𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐒

[saltburntmods]

MISFIRES

a rambunctious duo in salt has stuck their nose where they shouldn't and now you can all reap the rewards! this is a MISFIRES meme. post a header for your character, and receive accidental texts from your local saltburntian guests. nudes, nasties, confessions of a certain persuasion? things you'd otherwise never write or send? they're all on the table. (meme threads aren't game canon, but they're not not game canon either, right)

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[temporicide]

Well, at home, everything is so black and white! You have one person, your whole life, and that's it, and even if you love that person the most you're never allowed to care about anyone else

And I don't think it has to be that way. I'm mostly not a jealous person. I don't want to take things away from people I love. And for another thing, I've hardly had any fun in my whole life, and I don't want to stop now just because people say thin




Wait a minute. Hey?

[poppycock]

( intriguing and relatable too. )

Hello.

( a pause. )

Forgive me, but you were just getting to the good part. People are tiringly judgmental.

[temporicide]

Yes! The box we live in is so small and you don't even get to decide what color it is. I think by my hometown's standards, I've been an awful girl this summer. Already. But I'm not sorry for it. I can't make myself be sorry. That's all I mean.

Do people really judge you, too? How come?

[poppycock]

I doubt there's anything worthy of shame or apology. Unless it's that murder.

( and, actually, even then.

there's another pause, while klaus decides what he'd like to depart, and how. )

My father despises me. My mother puts him above all else. I've a child out of wedlock with a very unsuitable woman. You might say I consistently fail to meet expectations.

[temporicide]

Well. We're two misfits in a misfit text. Shame is hard to get away from when you think it's what keeps you in line. But I think you're right.

I ran away to get married when I was 16. My family thought he was unsuitable, too. They tore us apart, and nobody ever forgave us. They still hate us for it. But we didn't have children.

[ Sometimes she wishes they had, for a great variety of reasons, just one of which is that it would have made them harder to separate, or so Roza wants to believe. ]

Will you tell, me, please, if you can
What do you do for it? That feeling they want you to have. Like you've failed.

tw implied homophobia/physical abuse in thoughts bracket

[poppycock]

( shame—the shadow that has followed him all his life and fed his anger. he holds some awe, gratitude, and resentment for how easily she recognizes and identifies his. how close he usually tucks it into his chest, now named and uncovered between them.

he thinks of stefan as she speaks. he thinks of his father's fists. )

I embody it. Sometimes, I've become what they want me to be, both useless and wretched. Sometimes, I'm wrathful and cruel. But there are people—moments—that I believe are worth the wanting to be more. Worth wanting to transcend that shame.

What do you do?

[temporicide]

[ It's a familiar circuit of punishment. Of the self, of others. Her heartstrings tugged, wishing no one else had to feel this way, even if she's grateful for the commiseration: ]

It never quite goes, does it? Even when you're on your own two feet. It shapes you, what they think, those earliest judgments... of course, I'm speaking somewhat from my own experiences, but it's like all that I am right now is a reaction. So that's what I do. I go running in the opposite direction. They told me to be a good girl, and a good girl keeps her legs together, doesn't drink, doesn't talk as much as I talk. Doesn't like the things I like. And even though I've gone so far away, and my life is different now
I still want to be called good. Even if it's not their version.

So maybe we're talking about the same thing. But if it helps, just based on this conversation alone
I think you'll do it. You can. Maybe sometimes in fits and starts, but that's still doing it.

[poppycock]

( if she is here to persuade the salvatores out of dignity, house, and home, she's the deftest hand at manipulation he's ever seen. perhaps even better than he. )

You're right, you know. Everyone is entitled to their own rules. Their own boundaries and freedoms. I ran, too. I travelled the world in search of art and music and a sense of self that could absolve me. I don't know that I found it there, but I know where it led me.

You get to decide what it means to be good——or bad——whatever you prefer.

Personally, I've always felt the distinction was rather rigid, anyhow.

[temporicide]

I'm glad you went. You deserve to be free, too. Maybe art won't save us, but it can get us an awful lot closer to feeling that way... or make us want to be saved in the first place. You can see the premonitions of self in a good song. I gave up for a while, after that first time, but then I heard Duhont àr ar mané, the Yann-Fañch Kemener one, and I was able to imagine myself free.

I'm only ever able to do things if I imagine myself, first. Those premonitions. I don't know why.

But I think so, too. Any kind of dichotomy will do that to us, won't it? It makes a cage. Bad/good. Real/fake. Crazy/sane. But part of me craves it. Discipline, certainty, even sometimes a little bit of that shame, if it's said the right way or done the right way. I've found other ways to give myself structure. Ballet is one. It's a place to always look for perfection, even though you know it's impossible.

[poppycock]

I've never heard it, that song. You should share it with me.

Holding a paintbrush or a pencil in my hand has always given me a sense of control I've lacked. I create the vision I want. I express what I feel, what I think, what I know. Every color and every line is my choice. The pure, simple joy I felt when I realized I could find meaning and solace from my hands has comforted and led me, both.

Your premonitions do not seem so foreign to me. It seems your strength of will is something to behold. Ballet requires that as well, does it not?

I prefer to live between definitions, in spite of expectations. I believe it is our natural state, to be imperfect. There is beauty in that too; in being.

[temporicide]

I'd like to do that. I could send it to you, or I could play it for you. At your leisure.

[ And she may be partial to the latter option because she thinks that what he describes is so intimately familiar it nearly hurts, but in the good way, like muscle stretching out of some enforced stillness. ]

Like you have your own world in your hands. Built brush by brush, brick by brick. Yours alone, and you only let people inside when you choose who's right for it. Which is to say I'd love to see your work, but with permission.

But I think we're on the same wavelength, because you're right about ballet. You have to know what you want before you can do it. It's never accidental. There are so many things that come to people easily, and I really appreciate talent, but it's the labor I love. The work. Pouring myself into something.

I wish I were better at that, though. Accepting imperfections. It's not other people's, but I think... sometimes I hear a voice that isn't my own when I look at myself. Not literally, like a hallucination, but it's strong. I don't want it there, but it never really goes unless I lose myself entirely in something.

[poppycock]

( he's drawn to her. every message that lights up his phone inspires both a terrifying affinity and an inescapable curiosity.

perhaps she is right, and he only lets people inside when he chooses who's right. his screen goes dark from idleness. he calculates and he weighs his motives, his reasons, and his desires. )

I don't feel particular, when it's you who's asking. I'd like to see you again. I want to hear your song.

The labor is what makes it worth it. I'm not humble enough to deny I possess talent, but there is a skill and practice to art that must be mastered, in each artist's own way. Yet more dire is the inspiration necessary to see each piece from its beginning to its end. They are all unfinished until they are realized, to me. Like a comma or an ellipses, not a period. A hope or a possibility.

Who's voice is it, that you hear? Your family's? ( his father's. that is who he hears, who he has always heard, haunting his thoughts. )

[temporicide]

[ She waits, wonders — not without some butterflies-in-stomach feeling, a shimmer of nervousness, but it is easy to wait. Because she wants to know what he has to say more than she wants to reach out too soon and spoil the magic. ]

You choose time and place, and I'll play it for you. Because of the song but because I'd like to see you, too.

The process is its own reward, right? I don't fully value the finished work until I'm done with learning it, in that same way. Not until I know that it's a part of my body. But I don't do my own choreography, or at least very rarely. What you do, making something entirely out of your own self, that's harder, I think.

Yes. I used to think it was Grandmother's, but
I think it's my mother. I don't remember her voice well enough to know for sure. But it must be. Who else, right?

[poppycock]

Now?

( it is an earnest impulse and an honest desire. he finds no reason to wait, nor deny himself, and plenty to flatter her besides. )

I think what you do is harder. I'd never be able nor willing to contort, stretch, and push my body to its limits the way you do, let alone with the grace required. What is your favorite? Ballet to perform, I mean?

( a pause. )

I hear my father's voice. It's difficult, at times, to hear anything else. As if his voice is also mine, or some higher power dealing immutable truths.

What does she say?

[temporicide]

Yes. I'll come to you, or wait for you. Whichever you like.

[ With no thought of varnish to cover her eagerness, she sends it. ]

Someday maybe we'll swap for a day, try on each other's passions. My favorite may be Les Sylphides, for beauty alone, and The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, for the story, too. Do you know it? A lot is made about the Khan, but I think it's a story about women. All of us are both of them, shown in the story.

[ But she pauses when he does. Both of them haunted by their family members, their parents! There is no exorcism that can cure this. It is a kind of ghost that lives within the bones of a person. How do you cleanse yourself of what grew with you when you did? ]

Our brains attribute to them the qualities of gods. Omniscience, authority. Intellectually knowing otherwise only does so much, doesn't it?

It says that I'll be just like her. Grandmother despises weakness, but I don't agree with her. I'd rather be weak than the way my mother is. I can't even say she loves nothing and no one, because she does — herself. But she also says things that are
Strange, sometimes. She accuses me of forgetting. But I don't know what I've forgotten.

Does your father's voice say things like that?