the thing about being a deeply repressed trans man and finding someone so unrepentant, so 'sinful', yet so happy in his transmasculinity... is that it tends to lead one towards a path of unfettered envy. though roman assumes a masculine identity in his craft, he could never dare to live as boldly as remus does. the option is technically available... but it's unsafe. and impractical. and he has responsibilities, obligations, there's too much at stake if he gives in to that selfish need clawing at him. but that won't stop him from looking at his sibling and wondering what he could've been.

the original idea came when i saw thomas posting era looks for his characters and thought "i could make a time travel au out of this!" by placing each of the characters (now whole humans as opposed to just sides/otherwise one-note characters) in their respective eras and having them meet up via time travel.

^ guy who has no idea just how mentally ill he's going to get about this au

eventually the plot came to be this: cthomas and nico are time travelers from the year 2026, who decide to go back in time as a sort of break from the present. something goes wrong with their time machine and nico gets stranded in time, and thomas has to hop through time with that same messed up time machine to try to find him again. in the process he ends up dragging a whole bunch of people through time behind him :D

those people being:

dr. picani, 30, pulled from 1989. not all that different from his canon self; he's a neurodivergent cartoon-loving therapist who's considered eccentric at best, but still keeps an optimistic outlook on life.

virgil, 28, pulled from 1898. a young vampire, recently turned by someone he trusted. now fears humanity and avoids them for the most part, thinking he no longer deserves to lay claims to personhood.

patton, 49, pulled from 1947. a zookeeper, beloved in his community, who enlisted in ww2 after having been too young for ww1. tries hard to seem just as peppy as before despite the resulting depression and dissociation.

remy, 24, pulled from 2003. embodies a self-absorbed, shallow party boy to divert his mind from the familial pressure (to work, and to settle down) that comes with being a first-generation immigrant.

janus, 32, pulled from 1927. ran away from his broken home when the ww1 draft started claiming victims. now lives a life of crime, even acting as an informant for the chicago mafia. knew patton at one point. :)

roman, remus and logan also get dragged along on this adventure eventually, and we have in fact worked out a lot of character details for the three of them!!! however. their era looks aren't out yet. so i won't say anything about them on tumblr just yet because each of these characters' opinions and experiences are heavily informed by the place and time period they come from and if those differ from the eras we're guessing for them we'll definitely have to do rewrites ☝️

(that said orion and i posted quite a bit about the twins in particular last month, so if you want to know what we've decided so far for roman and remus you can just search #creativitwins ides week 2026 under either of our profiles)