#redneck wizardcore au

[edoro]

when i first came up with the redneck wizardcore au (this is my “they’re all humans in modern day Gravesfield and it’s my attempt at creating a somewhat less hideously overtly abusive Hunter-Belos dynamic” au) we didn’t know much about Caleb so i just kind of waved my authorial wand and went “it’s just Philip, Something Happened”

now i have Caleb to reckon with so i have like... three different versions of the au, because Caleb - like Hunter - has The Most Transgender Energy ever - so we’ve transfem farmbutch Caleb, transmasc burnout Stepford-smiler househusband Caleb, and Dead Or Gone Caleb (this one pretty much inevitably leads to the worst possible outcomes for Hunter tbh)

anyway though... Hunter loves Caleb his mom Caleb very much and learns so much from her... not all of it is good. a short list of things that she has taught him:

-a variety of household repair and maintenance skills (he’s also very good with cars and other machines but that’s because Philip is the Devices and Contraptions Guy and Hunter is just an autistic little sponge)

-how to completely fail to notice women flirting with you (happens to her every time she goes to the hardware store)

-birdwatching

-woodcarving

-being cuckoo bonkers in general and about Philip specifically (welcome to life, baby Hunter! you may have just been born but you will be happy to know that this grown man is in fact your baby now too! he needs to be taken care of so much, you see)

[edoro]

1 & 7! :3

do you daydream a lot before you write, or go for it as soon as the ideas strike?

oh i definitely daydream a lot. it's an integral part of my process. anything i actually sit down to write has already been through several drafts and rounds of refinement as a daydream or subject of discussion with friend(s) before i start outlining it, because that's how i go from "vague concept or idea" to "actually writable scenario."

7) post a snippet from a wip

you probably want me to post some Huntlow 3, but joke's on you, here's a nice section from the little bit of redneck wizardcore au i swear i'm going to finish someday.

Sitting in the middle of the workshop, up on blocks, was a riding mower. Hunter wandered over and ran his hand along the curve of its hood, looking fond. “So this is the big project we’re working on right now. We got it off craigslist for cheap and Uncle’s teaching me how to rebuild the engine and make it go faster.” “That’s really cool.” Luz followed behind him, gazing around in open awe, not quite daring to touch anything. Some of it looked like she might lose a finger if she did it wrong. The whole place smelled sort of like the auto shop where her mom got her oil changed. “What do you want it to go faster for?” Hunter scuffed at the floor with the toe of one shoe, looking almost bashful. “There’s this, uh, county lawnmower race every July, and you have to be sixteen to enter, so…” “There’s a county lawnmower race?” The image those words conjured into Luz’s mind was nothing short of miraculous. “Oh my god, you have to take me with you to that.” “I mean… sure, if your mom’s okay with it.” “How long do I have to convince her?” That was exactly the sort of thing her mom wanted her to be doing, right? Expanding her horizons, pushing her comfort zone, making friends? Redneck lawnmower racing was nothing like writing fanfiction or reading doorstopper fantasy novels.  “Uh, it’s at the end of the month, so, a couple weeks?” Luz clicked her tongue and shot him a cool double finger pistols. “It’s a date.” The silence after that was deafening. They both stared at each other, Luz’s cheeks hot, Hunter’s whole face red - even his ears, too - until eventually he coughed and turned away, reaching for another mysterious metal item almost at random. "This is, uh… what is this? Oh." He straightened up and held it out, offering Luz a better look. "This is a really old bread slicer. Uncle likes to get messed up old stuff and restore it and put it back together. “Oh, cool!” Luz said way too loudly. Her voice echoed in the enclosed space. “So is he, like, an engineer or something?” “Not professionally or anything. It’s just a hobby. He likes making stuff and fixing up old stuff. You can go ahead and look around, just don’t turn anything on or hit any switches, and if you pick something up, put it back where it goes.” Thus unshackled, Luz did her best to wander around and touch everything.

[edoro]

r u planning on writing anything for ur redneck wizardcore au? that snippet u posted a while back with luz and hunter has been sitting in the back of my brain every since i read it LOL i am so curious abt phillip in that au... also loveddd the lunter, them meeting under less fucked up circumstances is extremely cute

oh thank you for saying so! i keep meaning to finish that fic up and post it - it's literally like 90% done, i'm just stuck in that final stretch where i'm almost finished so suddenly i have no motivation.

(also i radically altered my ideas of like, who the Mysterious Wittebane Sibling is and what role they'd play in Hunter's/Philip's lives in between starting it and now, so the story as it exists is for a version of the au that isn't what i would write now... but that doesn't mean i can't still present it as-is, really, and i keep meaning to.)

i can't make any promises but knowing that people want to see it, i will try to summon up the motivation to actually finish the story. it probably wouldn't even take that long and it'd be fun. and then maybe i could start working on a more updated version that includes current knowledge of and ideas about Caleb...

also yes the Lunter is so cute. very teen summer romance movie type of deal here. Hunter's whole deal is still very fucked up but in a much more everyday, mundane kind of way. perfect angsty slightly older boyfriend material! he's sad and has family drama AND a truck! get it, Luz.

is there anything in particular you're curious about re: Philip here? i don't mind handing out spoilers or whatever, i'm a lot more likely to talk about the au than actually end up writing it, so feel free to ask questions

[edoro]

the most tragic thing about the Wittebanes is that Caleb was born, lived, and died far FAR too early to rock up in the hardware store in jeans, utility belt, steel-toed boots, tanktop, and leather motorcycle jacket and secure her rightful place as Hottest Butch In A Ten Mile Radius

[edoro]

“5a) subfolder: Groomer Philip version

-luz gets a warning”

^^^^^^^^^ my curiosity is peakeddddd lets go redneck wizardcore auuuuuu

putting this one under a cut for obvious reasons (entire premise is csa, incest, and grooming)

so the redneck wizardcore au is basically my attempt at "what if Philip wasn't an intentionally-abusive-in-every-possible-way fucking nightmare person", which means i immediately turned around and made a version of it where Hunter is in fact being sexually abused

in this version of it, Philip has had custody of Hunter since he was a kid (what happened to Caleb/his other family? no idea, shh, don't ask) and has been molesting him for... probably slightly fewer years than he's had custody of him.

between being home-schooled and working in his uncle's museum, Hunter is very isolated and doesn't have any friends, which is fine with him, because when he was younger Philip would use any friendship he had with other kids as a way to get himself access to fresh new victims.

he never went as far with any of those kids as he did with Hunter, he was always very careful to keep a veneer of plausible deniability to protect his own reputation and make it hard for the kids to even say what had happened or describe it in a way that any other adult would understand as abuse, but Hunter knew all about the kinds of games Uncle Philip liked to play and as he got older he realized his uncle was using him as a honeypot and just stopped even trying to interact with anyone.

cue the plot framework of redneck wizardcore au: instead of getting sent to normal camp, Luz takes a volunteer job at the historical society museum (which Philip runs out of the historical Wittebane home) and befriends Hunter... and his weird uncle, who seems very interested in her.

Hunter sees what's happening and starts trying to play interference hard. first he tries to just not get involved with Luz, but she's too friendly and he's too lonely and it doesn't work. so then he just tries to play keep-away, only hang out with her during work hours or out around town, make sure he's there and watching anytime she's interacting with Philip, etc.

one day, though, Luz comes over while Hunter is busy mowing the yard. Philip invites her to hang out with him while Hunter finishes that up, and she does, because Mr. Wittebane is a nice if somewhat strange old man and he's always so happy to see her and talk to her.

when Hunter comes in and sees Luz just sitting in the living room with his uncle, having been alone with the man for who knows how long, he has twenty-seven simultaneous heart attacks.

he drags her up to his room and furiously asks her what she's doing here, which of course scares the shit out of her and makes her mad too - why is he manhandling her and yelling at her and acting like this?? what the fuck is wrong? she wanted to see if he wanted to go see a movie or something but now she kinda just wants to go home because he's being really weird and aggro and scary

he asks her if Philip did anything weird to her, she says no, he tells her that she needs to not ever come over if he's not around, that she needs to not ever be alone with his uncle, if she wants to talk to him and he's not right there then she can call him and he'll come out but she cannot be in the house or around Philip without him there

of course, Luz wants to know why, and Hunter doesn't want to tell her, but she's not stupid and the fact that he asked If Anything Weird Happened plus how freaked out he is leads her to the obvious conclusion, and then when she asks if his uncle like, does stuff to him he just completely shuts down and walks her out of the house and tells her to go home

[edoro]

manic-pixie-dream-dude

can't explain the excited air punch i just did reading that wip! redneck hunter is such a fun concept, i'm so glad that ur expanding on it!!

(in response to this post and the snippet i posted)

yeah! man i love redneck wizardcore au so much. i’ve actually had this fic about 3/4 of the way done and sitting in my drafts for, uh - jesus i went and checked and i made the document in fucking february??

i didn’t manage to finish it before we started finding out some more stuff about canon Caleb, and now i’m like, stuck on it because i need to make some kind of decision re: Caleb’s involvement in this au (my initial idea for Wittebro when i first made the au is, uh, a lot different to say the least) 

but tbh i could probably get away with not addressing it in the fic at all, and i can always break my own continuity... if comic books get to do it then why not me??

but yeah it’s such a fun au! i have sooo many thoughts and feelings and ideas and like, aus of the au... it’s exciting to hear that other people are interested in it too!

[edoro]

WIP Game

Rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have wips. (You can make your own post or reblog this one!) I have deemed that this isn’t just for writing either. Sketch titles? Comics? Dnd campaigns? If you have an unfinished project, it counts!!

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OKAY lmao i am not going to post All Of My WIPs because uh my gdrive fic folder has existed since 2012 and has like a dozen subfolders, but i WILL post all the ones in my TOH subfolder

putting it behind a cut for both length and also because some of the titles reference the usual range of darkfic topics found in my writing, ie csa, incest, rape and so on

i’m tagging... @sharoscylla, @rainbowbarnacle, @destiny-llama, @dundeelemonade, and anybody else who sees this and wants to post their WIP names 

1) Belos and Luz’s Excellent Adventure AU folder -Belos Sickfic -Beluz Sex Pollen

2) aladric blightcest

3) Kept Boy AU folder (technically the kept boy piss kink is a finished fic but the AU itself is very much a WIP)

4) paint the blood and hang the palms on the door chapter 7-???

5) Redneck Wizardcore AU folder -luz stays over for dinner 5a) subfolder: Groomer Philip version -luz gets a warning

6)Runaway Hunter AU folder -little bit of light molestation, as a bedtime snack (technically a finished work but i’ve never posted it) -hunter meets his mom -runaway hunter au (the fic) 6a) subfolder: Doll Witch N -hunter and n talk incest fantasies and hump

7) alpha Hunter/omega Belos

8) Belord - Ford Interrupts Uncle-Nephew Bonding Time

9) Beluz - Hunter Breaks The Emperor’s New Pet In For Him

10) exhibitionism chicken fic

11) fic ideas

12) horny fic ideas

13) hunter suicide attempt fic

14) Huntlumity wilderness survival fic

15) luz and hunter bookclub time

16) luz-hunter bodyswap beluz

17) pregnant! in the human realm

18) whump continuation of hunter fights back

aaaand in my comms folder rn we have

19) priest philip grooms trans hunter au

[edoro]

⛔ , 🦅 and 🎉

⛔ Do you have a fic you started, but scrapped? - hmm... i have a ton of wips that are probably never going to be finished, but as far as like, projects that i started and then decided to not continue on purpose rather than just running out of steam/motivation...

i think probably the closest is the redneck wizardcore modern au. that was my stab at "what if Philip wasn't On Purpose an abusive monster" (still ends up being very dysfunctional because... it's Philip) and i came up with the whole concept during the mid-s2 hiatus, and there's a lot of stuff i've since updated my understanding of wrt like...

Philip's character and how i see him but also, when i came up with it, we didn't even know Caleb's name. i had an idea in mind for then-unnamed Wittebro, and it's since turned out to be wildly incorrect and their entire dynamic is much different than the one i had in mind.

so, i just need to redo the entire au to account for Caleb and either why Caleb isn't around or what Caleb being around does to the story. definitely have a few different versions of that rattling around in my head, but the initial one as i wrote and imagined it is just no longer canon compliant to a degree that i don't think it works anymore.

🦅 Do you outline fics or fly by the seat of your pants? - oh yes i outline the HELL out of fics. i usually have a process of getting gradually more and more detailed with the outlines - i start with a general concept, put down everything i know for sure in order, figure out where the gaps are to connect one event to another so i don't have anywhere where i'm like "idk and then something happens" bc that kills writing momentum like NOTHING else, and then when i actually get to writing i drill down into the play-by-play of each scene.

🎉 What leads you to consider a fic a success? - actually finishing and posting it, lmao.

outside of comms, i write things because i'm interested in exploring an idea, so it's primarily for me. i do find a lot of gratification in getting comments though, the more detailed and in-depth the better - and i'm aware that takes effort to do! i have my own huge backlog of fics i need to leave comments on when i have the spoons to do it.

but getting people - whether it's random ao3 users or regular commenters or my friends who i torment/delight with all of my wips and ideas - talking to me about what i wrote, having ideas and feelings about it, telling me their reactions, telling me their thoughts and theories, riffing off what i did - that's the best part of writing fic for me. so whenever i get that with something, then i'm really happy.

and if i get people commenting telling me that they felt what i hoped to make people feel, or noticed/took away what i was hoping for people to notice/take away from it, then that also makes me feel like i successfully communicated the ideas and feelings that i set out to.

[edoro]

Owl House humanstuck au: the one where Philip Wittebane is the local eccentric town cryptid who runs the Gravesfield Historical Society Museum out of the historical Wittebane family home, Mystery Shack style, with three staff members: Kiki (admin and financial side of things), Lilith (general manager as well as being in charge of the historical collection and writing up educational materials, has a history degree), and Hunter (teen nephew who he doesn’t have to pay bc of child labor law loopholes w family.)

Instead of getting sent to reality camp, Luz successfully convinces her mom to let her prove how Normal And Responsible she can be by getting a volunteer position at the museum over the summer, which is like, basically community service, right?

Only to end up meeting the four most absolutely batshit weirdos in probably the entire town and getting into just so many shenanigans.

[edoro]

discoursed-dracula 2h I see a modern AU fic idea 👀

(in response to this post)

oh yeah! i have a specific modern au framework i like to slot my various Wittebanes into that i already recently retooled for the version of Caleb who lived in my head before i realized the unarguable truth of The Best Possible Version Of Caleb here

i think i’ve posted about it before but i’m not going to go looking for the post right now; the gist is that everyone is humans in the modern day, Philip Wittebane runs the Gravesfield historical society museum out of the historical Wittebane family home Mystery Shack style, and Luz ends up getting a questionably legal summer job/volunteer position (?) there to convince her mom how Normal And Responsible she can be instead of getting sent to reality camp

it focuses mostly on Luz and Hunter (it’s a Lunter au about the two of them having a cute teen summer romance) and gets a lot into how isolated they both are, and specifically is an attempt on my part to look at what a... more functional (?) familial relationship between Hunter and his uncle might look like

which mostly means “Philip is not intentionally physically, emotionally, or sexually abusive towards Hunter as i typically write him being”

i say ‘intentionally’ because another big aspect of the au is that instead of having some kind of weird curse due to centuries of huffing souls, Philip is terminally ill 

(this is me getting to project my ‘dying parent’ trauma all over Hunter bc i don’t see that angle in fandom stuff nearly as often as i’d like) and as his health declines, Hunter takes on more and more of the responsibility for his medical care as well as keeping up the house and business etc

so he’s heavily parentified and experiencing, honestly, a very similar level of emotional incest as in canon - my original idea for the au had Philip as a single guardian who inherited Hunter as his last known living relative after some mysterious accident befell Hunter’s mother’s family, who he lived with up until then, so they’re both just very dependent on each other

NOW THOUGH, WE HAVE CALEB

so i think she and Philip live together and have kind of a weird codependent vibe but it’s significantly less toxic and involves way less murder than usual. in the ideal version of things then maybe Hunter’s other parent would even still be around and living with them, actually, and Philip manages to not be such a jealous possessive freak about it

but i tend to imagine a bit more tragic of an outcome - probably some kind of accident, who knows

or maybe Hunter was the result of a less serious relationship and Caleb’s partner ended up handing the kid over to her and her brother to raise because they’re much more financially suited for it and she didn’t want to commit that deeply... unsure!

(my original version of Caleb was a man who, due to Intense Childhood Trauma, suffered from a pretty debilitating dissociative disorder, and was therefore perfectly pleasant and helpful around the house in many ways and with Philip’s medical care as he got sicker, but also a complete emotional non-presence in Hunter’s life

which led to Hunter being responsible for caretaking both his dying uncle and his mentally checked out father, who he mostly felt a sense of vague contempt towards as he got old enough to realize something was very weird there, but didn’t really ever get to understand why 

(it’s a lot easier for him to get why Philip needs help; original flavor Caleb’s problems made him come off as just sort of lazy and like he didn’t care))

anyway though that’s a different Caleb. farmbutch mom Caleb, i’m really not sure what kind of relationship Hunter has with her yet! 

she’s very earnest and loyal and dutiful. she’s used to just putting her head down and shouldering most of the household maintenance quietly and not asking for much in return. used to making herself small and, tbh, similarly dissociating her way through life because she’s so used to being abused all the time that she learned to just emotionally detach from, well, everything

and to just sort of assume that people won’t want her around and will get tired of her, and so kind of preemptively shrink her presence in their lives so it’s as easy as possible for them

she loves Hunter very much though and wants to care for him... 

this is definitely a Hunter who grows up knowing he’s wanted and loved and who never has cause to doubt that his family will take care of him. (he ends up more with the idea that you’re Supposed To Do Anything And Everything For Your Family, really, than the idea that he has to Earn His Place)

and with Caleb around, she definitely takes on a lot more of Philip’s care, so Hunter has to deal with a lot less of that than in the versions of it where it’s just him and Philip

anyway it’s very early and i am very tired and rambling a lot here, i have not solidified most of my ideas about this Caleb’s inclusion into this au yet, but that’s the basic idea