#scp-105

Iris: Boy I sure do love having my religion as a way to contextualize the trauma of my life.

>Enter Cain (the murderer from the Bible. He has a photographic memory thanks to his cybernetic implants)

Cain: You know Iris, I don't think Genesis played out how you were taught in Sunday School at all.

Iris: That's fine it's about the practice, not the stories. I'm cultivating my relationship with Jesus.

>Enter Director Sophia Light (she is Jesus. Neither of them knows it)

Light: Hey I'm placing another child soldier under your command.

Iris: Screw you Light.

Light: Fair.

>Enter Meridiana (aka scp-166. She is in denial about being a nature goddess because she's also Catholic)

Meri: Wow Iris, I'm really glad that God will forgive us for being lesbians.

Iris: Right? He has to, just like he'll forgive you for how people keep saying you're a goddess.

Dr. Alto Clef: Iris are you sure you're actually a Catholic?

I wanted to sort of experiment and use this place for some character thoughts, specifically around the Meri and Hana I write. Now, I write these characters a ton: I have around 40% of the written work in Meri's tag with my name attached to it, and Hana also got her own tag earlier this year, which is incredibly cool to be able to say.

There was a meme on Reddit based on my work recently that, while absolutely hilarious in terms of how much hate it held, really put an interesting idea forward in terms of writing I was already pursuing: what does Meri look like outside of the context of Iris/Hana.

This, obviously, is something that I've already begun working on to an extent; in Eventyr, Meri has a much different childhood than the non-remix version of her, and spent her very early time in a containment cell before being moved to an island after meeting Light, her sort of mother figure.

The thing about the Foundation's treatment of Meri is they don't necessarily know how to handle her: to them, she is more animal than human, so they treat her as such, but the forces that advocate for her (Clef and Luca, her pseudo-uncle from SCP-8166) try to reaffirm her humanity (in this canon, Clef has once-a-year visitation with Meri). This weird split of treatment, even as a child, is something that really really messes with her head.

Additionally, as is the case with most to all reality benders in Eventyr, Meri has to deal with a shadow of the Scarlet King latching onto her fear specifically.

Compounding this, Meri is trans in Eventyr. I think someone being part-animal lends itself really well to an exploration of what it means to be "othered" by the people around you, and how that can lead to feelings of, as Meri puts it, "being born wrong."

This is something that definitely transfers into her adult life too. Currently, there's somewhat of a gap in terms of Meri's childhood to when she meets Hana and travels to a Deer College campus with her. Their relationship deserves its own post, so I'm not going to talk about it here, but Meri begins to claim some shreds of humanity through this relationship (to an extent).

I think as of recent, my favorite piece showing that was what I wrote for pride this year: a fairly intimate story staring Hana and Meri that focuses on Meri learning about attraction and how to (start) becoming comfortable with her body.

For the future, I definitely plan on exploring Meri's understanding of the world to a much deeper degree, especially in terms of how she sort of plays catch-up for all the years of her life she spent in containment before being allowed out on supervised leave. She is still overshadowed by Hana a bit, mostly because Hana places herself in a protective role over Meri (again, will talk about in the future if I remember), but she does learn how to advocate for herself once she understands what needs of hers are still unmet.