#wereweevil vi

[mantisgodsart]

We have finally finished this project, and thus, The World's Worst Dating Sim is finally DONE! Just in time for April Fools Day. Now, with our six new contestants, choose, uhh... who's dateable? Or not dateable? This last batch was determined almost entirely by People Telling Us Who To Add, contains multiple AUs, and is... hmm. "Unconventional" may be a good term? Half of these are probably undateable but you can still shoot your shot.

As previously, it can be a platonic date if you want, you just can't be neutral. Deadlander Lambda belongs to @cordycepsbian and has been moved into our studio for duration of this poll. Profiles below the cut.

(we're linking the first poll here)

Deadlander Lambda - Maybe - Deadlander - Good question - At least a little bit

This, uhh...

...is this safe? We don't think this is safe. ..."Already had kids before"? What do you mean it's a parent?

...well, we can't get it out of the studio, so it's an option now? We guess? This... really doesn't seem like a good idea.

Rogu - He/him - Ant drone - Very rude to ask a gentleman that, don't you think? - I wouldn't worry about that.

A charming mystery from somewhere only described as "a faraway land", though he wasn't quite scheduled in this lineup, we think we can make an exception. This silver-tongued bug seems to be able to say just what's needed to get under your skin... and from the look of it, he's angling to take you somewhere private.

...come to think of it, haven't we seen that face before? On a poster, maybe? Well, it's not a surprise he's been modelling for things, he's certainly got a pretty enough face for it, but why do we feel... nervous, all of a sudden?

Carmina - She/(scribbled in)it - (illegible) - (illegible) - (illegible)(scribbled out with "No longer relevant" written in its place)

...where is she? She was meant to show up hours ago. What on earth could have held her up this long?

Pebbles - He/him - Moth ("iterator") - Juvenile (estimated) - Unclear

Right out of surgery, this one. While we're not sure if it's entirely responsible to include this one, and we certainly don't speak whatever language he's speaking... he's cute, isn't he? And looking for a home? Well, maybe if you're the sort of person who might want to rescue a domestic moth in a bad situation...

Wereweevil Vi - It/its (wereweevil form) - Wereweevil - 19 - Aro

Pre-existing hangups mean that you can only date this one in wereweevil form. Good luck.

Kina - She/her - Mantis (big) - Haven't asked - Also haven't asked    

Well, we assume that you can do less lethal than the bandit who people mostly know thanks to her former job as a corpse disposal unit, but some people might be into that sort of thing, honestly. Are you, perchance, also a mantis?

[secret-bug-pain-blog]

@febuwhump Day 6 - "You lied to us"

This one's a rough 'un for sure, content-wise. Behold, the mental state of a 2000-pound wild boar afflicted with pack mentality, a complete lack of pack, and several metric tons of trauma.

The moon is coming.

Vi scurries through the city streets, dread rattling in her throat. There are too many people here, too many bugs, too many people she could hurt. She must have lost track of time - miscounted the days on the calendar, miscalculated the time left in the day, forgotten to watch out for the moonrise, something.

The moon is coming, and she is afraid.

Everywhere she goes, the crowd only seems to grow thicker. It's too many people, too much crowding- she can almost smell the blood that'll be spilled if she stays, the feeling of shell cracking in her teeth, the taste of guts and hemolymph.

She needs to get away.

Vi pushes through the throng, frantically hunting for anywhere that might be less full, anywhere that she might be able to chain her other form. She can feel something beginning to stir, the phantom of her claws threatening to break out from under her shell. Her teammates are calling after her, concerned, afraid- but she can't go to them now, not when the moon is so close.

She can't afford to have more people dead.

She needs to get somewhere safe- somewhere away from people, somewhere she can keep her claws bound, somewhere that the only person she'll hurt is herself.

But everywhere she goes, there only seem to be more bugs in the crowd, more people pushing, stalling, stopping her from getting anywhere that she might be able to get out-

The moon peeks over the horizon, and for a moment, all she can feel is blinding, awful dread.

"Vi," Leif says. "Vi, why are you running away?"

"You're acting strange," Kabbu says, concern clear in his voice. "Shouldn't you be resting? Weren't you hurt in that fight? Any other bug would be dead by now, Vi."

She tastes hemolymph on her tongue as one of her growing tusks pierces her lip. She doesn't answer, running blindly further, further. The crowd doesn't thin, no matter how far she runs, and she can feel the warning twisting beginning under her shell, the feeling of flesh starting to warp.

Her flesh gives a warning twist under her shell, and all she knows is that she has to go, now.

A bug cuts in front of her, and she startles, balking at the unexpected motion - too much, too close, the feathering on her antenna brushes shell with an uncomfortable thrill of feedback and she barely bites back a whimper. Something in her back gives an uncomfortable crunch, and she stands a head taller - still not enough to part the tide, but enough that she can feel her shell tighten, the spines beneath threatening to pierce through.

There are people all around her. At her sides, at her back, at her throat. She can feel them press closer and closer, boxing her in. Her teammates are coming closer, closer, their words scraping against the insides of her skull in awful, uncomfortable shards.

"Vi?"

Too close- she's going to hurt them, she can feel the transformation getting worse, her arms beginning to twist apart, rows upon rows of claws sprouting from her arms. They're just behind her, she can tell, staring, watching her as the moon rips through her body. She sees them, horrified, disgusted, looking at her-

"Don't touch me," she begs. "Get away, get away-"

But they don't listen, crowding closer, staring and murmuring like she's an animal in a zoo. Spikes climb the ridge of her back as her shell hardens and thickens, her wings melting and melding with the thick plane of carapace that is now her thorax, her muzzle twisting and lengthening and thickening as her jaw warps, her tusks curving and twisting outwards, her eyes watering as something behind them shifts.

She's surrounded on all sides. There are so many people here, so many people everywhere - the, the more she sees, the more she recognizes, staring and gaping and pointing at her as her shell shifts and distorts. She presses her hands over her ears, but there's nothing there but talons, long and sharp and threatening to tear away the sides of her face as her chitin crunches-

They are silent as she screams, the transformation rattling down through shell and flesh, her mandibles pulling apart, the scar on her lip tingling and pulling as her pedipalps fully extend. Her shell practically breaks in two, going from bee-size to beast-size in a split second, shattering and healing itself in an instant. The sound she makes isn't bug, an awful, wretched, guttural thing, wrenched from her chest to her jaws as her body warps unnaturally, as she changes in an instant.

The pain rings in her ears all too long after it finishes, but when it does, she can see her shell battered and broken on the floor in front of her. Her bee body, ripped to shreds, taken apart piece by piece - her beast form torn out from within, rendering it a useless corpse on the floor.

Vi looks up. And up. And up. She towers over everyone, now, but she feels horribly small. She sits in the middle of a circle, a monster torn from bee shell- she sees the looks of shock on their faces, the slow step back, the growing fear. A few nervous bugs level weapons at her.

Kabbu breaks the silence. "You- a beast!"

"When were you going to tell us?" Leif asks, its fur ruffled with displeasure. Elizant steps out from behind it, levelling her with a stony glare that demands an explanation. They crowd in, new bugs appearing from thin air to check out the hubbub, staring and poking at her like she's a zoo exhibit. A doctor jabs at the aching bite on her arm, trying to spread it open for examination, another trying to distract her as she's poked and prodded like a lab animal. They're too close, they're all too close, she can't breathe-

Vi balks, lashing out at the growing crowd with her talons, and the air is steeped in hemolymph in an instant. The floor is blue-green, pale white, deep emerald- the doctors are dead, They're dying- and everyone looks at her with disgust, backing up as if they'll catch her sickness if they get too close. There's rot in her mouth, decay coating her tongue as it pools in her stomach, an awful nausea climbing up her throat.

"Why would you do that?" asks Kabbu. "They just wanted to make sure you were okay."

Vi tries to respond, but her throat doesn't form words anymore. She wails something out, incoherent, but he simply looks at her with cool disappointment. "I don't see why I bring you out at all, if you're going to act like this," he tuts in Jaune's voice. "Behave yourself! Do you think that the Hive raises wild animals?"

The Hive around her tuts in agreement, casting judgemental eyes on her. There's blood on the floor, pooling in the crevices between tiles, the same yellow-green of all bee's blood. Bugs murmur and titter and judge, a million billion eyes all on her, alone at the middle of the throng.

It feels awful, it feels wrong - but no matter how much she twists and turns, she can't find a single bug who seems to notice that something is strange. The awful feeling in her chest grows and grows, taking over until she can't feel anything else, rotting and festering and swelling. There's a static between her and them, an awful gap, and it won't stop growing and growing and-

She snaps back to reality.

Jaune is beneath her, a horrible fear in her eyes, Vi's jaws clamped around her arm. There's that awful sinking feeling in her stomach, the feeling that she's done something horribly, irreversibly wrong.

She lets go, and Jaune scrambles back, vanishing into the crowd- a million eyes staring right at her, right at the shards of bee fluff and shell in her teeth.

"You animal," the Overseer snarls. "What's wrong with you? Do you get off on attacking harmless bugs now?"

"And Maki approved you?" Elizant snarls, her mask doing nothing to conceal the disgust on her face. "Has my association fallen so low as to take in mindless beasts?"

"You lied to us!" cries Leif. "A member of the hive? You're nothing but a monster!"

The other bugs join the chorus, chanting their disdain for her- wretch, beast, poacher, rattling through her shell until she can't hear herself think, the sound vibrating in every little crevice of her shell and every hair of her antenna in a cascade of voices she knows.

A stone cracks across her shell, and she howls. It doesn't drown out the voices- they only get louder, and louder, and louder, howling for her death, for her silence, shut up and die already-

She runs. Like a coward, like the fucking idiot she is that's run a hundred times before- faces blur past her, people she knows, Maki, his face twisted in disgust and horror, Bau, all humor gone from their face as they ready their daggers, Ollie, half her body gone beneath the tearing force of her jaws-

The Golden Path's leaves crunch under her paws, the crowds falling away as she flees. Her pursuer is only a few paces away, bigger than her, stronger than her, jaws snapping at her ragged wings. She has to run, she has to get out, but her legs are too short, her limbs fumble beneath her, she stumbles-

Claws lodge in her chitin, piercing it as easily as if she were a wriggler again and wrenching her on her back. Rust-red eyes, flashing green-blue in the moonlight, a pair of tusks, a twisted reflection of her, rope tied around its limbs and bee-blood spilling from its jaws as it calls her name, Vi, Vi, VI-

"Vi!"

Her claws flashed out, scoring a sharp gash into one of Kabbu's external mandibles. Vi sat bolt upright, ignoring the jolt of pain from the sting-mark in her side as she pulled her claws against her chest.

...but no one was there but Kabbu, holding a hand to the new scratches on his muzzle.

A dream. It was a dream.

It... wasn't real.

Vi trapped her claws against her ruff, trying to focus on controlling her breathing. It was a dream. It didn't happen. None of it had actually happened.

Her hands were still shaking.

They were still in the Swamplands. She could smell the swamp water if she focused, lingering over nearly everything else. Maki was still leaned against the wall, Leif was sleeping not half a foot away, curled into some awful pretzel shape.

In, out. Focus on the spiracles closer to her thorax. Focus on the spiracles closer to her stinger. Her claws were tipped with pale blue-green. Hemolymph dripped from the scratches on Kabbu's face.

Just a dream.

She worried her wrist in her teeth, ignoring Kabbu's sound of alarm. She- it wasn't real. It wasn't real. Tonight wasn't the right night. She still had her calendar in her bag to prove it, hidden away with the chains and the handful of charms she'd commissioned.

The half moon shone high in the sky.

Fourteen days until the full moon. Fourteen days before the next time she had to fear her transformation.

She wondered, absentmindedly, if the old poacher camp in the swamp was still standing.

[mouse-drawings]

Attack on @mantisgodsdomain!

Once upon a nightmare.

Mantisgod's Wereweevil Vi AU mixed together with my Bandit Kabbu (Crime Kabbu?) AU. Thankfully neither of them actually remember each other. Vi was transformed and not in much control of anything. And since she was in the beast form, Kabbu would have a hard time recognizing her in a normal form.

Really, it was like a nightmare that you forgot once you woke up. Only a vague sense of dread remains.

[cordycepsbian]

Also Vi. Potentially also Kina and Maki if this is not pushing the limits of werebugs, we are Very Predictable and yet we still wish to see cool bugs

denmaki and madesphina. the whole team is caterpillars now

[mantisgodsdomain]

Sometimes we are deeply deeply tempted to make line-ups of our AU Versions Of Characters or something of the like, but then we remember our consistent preference for AUs to be canon-adjacent at absolute minimum meaning a lot of them will look relatively same-y combined with our struggle to draw character sizes accurately to each other makes that task a lot harder than it arguably should be.

[bugs-in-situations]

what we're trying to think of: bugmeshi recipes to draw

what we're actually thinking of: bugmeshi vi + wereweevil vi = sonic the hedgehog>?

[mantisgodsaus]

Slowly coming to the realization that Vi in Wereweevil Vi would almost definitely have come into close proximity with Marigold on at least one occasion simply due to the nature of their respective circles and Marigold's particular expertise and specialty means that she almost DEFINITELY would be able to tell, if not that she's a wereweevil outright, that Something Is Off With Her. Unsure what we want to do with this plot element but it means that there's a decent chance that at least one person knows about the Wereweevil Thing, and that one person is someone who would love to observe the change and also would dearly enjoy taking at least a bit of fur or shell off of her to experiment on and use for charmcraft.

[mantisgodsart]

You see it first. Its tusks gleam in the light of the campfire, its massive head trained on your campleader. You fear, for a moment, that one of the locals has discovered you - it's precious seconds before you realize it's worse.

Your trapmaster tried to warn you. You remember her pleas, you remember her chains - there were ten locks on the cage, and she begged you to add more. No one wanted to trust a monster with her own chains, no one wanted to risk a monster getting out - but she was your only trapmaster, and few of you dared to use her tools.

Perhaps that, in the end, was your mistake.

You cry out a warning, but the beast hears it before your friends. You see its head snap up, its rust-red eyes trained on you. You see its muscles tense in preparation for an attack.

It leaps. Someone screams.

The night is bathed in blood.

[mantisgodsart]

Pretend to be what you will, but under the light of the full moon, there's no more room for playing at civility (you are a monster, and you cannot control your nature)

[mantisgodsart]

World's Worst Werebug Support Group (4/5 of these AU Guys are by @cordycepsbian and if you can't read the text here then don't worry! it's because we don't want to scan this. text below)

Leif: -and then our wife died-

Astotheles: -yes, that sounds similar to-

Neo: <Only guy here without elaborate werebug trauma

Vi <Needs to be held or she'll Die

[secret-bug-pain-blog]

@febuwhump day 17 - Hostage Situation

Yet again, drawing is A Pain In The Ass, so we aren't doing it. This one is us pulling from a longer work. Don't worry about it.

The cell was bare. Vi clutched the package to her chest, wrapping her claws so tight that they threatened to shred the parchment, until they stopped trying to pry her claws open. She could hear them speak, talk of ransom and money and negotiations, contacting the Queen for her bee back, every conversation inspiring an ever-stronger feeling of dread.

Time was running out.

She could feel the tension build under her skin, day after day - the bars were wood and flimsy, her chains so brittle that her bare bee claws could ruin the finish. The steel collar around her neck chafed, but she knew it wouldn't be enough, knew it like she knew the cycle of the moon.

To be held until her employers paid the bail. To be held until her employers paid the bail. How long before Zoza noticed she was missing? How long before someone knew that her missive'd never been delivered?

Were she a year younger, she'd fear that she'd change any moment. Were she a year younger, then it would be unknown, unpredictable, unplannable - but Vi had spent a year beneath the desert sky now, a year by the lunar calendar of the Grasslands, a year mapping the nights when the transformation came.

The beast always, always, came on the full moon. And she could feel the clock slowly, slowly, running down to nothing.

[mantisgodsart]

You are a poacher. You have just uncovered your trapping specialist as a Wer, a beast transforming on the night of the full moon, and a valuable piece of merchandise. She fought well, of course, but money is money, and Wer are valuable beasts. It is the night of the full moon. You have just made a terrible, terrible mistake.

[mantisgodsart]

Day 3 - Cozy

In another time, in another life, maybe if things didn't go so poorly this time...

[mantisgodsdomain]

Yeah, I don't really understand the appeal of human AUs either.

I mean, doesn't it just remove a key aspect of whatever is being humanified?

What I'd find interesting is whatever you would call the opposite of a Human AU.

Generally we call those Creature AUs or species swaps and you can also apply them to random nonhuman characters if you want

[mantisgodsdomain]

Since we've been working on Timelines tonight we wanna note that it's occasionally, like, really funny to look at any confident claims about age we make, because we're really prone to moving dates around between even stories that don't incorporate a major AU and sometimes shuffling dates around means that information will be inconsistent anyways which occasionally results in situations where people will say information that they learned from our other fics and try to apply it to new fics but nope! That's incorrect! You've been deceived by assuming that character information still remains consistent between works.

[mantisgodsdomain]

Every time we reread Vi's dialogue we realize that we write her with way too much restraint. Considering that she's already doing shit like picking fights with random bandits on a diplomatic mission, this seems like a low bar, and yet.