toplvl | bad rap

Great news: due to the international reputation my mother has for torture, murder and things I'm not sure there's a name for, I don't have anyone I care about left in my life currently. So it's not likely I'm going to hurt anyone via sudden word vomit, at least. Silver lining. [An admittedly thin and frail silver lining, but still.]

I'm glad you had that friend group established before you went there. I think there's a lot to be said for support networks and having others who understand what you're feeling. Although I don't really have that anymore, growing up I did have one friend who had... similar circumstances, though not identical ones. It was comforting, in its' own way.

I'm sorry.

[She's immediately contrite on that count. Hearing about his mother's reputation reminds her of her own mother's, and the parents of her friends. The idea of having to deal with that alone....]

If you ever do want someone to talk to, I'm willing to listen. You might not have grown up on the Isle, but you're definitely a VK.

Thank you. For your sympathy and your offer. I appreciate it, and although I never really know how to verbalize these things in a way that makes sense to other people - the offer means a lot anyway. You're a good person.

[She smiles and offers him her hand.]

Evie. And you are...?

Jefrosinije Ciro. JC, for short.

[He takes her hand and his skin is oddly hot, as always. Side-effect of the superpowers he was born with, unfortunately.]

A pleasure to meet you, Evie.

[That's strange. She's glad she always wears fingerless gloves. It keeps the heat from turning too painful to shake his hand properly.]

Likewise, JC. Always good to meet a fellow VK.

VK? I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with that term.

[He withdraws his hand quickly, before he can risk really irritating her - the sudden heat of his skin can't burn anyone, but it stings, sometimes, and he's aware of that.]

It's something from where I grew up. VK - Villain Kid. Every kid on the Isle was a VK, because it was a prison island. We were known for our parents' reputations as much as our own, at least until we were old enough to make a name for ourselves. It started as an insult, but we took it and owned it. A VK may have a villain for a parent, but that doesn't mean they're a villain themselves. Pretty much all of us just want to do our own thing, not follow in our parents' footsteps.

Ah. There weren't enough kids of villains where I was from for there to be a community of any kind, let alone terminology. I agree with the philosophy, though. Don't get me wrong, I love my mother - God only knows if that's a good thing or not, but still - and I understand why she became such a monster. But I'm not her. I'll never be her, and I don't think I could be if I tried.

...not to say she didn't try to haul me down that path. She tried very hard, it just didn't work.

We've all got...complicated...relationships with our parents. Most of us only know one parent, either our mom or our dad. My friend M's one of the few who knows both of hers. I wouldn't have been able to survive without my mom's lessons, but mom's also the reason we got exiled from the one town on the Isle for almost ten years. She's also the reason I can't have apples in my studio when clients come. Most people now see me for me, but the apple makes them remember I'm her daughter.

Mom tried really hard to make me like her. Like the idealized version of her. M's mom did the same, but went about it in a different way. Jay went way more aggressive than his dad, and Carlos.... We kept him safe from his mom as much as we could, and he kept us all together.

My mother helped me learn a lot of things, too. She was the one who taught me how to read people, how to say what people need to hear rather than whatever my first reaction to say is, and how to stay calm even when everything is a disaster, but, well. She can't set foot outside the country without being arrested or someone trying to kill her, and I love her dearly but it's entirely justified after what she's done. I did have the relative luxury of knowing my father, though. He was a good influence, I think.

[Life without him as a 'VK' was certainly harder, but he doesn't get into that. This isn't a pity party.]

My mom... I don't think it's that she wanted me to be like her, it's that she thought I was automatically and seeing that I'm not took years. She can't comprehend me, still, to this day. Parents are... I don't want to sound cliche or like I'm minimizing this, but parents are just not from the same world mentally as their children, sometimes.

Being able to stay calm in the middle of a disaster is an important thing, as is being able to read people and to figure out what's best to say sometimes. My mom taught me those things, too, in addition to the flirting and sewing and beauty regimes.

[She sighs before she musters a smile.]

That's good, that you knew your dad. My mom still won't even give me a name or any kind of clue. And even with a limited population like the Isle, there's still at least a hundred guys who could potentially be my dad. Of all the adults I know, I can only rule out two of them - Mal's dad, and Jay's dad. M and I are too close in age for her dad to be an option, since actually tried to make it work with her mom. And Jay's dad would have actually tried to teach me more about politics if we were related, since he knew a whole different style from my mom.

[She chuckles.]

For all I know, I could be Gaston's daughter. He only really cared about his boys - though neither Gil nor the twins look much like me.

That sounds a lot like my mom, actually. I was always her 'little evilette in training'. She didn't really get me when I was a kid, and she doesn't get me now, either.

[She offers another smile and a shake of her head.]

You aren't minimizing it at all. They really aren't. So much has changed since they were kids, and it's hard for them to deal with that, let alone us.

My mother couldn't have taught me flirting if her life depended on it. She once described my father as the only man so good at reading people he could tell she was into him. And frankly? That's about my level of romantic skill - none.

[He purses his lips, thinking. His first impulse is that he wishes he could help her figure out who it is, but there may be very good reasons her mother didn't want that man in her life. If he was abusive or violent, then perhaps it would be best for Evie not to track him down.] He may not be a good person, even by the standards of villains. She's probably trying to protect you. I know the dishonesty is gross, patronizing and probably agonizing at points, but... if he's bad enough she doesn't want to give you his name, then maybe you should ask yourself if that's someone you want to meet.

Alternatively, he might be dead. That would explain some things. [Though whether that's a comfort or a cruelty, he can't say.]

My mother called me malo vrana moje - her little crow. I suppose she wanted me to be the little crow to her mighty raven, to be thematic about it. It'd be both a religious reference and a mythological one. And if she'd meant to make me miserable I'd be less hesitant to talk trash about her, but she really thinks, to this day, that she simply wants what's best for me.

I do feel sorry for her. She had me relatively young, and I was unplanned. It couldn't have been easy to have a baby less than four months after the war was declared officially over. Everything was still in ruins and half the time they didn't even have electricity, and she'd lost her parents by that point, too. She can't comprehend the world I grew up in and vice versa.

In a way, our lives did depend on it. Being able to flirt my way out of a bad situation came in handy on more than one occasion on the Isle. And it helped us get some of the less rotten food, since I could sweet talk just about anyone into trading a kiss for a dented can or two.

[She shrugs, a faint scowl on her face.] I'm an adult now, so she should at least have the decency to tell me. Then I can choose what to do with the information. Even if my dad's awful, I'd rather know that. And if he's dead, I'd like to know that, too. There's only three villains on the Isle who might be bad enough that mom wouldn't want to tell me, but even then, two of them have other kids. So unless Chernabog's my father, I'm pretty sure I can handle the news.

That's... that's actually a sweet nickname for a kid. Definitely better than being an "evilette". If she really does think that she was doing what's best for you, it's kind of sweet. My mom's the same way. Even if she's completely wrong about what's best for me, she's trying.

All of us VKs were unplanned, I'm pretty sure. Maybe not Mal, since her parents were apparently trying to make a family work for a little while. Ruins and lack of electricity were normal for us all on the Isle.

I'm sorry. That sounds terrible. I was fortunate enough to grow up with a steady food supply - one of my mother's criminal connections knew a smuggler who specialized in illicit food and produce trade, and they worked something out.

...I mean, if she's withholding the information into your adult years, and there's an option so bad that you don't think you can handle it right there, then that might be it. It might be Chernabog. Chernabog had a reputation in Slavic countries for, uh - [How to put this delicately?] - for assaulting rather than seducing women. That might explain her refusal to get into it in and of itself. Trauma is a powerful motivator.

I was always malo vrano moje or lane moje or srecno moje - her little crow or her fawn or her blessing. She's alternated between the three over the years pretty interchangably. It's why I maintain she really does care, and she's clearly trying, and to me that makes it worse. If she weren't trying I could hate her. She is, so I can't. In spite of our differences, I love her.

She and my father wanted children, but not as young as they were when I was born. Electricity got sorted out eventually, and they found a relatively sound place to raise me, but... I'm sure it was still a strain, 'moje screno' or not, wanted or not. Having a kid is a lot.

It was all we knew. The joys of growing up on a prison island. [She raises an eyebrow, impressed.] That's kind of amazing; I'm not going to lie.

Whether or not I can handle the news is beside the point. I'd rather know than not. Chernabog mostly kept away from people on the Isle. He stayed in the mountains, beyond the dark forest. If he did force himself on my mom... I doubt she'd have kept me around, honestly.

Would you really want to hate her? Hate is such a strong feeling, and it takes so much out of you. I know people who hate their kids, and kids who hate their parents, and it's exhausting. It keeps them from enjoying other things in their lives, too, because of the energy maintaining that hate requires.

Having a kid is a lot under the most ideal circumstances. Add in age of parents, poor living conditions, and all sorts of other factors, and it becomes almost too much at times. I saw it all over the Isle. Though for some of the villains, having kids actually helped them become less villainous. I have yet to see a parent act as sweetly toward their children as I do whenever Mr. Smee spends time with his twins.

The very concept of a prison island sounds and feels like a violation of your human rights to me, honestly.

You'd be surprised. A lot of sexual violence went on in my country during the war, on all sides, but most people did keep the resulting children, and for many of them the love they felt towards those children was very apparent. People's hearts are bigger than you'd think.

The world wants me to hate her. People constantly talk about her as if I should agree with them that she's garbage and act stunned when I defend her. If I disliked her it wouldn't be so exhausting. As it is, I spend a lot of time trying to explain to people that for all the violence she's wrought, she's never laid an unkind hand on me. I've never been hit, or denied food, or called names, or any other type of abuse, not by her - she would never hurt a child. I don't enjoy having to fight people over this on a near-daily basis. But no, you're right. I don't really wish I hated her.

Having me definitely mellowed out my mother a bit. At the very least it made her a little more likely to leave people alive, and she stopped one specific kind of torture after I walked in on it and had nightmares for a month afterwards. And she was always sweet to me; church on Sunday, hugs and bedtime stories and songs at the piano. She taught me constellations, Serbian mythology and how to dance.

[Hence why it's so hard to hate her, much as the world at large seems to have decided she's devoid of humanity.]

Pretty sure the king didn't think of it that way. I'm just glad his son - the current king - was way more progressive.

[She listens to him talk about his mother, and all the kindness and love she'd shown him, and Evie can't help feel jealous. Everything he said his mom never did was something she'd either experienced directly at her own mother's hand, or she knew her crew had experienced from their parents. By the time he finishes speaking, there are tears in her eyes.]

She sounds like a really good mom.

I'm glad there's more compassionate rulership in place. That doesn't make what happened prior better, but hopefully this means things can continue to change for the better.

[One of his earliest memories is falling asleep on the bench at church, and his mother picking him up to gently hold onto him, rocking him in her arms as he grabbed at her blouse with tiny, uncoordinated hands. She pressed her lips to the top of his head and murmured "lane moje, malo lane moje", and the world as he knew it was safe, warm, and extended only as far as her arms. He smiles, sadly, still indescribably fond of her.]

She is. People never believe me when I say it, because they can't believe that the woman who once spent four hours torturing the former leader of the Croat Nationalist Militia is also capable of love, but she is. I think people can't understand that she's only a monster because being one keeps the worst of the worst away from our city. They don't ever ask why she's like this or what she's trying to accomplish. They see what they want to see.

I'm not justifying any of it - the murder, the torture, the bodies that just went missing entirely - but I know her. I know her and I love her. And I don't think I'll ever stop loving her. Maybe that makes me stupid, or foolish, or a little crazy. I don't know. I'm not sure what a "VK" is supposed to feel about a "villain" who can forcefeed a man gasoline and set him on fire and then go pick up her son from school still smelling like smoke and ashes.

[She smiles at that thought.]

Ben wants to make everyone feel like they belong, and not have his people live in fear. He leads by example. Before his coronation, when he was still just the prince and my crew and I were brought to Auradon, he was the one who greeted us, and went out of his way to make us feel welcome. And because of that, the other kids started to open up to us, too.

Of course a 'villain' is capable of love. How often is it that love and passion drive a person to do things they wouldn't dream of otherwise? Or that they would think of, because they felt like they were in the right?

[She smiles as he continues to justify his emotions - something she doesn't feel that he needs to do.]

It makes you human. You aren't 'supposed' to feel anything except what you feel. Carlos is terrified of his mom, and with good reason. That didn't stop him going back to the Isle once the barrier came down for good to go and visit her. Just like it didn't stop me from going to visit my mom, or Jay his dad.

That's really good. By setting an example, he's helping to normalize those kinds of interactions, and that's very valuable for breaking down prejudices. And in general, much as I'm sort of hardwired to distrust monarchies, I can't help but feel a monarch who's actively participating in societal reform is a very good sign. Hopefully the future will continue to be more integrated and fairer for everyone.

I don't think people stop to consider the origins of most villains to begin with. How often does anyone ask why either of our mothers have done what they've done? How often has anyone ever looked into how things started?

Do you think you'll always visit your mother? Do most VKs visit their parents, and still care about them? I really don't have much frame of reference, to be honest.

That was his thinking exactly. And he really did want to get to know us. He didn't think we were any different than the other kids at school. And he put us in the path of some of the people who ended up being our closest friends and mentors. Monarchies are the norm where I'm from. Ben's the king of a whole bunch of 'states', each of whom are governed and represented by a royal on his council. But there are just as many non-royal members, and he listens to each of them earnestly.

That is the truth. I don't even know the full story on why my mom did what she did. She doesn't like to talk about it. And I don't want to push her. I know why she acted the way she did with me. I don't agree with her methods, but I can see why she thought they were our best option.

I'd like to, as long as she can get over her prejudice against my boyfriend. It's a process. Since she isn't trapped physically on the Isle, I'd like it if she felt safe and confident enough to come live on the mainland. My sister would like it, too.

For the rest of them, it depends on the VK. Celia and her dad were close before, and they're still close now. And Squeaky and Squirmy adore their dad. Dizzy likes visiting her granny, but she's glad she doesn't have to live and work for her anymore. Gil is so proud of who his dad is, even if his dad doesn't want to acknowledge him, so I know he still tries. Harry... I think it's better for both of them if he and his dad stay far away from each other. And M is finally getting to know her dad after her mom forbade him from visiting her, then told her that he didn't care about her at all. So it really is anything goes, like most relationships between parents and their kids.

Monarchies are tied to religion in my part of the world, and that has implications these days that tie into the past Yugoslav Wars and - it's complicated. Some words and titles are very loaded. But those implications aren't universal, and if Ben is running his monarchy in a fair and just way, then I'm glad. So long as someone views others as equals, I think world leaders of many kinds of governments can be good people - it's only when someone thinks themselves superior for being a part of the monarchy that there's a problem, and that's not what's happening in his case.

My mother never told me directly why she did what she did. I eavesdropped and learned some of the details, and good God, I wish I could unlearn them. What I know, though, is that she wanted to keep herself and those she loved safe. And I think that really, that point has been lost on a lot of people.

I have no idea how my mother would feel if I got involved with someone. I'm not great at dating, so I guess that's one bridge I won't have to cross for a while. How does your boyfriend feel about your mother - is the awkwardness mutual, there?

[He nods, mulling all of that over. A lot of variety is present in the responses to their parentage, and he can sort of see where all of them are coming from. These things are complicated. There aren't easy answers, much as he'd like there to be.]

I don't want to ever quit talking to my mother, but sometimes doing so makes me feel like absolute garbage. I don't think it's intentional on her part. It's just... complicated. We don't mesh well sometimes. Which I suppose is also like most parents and kids, in a way.

Ben is the first person to own up to his mistakes and try to put them right. He's got a good mix of idealism and realism. I'm sorry that monarchies aren't as solid in your part of the world, and have such negative connotations. I've never known anything besides a monarchy or anarchy, and I know which I prefer.

I know what my mom did, too, and it's awful. If Snow weren't the person she is, I'd feel worse about it. But if she can forgive mom for what she did, and say that I should judge mom too harshly, then who am I to argue?

He's intimidated by her, so yes, definitely mutual awkwardness. We tried doing a dinner, the three of us, but most of it was mom talking about how I deserved better, and she didn't spend all that time and effort on teaching me to be a princess just to 'settle for the son of a horrid little dwarf', and giving him glares as if it's his fault his dad happened to be there when she got struck by lightning. But he's braver than he lets on, and I'm not worried about him deciding our relationship isn't worth the family drama.

I can definitely relate to that. For my mom, it's intentional, but it's kind of her way of showing she cares? She can see all the imperfections, and she points them out one by one. I hate it, but she's done it since I was a little girl, so I'd learn how to mask them and be the perfect princess.

bad rap

bad rap

how to play:

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject