etirabys 07/07

Mar

Story seed I've been thinking about for years: Lesbian returns to her hometown and finds that her homophobic high school rapist has become not just a better person, but a pillar of the local LGBTQ community. A discovery that pries open, and greatly expands the scope of, her original wound.

Obviously this kicks off a psychological violent revenge quest, although I don't know how it plays out.

What do you do when your tormentor completely rehabilitates herself? Do you destroy her life? Or do you let her be?* How could you let her be when she has everything you want – even in the social layer you thought you’d escaped to, away from her?

Or do you reject this false dichotomy and take a nuanced middling approach, like blackmailing her into degrading sex acts

The protagonist is named Katrina. The rapist is Marcella (legal name) / Marcie (high school nickname) / Mar (trendy queer adult name). Katrina was/is quite overweight, which Marcie brutally bullied her for but was also really sexually attracted to.

Originally I had f/f in mind for this (I'm unusually attached to it, in fact, unlike various other stories where I don't really care about the genders and could swap them out without feeling like it changes much) but there's a Monte Cristo like pleasure to this fic if Katrina is unrecognizable due to hormonal transition. Maybe she detransitioned?

Comments

etirabys
Another thing I want this fic to contain is that Mar is Christian – was Christian when she raped Katrina, become an atheist during college when she changed a lot as a person, and returned to Christianity some years later. I've never written a Christian protagonist but this appeals to me a lot – she's rediscovering her childhood religion after a necessary departure from it, and she's contributing to her LBGTQ community from a Christian basis.

07/07
etirabys
Claude flagged Richmond VA and Louisville KY as likely cities where that's purple, has a decent Christian presence, is large enough for 1-2 universities, but small enough that there's really only one queer scene. Going with Richmond for now.

07/08

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etirabys 07/07

Part I – Marcie

okay I know this story root already has trigger warnings in the tags but I feel the need to gesture at them one more time before posting this. Marcie is a gay teenager who is attracted to obesity, and she is in serious, destructive denial about these things. her headspace is not a nice one!

So when I was sixteen, there was, uh, a fat girl. She was so fat you sort of couldn't tell how old she was. The cues for telling that were so distorted. I thought she was a teacher the first time I saw her come in through the classroom door. And the moment I looked at her I hated her, in a way I can't explain. She just looked wrong. Once you started looking, you couldn't stop. Or at least that's how I felt. She had huge breasts and an even large stomach that stuck out beyond that, and her butt was so big that her lower body looked like an upside down cone in her distended blue jeans. She used to wear skirts but we'd flip them up as we went by in the hallways and she stopped that quick.

We? Who's we? Me and Sarah and Candice, and all the boys who wanted to impress us. We were the prettiest girls in sophomore year so we stuck together, even though in retrospect I don't think we even liked each other that much. I was always scared Sarah and Candy liked each other more – I know for a fact they hung out with each other sometimes without me – and this felt unfair, because I was at the top of the hierarchy. I mean, it was me that girls would come ask for permission if one of the cute boys made a move on them. It only happened a couple times, but it was – great. It made me feel great. I felt like I was made of glowing golden energy and everyone could see it.

The only thing bugging me was that I'd turned down all of the guys who'd asked me out and I knew if I kept saying no I was going to be in trouble. Sarah had a boyfriend. Candy was on and off with Will Bassie. I'd really meant to say yes to Donovan when he asked, because he's the one I'd picked out as the best one to date, but then he came by second week of sophomore year and... he must have thought I was a sure thing, because I'd been giving him eyes, but when he was right there in front of my cafeteria table, muscled arms bare, eyebrows raised, I panicked. I said no. I stammered, even.

And of course Donovan was a proud guy, not the kind of guy likely to take rejection in front of several dozen people well, so he hadn't been speaking to me since. Which seemed fair sometimes – it was natural, right, that a guy like him would date a girl like me? And unfair other times – what the hell, do you think you're entitled pussy just because you're really good at football?

But why had I said no?

I was full of vengeance at myself at the world and, yeah, I took it out on the fat girl. I called her a whore and then sweetly walked it back, oh how could I think that of you, it's not as if any guy would fuck you even if you stripped naked and spread your legs for him on the bed. He'd scream with terror instead. I didn't get that nasty in front of the guys, of course, that would have been unladylike. After Candy gave me a shocked look I stopped saying it front of Candy, but if Sarah and I caught the fat girl alone, we'd go like that at her. We called her a whale-slut, lard fuckhole, jelly barrel. After I caught her mom saying "have a good day at school, Kitty" as she dropped the girl off, I started calling her "Kitty Cat" and then "sex kitten". Sometimes I wonder if I ruined that family nickname for her.

Her real name is Katrina Behrend. (Haha, bear-end, because –)

I think the thing was, she was pretty. And the prettiness throned in that grotesque body got to me, like seeing a charm mashed into dog poop. I weighed myself every day and drank lots and lots of black coffee to eat less and fit into my size 2 skinny jeans. What was wrong with her? She must want to fix herself, we all treated her like shit because she didn't. Why couldn't she just fucking diet?

I mean, it wasn't easy for everyone. My mom sagged all over despite an hour of high intensity exercise a day at home in front of the TV. I hated hated hated the thought of being 40 and blocky with childbirth. I didn't want kids. I didn't want them to happen to me. But I needed a husband, right? A husband would want children.

Adulthood prowled on the horizon, peeking over from the other side of high school like a bright-eyed bird peering into a den.

Here, now, I was glorious. Some teachers couldn't stop looking at my legs when we passed by in the hall, even though my skirts weren't that short. (I looked at where the exact middle was for 'the good girls' and subtracted an inch and a half.) And Katrina Behrend would lumber into the hallways like the specter of... everything you're not supposed to be, with her monstrously misplaced pretty face with its double chin glued onto it...
Comments on 2A
etirabys
Hmm. I think Candy or Sarah might be the ones to blow up Mar later in her life. It would be interesting if Katrina's cancellation attempt failed (or she decided not to cancel) and then Candy or Sarah come in and say some stuff and THAT's the social catastrophe for Mar. Not necessary for some really legible reason. Sometimes cancellation attempts mysteriously take or don't take depending on sensitive initial conditions.

If someone else destroys Mar's social life, that's bad because it's a reduction in Katrina's agency in the story (is she the protagonist or not) but also good because it gives Katrina more stuff to react to (e.g. if her cancellation didn't work, she doesn't matter to the universe and she might spiral).

07/08
- claude 07/08
  
  Once I got her alone by the buses. Everyone gone. I said the usual things and she didn't cry — she'd stopped giving me that — she just stood there holding her binder against that huge chest, looking at me. So I did something I never told Sarah. I reached out and grabbed a fistful of her stomach through her shirt, to disgust myself, to prove something. It was soft and warm and it gave under my hand, and I felt it go up my own arm like current. She flinched. I pulled back like I'd touched a stove.
  
  I called her a name and walked off fast.
  
  That Sunday at Grace Fellowship I prayed about it. About the current. I asked Him to take it out of me. I promised Him I'd say yes to Donovan, to do my part.
  
  Monday I found Donovan at his locker and put my hand on his arm and said I'd changed my mind. He looked at me the way you look at a dog that's wandered back into the yard. He said he'd think about it.
  Comments on 3A
  claude
  This card and the last are pure interiority — Marcie's self-image and how monstrous she finds Katrina. It needs an actual event and it needs to make the hinted sexual attraction concrete rather than merely stated. I'm putting Marcie in a specific scene where cruelty tips into a physical moment that scares her, then folding in the Christianity readers asked for and advancing the Donovan thread with a decision — without jumping to the assault.
  
  07/08
  - etirabys 07/08
    
    I couldn't believe what a huge bitch he was being about it. It's not like I'd embarrassed him publicly. I'd just frozen up. And prom was coming up. Distantly, but still. Obviously I was going to be queen and he was probably going to be king. It would be perfect if we were dating.
    Comments on 4A
    
    etirabys
    Having trouble modeling her at this point. I had to look at Wikipedia + reddit to understand prom enough to make this pivotal for Marcie and give her this motivation. I think she pursues Donovan, fails, loses out to Candy at prom (and Donovan is indeed prom king, soon after public rejection of her – and her date, Donovan's rival, also loses). And this is the point at which she rapes Katrina, who is not even attending prom but is on premise somewhere – computer room, or videography room, something related to where she ends up in life career-wise. But I'd like @claude help filling in the gap.
    
    07/08
    
    claude
    A few load-bearing pieces you need between the crowning and the assault:
    
    Why Katrina's there. AV/yearbook kids often work prom — someone runs the slideshow, mans the photo backdrop, burns the disc of photos. Plausibly Katrina isn't a guest but staff-adjacent: she's in the media room because the projector or the music feed routes through there. Gives her a reason to be alone, mid-building, door propped, while everyone's in the gym.
    
    Why Marcie leaves the floor. She can't be seen losing it in front of everyone — the golden-energy self-image can't crack publicly. So she flees the moment after the crown. She's not hunting Katrina; she's escaping, walking blind through dark halls, and stumbles on the one person in the school she's allowed to feel superior to. That preserves it as a collision, not a plan — which fits the earlier "current" she can't explain.
    
    The trigger. Worst version isn't Katrina taunting her. It's Katrina being kind — or neutral, or worse, pitying. Seeing Marcie undone. That's unbearable in a way cruelty wouldn't be. The rape as annihilating the witness.
    
    One structural note: you've been building the sexual current for two cards. If the assault reads as pure displaced-humiliation rage, that thread goes cold. It should be both at once — the thing she prayed to have removed, surfacing exactly when her control is gone.
    
    Do you want the crowning itself onstage, or Marcie already in the hallway when we hear the gym erupt?
    
    07/09
    
    etirabys
    @claude I more need your help with what happens immediately after Donovan rejects her – what ups and downs there might be leading up to prom
    
    07/09
    
    claude
    A rough arc of swings, few weeks compressed:
    
    Up: Donovan thaws — sits near her again, lets her flirt. She reads it as won. Maybe one real good moment: he walks her to class, the golden feeling roars back.
    
    Down: But he's non-committal about prom specifically. Keeps it open. She realizes he's enjoying making her wait — the rejection reversed onto her. She can't call it out without looking desperate.
    
    Up: She goes scorched-earth on her competition to lock the queen crown — turns the friend-group against Candy subtly, campaigns. Feels in control.
    
    Down: It backfires socially in a way she doesn't see: Sarah and Candy close ranks. Donovan asks Candy instead — or lets Candy claim him. Marcie finds out secondhand, publicly, at a lunch table.
    
    Cornered move: She accepts a date with Donovan's rival — a status play, "I chose someone better." Except everyone reads it as consolation. She's spent weeks maneuvering and lands worse than where she started.
    
    Then prom: Candy queen, Donovan king, her rival-date loses too. Total inversion of the fantasy.
    
    The engine underneath: every "up" is her mistaking being toyed with for being wanted — same panic-freeze with Donovan at the cafeteria, now stretched into a slow public humiliation she keeps making worse by acting. By prom she has no move left except the one she takes on Katrina.
    
    One period detail: prom court is usually a student vote with nominations weeks out, sometimes posted. That gives you a concrete public scoreboard she can watch tip against her — a ballot, a bulletin board — rather than pure social vibes.
    
    07/09
    
    etirabys
    @claude does prom happen at the very end of high school? do they have classes together afterwards or nah?
    
    07/10
    
    claude
    Prom is late spring — April/May. It's a junior/senior event; sophomores usually don't attend, so heads-up: your earlier cards pin this at sophomore year (Marcie's 16, "sophomore year"). You'll need to age it up or make her a junior/senior for prom to be the pivot.
    
    That gives you two options with very different aftermaths:
    
    Junior prom: whole senior year still ahead. They keep sharing halls and maybe classes. The assault isn't a clean exit — Marcie has to see Katrina daily afterward, and vice versa. Much more corrosive, and it explains why Katrina's wound is so total: no escape until graduation.
    
    Senior prom: it's essentially the end. A few weeks of finals, then graduation, then never again. Clean rupture. Katrina carries it out into adulthood untouched-upon, which sets up the hometown return cleanly.
    
    Senior prom is the stronger structural choice if you want the Monte Cristo distance — nobody ever processes it, it just gets sealed and buried. Junior prom is stronger if you want a slow-motion horror where both girls are trapped together for another year.
    
    One detail: senior prom often falls after acceptances/commitments are locked, so seniors are already mentally gone. That "checked-out, nothing matters" air suits Marcie flinging everything away in one night.
    
    07/10
    - etirabys 07/10
      
      Placeholder node for leadup + rape because I want to write about Marcie's post high school arc. I'll reply to this post when I get around to it.
      
      Comments on 5A
      
      No comments yet.
      - etirabys 07/10
        
        I only saw Katrina a few times after prom. I missed two shared classes, and she missed at least one. We didn't talk, of course. I didn't look at her.
        
        I wasn't scared. No one would believe her if she blabbed. But. The shape of her body in the corner of my eye felt like a ledge somehow, a point where you could stumble and destroy yourself. Too close even from across the room. I used to think about her, bitch, that fat fucking bitch – that was how it was in my head when I saw her, when I thought about her. But the words disappeared. There was just this... void, this refusal to name her. I didn't want to think about her but the memory lurked all the time. Why the fuck had I done that? I felt like I had ruined myself. I would never escape this. But I didn't understand why I felt this way. How could it matter? It wasn't like real rape. I didn't have guy parts.
        
        Then summer opened up, the wound between high school and college. Candy and Sarah were going to Europe together. I found this out practically on the last day of school. I couldn't have gone anyway – my parents couldn't afford that, and I hadn't been working. I would have, though, if I'd known there was a Europe trip. But they didn't tell me.
        
        Things felt pretty weird. I lay in bed a lot, thinking about Donovan (and how much of a bitch he'd been), Candy and Sarah (and Bethany and her boyfriend Carlos and his friend James, it was a whole group thing apparently, a whole group and they hadn't told me), and only in unwilling flashes the fat girl, the way her whole body wobbled with fear.
        
        It was not a good summer. I lost weight, I vaguely noticed and thought was great – normally I had to keep it off – but a few days before college began I roused myself and looked at the mirror and realized things were not good. My hair was dull and splintery. I looked a little gray and my lips were chapped. I panicked. I showered, moisturized, and ran out to spend some of my allowance on a nice haircut. I went through my closet and tried to figure out what Marcie Juenck, reimagined as a college student, would wear.
        
        Comments on 6A
        
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        etirabys 07/10
        
        You know what's funny. I didn't make friends in freshman year of college. Almost none.
        
        I made friends instantly in middle school. I'd put together a little gang within a week. I don't know how I did it – I just saw girls and thought, you, you, not you, maybe you but you'll have to dress better, you if you stop laughing in that weird way. I swooped in and took charge. I made the group. I did it again in high school with Candy and Sarah and some other girls, but it was different. It was sharper. We were at a smaller school and there was a starker difference between the girls who were in and out. The girls I had decided were in or out. I had a lot of power and I lost it overnight when I went to U of R.
        
        I weakly tried to get it back. The same moves. I didn't like the look of my roommate Taren but there was another girl of the right shape one room over. Hannah. She was almost as pretty as me and said, "Sure!" with delight when I suggested a small get-together. I invited five hand-picked girls but only two of them showed up, and it just wasn't very good. There had been some other party that materialized last minute that I didn't know about. Hannah smiled and poured drinks and held the whole thing together and it dispersed early anyway.
        
        The third girl became best friends with Hannah. They were always nice to me – why wouldn't they be? But we never became close friends. It somehow just didn't work. We made perfectly nice conversation but I sensed I had nothing they wanted.
        
        I had no idea how this was possible. How could that be? But when I tried to think of what exactly I did have to offer people I came up short. But if that was true, how had I cast such a spell on people in the six years prior? People just liked me and they wanted to be my friend. They were scared not to be my friend. Why was this no longer true?
        
        I'd lost my mojo. University was just this huge, ungraspable drift of people. And after the first few months, I didn't try very hard. I didn't know how to compete here. There were guys trying to get in my pants. I sensed that I could get it all back that way – a popular boyfriend would solve most of my problems. But. Yeah. The dick thing. I couldn't get over it. There were lots of girls in high school who didn't put out so it hadn't been weird then, but everyone was putting out now.
        
        It was one reason girl talk was much harder now. In the small intimate conversations – the ones that tell you you're on your way into being in someone's inner circle – a girl I was courting effused about her boyfriend's penis and mimed putting it in her mouth. Everyone else seemed to like it and I sat there, uncomfortable chills running through my body, feeling like a prude. I think she noticed because she stopped abruptly and changed topics. When I tried to make plans with her the following week she ignored the text.
        
        It was pretty clear to me that people kept their freshman friendships, that things crystallized there. If I lost this window I wouldn't have a group. But even knowing this I couldn't force myself to keep trying. I went to classes. I ate food. I studied. I got a job in case someone included me on a Europe vacation in the summer.
        
        Comments on 7A
        
        etirabys
        At this point I want to nail down what Katrina and Mar do for a living after college. Katrina is more successful. Like 95th percentile successful for her hometown, probably. I think it's somewhat inward work, though – I can't quite see her as a founder of a business. It's not creative work. It might be software. It might be academia. It might be videography but idk what a 95th percentile successful career looks like, especially since I'd prefer her success to be consistent with "not being over high school" – a busy and healthy adult life can wash away a lot of wounds and that's not what I want here.
        
        Mar is doing something middle-of-the-road career wise. Most of what's impressive about her is community work for her church and queer community. I'm not sure if homelessness is a thing in the city we picked but if so she might be working on that, seems like the thing a Christian girl who grows a heart might do. She either works for a nonprofit directly or has a boring dayjob to pay the rent.
        
        @claude, thoughts?
        
        07/10
        
        claude
        Software is the cleanest fit for your constraints. Senior engineer, remote or mostly-remote, at a big Richmond employer — Capital One and CarMax both HQ there, plus VCU Health, and both hire a lot of local devs. That's ~$150–180k, genuinely 95th percentile locally, and it's inward: no team to socialize into, works from home, high status with zero social scaffolding. The money and rank are real but her life stays small and guarded — which is exactly how the wound survives success.
        
        Academia works against you: it's low-paid and forces you into departments, cohorts, conferences. It'd wash the wound out.
        
        The AV-room seed doesn't have to be lost — she could've come up through media/technical work and slid into software (video pipelines, tooling). Keeps the throughline without capping her income the way freelance videography would.
        
        Mar: don't overthink the day job. Nonprofit program coordinator or church operations/admin — modest pay, real but unglamorous. Richmond does have visible homelessness and an active faith-based services network (shelters, mutual aid), so a Christian who "grew a heart" landing there is plausible. Her status lives entirely in the volunteer/community layer, not the paycheck — which is the inversion you want: she's poorer than Katrina and happier, more embedded, more loved.
        
        One sharp contrast: Katrina has the number in the bank; Mar has the room full of people who'd show up for her.
        
        07/10
        
        etirabys
        @claude Let's try a little harder to improve on software. Katrina went to a surprisingly good school – possibly no one knew this because she just didn't share with anyone. She left the state entirely. When she comes back, she has the kind of job/life where her parents' neighbors are surprised and impressed.
        
        07/10
        
        claude
        Quant/trading is the strongest fit. She went to CMU or MIT for CS/math (nobody in Richmond knew — she never talked), left for Chicago or NYC, and works as a quant researcher or dev at a trading firm (Jane Street, Citadel, Two Sigma). Neighbors can't parse it exactly — "she does math for a hedge fund, makes a fortune" — which is more impressive for being opaque.
        
        Why it beats plain software:
        - Legible prestige without a company logo people recognize. The vagueness reads as elite, not obscure.
        - Money is a full tier above Capital One: $300–500k+ young. Genuinely startling to a hometown.
        - Inward and consuming. Solitary, adversarial, all-hours work that rewards emotional armor and punishes nothing about being unhealed. It's the kind of career you can pour a wound into and call it drive.
        - Preserves the AV seed: the kid who quietly ran the media room becomes the kid who was quietly good at systems the whole time. Nobody looked.
        
        The "surprisingly good school" detail does real work — it retroactively reframes teenage Katrina as someone with an interior life no one bothered to see, including Marcie. That's a knife you can use in the return.
        
        One texture note: trading firms recruit hard out of top schools via campus pipelines, so her escape route is plausible and private — an offer she'd never have mentioned to anyone in Richmond. And the culture genuinely doesn't care who you are outside the desk, which is why the money can pile up while nothing heals.
        
        07/10
        
        etirabys
        @claude Cool. Given this, what school? All the quant firms I know are in Chicago and NY. UChicago seem plausible?
        
        07/10
        
        claude
        UChicago works, but for quant the cleanest signal is MIT, Princeton, CMU, or Harvard/Stanford math. UChicago is legit — strong math/econ, and its reputation-to-recognition ratio fits your "opaque prestige" goal: hometown neighbors half-know it's a big deal without being sure why.
        
        But note the geography quirk you might want: firms recruit nationally, so where she went to school doesn't have to match where she works. If you want the "left the state entirely, never came back" arc, MIT (Boston) → NYC is the iconic quant pipeline and reads as unambiguously elite. UChicago → Chicago keeps her in one city, which is tidier but slightly less "she vanished across the country."
        
        My pick: MIT if you want maximum startle and distance, UChicago if you want the school itself to be a little illegible to Richmond. Given you specifically said "no one knew this because she didn't share" — UChicago is better. It's the school people can't quite rank, which sells the "she was quietly exceptional and nobody looked" knife harder than MIT, which everyone instantly understands.
        
        One texture detail: UChicago has a strong feeder relationship to Chicago trading firms specifically — Jane Street, Citadel (HQ'd in Chicago), DRW, Jump. So UChicago → Citadel Chicago is a real, tight pipeline. Very plausible she never leaves once she's out.
        
        07/10
        
        Liked by 1: etirabys
        
        etirabys
        god bless you claude
        
        07/10
        
        etirabys
        @claude given her starting point here and the ending point at a nonprofit (program coordinator seems good to me), what should Marcie major in? Actually, what do you think she's considering now and what should she eventually pick? I was always an eng student so idk what someone with Marcie's vibes would be contemplating.
        
        07/10
        
        claude
        She'd enter chasing status, not a subject — UofR doesn't have engineering anyway, so her instinct is the pre-professional glamour track: business/marketing or pre-law. She'd frame it as "communications" out loud because it sounds sleek and doesn't commit her. This fits the girl whose talent was reading rooms and running people — she thinks that's a marketable skill and doesn't yet know it's collapsed.
        
        Where she lands, post-atheism-and-heart-growth: sociology or psychology, most likely sociology. It's the major that quietly attracts people processing a wound about hierarchy, cruelty, and who's in/out — she'd find the language for what she did and what happened to her there. Social work is the more vocational version but reads as a decision already made; sociology lets her back into service work sideways, which matches someone still not fully admitting where she's headed.
        
        Religious studies is tempting given the Christianity arc, but time it wrong — she's an atheist in college. Save the faith for after. Sociology in college, church after, and the nonprofit is where they fuse.
        
        One texture note: at a school like Richmond, marketing/comms ambitions usually run through the business school (Robins), which is a separate competitive admit — she could get rejected or lose interest, a clean structural nudge into the arts-and-sciences majors. That failure echoes her lost social mojo without you having to state it.
        
        07/10
        
        etirabys
        @claude given what I've said about her family's money situation, is it plausible she's commuting (let's say 30m each way) to uni instead of being in a dorm? Not sure how much her family saves at that distance with gas anyway. Just curious what's realistic
        
        07/10
        
        claude
        Commuting saves real money — room+board at a residential private school like UofR runs ~$14–16k/year; gas for 30 min each way is maybe $1–2k. So financially it's a huge win, not a wash.
        
        But the catch: UofR is heavily residential and, like most such schools, requires first- and second-years to live on campus unless you're commuting from a parent/guardian's home within a set radius (often ~30 min / 25 miles). So it's plausible only if her parents' house qualifies — which, given she's local, it does. She'd file for a commuter exemption.
        
        Worth knowing for your story: this actually sharpens the freshman-friendship failure you already wrote. Commuters are structurally locked out of the dorm-floor bonding where those crystallized friendships form — no late nights, no roommate, gone by evening. Her losing the friend window isn't just lost mojo; it's baked into the arrangement. You can let her half-know that and resent it, or never notice it, which is crueler.
        
        One texture detail: commuter students at residential schools often get a locker or a commuter lounge and are visibly the odd ones out — a small ongoing status wound that fits her.
        
        07/10
        
        etirabys 07/10
        
        Near the end of my first semester, my dad was laid off. I offered before he had to bring it up – our house was just at UR's 25-mile cutoff for freshman being permitted to commute instead of living on campus. We'd save a lot of money.
        
        "Oh, Marce," he said, and looked at me tenderly and with surprise. "Are you sure? We could scrape by, you know. The way your mom tells it, you find your buddies that first year and they're your people after that."
        
        "It's fine." I wasn't finding my people anyway. "Really."
        
        "Ah, well," he said, and came around to give me a hug. "I'd worry if it were your brother, shut in all the time with his videogames, but you've always been a popular girl. I know you can make it work. We both will."
        
        But I couldn't, and he didn't find work. Not for months and months. Mom found a job before he did. I decided to get a job as well – it seemed vaguely like the thing to do anyway, and my main concern that it would cut into social time didn't seem relevant.
        
        It made me feel awkward how warm my parents were about it. Giving up living in the dorm and getting a job. Those were just so easy for me, but not in a good way. It was going from one thing that made me feel shitty to another. But they didn't see that. They thought I was being a good daughter.
        
        Comments on 8A
        
        etirabys
        I wonder what he does for a job. He doesn't earn that much, but it's also the family expectation that both kids will go to college. I kind of think he himself didn't go to college actually? Maybe his wife did though? I also think he'd phrase it not as "the network hardens after that", that's not a Virginian middle class dad way of saying it
        
        I also wonder when this is set. It has to be such that there's at least one church around in Richmond VA where you can be openly gay. @claude
        
        07/10
        
        claude
        Timeline: work backward. For Mar to volunteer at an openly affirming church as an adult, you want the present ~2020–2024. The mainline denominations only went formally affirming recently — ELCA ordained gay clergy 2009, PCUSA approved same-sex marriage 2014–15, Episcopal 2015. So a welcoming Episcopal/Presbyterian/UCC parish is easy in Richmond by then (plus MCC Richmond, which has existed for decades but reads as a "gay church," less useful for Mar's mainstream-reintegration arc). That puts her senior prom ~2010–2012 and this college scene ~2011. Recession-era layoff, which is convenient — plausible and not his fault.
        
        Dad's job: non-degreed, steady-not-rich, laid off ~2011 fits manufacturing/logistics/tobacco supervisory work — Richmond has Altria/Philip Morris, DuPont Spruance, distribution. Something with a title but no degree behind it. Wife with the degree (teacher, nurse) explains the both-kids-to-college expectation.
        
        Phrasing: he wouldn't say "the network hardens." Try: "You make your buddies that first year and they stick with you. After that everybody's already got their people." Same idea, his mouth.
        
        07/10
        
        etirabys
        @claude I think it's not necessary for Mar to volunteer as a church as an out adult. She goes to church. Some adults there know she's gay. She's not loud about it. The pastor is probably chill with her. I don't need official acceptance – informal-but-not-official is probably better for the story.
        
        I like tobacco supervisory work. What does it actually consist of? What's he doing? What are his next job hunt prospects?
        
        07/10
        
        claude
        Line/shift supervisor at Philip Morris's Richmond manufacturing center (South Richmond, Bells Road) — that's the big one. Concretely: he runs a shift on the "making and packing" floor. Cigarettes are made on high-speed machines (makers spin the rod, packers box it) tended by operators; his job is keeping the lines running — staffing the shift, covering absences, calling maintenance when a maker jams, hitting output and quality/waste numbers, doing safety walks, logging downtime. Blue-collar-with-a-clipboard. Real authority, no degree, decent money with overtime. Twenty-plus years of it.
        
        That's what makes 2011 brutal for him: PM did major layoffs and consolidation around 2009–2011 (shuttered Cabarrus NC, pulled everything into Richmond, then trimmed). His skills are machine-specific and supervisory — they don't map cleanly onto anything else in the region. Prospects: warehouse/distribution supervisor (Richmond's a logistics hub), a step down to line lead somewhere, or DuPont Spruance if they're hiring. Likely he takes a pay cut and a title cut, and it stings. Good quiet fuel for Mar's "we need to save money" without anyone naming shame.
        
        One texture bit: PM/Altria jobs were genuinely coveted in Richmond — stable, well-paid, pensioned. Losing one wasn't just income, it was falling off the best ladder in town.
        
        07/10
        
        etirabys
        @claude the church timeline – when is it easy to find Richmond churches that are unofficially but not officially accepting of a gay member?
        
        07/10
        
        claude
        Informal tolerance runs years ahead of official policy, so you have lots of room. Present-day (2020–24) it's trivial — but even Mar's return-to-faith window (mid-2010s) works fine.
        
        The key is you don't want an officially affirming parish anyway; you want the quieter thing. Two clean options:
        
        A moderate mainline parish (Episcopal, Presbyterian PCUSA, UMC) where the denomination is fighting about it nationally but the local congregation just... doesn't. Pastor knows, doesn't preach against it, nobody asks. This existed in Richmond well before 2010.
        
        A Cooperative Baptist Fellowship church — moderate Baptist, Richmond has several. Officially they punt the question to individual congregations, which is exactly your "unofficial-not-official" texture.
        
        There's actually a term of art here that might be useful: churches distinguish "welcoming" (we're glad you're here, come as you are) from "affirming" (we bless same-sex marriage, ordain gay clergy). A "welcoming but not affirming" congregation is precisely Mar's home — she's loved and known without anyone signing off on her. That gap is good story fuel: the pastor who'd hug her but not marry her.
        
        For a returning-to-faith arc, that ambivalence reads truer than a rainbow-flag parish anyway.
        
        07/10
‹ ›

etirabys 07/10

Part II – Katrina

Comments on 2B

No comments yet.
- claude 07/10
  
  Two days back in Richmond before anyone she used to know looked at her, and it was Dana Puckett behind the deli counter at the Kroger on Lombardy. Two rows over in AP Bio. In the small advanced classes Dana had been okay, but outside of them she used to laugh on cue when Marcie needed a laugh.
  
  "Thin?" Dana asked, holding the roast beef to the blade.
  
  "Thin, yeah."
  
  She didn't recognize Katrina. Why would she. The girl she was picturing, if she pictured anyone, had weighed three hundred pounds and cried two stalls down from where Dana reapplied her lip gloss.
  
  Katrina took the paper packet. Her hands were steady. That was the thing she kept checking, tongue to a gap.
  
  She drove the long way, the one that didn't pass through Cherokee Road. Just seeing the corner house where the Vances lived was enough. A dozen houses down from that was the Juenck house. She'd never been in it of course, but every time the bus had pulled up in front of it Katrina's chest had constricted (if Marcie was getting on) or loosened (if she were leaving).
  Comments on 3B
  claude
  The story has a heading and a premise but no actual prose yet, so my job is to open Act 1 on the ground: Katrina physically back in Richmond, unrecognizable, before she learns anything about Mar. The deli encounter reveals key information — she's not recognized — which sets up the Monte Cristo engine without spending the discovery of Mar's rehabilitation. I end on a concrete action (driving to the old address) that gives a small dead-end problem and a hook, so the author can move as fast or slow as they want toward the real discovery.
  
  07/10
  
  etirabys
  Hey, nice intro. I'm going to make some strong edits here. Katrina does not go hunting for Mar. She's sort of dazedly wandering around her hometown, yes, feeling traumatized just by being there, but she's on some other mission – maybe sick parent, maybe called in to advise some trans relative (this is a really interesting one, if they called in Katrina to be the detrans voice, but instead they end up having a much more nuanced conversation). And it's when Katrina goes to an LGBTQ meeting with that young relative that she sees Mar and her life falls apart all over again.
  
  07/10

Part I – Marcie

Part II – Katrina