#coaptation

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Ramsey and his daughter Li-li for @creatingblackcharacters Black History Month Challenge. For them hair time is bonding time, even if she does end up needing it all taken out and washed and redone again the next day because she gets covered in hummus.

Tagging some friends and mutuals who might like to see these two or be interested in the challenge (even though it’s almost the end of the month oops) @mirasmirages @aprilwaters @sableflynn @hottubraccoon @arithmonym

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Two new Conviction chapters posted in two days! 59 and 60! Tumblr isnt letting me embed links in text anymore for some reason 😓

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27131302/chapters/154839418#workskin

I now have ONE chapter left to write, plus some line editing and picking out a name for Cardean Genghis Khan, then I’ll be DONE with Conviction and ready to post the last few chapters, including the epilogue I’ve had written for years. I just need to write out Gavin and Ramsey meeting, judging the heck out of each other, and taking Cat to the vet. Essential plot stuff yknow.

And then I can go work on Eldritch Fracking story until I feel ready to dive into Coaptation (Conviction sequel).

If I finish Conviction in January of 2025 that’ll be so funny, since I think my very first Jail AU idea was in January of 2018.

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She’s so good at helping!

Li-li is the one (1) person who’s allowed to push Gavin’s wheelchair around (other exceptions are on an emergency basis only).

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4, 15, 21 for Li-li <3

Adult Questions for the (approximately) two year old! This was so fun I did them immediately.

4. Which parent, guardian, family member, or mentor does your character take after most, and is that significant? How?

She’s so Ari. Gets attached quick and hard, wants snuggles all the time, is generally pretty happy. Like Gavin she’s quite outspoken, can be kinda intense, and makes her opinions KNOWN. Arguably you could say this makes Ari and Gavin like toddlers but I headcanon that these are traits which stick around. Older Li-li will still be bossy af, extroverted, and fiercely loving. Like Ari, she does cry at perceived abandonment, but she will grow out of it and has a very secure attachment. She’s definitely lacking in her father’s mellow presence, though he of course also imbues her with lots of love.

15. List some of your character’s strengths, and don’t be afraid to dig deep. Does your character see those as strengths, and how are they perceived by other characters?

Okay well I’d say that many of the above answers are strengths. Some other strengths are that she is good at learning new words and is brave about new experiences. If you need someone to shout CHAIN every time there’s a train sound in the distance, she’s your girl. Everyone sees her strengths as absolutely delightful except Trystan who knows jackshit about children and only finds some of her traits charming.

21. What would pop into your character’s mind if he or she were to think of the word, “bliss?”

This word means nothing to her but depending on the age I’m writing her at, she might try to repeat back this fun new noise.

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My stories are written in english and i havent done any conlanging but for the record gavins mom is absolutely saying “ah broch is mir” (woe is me) like a stereotypical bubby

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Thinking about Ari doing the “introduce two cats with a closed door between them” thing to Ramsey and Gavin

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a ramble about coaptation plot and trystan employment issues

Ive been in such an In the Mirror zone lately but I abruptly brainteleported back into Coaptation zone.

Fun fact about my plans for that: I have a scrivener doc split into three sections: Before Trystan Comes Back, Trystan Comes Back, and After Trystan Comes Back. And like fully a third of After Trystan Comes Back is various plotlines about Trystan and employment. Nevermind the basic fact that it's hard to get a job as an ex-con with 0 employment history, Trystan just has Issues with work.

Idk if ALL of these plotlines will happen or in this exact order but basically here's what I've got so far.

At first he's just happily unemployed, but then he gets depressed and feels stuck in Gavin's apartment, so Gavin talks him into getting a job, which is a big source of conflict at first, because Trystan hears "I think you seem unhappy being in my apartment all the time, maybe you need enrichment, getting a job was good for me yknow, also we're broke always" and jumps to "you're useless and annoying and should just fucking leave forever."

This is another recurring relationship issue. Trystan approaches every problem with "fight or flight" and Gavin is so freaked out by the idea of Trystan leaving, which sometimes also freaks Trystan out and makes him feel trapped, even though he also desperately wants Gavin to want him around.

So anyway Trystan gets a warehouse job and feels so martyric about it, but the job sucks physically and mentally, and he has an entire crisis about how he can't quit or Gavin will be So Upset with him, and maybe it's kind of romantic slowly destroying his body like this. And Gavin's like "bro ur forgetting im literally disabled from a factory job? Ur forgetting every workers rights rant ive ever gone on?? Just quit!!"

And then the next job is soul sucking in a different way, it's like a desk job shuffling papers or something, and Trystan quits and is like actually I was right, jobs suck and authority sucks and I'm gonna be unemployed 5ever, fuck the system. And Gavin's like bro maybe you're just depressed and you haven't found the right one? #notalljobs. And Trystan's like sorry I'm failing to find joy?? Sorry I'm not the happiest little worker bee??? Sorry I'm failing to delight in finding some meager way to apologize to society for my existence and be less of a useless parasite??

And Gavin's like bro, ur not a parasite, ily, you can be unemployed, also pls stop threatening to leave every time you have a problem. yes i know you dont mean it as a threat but i feel threatened

And then this fic I just wrote, where Trystan just dissociates out of a job that he actually finally liked, and Gavin actually successfully gets him to agree to therapy. It just occurred to me and I scribbled it out today so I'm not sure if it fits in with the timeline or how it fits in. I think it's kind of fun that Trystan's scared he's gonna like, accidentally break up with Gavin and leave for good, but also the topic doesn't even come up, unlike many other times when it very much does come up.

Eventually endgame is that Trystan has a series of odd temporary jobs, does a lot of traveling and different things, is still often between jobs but just embraces the inconsistency of it instead of trying to stay at one forever and be trapped on either side of a permanent employed/unemployed binary.

So, yeah, definitely some recurring patterns here. I'm aware it gets kinda redundant, but also it be like that? But also I don't want the whole book to be overwhelmed by WORK DRAMA lmao. They have plenty of other drama.

Trystan domestication plotline is hard for both of them lmao

You can kind of see why Gavin's mom is like "ah, yes, we just need to teach ur chronically unemployed partner to be a happy housewife and homemaker" even though she's incredibly off the mark with that

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Haze

A little scribble about dissociation, set in Coaptation, the Conviction sequel, after Trystan gets out of prison and he and Gavin have lived together for a bit. Not sure if it'll be canon exactly, but here you go!

There’s an odd sort of horror to realizing you can do genuinely whatever you want. There’s nothing forcing you to get up in the morning, or eat meals on time. There’s nothing stopping you from quitting your job, breaking up with your boyfriend, ruining everything you’ve worked for. One day it could just hit you, and you don’t bother to eat lunch or do the dishes or clean the litter box, and you walk through the day in a haze, sure you should do something, you have to keep trying to do something, so you go downtown and wander through the streets and nothing feels real, which isn’t that odd, for you, but you’re supposed to be past that now. It took Trystan many long hours to wrap his mind around this, after days of floating in and out of a haze. Gavin was out of town for a school conference, and Trystan went home halfway through the second work day, and called in sick for the rest of them. He wasn’t sure if he was actually sick or not, at first, but with no other symptoms, eventually he had to admit this was all in his head. It wouldn’t have mattered. Back in the day, he’d have just wandered absently until it wore off, and he “woke up” hungry and irritable that he hadn’t done a better job of arranging for his body to be fed. But Gavin had a stockpile of groceries, so Trystan ate every so often, in the halfhearted hope that it would make him click back into place. There was something about knowing he could do this forever that was horrifying in the way people tell ghost stories about, except he wasn’t scared, even if he should have been. When his boss called and said if he didn’t come in tomorrow, he was fired, he said okay, and promised to be in. And then when the morning came, he got dressed to go to work, sat on the porch for a moment to watch the sun rise, and the sun rose, and the clock kept moving forward and he waited for himself to go to work, but it didn’t happen, and then it was too late and he supposed he didn’t have a job anymore, so he went for a long walk to nowhere.

Gavin was alarmed when he got back. That was a bit of a relief, actually. Someone ought to be, Trystan thought, and he sure wasn’t managing it himself. “I thought… I thought you liked this job?” “I did.” “Well, if you were that sick, and they fired you because of it, that should be a labor rights violation. I know you’re a subcontractor so you don’t get labor rights but —” “I just didn’t show up. I wasn’t sick, I just didn’t show up.” A few more words of Gavin’s labor rights rant dribbled out, like a faucet that hadn’t yet registered it had been turned off, then he trailed off. “Why?” he implored. And part of Trystan was glad for that. Someone else might have afforded him too much sympathy, or gone off about his irresponsibility. Gavin got to the part that mattered: why? “I’m not sure,” Trystan said. “That’s — hm. Alright.” The sink was more full of dishes than ever, the litter box stank. Cat hopped up on Gavin’s lap and meowed plaintively. “Maybe you’re depressed,” Gavin said, scritching under her chin. “I was fine last week.” “Did you… I don’t know… Have some kind of crisis about me being gone?” “Not really. I didn’t miss you,” Trystan said, and a tiny part of him wondered where this was going, what if his train just kept on running off its track, and the next thing he knew he’d called it quits on Gavin, too, in favor of wandering off into the streets? “I didn’t feel much of anything,” he made himself add. “That sounds like depression,” Gavin remarked, his brows creasing into an increasingly deep frown. “It’s not the same. I just check out sometimes. You know that. I just check out, and then sometimes I can’t check back in.” “You should really see someone about that.” “I was doing fine. I’ve just been a bit out of it for a couple days. It’s not serious.” “Okay, but most people don’t ‘get a bit out of it’ and impulsively quit their job without knowing why. For that matter, most people don’t ‘get a bit out of it’ and wander the countryside for weeks at a time. You know that, right? Right?” “I guess,” Trystan said. He forced a laugh. “Did you eat anything besides canned peaches this whole week? Please tell me you had something else, too. This is a lot of cans.” “I did. See, there’s dishes.” “And you’ve been feeding Cat, too, right? Honestly?” “Yeah.” “Okay.” Gavin heaved a deep sigh, and took Trystan’s hands in his, meeting his eyes in earnest. “Tomorrow, we’ll go to the library and get a list of people you can go see. It doesn’t have to be someone in a hospital, it can just be someone you talk to that isn’t me.” “I don’t need to talk about anything,” Trystan muttered. “I feel fine. I don’t have anything to say.” “Yeah, well, our household income says otherwise.” “I’m sorry.” “It’s fine.” More sighing. “We’ll get by. You’re not an expensive housemate. But you’ve got fucking issues, you know you’ve got issues, even if it’s not whatever this is. And if you’re not working, you’ll have plenty of time to go talk about your feelings for a bit. It’s not as bad as you think.” Trystan shook his head, but all his usual arguments failed to hold enough weight for him to even bother saying them. The fact of the matter was, he couldn’t be bothered to fight Gavin on not going to therapy any more than he could have been bothered to go to work. So he found himself agreeing to it, and supposed there were worse outcomes.