#character ref ab

[bardicbeetle]

💬 :)

“I wanted to,” Alex says softly, “I was going to—probably would have waited, but—he didn’t make me do anything I wasn’t already considering.”

“Still, it wasn’t a decision you should have had taken from you.”

“Do I—” Alex’s voice chokes off again, they take a breath, “—I have to do this don’t I, I have to kill someone, soon.”

[bardicbeetle]

sitd snips - in what is not believing

cw for mild emeto

“Later. I promise. Are you okay?”

All they can do is shake their head, “I—I didn’t—” Why won’t their stupid tongue cooperate. They feel like they’re going to be sick.

“C’mon, lets get you inside—a shower might do you some good.”

Hot water.

Hot water and steam would be good.

Though the idea is an unpleasant reminder that there is blood dried to their face, to their hands where they had tried to wipe it away, staining the front of their jacket—

“Alex.”

They nod, following Daniel inside and upstairs.

“Don’t leave.”

“I’ll be right here.”

And that’s how they stay for a while. Alex scrubs their skin raw, watches the runoff going down the drain fade from pink to clear. Then sits on the floor of the tub, water at their back, and heaves. Nothing comes up. They swear they can hear liquid sloshing around in their stomach but it stays firmly and stubbornly in place. Maybe that’s better. Maybe seeing more evidence would be worse.

They settle back against the spray.

“I might have killed him.” it’s quiet and broken

“You didn’t,” Daniel’s voice comes from the other side of the curtain. They can vaguely see his outline where he’s sitting on the bathroom floor, back to the wall. “you’d know.”

“That’s the last part, isn’t it.” It’s not a question, they aren’t even sure why they’re saying it, he’s right, they know. They don’t really know how they know. But the understanding is there.

“That’s the last part.” Daniel is quiet for a moment, “Why didn’t you wait for one of us?”

What?

“I—your friend didn’t explain?”

“Friend?” That word is sharper than Alex expected it to be.

“Eric. He was here when I woke up—he—he said there was really no point in thinking it over—” they pause, tip their head back into the water a moment. “—I guess I believed him.”

Except it hadn’t really felt like believing. Something about the moment feels off.

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[bardicbeetle]

7 for Isaac and 19 for Alex? :3c

oooooooooh these are excellent congratulations you hit the exact brainwave I needed to write.

7 - What's one way your OC has changed since you first came up with them?

Well he's not fucking dead for one. I have talked briefly before about the part Isaac once played in SitD but it really does come down to that. This boy was supposed to die. Alex was supposed to kill him. That was supposed to be it. But no matter what I did, no matter where I moved his eventual death--be it the first instance or the end of the story--Isaac Raes refused to fucking die.

Beyond the simple act of his continued existence: Isaac is a lot softer than he used to be. This is true of a lot of my characters--because I was horrendously full of repressed anger when I was younger--but I think it's most clearly illustrated in Isaac, who in older drafts was a lot quicker to condemn both Alex and the vamp!house as a whole as irredeemably evil. I think a lot of it came from his father's death being much fresher in mind (once upon a time that was not a matter of the past) and therefore not having had actual time to process and grieve.

He still tries to kill Alex the night they come back to apologize for almost killing him but after that there are no more attempts. He's more willing to talk Alex through what he knows, he's less hostile when Daniel eventually shows up to tell him to stop acting like a walking blood bank before it kills him.

Yeah.

He's less angry, by quite a lot.

And you know, he's alive.

19 - How does your OC behave when enraged?

Not gonna lie, Alex kinda loses their shit when they get to that point. If something gets bad enough, if they get pushed over the edge and can't escape backwards into shutting down instead of blowing up?

You're fucked.

If you are unlucky enough for this to coincide with them being any level of hungry, you are extra fucked.

Alex is new, new to being a vampire, new to having people they care about, new to feeling safe and loved and happy and if you push them to the point where they are close to losing any of that, or worse if you take some part of that away from them?

There is no fear button anymore.

It's.

Just.

Rage.

Alex angry is from quiet and spitting to screaming and tearing in a matter of seconds. It would take a lot to get to that point. But once it's reached, there is no coming back from it.

[bardicbeetle]

anyways I've changed my mind yet again about which of Alex's parents is their first kill.

[bardicbeetle]

putting "Going to Georgia" by the mountain goats on Alex's playlist is the best thing I have ever done.

and the best part is it barely makes any sense

[bardicbeetle]

spoopy asks! for whatever story you feel like blorbin about

🎃 Pumpkin: What character continues to light up your mind and inspire you to write more?

👻 Ghost: Do you have a character or a scene that continues to haunt you? Something or someone you wish you had done differently or just can’t stop thinking about?

(hard mode: 👻 cannot include That Part from SiTD)

@flyingbananasaur

🎃 - Isaac. While this answer changes frequently and without notice, Isaac is one we pop back to again and again because his choices tend to change my writing the most drastically. He's the catalyst. He's the one everything hinges on for no good reason. I love him.

👻 - For the uninitiated: "That Part" = The Massacre = the night Eric abducts Alex

However, we need not even call this hard mode, because while The Massacre TM takes up a decent chunk of my brainspace, there is another scene that I am constantly haunted by and changing forever in bits and pieces, and is the scene itself that re-sparked my work on Safe in the Dark back in, I dunno, 2016?

The death of Jack and Corrine/Alex's first kill.

This scene refuses to leave me alone.

I have written and rewritten it a half dozen times in 2023 alone, and I haven't touched it since JUNE.

I think the reason it won't leave me be is because it's such an important scene to the whole story itself. It's important for Alex so they can move forward, it's important for their understanding of their own power and worth, it's fucking important for them to realize exactly how far the entire vamp!house but especially Daniel are willing to go for them. It's the point at which the story used to end. It's the culmination of months of hunger and suffering and fear-based procrastination. It's the final nail in the coffin, the acceptance that this is what they want.

And in the beginning Alex killed both their parents. Then just Jack. Then just Corrine. Sometimes Daniel kills the other. Sometimes he kills them both because Alex can't do it. Around and around it goes like a fucked up circle of made and unmade decisions.

Sometimes they die without Alex taking their blood. Sometimes Alex lets go completely and while they are unconscious afterward, Daniel has some serious fucking cleanup to do.

It comes back and it comes back and it keeps biting at my heels and saying fix it, change it, you're not done here.

Yeah.

The death of Jack and Corrine.

The moment you stop being the rabbit.

[bardicbeetle]

today in lines i forced out through my teeth because the writing is not going

“I never got to thank you.” Katie says softly, still off-color, still wide eyed.

“Don’t.” Alex shakes their head, letting their hands drop over their chest. “Don’t, I don’t deserve that—”

“—bullshit.” Katie cuts them off, letting go of Carrie’s hand and marching her way over the bar where Alex is sitting. “Everyone else in that fucking room died, I didn’t, I didn’t because of you.”

[bardicbeetle]

Hi hello! 5 and 7 for Moira, 4 and 9 for Alex? 13 for whoever you wanna talk about c:

Hello!

For Moira:

5 - Has their vampirism cost them friends or forged new bonds?

In Moira's case the vampirism has almost exclusively allowed her to forge new bonds. Especially given she made the decision to wait half a decade after the Vamp!house settled in to actually make the change.

She had cut ties with a lot of people immediately before moving to Chicago, so there weren't a lot of friends left to lose, and the ones who she did were more... colleagues than anything else.

Moira is the one who befriends the DA's assistant, Theo when he starts working for Davies' office in...oh that would be about 2002? She does art trades back and forth with them, and they sometimes collaborate on projects for local events.

Obviously she is very much closely tied up with the rest of the vamp!house. She, Jesse, and Daniel would pretty much all die for one another if it came down to it. This includes Alex down the line when they eventually become part of that family.

7 - Are they open about what they are, or do they hide their condition?

Moira is one of the members of the vamp!house who will drop the world's vaguest hints about the truth, but won't actually say anything that puts the household in danger.

She's the one every other day going "I don't care if it's not real food, I'm making quesadillas and salsa." and then not elaborating if/when someone brings up that that is in fact, real food.

The one who is up at 10AM in the goddamn morning, wrapped in her silly little blanket cocoon, trying to shimmy the kettle out of the sink because she forgot it there again even though she knows the sun is coming through the kitchen windows at just the right angle to bounce off the copper at that hour of the morning.

The one who when Isaac is brought over to help Alex is kinda just sitting in the room with him and he very quietly goes "Are you... all--?" and then stops and she first assumes he's asking if they're all okay, since that was the first thing she asked him. But once it's clear that's not what he meant she goes "Oh--all vampire, yep, sorry." and immediately goes back to drawing even though she's got blood halfway up her arms because it's been a gross night and she needs to decompress goddamnit.

For Alex:

4 - How does being a vampire affect their interactions and relationships with other people?

On the whole I would say poorly.

Given uhhhh, let's see in a single month alone they nearly kill Isaac three separate times, makes them conflicted about their housemates (murderers), they get kidnapped by one of said housemates old friends-turned-worst-enemies (because they refuse to commit murder), eventually it leads to the death of their parents (this is a good thing), ends up getting them staked by a friend (it was an accident) and by Isaac's uncle (that one was on purpose).

Alex is jumpy, Alex is not super duper in control of their newfound supernatural bullshit, Alex would very much like to not have to be thinking about how much the people they are trying to be friends with smell like a really tasty snack right about now--but it's fine, they're fine, they're not gonna hurt anyone--

It gets, better after they turn all the way, but it's still, a little on the far side of complicated for their liking.

9 - How do they get their meals?

By using Isaac as a juice box

Some of the time. A lot of the time.

When Alex does kill people, it's almost entirely reserved for anyone who tries to hurt them. Do they put themselves in dangerous situations sometimes to achieve this--yeah, yeah they do--but the knowledge that it's them being attacked first helps them justify it, and it stops Isaac from trying to literally bleed himself dry, which is their Other Concern.

And let's do Eden:

13 - What inspired their design?

I wanted Eden to feel a little more otherworldly, like Amalthea but less unsettling and more ethereal. Still very apparent that she's not human, but not... in a threatening way. More in a what am I looking at kind of way than a Oh God What Is That Thing Pretending to Be a Woman which is what tends to happen when someone witnesses Thea for the first time.

Like Amalthea, Eden is old enough to be fully unsaturated (someday I'll find better words for that, not tonight, it's almost midnight), and her body isn't really... all the way there anymore. Daniel describes it as looking at someone through frost, like the light is bending around her in ways you don't expect. Where Amalthea is stone made moveable, Eden is Smoke made Solid. Like she's matter poured into a cracked vessel and it can't help but pour out.

In so much as the way when my vampires disappear, they sort of melt into the shadows, Eden is always partways into that space, always a little faded into the background. Which suits her well enough, she likes to be ignored, she likes the safety of being considered inconsequential, and she likes to see the terror on people's faces when they realize she isn't.

Thanks Monday!!!