triangularity | for Stefan

Maggie spends the first part of the evening on her laptop, liveblogging in one chat window and using the other half of the screen to monitor threads on her section of the After the End Times forum. Maggie's good with people. She never minds a turn on forum duty, and as a beta on the site, she pays her dues just like everyone else who isn't a department head. It's a refreshing change, actually, to have an entirely merit-based system where her last name doesn't mean a thing.

As the first movie winds down, Maggie sets aside the computer, standing up and stretching. She did look around enough to take stock of the room. Almost everyone here is a regular. She knows all of their food and drink preferences, and she fully expects a couple to stay for half the week.

So of course it's the newcomer who caught her attention. He seemed amused by the movie, and she agreed with him on this one. Funny how a horror movies aren't scary at all when the world has turned into one.

Whoever invited him probably pointed her out to Stefan. Maggie got his name from the security scans at the door, but she isn't especially worried about strangers in her house either way. She tosses the remote to another Fictional, letting him take over and set up the next movie.

Stefan's the only one who needs to tell her what he wants, which makes him the logical choice for help fetching it. Maggie makes her way across the room, leans over one arm of the couch, and and introduces herself, probably unnecessarily. "I'm Maggie. Help me carry snacks from the kitchen?"

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"His namesake?"

Stefan's brain doesn't immediately leap towards Stoker. It's gotta be vampire-related, he knows, and since Maggie doesn't strike him as the Twilight-type, the little guy has to have some other author in mind.

So it takes him a few seconds until he smiles and says, "Ah, right. Even Stoker might get a couple of things wrong."

Because you know, he's not even remotely weak to sunlight or garlic or streams of running water.

"Get them wrong?" Maggie teases, grinning as she pounces on his word choice. "Granted, I'd agree with you that the sparkling is flat out wrong, but I wouldn't think there's a right to be gotten, when it comes to legendary creatures and beings."

Her lack of correction is confirmation that yes, Stefan guessed the dog's name correctly. She scratches Stoker under the chin with the hand further from Stefan, leaving her nearer hand free to continue snagging popcorn.

"What about your grandfather? Is his take on vampires the correct one?" Gilbert Branson did write supernatural romance, after all.

Stefan internally winces. As much as he wants to relax around Maggie, he has to remember that he technically doesn't exist. Stefan Salvatore is Stefan Salvatore IV, and he is his own great-great-great grandchild. (Or something like that.)

"Probably not, but I'm biased towards him." As any grandchild should be.

He has to think back to what he - er, what Grandfather wrote. Even Stefan had taken care to change a few details, in case some would-be hunter read his romances and declared open season on his family.

"Grandpa would've said he's right, because he started that whole trend of vampires feel more strongly than humans, but I don't know. It's like you said. No one really knows the truth when it comes to these things."

She grins. Of course he's biased toward his own grandfather.

"I never agreed with that particular aspect of his portrayal," Maggie counters gently. "I think it's just a little arrogant They may have more history, more accumulated emotion, given their lifespans. I won't argue with you there. But that doesn't mean humans feel things less intensely."

She enjoyed the books, she just doesn't think her own take on vampires would include that quality.

He tilted his head. Was that his indirect implication? That humans weren't capable of emotion? If so, "Grandfather" might need to re-think some of his life choices.

"True," he concedes. "I wonder, though. Grandpa always meant it more like - prior to him, people thought vampires were inner demons. That they couldn't feel, and that their only desires were nourishment and survival."

So when Gilbert Branson penned his tragic romances, he wanted to paint a new image of the vampire, as a creature that had amplified emotion rather than none. It was the truth, after all.

"I mean, they're not exactly mindreaders like Mr. Cullen, but they picked up on emotions quicker than you'd think."

"Stories do become a lot more nuanced and interesting when the monsters aren't monsters," Maggie remarks. "Even from a purely narrative point of view, I'm surprised it took so long for that to get a foothold in literature."

She likes horror movies. She likes jumpscares and uncomplicated monsters and ridiculous, unbelievable, terrible, mockably bad movies. She just doesn't think the world works anything like that.

"My point was that I would put their emotions on an equal scale with human feelings. I wouldn't swing from one extreme to the other, because it always feels as just as unrealistic." You know, because vampire novels are so big on realism. "I would just settle in the middle. Not devoid of emotion, of course, but not with amplified emotion either."

"Unrealistic?" He holds back a laugh, because this is his life she's talking about.

So he grabs some more popcorn to stall for time while he gathers his thoughts. No sense in upsetting her, or having a strong opinion about a genre he normally doesn't pay much attention to. (Most modern vampire fiction is... well, it's something.)

"Maybe you should write a vampire story next time," he finally says, unable to hide his amusement. "I don't think I've heard this middle-of-the road idea before. You might be onto something here."

Maggie is enjoying the conversation with Stefan enough that she agrees readily, "I will, if you'll read it and let me know what you think afterwards. I was due for another open request night anyway. I can promise at least a short vignette, to be expanded on later if I'm feeling inspired."

She can start with a vampire story during her next all-night writing marathon. Maggie writes quickly, and she's a ruthless enough editor of everyone else's work that it only takes a quick pass through her own stories to make them publishable. Especially in a forum that's specifically rapid-fire.

Edited 2016-05-08 15:22 (UTC)

"Of course I will." She didn't have to ask him twice. Stefan might've re-read a few of her stories when he was in the mood. "Email it to me when you're done. I'd always make time for that kind of thing."

It had been a long time since he'd read vampire fiction, let alone commented to a forum about it, but for her sake, he'd give it a shot.

for Stefan

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