#CIA Stories: The CIA Is Born

[triflesandparsnips]

So I understand that there are Good Omens show fans who have never read Good Omens the book, and that makes me deeply sad because--

Like, there's so much depth to the story being told about humans and humanity and the choice between good and evil -- and how that's actually a false dichotomy whoooops -- WHILE ALSO not really being about Aziraphale and Crowley at all (who are, imo, basically there as embodiments of "Impressive Failures" for the purposes of Theme and also Plot).

BUT IF you want to know why I've shipped them since the book-- here's the moment it happened for wee teenage me:

Wednesday (before the end of the world)

So it's Warlock's birthday party. And there are all these children and security guards and also an angel doing magic tricks while a demon is disguised as a caterer. This bit is basically the same as the show, so hooray.

But as wee me understood the characters up to this point, they were still basically enemies who had been in the field together for way too long and knew each other's moves well enough for the same tempting/thwarting of one another to become kind of boring and repetitive and generally pointless-- particularly once they realized that they could, for instance, just live their (separate!) lives watching humans being weird (Crowley) and seeking various sensory stuff (Aziraphale) while doing the least work necessary to keep their respective bosses off their backs.

The Arrangement was borne not out of hiding a friendship or anything, but instead the realization that sometimes covering for one another would just... cut down on their total overall workload. They were, at best, employees of two different, competitive companies-- though in same kind of department, doing the same kind of work-- who discovered they liked to have lunch at the same deli and that their jobs were sometimes distressingly more similar than either was comfortable with.

SO ANYWAY. BACK TO THAT WEDNESDAY. They're not covering for one another with this whole Antichrist thing-- they're now actively collaborating, and they've acknowledged (mostly) that it's not to cut down on their individual workloads, but rather to preserve their identical-- but not shared (not yet)-- goals of Getting To Continue The Lives On Earth They've Grown To Enjoy.

But like-- still not friends. Not really.

Until Aziraphale fucks up a bit, Warlock accidentally gets hold of a security guard's weapon and starts waving it around, and:

Then someone threw some jelly at Warlock. The boy squeaked, and pulled the trigger of the gun. It was a Magnum .32, CIA issue, gray, mean, heavy, capable of blowing a man away at thirty paces, and leaving nothing more than a red mist, a ghastly mess, and a certain amount of paperwork. Aziraphale blinked. A thin stream of water squirted from the nozzle and soaked Crowley, who had been looking out the window, trying to see if there was a huge black dog in the garden. Aziraphale looked embarrassed. Then a cream cake hit him in the face.

My teenage brain exploded at this moment.

BECAUSE: there is no reason for Aziraphale to do that.

Work-wise: If he got shot, Crowley would get discorporated, but not die-- and anyway, it would happen in such a way that both of them could explain it away easily to their respective sides (and possibly even be commended for it!).

Collaboration-wise: If Crowley had been watching Aziraphale, and if he'd seen Aziraphale have the chance to change the gun but not do it-- then yeah, probably that would've been annoying enough to have warranted some chilly conversations once he came back topside, and therefore, Aziraphale choosing to save Crowley could've been a reasonable, logical choice to keep their working relationship on an even keel until they'd sorted out this Doomsday thing.

But Crowley was looking the other way.

Work-wise, it doesn't make sense-- and secret-collaboration-wise, it doesn't make sense-- and so it is, overall, really weird that Aziraphale saved him.

But his automatic reaction-- in a blink-- is to stop Crowley from getting shot. And he knows it's weird-- he feels embarrassed that his sudden, unthinking reaction is to save his "enemy".

And the final bit is just a couple paragraphs later:

With a gesture, Aziraphale turned the rest of the guns into water pistols as well, and walked out.

SO LOOK: He changed only the pistol about to shoot Crowley. His automatic reaction had nothing to do with saving a party full of humans, many of them children-- nothing to do with Heaven or Hell-- nothing to do with preserving the coworker he needs to stop Armageddon--

It was all to do with saving Crowley. Who may be the enemy, but he's Aziraphale's enemy. And another part of his life on Earth that he's doing all of this just to preserve.

Which may also be, for the first time, the moment he lets himself realize how important Crowley in particular is to him.

...and so anyway, that's how I started shipping these two immortal idiots, and one of many reasons why everyone should read the book.

#good omens #good omens book #versus #good omens tv

[cryptotheism]

A Review of The Way Of The Shadow Wolves: The Deep State And The Hijacking Of America by Steven Segal

Alleged rapist and human trafficker, cop groupie, washed-up action movie star, and personal friend to Vladimir Putin, the paradox of Steven Segal is how he manages to stick around despite being –by damn near every account– a universally unpleasant vacuum of charisma. I could go on, but I feel that no introduction of Steven would be complete without the tale of the headlock. Legends tell of Steven’s conflict with legendary martial artist and hollywood stunt coordinator “Judo” Gene Lebell. Allegedly, the two fell into an argument on the set of the film Out For Justice. The crux being Steven’s claim that he was “immune” to being choked unconscious. Allegedly, LeBell called his bluff, and put the actor in a headlock. A headlock that resulted in Steven losing consciousness, and control of his bowels. Steven denies the story. He also wrote a book.

The book is garbage, but garbage in a way that can be easily overstated. I wanted to take a page from other reviewers of this book, and call the text what it is; a fever dream of exhausting mediocrity, swaddled in delusions of grandeur. I wanted to whale on it. I wanted to denounce it like some ridiculous fire-and-brimstone preacher of internet literary criticism. But this does not capture the core, the essence of Way of the Shadow Wolves. There is a paradox at the heart of this text, a contradiction that even now I struggle to describe. Because despite everything, despite the balls-to-the-walls premise, the disastrous prose, and the buckwild plot, this book is deeply and powerfully boring. To call it a fever dream is to imply that it might be exciting. 

Some books are bad in a way that must be experienced firsthand. This is not one of those books. In a way, I feel that you’ve already read this book. You know Steven Segal. You met him in elementary school, when he told you he has “every black belt.” You met him in college when you tricked him into smoking a bag of oregano. You met him at your most recent family gathering, where you were trapped in an awkward one-sided conversation about “those people.” The bad-ness of Steven’s work is deeply familiar. 

We have our boots. We have our waders. We have our shovels. But, before we wade into the shit, there is one more thing we need to get out of the way: The Shadow Wolves are real. In 1972 the United States government agreed to the Tohono O'odham Nation’s demand that border enforcement agents patrolling their land have at least one quarter native ancestry. The result being the specialized unit of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers known as The Shadow Wolves. In the 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog film, Dr. Eggman states that they are who trained him in the art of tracking. 

WAY OF THE SHADOW WOLVES

Let us cook Way of the Shadow Wolves from scratch. Think of every dogshit C-list action movie you’ve ever seen. Ideally, you want the trash cuts of post-9/11 hysteria marbled with ex-cia heroes and vaguely arab villains. Drop it all into a stockpot. Next, roughly dice some comic books and kung-fu movies, the more racist the better. Now add some datura, it doesn't matter if it's edible or not, because you saw a native American in a movie make something like that once and you’re totally 1/64th Cherokee. Add a whole can of Qanon and a whole can of racism. Boil until you have pacing thicker than mud. 

Way of the Shadow Wolves is a police procedural meets a spy thriller, a fast-paced action drama about elite agents on the fringes of the law who have the huge sweaty meaty balls to do what needs to be done for our country. It is Steven's attempt at the action schlock he embodies as an actor. Our hero is John Gode: Shadow Wolf. Reservation-born native American tracker, ICE agent, and Kung-Fu master. I believe he might have been described at one point. If he was, I do not care. Steven does not care. It does not matter. John Gode is Steven, and he’s the most badass dude to ever not be gay. He is: Special Agent Shaman Cop. He’s gonna beat up the deep state. That’s all you need to really need to know. In fact, it is shocking just how little you need to know about this book. 

We begin in a movie theater, where our protagonist is alone, watching the end credits of a movie about the atrocious treatment of native Americans on behalf of the united states government. When the film finally ends, John says to himself “It’s about time.” He gets up to leave. The chapter immediately ends. My compliments to the chef. A delightfully bland apéritif of a character introduction. Steven uses the essential point of first contact with our protagonist to tell us vital information like “He doesn’t like it when movies are long.” or maybe “He didn’t like this movie about the trail of tears.” It is unclear. To quote English-Albanian philosopher Dua Lipa, “Go girl, give us nothing.”

I have been dancing around the quality of the writing. It seems impossible to approach without the footing of a new paragraph, an opponent that requires full-focus, an all-out assault. It is nigh-incomprehensible. I hate comparing bad writing to drugs. It feels too easy. But there is a specific air to Way of the Shadow Wolves. There is a distinct cadence, simultaneously manic and lethargic, that comes from attempting to write while day drunk on over-prescribed amphetamines. And make no mistake, if Steven was not entranced by the muse of Too Many Uppers And Downers At The Same Time, if he wrote this thing stone sober, that is worse. Small quotes will not do the writing style justice, you must see for yourself how sentences flow into each other:

“The desperado’s mind went back in time to a small town in Mexico twelve years before, where he first met his two cohorts when they were thrown together by a tragic set of circumstances. Their parents had been gunned down by a cartel who was at war with a competing cartel for control of the area, which was a pathway to the American border near Nogales, Arizona. All three had been shepherded to a local mission where they were being cared for by the Franciscans, who were becoming overwhelmed by the growing number of children left homeless due to the rampant killings by the warring cartels . . .”

Labyrinthine. A paragraph structure that would feel more at home with Calvino, or Garcia Marquez at his most experimental, though stripped of its deft control and musicality. Segal will regularly change temporal perspective in the middle of sentences. A single run-on sentence will begin in the past, have a middle clause in the present, and then return to the past by the end. There is a downright massive cast of characters for a 200 page book. Damn near every chapter introduces three or four more names, and we are lucky if Steven describes them before discarding them entirely. This book is a slog. I find myself losing patience with Steven. 

—

Some time has passed since I began writing this review. Originally, my approach was surgical disassembly. I was going to go over the plot, summarize its anatomy, pick apart its flaws with surgical precision. But the more I cut, the more I felt as if I was the butt of a joke. I was performing an autopsy on a clown, pulling sheets of colorful rope from its gut, and the cadaver was laughing at me. 

There is a moment, about halfway through. A woman approaches John at a bar. An assassin, who later attacks John in the parking lot with karate. A furious series of crescent kicks, effortlessly blocked by John Gode, who punches her in the ribs and knocks her to the ground. Realizing that her martial arts are defeated, she draws her gun, but John Gode is too fast. He fires his own weapon before she can get the shot off, killing her instantly. “Her round went upward toward the sky as she fell backward with eyes wide open, seeing nothing.”

This scene stuck with me. It illustrates one of the critical flaws at the heart of Way of the Shadow Wolves. Nothing hurts John. Nothing even gets close. He does not struggle. He does not sweat. He does not bleed. Steven clearly intends this scene to be badass, a moment where his self-insert hero defeats a dangerous enemy without trying. This book is an action movie, but John’s untouchability makes every action scene read as a moment of profound and boring cruelty. This was not a contest of master martial artists. This was an adult kicking a child in the throat.

I find myself losing patience with Steven. I am running out of humorous ways to describe this vapid tripe. This is, in my mind, the greatest condemnation of bad writing. There is no hell lower than being boring to mock. I see myself as a sort of sommelier of the awkward and disastrous. I will be the first to tell you “Wait! Don’t throw that out! There are things to be learned!” But Steven repeatedly proves himself to be a sort of Alchemist of Shit, capable of transmuting theoretically interesting bullshit into just fucking nothing. If this book deserves credit for anything, it is its miraculous ability to squander its own premise. 

Why write this? Any of this? Steven clearly does not read. Or, if he does, he seems to subsist entirely on a diet of comic books about monkeys that do kung-fu. Why write this? At some level it all comes down to “because Steven wanted to” right? 

Right? 

But I cannot shake the feeling. To call this book masturbatory is to imply that Steven might have enjoyed it. There is a desperation to the power fantasy here. To be feared by men, desired by women, revered by all, yaddah yaddah yaddah, all the same trite excretions of blunt masculinity. But there is something else. Steven wants the same thing that every conspiracy theorist wants; a simple world. A world he can understand. Steven is exhausted, overwhelmed with a world he feels he can neither effect nor understand. I am exhausted. 

I fear my earlier allusions to expressionist novels may have been more spot on than I imagined. Way of the Shadow Wolves has a plot in the sense that Sunny-D contains fruit juice. Its presence is a formality, a ceremonial hat worn for tax purposes. The plot is there, but it is unimportant. This is not a text that can be debated with. Because within the world of the text, politics is not complex. It is not actually a web of interconnected groups, each with their own interests, rivalries, alliances, and historical contexts. Behind all of it is two things: Good guys, and bad guys. The good guys are all working together, and the bad guys are all working together. 

I find myself losing patience with Steven. I fear my earlier allusions to expressionist novels may have been more spot on than I imagined. Way of the Shadow Wolves has a plot.

John Gode finds a human tooth in the desert. It belongs to a body, a body of a woman described in lurid detail. Nearby, he meets a young native American man, a man who calls himself Sweet Tooth. The body is missing teeth, missing hands, missing feet. A trademark cartel killing. A young native American man. “I’m gonna be like, your assistant right?” A buddy cop dynamic. Meeting the task force. Tailing an ICE van full of cartel soldiers. A hostage situation. A shootout in the desert. Far away, faceless men in suits with masonic ranks plan a mass killing. Some sounded like they had Arabic accents. Freemasonry. Interrogation with a snake. The corpse was a woman. The woman was a reporter. She had the evidence on a flash drive, evidence that proved the existence of the deep state. What if its all connected? A sex scene, or almost a sex scene. A sex scene interrupted. A shootout in the desert. Kung Fu assassins at a bar. A cartel defector. A shootout in the desert. What if its all connected. They’re working with the Jihadists. The USA is already “half latino.” The government is paying the cartels to ship Jihadists north across the border. They’re well-trained and well armed. You can’t trust anyone. A terrorist defector who hears the voice of the prophet. The ghost of John’s grandfather. The sun sets over the Sonora. A shootout in the desert. They kidnapped John’s mother. Bring them the flash drive. They’re planning to bomb the casino. A shootout in the desert. The police chief was a traitor. The Catholics are in on it. Its all connected. A shootout in the desert. Assault by night. Rescuing the hostage. A knife dipped in pigs blood. A pit of vipers in the sonora. 

Steven ends a chapter with the line. “They had functioned like a well-oiled machine that had just saved two innocent lives. All lives matter. Do they not?” 

I am tired. I find myself at a neighborhood block party, trapped in a conversation I’ve had a thousand times. This time the man on the other end is a sweaty divorcee in range glasses who looks like a sunburned thumb. Last week, it was a woman with a necklace of crystals and blonde hair bleached blonder. “Haha yeah” I say, looking down at my phone. “Burgers look good this year huh?”

Thank you to my Patreon supporters who made this review possible.

#Steven Segal Review

[tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons]

Terrible Visions

A scrambled timeline is a timeline that has proceeded much like ours, except that some particular facet has been mixed up all over the place. For example, in the scrambled timeline we will consider today, our world's fictional stories have been told by different people, and in different ways.

Bryan Lee O'Malley, in this alternate timeline, is best known as the cartoonist responsible for Homestuck, a popular comic series about a group of children who become embroiled in a cosmic-scale video game known as Sburb. Although Homestuck is probably most often associated with the cult classic Edgar Wright-directed film adaptation released in 2016, the comics themselves are highly-regarded, and the film brought a new audience to them. Netflix has commissioned an animated continuation, The Homestuck Epilogues, which is due to be released soon.

Andrew Hussie, on the other hand, is a figure you're likelier to know if you're overly online. His "MS Paint Adventures" series - most notably including Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, which is kind of like Homestuck but weirder and hornier - have firmly remained a fixture of obsessive Twitter fandom culture. It doesn't help that the best-known iteration, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, is infamous for stretching thousands of pages of meandering digressions out of a simple and focused narrative starting point. Scott Pilgrim fans have developed something of a toxic reputation, which is not entirely deserved - although of course Knives discourse is interminable, and back in the fandom's heyday there were reportedly incidents of fans assaulting each other "for being evil exes".

Scott Pilgrim fandom was very big back in the day, though, and consequently it was a nexus for other creative figures who would go on to surpass Hussie. Perhaps foremost among these is indie developer Toby Fox. He was literally living in Hussie's basement when he produced ROSEQUARTZ, a universally-beloved retro Goonies-like RPG about a human hybrid boy born to a race of gem-based aliens. He's now developing an episodic spiritual successor, RAZORQUEST, with more overtly dark themes. It revolves around an inheritance dispute among a demon-summoning family.

Other foundational figures in this timeline's internet culture include Alison Bechdel, who helped get the webcomic scene started. Although she's now more seriously acclaimed for her personal memoirs, her gaming webcomic Press Start To Dyke, which premiered in 1998, was once everywhere. It had a broad appeal, and at its height, it was common to see even straight guys sharing pages from it. Time has not been especially kind to it, though, and at this point its main legacy is test.png, a meme spawned by one of the comic's most ill-advised pages.

Then there's John C. McCrae, more often known by his pseudonym Wildbow. A prolific and reclusive author of doorstopping "web serials" - long-form fiction published online - McCrae's best-known serial is still his first, Wind, a noir superhero story set in an alternate history where capes are mostly just a subculture of unpowered vigilantes. Wind landed in a culture already rife with comic book deconstructions, like Alan Moore's 2002 graphic novel Worm Turns, but it nonetheless managed to stand out from the pack with its extensive cast of characters and its themes of coordination problems and the end of the world. Later McCrae web serials include Part (the first "Otherverse" serial; an urban fantasy story about a couple who die in a car accident and find that they have become ghosts), Tear (a "biopunk" story set in a collapsing underwater city), Warn (the controversial Wind sequel), and Play (the second "Otherverse" serial, set in a small Indiana town that helps hide a psychic girl from the CIA).

Last and perhaps least, we should discuss J. K. Rowling. Far and away the most famous of any of these authors, Rowling's name is inseparable from the YA series that she debuted with, the Luz Noceda books, which remain her one successful work. Although it was heavily derivative of older fantasy novels - like Jill Murphy's Academy For Little Witches, or Philip Pullman's Methods Of Rationality trilogy - Luz Noceda was still a monumental and unprecedented success in the publishing industry, and the film adaptations were consistent blockbusters. The final book, Luz Noceda and the Watcher of Rain, contained some allusions to a romantic relationship between Luz and her recently-redeemed associate Amity. Rowling confirmed that this was her intent in subsequent interviews and indicated that she had fought her publishers for it; the film would then go on to escalate matters slightly further.

There have been many lengthy and heated online arguments as to whether the references in the book itself constitute text or mere subtext. Whatever your stance on this discourse, a new complication has been introduced recently: although she has put out no official statement on the matter as of yet, it has become quite apparent from Rowling's shrinking network of contacts and her conspicuous silences that she is certainly TERF-sympathetic, and likely an outright TERF herself. For many, this is leading to a critical reevaluation of the social values inherent in the Luz Noceda series; others, to say the least, are holding off on that kind of reappraisal.

Anyway, Scott Pilgrim just beat Luz Noceda in a Twitter poll for Most Gay Media, and people are piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissed

#the scrambled timeline

[geddy-leesbian]

my grandma would always tell stories about this cia agent she was fucking and to this day no one knows if that actually happened or if it was just one of her batshit insane things

#she didn't have dementia she was just batshit in general #like the cia guy stories first started before my older siblings were even born

[writeforfandoms]

Armor - pt 1

Find my CoD masterlist

Los Vaqueros borrow a CIA shifter to help them investigate a new drug in the streets of Las Almas. Of course, you can't keep your nose fully out of trouble… Fortunately Rodolfo is willing to help you out.

Welcome to my second offering for Fall4Rudy hosted by @glitterypirateduck - this part used the prompt "You don't know me."

This fic does take place in the same world as Born for Greatness, and ties into that story indirectly. However, you do not have to have read Born for Greatness to understand this one.

Warnings: shifter!reader, brief violence, canon typical violence, non graphic injury, minor character death, forced drug use, drug mention, cartel stuff.

Word count: 2.7k

Rodolfo Parra x f!reader

Technically, you weren't supposed to be in Mexico. You were supposed to be somewhere in Russia. 

But Laswell had pulled some strings and called in a favor, so. Here you were. Making your way to introduce yourself to the local alpha. 

Because Laswell had not only changed your assignment, but also sent you to deal with a pack. 

You were a little bit tempted to wring her neck. 

You stopped outside, taking a moment to eye the alpha, as he and his second in command eyed you. They were both good looking, with dark hair and dark eyes. 

But there was something about the second in command, hidden depths that intrigued you. 

"Alpha Vargas." You tipped your head to him. 

"Be welcome on my territory," he greeted, nodding to you. "Laswell said to expect you."

"She also said you'd give me more information on what you need help with." You smiled politely, tipping your chin. 

"Come inside." He nodded to the building behind him. "Have a drink with us." He clapped a hand to the other man's shoulder. 

"Rodolfo Parra," he introduced himself quietly. "Pack second." 

You nodded to him as well. "Pleasure." 

"Come," Alpha Vargas reiterated, leading the way inside. You followed quietly, observing the base with keen eyes. The pack here was not huge, only six members, but everyone on base had common shifter courtesy, from what you could see. 

The alpha's office was nice, and he waved you into a seat before he brought you a drink. He sat on the edge of his desk, his second sitting on the couch instead. 

"We need an unknown to do some surveillance," Vargas told you, tumbler dangling from his fingers. "All of my Vaqueros are known to the cartel here."

You nodded. This wasn't the first time you'd been thrown into a situation to gather intel. "Can do." 

He hummed, taking a sip of his drink. "Tomorrow," he decided. "For today, relax. Rudy will show you around." 

You blinked, a bit surprised, before you nodded. "Alright." You tossed the rest of your drink back, enjoying the brief burn, before setting your glass down. 

"This way." Rodolfo stood and waited for you to follow him. You did, of course, slinking after him with an easy confidence. 

Rodolfo was quiet as the two of you walked away from the alpha's office. He walked with the ease of someone not only used to having orders followed, but used to having some level of responsibility. Which made sense, as the pack second. 

"Have you been with your alpha long?" You tucked your hands in your pockets, looking around. The general hustle and bustle of a base was normal to hear, and the way nobody even tried to meet your eyes honestly felt nice. 

"You could say that." Rodolfo glanced back at you, amusement bright in his scent. "Twenty years."

You whistled lowly. "Damn," you muttered. "Impressive." 

“And you?” Rodolfo opened the door to another building, stepping inside and looking back at you. 

“Packless,” you informed him, easy as anything. It had been your own choice, after all. You didn’t need a pack. And you did better without yet another person keeping track of your movements. 

He nodded and didn’t offer condolences, which was a welcome change. Far too often, other shifters met that with pity, and you hated it. 

“This is your room,” he said, opening another door for you. “You are free to explore.”

“Why do you think he’s waiting until tomorrow?” You stepped into the room, taking a quick look to find your bag already sitting at the foot of the bed. The room was even a little decorated, a far cry from the bland, soulless military rooms you were used to.

Rodolfo was silent for a few moments, and when you turned to look at him he was already watching you. “We were advised you were coming from a different time zone,” he answered slowly. “And this is not so time sensitive you must move immediately.”

You huffed but nodded, accepting that. Good enough. Kind of unusual for a colonel to not shove you straight back into the field, but you’d take it for today. “I see. Thank you.” 

He nodded once before looking away. “Let one of us know if you need anything.”

You nodded, watching him turn and stride away. You weren’t sure what he shifted into, but you were willing to lay even odds on a canine of some sort. You were curious, of course. You wanted to know. But you weren’t about to ask. That would be rude. 

Clearly, a little exploring was in order. So that’s exactly what you did, taking your time surveying the base. It was nice, had personality, different from what you were used to. But in a good way. Nobody met your gaze, instead looking at your chin or forehead, which was just fine with you. (Actually, you were impressed with how easy it was.) 

You’d definitely had worse places to stay before. 

It was easy to pick out the pack among the rest - the pack all circled up around their alpha at dinner time, chatting and laughing with an ease you were almost envious of. 

Rodolfo met your gaze across the distance between you for a moment and raised one eyebrow, looking back to the table. A silent invitation. You smiled gently and shook your head just a little when he looked back at you. You were fine by yourself.

You were always fine by yourself. 

The job, when you finally got the details, didn’t sound too bad. The Vaqueros were all too well known to go looking, but you could pose as a tourist and get in places they would be noticed. The local cartel didn’t know to look for you, and you could blend in. 

Rodolfo was to be your point of contact. Of course. 

“We’ve arranged a room for you,” he said as he walked you back to your room. “In the city, so you will not have to trek back out here. We have communications set up for you.”

“Think the cartel will be that curious?” You weren’t dismissive, simply curious.

“It is difficult to say.” Rodolfo shrugged. “But we are asking you to, hm, poke your nose into their business.”

You surprised yourself with your laugh, head tipping back a little. “That’s not a hardship for me,” you told him with a grin. “I do that all the time on my own.” 

He smiled, amused, and shook his head. “I’ll drive you out,” he murmured. “Is thirty minutes enough?”

“Plenty,” you assured him. “Thanks.” You nodded once to him as you stepped inside to gather enough to tide you over a few days. Fortunately you had a few civilian outfits with you. 

The drive out of the compound was quiet. It wasn’t until you got closer to town that you gave in to the curiosity clawing at your chest. 

“Is your pack really that well known here?”

“Yes.” He shot you an amused look. “This is surprising to you?” 

“It is.” You leaned back in your seat, contemplating how best to phrase your thoughts. “My family always kept quiet about it. Old town superstitions, nonsense like that.” 

He hummed his understanding, gaze flitting briefly to you again. “No place is perfect.”

Your laugh was soft this time, your lips stretching in a grin to show your teeth. “True enough.” The city grew closer slowly, and you shifted in your seat. You knew he’d drop you off on the outskirts, to avoid raising suspicion. “I’ll try not to contact you in the middle of the night.”

He paused, pulling over so he could twist to look at you head-on. “You contact me any time,” he said, holding your gaze. Not pulling rank, just keeping your attention firmly on him. “For any reason. Si?” 

You blinked at him, caught off guard. Not just by the eye contact, but the intensity. The sincerity in his words was palpable in his scent, too. He really meant it.

“Okay,” you agreed slowly. 

He held your gaze for another two long moments before he nodded once and started driving again. 

He left you in the arranged drop location, bag slung over your shoulder, sun warm against your skin. You had directions to the hotel memorized, and you set off at an easy walk.

Sure, you were looking for cartel and for their involvement in the city, but you were also looking for anything odd or out of place. Thus, taking your time walking around. 

Signs of the cartel were everywhere, as were signs of violence. It was clear to you that something had happened here fairly recently - the cartel people you saw were more vigilant, almost nervous. The civilians were as well, constantly on the lookout. 

Good thing you were just a dumb tourist, then. 

You didn’t check in until that night, and that first check in was short. You’d arrived, nobody followed you, you’d report back when you had more. Rodolfo wished you luck. 

You tried not to be touched by his care. 

Two more days brought nothing of use, just dead ends and being sworn at. Nothing new, really. Your curiosity came in handy here, giving you the patience to explore, even if you didn’t always have the wisdom to back off when you should. 

Some of your frustration must have leaked through that third night, though. 

“Estás bien,” Rodolfo murmured. “Cálmate.”

“I’m calm,” you shot back, a little annoyed. “I’m fine.”

“You do not sound it.”

“You don’t know me.” 

That gave him pause, silence sitting between you both for long moments. “Not yet,” he admitted. “But I would like to.”

You blinked, jaw dropping in surprise. “...What?” 

“You heard me.” 

“You are trying to distract me.”

His chuckle was soft. “Perhaps, but I am also telling the truth.”

“We’re putting a pin in that until I’m done,” you decided after a moment, shaking your head. “After I’m done, we can get food, if you’d like. How’s that?” 

“Acceptable.” His smile was clear in his voice. “Keep me updated.”

“WIll do.” You hung up and blew out a breath. He… wanted to get to know you. Even though you were on loan. Even though you were not part of his pack. 

Huh. Well. That definitely gave you some food for thought. 

It took two more days for you to find trouble. 

You poked your nose somewhere it didn’t belong, and ended up finding much more than you anticipated. 

Having four guns pointed at you was nothing new. Being tied up while this happened was nothing new. Being threatened with mysterious white powder, however, was new. 

You could just hear two of them arguing while the others kept their guns on you. Something about you being a spy (correct), trying to get the formula (incorrect), something something rival production group (so wrong it was laughable), if they wanted to find out so bad they could get a sample off your corpse… Huh. That sounded bad. 

You were still trying to twist your hands free when one of the men dumped a little baggy of white powder on you. 

Welp. You were dead for sure. 

But the burning sensation against your skin was new. Some of the powder got up your nose and the burning intensified, traveling from your nose up to the rest of your head, and down to the rest of your body. You breathed in, pressure building, until you couldn’t hold it in. 

You shifted, bones shifting and muscles changing, feeling every agonizing moment. It felt like it lasted forever, but could have only been seconds. 

Leaving you on the ground, the chair splintered under you, fur all on end. You shook your head, disoriented, trying to right yourself. 

The first gunshot skimmed your shoulder, and you yowled. You didn’t know where you were, and it didn’t matter. You weren’t safe. 

The first man fell to your claws, his screams echoing in your head, too loud. And he wasn’t the only threat. Nothing made sense but you knew you needed to defend yourself. 

Your jaws and paws were dripping by the time you felt safe, by the time the shouting and shooting had stopped. You turned a quick circle to make sure there were no other threats, but all was quiet. Your chest heaved with your panting, jaws parted, the burning under your skin urging you to move, to get out, to run. 

So you did. You left the room and managed to find your way out of the building. Outside was dark but that worked to your advantage, letting you slip away from humanity, taking to rooftops to get out faster. It wasn’t long until the city was behind you, leaving you in more open land. 

The burning finally faded from your skin and your mind, leaving you exhausted but yourself again. But you couldn’t shift back. Trying sent a jolt through you, causing you to hiss. 

Well. You were definitely late to check in with Rodolfo, but there was nothing you could do about that now. You could hardly waltz back into the city and climb up to your room, not as you were. 

Mountain lions weren’t exactly a common sight in Las Almas, after all. 

Growling softly to yourself, you finally huffed. You could find a spot to hang out until you could shift and then get back to the hotel. You could try to get back to the base. You could just find somewhere to chill for a while and hope a better idea came to you. 

Well. The base wasn’t that far from town. You could make it. 

So you started walking, keeping to the side of the road. Just in case. It was dark, but nothing your vision couldn’t handle. Thank goodness for that. 

Your tail swished in agitation as you recalled the drug they’d dumped on you. You had assumed something more run of the mill, but that had clearly been something worse. You were far from an expert, but you’d heard rumors of a drug that forced a shift. 

Having now experienced it first hand, you could definitely add that it was not pleasant. You’d shifted almost feral, had gone fully feral when shot at. (Not that you felt bad about that - they had been planning to kill you, so you had no sympathy for them.) 

If the cartel was making that shit, which it sounded like, you needed to make the Vaqueros aware. That could be very dangerous let loose on the pack. 

It had certainly done a number on you. 

The sun was just starting to rise when you got to base. You stopped a little ways away and yowled, hoping to attract attention without getting shot at. Again. Fortunately, your wound had stopped bleeding long ago. Unfortunately, you were half-covered in dry or drying blood, and you felt absolutely disgusting. 

The commotion of multiple soldiers coming up to the gate was clearly audible to you, and your tail flicked against the ground. 

But it wasn’t until you heard Rodolfo that you tried to approach, yowling again, looking for the sergeant major. 

He called your name, and you trotted closer, paws silent on the ground. The gate opened and Rodolfo walked out to meet you, crouching down near you. 

“Can you shift back?” he asked, keeping his voice low. He didn’t touch you, but his gaze caught on all the blood on your fur.

You huffed and settled down to focus. It took a few moments (including one moment of sheer panic) before you shifted back, still bloody and sticky and gross. Remnants of the white powder clung to your skin and hair. 

Rodolfo was quick to shuck his jacket, tossing it over your shoulders. “Need to get you back to medical,” he fussed, gaze sweeping over you again. 

“I can walk,” you assured him, though you didn’t move away from him. The helping hand at your elbow was, in fact, helping. And soothing. 

He shot off orders in Spanish to get the alpha and alert medical, staying close to your side. Your progress to medical was slow as your body protested the drugs and the hard use. 

But you got there in the end, near-collapsing onto a bed. Rodolfo hovered, refusing to leave. Which was kind of nice, honestly. You got to hold his hand while you got stitches. 

"Thank you," you murmured to him when the nurse stepped out. 

"Any time." He squeezed your hand, looking down at you with some emotion you didn't want to identify.

#fall4rudy #rodolfo parra x you #rodolfo parra x reader #f!reader #shifter au

[welldonekhushi]

Call of Duty OC: Vasili "Bell" Sokolov 🔔

OLD DESIGN:

NEW DESIGN:

Finally, I came up with my Bell's bio-sheet as well! I abandoned him for nothing, but now I decided to give him some depth and character for good <3

GENERAL:

Name: Vasili

Full name: Vasili Mikhailovich Sokolov/Vincent Stephens

Codename: "Bell", Ворона (The Crow, by the KGB)

Alias(es): Vasya, Vince, Adler's protégé (by Woods), Scary Old Man (by Sims)

Age: [REDACTED]

Gender: Male

Nationality: Russian (as Vasili), American (as Vincent)

Languages spoken: Russian, English, Spanish, Italian, German and fluent in many other languages

Date of Birth: [REDACTED]

Place of Birth: [REDACTED]

Sexuality: Heterosexual

Marital Status: Single

Occupation: KGB (retired), Perseus Operative (formerly), MACV-SOG (currently, but after the true ending he leaves)

Status: Unknown

Universe: Black Ops: Cold War

Faceclaim: Danila Kozlovsky

Song: "Ostrov Nevezeniya" by Andrei Mironov

Biography: Bell, unaware about his own existence and his past, sought to assist the CIA special agent, Russell Adler on the aim to hunt down Perseus. Every moment that passes, he starts gaining his lost memory back, which makes him question himself about what he truly is. Would Bell choose the right side of history, or choose his own?

AFFILIATIONS:

KGB (Committee for State Security)

General Anton Charkov

Major Dimitri Belikov (double agent)

Major Vadim Rudnik

Lev Kravchenko

Perseus Faction

"Perseus" (leader)

Arash Kadivar

Anton Volkov

Qasim Javadi

The Safehouse

Alex Mason

Frank Woods

Russell Adler

Helen Park

Lawrence Sims

Lazar Azoulay

Aleksandra "Aleks" Clarke R. (@alypink )

SKILLS AND ABILITIES:

Weapon induced: Knife, MI6A1, M60, MP5, Type 63, LW3 — Tundra, AK-47, Throwing Knife

Fighting style: Systema, hand-to-hand combat, a little martial arts

Special skills: Has a good sense of observation and quick to react to the situation, can compose himself in many identities

Talents: Vasily could learn languages easily at a fast rate, even after getting brainwashed, he still retained those qualities within him

Shortcomings: Has frequent headaches, loses focus at times, not very confident when it comes to taking a decision, becomes absolutely dependent on his superiors

PERSONALITY:

Myers-Briggs Type: ISTP (The Virtuoso)

Is aware of his surroundings: Because of his career as a special agent, Bell conceals himself in terms of his personal life in seclusion. Even knowing he's hunted everywhere, he intelligently makes himself invisible from the outside world which makes others difficult for him to locate or recognise.

Works in solitude: Vasili/Bell has always prefered to work alone, but it doesn't mean he doesn't mind going on missions with the team. But, as his habit of being a special agent, that trait normally came from him back in his days when he worked with the KGB.

Observant and intelligent: Vasili was able to survive any sort of situation because of his good observant skills, and his capacity to act quicker. He was able to learn a lot of languages as well, and posed himself in different identities, that made it harder for the intelligence agencies to track him down.

Is reserved and introverted: Bell really doesn't speak to anyone much, unless when it comes to planning or going for missions, he needs to form a sort of communication to keep it lively. He is seen being more comfortable with Mason and Woods, but never felt having a good vibe with Adler. It was odd on his part, but it was going to grow very obvious when the truth would have come closer to any minute.

BACKGROUND STORY

Bell, who first used to live under the identity of Vasili Sokolov, was born in a family who had an army background, where his mother and father, both served during the Second World War, and hearing their stories, it gave Vasili a motivation to support his parents legacy by joining the intelligence — which was the KGB, going under the codename "Crow".

THE KGB ARC [REDACTED]

When Vasili joined the organisation, he showed a remarkable performance as a special agent. Some say he was born to join the intelligence and make the country proud, or he was a gifted child who could learn anything quickly and successfully perform a mission by stealing info or destroying any plans that could harm his country, without any failure. He even pointed out possible mistakes while planning out a mission, and in the end they worked out efficiently.

Sooner or later, Vasili's influence spread all around the world, especially during the Cold War, the enemies of the Soviet Union had a kill/capture on him. "Kill" because Vasili knew too much about them, and "Capture" because, they wanted him to tell everything he has with him, which likely created a risk for the KGB and they couldn't do so. With that, General Anton Charkov gave him the order to "retire" and stay hidden to protect himself along with the organisation. Disappointed, Vasili protested that it was the only thing that "kept him going", but having no choice, the agent decided to leave the KGB, under the General's orders.

PERSEUS ARC [REDACTED]

It was a matter of time, when one was going to collect him instead, realising he was now no longer affiliated with the KGB. Vasili was met with someone who called himself "Perseus", and requested him to join his alliance, since he knew about Vasili from his influence, and promised to give him full security, knowing he was hunted worldwide too. Seeing that as an opportunity, Vasili agreed to join in good terms, directly becoming Perseus's loyal agent.

As he continued his journey in the faction, he had shown his skills again which made Perseus as his most trusted agent, unlike the rest. But, at times Vasili has shown inner conflict towards his ideas. During the moment when he was explained about "Operation Greenlight" with the members, it left a strange feeling within his heart. He tried to protest, but he somehow couldn't refute his superior's words, and decided to acknowledge instead. Vasili had kept showing a remarkable performance, much to Arash Kadivar, one of the faction members, being envious of his relationship with Perseus.

Kadivar lures him to Trabzon Airport, where he takes Vasili, and explains that he didn't want any more "competition", resulting in him shooting the special agent in the car he was present in, leaving him to die and bleed alone. But, sooner or later, an attack situated on the airfield, unbeknownst to the dying Vasili who was growing unconscious every passing minute. Growing lost in his own thoughts, about Perseus that promised him to give him protection from the outer forces, but didn't recognise that his "own" people were against him too, as he questioned his existence at the same time.

SAFEHOUSE ARC

The voices echoed, and the man started to lose his breath.. until he woke up, and found himself in a strange place, where he couldn't remember anything of what happened. This is where, he encounters Russell Adler, a CIA agent who he curiously looks upon, having no idea. Unable to introduce himself, Adler briefed him about his name, being it under the codename "Bell". And this is where, all the very events of the canon game begin from here.

#cod #call of duty #bocw #black ops #call of duty black ops #black ops cold war #cod bell #bell oc #vasili sokolov #call of duty oc #oc #original character #oc biography #original character profile #character profile #my oc #my oc character #vasili bell sokolov

[sapphicseasapphire]

Sorry for the many questions I'm about to ask but its been driving me insane.

How exactly does the story of Hyrule Warriors work with your cryptid au? Does Wars have a personality during those events or do the events of Hyrule Warriors not happen at all?

Your au is great and l really want to know how Wind, Time, and maybe Ravio interact with Wars. I am considering writing a short story with them, and I want to stay as loyal to the au as possible.

Also I love your art.

Hello!! First of all I’m SO SORRY it’s taken me this long to get back to you!! Sincerely I apologize!! But this question made me do a lot of deep thinking and I wasn’t exactly sure how to answer. I’m gonna break this up into sections under the cut because it’s gonna get pretty long.

How does Hyrule Warriors fit into the au? Gonna be completely 100% honest here, I’m kind of sort of rewriting the whole story I think. There’s a lot that I’m still figuring out, but (in the briefest of terms as this is all subject to change) here’s what I’ve got so far: Cia is still enamored by the Spirit of the Hero, and Ganon still takes advantage of that desire and purges her of her light, corrupting her. She still opens the Gate of Souls(s) and launches an attack on Hyrule, opening portals across time. However, in this era, there is no hero. (There was no Ganon either, before she showed up, so Link was never born. There was still a Zelda, since Hyrule’s princesses are always named Zelda. But yeah, Link just doesn’t exist). Not until Cia’s attack, that is. When Hyrule is threatened, Zelda and Impa decided that they need a hero. And so, they make one. They physically pull the Hero’s Spirit from its resting place in the Sacred Realm and manually place it in a sword, thus creating Wars.

They don’t call him Link, as he’s not a person. In this era, he’s always been called the Hero of Warriors, as that is his purpose. He was created solely to fight. To win the war and save Hyrule.

After the war is won, he is placed deep within a temple and abandoned. After all, he’s a literal weapon. A weapon without a wielder is dangerous- anyone could take up his sword and be accepted as his new Master. The temple that he’s placed in is a typical Zelda Temple TM, like a dungeon, and it’s where he will wait until he is discovered by the Chain.

Does Wars have a personality in Hyrule Warriors? Short answer: no. He is a freshly created sword spirit and bound entirely to his Master. (Which, at this point, is his Zelda). With the War of Eras still ongoing, his purpose hasn’t yet been fulfilled. At this point, he is very very similar to how Fi was in Skyward Sword: mostly residing in his sword and giving power ups to his Master, only manifesting outside of the blade when called upon. He doesn’t speak unless spoken to. He shows absolutely no emotion. Ever.

… which leads me to the bad news. How do the others (Time, Wind, Ravio) interact with Wars? Generally speaking, they don’t. Like. Not even a little bit. With Wars constantly in his sword, he’s pretty inaccessible. Plus, they don’t really have any reason to. Any of Wars’ advice is heard only by Zelda, who relays the information to the group, they don’t think to ask where these strategies are coming from. And they really don’t think much of the sword at Zelda’s back.

That’s not to say that nothing is happening between the Links, though!! I’ve been having a field day thinking of little Time, a godling, fresh out of Termina and trying to comprehend the weight of his fate while also being a kid and now fighting in yet another war he never asked to be a part of. He’d appear to the others as Child Link (and go by Mask), using his god powers to change his appearance. He doesn’t have to be Child Link, but with how new his powers are?? He’s scared to be anything else.

And WIND!!! Wind and Ravio interactions!!! I have been thinking about this for WEEKS, ever since you sent this ask. Wind, the chaos gremlin of an Aquili. And Ravio, the violence hating Mer whose whole family and everyone he knew was killed by the corrupted Aquili in his own world. Ravio witnessed his whole pod being murdered, he narrowly escaped. He was a child, alone and afraid. If Legend carries bias against Aquili, imagine the scope of Ravio’s trauma. I wouldn’t be surprised if he avoided Wind at any cost.

(I will be making a lot of Ravio content in the future. He’s just. He’s my little guy).

I’m having a very fun time thinking about these interactions, even if it’s a bummer that Wars isn’t a part of it. (Remember! The only one who knows what Wars is is Sky. Wind and Time never had the chance to meet him. Although, after they discover that he’s a Sword Spirit, I bet a lot of things suddenly make a lot of sense haha!)

ANYWAY. This is one of the less organized lore posts I’ve made but I wanted to get this answered. Like I said, I’m still workshopping this, but I hope this helps? You’re welcome to make a story (as long as you tag me)! I’m sorry if this was a bit of a let down, but even if Wars’ role isn’t very big, I already have so many ideas about the others! I hope this gives you ideas as well

#the legend of zelda #chain as cryptids au #cryptid lore #I answered question #sapphire rambles way too long #hyrule warriors #albw ravio #sorry again about how long this took me to respond to #and sorry about wars #cryptid wind #cryptid time #cryptid warriors #links meet au

[sgt-morgan]

Of Cowboys and Daisies🐎

Summary: Jack is assigned to watch over a mother and her adorable little girl. As they get closer and closer to taking care of their problem, Jack worries he won’t be able to let go.

Warnings: AFAB! Female identifying reader, talks of cannon typical violence, death of a spouse x2, really a fluff piece.

A/N: I wrote this because I have that stupid Tik tok edit song stuck in my noodle.

Masterlist

Follow up fic

Agent Whiskey wasn’t sure he was going to survive this arrangement. Champ said it was temporary, but his idea of temporary passed about two months ago. It was a fairly simple assignment, and with everything that’s happened, an easy assignment is a lot kinder than getting kicked off the team. So he took the job, even though the rapidly approaching end of it made him want to drink until he couldn’t see straight.

“It’s a simple protection detail.” Champ had shrugged, pulling the file out of his desk and smacking it down in front of him with a sigh. “She’s a youngin’, at least to me anyway. She’s CIA, talented too, once her life is out of the red zone, I’ll probably recruit her. Sharp as a tack, quick as a whip, and she’s got the mouth of a sailor, she’s right up your alley.” Jack studies the files with interest, running a curious finger over the picture of you that was attached to the file. You were a looker for sure, he listened to champ go on, reading over your impressive and extensive file, until he ran across a bit of information that shocked him half to death.

“She’s got a baby?” He huffed, incredulous.

“Yeah, little girl, her names Daisy May, she’s three. She’s sweeter than a peach, got Tequila and Ginger wrapped around her little finger already, and Momma is just as bad.” Champ chuckled, pouring them both a glass of Statesman’s finest while Jack stared at him intent on hearing every detail Champ was willing to offer. “Her late husband was a SEAL. Top ranking, special ops, very high up on the food chain. One day she goes out to grab dinner with the baby, comes back and he’s dead with a note pinned to his chest with her cover details written all over it. Tried to deal with it on her own, then after about two months she pulls the bottle her daddy- former agent Brandy god rest his soul- left her and called us up asking us to make her disappear. So we called our buddies at the CIA, got her cleared, and we’re doing it. She’s our-specifically your- problem until we can take out whoever blew her cover.”

Jack stared at the amber liquid in his glass and thought long and hard about that one. It’s a dark story, indicative of his own. “Where are we keeping her?” He sighs, swirling the liquid once more before shooting it.

“Well son, that’s up to you. If you wanna do a safe house, that’s fine. We can radio y’all in and use satellite to do the rest, or you can use the ranch. Familiar territory for you, plenty of security, and it means we can all look after her and the little one when necessary.” Champ sighs when Jack slides his glass back over to him.

“Where abouts they from?” Jack questions, “They gonna be ok living in a ranch or am I working with city slickers?”

“Oh no, She’s originally from Prestonsburg, she’s Floyd county born and raised. They were living in Texas though. Her husband was a Texan, moved to Austin to be closer to family and all that. She ain’t got anybody but an Aunt back home, but she’s an Eastern Kentucky girl. She grew up riding horses.” Jack’s eyebrows shot up to the brim of his hat at Champs little interlude.

“Well Shoot Champ, you really shot the shit with her huh?” He laughs.

“Her daddy was a friend, and she’s just like him. She’s a good girl, you’ll like her.” Champ nodded him to the door, and Jack took the dismissal in stride. Champ had high hopes, and Jack just hoped he was right.

Reflecting on it now, it’s laughable how skeptical he was. You were a picture of perfection. When he first met you, he knew, and Daisy put the bow on top of the package.

Funnily enough his horse introduced you, Tequila and Ginger were walking you around the distillery grounds, and had stopped to let you show Daisy the horses. He found you standing outside of a stall, specifically the stall of his horse, Coke. Coke is an Appaloosa with a blanket with spots. He’s not normally friendly with newcomers, having a stubborn streak a mile wide, but Jack was shocked to see you stood in front of the Horse’s stall with no issue. You had the baby propped on one hip, with her head on your shoulder and a thumb in her mouth, and Coke’s muzzle resting on the other. You were casually talking to Ginger while Tequila stared on shocked as you fondly stroked the horse’s muzzle. Normally, everyone knew not to turn their back on his horse, unless of course you were him. Coke was known to be a jester, and liked to nip at your hair or push you around with his muzzle, but there he stood, cozying up to a woman he just met today. He stood back and kept watching, seeing what the horse was up to. He heard the horse nicker and huff, moving his head to push towards the baby and you laughed, letting the curious animal nuzzle at the girl.

“Yeah big boy,” you patted his crest as he moved his head off your shoulder to let the baby stroke his muzzle, “yeah- gentle Daisy May, be nice- yeah big boy, that’s my Daisy, you like her? Yeah, that’s the baby, are you a good boy? hmm?” You talked to the horse and he watched as you pulled a sugar cube from the shelf next to the stall and let the girl feed it to Coke. The big horse oh-so-gently took the cube from the girl, tickling her palm and she giggled. The horse huffed through his nose and threw his head a bit and you laughed. “Oh ho ho! Well, you liked that huh? I’d give yah another big boy but I don’t know if your rider would take too kindly to me fattening up such a pretty stallion, bet you make all those pretty broodmares happy huh? Yeah.” You laugh as he whinnies.

“Well, He took a liking to you quick.” Jack called, making himself known and getting closer to the stall. “Ol’ Coke here is usually a temperamental fella.”

“Who, this guy?” You smirk as the horse huffs again at Daisy’s hair making her giggle. “Why no, he’s a sweet fella. Ain’t yah big boy?” The horse bobs his head as if nodding in agreement and Jack chuckles.

“Don’t let him fool yah,” Tequila grumbled, eyeing the horse warily, “That menace picks on anybody that ain’t him.” He pointed at Jack with a glare and Jack chuckled.

“Now don’t be bitter sunshine, you’re just mad that he pushed you into the water trough last summer.” Jack grinned at you with a wink and you laughed. Then the girl on your hip tugged at your hair a bit and whispered in your ear. Like most children though, Daisy was not a good whisperer.

“Mama, wook, Cowboy.” She mumbled around her thumb, pointing to Jack’s Stetson. Oh how his heart melted, he knew he was a goner then and there.

“Oh man,” you gasped, “you’re right! I bet this is his horsey.” You nodded and the girls eyes twinkled with wonder.

“Horsey pwetty.” She nodded sagely, “Ask him mumma, wanna ride him.” She had the biggest eyes, her tiny curls were barely contained by the pigtails her hair was in. She was a pretty little baby, and a carbon copy of her momma, dressed in little denim overalls and a pretty flowered shirt. She was cute, almost too cute, he didn’t know how he’d survive the next month or so with those big eyes pleading with him to give her anything she wanted, he knew he would be too weak to say no, he has a hard time picturing anyone saying no to her, not even her momma. Speaking of the mom, she was beautiful. She had on a beat up Vietnam tiger stripe jungle fatigue with a patch reading ‘Brandy’ rolled up to the elbows. Her T-shirt read ‘Kentucky Strong’ and he recognized it as one of those charity shirts that raised money for the flooding in Eastern Kentucky. She had aviators perched on her nose and two dog tags around her neck, one that was clearly older than the other, one for dad one for her husband if he had to guess. The best thing about the outfit though, was the shorts, those beautiful legs on full display, so good looking he had to pry his eyes off of her with the strength of ten men.

Jack jumped in all at once, “Am I a cowboy sweet baby? What gave me away? Was it the belt buckle?” He playfully tugged on it and gave an exaggerated frown, the girl giggled a no, and he pointed to his boots. “Oh, must’a been my boots!” He kicked up a heel to show off the worn brown leather boots. The girl squealed and laughed again, and you watched delighted that your baby was having so much fun.

“No!” Daisy laughed again clutching her hands together while she giggled. “No it was the hat!”

“Oh! Why silly me!” He breathed a fake sigh of relief, “I forgot it was up there sugar! Can’t be a cowboy without the hat!” The little girl laughed again in delight and he grinned back. Tequila and Ginger stared on shocked, Whiskey hadn’t been this carefree in a while, this little girl was working miracles. “Oh but I’ve gone and forgotten my manners,” Jack smacks his forehead dramatically “I never got your name Little lady! My name is Jack, what yours?” He extended a hand to the girl and she beamed, tucking her tiny hand in his.

“I’m Daisy!” She grinned, shaking his hand.

“Well, ain’t that just first class, you’re as pretty as a flower, so you must be Daisy!” He grinned at the delighted little girl, then whispered to her conspiratorially, “And who’s this?” He pointed at you and Daisy nodded, her mouth an ‘o’.

She introduced you and Jack smiled, tiling his hat to you, “Pretty name for a pretty lady, I’m Jack Daniel’s, code name Whiskey ma’am, pleased to make your acquaintance, and this here’s Coke.” He patted the horse’s flank as he stepped closer to you.

Your smile was just as magnetic as your daughter’s, and Jack felt his knees buckle, “Pleased to meet you Whiskey, Jack and Coke is my favorite combo, so I got high hopes this’ll be a good arrangement.”

And it was, y’all got on like a house on fire, and now he was very used to having you in his home. He hadn’t invited anyone into his space like this since his wife died. He couldn’t find the appeal in it, but there was something about you and this little girl he couldn’t seem to shake.

You were more than willing to tackle any task, and it was one of the things that he enjoyed most about you. In the months you had been there you helped around the Ranch any way you could. Jack had gotten used to doing the chores on his own, but he was suprised by how easily you worked yourself into his routine. It wasn’t a big Ranch, it was near the distillery in Oldham county, right smack in the middle between Louisville and La Grange. The ranch hosted his three horses, six chickens, two barn cats, and about 10 or so cows. In the mornings, you were up just as early as him, you alternated putting on the coffee, then he would deal with the horses (Coke, Julep, and Sazerac. You got a big kick out of their names, and he loved how you chuckled anytime he mentioned them.) and the cows, and you fed the chickens and the barn cats (Tom and Jerry, all the whiskey themed names). When you finished gathering eggs and greeting the cats, he would come back to you bouncing the baby on your hip while cooking breakfast.

“Well, you feed my animals and make my eggs, aren’t you handier than a pocket on a shirt.” He grinned one morning and you rolled your eyes with a chuckle.

“Well Cowboy, someone’s gotta feed you, black coffee and a Marlboro red aren’t breakfast, and they never will be.”

You were also a brilliant agent. Once you were settled, you and Jack started digging into anything you could find about the people who killed your husband, and you proved yourself an invaluable asset in intel gathering. You dug up more in a single hour than some men hoped to find in a lifetime, but it took its toll on you for sure. Day in day out combing over your husband’s files and trappings, staring at the inner mechanisms of his whole life and wonder what it would be like if he was here to finish all of his loose ends. He understood, and he hated that he couldn’t just take the pain for you, but it was a comfort to the both of you to have someone to talk to.

“Oh, the first week after his funeral was hell,” you sighed, playing with your daughters curls as she slept peacefully on your lap in the evening sun, “I kept trying to call him, to vent with him about how scared and tired I was, only to be reminded this wasn’t a deployment or a buissness trip, he was just… gone. Daisy was a mess too, cried for him every night, wouldn’t sleep until I showed her this video of him saying he loved her that he made her when he went on deployment. It broke my heart.” You sniffled and Jack felt his heart ache with sympathy.

“I know all about that hurt,” he sighed, handing you a beer and settling next to you on the big wrap around porch, “I’d keep rolling over and reaching for her in the middle of the night, I’d touch the cold sheets and I’d remember and it would hurt me every time.”

“Oh god yeah, took me weeks before I could truly sleep on my own again, I used to put one of his shirts on his pillow and sleep with it, it was the only way I could get myself to bed.” You sighed, nodding and sipping the drink.

“I used to spray her perfume on her pillow,” Jack nodded, “When I ran out I forced myself to sleep without it, It was months before I could get a full nights rest again.”

“I couldn’t imagine having to deal with all that alone,” you grimaced, “I at least had Daisy, I hate that you’re alone.”

“Well, I was alone, but I’m not anymore, I got you.” He slung an arm around your shoulder and you basked in the sun together until Jack felt you go lax in his grip. You had fallen asleep in his grasp, and he was shocked at how good it felt to have you be so vulnerable around him. It melted something in his chest. What was he gonna do with you.

You and Daisy just kept growing on him. His life was no longer just solitude and shoot outs, now it was a little more tea parties and tag and it was a very welcome change. You both had him wrapped around your fingers, every moment he wasn’t spending working on the project with you, or with Ginger and Tequila at Statesman, he was with you and your little girl.

One evening you were playing a game of tag, when Daisy just about caused them both a heart attack. You were running around and chasing each other in the small creek out the back of the ranch. Daisy was a doll in her little floral one piece, her wet hair plastered to her forehead and her little feet splashing away. You were a sight too, a black bathing suit with a cut out under your breasts showing off an ornamental tattoo that he really just wanted to-

“Come on Dada, catch me!” Time froze when the little girl said it and your jaws dropped, when you finally met each others gaze, you snapped out of it and turned to your daughter.

“No sweetie, that’s-“ you tried but the little girl cut you off.

“I know mumma. It’s otay though, Dada is no here, so this is my OTHER dada. It’s otay to have two dada.” She smiled and meandered to Jack, squeezing him in a hug. The little girl was barely knee high to a grass hopper, but she had hit him with that bombshell so hard she might as well have been a giant. Then, she just toddled off, finding interest in the stream once more, gathering rocks.

“Darlin I’m so sor-“ he began and you waved it away.

“Don’t worry Jack, she’s three. She adores you, and her only other frame of reference for a consistent male presence is her dad. Besides, if she had to pick another father figure, I’d want it to be you.” With that, you went to go stop her from tormenting a frog, and he stood there like a statue. The way you so casually said that amazed him, you put so much unwarranted faith in him, and it made the hardened cowboy turn to mush. Whatever this turns out to be though, one thing is for sure. He would do anything in the world for you and that little girl, and this just drove it home.

Weeks passed and you all just continued to get closer. Daisy asked for him as often as she did for you now when she’s upset, and he was now totally attached to their evening ritual of snuggling on the couch and watching Bluey. Every day you got closer and closer, and every day you found out more and more about your husbands killer, which ultimately led you to today.

Jack had left early, sun not even being up and the morning dew had just barely settled over the grass. Jack had gotten the mission from Ginger last night, and you had prepped and planned with him until he swore the plans were tattooed on the back of his eyelids.

It was over quick, he took them out and got his necessary intel and now you were safe. No blown cover, no second attempt at murder, just efficiency.

You’re free. You could go anywhere you want and you’d be safe. Where would you go? Your aunt was in Pburg, not too far off, a couple of tolerable hours away. Your late husband’s family though… they were in Texas, and that was more of a stretch.

This was miserable, thinking of all the ways you would leave him, though you weren’t even his to begin with. You were never his, you were just his charge, someone he was meant to protect, you and that perfect little girl. He got so caught up in it, he forgot to protect himself, and now he was faced with an old companion he never wanted to see again, loneliness.

He finally pulled up to the ranch, and Coke and the others were grazing in the first paddock near the front of the house, until the clever horse sees him and trots over with something in his teeth. It was a little stuffed rabbit, Coke had it by the ear and dropped it in his outstretched palm. It was like another painful reminder of what comes next. What would he do when his life was no longer bows and bunny rabbits. How would he go back to the way things were before. He sighed and made his way into the house, he was somewhat confused to see the front room totally empty. Normally, you’d be feeding the baby at this time, she would be sat in in the booster seat he’d bought for the kitchen table, in the little pink bib she always wore, probably making a mess, but then she’s squeal and wave at him and tell him to ‘come sit cowboy! I share!’ You’d laugh and tell her he had his own to eat, and she would frown and say ‘mine better!’ Today though, the kitchen was quiet and he felt his heart hammering in his chest, had you already gone? Were you so excited to be rid of him? But no, there was the sound of a shower, his shower specifically. He wandered into his room, and the sight there strengthened his resolve and told him that he needed to buck up and tell you how he feels, because he never wanted to sacrifice this.

Daisy was laying on his pillow, the stuffed horse toy that was an exact replica of Coke was tucked up under her chin, and she contentedly snored away on top of his quilt. The only light in the room was from the lamp on his bedside table, and a sliver leaking out from the cracked door to his bathroom. He carefully tucked the little girls blank is up over her chin, and listened to you humming from the shower. He was used to sharing his bathroom with you, normally you used the one near your room, but when you needed to shower and Daisy was napping, you preferred to use his so you could hear her if she cried. The warm smell of your shampoo was wafting from the bathroom, and your clothes were laid out on his bed. He ran a hand over them with a soft smile, the whole thing just felt so domestic. The sleeping child, the woman in his shower, the three sets of boots by his door, the pictures on his fridge. They all just felt so natural, filling his empty space with the feeling of home.

“Jack? Cowboy? Is that you?” You called from the bathroom.

“Yeah Sugar, it’s me.” He called back softly, padding his way into the bathroom and leaning up against the sink.

“How’d it go Whiskey? Did all go to plan?” He heard the hopefulness in your voice.

“Yeah sweetness, we did it. You’re free.” He could hear you pause at the melancholy in his voice and he was kicking himself. ‘Don’t ruin this for her Jacky, she should be happy.’ He heard the water kick off and handed you your Terry cloth robe and a towel. Once you were decent, you opened the curtain.

“You say that, but why does it sound like you just signed my warrant?” You asked curiously, squeezing the ends of your hair with a towel. He hadn’t realized how comfortable you had gotten around each other, but he supposed he shouldn’t be all that shocked. All the small touches, the snuggles, then tender moments. He was addicted to them now, and he never wanted to kick the habit.

“Well, I reckon you’d wanna get back to your life now there ain’t a target on your back.” He sighs, removing his hat and running a hand through his hair.

“Oh Jack,” you chuckled and his head whipped up when your palms came to rest on his cheeks. “These past few moths have been some of the happiest moments of my life since my husband passed. My daughter loves you, you are so good with her, she’s had nothing but smiles and laughter. You make my days better, you make me happy.” You caressed his cheek and he was hanging on to your every word, staring into those beautiful eyes he dreamed after these days. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it clearer baby, you’ll have to pardon me for that, Lord knows I’ve been a little scattered, but I have my life, it’s right here, with you. That is, if you’ll have me.”

He was stunned, here in his arms he held everything he never thought he’d have when his wife died. A beautiful woman, a sweet baby, laughter, light, and maybe even love. “Oh honey,” he gasped, pulling you in and finally kissing you like he’s wanted to since he saw you that first day in the stables. “Wild horses couldn’t drag me from you and that little girl.” You giggled and kissed him again, and again. When you finally broke away, you grinned up at him, and in this moment if you had asked him to kill an army of a thousand, he would have asked you what time you wanted him home for dinner.

“Well then cowboy? Why don’t you get gussied up and we can celebrate our new beginnings. Together.”

#agent whiskey #agent whiskey x reader #Jack Whiskey Daniels #Kingsmen #Kingsmen and the Golden Circle #Spotify #jack daniels x reader #jack daniels x female reader #jack daniels x you #pedro pascal #pedro pascal fandom #pedro pascal character fanfiction #whiskey #whiskey x reader

[revnah1406]

⛰️☀️ABBY MASON 🌿🍂

Name: Abigail Mason

Nickname(s): "Abby", "Abs" (only by Woods), Kid, kiddo, girl.

Date of birth: February 29th 2012

Age: 18/19 yo (2030)

Height: 1.65m/5.4 ft

Weight: 56 Kg/ 123.5 lbs

Blood Type: O+

Sexuality: Lesbian

Family:

David Mason (Father) - *Alive*

Alice Johnson (Mother) - *Deceased*

Alex Mason (Grandfather) - *Deceased*

Frank Woods (Adoptive Grandfather) - *Deceased*

Biography:

(Call of duty black ops 2 spoilers!)

Abby is the Daughter of David Mason and Alice Johnson. She was born and raised in an environment full of fun and love. She had a great childhood. But the sad thing is due to her parents job she didn't see them very recently. David in the military and Alice working in the hospital.

But she stayed the majority of her days with the one and only Frank Woods. While her parents worked she was raised by Woods, like he did with David before. She has her best memories with that old man. He taught her a lot of things and told her a lot of stories too.

She loved that old man.

She had an amazing youth until she was 13. One night while visiting Woods in The Vault. They had a strange visit. After all that happened, Menéndez appeared again. Ready to get his revenge for what Woods did years ago. The poor kid didn't know what to do but look. Until suddenly Menéndez aimed a gun at her and shot. She hit the ground holding her chest while she started to bleed out.

Woods couldn't do anything because in the blink of an eye, he got stabbed in the throat with a knife. Abby just could lay there, bleeding out, begging, screaming, witnessing how Menéndez killed the man that practically raised her.

That affected her enormously, and she never was the kid she was once.

Personality:

She was practically raised by Woods, so it's not a surprise that she got a few traits from him. She has a strong personality, not afraid to say what's in her mind, it doesn't matter if she's talking with the fucking president Bosworth herself.

It's hard to gain her trust, she's reluctant and even rude to strangers. But when it comes to friends and family she's pure joy and kindness, she leaves her mean shell aside and she jokes around (usually dark humour), laughs, giggles...

"Abs swears like a sailor but has the imagination of a five year old" - Woods.

She has a really strong bond with her family, it's everything to her, so she would and will do everything for her family.

So it's better not to mess with her but if you earn her trust she will show you that little kid inside her.

Trivia:

Abby is left-handed

Her name was chosen by Woods, he knew that if his Friend Mason would have a daughter would name her Abigail. So in honour of his memory David and Woods named her like that.

She's Allergic to seafood

She doesn't like sweets and is a huge fan of spicy food. Although the next day she will feel as if she has been hit by a truck.

She has one of Woods' tattoos to honour his memory, although she feels a little bit shy when she has to talk about it.

She swears more than she talks. (She spent too much time with old Woods)

Loves talking and reading about space and astronomy. One of her dreams was to become an astronaut.

Wears silly socks with silly patterns.

Although she was raised by a lieutenant commander and an ex-CIA agent, she has a really anarchical mentality. She doesn't believe in rules or the government and she's not afraid to "debate" it.

Delta (∆):

Moodboard:

Playlist:

You can read more about her here!

👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

Mason's Legacy

#abby mason #call of duty oc #call of duty oc: abby mason #mason's legacy #call of duty #call of duty black ops #call of duty black ops 2 #call of duty cold war #frank woods #alex mason #david mason #my oc #my art #call of duty fic #cod blops #cod blops 2 #cod cw

[tanadrin]

[epistemic status: a bunch of semi-related thoughts I am trying to work out aloud] It has been noted countless times that reactionary politics rely on a feeling of threat: our enemies are strong and we are weak (but we are virtuous and they are not, which is why they’re our enemies!); we must defend ourselves, we must not be afraid of doing what needs to be done; we must not shie away from power generally, and violence specifically.

And there are lots of contexts--like when talking about the appeal of reactionary politics in the US before and at the beginning of Trump’s rise to prominence, or when talking about hard-on-crime policies that are a springboard to police militarization, or (the central example of all this in the 21st century) the post 9/11 PATRIOT-act terrorism paranoia that was a boon to authoritarians everywhere, and spurred a massive expansion of both control and surveillance in everyday life--where critics of reactionary rhetoric are chastised for their failure to appeal to the other side, because they come off as callous towards their concerns and their real fears and anxieties.

And while this might not be strategically correct, frankly, I think there’s a sense in which it is justified to be callous towards those concerns. Because those concerns are lies. They may be lies borne out of a seed of real experience (9/11 did happen, of course), but the way that seed is cultivated by focused paranoia, by contempt toward cultivating any sense of proportionality or any honest comparison of risk, the way it is dragooned into the service of completely orthogonal political goals (”the CIA/NSA/FBI must be able to monitor all private communications everywhere in the world, just in case it might prevent another 9/11″) chokes off any possible sympathy I might otherwise feel. American paranoia about another couple thousand lives being lost in a 9/11 like event resulted in a number of deaths literally multiple orders of magnitude larger in Iraq and Afghanistan. During the former, some years Iraq was suffering the equivalent of six or seven 9/11s a year.

So, any fear-driven policy must not (for example) say “to prevent disaster X happening again, we’re going to make it happen 270 times over to someone else.” That’s not reasonable. And “fear is a bad basis for crafting policy” is not exactly a revolutionary observation. There’s that probably-apocryphal story of a Chinese professor responding to Blackstone’s Ratio--you know, “better that ten guilty persons go free than one innocent person suffer”--with “better for whom?” Which is supposed to be this trenchant and penetrating question that makes you reexamine your assumptions. But it’s always struck me as idiotic. Better for society! For everyone! Because the law only functions well if it is seen as a source of order and justice, not as an authoritarian cudgel; because a society in which anxiety drives policymaking and legal responses to social ills is one that is in the process of actively devouring itself; because flooding the public discourse with language that dehumanizes criminals and makes it easy to separate the individual from universal principles like civil rights is an acid that destroys the social fabric.

Fear as a germ of reactionary politics manifests itself in lots of ways outside of both historical examples, like fascism, or more recent examples, like US foreign policy during the war on terror. Fear and its link to purity-attitudes, with a low level of scientific literacy in general, drives stuff like the organized anti-vaccine movement. In the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram of political tendencies, I’d argue it’s a big factor in the wellness-to-Qanon track. It’s a big part of tough-on-crime rhetoric, which in the American instance in particular also draws on an especially racialized form (cf. the “Willie Horton” ad). Fear and purity and anti-contamination anxieties are even big in opposition to nuclear power, because most of the public just has a really bad sense of what the comparative dangers of nuclear vs fossil fuel are; and because the former has been culturally salient since 1945 in a way the latter hasn’t, nuclear contamination feels much more threatening than fossil fuel waste, despite by any measurable harm the latter causing far worse problems, even before you factor in any risks from climate change.

I would like to argue in particular that true crime as an entertainment genre, and wellness culture, and fears about child abuse all contribute to reactionary politics--they are in themselves major reactionary political currents--in a way that cuts across the political spectrum because they are not strongly marked for political factionalism. A lot of the rhetoric both from and around true crime entertainment promotes the idea that violent crime exists, or at least can flourish, because of an insufficiently punitive attitude toward crime; one that can only be fixed by centering victims’ desire (or putative desire) for retribution in the legal process, by eroding the civil rights of the accused, and by giving the police and prosecutors more power. Obviously, this is just 80s and 90s tough on crime rhetoric repackaged for millennials; it centers individual experience a bit more and deemphasizes the racial component that made the “Willie Horton” ad so successful, but it posits that there is only one cause for crime, a spontaneous choice by criminals that has no causal relationship with the rest of the world, and only one solution, which is authoritarianism.

Wellness culture leverages purity concerns and scientific illiteracy in ways which are so grifty and so transparently stupid that it’s by far the least interesting thing on this list to me; its most direct harm is in giving an environment for the anti-vaccine movement to flourish, and I’m always incredibly annoyed when people talk about how the medical establishment needs to do more to reassure the public about vaccines’ safety and efficacy. Again, strategically, this may be correct; people dying of preventable disease is really bad. But doctors as a body didn’t promote Andrew Wakefield’s nonsense; doctors as a body didn’t run breathless article after breathless article about vaccines maybe causing autism; doctors as a body didn’t scare the bejezus out of folks in the 90s and then act all surprised when preventable childhood diseases started breaking out all over the place.

Although outside the whole anti-vax thing, I think there are lots of other harms that wellness culture creates. It tends to be fairly antiscientific; in order to sell people nonsense (because as a subculture it exists almost exclusively to sell people things) it has to discredit anything that might point out that it is selling nonsense. Whether the anti-intellectualism that flourishes in these quarters is a result of intentional deceit or just a kind of natural rhetorical evolution probably varies. But it is an important component of wellness culture to be able to play a shell game between “big pharma doesn’t have your best interests at heart,” “you don’t need your anti-depressants,” and “laetrile cures cancer.”

The way in which fears of child abuse are turned into a reactionary political cudgel probably actually annoys me the most; whether it’s Wayfair conspiracy theories, conservatives trying to turn “groomer” into an anti-queer slur, or just antis on tumblr, the portrayal of sadistic sexual threat aimed at children from an outside malevolent force is compelling only because the vast majority of child abuse and CSA comes from within families and within culturally privileged structures of authority like churches, and this fact makes everyone really uncomfortable, and no one wants to talk about it. I remember getting really annoyed during the Obama years when the White House wanted to talk about bullying and anti-LGBT bullying in particular, while studiously avoiding blaming parents and teachers in any way for it, despite the fact that all the coming out horror stories I know are from people’s parents turning on them.

Now, very conservative politics have always opposed dilution of a kind of privilege for the family structure; they envision a family structure which is patriarchal, and so dilution of this privilege is dilution of the status of patriarch. Very insular communities which cannot survive their members having many options or alternative viewpoints available to them, including controlling religions but also just abusive parents who want to retain control over their kids, also bristle at the idea of any kind of general society-wide capacity for people to notice how parents treat their children. But beyond that, I think our society still treats parents as having a right of possession over their children and their children’s identities, especially when they’re young, and bolsters that idea with an idea that the purity of children is constantly under threat from the outside world, and it is the parents’ job to safeguard that purity. The result is the nuclear family as a kind of sacred structure which the rest of society has no right to observe or pry open; and this is a massive engine of enabling the abuse of children. To no other relationship in our society do we apply this idea, that it should be free from “interference” (read: basic accountability) from the rest of society.

Moreover, the idea of childhood as a time of purity and innocence, which not only must be protected from but during which children must be actively lied to about major aspects of how the world works, is one of the last ways remaining to an increasingly secular culture to justify censorious and puritanical Victorian morality. It is hard to advocate for censorship to protect the Morals of the Christian Public, when nobody believes in the Morals of the Christian Public anymore; but “think of the children!” still works as a rallying cry, because of this nagging sense we have that age-appropriate conversations with children about adult topics will cause them to melt or explode.

In many ways, these anxieties on behalf of theoretical children are the ones I am most contemptuous of. Not because child abuse isn’t a serious problem--it is--but because the vector imagined for it is almost entirely opposite the one it actually tends to occur along. People who pretend that the primary danger to children is from strangers are usually woefully misinformed; people who pretend it is from media are either idiots or liars seeking a cover for their craving for censorship.

In conclusion: while it’s not possible to exorcise all our neuroses from our politics, anymore than we will ever exercise all our neuroses from our aesthetics, there are some we should be especially on guard against. A sense of threat, and anxieties which tie into concerns about purity and fears of contamination, are two big ones. These produce policies that are not only badly correlated with the outcomes they ostensibly want, but actually and severely destructive to them, in the same way that invading Iraq was actively destructive to any notion of preventing terrorism, saving American or Iraqi lives, or promoting political stability in the Middle East. And we should hold in healthy suspicion anybody whose politics seem to be driven by similar neuroses. Some merely believe very harmful things. Some are actually actively deceptive. None will achieve any of the higher aims they claim as justification for their beliefs.

#i'm not saying we *must* radically reshape society to destroy the nuclear family #but i am saying i think it would be good for child welfare

[usafphantom2]

Where is the doghouse?

Not only JP-7: the SR-71 could use JP-4 and JP-5 as emergency fuels but they both limited the Blackbird's top speed to Mach 1.5..

The SR-71 Blackbird was the first aircraft to use its own fuel for hydraulic fluid. It was called the fuel hydraulic system.

The legendary SR-71 Blackbird Mach 3+ spy plane was powered by two 34,000 lbf (151,240 N) thrust-class J58 afterburning turbojet engines. Each engine contained a nine-stage compressor driven by a two-stage turbine. The main burner used an eight-can combustor and the afterburner is fully modulating. The primary nozzle area was variable. Above Mach 2.2, some of the airflow was bled from the fourth stage of the compressor and dumped into the augmentor inlet through six bleed-bypass tubes, circumventing the core of the engine and transitioning the propulsive cycle from a pure turbojet to a turbo-ramjet.

The SR-71 was the first aircraft to use its own fuel for hydraulic fluid. It was called the fuel hydraulic system.

An engine-driven pump provided 1800 psi of recirculating fuel to accurate various engine components and then returned it back to the aircraft fuel system to be burned. Fuel was used in the actuators to control the afterburner nozzles, which maintain the proper exhaust gas temperature and control the thrust output. The fuel was also used in the engine actuators to shift the two-position inlet guide veins from their axial position to the cambered position and back again. This was just another of the many first-ever inventions of the-SR-71.

The J58 engine was hydromechanically controlled and burned a special low volatility jet fuel mixture known as JP-7.

Emergency fuels could be used in the SR-71 if the crew was low on fuel and had to use ANY tanker (as already explained the Blackbird relied on KC-135Q tankers [that could simultaneously carry a maximum of 74,490lb of JP-7 and 110,000lb of JP-4 for their own engines] but the SR-71 could also be refueled by standard Stratotankers in the event KC-135Qs were not available or if the Blackbird crew had to deal with an emergency situation) they could find to avoid the loss of the aircraft. The emergency fuels were JP-4 or JP-5 but they limited the Blackbird top speed to Mach 1.5. There were six main fuselage tanks. All 80,285 pounds of JP-7 fuel were carried in six main fuselage tanks. The tanks numbered one through six moved forward to aft (back) tank 6B It could hold 7,020 pounds of gravity-fed fuel and two tanks sumps. This was also called the “doghouse” and was located in the extreme back portion of the fuselage.

Fuel was the lifeblood of this fastest-manned airplane in the world. I found the following in a declassified CIA brief.

There it would first be used as hydraulic fluid at 600 F to control the afterburner exit flaps before being fed into the burner cans of the powerplant and the afterburner itself.

Cooling the cockpit and crew turned out to be seven times as difficult as on the X-15 research airplane which flew as much as twice as fast as the SR-71 but only for a few minutes per flight. The wheels and tires of the landing gear had to be protected from the heat by burying them in the fuselage fuel tanks for radiation cooling to save the rubber and other systems attached thereto. Special attention had to be given to the crew escape system to allow safe ejection from the aircraft over a speed and altitude range of zero miles per hour at sea level to Mach numbers up to 4.0 at over 100,000 feet.

Written by Linda Sheffield Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/09/27: CIA-RDP90B00170R000100080001-5 -4- The problems of taking, pictures through

Be sure to check out Linda Sheffield Miller (Col Richard (Butch) Sheffield’s daughter, Col. Sheffield was an SR-71 Reconnaissance Systems Officer) Facebook Pages Habubrats SR-71 and Born into the Wilde Blue Yonder for awesome Blackbird’s photos and stories.

Written by Habubrat

@Habubrats71 via X

[tirsynni]

While I'm aware that LoZ: HW isn't a canon game, I think it adds some interesting details and implications to the overall series, so I'm keeping it. One point is what causes the Heroes to be born and awaken and their role as sacrificial lamb. Another point is how it's more evidence -- with BotW further proving the point -- of why it's not a good thing that the legend of the Hero is known and how that being known affects the Princesses, which affects everything else.

Beginning of HW, Link is a trainee. Based on the rest of the games, I'm guessing he's around 17 (honestly, maybe even younger, as this is a fantasy setting and he's not a soldier or knight but a trainee). He was not supposed to be on the battlefield at all but, in true Link fashion, threw himself into the fray, anyway. When Volga was about to kill him and Impa, Link's triforce was revealed and he protected himself and Impa from Volga's flames, saving them.

In other games, that probably would have led to Link being pulled aside by Impa and given a different role, one more centered on Princess Zelda and the Big Bad. In this game, it's completely different. In this game, the Hero and all of its implications are known. It's a main part of the story, after all. That's why Cia wants Link: because he possesses the Spirit of the Hero. That's why he elevated overnight from a trainee to a high-ranking leadership position. There is no anonymous savior here like the other games: in this one, the spotlight is clearly on the Hero.

This happens in BotW, too, with the opposite reaction in many ways. In BotW and HW, both Links are no long just LINK. They are now the Hero, with all the responsibilities thereof. I would argue that they're both objectified, albeit in different ways. HW!Link is elevated in many ways. He's put in a leadership that he can't be qualified for, but it's okay: the Hero surely knows what he's doing! Surely he can lead these people into battle! BotW!Link is a weapon. The king treats him as part of the decor when he talks to Zelda. In different ways, they're no longer people: they're things. Amazing things, yes, but still things.

The Zeldas react differently, too. In BotW, Zelda is very much outside the norm and the pressure s high on her. She despises Link because it appears like the Hero title and its responsibility occurred easily and naturally while her title isn't as smooth. (That and how that goes is easily another bit of meta for later, especially if you toss in WW.) The weight of the legends is overwhelming and almost crushes them both.

In contrast, HW!Zelda doesn't have that same weight but is very aware of the myths and legends. She was more than ready to don the Sheik costume like the Princess Zelda of old. She stares at her Hero with bright, adoring eyes, and it's easy to wonder if she sees "Link" or if she sees the "Hero." The myths aren't a burden to her. She's already confident and deadly and doesn't seem to have the weight of legacy on her. If anything, she seems to glory in it.

There are several hints in the game that OBVIOUSLY the Hero belongs with the Princess. Not Link. The Hero. It would be interesting to think that while those ties made BotW!Zelda hate her Link, those same ties gave HW!Zelda a parallel to Cia. She knew the myths. The Hero was always paired with the Princess of Destiny. Now that Cia was defeated and Ganon struck down again, the Hero is obviously all hers. Destiny and all. They defeated the Evil together, just like in the stories, so obviously this was how the story ends.

Right?

#meta #hyrule warriors #may delete later #have been doing that a lot lately #but eh

[soaps-mohawk]

I don’t know why it just hit me but was readers dad in a pack? I know we don’t know much about our dad but since he was in the military you said they had packs right? Were we also part of that pact or how would life had been if we were?

So we don't know much about the reader's past, but I will be delving more into it as the story progresses and it becomes more relevant.

That being said, reader's dad likely was in a pack for a while with his military buddies as is pretty standard before he met reader's mom. After they met and mated, reader was born into a standard traditional pack with just one alpha and one omega. So more of a small family pack than a large pack.

If reader's dad had been part of a larger pack, things probably would have been a lot different. For one, it's unlikely reader's dad would have been pack alpha (for a lot of reasons and you'll understand why he wasn't part of a larger pack once we get to know him a little better), but he still could have taken one of the pack omegas as his mate and had his babies. He would have still been the authority figure for his children and been the provider for them, but there would have been other resources. Other alphas and omegas around, and there would have been betas as well which would have changed the dynamic probably a lot. I doubt reader's dad would have included a beta in his little group in the pack, but as they're part of a larger pack, reader's mom could have chosen to be close to one regardless. Being part of a larger pack probably would have changed reader's dad's character a lot (see above lol) and probably would have changed the reader a lot as well. Reader probably wouldn't have gone to an institute even if they presented as an omega as it wouldn't have just been up to reader's dad to make that decision (and again, you'll understand why that's such an important here in the future.)

Yeah, this will get touched on briefly in a (much) future chapter. You'll get to know reader's dad as a person and what their childhood was like and what living in a traditional pack was like. You'll also get a glimpse at how things might have been different, had the CIA not had eyes on the reader from early on 👀

#that's all i'll spoil for now #but yeah #hope that makes sense #answered

[dinodude52]

Okay, let’s talk about Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, shall we?

*spoilers*

Duh

The beginning: I saw a tweet today where the author said they hated that the movie killed T'Challa with an illness and I have to say I disagree. Not only because logistically there was no way for Chadwick Boseman to act in the movie for a death scene, but because (for me personally) I don't think I would have liked it any other way. I like that T'Challa died of an illness for one simple reason: The whole movie sort of felt like a catharsis for the cast and crew. No one knew Boseman had cancer except his immediate circle. I still remember opening twitter and literally not believing what I was seeing. The way they chose to go about it, and then all the time the devoted to grief and loss felt like a release for everyone involved. And if this was the way they thought would best help them work through their grief in their art, I don't think it's right to say you wished it happened a different way.

Okay, time for something fun after all that heavy: Queen Ramonda's speech in the beginning was amazing.

The scene of the Dora Milaje in the Wakandan outpost coming out of the hall was amazing.

I loved that the people of Talocan had siren powers

Riri Williams. I have a problem with making a significant part of a plot revolve around a person who needs to be kept alive, especially if that person isn't the main character. I find that it leaves me feeling like there was no point to the character. In the case of Riri, I can't decide how I feel. I like her character and I was happy to see her introduced. I think a Black Panther movie was the perfect place to introduce her one, because she's Black and was clearly written to have a deep love, respect, and admiration for Wakanda, and two because she's a technological genius like Shuri. But something about her story feels... well, it just doesn't feel right. Like a puzzle piece that *seems* to fit in a space, but also doesn't. I think if she might have had more agency. Or maybe if they'd let her feel bad that her design put Talocan in danger. She didn't make that machine to help the CIA or anyone, she built it to spite one of her college professors. They don't explain it in the movie how the machine got into the hands of the government, but they do make it a point to say that she built it for an assignment. This leads me to believe that it was either stolen or given to the CIA without Riri's permission. If she'd been allowed to explain that (or if Shuri had just mentioned it) I'm not sure it would have changed anything, but it might have made Riri's story feel more full.

Namor did nothing wrong. He was completely justified in everything that he did. lmao okay, no, he killed the queen of Wakanda, but listen here: He had his reasons. Namor, at heart, is a good man, and I truly believe that. He want's what's best for his people. T'Challa wanted the same, and for him, the right thing to do was to open Wakanda to the world. He couldn't have known he was putting Talocan in danger, too. I think Wakanda is gentler on the world than Talocan, and that's were the biggest issue comes from Wakanda was never colonized. Their land, their histories, their people, their resources were never stolen from them. They watched all that happen to other people. But watching bad things happen to other people is different than having those things happen to you. By contrast, Talocan was borne from a colonized civilization. The flower that gave them their powers and abilities was used as a treatment for smallpox. Their legends even say that their god gave them the flower to build a new home, the implication being that they needed a new home because their old one was stolen from them. Because of their vastly different histories, their reactions to the possibility of outsiders trying to steal from them is vastly different. Namor has the right of it and by the end of the movie, he still does. The surface world will come for the Wakandans and the people of Talocan will be ready. His methods may not have been sound, but his rationale was.

Battle orcas. No, I will not be adding context.

Everett Ross was married to Madam Hydra and I just can't get over that.

Talocan seemed like a more accurate underwater city than any I've seen, and I love that.

I wish Shuri hadn't made a new heart-shaped herb and had become the Black Panther because of her technological skills. A Black Panther Iron Man suit, if you will. I didn't feel like there was enough justification for her to make the herb and then take it herself. After she wakes up from the ancestral realm, she said that she drank the herb to see her family, but none of them came. It's a heartbreaking scene, but it also doesn't make sense when you remember that Shuri doesn't believe in any of that. Even Killmonger said in her vision that she didn't believe in the ancestral plane. I think Shuri's time would have been better spent making a Black Panther suit that gave her almost all of the abilities of the traditional Black Panther. I think what they were going for was a full circle catharsis moment where Shuri couldn't make the herb in the beginning of the movie but then she did near the end. And that would make sense, except she didn't make the herb to heal anyone. She made it so she could get revenge on Namor. And I don't think that's a good way to tie the herb to the theme. Edit: I’m seeing your replies to this point. My opinion still stands as of now, but I do appreciate the other perspectives and it’s giving me something to think about whenever I watch the movie next.

I like the Shuri didn't become queen of Wakanda at the end. I don't think being queen would have suited her at all.

The end credit scene really punched me in the heart.

I forgot to mention M’baku’s “Bald headed demon” line. And apparently it was improvised which makes it so much funnier.

All in all, I loved this movie. I've seen it twice now and I can't wait to see it again.

#wakanda forever #review #movie review #film review #marvel #mcu #namor #talocan #wakanda #black panther #black panther 2 #thoughts #shuri black panther #riri williams

[courfeyracs-swordcane]

Who are the ballad brothers I have seen you tag them on a variety of posts and I am intrigued

THREE MONTHS LATE BUT HERE WE GO!!! I also did a post about this ages ago which I’ll link HERE but! There’s been a lot of development since then!!!

This is going to get long. Sorry in advance. (Also I’m keeping it to just the Ballad Brothers themselves (and co) but lmk if you also want to know about the saints! They’re not at all relevant to the main plot (two and a half exceptions) but they live rent free in my head)

TLDR. Little guys took up residence in my head when I listened to music in the car and it’s become a whole scifantasy worldbuilding exercise.

Anyway!

KYRIE ALEIDIS BALLAD

- she/her

- 29 years old

- 5’11 (and a half)

- Massive Fucking Tech Sword

- Enneagram 8w7 if you’re an enneagram guy

- she is YOUNG she’s FANTASTIC she’s GOD’S FAVORITE and she’s NEVER GOING TO DIE

- The main character!

- She is the city (symbolic) and her name is god

- Former sword-for-hire/star player/golden girl/mascot/diversity hire (whatever you want to call it) for evil organization(tm) Rekah’s Finest

- (named after St Rekah of the Guard)(think somewhere between the CIA and the Pinkertons)(National guard type of thing that staged a very quiet coup/government takeover about a decade before Kyrie was born and is gradually got to the point where they’re running the city-state where this all takes place as a police state)

- current renegade and aspiring vigilante

- she fucked off the minute she turned 18 to join the metaphorical army/become a cop (same difference)(except there’s also regular cops and they kind of suck shit) and very quickly became very good at it!

- wound up as essentially the Special Little Guy they have as the face of the organization doing a lot of like. Public outreach and shit. Also doing a lot of assassinations inside and outside of the city

- A few years before the story starts she Realized Some Things about how her and Alonzo were orphaned and quit her job EXTREMELY publicly and extremely dramatically and left with nothing but her Massive Fucking Tech Sword and the clothes on her back and fucked off to go hide/live in a massive tower monument at the center of town

- It’s… legally difficult to get her out of there due to the historical site preservation regulations so she’s just been kind of vibing there ever since

- Theoretically. She’s trying to take down the RF and get them Out Of Her Damn City

- In practice she’s one singular burnout and has no idea how the hell to go about doing that so she’s mostly just hanging out in the tower and evading arrest

- She’s a fuck boy dirt bag piece of shit (etc etc etc) and I love her for it

- She gets no bitches despite being a local celebrity with one of The Fanbases Ever (she would do numbers on scifantasy Twitter) bc She’s So Sucks <3

- (no bitches except she does have a weird homoerotic thing going w her roommate/childhood best friend who’s kind of a reincarnation of St Ely who built the city and lives in the tower)(she’s not looking at it)(she’s got bigger problems called Avoiding Confronting Any Emotion bc if she looks at any of them she’ll have to process all of the Guilt she has irt. Pretty much abandoning her baby brother on the streets to go be a hero and then Never Contacting Him Again)

ALONZO BALLAD

- he/him

- 25

- 5’4

- two regular guns

- Kyrie’s aforementioned baby brother!

- Enneagram 3w4 which if you were friends w me 2019-2021 you’ll know exactly how much that says everything you need to know about this guy (derogatory)

- Most repressed mfer on the planet and a neurotic little freak

- Considers himself to be the only guy in this found family with a braincell. (Untrue, even if you don’t count An)

- His first instinct in a lot of situations is Improv Theater. (Seeing his sister for the first time in more than ten years? Better wear a hood and prepare a whole dramatic reveal about it. Ran into the guy he kissed at the office holiday party while trying to get his expense account wrangled for an upcoming assignment? Time to launch into an extended bit about how he’s so sad and poor and he’s gonna starve and freeze to death all alone on the street and Only They have the power to help him. please.)(they think it’s hilarious but jfc what’s wrong with him)

- The main issue with him is that he gets his apartment and all of his necessities directly from his employer, so his first priority at all times is Preserve His Job At All Costs

- He thinks of the way he lives as self care. I think of it as masochism.

- His main idea of a Life Plan from the ages of 15-his early 20s was Look At What His Older Sister Did And Then Do It Too

- (his main idea of a life plan from the ages of 3-20 was Don’t Get In Trouble Ever or They Will Come And Kill You To Death)(these are not especially compatible philosophies.)

- So he’s a sword-for-hire (gun for hire. And not even a fancy tech one. They’re not trusting any more Ballad brothers with any more expensive technology.)

- This is not working out well for him. he’s not overwhelmingly good at the job. He doesn’t find any purpose in killing people. He doesn’t even like blood.

- He is, however, very good at following orders. But only when he wants to.

- He’s also very good at Lying To His Boss’s Boss

- They keep sending him to try and assassinate Kyrie as like. Kind of a power move? Trying to show her that they’ve got her only family at their beck and call and they can make him do whatever they want

- Unfortunately Alonzo has no interest in killing her so those missions pretty much just wind up with him going to hang out in the tower and shoot shit for a couple days and then going back and turning on the big sad wet eyes for his report to tell them that he did his best he really did but she’s always been stronger and he just couldn’t take her— but he’ll do better next time he promises 🥺🥺🥺

- Kyrie had been their best guy for several years and Alonzo is, in all other regards, the perfect employee (turns in all his paperwork ahead of time, does every other mission very efficiently and never gets caught, goes to all the company mixers even though everyone can tell he’s exhausted, always has his uniform meticulously clean and pressed) so this is plausible, and they go “aww okay better luck next time :) go get some rest :)”

- Also he’s lowkey a hostage here. What are they gonna do? Fire him? No they need him for leverage

- It drives his immediate supervisor who knows EXACTLY what’s going on up the fucking wall. We will get to them.

- Gets Fucking Shot With A Cheater Bullet (very small timed action grenade) on an assignment midway through the story and his first instinct (instead of going back to the office where they have like. Actual doctors and medical equipment to deal with that) is to head to St Ely’s tower, where they have his sister and his kind of boyfriend and also his sister’s roommate who can sew and his childhood buddy Jonesie down the street who knows first aid

- He’s not thinking especially straight due to the Panic and also the Blood Loss from the Bullet In His Ribcage and he’s got a whole emotional thing about how he wants to die at home w his people— and then it goes off and he Fucking Dies. Whoops!

- He gets better his boyfriend (for real now lmao) is an aspiring necromancer and God’s Pet Freak (there’s a lot. Behind that. more later) and he very pointedly doesn’t believe in magic or saints or anything but also his chest cavity did very much get exploded and he’s fine now (besides the lingering Effects) so like.

- He deals with this by 1. Contacting his supervisor who lets the higher ups know there’s been An Incident. 2. Going back to work as soon as they’ll let him (like three days later). and 3. Getting himself transferred to the security division and becoming Ari’s dad’s bodyguard so he doesn’t have an excuse to go hang out at the tower anymore and he doesn’t have to look at any of those emotions he can just Focus on his Work <3

- Obviously that does not go well for him.

SENECA “ARI” FINCH

- they/them/any

- 25

- 5’2

- Enneagram 5w6

- Mad scientist

- Nepo baby

- Front desk intern for the RF financial department

- Aspiring necromancer

- God’s Pet Freak

- If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you raise a child in one of those beige instagrammable influencer houses. It’s this.

- Their dad is the puppet city governor for the RF (Kyrie wants him dead so goddamn bad)(he’s kind of a useless twink but he’s an easy guy to blame for all this shit)

- Their mom died when they were like 8 of something pretty regular and they have since dedicated pretty much their entire life to Bringing Her Back

- (No they were not especially close or anything why do you ask?)

- TECHNICALLY their dad, knowing their passion for Science (and not much else about them) got them a cushy RF job developing biotech to make the cool individualized tech weapons

- In practice, they got their funding and their fancy work lab and immediately proceeded to squirrel just about everything useful from it downstairs to their own personal lab in the basement (not on the floor plan) where they don’t have to worry about things like “supervision” “safety regulations” “proper ventilation” “their job” etc

- They are still doing their job but they’re getting it done in like. Two days out of the month and spending literally all the rest of their time on the necromancy

- It’s gotten to the point where they’re not even clocking in upstairs anymore so they made them take a couple shifts a week at the front desk of the financial department just so they have something on record to pay them for

- They’re okay with this! it’s fun to switch it up and there’s snacks in the breakroom

- I cannot emphasize enough how much they Do Not Leave the horrifying unventilated unethical science basement. there’s a couch in the corner and a sink and an employee bathroom in the stairwell what more could they need.

- One of the early plotlines is centered around Getting Them To Go Outside (really outside, not just to the regular parts of the RF building) and like. Idk. Maybe seeing a leaf or smth would be good for them)

- where they also wind up meeting and hanging out w Kyrie and El, doing some upkeep on Kyrie’s fancy sword, and being Absolutely Fascinated by St Ely’s Tower (there’s some generally buried Magic Shit that perks up when them and El are in the room together)

- BECAUSE!!! (And this is why they haven’t succumbed to the Fumes in the horrifying unventilated unethical science basement, or the gas leak in there from the pipe main running through the middle of it that they’ve been siphoning off of, or any of the experiments they do on themself bc they can’t get any other test subjects and also bc they wouldn’t trust anyone else’s testimony as to What It’s Like) the magic, which is how Ely built the city (and how all of the other saints Did Their Things as well but that’s a whole other can of worms) is a vapor that lives underground and speaks no human language but saw this little freak trying to defy the laws of nature from their hole in the ground and took a liking to them

- It can’t bring their mom back bc she’s been dead for fifteen years and it never met her so it wouldn’t even know where to start

- But it likes them! It follows them around and keeps them alive and helps with their experiments :)

- (they remind it of Saint Ely, who was a similarly tiny passionate freak, but that’s also a whole other can of worms)

- Ari is not aware of this in the slightest.

- Their second arc is getting Disappeared from legal existence (very easy. They live in a basement and barely ever leave it and don’t really talk to people), realizing that they are in fact mortal and could potentially die someday, and trying to contact their dad to make sure he knows they’re okay. (Doesn’t work. They’ve been disappeared and are no longer allowed past the front desk.)

- Their third arc (during the communal breakdown era. Kyrie’s abandoned by god arc where she decides to run away from her problems in a literal sense and Alonzo’s evil arc where stops speaking to everybody and dives headfirst into his job at the war crimes factory) is deciding that the same thing happened to their mom and the necromancy isn’t working because she’s NOT actually dead which means she’s out there somewhere and they can find her! :)

- That is not even a little bit true. :(

EL (no last name)

- he/him (woman)

- Doesn’t really have an age. They don’t really exist in time in the usual sense

- 5’0

- Enneagram 9w1

- Lives in the tower

- Just kind of showed up there one day as a kid and has been living there ever since

- There’s a nearby convent of some kind that fed and clothed them growing up (same place that looked after Kyrie and Alonzo after they were orphaned)

- Kind of a reincarnation of Saint Ely. not in so many steps bc again. Out of time and who knows how long he’s been there but like. He’s back for more but he’s a lady with an ounce of common sense this time. It’s unclear how much he’s aware of this part of it. He knows the tower is important, and he knows restoring the murals inside of it is important. I don’t think he knows why.

- only guy in this found family who’s even remotely capable of coping with the idea of death (he already did that)(kind of psychopomp coded about it)

- Kyrie’s best friend and second in command so much as she has a command. Weird homoerotic gay thing going on there. I assume there’s some of the traditional St Ely brand of devotion but like

- (And by traditional I mean I don’t think that’s a widely known thing about Ely the Saint but it is one of the more prominent things about Ely the Guy)

- Spends most of his time restoring the tower and the murals inside that nobody has seen in years

- (That’s a whole thing)(different can of worms)

- This is @nosongunsung11’s guy so I’ll tap them in for the details but I think that’s the basics!!

AN “PUNK” JANG

- they/them (lesbian)(in gender moreso than practice)

- 35 but they’re lying about it. actually 33

- 5’5

- Enneagram 1w2 😬

- Twin fancy tech rapiers

- The previous Special Little Guy/Mascot/face of the RF

- Ran away from home, changed their name, and lied about their age to join up when they were 16 and they’ve just kind of been going off that ever since

- Went by Punk for a while towards the beginning of their career bc they were 16/17 and it Sounded Cool and it would up becoming almost like their callsign (that’s what Alonzo calls them bc he was very much an enjoyer when he was a kid. They were like Spider-Man to him. Blorbo from the news.)(and he continues to call them that bc he’s a little shit.)

- (They wound up naming themselves after Saint Anjane of Strength not because they believe in any saints but because they desperately wish they did and this way at least they can pretend they know what it might feel like to have that kind of faith.)(in a fun and funky coincidence, they’re actually very very similar to Saint Anjane herself. El has some Complicated Emotions about this.)(long story. It’s Saint Ely’s Monument but it’s also the closest thing he has to a grave— he pulled it out of the ground so he could be alone w/ Anje’s body after he got to her execution too late to talk her out of it)

- Got shunted when Kyrie showed up and was infinitely more personable due to her heroics in SciFantasy 9/11 (long story. Building exploded.) and general bright-eyed and bushy tailed unjaded Disposition

- And by shunted I mean promoted to middle management in the Murder Department

- They’re fine with this it’s significantly less work on their end

- They do make sure after that to have everything they need for basic living separated from the job though

- Only guy in this found family with their own actual apartment. And basic cooking skills. And healthy sleep schedule.

- When Alonzo gets into the Murder Department they wind up as his immediate supervisor!

- Exciting prospect at first! He’s a high profile assignment (hostage) and also an easy assignment (does all of his paperwork on time, completes his missions Quietly and Efficiently, doesn’t really do anything interesting at all)

- Less exciting prospect once they actually work with him. He’s a little shit and a motherfucker and he knows exactly what he’s doing

- They can’t stop covering for him at this point without doing a hell of a lot of paperwork and jeopardizing their own job so they’re stuck now

- Also. unfortunately. they got attached. They’re not the step-older sibling, they’re the older sibling who stepped up.

- They’re the one who arrests Kyrie at the beginning of the story and kick off the whole first half of the plot, but they also wind up putting in their two weeks after Alonzo Gets Fucking Killed and then immediately goes back to work

- They do it significantly better than Kyrie tho they keep their apartment and their bank account and return most of their uniforms so the rf doesn’t have any reason to come after them besides Aiding and Abetting (and also trespassing. On the protected historical site that is St Ely’s monument. But that’s the least of anyone’s worries here.)

- They wind up kind of taking charge of the. whatever the hell these guys are doing. during the Communal Breakdowns arc. they would really prefer not to be doing this but somebody has to. So.

- Also during that arc they wind up facing off with Alonzo and boy howdy is there a reason they got assigned as the rf’s Special Little Guy and he didn’t, bc he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell even with them holding back

AND THAT’S THE MAIN CAST! Thank you for coming to my ted talk! (Get it?) I’ve hit the image limit on mobile so I’ll come back and add the before/after pictures in a reblog bc I had fun making those

#THANK YOU FOR THE ASK BLUEBERRY I AM SO SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG #ballad brothers #please disregard the world’s Shittiest Low Effort Backgrounds on the art I slapped them together in like ten seconds #Kyrie ballad brothers #Alonzo ballad brothers #Ari ballad brothers #El ballad brothers #An ballad brothers

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

tell me about your ocs 🫣🫣 i liste

thank you for unlocking my side quest. this is probably definitely going to be a very long post

okay, so i've got five time lord ocs, but the main one is Fox (short for foxilquinn, because of course i had to give him a weird time lord name)

so he kind of started out as the kid in a doctor/master child au type story, and hes not not that anymore, but also he's got much more lore than just that now

to start off at the beginning he was born (or loomed i should say) on earth during the third doctor's era. i still haven't figured out why or how they had a loom, but they had one. the unfortunate thing for fox is that this loom was mildly broken so that leads to some problems for him (mainly his hair color will stay the same across all regenerations (which isn't really a problem but whatever, and its also where he got his name since the hair color is about the same as the color of a red fox's coat), he doesn't have a typical injury/stress threshold for regeneration, he has to literally be dying or he can't regenerate (this ends up with him losing a leg and an eye during his first regeneration, but it doesn't kill him so he doesn't regenerate from it), and he's really time sensitive to the point that being near anything paradoxical or too out of sync with the time line just kind of makes him pass out)

(also side note, fox is trans, it isn't like a big part of anything but i just like making my characters trans)

anyway when he's like six the cia show up and are like 'hey we're going to take your kid and put him in the academy on gallifrey' and then basically kidnap him. and since he's still got two years before he's initiated into the academy they stick him in the care or brax because a) he's the doctor's brother and therefore closest available family member on gallifrey and b) i thought it would be funny to stick brax with a child, he does not seem qualified for that

fast forward a bit and he's at the academy doing academy stuff. this is mostly uneventful, he does some mischief, but nothing big happens here. he does end up being in like the same year/class as romana though because this is my story and i like romana so she can be in it if i want her to.

after graduating fox steals a tardis and runs away because hes seen what gallifreyan society is like compared to the rest of the universe and he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life in that society not being able to do what he wants.

anyway he kind of just travels around for a while until he one day runs into the doctor and romana and him and romana have a fun little reunion and he travels with them for a while.

after romana returns to gallifrey fox starts sneaking in and out of gallifrey to see romana. this gets a cia agent assigned to his case because he's now a threat to security (he isn't really all that much, his main goals other than seeing romana are to not get arrested and being annoying to gallifreyan government officials that aren't romana). of course this cia agent is narvin because he's one of my favorite time lords so he goes in the story as well

anyway things happen, romana gets captured by the daleks and imprisoned on etra prime. fox goes looking for her, does not succeed but does get blown up and has a building fall on him, resulting in him losing most of his right leg and left eye (also he builds himself a futuristic prosthetic leg and also uses forearm crutches that can fold up really small (like fit in your pocket small) because that's something i desperately want to exist so i'm giving them to him and just calling it time lord technology instead of finding a way for it to make sense) (forearm crutches are so inconvenient to bring anywhere if you're not actively using them and also sometimes when you are)

after romana gets back she gets a bit concerned about fox just running around the universe and getting into dangerous situations because of the events mentioned in the previous paragraph and basically goes 'why don't you teach a class at the academy' so she can make sure hes not out there somewhere getting himself killed

he agrees and ends up teaching a small class of students that (maybe they know this through like matrix prediction or something idk) are all probably going to be renegades. the goal of this class is basically him teaching them how to not die out in the universe (the high council also make the rule that if he's going to be employed on gallifrey he needs to stay there and try to take his tardis from him, but he basically tries to fight them about it (i like to think he tries to bite one of them) and they let him keep his tardis as long as he doesn't go on any unplanned trips)

(there's other stuff about him, like he survives the time war because i don't want to kill him off and theres a few regenerations here and there, but i've already said so much about fox so i'm going to talk about my other ocs now)

the other four are all fox's students who i actually just made up to be placeholder characters for like a scene then i got attatched. they're Azdran, Ensil, Jerex, and Maxin

Az is probably the one i have the most stuff for, they're from the house of oakdown and their parents really want them to be like some kind of politician, but they just want to get off of gallifrey and live a normal life without the expectations of their house behind all their actions. they're nonverbal and use a data pad that they modified as an aac device, this data pad is pretty old and it's a miracle that it still works, but az manages to keep it functioning somehow. they're also the only one of the students that survives the time war, they fall through a rift in time and space opened by the war and end up on earth (something something that rift in cardif)

I honestly don't have much for ensil, hes arcalian (the others are all prydonian) and finds the whole time lord society thing stifling and wants to not deal with that for the rest of his life

Jerex was raised by tardis engineers and likes tardises more than people. he already is bonded to a tardis by the time he enters fox's class and would prefer to spend his days working on upgrading and fixing it rather than having to do classes. if it weren't for the time war getting in the way of things he probably would have just settled himself on a quiet planet with his tardis and helped with repairs on the tardises of renegades who stopped by. i think he still ends up as a tardis engineer/repairer during the war because its what he's good at, but he'd rather not be involved in the war

Last there's Maxin. she's the daughter of maxil and i honestly can't remember if she started out that way or if i made her design and then named her and went 'yeah that could make sense'. anyway because of that she often disregards a lot of rules because her father has like some power and can get her out of things. she also definitely breaks into his office and looks through things she shouldn't be. after the academy she ends up joining the military and pretty quickly climbs the ranks (all of them graduate pretty close to the start of the time war so the gallifreyan military is actually like a relevant thing that does stuff at this point). once the war actually starts though it doesn't take her long to figure out that she a) kind of hates rassilon and thinks he's just making everything worse in some sort of power play against the daleks and b) she can't actually do all that much of what she wants or thinks is best in the military both because of it's structure and because, even despite her rank, she isn't often taken seriously since shes pretty fresh out of the academy, so she defects and starts helping the resistance

#thanks for giving me an opportunity to info dump about these guys #i have so much to say about them all the time #dw oc #asks