#dreampack au

[halfwaydeepunofficial]

also is sebastian ever insecure about having a gayass middle name. is he homophobic. how homophobic is he. what would happen if he woke up and he was bisexual

i know this is a joke but i don't really know how to respond in kind so i'm treating this like a serious ask i guess

i would say he's homophobic yeah. it doesn't really come up most of the time but he generally considers gay men pathetic for not being into women and he's not super pleased with the existence of lesbians because they're women who are off limits. these are pretty passive attitudes though, like, he doesn't go out of his way to bully random gay people and he's perfectly willing to associate with them. raph, for example, is openly gay and a member of sebastian's little cult in both dreampack aus. that being said, being condescending about other people's sex lives is very much how sebastian rolls, so if he sees an opportunity he's absolutely willing to use that as a cudgel in an attempt to make other people feel inferior to him.

i used to say his sexuality is "straight but he'd have sex with a man for personal gain if necessary" but honestly i think that's changed, in his current form i don't think he'd have sex with any guys. i'd say sandrine is the opposite but tbh i don't think she can even conceive of the idea of lesbianism. if a powerful woman made advances and she thought she could get something out of it she'd probably go for it though.

if he woke up and he was bisexual i don't think that much would change except that he'd cheat on his girlfriends with people of all genders, not just women. i don't think he'd be all that interested in long term relationships with guys.

related fun little fact: sebastian's worstie/second in command hugh randall has a repressed bisexual crush on him. sebastian has no idea and if he did he would 100% laugh, call it pathetic, and use it against hugh at every turn.

[halfwaydeepunofficial]

amaryllis for alec and raph

amaryllis - what is something your oc has achieved that they are proud of? what is their biggest accomplishment?

raph - depends on the au and the specific point in the timeline ofc, but really anything associated with elite institutions and success/upward mobility. most of the time this presents as scholarships. in both dreampack aus, on top of his scholarship to an elite boarding school, he gets invited into a cult run by sebastian, who is insanely wealthy and has a lot of connections, and in raph’s mind his membership in the dreampack is worth more than being at the school in the first place because it represents a greater closeness to power/fame/wealth than even what he already gets just by going to the rich boy boarding school.

alec - getting into columbia for sure, haha.

on a more general character note, alec cares a lot about certain traditional markers of prestige - particularly academic ones like getting perfect grades and getting into (and attending, and succeeding in) an ivy league school - but at the same time, he wants to rebel against societal (and familial) expectations. he’s not quite a “burn it all down” type, he’s too smart and self aware for that, but he has a strong contrarian streak, which doesn’t always play well with the fact that his life goals do actually align with a lot of what his parents want/expect from him. not everything for SURE, but a lot of it.

also, alec’s achievements aren’t often big plot points - wayyyyy back when i was first making him, he was based on a character whose entire essence is failed revolutionary. “barely missed becoming historic.” his perfect grades play in the background of his real goals. whether he achieves those goals or not depends on the au. denying him what he really wants is super juicy but admittedly doesn’t happen a lot anymore. which isn’t to say that i’m always giving him what he wants either, but his arcs in different aus have diversified a lot, so sometimes the character focus or the overall tone is different. and sometimes what he wants is kind of the same as what everyone else wants, he’s just more open about it, which tends to happen in aus where the setting is some kind of high control environment. like, if it’s a hunger games au, he’s hardly the only rebel. in the ivory room au - basically an assassin’s league built on human trafficking - everyone wants to get out. and those aus aren’t meant to be doomfests, they’re about control and freedom and trauma and healing, so it would really defeat the purpose if he had the “young idealist who is eventually hollowed out by grief” arc. even so, the progressions of many of those aus don’t necessarily amount to Alec Achieves Something Big. (once in awhile he still gets that classic alec arc, though. especially if he’s immortal or quasi immortal.)

anyways! that’s a hell of a tangent that isn’t super related to the original question. but i hope you like it 👍

[halfwaydeepunofficial]

the high priestess and the tower for franklin :)

so i may have gotten super carried away on both of these.

the high priestess: When has trusting their instincts paid off for your character?

this is kind of a funny question to ask about franklin specifically bc tbh he has horrible instincts. once in a star wars au he had to crash land on tatooine and the only thing stopping him from getting scammed by “shady tatooinians with wrenches” was nic’s oc jasper being there.

but this question is about when it paid off! so. hm.

in the dreampack au, there’s a point where sebastian locks nic’s oc charlotte in the basement of the mansion, which is a bunker full of weapons. franklin hears charlotte shouting for help, and although he’s conflicted about it and needs some advice from meera to push him in the right direction, he does eventually go get her out. honestly, that part, like so many of franklin’s best moments, is more him going against his instincts and growing as a person for it. but the part where he does actually follow his instincts and is rewarded for it comes next, when charlotte pulls him into her arms and asks him if he’d let her take him to cabeswater (basically her magical place in the forest). both of these things make franklin nervous, because both could lead to punishment from sebastian. but both his instincts and conscious thoughts tell him not to push her away from him, literally or figuratively. so he lets her hold him and take him to cabeswater.

and yeah, it pays off big time. he and charlotte finally do some proper adult communication about their feelings. plus, cabeswater responds to thoughts and feelings and requests, so once charlotte tells franklin how it works he gets to shape the landscape. he’s an indecisive little guy so he weighs his options about it for a long time, until he realizes that cabeswater made everything he was weighing. he inadvertently makes an overgrown garden and he’s embarrassed at first, but charlotte loves it, so he grows to appreciate it. he’s not used to creating anything of his own - sebastian would never ever allow that - so it’s really special for him.

the tower: when has your character lost an ideal or relationship?

three words: percy jackson au. i know you never read the books and you didn’t really watch the tv show either, so i can’t just say “he and jasper are annabeth and luke” and you’ll instantly go “goddamn”. so allow me to explain.

ok so first thing’s first, in most aus franklin and jasper are like best friends. sometimes their relationship is even brotherly - there are aus where they’re fully adopted brothers, and others where they’re similarly very very close. jas is willing to kill for franklin and in some cases he absolutely has.

in the percy jackson au, franklin and jas have a long history. franklin ran away from home when he was young, and jas (as well as meera) basically took him in. none of them had anywhere to stay, they were homeless demigod kids on the run from monsters, but jas and meera were older and they protected him and he idolized them.

meera ended up sacrificing herself in order to get jas and franklin to safety, so so it was just the two of them once they got to camp half-blood. (i hope you’ve absorbed enough from me and our brother to know that’s demigod camp, lol. a safe place for greek demigods to stay and train.) franklin turned out to be the son of athena, jas turned out to be the son of hermes, the years went by, et cetera. jas never got over what happened to meera, or, well, anything else from his past - there’s plenty of lore there. he blamed the gods and only grew more and more bitter and angry as time went on. it was only a matter of time before someone took advantage of all that bitterness and anger, and who swept in but kronos, an ancient titan with a hell of a grudge against the gods and enough power to start a war. he manipulated jas into a spiral of betrayal and violence, with jas essentially becoming kronos’s top general in a war against civilization itself.

franklin, for all of his faults, fundamentally as a character wants desperately to do good and to be good. plus, he’s extremely not a rebel type. it’s the enneagram sp/so 6. in the pjo au he carried immense grief from what happened to meera and from not really having a home to go back to, but it didn’t manifest in the same kind of deeply held anger or drive to burn it all down as it did for jas. point is, as much as he might have wanted to believe jasper’s promises that in the new world he would be safe and they could still be brothers, he refused every offer to join the side of destruction. and time and time again, jas proved that he wasn’t coming back to the side of stability. their relationship never recovered, even though neither of them ever fully gave up on hoping that it would.

[halfwaydeepunofficial]

give me something absolutely batshit raph has done, one in backstory and one in something you've actually written

OOOOOOOOH i am a fan of this question. love ya kye.

fair warning: this gets rambly and a bit hard to follow. sorry

honestly in most aus raph doesn't have a batshit backstory. it's mostly the same stuff - from manhattan, dirt poor, alcoholic, insanely ruthless social climber, his greatest ambition in all the world is to be a famous actor. and he's always abandoning his sister. it's this last part that has the most potential for batshittery, which reaches pretty much its full potential in the dreampack and remix dreampack aus. (especially the latter.)

he basically lives full time in virginia in those ones - he never goes home even during breaks. meaning he left his 12 year old sister in a not super safe neighborhood of manhattan, basically living alone because both of their parents are overworked to fuck in dead end working class jobs. their grandparents, who have more of an active role in raising both of them, are probably even more of a presence for olivia in those aus, but still. insane move. you were probably expecting murder or something, but yeah as much as he WOULD kill (and implied has killed in the six of crows aus), it hasn't really been an explicit part of his backstory in any au.

the most batshit thing he's done as an active part of an rp plot is in the (og) dreampack au.* unfortunately it's not something i actually wrote out, bc kinda the whole point of it is that he acts alone and in complete secrecy (except for charlotte, but she doesn't go with him, she just gives him what he needs to do it) and the downside of rp format is that you can't explicitly write about things that characters do alone unless you go out of your way to do a fun little google doc sidequest. now i love my fun little google doc sidequests, but usually those are for slightly more extended narratives or lore backstories, not single missing scenes. (dreampack/remix dreampack raph (they have the same lore and backstory, they just serve diff functions in the plot) actually DOES have a fun little google doc sidequest, but it's more of an origin story.)

ANYWAYS the thing that he actually does is he enacts destruction on sebastian's cult mansion (which is literally made of dreams btw) in retaliation for sebastian stalking olivia and hugh beating the absolute shit out of him to the point where he had at least one broken rib and had to go to the hospital. (tangent: thank god his boyfriend hunter was willing to foot the bill for that one, bc lbr otherwise he would've gone into debt. i've mentioned this a bit before but raph gets a LOT of plot convenient scholarships and hunter-footing-the-bill-for-things in order to justify putting him in the same circles as upper middle class and true rich characters. but it comes free with impostor syndrome and angst! ok tangent over.) anyways x2. he breaks everything breakable, steals anything valuable he can find, beats the shit out of hugh, and drains all the poison from the room where it's literally dripping from the walls. basically he completely and utterly snaps. it's really fun to play with - i haven't actually written his perspective in that au since before he did that, but it's already had so many fun effects on sebastian and charlotte and hugh. damn this is getting me excited about it all over again. maybe when nic and i wrap up the rp scene we're currently doing, i'll suggest we go back to it.

*i've never actually explained the difference between the og dreampack au and the remix dreampack au. basically, this happens when we want to mess with the character setup of a given au but the core premise remains the same. so in the og dreampack au, charlotte is dating sebastian. in the remix dreampack au, sebastian's pet dreamer (they are NOT dating) is will instead. in the og dreampack au meera is a ghost, in the remix au it's maddox. et cetera. similar things have happened with other aus, but the dreampack is definitely the most straightforward example of it.

[halfwaydeepunofficial]

this is extremely specific but i’m curious

footwear: What does your OC wear on their feet?

for raph. what kind of shoes does that showy mf usually wear

lol. funnily enough there’s already an answer built into the lore!

one of his prized possessions is a pair of royal blue cubans. he probably got them from goodwill a little scruffy but otherwise in Shockingly good condition. he did what he could about the scruff.

he wears them when he particularly wants to feel sexy but in order to keep them in good condition it’s not like, All The Time. he probably has a rotation of shoes tbh. every aspect of his look is Extremely curated to give the appearance of being a lot richer than he is, especially in an au like base modern or (even more so) dreampack/remix dreampack, any time he’s at a fancy school/institution on a scholarship.

most of his shoes are more normal looking tbh. but the cubans are special

[halfwaydeepunofficial]

hey. hey raph. hey raphael. listen to me. sometimes being a social chameleon isn’t a good thing. raphael you’ve surrounded yourself with awful misogynists can you guess how that’s going to work out

[halfwaydeepunofficial]

if you can’t tell i’m thinking about raph today. anyway have my favorite excerpt from my favorite thing i’ve ever written for him

He stood over the translucent water, looking down into the depths of the pool. The reflection he saw was him, but… uncanny. More filled out than he’d ever been, more at ease. Wearing clothes instead of swim trunks. Clothes Raph had never owned, but had dreamed about since he was young. A sunset-bright suit, tailored to fit him just right. Expensive sunglasses resting casually in his curls. A gold chain around his neck—real gold. The reflection’s grin was sharp and magnetic, the sort of expression Raph had always wanted to wear but had never felt satisfied with when he practiced in the mirror. It looked almost like Sebastian’s grin, but it was warmer, as inviting as it was compelling.

Raph crouched by the edge of the pool, less and less hesitant by the second. He skimmed his fingers across the reflection’s torso. The reflection winked—maybe at him, maybe at some unseen audience. He had the air of someone who was used to winking at audiences.

He didn’t even realize he’d dived until he was plunging into the water.

Endless scenes played out before him. Red carpets. Tilting his chin up toward a spotlight, basking in applause, sweating not from the effort of staying alive but from a show well performed. A big, lavish penthouse apartment in the heart of the city, just for him and his lovers. No—his boyfriend, a broad-shouldered boy with a steady smile and steadier hands who kissed his neck. God, Raph hadn’t even realized he wanted a boyfriend until it was right in front of him. He’d always imagined something more detached; lots of sex, not much love. No attachments meant nothing could get in the way of fame. But of course he wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He always had. He always would. He hadn’t realized until that moment just how much he ached for a stable presence beside him, holding his hand, pulling him into an embrace when he finally had a moment away from the flashing of cameras.

His lips parted as if to kiss the imaginary boy who his flourishing reflection was already kissing, and water rushed in. Next second, he was gasping and sputtering as hands pulled him out of the water, pinning him in place.

[halfwaydeepunofficial]

guys you’re not gonna believe this but having multiple extremely similar aus can get confusing