Lacuna Rambles/Thoughts/Gif Reacts #1: Telling Treats 🍬 (Patreon)

[Alternate Text: An image of a glass candy dish filled with different colored hard candies. They are wrapped in plastic so their colors (swirled red, swirled green, orange, and lemony yellow) are able to entice.]

(Quick sidenote: Patreon's latest update took away my ability to italicize things in posts, which is quite maddening to me. If you're wondering about that formatting difference compared to my other posts, that's why. I hope it's resolved before our next writing; you all know how I sometimes like to italicize for dramatic effect or general emphasis. 😁)

You turn to see R rifling through a seashell-shaped candy dish that appears to contain plastic wrapped gemstones and not pieces of confections. The colors are so vibrant and intense that you move closer to them to inspect the hard candies that are likely fruit flavored. "Those aren't a brand name," you note, failing to spot any label or symbol of a candy maker on the wrappers. "They can't be."

"Would you like one?" R offers, no longer attempting to find one of every color and arrange them in a neat line. "It's hard to tell the flavors, but I have educated guesses."

Many of you will remember the above scene from Book One if you brought R. Verner along to the coroner's office in Chapter 7.

This section has many triggered exchanges in it that relate to the MC's personality, their romance route, their friendship with R, and the actual choice itself to try the unique candy or not. I thought it might be fun to learn what flavors the TFS characters would get from the bowl, except I switched things up for certain characters for more insight. 😉

Imagine each one plucking a candy from this dish, but in less grim circumstances while you're waiting.

_ _ _

B tries not to obviously frown when they unwrap the wrapper only to see that it's actually empty on the inside. There's no trace of a sticky filling or a dusting of sugar; it's blank. To be fair, they're nervous being back here, so grabbing the first thing their fingers touched is what they went with since everyone else is taking questionable, coroner candy for whatever reason. B gives you a quick smile when you pop a piece of candy in your mouth and remark on the flavor. It gives them a chance to stuff the wrapper in their hoodie pocket.

They aren't really hungry anyway.

(B. Warrick doesn't receive a candy from the dish. 🥺)

_ _ _

S takes time to admire the hues of the candy before snagging a particular piece that buckles under their touch, so they extract it by the very ends of the plastic wrapper. It was half-buried beneath the others, almost crushed by the hard candy shells since this one lacks a sugar shell. It's probably a variety of soft toffee.

(S. Dorran receives the merciful candy from the dish. 💙)

_ _ _

Technically, you can figure this out within some of the choices options. This is from Book One:

"It's a candy dish in a waiting room," R notes with a touch of amusement, swapping out a green piece for a red one. They twirl the candy by the end of its plastic wrapper, making it catch the light from a nearby lamp so the red sugar glints like a polished garnet. "We are allowed to take one; there is an implicit invitation to."

(R. Verner would receive either the zingy sour candy (snarky) or the red candy (cruel).)

Before anyone tries to separate [Dog_Name] from R after reading this, please let me clarify. 😅 The cruel factor with the Verner heir isn't the same as with the MC in TFS; it's a hint about how they attack the spriggan later on in Book One along with some future things for the series. During the forest fight, R acts (really, reacts) because they care for Milton and have a unique bond with the prankster. They go for the spirggan's knee for maximum impact. It's described as a 'cruel move'; R is good at this, finding and capitalizing on weak points without pause. Their 'cruelty' isn't that they enjoy being callous, rather it's how the Line (of what's acceptable and humane) can blur for them more easily among the characters once they or someone they love is threatened/hurt/etc.

Here's another line from Book One that hints at this propensity:

"I would only need a name if someone killed a member of my family."  -R. Verner

My inclusion of that red candy for R is a way to signal in a very subtle sense (that I'm now explaining) to be aware of this aspect of their personality. It can come up in Book Two.

_ _ _

J lingers by the end of the counter until they see that everyone else has a confection aside from them; it normally wouldn't bother them, but you're shooting them a quietly curious look. They resist the urge to sigh, stepping forward to select a piece of candy that instantly breaks under their touch. Very thin shards of sugar fill the wrapper that J regretfully slips into their coat pocket, unwilling to try and salvage the shattered sweet treat or reveal what they did by mistake.

(J. Corvin would receive the sincerity candy, and yes, they feel bad about breaking it. 😌)

_ _ _

“No,” Mal flatly concludes.

No one is in the Coroner's Office now; it's only them and the skeleton in the Hawaiian shirt who is offering a slack-jawed grin that's getting on their nerves with each passing second. Mal's eyes bore into the skull's empty eye sockets, unimpressed by this stare off enough to force an ending when they knock the candy dish off onto the floor. They step over most of the confections, but a few stray ones end up crushed beneath their biker boots, sweet, hollow shells breaking in seconds. It makes them freeze since they're typically more careful with their soundless steps. After a moment, Mal continues to leave, staring into one of the shadowy corners of the room before placing a hand on the door just as it creaks open.

(Mal believes they would receive the cruel candy. They don't want to participate in this. 🙃)