you humans are so cute when you're scared.
Blah. I hate it when my feels about how to work a character into a fic are conflicted and undecided and torn in multiple directions.
The character in question is Kira and the fic in question is the college AU Skittles fic I'm working on where Scott has an eating disorder and relapses really badly and Stiles is pretty aware that things are bad for Scott right now but he's not aware of the full extent how bad things are getting for Scott until Scott comes down with pneumonia and Stiles drags him to the ER which leads to Stiles finding out that no really Scott is in a worse place than he got before the first time he got caught and everything is sad. so, trigger warning for eating disorders.
Like… I'm not torn on the basic idea with Kira in the fic, which is that she's Scott's good friend who he first met in their campus's eating disorders support group (then got to know better in the campus group for queer and/or trans POC students, one of the myraid student poetry writing groups, and the campus group for neuroatypical students because autistic!Scott and autistic!Kira is my story and I'm very much sticking to it). but I'm torn on what this, "Scott and Kira are good friends who relate to each other on a lot of levels and get each other on a lot of levels (and in a lot of ways that Stiles fundamentally doesn't get just because he's not autistic, he's very much white and… not exactly butch but also not consciously femme like Scott and Kira are, and he doesn't have an eating disorder or a history of suicidal ideation)" thing is going to entail.
(And Stiles… yeah, he is probably kind of jealous of all the ways that Kira gets Scott where Stiles really inherently can't get Scott in those ways? It doesn't get into possessive territory or anything because: a. Stiles loves Scott and respects him enough not to be possessive of him because that's inherently a form of objectification and Stiles wouldn't do that to Scott; and b. Stiles knows full well that Scott loves him and that Scott wouldn't cheat, especially since Kira is also in a monogamous relationship, either with Erica or Malia, I'm not sure who yet, but… yeah, there's no possessiveness on Stiles's part or romantic and/or sexual jealousy going on, and there definitely isn't any, "get that slut away from my man" misogynistic bullshit just because… that's not how I want to write Stiles so I'm not going to write him that way. Like, I guess I could understand someone else reading Stiles that way but that isn't how I personally read Stiles so he's not going to do that in this fic.
But he's definitely jealous of the fact that there are levels on which Kira can understand Scott that Stiles doesn't have access to because of aforementioned reasons. Underlying the jealousy is mostly worry about Scott because Scott isn't okay right now and Stiles wants to help him but he doesn't entirely know how to do that, and then there's probably a feeling of inadequacy mixed in with it because… what if he isn't good enough for Scott and what if he isn't what Scott really needs in his life and what if the levels on which he inherently can't get Scott make Scott realize that Stiles isn't the person he wants to be with and… oh, boys, basically? oh, you silly silly boys who love each other so much and have so many insecurities, I just want to smush your faces together. But back on topic.)
Specifically, I'm sort of tossing stuff around and debating myself in huge circles vis a vis things like the status of Kira's own recovery and eating disorder, how Scott relates to her on that level, how Kira relates to Scott on that level, how Scott's relapse is going to affect Kira, what she's going to do about it (aside from one scene that I definitely want to put in where she asks Stiles if Scott's seeming weird or off at home and if he's okay because he hasn't been in their ED support group for a couple weeks, which Scott has been lying to Stiles about in some way, still putting together the specifics of that but I'm thinking it's a mix of, "I got asked to cover someone's shift at the library and the extra pay is good for us" excuses and, "oh one of my professors is having us go to a thing tonight" excuses and possibly just pretending to go when actually Scott is working an extra shift at the library that he signed up for very much on purpose)… Basically, there is just a lot to figure out on this level in order to do everyone their due justice?
And like. My original idea had been that Scott and Kira are both caught in a relapse and trigger or possibly even encourage each other… but I just don't see that as being in character for either of them? Like, even making allowances for how EDs make people do things that they normally wouldn't do and how a lot of people who have eating disorders express some sentiments like, "I feel like a completely different person when this disease takes over and makes me do X"… I just don't feel like Scott and Kira are the sort of people who would actively enable someone else's relapse or encourage someone else in their relapse, not even in the lowest most psychologically toxic and fucked up depths of their illness. Like, if Kira were to relapse while Scott was also relapsing, Scott might do the thing of trying to help her get more attentive help while completely up and ignoring if not outright denying his own illness and his own need for help.
But Scott being Scott… he's too empathetic to actively and very much knowingly do anything that would make another person hurt themself, especially not when he knows what they're going through as deeply and intimately as he does due to also having an eating disorder, because not only would Scott refuse to willingly and so pointlessly hurt another person in this way on an ideological and moral and ethical level but doing the thing would also cause Scott his own emotional distress because of how intensely he feels other people's pain and feels other people's feelings for them.
And Kira… Granted, we haven't seen a lot of her in canon yet, but what we've seen of her doesn't lead me to believe that she is the sort of person who would willingly and knowingly try to hurt another person especially not in the way that she'd be hurting someone else by enabling their relapse into the worst depths of an eating disorder. Like, when her life was in danger in this week's episode, she still tried to get Scott to go and not try to save her because she didn't want Barrow to hurt him. She spent at least two or three hours doing research for Scott in order to clarify her explanation of bardo in Tibetan Buddhism because she likes him and wanted him to have a better explanation. After Scott helped Stiles out of the classroom while he was having a panic attack, she willingly went out of her way and chased after the two of them to try to bring them their bags back. She got Scott pizza after her dad's sushi dinner went questionably for Scott both because he couldn't use chopsticks (how adorable is it that Scott has super werewolf powers and is still clumsy as fuck sometimes? IT IS SUPER ADORABLE OH MY GOD) and because he thought the wasabi was guacamole (oh, honey ♥).
Like. Maybe Kira has sort of morbid interests (I mean, she seems like a total perky goth to me, both in her choice of outfits and in how cute and enthusiastic she gets when going on about death and demons and stuff) and a really morbid sense of humor (cf, "I could set myself on fire and be noticed" "Well, then you'd be dead" "Exactly")… but she's a really genuine, earnest, caring person, and I don't think it's in character for her to do the thing I'd originally envisioned her doing even if you make allowances for, "people do crazy things when eating disorders are fucking with their heads." She and Scott just both strike me as the sort of people who would rather internalize their own pain and hurt themselves rather than hurt another person in this way. (plus on a meta level, just… nope. Kira can be flawed and make mistakes without handing readers an excuse to be misogynistic and potentially also racist at her because oh my globbb get that evil eating disordered [gendered slurs redacted] away from Stiles's boyfriend if I were Stiles then I would hurt her for doing that to Scott… completely ignoring the fact that, in that hypothetical situation and that hypothetical scenario, SCOTT WAS DOING THE THING TOO, BOTH OF THEM WERE DOING THE THING, IT'S A BAD THING THAT THEY DID BUT THEY BOTH DID THE THING BECAUSE BOTH OF THEM ARE SICK IN THIS HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION WHAT DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND ABOUT THIS WHEN APPLYING THE RATIONALE TO KIRA.)
(…the lack of faith that I have in my fellow fans sometimes takes me by surprise.)
But basically… yeah. I need to do more figuring things out with Kira and how she fits into this fic and I meant to do more of it tonight but ahaha, then I spent the majority of the night, like… figuring out the backstory and the timeline of events and fleshing out the Delgado family (especially Marisol Delgado and her twin brother Santiago, Scott's older cousins and the cousins he's closest to) and Camden Lahey (Isaac's older brother, who is dead in canon but I decided to go, "yeah no fuck that" and bring him back to life; also fleshing out his NPC boyfriend Spencer, who is kind of mentoring Scott a little bit in school and career ways because Spencer is a social worker and Scott wants to go into social work too but he is also kind of an accidental trigger for Scott once Scott's relapse starts because… well, one of the worst parts about the effects that eating disorders can have on your thought processes is that they can basically make you start comparing your body to everyone else's as well as to the idealized thing that you want, and when your social work mentor is about 6'4" [the same height as Boyd] and skinny like a reed and looks like this… yeeeah. yeah. but in fairness, Spencer isn't the only one that Scott gets this way with. he also does the thing with Isaac and Jackson and Danny especially Isaac because holy shit, Isaac is lanky)
(though incidentally, on the subject of Jackson? he and Scott hate each other a lot less in this AU because ha ha, oops, both of them are in the campus eating disorders support group and… Jackson was a tool to Scott in high school until he got mind-fucked a lot during Matt's serial killing spree… Matt was the one doing the mind-fucking and like, Jackson had already had an eating disorder before then but Matt just made it worse and basically, the summer after Matt got caught and arrested? Jackson "went on vacation to visit relatives in London" but actually he was in the inpatient rehab that Scott and Melissa couldn't afford because their insurance wouldn't cover it and even with assistance from the Sheriff, Deaton, and Talia [because Melissa was dating Peter at the time and Derek was kind of like, "nope this is my brother now, Scott you are my baby brother because I said so" and when Scott got caught making himself throw up at work, Derek went, "but moooom, my baby brother is sick, please pay for him to go to rehab :("]… they really needed Blobfish's help and Blobfish didn't give it because he literally looked at the situation and refused to believe that Scott was sick because well Scott looked fine to him, Melissa, and come on, he's always been an emotionally needy attention hungry kid how do you know that he's not just faking this for attention.)
(yeah Blobfish is pretty much the fucking worst but that's not news or anything so.)
The character in question is Kira and the fic in question is the college AU Skittles fic I'm working on where Scott has an eating disorder and relapses really badly and Stiles is pretty aware that things are bad for Scott right now but he's not aware of the full extent how bad things are getting for Scott until Scott comes down with pneumonia and Stiles drags him to the ER which leads to Stiles finding out that no really Scott is in a worse place than he got before the first time he got caught and everything is sad. so, trigger warning for eating disorders.
Like… I'm not torn on the basic idea with Kira in the fic, which is that she's Scott's good friend who he first met in their campus's eating disorders support group (then got to know better in the campus group for queer and/or trans POC students, one of the myraid student poetry writing groups, and the campus group for neuroatypical students because autistic!Scott and autistic!Kira is my story and I'm very much sticking to it). but I'm torn on what this, "Scott and Kira are good friends who relate to each other on a lot of levels and get each other on a lot of levels (and in a lot of ways that Stiles fundamentally doesn't get just because he's not autistic, he's very much white and… not exactly butch but also not consciously femme like Scott and Kira are, and he doesn't have an eating disorder or a history of suicidal ideation)" thing is going to entail.
(And Stiles… yeah, he is probably kind of jealous of all the ways that Kira gets Scott where Stiles really inherently can't get Scott in those ways? It doesn't get into possessive territory or anything because: a. Stiles loves Scott and respects him enough not to be possessive of him because that's inherently a form of objectification and Stiles wouldn't do that to Scott; and b. Stiles knows full well that Scott loves him and that Scott wouldn't cheat, especially since Kira is also in a monogamous relationship, either with Erica or Malia, I'm not sure who yet, but… yeah, there's no possessiveness on Stiles's part or romantic and/or sexual jealousy going on, and there definitely isn't any, "get that slut away from my man" misogynistic bullshit just because… that's not how I want to write Stiles so I'm not going to write him that way. Like, I guess I could understand someone else reading Stiles that way but that isn't how I personally read Stiles so he's not going to do that in this fic.
But he's definitely jealous of the fact that there are levels on which Kira can understand Scott that Stiles doesn't have access to because of aforementioned reasons. Underlying the jealousy is mostly worry about Scott because Scott isn't okay right now and Stiles wants to help him but he doesn't entirely know how to do that, and then there's probably a feeling of inadequacy mixed in with it because… what if he isn't good enough for Scott and what if he isn't what Scott really needs in his life and what if the levels on which he inherently can't get Scott make Scott realize that Stiles isn't the person he wants to be with and… oh, boys, basically? oh, you silly silly boys who love each other so much and have so many insecurities, I just want to smush your faces together. But back on topic.)
Specifically, I'm sort of tossing stuff around and debating myself in huge circles vis a vis things like the status of Kira's own recovery and eating disorder, how Scott relates to her on that level, how Kira relates to Scott on that level, how Scott's relapse is going to affect Kira, what she's going to do about it (aside from one scene that I definitely want to put in where she asks Stiles if Scott's seeming weird or off at home and if he's okay because he hasn't been in their ED support group for a couple weeks, which Scott has been lying to Stiles about in some way, still putting together the specifics of that but I'm thinking it's a mix of, "I got asked to cover someone's shift at the library and the extra pay is good for us" excuses and, "oh one of my professors is having us go to a thing tonight" excuses and possibly just pretending to go when actually Scott is working an extra shift at the library that he signed up for very much on purpose)… Basically, there is just a lot to figure out on this level in order to do everyone their due justice?
And like. My original idea had been that Scott and Kira are both caught in a relapse and trigger or possibly even encourage each other… but I just don't see that as being in character for either of them? Like, even making allowances for how EDs make people do things that they normally wouldn't do and how a lot of people who have eating disorders express some sentiments like, "I feel like a completely different person when this disease takes over and makes me do X"… I just don't feel like Scott and Kira are the sort of people who would actively enable someone else's relapse or encourage someone else in their relapse, not even in the lowest most psychologically toxic and fucked up depths of their illness. Like, if Kira were to relapse while Scott was also relapsing, Scott might do the thing of trying to help her get more attentive help while completely up and ignoring if not outright denying his own illness and his own need for help.
But Scott being Scott… he's too empathetic to actively and very much knowingly do anything that would make another person hurt themself, especially not when he knows what they're going through as deeply and intimately as he does due to also having an eating disorder, because not only would Scott refuse to willingly and so pointlessly hurt another person in this way on an ideological and moral and ethical level but doing the thing would also cause Scott his own emotional distress because of how intensely he feels other people's pain and feels other people's feelings for them.
And Kira… Granted, we haven't seen a lot of her in canon yet, but what we've seen of her doesn't lead me to believe that she is the sort of person who would willingly and knowingly try to hurt another person especially not in the way that she'd be hurting someone else by enabling their relapse into the worst depths of an eating disorder. Like, when her life was in danger in this week's episode, she still tried to get Scott to go and not try to save her because she didn't want Barrow to hurt him. She spent at least two or three hours doing research for Scott in order to clarify her explanation of bardo in Tibetan Buddhism because she likes him and wanted him to have a better explanation. After Scott helped Stiles out of the classroom while he was having a panic attack, she willingly went out of her way and chased after the two of them to try to bring them their bags back. She got Scott pizza after her dad's sushi dinner went questionably for Scott both because he couldn't use chopsticks (how adorable is it that Scott has super werewolf powers and is still clumsy as fuck sometimes? IT IS SUPER ADORABLE OH MY GOD) and because he thought the wasabi was guacamole (oh, honey ♥).
Like. Maybe Kira has sort of morbid interests (I mean, she seems like a total perky goth to me, both in her choice of outfits and in how cute and enthusiastic she gets when going on about death and demons and stuff) and a really morbid sense of humor (cf, "I could set myself on fire and be noticed" "Well, then you'd be dead" "Exactly")… but she's a really genuine, earnest, caring person, and I don't think it's in character for her to do the thing I'd originally envisioned her doing even if you make allowances for, "people do crazy things when eating disorders are fucking with their heads." She and Scott just both strike me as the sort of people who would rather internalize their own pain and hurt themselves rather than hurt another person in this way. (plus on a meta level, just… nope. Kira can be flawed and make mistakes without handing readers an excuse to be misogynistic and potentially also racist at her because oh my globbb get that evil eating disordered [gendered slurs redacted] away from Stiles's boyfriend if I were Stiles then I would hurt her for doing that to Scott… completely ignoring the fact that, in that hypothetical situation and that hypothetical scenario, SCOTT WAS DOING THE THING TOO, BOTH OF THEM WERE DOING THE THING, IT'S A BAD THING THAT THEY DID BUT THEY BOTH DID THE THING BECAUSE BOTH OF THEM ARE SICK IN THIS HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION WHAT DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND ABOUT THIS WHEN APPLYING THE RATIONALE TO KIRA.)
(…the lack of faith that I have in my fellow fans sometimes takes me by surprise.)
But basically… yeah. I need to do more figuring things out with Kira and how she fits into this fic and I meant to do more of it tonight but ahaha, then I spent the majority of the night, like… figuring out the backstory and the timeline of events and fleshing out the Delgado family (especially Marisol Delgado and her twin brother Santiago, Scott's older cousins and the cousins he's closest to) and Camden Lahey (Isaac's older brother, who is dead in canon but I decided to go, "yeah no fuck that" and bring him back to life; also fleshing out his NPC boyfriend Spencer, who is kind of mentoring Scott a little bit in school and career ways because Spencer is a social worker and Scott wants to go into social work too but he is also kind of an accidental trigger for Scott once Scott's relapse starts because… well, one of the worst parts about the effects that eating disorders can have on your thought processes is that they can basically make you start comparing your body to everyone else's as well as to the idealized thing that you want, and when your social work mentor is about 6'4" [the same height as Boyd] and skinny like a reed and looks like this… yeeeah. yeah. but in fairness, Spencer isn't the only one that Scott gets this way with. he also does the thing with Isaac and Jackson and Danny especially Isaac because holy shit, Isaac is lanky)
(though incidentally, on the subject of Jackson? he and Scott hate each other a lot less in this AU because ha ha, oops, both of them are in the campus eating disorders support group and… Jackson was a tool to Scott in high school until he got mind-fucked a lot during Matt's serial killing spree… Matt was the one doing the mind-fucking and like, Jackson had already had an eating disorder before then but Matt just made it worse and basically, the summer after Matt got caught and arrested? Jackson "went on vacation to visit relatives in London" but actually he was in the inpatient rehab that Scott and Melissa couldn't afford because their insurance wouldn't cover it and even with assistance from the Sheriff, Deaton, and Talia [because Melissa was dating Peter at the time and Derek was kind of like, "nope this is my brother now, Scott you are my baby brother because I said so" and when Scott got caught making himself throw up at work, Derek went, "but moooom, my baby brother is sick, please pay for him to go to rehab :("]… they really needed Blobfish's help and Blobfish didn't give it because he literally looked at the situation and refused to believe that Scott was sick because well Scott looked fine to him, Melissa, and come on, he's always been an emotionally needy attention hungry kid how do you know that he's not just faking this for attention.)
(yeah Blobfish is pretty much the fucking worst but that's not news or anything so.)