Everyone prepares for a death, although they’re unsure whose. When there’s an assurity of something occuring, it makes everyone act more volatile, giving things too much credit.


Palmer has doubts about killing people. Sometimes.
Everard does not, besides how else to take advantage of them.

Everard and Sebastian are similar in their “thoughts and prayers”


—-
By this point, Diana has spent a year and a half essentially isolating herself. She’s usually a social butterfly and wants to return to normalcy, so she takes up Robin’s offer of a Halloween party. She doesn’t expect a lot of college kids there, but Robin’s there, and she figures she’ll probably need the backup.

Galvanized by the newfound friendships she’s made in the past couple months, Diana participates in a true crime podcast that was featuring the story about the deaths of her friends.

After Spring Break


—
Since Seb is more chill, we can either have Diana stumble upon Seb w/ Kitty and have a chill opening, or Yvonne ends up being the first one and is incredibly boisterous. I can’t really envision Madi or Forrest being first encounters. I digress.
Yvonne is a soothing figure at Halloween, someone who can take an overwhelmed Diana and give her room to breathe while charming her and coaxing her back into a party spirit more gently than Forrest, but doing much more than Seb’s attempt to further isolate. Seb could spend the rest of the party with the cat so long as he got a bite, but Yvonne always intends to jump back into the fray.

Madison has an easy in to vampirism via familial connections, and while she’s a perfect fit regardless, it’s because of that combination that Palmer doesn’t want to accidentally sweep her potential under the rug. He agrees to turn her like any other wannabe vampire, but comes with some special requests. He sees Catherine, young and not necessarily aimless, but frustrated at the potential of immortality. Something that would come naturally, but he sees no issues with capitalizing on either her or the leverage he can squeeze out of her parents.
He knows Bernard wants to die eventually, and Palmer wants him in the office sooner than later. He also knows that it’s directly due to his hand that Bernard and other vampires have ended up becoming lynchpins to certain power balances in politics: free healthcare, etcetera, etcetera. Concepts that could still survive even without Bernard’s lobbying, but one that would still be very much at risk. Nothing productive would come from the power vacuum, and it’d be terrible for Bernard’s morale, so he decides that Madison would be a good eventual replacement for the good doctor. (Not that that isn’t terrible for Bernard’s morale in its own way, but at least this one has less of an innocent body count.)
In this sense, what was originally Yvonne+Bernard is planned to become Yvonne+Forrest+Madison, with Bernard’s responsibilities split in half. Forrest does the moving and shaking more directly with the law, while Madison has a more fine tuned expertise in the medical system. Not that Palmer tells any of this to her face - a crown only gets heavier if you ghost it over someone’s head before it drops.
Instead, he asks for a few questions. How she has her coffee, her thoughts on Bernard’s policies, on Yvonne’s, on the threat of an opiate crises, on the negligence of the medical field. Her plans for after college, and the like. What she likes to do outside of school. About her game and how to play it, since he has a friend that’s into it and he wants to surprise her.
He also asks for a few favors to cash in at a later date. Nothing too serious, he assures her. More of a messenger role for now, because while he can travel pretty quickly, having a second set of hands is always nice.
Madison readily accepts because for all she knows that this leads to eternal damnation, at least this way she gets a guarranteed good run of it first. She was never much of a gambler - even gacha bends with enough money.

Diana and Madison don’t interact too much before Halloween besides an obligatory boundary talk, with conflicting schedules and only one overlapping class. Madison’s terrible at socialization and Diana’s pretty antisocial until the party.
They’re a mix of opposites attract and a unique relatability that the other three don’t have - being similar in age and stages in life since they’re both university students. (In this sense, Forrest and Diana best understand Americana and trying to be cheery, Seb and Diana are both most involved with filming media, and Yv and Diana both indulge in similar themes and social dynamics.)
Diana is sweet while Madison is rough and both can be cutting. Madison’s tolerance for bullshit is higher than Diana’s. While Madison is initially terrifying due to vampirism, she’s less of a real threat to Diana than Yvonne is simply because Madison is so blatant in her aesthetic and is such a straight shot even in her emotional miscommunication. It is directly through Diana’s pity of Madison’s communication skills that Diana becomes more amicable to the vampires. While she may have eventually been assuaged through Forrest and Yvonne’s persistance, Diana wouldn’t have had the opportunity to pity them - and thus shift how she approaches all four of them, as well as her perception of her own power against them.
Even in 2016, it’s becoming more of a common trend for medi



Yvonne and Diana are initially something simple during the first two months: smitten girl enticed by dangerously alluring but warm vampire who makes girl lower her guard even when she knows she shouldn’t.
 Yvonne expresses an interest at the odd little curiousity who stayed awake during a bite and has a surprising amount of magic power. While she does a cursory look at a background check, she decides it would be more fun (and better in general) to learn everything directly from the source. Articles and ledgers never carry quite the same emotion.
Diana is starstruck by the woman who’s basically a flawless dream, a Daisy Buchanan without a Tom and a tragic backstory that’s long dead. She’s double starstruck when Yvonne flashes not just her riches, but her emotional support. She’s a master of operas and fancy brunches, but she shows an approachability through bootleg musicals and food vlogs and treating her seriously.
Things are hook, line, and sinker, with Yvonne subtly(?) taking Di under her wing during the Christmas party planning. She gets to listen to Diana continue her magical practice and get more involved with the vampires, and she thinks Diana is simply just darling. There’s a bite, things are looking up.
Christmas goes about as well as it could. New Years comes in for the vibe check with the reveal that she knows Diana’s father from before he was a demon. And for once, Yvonne is completely thrown out of whack in a power dynamic. She pulls away, and Diana only has half the picture.
When Bernard

Sebastian hogs Charlotte’s original position of being the cat person at a party. Diana goes looking for Evangeline (Robin’s kitty) and stumbles upon him, and he’s pretty quick to scoff at her while she gets indignant.  This somehow leads into a discussion about costumes, or perhaps theatre, or some other taste that establishes the gist of Sebastian’s route: discussion of (supernatural) media and perhaps a romanticisation of old history. He’s still obnoxious but begins more muted, and Diana is a bit more charmed. He might get a bite out of her yet, but it turns out that he’s also kinda-hiding from Madison for. Reasons.
Diana and Sebastian begin more as quiet cohabitation and less as a developing friendship than the other three. (see, that one john/dave fic I like) She doesn’t trust him, but he doesn’t particularly care if she does, unlike the others. He will however be amicable to discussing media further. He’s a bit more annoyed when she comes in one rainy day with a cat.
Diana asks for a bite as a birthday gift. More specifically, one based off a movie they discussed in the past.

Sebastian has:
- a cat
- an established film career
- vampirism via angel
- an ex who’s living her best life and still somehow cares for him.

Sebastian sees Diana work with Madora over magical circles. He, perhaps, is the one who realizes that what works for Madora and the demons isn’t going to work for Diana and that angels have a different channeling method. This also really kicks up Diana’s own progress freeze.

Where Yvonne pulls away from Diana immediately to think things over (and in fear), Sebastian lingers a little longer in the face of Catherine. While he is wary of her and Palmer. He doesn’t recognize Leo, but he adds Leo to the list of people to watch out for when Yvonne gets a little twitchy. He tries not to involve himself. That is the key difference between him and Everard, who likes to meddle.


Currently, everyone is completely distanced from the circles. Madora helps find new artifacts to test while the doctor is left rooted






While Charlotte had to be put down like a dog, it isn’t to put her out of her misery, but simply so Diana can kick the only person she can currently reach that can fly as far she wants. (Madison simply doesn’t have the weight.)
However, in Charlotte’s route, Diana doesn’t even get that far. She intercepts the ritual but due to

Everard gives off a pretty terrible first impression because he’s in a conversation with Robin. Apparently, someone close to them is struggling (if not Robin himself), and Ev’s response is essentially thoughts and prayers. Diana watches in the bg warily.
Everard vaguely knows Diana from when she was an infant, but he was preoccupied handling other matters most of the time, and Leo preferred to keep Diana as distanced from the afterlifers as possible. That isn’t what catches his interest about her. He finds it interesting that she’s already so magically inclined,



Catherine wants - a lot. She likes the spotlight when things are good, hiding in the shadows when the going gets tough, a knife strapped to someone’s thigh because she likes the surprise.
She wants to be a good influence to Diana, since they already get along so well and she can see the grief even if Diana doesn’t. Catherine looks at Diana and sees someone to nuture and help heal simply by being a good friend, something like a doting older sister, but also wants to be a reachable figure - similar to how Diana was to her viewers. She’s less obtuse than Palmer, and has more excuses to hang out with her. Leo still views her with suspicion, but she has even less reason to listen than Palmer. She’s a good influence, in some ways.
But it’s a lot of pressure, trying to be an ineffable figure to Diana. Catherine never confides like the other vampires did - similar to Yvonne, although Yvonne is more honest when someone cracks her open.
She also loves Palmer, and she does, for all she can. There’s still a lot to worry about, but there always is. Diana gave her the nudge, but Catherine gets cold feet. She wants a big wedding, but things are a little soured when politics also wants one.

Diana comes home. Virginia was always just a pit stop with extra steps. New York too, now. Home is her father and Robin and Steven, now Catherine and the others. She’s never felt more comfortable in her own skin, but also never so frazzled. While she made some attempts to not be overly dependent on the vampires for social interaction, they were still her closest living friends for the past couple years, as well as people she could potentially fall in love with.


Fire Emblem tends to be about a tragic Greek hero.

Sebastian sees Diana want to do something romantic and fatal. It’s something he’s done, so he supposes he can’t judge her, but that’s a lie.

When Palmer tags along with Diana, she’s swept up in the currents and is absolutely 100% affirmed that she’s out of her element. When she tries to ask

Since Cath likes rabbits, Palmer probably had good intentions offering her (dead rabbit related) gifts.