#julijah

HOW DID I MISS THIS AURUHGUGHGUH

we’re going to start with a statement: i have no idea what their canonical sexualities are and i never intend to fully find out. we have aspec and we have some kind of bisexual and i think putting anything more rigid on them than that is unrealistic, because these things aren’t usually rigid. neither of them are cishet that’s what really matters. ok wokeness disclaimer over

anyway. i’ve been thinking about them lots this week. nothing too specific just vibes. i think the short answer is yes, in a sliding scale of their reunions being “partners in crime (business/battle)” to “hey this just looks like a somewhat normal romantic relationship (it’s not)” to “man if these people knew what the word qpr was. well. they’d have a new word to use.” the best way to describe the modern day julijah dynamic is just. devotion. trust. teamwork. they have each others’ back, anything else is up to interpretation and how they feel about each other on the day and also the alignment of the stars.

but how they get there is fucked up and probably aphobic. but i’m allowed to do that to him because all aspecs can do whatever they want forever. also he deserves it.

so. 2 very different types of living weapon* walk into a domestic partnership after like 2 years of hanging out. one of them has somehow fallen in love with the guy that kills people badly. the other doesn’t really Do caring about individual people anymore, or at least he Thought so until this freak showed up in his life.

they’re a perfect team, and each cares about the other more than anyone else. maybe for the first few years they’re not exactly on the same page (and hell, maybe they know that), but they work.

eli doesnt know what the aromantic spectrum is, he probably thinks hes broken. but it’s ok because something has to be broken with jude to have her put up with him, so theyre perfect for each other. right. but it’s also like, not many people liked him or even seen them as a person in so, so long. and jude does. so there’s a whole ‘hold on tight and don’t let go’ element. he knows it’s bad form. too bad. vampirism is about selfishness. he DOES at least respect jude enough to try to tell her but she’s just like “pfft, like we were gonna be normal? the fact you’re even acknowledging my feelings is exceeding expectations” (SHE HAS ISSUES TOO). i just think putting eli through the comphet horrors and jude through the lowkey unrequited horrors is a great way to explore aromanticism. by them both being tormented. badly.

everything kinda goes to shit after jude’s been turned for lack of blood related reasons ((dont get scared) turns out compensating/substituting a lack of sexual attraction with bloodlust stops working when you get rid of her blood, dumbass (that was mean. he probably didn’t know exactly where the line between those 2 emotions was)) and also new species new life new existence to explore reasons, no longer being tied down to an institution (knighthood) has given her a taste of freedom and she wants more of it. and eli has kinda always been there for the last 10 years or so, and it’s getting increasingly more suffocating, and increasingly more obvious that their current dynamic doesn’t work. idk how yet, but they eventually land on separating. whether they mutually agree on that or if there’s a fight… hm.

i dont know how long jude’s hot girl summer era goes for yet. decades minimum. maybe 200 years maximum.

i think i mentioned in one of my other posts about my vampires they’re solitary creatures? idk for sure what that looks like yet (and meta-wise doesn’t work well with making a story, you need multiple characters to bounce off) but between that, the extra layer of it on eli’s side, and the whole “these people are eternally in their 20s and they can probably only stay in one place for maybe 2 decades at a time at most before people start Noticing™️, and that’s if no one notices the killings sooner” … well now you have your long answer. yes.

eli does tell jude going into their relationship, in the vocabulary of the time (~1100ce), that they’re aspec. it goes ok. i will write out this conversation one day. it’s a lot of “hey i’m 300 years old and never fallen in love, if it were possible i think it wouldve happened by now?” and “you are my favourite person ever(this is true!) and i want to make you happy” ( also true but 🚩) “this isnt usually my sort of thing but i will try for you :) you probably wont even notice a difference! but you deserved to know :) a lesser man wouldve just gone along with it without making it all so complicated” (chat do they know). so they get together. it’s fine for a couple years. freaky vampire/human shit happens yayy blood !!

eli didnt even think about marrying jude until they met her parents and they were like “hey man are you gonna ask for our daughters hand in marriage or what because you guys have definitely got something inseparable going on” and they were like Oh Ya ☝️ Thats A Thing I Can Do I Forgot I Could Do That 🧐 so they do and she says yes because ofc she does and thats great and then like maybe a year or less later they turn her into a vampire and that’s fine and everythings great.

except it’s not . eli gets super aspec with it within like a couple decades and like. the love is still there or whatever. but they want different things from each other <- we’re having an everything-repulsed day here . infer. im not going to make myself feel ill for you. and so jude’s like, hey let’s kill 2 birds with one stone, i’m gonna go off and find out who i am without you because my whole life has revolved around you since i was like 24 or something, and also figure out my own path with the whole “im now a completely different species” thing, we’ll find each other again i’m sure but i think we need this. and eli’s like yeah youre right ill miss you though ☹️ and she’s like youll be fine 🙄 because she’s a liiiiiittle bitter.

and so she goes off and has a hot girl summer for agesssss like we’re talking decades if not a century. kisses girls, slaughters thousands etc. and eli’s chillin. theyre used to being alone. and sure their whole favourite person ever is not here but it’s ok because she’s immortal and they know she’s out there somewhere and she can take care of herself. everyone theyve ever cared about is dead but not her yayyy we love the bare minimum. or something. we’re still working out details idk exactly what they were doing. they probably kill a few more people than strictly necessary too. who gives a fuck yayy murder yayy vampires YAYY BEING REALLY BAD AT EMOTIONS theyre just like me fr

anyway eventually they find each other again and jude’s probably come into her own at this point as a like, fucking terrifying and extremely capable living weapon (she was a knight viking in life, and now she’s got teeth and an endless list of excuses). and also figured out bigenderism. or genderfluidity something. it is like, 1300ce at this point, the word hasnt been invented yet. anyway so they live together for a while again. neither of them had taken their rings off, but they werent wearing them as wedding rings either - eli’s on a necklace chain, jude’s on her right hand instead of her left - and they stay that way. no one brings up divorce, but they do talk about their marriage and decide that yeah, they’re still super devoted to each other and love/care about each other and are each other’s favourite person ever, and that even if romance doesn’t really work for them anymore (if it ever really did?) the devotion is what matters.

so they keep the rings and they live together for a bit. jude gets involved with other people and eli’s like, ok sure whatever fine, because to me polyamory and aromanticism are beautiful twin babies (that are actually triplets with bisexuality 🙂‍↕️ and also they have a cool sibling called nonbinary i’m calling them “the idgaf siblings”) that all understand each other. eli only cares that jude doesnt get hurt and if she does offers to torment whoever’s responsible (but chances are she’s already done it) and if that doesn’t work is there to comfort her.

[200 years in uhhhhh we’re thinking about a plot point here maybe… that plot point being “do they or do they not raise a child” this is entirely hypothetical at the moment but i’ve been thinking about Maybe doing that. based on “hypothetically, if half-vampires exist in this world, this mythos, what does that look like?” and basically i’m thinking if an unborn child is exposed to vampire venom (say, if the mother (was ill/plain unfortunate) and a vampire (doctor like eli treated/exposed) her (with/to) venom, not knowing that half-vampires were possible). it’s a work in progress. there’s angst with like, one of eli’s few morals is that they won’t turn someone into a vampire if that person isnt willing… and like, they didnt know… but still. and so like 2 years later the parents turn up on their doorstep and 1) demand answers, 2) admit they cannot raise this toddler with supernatural strength and vampiric hunger (who may or may not have killed someone?) and 3) ABANDON that toddler with these fuckass VAMPIRES who have never even CONSIDERED raising a child and are WOEFULLY UNPREPARED for this. and theyre like super mad at the parents for just ABANDONING this toddler with them (they do get that these humans could NOT handle all that but STILL they barely let them think about it before they took off). anyway but they do raise the kid. theyre not great at it, but they do try their best. but this kid is half human and the most recently one of them was human was 200 years ago. this guy’s gonna be peculiar as fuckkkk, but functional.

also this kid is probably going to be a distant descendant of eli’s sister. that’s why the human parents trusted eli in the first place - they’re like an old family legend that shows up every now and then. great (great-times-something) uncle elijah. this part IS real. but we’re still cooking on the kid. they turn out musically talented. idk. but know if this becomes real it’s entirely for dynamic science purposes. jude has basically zero maternal instinct. eli is slightly better at it, but is definitely more of an uncle than a father. both of them tend to mentor them more than anything else. the kid has a LOT of autonomy, which is something theyve got going for them at least. they taught them how to eat people at age, like, 7. they had to figure out their own moral stance on that later, which is of course very complicated and probably a little contradictory, since unlike true vampires they can choose between human and animal blood.]

^ the point of all that is that julijah DO eventually hit their stride with their dynamic. whether that is through stressor of raising a child or simply just over time ??idk. i wanted a catalyst for them to lock in a dynamic, and i was also canvassing half-vampires around the same time, the ideas came together.

they’re each others constant and although they do get involved with other people (mostly jude but it’s not unheard of for eli to also go off) they always eventually come back to each other. the kid Is a character in my mind but i am not ready to share them… theyre not just a lampshade or a cardboard cutout… ohh [REDACTED] you do hit as a character on occasion…

anyway after that they’re on-again-off-again for the rest of eternity except theyre never really Off.. just Separated. and chill. casual but weird about each other.

i think by modern day they do still consider themselves married to the other but they havent actually lived together for more than a few months at a time in like, centuries. mobile phones are a breakthrough where they’ll each have phases where they wont text for months at a time and phases where they are in constant conversation (“saw a snail on the sidewalk today… effervescent…”). i think eli’s far more likely to actually drop the phrase “my wife/husband” (jude likes both descriptors) in conversation than jude is which you’d think would be backwards but it isnt because i know them. personally.