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ciderjacks · 2 months

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please tell me about cal, love that little bastard

oHHHHHHOHOHOOHHO YES. OK. I WILL. IVE BEEN WAITING 10 YEARSTO BE ASKED THIS VERY QUESTION.

so ok so. Uh heavy Heavy TW for like themes of suicide and mental illness and stuff ahead. I’m sorry I would avoid it but it is genuinely impossible to talk about this story without them, bc that’s literally the central theme of it. But. Okok.

Sso Cal is one of my fav characters ever, he was originally created as like, a tragic backstory for Kimu-

(Kimu is this guy)

-so like, literally created to die. And he’s always been sort of a sad character. I made him when I was like 11 and edgy so he was an emo childhood friend of Kimu’s who takes his life, sending Kimu on a downward spiral. Like that was the original story basically.

Then as time passed I started developing the story, added more character and Cal got to have a personality, but he still dies. More time passes and I start to really like Cal, and bc his death is like, the most important part of the story, he sort of becomes the “main character”. Then in like 2023 I decided I actually didn’t want him to die, partially because I felt bad and partially bc at the time I really didn’t like the idea of having a character like him ending that way. like. Thematically I just didn’t like it.

So now he’s alive, the meta narrative has decided that he should live. I change it up so he has a suicide attempt, but survives it and gets his shit together after bc he’s now realized he likes being alive even though it sucks sometimes.

There’s a lot of like, actually in narrative drama happening in this version of the story. He’s got a crappy home life, he’s got gender dysphoria, he’s in a weird love triangle with like three of his friends. Usual stuff. Up to this point it’s sort of been a sad version of a slice of life, like. Sort of similar to bojack horseman I’d say, if I was to compare it to anything. I like stories like that but tbh they’re sort of uninteresting to describe.

ANYWAY HERES WHERE THE TIME LOOP IS INTRODUCED.

so at some point I was thinking about how Cal was a doomed character for so long, then got like. a second chance to live. Bc I felt bad about killing him. And then because I love Groundhog Day more than any normal person should, I went “omg what if there was a time loop type thing. Or like a time reset. Or something. Like a single time loop.” And then I was like omg bc now there’s more to the story than just a straight linear narrative.

So now there’s two stories for the price of one. Cal’s first chance, and Cal’s second chance.

So first chance is way more similar to the earlier one I described, before he gets his fate changed. His life in his first chance sucks. He’s being treated badly at home, he’s being treated badly at school, he’s an asshole so all his friends sort of hate him, he’s ruined several peoples lives just sort of by existing in them. Terrible. A lot of the bad stuff that he goes through is also entirely his fault like he really really sucks here. He drives all his friends away besides Kimu, who is extremely patient and also Cal is his best friend.

Kimu is the one to confront Cal #1 (I’m just gonna call this Cal, Cal #1 now. So it’s easier to understand what I’m talking about bc time stuff is weird and confusing.) and Cal #1, worlds worst guy, just completely loses it on him. He pushes him into a shelf, which causes Kimu to actually get hurt, and Kimu is obviously shocked and angry, so he storms out and tells Cal they’re done. Cal #1, realizing he’s fucked up, is like “well I’ve hurt literally everyone in my life irreparably. Guess I’ll die.”

Ofc old pal Kimu, feeling off about the argument like an hour later, comes back to apologize. Unfortunately this is change #1, so it’s too late. Last thing Cal #1 processes is Kimu freaking tf out. He ends up dying at 19, like days before he turned 20.

So on that cheery ending, Cal wakes up. This time it’s Cal #2 though. He wakes up and realizes that he is a baby, he’s back at his old house, and he is a baby. The thing is though, he has all his memories from his first life. This makes him, first of all, and incredibly intelligent baby. (He still has baby brain though, not the brain of a 19 year old. That would be a whole different world of problems.) But second of all, he is REALLY REALLY weirded out and uncomfortable.

He freaks out for the first couple years of his new life, which is the exact same as his old life except now he has cheat codes. Then around the age of like, 5, he has the realization that he has cheat codes, and if he can map everything that went wrong in his first life, he might actually be able to change his outcomes. so he does that, he does that for awhile. At this point most of the external things are the same. He’s best friends with Alex, he becomes friends with Kimu via Alex, it’s all the same.

Kimu, Alex, and Cal in that order ^^^ (It’s also worth noting that while he overtime is able to address a lot of his shittiness as being shitty, and him being to blame for most of it. he can’t seem to see Kimu as a victim of his crappy behaviour. He even still sort of resents him for how things went, bc first life Kimu was sort of a dick too.)

so anyway things are normal the first like maybe 6 years after that too. He changes some of the big things that went wrong in his early life, he avoids some people he knows are bad news now, which also stops his mom from going criminal (long story. She’s a shit mom most of the time but she’s still protective, and will still do anything for her kid.) he thinks this might save her from dying, he actually does everything he can to prevent her death. It doesn’t. None of it works. She dies differently, this time of a sickness rather than suicide. She also dies later on in the story this time. We’ll come back to this.

anyways, it’s around this point Yami and Amelia get introduced. Amelia is Cal #1’s greatest sin, she’s the person he really fucked over, and it’s to the point where Cal #2 doesn’t even think he should talk to her. Yami is Amelia’s cousin and Kimu’s childhood best friend, though they had a falling out.

(Yami and Amelia. Yami is the husky, Amelia is the spaniel.)

In the first life, Yami also dies. Completely unrelated to Cal, like they barely even knew each other. Yami died because of a prank gone wrong, done by some bullies.

However this really started off Cal #1’s downward turn, because this incident totally fucked up both Kimu and Amelia, and Kimu being all fucked up is partially what drove Alex away. (The other part was Cal’s fault LOL). Kimu got really withdrawn and aggressive, wanting revenge for what happened. Amelia got weird and withdrawn, and starts focusing on getting into this prestigious arts college way harder than before, and Cal, who doesn’t fully understand grief or why people feel it, figures maybe it’s because her parents are awful and controlling (and like. Ok they are. But. They don’t gaf about her grades or studies. He just totally misread the situation.)

He’s also mad that she’s not hanging out with him, or doing the weird chaotic stuff that they used to do all the time. He tells her she just needs to unwind, and let go of the expectations put upon her. Amelia is reluctant at first, but then as she unwinds, she starts to get way more crazy than she ever was before bc of all the shit she’s been bottling up. They do some extremely dangerous shit, on what is basically a bender, and then he ends up crashing the car bc he wasn’t watching the road. They get arrested, she’s now disabled, her parents disown her, she loses her scholarship, and it’s all mostly his fault. He’s too emotionally stunted to even properly apologize.

(Illustration of about how he responded to all this)

She tells him she’ll kill him if she sees him again, and that’s the end of their relationship in the first life.

Back to the second life. Cal peer pressures Yami into letting him come to hang out with him and his bullies (the ones who ended up accidentally slashing him). Yami relents, but is really uncomfortable because he doesn’t know this guy. Flash forward a few hours, the bullies do the prank, but this time because Cal is there, Yami doesn’t die. This incident leads to two things happening. 1) Yami connecting enough dots to vaguely remember his first life. Not as clearly as Cal, but now he’s suspicious. 2) Cal and Yami becoming friends.

Yami ends up later introducing Cal and Amelia, and they end up becoming friends, though for a long time Cal tries to keep her at arms length. This is hard bc they get along really well.

eventually he gives in and they become besties again, but without all the trauma and horrors. This is great, and this is around when Cal starts to think he’s actually done well. He’s 19, he’s sort of awkwardly repaired his relationship with his mom, all his friends are happy and alive, everyone’s closer than ever. Like things are going REALLY well.

Anyway remember earlier when I mention his mom dies in both lives? Yeah so. When he’s 19, she dies of a sickness that he thought was improving. It’s really sudden, and it really trips him out. Not only is he just actually devastated, but now he starts wondering if some things are just bound to happen. He worked so hard to change her fate, and she still died relatively young and unexpectedly.

Then he finds out it technically wasn’t the sickness that killed her. She did it to herself because she realized it was getting worse, and she would probably die from it, and decided she’d rather die in a way she self was dignified. She didn’t tell him any of that.

Now he’s really like. “Oh god maybe things are just meant to happen.” this undoes a lot of the work he did on himself throughout this life, and he reverts back into a similar weird jerk that he was before. Less destructive obviously, but he withdraws, he starts ghosting everyone, he doesn’t leave his apartment. Eventually Kimu rolls up to confront him, and remember when I said Cal never grappled with how his actions affected Kimu, and how he still sort of resents him? Yeah.

So this happens.

It’s at this point he Finally, after nearly 20 years, realizes the one person who stuck by him at all times in both his lives, and the person he arguably hurt most, even more than Amelia.

And then he realizes that no matter how much he tried to change, it ended up like this.

And he thinks back to his mom, and how some things just seem doomed. Kimu storms out in tears, just like how he did during Cal’s first chance, and Cal decides that he and his mom must share the same fate.

This is one day before the anniversary of his death. Fortunately this time Kimu didn’t actually leave. He waited outside Cal’s door for a few minutes, thinking about what just happened, and then decides something is off and comes back in to talk things out.

He catches Cal this time, right before he attempts, and stops him from doing anything. Ofc Kimu starts yelling at him, asking him what the hell he’s doing, but all Cal can think about is that for whatever reason: Kimu came back early. And more importantly, that before Kimu came back, he hesitated.

this is about when he has a realization that nothing is actually doomed, and that this whole he’s wanted nothing more than to live. He realizes he wanted to live so much it created a tear in time and space.

So then he gets therapy and starts actually properly living his life to the fullest.

#ask tag #bloominghearts #calposting.jpeg #SORRY THIS IS SO SO SO LONG IM SO SORRY JSUFJV #tw suicide #tw death #I reallly like talking about my weird fucked up time loop ocs #I think it counts as a time loop #It’s just that time only loops once.#This also isn’t even touching on the weight over Cal’s head for like most of the story that is #“Is this just what life is. Do we just die and then come back. Is it all for nothing.”#It’s not he did genuinely create a time space error bc he didn’t want to die that badly. but that’s a concern for him for awhile.

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