#leapingoldfish

uh theres a lot of stuff with antisemitism (angus is considered jewish by a lot of people because first of all hes really cool and everyone projects onto him and second of all there was a joke about him saying happy hannukah in the first candlenights liveshow) and lizards thats. really bad. you know the whole “conspiracy theory that the government is secretly run by lizards” thing? it originally said jewish lizards and was spread by an antisemite. therefore, a lot of jewish people (including several of my friends) are really uncomfy with dragon angus, cause... theres a little similarity? i cant really speak much on this because im not jewish, and i do still think dragon angus is cute, but... dragon jake is cute AND doesnt come with that cultural baggage, so, you know. we stan.

so i think it would make more sense for everyone to be counselors, but it’s more fun for me if they’re campers. taako and lup resent their family for sending them away to the middle of bumfuck nowhere for the summer.

lup warms up to the idea of “camp” much more quickly than taako does. she’s all about building fires, roasting marshmallows… telling scary stories that make magnus wet his pants. 

speaking of scary stories, one night a counselor tells everyone about the thing that lives in the forest - though “living” might be too generous a term for what it does. it’s attracted to - or, well, enraged by - the glow of the campfire, and if you’re not careful, it might snuff you out along with the light. if you go into the woods during the witching hour… if you peer just past the treeline… you might find a dozen pairs of hungry eyes staring back.

it’s meant to be a cautionary tale about not staying up past curfew and/or going out into the forest alone - so obviously after everyone else goes to sleep, greg grimaldis dares lup to go check out that noise they heard in the brush. if she can stand fifteen minutes alone in the woods, he’ll give her fifteen dollars.

lup’s not a chicken, so she goes.

surprising exactly no one, she does not come back. must have been eaten by the hunger, yeah?

(she went too far into the woods, got a little lost, tripped on a root, and sprained her ankle badly enough that she couldn’t get up and find her way back)

taako, magnus, merle, and barry head into the forest to look for her. shenanigans ensue. i think they get spooked by a noise, and someone throws lit matches towards the sound. you know, so that the hunger will chase the light instead of them as they run away. good plan, guys.

in the chaos of their escape they a. start a small forest fire and b. lose barry. whoops.

thb have to find lup and barry and get out of the burning woods before someone gets hurt; camp director lucretia is going to kill them if they get out of this alive.

anyways their terrible, horrible, no good, very bad night in the woods is the plot of the story, i think. here’s some less dramatic headcanons that may or may not fit into the above au:

though she knows how to roast the perfect marshmallow, lup prefers to set hers on fire and eat the charred remains, much to taako’s dismay.

taako teaches barry how to swim in the lake so he doesn’t have to wear floaties in front of lup

at one point, merle gets dared to eat poison ivy (he does)

magnus does not get dared to eat a rock (but he does)

yes lup and barry are definitely both into both the hero and irl persona and neither of them know what to do

and i know it’s more in character for taako to just start dating his crush immediately but you have to understand i LIVE for the love square and i want to make it more complicated

so what i think happened was taako (as The Twin) asks the Bounty Hunter out and he rejects him bc he has a crush on taako not realising that taako IS The Twin.

and then like.... kravitz starts falling for The Twin anyway and he can’t exactly ask him back out because that’s embarrassing as hell.