#charlore

[charl0ttan]

my ocd was so bad as a kid whenever i would ask my mom if i could have a piece of candy she would say yes and then i would be like "you said yes right" in case i somehow misheard her fully-consistent-every-time single-syllable response which i of course was also very intently focused upon. its a good thing that doesnt happen any more 👍 hey does that clearly-flush-with-wall door look closed to you. better get up and investigate a few times🧐

[nonplatonicsubtext]

Estate of the Bay Part 1: Johnny Law

(If you haven't read about @shakertwelve's Estate AU, go check out their victor lavere tag, or this won't make much sense)

Thought we'd put together a quick breakdown of the state of Brockton as of story start, beginning with the heroes. Names in italics are changed from canon

Protectorate Heroes:

Armsmaster (Colin Wallis)

Miss Militia (Hana)

Velocity (Robin Swoyer)

Dauntless (Shawn)

Battery (“Jamie”)

Assault (Ethan)

Redeye (Crystal Pelham)

Wards:

Clockblocker (Dennis)

Aegis (Isabela)

Scribble (Rune)

Vista (Missy Biron)

Kid Win (Chris)

Browbeat (Browbeat)

The Brockton Bay Protectorate core members are mostly unchanged, due to the point of divergence only being about ten years prior. The main differences are the absence of Triumph, who died in a horrible nepotism accident due to a lack of Panacea around for healing, and the addition of Redeye, who graduated from the Wards closer to a year before story start and rebranded from her Laserdream identity, severing the last tie between her and the Brigade, at least in the eyes of the public.

The Wards are a different story. Gallant was put permanently out of action in a horrible fucking rich boy accident, which was what precipitated Crystal being transferred in. Beyond that, Aegis is transgender but that doesn’t really come up except in the Wards interlude pre-Leviathan.

The biggest change to the Wards is the absence of Shadow Stalker - in her place is Scribble, aka Tammi. This is very much the same Rune as in canon, to be clear - no whitewashing here. She just got snapped up by the PRT while doing Plausible Deniability “Vigilantism” kind of like what Purity does and got press-ganged into the Wards. She’s not mask-off all the way about the white supremacy… at least not yet.

More importantly, she takes over Sophia’s Other role in the plot too - the Trio now consists of Emma Barnes, Madison Clements, and Tammi Surname. Always Sunny font Emma Barnes Goes Alt-Right.

Outlaw Inlaws

The Arrows

Spitfire (Emily)

Morrigan (Sophia Hess)

Apsis (Whirligig)

Replacing New Wave as the independent heroes (or ‘heroes’ depending on who you ask) are the Arrows, a recently formed vigilante antifascist group. Spitfire, the leader, has a bit more steel up her spine than in canon (though she still struggles), Sophia’s still an angry loose cannon but just not. you know. in a racist way. She's got a lot of very good reasons to be angry. Whirligig in canon is just a power and a faction so she’s basically an OC - she’s slightly older than the other two, an even mix of the level head and the slacker. Doesn’t seem to quite fit with the vibes of the group.

For the most part, they’re concerned with not bringing the wrath of the Protectorate down on themselves - like in real life, killing Nazis tends to get more of a response than Nazis killing people does. A lot of what they do is lurk nearby during civilian antifascist action, ready to head off the Nazi capes if they try and intercept for their own side. A few months before story start, they killed Alabaster - more specifically, Sophia did, and while it hasnt been conclusively linked to them at story start, they’re keeping their heads down, to Sophia’s chagrin. 

They're still semi-associated with Palanquin, despite Spitfire not being a part of that group - they did approach her, and now they communicate sometimes, as the club with Case 53s is a pretty frequent target for neonazis and other shitheads.

Charlotte knows them by chance encounter, after Sophia saved her from a few skinheads.

Rogue One

Parian is still Parian. She’s aware of the Arrows, but disapproves of their use of violence, cause she’s a bit of a lib. 

[charl0ttan]

they dont tell you this a lot but if its 2015 u can just wear this fit to high school and a girl will notice you and she will get really excited and go "friend?? friend??? hello?????" and it will be really scary

[charl0ttan]

seriously cannot be stressed enough just how much the game was altered

[charl0ttan]

genuinely when i was 17 i wanted to go to a portugal the man concert but i was worried they were a Girl Band and i would feel out of place there so i like read the google search results genres to my mom to get her opinion on if they sounded like a Girl Band. because i was so so so afraid of being into anything that could possibly be a Girl Thing. i think this is also related to when i was a kid in afterschool daycare and someone was doing a puppet show for us. and he asked who wanted to be a princess character and i raised my hand because i wanted to be involved. but then i looked around and noticed it was only girls raising their hands. and i got so so so so so so scared and vowed to never volunteer for anything ever again. also in this one middle school class for like Gifted Kids there was a newsletter to the parents about what we did each week. and i volunteered to write it. and for some reason i started to get this idea that it was a like Girl Thing to be doing. so i did it really scared. because of the mental condition 🧠its rough out there folks. start estrogen👍

[charl0ttan]

yucky part of transition is slowly growing more and more detached from your pre-transition friend group as you realize they dont seem to care about you the same way that your new post-transition friends do

[charl0ttan]

i think the size of a room depends on the context. a little shed out in the yard? well that could be a palace for a spider. youve gotta be thinking about these things. you could be in a dark cave feeling your way along the wall hand by hand but then your buddy comes over with a couple of flares and soon you notice how, strikingly, Upwards still looks just as unknowably faraway as it did before.

theres something about a Large Underground Space that really gets to me. every day we manage with the sky. all day long its up there, with all its big and open and so very empty space, and yet still only being the near edge of the starting line to get way out there. and to be fair, we Do talk about it a good deal, yet even then it’s literally the smallest talk we do. but something for me is to imagine if there was a roof up there. what if there was a firmament. of fully dark and tough stone. what if, for as much space as we had, we were nonetheless Contained.

when i was 13 my family visited silver dollar city in branson, missouri. now, silver dollar is an 1880s-themed amusement park which is also home to marvel cave, itself holding what's known as the Cathedral. this is the name given to one of the biggest cave entrance rooms in the united states. because the prospect of this, among several other things about caves, frightened my younger brother, our mom stayed back with him while i went with my younger sister under the watch of our family friend who had joined us for the trip. in due time our small group of a dozen or so cavegoers had begun the tour, climbing up several flights of minimally-lightbulbed stairs, stairs which banged menacingly out into the near-dark for each of our group’s upwards-avalanching staccato footsteps, footsteps which were rebounding off of a wrought-iron structure that seemed to hoard up all of the light available to us, leaving nothing in existence to speak of beyond an arm's reach. soon we were gathered up on a little landing with the one half of our two-person guide team who had stayed with us. making sure everybody was safe and settled there, he had us look out into the darkness for an extended period of time, soaking in the presence of the cave, feeling the weight of time all around us, unseen yet not unsensed. and then he echoed out to his companion to flip on the Cathedral's lights.

2008's journey to the center of the earth was a formative movie for me. it jabbed the exact same vein as land of the lost, rat race, and jumanji, among other things. movies id watch again and again for their ability to engross me despite how anxious theyd get me, with will ferrell facing off against all sorts of freaky prehistoric life, cuba gooding jr going through All Of That, and even just imagining the concept of robin williams getting trapped in that awful jungle for years and years, to say nothing of how stressful literally everything else about that film is. but what i think got me the most about Journey- the most striking, awe-inspiring, definitely the most dreadful image i can recall- was the ceiling of an underwater ocean.

the film of course doesnt give us any context as to exactly how large the ocean or the cavity it sits in is, but regardless, just the coining of this space as an Ocean evoked in child-me such a hugely reverent fear. the idea of there being, somewhere dizzyingly far beneath the ground i can see and touch, any sort of unspeakably massive cavern entirely closed off from sunlight yet with enough water and, crucially, space to put it in, to match up at least in spirit to the oceans of the earth's nice and safe crust that i had at best managed to come to a hesitant understanding with. it honest to god freaked me the hell out in a way i had never experienced before then. i would imagine being down there on the shore, looking out at the water, so much water that it would have its own horizon, water that would perhaps rise to form balkingly massive clouds which would be made all the more undeniable and tangible for how the ceiling would contain them, water that would be either thrashing with horrifying Somethings in it, or would sit entirely still, and somehow feel even more disquietingly goliath for it.

[charl0ttan]

just rembered today is my official Third Estrogen Anniversary :'^) i feel like ive already been posting selfies a bunch lately so im not gonna bother with More lmao but im soo so happy to be here:) its such a dream to finally be so far into my transition, and to have covered so much ground already. i think on some level i didnt expect to be able to get *here* ever, much less so soon, and it just blows me away every day how stupidly amazingly euphoric the experience has been the whole time. i think back to who i was just a few years ago and how unbelievable it would have been for him and even her to see me now. my Everything about me has just completely changed. like. im cute. i finally get to live in a way which is cute. which of course looking back is something ive wanted my whole life, all the way back to when i was ten and felt a certain way about how my younger sister got to have her bedroom painted "pinky-purple", as we would all refer to it as in a certain endearing tone of voice. when i was four and watching on the tv about a boy who claimed to be a girl, which i certainly didnt think anything of beyond my intial surprise, but which i nonetheless remembered and would consider my entire life for one reason or another. eight years old and worrying if maybe reincarnation is real but i would have to be a boy every time and how much that would suck Never Getting To Experience Anything Else. i didnt think i was the type of person to transition. i thought i was Just Some Guy. of course i wouldnt be happier transitioning. because wouldnt that just be awful