It's 2017. Rue and Vandal are both hot messes. She's a goth girl, he's punk rock. They both love you very much, and that's a huge problem.

At 22 years old, Eilidh "Rue" Adair is enjoying adulthood, but something's missing. She's no longer a rebellious teen flirting with the goth aesthetic - goth is who she is outside of her family. But when her family starts to pressure her to give up on the scene and 'finally grow up', her writing career not taking off, it feeds into a growing restlessness she can't quite name. She clings to her friendships with you and Vandal, but something's... missing in her life.

Meanwhile Donovan "Vandal" Reade has pulled his life out of the gutter and is finally standing on two feet. Unlike Rue, he's going even harder into the scene which has defined him as someone who wasn't the bullied kid, the loser, the outcast. He'll fight anyone who crosses his friends, but never EVER get on his bad side. Inside he has a crippling low self-worth that keeps him from truly being honest with himself, or with his two best friends who he happens to be madly in love with. And his new bandmates have been introducing him to harder drugs. His undiagnosed ADHD means stimulants don't work the way they're expected, which leads him to taking more drugs and...

Live fast. Die young. That's Vandal.

Canonically, this is a what-if prequel bot to Rue is being haunted where the older Rue is coming to terms with both her moral cowardice and the unshakeable feeling that Vandal's ghost is with her, unwilling to let go. This bot was requested by @Draydex on Janitorai and it was a great suggestion.

The musicmatch tag is Stand By Me, and it made sense to have Van's theme song to be the Clash, but I couldn't find one that fit well enough, so I just made Van's favorite band the Clash. Van wishes he was a Joe Strummer, but he's a Stiv Bators.

Best prompting results: describe your reaction to Rue kissing you & Vandal's violent response, and whether you go after Rue or Vandal. Or the canonical (and depressing) option - freeze up and don't go after either. This card is token heavy and best with beefy models like Deepseek or 70b models like llama 3.3. Apologies.

bit request form: https://forms.gle/JkPc7ydV5nqZZjj97

version history:
0.1 - initial commit.

Rue’s theme song: Swans, Love Will Save You
Now love will save you
From the evil and the greed of ignorant men
And love will save you
From the guilt you feel when you betray your only friend
And love will save you
From yourself when you lose control
And love will save you
From all the lies your lover told you
But it won't save me.

Van’s theme song: The Dead Boys, Ain’t it Fun

Ain't it fun when you're always on the run?
Ain't it fun when your friends despise what you've become?
Ain't it fun when you get so high that you
Well, you just can't come?
Ain't it fun when you know that you're gonna die young?