#satispacktion

[rivienna]

As per usual of late, while driving to work I got to thinking about LWTW. I started out thinking about Allison's pre-series visit to Peter, since that's the next scene I want to write, but then it twisted up into just thinking about Peter. I like thinking about Peter. He's fun.

Peter "being left to rot" and how any hunter/enemy could have come along and killed him while he was in hospital because he was there under his own name is mentioned a lot in Peter-centric fanfic. And comes up often enough in other fanfic as a point towards Laura being a failalpha that it's been chewing away at my brain in the background for awhile.

Because what if that was the point?

Put the target on Peter, and Laura and Derek are safe. Make a stationary target instead of a moving one. I don't think that this is what Laura set out to do, but I think it could have been an Argent move. Like, I am 100% positive that Kate and/or Gerard could find a way to spin killing a comatose/catatonic werewolf where they come out smelling like roses, but this is an opportunity. And opportunities are meant to be exploited.

also meant to be spelled correctly, but apparently my fingers don't like putting the r in opportunity.

Peter is admitted under his real name because the first responders were all human, and it wasn't like there were any survivors expected. It's just one of those things that couldn't be helped. Maybe it could have been covered up later, especially if he'd been transferred somewhere with actual knowledge of the supernatural. Maybe not. We'll never know.

But we do know that his nurse's response to seeing a werewolf was "let him out :D", and if that doesn't stink of someone in the know, I don't know what to tell you. Except that you probably know something that I don't because all my knowledge comes from four episodes, a lot of fanfic, and some meta. (Current plan is to watch episode 5 tonight. will everything I know get jossed again? Maybe!)

So. Let's say that Laura and the Argents make a deal: Laura and Derek stay the hell out of Beacon Hills and Peter won't mysteriously die in the night. Laura doesn't even get the time to say goodbye to Peter, doesn't get the time to try to settle the changed/changing bond between them, they just gotta get the hell out of dodge. This will come back to kill her, obviously, but that's for Future Laura to fail to deal with.

With Laura and Derek out of the way the rumors start flying. Two wolves fled the Hale territory-- they must be betas. Why would an alpha flee their territory? That doesn't make sense; what makes sense is if the alpha is the comatose one in the hospital, no longer able to guard the territory, no longer able to guide or protect the betas... and since both were younger blood relatives, they probably couldn't work up the nerve to kill him and take the power for themselves.

It helps keep Laura safe from alpha-hunters as she attempts to deal with the mess the fire left. (I. have a theory that the backlash of suddenly becoming alpha and then losing all the bonds within minutes broke Laura's ability to even feel the bonds. She doesn't know Cora's alive because she can't feel her. She thinks Peter is going to die because she can't feel him. She won't let Derek out of her sight for the same reason. Laura and Derek wind up more codependant than the Winchesters. It's a mess.)

But it paints a giant target on Peter.

That provides the Argents with such a lovely little trap. Peter makes the best bait: he can't stop them from using him and he can't fight back. I imagine that before he wakes up, the hunters have picked off a minimum of twelve wolves trying to take the alpha power from him. Being Peter's primary care nurse is both the easiest and most boring post an Argent-affliated hunter can be given. Sometimes it's even used as a punishment, as the nurse rarely gets the kill. They just need to make sure that Peter stays alive and stays catatonic.

They'd likely started poisoning him once he came out of the coma. Gotta keep him in limbo, keep him from being able to defend himself. A little wolfsbane and some kanima poison and that wolf is going no where.

At least until one hunter-nurse decides she's got a better idea and takes him off the cocktail. 

Until she sees the shift and lets him out.

[rivienna]

My vague as fuck outline for LWTW does not include Derek driving Allison home in episode one. Like. That doesn't even happen in the outline? Allienne just shrugs, goes "you got a migraine, imma take you home", and then steals Scott's food because if she’s hanging out pretending that she’s just there to keep him from drowning himself in the bathtub to escape the migraine pain, she’s gonna eat.

But noooooo my brain went "isn't that the first interaction between Derek and Allison and we don't even see what happens?" (unless there’s a flashback to it at some point, but I’m still only five episodes in lol) 

seriously, how unnervingly quiet was that drive? did Derek try to keep up the friendly face or did he try to threaten Allison except that she totally didn't get it? Did she wind up saying something to Chris and that's why that weird window wash and smash scene happened?

So I wound up writing this scrap of a scene instead of anything I actually meant to.

----

It's not until she's in Derek's car that she really understands just how much she's come to depend on her foreknowledge. How much she's depended on knowing the ins and outs of the overarching plot lines, the motivation of other characters, of events that happen outside of her current perspective. Here and now, with the echo of "I'm a friend of Scott's" in her ears, she has none of that. It makes her nervous.

Was she supposed to be in this car? Should she have gone with Scott instead? What did the original Allison do? What had she said? She just... watched Scott rush off in his mom's car. Was she supposed to get in? Help him somehow? Obviously there's no way that she's supposed to know about the werewolf thing yet, but was this when she was supposed to learn about it? She'd definitely felt something (claws, maybe?) when whatever that was started.

She has to bite her tongue to keep from cussing out her otherself out loud.  If they were writing Teen Wolf now, then obviously something had changed from "hell no with a cherry on top" in regards to watching it, so why couldn't they just give her a damn hint?

Unless...

Unless this was it? Derek showing up and offering a ride seems pretty author fiat-y. He was far friendlier than the gif sets had ever made him appear... although given how quiet the ride has been since getting in seemed to support that vague recollection. Not that it's going to stay quiet for long; Derek seems to be working up to something, and without her foreknowledge to use as a guide Allison is almost positive that she's going to fuck everything up.

"Do you know what it's like to live with serial killers?"

That... that was not the way that she'd intended to start this (or any) conversation, but the werewolf in the driver's seat had opened his mouth to say something and she just. She just needed to be the one in charge of the conversation. She's absolutely clueless to how this should have gone, and that lack of control is more unnerving than the silence had been.

"What?"

"Serial killers," she repeats it, quieter this time as she scrambles to put together an explanation, "And living with them. It's... you never know what you can and cannot say. What will tip them off that you know that they get off on killing people, and what will mark you as the next in line."

He doesn't respond, and she's really not sure what that's supposed to mean; she can't read him at all. His dead eye stare had been unnerving when she’d just seen it online, seeing it in real life was about ten times worse. The car slips back into silence as he chews over (and she frets over) those few sentences.  They're only a couple blocks from her house-- from Kate's house-- when Derek pulls over. He doesn't look at her.

Allison licks her lips as she opens the door and it occurs to her that she never told him where she lives. Is this meant as intimidation? To make her and her family aware that he knows where they are just as well as her parents (probably) know where he's living?

Before she closed the door, she leans back in. "I knew my family was killing people before I found out why. I can't ask you to trust me. But Aunt Kate is coming back."

The car takes off almost before her fingers are clear of the door.

[rivienna]

the pre-series meeting of allison and peter is turning out very exposition-dumpy and allison hasn't even spoken directly to peter yet. it's just a conversation between allison and the hunter-nurse.

I should. probably watch episode 6.

there had been a plan to watch earlier this week but emergency dental surgery had me like "no I just want to sleep off this pain" and "I'm going to play games on my phone until I pass out from the drugs"

[rivienna]

It's been three weeks and I still haven't watched episode six. Whoops.

I mean... one of those weeks got eaten by audit stuff and event stuff because sometimes I do things at work that aren't data entry and being IT support, but mostly I've just been playing FF14. Some day I will get Rivienna past ARR. Some day. Maybe after every class I can get without finishing the base game is at level 50. I hate dungeon crawling.

All of that said: I have still been mentally writing LWTW stuff. Just. not the stuff I wanted to be writing. That scene with Allison and Derek was supposed to just get the idea out of my head instead of spinning off into a completely new direction.

Like I said, the plan had been to have Allison's response to Scott's sorta collapse thing be "Oh, you have a migraine? Those are awful, the music and the people can’t possibly be helping, let me take you home." She'd drive him home, let him have his freak-out in the bath, ostensibly sticking around so that if the "migraine" gets to the point where he can't move then there's at least someone there to make sure he doesn't drown in the bathtub or can turn the lights off for him or any number of things that make my life easier when I'm dealing with a migraine.

With Allison at the house Stiles doesn't accidentally set Scott off, and the train wreck of the last part of episode one just. doesn't happen. It was going to be a set up for Allison trolling Stiles and Stiles getting Very Suspicious About Allison. There would be drama! There would be trolling! There would be Scott Being Oblivious To Everything!

That's uh. Probably not going to happen now. I haven't been able to think of anything except what immediately follows Allison getting out of Derek's car. Even the pre-series Allison-Peter meeting that I kinda really need to finish if I ever plan to make this a real story which yeah. kinda do.

Unfortunately writing it from Allison's POV just doesn't seem to be happening right now, and that is kinda necessary for this fic, so this is a rough outline in the hopes that I can come back to it later.

Instead of finishing her walk home after Derek kicks her out of the car, Allison decides "fuck it, I need to vent." and who better to vent to than a catatonic werewolf that can't tell her off if she leaves the door open? She also can't go home and get her car so... walking it is. This is where Stiles, on his way to the Argent house after Scott flipped out, comes into the story; seeing her walking in a direction that is definitely not towards her house, he offers her a ride home.

His plan is to interrogate her about the ride with Derek, mostly so he can set Scott's mind at ease, but Allison refuses. She has other places to be. So Stiles offers to take her to those other places instead. Anything to get the info right? Something something something, Allison brings Stiles with her to Peter's hospital room. Now she can close the door and he can't tell her off! Man, Peter is going to seriously regret pretending to be catatonic. So Much Regret. (His nurse, an Argent affiliated hunter, just rolls her eyes when they arrive. The Argent heiress taking a date to see a catatonic werewolf? Sure, why not. Sounds like an Argent Thing.)

This does mean that Allison has to be pretty vague about werewolf/hunter stuff so she can continue to troll the fuck out of Stiles, but she gets to tell Peter that his nephew is a dumbass, that her aunt is coming back to town, and also drop off a couple of bullets that she's swiped from her parents' collection. She has no idea if its the same stuff that Kate uses, but she figures it's better to be prepared, right? Stiles is Big Confuse.

Allison very deliberately runs her hand down Peter's arm when they leave. She explains this to Stiles as "I do it because he hates it."

So of course she does it to Stiles too when she gets out of the jeep at her place.

It takes Scott flipping out over Allison's scent on him for Stiles to start thinking that Allison Knows Something. Not that. this is a scene that can happen in the main LWTW story. Maybe as a supplemental piece? There's so much going on in the background that Allienne just Does Not Know, between canon events and things that she's changed accidentally through her Hella Spotty Knowledge, that I might have to go that route. (I’m. still justifying to myself how Allison even knows about the wolfsbane bullet thing.)

I like writing snippets from other characters POVs when I write for Lay Waste The Sky; it helps me keep things more in character. I've just never posted them, because they've mostly been ways for me to determine whether or not something I think is funny fits with the overall tone of the story.

This post is a lot longer than I thought it would be.

[rivienna]

been a long couple days between a work event last night and the much anticipated dental appointment today. I'm officially done dealing with the mess I made of my molar (apparently the crown was "cute"? because it was small I guess?), but the suggestion was made that I get the rest of my teeth examined and maybe get a night guard. So there may be even more tooth madness in my future. yay.

In a case of fortunately/unfortunately, I got caught in accident traffic on the way home. A 30 minute drive turned into an hour long contemplation of LWTW. I really need to come up with a unique name for that.

Anyways. I spent a lot of time thinking about Allienne and my Entirely Too Vague understanding of Teen Wolf. I keep finding out Neat New Things that completely and utterly joss my plotting and planning.

Like I said previously, one of the things that tipped me to choosing Allison as the insert over Talia was the rather amusing thought of Allienne just waltzing into Peter's Casually Catatonic Cave and just plot dumping on him. I'm actually pretty set on the idea of Allison coming to see Peter in those few days between moving to Beacon Hills and the start of the series, but the question becomes

does Allison wolf?

If I have Allison turned is it in place of or in addition to Scott? If I go in place of Scott then that's a big enough change and I'll have to actually y'know. finish watching season 1 at the very least, so I can get my plotlines straight before I get my funny idea killed by Canonical Dating Shenanigans again. That's some pretty major reworking to be done, and I think it would wind up being a very Lydia-Jackson-Danny centric plotline because that's Allison's friendgroup from what I've gathered. And I know so very little about those three. I could maybe swing Stiles into it through Scott's Very Creepy Interest In Allison and his own Over the Top Please Stop Interest in Lydia. It would definitely mean the boys weren't involved from the onset.

If it's in addition to Scott, I can have so much fun with her Not Telling Scott. She would troll the fuck out of him, like oh my god. I'm just imagining all the shit she would pull that Scott is completely oblivious too, while Derek's inability to communicate means that he believes that Scott knows Allison is a 'wolf but never comes out and says it, and Stiles is wishing he had hair to pull out because goddammit Scott! Allison gave me the bullet we used to save Derek with the warning that her aunt is in town three hours before she could have possibly known we'd need it, SHE'S DEFINITELY INVOLVED SOMEHOW.

But if I do have her go wolfy, I have to work around that whole Argent suicide if bit thing and the Gerard thing. Which means getting through season 2.

I still haven't started episode 5.

[rivienna]

Episode six has now made it's way onto the "When is Riv going to watch it?" list. The weekend is turning out busier than expected, but that just means I have time to think while driving around.

I'm still on the fence about whether I want Allison to get wolfy in LWTW. It really comes down to the question of Allison and Derek's relationship. Could Allison be one of Derek's betas? In this scenario she only managed being Peter's because she goes into it knowing he's going to die once Kate is out of the way. Would she snipe the kill from Derek? Would Derek be able to handle an Argent as alpha-- let alone as his?

There are so many pitfalls writing for werewolf!Allison. The biggest being basically all of season 2 from what I can tell. If Allison sniped Derek's kill, then Chris winds up in the know and probably Gerard too? And why would Gerard need to bother with Scott if his own granddaughter is the alpha? We can just toss that whole plot line out the window.

This has been bugging me for just about three days now. 

There would have to be another way to transfer the alpha power, right? Where would the power go if the alpha wasn't murdered by another wolf? It can't just be the closest werewolf-- the alpha power would have stopped on Peter in that case, since he was definitely physically closer to Talia at the time of her death than Laura was. There's gotta be some way to direct the power to a specific individual... but it's gotta be something more time consuming than shoving it through a pack bond at the alpha's chosen heir in the moments between "oh shit teeth in my throat" and "im dead", or there would be no point in challenging an existing alpha.

This was about the point when another Stiles Refuses The Bite gif set appeared on my dash and my brain went "OH OH OH!!!!!". Because I've seen that "position of the bite has meaning" thing a few times, and like. I know it's mostly so people can ship but for the sake of Allison not accidentally outing her wolfiness to her grandfather I'm running in a different direction with this.

Ritual bites! Because all your wrist biting needs should not be limited to turning werewolves. It can also be used to make sure your power goes exactly where you want it to go when you die and not to whatever wolf has taken you out. This is probably a Very Traditional Wolf Thing, something that requires time to work; maybe about the same amount of time it takes someone to turn? It would make sense then for a ritual bite and a turning bite to be the same bite. Anyways this Very Traditional Wolf Thing would be something that Laura and Derek hadn’t been taught before everyone who could tell them about it died. Or wound up in a coma.

A bite on the left wrist means you're shit out of luck, you're the assassin now, go murder things for your alpha, Left Hand.

A bite on the right wrist means you just got tagged in as the heir apparent, you'll be the alpha just as soon as you learn all the things, Right Hand.

So yes. This means that in my head canon Peter was trying to alpha-block Derek/Scott by turning Stiles. Maybe I'll write that fic sometime. Probably not.

I will, however, be going off to bed where I doubtless will have weird werewolf themed dreams again, the scattered fragments of which may lead to another world-building post where I figure out plot points while throwing questions into the ether.

[rivienna]

So I deleted the Peter-Allison pre-series meeting by accident. I’ve been pretty pissed at myself for that for awhile. But that did give me this, and I think this is better so. Good for me?

----

It’s not the first, second, or even third thing that she does once they’ve finally moved into the long unused Argent property in Beacon Hills. Those three (and so many more besides) are taken up by settling in and getting an idea of where things are in town, and it takes several long days before Allison finds herself slipping through the glass doors of the Beacon Hills Public Library. She would have much preferred it if the branch had been further away from her new home than it happens to be, but Beacon Hills is hardly a major metropolitan center. There’s only one library.

As it is, she had to wait until both of her parents were distracted with “work” things before going on this particular little adventure.

She can’t quite put her finger on which set of memories it is that is picking, poking, and pressing her towards the library. Faith or Renne, Renne or Faith; there’s an argument to be made for either of them, or even for any of the dozens of lives she’d lived between them. The Slayer’s teenage misadventures had left a solid impression that she could find anything she needed to know in a “properly stocked” library, because libraries are where Watchers and their supernatural knowledge bases made their homes. The self insertion’s frustratingly vague and out of reach memories whispered of comfort and familiarity with a library and it’s breadth of possibilities that has the tension easing out of her shoulders once she has a membership card in hand. 

No matter what memory it is that has brought her here, Allison finds herself settling in at a computer station to pick away at the past a bare handful of days before she’s set to start classes at her new high school. That, in and of itself, feels important in a way that twists her stomach with anticipation and dread. It makes her think of tropes and plot lines and opening scenes; a supernatural teen drama is about to begin with her in the position of primary love interest. If it follows the formula she’s only got until school starts before things start coming at her fast and furious. 

So for the small bit of time that she has left, she researches. She looks up Beacon Hills and Scott McCall. She looks up Stiles Stilinski and Derek Hale. They’re the only names that she’s absolutely certain of, the only thing that she can think of to look up.  Information on the town is overwhelming and information on Scott is non-existent. There are articles on Sheriff Stilinski that mention his son in that off-handed way that news articles tend to and hit pieces that talk about his son and wife’s medical histories before her “untimely death”, but nothing that tells her anything about Stiles himself.

But oh. Oh the Hale name brings up all sorts of interesting things.

There was so much that she hadn’t known about the Hale family that was just... out there.  In the news and on the internet and just so readily available for anyone to find. Renne’s scattershot knowledge of the series hadn’t prepared her for this, for the fire and the deaths and the dreadful way that her stomach clenches. There’s something there, some part of her (of Renne) that says that her family has something to do with it. 

There’s nothing inherently supernatural about any of the articles. There’s nothing that even whispers of werewolves or hunters, but there’s still a feeling of her family in every inch of the investigation. And what an investigation it was-- unexpectedly it was nearly a year long, with the fingers of reporters and citizens pointing in every direction but the truth. While officially a suspected arson would become an accidental fire, rumor and conspiracy had filled the town for months. 

Wagging tongues had it that Derek or his sister had caused the fire, looking to cash in on their mother’s money. Their uncle surviving screwed up that plan, and when they couldn’t get their hands on it, they fucked off to parts unknown and didn’t leave a forwarding address. How tragic, some said. How suspicious, said more.

Rumors aside, it’s that surviving uncle that really intrigues her. Derek is something of a known quantity; she’d be willing to bet cash that he’ll be back in town within a week. She knows nothing of the sister, because whatever happened to Laura is beyond Renne’s knowledge. But Peter...

Oh Peter. Peter Hale, who was burnt so badly that there should not have been an iota of a chance of survival. Peter Hale, whose miraculous recovery somehow slipped under the radar. 

Peter Hale: catatonic and still in Beacon Hills. 

It looks like she has a werewolf to go visit. Preferably before the series kicks off. 

[rivienna]

this is so not actually going to happen in Lay Waste: Teen Wolf (because I have other better ideas), but it's just one of those thoughts that sprung upon me during the drive home tonight.

Because Allienne is the absolute worst.

"I'm a friend of Scott's. My name's Derek." The attempt to be cheerful and the welcoming(?) smile drops off his face into something that looks a bit more blank as the silence hangs between them for a beat too long. Jesus. No wonder the boys thought this idiot was a murderer. 

There are plenty of other less assholeish things to say, but what actually comes out of her mouth is "Like a friend-friend or a Kate-friend?"

---

and that’s it. that’s what popped into my head. I don’t know enough about anything to go further than this, but there’s also that whole having a better route to go on the Allison path thing that is.

well. Allienne is still the absolute worst, but she’s not going to poke a woof at a party at least.

[rivienna]

No episode watching and no transcript tonight. I'm not even sure if this bit of fic is even going to be coherent, I am so damn tired. today was the first day in about six weeks that I didn't start with an energy drink and man am I feeling it.

--- Lay Waste: Teen Wolf ---

It is more than a little embarrassing that it takes as long as it does for her to figure out just what series she's wound up in this time. The only other time that came close to matching this was the first time around, back before the whole "self insert" thing came to light-- and back then she was a literal toddler.

Some of that was very likely from the recovery period; as scrambled as her thoughts had been when she awoke, she'd gotten one thing right: she was in the hospital. She'd clawed her way back into consciousness after a three day coma, blinking blurry eyes at the ceiling and barely aware that her mother's hand was wrapped around her own. 

She'd had to grapple with the mocking voices of her memories once she’d been told what happened. The brief coma was nothing to laugh at, nor were the line of stitches holding her skull together a few inches back from her left ear, nor the broken bones carefully set in her arm. And yet the edge of Faith scoffed at only three days and a battered body.

She’d been a Slayer for long enough that the kind of pain that she experienced in the wake of the accident was fascinating and new. It was bright sparks behind her eyes, a dull throb throughout her body, and a jagged sharpness when she pressed to hard.

She thinks it worried her parents.

It worried them in the way that her fingers would creep up to the stitches and scrape across them before she caught herself and jerked them away. It worried them in the way that she'd stare blankly down at the broken arm, flexing her wrist and always testing her range of movement. It worried them in the way that she'd press the mottled bruises of her legs into the closest surface, soft or sharp, just to feel them.

It has been a very very long time since her body reacted to trauma the way that this one does. It made her wonder, and that was just another reason why she didn't recognize this world. It feels... real in a way that her memories of other times and lives and people doesn't. It feels like there's a curtain between the her of the here and now and the them that once existed for uncountable lifetimes. The diaphanous fabric in her mind is easily pushed out the way, and she can call up those memories as easily as any of the ones from this lifetime, but they don't feel like they're hers. The disconnect is unnerving on one level and comforting on another.

There is an Allison Argent that lives in Renne's knowledge, but it's hazy and indistinct. There is no Christopher or Victoria Argent; these are not names that she recognizes. The familiarity of Allison could just as easily be because she's a side character in something as it could be because she is Allison. This is her current life, and therefore it's familiar.

For all she knows this could be the life of an original character that was thought up as a break, a respite, from the hell of her last two lives, and the authorial bleed through is just particularly strong.

She's never been an OC before, and it... it makes a certain kind of sense. A car accident and a cracked skull, gymnastics and martial arts... that's Renne's life. Was Renne's life, anyways, back when she was a teenager in those muddled memories of 90s neon, just discovering the internet and fanfiction and a dozen other things.

It's not until two months after the accident, when she's watching the armory being packed up and the words "We're moving to your aunt's old place in Beacon Hills" echo between her ears that it clicks.

Renne had never seen Teen Wolf, but she knows that name. They’d laughed at the shopping center in their city that shared it, every time they went.

The curtain between Renne's memories and Allison's life is because Renne doesn't know what's coming. Ripping into those memories and scrabbling wildly at the knowledge of what's to come just leaves her shaking. She has an outline. It's just the barest scraps of a vague idea of what's happens, and it's almost no better than being Allison-without-Renne.

Shit.

[rivienna]

Oh hey look, I actually wrote something for Lay Waste: Teen Wolf. It’s the opening for the Allison path.  Because I enjoy writing disconnected thoughts, and also I was having fun with some ideas re:teen wolf being literally the only series in Lay Waste that I have zero reference points for.

Sorry Allison. you’re stuck more with your last life than your first one :D

--------

weight

pressure, really

it's a sensation of distant pain; an ache that begins in your lungs and creeps through your body from chest to arms and legs, hands and feet, to pound a tempo of obliteration in your skull--

this is what draws you up and out of a darkness you do not recall entering. your mind is scattered and foggy; you don't know what happened, or where you are, or why it's still so damn dark--

except

no. it's still dark because your eyes are closed. you're on your back, and your head pulses and throbs and you don't want to open your eyes at all because--

because--

you don't know.

your hands hurt and your arms feel like lead, but still you clench your fists and flex your wrists and relief floods you because there are no straps.

thank god, you find yourself thinking, i'm not captive--

captive?

your mind catches on the word, turns it over and over and over again in your still hazy mind, because it's wrong wrong wrong and you don't know why.  why would you be held captive? why wouldn't you be? you've never even given kidnapping a moment's thought, except that you've considered it so many many times. from both sides, even

your head still hurts. it's hard to fit the pieces together

maybe if you opened your eyes?

it's a monstrous task, more so than any fight against-- against-- you can't quite grasp it.  What could you have possibly been fighting? You're just a teenage girl--

or

are you?

you don't feel like a teenager. you feel like--

like you need to open your eyes. you're not sure how many minutes you've wasted before you manage that herculean task, but with your eyes open it feels like you've suddenly turned the world on. You can hear the hum of electronics, smell the sharpness of sterilization, feel the uncomfortable mattress under you and the sheets wrapped around you.

You're in a hospital.

That... that tracks. It's a puzzle piece clicking into place in your head, because of course you're going to feel foggy and out of it and exhausted and pained if you've managed to get yourself hurt enough that your powers can't ta--

Powers?

What?

You don't have powers. Powers are a comic book thing, a tv thing, a movie thing, not a real life thing. You're just a regular girl and that right there? That thought? That is more than enough to snap the rest of the puzzle pieces into place.

Faith-- (Renne)-- Allison draws a breath in through her teeth, wincing and fighting down the nausea and the pain to try and focus past the rush of memory and experience and lives left long ago.  Faith is still too close to the surface, but Renne subsides and settles quietly into the back of her mind. It's... odd. Allison knows that she's lived dozens of lives and that she can call on those memories as needed but there's a disconnect there that's never been before.

She's less Renne than she's ever been before, and that. That is just plain unnerving.  How can she be the self-insert in a self-insert fanfic if the part of her that's the author is quiet?

[rivienna]

APPARENTLY the post office thinks today is the 25th, because the box set showed up. Go figure. The other thing that showed up today is my dishwasher.

I am about 4000x more excited for the dishwasher than the box set. Four months of washing every dish by hand twice because the water is dirty after the first wash is tedious. And I can’t even blame anyone else for that because that’s just my brain telling me it’s not actually clean.

Anyways, with the box set here I suppose I’ll actually be able to double check things and hey maybe even watch the damn show, but for now I have THREE tally marks for Allienne’s route. 

Tally marks three and four are the last two of the original tally marks:

Three is Allison implying to basically everyone that she thinks her aunt is a serial killer (and outright stating it to Stiles because “your dad is the sheriff. I can’t find proof but I bet he can!”) and basically just being a troll about not being told about werewolves. The former evil vampire slayer is delighting in either misconstruing peoples’ attempts to tell her about the supernatural, or fucking with the people who are trying to keep her in the dark. It’s  hilarious to her. 

Four is another one of those “is this a real scene?” things, because I haven’t even seen a gif set of it, but it shows up in season 1 rewrites so probably? Anyways. It’s that part where Chris/Chris’ Minions smash out Derek’s window? And it’s at a gas station or something? Allison totally walks out of the gas station with an energy drink right then and there, and in the most scandalized voice ever is just like “DADDY????” because again: fucking with people trying to keep her in the dark and Chris. Chris is one of those guys.

I had this moment in the car tonight where I was wondering if I was pushing it with these scenes, before remembering that I’m fantasizing about a version of myself from 2015 inserted into a fanfic for a series I’ve never seen where in my insert KNOWS they’re an insert and spends half the fic bitching about author fiat and “how this would never happen outside of a fanfic!!”

Which lead into the new tally mark: Reason #5 to choose Allison for the insert!

With her Dramatic Bitch-itus in full swing, Allienne shows up at the Sheriff’s house asking if she could stay with the Stilinskis because she “doesn’t feel safe at home” anymore. Because she’s positive Aunt Kate is a serial killer, and now her dad’s got her thinking that he might be her aunt’s Serial Killer Partner, and she still doesn’t have any proof, but he was destroying that one guy’s property and-- and-- and-- 

and that’s about when I almost rear ended a guy and had to pay attention to the road again.

[ Current Tally: Allison 5, Talia 2 ]

[rivienna]

Boo the ETA on my box set got changed from today to the 25th.

Well okay fine. Let's throw down another of Allison's tally marks in the Allienne vs Talienne debate, and since I can't check where/if it actually happens all this is based on a gif set I saw a couple weeks ago and do not actually remember where it is to even double check that.

So the gif set has Kate telling Allison that she doesn't think of werewolves as people, only as animals and I just--

"Ew." says Allison, hand wrapping around the breaker bar Kate had out for some reason.

"Gross," she says as she hauls her arm back.

"Bestiality." she finishes as the breaker bar slams into the back of Kate's skull.

And that's it. That's the entire tally mark for going with Allison instead of Talia.

I chose a breaker bar because my dad gave me one for christmas, so I have a pretty solid idea of just how heavy a breaker bar is right now.

The tally is still 4 vs 2.

[rivienna]

Hmm, if I'm going to be posting tally marks for which version I like best, maybe I should post some of the Allison tally marks. That "four" had to come from somewhere, right?

Unlike with the Talia path, it's a lot harder to figure out where I'd have Allison waking renne. A pre-series accident that was enough to temporarily kill her? Some random injury made worse? That weird drowning thing? Her canonical death? I really need my box set to arrive. just gotta wait until Tuesday Riv, just until tuesday...

There's some handwavy ideas for the canonical death, and some amusing scenes for Allienne vs Nogitsune, but mostly I've been thinking about a pre-series injury. And because this is me, and renne is me from 2015, I thought "you know what would be great? a car accident. renne’s familiar enough" But Allison's car accident is far worse than the cracked skull and nine hours of unconsciousness and Fighting The Doctors that I got to experience, and she temporarily dies. As this is not a supernatural-related accident, the Argents keep their traps shut and don't tell her about werewolves.

That may have been a dumb idea guys, because Allison just woke up a) with the info dump of a vague outline of the Teen Wolf series, b) having been Faith Lehane in the previous life, c) a lot of lingering injuries she doesn’t want to keep and d) the habit of making terrible life choices even without the influence of renne and Faith's memories. Allison knows about ‘wolves and she knows about Kate and she also knows where to conveniently find that rogue alpha that I guess they moved to Beacon Hills to find? This not actually knowing the timeline of events that lead to the Argents being in Beacon Hills is not good. I should probably look it up.

In any case, they're in Beacon Hills, Scott is all bitten and smitten, and Allienne saunters her way into Peter's hospital room all like "So hey, I know you want to kill my family because my aunt is a psychopath and burned down your house while trapping all your loved ones in it, but you know what would be the best revenge? Turning me."

Because going from Demon Powered Vampire Slayer to Regular Human Girl is. uh. Well, it's an adjustment. and Bad Decisions are just the way she works.

Anyways, the tally is still Allison 4, Talia 2, because this was one of the original ideas that got this whole Teen Wolf ball rolling.

[rivienna]

More thoughts for the Talia path of Lay Waste: Teen Wolf Edition 

I had to stop mid-daydream to look up teen wolf canon stuff because there are a lot of things that I’m like “is this canon, can I play with this or is this just fanfic stuff?”

and like.

all alphas are assholes, right? like, that’s what i’m getting from what I’ve been reading. something something lycanthropy is a gift but alphahood is a curse. So I’m running with that.

Talia drags herself out of the grave, flops over, and in the moments before renne’s memories crash down on her like the behemoth of lives lived that it is, she recognizes that her mind is clear for the first time in decades.

like there are so many decisions crowding in that made sense in the moment, but without the alpha spark(?) there to guide her thought patterns it’s a lot of “what the shit? why did i do that? what??”

and then to top it all off she gets all of the bad decisions renne made as Faith Lehane dumped on her. Talia’s not having a good pre-series time.

Point to the Talia path over the Allison path. 

[ Current Tally: Allison 4, Talia 2 ]

[rivienna]

rolled out of bed this morning poking my tooth and going "ow this hurts ow" because what else do you do after a root canal? apparently I make things worse for myself. and on the topic of making things worse for myself...

some more lay waste: teen wolf edition.

apparently my pain fogged semi conscious brain went you know who would be fun? talia. I dont know anything about talia because, let me reiterate, I have never watched teen wolf. the box set is scheduled to arrive next week.

so. talia wakes up renne. post fire, no longer the alpha. having to dig themselves out of Yet Another Grave, thank you author-me you're just the bestest. maybe there is A Stilinkski visiting claudia to witness this madness. maybe there is a request to bring claudia back if talia was able to come back. and talienne is just kinda like "she wont come back right. and you're going to have to move because everyone here knows she's dead."

and like. the not coming back right? would be because talienne would be giving Claudia's body to the nogitsune provided the nogitsune helped talienne completely and utterly destroy Kate and gerard and make the argent name mud. as you do when you're getting revenge for your own murder. ("happy birthday Pete, I got you some dead hunters. get well soon!")

I also thought about having the nogitsune be renne, but then I wouldn't get the fun of

"I'm a thousand years old--"

"Good for you? I stopped counting years lifetimes ago, but I got up to 3k before that so..."

what does she do about Laura and Derek? stalk them from afar mostly. take lessons from Peter about Being Creepy.

send faked transfer requests from eichen house for Peter to force them back to beacon hills at regular intervals.

I'm enjoying this version almost as much as the allison version. talienne versus allienne go!!

[ current tally: Allison 4, Talia 1 ]

[rivienna]

I feel like I'm on a quest to see how long it takes people to abandon this blog. It's been sixteen months since my last post, how many of you even remember who I am??

Mucking around with Lay Waste the Sky again. I'm always mucking around with Lay Waste the Sky, but I'm never actually writing it down so I have nothing to give ya'll.

This time around it's Teen Wolf. I have never actually seen Teen Wolf. Everything else in LWTS is something I have seen/read and obsessed over, but sure lets go with something I have no understanding about on any level except "I like rayshippouuchiha and cywscross's stories for other serieses, so maybe I'll just read one or two or hell it's been two months and aside from three KHR fics I have read only Teen Wolf fics this entire time maybe I should watch the series"

I ordered the box set last night. This may have been a terrible idea, I do not know.

I've had a lot of ideas for who wakes up as Renne. Timeline wise: if it was immediately post-MCU it would be Scott, with Stiles being the companion. Immediately post-Naruto it would be Stiles with either Scott or Lydia as the companion. If it was somewhere in the nebulous period between being Steve and being Nana it could be Laura or Peter or Chris with undecided companions for each of them, unless it was immediately following the unplaced undecided Bleach insert. In which case it would be Lydia with Jackson as companion. I don't think I came up with any timeline where Derek would be Renne.

But as fun as some of those ideas were, I kept cycling back to Allison. I know so little about this series you guys. SO LITTLE. And because of who got me started on the Teen Wolf fanfic, most of my knowledge is very heavily Stiles biased. So the fact that it's Allison I keep coming to? MAKES NO GODDAMN SENSE TO ME

Anyways, I had to rearrange Renne's timeline. I moved BtVS later in the series so that Renne just from Faith to Allison. Because that will work out splendidly.

All this babble to say that I don't have anything written for my few remaining followers, but I am still thinking and creating and digging myself into holes.