where's the kratom dog ashes tweet. please
this animation gave my tablet a few scratches I had to order a $30 screen protector :sob:
cinderella marries the prince
and it’s… fine. The prince is great! They’re in love, he’s very sweet and passionate, writing her poems and songs, giving her anything she wants. The time she spends with her husband is great.
but cinderella is not royalty, her family was noble but she never spent time in those circles. She’s used to being busy, she’s used to cooking and cleaning and mending. There are hours, days, where she has nothing to do.
time passes. cinderella learns the fancy lady type of needlework. Learns to ride horses. Reads a lot.
as is normal for royalty at the time, they travel and are hosted by nobles or stay at castles owned by the king. But even that variety begins to become routine. The prince is distracted, there’s a lot of young women living and working on their route. Daughters of nobles. Younger and prettier with soft hands that have never done a day’s work.
cinderella needs something to spend her time on, and there’s a part of her thinking a couple-only trip might get her husband’s attention again, so she suggests making an old castle that’s fallen into disrepair their “project.” It was built in the time when castles were made to be defensible, so it’s quite sturdy, but it’s overgrown and secluded. The prince doesn’t know why his family stopped living there either. A hundred years ago it was their summer home.
so they go. And they work. And for a while it’s great! But when they leave for winter cinderella’s husband forgets her once again. cinderella resolves to make the best of her life and stop worrying about a man who has gotten what he wanted from her.
summer comes again and this time cinderella goes alone to the old castle (minus staff, of course, but cinderella manages to narrow it down to only repair workers and one maid). She can cook and clean and mend again, but this time it’s her own choice. She is happy.
this summer they make more progress on repairs. The workers say that most of it can be salvaged, except one tower that’s been completely overgrown with vines and briars. It will have to come down, eventually, but for now it can be safely ignored.
cinderella has more free time now. The old castle has a surprisingly untouched library, though time and moisture have damaged many of the books. Behind a collection of greek poetry cinderella finds an old diary. Very old, in fact, at least a hundred years. It’s rude to read a diary, of course, but whoever wrote this is long dead, and cinderella is bored, so…
from the description of activities the author looks to have been nobility. Maybe even a princess. She’s sensitive and sweet and smarter than she seems to realize. If circumstances had been different cinderella wishes they could have been friends…
after the summer ends cinderella returns to her husband. He’s spending a lot of time with a young musician and cinderella can’t even work up the energy to care. She does some research about the castle and the family she’s married into, finds out the name of the princess who wrote the diary.
aurora. Cursed and forgotten. She died young, they say, in a plague that also took out the castle staff and her own parents. Luckily they avoided a succession crisis, but not so lucky for the dead.
time passes. cinderella goes to the old castle again and again, even out of season. Soon enough all that remains to be done is the old tower, and the builders say they should tear it down and fill the gaps before it gets cold.
one night cinderella is restless. The princess from the diary had been fond of that tower, and cinderella is far more attached to a dead woman than she ought to be. She gets out of bed, reads by candlelight, and finally goes to walk the empty halls.
she finds herself going to the tower. Pushing past the vines that don’t seem so troublesome really. They almost part before her. The stairs are perfectly intact, the door at the top is already cracked open. As if she should have done this years ago, cinderella steps into aurora’s bedroom.
she’s as beautiful as the stories say. And sitting under her hands, crossed across her stomach as it rises and falls, is a book of greek poetry.
years later, people will tell the story of cinderella as a cautionary one. Don’t seek above your station. Don’t marry for prestige. After all, a girl who grew up as a servant once married the crown prince, and disappeared after only three years. She ran away, they say, she couldn’t handle the lifestyle.
two old women who run a bookshop together agree with the lesson. Marrying for the wrong reasons never ends well. It’s best to wait for someone you have things in common with, shared interests.
or, failing that, the more linguistic of the two says, wait a decade or ten for someone to fall in love with you from your diary.
her partner laughs and hits her with the socks she is mending.
i swear this was just supposed to be some fun aesthetic swap doodles, but then i started thinking about The Implications and now i have a wholeass story behind this au lol
any world where grace chasity isn’t a horny, homicidal prude, we lose the original plot, so this au would revolve more around the church of the starry children then max jägerman lol
solomon decides the best way to wield power in hatchetfield is through religion instead of government and he unites all the tiny denominational churches into his church, becoming the pastor (happening around the same time steph starts middle school.)
it works. almost everyone attends solomon’s church, and it becomes a required social event for anyone who’s anyone in hatchetfield.
but it’s all a manipulation for bigger purposes as solomon slowly incorporates text from the black book, pushing the church into culty territory.
as the preacher’s kid, steph is under constant scrutiny. she might have wanted to rebel as a kid, but the wrath of god is a much bigger threat than just breaking her phone and solomon uses fear and guilt to keep her in line, turning her into a model of godly behavior (at least on the surface).
the chasitys refuse to join solomon’s church, but their small congregation shuts down when there aren’t enough people left.
grace’s parents encourage grace to pour all her free time into individual bible study to make up for the lack of church, church activities, and church outings, but grace starts treating the bible like a textbook instead of a spiritual guide.
without structured church activities, her obsession with rules and procedures shifts to the school system
grace unknowingly separates herself from spirituality when her bible obsession becomes academic. she’s still a christian, but she’s more likely to corner you in the library to infodump about angelic hierarchies than preach about purity.
travis coulson was ruth’s older cousin. it freaked her the hell out that someone could be bullied that bad that they have to transfer and their entire life is erased for a dumbass lie that everyone believes. so ruth vows that she and her friends will never be outcasts (or timberwolves) and drags pete and richie into a "popularity pact" in fifth grade, forcing them to get cool or else.
the trio spends their summer doing research and practicing social skills. (they basically spend their time practicing masking autism and refining their ability to camouflage.)
the trio starts researching what’s cool. their findings? football players, student council presidents, and school play leads are the pinnacle of popularity. so, they throw themselves into middle school tryouts and campaigns to fit these roles:
richie tries out for football but ends up as the mascot.
ruth auditions for the lead in the school play but gets relegated to lighting tech.
pete campaigns for class president but only gets elected secretary.
instead of quitting there, they regroup and try again in high school:
richie uses the athleticism he got as a mascot to land him a spot on the swim team.
ruth works her way up to the the student/assistant director for the school plays
pete works his way up the student council ranks, eventually becoming class president.
the trio is finally just cool enough that their quirks get rebranded as "quirky-cool" instead of "weird." they still bond over star wars and anime in secret, but their popularity ensures they’re never targets again.