Bloodloathing

Mini comic transcription: Legs looking flushed while thinking “I’m so cooked” with subtext that says “totally into it” with a speech bubble above that says “Doc, no!” with subtext that says “Cleo running to stop him”

Paramedic Legs was not something I had in my mind when I started this. It began with someone in Twitch chat referring to Legs as “Captain Trauma” and me deciding to draw him wearing some kind of merch with that on it. Then I added the “I can fix him” hat and the Veinbound souvenir shirt and by the time I was done, we ended up with a full blown AU idea. I’m going to just ramble ideas (feel free to snag some for yourselves lol, I’m not much of a writer and it’d be cool to see what yall do with them).

TW: accidental substance use

The story in my mind here is that everything takes place in loosely mid to late 2010s. Oakhurst is a small town that’s about 20-30 minutes from a popular concert/festival spot.

My version of the coven (Scott, Avid, Owen, Pyro, Shelby, and Drift) already exists and live together in a high-end apartment block that Scott owns. Everyone else exists in the same building in some capacity.

Cleo and Pearl are long-term residents that have been there since the coven moved in. Pearl is her usual Pearl self and is friendly with everyone, even if they don’t exactly return it. Cleo has a bit of a passive-aggressive rivalry going on with Scott and generally doesn’t trust him but isn’t outright hostile. Martyn, Ren, and Sausage just moved in together and are new to town.

Apo joins the crew when she is stranded in Oakhurst (haven’t figured out why yet but she very much wants to leave and get home to Cherri). Scott turns her at some point, which is when Abolish starts getting involved. He roommates with Apo and is his usual self.

Louis is not around at this point (I'm toying with the idea that he's under a curse similar to what happened to Scott in canon and that Owen and Legs have to eventually team up to break it) and Owen believes he was murdered. He doesn't do the full massacre he did in canon, but he does kill ~200 people.

So one day Scott decides to drag the coven to a 3 day music festival happening near town (insert whatever bands you think Scott would listen to lol). Owen *does not* want to be there but goes along with it to make Shelby happy. Also easy access to food and some not terrible music.

Now in this universe, vampires are affected by any substances that are in their victim's blood. Significantly less than the human they're drinking from is, but still enough to be noticeable (ex extremely drunk human = moderately drunk vampire). Owen does not know this and ends up drinking from someone who was engaging in some... slightly stronger fun and has a bad reaction. Someone ends up dragging him to the med tent to get looked over

Enter Legundo, resident veteran and paramedic who is working the festival. (Legs is heavily inspired by Electric Medic on social media because I can lol ✨ if I say something that makes no sense, please correct me because I know almost nothing about working a job like that) He's mid 40s and just as traumatized as canon from his time in the military. He came home and became a paramedic because it's within the medical field and the fast-paced and chaotic nature of it felt familiar enough to be vaguely comforting.

He ends up being the one to treat Owen, who gets kept in/near the med tent for several hours. They talk a bit and it's pleasant. Owen goes and rejoins the festival once released and thinks to himself that Legs wasn't the worst, but that he's glad that he won't have to regularly interact with him again (😉)

Little does he know that Legs isn't just in town for the festival, he's moving to Oakhurst the following week. His new apartment is in the same place as the rest of the cast.

Cue plot

I think that's all I'm going to go into for the broader story on this post, but I might make more posts talking about it because I really like the concept. If I do decide to make Louis revivable, there will be trustbites because I adore the ship 💖

Now into the drawing itself!

My favorite thing is the Triple Hell shirt. I'm thinking a lore explanation for it is that Veinbound is an escape room with multiple "stages", beginning in regular hell. First stage done as a larger group, but individual players can still fail to make it out. The second stage is like the actual Veinbound. If you fail the first stage you go to Super Hell, and if you fail the second you get sent to Triple Hell (I don't think these would affect gameplay, just a fun little thing for bragging rights). The coven + Legs go and do it fairly early on in the friendship and he and Owen predictably end up in Triple Hell but do bond over it. This eventually leads to the blood drinking scene after the vampire reveal (not sure how/why that goes down but it does at some point).

The hat and pin are mostly just references but they're still so fun. The hat is the obvious one. Yall helped me figure out who it came from in a poll from a couple days ago and I do agree that it's a very Avid thing to do lol.

The pin is a reference to something said by Twitch chat on day 2 of the VSMP viewer event and I decided that Cleo gave it to him as a way of teasing him ("I saw this and thought of you").

I had so much fun with this y'all. It was a silly idea that wasn't supposed to take all that long but I went ham on it anyways. I'm glad I did because I really like how it turned out. I don't usually do the sketchy, lightly shaded style because I struggle to stop myself from doing a full render (it's my favorite part lol).

This was my first time drawing sneakers! They're based on some New Balances I found online and some of my own father's shoes lol. I changed the N logo to a V for vampires for funsies. I really just wanted him to look as dad as possible for this and the shoes and cargo shorts were the perfect way to do it. I really need to draw more shoes in general but I think I did a pretty bang up job for a first try.

The mini comic in the top right was a fun little challenge. I struggle with emoting but I think I got the expression ok? I need to work on exaggerating them a bit more so it's more readable. Definitely a New Years art resolution for me.

If you got this far, thank you for reading all this! It means a lot. Not gonna lie y'all, the Veinbound shirt lore led to ALL of this. I just got going on lore and didn't stop lol and I hope I can continue the momentum a bit.

Anyways, here's the time lapse!

Shelby and pyro think all the designs are cool, but there’s some hangups with the discomfort of not being in their own bodies.

Shelby and pyro think all the designs are cool, but there’s some hangups with the discomfort of not being in their own bodies.