if u wanna yell abt ian or lionel i would be super here for that

marypsue:

I AM GOING TO YELL ABOUT BOTH OF THEM and try very hard not to give anything away because I’m got BIIIIIIIG plans for Ian, ahaha I’m looking forward to this waaayyyyy too much and may need to tone the excitement down a notch.

I never expected to get as attached to Lionel as I did, or for him to turn into as much of a fully-fledged character as he did, even though I’m very glad that he did, because a) GREAT, more living breathing characters is always good, more interesting stories to tell, and b) it’s thematically appropriate for Gravity Falls that the character you least expect to have depth and backstory (of the tragic kind) turns out to be a fully-realised person with dreams and fears and problems just like anybody else! I love the fact that he turned out to be a would-have-been rock star who grew up to be a librarian, for pete’s sake, he is such a dork and it’s great. And I may have mentioned that the fact that he’s not a reincarnation of anyone or related in any way to the Pines family is intentional? He’s just about how people can surprise you, sometimes for the worse but sometimes for the better, and how sometimes you find the most important people in the most unexpected places.

(Also, he’s a dork. Have I mentioned that he’s a dork? Because he’s a dork. And he’s not always good at being the dad of a teenage girl and a teenage-ish demon, but he’s doing his best, and that means a lot to me.)

And Ian is…well, initially, Rosa was the hero of his story and he was her one-dimensional bassist and backup villainous henchman in her nefarious plan to take over the world by being charming and adorable and talented and basically Taylor Swift. And then the Alex!Bill design showed up, and then Toby got big on the TAU blog and there was a little bit of a reaction against that in him, because I’m generally just not as interested in characters/stories about characters who are 100% innocent and self-sacrificing and Good to the core and are just unfairly maligned by an unjust world that tries to stamp out Good wherever it’s found as I am in stories about characters who are not 100% Good and are in fact a little bit (or a lot) Bad but are trying, and who have to deal with a world that’s difficult and complicated and totally uncaring one way or the other, but isn’t particularly prejudiced against them or anyone else in particular (the system/society is another story).

Sooooo there’s a heaping helping of that in his character, and all of the characters in that story are struggling with determinism in one form or another, which is why there are so much higher a concentration of reincarnations in that fic than there is in RRR. Like, obviously there’s Mira grappling with the role of Mizar and the fact of her previous existence and what she means to Dipper/Alcor, there’s Dip trying to come to terms with the fact that he has, already, lost a good deal of his humanity just as a side effect of his life and his biological (metaphysical?) reality, and there’s only so much he can do against that when he hasn’t even noticed, and then there’s Ian and Rosa and whether or not you can fully and completely resist something that’s ingrained into you, whether it’s created by your circumstances or only enabled or suppressed, whether it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, and whether you can exercise free will if you don’t even know that determinism is acting on you. (And then there’s Sun-mi who is there entirely because she popped into my head and demanded not to be left out. And, y’know, for plot purposes. But mostly because she was pushy. And I’m not a person who talks about characters as though they have some kind of life in the writer’s head, so that’s not really how I mean it, but the concept of her was a very persistent idea, just like most of the OCs in this fic.)

So yeah. I have a lot of deep thoughts and they come out in weird ways in dumb fics about superpowered demon-people hybrids. And then I get drunk and explicate the themes of said fics, because that’s a thing that people do when they’re English majors.

eeeee

Reincarnation Blues 5/?

marypsue:

Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five

on AO3

“You’re honestly still seeing that creep?”

Mira looked up from the debit machine. “He’s not a creep. What do you have
against Ian, anyway?”

Sun-mi shrugged, the gesture nearly hidden by the oversized scarf wrapped
around her shoulders. “I can’t really explain it, there’s just something not
right
about that guy. And you can’t trust anybody who thinks total nuclear
annihilation makes a good punchline.”

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Rosa, please!

marypsue:

send me a character and I’ll tell you:

2-4 songs that are probably on their iPod: Teenage Whore by Hole, God’s Gonna Cut You Down by Johnny Cash, I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow by the Soggy Bottom Boys, Fire by Delta Rae.

the one place they sometimes end up falling asleep — where they’re not supposed to: anywhere backstage; in the recording booth; in the hairdresser’s chair.

the game they’d destroy everyone else at: Rock Band and any of its variations/copycats; Mario Kart.

the emoticon they’d use most often: ;*

what they act like when they haven’t had enough sleep: GROUCHY. Easily set off by tiny things. Constantly trapped in a cycle of explosion and apology.

their preferred hot beverage on really cold nights. or mornings. or whenever: vanilla creme brulee latte with cinnamon sprinkles.

how they like to comfort/care for themselves when they’re in a slump: pampers herself: goes for massages, mani-pedis, hits up vintage stores and thrift shops for cute things to DIY.

what they wanted to be when they grew up: rock star princess of the world, or possibly a welder.

their favorite kind of weather: scorching heat. The kind of day where you go to the beach to try to cool off and burn your feet on the sand.

thoughts on their singing voice (decent? terrible? soprano? alto?): incredible, mezzo-soprano, surprisingly powerful.

how/what they like to draw or doodle: tends to draw really quick, sloppy stars all over nearly everything she owns without thinking; adds hearts and skull-and-crossbones when she is thinking.

marypsue:

Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five

on AO3

“Babe?” There was a jangle of keys as the door creaked open. “You home?”

Ian jumped up, meeting Mira in the entryway. “Hey, stardust, you’re back later than I expected.” He leaned in to kiss Mira lightly, before she pulled back, kicking off her lace flats and letting them lie where they fell.

“My bus broke down on the freeway.” She sighed heavily, pouting up at him as she slung her purse over a hook in the closet. “You would not believe the day I’ve had. We got six hundred complaints about the new receptionist AI. Six hundred! And I had to field nearly all of them! Apparently people don’t like being referred to as ‘valued mortals’.”

Ian barely managed to smother a laugh, and Mira shot him a dirty look as she dropped her keys on the low dresser by the door. “Oh, you only think it’s funny because you didn’t have to field angry calls about it all day. And there are swarms of cars around the apartment today and all kinds of furtive people lurking in the courtyard with cameras, and the elevator’s not working, and some complete sadist drew a smiley face on the out-of-order sign!”

She looked up at Ian, blowing a strand of hair out of her eyes, and then flumped forward to rest her head against his chest. “Carry me over to the couch and rub my feet, please,” she mumbled into the front of his white dress shirt.

“I’d love to, but we’ve got a visitor,” Ian said, gently putting Mira back on her own two feet.

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MOD M DID THE THING REPEAT MOD M DID THE THING

Do Ian, Mira, or Rosa have siblings?

marypsue:

Ian’s an only child.

Mira has five older sisters, one of whom is a biochemical researcher, one of whom does something unspecified for the government which she’s not really allowed to talk about, one of whom is a dragon tamer, one of whom works at a really famous fashion magazine, and one of whom is married with two kids of her own and an online business selling hand-printed stationary.

Rosa has a little brother (like, ten years younger little brother; he wasn’t…exactly…planned) and she absolutely dotes on him. When she’s not threatening to kill him for stealing her lipstick and using it to write rude things on every mirror in the house, that is.

BABBBBSSSS

Can you share some details/backstory on Rosa and Ian’s friendship?

marypsue:

I absolutely can! 

They’ve known each other since first grade, when Rosa’s family moved from Austin. On the very first day, Ian recruited her to help him in some mischief that I honestly haven’t decided on yet, resulting in both their parents getting calls home. They’ve been inseparable ever since.

Ian’s mother is a music promoter, and Rosa’s mother and father are a couple of country singers, so it came as a surprise to no one that they encouraged the kids to make music together. For a while, they played nursing homes and church functions as ‘Partners in Crime’, a bluegrass duo that started to fall apart when Ian’s mom started pushing to try to get them to ‘get serious’ when they both were in their early teens. Ian officially dropped out after he ended up in hospital, effectively putting an end to the duo, but he’ll still pull out his fiddle and jam with Rosa when they hang out (so long as his mom isn’t around, because she still holds out hope he’s going to get back into music).

They made a blood pact before starting middle school that, no matter what happened, no matter what weird changes middle school might throw at them, they’d stay friends and watch each other’s backs. For the most part, they’ve held it up – there was a period of about two weeks when Ian started talking up a girl Rosa didn’t realise she liked as more than a friend that put a bit of a strain on their friendship, but otherwise, they’ve stayed pretty close.

(There were a few times through high school when some idiot kids tried to get on Ian’s case for being a weirdo and a literal mental patient. They quickly learned that Rosa’s fists were at least as powerful as her growing fame, and also that she and the weirdo mental patient were more than capable of making the principal think she hadn’t started the fight. In fact, the principal seemed convinced that several fights over the last couple of months had been the fault of whoever was picking on Ian. After the first few expulsions, people started to clue in that maybe it was best just to leave Ian alone.)

They also pull the BEST April Fools’ pranks.

Mod M jumped on the bandwagon and did up some physical descriptions for her OCs! (Also, discovered just how many she has. There are…kind of a lot.)

Belle grows out of her close resemblance to Mabel as she gets older and discovers her own style, one that incorporates a lot of bright clashing neon colours, tacky Lisa Frank imagery, 80s silhouettes, and glitter. Looooots of glitter. She has Mabel’s dark, waist-length curly hair, but lets Onika shave half her head for graduation, and within the first year of college has chopped off what’s left to about chin-length, a style she keeps pretty much the same for the rest of her life. She has very rounded features and a wee button nose, and wears rectangular wire-framed glasses and a lot of outrageously coloured eyeshadow. She ends up being about 5’4” and 170 lbs, with most of her weight in her hips and butt, which annoys her to no end because do you know how hard it is to find leggings with patterns of kittens playing laser keyboards in space that fit? Her mother was a Chilean mestiza, but Belle looks very white.

(Dipper bases his appearance on hers more consciously as he ‘ages’ past twelve, but he stays skinny and noodly, and has a tendency to wear formalwear as casual-wear. He gets voted ‘best dressed’ in the yearbook for his usual skinny jeans-dress shirt-suspenders/vest-bow tie combination and has absolutely no idea why. His usual outfit is a three-piece suit with tails, this is dressing down. He stays about half an inch shorter than Belle, who lords it over him every chance she gets.)

Lionel is white, not particularly tall (about 5’10”), and all knees and elbows. He is a university librarian and dresses the part. He’s dark-haired (and won’t admit he’s slightly balding), brown-eyed, and has a rather long face and soft features, with a goofy smile that makes him look at least ten years younger. He has worn a truly atrocious pair of aviator-styled wire-framed glasses straight out of 1982 for the past nearly thirty years and sees absolutely nothing wrong with this.

Onika ends up being nearly six feet tall and almost all muscle. Her hair changes colour, length, and style weekly, and she has a wide selection of coloured contacts, though her own eyes are nearly black. She’s very dark-skinned, and fine-featured with prominent cheekbones and very full lips. She likes to experiment with colour, but her style is generally more conservative than Belle’s (then again, there are many drag queens whose style is more conservative than Belle’s).

Alice, as mentioned, looks almost exactly like Wendy, but pays considerably more attention to clothes; her style is very business casual, with a little bit of glamour sprinkled in. She bobs her hair when she’s about twenty-five and decides she hates it, and never gets it cut short again.

Mike is mixed, black and white; he’s got a fairly square face, the Corduroy genes for freckles, and wears his thick, tightly-curled hair long enough to frame his face, which gives him a boyish look even late into life. He’s a little taller than average height, and a lifelong career in supernatural investigations and investigative demonology has given him some serious muscle tone despite the fact that he’s actually kind of a total nerd whose first love is research (which has saved his life during actual faceoffs against supernatural beasties more than once). His left leg is prosthetic, and he’s fully weaponized it.

Mira is about 5’2”, of Indian descent, with thick black hair to about the middle of her back and dark brown eyes. She has a medium-dark brown complexion, a heart-shaped face with full cheeks, and a slightly hooked nose that she’s made peace with but will never love. She’s a bird-boned little wisp of a thing and has been known to shop in the girls’ section (mostly for inexpensive tutu skirts) – however, she’s still a ‘medium’ or even a ‘large’ in most of the clothes she orders through taobao. She usually wears contact lenses, either plain prescription lenses or circle lenses to make her irises look much bigger, but she also has square black plastic-framed glasses that she wears around the apartment and whenever she’s writing.

Ian is…well, basically Alex Hirsch. He’s about 5’8”, a little shorter than average for guys, and an absolute noodle of a person. Generally spotted sporting jeans and pastel t-shirts with cute images on them, usually with a plaid flannel overtop that clashes horribly, though he takes literally any opportunity to dress up and has an inordinately large collection of bowties. After he loses his right eye, he has it replaced with a state-of-the-art cybernetic implant equipped with a filter that imitates the Sight (and a few other cool tricks); it doesn’t look even remotely natural, being a bright gold and occasionally moving independently. He is almost too fond of freaking Dipper out with it.

Rosa is five feet, fat, and fabulous, if she does say so herself. Just about everything about her appearance is round and soft, including her features, though she has a rather sharp chin and an equally pointed glare. You will never catch her with her platinum-blonde hair down out of its carefully-gelled fauxhawk, or without perfectly winged eyeliner. She’s lost count of how many piercings there are in her ears, but there’s one in her tongue and one in her nose. They match the safety pins, studs, and spikes that dot her rockabilly-punk styled outfits. She’s about as pale as they come and has startlingly blue eyes, which occasionally, when she’s taking a look at someone’s aura (or when she’s particularly pissed off), seem to almost glow.

marypsue:

Followup to this and this. It grew a plot when I wasn’t looking, so there will be probably two or three more chapters.

Mira waited until Ian had gone back to the studio for the evening to work in the revisions to his boards before pulling out the chalk and candles. She took a bag of chocolate-covered almonds from the cupboard, considering them for a moment before walking into the living room and pushing aside the coffee table, clearing a space to draw Alcor’s circle on the laminate fake-hardwood floor. She could have called him with just a few drops of blood (at least, she could when he wasn’t sulking and avoiding her), but she already knew that this was a conversation he was going to try to dodge out of as soon as it started. And while the circle wouldn’t hold him, the sense of obligation might.

Alcor appeared without ceremony, grabbing the bag of chocolate-covered almonds from the centre of the circle and stuffing a handful into his mouth before he even said ‘hello’. He leaned back, lounging in midair, as Mira wrinkled her nose.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to talk with your mouth full?”

Alcor just grinned at her with a mouthful of shark teeth stained with chocolate.

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If you need the other mods, they will be exploding out of sheer joy

marypsue:

Another thing with Ian and Mira from this fic, because can’t stop won’t stop. Warning for discussion of suicide and suicidal ideation, ableist language, existential angst, and one really bad pun.

The moment Mira had walked into the sole lecture hall at the community college, Ian had known she was going to be important. He hadn’t been sure how, exactly. It was just a feeling, like the change in the wind in October or April, like the faint sense of meaning that clung to treasured heirlooms, and it had punched him in the gut before he even got a good look at her face.

She had been ten minutes late, flushed and breathing hard like she’d been running, and as she’d tried with little success to shut the door silently behind her, Ian had noticed that she had stars in her thick, glossy black hair. She’d turned to look around the classroom, and he’d raised a hand, pointing to the empty seat beside him. The smile she’d shot him in silent thanks was bright and dazzling and stone-cold terrifying. Terrifying, because it had shot through him like a cupid’s arrow and nearly stopped his breath. He didn’t know her, didn’t know anything about her, but he’d been instantly sure he’d do anything for that smile.

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