Tonight’s aesthetic before I fall asleep: Fixing that weird Lucretia Wonderland thing where she gives THB exactly ZERO useful info before they head into a nightmarish hellscape. I’m willing to bend characters around narrative necessity to a degree, but that feels so weird and off to me – there’s no way Keesha wouldn’t’ve given them AMPLE INFO, right?
So let’s try this on for size:
Lucretia’s not the only one who’s escaped Wonderland. There aren’t very many, but eventually it’s inevitable that a few fish slip the net. Part of the price, then, is your silence. After escaping Wonderland, you can’t speak about it. Can’t tell anyone what happens in the fairy light tent. You just swallow hard and open your mouth and nothing comes out. Your fingers stall out on the page, the pen drops from your fingers.
And so it is that Lucretia, who kept her secrets so well that even her family didn’t know what she was capable of, didn’t know how much pain she was in, is cursed with her own inability to communicate writ large.
She wants to tell them (she wanted to tell all of them, wanted help, wanted them to stop her before she dropped the journals into Fischer’s tank), but she can’t. For once, she actually can’t.
And the silence, and her shame, lodges in her throat like a stone
Oh. THIS is an interesting concept. (and Lydia and Edward fucking with Lucretia’s head is something I’ve thought about a lot)
a fic i do not feel equipped to write but would love to read:
you know how lucretia says she hired angus bc he got too close to figuring out the shape of the bureau of balance’s secrets??? how close could he have gotten to solving that mystery when nobody (including himself) could remember or even conceive of the missing people he set out to find… how hot on their trail was he!! i wanna know. what was the tipping point where lucretia was like “okay FINE let’s kidnap this small child and bring him to the moon and offer him a job i GUESS”
consider: angus mcdonald spots a metal ball falling through the sky. he tracks it (he’s good at this, he’s good at this, is what he keeps telling himself, nose to the ground). he finds the metal ball. no one is around. little angus mcdonald climbs into the ball and hides under the seat. someone climbs in. someone is distracted. someone is swearing and nursing a wound and casting a series of poorly done spells (angus has studied the theory, he knows that a certain, delicate, somatic component is involved, and whoever this is does not have the talent).
he gets nauseous under the seat, but stays calm. the ball lifts off. he gets the idea that this is a ride that was called, that he missed being discovered by seconds. the ball arrives. his companion climbs out, and someone else comes by and begins humming a song, resetting the the various switches and knobs.
angus sneezes.
it’s a sneeze that changes everything. it’s the sneeze that introduces him to avi, that has him being lifted bodily out of the cannonball and carried across the moonbase. angus informs the man that he can walk, thank you very much, and avi sets him down.
it’s a sneeze that introduces him to the director, a lithe, elegant woman who blinks down at him, then stoops down to inspect him more closely. maybe she sees something, or maybe she is considering precisely how to drop him off the edge of this place. she is hard to read. her eyes are dark and something clouds his thoughts when he tries to inspect her just as closely.
she pulls away. asks him his name.
“angus mcdonald,” he says.
“how did you get here, angus mcdonald?”
he sighs. he tells her the story (telling stories to adults is exhausting).
“tell me about your family, angus.”
she sits in her chair and pulls out a metal bracer. “and i’ll tell you a little bit about mine.”
okay, so, admittedly i misread this, but it was already turning out in a super fun way so i just decided to run with it. have a little something from post-canon!
On the third ring, Joaquin has to step out of his math class, because whoever’s calling him is calling instead of texting and that means it’s serious.
All eyes are on him as he whispers an apology to his teacher and steps out into the hallway. He’s sure it’s not just because of the call; having magic powers tends to make him a target for people’s stares, nowadays. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have gotten him much else. An exemption from math class, for example.
The door swings mercifully shut behind him, and Joaquin presses the phone to his ear. “Uh, hi, whoever this is?” he whispers, because one of the hall monitors is a few doors down and eyeing him suspiciously. “This isn’t a good time.”
“Hey, kid! Am I on the right frequency?”
Joaquin freezes and cranks up the volume. “Uh, sorry… is this—”
“Taako,” the voice on the other end drawls. “Y’know, from TV? And also the end of the world, keep fuckin’ forgetting about that one. Uh… listen. I’ve got a bit of a—uh, we have a bit of a situation here, and—”
“Whoa, just—hold on a sec.” The hall monitor is definitely staring now. “Where is here? Where are you? How did you even get my number?”
“World savior privileges. So the thing is—”
Joaquin blinks. “Oh my God, are you… are you here in this world? Like, actually here?”
He can practically hear Taako’s shrug through the phone. “Near as I can tell.”
Okay so it follows three protagonists named Taako, Magnus, and Merle who KHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHKHHHHHHHHHHKHHKHHKHHHHHHHHHHHKHHHHHHHHHHHHKHHHHKHHHKHHHHHHHHHHHHKHHHHKHHHHHH and KHHHHHHHHHHHKHHHHHHKHHHHHHHHHHHKHHHHHHKHHHHHHHHHHHKHHHHHHKHHHHHHHHHHHKHHHHHHKHHHHHHHHHHHKHHHHHHKHHHHHHHHHHHKHHHHHH-
just moving along like everyone else 