I SEE PIRATE JAX I MUST COME TO THE SOURCE
tell me more about ur AU >:)
I'M SO GOD DAMN GLAD YOU ASKED!!!!
but fair warning, it's probably not what you might expect based on that art alone :D!
here's the high-level gist: the residents of the circus are members of a long-running tabletop role-playing campaign run by caine. the pirate jax in question is actually jackrabbit, jax's roguish player character in that campaign! he's very good at names.
to go a little deeper: pomni just moved out of the big city and into quaint historic gooseville, where she learns her extra-eccentric neighbor caine is the owner of a local game store with an excellent name, if he does say so himself.
immediately after introducing himself and giving pomni a welcome-gift tin of suspicious cookies, caine ropes the poor thing into his ongoing tabletop campaign, which he promises will provide an endless array of fantastical adventures!!!!! pomni agrees to get him off her back with no intent of actually attending, but... she did promise herself she'd be more outgoing here...
and if it's a bust, she can move back to the city, resume her agoraphobic ways, and pretend nothing ever happened. right?
slowly but surely, pomni will get to know her fellow players both through the game and outside it. as she does, she'll realize that none of them really know each other. as absurd as it is to consider, it falls to her to bring the party together in a meaningful way - or at least get them to actually communicate.
