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wisteria-project-archives · 3 months ago

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S!Wis's story - the long version 🧡

[MTAS spoilers below]

🌲 Before Sandrock

Wis knew that she wanted to be a builder from a young age, when she discovered how much she liked working with her hands. From doing chores on her father's berry farm, to watching her mother on her sewing machine, she was always driven to making and moving. She graduated from Highwind's Builder Academy with decent grades, nothing too special.

Soon after, she bought a small building on the north edge of Highwind West, next to a sprawling pine forest. The region's famous winds would blow the refreshing scent of pine down the street everyday, and so Wis named her new workshop with that as her inspiration: Fresh Pines.

However, increasing corruption in the Commerce Guild eventually led to smaller or newer workshop owners like her being pushed out of the business with the lack of significant commissions, instead funneling most of the work to the wealthiest and those most in favor of the Commerce Guild's administration. Without any work, Wis was forced to close her workshop's doors after just over a year, and to find work as a contractor for one of those larger workshops.

Unrest amongst the disenfranchised builders began to stir, Wis included. A movement began to gain momentum for the Highwind government to investigate and eliminate the corruption and the suspicious practices of the Commerce Guild, and for tighter regulations to be passed on how it could distribute work across all its members. Unfortunately, the Highwind government was only moved to do very little, like conduct internal reviews of the Commerce Guild, which obviously turned up no wrongdoing. Discouraged, the builders' movement began to lose members, and those remaining could not sustain the same kind of attitude or momentum they used to have with greater numbers.

🌵 A Fresh Start in Sandrock

One day, several years after she lost her workshop, Wis was on her way to work when she saw an ad in the paper: Sandrock was looking for builders. And they'd provide workshops! With barely an ounce of hesitation, she applied, got accepted, and packed her bags to move out to Sandrock. Aside from Nia and her family, no one knew what she was doing or where she was going. Eventually, after enough time, Wis would wonder if she betrayed the builders' movement by suddenly vanishing and seizing an opportunity for herself, even if was in a completely different place, and she wasn't deeply involved with organizing the movement's efforts.

Aside from the heat, she took to Sandrock immediately, what with its constant need to upkeep its vital infrastructure and its sparse amount of staffing. She grit her teeth against the machinations of Yan, who was very clearly trying to exploit her building experience to get more work out of her, and built up rapport with the townsfolk. In no time at all, she found herself a part of this toughskinned, but warm little community.

🌠 Wis and Qi 🌙

In particular, she found herself forming an unexpected bond with Qi. Despite their initial general apathy towards each other (and Wis's annoyance towards Qi), the construction of the mobile suit marked a sudden shift. By that point, they'd already seen their mutual interest in Old World relics, and the quality of each other's work, and from that point on, they began to grow closer as friends. It certainly helped that learning Wis was a clone only sparked Qi's interest in spending more time with her, under the guise of studying.

Their objectives in life were more or less on opposite ends of the spectrum. Wis wanted a life where she could perform fulfilling work and figure out what else made her happy on the side, like her hobbies and interests in gardening and history. What Qi wanted more than anything else was for his work (and by proxy, himself) to be recognized by his peers in Vega 5, after having a key piece of his work stolen and taken credit for, and no one coming to his aid in the aftermath. Wis was planning on staying in Sandrock for good. Qi saw Sandrock as a stepping stone for his eventual return to Vega 5.

In spite (or perhaps because?) of the contrast, they grew closer. Their curiosity for each other grew, they grew to enjoy each other’s company more, and soon the first hints of romantic thoughts crept into their heads. Wis more readily accepted her growing feelings, though Qi...could not at all say the same for his own. If anything, he tried to pretend that it was some sort of ailment, someone else's thoughts interfering with his own, or just some...thing that couldn't possibly be a part of him.

When tensions began to rise with the water theft and the infiltration of Duvos gradually coming to light, with Wis gradually being inserted into a pivotal role of keeping Sandrock safe, somewhat against her own will, and Qi wrestling with increasing internal conflict about his feelings, his work, and his life's goals, so too did their feelings.

It wasn't until Wis fell over a cliff per Logan's plans that things finally began to spill over.

In this newly-revealed scheme with Duvos, keeping some of the heaviest secrets, suddenly being asked to fight well outside her capacity as a builder with dozens of lives she cared about on the line, Wis needed some form of stability. Everything was changing so quickly and she had nothing to anchor herself with.

Despite fighting his own mind and heart for so long, trying to convince himself that he wanted and needed nothing outside his work success, trying to drown himself in work to try and numb himself with things he could understand and explain away with pure empiricism and logic, Qi couldn't deny the sudden wave of agony that had taken hold soon after Wis was reported to have fallen.

And so, one starry night when they both finally had a moment of calm after Wis came "back from the dead", alone together out in the sandy outskirts, they talked. They fell silent. There was a wordless moment of understanding. And then their lips gently met.

⚔️ The Invasion and the Aftermath

The invasion was stressful, to say the very least. Wis really didn’t appreciate quite literally falling into the role of one of the town’s only defenders, particularly when it came to Grace, not only who she thought was a trusted friend, but also who she trusted to do better than a scheme like Logan’s weird little Secret Test of Character (tm). On the other side, the rest of the town was recovering surprisingly well after being witness to an act of war. So while the rest of the Alliance sings Wis’s praises and calls her a hero, she still has to endure nightmares and basophobia, and she feels like she’s being left behind.

It takes a while for her to be able to work through the trauma to get it down to a level to where it doesn't bother her on a near constant basis, and to send the message out to others that her being a fabled hero was the last thing she wanted. She was just a builder. A person. Push came to shove and she had to step outside that box, and she succeeded, but the fact remained that she was shoved.

Gradually though, with time and the help of some of her clone sisters, her friends, and her new partner, she heals. And she helps Sandrock heal in the process, helping become the Jewel of the Eufaula that it always deserved to be.

🌄 What’s next?

Hard to say! I think later on into MTAS Act 3 she and the other builders in the region organize into a rough little union. Considering Wei is generally pretty agreeable and actually has some concern for his employees, they probably use it as a pilot and a template for other commerce guilds around the Alliance and encourage the builders there to follow suit. And Wis takes advantage of her reputation to sway that into happening. Especially in Highwind, which started this entire business in the first place!

She does eventually get married and way later down the line she builds a robochild, but with the events of MTAE, we’ll have to see. When she received word that P!Wis was planning on going to Settlement 2, she was immediately skeptical. She knew the true motivation behind the Northern Development Plan, and even though P!Wis would be the governor, she could see that the military would just as easily flick her aside if they saw fit. Worse, she effectively becomes a puppet leader for them, or worse still…she loses herself to the most extreme Anti-Duvos barkers, and advocate to conquer and colonize just as Duvos has. Plus, with all the shit that S!Wis had to deal with Duvos in MTAS, she's absolutely not jumping the gun to leave behind a community that she fought to preserve and move out to a war front. Considering the MTAS builder's slated to appear in MTAE, we'll have to see how that story plays out...

#opting to put these long story summaries on different posts incase ppl don't want to be jumped in their feeds if tumblr shortens it lol #wisteria cyprens 🧡#s!wis 🧡#the wisteria project

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