#and the fact that I just really love vampire!Alice with Victor | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

angelchanisaweeb · 4 months

Text

Introduction

Hello!

Salutations, friends, travels, and all those present.

I'd like to welcome you. My name is Angel. She/Her, please.

I'm sure we'll find something here that interests you here.

I'll have a bit about me, (most of) my fandoms, and my personas/self inserts and my fandom and non-fandom ocs.

I do roleplay sometimes. Usually only with friends, but if you're fine with doing short and simple stuff I'm sure we can give it a shot! Please keep in mind that I have a life, and a busy one at that. So, I may not have the most time in the world. And if I don't like roleplaying with you and I don't find it fun I will tell you so (politely) and stop replying. Here are my rules. Also, I don't usually censor and am generally okay with darker topics, but please let me know what you have in mind before we start.

I'm just a silly little fae that loves stories and bats. Hope you have fun! Don't be scared so ask me something or start up a conversation!

Here's my Carrd

There's lots (and I mean lots lol) of info after the cut if you're interested^^

A BIT ABOUT ME

Name: Angel Lovelace (online persona, what I've gone by for years)

Gender and Pronouns: Girlflux | She/Her

Sexuality: Omnisexual (or maybe omni-sapphic)

Triggers: None really. Except for people being creepy toward me

Squicks: A specific type of body horror: where you like- get blown up from the inside like a balloon. Idk, I just don't like it.

Favorite animal(s): Cat, bat, snake, fox

Favorite color(s): Purple (2nd is blue, 3rd is black)

Favorite song: (currently) Catch a Falling Star

I listen to all kinds of stuff, so anything I vibe to. Pop music (from all over the world), classic rock, metal music, folk music (from all different places, not just American country music), opera, jazz, electronic, a little rap, you name it.

Fact: I know a little ASL and a little French

Hogwarts House: Ravenclaw | [Harry Potter]

Camp Halfblood Cabin: 20 - Hecate | Percy Jackson

Panem District: District 8 | [Hunger Games]

Divergent Faction: Eurdite | [Divergent]

Genshin Element: Anemo | [Genshin Impact]

Nen Type: Manipulation | [Hunter x Hunter]

Bending Element: Air | [ATLA]

Ability: ??? {TBA} | [BSD]

Breathing Form: ??? {TBA} | [KNY]

Blood Demon Art: Illusions | [KNY]

Quirk/Meta Ability: Sensory Override: User can manipulate senses, and sometimes memories | [MHA/BNHA]

Night Raven College Dorm: Ignihyde (or possibly Pomefiore) | [Twisted Wonderland/TWST]

Unique Magic: ??? | [TWST]

Feel free to ask questions!

--------

FANDOMS

Aaron's Absurd Armada

Alice in Wonderland

Alice in the County of Hearts

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Babblebrook

Black Bulter

Bungou Stray Dogs (not far far in lol)

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba

Descendants

Diabolik Lovers

Divergent

Ever After High

Five Night at Freddy's

Genshin Impact

Harry Potter

Hazbin Hotel

Helluva Boss

Hunter x Hunter

Julie and the Phantoms

Link Click

Lost

Marvel

Maze Runner

Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir

Monster High

My Hero Academia

Obey Me!: One Master to Rule Them All

Once Upon a Time

Percy Jackson

Pirates of the Caribbean

Seven Wonders

Sk8 the Infinity

Spy Family

Star Wars

Stranger Things

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley

The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

The New Legend of the Monkey King

The Vampire Diaries

Twilight

Twisted Wonderland

(I'm sure I forgot a lot of them and a lot of fandoms I'm not that far into, so I didn't list them. Stuff like Attack on Titan and Haikyuu!!!. But you ask me if I'm in any of your fandoms! And if I remember anymore, I'll update my list.)

--------

PERSONAS & SELF INSERTS

HARRY POTTER

Name: Angel Lovelace

Blood status: Pureblood

House: Ravenclaw

Birthday: January 10th, 1979

Is American. Transferred from Ilvermorny to Hogwarts in her second year (the Golden Trio's first year)

PERCY JACKSON

Name: Angel Lovelace

Godly parent: Hecate

Fatal flaw: Cowardice

HUNGER GAMES

Name's the same unless said otherwise, k?

District: 8

Usually not a tribute. Usually the niece (or sister or smth) of a victor.

BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES

Capitol citizen. A first year at the University and one of Dr. Gall's assistants. Friends with Tigress and Hilarius Heavensbee.

DEMON SLAYER

Species: Demon

Age: 128 (chronologically), 14 (biologically)

Blood Demon Art: Smth to do with illusions

Was training to be a demon slayer in life, but a demon got her best friend and she kinda lost her faith in them. Never took the test.

DESCENDANTS

AK or VK: VK

Parent: Red Queen (or Queen of Hearts if we're only doing og animated ones)

HAZBIN HOTEL

Sinner or Hellborn: Sinner

Death date: It changes from time to time, but it's either 1888, 1924, or 1986

HELLUVA BOSS

Species: Imp

Job: Informant and hitman

Affiliation: IMP

BABBLEBROOK

Location: Harrington (I think... the town near the inn)

Job: Librarian

Very good friends with Maybell. Also friends with Mrs. Pippetwhistle, the haberdasher, and Bridgette. Has bats and cats around the library.

MY HERO ACEDEMIA

First - Hero

Age: 15

Class: 1-A or 1-B

Quirk: Sensory Override - Can manipulate senses and sometimes memories

Second - Villain

Age: 19-24

Affiliation: League of Villains, Shie Hassaikai, Paranormal Liberation Front, Poppyseed Circus, among others

Quirk: Sensory Override

Doesn't really commit to anyone one thing or ideology. Just drifts from place to place selling information for entertainment. (Not that kind of entertainment, chill. Think Undertaker from Black Butler, wants jokes and stories. Also likes to play pranks and stuff yk)

TWISTED WONDERLAND

Year: Second year

Dorm: Ignihyde (sometimes a Pomefiore transfer)

Class: 2-E | Seat 18

Unique Magic: "Make a Wish" Basically shows the target illusions. Sometimes puts them to sleep.

Club: Film Studies

DIABOLIK LOVERS

(I've only played the first game and the beginning of the second, so sorry if these are bad. That being said my personas for this are works in progress)

First-

Age: ???

Species: Vampire (possible has demon connections)

Worked in the manor for years as a dresser (made everyone's clothes) and sometimes an advisor of sorts. Admired Cordelia for her beauty. Knew/knows lots of secrets and very fond on manipulation.

--------

FANDOM & NON-FANDOM OCS

Work in progress, but I kinda have them scattered all around lol

Looking back, they're all so cringy 😭 I d e s p e r a t e l y need to update all of them lol and the stories too because like- ugH

I also have a Toyhouse account that I never use, but I should get around to. Anyways, here's the link.

ANywAys-

I'm crying looking back on my old stuff. Tempted to just delete lol. And I still need to find all my roleplay ocs, the ones I made spefically to rp with. And I still need to do my Twelve Cities stuff. The Twelve Cities is a story I'm working on, if you care.

--------

WOW! That's a lot of my stuff lol. Anyways, if you made it this far, congrats! Have a cookie 🍪

Well, I hope you have a good time. Come visit me whenever!^^

2 notes · View notes

afaimsarrowverse · 3 years

Text

The 14 Creepiest Arrowverse Villains:

Yes, this one should have been made for Halloween. But after the year we just had, let’s take comfort in the fact that were are not forced to ever meet this guys here on the street in the dark. While two of the villains on this list had rather big seasonal arcs, I specifically disqualified characters from here, have proper motivations and character arcs as well as villains, who are creepy but at the same time quite a lot of fun. This why you won’t find Alice, her Mouse, Ramsay, Eobard, the Trickster, Mallus, Neron or even the Thinker here.

This list mainly consists of people we want to put back in the box, they got out of, until not seeing them at least for a season or so, and who we want to yell at: „What’s wrong with you!“ while they are on screen.

14. Toyman Senior (Winslow Schott Sr., Supergirl, Henry Czerny)

Technically this one should not be on this list, because he was redeemed in Season 5, however that happend after his death and on Earth Prime rather than Supergirls Original Eart,h so we will ignore that for now (also I wrecked my head whom from „Supergirl“ to put on here, so I overlooked that on purpose). Toyman is more creepy as a concept than in reality. He blows up kids (and other than the Trickster is no fun at all while he is doing it), threatened the life of his son to get his wife to leave him and did God knows what else to said wife and son. And did not even stop terrorizing people after his death. Can you imagine growing up as Toyman’s son? Poor Winn, you truly deserved better!

13. Bug Eyed Bandit (Brie Larvan, Queen Bee, The Flash, Arrow, Emily Kinney)

Yes, it’s because of the Bees. Because she controls Mechanical Bees that sting and kill people! I am sorry, but what’s your problem, can’t you just kill your enemies like a normal person, Brie? Not to mention the whole Felicity-thing, because yes it’s totally normal to go around and kidnap and threaten to get what you want and then try to murder again. I still do not get why they let her into the Young Rogues anyway, but then … most members of that gang were all wrong, weren’t they?

12. Garfield Lynns (Arrow, Andrew Dunbar)

Most of us have tried to forget about Season 1 Episode „Burned“ for several reasons. But the villain of it is also one of those. Because, yes Mick was a Pyromanic as well, but for more complex reasons. Garfield Lynns was a fire fighter who started burning people and ended burning himself to death because of reasons and … well let’s be honest, he was nuts and burning people is not cool at all!

11. Jake Simmons (Deathbolt, Arrow, The Flash, Doug Jones)

That’s what you get, if you hire a creature actor (no offense, Doug, we love your work!) to play a psychopatic villain. Occasionally kind of fun, yes, but mostly Simmons is crazy and creepy, and we never liked him very much, but crucial Captain Cold killed him with a flimsey excuse, which no one ever bought, and let’s put it that way: If Leonard killed him just like that, there had to be something wrong with him in a big way, and yes, the hints were there, so, yeah, what a creep.

10. The Mist (Kyle Nimbus, The Flash, Antony Carrigan)

A former Mob Hitman that looks like that and can turn into Mist. Do I have to say any more? I would take Victor Szasz over this one any day. Because Nimbus … well you would not want to meet him during a misty night, would you?

9. Murmur (Michael Amar, Arrow, Adrian Glynn McMorran)

This one actually cares about his grandma, I will give him that, but SOMEONE SEWED HIS FUCKING LIPS TOGETHER! So you don’t really like looking at him, and he kind of went over board after he was pressured into joining Damien Darhk with, you know, killing everyone and joining HIVE, who as you recall planned to end the world as wen know it, so what about everyone elses grandmas, they can just die or what? No, Mister Amar, there is quite a lot wrong with you, that’s for sure.

8. Everyman (Hannibal Bates, The Flash, Various)

That one could be a tragedy, but well, he got so mixed up and wrong in the head, that he became a danger to everyone else. He is creepy trapped between shapes and he is creepy in other shapes because … you don’t just go around and kiss random women, who think you are somebody else. That is just wrong. But Bates is kind of mostly wrong, so, yeah.

7. Anthony Ivo (Arrow, Dylan Neal)

Ivo is Sara’s Personal Case of #Metoo, which really should be enough to earn him a spot on this list, but there is also his habit of keeping people in cages and the whole „You have to choose, whom I shoot dead!“- thing and all of that is only the tip of the iceberg. Not even Dylan Neal can stop me from wanting to scream at the top of my lungs: WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?! at Dr. Ivo.

6. Nocturna (Natalia Knight, Batwoman, Kayla Ewell)

We all know the story how Nocturna was not allowed to show up in the Animated Batman Series in the 90s, because she was considered too disturbing (Morbius on the other hand was allowed to show up in the Spider-Man Cartoon but had to … undergo some changes, which made a perfectly good vampire into the creepies cartoon-villain ever unleashed on kids and scarred me for life, but that’s another story). Here she finally is, and yes, she is rather disturbing. Because she acutally knows very well that she isn’t a vampire, but still strings her victims up and bleeds them out, after biting them with laced spikey teeth. It would be kinky, if it were the least bit sexy, which it totally isn’t, so yeah, put her away for good please.

5. Vandal Savages Hawk Creatures (Legends of Tomorrow, Various)

Season 1 of „Legends“ was quite different than what came after, but „Night of the Hawk“ was an early highlight. While it was kind of a parody, being Season 1 it still played it straight for the most part, which resulted in an episode with the vibe of „American Horror Story“: We are in on the joke, but it’s still Horror. No wonder, after all Joe Dante directed this one. Vandal Savage turned poor teenagers into hawklike monsters, that no one would want to meet … ever. So yeah, thanks, but no thanks.

4. August Cartwright (Ethan Campell, Batwoman, John Emmet Tracy, Sebastian Roche)

Oh, God, that guy. So his mother wasn’t particulary ... nice, but that is no excuse to kidnap, gaslight, and brainwash a young girl, keep that girl’s mother’s head in a fridge for years, turn said girl into a slave and get her to make facemasks out of actual human face! Nor is that any excuse for fear-gasing your own son just because you are mad at him. Or anything in any way related to face-stealing, ,killing, identitiy theft, or anything else Dr. Cartwright has ever been up to. Like, seriously it has been a long time a character that desevers to be hated that much has been on our televions screens. Creepy Creep!

3. Duela Dent (Batwoman, Alessandra Torresani)

Female Slashers have become kind of a common trope in fiction by now, but Duela is kind of different. Suffering from a pretty extreme version of of body dysmorphic disorder Duela sees beauty through a different lense than the rest of the world (we will never forget what she deems to be her face being perfect, even though we desperatly want to). So yeah, she slashes faces, mainly her own, is out to punish people, who force beauty ideals on her and othes, and somehow has no problem with … donating her face to Alice. … Can someone please get that poor woman help, I mean, seriously?!

2. Rag Doll (Peter Merkel, The Flash, Troy James, Phil LaMarr)

He did make Joe West throw up. And not only him. Rag Doll is plains disgusting. So disgusting actually, that the producers dialed him back in Season 6 and used more CG and less pratical „Troy James freaks us out“- bending. But while he could be fun all elongaty, we actually prefer him as his creepy original Season 5 Self. He is demented, wears a creepy mask, acts creepy, and we really don’t want to see him do his stuff but can’t look away at the same time. I have no idea why he was in the Young Rogues either, because he is really mainly creepy – und would be the Overcreep on this list, if it weren’t for….

1. The Dollmaker (Barton Mathis, The Broken Doll Killer, Arrow, Michael Eklund)

I am still amazed to this day that they were allowed to make this episode. You have to remember „Arrow“ had been only on for one Season at this point and „The 100“ was still about to premier. The CW was yet to change it’s image. Still they somehow got to made the Dollmaker-Episode, which left us disturbed to this very day. What Mathis was doing to his victims …. Well not only Quentin got nightmares about it. Poor Laurel went understandable full addict after almost being made into a puppet by him. So, Rag Doll might look creepier, but the Dollmaker is one of this Serial Killers we never want to even hear from again. It’s really no wonder he was an one-off, like I said, I am still amazed they were even allowed to make the episode on Network Television let alone The CW at all.

#Arrowverse #Creepiest Villains #Arrow #The Flash #Supergirl #legends of tomorrow #Batwoman

19 notes · View notes

georgieharrisons · 6 years

Text

so i just finished life and death: twilight reimagined

yeah i caved after almost three years of just seeing it as a lazy gender-flipped cash grab and i read the thing and...it was actually really good? maybe i’m giving sm too much credit but it almost felt like she used this as an opportunity to correct some things wrong with the original books other than just “bella’s not weak because she’s a girl but because she’s human.” this has reignited my twilight obsession somewhat so if there’s more twilight on my blog than usual sorry not sorry. the read more is mostly here because i figure most people don’t care and wanna keep scrolling but there’s also spoilers under there so if you haven’t read it, intend to, and don’t wanna be spoiled, move along

so first of all i felt like the book was just better written? like it was a more enjoyable read. and this is coming from someone who genuinely loved the twilight books. like i was obsessed. and i felt like this book kept all the stuff that made the original books good, fun, easy reads while getting rid of a lot of the stylistic stuff that made it less enjoyable. for instance: yes beau still waxes poetic about how beautiful edythe is but it’s a lot shorter and less frequent. maybe that’s just cause sm doesn’t feel comfortable talking about how hot a girl is (though her depictions of rosalie would say otherwise) but regardless it was a welcome change.

i know some people don’t understand why everyone had to get genderflipped instead of just the main couple but i actually liked it. i felt like sm relied a lot on stereotypes in the original and now, by flipping the genders, those stereotypes were flipped on their heads (though some stereotypes still existed like having renee be a ballet teacher now instead of just having beau take them. let’s be real: free spirited, hippie renee would be just as likely to sign her son up for ballet as her daughter). but yeah flipped stereotypes: the werewolves are all women now instead of all men. we have super buff, super athletic eleanor and vain as hell royal who really wants kids. fashion obsessed archie and battle-scarred, standoffish jessamine. carine the doctor and caring homemaker earnest. idk i found it refreshing. i do feel like there was a missed opportunity with the genderflipped cullen names though. she could’ve just gone for period accurate names instead of making them as close to their original names as possible (except for eleanor like-emma? emma is the obvious choice here) like we wouldn’t be able to tell who they were without it.

i also felt like beau was more relatable/seemed more genuinely selfless than bella. at first i though that was my internalized sexism rearing its ugly head but then i went back and reread some of the same sections from twilight and realized that no, sm actually reworked some scenes and made beau more likable as a result. on a more personal note (ie this isn’t a thing i found objectively better about the book it just made me happy) i loved what she did with jessamine. during the time when beau, archie, and jessamine are stuck in the hotel jessamine actually has a personality! and lines! i fell in love with jasper because of how jackson portrayed him (and because jackson is a very good looking man) and then carried that over to the books (true confession: i saw the first movie before i read that book. but that’s a story for another time by which i mean never unless anyone actually cares enough to ask) but i fell in love with jessamine from this one book alone. and even archie felt more fleshed out than alice’s “fashion! shopping! besties! yay!” i won’t repeat everything jess got to do/say that jasper didn’t that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside because this is already wayyyy too long but suffice to say i again went back and reread the same scenes from twilight and the difference is staggering.

finally i loved the ending. yes it sucked that beau still has the super crazy newborn control with even less explanation this time (like wtf i thought it was the fact that bella was prepared that made her so good? beau was not prepared?) but i really really liked that he actually had to give stuff up and it was bittersweet.

i know this isn’t a popular opinion but i’d read three more of these with beau as a vampire just having supernatural adventures. i mean we could even have the same main conflicts right? like victor’s still out there looking for revenge. anyways it you made it to the end of this i’m very impressed and i’d also like to know your thoughts if you’ve read the book

#twilight #life and death: twilight reimagined #rambling

2 notes · View notes

gaysparklepires · 6 years

Text

25. Mirror

Read on AO3

I forced my eyes—frozen wide open with shock—to move, so that I could not examine too closely the oval object wrapped in tendrils of shivering, fiery hair.

Edward was in motion again. Swift and coolly businesslike, he dismembered the headless corpse.

I could not go to him—I could not make my feet respond; they were bolted to the stone beneath them. But I scrutinized his every action minutely, looking for any evidence that he had been harmed. My heart slowed to a healthier rhythm when I found nothing. He was lithe and graceful as ever. I couldn’t even see a tear in his clothes.

He did not look at me—where I stood frozen to the cliff wall, horrified—while he piled the quivering twitching limbs and then covered them with dry pine needles. He still did not meet my shocked gaze as he darted into the forest after Seth.

I didn’t have time to recover before both he and Seth were back, Edward with his arms full of Riley. Seth was carrying a large chunk—the torso—in his mouth. They added their burden to the pile, and Edward pulled a silver rectangle from his pocket. He flipped open the butane lighter and held the flame to the dry tinder. It caught at once; long tongues of orange fire licked rapidly across the pyre.

“Get every piece,” Edward said in a low aside to Seth.

Together, the vampire and the werewolf scoured the campsite, occasionally tossing small lumps of white stone into the blaze. Seth handled the pieces with his teeth. My brain wasn’t working well enough for me to understand why he didn’t change back to a form with hands.

Edward kept his eyes on his work.

And then they were done, and the raging fire was sending a pillar of choking purple toward the sky. The thick smoke curled up slowly, looking more solid than it should; it smelled like burning incense, and the scent was uncomfortable. It was heavy, too strong.

Seth made that snickering sound again, deep in his chest.

A smile flickered across Edward’s tense face.

Edward stretched out his arm, his hand curled into a fist. Seth grinned, revealing the long row of dagger teeth, and bumped his nose against Edward’s hand.

“Nice teamwork,” Edward murmured.

Seth coughed a laugh.

Then Edward took a deep breath, and turned slowly to face me.

I did not understand his expression. His eyes were as wary as if I were another enemy—more than wary, they were afraid. Yet he’d shown no fear at all when he’d faced Victor and Riley… my mind was stuck, stunned and useless as my body. I stared at him, bewildered.

“Beau, love,” he said in his softest tone, walking toward me with exaggerated slowness, his hands held up, palms forward. Dazed as I was, it reminded me oddly of a suspect approaching a police officer, showing that they weren’t armed…

“Beau, can you drop the rock, please? Carefully. Please don’t hurt yourself further.”

I’d forgotten all about my crude weapon, though I realized now that I was grasping it so hard that my hand was probably cut up now, too. I glanced down—as briefly as I could—down at my arm; the blood was still trickling down my forearm, leaving a small pool of blood in the snow.

Edward hesitated a few feet from me, his hands still in the air, his eyes still fearful.

It took me a few long seconds to remember how to move my fingers. Then the rock fell with a dull crunch into the snow, while my hands stayed frozen in the same position.

Edward relaxed slightly when my hands were empty, but came no closer.

“You don’t have to be afraid, Beau,” Edward murmured. “You’re safe. I won’t hurt you.”

The mystifying promise only confused me further. I stared at him, trying to understand.

“It’s going to be all right, Beau. I know you’re frightened now, but it’s over. No one is going to hurt you. I won’t touch you. I won’t hurt you,” he said again.

My eyes blinked furiously, and I found my voice. “Why do you keep saying that?”

I took an unsteady step toward him, and he leaned away from my advance.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered. “What do you mean?”

“Are you…” His golden eyes were suddenly confused as I felt. “Aren’t you afraid of me?”

“No?” I blinked a few times. “Why would I be afraid of you?”

I staggered forward another step, and then tripped over something. Edward caught me, and I buried my face in his chest and started to sob uncontrollably.

“Beau, Beau, I’m so sorry. It’s over, it’s over.”

“I’m fine,” I gasped. “I’m okay. I’m just. Freaking out. Give me. A minute.”

His arms tightened around me. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured again and again.

I clung to him until I couldn’t breathe, and then we were kissing. I don’t know who initiated the kisses, but it didn’t matter. We were holding each other tightly, fiercly. Kissing and kissing over and over again. My brain finally started working gain.

“Are you okay?” I demanded between kisses. “Did he hurt you at all?”

“I’m absolutely fine,” he promised, burying his face in my hair.

“Seth?”

Edward chuckled. “More than fine. Very pleased with himself, in fact.”

“The others? Alice, Esme? The pack?”

“All fine. It’s over there, too. It went just as smoothly as I promised. We got the worst of it here.”

I let myself absorb that for a moment, let it sink in and settle in my head.

Everyone was safe. Victor was never coming after me again. It was over.

We were all going to be fine.

But I couldn’t completely take in the good news while I was still so confused.

“Tell me why,” I insisted. “Why did you think I would be afraid of you?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, apologizing yet again—for what? I had no idea. “So sorry. I didn’t want you to see that. See me like that. I know I must have terrified you.”

I had to think about that for another minute, about the hesitant way he’d approached me, his hands in the air. Like I was going to run if he moved too fast…

“Seriously?” I finally asked. “You… what? Thought you’d scared me off?” I snorted. Snorting was good; a voice couldn’t tremble or break during a snort. It sounded impressively offhand.

He put his hand under my chin and tilted my head back to read my face.

“Beau, I just”—he hesitated and then forced the words out—“I just beheaded and dismembered a sentient creature not twenty yards from you. That doesn’t bother you?”

He frowned at me.

I shrugged. Shrugging was good, too. Very blasé. “No, not really. I was only afraid that you and Seth were going to get hurt. I wanted to help, but there’s only so much I can do…”

His suddenly livid expression made my voice fade out.

“Yes,” he said, his tone clipped. “Your little stunt with the rock. You know that you nearly gave me a heart attack? Not the easiest thing to do, that.”

In a swift motion, he ripped off a piece of his shirt and wrapped it around my arm where I had cut myself.

“I wanted to help… Seth was hurt…”

“Seth was only feigning that he was hurt, Beau. He recovered much quicker than he let on.” He shook his head, “Your distraction did help, though. But believe me, Seth could have handled things on his own.”

We both looked at Seth, who was studiously ignoring us, watching the flames. Smugness radiated from every hair in his fur.

“Well, I didn’t know that,” I said, on the offense now. “And it’s not easy being the only helpless person around. I wasn’t going to just sit on the sidelines—and I won’t be sitting on the sidelines next time, either!”

A dozen emotions flitted across his face before he settled on being amused. “Next time? Did you anticipate another war soon?”

“With my luck? Who knows?”

He rolled his eyes, but I could see that he was flying—the relief was making us both lightheaded. It was over.

Or… Was it?

“Hold on. Didn’t you say something before—?” I flinched, remembering what exactly it had been before—my conversation with Jacob. My splintered heart throbbed out a painful, aching beat. It was hard to believe, almost impossible, but the hardest part of this day was not behind me—and then I soldiered on. “About a complication? And Alice, needing to nail down the schedule for Sam. You said it was going to be close. What was going to be close?”

Edward’s eyes flickered back to Seth, and they exchanged a loaded glance.

“Well?” I asked.

“It’s nothing, really,” Edward said quickly. “But we do need to be on our way…”

He started to pull me into place on his back, but I stiffened and drew away.

“Define nothing.”

Edward took my face between his palms. “We only have a minute, so don’t panic, all right? I told you that you had no reason to be afraid. Trust me on that, please?”

I nodded, trying to hide the sudden terror—how much more could I handle before I collapsed? “No reason to be afraid. Got it.”

He pursed his lips for a second, deciding what to say. And then he glanced abruptly at Seth, as if the wolf had called him.

“What’s he doing?” Edward asked.

Seth whined; it was an anxious, uneasy sound. It made the hair on the back of my neck rise.

Everything was dead silent for one endless second.

And then Edward gasped, “No!” and one of his hands flew out as if to grab something that I couldn’t see. “Don’t—!”

A spasm rocked through Seth’s body, and a howl, blistering with agony, ripped from his lungs.

Edward fell to his knees at the exact same moment, gripping the sides of his head with two hands, his face furrowed in pain.

I cried out in bewildered terror, and dropped to my knees beside him. Futilely, I tried to pull his hands from his face; my palms, clammy with sweat, slid off his marble skin.

“Edward! Edward!”

His eyes focused on me; with obvious effort, he pulled his clenched teeth apart.

“It’s okay. We’re going to be fine. It’s—“ He broke off, and winced again.

“What’s happening?” I cried out while Seth howled in anguish.

“We’re fine. We’re going to be okay,” Edward gasped. “Sam—help him—“

And I realized in that instant, when he said Sam’s name, that he was not speaking of himself and Seth. No unseen force was attacking them. This time, the crisis was not here.

He was using the pack plural.

I burned through all my adrenaline. My body had nothing left. I sagged, and Edward caught me before I could hit the rocks. He sprang to his feet, me in his arms.

“Seth!” Edward shouted.

Seth was crouched, still tensed in agony, looking as if he meant to launch himself into the forest.

“No!” Edward ordered. “You go straight home. Now. As fast as you can!”

Seth whimpered, shaking his great head from side to side.

“Seth. Trust me.”

The huge wolf stared into Edward’s agonized eyes for one long second, and then he straightened up and flew into the trees, disappearing like a ghost.

Edward cradled me tightly against his chest, and then we were also hurtling through the shadowy forest, taking a different path than the wolf.

“Edward.” I fought to force the words through my constricted throat. “What happened, Edward? What happened to Sam? Where are we going? What’s happening?”

“We have to go back to the clearing,” he told me in a low voice. “We knew there was a good probability of this happening. Earlier this morning, Alice saw it and passed it through Sam to Seth. The Volturi decided it was time to intercede.”

The Volturi.

To much. My mind refused to make sense of the words, pretended it couldn’t understand.

The trees jolted past us. He was running downhill so fast that it felt as if we were plummeting, falling out of control.

“Don’t panic. They aren’t coming for us. It’s just the normal contingent of the guard that usually cleans up this kind of mess. Nothing momentous, they’re merely doing their job. Of course, they seem to have timed their arrival very carefully. Which lead me to believe that no one in Italy would mourn if these newborns had reduced the size of the Cullen family.” The words came through his teeth, hard and bleak. “I’ll know for sure what they were thinking when they get to the clearing.”

“Is that why we’re going back?” I whispered. Could I handle this? Images of flowing back robes crept into my unwilling mind, and I flinched away from them. I was close to a breaking point.

“It’s part of the reason. Mostly, it will be safer for us to present a united front at this point. They have no reason to harass us, but… Jane’s with them. If she thought we were alone somewhere away from the others, it might tempt her. Like Victor, Jane will probably guess that I’m with you. Demetri, of course, is with her. He could find me, if Jane asked him to.”

I didn’t want to think that name. I didn’t want to see that blindingly exquisite, childlike face in my head. A strange sound came out of my throat. I felt my breath quicken in panic.

“Shh, Beau, shh. It’s all going to be fine. Alice can see that.”

Alice could see? But… then where were the wolves? Where was the pack?

“The pack?”

“They had to leave quickly. The Volturi do not honor truces with werewolves.”

I could hear my breathing get even faster, more frantic, btu I couldn’t control it. I started to gasp.

“I swear they will be fine,” Edward promised me. “The Volturi won’t recognize the scent—they won’t realize the wolves are here; this isn’t a species they are familiar with. The pack will be fine.”

I couldn’t process his explanation. My concentration was ripped to shreds by my fears and rising panic. We’re going to be fine, he had said before… and Seth, howling in agony… Edward had avoided my first question, distracted me with the Volturi.

I was very close to the edge—just clinging by my fingertips.

The trees were a racing blur that flowed around him like jade waters.

“What happened?” I whispered again. “Before. When Seth was howling? When you were hurt?”

Edward hesitated.

“Edward! Tell me!”

“It was all over,” he whispered. I could barely hear him over the wind his speed created. “The wolves didn’t count their half… they thought they had them all. Of course, Alice couldn’t see…”

“What happened!?”

“One of the newborns was hiding… Liam found him—he was being stupid, cocky, trying to prove something. He engaged the newborn alone…”

“Liam,” I repeated, and my panic started rising higher. “Is he going to be okay?”

“Liam wasn’t hurt,” Edward mumbled.

I stared at him for a long second.

Sam—help him—Edward had gasped. Him who?

“We’re almost there,” Edward said, and he stared at a fixed point in the sky.

Automatically, my eyes followed his. There was a dark purple cloud hanging low over the trees. A cloud. But it was so abnormally sunny… No, not a cloud—I recognized the thick column of smoke, just like the one at our campsite.

“Edward,” I said, my voice nearly inaudible. “Edward, someone got hurt.”

I’d heard Seth’s agony, seen the torture in Edward’s face.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Who?” I asked, though, of course, I already knew the answer.

Of course I did. Of course.

The trees were slowing around us as we came to our destination.

It took him a long moment to answer me.

“Jacob,” he said.

I was able to nod once.

“Jacob,” I repeated.

And then I slipped off the edge I was clinging to inside my head.

Everything went black.

I was first aware of the cool hands touching me. More than one pair of hands. Arms holding me, a palm curved to fit my cheek, fingers stroking my forehead, and more fingers pressed lightly into my wrist.

Then I was aware of the voices. They were just a humming at first, and then they grew in volume and clarity like someone was turning up a radio.

“Carlisle—it’s been five minutes.” Edward’s voice, anxious.

“He’ll come around when he’s ready, Edward.” Carlisle’s voice, always calm and sure. “He’s had too much to deal with today. Let his mind protect itself.”

But my mind was not protected. It was trapped in the knowledge that had not left me, even in unconsciousness—the pain that was part of the blackness.

I felt totally disconnected from my body. Like I was caged in some small corner of my head, no longer at the controls. But I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t think. The agony was too strong for that. There was no escape from it.

Jacob.

No, no, no, no, no…

“Alice, how long do we have?” Edward demanded, his voice still tense; Carlisle’s soothing words had not helped.

From farther away, Alice’s voice. She sounded distracted. “Another five moments. And Beau will open his eyes in thirty-seven seconds. I wouldn’t doubt that he can hear us now.”

“Beau, honey?” This was Esme’s soft, comforting voice. “Can you hear me? You’re safe now, dear.”

Yes, I was safe. But was Jacob?

Then cool lips were at my ear, and Edward was speaking the words that allowed me to escape from the torture that had me caged inside my own head.

“He’s going to live, Beau. Jacob Black is healing as I speak. He’ll be fine.”

As the pain and dread eased, I found my way back to my body. My eyelids fluttered.

“Oh, Beau,” Edward sighed in relief, and his lips touched mine.

“Edward,” I whispered.

“Yes, I’m here.”

I got my lids to open, and I stared into warm gold.

“Jacob is okay?” I asked.

“Yes,” he promised.

I watched his eyes carefully for some sign that he was placating me, but they were perfectly clear.

“I examined him myself,” Carlisle said then; I turned my head to find his face, only a few feet away. Carlisle’s expression was serious and reassuring at the same time. It was impossible to doubt him. “His life is not in any danger. He was healing at an incredible rate, though his injuries were extensive enough that it will still be a few days before he is back to normal, even if the rate of repair holds steady. As soon as we’re done here, I will do what I can to help him. Sam is trying to get him to phase back to his human form. That will make treating him easier.” Carlisle smiled slightly. “I’ve never been to veterinarian school.”

“What happened to him?” I whispered. “How bad are his injuries?”

Carlisle’s face was serious again. “Another wolf was in trouble —”

“Liam,” I breathed.

“Yes. Jacob knocked Liam out of the way, but he didn’t have time to defend himself. The newborn got his arms around him. Most of the bones on the right half of his body were shattered.”

I flinched.

“Sam and Paul got there in time. He was already improving when they took him back to La Push.” “He’ll be back to normal?” I asked.

“Yes, Beau. He won’t have any permanent damage.”

I took a deep breath.

“Three minutes,” Alice said quietly.

I struggled, trying to get vertical. Edward realized what I was doing and helped me to my feet.

I stared at the scene in front of me.

The Cullens stood in a loose semicircle around the bonfire. There were hardly any flames visible, just the thick, purple-black smoke, hovering like a disease against the bright grass. Jasper stood closest to the solid-seeming haze, in its shadow so that his skin did not glitter brilliantly in the sun the way the others did. He had his back to me, his shoulders tense, his arms slightly extended. There was something there, in his shadow. Something he crouched over with wary intensity…

I was too numb to feel more than a mild shock when I realized what it was.

There were eight vampires in the clearing.

The girl was curled into a small ball beside the flames, her arms wrapped around her legs. She was very young. Younger than me—she looked maybe fifteen, dark-haired and slight. Her eyes were focused on me, and the irises were a shocking brilliant red. Much brighter than Riley’s, almost glowing. They wheeled wildly, out of control.

Edward saw my bewildered expression.

“She surrendered,” he told me quietly. “That’s one I’ve never seen before. Only Carlisle would think of offering. Jasper doesn’t approve.”

I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the scene besides the fire. Jasper was rubbing absently at his left forearm.

“Is Jasper all right?” I whispered.

“He’s fine. The venom stings.”

“He was bitten?” I asked, horrified.

“He was trying to be everywhere at once. Trying to make sure Alice had nothing to do, actually.” Edward shook his head. “Alice doesn’t need anyone’s help.”

Alice grimaced toward her true love. “Overprotective fool.”

Then Alice’s eyes slowly drifted back to me. She looked at me with a concerned, but confused expression on her face.

The young female suddenly threw her head back like an animal and wailed shrilly.

Jasper growled at her and she cringed back, but her fingers dug into the ground like claws and her head whipped back and forth in anguish. Jasper took a step toward her, slipping deeper into his crouch. Edward moved with overdone casualness, turning our bodies so that he was between the girl and me. I peeked around his arm to watch around his arm to watch the thrashing girl and Jasper.

Carlisle was at Jasper’s side in an instant. He put a restraining hand on his most recent son’s arm.

“Have you changed your mind, young one?” Carlisle asked, calm as ever. “We don’t want to destroy you, but we will if you can’t control yourself.”

“How can you stand it?” The girl groaned in a high, clear voice. “I want him.” Her bright crimson irises focused on Edward, through him, beyond him to me, and her nails ripped through the hard soil again.

“You must stand it,” Carlisle told her gravely. “You must exercise control. It is possible, and it is the only thing that will save you now.”

The girl clutched her dirt-encrusted hands around her head, yowling quietly.

“Shouldn’t we move away from her?” I whispered, tugging on Edward’s arm. The girl’s lips pulled back over teeth when she heard my voice, her expression one of torment.

“We have to stay here,” Edward murmured. “They are coming to the north end of the clearing now.”

My heart burst into a sprint as I scanned the clearing, but I couldn’t see anything past the thick pall of smoke.

After a second of fruitless searching, my gaze crept back to the young female vampire. She was still watching me, her eyes half-mad.

I met the girl’s stare for a long moment. Chin-length dark hair framed her face, which was alabaster pale. It was hard to tell if her features were beautiful, twisted as they were by rage and thirst. The feral red eyes were dominant—hard to look away from. She glared at me viciously, shuddering and writhing every few seconds.

I stared at her, mesmerized, wondering if I were looking into a mirror of my possible future.

Then Carlisle and Jasper began to back toward the rest of us. Emmett, Royal, and Esme all converged hastily around where Edward stood with Alice and me. A united front, as Edward had said, with me at the heart, in the safest place.

I tore my attention away from the wild girl to search for the approaching monsters.

There was still nothing to see. I glanced at Edward, and his eyes were locked straight ahead. I tried to follow his gaze, but there was only the smoke—dense, oily smoke twisting low to the ground, rising lazily, undulating against the grass.

It billowed forward, darker in the middle.

“Hmm,” a dead voice murmured from the mist. I recognized the apathy at once.

“Welcome, Jane.” Edward’s tone was coolly courteous.

The dark shapes came closer, separating themselves from the haze, solidifying. I knew it would be Jane in the front—the darkest cloak, almost black, and the smallest figure by more than two feet. I could just barely make out Jane’s angelic features in the shade of the cowl.

The four gray-shrouded figures hulking behind her were also somewhat familiar. I was sure I recognized the biggest one, and while I stared, trying to confirm my suspicion, Felix looked up. He let his hood fall back slightly so that I could see him wink at me and smile. Edward was very still at my side, tightly in control.

Jane’s gaze moved slowly across the luminous faces of the Cullens and then touched on the newborn girl beside the fire; the newborn had her head in her hands again.

“I don’t understand.” Jane’s voice was toneless, but not quite as uninterested as before.

“She has surrendered,” Edward explained, answering the confusion in her mind.

Jane’s dark eyes flashed to his face. “Surrendered?”

Felix and another shadow exchanged a quick glance.

Edward shrugged. “Carlisle gave her the option.”

“There are no options for those who break the rules,” Jane said flatly.

Carlisle spoke then, his voice mild. “That’s in your hands. As long as she was willing to halt her attack on us, I saw no need to destroy her. She was never taught.”

“That is irrelevant,” Jane insisted.

“As you wish.”

Jane stared at Carlisle in consternation. She shook her head infinitesimally, and then composed her features.

“Aro hoped that we would get far enough west to see you, Carlisle. He sends his regards.”

Carlisle nodded. “I would appreciate it if you would convey mind to him.”

“Of course.” Jane smiled. Her face was almost too lovely when it was animated. She looked back toward the smoke. “It appears you’ve done our work for us today… for the most part.” Her eyes flickered to the hostage. “Just out of professional curiosity, how many were there? They left quite a wake of destruction in Seattle.”

“Eighteen, including this one,” Carlisle answered.

Jane’s eyes widened, and she looked at the fire again, seeming to reassess the size of it. Felix and the other shadows exchanged a longer glance.

“Eighteen?” she repeated, her voice sounding unsure for the first time.

“All brand-new,” Carlisle said dismissively. “They were unskilled.”

“All?” Her voice turned sharp. “Then who was their creator?”

“His name was Victor,” Edward answered, no emotion in his voice.

“Was?” Jane asked.

Edward inclined his head toward the Eastern forest. Jane’s eyes snapped up and focused on something far in the distance. The other pillar of smoke? I didn’t look away to check.

Jane stared to the east for a long moment, and then examined the closer bonfire again.

“This Victor—he was in addition to the eighteen here?”

“Yes. He had only one other with him. He was not as young as this one here, but no older than a year.”

“Twenty,” Jane breathed. “Who dealt with the creator?”

“I did,” Edward told her.

Jane’s eyes narrowed, and she turned to the girl beside the fire.

“You there,” she said, her dead voice harsher than before. “Your name.”

The newborn short a baleful glare at Jane, her lips pressed tightly together.

Jane smiled back angelically.

The newborn girl’s answering scream was ear-piercing; her body arched stiffly into a distorted, unnatural position. I looked away, fighting the urge to cover my ears. I gritted my teeth, hoping to control my stomach. The screaming intensified. I tried to concentrate on Edward’s face, smooth and unemotional, but that made me remember when it had been Edward under Jane’s torturing gaze, and I felt sicker. I looked at Alice instead, and Esme next to her. Their faces were as empty as his.

Finally, it was quiet.

“Your name,” Jane said again, her voice inflectionless.

“Bree,” the girl gasped.

Jane smiled, and the girl shrieked again. I held my breath until the sound of her agony stopped.

“She’ll tell you anything you want to know,” Edward said through his teeth. “You don’t have to do that.”

Jane looked up, sudden humor in her usually dead eyes. “Oh, I know,” she said to Edward, grinning at him before she turned back to the young vampire, Bree.

“Bree,” Jane said, her voice cold again. “Is his story true? Were there twenty of you?”

The girl lay panting, the side of her face pressed against the earth. She spoke quickly. “Nineteen or twenty, maybe more, I don’t know!” She cringed, terrified that her ignorance might bring on another round of torture. “Sara and the one whose name I don’t know got in a fight on the way…”

“And this Victor—did he create you?”

“I don’t know,” she said, flinching again. “Riley never said his name. I didn’t see that night… it was so dark, and it hurt…” Bree shuddered. “Riley didn’t was us to be able to think of him. He said that our thoughts weren’t safe…”

Jane’s eyes flickered to Edward, and then back to the girl.

Victor had planned this well. If he hadn’t followed Edward, there would have been no way to know for certain that he was involved.

“Tell me about Riley,” Jane said. “Why did he bring you here?”

“Riley told us that we had to destroy the strange yellow-eyes here,” Bree babbled quickly and willingly. “He said it would be easy. He said that the city was theirs, and they were coming to get us. He said once they were gone, all the blood would be ours. Riley gave us his scent.” Bree lifted one hand and stabbed a finger in my direction. “he said we would know that we had the right coven, because the human would be with them. Riley said whoever got him first could have him.”

I heard Edward’s jaw flex beside me.

“It looks like Riley was wrong about the easy part,” Jane noted.

Bree nodded, seeming relieved that the conversation had taken this non-painful course. She sat up carefully. “I don’t know what happened. We split up, but the others never came. And Riley left us, and he didn’t come to help like he promised. And then it was so confusing, and everybody was in pieces.” She shuddered again. “I was afraid. I wanted to run away. That one”—she looked at Carlisle—“said they wouldn’t hurt me if I stopped fighting.”

“Ah, but that wasn’t his gift to offer, young one,” Jane murmured, her voice oddly gentle now. “Broken rules demand consequences.”

Bree stared at her, not comprehending.

Jane looked at Carlisle. “Are you sure you got all of them? The other half that split off?”

Carlisle’s face was very smooth as he nodded. “We split up, too.”

Jane half-smiled. “I can’t deny that I’m impressed.” The big shadows behind her murmured in agreement. “I’ve never seen a coven escape an attack of this magnitude intact. Do you know what was behind it? It seems like extreme behavior, considering the way you live here. And why was the boy the key?” Her eyes rested unwillingly on me for one short second.

I shivered.

“Victor held a grudge against Beau,” Edward told her, his voice impassive.

Jane laughed—the sound was golden, the bubbling laugh of a happy child. “This one seems to bring out bizarrely strong reactions in our kind,” she observed, smiling directly at me, her face beatific.

Edward stiffened. I looked at him in time to see his face turning away, back to Jane.

“Would you please not do that?” he asked in a tight voice.

Jane laughed again lightly. “Just checking. No harm done, apparently.”

I shivered, deeply grateful that the strange glitch in my system—which had protected me from Jane the last time we’d met—was still in effect. Edward’s arm tightened around me.

“Well, it appears that there’s not much left for us to do. Odd,” Jane said, apathy creeping back into her voice. “We’re not used to being rendered unnecessary. It’s too bad we missed the fight. It sounds like it would have been entertaining to watch.”

“Yes,” Edward answered her quickly, his voice sharp. “And you were so close. It’s a shame you didn’t arrive just a half hour earlier. Perhaps then you could have fulfilled your purpose here.”

Jane met Edward’s glare with unwavering eyes. “Yes. Quite a pity how things turned out, isn’t it?”

Edward nodded once to look at the newborn Bree again, her face completely bored. “Felix?” she drawled.

“Wait,” Edward interjected.

Jane raised one eyebrow, but Edward was staring at Carlisle while he spoke in an urgent voice. “We could explain the rules to the young one. She doesn’t seem unwilling to learn. She didn’t know what she was doing.”

“Of course,” Carlisle answered. “We would certainly be prepared to take responsibility for Bree.”

Jane’s expression was torn between amusement and disbelief.

“We don’t make exceptions,” she said. “And we don’t give second chances. It’s bad for our reputation. Which reminds me…” Suddenly, her eyes were on me again, and her cherubic face dimpled. “Caius will be so interested to hear that you’re still human, Beau. Perhaps he’ll decide to visit.”

“The date is set,” I answered, surprising myself with my confidence.

“Perhaps we’ll come visit you in a few months.” Alice said, backing up my lie.

Jane’s smile faded, and she shrugged indifferently, never looking at Alice. She turned to face Carlisle. “It was nice to meet you, Carlisle—I’d thought Aro was exaggerating. Well, until we meet again…”

Carlisle nodded, his expression pained.

“Take care of that, Felix,” Jane said, nodding toward Bree, her voice dripping boredom. “I want to go home.”

“Don’t watch,” Edward whispered in my ear.

I was only too eager to follow his instruction. I’d seen more than enough for one day—more than enough for one lifetime. I squeezed my eyes tightly together and turned my face into Edward’s chest.

But I could still hear.

There was a deep rumbling growl, and then a high-pitched keen that was horribly familiar. That sound cut off quickly, and then the only sound was a sickening crunching and snapping.

Edward’s hand rubbed anxiously against my shoulders.

“Come,” Jane said, and I looked up in time to see the backs of the tall gray cloaks drifting away toward the curling smoke. The incense smell was strong again—fresh.

The gray cloaks disappeared into the thick mist.

#Eclipse #Eclipse Revamped #The Twilight Saga Revamped #Edward Cullen #Beau Swan #Jacob Black #Gay Eclipse #Gay Twilight

4 notes · View notes

josebarrmageddon · 7 years

Text

Frankenweenie 5th Anniversary

Tim Burton and Animation seem to go hand in hand, but out of the few stop motion movies he’s been involved with, everyone always focuses on The Nightmare Before Christmas(1993) and really nothing else. Where’s the love for Frankenweenie? In the movie, Victor Frankenstein is a young boy who spends his time at home making monster movies with his dog and lead star, Sparky. Everything is great until Sparky runs after a ball in the streets and is hit by a car. Victor mourns the loss of his companion, but is then loosely inspired by his science teacher, Mr. Rzykruski, to use revive him with the power of electricity. Once Sparky is back, Victor tries to keep him a secret, but word soon spreads across the school and town that the Frankenstein’s have a dead dog and all the other children hatch their own ideas of bringing their deceased pets back from the grave.

Needless to say, this is an amazing love letter to James Whale’s Frankenstein(1931). Not only that, but a lot of Universal’s horror movies and even others like Godzilla, Gremlins and The Black Cat. The other children from the town have their own pets that each resemble famous monsters. There is even a funny moment where the parents are watching Dracula on T.V.. It isn’t animated, it’s just a live-action clip of Christopher Lee in Horror of Dracula(1958). So much of this movie is appealing, it makes me wonder why no one outside the fandom acknowledged it. Maybe young children didn’t get the references or their parents didn’t want their kids to be watching horror movies. This movie came out in 2012, along with his Dark Shadows and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, on which he was a producer. While I adore both, I’ll be the first to admit that they weren’t the most profitable or well received movies he’s made. Prior to these, Burton did Alice in Wonderland(2010) which was also a disappointment. Were people were unimpressed or tired by the earlier movies that they didn’t bother with this one.

To be honest, I have no idea. I’m a massive Tim Burton fan and a massive Frankenstein fan, so I could just be biased, but even if I wasn’t, this is still one of the best movies he’s ever directed. It’s an homage to a genre that is well known through out the world, but also a story about childhood and the things we hold dearest to us. Sometimes it feels unfair to have to let things go, yet it’s important to know when it’s time to and move on. I’d say that’s an important message to teach kids, don’t you agree?

-Jose Barr (10-05-2017)

FUN Fact:

A remake of Tim Burton’s 1984 short film.

Mr. Ryzkruski has a strong resemblance to Tim Burton’s idol, Vincent Price, and is voiced by Martin Landau, who portrayed Bela Lugosi in Burton’s Ed Wood(1994)

#frankenweenie #5th Anniversary #Tim Burton #Winona Ryder #martin short #catherine o'hara #martin landau #frankenstein #victor frankenstein #elsa van helsing #2012 #walt disney #stop motion animation #October 5 #sparky the dog

13 notes · View notes

jamfingers · 7 years

Text

Now that I read it, ngl I like "Life And Death" way better than "Twilight". Spoilers ahead.

CONS:

I have one really big issue and that’s that the execution for disproving that Twilight wasn’t sexist fell so flat. Bella experienced sexist treatment at the hands of Edward (her boyfriend), Charlie (her father), and Jacob (her best friend). While I can see what SM was getting at about Edward and Bella’s relationship specifically being uneven not because of gender, but because of power dynamics, Bella experienced sexism from her other important male relationships. Charlie and Edward had the whole “Take care of my girl” exchange in front of Bella like she wasn’t even there when he came to pick her up for baseball and it irritated her. Beau had his dad being awestruck that his son scored someone so hot in the equivalent scene and Beau was like “ikr?”. In NM (granted L&D didn’t get this far and went a different plot route in the end), Jacob sexually assaults Bella and because she can’t physically stop him, she just has to wait it out. Beau, like Bella, gets a harem to choose from, but unlike Bella, has (imo) more control at rearranging these dynamics.

There were also the societal adjustments made to suit Beau’s gender…like the assault in Port Angeles….what? Boys can’t be victims of random almost gang rapes? Or Beau’s fave book. The neuroscientist in me is like “well, there is a 2% genetic difference in males and females that accounts for mechanistic changes in brain functioning” while the sociologist in me is like “bullshit, his preference change is because of gender conformity and expectations”. So I’m torn.

Also the entire book is basically a fan fiction and a ploy for the author to make some more money (Yes I got suckered in, but still bro….you didn’t change much. I’d rather have something rewritten than revised).

Also, as much as I like the queer Twilight ideas, Bella would be just as “abused” in her relationship with Edythe and Beau would be “abused” in his relationship with Edward (I quote this because abused is the word used by fandom critics - I, like SM, always saw it as a power dynamic issue, not abuse, but that’s another thing all together) because both narrators just seem so damn susceptible to brainwashing and both versions of their love interest are incredibly forcible in their assertions and wills. The dynamics of their relationship don’t actually change much in the narrative, which was SM’s point - many people only called it abusive bc Edward was a male and Bella was a female, when in actuality it should be considered that way no matter what the gender or sexuality dynamics. Just saying. Stay consistent because, for all her faults, SM did. Edward/Edythe almost always got their way while Bella/Beau was often frustrated because they had to be the compliant one. When B does exert their will, it has to be through trickery rather than talking it out like adults bc they know E will be an obstacle. That is not an equivalent relationship and no amount of gender/sexuality changes will change that.

PROS:

So many things I loved. I adored Bella and Beau is just as lovable. He is so tol and so awkward and so adoring of this girl and it was refreshing to read a YA romance (esp a supernatural/fantasy one) about an ordinary boy falling in love with an extraordinary girl. I also like the fact that he’s more straight-forward in his descriptions of things that aren’t Edythe than Bella is. Bella goes on and on about how green and wet and cold it is and how she hates Forks bc it’s not Phoenix. That never appealed to me. Beau’s straight-forwardness and briefness about these details, to me, emphasizes the suddenly flowery, dramatic language he adopts when basking in Edythe’s glory. It was cute.

The genderbent versions of the characters seemed so much more…well-rounded and developed compared to their original incarnations. Which is weird because the book is essentially a copy-n-paste except for a few key moments and changes. Perhaps the author was just more comfortable writing them this time around.

Edythe Cullen is so much cooler than Edward. I didn’t like Edward much but I understand Beau’s obsession more than Bella’s. Fr dude I get it. Like the ECs essentially have the same rotten personality but it’s the little details that draw you in. Edythe’s details make her more awesome than Edward, sorry not sorry. She’s also like, smol and graceful and possibly more sarcastic than any version of all the characters which contrasts Beau’s slightly overwhelmed baby giraffe status so adorably. She reminds me of those evil-but-elegant looking Maine Coon cats.

A bevy of awesome female characters. Because so many of the key supernaturals were male in Twilight, it is fucking amazing that this whole new world seems so female driven. The new Volturi? Yes. The matriarch wolf pack? Double yes.

Archie fucking Cullen. I didn’t think it was possible for me to love a Twilight character more than Alice and Rosalie, but Archie man. Omg. (Royal not so much -his name omg I’m dead - because he seems to have Rosalie’s chip but his reasons for it are so ugh compared to hers. Both lost their families and statuses, yes, but Rosalie enduring horrific sexual assault before dying and losing all this on top of that seems more striking than Royal getting jumped. Idk, both are PTSD-inducing moments, but it once again portrays that SM failed to full stop the sexism she’s accused of utilizing. Also Royal was so vague about the details so SM wouldn’t have to think about developing why Royal is such a prick - like he could just be an asshole who thinks Beau is an idiot. That’s fine. I thought Bella was an idiot and sided with Rosalie, bc yeah girl, you want to die for a boy, a terrible, terrible boy at that. Rosalie was right in her logic and gets unfairly shat on for being a bitch. Whatever. I digress.) But Archie is also a double yes. I loved Archie, I want one in my life.

The ending. That was the ending I wanted for Twilight when I first read the saga. Tbh, the way Breaking Dawn ended was too perfect, kinda creepy on many accounts, retconish (Renesme or however the fuck it’s spelled shouldn’t exist, fight me), and frankly, incredibly boring. Too many things worked out for Bella and Edward and while they did have obstacles, their relationship was too happily ever after for my tastes and not really earned because a lot of their obstacles arose from their own stupidity/stubbornness.

The follow up for this new ending could potentially be soooo good and complex because there would be so many new obstacles and stakes to explore with Beau as a (spoiler) vampire in a relationship with a girl he’s madly in love with, but slowly realising exactly what it is he ended up losing to be with her. That is good relationship strife. Plus seeing Beau have a nemesis in Victor (Victoria) would make up for us being deprived of Bella having a single enemy that she went toe-to-toe with rather than her being the target of Edward’s nemesis because that would hurt Edward. Bella was very much side-lined in her own story and didn’t get to grow much in Edward’s presence (she had development just fine when he wasn’t around) until she got pregnant. Beau, with his ending, would not have that. I also want to see more fiercely protective Edythe - I want to see a couple protect each other, not one more powerful partner seclude the other away from the world “for their own good”. The new ending is a good way to provide growth for Edythe’s character as well and completely overturn that “abusive” dynamic. While I’m sad Bella didn’t get Beau’s awesome ending, the author seems satisfied and so were a lot of less critical readers so… *shrugs* Whatever.

Anyway td;lr - Life and Death, while not perfect, is a better story than Twilight with the foundation for a really interesting follow up if the time and thought were put into it.

#life and death #twilight #edythe cullen #edward cullen #bella swan #beau swan #life and death meta #twilight meta #spoilers #comparison

5 notes · View notes

thevalicemultiverse · 7 years

Text

Things You Need To Know About: Londerland Bloodlines

Tag: ~V: Londerland Bloodlines

Premise: What does one do when, after having been “strongly encouraged” to date the local upper-class girl, they’ve accidentally awakened a corpse bride-to-be, seen the Land of the Dead, saved the local upper class girl with the bride’s help after she was kidnapped by another potential date, set the bride on the path to finally moving on, and agreed to a break with the upper-class girl to give her time to recover? And one’s parents won’t shut up about it? Move to California, of course! Victor hoped Los Angeles would be a new beginning, but it nearly turned into a new ending when he was hit by a car three days in. But then, his own dark-haired, green-eyed angel entered his life – with sharp fangs and sweet blood he just can’t get enough of…

This AU is is a crossover between Corpse Bride, the Alice games, and the Old World of Darkness (and, quietly, Back To The Future). Specifically, it asks the question, "What if Alice ended up the Malkavian protagonist character of Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines, and Victor took the place of Heather Poe, the protagonist's potential ghoul?" In this more modernized (2004, to be precise) world, before the main action starts, Victor and Victoria are not arranged to be married -- instead, they're just being pushed toward each other by the very-enthusiastic Nell and the rather-more-reluctant Maudeline. Victor and Victoria, fortunately, actually like each other, and they're happy enough to go on dates and think about a future together.

They're less happy when, urged by Nell, Pastor Galswells shows up on one said date to extol the virtues of marriage. They're able to have a laugh about it -- but later, on a walk through the local woods, Victor finds himself wondering about a future with Victoria, and does a practice proposal with a plastic ring he got out of those "toy in a bubble" vending machines during the date, slipping it onto a convenient hand-shaped branch.

Convenient hand-shaped branch turns out to be an actual skeletal hand, and its owner -- a murdered bride named Emily -- promptly rises, believing Victor's proposal to be legitimate toward her. Victor tries to run, but Emily catches up and takes him to her home in the Land of the Dead. Victor, terrified, blurts out the whole thing was a joke -- and then, seeing the heartbroken look on Emily's face, clarifies that he didn't even know she was there. Emily's friend Bonejangles explains her history (killed by the man she intended to elope with for the money he told her to bring), and Victor, feeling awful, decides he has to do something for her in apology for getting her hopes up. Emily admits that it would be nice to just have a date Upstairs, if possible -- Victor explains about Victoria but says that if she's okay with it, he'd love to take her on a little moonlight picnic or something. Emily is cool with this plan, and after talking with Elder Gutknecht (the most powerfully magical dead person around), they go back to the Land of the Living so Victor can talk to Victoria.

But when Victor arrives at the Everglots, he finds the lord and lady in a tizzy and the police taking statements. Turns out Victoria has been kidnapped by the second date she had that day -- Maudeline pushed her to meet a "Lord Barkis" once she got home, and Victoria agreed just to get her off her back. Barkis promptly took her hostage and is demanding a ransom the rather-broke Everglots simply can't pay. Victor, horrified, brings this news back to Emily -- and Emily wonderingly admits that her old beau went by the name "Edward Barkis." Getting Elder Gutknecht's help in finding the missing Victoria, they discover that yep, it's the same guy, and that he fully intends to kill Victoria instead of releasing her once he gets his money. A furious Emily (backed up by Victor and a few of her dead friends) confronts him, and they manage to subdue him and get word to the police, sending him to prison and saving Victoria. Emily, feeling like the major anchor holding her to the living world has been released, decides to return Downstairs and have a farewell party or two before preparing to move on, and she and Victor fondly bid each other adieu.

Which is followed by Victoria admitting the whole kidnapping really shook her and she'd like a break from dating altogether. Victor is understanding, but his parents are less so -- and after the fiftieth complaint about how he let their best chance for social importance slip through his fingers, Victor snaps and decides he wants to put as much distance between them and him as possible. One ticket to Los Angeles, California later, he's ready to start a new life!

Three days in, he's hit by a car and rushed to a severely-understaffed clinic in Santa Monica. Victor, certain he's going to die, begs the first person he sees -- a mysterious green-eyed girl in a blue dress -- first for help, then for company as he passes. The girl instead cuts her wrist and makes him drink her blood. To Victor's intense surprise, he not only enjoys the experience, but when he wakes up later -- he's fine.

Fortunately, he's not left in the dark as to the reason for his mysterious cure for long -- a run-in with local bounty hunter Knox Harrington explains all: the mystery girl is Alice Liddell, she's a vampire (a Malkavian, to be specific), and her blood is what healed him, turning him into a ghoul. Victor promptly tracks down Alice, and the two end up living together in her downtown apartment while Alice runs errands for the longer-lived members of the local vampire population (being the newbie, and one who shouldn't have even been made to boot). Along the way, Victor reunites with Victoria, who also fled to California after her parents tried to push her into yet another unwanted relationship -- and with Emily during a raid on a family reunion of the Giovanni clan of vampires. The Giovanni specialize in necromancy, and Emily's spirit had been captured and restored to a kind of life as an advanced sort of zombie in one of their rituals -- along with Alice's murdered sister Lizzie. Both Victor and Alice are only too glad to welcome the pair into their home, and soon a sweet little quartet forms between Victor, Victoria, Emily, and Alice.

However, not all is well in the City of Angels -- Alice has made a lot of enemies in her time as a vampire, and as they start closing in, Victor and Emily are forced to flee L.A. for their own safety. Victoria and Lizzie follow shortly thereafter, having been narrowly rescued from abduction by the evil Sabbat vampires (Victoria, as you might imagine, is sour about being kidnapped TWICE in one year). The four end up settling in the little town of Hill Valley, waiting with bated breath to see if Alice will eventually join them.

She does, having very thoroughly told the L.A. vampires to fuck off. And so Victor settles into a very content future, with three women who love him dearly, an honorary older sister, and a steady supply of that amazing blood from Alice's veins.

This verse has two distinct time periods/locations threads can be set in:

Epic of the Ankaran Sarcophagus: Anything set during Victor's time in Los Angeles, post the car crash (aka the time period of Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines, which starts in October 2004 and probably runs through at least the end of the year). He's a little confused at how he keeps ending up in situations involving undead women, but he's happy playing a supporting role in Alice's various adventures. She saved his life, after all -- and he's come to like her quite a lot for her imagination and determination. Just, uh, don't ask him why he's twitchy sometimes. He's trying not to think about that addiction Alice refuses to feed.

Nice Place To Live: Anything post-V:TM-B, when Victor and company are living in Hill Valley (starting in 2005). Victor's happily settled back down into small-town life -- albeit the kind that includes being part of a romantic foursome with another ghoul, a zombie, and their vampire mistress. And with Alice having finally gone ahead and blood-bonded him, he's a lot more stable in his cravings. He's only too happy to chat with the neighbors now! (Though if you're visiting from L.A., expect to get some side-eye until he confirms you're not part of the Camarilla, anarchs, or Sabbat, come to ruin their day.)

Common NPCs:

Alice Liddell (throughout)

Victoria Everglot (throughout)

Emily Cartwell (throughout)

Lizzie Liddell (throughout)

Shipping: Another poly AU! It started out as just Valice, but the moment I decided Victoria was going to take the place of Samantha -- the NPC in Hollywood who recognizes the player character as a mortal friend -- and figured out a way to get Emily into the main story. . .well, things just fell into place. Victor’s feelings for Alice may be the strongest (thanks to her literally saving his life and being her ghoul, with all the benefits and drawbacks that entails), but he loves Victoria and Emily dearly too, and is all for romance with any of them.

NPC Ships: None

Important Facts:

NPC Alice’s backstory is similar to what she had in the games (Bumby stalked and raped her sister, burned down the house to cover his crimes, Alice escaped and was committed for ten years before entering his care and realizing the truth), only Bumby actively bribed someone in the forensics unit to keep from getting caught at the time and she didn’t suffer quite so badly in Rutledge (no leeches, for one thing). Her move to L.A. was prompted by shoving Bumby in front of the train -- while she was reasonably sure she’d get away with the murder, it still seemed prudent to put as much distance between her and England as possible.

NPC Alice’s sire was a seventh-generation Malkavian called Fish -- a narcissistic asshole who considered Alice’s attempts to leash her hallucinations and delusions a personal insult. He lured her to his apartment by pretending it was for lease -- Alice tried to fight him off when he first bit her, but he overpowered her. He seriously did not expect Lacroix to kill him for the deed. Alice does not hold his death against the Camarilla prince at all.

NPC Alice’s Malkavian madness is basically a permanently-on Londerland. As she’s used to handling these sorts of hallucinations by now, it’s possible anyone who didn’t know her clan might think her a Brujah until she starts having conversations with cats and rabbits that no one else can see. Following the rules of the video game, she has access to the Auspex, Obfuscate, and Dementation disciplines, along with general Blood Buff and Blood Heal. Alice finds inflicting more than hysterical laughter on people to generally be a little uncomfortable, but she loves Obfuscate.

NPC Lizzie became a ghost after her unfortunate demise, anchored to the mortal world by her fury at Bumby and her worry over her little sister. A Giovanni vampire heard about the poltergeist activity at the site of the old house, and managed to capture Lizzie and take her to the L.A. mansion, where she received a new physical body in a ritual to create a more durable kind of zombie. However, the ritual happened to leave her with her mind and free will, and when it became obvious she wasn’t going to play ball, she was locked in the cellar with Emily, the other failure of the day. The two became fast friends in their confinement, and made regular escape attempts -- up until Victor and Alice showed up and were able to rescue them. Lizzie wasn’t happy that her little sister was a vampire, but was thrilled to hear Bumby had died. She’s basically the honorary older sister of the entire group, and rather protective.

Actually, they’re all protective of each other, as is the norm. Victor in particular will take a baseball bat to anyone who threatens his girls (never mind that one of them is a vampire and probably better-suited for dealing with threats).

As a ghoul, Victor heals faster, is a bit stronger and quicker in general, and can amp up his strength, speed, and stamina even more using the vampire blood in his body (in game terms, I imagine him being able to use Blood Buff). He’s also addicted to vampire blood, and, being a Malkavian’s thrall, occasionally hears voices and has prophetic dreams. During Epic of the Ankaran Sarcophagus, he’s struggling with the fact that Alice, frightened of stripping him of all free will via the blood bond, is refusing to give him any more of hers. She occasionally lets him have elder blood from packs she picks up, figuring either those vampires are dead or at least unlikely to meet Victor, but he doesn’t find it as satisfying as hers. Talking to him about his status is likely to make him a bit twitchy. By Nice Place To Live, Alice has realized Victor knows what he’s getting into and wants it anyway, and has blood-bonded him on a weekly feeding schedule. He’ll happily rhapsodize about what a lucky ghoul he is in that time period.

NPC Victoria is also a ghoul bonded to Alice, at least by the time of Nice Place To Live -- she got hurt during the escape from the Sabbat, and Alice gave her some blood to heal her (with more of a warning this time). A combination of the Malkavian blood and being kidnapped twice in one year has made her somewhat paranoid of going anywhere outside alone, especially anywhere that might put her near strange men. Fortunately one of the others is pretty much always available to walk with her and calm her down should she panic.

While Back To The Future’s characters aren’t huge players in this verse, the quintet does know Doc Brown and his family -- largely because they’re renting Doc’s old garage apartment. (They’ve sub-divided it with screens and made a special sun cover for Alice’s bed.) So BTTF characters are more than welcome here!

Bloodlines characters are welcome too (obviously), but be forewarned -- Victor knows very few directly apart from Knox and Mercurio, his fellow ghouls; the rest he generally hears about through Alice. And, uh, Alice doesn’t like many of the L.A. vampires apart from Beckett and VV. There probably won’t be any overt hostilities unless the other person makes the first move, but expect lots of snark.

This verse is open to everyone!

#~V: Londerland Bloodlines #~T: Epic of the Ankaran Sarcophagus #~T: Nice Place To Live #~C: Alice Liddell #~C: Victoria Everglot #~C: Emily Cartwell #~C: Lizzie Liddell #~M: when he was a boy (headcanon)#~M: meanwhile in our reality (OOC)

1 note · View note

victorluvsalice · 3 months

Text

Another Game To Add To The List

So -- you guys all know that I like video games. I mean, I post on a pretty regular basis about the antics my Sims in my latest Sims 4 save file are getting up to. And you all know that I love to put my favorite characters in my favorite video games if I'm able to -- or even if I'm not. My current Sim family is my Valicer OT3; my Fallout 4 protagonist is Victor Van Dort (or as close as I can get with FO4's character creator and artstyle), and my Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines Malkavian Fledgling is Alice Liddell (I may not be able to actually reflect that with her appearance in the game, but I can sure as hell write about her adventures doing all the quests!) I have a vested interest in this sort of thing.

So -- when my friend @gaydragonwizards got me into Baldur's Gate 3, leading me to purchase the game for my birthday using the Steam gift cards my parents had gotten me, I immediately thought, "Okay, so -- Alice has VTMB, and Victor has FO4...but a certain newbie roller coaster OC does not have a game yet. And this one DOES allow you to do a custom character..." Which led to me deciding that Smiler was going to be my "Tav" in BG3! I haven't gotten very far in the game yet (I had to do an early restart to add in a mod patch that the creator was VERY SURE shouldn't be put in an existing playthrough because it fucks with XP and leveling a bit, and then recent hotfixes possibly breaking quest items made me too nervous to play for a bit), but I have gotten my Smiler set up, made it past the Nautiloid segment, and have started exploring the wilderness around the ravaged beach! Here's some shots of Smiler in the game:

Smiler's look from the character creation/level up screen! They're a half-elf with Body #2 and Head #5 because that was the combo that actually looked the most like my Smiler Sim -- have a comparison shot:

It's not a PERFECT match, but nothing was going to be -- it's pretty close, though! The hairstyle is of particular note because that is in fact one of the very first mods I picked up for this game: Alt Lae’zel Hair For Tav! None of the in-game hairstyles had the right sort of "bangs" that my Sim!Smiler sports, so I was REALLY happy to spot this on Nexus Mods to give my Tav!Smiler the right look, at least from the front. :) (And, hilariously, the mod was in fact uploaded ON MY BIRTHDAY, so I'm counting it as an inadvertent birthday present.)

Smiler's arrival on the Ravaged Beach, having just woken up from their little fall out of the Nautiloid! As you can probably guess by the outfit, I started them out as a Bard. That was the class that seemed to make the most sense for them, both from a "the roller coaster in Alton Towers is often associated with upbeat music and dancing, especially after the original Festival of Thrills and The Smiler Takeover, and bards DO get access to a good number of mind control spells" and from a "my personal take on Smiler is that they are super charismatic and want to make as many people happy as possible, and the Bard's high Charisma start combined with the Entertainer background suits that perfectly." XD However, they're not JUST a Bard these days -- thanks to the further power of mods, upon their first level-up, they became a Bard/Artificer! :D I picked that class because it has a whole sub-class dedicated to Alchemy, and one of my headcanons for my Smiler is that chemistry/alchemy (depending on the universe) is their thing. Plus it just looks like a super-cool class and mod. (And yes, I do have 5e Spells and Unlock Level Curve to enhance things further, with the appropriate patches (including ULC's patch to smooth out the weird XP valley while leveling up -- learning about THAT was what prompted me to restart so I could install it). Oh, and the exclamation mark is from Camp Event Notifications -- it's telling me that Smiler should Long Rest soon to get one of the special camp events.)

Smiler hanging out in the Wilderness camp! I came here for the first time after picking up Shadowheart, Astarion, and Gale, and was amazed at just how PRETTY the camp is. I mean, look at that waterfall over by the ruin that houses the Magic Mirror! :D Seriously, this game is gorgeous -- I've spent a decent amount of time just wandering around with the camera, admiring the scenery. XD Anyway, as you can see, Smiler picked up some new clothes -- the main outfit is some basic leather armor, dyed with the dye available in the Traveler's chest (I first dyed their starting jerkin, but hated the resultant color scheme -- I'm not wild about the red arms on this set, but at least the yellow pants and black chestpiece feel right!), while the cape and their new lute are from the Digital Deluxe content -- the "Cape Of The Red Prince" and the "Lute of the Merryweather Bard." (Hey, I got this for my birthday, I wasn't not going to get the Digital Deluxe content!) I had them give the lute a little try in-camp -- the upbeat Bard song DEFINITELY suits them. XD

And finally, Smiler with their current companions, ready to head to the nearby chapel on the beach -- Shadowheart (in some new, slightly better Sturdy Armor), Gale (in his robe and wizard hat), and Astarion (sporting more DD content, the "Bicorne of the Sea Beast" and the "Needle of the Outlaw Rogue" (the dagger on his hip)). They are indeed a motley group. XD Hopefully Smiler's 17 Charisma will allow them to talk their way out of most binds!

Now, you may be thinking at this point, "Well, this is going to spark another AU, isn't it?" And you would be -- partially correct. Allow me to explain by excerpting part of my and Squid's conversation while they were recommending mods to me and I was telling them about my plans to do Tav!Smiler:

Squid: ((though -- there is one thing that has popped into my head. with playing Smiler, obviously you can't have any of your Valicer stuff going on in BG3 by default. and do you really want to give yourself ANOTHER AU by playing as them again :P )) Me: ((Oh, that's not really a worry -- the Valicer in the Dark crew already fucking claimed the game as a potential AU ))

YUP. Much like how my brain insisted that the Alice in my Fallout of Darkness stuff be a variant of my Malkavian!Alice from Londerland Bloodlines, thanks to me getting into BG3 at the same time as my obsession with Valicer In The Dark ramped up, the AU in my head is now the VITD trio going through the game. And while it's only a partially-formed pile of shitposts as of yet, that idea PROBABLY deserves its own post...

#baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #smiler alton #video games #yeah I was checking various heads just to see if I could get one that just roughly matched Smiler's basic head shape #and was pleasantly surprised to see this one actually had a decent match for the rest of the features too #so yes half-elf Smiler for this world #half high elf to be specific #with the Mind Sliver cantrip thanks to 5e Spells #it's psychic damage which felt right for them #still figuring out EXACTLY how I want to play them but I figure spells focusing on psychic effects #and making people more friendly should be prioritized #stuff like the Friends cantrip and Charm Person and the like #and we'll see how the alchemy funtimes go once I get to it :D #gotta level up a bit more first!#and yes my INTENTION for this whole mess was 'don't take it too seriously Vic'#'we're just gonna play this one for fun and not worry about writing an AU for the local Smiler'#VITD Crew: 'Oh so it's free real estate'#*facepalm* why is my brain like this seriously...#queued

5 notes · View notes

victorluvsalice · 10 months

Text

Sims 4 Valicer Outfit Fun

So, as I said at the end of last week’s “episode” of the Chill Valicer Save, the next scheduled update, of the gang celebrating SimCity Founding in San Sequoia, is actually better-suited to be posted NEXT week, as it would fall then between 4th of July (the holiday SimCity Founding is based on) and Victor and Alice’s wedding date (for reasons to be explained in the update ;) ). So this week, I’m doing a post showcasing some new Smiler looks I made recently while saving an all-human Valicer trio to my Gallery (with the Smiler I mentioned curing of vampirism with MC Command Center back in the “Happy Smiler Creation Day” post), along with a couple of Victor and Alice looks! :)

First up, we have another variant on the Valicer In The Dark AU Smiler look -- this time we have the black hat, the yellow vest, AND the yellow shoes! And also that one bracelet that seriously looks a bit like something they’d make as official Smiler merch. XD I think this is pretty much the “final” VITD look for Smiler, though don’t quote me on that. :p

Here’s another idea for a “formal” Smiler look I came up with while playing around with some of the new clothes from the recent packs -- I’m like 99% certain that ruffled yellow shirt is from High School Years. It’s got some good vibes, but I’m not sure about the pure black shoes paired with those pure black pants. It feels a little too samey. Plus I wish the top hat was in a swatch other than “brown.”

There’s a similar problem with this “fancy party” Smiler look -- I really like the fancy purple vest and yellow tie combo, but those black pants and shoes. . .little too plain for my liking! That being said, I like the eye makeup I gave Smiler in this outfit --

Something about that soft pinkish-purple “glow” really suits them, I think! Though maybe for this outfit it should be a tad darker. . .we’ll see what happens as I continue playing around with stuff!

An “athletic” Smiler, with a neon-yellow hoodie and bright yellow sneakers I knew I had to use for them. I’ve been trying to get them more “yellow and black” looks to go with The Smiler’s official color scheme -- a process hindered by the fact that The Sims 4 doesn’t have a lot of great yellow swatches. And sometimes a really good item in yellow is paired with another item in a not-so-good color. *sigh* I really wish layered items, like shirts and vests, had swatches you could customize separately! Meh.

On the other hand, the sweater in this winter look is totally them. XD Not totally sold on the pants, but the bright yellow boots are nice, and of course I like the hat, given I used it earlier in their VITD look. :p

And here’s a very casual Smiler more appropriate for the summer heat -- perhaps the shirt is a bit paler than I’d like, but it’s got a good “chill” vibe! And I like the black sneakers with the colorful shiny stripes on them. :)

Onto some Victor looks, with one that I was playing around with trying to find a VITD outfit for him. It’s a little monochrome (which, uh, I guess DOES suit his source material), but it’s got a good vibe of “was once more formal, is now a little more casual“ with the open collar and whatnot. I tend to lean toward vest-based outfits for Victor, given he’s originally from a Victorian-esque film and sometimes it can be hard for me to picture him in more casual wear.

Case in point, I’m not sold on the belted jeans here, but the blue vest with its little stripey tie works for me! I tend to default to putting Victor in blue if he’s not in black or grey -- he feels like a “blue” person to me.

Okay, I’m not sure this one is really Victor, but I honestly love how silly he looks, especially with the shades. XD It’s like, he’s trying just that little bit too hard to be cool. In all senses of the word. XD

And now onto Alice looks -- though this first one, as you can see, is less of a “look” and more be playing around with body details. Specifically, this is me slapping on one of the new birthmarks in “skin details” on her shoulder because I think, in that particular color variant, it might sub nicely for the burn scar I’ve always headcanoned her having there. The actual body scars from Werewolves never fit because those were explicitly claw and bite marks, but this. . .yeah, it at least has the right vibes! Though, of course, if anyone can point me to any actual scars that might look more like burn scars, I’m all ears.

This was a “party” look I played around with for her -- I’m not totally sold on it, but I do kind of like how this dress, at least on the top, has sort of the opposite vibes from her standard Wonderland outfit. And it’s a good color combo for her!

And here we have a summer look for a more modern Alice -- I think this is a dress she’d wear, and the white-framed sunglasses go well with it! Though I just realized, the color scheme actually roughly matches Victor’s summer outfit above. XD Well, they do say that couples do tend to start dressing alike. . .

And yeah, that is your lookbook for this week! Hope you enjoyed, and hopefully I shall see you next week for SimCity Founding shenanigans in the Chill Valicer Save! :)

#sims 4 #looks #fashion #smiler alton #victor van dort #alice liddell #smiler always #yeah I've been trying to bring my Smiler a little more 'on brand' in their fashion sense #I still really like their 'standard' shirt in the Chill Valicer Save with its trippy triangles #I just feel now that it's a bit too orange #if I trusted myself to recolor it I would!#also there's not a heck of a lot of stripes in Sims 4 #unless I'm missing something #you should be able to sort by patterns too #meeeh #anyway I'm still having fun dressing them #even if sometimes I wish like the perfect yellow vest wasn't paired with a BLUE shirt #Sims 4 throw me a bone here #it can be hard getting looks just right for ALL of them honestly #you want their clothes to match their tastes and personality #though as you can see I am not above throwing them in 'oh this looks silly' clothes XD #those sunglasses absolutely make Victor's summer look XD #and yeah didn't realize until I was writing this that Alice's summer dress kinda matched Victor's summer shirt and shorts #nice XD #sometimes it's just fun to use Sims like dress-up dolls #queued

4 notes · View notes

victorluvsalice · 2 years

Text

AU Thursday: Coffee Shop All Occults AU

So -- this one isn’t really a fully-fleshed-out AU yet, mostly because I’m not sure where, if anywhere, I’d want to go with it. But it’s in my head taking up a bit of space, so I figured I’d get the basic sketch of the idea out so I’d have it on the tumblr in case I ever wanted to poke at it some more. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

-->The inspiration is this post by @prokopetz, which I have reblogged before: Coffee Shop In World of Darkness, where the basic premise is that it’s a coffee shop in a “supernaturals must hide” setting -- where the staff and regulars are poorly-hiding supernaturals (who don’t immediately realize that they’re not alone in this regard)

-->It’s a “Four Victorians On A Roller Coaster”-type situation, with the option for separate Valicer/Vemilia pairings -- either way, Victor, Victoria, Emily, Alice, and Smiler are all involved

-->The occult types are at least semi-based on how the ones we have in Sims 4 work, as I’m most familiar with the most number of occults in that series (like, in WoD, I’m really focused on the vampire side of things, so I’m not great with werewolves and mages in that system)

-->The coffee shop in question is called Sunny Brews (reusing the coffee shop name from the old DGHDA Coffee Shop AU idea), and is open pretty late, with everyone either working or frequenting the late afternoon/evening shift

-->The players and their “splats” are:

Victor: One of the regulars, in university studying business at his father’s behest to take over the cannery (he’s not happy and would much rather be studying art or biology or maybe even engineering, he likes his little robots); his splat is Spellcaster -- he ran across a portal to the Magic Realm, and upon realizing that getting magic was the matter of a simple fetch-quest, got the Rite of Ascension. He’s currently trying to study spells while hiding his new magical abilities from his parents, whom he’s sure would NOT understand.

Alice: One of the two staff on the late shift, generally in charge of the counter, living with her Nanny while trying to get her life back in order after all the bullshit with Rutledge, Houndsditch, and Bumby; her splat is Vampire -- she was unwillingly changed by a rogue vamp (I haven’t decided who yet, though I suppose I could import Fish from “Londerland Bloodlines”), but has managed to embrace a few of the perks. She’s working on getting enough power to up her sunlight resistance, and dealing with the thirst via plasma fruit and plasma packs (though she has stopped at least one near-assault near the shop. . .)

Victoria: Another of the regulars, who comes to the coffee shop to escape the high expectations of her parents and avoid their attempts to matchmake her with someone she doesn’t love; her splat is Werewolf -- her entire family line is aristocratic werewolves, in fact! The Everglots favor restraining one’s fury and being a civilized werewolf, which Victoria can get behind; however, they also don’t believe in fated mates or having ANY fun with your werewolf nature, which she can’t. She likes a nice run under the waxing moon too much! And she does still hope to find that special someone for her. . .

Emily: The third regular, also in college studying business -- unlike Victor, though, this is her choice, as after a bad break-up she’s pivoting into the small business world and working to start her own bridal boutique; her splat is Mermaid -- Barkis actually took her to the islands to “elope” and try to murder her there, but Emily got away and -- with the help of another mermaid giving her the kelp to transform -- escaped into the sea. Barkis escaped before she could bring him to justice, so she instead chose to return to her home land with her new form. She really likes her new song-based powers and fish tail -- she just hopes it doesn’t weird any future potential suitors out too much!

Smiler: The other staffer with Alice, a master on the actual drink-making machines, just vibing at the shop and trying to give all the customers the best experience ever; their splat is Faery -- the only one not in Sims 4! (Well, unless you use Spinning Plumbob’s mod, which I have looked at. . .) They’re a natural-born fae from the Sylvan Glade on a mission to spread happiness around. Said mission often involves spiking the coffees of people who ask for one of their special pick-me-ups with joy serum. XD They’re also good at commanding people, though they don’t often use that ability -- a little too obvious! They’re staying nearby with some other fae friends (aka the other coasters) while deciding what exactly what they want to do with their time among mortals.

-->As per the original prompt, nobody knows the others are supernatural -- until such time something happens that they’re all forced to fight the same assailants, and they all end up whipping out the supernatural powers. I am open to the possibility that Smiler at least could sense everyone was MAGICAL, but not exactly HOW. They all relax a lot when they realize they’re among fellow “freaks,” as you might imagine!

-->Most of the AU would be just coffee shop shenanigans, with the gang dealing with other late-night customers and navigating their own growing relationships; most vivid other scene I have for it is Victor’s mother coming in and ordering a drink, then berating Victor in full view of Smiler -- who is forced to toss the drink because they reflexively started cursing it. So much that the trash bin starts melting when they throw it away. I dunno if this would be better either before they all find out about each other (Alice: “How hot did you make that coffee?!”) or after (Alice: “. . .you’re way more dangerous than you let on, aren’t you?”)

-->If the Sims 4 fated mates for werewolves are a thing, I’m tempted to make Victoria’s Emily, just because XD

And that’s about it for now. *shrug* I mean, I suppose if nothing else, it’s a good starter set for a potential Sims 4 save file. XD

2 notes · View notes

victorluvsalice · 4 years

Text

AU Thursday: Tell Me Where To Find Shelter -- Weird And Complicated Video Game Crossover AUs Strike Again

Okay, so last week I offered you all an updated rewrite on my old Fallout 4 Sole Survivor!Victor AU, Tell Me Where To Find Shelter. And at the very end of said update, I let you know that I had an idea for fitting Alice into the AU --

Specifically, my Malkavian Alice from Vampire: the Masquerade -- Bloodlines.

Look, the fact of the matter is, Fallout 4 and Bloodlines have been rather closely connected in my head from day one of my purchasing them -- hell, I got them during the same Steam sale! (Along with the BioShock series entire, which is why I had a couple of posts about Tell Me Where to Find Shelter back in 2016, then it dropped off the face of the earth -- I played Bloodlines first, and followed up with that series.) And my “Londerland Bloodlines” playthrough of Bloodlines was done concurrently with my starting up Fallout 4, so -- yeah. Me wanting to figure out how to cross the two over was probably inevitable.

I know what you’re all thinking, of course -- “how the hell do you make this sort of crossover work?” Well, I have had a few ideas:

-->This version of Malkavian Alice and her adventures in 2004 Los Angeles would be much more like the standard fledgling’s, given that the Corpse Bride characters are now born in the future. So the person she saves in the hospital is Heather (who she does manage to send away in time to save her life), and the Giovanni party goes down without dragging an undead version of Lizzie into the mix. Obviously the story and setting would have to be tweaked to fit better into Fallout’s alternate history (though given what the computers in the original game are like, maybe that’s easier than expected). She still goes Independent, and escapes from Los Angeles in the wake of LaCroix’s explosive death, making her way slowly but surely to the East Coast because she has had enough of California and everyone there.

-->She manages to get on with her unlife, watching the growing tensions with China and the Resource Wars with unease, but keeping to herself and doing her best not to let her humanity slip as she gets older. When the bombs fall, she’s sleeping the day away in a basement bunker she set up in Boston -- but the destruction from the explosion ends up collapsing part of the ceiling, burying her in rubble -- with a chunk of timber piercing her heart. She ends up in a staked torpor. . .

-->Until Victor shows up at her location at night to clear out a few raiders who are taking over the place as a base. One of the raiders yanks out the stake to use as a weapon, has three seconds to wonder why it’s got fresh blood on it -- then Alice explodes from her centuries-long hiding place and drinks him dry. Victor is too stunned at first to actually shoot her, and once Alice’s blood thirst has been quest, she immediately puts her hands up and does her best to show she means him no harm. They talk, Alice explains what happened (and goes ahead and admits she’s a vampire when Victor explains about the nuclear apocalypse -- who gives a shit about the Masquerade when the world has ended?), she offers to help with the remaining raiders to prove her good intentions, Victor accepts, and they take down the assholes together.

-->Obviously, Alice isn’t immediately “unlockable” as a companion -- she’s still got her sunlight thing, after all! She and Victor chat about it, and Victor, feeling bad, offers his assistance. Alice accepts -- she misses the sun -- and says that she’ll stay where she is for the moment (after finding a non-partially-collapsed basement to stay in) and keep raiders and monsters out while he searches for information. And so the “Here Comes The Sun” quest begins, with Victor searching for a way to counteract the sunlight curse! I’m thinking this would end up interacting with the Cabot family stuff, because I don’t think it would be hard at all to change the source of their immortality, and the artifact upon Lorenzo’s head, from something alien to something vampiric. Maybe Lorenzo’s partially possessed by the spirit of an Antediluvian, and it’s turned his blood into something close enough to vitae it can make ghouls? At any rate, Jack manages to whip something up after examining some of Alice’s blood (which, naturally, she’s kind of nervous about, but what choice does she have?), and it successfully stops her from burning up in sunlight (though she is weaker in it). A grateful Alice thanks Victor (and Jack) and agrees to travel with him to experience the Commonwealth.

-->As they go on together, they end up getting closer -- Alice likes that Victor is generally a good guy and sympathizes with the story of his lost family; Victor likes Alice’s snarky wit and strong sense of justice. As they share more details of their lives, help out the settlements, and battle monsters together, they realize they’re growing feelings for each other, and eventually get together, facing off against the Institute as a couple and parenting Synth Shaun/Chester together afterwards. (Alice jokes a lot that it took both her dying and the end of the world in general to finally get a domestic happy ending.)

-->Alice’s starting clothes would be a simple blue dress and apron with black buckled boots (the dress would naturally have a big bloody hole right over her heart when she first wakes up; she patches this after you leave her to her own devices for a bit), and she’d have the Tal’Mahe’Ra Blade (her prize from her storming of the Hallowbrook Hotel, taken from Andrei’s lair) as her standard weapon. She has a unique bite attack, being a vampire, and can still use Obfuscate (turning invisible to sneak past/sneak attack enemies) and Dementation (inflict debuffs on enemies so they’re confused and can’t shoot straight, or kill a single enemy from fear alone), though both have a cooldown so Victor can’t rely on her just spamming that to take care of every raider for him! XD Her perk would allow you to drain blood from enemy corpses (which other companions would find less disturbing than outright cannibalism, but still fairly creepy) and/or increase the healing capabilities of blood packs. I’m thinking, once romanced, she’d also have a unique variation of the “Lover’s Embrace” temporary perk, “Love Bite” -- Victor wakes up with HP not fully restored, but the XP boost is greater than “Lover’s Embrace” (+20% vs +15%).

-->Other vampiric elements of the Commonwealth would include:

A) That blood bank you can find? Those bags of blood are warm and fresh because there’s a Tremere there who has built up their power and knows some rituals for preserving the stuff. Unfortunately, they’re also very low humanity by this point, so they end up being a nasty surprise fight.

B) There’s a secret settlement of vampires that is made up of all the various fledglings you could pick from in Bloodlines, having learned to live together after the destruction of vampire society along with human when the bombs fell. The local Tremeres managed some blood sorcery that infused a mutfruit tree with human blood, so plasma fruit, a la The Sims 4, is a thing for them, and allows them to live in relative peace with their human neighbors (though they’ll happily drain anyone who attacks them). They’d probably have a quest revolving around either talking down or killing some vampire hunters who have been eying their base, and they could be persuaded to allow Jack Cabot and family to study them in exchange for vitae to help them stay in their immortal states. Also, the Malkavians openly call Victor the “Sole Survivor” and offer roundabout tips on his quests -- if he can decipher them. XD

C) This is just one that amuses me -- this universe’s Mysterious Stranger is none other than good old Caine! He’s trying to be a little more helpful to mortal and Kindred alike in the post-apocalypse, and has decided this means “showing up randomly to help people out of tight spots before vanishing again.” Alice, upon seeing him, jokes that the cabdriver thing didn’t work out, huh?

D) I’d kind of like to make stimpacks developed from vampire or ghoul blood to explain just how it is they can heal crippled limbs so fast -- the wiki didn’t provide much of an answer there! Which means anyone who uses them is at least slightly a ghoul. . .which might explain a few things about carry weight and why some enemies are so tough. (Legendaries have more vitae in their system, prompting the power-up, maybe?)

So yeah -- that’s how I’d get Bloodlines and Fallout to work together, and thus have my Malkavian!Alice and Sole Survivor!Victor be a couple in the wasteland. Because why make a crossover simple when I could make it way more complicated than it needs to be? XD Look, I just like the mental images I have of them together -- and of Alice taking out a whole army of baddies by hitting them with Voice of Bedlam to throw them into absolute chaos.

#tell me where to find shelter #fallout 4 #vampire the masquerade bloodlines #vtmb #valice #weird ass AUs #look this was probably inevitable #given the whole 'Londerland Bloodlines' fic keeping my brain at least partially in vampire land #and the fact that I just really love vampire!Alice with Victor #still this is a lot of thought for an AU #that is going to be snippets of fic at BEST #I can only novelize one RPG #and it's going to be the one with a smaller world and fewer sidequests #still I like a lot of these ideas #and the resultant mental images #'Voice of Bedlam' is the top tier Dementation ability in Bloodlines btw #it inflicts all the below levels randomly on the target and anyone near them #so you'd have people laughing or crying maniacally #people experience weird hallucinations that drop their combat abilities #people just plain old dying of fright #and people attacking each other randomly #(naturally Alice would activate it via a Hysteria scream)#she'd be the most terrifying thing in the Commonwealth #I love it :D #as does Victor XD #queued

2 notes · View notes

victorluvsalice · 3 years

Text

AU Thursday: Fallout Of Darkness -- A Half-Decent Sum-Up Of The Pre-War Timeline

If you follow my RP tumblr, @thevalicemultiverse, you may have seen this before (barring a few edits I made just now) -- I wrote this up as background for putting Fallout of Darkness into play over there as an RP verse. It’s as good a write-up as I currently have for Alice and particularly Victor’s lives before the bombs fell, so might as well bring it over here for more general consumption! Enjoy!

---

Alice Liddell shares most of her backstory with her Londerland Bloodlines counterpart: she’s born in 1984, loses her family to Bumby’s obsession with her sister, hallucinates her way through the horrors of Rutledge and Houndsditch with Wonderland serving as a horrific psychological dreamscape for her to get her sanity back under her, realizes Bumby’s behind all her pain and is a child trafficker, kills him, moves to Los Angeles for a fresh start, and gets illegally Embraced by Malkavian Fish and ends up errand girl to Prince Sebastian LaCroix. In this reality, though, she lives through something much closer to the standard Bloodlines plot (albeit filtered through the “all tech is at least kinda 50s sci-fi” lens of Fallout) – including saving Heather Poe instead of Victor, and finding nothing in the Giovanni basement except regular old zombies. She pushes through all the bullshit of Camarilla vs Anarchs vs Kuei-Jin vs Sabbat, convinces Heather to leave when it transpires she’s being really badly affected by Alice’s Malkavian blood (to the point of luring a guy to the haven and then locking him in the bathroom for Alice to eat), and eventually chooses the independent life, killing Ming-Xiao, letting LaCroix blow up with his tower, and flipping off the Anarchs when they try to recruit her. She flees Los Angeles completely shortly thereafter, and spends most of the rest of the next seventy-odd years on the move around America, avoiding possible reprisals from the Camarilla and watching the world go to hell in a handbasket with resources running out and the war for the last great oil pipeline. She finds shelter in Boston in October 2077, and is sleeping away the day in a presumed-safe building when the bombs drop. While she’s luckily buried in a sunlight-blocking pile of rubble, she’s also staked by a falling beam. . .and remains so for the next two centuries. . .

Victor Van Dort, on the other hand, is born in 2050, to Nell and William Van Dort of Burtonsville. William is in the fish business, and moves his family to the USA when Victor is still just a baby to seek new opportunities. What he and his wife and son get is the New Plague, forcing them to stay in Massachusetts due to quarantine measures. Despite this, William still manages to become a fish cannery mogul, making millions off his automated factories. Victor himself grows up almost entirely confined to the house and gardens, cared for and taught by a variety of robots until he was fourteen and it was deemed safe enough for him to attend a normal high school. The gardens taught him to love nature, but his caretakers taught him to love science and technology – while still a hobbyist lepidopterist, Victor is much more a tinkerer and technician in this world. Having to help fix the family’s Protectron driver, Mayhew, when he falls apart almost right in front of you will do that to a boy! He’s just more comfortable with machines than people – a fact that doesn’t make him popular in school.

In his senior year of high school, Victor is pushed to date Victoria Everglot by his parents, seeing her family’s noble history (some relative way-back-when in England was a Grand Duke) as a good way to improve their own social standings. Victor goes along with it after realizing he likes Victoria herself a fair bit, and the two soon become boyfriend and girlfriend. A few months into the relationship, though, Victor comes across a gravely-injured Emily Merrimack-Cartwell in the park, the victim of an elopement that turned out to be an excuse to rob and murder her. Victor is able to rush her to the hospital in time, and the two become friends in the aftermath. Victoria, noticing that they seem to have a growing attraction, decides she doesn’t want Victor to feel obligated to continue dating her if he’d prefer to be with Emily and actually encourages them to go to prom together. They agree after confirming she’s okay with that, and that she won’t be missing out herself. They start out having a good time together, but midway through Victoria goes to the ladies’ room and doesn’t return. Victor and Emily, concerned, go looking for her and find her being menaced by none other than Emily’s ex Barkis – apparently not satisfied with what he got off Emily, he’s now trying to rob and possibly kidnap Victoria. Victor and Emily take him down and get him carted off to jail, to Victoria’s eternal gratitude. The experience bind them all together as a trio, and – coupled with the discovery that Victoria and Emily feel much the same about each other as they do about Victor – they decide to just all date each other and see where the chips fall.

And then the draft comes and Victor is yanked into military service. He ends up a combat engineer in the Engineer Corps, and is assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 108th Infantry Regiment, aka “Fox Company.” While he makes some friends in fellow soldiers Nate Howard and Sam “Bonejangles” Thatcher, Victor loathes his experiences as a soldier, especially as his unit is protecting the Alaskan Pipeline on the Alaska border and watching as the US annexes Canada. Things come to a head when his commanding officer tries to get him to shoot two Canadian kids who were throwing rocks at their camp – an enraged Victor shoots the officer instead, then gets wrapped up in a sudden enemy attack on said camp (a small company of Chinese infiltrators in stealth suits -- one accidentally decloaked in his surprise over Victor killing his target), spiriting the kids to safety before managing to save the rest of his company via fast fixing of their defenses and rigging up some explosive power armor. The chaos makes it impossible for the upper brass to know for sure Victor killed the officer (though they’re deeply suspicious), and the fact that everyone else is calling him a hero (plus his father being willing to pay good money for his son’s safe return) leads to him going home for good. Having married Victoria while on leave earlier, they take in Emily as a “live-in friend and help around the house” (wink wink), and the three move to the little community of Sanctuary Hills. They have a good couple of years there, culminating in the birth of Victor and Victoria’s son Shaun. Victor, despite his worries about the resource shortages, the war with China, and his own government possibly looking for a way to silence him whenever he makes his opinions about same known, starts thinking that maybe things can be all right for him and his family at least. . .

And then, on October 23rd, 2077, the bombs hit. Victor and his family get to Vault 111 just in time, and are processed and cyronically frozen as per the experiment. However, things go bad with a security staff revolt, and the frozen family is left easy pickings for some mysterious scientists to come in, shoot Victoria, and kidnap Shaun right before Victor’s horrified eyes. When he is revived again, he finds that the life support failed for the rest of the residents (including Emily, whose pod partially thawed her and left her half-rotted), leaving him the sole survivor – apart from his missing son. He escapes the vault and returns to what’s left of Sanctuary Hills, vowing to find Shaun.

Finding Shaun turns out to be more difficult than imagined – the world above is a dangerous place, and Victor is ill-prepared to deal with it. Fortunately, he makes some friends right off the bat – his old Mr. Handy Codsworth; a German Shepherd waiting for him at the local Red Rocket, who is later revealed to be named Dogmeat; and Preston Garvey, last of the Commonwealth Minutemen, whom Victor saves from raiders at the Museum of Freedom in Concord while looking for other signs of life. Victor welcomes Preston and his settlers to live in Sanctuary, and joins up with Preston’s efforts to revive the Minutemen and make it a force for good in the wasteland (being named General by Preston in the process, a move that baffles him and his 2 Charisma). Helping settlers leads him down to Diamond City, where he was told by slightly-psychic Mama Murphy he could find some help. He befriends reporter Piper Wright there, and ends up getting her help to find her missing friend detective Nick Valentine when it transpires he – and with him, Victor’s best hope for finding Shaun – has vanished.

And during their adventures to track down Nick’s precise location, they come across a raider base, are attacked by a raider who yanks a bloody stick out of a pile of rubble – and are introduced to Alice when she bursts from the rubble and sucks the guy dry. Alice hastily informs them that she’s not a threat to them (she was just thirsty after, you know, two centuries of being staked), and they end up trusting her enough to take down the rest of the raiders with her. Victor does his best to explain what’s happened to her, and she does her best to explain her vampiric nature to him. Feeling bad for her, and like he’s finally found a kindred spirit in all this (uh, no pun intended), he invites her to travel with him, switching to a night time schedule to accommodate her. . .at least, until they go to a certain quarry mined by Dunwich Borers to clear out the raiders there. . .

#fallout of darkness #sole survivor Victor #Malkavian Alice #long post #I've been meaning to make a post like this for a while #particularly bringing up the whole 'Victor killing an officer protecting some kids' thing #and then I realized #I'd done it already for my RP blog #so why not just bring it over here?#hopefully you all find this informative and entertaining #probably bits and pieces of this will change as the verse continues to develop #but for now this is a good starting point for any fanfic I may want to do #queued

2 notes · View notes

victorluvsalice · 3 years

Text

AU Thursday: Fallout of Darkness -- Another Meme

I unfortunately don’t recall where I got this one, though I do remember picking it up in the #fallout 4 tag -- I think a number of people were using it for their Sole Survivors. Which is what I did! With the added twist of “let me do this universe’s Alice as well!” So you get double the information for the same price! :P

Note: This is vaguely set I’d say about halfway through the plot of Fallout 4 -- Victor and Alice have had the run-in with Ug-Qualtoth and gotten Alice sunlight immunity (see this post for more details), and they’ve met at least most of the other companions. Also yes, pets -- Victor does indeed adopt the “wounded dog” encounter in my verse! (And if anyone knows of a mod that lets you send her to a settlement for real. . .) Please remember I haven’t actually played much of the main plot myself, so things may be a little vague/prone to changing once I get further in!

name ➔

V: Victor Fitzwilliam Van Dort – my mother wanted me to have an "aristocratic" middle name, for some reason.

A: Alice Pleasance Liddell – yes, just like the historical Alice. I guess after Lizzie decided I should be "Alice," my parents decided to go whole hog with the reference.

are you single ➔

V: [with a warm look at Alice] No, I'm not.

A: [with a warm look back] Not anymore.

are you happy ➔

V: [still with that warm look at Alice] Very much so.

A: [smiling] A lot happier than I was in the past, that's for sure. Which is kind of sad, given it's post the nuclear apocalypse now. . .

are you angry ➔

V: [thoughtful] I – I was for a while. Not so much anymore – the worst of it has cooled. But – there's some things I think I'll always be angry about.

A: I think my answer's about the same. Given some of the nonsense we've been through, some low-level anger is just to be expected, honestly.

are your parents still married ➔

V: . . .they were when the bombs dropped.

A: Mine were when that bastard Bumby set our house on fire to cover up what he'd done to my sister.

NINE FACTS

birthplace ➔

V: Burtonsville – it's a tiny village in England. I don't actually remember it, though – my parents moved to Boston when I was only about a year and a half old. I grew up here in Boston and the surrounding area.

A: Oxford, England – my father was the Dean of Christ Church at the college when he was alive. I have fond memories, but I haven't been back since the fire.

hair color ➔

V: Black. Mother occasionally insisted it was dark brown, but – black.

A: Black, though weirdly I actually was almost a redhead as a child. It darkened straight through brown to this as I grew up. I've never been sure why it got so dark, though I suspect all that time lying in Rutledge, getting probably-inadequate nutrition and light for a growing girl, didn't help matters.

eye color ➔

V: Dark brown.

A: Green, though Victor likes being poetic with descriptions like "emerald fire" sometimes.

mood ➔

V: . . .er – generally anxious? Trying to be helpful regardless?

A: Sarcastic? To hide that I'm more worried than I let on?

gender ➔

V: Male, he/him.

A: Female, she/her.

summer or winter ➔

V: Summer – I'm not a fan of the cold. Though spring's my actual favorite season – I love seeing everything come back to life.

A: I feel like I should like winter more, because of the longer nights, but now that we've actually fixed the sunlight issue. . .yes, summer. I'm not really a fan of the cold either.

morning or afternoon ➔

V: Afternoon – I've never been that much of a morning person, and mornings tend to be – stressful in the Commonwealth.

A: To be fair, so are the afternoons, but – yes, generally you're not dealing with threats still wiping the sleep from your eyes in said afternoons. And in my case, they're closer to night, which is still the time when I feel most myself, so. . .

EIGHT THINGS ABOUT YOUR LOVE LIFE

are you in love ➔

V: [exchanging a very warm look with Alice] Yes.

A: [giving it right back] Very much so.

do you believe in love at first sight ➔

V: Maybe not true love, but attraction? A sense of connection, kinship? Certainly – that's how I felt when I first met Victoria, and later Emily.

A: I can get behind that – my mother said she felt a pull toward my father when they first met. . .but I don't think love at first sight exists. You need to get to know someone – form a solid bond first.

who ended your last relationship ➔

V: [darkly cheerful] The American and Chinese governments, throwing nuclear missiles at each other! [sighing] No, that’s not quite fair – yes, they drove us into Vault 111, but the ones who actually murdered my wife and girlfriend were Kellogg and the Institute. The former more obviously than the latter, but. . . [voice cracks] Damn it, what was wrong with putting everyone's life support back on. . .

A: [puts a comforting hand on his arm] In my case, I never really had a romantic relationship before – even friendships were kind of fleeting, or long-distance. I've gone along with flirtations in the past to get meals, sure, but none of those ever turned into relationships. The closest I had was – well, Heather getting blood-bonded to me, which I didn't even mean to do. I was just trying to help her, and I didn't realize at the time. . . [bites her lip] I ended that – sent her away before she could get hurt by my enemies, explaining that what would make me happiest would be for her to be with her grandmother and stay in college. I wanted to go back and maybe try to help her some more once I was done with LaCroix's bullshit, but then. . .I hope she had a good life, in the end.

have you ever broken someone’s heart ➔

V: Not knowingly – goodness, what started off my, Victoria, and Emily's threesome relationship was an attempt not to break anyone's heart! It worked out very well, until. . . [shakes his head]

A: [squeezes his arm gently] I probably broke Heather's heart by sending her away – she looked so sad as she walked out the door. But it was for the best – I dread to think what would have happened to her if the Sabbat had realized I had a ghoul! Other than that – depends on if anyone I've drunk from was hoping for more than just a "quickie." I doubt that, though.

are you afraid of commitments ➔

V: I'm afraid of them being forced on me because of people randomly promoting me every time I even get close to an organization. [sighing, reaching up to fiddle with a chain around his neck] But – maybe a little. Seeing – seeing your wife get shot in front of you. . .then your girlfriend's half-rotted corpse beside her. . .it sticks with you.

A: [nods] Being the only survivor of the house fire that killed your family sticks with you too. As does two of the most prominent men in your life being the bastard who killed them and was trying to wipe your mind, and the bastard who killed you and turned you into a bloodsucker. Add in my own rather unromantic nature, and – yes, I did pretty much avoid commitments for a while. [smiles at Victor] I think I'm a little better about it now, though.

have you hugged someone in the last week ➔

V: Oh, yes – Preston and Piper just the other day, in fact!

A: I'm not usually much of one for being touched, so I don't hug much. . . [thinks for a moment, then hugs Victor] But I'll happily make the answer a "yes" in this case.

have you ever had a secret admirer ➔

V: Does the brief period of time where Emily was crushing on me before Victoria noticed and decided to let her and me know it was okay if we wanted to date too count? Otherwise, I really don't think so. I wasn't popular with girls before meeting Victoria.

A: Bumby never made it clear whether he wanted to just turn me into a prostitute or fuck me himself as well, but I wouldn't count him anyway, because he was a horrible waste of flesh. So I have no idea – don't think so. Heather was – very open about her admiration.

have you ever broken your own heart ➔

V: Again, what happened between me, Victoria, and Emily was an attempt to avoid that. . .I can't say I have. It seems like others always break it for me.

A: Sending Heather away did hurt me a bit – not in the same way it hurt her, but it was nice to have someone else around the haven. . . [looks up at Victor] And I did resist romance initially here. Fortunately tall, dark, and handsome here didn't let me break my own heart.

SIX CHOICES

love or lust ➔

V: Love, definitely. [going pink] I mean, lust can be nice, but. . .

A: Love – even alive, I wasn't particularly interested in sex. And as a vampire, any urges that way now go toward sucking on people's necks. Which I guess is sex-adjacent, but still. . . Maybe "love" for serious relationships, "lust" for getting a meal.

lemonade or iced tea ➔

V: Oh, I haven't had either in ages. . .and I recall needing a lot of sugar for both to enjoy them. . .I guess lemonade. I think I had that more often.

A: Literally can't drink either these days, for multiple reasons. . .but I'm going with lemonade because I have fonder memories of that. And – hmmm. I wonder if it’s possible to make a variation with that “plasma fruit” Ted came up with at Wildwood Cemetery. . .

cats or dogs ➔

V: Dogs! I had a dog growing up, Scraps, who was my best friend! And Victoria, Emily, and I were going to get a dog shortly after. . . [pause, shakes head] And now I have Dogmeat and Mutt! They’re a good pair.

A: Cats! My best friends growing up were the family cat, Dinah, and her two kittens, Snowdrop and Kitty. Being a vampire does tend to make animals rather mistrustful of me, sadly, but I had some luck feeding ferals pre-War. And we managed to trap a cat recently who didn’t immediately try to claw me and run away – I’ve named her Kit-Kat.

a few best friends or many regular friends ➔

V: A few best friends – I'm n-not good with lots of people, and I just. . .I'm always so awkward, s-socially. I'd rather have a couple of people I know I can trust.

A: The same – I don't trust easily, after all the bullshit I've been through. Give me a small circle of people I know have my back over a larger group of more casual friends any day.

wild night out or romantic night in ➔

V: Romantic night in. I'm not much for parties. I like staying home with the people I love and just – being together.

A: Sort of like "love or lust" above, this kind of depends. I like a romantic night in for any actual relationships, but I did my fair share of clubbing to find someone to drink from back in the day.

day or night ➔

V: Well, I do like a good sunny day, but. . . [looking at Alice] I've really come to appreciate the nights in the Commonwealth. And not just because of the stars.

A: [smirking at him] Flatterer. . .but yes, night. For the longest time, it was the only time of day I could be out in. . .and even though it's wonderful now to be able to go out during the day and enjoy that, night is still when I feel most myself.

FIVE HAVE YOU EVERS

been caught sneaking out ➔

Victor: No, but that's because I never did. I grew up in the middle of a plague – I didn't have much incentive to sneak out! It took until I was fourteen for cases to drop enough in our part of Boston for my parents to be comfortable sending me to a school with other children, and by then I was so used to staying at home, sneaking out never occurred to me.

Alice: Oh god, yes, the New Plague, that was horrific. . .on my end, yes, I was. I tried to sneak out a couple of times as a small child to have adventures in the garden late at night or in the middle of storms. . .if my parents didn't catch me, though, my older sister did. I think I only actually got outside once, and even then it was only for a couple of minutes before Lizzie caught up with me. Mostly because she was trying to sneak out too, and didn't want her little sister tagging along.

fallen down/up the stairs ➔

Victor: . . .yes. To both. I – I can be pretty clumsy if I'm n-not paying attention to where I'm going.

Alice: [giving him an odd look] I've fallen down stairs – rushing around as a child on imaginary adventures – but never up. I'm – not entirely sure how you manage that.

wanted something/someone so badly it hurt ➔

V: [tugging at the chain around his neck again, which is revealed to have a blue butterfly pendant and a gold wedding ring strung on it] Yes. Something I can't have, I'm sad to say.

A: [playing with her own necklace, which is an old iron key shaped like the symbol for Venus] Same here. I'd like to think your Victoria and Emily and my parents and Lizzie are in the same place, at least.

wanted to disappear ➔

V: Oh, plenty of times. I have an unfortunate knack for saying the wrong thing and then wishing I could melt into the floor. And – well, I suppose every time I've been hiding from enemies and wanted to just turn invisible counts. . .

A: I wanted to disappear in the asylum a couple of times, in the sense of 'just stop existing.' Survivor's guilt does a number on your brain, let me tell you. . .though I can actually disappear these days, thanks to Obfuscate! Though, annoyingly, I genuinely can't do it if someone's looking.

smile or eyes ➔

V: Oh, back to these? [thoughtful] I – honestly, I think eyes. Victoria and Emily's eyes are one of the things I remember best about them. . . [smiles at Alice] And my current paramour has some of the most beautiful eyes in the Commonwealth.

A: You're going to make me blush despite being dead if you keep on like that. Though, what's good for the goose is good for the gander – while I like your eyes, it's your smile that really warms my undead heart.

shorter or taller ➔

V: Um – shorter out of necessity. I haven't met many women who are six-foot-three.

A: Similarly, I'm five-foot-five, so I kind of have to go taller.

intelligence or attraction ➔

V: . . .I assume this means intelligence or looks, and – I can't deny I like a pretty face, but the main reason I got together with the women I did is because I could hold a good conversation with them. Intelligence.

A: My attraction seems to be based on actually getting to know a person, and I don't suffer fools gladly. Intelligence all the way.

hook-up or relationship ➔

V: Oh, relationship. I never had a hook-up. I can't – I can't just do the "one night stand" thing. I need something a little more.

A: Another one where my actual feelings versus how I'd act to get a meal clash – though admittedly, I never had a "proper" hook-up. I'd just get someone in a quiet spot, suck a bit of blood, and let them get on with their lives. But now that things are better, I'm only too happy to commit myself to a real relationship.

FAMILY

do you and your family get along ➔

V: Well, it’s something of a moot point now, but. . . [he waggles a hand, making a face] I have to admit, I never liked my parents much. They weren’t very “hands-on” in raising me, and I often felt like they considered me a burden. Or a bargaining chip for social status. I did my best not to rock the boat just because upsetting my mother never ended well, but. . . [sigh] It wasn’t good.

A: By contrast, I had a perfectly lovely family life – my parents were kind and encouraged my sister and I in our various pursuits, and Lizzie. . .she was the best older sister a girl could have. I felt like I could tell her anything, and even if the age difference made playing together difficult, she did try whenever she had a spare moment. The reason I have such an “enthusiastic” imagination is because Mama, Papa, and Lizzie never tried to stifle it. I was – I felt so loved and happy the first eight years of my life. . .and then Bumby took it all away. [she looks away] I – it’s not fair.

would you say you have a “messed up life” ➔

V: [completely deadpan] I was frozen at the age of 27 in a vault designed to store people long-term for unknown reasons, and was finally thawed 210 years later, to find my wife and girlfriend dead, my son kidnapped, and the world above having been turned into a wasteland of vicious wildlife, super mutants, and raiders. With parts of it still irradiated because people are STILL launching small nuclear missiles at each other. Also the people who kidnapped my son can apparently make synthetic humans and use them as spies. And in the middle of all this, I’ve somehow ended up the leader of a bunch of little farms and such that composes a ragtag peacekeeping force that is still better than the actual assholes in power armor who have moved in. You tell me.

A: I can top that – turned into a vampire at age 20 after moving to Los Angeles to make sure I was far away from a murder I’d committed, then ended up roaming the world after a literally-explosive end to my time there as everyone’s errand boy. Was in Boston when the bombs dropped and got staked when my hidey-hole collapsed in on me, meaning I too got essentially “frozen” for 210 years, until a raider attacking this fellow here yanked the stake out and I responded by sucking him dry. Leaving me in a post-nuclear apocalypse trying to survive in a world where anyone’s blood might be at least slightly radioactive. Also we discovered that vampires are in fact the result of a little bit of some Lovecraftian horror worshiped by the people over at Dunwich Borers leaking into our world and infecting our souls. So that’s fun.

have you ever run away from home ➔

V: No – again, grew up in a plague, never really wanted to leave the house because of it.

A: I threatened to, once or twice, when upset, but I never followed through. Though I guess my moving to California could be construed as a kind of running away after I killed Bumby. . .but I never thought of Houndsditch as home. Same with Los Angeles, after I left there in the wake of that mess with LaCroix.

have you ever gotten kicked out ➔

V: No, though – sometimes I thought my mother was thinking about it. Whenever my social awkwardness reared its ugly head at one of her parties.

A: My parents were never the sort to do that, and Bumby of course wanted me close at Houndsditch. And I left polite vampire society on my own terms after LaCroix.

FRIENDS

do you secretly hate one of your friends ➔

V: . . .I’m not entirely sure how to classify my relationship with Strong. But I know he thinks more highly of me than I do of him. I – I try to be understanding, but it gets very tiring to listen to him go on about how one day Super Mutants will kill everything.

A: I had to be a lot friendlier to a lot people back in Los Angeles than I would have liked. . .but I don’t think any of them were laboring under the delusion we were actual friends. So no – if I don’t like you, I don’t hide it.

who is your best friend ➔

V: Alice, Preston, and Piper, definitely – they’re the ones I’ve traveled the most with, shared the most with, and just – feel the most comfortable around. [smiles] Oh, and Dogmeat of course.

A: Victor’s definitely my best friend – and frankly, I feel pretty close to Piper and Preston myself. They’re good people. [she smirks] Though Hancock and Nick are definitely the best people to snark with.

who knows everything about you ➔

V: Probably most of the people in the Commonwealth, I’ve had to explain about being frozen and what happened to my son a lot. . .more seriously, I’d say the above three. They’re the people I’m closest to, and the ones I’m most comfortable sharing information with.

A: I don’t know about everything, but – yes, Victor. And probably Piper knows the most after him, given she wanted to interview me for her paper.

#memes #fallout of darkness #tell me where to find shelter #(keeping that old tag for ease of use for the moment)#fallout 4 #vtmb #hopefully this isn't too confusing for everyone #Ted is supposed to be the Tremere living at Wildwood Cemetery along with the other 'rejected Bloodlines Protagonists'#and yes he made Plasma Fruit #because if I'm going all in with this crossover I will go ALL IN #I have a nasty feeling living through coronavirus is going to inspire me whenever I have to write about Fallout's various diseases #also its government #also yes Victor's opinion on Strong is my own #dude I'm trying to like you buuut #Piper and Preston are my current fave companions #but please remember I am kinda stuck in early days in the game itself #we'll see how things evolve as I take on other companions!#however Ada will be respected around here among the robots #she deserves better #queued

2 notes · View notes

victorluvsalice · 4 years

Text

AU Thursday: Londerland Bloodlines -- Dripping In Some V5

"What the heck are you talking about," you ask, staring at that title. Well, I'm talking about the fact that Bloodlines and its upcoming sequel are based on different editions of Vampire: the Masquerade. The original game is from the classic editions, made when the "original" World of Darkness was ending; the sequel picks up in the modern era, with the V5 version of V:tM (with -- all sorts of weird "New World of Darkness" and "Chronicles of Darkness" and "Classic World of Darkness" stuff in-between that I'm really not sure how to track). Thanks to a friend, I've managed to catch up some on the V5 stuff in preparation for Bloodlines 2 and -- well. I didn't expect to ever incorporate any of it into my Londerland Bloodlines verse -- for ease of writing, I'm trying to focus mostly on what's presented in the game and how it works there, though I'm not opposed to looking up stuff on the wiki when necessary -- but I've come across two concepts that I actually would like to work in if I could: Resonance and Touchstones.

Resonance: This is, as I understand it, the "emotional flavor" of blood -- if someone is feeling a very strong emotion (rage, joy, sorrow, etc.), their blood ends up imbued with that emotion. And if a vampire feeds on blood with a particular resonance, they can get a boost to certain abilities and disciplines, depending on what the emotion was! Angry blood makes you better at fighting, for example, while melancholic blood helps you fade away from sight -- quite literally. The way I see it, this could be a recent discovery in the original Bloodlines world, and investigation into it is just starting to ramp up. Alice finds out about it the first time she feeds from Victor, as he's feeling so good about it that she gets an extra boost from his blood. She probably asks Strauss about it, and they have a brief chat about how it's a new thing and what's been found out by now.

(Additionally, I have in mind a rather emotional scene where Alice drinks Victor's blood at his request before he and Emily flee L.A. near the end of the story, and his love for her basically smacks her right in the face. Flirty blood is probably not the best for going up against the Sabbat, but at least she feels closer to her boyfriend while he's in her veins.)

Touchstones: These are humans that a vampire feels a very close affinity towards, that embody values that the vampire thinks are important. They're important to helping a vampire retain their Humanity in the new games -- lose a Touchstone, and you'll lose the value they were tied to. Don't have any? You also don't have anything anchoring you to humanity. . .

Anyway, I think for "Londerland Bloodlines" this falls under "advice the older vampires give the younger ones, if and when they think of it." I think Bertram, who is one of the first helpful vampires Alice encounters, tells Alice about the idea and encourages her to find one, and says that ghouls count (like his own Knox). Heck, maybe this leads into the whole thing with him telling her that she's ghouled Victor and it's in everyone's best interest if she finds him! Naturally, Victor would be one of Alice's Touchstones, and Victoria the other when she joins the group. I'd like for Lizzie, Emily, and Sam/Bonejangles to also be Touchstones, but I think the rules for Touchstones forbid -- that is, only living humans qualify, and technically those three are a form of zombie thanks to the Giovanni. That being said, perhaps they can count as psuedo-Touchstones, either individually or as a group. As for the values they embody, I haven't pinned them down yet, but I think at least Victor's would be "Sacrifice to help others is worth it more often than not," given how they met (Alice sacrificing some of her blood to save his life, and getting a loyal friend, later boyfriend and even more out of the deal) and Victor being a helpful sort himself (he may not have been ready to kill himself to marry Emily in this verse, but he was certainly willing to help her out by taking her on a date -- not to mention everything he does with Alice as part of the game plot. . .).

So yeah -- I just thought these were nice concepts from the latest edition that would be cool to work into my own writing. Plus, if I do end up doing a sequel based on Bloodlines 2, it'll help tie the two together a bit more. :)

#londerland bloodlines #vampire the masquerade #v5 #granted I haven't refreshed my knowledge on either concept recently #so I might be a little off base here #but I just think they're interesting and could be fun for the fanfic #it occurs to me I could also namedrop the different feeding styles too #since naming how different people get blood still makes sense in the WoD the original Bloodlines takes place in #honestly I've given up trying to distinguish between different Worlds of Darkness at this point #I know my copy of Changeling: the Lost was New World of Darkness #but then -- I think they rebooted the game line?#and now it's Chronicles of Darkness?#and I don't know what if anything is going on with it?#I'm not suited for this I'm gonna stay in the corner with my video games #steal what I like from cheat sheets like a goblin #queued

2 notes · View notes

victorluvsalice · 5 years

Text

AU Thursday: Londerland Bloodlines -- With This Blood. . .

Happy Independence Day! Let's have a fic from the Londerland Bloodlines world about Alice giving Victor another drink from her veins and thus binding him to her all the more! XD More seriously, after last week's chat with Mercurio -- well, Alice still doesn't particularly like the blood bond, but she likes the idea of losing Victor, even to old age, a lot less. (Plus, Mercurio brought up a good point that Victor is "hot property" among vampires as a ghoul -- I'd still like to fit in something earlier about both the Giovanni and LaCroix wanting him as a personal slave to add to their own power. And maybe the Anarchs wanting to beat the shit out of him because of who his father is.) So she heads home, ready to make a commitment -- though, of course, not without talking to Victor first. . .

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Alice!" Victor grinned at her, trying and failing to conceal his puzzlement. "I didn't expect you back so soon. . .is everything all right?"

"Yes," Alice assured him, kissing his cheek. "Better than it has been for a while, in fact." She slipped past him to plop herself on the couch, patting the cushion beside her. "Do you have a moment to talk?"

"Er – of course," Victor said, sinking down beside her. "What about?"

"Us. And our relationship."

"Oh." Victor worried his lower lip. "Are – a-are you asking to be e-exclusive? Because I. . .w-we should probably wait for Victoria and Emily if that's the c-case–"

"Oh, no, no," Alice assured him, holding up a hand. "I am perfectly happy with the set-up we have right now. Victoria and Emily are wonderful women, and I am delighted to be able to share you with them."

Victor visibly brightened, sitting up a little straighter. "Oh, good. N-not that I don't love being with you, of course, I just – I love being with them too. With all of you together. You're all so amazing, and I'm–" He sighed, one of those sweet, dreamy smiles passing across his face. "I'm just so lucky."

"So am I." Alice twisted her fingers together in her lap. "Which is why. . .I want to keep you, Victor."

Victor's brow furrowed. "Keep me?"

"Yes. Keep you with me. Forever."

Victor's eyebrows nearly disappeared into his hair – though, given how little forehead he had, that was a fairly easy feat. "What – you – w-wait, I don't understand. You – you d-don't even want to blood bond me. S-suddenly you want to Embrace me?" His face filled with suspicion. "Did one of those other vampires do something to your head?"

"No!" Alice cried, waving her hands. Oh damn it, she should have known this would happen, given what she'd been like their entire time together. "Victor, I swear, this is all me. And I'm not talking about the Embrace. I would never drag you into the eternal night. You deserve better than that."

Victor stared hard at her – then his face softened. "My friend's saying you're telling the truth," he said, tapping his temple. "And I've learned to trust him. . .but – the only other way of k-keeping me is the blood bond. And you said – why would you change your mind?"

"Because I went to Mercurio tonight," Alice explained, leaning forward to take his hands. "To ask him his opinion on being a long-time bonded ghoul. And he said that, after years of service, he would do anything to make LaCroix happy. But he also still considers him – in his own words – a 'prissy bitch.'"

Victor snorted. "Really? LaCroix's best ghoul said that?"

"Yup – which should tell you everything you need to know about LaCroix, frankly." Alice smirked briefly, then turned serious again. "But that was his point – even through a loyalty written into his very veins, he can hold an unflattering opinion of his master. Which means his mind, his soul, isn't completely gone. He was clear that he was still not truly his own man, but . . .he's not a toy either. Or, at least, he's less of one than I thought."

Victor nodded slowly, a terrible growing hope on his face. "So – what does that mean for – us?"

"It means – I might be willing. To make you mine." She took his chin, looking deep into those dark brown eyes. "But I won't let you walk into this blind, Victor. Everything I said before still applies. The blood bond is not true love – it's slavery. If you drink twice more – you are going to be devoted beyond mortal reasoning. You will do anything to please me, even things you would otherwise find distasteful. Even if things go wrong between us, you will still be magically bound to me. Still want my blood more than anything else in the world. There will be no way to break free except by mustering up the willpower to flee into the night and never see me again, or by my Final Death. I'm only willing to risk this because–" She swallowed on outdated instinct. "Because I love you. And I can't bear the thought of you dying, even of old age. Or being used up by some other vampire. And I believe you love me beyond that taste you got of my vitae. I believe we can somehow make this work, around that twisted horrible core. But – you have to know the risks. You have to be sure."

Victor was silent for a long moment. Then he reached out and cupped her cheek. "I'm sure," he whispered. "I – I know it's not – ideal, w-what we have to do to be together. But I don't want to leave you. I love you. I love when you come out of your bedroom in the evenings and give me that little smile, so – genuinely happy to see me. I love when we're sitting on the couch together during a quiet moment, your hand in mine, even if it's cold. I love going out to the movies with you and – well, I don't get to have all the popcorn to myself anymore, do I?" he corrected himself with a laugh. "But it's still so much fun, going out with you and Victoria and Emily and Lizzie and Sam and just – enjoying a night out. Like we're all normal." He took a deep breath. "And – and I don't want to belong to just any old vampire either. I've talked with Mercurio too – and Knox, and Romero. I know how most vampires treat their ghouls. You have been nothing but kind to me ever since we met, and – I want to be with you. As long as you'll have me. I trust you."

That was what did it, Alice decided later on. The fact that Victor knew what she did sometimes to survive as a Kindred, knew how dangerous it was to be a ghoul – and still trusted her. Still loved her, glowing so brightly with sanguine energy for a moment she was sure she'd accidentally popped on Auspex. Deep down, she knew the "right" thing was to push him away, let him go. . .but she also knew she simply couldn't force herself to do it. He was already hers, in a small but significant way – and judging by the way her withered guts cried out at the thought of him leaving? She was his. And if she couldn't save him from Kindred society altogether. . .she could at least save him from other Kindred. "All right."

The Vorpal Blade was in her hand in a moment, hissing with delight as she drew it from its sheath. One quick slash, and her wrist was laid open. Victor's eyes locked onto the blood, oozing from the wound. She offered it to him, and he grabbed it firmly in both hands, licking his lips in anticipation –

Then, an inch from drinking, he paused. His eyes flicked back up to her face. "You're – y-you're really sure?" he asked, voice aching with longing – but also worry.

"He'll refuse if you refuse," Cheshire informed her, smile hanging by her side. "Rescind your permission and he'll pull himself away. Addiction is a strong vice, but his desire not to harm your feelings is stronger still. He'd give up eternity if he thought you would drown in the guilt."

I probably will, Alice thought back. But I'd drown too if I refused and tomorrow night LaCroix dragged him to his tower, or some gang-banger shot him down. At least this way he can throw me a life preserver. She nodded, with a bittersweet turn of her lips. "Go ahead."

Victor needed no further coaxing – he pressed his lips to the cut, sucking down the vitae with the same desperate eagerness she'd seen in the clinic. Alice allowed him a couple minutes to get his fill, then gave her arm a gentle tug. "That said, I can't really let you drink me dry. . ."

Victor lifted his head, breathing hard. His face was utterly transported, almost like he'd just finished making love to her instead of feeding on her vital fluids. He licked the red stain from his mouth with his eyes closed, shuddering. "Sorry," he breathed, not sounding it at all. "Just – oh, Alice. Drinking from you. . .it's like. . .like a big, warm hug." He wrapped his arms around himself, rocking gently back and forth. "Your love for me is right in my veins, and it's wonderful."

"That, I think, is the blood bond talking," Alice commented, pressing on her wrist. The cut sealed over, flesh carefully knitting itself back together. "Or possibly a dose of Malkavian madness. I've heard we can be flowery."

"Maybe a little," Victor allowed, blushing as he opened his eyes. "But – it truly is amazing, Alice. You're amazing." He leaned in and kissed her, mouth delightfully warm against hers. "Thank you."

Alice wrapped him in a tight embrace, returning the kiss with eager passion. "You're welcome."

They stayed like that for a moment, floating in a happy tide of gushy feelings. Then Victor pulled away, his ardor cooling into concern. "Alice? What – what about Victoria?"

Ah yes – this awkward moment. There wasn't just one mortal in this relationship, after all. Alice ran her thumb over her recently-abused wrist. "I want to have a talk with her first," she said. "Explain in exacting detail what this all means. But – I'm going to make her the offer. Same as you."

Victor's face lit up. "Really? You are?"

"Well, yes, of course! Do you think I want to watch her grow old and die while the rest of us continue on eternally?" Alice shook her head. "I love her as much as you do!"

. . .oh. Oh crap. She'd said that out loud. Victor's eyes widened – then crinkled up with sudden mirth. "Do you now?"

Ugh, why did being a vampire mean that she could still blush?! Granted, it took a little more effort, but her body seemed annoyingly willing to make it. "I – I think that's a conversation that should wait until she and Emily come back," she said, refusing to look at him.

"Of course," Victor agreed, and she could tell just from his tone that he was grinning like Christmas had come early. "Should I text them?"

". . .if you would."

#londerland bloodlines #fanfic #tw: blood #tw: self-harm #(as you know that's the only way she can give him her blood)#I think I've mentioned before that this was supposed to wait until after they'd fled LA #but poking at the timeline I think she'd have to agree to it before that #admittedly Victor should probably not be hearing a mildly-prophetic voice in his head on one drink of her blood #but a) Alice DOES have pretty potent vitae being the overpowered PC of Bloodlines #b) she has given him vampire blood she picked up at Grout's to help him take the edge off and stay a ghoul without blood-bonding #which is probably Malkavian too and thus not helping his brain #I'm probably being too easy on him with the downsides of ghoulhood #but darn it this is my OTP and I want them to be HAPPY #especially since it's about to become my OT4 #(also I have a mind control kink and this sort of scratches that itch)#(along with subby!Victor)#(look I'm weird and you all know it)#queued

1 note · View note