yes, yes we all know grace would look great in eridian celebratory costume BUT!! has anyone considered rocky swagged out in the finest, most professional, traditional clothing humanity has to offer
(no rocky you need to wear both hats or else human delegates won’t respect you. yeah no the one sock as well. human culture rule idk bud)
full details below the cut, but the tl:dr of it all is CCRP is fishing for Webby (instead of Tinky), Steph gets mixed into in the middle of it and now is the one and only Spiderwoman.
magic has been infecting Hatchetfield for decades, poisoning desperate people into superpowered villains that Spiderwoman now kicks the ass of on a weekly basis. she also saves one Peter J. Spankoffski on patrol and kind-of sort-of befriends him. and his weirdo friend Grace. and maybe starts spending way too much time with them.
but! she saved her dad from certain death, she loves Webby dearly, and is absolutely killing it as the city’s beloved hero!! Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong!
Hatchetfield is now a huge metropolis, but still on an island, which fucks immensely
It grew fast in the early 1900s after the U.S. government sponsored CCRP’s research into magic. Publicly, CCRP is a science/tech giant. Secretly, it’s contracted by PEIP to study the supernatural phenomena leaking into Hatchetfield. Of course it’s headquartered in Hatchetfield bc the barrier between reality and the Black and White is thinnest
CCRP’s current billion-dollar top-secret project is siphoning power from the Queen in White, Webby
During a junior-year field trip to CCRP, Steph gets mixed into a top-clearance Webby-summoning experiment that ends up permanently tying her to the Queen in White
And it is a weird tie, less “bestowed powers” and more “actual eldritch deity sharing Steph’s body and mind”
As Steph, she mostly feels Webby as a faint presence in the back of her mind, warning her of danger (or silently disapproving of her choices). To actually communicate, Webby has to take over.
Webby being in the driver’s seat stretches Steph’s body into this terrifying glowing form with extra eyes, thick weblike skin, and wayyy too much power. Steph can vaguely understand what’s happening around her, but she has no control.
Eventually, after a summer of trial and error, they work out a compromise: a halfway transformation where Steph stays mostly in control, keeps her face and voice, and gets access to the spider powers. Webby can still take over if Steph is about to die (or missteps on a rooftop, or swings from webbing at a bad angle, or is about to say some stupid shit). Steph ends up really liking Webby. Webby is kind and understanding about the whole “unwilling host of a permanent parasite” thing, so Steph is any ignoring long term implications of Webby in her mind.
Webby also explains what the Lords in Black are doing and their plans to widen the rift between realities through human sacrifice.
People can access the Lords’ powers through knowledge, desperation, or both. If they misuse that power and implode, it counts as a sacrifice. Anyone they kill also counts. If they’re stopped before they implode, the rift stays unchanged. Villains are dangerous when they’re wrecking the city and wracking up casualties, and then also on a larger scale they’re actively helping the Lords tear reality open.
Meanwhile, Grace Chasity finds the Black Book.
Grace is a good and devoted Christian, so she hates these ancient creatures. They are not gods, obviously, because there is only one True Lord. But if God put this book in her hands, then clearly He expects her to use these powers to carry out His will. Grace starts studying the Black Book carefully
Then Max Jagerman gets tied to Pokotho. Maybe it’s his hatred for nerds. Maybe something’s happening at home. But it transforms him into The Monster: stronger, crueler, nearly invulnerable, and absolutely thrilled by the power. And as The Monster, during another random destructive attack, he kills Ruth and Richie in front of Peter.
Authorities can’t do anything and no one cares, it's another casualty from a villain.
Grace cares. She’s the only one that actually reaches out to Pete after their deaths. Pete expects platitudes of “they’re in a better place” or “Jesus would forgive their killer,” and is completely blindsided by Grace wishing death on all villains. Pete, grieving and furious, connects with that way more than he expected. Neither of them meant to become friends, but Grace is present and steady when Pete has no one, and Pete is willing to help Grace without treating her like a joke. Pete’s scientific mind and Grace’s Black Book knowledge turn into a long series of hypotheses and experiments about how villains access the Lords’ powers and how to stop them.
Meanwhile, Steph sneaks out to be Spiderwoman as much as possible outside of villain attacks. She tells Webby she’s doing patrols to keep Hatchetfield safe, which is technically true (plus Webby has access to her mind and the final say on power use, she could veto whenever she wants), but mostly she loves the freedom of flipping around the city and not being Steph Lauter, mayor’s daughter.
One night, she finds some nerd getting beaten bloody behind a restaurant and scares the bully off. She pulls the guy (oh my god it’s Micropeter! She hasn’t heard of him since middle school!) onto the rooftopsto make sure he doesn’t immediate medical help, they talk, and Steph finds him unfortunately funny. So Steph decides to hang out with him in person. Dorkass bowtie be damned.
She uses tutoring as an excuse, which is technically true because Spiderwomaning is destroying her grades. But they become actual friends. Studying turns into hanging out, hanging out turns into dinners, and suddenly Steph is spending more time at the Spankoffskis’ than her own house. She also warms up to Grace, even if Grace and Pete are the weirdest pair of friends alive. Steph truly cannot figure out what glues their friendship together, because they constantly bicker and seem to agree on almost nothing, but somehow they fit
The three of them also bond over being way too interested in Hatchetfield’s supernatural disasters. Steph knows it’s weird that she keeps such "close tabs" on Spiderwoman and the villains, but Pete and Grace are just as obsessed, so it’s nice to have people to talk tactics with. Grace doesn’t necessarily approve of Spiderwoman’s power source, but she can begrudgingly admit Spiderwoman is useful as long as villains are running around. Steph comes so close to spilling her secret so many times, but she holds back.
Pete and Grace keep researching the Black Book in secret, and their experiments and mini rituals keep getting stronger. They end up mostly pulling from T’noy Karaxis because (for reasons they don’t fully understand) his power responds best
Pete never asks Steph to homecoming, but Steph’s got plans with other friends. It’s no big deal. She is extremely pleased that he keeps asking if he’ll see her there, if she’d maybe possibly consider saving a dance for him on her extremely full dance card. She promises a dance.
Then Pete finds out The Monster’s identity.
Maxwell Jagerman. Max Jagerman, the asshole who made his and Ruth’s and Richie’s lives a living hell. Max Jagerman, who killed Ruth and Richie. Max Jagerman, who is living his best life, getting a full-ride football scholarship, nominated homecoming king, and getting away with everything under everyone’s noses. Pete goes to Grace with that knowledge, and she sees the fire in his eyes, and agrees he should attempt what they’ve been working up to in their experimentations, a summoning ritual, a bond to connect Pete to the powers, to take matters into their own hands
It works. Pete transforms into a horrific goat creature with a single-minded rage to destroy Max Jagerman. He tears into the stadium during the homecoming game and singles Max out. Max also transforms and the two tear apart the football field, wrecking havoc among the rioting panic of the fleeing crowd.
Steph, who had been saving Pete and Grace seats in the bleachers, transforms to help get civilians out, shielding people from debris and trying to push the fight away from the crowd. By the time she joins the actual fight, The Monster and the new villain have practically torn each other apart.
Webby is horrified and uncertain. She isn’t used to seeing two of her brothers’ pawns fight each other.
Then the goat creature kills The Monster. And then just… stops.
He doesn’t attack Spiderwoman. He doesn’t go after the city. He just slumps in the middle of the field. His form starts flickering, which means the connection to its Lord is unstable. Which means he is going to implode and Spiderwoman needs to take him out quickly.
Spiderwoman approaches carefully. She usually takes out a villain mid-fight, but a strange sense of guilt arises at the thought of having to do it here, without the heat of the battle backing her moral justice.
Then, between flickers, she sees him. Peter.
She rushes forward, grabbing her catatonic friend by the shoulders, trying desperately to shake him out of the inevitable countdown of implosion. To understand why in the fuck her smart friend would do something so monumentally devastatingly stupid. A smile breaks through his bloodied and beaten face when he finally locks eyes with her, pained and satisfied in a way that looks familiar on his face but so wrong (it was the smug look of the boy who’d proven she could get a B on her math test, not a villain who’d just killed Max Jagerman in front of the entire school).
Webby has been screaming at Steph the whole time, getting louder every second Peter’s form flickers faster, blurring between both forms. Steph desperately tries to hold on to the feeling in her body, in the sensation of pressing her best friend into a final hug as Webby takes over. Steph’s shoved to the passenger's seat of her own mind as Webby steps into full control for the first time since Steph’s became Spiderwoman, and Steph doesn’t feel her hands take Pete’s life.
consider!! simon and ava are both wormhole/timewarped onto the hail mary, but it's before grace wakes up from his coma
so ava and simon see two open spots on this ship, jettison the two bodies and prepare to take the comatose guy hostage. but then they see the stars, learn about astrophage, and coma man wakes up with absolutely no idea of who he is or what he's doing here, and they can so use that to their advantage
i wanted to do a lautski au bc pete is so seymour coded but accidentally had too much fun drawing lautity parallels
au explanation (and bonus audreymour art!) under cut!
characters:
nibbly is audrey ii. of course. who else to play the quasi-eldritch, otherworldly being whose entire purpose is to consume, and in the process feeds off of the growing greed of those around it.
steph as seymour. she’s not as naive or clumsy, but she still desperately wants to get out of hatchetfield, make it on her own away from the strange, sinking trap of the small town.
solomon as mushnik. a florist in hatchetfield who’s forced to take on his dead wife’s failing family business and despises the lowly life associated with it. there’s no money, no influence, no power with being a small-business owner. he technically only has one employee, grace, as he makes steph work to “earn her keep”.
grace as audrey. a respectable girl working part time partly because of her love of flowers and partly because of an unexplainable obsession with steph. she’s dating a “respectable” boy, beloved by the town and her parents.
max as orin. a sadistic bully who’s constantly crude and abrasive to his girlfriend, grace. (gonna be slightly ooc bc i think canon!max has a freak4freak thing going with grace but here he’s just straight up an asshole and grace is not interested like that).
the nerds as the urchins/greek chorus LMAO
plot:
ok i got like 80% of the actual plot but i can’t think up a satisfying ending and it’d probably be more like the stage version but i can’t work it out :((
steph feeds grace jr. blood (the ugly little plant is named that as a ragebait tactic against grace lol). she takes special care of the plant because it popped up in the shop basement after her mom’s funeral, so steph feels like she’s carrying on her mom’s love of flowers (especially unusual ones). so if that’s what the plant needs, no harm no foul
but then her grades start picking up. she’s not doing anything different, not studying or applying herself. but her college applications are looking up.
meanwhile steph is slowly and begrudgingly befriending grace through all the forced proximity their jobs require. grace is ecstatic that they’re growing closer (one step nearer to saving her dear friend’s immortal soul).
steph continues to feed grace jr. blood and things continue to look up. the shop gets more sales and solomon starts to reinvolve himself in the business. she’s being offered scholarships to distant colleges and grants to help the business.
steph finally gets a glimpse at grace’s “perfect” relationship, and is enraged on her friend’s behalf with all the shit he’s pressuring grace into.
nibbly then finally speaks up and proposes a trade. no one would miss max. in fact, a lot of people (specifically grace, but the nerds are kept in mind) would live better lives without max around. and in return, steph’s spoils will keep increasing. did she think the scholarships and success were her own? nibbly could ensure steph gets a full ride in any college across the country. or could restore the shop to steph’s mother’s former glory, place the ownership in steph’s hands.
steph isn’t convinced, but does realize that max should be talked to. he was never a friend, but she knows him and could probably get through his thick skull that he needs to let up on the bullying and stop pressuring grace into things.
so she invites him to the waylon place, an old hangout of theirs when she still had time to go to parties. she tries talking to him, but it devolves into a heated argument, both angry and yelling. max is getting satisfaction out of this, out of seeing the power he holds over the things steph cares about. fuck you steph, he’s actually going to pummel those nerds harder and he’s going to dump grace as soon as he convinces her to sleep with him.
the banister breaks and max falls.
max begs her to call 911, but she runs away, panicked.
nibbly confronts steph and persuades her to make the best of a bad situation. get rid of the evidence of her negligent homicide and FEED HIM.
steph does it. and is then amazed by how much better her life gets. her friend group starts talking more and they’re even hanging out with the (now bully-free) nerds. business starts BOOMING and steph is allowed to make any changes she’d like to the shop, so she starts planning renovations and events that her mom would have loved. local news starts covering her efforts as a “young entrepreneur” with her strange and unusual plant. colleges start reaching out to her, offering her full rides or generous scholarships because of her success. and grace mourns her boyfriend, but steph pushes that to the back of her mind, knowing that grace would be off better for it. steph also pushes max’s agonizing, fearful, bloody last moments to the back of her mind. she killed him shekilledhimshekilled-
grace and steph hang out more as the shop gets busier. steph actually enjoys grace’s company a lot, especially now since their conversations have branched past religion and botany.
nibbly starts getting hungry again. he pesters steph relentlessly, but steph has been avoiding him as much as possible, guilt weighing down on her, especially because of how much happier she’s been.
solomon confronts steph about max. he’s had his suspicions, her life360 location matching the location max was last seen, her buried bloody flannel, and now her and grace (the last accusation is bewildering but steph is too panicked to push him on what grace has to do with anything). steph admits to everything, explaining the sentient plant and max's fall through sobs.
solomon believes her (its hard not to after the talking plant affirms steph’s explanation). but he’s not horrified, or ashamed of what his daughter’s done.
he’s excited. he starts contemplating aloud what this could do for business, discussing with nibbly how they could expand the plant’s powers beyond petty scholarships and sales revenue. he starts mulling over who’d be missed least, in exchange. whose disappearance in hatchetfield (a town where people go missing everyday) would direct the least attention towards them? the homeless man? a clivesdale resident? one of those nerds that’s always hanging around the shopfront?
steph numbly comes to the realization that he’s serious. her father would actually kill someone over this. he would take a life for a plant, for petty success in this stupid town. and now, no matter how he does it, that blood will stain her hands. as she realizes this, nibbly’s huge maw opens in tandem. solomon is seemingly oblivious to both the plant and his daughter’s building resolve.
she pushes him in.
and then idk lol i can’t decide how this’d resolve or how lautity would end up together sorryyyyy
anyways bonus audreymour (in lautski hoco fits!) as promised
i wanted to clean up some rough animation and add lyrics before posting but the motivation's been missing for months so this is likely as good as it’s gonna get unforch 😭
featuring bryce!pete, angela!steph, and mariah!grace shout out @the-maid-of-witchwood for coming up w her awesome recast au go send her love immediately!!
also since idk the official bryce!pete design, so i went with a mix of nerd halloween costume + the trivia that the short-haired pete wig that joey was meant to wear ended up on bryce-as-shapiro instead (also i’m furthering my agenda to give every fem!pete a pixie cut lol)
I LOVE ruth’s style, her canon outfit is so very 2021 but not quite there enough to be cool. like she’s got the striped sweater (with a mushroom!!), high-waisted cuffed jeans, striped ankle socks, but it's all wrong in a way that stands out and separates her from what everyone cool is wearing in highschool. (bright red jeans instead of vintage-washed, a brown-and-yellow sweater instead of soft pastels or proper 80s colors, running shoes instead of converse. etc., etc., etc...)
but in general I feel like she really cares about her outfits and is proud of her color coordinating and wants to fit in with the trendy clothes, but can never make her outfits look like her pinterest boards :( but don't worry y'all!! she so finds her style in college and is confident and comfortable and lives happily ever after !!!
damn why are all the hot girls from the same place like where even is 🏳️⚧️??
combining a few of my fav headcanons i've seen recently which are samoan!kyle and that steph got the certified official mayor lauter twitter handle before her dad could and he can't figure out how to get it back lmao
genderswap pete doodles (+ bonus wlw lautski)!! trying something new w the coloring technique :3
i LOVE genderswap art, but i feel like canon clothes would make fem!pete look too swag, so I wanted to explore what would actually change if pete were raised/socialized as a girl
headcanons for petra “pete” spankoffski below the cut:
• she wears pearls as her (outdated) status symbol to ward off the “poor” allegations
• like canon, her hair length is just an unmentioned break from gender norms. no deep reason, she just likes it short.
• instead of being pantsed (which i feel like would carry way more consequences if a guy did that to a girl), max “accidentally” dumps a full carton of chocolate milk on her after seeing her talk to sara zimmerman.
• when petra tries to confront him, he laughs and says she should be grateful he “rinsed her off” because she smelled. it gets a big reaction, and the nickname stankoffski sticks.
• ever since, she wears a raincoat everywhere to protect herself from further public humiliation (she also keeps potpourri in the pockets to really ward off the stank rumors).
• when updates her look to try to impress steph, she ditches the pearls, swaps her khaki pants for a skirt, and starts tying the raincoat around her waist.
snowghoul
germansingergirl
2087
stormborns
amandla
vaporwave