i wanted to do a lautski au bc pete is so seymour coded but accidentally had too much fun drawing lautity parallels
au explanation (and bonus audreymour art!) under cut!
characters:
nibbly is audrey ii. of course. who else to play the quasi-eldritch, otherworldly being whose entire purpose is to consume, and in the process feeds off of the growing greed of those around it.
steph as seymour. she’s not as naive or clumsy, but she still desperately wants to get out of hatchetfield, make it on her own away from the strange, sinking trap of the small town.
solomon as mushnik. a florist in hatchetfield who’s forced to take on his dead wife’s failing family business and despises the lowly life associated with it. there’s no money, no influence, no power with being a small-business owner. he technically only has one employee, grace, as he makes steph work to “earn her keep”.
grace as audrey. a respectable girl working part time partly because of her love of flowers and partly because of an unexplainable obsession with steph. she’s dating a “respectable” boy, beloved by the town and her parents.
max as orin. a sadistic bully who’s constantly crude and abrasive to his girlfriend, grace. (gonna be slightly ooc bc i think canon!max has a freak4freak thing going with grace but here he’s just straight up an asshole and grace is not interested like that).
the nerds as the urchins/greek chorus LMAO
plot:
ok i got like 80% of the actual plot but i can’t think up a satisfying ending and it’d probably be more like the stage version but i can’t work it out :((
steph feeds grace jr. blood (the ugly little plant is named that as a ragebait tactic against grace lol). she takes special care of the plant because it popped up in the shop basement after her mom’s funeral, so steph feels like she’s carrying on her mom’s love of flowers (especially unusual ones). so if that’s what the plant needs, no harm no foul
but then her grades start picking up. she’s not doing anything different, not studying or applying herself. but her college applications are looking up.
meanwhile steph is slowly and begrudgingly befriending grace through all the forced proximity their jobs require. grace is ecstatic that they’re growing closer (one step nearer to saving her dear friend’s immortal soul).
steph continues to feed grace jr. blood and things continue to look up. the shop gets more sales and solomon starts to reinvolve himself in the business. she’s being offered scholarships to distant colleges and grants to help the business.
steph finally gets a glimpse at grace’s “perfect” relationship, and is enraged on her friend’s behalf with all the shit he’s pressuring grace into.
nibbly then finally speaks up and proposes a trade. no one would miss max. in fact, a lot of people (specifically grace, but the nerds are kept in mind) would live better lives without max around. and in return, steph’s spoils will keep increasing. did she think the scholarships and success were her own? nibbly could ensure steph gets a full ride in any college across the country. or could restore the shop to steph’s mother’s former glory, place the ownership in steph’s hands.
steph isn’t convinced, but does realize that max should be talked to. he was never a friend, but she knows him and could probably get through his thick skull that he needs to let up on the bullying and stop pressuring grace into things.
so she invites him to the waylon place, an old hangout of theirs when she still had time to go to parties. she tries talking to him, but it devolves into a heated argument, both angry and yelling. max is getting satisfaction out of this, out of seeing the power he holds over the things steph cares about. fuck you steph, he’s actually going to pummel those nerds harder and he’s going to dump grace as soon as he convinces her to sleep with him.
the banister breaks and max falls.
max begs her to call 911, but she runs away, panicked.
nibbly confronts steph and persuades her to make the best of a bad situation. get rid of the evidence of her negligent homicide and FEED HIM.
steph does it. and is then amazed by how much better her life gets. her friend group starts talking more and they’re even hanging out with the (now bully-free) nerds. business starts BOOMING and steph is allowed to make any changes she’d like to the shop, so she starts planning renovations and events that her mom would have loved. local news starts covering her efforts as a “young entrepreneur” with her strange and unusual plant. colleges start reaching out to her, offering her full rides or generous scholarships because of her success. and grace mourns her boyfriend, but steph pushes that to the back of her mind, knowing that grace would be off better for it. steph also pushes max’s agonizing, fearful, bloody last moments to the back of her mind. she killed him shekilledhimshekilled-
grace and steph hang out more as the shop gets busier. steph actually enjoys grace’s company a lot, especially now since their conversations have branched past religion and botany.
nibbly starts getting hungry again. he pesters steph relentlessly, but steph has been avoiding him as much as possible, guilt weighing down on her, especially because of how much happier she’s been.
solomon confronts steph about max. he’s had his suspicions, her life360 location matching the location max was last seen, her buried bloody flannel, and now her and grace (the last accusation is bewildering but steph is too panicked to push him on what grace has to do with anything). steph admits to everything, explaining the sentient plant and max's fall through sobs.
solomon believes her (its hard not to after the talking plant affirms steph’s explanation). but he’s not horrified, or ashamed of what his daughter’s done.
he’s excited. he starts contemplating aloud what this could do for business, discussing with nibbly how they could expand the plant’s powers beyond petty scholarships and sales revenue. he starts mulling over who’d be missed least, in exchange. whose disappearance in hatchetfield (a town where people go missing everyday) would direct the least attention towards them? the homeless man? a clivesdale resident? one of those nerds that’s always hanging around the shopfront?
steph numbly comes to the realization that he’s serious. her father would actually kill someone over this. he would take a life for a plant, for petty success in this stupid town. and now, no matter how he does it, that blood will stain her hands. as she realizes this, nibbly’s huge maw opens in tandem. solomon is seemingly oblivious to both the plant and his daughter’s building resolve.
she pushes him in.
and then idk lol i can’t decide how this’d resolve or how lautity would end up together sorryyyyy
anyways bonus audreymour (in lautski hoco fits!) as promised
thinking about that line in Nerdy Prudes Must Die, where Wiggly says "We even hold court in your own tongue and form." at first I thought it just meant they were human-shaped, but I just now realized that The Lords In Black were literally borrowing the faces of people they knew. Pokey looked like Steph's dad. Nibbly and Tinky looked like Grace's parents. and then Blinky and Wiggly wore the faces of their recently-deceased friends. that had to be terrifying.
I love how after watching Nightmare Time, TGWDLM implies that all the powerhouses of Hatchetfield were infected before the CCRP crew (also that Pokey plays favorites)
Steph and Solomon’s initial and last name being slaughter but not just in the sense of the others they had to sacrifice to reach their goals, but also the things they had to kill in themselves to get here
The pieces both Steph and Solomon had to bury alive within themselves to be popular, to be powerfully, to be respected, to be liked
I haven’t seen anyone talk about how Solomon reacted to Miss Tessburger’s death. Like, the decapitated head of his secretary is thrown in front of him, and Solomon responds by picking it up and tearfully telling her that she was worthless.
