i have had a lot of vt7k ideas shelved or just thrown around that i genuinely did have interest in writing but i fear i don‘t have the spoons for any new fic ideas anytime soon so i rly should just start talking about some of them so they will at last exist somewhere outside of my head. anyway one that was particularly special to me was the piece i brainstormed of varian‘s pov in a modern au as someone genetically predisposed to both addiction /and/ mental illness. Because i really enjoy seeing people take on that particular flavor of scenario with fanfic and i wanted to give it a try myself AS someone with family history of both. SO
i chose modern au because i did want to be able to somewhat reflect my own experiences into the narrative because sometimes the best way to convey accuracy is to take from life itself. Lived experiences are the purest form of pov u can get. and in my mind i think the predisposition of addiction, while would have stemmed from both quirin and ulla, was moreso within quirin. i chose alcohol because what better way to torture varian than to bestow upon him pain i have felt myself. Suffer, bitch
i don‘t think quirin would have been an abusive alcoholic in this idea, tho. Not outright, maybe in smaller ways where you could pinpoint unhealthy and negative behaviors but not enough that it couldn’t pass under the average eye. i enjoy all explorations of hcs and aus, but i did want to retain aspects of the original characterization in this, and i think quirin‘s fault lies not within being /abusive/ but being a little too . watchful. controlling, at times. quick to cage in the name of protection. Adding alcohol into this equation would only heighten that— the paranoia of needing to keep his kid /safe/, but nothing is safe; the world is cruel and messy and bad, and nothing is safe. alcohol can make you feel caged in, paranoid, afraid, on edge for every bit of anxiety that has ever crossed your mind. He drinks to alleviate it, but it only ever ends up making it worse. he refuses to see that, maybe, because acknowledging a vice is often as easy as putting a bonesaw through your own elbow. Vices are vices for a reason
quirin, prone to drinking at night, a little too much, glass poured without much care because the bottle isn‘t gone and what does a little more hurt, anyway? varian having a tendency to close himself up in the basement or his room, still a recluse even in a modern au. maybe worse now? No friends, little family, the only public exposure he gets is in his college classes and even then, he’s not a socialite. Where would he ever have learned that from? ulla, maybe, but we all know where that goes and where it ends. i think in a modern au maybe she disappeared when he was five, or six. old enough to remember, young enough to forget
quirin‘s anxiety over needing to protect the last family he has, and doing his best to ensure his kid doesn‘t succumb to the same fate his wife did—add alcohol, quite and dark, alone in the living room, and he‘s thinking about how varian tends to stay in that room for hours, days on end. and he doesn‘t really have any friends, does he? he never mentions any classmates he talks to. There aren‘t really any kids around his age in their little hometown, so he was hoping the classes would help. but varian doesn‘t attract much attention, negative when he does, and quirin is worried. always worried.
he won‘t live forever. What is he to do? he couldn‘t protect his wife, he‘s doing his /best/ to protect the kid. Easier said than done. he won‘t live forever
varian‘s genetic predisposition to addiction is majority based from quirin‘s side. i wouldn‘t say varian would be too interested in alcohol enough to develop the /same/ one, though. the thing about having addict parents is you swear up and down you will never become that, in the name of the pain you have suffered from it, but addiction sneaks up on you in different ways. it doesn‘t have to be the same vice. a habit is a routine is an addiction is a vice. varian will drink but he knows his limits, even if he will pass them. it doesn‘t interest him much getting drunk. He has preferences
people tend to view addiction solely as drinks and drugs. Maybe it could be those, i didn’t actually choose the specific thing it would be for him. whatever it is, would be moreso an escape from the /other/ built-in hindrance, which is the mental illness. Now i think /this/ comes more from ulla‘s side. more than one. My hcs tend to be depression, borderline personality disorder, and while ptsd isn‘t inherited the way the other ones can be, i think he most definitely has it. so did she. funny how that works
habits form to cope. You tell yourself, i don‘t NEED this, i want it. it makes me happy. i could stop if i wanted to, whenever i wanted to. you never test that or ask yourself to stop, just to prove it. for him, i think he‘s undiagnosed and unmedicated, because one of quirin‘s flaws is that he wants to protect varian from ulla‘s fate so badly that he won’t risk looking at the possibility that they may be so, so similar. They can‘t be the same; varian has to be different, because if varian /isn‘t/ different than who’s to say he won’t fail to save him the exact same way?
he‘s got a plethora of unmedicated disorders from his mommy‘s side. ptsd built on experiences inherent to his life, and from mistakes that none of them wanted to make but did anyway. Addiction seizes people who need to cope
i think the main idea i wanted to convey here is how easy it is to become something you didn‘t want to. addiction has a very negative common perception, which is understandable at a level, but i wanted to give my 2 cents on how easy it is to suddenly be on the other side of that fence, no matter how much you grit your teeth and push against it. i think varian would see quirin getting shitfaced, drowning in anxiety and a creeping depression that will never cease, because it‘s in the hands of a person who will never come back. i think varian would remember those glimpses of his mom—as a child, she looked so happy, full of life and so bright, but you get older and you look back and you realize maybe that smile was a little too wide, eyes too dim for it to be genuine, and you piece that together with the reality of her being gone and it becomes what it is. i think varian would /not/ want to be like his parents, not in that way, but the easiest way to slip up in that way is to focus too hard on the /what/ and not the /why/. i won’t drink that much, i know my tolerance. i won‘t behave that way, i know what it looks like on other people.
but you don‘t know what it looks like on /yourself/, and just because you don‘t drink doesn‘t mean you won‘t smoke, or skip meals a little too often, or find cold comfort in a pain you can control. Needing control so badly often leads you to lose sight of it entirely. is it still control when you orchestrate the beginning of your own eventual crash and burn?
i think a lot of people overlook how easy it is. You know the signs and you‘re blind to others. one of my favorite things is weaving a sort of awareness into my stories. life imitates art imitates life and all that
ok done rambling for now i have things to do. Happpyyyyy Mondayyyyyy!!!!!