#i could write a book about why steph has one of the most tragic backstories omfg this poor girl

[soupdwelling]

poor stephanie lauter man. she was definitely alive when her mom died, maybe young but it’s likely she was old enough to grasp the concept and also understand that the circumstances of her death were. strange. solomon clearly struck some a deal with the lords in black that resulted in her death, but steph doesn’t know that. she’s probably always wondered what happened, it plagues her at night, she keeps pictures of her and her mom on her phone and wears her ring so she doesn’t forget.

solomon’s probably been affected too. it’s not a normal everyday thing to sacrifice your wife to 5 eldtritch gods, but maybe before it happened he wasn’t such a shitty person. maybe he’s always been power hungry and a little too controlling, but maybe he was trying to do better. he had a wife. he had a daughter. he was trying to be a good dad for her. so maybe in a way steph lost her mom and her dad that day. she died and he got way, way worse.

but what possible circumstances could solomon have ended up in that forced him to sacrifice his own wife?? my theory is that it somehow involved stephanie. the choice ended up being choose your wife or your daughter, and he chose his daughter. maybe this is partially why he’s so controlling of her. “your mother died for you so you have to be perfect, turn out exactly the way i want you to or it was all for nothing” on top of the need to protect his image, steph is just fighting an uphill battle trying to meet her fathers impossible expectations and always falling short. and she doesn’t understand why. from her perspective, the death of her mom is a mystery, all she knows is that her dad turned into a massive asshole after she died and seems to partially blame her for some unknown reason. so she’s just growing up with this weight on her shoulders and for some reason feels guilty for her moms death even though she doesn’t even remember it?