InsaneJournal

a little tl;dr
Since this is a CDJ and all, I figured it's about time for a little more CDJ-ness and less music-and-movies-meme-ness. ;D

So, I don't generally think about how my characters lost their virginity (if they did; there are some that I know from the start are chaste, such as Alice), at least not at the very beginning when I'm first meeting them and getting to know what they're like. It'll eventually come about, but it's generally not a big thing for the character; usually it's just Really Bad Fumbly Awkward Sex that makes you wonder why they ever tried again. (Y'know, that might just solve any kind of teenage pregnancy problem: have kids have [safe] sex for the first time in a really completely awkward and horrible and uncomfortable way so that they never want to do it again for a long long time.)

Now, I've played Marlene before, but that's mostly been in school, so I was mostly inclined to ignore the question of lost-it-or-not-and-if-so-how-and-when? So I wanted to play with the slightly-more-grown-up Marly for a while before I really got an idea of how and when she lost it. I think it was a couple of weeks after the game started that it really came to me. I didn't want to just come out with it, but I kept hoping (and have been since, like, mid-freaking-July) that something would happen in the game where it would have to come up.

Lo and behold, Jamie apped Effie, with Alie apping Pepper with the intention of having them be one of those couples that Molly talked about, those ones who rushed into marriage because of the war. The age difference between Effie and Pepper alone was enough for Marly to start seeing the similarities between her own first time and her sister's relationship with this guy. I really really kept hoping that it would come up.

Now, to go slightly off-topic for a moment (don't worry, it'll bring us back to the topic at hand shortly), Marly has always been a bit on the reckless side. This is the girl who jumped out of a tree at the age of ten to see if she could fly without a broom and broke her ankle. Twice. She is stubborn, once she gets an idea in her head, she will be like a dog with a bone. She's also a lot harder on herself than anyone else; as the oldest, she views it as her job to watch out for her sisters and make sure that they don't make the same mistakes she did, and keep them safe, etc etc. She also has a slight tendency towards self-destructiveness because of this, something that has really come out since King's Cross (thanks, Whit). When Barty imperiused her, not only did she lose control of herself, but she was forced to do something that went completely against the deepest fibers of her being: she was forced to crucio a "bystander" (at the time, she knew it was an Order member, but thanks to the disguise, she didn't know who it was). But she kept fighting. Once she was free of the imperius, despite a concussion and the variety of broken bones that she began collecting (also courtesy of Barty), she kept fighting. This goes back to the stubbornness thing: she will keep fighting until you kill her. And even then, she'd be liable to come back as a ghost and find a way to kick your ass, ectoplasm style. The most glorious moment was when Barty punched her (already-)broken collarbone and she ended up throwing up on him.

But then once the battle was over and she was taken to St. Mungo's, that stubbornness turned dark. Being the Head Auror's daughter, as well as an Auror trainee, she was positive that she should have been able to do something to prevent being hit with the imperius. She felt that the fact that she couldn't stop it was a failure on her part, that she wasn't even worthy of being a trainee. She seriously considered quitting the programme. As soon as she was awake, she refused any treatments the Healers tried to give her for the pain. It wasn't until Moody came to talk to her that she finally shaped up and let the Healers heal her (and she realised that being imperiused didn't make her a bad trainee, apparently), but deep down inside, she still blamed herself and was positive that everyone would hate her for it. Especially Lily, Sirius, Remus, and Peter, since it turned out to be James that she'd crucioed. This was all made worse, I think, by the fact that James didn't seem to want to tell anybody else about it: that only served to confirm, for her, that this was something bad that had happened. But sitting on that knowledge and being unable to tell anybody (she couldn't tell Ro, Alex, or Will, because that might end up bringing up the fact that she was a vigilante and so was James; she couldn't tell Lily, Sirius, Remus, or Peter, because apparently James didn't want them to know, and she was afraid that if she told them, they would side with James and hate her; she couldn't even tell the Order as a whole, since Lily, Sirius, Remus, and Peter are all members), that just tore at her even more. But for the most part, she internalized all that, beating herself up and struggling to be better so that she could prevent that from happening ever again.

For the most part, that's been able to help sort of dampen her self-destructiveness and reckless behavior, because she's been able to concentrate on just becoming better. And then she told Sirius, and she automatically assumed that his reaction was because he was so disgusted with her for letting herself be imperiused and then crucioing his best friend. And she broke down again, as she had in the hospital when Sturgis (again, thanks Whit!) pressed her for details about her fight. Keep in mind that this is more than a month after it happened, and she's been in a fragile emotional state that whole time, from keeping this all inside. Finally, finally James called her out on her stupidity over the whole thing, in the very-backdated log that Dawn and I are still working on. And I think she's finally as over King's Cross as she'll ever get. She finally understands that it wasn't her fault, that she can't be blaming herself for it. She's still determined to work harder in order to become better, but hopefully she's done blaming herself for that. And Lily knows, and it helps a lot to know that Lils still loves her and doesn't hate her for it. idk if Remus and Peter know? Dawn, would James have told them, too?

Anyway. So as of the other night, it had been about a week and a half since James had sat Marly down and called her out on being an idiot. A week and a half, after a month and a half of blaming herself and being in a fragile state. That's just not enough time for Marly to fully get back to herself, her confident, only-slightly-reckless self. She was on her way there, citing her coolness and such. (And, because she needed that final bit of closure, she sought confirmation from Sirius that he wasn't mad at her and didn't hate her.) And then there was Effie. It started out as just sisterly teasing. Who was really the coolest? Effie was still joking when she made that list. And Marly found out that her little sister, who she wanted to protect from making the same mistakes she herself had made, was sleeping with a bloke she hadn't even known for two months. A bloke who is five years older than her.

And suddenly Marly saw herself in her sister, in a very painful way. So she just snapped and went directly to what she knew: stubborn, reckless, self-destructive behavior. She deliberately picked a fight with Effie and ended up implying that her sister was a slag (pot, kettle, black). Meanwhile, she invites Sirius over, and he picked up that something was wrong. Naturally, Marly reacted in typical Marly fashion: which is to say with anger, defensiveness, and not even giving half the story. Sirius tried to calm her down and use logic on her (but, really, when she's in that kind of state, the only logic that matters is her own lack thereof), and despite the entirety of chat going "dude, Marly's an idiot if she can't be convinced by Sirius' latest argument" ... clearly chat underestimates her idiocy at times like this. xD Both of them ended up hitting nerves on the other, and the breaking point for her was Sirius' question of "Don't want her to make a mistake or don't want her to make your mistake?" Because that was exactly what it was, and she didn't want to admit it, so she responded again in typical Marly fashion with a "fuck you" and reckless behavior: going out in the middle of the night.

She went to a bar in muggle London (figuring that with all the recent DE activity in the past few months in public wizarding places, muggle London was safter; not to mention that she figured she could defend herself if a common everyday muggle criminal got hold of her), got herself drunk, and left with a guy. They were about to hook up in the alley behind the bar when she kept hearing Sirius' voice in her head, repeating over and over again his last comment to her in her journal before she left: Try not to do anything phenomenally stupid. (Which ... this is Marly. Phenomenally Stupid might as well be her middle name.) Which basically pointed out to her that she was being phenomenally stupid and that she didn't want to do this. So she stopped, but the guy didn't want to. She finally had to make use of the hand-to-hand fighting that the Auror trainees learn, and she had to fight the guy off.

And then she realized that she really was being supremely self-destructive. Maybe not in those specific words, but she knew that she had spent that night being completely and totally phenomenally stupid, not just at the bar and with the guy, but with her sister and friends. Naturally, she woke up the next morning with the hangover from hell, and even downing a bunch of hangover potions and pouring a pot of coffee down her throat didn't get rid of her massive head-splitting headache. She posted in her journal with a series of wards, apologising to everyone who needed to be apologised to (Effie, Sirius, Lily, Pepper) and asking Effie if they can talk. Because Marly needed to explain to her sister why she had overreacted so much over Pepper. Because, y'know. Marly's had too much sex, and had it for the first time much younger than her sister, to be that hypocritical without a reason.

Jamie and I are still logging it, but ... it feels a little weird, you know? After about three months of sitting on this story, alluding to it and being very vague, it's about to be out there. Chantal phrased it really nicely in chat last night: it's like it's a secret lost.

Which is why I'm being kind of vague about it here, because I'd like to hold onto that secret for just a little bit longer. But it does explain a lot about her, why she's very much not the "relationship type," why she's more into casual, string-free sex, etc. And hopefully, the events of the other night (at the bar, after she stormed out) and talking to her sister (and telling her the story) will help set her back on the track to getting back to herself. Only possibly a more mature and grown-up Marly (then again, she's only 20; let's not ask the impossible of her quite yet).



Wow, that tl;dr ended up a lot longer than I'd expected, and it took me nearly two hours to write up. >> But yay for character development!