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emchant3d · 2 years ago

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modern au, exes to lovers, transfem stevie harrington

Stevie Harrington is not having a good day.

By all accounts, she should be. Robin woke her right on time by pressing a perfectly made brown sugar shaken espresso into her hand. Nancy and Chrissy got to the venue earlier than expected. The hair and makeup people were on schedule. Their boozy charcuterie brunch during their prep time was perfectly served, the mimosas delicious and the food fresh and light enough to put on her nervous stomach.

Everything’s gone off without a hitch. She looks gorgeous. She’s got her something old, her something new, her something borrowed, and even her something blue. Her hair’s done in a soft blowout, framing her face but out of the way, ready for the combs of her veil to slip into. Her makeup is elegant, not too showy and not too dramatic, neutral and warm and sweet. And her dress. It’s what she always dreamed of, clingy and silky with a dramatic leg slit and a long train, off the shoulders, perfectly white. She’s staring at herself in the mirror knowing that in forty-five minutes, she’s going to hold the world’s most beautiful wedding bouquet and walk down the most perfectly decorated aisle in the quaintest, sweetest church she could find, and she’ll stand across from her fiancé and take his hands and say “I do” and all of her dreams will come true.

So she should be having a good day.

Because it’s her wedding day, and Stevie Harrington is about to become Stefania Hagan.

Maybe that brunch wasn’t so perfect after all, because she thinks she’s about to puke.

“I can’t do this,” she says, but her voice is so soft it’s barely a whisper and the girls don’t even glance at her. “I can’t do this,” she repeats, and Robin - bless her, her favorite person in the world, her soulmate, her other half, her maid of honor - glances up.

“What’s that, Evie?” she asks, and the others look over at her, and Stevie stands there beneath their gazes and knows if she just says it again, says I can’t do this, don’t make me marry him, get me out of here, all three of them would drag her to an exit and get her the fuck out.

They don’t even like Tommy. Robin actively hates him, actually, and that should have been enough for Stevie to never look at him twice.

But it wasn’t. It wasn’t enough.

She thinks back to a few days ago, drunk in a bar with a white sash wrapped around her torso, a tiara on her head, and mascara running down her face as she desperately sobbed on Robin’s shoulder during her bachelorette party. That little meltdown wasn’t enough. And she thinks back further, to when Tommy proposed - in public, at a fucking baseball game, on the goddamn jumbotron. Dread had settled in her chest at the sight of the ring (huge, gaudy, she hated it on sight) even as she pasted on a smile and said yes. That hadn’t been enough.

But somehow standing here done up head to toe, about to walk down the aisle in her absolute dream wedding - that’s enough. Because everything about today is right. Everything’s in place. Everything’s gorgeous and going to plan and she should be so, so happy - but it’s the wrong man waiting for her at the end of all of it.

She can’t do this.

She looks up and meets Robin’s eyes and forces a smile. “I said I need to get my veil,” she lies, and she slips into her shoes (red bottoms, a gift from Tommy’s mother, perfectly white and pointed and it’s her dream day, how can she be throwing this away?) and walks into the other room where her garment bag is hanging, and her veil is there with its delicate detail and it’s scalloped edges and it’s all so fucking perfect she’s going to scream, she wants to rip it to pieces and she wants to tear this dress off and she wants to sob, she doesn’t want to do this, she doesn’t want to get married - not to him. Not to Tommy.

She could ask for help. Robin would have her out of here in five minutes flat, Nancy would craft an excuse to tell everyone, and Chrissy would cause a distraction. But even that’s too long of a wait. Even that’s too much attention, too much suspicion. She needs to move faster than that. She needs out now.

She quickens her pace as she crosses the room, dress dragging along the carpet, and she snags her phone where it’s sitting on the end table next to an overstuffed love seat, and in three long strides she’s out the door and in the hall and the church has been busy and packed all day but somehow, miraculously, there’s no one here.

No one sees Stevie as she gathers up the fabric of her dress in her hands and starts to walk towards the exit. No one sees as her walk speeds to a jog, and then a run, and then she slams out of a side door and she’s on the sidewalk and she’s sprinting, her heels are going to get scuffed by the pavement but she can’t care, she’s running as fast as she can and dodging people on the sidewalk as they turn and gawk at her and she cannot give them a thought, cannot focus on them even a little bit because she has to get away, escape is the only thought on her mind as she gasps for air, her dress is so heavy and it’s not made for running that’s for goddamn sure, and the last few years with Tommy flash through her mind - every time he’s undermined her or given her a backhanded compliment or policed her, told her she wasn’t feminine enough, told her she wasn’t trying hard enough to pass, told her to just keep it all to herself so no one would know she wasn’t cis, wouldn’t embarrass him by making a scene, all the times that come together to a glaringly obvious conclusion that he doesn’t really love her and she kind of hates him a little actually, and obviously she can’t fucking marry him and–

There.

A beat-up four-door with an Uber sticker in the window.

That’ll do, she thinks, and she changes course, shoulder-checking a man and not apologizing for it as she makes a beeline for the car. She pops off an acrylic wrenching the door open and tossing herself into the backseat, and she yells “DRIVE!” at the top of her lungs and somehow, through some miracle, they listen, swerving into traffic with a loud curse and a myriad of honking horns and a quaint, sweet little church growing smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.

She’s gasping for breath, chest heaving, staring out the back window like she’s waiting for someone to follow her - and maybe she is, maybe Tommy is hot on her trail, or maybe Robin is coming to kill her for not including her in her mad dash to freedom and instead jumping in a stranger’s car going God knows where.

“So uh,” a voice says, and she whips around, staring wide-eyed at the brown eyes fixed on her in the mirror, and no, no fucking way– “where to, ma’am?”

“Um,” she says, and her voice is shaky, cracking a little, she brushes her hair out of her face and stares and– wait.

There’s a beat. The driver’s eyes widen. Recognition flashes over his face at the same time it registers for Stevie.

“Stevie?” Eddie Munson, her ex-boyfriend of several years, the man she hasn’t spoken to since that fateful night they went their separate ways, is staring at her in shock, not even looking at the road, and the only thing she can think is how he’s just as averse to road safety now as he’d been way back when.

“Eddie,” she croaks out.

Too many emotions are overwhelming her at once and it feels like the biggest cliché in the world, but honestly, Stevie feels like she’s entitled to some dramatics. It’s her goddamn wedding day, after all.

Her failed wedding day.

Where she just left her fiancé at the altar.

“Oh god,” she manages. Her lower lip wobbles. Her vision blurs.

“Stevie,” Eddie says again, like a warning, and that’s enough to push her over.

She bursts into tears in his backseat.

“Hey hey hey!” he says like she’s a fucking spooked horse or something, which only makes her cry more, ugly sobs that shake her shoulders and drip tear drops onto her dress. “Stevie, honey–”

“Do NOT call me honey right now!” she manages, and he raises a hand in surrender before flipping on a turn signal and finding a parking lot to pull over in.

“Okay, okay! No comforting pet names, you got it,” he agrees, and he shuts the car off, turning in his seat to look at her, concern painted all over his face and that’s just really not fair, she thinks, that he still looks so earnest and sweet and fucking worried about her.

“Are you hurt?” he asks, urgent and serious, and she shakes her head quickly.

“No! No, I’m - I’m fine, really,” she insists and he proves that he is a gentleman after all, because he doesn’t call her out on the blatant lie.

“Okay,” he says, level, his hand hovering in the space between them like he wants to touch her. “What do you need?” he asks, and she wipes at her face with her hands, swallowing down yet another sob.

“Get me out of here,” she pleads, and he searches her face for - something, she doesn’t know what, because she’s sure all she’s showing him is how much of a fucking mess she is, but he must find whatever he’s looking for.

He gives her a sharp nod. “Anywhere in particular, sweetheart?” he asks, turning to start the car again. She doesn’t call him out on the pet name this time.

“Anywhere but here,” she says, and he puts the car in reverse, pulling back onto the road.

“You got it,” he says, and some of that old charm must kick in - he winks at her in the rearview. She resolutely ignores the spike of emotion it gives her.

Then she takes a deep, shuddery breath, and opens the group chat to break the news to her wedding party.

part 2

#steddie #steddie fic #trans steve harrington #transfeminine steve harrington #stevie harrington #runaway bride stevie #my fic #apologies in advance but i don't do tag lists <3

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cloudbends · 2 months ago

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It's been rotating in my brain for a while, so I decided to compile my thoughts about the parallels between anaxa and sunday in terms of the way their writing, personality and themes align with one another. At this point, I don't believe this is coincidental.

Anaxa sees reason and emotion as coexisting concepts instead of opposing ends. he rejects himself but he doesn't reject his humanity. he rejects his life but doesn't reject his personhood. he debatably has more faith in his students than he does in himself, because he puts so much trust in them to continue his work. to question everything. to forsake everything. to prove everything he can because he has nothing to lose. he guards his theories with his life because its literally all he has left. and i just like how antideterministic it is. they're doomed but he proves its not humanity being doomed by the gods, its humanity's ability to both doom and save itself.

the parallels between sunday and anaxa are best summed up by these two quotes from their respective trailers:

sunday: knowing there were no gods who could save people unconditionally. to change anything, you can only rely on yourself.

anaxa: gods, decry it as blasphemy - if that is all you can do [...] we alone are the true gods of this world.

How can they believe there's such a thing as a god after all they've lost? A line that particularly stuck out to me in anaxa's stories was cerces's goading of anaxa, asking him if he prayed to the titans upon seeing his hometown ruined and his sister dead. It disclosed a deeper, more personal sentiment anaxa has towards the titans than a mere desire to erase their existence. For anaxa, forsaking the gods means to wrestle control back to humanity's hands, to his hands, in the face of an uncontrollably tragic fate.

In this sense, both anaxa and sunday must deal with a desire for control, doing so by getting their respective gods out of the equation. I think Sunday's words at the grand theatre are incredibly important to this point, and indicate just how similar (if, of course, different circumstantially) their characters and arcs are:

Sunday: My desire is not to resurrect a fallen Aeon, or become one myself... my sole objective is to create a paradise free from Aeons, where the Order ensures the dignity and happiness of all humanity. A paradise exclusive to us human beings".

Sunday, for all his religious theming and imagery, wishes to forsake the gods in favour of an order of safety, to be the sole person remaining awake to guard the dreaming. I think it's very interesting that thematically, anaxa is framed as chaotic, wishing to disrupt the status quo, a perceived opposite to sunday, who in fact shares many more similarities with his mindset than you'd imagine. They both want to liberate mankind from the gods, so their fates won't be inextricably tied to the gods' whims, having grown disillusioned with them. Here however, the stark difference in their methods comes into play: while sunday's desire for humanity's happiness is regrettably robbing it of agency, anaxa's desire for humanity to gain its agency back is knowingly robbing them of their faiths.

Sunday doesn't have faith in humanity's ability to overcome hardships, and in order to be their protector, he decided to usurp the role of a god - he saw horrors so severe, that he felt he had to shoulder their protection for himself. Sunday operates by his sense of anxiety which inadvertently disclosed his lack of faith, taking things into his own hands to ensure they will go as well as possible - he can ensure the success and happiness of humanity only if he takes the burden upon himself and sees it through with his own hands. He feels only he can, or really must, be the responsible person who can shoulder the burden of protecting humanity, which inadvertently strips them of agency. Meanwhile, anaxa's entire thesis is based on his own disillusionment with the gods and faith in humanity, that his plan and eventual usurping of the titan position was in service of proving humanity's agency over the titans by their being identical beings. Anaxa has so much faith in humanity, to the point of disregarding his life and physical existence and completely trusting his students to continue what he can't finish. The blasphemer is driven by faith in humanity, while the believer is driven by distrusting the gods.

To their respective ends, they both decide to pose themselves as antagonists in the eyes of the public in order to ascend to a higher position at the expense of their own lives and well being. They're both themed and viewed as performers of sorts (depicted in stage settings, the performer and the conductor), which on the surface level, epitomise sunday as an organizer, a puppeteering figure, a follower of Order, and anaxa as the wild stage performer, a soliloquy giver, disrupting the audience's understandings of the world into chaos. I contend, however, that the complete opposite is true, making these parallels all the more compelling. Sunday's performance is entirely puppeteered and driven by his sense of anxiety, desperation, and an urge to escape reality, not being able to withstand its horrors - the order hides personal chaos. On the other side of the coin, anaxa's performance is the epitome of calculated, an argument and theory decades in the making, meant to be his final proof so he can leave the world that pained him behind to his students to nourish and give a final sacrifice for his equivalent exchange - the chaos hides personal order.

These two opposing ideas disclose the paralleling approaches anaxa and sunday take in regards to their ideals, and their differences in mental fortitude and personality. Anaxa is very self assured that his method will lead to his desired outcomes, marches entirely to the beat of his own drum, passing his thoughts to his cherished students and trusting them to continue what he doesn't believe he can survive to accomplish. Sunday, on the other hand, is defined by his insecurity, being surrounded by the hostile environment of the family, the younger figure thrust into a position of power through manipulation, and being forced to conform to it. Anaxa's figure is that of a teacher, an authority, while Sunday was inherently stuck in the position of a novice political figure, forced to sway according to the authorities around him.

Probably one of the most dominant aspects paralleling anaxa to sunday is both of their incredibly meaningful and impactful bonds they share with their sisters. While in sunday's case his bond takes central stage and in anaxa's stage we can only infer based on the little that is mentioned about it, I think it is no less significant to a thorough understanding of his character and motivations.

In both cases, two young siblings are left to fend off for themselves as their parents either die at the hands of war (sunday and robin) or decide to abandon their children (anaxa and his sister). And as such, they're each other's most meaningful connections in the world. Sunday owes robin his dream of a utopia, her ever supporter because her happiness is his, cementing his dedicating his life for the sake of others. In a similar vein, anaxa owes his sister his education, his access to knowledge, to experiments, to what is going to shape his life ambitions. However, I think what ties these characters further together is this sense of debt towards their sisters, in a way that feeds their selflessness and becomes their central means to achieve their goals.

Anaxa, in what I can infer from his character stories, genuinely views his life as disposable after his sister's death. His philosophical emphasis on equivalent exchange is, in large part, a reflection of his guilt towards his sister and her sacrifice - allowing him to study at the grove, at the expense of her own life the moment he left. In order for him to be worthy of her sacrifice - or the exchange to be equivalent - he must give away everything in order to achieve his goal. He must continuously chip away at his body, and his spirit, while insisting on retaining his heart and person, in order to make her death have meaning, for the rules of the world to make sense.

They're both so riddled with guilt, to the point it becomes their driving force. Both of their most significant human connections were to their sisters, feeling such an intense amount of debt towards both of them, that this sense of owing encourages them to keep chipping away at themselves in a subconscious effort to live up to both of their sister's "sacrifices" (robin's is more metaphorical). The kindness they received makes them eager to sacrifice more and more of themselves, creating a core of guilt that serves as their motivation to keep losing themselves for their grander goal.

The following portion of anaxa's 'chrysos' volume drew more parallels between the two in a way I can only interpret as being intentional, at the foremost through the use of the songbird motif. While sunday's charmony dove allegory bears no need to repeat, and I could write about it for hours, the following quote by anaxa is meaningful:

anaxa: I once carved a songbird that miraculously flapped its wings and took to the sky, though it circled five times at low altitude before falling...

As it is explicitly told, sunday's turning point in his life and ideology was finding the charmony dove and having to confront the moral dilemma, a choice he viewed to be between freedom and security. His anxiety began to take root, as he had to watch the bird he nursed back to health attempt to fly again, and watch it plummet to its death, cementing in his minds that the weak, those he cherishes, are better kept secure than free. Ironically, he doesn't realise that he himself is stuck in such a cage, terrified of flying, and how his thought process ends up straining his relationship with the same person he so wishes to protect.

I don't think it's coincidental that anaxa chooses to emphasize the fact that the bird he manifested into life, also met its death a short amount of time after it was created by his hands. They're both left unsatisfied - they both must strive to do better, to either preserve life (sunday) or to create life (anaxa), so long as they can make sense of death. Both of these incidents end up solidifying and crystallizing their worldviews: they must sacrifice more of themselves in order to achieve their dreams. Be it a boundless utopia in sunday's case - posing himself as the sole guarding figure who shelters humanity from the terrors of existence regardless of the gods; or achieving transcendence and reaching an absolute truth in anaxa's case - by, similarly, posing himself as the one who must chip away at himself in order to prove, and give meaning, to humanity's existence regardless of the gods.

And perhaps most tragically, eventually, both sunday and anaxa were forced to sacrifice a part of themslves and lose the things they were most scared of losing. Anaxa, who was willing to sacrifice his physical well being, is forced to sacrifice his imprints on history and theory, sacrificing others memories of him, his legacy, his achievements. Sunday, whose drive for the betterment of others arose first and foremost from how much he cherished his only family, had to sacrifice his connection to her, the person closest to him, so he could protect her - they are torn apart, while ever present in each others' minds.

Something about these two, and their relationship to faith, the gods, their families, and worldviews, is deeply compelling in its similarity. They should meet up.

#vi rambling #hsr #UHM. HHHAHA SORRY THIS IS REALLY LONG #im not good at being succinct. and i haven't written meta in a very long time.#i hope any of this makes any sense.... ive just been trying to pinpoint #what is the similar themahic vibe im getting from both of them.#it felt at first like im just insane about my two favorite little guys in the game. but the more content they put out #the more i was proven right.#this is mostly a thematic comparative analysis so of course #some things get simplified. but #honestly. they will both talk endlessly about philosophy its just in their nature.#anyways. my hypercarry anaxa sunday robin team ily forever and youre never changing. favs on main or nothing!!!#IDK WHAT TO TAG THIS.#hsr meta #hsr anaxa #hsr sunday #I GUESS??? IDK!!!#i also got a terrible illness got being repetitive so. apologies in advance #vi.analysis

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