wordsgood reblogged
Which OC is a twin?
yeah i'm still at it with this picrew , this time w/ the deep six gang (lev, chance, sixes, sevens)
#idk if doing picrews is cringe yet. and i don't care. i can't draw so this is as close as i can get#i love this picrew for this gang tho. look how cute and sweet all these teenage murderers are <3#chance has no pin <3 because he is not allowed to have an identity <3#(he's queer somehow but even i honestly don't know how. i don't think HE knows.)#story: deep six
wordsgood reblogged
I keep getting increasingly excited about the idea of, instead of a revenge epic, a forgiveness epic. In the revenge epics, it’s always the main character who’s been wronged, who has the moral high ground and ain’t afraid to use it, which is cool and all, but–what about a main character who doesn’t have the moral high ground? Who’s done wrong and knows it? Who spends a long time trying to squirm away from what they’ve done, cover it up, lock it away, but finally is driven to a breaking point of admission– And is forgiven?
deep six gang if they were bg3 tavs
- lev: human eldritch knight fighter, urchin background. she has dreams of being a paladin (oath of devotion) that she buries way down deep; hitting things very, very hard, either with a weapon or her magical/technical intelligence, is how she devotes herself instead.
- chance: drow half-elf bard, college of lore, charlatan background. he doesn't play an instrument, just sings (siren, baby!). very much avoids physical violence until his opponents are under his spell enough that killing them isn't too messy.
- sixes: mephistopheles tiefling, fiend warlock, urchin background. pact of the tome. he's dangerous enough but has always tried to work smarter, not harder, since he's quite literally undead and still has shitty lungs. uses vicious mockery like it's going out of business.
- sevens: mephistopheles tiefling assassin rogue, urchin background. he isn't the strongest fighter or cleverest magic user, but he's learned to fade into the background so effectively that no one ever sees him coming until it's too late, and maybe not even then.
#vicious mockery is literally MADE for sixes he would use it constantly. in and out of combat. vicious mockery friendly fire#story: deep six#almost all of my books would be perfect for this game because 9/10 of them have 4 core characters#idk why it's always 4 i just. it's just the perfect balance. they were really onto something w/ 4 party members at a time#deep six bitter magic wdnftp monster.................all 4 core characters#the perfect party balance!
i didn't expect to ever be ready to outline deep six so soon but. well! things happen. i have an external plot column and then character- and relationship-focused columns, so i can make sure everyone has something interesting to do and there are good interactions happening every chapter.
but for Chapter 1, i'm just working on establishing character in the first place, so behold, short lil character blurbs for the four MCs of deep six, the book that used to be about assassin kids breaking free of their brutal home life, and which is now about assassin kids breaking free of their brutal home life and also 3/4 of them are monsters.
anyway enough horny vampires. sixes sees your sad horny vampires and raises you “grouchy touch-averse asexual vampire.” if you so much as bend your neck in his direction he’s going to spray you with a water bottle full of arsenic. wash your damn hands and then give him your wrist if you’re so into being his lunch. “intricate rituals” more like unsanitary rituals. if he ever bites someone on the neck its because he wants to kill them dead and he WILL be brushing his teeth afterwards
i was doodling value spectrums for the main 4 chars of deep six because that helps me figure out how to build plot (plot serves character alwayssss), and chance’s was the easiest because he is the biggest fuckup. his harmful value (cowardice) is glaring and obvious. sixes’s is also easy at this point (greed). sevens is always a little bit of an enigma and i’m working on his. but lev is my baby, my best girl, so i thought i knew what it was: need for control. she’s been the guardian of her little family for so long that ofc the trait that gets her into trouble is that need for control, she feels she has to be a little bit of a tyrant. but tbh that’s never been a cause of problems — she’s never loved her family “too much,” never wanted to save them “too much.” she doesn’t harm them by protecting them.
what does end up doing harm is that she is afraid of letting them go. it’s not control that she wants; she wants to not be alone. she is afraid of being the one less loved. which means that………..oh my god, lev and chance share the same value spectrum but they work in exactly opposite directions……….i’m going to scream. their identical fatal flaw is connected to their identical saving grace (fear <—> trust) and it works the same way. chance has to trust lev to love him so much that she will not harm him if he gets close; lev has to trust chance to love her so much that he won’t leave if she lets him go.
they are so siblings they are so soulmates they are so everything to me. the immovable object vs the unstoppable force. SCREAM.
#the thing about lev is that I don’t even think she’s aware of her fear.#chance is fully aware! he knows he’s afraid All The Time and he knows why. he lets his fear order his life#because otherwise he’s dead. and there may be things people call ‘worse than death’#but life itself is literally all he’s EVER had to his name. nothing else. he doesn’t even have his name to his name. life is IT#but lev…………lev loves her brothers so much. they’re her life. if she lost them she would die inside too#and maybe she thinks that’s her worst fear but it’s NOT. she’s afraid of losing them yes#but not to death just to life. she belongs with them but what if they decide they don’t belong with her? what if they leave?#which is why chance scares her so much. he would leave her in a heartbeat if he thinks she’s the less safe option.#the twins will PROBABLY stay with her but there’s been no opportunity to test it. with chance? he’s already proved it#like. fuck. they’re both so afraid all the time but lev doesn’t even know WHY#she just goes and goes and goes and says ‘if I save them they’ll have to stay with me. they’ll have to.’#and doesn’t even think about why that part is almost as important as rescuing them in the first place.#she’s my precious girl she’s my favorite girl she’s everything to me!#someone give her a hug and coffee and a blanket and a thousand forehead kisses and a hundred thousand hugs#story: deep six#char: chance#char: lev
on a whim listened to "rescue me" by daughtry for the first time in yeeeeears and i can't believe how well some of it neatly encapsulates the thing i was trying to say about lev and the twins rescuing chance despite him doing nothing to deserve getting rescued. like..... "some say it's hard to make the changes / rescue me, and i'll never be the same"? "rescue me in the middle of my darkest hour / time will tell, i never really had the power"??? the idea that at that point chance has been beaten down so thoroughly that it's unreasonable, even unthinkable, to expect him to try rescuing himself, or to make the sacrifice play for lev and the twins to "earn" redemption in death, but when lev and the twins still try to rescue him anyway, that's when he finds the courage to change? he was functionally powerless, systematically stripped of every good instinct and kind impulse he could ever have developed, until he begs for help that he doesn't "deserve"?????
THAT'S what the whole damn book is about. unearned unconditional love. this is a love story.
#of all my books so far. deep six is the most This Is A Love Story there is.#and almost none of it is romantic#and it's not a condescending love. lev and sixes and sevens are not doing this because they're Better People than chance or whatever#it's because they love him!!! they may make better choices but they also didn't go through what he did!!!#and it doesn't matter anyway because they KNOW him and he knows them and they all love each other so much!!#there is no catch there is no 'you can't redeem yourself but you can try anyway' moment there is no distancing themselves from him#until he Earns their love#(their trust...... maybe sure lmao. but not their love)#chance wouldn't survive if it were any other way. he wouldn't make it if his family weren't on their knees in the mud beside him#if they were positioning themselves as standing above the mess and graciously offering him a hand out of it that he doesn't deserve#he would just. die. it wouldn't be worth it to survive. but they aren't like that. they don't want him like that. they want him how he is#oh my godddddddddd i'm so sick of thinking about ds i don't want to care about it anymore but i DO#story: deep six#char: chance
wordsgood reblogged
big fan of liars. big fan of characters whose entire existence is a facade. love it when everything's stripped away from them and the lie is the only thing left of their identity. love it when the lines between an act and the truth are blurring. are they even them without the lie? the lie doesn't become the truth per se, but it's now such an intricate part of them it might as well be.
wordsgood reblogged
i want to surgically remove chance treize from my mind and make him someone else’s problem. unfortunately i love and cherish him deeply and ultimately i don’t think i want to lose him. which is wild because that’s literally exactly how every character in the book feels about him too
thing about chance is that the most important part of his story in deep six, no matter what shape that eventually takes, is that he does not do anything to ‘deserve’ being saved. things about redemption arcs is that they tend to be constructed in such a way that, at the last minute, the redeemee suddenly makes a change, stands up to their own bad choices, and does the good thing instead, allowing their friends to rush in and rescue them without guilt, welcoming them back into the fold. which is fine. that’s a fine way to do it
but the thing about chance is that it’s just. very important to me that he doesn’t have to redeem himself before being saved. he doesn’t have to save his own soul before it’s acceptable for others to save his body. he doesn’t have to “deserve” rescue to be rescued. at the end of every draft of deep six but the first, he’s been kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, and been turned against his family — as a consequence of turning on them by choice first. and in every draft, he’s been too afraid to “stand up to” the people who hurt him. he doesn’t get to say he’s sorry, he doesn’t get to even try a sacrifice play, he wouldn’t even if he could. he’s been too afraid for too long.
but his family saves him anyway. because they love him. they want him, apology or no, sacrifice or no. they don’t care if he “deserves” it, that’s not a question that matters — what matters is that they love him. and they know that somewhere in his broken, abused, tired little liar’s soul that he loves them too. so they save him when he’s given them nothing, no reason to do it
and that’s when he redeems himself. when he sees them come to save him when he’s done nothing to deserve it and everything to deserve abandonment, and he decides that if he lives, he’s with them forever. no more betrayal, a slow and cautious end to the lies and half truths — a thaw. he believes that he can’t afford to “redeem himself” before that point, but this final desperate act of love gives him the courage to face his worst impulses head on and see that they don’t protect him better than loving lev, sixes, and sevens back will.
i have goofed around trying to add some fantasy flare to deep six by saying i should make chance a vampire but his story doesn’t really suit the typical vampire motifs and it would, i think, give him more agency than he actually has. what he WOULD be is a siren: a beautiful lure. he makes himself irresistible to drag people down to a death they might have avoided if they were able to see him as a person instead of a thing they desired. and the question his character arc would have to answer is, What is left of him that exists for himself, what is his beauty when it isn’t being sold to strangers?
now SIXES, on the other hand, makes a great vampire. the sickly twin, maybe turned so he would survive alongside sevens. he winds up with asthma too so he’s hungry for blood and he’s hungry for breath. he’s a poisoner, he taught himself to cook. his whole life is about consumption: draining every drop of survival out of whatever he can get his hands on. he’s even trans, which doesn’t have anything to do with the vampire thing, i just like trans vampires
wordsgood reblogged
love when characters have to have a domestication arc before you can even consider giving them a redemption arc
wordsgood reblogged
Anonymous asked:
tag the oc that is The Heart
wordsgood reblogged
in all the previous drafts of deep six, it's always lev or sevens who kills the gang's assassin leader guy, often in a sense that it's "for" chance, who was arguably the most abused/objectified by the guy, but it's never been chance himself. but there have been a couple characters who remind me a lot of chance and who DO get a moment of real catharsis and now........ i don't know! on one hand it would be SO satisfying to let chance finally seize his own agency and put that part of his life behind him with his own hands. but on the other hand it's soooooo Like Him that chance would prioritize his own security up to and past the point of freeing himself from his situation and only after the act was done by someone else would he realize that that could have been him. he could have done that. but he was afraid. he was so afraid, not of being hurt but of being hurt in new and unfamiliar ways, that he let go of that opportunity. I DON'T KNOW, i have and apparently always will have thoughts and feelings about chance's agency and i never know what to do with them!!!
and i don't want it to be taken that i think chance is cowardly or that he is Wrong for being afraid, because he was like. comprehensively abused and groomed. he IS a coward and a shithead and kind of a garbage sibling but that's like. that's the point. there is Nothing else he could have been. the sadness of a version of his story where, even when he is handed the gun and helped to aim it, he can't finish it because he's so afraid of what would happen if he still somehow fails, is not that he's a Bad Person but that he has been trained out of seeing a way out. it's not that he should have somehow Been Better but that he was ever put in that position at all.
and also i cannot emphasize enough that he's a shithead. he's a mean selfish little coward who would sell you to satan for one corn chip. i can't guarantee that none of that would have been there had it not been for the abuse. it wouldn't be nearly as bad tho! that's on them!
#the thing about chance is that he's twenty pounds of Hot in a ten pound bag and he is fully aware of it.#awful awful awful young man. absolutely vile what dozens of grown ass adults did to him. still a smug vain little fucker#there are many reasons that all three of the other MCs frequently want to strangle him and not all of them are trauma-based#story: deep six#char: chance#YEAH i have a writing blog that i should have been using for my Thots and my bg3 character-based rambles. what about it!#finally found a topic i was too self-conscious to ramble on about on main!
in all the previous drafts of deep six, it's always lev or sevens who kills the gang's assassin leader guy, often in a sense that it's "for" chance, who was arguably the most abused/objectified by the guy, but it's never been chance himself. but there have been a couple characters who remind me a lot of chance and who DO get a moment of real catharsis and now........ i don't know! on one hand it would be SO satisfying to let chance finally seize his own agency and put that part of his life behind him with his own hands. but on the other hand it's soooooo Like Him that chance would prioritize his own security up to and past the point of freeing himself from his situation and only after the act was done by someone else would he realize that that could have been him. he could have done that. but he was afraid. he was so afraid, not of being hurt but of being hurt in new and unfamiliar ways, that he let go of that opportunity. I DON'T KNOW, i have and apparently always will have thoughts and feelings about chance's agency and i never know what to do with them!!!
wordsgood reblogged
FOUND family??? you think i just found them like this??? babes this is FORGED family. Me & the bros were scrap metal in a junkyard (very valuable, very sharp, very dangerous, uncared for) and we GOT IN THE FUCKING FIRE TOGETHER. WE did this. we said I AM NOT LEAVING YOU and melted into each other for better or for worse (it’s for better) and we are A FUNCTIONAL UNIT now. DO NOT SEPARATE. BATTERIES FUCKING INCLUDED. FOUND family my ass, we built this non-nuclear family unit from the ground up, don’t devalue this!!! it was is and will be a labour of love!!!
wordsgood reblogged
FOUND family??? you think i just found them like this??? babes this is FORGED family. Me & the bros were scrap metal in a junkyard (very valuable, very sharp, very dangerous, uncared for) and we GOT IN THE FUCKING FIRE TOGETHER. WE did this. we said I AM NOT LEAVING YOU and melted into each other for better or for worse (it’s for better) and we are A FUNCTIONAL UNIT now. DO NOT SEPARATE. BATTERIES FUCKING INCLUDED. FOUND family my ass, we built this non-nuclear family unit from the ground up, don’t devalue this!!! it was is and will be a labour of love!!!