#BUT EGG PUNK IS THE ONE IM MOST CURIOUS ABOUT BECAUSE WHAT

[aussie-bookworm]

Spotify the fuck???????????

[lids-flutter-open]

writing bloggin ignore if u want

so after listening to a ton of rpg live play podcasts the thing i think i’ve taken away from it is that the dynamics between characters and character choice and motivation cannot be underestimated ever at all and that you can set up a plot but your characters have to take you thru it and you can’t force them to make certain choices, and i think this is gonna rlly help w my titus reno story--

in making jenny and reno come alive and be equally like, legible for me like titus, i rlly wanted like to figure out how and why they were all originally hanging out and what they want and what their longterm goals are. initially i conceptualized jenny as this sort of punk hermione who is chaotic good and breaks the rules for the sake of justice and benevolence etc but i couldn’t figure out how jenny would get like that or develop those principles in the context of the medical compound and i also didnt find that like, a compelling character arc. BUT i have a new idea where jenny is like, this drug dealer turned accidental but passionate prophet and it has just tied my whole thing together in a way that i hope is gonna help me actually get this stuff on paper+ it also provides a GREAT underlying dramatic arc and a good rationale for the dynamic of titus and reno to work as a couple the way i want it to

so: in this future world, everyone, human and mutant laborer alike, has this parasitic worm living in them that’s impossible to kill which makes people infertile, causes nerve damage, and finally eats your brain, some fifteen years after your initial infection. Because the worms lay thousands of eggs in all kinds of water supplies, most people are infected within a few years of birth, except some hastily quarantined human children. Super secret scientists know the worm is an alien and this fact has only recently been released, but it doesn’t make much noise because at this point there are multiple global crises threatening civilization--climate change that has flooded cities and made agriculture on industrial scales impossible in many areas, total breakdown of all democratic governments, and now almost universal infertility. Pig-human mutants, who had been raised as laborers in dangerous lines of work, continue to be produced even as human mothers fail to concieve; these piggos are taken to be tested on, and each year as more die others are brought in. The scientists are working on trying to find something to kill the parasite that everyone on earth has. 

Jenny’s roommate in the medical compound realizes, through an accident, that the worms release hallucinogenic chemicals when you eat potassium fertilizer. She starts tripping and then begins dealing potassium fertilizer (to which she has restricted access as a specially authorized gardener). When she becomes too sick to continue, Jenny takes over. The position of dealer affords piggos status and power, and Jenny even deals to nurses, without telling them what the substance is. But gradually as time goes on she begins to be curious about the visions everyone has on this drug--because they’re all the same. 

When people take the fertilizer and ingest it and the worms release hallucinogens, people see pretty much all the same thing. they see alien landscapes and waterfalls and a sky with two moons and a distant red sun. It drips and spasms and is intermingled with other kinds of LSD type visions, but in general people see the same thing over and over. Jenny becomes convinced that the visions are a link to the world the alien worm came from, and she starts making all her clients draw their visions in an attempt to catalogue them. At the same time, the visions start to shift, and people start to see weird humanoid aliens, and increasingly, start to see visions of strange vines growing into what look like large organic structures. When, shortly afterward, the doctors announce they have cloned an alien humanoid from DNA left in the asteroid /ship? that hit Earth and brought the worm, and are using this clone to create antibodies to the worm, Jenny realizes that the alien is one of the humanoids from her visions, and becomes determined to figure out a way to contact the aliens. 

Reno is one of Jenny’s clients. He is hooked on the hallucinogen because he likes her sense of purpose but also he likes to escape and draw his visions and feel that there is something in the world besides the limited medical compound and the adolescent power struggles that surround him. He also has a little crush on Titus, who as Jenny’s bff is a supplier for a lot of the dorms and who is, while not very well liked, and not part of any male friend group, semi- respected based on his activities.

Reno keeps borrowing things to pay Jenny with, and his roommate/dorm head Rustler gives him an ultimatum--pay it all back with the fertilizer hallucinogen, or fight Rustler in a public match to settle the debt. It isn’t mean spirited but it’s like an adolescent maintenance of the status quo thing. Reno determines to get the drug and pay people back. 

When Jenny notices some of her stash is gone, she stakes out the shed she keeps it in overnight and she and Titus ambush Reno and threaten him with: knives, blackmail, the suggestion they could alter his medical records to make him look sicker than he is and have him removed to the late-term infirmary, etc etc. Titus sees Reno is genuinely scared and that he also is really miserable to find himself on Jenny and Titus’s bad side, and feels a little proud and excited and drunk with power, and is like, “ok, we don’t have to do all that, but you do need to either work with us and act as a supplier or just tell Rustler you have to fight him and we’ll supply hallucinogens to whoever wins.” reno does this partly bc he wants to impress titus. after he wins the match he asks titus to be his boyfriend, which surprises jenny and titus. when titus realizes reno has a crush on him he is also stoked, proud, flattered etc... though he is initially motivated primarily by lust, self interest and self preservation, and his romantic feelings only really emerge later.

sorry for this long ass post but im so glad to like work all this out and establish the ways that my characters’ personalities work--