Finishing off with characters from Yellow Jacket, we've got Eddie Chiplucky, Charles Coven, Stopwatch, and Spitfire.
Thanks to everyone for following this!
Notes and Design headcanons under the cut!
- Paul has eternal eyebags
- Alice is adopted
- Most Jeff Blim characters have long hair except for Mr. Davidson.
- the more you call on the Lords in black, the less human you become, hence Wilbur's and Willabella's ears and hands. Miss Holloway covers this up. In the NPMD timeline, Grace will eventually gain these traits.
- Tumblr ate the quality, but I gave Hannah freckles and Sun bleached hair. I imagine her mom sends her outside a lot.
- Greenpeace girl also has sun bleached hair, and is tan
- I'm proud of how I did homeless Ted's hair :)
- I tried to combine Tim's looks from Black Friday and Nightmare Time. I imagine he died his hair not long after Jane died.
- The only time Gary spends outside is running to and from appointments. He's a very pale man.
- Pete also doesn't spend much time outside. And he gets some pimples as a treat.
- Steph is not adopted, and is biracial
- Max has the most intense blue eyes.
- Grace spends a lot of time outside, whether at camp or riding her bike.
- Richie DEFINITELY dyes his hair. He also gets pimples as a treat.
- I saw one Werewolf!Mark Chasity post and fell in love, so I gave him a little fang.
- PJ x Reese
- The Metzger boys have been altered by the woods (again, saw ONE post and fell in love), so I made them all a little monstrous.
- Executive Kilgore definitely didn't become a cyborg without at least a little scarring. Maybe a lot.
- Kale also gets to be pale.
- Sophia seems like the type to do colorful and artistic makeup.
- Two of Linda's boys are NOT Gerald's. He knows this. He doesn't mind.
- Marco is clearly not human, so he gets gray skin.
- All of the Abstinence camp kids are pretty tan except for Mary. She's eternally pale.
I don’t think it’s been said before (if it has, not enough) but the banner card for this blog is so fucking cool!?
Not what I came here to do but it had to be said. My actual question is about more secondary/background characters and if they play a part in the AU, and what they’re doing if so?
You’ve covered a bit about Solomon, but what about Mark and Karen? Do they notice the changes in Grace? Same for the rest of her church goers - Gabe, Mary, Noah, the Jerries, Jason, the Woodwards? Even her peers in school, Pete must appear to complete the trio? What do they make of it all? On the other hand, I can’t imagine Pamela is too relevant given her lack of care for her girls, but Ethan must be doing something?
Does the Wilbur and Holloway fight, and Grace and Hannah’s moments, affect the rest of Hatchetfield? It’s felt in the Black and White but how far does that ripple go? Hidgens? Charles Coven? Roman Murray? The Youngs? Hannah’s fellow magic kids? Does it affect the Black altars and other key location? What becomes of Miss Retro’s and Brenda without Holloway?
Sorry if this is asking a lot, just stuff I’m thinking about
You’re good for asking a question! Some of these I’ve thought of a little more than others, and others I haven’t considered,
(Future Ups this is sooooo long so feel free to read in chunks)
Rambling about art
also thanks about the banner card!!! When picking the font I wanted it to be pseudo reminiscent of the the nmt font and have some of the visual motifs of the story, but also like I didn’t want to spend forever on it. The swooshies in the back were inspired by the piece I did of Mariah!Grace a while back and also they’re just a recurring shape/motif in my art if you’ve seen enough of it so it felt representative of me and thus the au!
There’s also a colored version of it based on the pallet of that Mariah!Grace drawing too but after doing the pfp for this I realized how working the palllet in to both of them would be difficult so I was like “uhhhh black and white and chromatic aberration to add a pop of color”—and also objectively black and white fits the series’ motifs and this one’s best
Mark and Karen
In one of my earliest sketches for this au, I have Grace saying a line like “it’s been forever since I read my Bible/went to church” or whatever, and it’s a reallllly important/major plot point to me, and the Chasitys tie into that.
In the au, part of why Grace becomes obsessed with the Lords is because of the instant gratification of them, compared to how Christian prayer always felt like playing the long game, or constantly being denied what you want. (I swear this is relevant)
As she becomes more obsessed with magic (and magic being real is also faith altering), she engages in church and reads her Bible less and less. Like she still has intense Bible thumper energy, but she puts her religion into practice less,
And the first people who actually clock this are Mark and Karen.
Now my perspective on them is that they were loving parents who tried their best, but unfortunately indoctrinated their child into alt-right Christianity and they’re also republicans, and that sort of comes inherent with harmful teaching practices.
I do think though that Grace becomes so committed to her faith that she essentially parents herself and tries to be the perfect obedient daughter and thus becomes THE golden child (I do think if she had a younger brother she would *immediately* the second favorite but that’s an au for another day)
This means that Mark and Karen try and steer Grace in the right direction faith wise, but also they know that she’s doing her daily devotional/prayers on her own.
Think back to the scene where Grace masturbates in the bathtub and yeah her parents are suspicious about it, but ultimately they don’t press. They can’t fathom a world where Grace is doing anything “wrong” so they don’t inquire too much.
This faith in her slowly begins to erode though as she becomes more and more distracted in church. She doesn’t focus on sermons like she used to, she’s not corralling everyone out of the house so they can be extra EXTRA early for “the best seats” (even though nobody ever sits in the front pews anyways).
It’s not that she doesn’t still think she’s a Christian, but her passion isn’t in it in the same way, and it concerns her parents.
They freak out about it behind closed doors, if I were writing this as a fic or a nmt episode, Grace would come home late through her window one night (learned that trick from Steph), and she would overhear her parents fighting/freaking out about it.
Mark definitely defends Grace more because he has his rose colored Girl Dad glasses on, but I think Karen objectively understands Grace better, especially what it feels like to be a woman in the church—powerless, overlooked, silenced—and she feels Grace’s straying much more acutely.
I also think Grace starts presenting in a more obviously gender non conforming manner at this point, and while I always think she’s contradicted conservative Christian values unintentionally in canon (I think I talked about that when you sent in an ask about enby Grace), it starts to get *really* obvious (Wilbur’s fashion influence is hard to ignore…)
Karen sees this not only as Grace straying from the faith, but also “biblical womanhood,” and she’s felt that temptation too! Karen also felt helpless and quiet in the church, and of course it’s what right, it’s what’s biblical, but gosh, a part of her yearns to be heard.
She’s afraid Grace’s straying from the church is a byproduct of her own discomfort with the gender norms of the church, which is in part true, but also a good bit of projection on Karen’s part.
If Grace’s faith and conformity to the perfect nuclear family starts to unravel, then what does that mean for Karen??? Especially because mothers are meant to preside over the children, every error Grace makes reflects on Karen first. Thus she is more panicked about it.
In another world this causes Karen to deconstruct her beliefs about patriarchy and the church, but the cognitive dissonance and existentialism terrifies her, she she shoves that all in a box and tries to “fix” whatever’s going on instead.
Mark is also concerned don’t get me wrong, but because he doesn’t understand Karen’s intense anxieties regarding Grace and her possibly straying, he full blown panics much much later.
(If you can’t tell I want this to be about the undue burden women have in the church when it comes to parenting, and how the father not caring as much isn’t reflective of him being more reasonable, but rather of the fact that he is not confronted with the more difficult parts of patriarchy and thus cannot fully empathize with women’s struggles)
Also both of them lowkey blame Steph and Hannah for whatever’s going on, which isn’t entirely untrue, but their reasoning is flawed. Steph is a “sinful girl of the world” who parties and drinks and has had relationships, and Hannah is a dirty godless heathen who has been accused of witchcraft by hatchetfield most alt ring circles (also like a big heaping ton of classism that they don’t fully acknowledge but they look down on the Fosters a lot).
Eventually, it gets to the point where Grace starts to *miss church* and that’s a step too far. They have an intervention with her.
The thing is, just because Grace is in practice “less Christian” than before, she didn’t actually deconstruct anything at all. She just swapped out some of the doctrine to be about the lords or her own self righteous ideas about herself and called it a day.
She listens to their criticism but in her mind, she’s still doing everything right. She still has all of the lingo and buzzwords to assuage her parents fears, and she’s makes an effort to cover for herself better.
Right now I’m not sure when I want Graces “oh I’ve strayed from the faith” realization yet, or if I want it to come at all, but if I were to place it it would be either a) when she overhears her parents arguing, b) when she has her intervention, or c) some third option. Her faith gets shaken yes, but also cognitive dissonance goes wild and people can ignore things for a looooooooooooooong time if they want to
Other Church Goers
Abby camp kids
I think Gabe, Mary and Noah’s reactions are like the chasitys but more delayed. They also probably try to have some sort of intervention that Grace manages to brush off.
She has a lot of social capital in the church because of how purely and aggressively devout she was, so she can probably talk her way out of any jam.
After the intervention though Gabe tries to shoot his shot like in abby camp and depending on how openly gross he is Grace either misses the cue, turns him down nicely, or sends him off with a minor curse.
Oh also also, Grace starts bringing Hannah around to church a lot, and even sometimes Steph (she’s very convincing), especially near the beginning of the au, so all of them get familiar with the other two, and I think Hannah quite likes them, along with Jason. It is kind of awkward for Hannah sometimes cuz they treat her like the little sister of the group but also she is a fair bit younger than them. Steph thinks they’re all nerds but nothing is really actually wrong with them.
Jason
I think Jason has a little bit of a crush on Grace and he tries to talk to her or hangout but Grace is actually so locked in to her secret double life that she’s not even registering it. Jason handles the rejection much better though so he’s left alone. He’s not super relevant to the plot as of right now, but because I think of this AU as an episodic series with an overarching plot he could become relevant to a single “episode” once I plan things out.
The Jerries
I fear the Jerries would be so on board with her decisions. I saw somewhere that Girl Jeri is the reason Grace knows how to bury a body and that’s very much canon to this au.
There may or may not be an abstinence camp episode as a part of the au though so it is fully possible that the Jerries get defeated/killed by lumber axe in this au and thus don’t get to have an opinion because they’re dead. (If Abby camp is relevant it is at the very start of the timeline) It would mean that I’d have to include a lumberaxe betrayal scene (which would be fun but also there are so many characters) when he realizes whatever the fuck Grace and Steph have going on.
The Woodwards
As for the Woodwards I don’t think Bill thinks too much of it. Yeah he likes Grace individually, but similarly to how he treats Melissa as a parallel for Alice, that’s how he treats Grace. I think Bill is a good dad but he has a tendency to compare Alice to Grace when they’re really just two different people. It’s not super relevant to the au but imagine in the background of everything Alice and Bill are working through their relationship and as Grace starts to more openly crack Bill realizes that a) Grace isn’t perfect and has hidden struggles and b) Alice also isn’t perfect and has hidden struggles they need to talk about. So yayayayay Grace’s decline somehow triggers Bill and Alice to make up.
Also I subscribe to the “Alice was Grace’s first crush but she didn’t know what the fuck it was” headcanon. So when Grace is finally like “oh no im gay?????” She gets a little Alice flashback.
School friends/the nerds
Pete, Ruth and Richie do appear, but in the AU they’re much tighter knit and thus they don’t merge into the main npmd group of Grace, Steph, Pete + Ruth and Richie. Steph and Pete are best friends, maybe exes who ended things early and stayed friends, it’s not super relevant to them now. They’re the kind of friends that nobody ever would expect to hang out and then they get randomly paired in class and they have like a shit ton of inside jokes and the teacher has to separate them. Steph is more acquaintances with the other nerds but they’re chill with her.
Ultimately though Steph spends a lot of her time hanging out with Rose, the smoke club, and then later Grace and Hannah at times. In general she’s a social butterfly, the kind of person who can dip her toes in lots of friend groups because of her sheer charisma but also her open mindedness. Yeah HW Steph is cool and she knows it, but she isn’t concerned about staying at the top of the social ladder, and thus people just naturally like her.
Ultimately the only person she ever took issue with was Grace and that’s because she was literally a Republican and wouldn’t stop harassing her and telling her she needed god, and even they somehow managed to get close.
(Such a long Steph side tangent lol).
Steph has Grace and Hannah sit with them and it goes pretty well until Richie and Grace start fighting about something stupid and Ruth starts causing more tension by backing Grace over Richie. Hannah gets along pretty well with Pete actually. I think they have a younger sibling solidarity, and Pete doesn’t talk down to her like a lot of other people do.
Other than minor stuff like this I don’t think Pete super relevant, but it depends on how much the au focuses on Steph’s perspective. I think when things start getting *Weird* Steph starts talking to Pete about it, especially when she starts to trust Grace less. She also talks about her parents with Pete because yeah she has her weird situationship with Grace, but also she’s not very tactful when it comes to emotions.
I think once Steph starts piecing together the history of the Lauters, the Black Book and her mom and dad specifically, Pete would be really helpful. He probably volunteered at the Hatchetfield public library at some point (god I love libraries) and did some digging for Steph and found some concerning shit, and also found other concerning shit missing. Writing this out he may become useful in the Duke Shapiro side plot but only minorly so. Steph and Pete’s sleuthing may collide with Duke, Shapiro and Ethan and that’s how Steph lays out her side of the story for them.
Pamela
She’s relevant in the sense that she deeply affects both Hannah and Lex’s psyche and irrelevant in the sense that she is incredibly absent. She’s part of the reason Lex gets Grace to help watch Hannah (begrudgingly and to her chagrin) so really we can blame her for the plot happening.
I also think when Hannah does some sleuthing into her genealogy (so much sleuthing in this au I guess it also doubles as a mystery now lol) she has to talk to Pamela about it.
I’ve been toying around with having willebella be a major character and/or have her appear in an episode, or even just be brought up in passing, and so that would connect to Hannah.
(Willebella would tie into Grace’s jealousy of Hannah’s natural gift and give Hannah a fear of being corrupted by power which would create some nice layers to their dynamic)
Also I think something similar to The Witch in The Web happens in this au and that’s how Hannah meets Duke and Holloway for the first time, and thus we get a bit of willebella and also Pamela.
I also think Pamela would give some necessary lore drops at some point like the complications of Hannah’s birth or Lex seeing Webby when she was younger and how both of them were just “odd children.”
If I’m smart and remember to include it there would also be a scene where Lex is freaking out about Hannah and she flips out at Pamela because she should fucking know what’s going on with her own daughter. Pamela would just shrug it off.
Ethan!
My boy my boy my boy! Ethan is a part of the Duke and Shapiro investigation team. He joins them because they interview him trying to figure out what the hell is going on because he’s close to Lex and Hannah, and when they find out he barely knows anything either he convinces them to let him join the case.
He’s seen Hannah acting weird and also Alex getting incredibly stressed about it and he wants to do something about it. He also wants to try and take care of it so Alex doesn’t have to worry and she can focus on covering expenses like rent and gas etc.
Duke and Ethan form a sort of mentor mentee relationship. Duke talks about why he got into social work, and how he wants to do what Ethan does for Hannah and Lex but for a bunch of kids who don’t have any parents or friends to look out for them. Something like that. I also think Ethan is meant to have this cool guy greaser energy and to me Duke has perfected that with a dash of southern charm.
Shapiro is a bit wary of him due to Lex and his track record (they don’t get caught selling pills in this au but they’ve definitely shop lifted and also possibly lit stuff on fire??? I need more context about Lex’s tarot card yesterday) but also Shapiro is more understanding of the stuff he pulled.
She’s also going awol/was kicked from the force for investigating everything so why should she care (uhhh long story short the HFPD does NOT want people looking into the strange things going on in HF, they’re in the pocket of the Lauter family and CCRP, and Shapiro flew too close to the sun).
Also while Hannah has the hat in this au and not Ethan like in Black Friday, I do think he’s encountered Duke and even Miss Holloway before, but I think the details are blurry for both of them because Miss Holloway was so involved with whatever happened. All they have to go off of is some paper work and their memories of what happened excluding Holloway.
In general, the trios investigations are held back by the fact that every time they’re able to trace something back to Holloway their minds are wiped. Duke, Shapiro, Ethan, Pete and Steph all run into this issue.
The Holloway and Wilbur showdown
Right off the bat Hidgens and Shiela keep to themselves.
Sheila
Sheila is more in tuned with the black and white since she used a page of the book before and thus she has tapped into it, but she’s the kind of person who keeps completely to herself. Sherman is also just shermaning around.
Hidgens
Hidgens doesn’t have an intuitive connection, but he’s got his lab and tech and Alexa reading the black and whites frequencies and he’s like “oh shit the apocalypse” and hides in his bunker. The Detective trio probably ends up going to talk to him a bit after following a few leads and they get some info out of him, but they find other than that he’s unhelpful (since they don’t have Emma as a connection he’s less forth coming.) Hidgens focuses primarily on Pokey related shenanagins, not all the lords at once so his help is limited. (Also I think if I were to pick a primary lord for this AU it’d likely be Wiggly or Nibbly but don’t quote me on that because I’m also considering some Webby and Blinky interactions)
Charles Coven and the Magic Kids
With all the black and white fuckery it’d be a plot hole if Charlie didn’t know something was happening. I also think on top of CCRP just having eyes on the black and white they also have a minor ping on Shapiro snooping around, hence why she’s kicked from the force, but they’ve had lots of people… taken care of before, so they don’t immediately clock her as related to the incident.
Honestly Charlie *should* be really entwined with the au, but I am worried about bloating the story? (I say this as if there isn’t only like a 40% that I’ll actually write it out. I *will* make a timeline for it though at the very least.)
If he is included though, he would probably have interest in Hannah. Hannah is someone who has a large presence in the black and white naturally but Grace would sort of throw them for a loop. Hannah has a large presence because of her psychic ability, but Grace’s connection to the black and white had more to do with how her personality and circumstances always lead to her doing something fucked up and insane in every timeline. Shes not naturally in tune with the black and white she is just a cosmically consistant problem, so I think her being there is partially a distraction.
I think an explanation for why Charles hasn’t caught on to Hannah sooner would be that Webby exerts some of her power to constantly conceal/obfuscate Hannah’s psychic presence, but as she begins to train her abilities more and more it’s more difficult for Webby to do so.
On the magic kids, a) use it or loose it should definitely go on the au playlist because it’s thematically relevant, and b) I definitely want an episode about them
Like I love Sophia and David, and it’d be good for Hannah to have friends her age that can meet her at the same level. They might be in the fight club they might not be, but Hannah and Grace help them out.
When Grace and Hannah are on the rocks or just not hanging out in general she’s probably with the magic kids. I also think Duke may get involved with helping them at some point during or even after the main story. Again, there are so many avenues to this AU that keeping the plot neat and also holeless is difficult lol
Roman
Similar to Sheila and Hidgens I think he feels it but is like “oh I only fw one of these guys I’m not touching this debacle with a ten foot pole” but he will probably try and use the chaos to his advantage.
The Black Altars
Since the showdown literally happens at the Waylon Place shit happens there obviously. I think dead spirits and general supernatural things like to hang around the black altars, so they definitely feel it, especially any starry children lurking around. In general any connection someone has with the black and white is amplified at the black alter which is part of why the blowback from this event was so huge, but also I think all of the black altars are connected. Any event that spikes the energy of one of them does so to the other four. So anyone at any of the other altars at that time would feel a deep sense of foreboding, even if they have previously had no connection to the black and white.
(In my dream world the altars are arranged in a pentagram but alas they aren’t and really I can’t make everything secretly about full metal alchemist if you don’t get the reference ignore me)
Also I think Hannah releases the most energy and causes the largest ripple, like Grace’s power comes from her repeated actions over timelines, but even if there were only ever one single Hannah she would still shake the black and white.
Miss Retros and Brenda
Honestly I’m not quite sure what happens to miss retros and I’m open to suggestions. I actually made a post about it on my main asking people what they thought for this very reason. I’m thinking it either closes or goes to someone else.
Maybe she tells Hannah’s and Grace to clear out some of her suspicious magic stuff before she goes or maybe she already has something set up beforehand to fix it.
I know that The Deal probably fills in some memory gaps with false details but I think Brenda would experience a level of memory loss that is a bit concerning, but because everyone forgot about Miss Holloway it’s not noticed until the Sleuth Crew show up and investigate.
I think Brenda and Holloway were pretty close and friendly, Holloway giving Brenda sage advice she definitely ignored the first few times and all. She’ll remember wise words and little tidbits with a pang of grief she doesn’t understand.
When Duke visits her to investigate about Miss Retros they have a natural banter because he visited Miss Retro’s so much, but Duke can’t remember *why* he was there all the time, and neither can Brenda.
Brenda also confides to him about her weird memory loss that no one seems to get, and that is also added to the sleuth crews pile of evidence. I think they start to realize that anyone connected to Miss retros, along with some of Dukes most severe cases all have individuals who report having strange, isolated memory issues.
Brenda probably says something like “when you find out what happens, let me know.”
She doesn’t just feel like she’s missing memories, she’s missing *someone.*
If Holloway’s existence is ever publicly revealed and renters the public conscious, she’s one of the first people at the funeral
Final thoughts
This was a lot to sink my teeth into boy!!! If you made it this far thank you and if you didn’t thank you anyways for the ask I enjoyed this. Lowkey got me to think about things I hadn’t considered that much and also gave me ideas for major plot points. Like I fear we do have to have a Brenda cameo and or episode.
This also made me realize that not only would this au require me to write a normal compelling plot, but also I’ve decided to add a mystery element lowkey by accident, and so now I’m curious as to how all the side plots threat together whilst also keeping a compelling mystery with enough info to be engaging but also not so much that it’s confusing.
There are lots of moving parts to this au which is what makes it fun, but also difficult to 100% sort out without glaring blind spots
Overall I really enjoyed this and it got my gears turning!!! Thank you for the ask (((:
Also I literally could not tag everyone mentioned in this post, and I try not to tag characters that aren’t super super relevant like one of mentions but like there were sooo many characters I simply could not fit them all in lol. I may reblog and add the others in the tags purely for the archival purposes of this blog
