#atari posting

for this au, my friends and i agreed to keep the basics of backstories the same, but changing it to fit the new roles of the characters. for shelby, i had to find a way to keep her backstory recognisable whilst also making it turn her into a vampire hunter rather than a monster lover (whilst also keeping in mind the demon aspect of avid) too). my current idea is this:

shelby grew up being told stories about all these wonderful mythical creatures by her dad (besides vampires, because those werent real), who would frequently go out to unsuccessfully hunt them down to learn about them. one day, he abruptly leaves without a goodbye to explore a new "breakthrough". eventually, shelby gets curious, and due to her optimistic nature towards monsters, she decides to go out to look for him. she comes across an evil creature, being attacked but barely managing to escape with a wound on her leg that wont heal. the people back home call her crazy, but she knows the truth. her dad had sheltered her from vampires because theyre beings of pure evil, and she has to undo everyone else's sheltering so they dont suffer the same fate her, and especially her dad, did.

i like that shelby's canon character singles vampires out ("i believe in every monster EXCEPT vampires!!"), so i wanted to twist that to make it work with being a vampire hunter ("i believe in every monster BUT vampires are the only definitely evil ones")

i also purposefully left it ambiguous as to whether the demon that attacked her was the same demon who attacked her dad or if it was her dad himself, because i wanted to keep the mystery of her dad's fate from shelby's canon backstory.

for her behaviour in oakhurst, i wanted to keep her fantasy obsessed nature, and so im having her see herself as the hero of whatever fantasy world shes in. i think this works well because canon shelby creates this found family fantasy to feel wanted, and creating a hero fantasy would also make her feel wanted, or rather, needed, which might be better. except because its shelby, itd very much be in a silly "dw i'll save you!! :D" way.