"The line between medicine and venom is as thin and ephemeral as the space between life and death, love and hate...you learn that often what has the power to take your life has just as much a chance of saving it."

|RULES|BIO|MUN|HEADCANONS

Hello and welcome to a new OC blog by Cryptie! Starring Savannah Boswick, aka the quadrant's leading expert in synthesizing antivenom, aka a closed-off nerd with a lot going on under the surface. A study in identity, the measure of humanity, protecting the unloved, bullying, survival, and the revenge of reclaiming your life.

I am once again thinking about Savannah and animal symbolism.

I heavily associate her with both dogs and birds. Insects and arachnids, she works with, and she loves any and all wildlife, but birds and canines have a very strong connection to her past and life experiences.

I feel like her Animus/Daemon/Maxx is a woodpecker. Woodpeckers were the birds she encountered while dying in the woods.

"I...I sort of..." Why are words so difficult? That phrase, those three words are the most difficult to utter in any language across the cosmos.

I had no intentions of turning her into the crazy animal lady but fuck it, here we go. Fun fact, she has a pet Atlas Moth named Otranto. Toto for short. Her quarters are kept hotter than the rest of the station for Toto's sake as well as her own. She never wants to be cold again. : ) If she was a ghost, she would create cold spots and ice patches.

I'm considering writing some stuff based on her past and the experiences that led her to become who she is today. It's a little silly, yeah, but I fully intended to at least incorporate a bit of folk and psychological horror. As a treat. For me. Because quite frankly everything I touch turns into gothic horror and I need it.

A bit of a side tangent; my brain chemistry is radically different than it was supposed to be. I have a brain that, while I love it, isn't easy to live with and I have absolutely no frame of reference what it feels like to exist without some kind of mental issue. That's why I don't write neurotypical people. I don't know what an absence of psychological conditions feels like.

I'm saying because I write younger Savannah as a kid the way I remember being a child. I was a fucking weirdo little girl and I'm pretty sure I had my own religion and philosophy at that age that looks and reads like a notebook you'd see marked Exhibit B. I still kind of do, but it seems a lot more prevalent with children. Kids are so insular, with themselves and other kids, that I'm fairly certain if you left a couple of 7-9 year olds in a room full of different creative outlets for a while, they would have already developed a whole society and customs for themselves or imaginary people.

"Good morning. If you want to know what fresh Hell I have recently been exposed to, I decided to try reading a gothic surrealist French literary work that I've been procrastinating for years."

Hiding secrets. Locked doors. Rigidity about rules. You escaped that house in the forest. Didn't you? Knowing only causes pain, but knowing will save your life one day. You know what it is to give your heart to someone you see as equally unlovable as yourself, and for that person to be as ugly as their reputation.

I'm coming up with more backstory.

Savannah had one friend growing up. Through all of the bullying and the cruel pranks, she had someone she thought she could trust. But as it turns out, every so often she would get to hang out with "cooler people" and she would talk shit about Savannah and give these kids fuel to hurt and upset her.

Every so often, they would be hot and cold with her, but they always sort of drifted back to at least friendly acquaintances. Her friend was the reason Savannah even went to camp in the first place. Her mom wanted her to go somewhere during the summer, but she let Savannah pick, within reason. She chose the camp her best friend was going to. The friend had hyped it up so much, and since someone she knew was going, she thought it was going to be a guaranteed good time.

The so-called best friend resented this immensely and amped up the bullying at camp, though she didn't necessarily hide it as well. During the hike, the other kids dumped the contents of her backpack into a creek. She asked the friend to watch her shoes and socks while she had to trudge through a wet, muddy creek bed in her shoes and get in more trouble.