//Ok, the last of my insane Yellowjackets crafting weekend is over (for now...) with Seance Shauna and her favorite little knife! The figure used as her body base had some imbalance issues (which were not aided by the shirt sculpt needing to cover the place where a backpack used to be) so I had to glue her to a base disk for stability -- which I spruced up with cabin floor details for some extra spice. I had to paint the symbol backwards to get it right (after some trial and error) but I think it really adds to the scene.
ICYMI: My Dead Jackie custom Pop-sicle and my Video Store Van Palmer
If you have ideas for other characters you'd like to see me try in the future, let me know! I'd love to draft up other concepts and already have 2 different characters planned for my second wave.
@scatcrccio gets a call from Shauna the day after Halloween
Yes, maybe Shauna was still rattled from seeing her daughter in Jackie's uniform last night. But no matter how pleasant their resulting conversation had actually been, it didn't change the fact that Callie had been getting high on ecstasy on Halloween at a dance club. And yes, Shauna had also been out at that club with Adam, but that was way beside the point.
After giving her daughter an earnest talk about the consequences of trying to blackmail her about the... cheating, Shauna resolved to do the responsible, motherly thing. Which, in her messed up life, meant calling one of the least responsible, but frankly quite consistent people she knew for intel. Preventative measures, she told herself.
"C'mon... pick up..." Shauna stood at the kitchen sink, looking out into the sunshine beyond the window to see if there were any pests in the garden. Then the line clicked. She perked up, if only in a sort of formal manner -- Nat Scatorccio wasn't exactly a girl-talk kind of friend.
"Hey, Natalie... Hope I'm not disturbing anything. Good Halloween?" A nervous laugh, and the smallest of small talk before launching into her ulterior motive. "I have a question that I think someone of your... local networking abilities would have an answer for."
v: it's not evil - just hungry, available for shauna/jackie/misty/nat
note: full background/social and timeframe setting for verse/threads is flexible dependent on plotting with partner
Cast: Shauna the psychopomp, Jackie the siren, Natalie the dhampir, Misty the hag-touched.
Shauna Shipman: Psychopomp
A psychopomp, or in essence, a reaper, is a melancholy and misunderstood figure. Associated with death but never the cause of it, Shauna is feared all the same. She arrives at the site of death and quietly begins the work of preparing the soul for its next stage of being. She does not judge or condemn the dead, but simply makes the transition to the afterlife a little easier, perhaps a little kinder. Her hunter's knife is the scythe by which she severs the threads to the mortal plane, whether or not there is a body left to carve. It is somber, solitary work to clean up the place where a life once was, but she dutifully does her work no matter how many believe her to be a butcher.
Shauna often does not know those she is tasked with ferrying, but if she learns anything of them, she writes down details of who they once were in her journal. Much of a life is lost to time, but she tries to remember the ones she helps.
She sometimes takes the form of her young self, and sometimes she is older, but Shauna exists outside of linear time and most frequently appears to be her teenage self (even if she never really was a teenager). She can also manifest in animal forms, occasionally a deer or a flock of birds waiting just beyond the body.
Shauna doesn't appear naturally to the living, unless they have some connection to the otherworldly -- the killers, those who have had near-death experiences, and others who have witnessed a lot of death may be included in this, but there isn't an exact science to it.
Jackie Taylor: Siren
What she lacks in skill and acuity she makes up for in influence. Sirens have that sort of hold on people, after all. For the longest time, Jackie never really understood why she always got what she wanted -- she just knew the universe conspired to make it happen. It wasn't until she told a guy in high school to "go fuck himself" that she finally realized there was something more to her words and her voice. That said, not everything she says is compelling -- Jackie has learned to hone "the voice" she uses to influence and beguile. In the meantime, it doesn't hurt she's gorgeous and well-liked. And that wasn't because she forced anyone to believe it... right?
Contrary to popular belief, she's not the type of siren that people think should be related to mermaids. They're more classically bird-women, but Jackie doesn't manifest any avian traits (apart from sometimes getting really sharp manicures, but that's purely aesthetic).
Jackie is skilled in vocal mimicry and even if she's not the world's best singer, her influencing abilities can be dangerous to weak-minded individuals. If she's swapped spit with you too, she's likely to have a stronger hold. If she's silenced, gagged, made to bite her own tongue, or deafened, her powers lose their effect.
Jackie also has synesthesia and can clearly see and distinguish the source of sounds (granted that they're not overpowering -- she can be prone to overstimulation).
Natalie Scatorccio: Dhampir
A cursed child often born of a vampiric father and a human mother. A mix of both worlds, belonging to neither. Natalie has always been an outcast in every sense of the word, right down to her very biology. And as she slowly learned the truth about her parentage, things began to become clearer. As vampiric offspring are wont to do, Nat was responsible for the death of her father, but it didn't do anything to solve her own affliction. It did, however, free her mother from his thrall -- but her mother still resents her daughter for what she did, even if it was ultimately a good thing.
As a dhampir, she has a weakened mix of the strengths and vulnerabilities as a vampire (though of course, stakes to the heart and decapitation will do the trick). Natalie is prone to sunburns and is sensitive to light, but is slightly stronger, faster, and more durable than humans. Religious iconography does still impact her, though she does not need invitation over thresholds and is not weak to running water.
Her blood and bile are toxic to full-blooded vampires, and her own appetite for carnage can mostly be suppressed, but she does still need to drink blood every so often, especially when injured or weak. (This is a mix of dhampir lore sources, I don't love when they're just All Vampire Awesomeness with No Weaknesses.)
Natalie will stop aging on a human timescale when she hits adulthood, if she lives that long. In the meantime, she indulges in nightlife, intoxicants, and other experiences to try to numb the pain and distract from the fact there's nowhere she truly belongs.
Misty Quigley: Hag-touched
She wasn't born a witch, and she's not innately magical. But Misty saw the sorts of powers that existed just beyond the fingertips of most normal lives and wanted some of it for herself. For those who aren't lucky enough to have natural magic, well, there's always a hag coven. Misty found a gathering of powerful women who were willing to make a bargain and bring the blonde into their society. And Misty prefers this type of wicked handiwork to simply waving fingers and casting spells. Just... don't leave strands of hair or fingernail clippings where she can find them for her "experiments".
Inspired by various hag folklore and D&D depictions, Misty's magic is based in exchange and component value -- she excels in curses, inconveniences, and changes in fortune, but she's not entire malevolent. She isn't wholly benevolent either, extracting some sort of price from those who seek her aid. And if they don't, she just has fun making whatever mischief she can -- often targeting individuals to whom she later proposes the solution to their woes.
Also, not all hags are old and ugly -- Misty resents that idea, thank you!
a poem from one of shauna shipman's journals, dated february 14, 199x???
It's bloody work,
to love the girl who holds the knife.
She has a heart like you and I,
but hers is trained to beat,
to beat and keep beating
until all is raw
and tender
and weeping.
That's why it's in a cage, you see.
Even if
she would crack
every
rib
to set it free.
Her knife cuts bone,
but it prefers the flesh.
She keeps her mind sharp
like her weapon,
full of cutting cleverness.
The word
cleave
has a double edge
for her knife's single one.
With it,
she would cut you in two
and hold fast the bleeding halves,
as if time
and
tenderness
would make you whole once more.
The girl is both
Damocles
and
the sword,
held in place by the strength
of one lock of hair --
brown,
sleek,
and at her age,
meant to be kept
in a locket close
to the heart of her love.
But it's bloody work,
to love the girl
who holds the knife.
You move in close
and the sharpness piercing your skin
sounds like the whisper of her sorrow.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
From where I stand
the handle's dull
and wrapped in beaten leather,
soft and worn in my hand.
Safe, familiar, home.
@itchose {callie} and shauna are back home after the mess at the compound
The drive home had been tense and quiet. It was one thing to omit the truth when Callie didn't know about it. But now, Shauna's silence was active denial of everything that had just transpired. She had wanted to keep her daughter out of it, out of all of it, for as long as she could. And a part of her wanted to believe that Callie didn't have to be involved any further, but Lottie's words scratched at the back of her mind like a rat digging through a pantry -- she's powerful.
Lottie had always been fascinated with her children and their capacity for the dark urges she saw out in the darkness. Why couldn't Lottie leave her, leave them alone?
Shauna knew her daughter would have questions. Too many she couldn't or wouldn't answer if asked. Her heart was aching and her mind was racing and she couldn't even look to her old journals for a sense of place, to ground her. The others had all been willing to kill, or to act as though they would so much that the lines blurred between reality and fiction -- and to Lottie, maybe that was enough. Van and Taissa had called off the psych team. Natalie died in her place, but without the famine of winter, what purpose did her death serve? There was no meat to butcher, there was no hunger to feed. And Misty, who had spent so long out in those woods trying to heal their wounds, was the one who killed their hunter, their leader.
How could Callie ever understand this when Shauna was struggling to make sense of it all herself?
The silence had swelled as it followed them home. Every time she looked at her daughter, Shauna was reminded that this is what she had been afraid of all along. Callie's hands held a gun, and while they didn't take a life, they brought her closer to the awful truth of everything her mother refused to put into words.
"I never wanted you to see any of that," Shauna finally said the following afternoon. It was meant to come from a place of love, perhaps maternal devotion. But through her strangled thoughts, it could only emerge laced with disappointment and anger. "You shouldn't have been there."
@perfectionreached is the maid of honor on Shauna's happy (?) day
Thank god for wedding day superstitions. The groom wasn't allowed to see the bride until that fateful walk down the aisle, so that meant Jeff wasn't nearby to see Shauna threatening to ruin an hour's worth of careful makeup with an ill-timed bout of tears. Taissa, her maid of honor, was on damage control, and boy, was it a lot of damage.
Not only was the sight of herself in a white dress (pure as the driven, deadly snow) hard to comprehend, but Shauna just remembered something--
"Tai, there's... there's the cake knife. Oh, god -- it's beautiful and it has our initials engraved on it. It was a gift from the Taylors, and what if I try to hurt him with it?"
For almost two years of her life, knives had not been beautiful, silvered things for slicing sugared breads in delicately manicured hands. They were hard, leather-wrapped things with edges held to the whetstone, pointed and lethal. Shauna had wrapped her dirtied fingers around the handle and skinned, cleaved, and butchered humans and animals alike. Hungry eyes holding fast, watching. What would she do today, in front of the crowd of loved ones waiting to see how that cake would bleed what flavor they'd finally decided on?
"Taissa, I don't think I can do this..."
Yes, thank god for wedding day superstitions. Too bad they never said nothing about seeing the ghost of your dead best friend sitting in the corner, watching the scene and saying absolutely nothing.
@darkconsumed {Jeff} and Shauna are trying to make this thing work post-crash
In some ways, Jeff was all that Shauna had left of Jackie.
In some ways, that was absolutely not true, but maybe if she said it enough, she'd be more comfortable with his love. Was that what this was? There was something to his affection and attention that wasn't being said. Which was fine -- apart from the barest of bones (bad choice of words), Shauna wasn't going to tell him what had happened out there. He'd never understand, no way.
Not Jackie, not the baby, none of it.
Where Jeff and her best friend had assumed the mantles of class king and queen to ensure their survival in the food chain that was high school, Shauna had to become something she wasn't (or maybe she always was) in those woods. Something that shouldn't have been rescued, or let back into society. Those words, those thoughts were only for her journals, and maybe Jackie's, someday. Wherever she was, she hoped Jackie understood. The hunger, the jealousy, the love.
Oh god, he'd asked her a question, hadn't he? What was it -- something about getting lunch, maybe? It was hard to go out in public in Wiskayok since the return, people asking the girls questions no one wanted the real answers to. But Jeff had said something, and she was just sitting here staring.
closed starter for @forgottensurvivor from adult shauna, set in Wiskayok after the bathroom incident at the restaurant
Shauna would be absolutely fucked if she took cheese shopping advice from psycho Misty Quigley. But, considering how badly she'd offended those insipid little hotel barons and now Jeff was upset and likely to lose a substantial source of potential income... she'd say she was already pretty fucked.
It felt good to watch Joel squirm, though.
Still, she's had to swallow worse things than her pride before, even if she's sure Jeff would agree with her that those two guys were total boners. Shauna couldn't help leaping into the fray when she saw the way they were preparing to batter her husband's ego around just a little more to make him beg for the privilege of furnishing their stupid "experience". So now she's here, buying fancy cheeses they'll probably waste or pair with stupid crackers or compare to caviar or something like weird rich men do.
Shauna gets in her car after spending an amount of money she'd rather not think about -- but if it's in the name of Jeff getting a deal, she'd have to survive it. But before she turns on the ignition, she gets this strange sense she's being watched. She checks the backseat, thinking of that one in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark before wondering whether she should get out or just go. She's exhausted by this strange feeling that's been following her since Natalie's memorial and feeling just punchy enough to confront it -- even if it's all in her head.
"Is there someone fucking with me? Is that what this is?" She calls as she steps out of the minivan, one hand curled around her keys as she circles the car. It would be naive to say that whatever is going on ends here, but for her part, she won't let it go on any further. "What do you want?"
