#mel spriggs

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

Looking over my main characters/the arcs I tend to write/the characters I tend to be attracted to writing 200k+ words about, patterns start to emerge (most of which describe me pretty well, ngl). So I'm kinda curious.

Which one of my favorite character traits to write do you vibe with the most?

Feel alone in a crowded room

Want to break the cycle my parents/mentors trapped me in

Have a deep craving for hugs but no idea how to vocalize it

Attracted to people in button-ups

Hardest turn-on is competence/people being really fucking good at things

Really fucking tired of ableism

AutisticTM

Favorite insult is "dipshit"

Voting ended onMar 24, 2024

[khruschevshoe]

Lucius and Mel Spriggs

It's all washin' over me, I'm angry again

The things that I lost here, the people I knew

They got me surrounded for a mile or two

The car's in reverse, I'm grippin' the wheel

I am not scared of death, I've got dreams again

It's just me and the curve of the valley

And there is meanin' on earth, I am happy

-Noah Kahan, The View Between Villages

Now that she is not dwelling over her own death, the anger seeps in. A righteous, blessed anger, at not just her parents but merchant society and the whole damn island that broke her and her brother. They were children. Babies tossing coins into wishing wells thinking that a tiny circle of metal might somehow banish the monster from their house. They never should have been trapped in that manor house, any more than Jim or Lucius or Frenchie or Izzy or Archie or Fang should have been trapped by their sea god.

“Fuck that place,” Mel spits as she takes another swig of rum. It burns going down, as hot and sour as her fury, and she relishes it. She'll take the heat of grog over the chill of a gaol cell any day. “Fuck being seventeen and knowing you'll never make it out and accepting that you're destined to die." She passes the bottle back to Lucius. “Because we did, you know? We made it out. Fuck him. Both of them. We made ourselves a family, a home, beyond what they wanted for us.”

“Fuck yeah,” Lucius says, raising the bottle in the air, cheering her statement. "Fuck him. Eat shit, Solomon and Elizabeth Spriggs." He downs a large gulp of rum while sending a middle finger to the sky.

And Mel cannot help the giggle that bubbles up through her throat, escaping bright and wild into the ocean air.

Going home can be a comfort for some, but it would never have been a comfort for her. Anguilla holds only ghosts; the Revenge holds life. It holds lantern light and music and love.

Because finally, Mel has this. The thing that she and Lucius could never have as children, when they were too scared of who might overhear. They have a shared anger, a shared catharsis. They get to complain together, bitch together, exist together without sins or memories weighing them down.

-aletterinthenameofsanity, forgive my northern attitude (I was raised on little light)

Something about reading Mel and Lucius' heart-to-heart rewired my brain a bit after the amazing arc they had in Season 3 and I'm not going to be over it anytime soon. Clearly I'm not over it now because I've been thinking about these two and their complicated, loving, trauma-bonded dynamic and them finally getting a sense of catharsis for the past week and a half.

(In which I have been rotating this song in my head for these two for weeks now and I don't care if I already did a moodboard for their dynamic, I'm posting a second one because I have FEELINGS, alright?)

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

@polikate @bricksbloggyplace @possumsmushroom

[khruschevshoe]

Archie Jimenez and Mel Spriggs

How deeply are you sleeping

Or are you still awake?

A good friend told me

You've been staying out so late

Be careful what it takes

From what I've seen so far

The good ones always seem to break

Grab me by my ankles, I've been flying for too long

-Florence + the Machine, Sky Full of Song

Mel looks down at the deck. "It's nice to see the whole family from here," Mel says. "See them in their natural habitat, and all."

Archie looks beneath them. Up on the upperdecks, Olu is at the wheel of the ship, talking with Lucius, who is jotting down notes as Olu gracefully steers the ship towards the Republic of Pirates. Down on the deck, Pete is leaning against the railing, whittling away at something. Izzy stops on his walk up to talk with Olu in order to press a quick kiss to Pete's mouth. Pete grins so wide that Archie can see it all the way up here. Jim leans over the side of the rigging to chat with Frenchie and Fang, who are busy playing cards while Wee John sits on a crate next to them, working on a new knitting project. Roach is likely below deck in the kitchens, bustling away with dinner.

Archie can't help but smile fondly. This is her family, now. She is a part of this crew, not just as an able body, but as cared about as Mel or Lucius or Izzy or Jim. "We've got a pretty great set-up on this ship, don't we?"

Mel nods and smiles at Archie in turn. "I'm glad you're feeling better. Things weren't as fun without you here."

-aletterinthenameofsanity, everybody saw that spring had come again (with a love song)

And enter my two new blorbos and their delightful friendship! It was so much fun to have their relatively easygoing dynamic compared to all of the angst/complicated relationships that are going on elsewhere on the Revenge, and you know I gotta love a mentor/mentee dynamic between two women- ESPECIALLY two queer women. Archie insisting on having the first hug after Mel was rescued in Anguilla made me smile so wide!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

@polikate @possumsmushroom @angxlwiings @bricksbloggyplace @yuenity @ruecrown

[khruschevshoe]

Jim Jimenez and Mel Spriggs

You should fear what you already know

And hope that you never find out about the things you don't know yet

Just because something burns bright

Doesn't mean it's gonna burn forever

So, all these people around you saying

"You got so much further to go"

"It's gonna get worse before it gets better"

I don't know, I don't know if that's true

'Cause we are all, eventually

Either the victims, or the victims' family

-Cold War Kids, First

"I don't ever want to be the reason Lucius gets hurt," Mel says. "And it seems like lately, that's all I seem to be doing. He's on edge, and he's pretending not to be, and I can't help but think that me being back here is just bringing back bad things into his life."

The problem with Mel is that unlike Blackbeard, whose apologies meant nothing to Jim even when they were sincere because Blackbeard had actively hurt them over and over, on purpose, Mel has made these hurts on accident. In certain ways, they're not even her fault; it's two people with their own bad histories bashing their own responses to stress up against each other in ways guaranteed to leave cracks.

Jim thinks about their friendships with Pete and Izzy, about how steady they feel, about how opening up to Pete about their gender has made them feel connected and sharing under the stars with Izzy has made them feel grounded. Mel is still adrift, dragging her chains behind her. 

They take a deep breath. They can do this. They can try to trust an outsider. 

For Lucius, Jim thinks. For their friends, they would do anything.

-aletterinthenameofsanity, on the back of a hurricane that started turning (when you were young)

So, I'm a big fan of watching Jim's journey of trust in Season 3, especially as it relates to Mel. To steal a line from this excerpt, Jim and Mel both have trauma reactions that don't always coincide nicely, and it's a real treat to get to see them slowly work things out until things explode with the bounty poster reveal (no spoilers, sorry, y'all will have to read it!), but then eventually Jim and Mel resolve their problems and end up with one of the tighter bonds in the show. I love a good mistrust-of-strangers-due-trauma-evolves-into-found-family-bonds arc, and these two really sell it well.

(Also, the Front Bottoms really fit these two's combined vibe.)

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

@possumsmushroom @bricksbloggyplace @jaceum @yuenity @polikate

[khruschevshoe]

Mel Spriggs

Long is the road that leads me home

And longer still when I walk alone

Steady is the hand that's come to terms

With the lessons it has had to learn

I've seen the things that I must do

So take my hand and set me free

Take my burdens and bury them deep

Take this burden away from me

And bury it before it buries me

-The Oh Hellos, Cold Is The Night

As Archie twirls her into her brother’s arms, Mel feels more a part of the sea than ever before.

She is no merchant's daughter. She is no trapped child. She is no criminal.

She is a pirate. She is free.

She is home.

This is the moment that Mel Spriggs wants to stay in forever, uninhibited, with her brother and her friends and this new, incredible family that she is beginning to call her own.

-aletterinthenameofsanity, look at the stars and confess our dreams (we can't wait 'til tomorrow)

I would like y'all to meet my new blorbo, Mel Spriggs, stubborn, beautifully-developed aromantic asexual queen. Since I am cursed with said blorbo being an OC in a fic series I'm reading, I just had to make her a moodboard.

Y'all can meet her in her intro fic here, though she gets a full arc over the course of the series:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

(I'm thinking of making moodboards for other characters/ships in the series, if people are interested? What do y'all think?)

@polikate @bricksbloggyplace @angxlwiings @possumsmushroom @aletterinthenameofsanity

[khruschevshoe]

Lucius and Mel Spriggs

Isaac, are you listening? I watched it from afar

Yes, I watched as your life just fell apart

Isaac, will you never learn that a father's love must be earned

Or your mother need not learn?

Isaac, I have never seen you look so afraid

With your head pressed so hard against the stone, you look so alone

I'm gonna give all my love to you

-Bear's Den, Isaac

When Mel set off for the Republic of Pirates, she could have remade herself in any number of ways. She could have chosen a new first name, a new surname, could have gotten rid of her last name entirely.

But she didn’t. She stayed Mel Spriggs, damn the consequences, not because the last name gave her protection, but because it connected her to the one person who, at any point in her life, had protected her. It didn’t matter that he’d left her. It didn’t matter that she had so little of a chance to find him that she had a better chance finding a letter in a bottle dropped off the side of a ship in the middle of the ocean.

Mel Spriggs was Lucius Spriggs’ little sister, and she was going to find him. She was going to get her family back.

-aletterinthenameofsanity, while you were out there weighing odds (I was imploding the mirage)

In honor of the new Mel & Lucius fic that went up yesterday, here is my moodboard for their relationship! I have never gotten so attached to an oc relationship before, but their sibling relationship is so complex and organic and real and heartwarming that I just got smacked in the face with the emotions!

This fic is not the first one in the series, but it is the one this quote is from! (Plus it has a Lucius-involved wedding proposal in for those who loved the proposal in the show!)

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

@polikate @angxlwiings @possumsmushroom @bricksbloggyplace

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

we'll all be here forever, or musings on sibling love

Listening to Noah Kahan's song "You're Gonna Go Far" and thinking a lot about siblings today. About how I've moved seventeen hours away from home and how I only see my younger brother twice a year and how we're nothing alike but how he knows me better than anyone else in the world, because our parents got divorced when we were so young and we were the only constants in each other's worlds and how we're mirrors of each other in so many ways and how there is a weight between us because no one knows how to hurt us like each other and about how as an eldest daughter I am protective of him but that he felt like he could never live up to the precedent I set in school (despite the fact that he's exceeded me in so many ways) and how I was always trying to cushion the blow of realizing how our father had failed us to the point where my brother still doesn't know the extent about it despite the fact that we're both adults.

Thinking about how I still love my little brother and always will but how love is shown in the small acts, like learning about sports I don't care about and asking him for country music recommendations because I didn't pay enough attention to him when I was a teenager because I was too focused on myself but I was this thing between a kid and an adult, never enough of one to feel like enough of the other, and how I'm still trying. That I care about these things because I care about him.

I'm thinking about love. I'm thinking about the long car rides to and from our dad's house on dad's weeks and the two of us falling asleep in the car in the morning listening to country music and how it's been thirteen years since our parents got divorced and I'm halfway across the country but I still smile when I see pokemon memes and text them to my brother because love is stored in the road trips and the bonding moments and the things that sucked and the things that hold nostalgia and the things that make you who you are.

I'm thinking about my brother. And I'm thinking about how he'll never know that he's the inspiration behind so many of my younger sibling characters in my writing and how sometimes the greatest evidence of love is something that the other person will never see.

I'm thinking about growing up. I'm thinking about distance and closeness and the bonds that can bend without ever breaking. I'm thinking about love.

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

So, Uh, That's A Lot of Words...

I'm not entirely sure how this is humanly possible (I'm the one who wrote it and I couldn't tell you how), but it looks like with these next two updates (one of which is already at 6k and the other of which is at 5kish, both of which look like they'll both need AT LEAST a few thousand more to complete), I'm going to hit 300,000 words in 2.5 months? CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW I DID THAT???

(This is coming from someone who once asked how NaNoWriMo was possible bc no way someone could write 50k in a month, whose previous writing record was for my book Burn the House Down, which was about 85k in 3.5 months. Like, I'm sorry? This should not have been physically or mentally possible? And yet I don't feel stressed at all?

Guess I gotta thank the hyperfixation, the new job, and the new place, but still. I don't know how I pulled this off.)

Anyway, if any of y'all want to check out what started out as an OFMD s2 fix-it fic (with plenty of poly rep, disabled rep, trauma recovery, shenanigans, and a living Izzy!) before it spiralled, you can find it here as I finish the last few updates:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works