#character summary

The Beliefs

Eve Farran is a hunter who specialises in covering up supernatural secrets to keep humanity safe. The inevitable price of the secret is that sometimes people die because they’re out of the loop, but far more people are kept alive by the secret existing than are killed by it.

While she believes that supernatural beings are people, Eve believes that hunters exist to act as an evolutionary defense mechanism against supernatural predation no matter how they feel about the hunt — it is not their job to judge who deserves to live or die.

After becoming disabled, Eve gave up active hunting to avoid dying young and serve better from the backlines. To compensate for her choice, Eve has become increasingly intense in her commitment to the hunter cause over the past decade, and more judgemental/resentful of hunters who are less committed than she is.

Over the years, these beliefs have become the basis of Eve becoming excellent at repressing her emotions. As Eve has been in Wicked’s Rest, these beliefs have mostly been reinforced and become more extreme. Threads which reinforce and worsen Eve’s ideology are tagged “belief” in my writing page.

The Method

Eve covers up supernatural secrets by relying on people reporting supernatural events to her, ideally before they reach the media/social media. Historically, she has relied on other hunters to notify her of supernatural events. Eve became a social chameleon to meet people where they are, to get as many hunters as possible to cooperate with her (Jade, Daiyu, Owen, Emilio, as examples). Eve needs allies, and the best way to make allies is to make friends.

But in Wicked's Rest, there is so much happening all the time, and not all of it involves hunters. Eve realises that if she plays her cards right, she can build connections with supernatural beings, who will tell her about their activities (Metzli, Wyatt, Hazel, Vic, Mickey). This starts off small, with individual supernatural beings who don't kill often or only kill by accident, but Eve slowly realises that she can find out with far bigger things (through Los Sombras, or Augustine). Building trust means not reporting those activities, but surely other hunters would figure it out anyway, and Eve truly believes the lives she’s saving are global, not just in this small town.

You can find other threads tagged “method” where Eve cosies up to people to meet her goals, taking greater and greater risks.

The Ring

Like any good queer woman, Eve wears a number of basic rings on her fingers. While saving a spellcaster (hi Diego) from a withercap, Eve is caught by a blast of wild magic. Unbeknownst to either of them, that magic has turned one of Eve’s rings into a Ring of Intention. While any good warden knows not to make a wish out loud, the ring senses Eve’s internal intentions, and has felt cold every time that it was charged on Eve’s wishes or feelings.

The Charging of the Ring

Every time Eve has done something that feels wrong but fits within her narrative of what the right choice is for the greater good, or every time Eve has had to bury part of herself emotionally to maintain the “allies” that she’s friendly with, the ring has been charged.

Early on, she found it harder to suppress her disgust at the things she was being asked to cover up, and slowly trained herself to become more and more accepting of the horrors, not letting anyone know how they affected her. Even when Emilio kills a human, or Wyatt kills a hunter, all the way to covering up for Las Sombras. Each time, it feeds the ring.

Unwittingly, this becomes a self-enforcing cycle. It will work, and so it doesn't matter how uncomfortable Eve is about it. It doesn't matter how uncomfortable she is with it, so she can just swallow it and bury it within herself. She becomes desensitized, and the next escalation doesn't feel so impossible anymore. But at the same time, it has to be worth it, because otherwise she is just enabling terrible things. Eve allows herself to become desensitised, and so keeps ending up in more questionable situations.

As Eve becomes more comfortable with crossing other hunter lines, she also becomes more comfortable crossing warden lines, like collaborating with fae (Oliver), making deals with fae (Estella), and covering up warden murders by the faun Augustine. 

And it pays off, eventually. When Eve makes a deal with Siobhan to find out when the blackout will start, she's able to warn other people. It’s worth it. Right? [thread incoming]

With each crossing of her own personal beliefs and feelings, in service of what Eve believes will help the secret, Eve represses her gut instincts. She spins the ring; it absorbs.

Every thread that charged the ring is tagged “charge”, and some dash interactions are tagged “stone”. (The latter was done as and when I remembered.) 

Resentment of Other Hunters

Eve was always resentful of other hunters for not taking the secret seriously. Over the last year, this resentment has only grown to encompass all aspects of hunter duty. She even makes underhanded comments to Henri about the time he spends on his doctorate, and spends a lot of time wondering about Jade’s commitment to the cause when she’s also dating a fae. Eve perceives herself as constantly sacrificing for the hunter cause and for other hunters, and increasingly resents the other hunters for the sacrifices they refuse to make, and feels she has to pick up the “slack”. This is most exemplified in how she reacts to Daniel going back to Talia.

The Opposing Forces 

Eve’s downfall has been slowed drastically by one simple force: love. (I mean it literally: look at this solo that I wrote to start Eve’s downfall back in the autumn.) Eve entered the RP relatively closed off, but while all of the above has been cooking, other characters have slowly been worming their way into her heart. This list includes but isn’t limited to:

Rosemary went from someone to sell evidence/spellcasting ingredients to to a friend

Xó becomes an increasingly close friend despite her knowledge of the SPN

Wyatt starts to become an almost-friend, despite the hunter murder

Metzli becomes a vampire that Eve will break her own rules for

Daiyu and Eve become closer with a shared secret

Daniel becomes a brother figure in all but blood

Eden becomes Eve’s closest “human” confidante

Jade and Eve agree to occasionally show each other the cards they hold close to their chest

Emilio perhaps knows Eve better than anyone else

Owen and Eve somehow repair the whole trying to kill each other thing

Mickey and Eve develop a soft friendship, although it is damaged by Estella

And of course, there’s Henri, who Eve slowly learns to bare her heart to, until she does something she thought she was not capable of: she falls in love. 

This all culminates in the shitshow that was December. 

When Jenny starts to die and Henri prioritises helping her instead of solving the problem the hunter way, Eve supports him. (No need to question whether hiding things from Jenny contributed to her ending up this way.) 

Then Eve is kidnapped by Max, and tortured as a message to send to Emilio, who also loves her. While Eve buries herself in front of Max to manipulate the vampire, the only reason she survives is love: Rosemary’s made her a protection charm, Henri’s infodumping, Jade’s friendship and persistent hope, Emilio’s trust. And then after: Daiyu helping her clean up the evidence in the house, Owen removing the evidence in her shoulder, even Madison’s kindness.

Then, Henri loses his arm, and everyone rallies around Eve when all she wants is to pull away. Eve tries to focus on being a hunter, but her friends don’t let her: they see her as a person, and so she does, too. Eve lets herself have what she wants: friendship, love, comfort. Despite the many horrors, the ring is barely fed for weeks. 

Threads which blocked the ring are tagged “heart”.

The Start of the Downfall 

Owen dies. More importantly, Rosemary wants to resurrect him. Eve, who knows Owen well enough to know that he’d want to stay dead, objects strongly. Surely, in this situation, it should matter what he wants? But it doesn’t seem to: not to Wyatt or Rosemary. Trying to manipulate them, and then break into their homes, makes Eve lose both friendships fast. She asks Emilio for help, and he refuses. She finds out Jade is helping too, and Daiyu tricks her so that Daiyu doesn’t have to hurt Wyatt.

It barely seems to matter to anyone that Owen doesn’t want this. In caring about what Owen wants as a person, Eve loses multiple friendships. (It’s definitely not her methods that are the problem.) Somehow, Owen’s is the only one she doesn’t lose.

It’s a good reminder that hunters exist to serve humanity, not just themselves. Eve’s walls come back up, and she plays nice to preserve the connections she has left, even when Talia and Emilio plan to attack Daiyu.

The Catalysts: Bad Things Come in Threes

Emilio and Eve are hanging out, with the cloud of his involvement in the Daiyu attack hanging over Eve, when a slayer shows up to kill Emilio. Rowan accuses Eve of being soft in trying to protect Emilio. She has to choose: stay alongside Emilio, or keep her hunter loyalties. It’s a harder choice than it should be. Eve makes the choice she knows she should, and feels herself start to tear in pieces, torn between what she wants, and who she should be. It was a mistake, Eve decides, to let herself love Emilio.

Then, she finds out that Henri has been hunting other humans and hunters. It’s the one unforgivable thing a hunter can do, in Eve’s perspective, and it is an executable offense. But she realises she’s compromised here: she loves him so much that she can’t kill him, not yet. Henri has corrupted her. Worse, he’s found out about her dealings with the supernatural, and he doesn’t understand. He can’t grasp that when everyone is a person, personhood doesn’t matter anymore. Hunting has always been a numbers game in humanity’s survival, and Eve’s whistling is playing the long game. When Henri begs her to reconsider, Eve feels herself splitting even further: the part of her that loves him and wants to fix this, and the part of her that knows she is right and can see how much loving him has broken her.

Finally, Wyatt comes after Eve for her actions during Owen’s resurrection, and almost kills her. Eve cracks, realising how few people around her she trusts anymore, because she resents all of her hunter friends, doesn’t trust her friends or family to have her back, and is afraid that if they see her the way Henri does, they won’t want to be here anymore. Wyatt almost splits her in half literally, but also emotionally. 

When Mickey comes to patch her up, Eve tries to be personable, to mend that broken relationship too. Mickey softens up towards her, and the two almost have a human moment of connection again. Eve lets herself want, just one last time, even though she knows this is how she ended up in this mess in the first place. 

The Ring Activates

Eve and Rosemary meet as Eve is quite literally falling apart. Confronted by someone she lost as a friend and a valuable connection, the last part of Eve splits, as she can’t decide whether to ignore Rosemary, beg for her friendship despite everything, or to play the cards that Eve used to play so well to build new connections. 

Her self-isolation is complete, her commitment to the Secret, and to the humans it protects, is absolute. It is not her methods that are flawed, it is her desires. 

Many hunters believe the supernatural aren’t people. Eve wishes that hunters (especially her) weren’t. The ring is fully charged with Eve's intentions, and removes the part of Eve that she struggles with the most: her heart. 

What Now?

Eve has no capacity for emotions anymore. Those include the ones she perceives to be compromising her: love, guilt, disgust, shame, grief, but also other ones like hope, compassion, determination. She is still an excellent liar and manipulator, so, to a degree, she knows how to behave like she still has them, although we’ll see how far that goes, as she just doesn’t care about certain things anymore. Eve doesn’t understand what has happened yet, but right now she doesn’t see it as a bad thing.

I’m sure there are no weaknesses to be found with not having emotions.