since we know the writers do discuss plot arcs with the actors in advance (or at least they have done so with todd before) i believe that when he said this, it was based off his awareness of what the writers were thinking.
which means that avery could have been brought back to be a source of future conflict–and after schneider’s s3 declaration that ‘family is everything’ it’s not guaranteed that he would choose avery in that scenario. i could see him learning to balance and compromise, maybe, but schneider drifting out of the picture because of his love interest wouldn’t make sense for who he is–unless the actor was leaving the show maybe? i still wouldn’t find it very believable though.
i do agree that avery’s only connected to the show through schneider. that actually bugged me in s3, because they gave her so many little great moments in the beginning to establish who she was, and then she really never interacted with the family even when she was in scenes with them!! they either need to fully include her in s4 or keep her more separate; now that we’re more familiar with her, it won’t make sense at all for her to be in the apartment or at events and ignoring the rest of them most of the time. (unless that’s part of the plot, of course.) i think that avery won’t be likely to get much actual plot unless it starts to be about non-schneider things, like how she affects family members.
i honestly have no idea if schneider and avery are endgame or not. india is too adorable for me to be against it, despite my many objections to how avery was handled in s3 (so much potential after that meet-cute! i ranted in multiple essays about about it!). because the actors are married it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what the show does, letting schneider’s storylines going forward be more about him maturing and dealing with his first serious lasting relationship.
i think that how long the show gets to continue existing will also have a lot to do with what turns out to be endgame–if it ends on its own terms in a few years, then we’ll know what their intended endgame was. but if it gets cancelled then i’ll always wonder what they might have been really aiming for.
the biggest thing that you and i seem to disagree about, though, anon, that probably affects how we see the avery stuff playing out, is schneider’s role on the show. you say that he just barely makes the cut for family, and i would argue (as i sort of started to, messily, above) that in fact it’s season 3 that doesn’t just confirm but yells that he’s completely family.
in the first scene of the season, he comes in and tells the rest of them who their own dead relative is, and in his last scene, avery passes along the news of lydia’s official adoption of him. between all of that, the family sees him turn into someone else while he’s trying to please his father–and they see the relapsed alcoholic he’s never been in their presence before–and they commit even harder to making him feel loved and like he’s a part of them.
along those same lines, i’d also argue that schneider is a ‘main character.’ not only just technically (because he’s been included in things like promo images for the show since s1, where leslie wasn’t) but in terms of the story. if he wasn’t a main character in seasons 1 and 2, he definitely became one in season 3, when two whole episodes were formed around his arc in addition to his usual mini stories alongside the family.
tl;dr i have no idea if avery is schneider’s endgame but he is an alvarez now and i’ll believe him choosing her over his family when i see it
#odaat#one day at a time#schneider#avery#schneider x avery#hopefully this doesn't come off rude in response i tried hard to be diplomatic and reasonable when it comes to a character i adore#a totally polite anon with a difference of opinion: schneider isn't fully part of the alvarez family#me who likes my blog to always be a welcoming and friendly space: FIGHT ME#the 'avery is endgame and schneider's sobriety was mishandled' anon does not trip lightly off the tongue#elena alvarez#penelope alvarez#lydia riera#replies
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Mia & Jimmy & Janis
Mia: [Computer Science project that you have to make a company/logo/business cards/spreadsheets/website/everythang you could think of so it takes a full term or whatever and you have to work with each other in every lesson] Mia: Right, I think we should do a law firm for our business Mia: because my dad is so we can actually use examples to make all our products legit Jimmy: what, like no win, no fee? 👍 can do a funny ad piss easy Mia: That is NOT the kind of lawyer my dad is Mia: funny isn't gonna get us good grades either Jimmy: 💔 Dunno who I'm gonna get to chase my 🚑 now Janis: I'm with Chuckles Janis: you're just trying to make this project most beneficial to you Janis: I don't wanna be a vulture when I grow up Janis: go generic as possible or it ain't fair Jimmy: don't reckon your dad needs the free promo any road, rich girl Jimmy: unless this is a cry for help that he can't get the prey Jimmy: 🎻🎻 Mia: Obviously I want to make it beneficial, I CARE about my grades and future Mia: but I'd love to hear your suggestions I'm sure Jimmy: you after a 🏆 or just a 👏 for trying to get an A? Mia: I get As, new boy, I don't just try Jimmy: I get it, you want 🤤😍 Jimmy: there Mia: Don't be so disgusting Mia: If you two are going to try and sabotage my grade, I WILL make my dad make Sir let me move Mia: I'm not being dragged down Jimmy: crack on, we've worked out your dad ain't busy with accidents at work Janis: Like, please try and use all daddy's clout to get that stubborn prick to do anything he's deciding he's not gonna do Janis: I already said I'd do this shit alone and no 🎲 Jimmy: don't sound like him that Jimmy: go on, rich girl, love to witness another failed flex Janis: You reckon we'd get extra points for fluffing our business expenses like your dad or what? Janis: I'll go along with it if we can convincingly hide our fake funds in a tax haven and make ourselves look LEGIT 👌 Jimmy: Me an' all Mia: You know as little about my dad as you do about your own, Janis Mia: you wish he was as crooked too but he's on the right side of the law so Janis: above the law Janis: can't do no wrong in your eyes, so I've heard Janis: but doubt new boy finds your family drama any more interesting than I do Janis: be a fucking law firm if you like, let's just split the jobs up equally and we don't have to talk until it's time to piece it all together Jimmy: I'll have the ad and the logo, tah very much Janis: you mean the fun bits Jimmy: I mean the 🎨 bits Jimmy: rich girl wants her A Janis: obliging Janis: I'll make the website and business cards, I've done it before Janis: Mia, do the data input, yeah Janis: star in Tarantino's ad, you'll love that Mia: No, no Mia: I don't feel comfortable leaving you completely to your own devices Mia: that's not a totally terrible split of the workload but I intend to oversee every step of the process Mia: we have to do a writeup at the end, you know Jimmy: it's almost like the other lass ain't as thick as you'd feel comfortable her being, funny that Mia: I literally want to do well and as far as I know, I'm the only one here who consistently gets good grades Mia: so hostile Mia: I agree that's how we should split the work but I'm not going to just assume you'll both do it well, we can all have input in every part Jimmy: could LITERALLY fill a book the size of sir's big head with all the shit you don't know about what I do well Jimmy: but alright Jimmy: watch me, if you don't get enough of it already, better uniform at work though, don't you reckon? Mia: Oh my God, brag much? Mia: hit the nail on the head with big head 🙄 Jimmy: stalk much? 🙄 Jimmy: least your dad could take my case Mia: It's HER sister that likes you, not ME Mia: get a grip and take it up with her if you're not feeling it Jimmy: I'll still give your dad a bell, chuck him that 🦴 as he's struggling Mia: As I said, he doesn't DO no win no fee, so you couldn't afford him Jimmy: 💔🎻 Janis: Now we've established it's justice only for those that can afford it Janis: and rich girls can do whatever they want Janis: what are we doing first, oh mighty project manager Jimmy: I'll do the logo in blue, sounds about right, that Janis: #bluelivesmatter is already taken for a tagline but I'll get to thinking Jimmy: 👍 Jimmy: I'll have a think if I wanna use gold for her 👑 or silver for the 🥄 Janis: 🥄 might imply a problem with amphetamines and obviously, you want everyone to know you WORKED for that 💀🦴 all by yourself, you know Mia: You'd know all about that, wouldn't you Mia: taking over the family business, yeah? Jimmy: Oi, it ain't that grim up north Mia: Grim is right Jimmy: Gutted Rosso didn't make you feel like the WAG you deserve on your last visit babes 🤞 next time you'll spot them celebs Jimmy: or you'll keep to Bijou, that glam dress code would never do you dirty Jimmy: 💕 Janis: I get it Janis: you want me to make sure you're infertile Janis: all those cheat days and binges got you feeling unsure, no problem, just ask Jimmy: lend her the 🥄 Mia: You are both SUCH freaks Mia: what does any of that even mean Jimmy: bit rude Jimmy: only a freak on the weekend, me Mia: NOT interested, new boy Mia: I HAVE a boyfriend who's a lot hotter than you, right Janis? Jimmy: makes two of us, rich girl Janis: For someone who thinks my bloodline is filth, you LOVE being surrounded by 'em, yeah Janis: bit weird but everyone likes their bit of rough Janis: how disadvantaged is your dad's newest mistress, I mean secretary? Janis: SO charitable 💙 Jimmy: might be northern, sounds like they've been there loads Mia: Are you gay, new boy? Mia: I'll have to let down Gracie for you Jimmy: only for sir Jimmy: he's well fit Jimmy: crack on with letting your bestie down though and if my mum's the one with your dad, tell her she left the oven on but I sorted it Mia: ??? Mia: What EVEN Mia: you're cracked Jimmy: brb gotta go dry my eyes Jimmy: 🐣💕 Jimmy: I do feel #seen tah for that, hun Mia: I can't even Mia: fine, you two come up with our company branding Mia: I'm going to write out all the info to put on our website when it's done Jimmy: Oi, bad blood, you wanna be the star of my ad or what? Janis: no Jimmy: alright, I'll ask sir Janis: good taste Janis: rinse her dad in a fight Jimmy: tah for the meet cute opportunity Jimmy: when he's her dad's new mr I wanna 🎥📸 the wedding Janis: awh, full ⚪ Janis: she'll look adorable in her flower girl dress Jimmy: 🤞 Gracie catches the 💐 Jimmy: she is on a lad hunt Janis: 🤞 Mia's da has a brother Mia don't also want to fuck Jimmy: don't leave us in suspense 👑 does he or what? Mia: Shut the fuck up or I'll show all this to Sir Jimmy: Go on Jimmy: he'll think I'm 😎 and I'll be well in Janis: Do it, little miss perfect Janis: the part where you shit on my dead dad's grave will be well more shocking when I open the floodgates 😭 Jimmy: ⏲ Janis: ... Jimmy: ........ Janis: guess Sir won't wanna pet you no more when he finds out a. you're a cunt b. new boy is interested in your position Jimmy: he'll do til I can get Mr Lucas Jimmy: you can have him back then Janis: LOVE a happy ending Jimmy: I'll look top in my 👰 Janis: gutted about the lack of uniform though, yeah Mia? Jimmy: What do you make your boyfriend wear? 🦺? Mia: New boy, don't even go there 'cos he could beat you down so easy if I asked him to Janis: that means she pisses on him so they know he's hers Jimmy: makes sense that'd be your kink Janis: dog eat dog world, right babes Janis: stories you was raised on come straight out of your dad's man's man motivational speaker bullshit Jimmy: Oh shit, are you my half sister, rich girl? Jimmy: brb gotta pack my shit so I'm ready to move in Janis: get a princess dress to go with that 👰 Jimmy: order my 👑 in XXL tah Janis: can share with your sister Janis: big happy family vibes xoxo Jimmy: 🤗 Janis: get in here sis Janis: finally not a lonely child Mia: Yeah, I SO want 1000s of siblings like you Jimmy: You're alright, I've only got the one brother and the one sister Jimmy: be piss easy to fit us in your palace Mia: You AREN'T invited Mia: might steal the silverware 🥄🍴 Jimmy: I'll leave you a 🥄 to stick down your throat after dinner Jimmy: got some manners, me Mia: That's lovely, isn't it Mia: eating disorders are really serious, you shouldn't make some jokes Janis: respect the 🎨 Jimmy: cleaning the 🚽 after you lot is an' all Jimmy: part of the job description btw, I get that you'd have to have one to know what that means but Janis: 😏 Janis: staff know all your dirty little secrets, babes Janis: better than a tip, like Jimmy: be 👻⚰💀 before I get a tip off her Janis: if we were all walking 'round looking as SICK as her, what would be the point of corroding away her esophagus and not-so pearly whites? Janis: gotta find your own tricks, boy Jimmy: I'll put a ❄️ in the logo for you, babes Janis: cannot escape those coke vibes omg Janis: you're a PR nightmare Jimmy: 😱😱😱 Jimmy: #whitelivesandwhitelines Janis: GREAT slogan Janis: basically done over here and you're just texting 💀💩 Janis: tsk tsk, Mimi Jimmy: tick tock or tik tok if you'd rather Jimmy: 😘 Janis: 😂 Janis: make us a law tiktok, hun Jimmy: starring your dad, OBVS Janis: share that 🤤🤤🤤 with the world, not just the local 18-35s Jimmy: 💰 on him being a 🔥🔥🔥 dancer Janis: all middle-aged white men are Jimmy: DUH Janis: POV- you're my client, I'm overcharging you Jimmy: 🤤🤤🤤😍😍😍 Mia: You're obsessed with me, I get it 🙄 Jimmy: busted Janis: If that's a crime Janis: get to spend more time with your dad than you do Janis: 💘 Jimmy: SO romantic Jimmy: 👨💕 Janis: can't wait 'til he wants a couple grams Jimmy: refill the silver 🧂 Janis: you know it Janis: sugarbowl never tasted so sweet Jimmy: 😋 Janis: careful Janis: her boyfriend WILL fuck you up Jimmy: I get it, he's obsessed with me Janis: can't blame him Mia: OMG Mia: that is soooo fucked Mia: know your family doesn't see blood relation as an issue but he'll 🤢 when I show him this Jimmy: if he's that bothered, he can come find me Jimmy: you've had my shifts memorised since I started Mia: You wish Jimmy: to give him a smack, yeah Jimmy: why not? Jimmy: sounds like a right knobhead Mia: [sends a picture of Pablo like he's a prize bull or some shit gross Mia] Mia: you reckon, do you? 😂 Jimmy: I reckon he looks like a right knobhead an' all now, since you asked Mia: You've got a deathwish like Mia: wow Janis: kindred spirits Jimmy: 'cause you reckon he looks like a knobhead an' all? that's just sense Janis: was talking about her eating disorder which is VERY serious and we MUST NOT joke about Janis: but yeah, the fuckboy radiating from that selfie must be the appeal Jimmy: Soz mate Mia: She doesn't DO boys, I'd save your breath Jimmy: weren't breathing down her neck, that's you Jimmy: I get why now though, it's a blatant crush Janis: Stalking's your kink, right babes? Janis: Or am I just that special Jimmy: [draws these gals as snowflakes holding hands but Mia is melting] Janis: That's good Janis: but horrific Jimmy: #allherkinks Jimmy: [doodles on the picture of Pablo that she sent in hilarious ways] Janis: 😂😂 Janis: Send him that, whilst you're at it, Mimi Janis: really get him 'roiding out Mia: 🖕🖕🖕 Mia: you're both jealous, both for weird freaky reasons Jimmy: Of what? Go on Mia: You're jealous because you think every girl here wants to ride you and I DON'T Mia: because my boyfriend is better looking and fitter than you 💁 Mia: and she's jealous either because she wants me or she wants her own brother Mia: either way 😷😷😷😷 Jimmy: if every girl round here wanted to crack onto me why would I give a shit if you do or don't? Jimmy: all your mates are fitter than you and they ain't close to this paddy school's top tier Jimmy: and you just said she don't do lads so why would she wanna have a go on her brother unless the steroids have fucked him up harder than advertised Mia: yeah 👌 narcissist Mia: neg me, that'll totally make me interested Jimmy: 🤞 it'll keep you well clear Jimmy: that'll do Mia: I want to be working with you as much as you do me, I've said Mia: leave me alone and this can be as painless as possible Jimmy: I get that you're fuming your boyfriend is growing bigger tits than you but that ain't my problem, my dear Mia: So immature Jimmy: still got a deeper voice than him Janis: imagine defending your man this hard when he fully cheats on you Janis: 💔 Janis: daddy all over again, am I right? Jimmy: 🎻😭🎻 Jimmy: Dunno what I'm more flattered by, that you reckon I'm gay after seeing the state of all the straight lads round here or not wanting to ride me 'cause I ain't a cheating dickhead with massive tits or in your dad's case a hair transplant Jimmy: either way, tah Janis: could donate some to the cause, new boy Janis: hair, not tits Jimmy: you could an' all Jimmy: cause a scandal Janis: #cancelling bitches is a solid hobby Jimmy: there you go Janis: can't lose my only beauty though Janis: 🎻🎻 Janis: have to keep being #problematic yourself babes, so soz Jimmy: 👍 Mia: Stop nerd flirting Mia: send me what work you've done today Jimmy: Hang on, I'll 😎🚬 Jimmy: 💕 Mia: Gross Jimmy: What, I'm only fit and mysterious if I starve myself to 💀💀💀? Alright Jimmy: [sends her the work like oh I must be a nerd then] Mia: Thank you Mia: I'll go over this and give feedback later Jimmy: Gross Mia: 🙄 Mia: I've got to do a speech in Politics and Society after this, so I need to prepare Jimmy: 🙄 Janis: 👋 Janis: pleasure as always Jimmy: bit rude if you two get to nerd flirt Janis: what's 'fuck off' in Arabic? Jimmy: تخلص من Jimmy: probably means ILY or some bollocks 'cause I google translated it Janis: beautiful Janis: love double-meaning Janis: Qué te folle un pez espada, new boy Jimmy: ? Janis: I hope you get fucked by a swordfish 💘 Jimmy: [draws their teacher, Mr Lucas, Pablo and Mia's dad all as swordfish so she can vote for who she ships him with] Jimmy: ✔ or ❌ Janis: [❌ out Pablo's eyes and Mr Lucas' junk like no] Jimmy: [IRL 😏] Janis: [does very unflattering drawing of Mia all up on her father] Jimmy: 🥇 Janis: not an A though, is it Jimmy: [makes it even more unflattering somehow like now it is and now it's also teamwork so even better] Janis: 😏 Jimmy: LOVE a #collab Janis: been waiting for a group project to come along Jimmy: rigged it to work with 👑💀 obvs Janis: duh Jimmy: SO obsessed, her dad will get me off though, he can TOTALLY relate Janis: should but it in our ad Jimmy: 🔪🔪🔪🚿 Janis: 😱😱😱 Jimmy: 💘 Janis: Sir will kill that role Jimmy: Literally Janis: ha ha 🙄 Jimmy: Chuckles is right 🤡 Janis: keep 'em coming Janis: 👑💀 might have an aneurism Jimmy: 🤞 might get an A if she dies Janis: it's what she would've wanted Jimmy: you do love a happy ending Janis: who don't Janis: be my tragic family's fault, no doubt Jimmy: so I've heard Janis: not gonna apologize, new boy Jimmy: weren't waiting for one Janis: 👍 Jimmy: 👌 Janis: please stop nerd flirting with me Jimmy: you started it Jimmy: calm YOURSELF down, mate Janis: did I fuck Jimmy: neg me, that'll totally make me interested Janis: [IRL 😏] Jimmy: [sends her a pisstake version of the logo to fully drag Mia] Janis: is it RGB #374E88 though Jimmy: what? Janis: it's called tory blue Jimmy: is it? Jimmy: [does a colour corrected version immediately] Janis: Better Janis: solid 🥇 Jimmy: Tah Janis: [the pisstake business card with the logo for her dad] Janis: we've absolutely SMASHED it Jimmy: I reckon we can go Jimmy: 😎🚬 Janis: alright Jimmy: [IRL 😘 to sir] Janis: [we're loving this so hard but gotta hide it] Jimmy: [strutting out cos bad bitch global] Janis: [when you wanna go for all the reasons but also the rumour mill would go off immediately so you're like hmm] Janis: [fuck your life amirite babe] Jimmy: [gutted we ever have to end this convo so same]
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Marriage Headcanons
Anyway, I was watching Say Yes to the Dress and now I'm just thinking dresses and weddings.
Essentially a no cult AU
The GFH are just the bridal party.
Maid of honor is entirely subject to your Deputy's best friend.
Sharky
I luv this boy. Super supportive fiance.
Like he wants to respect the tradition of not seeing the dress but also wants to break tradition.
So he comes to help.
Sharky thinks that the Deputy wearing anything would be perfect.
Hell he was ready to go to the courthouse and elope the second he proposed.
He finds the ugliest dress in the store.
"Its got character Dep."
Tbh, I feel like he would make a lot of jokes about having the ugliest things. Like instead of having regular tuxes they're like camo or like the sleeves tear off, but when it comes down to it he wants to look nice.
For a dress the dep would probably do something like a mermaid style.
Sexy but elegant so it still feels like a wedding dress.
Even if he saw the dress in the store and even if he did cry then, he still cries when he sees her on their wedding day.
I don't think rings would be a big deal for Sharky and the Dep, I think the ring would he like the last thing either of them thought about.
Probably a small diamond with a pretty simple design.
Sharky would feel bad that he couldn't afford something fancy but the Dep wouldn't care.
Sharky totally proposed in the heat of the moment, or just when they were chilling out together, and it kind of slipped out.
He was #shook the Dep said yes, because he would plan out a whole thing with fire and explosions, but he's glad that he doesn't have to figure out the logistics of having fireworks spell out "will you marry me" in the sky.
X
John
He respects the tradition of not seeing the the bride in the dress before the wedding.
He wants to be involved, the part of him that wants to know very last detail really wants him to be involved but he controls himself, for the most part.
He has Faith be his eyes on the inside and John convinces the Dep to let Faith come.
John really just wants to know if the Dep is sticking to the general theme of their wedding, which is very like upscale bougie type deals.
The Dep definitely wants to pay for her own dress with her own money, not relying on John, so her budget is really tight.
She doesn't like relying on John or his wealth.
Dep knows that it would drive John crazy if she isnt on brand, and while for everyday life she'll mess with John she won't for their wedding.
So she tries really hard to match the aesthetic John is going for, and there's a few dresses that she likes that are in her budget and that sort of match the theme and she's planning on getting the one she likes the most.
Until Faith brings a dress that Rook absolutely adores, it's like perfect in every way. Until she sees the price tag and it's way over her budget.
And the Dep is like in tears because she wanted to be able to do this one thing since John does so much.
Faith calls John who is trying to be the voice of reason, because he knows this is important to the Dep.
Eventually John talks the Dep down from the ledge with help from Kim and Faith and they come to an agreement.
John went all out with the ring. It's one of the most extra looking things.
He loves her and he thinks she put the stars In the sky and wants the whole world to know that.
John talks a big game and he's usually very confident in appearance, but he's got a pretty low opinion of himself.
He kept his proposal lowkey, just in case he's right and the Dep actually hates him. He doesn't want the whole county to know.
To his own surprise the Dep says yes and he couldn't be happier.
He hasn't been this happy since Joseph and Jacob came back into his life. He gets to experience a loving family.
X
Joseph
They're going to have a really simple wedding. Just family and close friends.
Dep isn't looking for a super fancy dress, just something simple.
They're ceremony has a backyard sort of feel, and its during the hot Montana summer.
So she doesn't really want heavy layers.
Joseph has been through a wedding before, his first marriage had been just signing papers at the courthouse, this was an ACTUAL ceremony.
The Dep doesn't want to replace Joseph's late wife and they have a really long conversation about it.
Joseph can't help but see the similarities between them, and he can also appreciate there differences.
He planned out his proposal, he had a super romantic dinner and he and the Dep reminisced about how they met and some of their favorite memories.
Joseph would probably go for a simple ring, probably just matching gold bands no diamonds or anything.
The Dep and Joseph DIY most of their wedding decorations.
Joseph's congregation are also really generous, they help out while putting together some of the bigger decorations.
Joseph, who is usually calm and collected, is shaking with nerves on the big day.
Even getting married to his first wife he wasn't THIS nervous.
All his fears melt away when he sees her coming down the aisle.
X
Jacob
I'm personally a fan of the "Jacob was married" backstory that we never got to experience.
Tbh, I think Jacob probably married young, like a lot of military guys do, and between his deployments and his PTSD, it got to his wife, and she being young herself couldn't deal so they divorced.
That experience probably made Jacob really anti marriage, he felt abandoned and alone.
He only started to waiver in his beliefs after he'd been dating the Dep awhile.
The Dep would have to warm him up to the idea, and she'd probably have to be the one to propose too.
Jacob fully intends to wear a tshirt and jeans but John has a fit.
So the Dep is excited! She's getting married! Her friends are more or less supportive, there's a few comments about the age difference but Dep has had plenty of time to think about that.
Jacob is kind of insecure about that too, not that he'd ever say it out loud to anyone but Dep or Joseph.
Jacob literally only let's a handful of people even know that they're engaged, even less are invited to the wedding.
Jacob doesn't think he's going to feel any differently for the Dep after they get married, he thinks that their wedding is only going to be an inconvenience.
He doesn't like to admit that he MAY have shed a tear when he first saw the Dep coming down the aisle.
He didn't think he would love again, and he definitely never thought he'd marry again.
The Dep didn't go overboard dress shopping, she'd want something simple.
Jacob doesn't understand how someone as great as the Dep could ever want him, but he's glad that she convinced him to marry her.
The Dep goes all out on her own ring but she knows Jacob wants something simple.
X
I'm dying inside, sorry I've been inactive, I'm like caught between wanting to write a million things and not being able to commit to any, so hopefully I can just work through this funk I'm in 😥
#sharky boshaw x deputy#john seed x deputy#joseph seed x deputy#jacob seed x deputy#no cult au#far cry 5#far cry au
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