#no storm:time traveler au

[stari-hun]

No Storm: Time Traveler AU

Isokania (and their horrible no good bad college situationship that forces them both to become separate people)

In my first Ramble, I mentioned how Kakania and Isolde grew up together in a boarding school. Both of their parents are historians, but the Dittarsdorfs have an actual connection to nobility and are still technically noble. Just like the original story, they met through Theopil during the time he was free to introduce the two, and just like the original story, they became instant best friends. Inevitably they were sent to the same catholic school boarding school together. The two of them were very isolated to one another too, as Kakania would struggle to make friends from her quick reputation as a troublemaker, and Isolde held no interest in others outside of Kakania. Since Isolde and her were already close, Kakania didn’t even notice the way she lacked other friends or human interaction. Later after they graduated, Kakania had already heard of the concepts of mental health resources from others, and decided to become a psychiatrist. From there, Kakania heard about Laplace’s education programs, and as an arcanist who would already have ties to the Foundation in the future, she decided to go to them. Isolde, who wanted to stay with Kakania, convinced Mr Dittarsdorf to send her as well for a degree in fine arts when Kakania got a scholarship. (After her first semester, Isolde was also given a full-ride scholarship for her talent).

✰.

Kakania began to struggle in college after seeing the community in Laplace between students and the staff. (Laplace has a separate building for college and the actual research center.) Kakania would struggle because she was friends with Isolde and only Isolde for years, and Isolde never held Kakania to the expectations of a healthy friendship. Isolde had been in love with Kakania since they first locked eyes, so she never held her to the same expectation of care or consideration that Isolde would show her. Isolde saw everything Kakania did under rose tinted glasses to the point that she didn’t care about her being pushy or careless with her. Meanwhile Kakania didn’t even know what area of the campus Isolde took classes in until she had offered to meet her so Kakania could do a mock therapy session for class. Kakania would remember people's birthdays, but she'd never ask about their hobbies or their experiences in life until it was something she was personally interested in. If Isolde got a cat, Kakania wouldn't know until she went into Isolde’s part of the house because she was doing an interview for her psych class. Despite living together, their friendship also matched the way it did when they were kids at opposite ends of the neighborhood. 

Kakania began to struggle more and more socially when people would cut her off from seemingly nowhere according to her. Meanwhile Isolde formed a small group of friends with Tooth Fairy, Jiu, and Windsong before she met Tooth Fairy’s juniors from the SPDM’s Guidance Program: Medicine Pocket and Mesmer Jr. Isolde would always keep a level of distance between them which Tooth Fairy would notice.

✰.

In their second year, Kakania and Isolde began to get closer than ever because of Kakania’s isolation in her program. No person in her classes or even program would consider Kakania a friend, and the inability to keep a friend began to wear on her. She was able to get through her first year while burying her head into her coursework, but by the start of the second it became too much. It all accumulated into the midterm of their first semester when Isolde suggested they celebrate passing midterms together with a platonic date night in their living room. After ordering takeout using Kakania’s accounts so Mr Dittarsdorf wouldn’t catch Isolde having junk foods, they end up making out. Isolde, who had known she was a lesbian since she was a child, was having her dream relationship with the girl she loved since they met at 15. Meanwhile Kakania, upon her first kiss being a woman, had to reevaluate her entire sexuality and outlook on life, or if she even loved Isolde. By the time the break between semesters was about to start, Kakania realized she didn’t love Isolde and decided to break it off before things got too serious. Naturally, Isolde melts down because unlike Kakania thought, she had loved her, and for a while she had resolved herself to simply be friends with Kakania until she could “fix” her. But after their kiss and dating for months before the semester ended, Isolde realized she couldn’t stay friends anymore. 

✰.

Kakania ended up moving into the student dorms while Isolde stayed with Tooth Fairy for a few weeks while ignoring everything from her phone. Her ignoring calls got to the point that Theopil visited her after class one day because she hadn’t contact anyone since the breakup. (He left only after giving her a gift box she later opened to see full of pounds for when she couldn’t use her credit card without Mr Dittarsdorf finding out). Isolde being forced to actually open up to others after showing up at Tooth Fairy’s apartment the evening of the breakup because she couldn’t go home to Kakania. Even though she’s still in a daze during her time at school, she has the talent to match her grades without trying. Isolde starts to form an outer circle of friends, and Tooth Fairy reassured her that people can be safe while helping her not just switch dependencies from Kakania to her. She starts becoming better friends with Jiu and Windsong, and even Mesmer Jr and Medicine Pocket now that she’s not masking over enjoyment whenever they meet. 

✰.

Kakania starts to feel the absence of Isolde in her life even more as she’s left alone. Now that she’s thinking about Isolde actively, she realizes all the unhealthy things she did with her while Kakania didn’t notice. She starts to reflect on the way that she was also dependent on Isolde as her rock to reassure her that her actions were right. Without her, and the way things were going in her social life, Kakania was at a total loss of how to move forward. 

Kakania started the new semester in a daze, but can’t keep up with schoolwork just off of groundbreaking talent. Eventually, her counselor meets with her to tell her how she’s in danger of losing her scholarship and it manages to snap her out of it just enough to go to a tutoring club. With her delusions of grandeur shattered, she meets Blonney, Horropedia, and An-An Lee. Three film majors with two as double majors for mechanical engineering and cultural studies. Kakania, who is quick to make friends but never keeps them, makes fast friends with the study group. But with Blonney, she started getting actual feedback about her treatment of others. Kakania is a lot of things, but she sees the way Blonney is never mean to anyone who hasn’t deserved it. So when Blonney starts checking her for the careless way she treats people, she has no choice but to listen. Even worse, Kakania starts to realize how little she knew about Isolde, despite the decade they knew one another, or the fact the entire campus thought they were the ideal couple during their 2 months of dating.

✰.

After their last semester starts, Kakania wants to see Isolde but realizes she didn’t know where her main classes would be. The only class she does know the location of was a prerequisite from a year ago. As Kakania starts spiraling farther, she realizes how much she didn't know about Isolde. But Tooth Fairy and Jiu are like Medicine Pocket, once they’ve made a friend they know need extra security, they’re a guard dog. Medicine Pocket is the type to bite on sight to harass someone to go away, but Tooth’s disappointment is like a knife to those who upset her. So to someone like Kakania who brushes off aggressive people as without sense meets their match with someone like Tooth Fairy. Kakania can brush off someone like Medicine Pocket even if they have good points purely off of being aggressive out of the gate, but for Tooth Fairy she can’t help but deflate while trying to ask about Isolde’s schedule to meet her. Tooth Fairy barely holding back a fist when she tells Kakania that she needs to reevaluate how good a friend she even was to Isolde because people like Kakania need to heal on their own through feedback from others, but people like Isolde need community support to assure her she isn’t alone in her struggle.

✰.

By the time they graduated, Kakania went back up to full honors, but she knew that while she was smart she had to get there from her own efforts instead of believing she was a genius. One of Kakania’s teacher gives her a recommendation letter for a counselor position in the SPDM, and she accepts. Meanwhile, Isolde was cutting off the Dittarsdorf name. After she opened up to others, one of the first things Windsong recommended was to change her home address to Tooth Fairy’s long before diplomas were sent out.

✰.

Kakania spends the next 5 years working as a counselor for the SPDM and learning how to work with the mental health of teens. While working together with Tooth Fairy for long enough to gain a friendly understanding with, she doesn’t learn about Isolde’s whereabouts even though she knows Blonney and Horropedia are friends with Tooth. Most of the time she gets to know Isolde is ok, and very rarely she’ll learn a tidbit about what she’s doing. When she sees of the Dittarsdorfs’ death in the newspapers, Kakania considers going, but she decides against it because Isolde had never reached out to her to reconnect. Luckily for her, Kakania stayed back just in time to receive a job offer from a famous institute for the research of mental health. 

Isolde was busy with her music and career as a singer. During her time in school she found she enjoyed jazz over opera, so she’d work gigs around town with both, and after Windsong showed her how she started uploading songs online too. 

Then Isolde received news of her father and mother’s death and the date for the funeral alongside it. After talking with her friends she decided to go if only to see Theopil again. She arrived a month before the funeral began to help and sort her business with the house. The month went by quickly as the funeral proceeded with Theopil alongside a few close family friends (Mr Karl barred from entering). Theopil was driving her to the train station home before the crash happened, and Isolde had another funeral to plan. As the last person with the Dittarsdorf name along with being in an accident, Isolde was forced to stay even longer, and with the legal rights to the house she stayed in her childhood home. After Theopil’s funeral ended Isolde still stayed in the house to figure out what to do with it, and before she knew it a year had passed. By then she had sold everything in the house that wasn’t of sentimental value or furniture before turning it over to the city as a historical museum following the Dittarsdorf line. Despite her hiatus from singing in person consistently, Isolde got an invitation to the US to become a singer in a well-respected jazz club, so she decided to begin her story of tomorrow in the States.

✰.

Over the next decade, Kakania worked her way up the corporate ladder in the research institute in the same way Isolde worked her way up to be a household name. While working at the research institute, as people try to get to know her, Kakania begins to have gender and sexuality crisis number two when they try to set her up with other people. Kakania never knew about Isolde’s shift into jazz because she couldn’t bear listening to her songs after realizing how much she had hurt her alongside how she realized she had loved her all this time. By the time she had turned 32, Kakania decided to focus more on children's mental health so that someone like Isolde would never go without help again. She especially focused on getting rid of the stigma that therapy meant there was a problem in order to have more children of affluent families sent to therapy. Before she knew it, Kakania was 35 and considered one of the top therapists in Europe for teens. Then she was invited to a national summit for her expertise in New York planned for right after her 36th birthday.

✰.

When she arrived for the week long convention, Kakania couldn't help but feel homesick. Despite not going home to Vienna for years, there was a difference between being a day’s trip away and being an entire ocean away. After hearing about the chance to find different cultures she could find in New York, she asked around if anyone had heard of a place to get Viennese food. From there she found out about a certain jazz bar nearby that had a live band during dinners, food from all over Austria, and a live singer on weekends who was supposedly the reason many people stayed in the hotel in the first place. The first time Kakania goes she ends up crying the first time she has dinner there after her conference panels from a mix of stress building up and homesickness. Kakania begins to eat there every day for the entire week the summit lasts, even ordering lunch from the bar when she has the chance between meetings. She even decided to stay later in the US, and catch a Saturday morning flight instead of pushing herself by leaving the second the convention ended. As she was enjoying dinner the lights went off as the stage crew announced the jazz club’s performer would be coming on shortly, and as Kakania readied herself to see her first performance in America, she saw someone she never stopped thinking about for the first time in years.

✰.

Fun Facts about them in the story:

Kakania got through the first year and a half of college through her good memory, but she learned in her last semester while struggling that it only works when she’s tuned in. If she doesn’t pay attention to someone’s words, her good memory with them means nothing.

Tooth is in college in order to get another certification, her degree only took 2 years because she was only a part time student in order to continue working at the SPDM.

The entire Dittarsdorf family showed up to Isolde’s graduation, but Evangeline praised her as Trista in front of Windsong and Vila, and Mr Dittarsdorf quickly left early to escort Evangeline out. Theopil stayed for an hour meeting her friends before handing her another chunk of cash “just in case.”

Isolde spent 2 months out of the year she spent back home transcribing Trista and Theopil’s lullaby into music sheets and online recordings of it so they could be played in the house even though they had passed.

Kakania’s therapist scolds her frequently for ignoring her own signs of stress, and the way she pushes herself too far to help others.

[stari-hun]

Mesmer: I just don’t trust her.. I know she’s hiding something.. Better safe with caution than hurt by someone sick…

Medicine Pocket: I got this

Medical Anomaly Pocket, running up to Isolde: Ms, are you sick in the head?

Windsong, on babysitting duty while Tooth Fairy went to grab her lunch after she forgot it: Oh god. Vila never taught me how to deal with that….

Isolde, trained on formal interaction but has zero experience with socializing with peers: “Yes…!”

[stari-hun]

Kakania: I don't know! I guess!-.. I guess I just wish we were two different people in any time other than where we are right now.

Isolde: It has to be us. It has to be right now.

[stari-hun]

Tooth Fairy after taking the group in a ride around the town to run through the basics of driving for Isolde: :) Any questions?

Vila in the back, traumatized: Comrade Tooth Fairy…. Do you not drive Comrade Mesmer and Medpocket to school each day?

Tooth Fairy: Yes? Why?

Vila:

[stari-hun]

More No Storm but Vertin has a Time Traveling Arcanum Content

Inaccurately Named Modern AU

* Apeiron

I think with like knowledge and math becoming more accessible sooo many people in Apeiron would go to the outside world to share their knowledge because 77 (37s mom) showed that even the people most faithful to their school of thought are interested in calculation machines. Give them Mathway.com and people would lose their minds.

6 would be a professional gamer. In fact he’d take so well to modern society that he’d be one of those people thriving in the 2020 lockdown and being away from Apeiron. Afterwards he’d also recover fast and put daily walks into his schedule or something cause he knows how badly his physical would’ve gotten. 6 would have an Instagram that’s the weirdest thing ever. People use it as inspiration for arg characters because he unintentionally posts with the vibe of someone extremely inhuman, and even though with the internet most humans would be aware of nonhuman arcanist they’d still be like what… There’s several video essays breaking down theories on who or what he might be. On the other side his posts are all pictures of objects he sees on daily walks that he sees have interesting dimensions to them or placement in a scene. The issue is that he doesn’t give any preamble or context to his math like 210 who wants to share math with the world would, or 37 who genuinely wants to teach, he just drops it in the caption and closes the app. He’d also have a YouTube explaining how he wins matches with others and insane speedrun content and how he beats games in under three minutes in extremely stupid calculations and exploits. His uploads are once in a blue moon but he’s a really popular faceless YouTuber (unlike 37 he reads comments and thinks about the questions he gets a lot, and even answers them in other videos). Also his like daily wanderings until he wants to go back home and risk interaction with others.

37 would get ahold of the internet like fish to water. She’d be an early YouTuber on 6’s recommendation and get super popular without realizing it. Her upload schedule is a “think of something start recording it and post with little to no editing” kinda style that for her ends up being 6-12 videos per week. 37 probably wouldn’t even realize there’s a comment section but Sophia knows it. Sometimes she’ll relay the comments to her from fans if they’re questions or constructive, but she mostly keeps them for herself because she’s happy 37 is branching out even if she isn’t entirely meaning too. I think 37’s content is a personality type. She’s giving constructive lessons that are informative but her personality and voice made her gain an audience mostly there to listen to her as background noise while she does homework. She does have a very loyal core audience of economists and radiologists since the topic she circles back around to the most is patterns in the weather and how they can be applied to daily life. Her most viewed video would be a super complicated explanation on how to predict when the next storm will happen in your area, and the top comment is a link to a website where someone made it into a calculator (it works with like a 5% chance of error). Also fun fact Vertin tried to use it once and the website was down for a week after she tried it. Sophia would have more kids centered content. Her follower base would mostly be parents who sit their kids in front of an iPad during work, but heavily monitoring their internet use and want them to watch content that’s good for them. She’d be faceless but unintentionally blow up super hard for story reading content, and her process for making up original stories. Afterwards she’d take a huge social media break entirely, only helping 37 with hers before slowly going back to her usual audiobook content with locked comments.

On that note, it’s slightlyyyy canon based, but I also think 210 would become good friends with Sweetheart after the island opened up and he reached out to her through Pandora to be their liaison. They’d do a ton of promotions and fashion statements. 210 already has an established interest in beauty, arts, and how they tie to math, and Sweetheart as a person who’s mathematically perfect would be his best excuse to study arts. Then Sweetheart would enjoy the company of any asexual, especially if they’re good for her image, and 210 is genuinely there to vibe and enjoy the beauty of the world. I also feel like he’d have one of those instagrams where he’s super popular for his looks but vast majority of his posts are sky pics and pictures of flora he sees.

I think in the story Sweetheart and Pandora are already on pretty good terms but I think in a Modern!Twist AU Pandora would be even more active in her writing. I think she’d have a small but famous journalism company where she employs only those she deems have a fresh perspective in a way she can’t supply. I talk about it in my other post, but Marcus interns there after getting an associates degree journalism during her dual enrollment and finishing Highschool. 210 and her run top series in UTTU for numbers and art analysis in a way people hadn’t thought of before, and Marcus runs a deep dive on historical spaces and the hidden stories within them.

UTTU would sometimes have interview segments where guest slots of an employee’s choosing (approved of by Pandora) will get a special feature. Windsong is the most reoccurring interviewee alongside Vila for research papers in ley lines and ecosystem observations respectively. Both are very popular features every time due to how they provide perspective on Marcus’ and 210’s segments.

[stari-hun]

I need everyone’s headcanons on their favs in a modern modern AU

Thought honestly this isn’t really a modern au it’s just an idea of what would happen if they were grew up as like millennials and Gen Z but also they’re all from diff eras so that needs an AU in itself?-

I feel like Sotheby would be a religious Wild Krats enjoyer. She already loves the adventuring genre a lot so I think she’d love Pokémon too and have all the games. Vertin would like the adventuring genre too but she’d be more a meta gamer and into adventuring series like Journey of Elaina or Frieren.

I think Sotheby would be super into DND too. I feel like she’s the type to go for the same class but different executions of it. Vertin is definitely the intentional game breaker, but Sotheby knows enough about potions and probably magic tools to be an accidental bomb in the party.

Sonetto is childhood friends with them, she met Vertin way before and they both met Sotheby in middle school when she was a year below them. I feel like she would be the type of kid who struggles to find interests of their own and instead builds interest up in stuff her friends already like.

I imagine Isolde and Kakania would be like childhood friends from something like private school or a Catholic boarding school. It’s projecting but I think Isolde and Kakania would LOVE Secrets of Moonacre and The Golden Compass.

Druvis and Lilya would obv be college students, but I wanna say Druvis would be an environmental activist looking to go into politics. Like for an environmental protection agency working on restrictions for deforesting.

Marcus would be a fan of like those late night documentaries and esp the series Round Planet. I think she’d thrive being able to access online archives for books. I think she’d also take a year after Highschool to go on like a tour of the world in a program that allows young adults to work in national parks and nature bases for free housing a paycheck. She’d transfer around running blogs and writing small bits for local newspapers in each place she visits using her Arcanum to find hidden stories.

Hofmann would be a college teacher from the college Marcus is dual enrolled in (she's on an accelerated course and Hofmann is a journalism professor).

[stari-hun]

No Storm: Time Traveler AU

Isolde’s Normal Girl Adventures and Kakania Learning to Make Healthy Friendships

This is a bit of a world building post to my Isokania story for my janky modern au. It’s a collection of fun (and not so fun) facts about their lives 

Timeline: Isolde and Kakania start college (Isolde 18 / Kakania 19), Graduate (Isolde 20 / Kakania 21), 5 years later as their lives change (Isolde 25 / Kakania 26), Reunion (Isolde 35 / Kakania 36). 

✰. General Facts About The Two

Isolde is a morning person. She dislikes fluorescent lights and she hates the warm glow of candles even more, so she’d rather just wake up early morning and use natural daylight.

Isolde is the type to randomly drop trauma out of nowhere. While she doesn’t think of it as incredibly traumatic, her friends taught her to air out her thoughts instead of letting people never get to know her. 

✰.

Kakania is a midday person. She dislikes early mornings, but also late nights. She’d rather get the most out of any day, but she doesn’t function well waking up at dawn or staying up super late.

While Kakania had much more freedom than Isolde in her childhood, she still didn’t know a lot about sexuality until far later. It took a lot of talks with Blonney and Jessica after graduation, and once she had started her job, that there was more to it than just liking the same or opposite gender. 

Many people in Kakania’s family have had cataracts later in life, so it’s one of her biggest fears. Once she reached her 30s though, she stopped worrying as much over it because of her health insurance and good eye health. 

✰. Friend Group Content: 

Despite using it as an example, cats are wary of Isolde because of her arcane energy. Dogs are downright terrified of her. Jiu has a picture on her phone of a cat purring with Vila and following her around before it realized Isolde was next to her. 

Isolde is impossible to startle by jumpscares in movies or even the tension from psych horrors, but she can still get scared. She struggles a lot when she thinks about the time she lost as a child to possession.

Tooth Fairy was initially going to be the one to teach Isolde to drive, but after Windsong and Vila saw the way she drove. It was quickly decided Windsong would teach her.

Medicine Pocket, Mesmer Jr, and Vertin aren’t scared of Isolde or unnerved at her at all. It gave her a false sense that children weren’t as afraid of her as animals are. She learned of the misunderstanding when Vila asked her to be her TA during a midterm assignment to do a mock lesson with children. They ended up having to reshoot twice before Matilda is able to keep her eyes off of Isolde. 

Once she got used to her however, Matilda had the chance to teach Isolde some divination skills. In turn, Isolde taught Matilda an arcane spell to do with insight which had been passed down in her family. (It has a VERY low chance of working, but in turn it’s the only completely safe arcanum the Dittarsdorf’s preserved.) 

During the time she lived with Tooth Fairy, Isolde worked at Jiu’s tavern because she she had enough knowledge on alcohol from her studies as a Dittarsdorf. 

For a few months, Jiu became really obsessed with spicy food, and the entire group would eat a lot of the hot foods she’d make in the tavern. While Windsong was her biggest challenger in their quest to see who had the best spice tolerance. Isolde ended up winning overall. Even though she hates when food is too spicy to taste, her ability to keep her cool made her seem like the winner before an hour had passed and Tooth ended up giving her 3 fairies to stop the pain.

Isolde is friends with Desert Flannel but only online. They met through Windsong when she was showing Isolde how to navigate the internet properly and upload videos, and Desert Flannel has a side hustle with indie music editing. 

Isolde has met Tooth Fairy’s parents before during Thanksgiving. Isolde, Jiu, Windsong, and Vila went together after being invited by Tooth Fairy’s parents through her. 

Kakania saw the Film Crew around quite a bit during her first year and even in her second, but she never interacted with them because a situation never came up. She never saw Jessica either until after spring break of their second year. It’s one of the few things Blonney is grateful towards Kakania’s insensitivity for. 

Kakania’s first real mutual bond with the film crew was from the fact that she doesn’t scare easily. She grew up with her best friend being in a long line of mediums, so ghosts don’t scare her. She would also get into danger on her excursions, so she was fully aware of how to handle a dangerous situation with both ghosts and humans. An-An and Horropedia spent a solid month before they found a movie that startled her.

Blonney and An-An Lee took Kakania to Jiu's tavern once, but Jiu didn't really recognize her, and Kakania didn't drink. So it wasn't an eventful incident enough for any of them to remember.

Shortly after graduation, Blonney got into marathon running. Jessica, Blonney, and Kakania completed a few runs over the years until Blonney began working as a director, and Jessica as an actor. But Kakania kept up running even after they stopped marathon prepping, she’s even won first place in a few runs in London. 

Kakania started a therapist twice a month after starting her work at the SPDM. They frequently scold her for ignoring her own signs of stress and the way she hurts herself by exhaustion when she feels frustrated. Whenever Kakania feels like she’s made a huge mistake, she jumps into helping people as much as possible, even when it's hurting her, until the episode has passed.

Vila and Kakania have run into each other on occasion from Kakania being the children in her classes' therapist. Even though she had been on somewhat friendly terms with Tooth Fairy as a coworker, Vila had no plans of making the same kind of friendly truce between her.

Kakania has heard of how Isolde is doing, just without her knowledge and not from Tooth Fairy. An-An Lee got really interested in Isolde for a good amount of time after she did an interview for a news station on what it was like being a Dittarsdorf and around ghosts all the time. An An took it as a good learning opportunity and even kept up with her for a while when she’d answer questions on social media. 

✰. Already Settled into their Lives Apart 

By the time Isolde was 25, she had started having wards sewn into all of her custom clothing in order to ward off possession after a particular episode revealed to her therapist her habit of using it to cope. She’s powerful enough either way that if she was in a serious amount of danger to need possession, she could drag a ghost into her past the wards, but they’d still give her more control over the possession than she’d have without. 

✰. Bonus ! 

At one point after their reunion, Kakania and Isolde go back to Vienna together, and Kakania realizes that nostalgia is what had made the Austrian food in New York taste good.

[stari-hun]

Isolde: I mean I don’t think my childhood was too bad. My tutor was weird about me, yes, but such things are expected…

The friend group (Tooth, Jiu, Windsong + Mesmer & Medpoc some weekends):

Tooth Fairy, also a child of a legacy: No the fuck it is not.

[stari-hun]

The funniest part about a true modern au would be that Isolde's PR team would need to BAN her from twitter. Girliepop would pop up on tiktok feeds for years after she made her posts because she's drop dead gorgeous, funny, knows how to make her point come across and lead up to it with a story. And she's also a misandrist! You go girl but her PR team would literally ban her from social media if she ever wanted to be world famous

[stari-hun]

I can't wait for Digger's anecdote cause I do really love his character. He's also a character I think would be SOOOOO interesting in our time period. I feel like with what we know about him and now about his backstory, I think he joined the hippie movement because their values of peace, love, and equality appealed to him. So if he understood a big portion of what he does is cultural appropriation he'd have a big crisis in his morals. On one hand change is best when done in a group, but on the other by the events of the Rimet Cup he likely swore off doing more harm than good, so if he learned he was doing harm and stealing cultures he would have to replan his life and how he works towards equality and art.

[stari-hun]

Introduction | No Storm:Time Traveler AU

No Storm:Time Traveler AU, an Inaccurately Named Modern AU

+ Introduction + some general world-building

An inaccurately named time traveler AU. This au is for a modern au without the storm, so how can Vertin meet people from other eras? Uh…. she.. has time traveling arcanum… Yeah, that works. Not much changes in the world building of this AU besides the grief around the Storm. Instead of the Storm taking her classmates as a child, their group went out into the rain and hid under George the Oak to talk about the world outside the Foundation. When the rain started all of them used their arcanum to light their way back to the building, Vertin wasn’t able to control her arcanum, and after trying again and again she activated her arcanum and was sent back in time to 1966 where she pulled Regulus back to her time.

☆ The general conflict of the game follows Vertin as she tries to grow her arcanum to help the people she summoned go back to their original time. The Suitcase is a token from Vertin’s mother in Constantine’s care when she left Vertin with her. The oak tree incident is when Vertin brought back 12 year old Regulus. So Madam Z gave the suitcase to Vertin in order to give her shelter when she was away from the Foundation facilities of the past or unable to convince them of her arcanum. Constantine gave her the assignment to record the lost stories of the people in the past while she learned to control her arcanum, but Vertin quickly found that trying to bring humans back to her time would result in them dissolving before returning their original time without any memories of Vertin regardless of the amount of time they spent together. By the time Vertin turns 16, she’s learned to control her arcanum enough to only go back in time when she wants, but she has no control on where or when she lands.

The Suitcase

The Suitcase is a shelter for Vertin, but also an anchor for people living outside of their original time as too much time experiencing the comic horror of time travel wears on the soul and spirit. The waters around the summoning wheel in the Suitcase don’t dissolve people like the Storm, but it does throw anyone who isn’t from the current time to a random place within the Suitcase (which aren’t always safe).

The SPDM and the Guidance Program

Children with the Foundation go to the SPDM still, but there’s an after school program called the Guidance Program that’s aimed to teach them about the “light of truth”. The Guidance Program is similar to a cram school in the way it goes over the curriculum more heavily alongside prepping them to go into Laplace or the Foundation’s ranks.

୨୧ The children in the Guidance Program are Sonetto, Mesmer Jr, Medicine Pocket, X, and Vertin.

Matilda has the highest grades behind Sonetto and spends her breaks going on missions to grow her arcanum, but despite this isn’t in the program at the request of her parents. She doesn’t know that fact however.

୨୧ Some graduates of the progam are Horropedia and Tooth Fairy.

Lucy has also gone through the program for a few months on an expedited course when she first joined Laplace in order to gain the experience.

The Foundation/SPDM/Laplace Grounds

Without the Storm, Constantine remodeled the Foundation grounds shortly after 1999. She did this in order to add more facilities to accommodate more cars as field agents and staff began using them more. The Foundation, SPDM, and Laplace are still all on the same grounds, but the Foundation and SPDM have more space between them now. The grounds looks closer to college grounds now with the school, main administration building, and Laplace's grounds.

[stari-hun]

You're no storm au Isolde is so funny to me 🤣

She gives off strong: "You are a lesbian because you like women. I am a lesbian because I hate men AND love women" vibes, it's great 🤣

I also appreciate the implication that while Isolde "hides" a lot about herself, it's not because she thinks she needs to out of shame or fear but more so she works off a "well you didn't ask" mindset mixed with a bit of "it isn't as bad as it sounds" when discussing anything about herself. Which works great (it worries them deeply) when dealing with inquisitive/sensitive people.

Does she still suffer from seizures or (non paranormal) hallucinations in this AU, by the way? Or take any medication to help balance out her potential mental health issues if she has them in this AU?

✰. Yeah I wanted to address as much of canon as I could while still staying on true to what Isolde would be like with modern day. Also, hating men and liking women are separate to her from her experiences and PTSD. If she stopped liking women she'd just be aroace, there is zero reality where someone like her would even consider liking men.

She pretty actively resents all men, even Theopil, in the original story, but for women she can recognize that Evangeline IS sick and out of her mind, so it’s not the same with her. Mr Dittarsdorf is “perfectly sane” keeping his child around someone who wants to climb up to being a higher class noble, and even if he does his best later to find her help Theopil basically stayed away from the house as long as possible as a child… She rightfully resents them for a long time, but I think if she had time away from her family and home with a good support system, she'd realize how Theopil was a child just like she was.

✰. Isolde hiding herself is also modeled off canon because a part of her possession with The Small Room is the fact that she was hiding herself away from the world. She was tired, traumatized, and sick of the real world. Mr Karl groomed Isolde into a lot, and one of those things was conditioning her to not consider leaving Vienna. Her sense of duty is close to Mesmers where she doesn’t actually hold any sentiments towards her work, it’s something she MUST do. Fate made her a Dittarsdorf and she’ll be cursed like one in her opinion: it’s the template of her fate.

If Kakania was in the modern era then she’d absolutely want to explore and get away, and while her father disapproved of her practice, he would still be somewhat interested in the fact that his kid got a full ride scholarship to one of the most famous institutions in the world. Isolde doesn’t think of leaving cause it’s all she’s ever known, and like Mesmer, someone with severe PTSD she’ll seek something she knows for comfort. Isolde has such a massive dependency on Kakania as a source of comfort that if she left, Isolde would do everything to leave as well.

Actually, if she wasn’t possessed I’d probably write her in with Disassociate Identity Disorder cause her detachment, memory loss at times, and disconnects in personality would’ve made for a fun read, but there’d be an issue with possession being DID is ehhhh and also it be a lot to juggle. But I’ll probably write a lot more things of her in the future alongside Trista because she’s heavily implied to be the main ghost in control of Isolde.

✰. Isolde’s tendency to brush things off also comes from the fact that one of the first things she was taught for opera singing was that she WOULD get stalkers. Not that she needed to stay safe even, but that she would be harassed and obsessed over in life, and there was nothing anyone would do to protect her or even SHE could do for herself. Any issue she had and tried to bring up was immediately diminished, and only Theopil cared about the warning signs and similarities to the way Evangeline suffered. Tooth Fairy is upper middle class in the way Kakania is, her family has a long line of distinguished medical professionals. She’s also spent a lot of time in the SPDM by now, so she’s seen a lot of signs that children or even staff in the Foundation suffer from. Tooth Fairy is an extremely empathetic person, and she’s content to listen to others and takes enjoyment from it too.

✰. As for seizures, she definitely still suffers from them. I still wanna stay close to how they are in canon, just them getting older and living their lives without the Storm and inching towards the modern era. The timeline still goes like, Isolde childhood, letting the ghosts (mainly Trista) take over her life, and meeting Kakania at 15 when she got attached to her, and the ending of that possession at 18 when Kakania promised to treat her (it’s just a promise to do so in the future this time). I don’t have much of their backstory IN Vienna built yet, but Isolde had an incident where she was forced to stop letting the ghosts possess her (likely an incident surrounding the death of Mr Karl still).

I'll probably retcon it later by accident, but for medication, if the story's time would've been in 2007 and they were 18 then, they'd JUST be getting to 2024. I think medication would be hard for both of them, I'm gonna say Isolde would be sensitive to medication cause yes and also her issues are mostly a side effect of years of possession.

I do think Kakania takes some mild anxiety medication though. In her later years, once she can't spin herself up the wall to cope with not knowing what to do in any give situation, she turns to silent panicking until she has an answer (something she's working with in therapy).

As for Isolde, she can cope with the after effects of spending her childhood possessed. She also does a few small things to stop it from getting worse like sewing wards into the inner sides of all her clothing.

Another kind of fun tidbit is animals can sense she's been possessed and they're VERY wary of her. Even a very friendly dog wouldn't even be seen in the same room as her (I have a separate WIP of Isolde's normal girl adventures).

[stari-hun]

My No Storm:Time Traveler AU would have Vila become super popular, which would lead to other Rusalka joining human society because H2O came out in 2006.

[stari-hun]

Just a reminder my inbox is open for questions on Reverse 1999 AU ! And general stuff but mostly for the AU (or if you wanna ask about my undertale x reverse 1999 ideas that be soups cool)

[stari-hun]

Rubs my evil little hands together , if only someone asked me about the Manus in my AU

[stari-hun]

Madam Z talking about Constantine to Tooth after she was ignoring more reports in Vertin.

“Even if her arcanum isn’t strong, it poses a great amount of questions!-“

Constantine is a character driven mostly by her own motives and aspirations, and without the Storm the last thing she needs to get ahead is murder. So her and Madam Z broke up their situationship on much more amicable terms than the original story. But Constantine’s desperation and cold actions in the story are ironically what make her the most warm.