Discover Top Posts Tagged with #wager plot

Hi! I wanted to tell you that I really love your beetlebabes art <3 I’m really curious about your take on the characters, can you tell us more about your AU?

Thank you!! Im a sucker for powerful characters getting wrapped around the finger of some normie lmao

Okay okay so I've only seen the movie once when I was like 11, and haven't gotten around to rewatching it, but I remember Betelgeuse's nature/motive being more of a mystery at first? I like good old fashion demons with Rules and Deals and True Names. In my AU, Betelgeuse has made a lot of trouble by making deals with ghosts and taking their souls (basically all those background dancers are ghosts who are contractually bound to him lmao), then using them to get living people to summon him, before he either gets banished again, makes a deal, or kills them.

It becomes such a problem that Juno decides to play his game and make a Wager. She gets to pick a recently departed spirit, and Betelgeuse has to train them to haunt their place of death. He can't help outside of teaching them how to scare; the spirit has to do the actual haunting all by themself. If he wins, he will be free to enter the living world whenever he wants, without needing to be summoned. If he loses, his contracts will be destroyed, and he will be bound to the spirit's place of death alongside them.

He accepts, thinking this is going to be the easiest thing in the world. He's already trained so many ghosts how to scare, its his whole thing!

And then Juno picks the Maitlands.

He was excited for all of two seconds, thinking Juno lost her mind giving him TWO ghosts to work with, but that excitement is quickly and brutally extinguished because my version of the Maitlands are exactly like they are in the musical.

He manages to last almost two weeks before they drive him fucking crazy, and he gives up. He meets up with Juno on the roof and tries to complain that picking these two wasn't fair, yada yada, but she's having none of it. As agreed, all his contracts are destroyed, freeing the ghosts who are bound to him (notice how after the Invisible Reprise he doesn't have background dancers anymore until the wedding??), and he can't leave the house. He is BaNiShEd! DiSaVoWeD! And its going to be really fucking hard to get back to where he was before when the only ghosts he has are the goddamn Maitlands.

Then the Deetz finally move in, and he meets Lydia. A 16 yr old goth girl writing a suicide note- who can SEE him. Their first meeting goes almost exactly the same as canon, except Lydia jumps afterwards, still very much suicidal and believing that the Maitlands are unable to make her dad see them.

Barbara's ghosty powers kick in right on time, and she levitates Lydia back to safety. Cue the gushy ass scene that keeps me awake at night, where the Maitlands tell Lydia she doesn't have to do things alone, she can rely on other people, they aren't going to give up on helping her after only one failed attempt :') New Parental Figures Acquired.

Then they fail again and Lydia can't deal. She summons Betelgeuse!

Now to the part that you actually asked about, which was my take on Lydia and Betelgeuse's dynamic sjslkdlsjs. When he first met her on the roof, he was just gonna kill her or steal her soul after being summoned, but in the five minutes they spoke he went from looking down on her, to seeing her as a challenge, then to downright respect by the time she pushed him off the roof lmao. Even at her most vulnerable emotional state she doesn't let herself get pushed around, and even takes the time to actively fuck with him. Mad respect.

Lydia has dealt with enough predators to recognize the glint in his eye right off the bat. She enjoys taking some of her anger out on him, since he clearly needs something from her and won't be properly retaliating. When the dinner party thing happens, she figures she was going to kill herself anyways, what more could a demon possibly do?

At this point Betelgeuse is just delighted. As an immortal, boredom and being trapped are two of his worst nightmares, and this girl just handed him some freedom and goddammit she's interesting. Most people would cower when a demon shows their true form in the middle of the living room, but she just ran up to him and told her dad "this is what you get!" Like bitch! He's sold! He wants to hang out with this fucked up breather.

Okay summary time because I could Go On. Betelgeuse wants to be needed, he wants people who can't leave him, and he wants to be free to do whatever he likes. Lydia needs him, but she also seems to genuinely like him, which isn't really a thing he's used to. Suddenly he feels the need to constantly impress her, he loves making her laugh, he loves listening to her talk about weirdo shit, and he loves how she isn’t as uptight as other breathers are about him doing things like- summoning snakes out of a pizza box and having them maul the face of the delivery guy.

Lydia just wants to be seen and accepted for who she is, and someone she can rely on when things are hard. Betelgeuse is literally the only person in the five years since her mom died (yeah in my AU its been 5 yrs not 6 months) who she has been able to rely on to keep her physically safe. Who has no issue with her talking about weird/gross things, and who actively encourages her to let out her emotions instead of keeping them pent up.

But this sudden release of all the anger, pain and frustration she’s kept inside her is what leads to this new, crueler attitude she picked up. She laughs at Betelgeuse chasing a child with a fake disembodied head, laughs at the pizza guy writhing with snakes biting his face, and mockingly joins the dance of the three possessed people because she is just... dissociating. And why should she care about other ppl’s pain anyway, when they ignored hers all this time? She rides the power high of having a demon enamored with her, backing up her anger with literal fire. It’s extremely self-destructive and unhealthy! :)

#wager plot

Trending Tags

Recently Viewed Tags

#wager plot