Just a little guy

Fourteen people come to Oakhurst. They soon discover that they are trapped there: some mysterious force holds them, chains them like dogs within a certain proximity to the ruined castle nearby.

This is concerning, yes. But without contact from the outside world, they turn themselves to survival. The days pass, the moon thins and then fills, and soon they have a ramshackle little town, and a budding community.

The nights may be stained an uncanny red. They may be full of monsters. But that is outside the walls. Inside, they are safe. Inside, they have one another.

And then, almost one month after they all arrive, the moon rises above the horizon as a perfect circle.

.

Of the fourteen people in the town, only twelve are human. Pearl and Ren, though? Pearl and Ren are werewolves.

via @uncannyfig

Pyro does, after all, still have the survival instincts of a hot pocket.

I think it'd be fun to see what happens with the Pearl-Cleo dynamic. Do we keep the 80 years a thrall thing with Cleo in such a universe? Do we adapt their backstory to being more werewolf-oriented? How would we even adapt it? Werewolves don't really seem to do servants or slaves.

Which means it'd make more sense to keep them as a vampire thrall in danger of dying of old age if they don't get vampire blood or vampirism in the next few weeks. So how does that play with the werewolf curse?

Is it even possible to save Cleo without vampires? Or is Pearl going to have to see Cleo die, and lose another important person to her?

(and Pearl's backstory: Is her family lost because they're werewolves, here? Or are they lost to her because she's a werewolf and she can't go home, or they'll kill her?)

And Ren! How does his attitude towards the supernatural change when he's been a supernatural creature for a good chunk of his life? Did the witch turn him into this? Was it a second curse acquired in another way?

Does he have a self-hatred thing going on with the werewolfism?

via @areafae

@uncannyfig

And you know Cleo is shaky on whether she's worth keeping alive in the first place. The price of her life being a terrible curse for twelve more people? And she'd have to be turned to get everyone out anyway, if the same rules still apply.

And Pearl still being so tempted to spread the curse because she wants Cleo to live, and Cleo not really getting why someone would feel that way when she's such a monster.

Aaaaaaaaaa

And yeah! Owen! He and Scott are fully we're gonna have to alter their backstories territory. Maybe he killed a few people for killing his Louis and is on the run from the law, but is still afflicted with his illness.

Oh man @earthspeaking

You could still have her mother 'Acquire' her at a young age, even, and have Cleo never know if her biological parents abandoned her, or adopted her out, or if her mother instead killed them and just found her in the mess left behind after waking from a full moon rampage.

I wonder what her Rules might look like, if they were intended to keep groups of werewolves safe instead?

the judas goat @blockcat-safari !

reblogging with my own tags and some extra ideas before I vanish for the night:

That game preserve belonged to Cleo's mother, the previous leader of the pack. It was intended as a space where the pack could run free without worrying about maiming humans.

Canon's timeline is...fuzzy, but the first full moon within canon happens in episode 5. This means this AU is probably a fair bit slower than canon, but also Cleo's maybe got more time before dying from their whatever it is

Avid might not.

Maybe Legs gets turned by Cleo by accident while monitoring their condition during the second full moon, and discovers most of his aches and pains vanished, kicking off a maybe-this-is-a-cure-for-Owen thing, because Owen's leprosy is slowly killing him. Owen has Opinions.

Shelby of course has a lot of feelings about "werewolves are real and I'm trapped with a few." She also has a lot more feelings about "werewolves are real and if my Dad got bit by one he'd still have been able to come back home and be safe 95% of the time. He didn't come home for other reasons." Most of them are noooot good feelings.

Consider: Ren stoking fear of the unknown in the members of the militia only to end up accidentally turning them because he doesn't know he's a werewolf. They become their own little sub-pack and cause exactly as many problems as in canon. Maybe more.

Drift getting turned and experiencing the exhilaration of running to hunt instead of running to flee. This causes no sudden changes in worldview at all.

I recommend a time element. The Beacons were built for vampires and are causing the werewolves to take longer and longer to come back to themselves. If they don't turn everyone Quickly then the turned will be nothing but uncontrollable beasts in the woods.

And actually, you could make that "beasts in the woods forever" because of respawning. No death is permanent. You cannot stop yourself early and infact trying makes it worse by panicking the beast within and painfully straining your new body. (Doc and co go cry in a corner)

Forcing the people of the town to rush in their decision could cause them to start lashing out. Forcing the werewolves to be Less in control as time goes on, too, instead of more would cause some angst, too. and

freeing these tags :3

I think we could also spice things up by making the werewolves weird even when the moon isn’t full. for example, Apo—canonically she’s extremely loyal and caring, classic social wolf traits.

let’s then turn these traits up to eleven

Apo’s brain is in agreement that it wants to protect everyone most of the time, but what if she’s torn on how exactly to go about it?

Wolves are pack animals.

so basically: what if werewolves directly had the urge to turn people, particularly people they are close too?

Sure, vampires had the hunger, and certainly some of the least moral of them chose to satiate that hunger by turning people. But the turning itself wasn’t the instinct.

now I’m NOT saying he should have had a partner on earth or whatever because I do think it’s awesome that he’s (implicitly at least) aro/ace/both, but it would have been a great aside to see the cloud of yearning that follows him everywhere which he either has to deal with or has decided to be permanently ignorant of. like the comedy potential of objectively the most fuckable man any of these strange science geeks have ever met being like oh um :) thanks for the coffee and the flowers and stuff and you guys are all so nice to me it’s great to work with you all :)

but, due to the fog of the amnesia, then the urgency of the mission plus Rocky's appearance, Grace doesn't fully look through every box until they're on their way to Erid. and that's when Rocky wakes up from sleep to see Grace sobbing over a bunch of letters. students telling him how much they enjoyed his class, actually made learning fun and interesting. got them through tough days. made them feel seen and appreciated. quite a few cite his class as being the spark that got them interested in science as a career. and even those that didn't still consider him the best teacher they ever had. fellow teachers admiring his classroom management and lesson planning, and even so his kindness to every student who walked into his room.

one letter is from the principal. when Dr. Grace's involvement in the Hail Mary Project became public knowledge, there was a push from the community to rename the school after him. after discussions with the school board, there had been a secret agreement to do so, even had a new sign made. they were just waiting for him to be released from the project and return to San Fransisco to surprise him. but, with the recent news of his "noble sacrifice", they'd gone ahead and done it. attached the press release with a picture of the new sign, a bunch of his former students standing around it, beaming. a local artist has been commissioned to add a mural to the front entrance over the summer break. and a final note: "Do your work knowing that it will allow the Dr. Ryland Grace Middle School to continue to educate and inspire students for generations."

Grace: *misses the capsule Rocky sends*

grace: I think id rather die actually

stratt: I have terrible news grace

Grace ends up in a place he likes at the end of the story, he's happy, he's safe, he loves the people around him, and it's an obviously better ending than he initially expected to get when he woke up on the Hail Mary, but that doesn't erase everything he lost

It doesn't change that he had a life stolen from him, that he was, in a very real way, murdered when Stratt put him on the Hail Mary

I cannot remember who said it, but they were on the money when they said Ryland died on earth and Grace was born on the Hail Mary

also both of them together :3

Chasing after him personally to bring him onto the project, to watching him run, having neither the heart to stop him personally nor the choice to let him go anymore.

Going from needing two coffees to function and heading straight to work, to sharing one cup each and simply being still for a moment, together.

From bringing him into rooms and making everyone there appreciate him, to leading the room that is fully aware he is their only saving grace.

From “Must be hard, having to ask everybody to… you know.”

“Actually, it isn’t.”

To... “Don’t make this harder, please.”

The first and last time he makes her smile, by acknowledging her intelligence, (and being snarky about it).

By being surprised that she knows he was fired for calling the leading scholar in his field a “staggering waste of carbon,” rather than for standing by what he said as he tried to imply. And years later by throwing the phrase, “You’re smart, you’ll figure it out,” right back at her.