OC Notes Blog

I think I'm a little bit, little bit A little bit in love with you But only if you're a little bit, little bit Little bit in la-la-la-la-love with me

So while I was offline for a week or two, @gluku-pikron & I made up an Old West AU (takes place in California circa 1890ish), which is kind of a remix/funhouse mirror version of our original story.

Rafa & Rafi

Their mother, a dancer, had a romantic entanglement with a famous actor, who promised to marry her eventually, and who asked her to name their child "Rafael" (some family name). He never kept his promise (though he did leave her with some money), but she kept hers. Except she ended up having twins. Thus: Rafael & Rafaela. Adding to the confusion, they were nearly identical as children, and each would often pretend to be the other.

After falling on hard times, their mother took to working at a brothel, and sold Rafael to what she thought was a circus (it was actually a cult). Before their mother could recruit her daughter into her line of work to provide extra financial support, Rafaela ran away to go rescue her beloved brother. For five years, she traveled & lived with Simone.

Simone

Simone is a traveling herbalist who works with her colleagues Dr. Durand (a chemist) and Dr. Knox (a naturalist), selling cosmetics & cure-alls. If you need a little heroin syrup for your cough or an arsenic wafer for your complexion, she's your gal. When she & Rafaela finally find the cult that took Rafi, she's able to help Rafa infiltrate the group and rescue her brother by acting as the cult's laudanum source.

Felix

When Rafi & Rafa finally reunite, they start a new life together working at the same bar, with Rafi bar-tending and Rafa waitress-ing (when she's not taking patrons to the upper private rooms for other services). Felix is one of her regular "special" customers, and just obscenely and unfairly rich, so she tries to hatch a plot with her brother to discretely drug & rob him. This goes very poorly when Rafi ends up accidentally downing half of Felix's drink. At the end of that misadventure, Felix ends up in bed with Rafael instead of Rafaela, and he catches a glimpse of the scarification on Rafi's back given to him by the cult. Wanting to photograph and interview him (among other things), Felix invites both twins to work for him at his house. Rafael is a bit infatuated, and Rafaela wouldn't say no to such easy money & cushy lodgings.

Mia

Married into wealth, widowed quite young, and childless, Mia is living her best life writing poetry and donating some of her fortune to generous causes. She ends up dating the "confirmed bachelor" Felix Papadakis more out of boredom than anything, and they become fast friends. One day she visits his house while the twins are living there and falls head-over-heels in love with Rafaela (and the feeling is mutual).

Dolores

Kidnapped as an infant by the same cult that bought Rafi, she has never known any other life than the destiny they assigned to her—the vessel for a powerful alien entity or god who is summoned by a combination of music and intense sensation (pain and pleasure). The symbols carved into her back and Rafi's are musical notations that can be used to bring their respective entities into this dimension.

A few years after Rafi is rescued from the cult, she escapes to find him, in the hopes that he'll help her determine the last few missing symbols to fully bring her god into this world. When this proves to be a dead end, she ends up recruiting Felix to help her hunt down the last remaining cult members, to glean their secrets and seek a bloody revenge.

Anyone. Who do you have sleepy headcanons for?

Mia finds it extremely difficult to go to sleep without the help of medication. She wears a cute little eye mask & some earplugs, but if she could sleep in a sensory deprivation tank she would lol. If the bed sheets have even the slightest wrinkle in them, she feels like screaming. She is like the princess in the story of the princess & the pea.

However—when she sleeps with the help of her pills, she sleeps sounder than the dead. Like the judgement day trumpet could not wake this girl. Which gives Felix & Rafi time to do... their guys' only activities.

Also - love your characters. Thank you for sharing them. I'd love to know more about the pretty princess (not Rafi lol)

Ooh this is such a fun question! Let's see...

Pride: Felix 100%. He believes he's the smartest, funniest, and most rational person in any given room. He will order your food for you at a restaurant because he's sure you'll like what he picked out better. Also, to paraphrase a lyric by Sofia Isella, "he thinks his penis is very important."

Avarice: Also Felix lol. He kind-of/sort-of manipulated his dying & senile step-father into leaving him every penny of his fortune. He likes to show off his covet-able belongings, whether that's an expensive watch, a sophisticated liquor collection, or his so-very-desirable partner(s). He tends to objectify people and see relationships as transactional.

Lust: Rafi... It's not that he's exceptionally promiscuous or that he thoughtlessly uses people for sex, more that his overwhelming desire to be desired has led him to making some very stupid decisions that have hurt people (himself & Mia, mainly). Thinks with his dick too frequently.

Envy: Mia, probably? She has a habit of comparing herself to others unfavorably. She often finds herself thinking: "if only I had gotten the opportunity they had, my dancing/theater/poetry career could have really taken off..." This is a big factor in why she secretly loves being catty towards others with Felix.

Gluttony: Rafi again, but specifically with alcohol (he actually has some disordered eating tendencies). He will skip breakfast to drink a third of a bottle of vodka later (or better yet, just pour the vodka into his morning coffee).

Wrath: Dolores, surprisingly(?). She does not need a lot of convincing from her alien brain parasite to enact violence on others. At least those she thinks deserve it. Like Felix lmao. Hide your garden clippers and/or cigar cutters from this girl.

Sloth: Simone. How many days has she woken up meaning to start a new sewing project and ended up in a weed-induced coma-nap? Too many to count... Her anxiety about making crappy art has led her to avoid making much art at all, unfortunately.

As for the pretty princess! I'm guessing you mean Mia? :)

Personality: She comes across as almost naively sweet at times, or even ditzy, but that's mostly a persona she's crafted. She's secretly an artsy theater kid.

Relationships: Felix really does try to spoil the hell out of her and protect her (he reserves most of his cruelty for people who piss him off—plus a bit for Rafi, “because he likes it!”). She thinks of Felix as her (maybe a bit flawed) knight in shining armor and of Rafi as her dear innocent puppy who can do no wrong (and her presumed-gay bestie who she is trying to find a boyfriend for! 😭 oh Mia).

Plot: I think she remains 100% unaware of all the supernatural events that occur throughout the course of the story (the murder, the resurrection, the alien mind-parasites). She just wants to put on the greatest talent show this town has ever seen design a visually avant-garde dance & acrobatics hybrid performance inspired by mythology & poetry.

Likes: Art-house films, nostalgic diner food, karaoke nights, museum outings, tarot & astrology, New Yorker magazine, being a Mean Girl with Felix.

Dislikes: Waking up early, Starbucks coffee, driving up to LA (and driving in general), housekeeping (especially dishes), gross-out/cringe comedy (she’s really not a fan of Rafi’s former stunt/prank show).

I always forget that while Dolores is out in the middle of the desert trying to create her necromancy-based musical instrument at the behest of her acoustic alien mind parasite, probably everyone in her life assumes that she is dead—or at the very least, she's considered a missing person. I think sometimes she manages to slip out of her possessed fugue state to be lucid enough to recall this, and it breaks her heart to think of her family & friends worrying about her, especially her abuela, who she is very close to.

Sound is a wave like a wave on the ocean Moon plays the ocean like a violin Pushing and pulling from shore to shore Biggest melody you never heard before

Dr. Durand studies the acoustics of space, so "The Sifters" by Andrew Bird seemed like a good match for him. His relationship with Dr. Knox is also central to his story, so this being a philosophical kind of love song also fits. In a way, their relationship is everything that Felix & Rafi’s relationship is not—they are colleagues and equals who respect and support one another.

🌧️ — What makes them cry

For Felix? :)

Felix is an atheist, but he wears a St. Christopher’s medallion that was a gift from his step-sister. When he’s lost in thought at his desk, he has the weird little habit of tapping the metal on his teeth (and the sound drives Mia crazy if she happens to hear it).

Listening to certain blues or opera songs can make him cry as if on a cue. I think he’s very methodical about it—if he’s feeling emotionally on edge, he’ll lock himself in his office & blast some music, have a good weep, then clean himself up and not need to cry again for a good long while.

Dealer's choice!

Simone’s funny little habit is that she talks to her taxidermy animals. They usually don’t talk back, except when she’s extremely stoned.

When Rafi is super tired, he finds it hard to speak in any language at all, and also it becomes harder to convince him to just go to sleep already. He gets very quiet & watchful, but he’ll be blinking & nodding off sitting up. When he’s asleep, he moves around a lot—like even when he’s dreaming, he can’t manage to lie still.

@rammtwo said: "Could I request you draw a 'growing-up' timeline for Felix? I'm curious to meet this younger version of him!"

This was a comment on a different blog, but I figured I could post my sketches & reply here :) Thank you for the great question/prompt! <3