#a-post-lon

at this point in the series, pretty much literally everyone is motivated first and foremost by survival. whether that means getting ready to kill the folks that are a threat to their survival before they can kill you, whether that means lying and trying to suck up to someone or everyone to try and find any outcome that doesn't get you killed, whether that refers to everyone in your faction, or you and a couple close friends, or literally just yourself, no one wants to die here. the few for whom survival is not their most urgent priority, it's because their most urgent priority is revenge.

legs and shelby both want to get out of oakhurst alive, and have both expressed that if they need to kill to keep the people around them alive, they'll do it. but they're also two of the people most motivated by helping others and trying to find a peaceful solution where they can.

legs has been trying to reach out to the vampires from literally the minute he realized vampires existed. he's offering the option of a cure as a means to help them with the extremely limited information he's operating under, but fundamentally what he's offering applies regardless of the cure: we don't have to fight. we can work together. you're not inherently a monster; it's your actions that determine that. he keeps trying to reach out even as certain vampires thoroughly attempt to burn that bridge. he's been trying so hard to trust everyone. legundo wants to make sure as many people as possible make it out of town alive, and what that means is that if the coven vampires keep killing people, well, lose the leg, save the life-- he's promised to do no harm, but he's also already dismissed himself as beyond redemption.

shelby, meanwhile, is the most obviously worried of the vampires about doing the right thing. they refuse to drink human blood until they're presented with a situation where it's the only way to help avid, and then in the aftermath of that she's constantly worried as she watches avid's downward spiral slash manic episode, because if he turns into a monster that is now her fault. she doesn't want the cure, but as long as it didn't involve killing anyone they wanted it to be available to those that did want it. they react with discomfort at best when various other vampires talk about just going and killing a bunch of people, even though they try really hard to rationalize it to themself, and have thus far managed to successfully be a noncombatant every time. however, she has repeatedly expressed that she is willing to kill if she has to to defend the other vampires; she'll probably psych herself up enough to actually do so if put in a situation where they don't see any other options. a recurring theme throughout her perspective is that she's really worried that everyone wants to kill her, while literally everyone else likes them a lot and would at worst be extremely reluctant to do that.

Got a decent chunk of the way through SerotoninRat's Xpiration Date perspective before coming up with this idea and having to draw it immediately right away. I didn't even look at a reference for the let's take ibuprofen together anime girl image. This is the vibes that Sero's character in that game gives off. Take my hand.