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#nate is the only one interested in this all because he's a big nerd when it comes to people's inner workings

robo-dino-puppy · 3 months

Text

10 Fandoms, 10 Characters, 10 Tags

thank you for the tag @bluntblade! (i'm embarrassed this took me so long. also i've never been good at ranking things so uh don't consider this list in order of most favorite or anything)

Donna Noble (Doctor Who)

Character I think about if I'm having a bad day <3 This scene between the windows in Partners in Crime never fails to cheer me up. Also: "You're not mating with me, sunshine!" Theeeeee best platonic relationship with the Doctor IMO.

Varl (Horizon)

Aloy did not appreciate this good dude nearly enough. I want Varl to be my BFF. T_T But HFW happened and... I won't say too much about that or we'd be here all day. He's alive in my head and that's all that matters.

Cimorene (The Enchanted Forest Chronicles)

Cimorene! She's no-nonsense and clever. She wasn't a fan of being treated like a princess so she went and "got captured by" a dragon so people would stop bothering her, and helps her cook and organize her library. I mean, goals.

Loki (MCU)

I wasn't into the MCU when it started getting big, and in fact I didn't see any of the movies until I read someone on Tumblr (c. 2012) going on about (paraphrased) how awful it was that people liked Loki because he was the absolute worst and if you liked him you were a gross immoral person and you should feel bad. So I went and watched this Avengers movie everyone was talking about. And guess what haters? He is terrible and I love him.

Parker (Leverage)

Although I am not brave enough to throw myself off buildings, sometimes I amuse myself by thinking "what would Parker do?" and since a canonical option involves stabbing someone who's bothering her with a fork and jumping out a window, the thought cheers me up even if I can't do that.

Aziraphale (Good Omens)

He just wants people (aside from Crowley) to leave him alone in his bookshop. He never fits in with his "side" but tries to do what they want anyway, because that's the good thing to do, and he wants to be good. I can relate so hard, buddy.

Milo Thatch (Atlantis: The Lost Empire)

Ok so... I totally had a crush on Michael J. Fox and I was already interested in linguistics back when this movie came out, and then here's a main character voiced by him who was a linguist! Milo had to be my favorite :D

Elena Fisher (Uncharted)

I will fully admit that some of my initial love of Elena came from her AI covering my panic-flailing self early on in the first Uncharted game (I'm THE WORST at games with guns, even on easy, it's actually embarrassing) - but she impressed me right away when she was not overly impressed by Nate. And her snark game is on point.

Zeb (Star Wars Rebels)

I feel like Zeb needs more love. Comic relief character who actually has an unbelievably tragic backstory! And his story has so much untapped potential! We never really get to explore what happened with Lasan, and then then dump Kallus in there with his defection to the Rebellion and his whole *handwaves* history with the Lasats and eventual apparent (b)romance with Zeb - and the show had so little to say about it! Huge angsty storytelling miss right there. (Dave why.)

Brian Finch (Limitless [2015])

This dude! Lovable but he would be SO exasperating to deal with IRL. His arts-and-craftiness just resonated with me. He was always making stuff out of toothpicks and yarn and papier mâché and clay and and and- I'm still mad this show only got one season.

zero-pressure tags: @mari-mary, @ayaitch, @hannahmationstudios, @inomakani, @fogsblue, @nerd-artist, @singingkestrel, @prototypelq, @tjerra14, @artekai or just consider yourself tagged if you want to do it!

#tag game #ty this was fun!#it took me so long because my brain has been overwhelmed mush lately and *waves vaguely* WORDS #but also... how tf does the tumblr gif search work?#i couldn't find what i wanted for some of these so i just took all my own screencaps instead lmao

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sustainably-du-mortain · 1 year

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10, 11 and 12 from the ship asks for my favorite triad <3 (@ do-this-for-me)

Thank you so much for the ask!! 💖 (Oh boy! This is going to be a long one and I'm not sorry about it)

10. Do they share hobbies or interests? How do these things bring them together?

They do! One of Jonah's love languages is quality time so he loves finding things he can do with Adam and Nate. This includes:

LOTR - Jonah is a nerd™ for lotr and I hc that Adam shares the same nerdiness for it, at least for the book. They discovered this shared interest because Jonah has a whole shelf of his bookcase dedicated solely to collecting different lotr editions and other books about the universe and Adam made a comment on it and Jonah started rambling until he realized that Adam understood which scenes he was referencing while talking and they went *insert spidey meme here*. They regularly have reading dates dedicated to lotr where they annotate the book, or Jonah adds onto his already annotated copy and Adam annotates the brand new copy Jonah got him, while they share their thoughts. I also hc that they got Nate into lotr (I know N reads a ton, but lets be honest there are too many books out there, Nate just had not gotten to reading lotr yet). So they dragged Nate into it, and he's not as into it as these two are, but his two nerds are quite adorable when they get into arguments over lore. Jonah also got Adam to watch the movies (the extended versions, because that's the only correct way) and let's just say Adam got even nerdier (and a little gayer too)

Reading & baths - Okay so, Jonah isn't that big of a reader BUT he is a glutton for knowledge so when he gets into a new interest he tends to read everything he can get his hands on about said subject and he loves to share that with Nate. Especially reading in the bath. Jonah is a sucker for baths, they get him to relax and everything but that's not why he loves reading in the bath. He loves it because, weirdly, he is able to focus better on reading while taking baths. But while Jonah is a sucker for bath he's actually not really good at making it an enjoyable experience, before meeting Nate he'd just fill his tub with water and that was it, that was all he needed. So you can imagine Nate's horror when he saw him do that the first time. Nate had to introduce him to bubble paths, scented products, the whole thing. So now they regularly have reading session in the bath with a little music playing in the background, candles and a little wine.

Mechanics - Jonah wasn't really into mechanics before Adam, but he did minor in engineering, so he's always interested in how things work and seeing the inside of things. When he learned that Adam was into it, he got curious and, as I said before, not only is quality time a love language of his, he's also a glutton for knowledge, so he asked Adam to show him how all of it worked. So he loves to hang out with Adam when he's working on his car.

Tech - Now, this is an interest of his that he shares it with Nate. I know, N is bad at tech, but that's the whole reason they share this together. Jonah actually takes the time to not only teach Nate how to use everyday tech, but actually get some enjoyment out of it. He introduces Nate to audiobooks and e-readers or even podcasts.

Yard sales - Jonah goes to a lot of yard sales to expand his record collections, so he started dragging Adam and Nate with him (and Bo). He knows Nate loves antique furnitures and yard sales can be great to find just that. He also convinced Adam to come with him because you can sometimes find car pieces there. But, in reality, he just loves going on a walk with them and Bo.

And last but not least Music - So this is not something that they do together, but music is Jonah's way to express how he feels, so he ends up writing quite a lot of songs about Adam and Nate, and he sometimes shares his songs with them. Not all of them though, because singing about them in front of them makes him feel very vulnerable, so when he does sing for them this is always a very intimate moment.

Their relationship is all about bonding over a shared interest or getting to know the other through a particular interest and spending time together.

11. How do they feel about nicknames/pet names? If they like them, what pet names do they use? If they hate them, why do they feel that way?

Jonah loves pet names, but not in public. He is not comfortable with pet names being used to refer to him and with using pet names to refer to his partners in public. But behind closed doors, and in front of the other half of UB (they're the exception to the rule), he loves using them and that they're used for him. They make him all mushy.

He uses French petnames for both Adam and Nate, because he grew up speaking it and they flow naturally for him. And bonus point French makes the both of them all flustered (especially Adam).

His petname for Adam is mon amour (my love). This is a pretty standard pet name, but it fits Adam perfectly.

His petname for Nate is joli coeur (literal translation is "pretty heart", but it has two meanings in French. It was used in old French to refer to a lover/ suitor but nowadays it's used to refer to someone who is really flirty). He started using it as a way to tease Nate, especially considering its meaning nowadays, and the pet name simply stayed.

Now, while these two are the petnames he uses the most, he also uses other pretty standard ones both in French or English that he casually throws in conversations.

12. Do they have a difficult time when separated from each other, or are they fairly independent?

Jonah is a fairly independent person, so he can deal with being away from Adam and Nate, but when he can't see them he always sends them a text in the morning along the lines of "Take care of yourself today / Be careful. Have a nice day. Love you" and one before going to bed telling them about something that happened during the day, if anything interesting happened, or to tell them he loves them, just as a little reminder.

Other than that, he's not really cranky or anything if he can't see them, unless it goes on for a while and by "a while" I mean over two weeks (I'm talking deep into the relationship here). After two weeks he'll start getting a tad grumpy because he misses them.

But he's got Bo, so it helps a little when he's away from them.

Ship ask game

#i'm a little sorry for rambling so much about the first question #but just a tad #lux💓#oc: jonah rafferty #ship: i used to live alone before i knew you #adam x jonah x nate #twc detective #ask game #ali's headcanons

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ot3-watch · 3 years

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Episode 5: The Mile High Job

WHY IS THIS EPISODE 8

FUCK THE NETWORK I’M VERY TIRED

So we’re starting on a client testimony. Which is sad because I kind of like the context establishing scenes

Sophie being French is hilarious

I’m not saying Hardison shouldn’t be able to take off when he needs to. I am saying that MAYBE THEY SHOULD PLAN HEISTS FOR DAYS WHEN THEY ARE A MEMBER SHORT?

Also, why does Hardison not put his food on a plate before he puts it in the microwave. That spinning plate does not get washed nearly enough for that to be sanitary

OK wait did Hardison just flake out? THEN WHY DID THEY NOT POSTPONE?

THEY SHOULD HAVE PLANNED THIS MUCH BETTER

I love Parker being magic and teleporting

The security guards always seem like idiots and tbh, working where I work with the security guards being who they are, I feel like it’s all bullshit and a disservice to security guards.

I love the Doctor WHo references. TOM AND SARAH JANE BAKER YES MA’AM

But also did no one make a Doctor Who comment? Like really. I know Tom Baker is probably a common name but I really want to know what happens when they get a whovian checking their IDs

THe poor flight attendant. That sucks. Can you imagine getting a COMPLETELY fake call that your cat might be put down? I’m sorry, I can’t. Completely innocent people get screwed by them sometimes and I feel bad

Eliot remembers everyone he’s slept with I love him.

THIS POOR FLIGHT ATTENDANT? WHat happens when she comes back and everyone is side eyeing her and being bitchy?

I hate the trope of girlfriends or love interests being overly sensitive about people remembering tiny details. Especially when they aren’t actually together. Especially when it happened years ago. Especially when they hold it against them for the whole episode.

SOME PEOPLE HAVE TERRIBLE MEMORIES OK

Also, this is Nate. It’s a shock he has any brain cells left with how drunk he is 99% of the time. Get OVER yourself Sophie.

PLACE YOUR MASK OVER YOUR MOUTH AND NOSE ok Leverage predicting the future…

Parker being a terrible flight attendant is hilarious

Did I like her in this episode? I think I liked her in this episode

Eliot suffering through economy I can’t

I feel bad for the woman, but like… stop pushing? I know she’s nervous but the flight attendant is trying to do her job. I mean, it’s Parker, but in any normal situation…

Hardison pulls the same “You’re such a racist” bit every time he gets in a sticky situation, and it always works? Can you imagine if he tried to pull that on an actual racist?

Do planes have bars like that? I’ve been on plenty of planes and i’ve never seen a bar like that

Im never in first class though so whatever

OKAY GUYS THE IN-FLIGHT MOVIE IS ONE OF THE LIBRARIANS MOVIES

Which means noah wyle exists in the leverage universe.

HOW IS THAT GOING TO WORK WITH THE REBOOT THOUGH?

Unless they just… expected no one to notice? To be fair, it’s not like they focused on it

They probably just needed a movie they could use without securing rights first or running into copyright issues

But still… paradoxes

Eliot just going through a bunch of random people's bags…

HE AND PARKER MOVING AROUND EACH OTHER SO COMFORTABLY THOUGH

THIS IS SEASON ONE WHY ARE THEY SO GOOD TOGETHER ALREADY

I LOVE THEM GUYS

Parker. That’s not reassuring Parker. Parker that’s just terrifying. WHY WOULD YOU SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT PARKER?? pARKER?? i’M CONCERNED PARKER!

I really hate Sophie getting mad at nate for this shit. It’s not funny. It’s not cute. It just makes Sophie seem unreasonable and bitchy

OK BUT Hardison and the woman bonding IMMEDIATELY over nerdy gaming is so great

Also i like that they made the other nerd a woman is great

OK but he is not talking nearly silently enough for the ONLY other person in the room to just stop listening to him?

Could you imagine the person you were talking to randomly stops talking, looks upset, and then sticks his head in the cabinet? And starts muttering to himself?

LIKE EITHER HE CAN’T TELL REALITY FROM FANTASY OR HES A SPY

WHY ARE YOU NOT SUSPICIOUS??

He really does pull this shit off really well.

The amount of men in that conference room is oppressive and very realistic ina very sad way

Parker must be in a thief’s paradise

OKAY I REMEMBER NOW AND I DID LIKE PARKER IN THIS EPISODE

“Nobody tells me anything”

THAT’S SUCH A MOOD

Literally the job I’m working in right now is exactly like that

My job is literally to know things and help people and provide them with the information they need

AND STILL I’M ONE OF THE LAST TO FIND THINGS OUT

IT’S VERY FRUSTRATING OK

WHy can I not remember why they’re going after genegrow? Someone died I think? But i cannot remember

“The guy in 1D wants to kill you. Ginger Ale?”

Why is it that all i can think about right now is harry styles and niall horan

I mean I KNOW why but like… why

I LOVE them but why?

WHAT IS THIS OFFICE WOMAN’S NAME I LOVE HER

How does no one question Hardison showing up out of nowhere though?

Im just saying… supposedly it’s “Dave’s” birthday, and they think they should have already known about it? He just started that job on that day?

Unless he’s pretending to have been there forever but even then…

This makes no sense? I’m so confused?

Eliot beating a guy up in an airport bathroom is fantastic

But also you can’t fit one person in a airport bathroom, let alone two

THe view from the top is much smaller than the shots from the side

Parker: the guy we just took out? Eliot: -_- Parker: The guy Eliot just took out?

Sophie always seems so shocked by the inhumanity of some of these people they interact with. Nate’s like “Yeah, people are awful” and Eliot’s like “I see worse all the time” and Parker’s like “Is this meant to be weird or something?” but Sophie’s like “WHAt? Someone wants people DEAD? And might KILL US IN THE PROCESS?”

Is the art theft world just not so violent?

Even hardison doesn’t seem shocked, just upset and offended. Sophie’s always like OoO though and it gets weird?

Now both Eliot AND Nate are fitting in the bathroom? With an already unconscious guy? I’VE BEEN IN AIRPLANE BATHROOMS. THEY AREN’T BIG ENOUGH FOR THAT.

Unless i’m just fat. Which is an option.

Why do people have random wires in their luggage? Who travels with a giant bundle of wires in their luggage?

Oh look. The red head was right. There is a tailwind

OK But THE OXYGEN MASKS CAME DOWN AND NO ONE IS TRYING TO PUT ONE ON?

I know they’re panicking but still

Nate really does just throw things at hardison and then Hardison goes like WHAT I CAN’T DO THIS and then he does it.

HOW is Hardison THAT talented it’s ridiculous

WE all talk about Eliot being hyper-competent in everything when Hardison is literally right there

Not to say that eliot doesn’t deserve attention because he does and I love him

I LOVE ELIOT OKAY

I’m just saying Hardison deserves more credit

HOW DID THEY NOT HIT ANY CARS WHEN THEY WERE LANDING? THERE ARE CARS RIGHT THERE? ANd then there’s suddenly no cars in font of them when they land ? It’s all deserted?

HARDISON IS SO GOOD THOUGH

How did they set up a party for “Dave” so quickly?

WHY DOES NO ONE LOOK TO SEE WHO DAVE WAS YELLING AT?

Everyone is so done with Hardison and honestly? Fair. He might’ve saved them, but he also screwed them over earlier. It came in handy, but still.

I really could not give less of a shit about the Nate Sophie storyline in this episode. In most of season one really. It’s all shitty and annoying

FINAL THOUGHTS: 8/10. Points off for people not acting like people. Points off for the shitty Sophie/Nate stuff. Extra points for Eliot being Eliot. (There will always be extra points for Eliot being Eliot). Extra points for Hardison’s badassery. Extra points because I liked Parker in this episode. Extra points for nerd girl. You go nerd girl. Points off because I literally remember nothing about this episode except for Hardison being awesome, the office scenes, and the fact that there was a plane crash. Why were they on the plane? No idea. Can’t remember.

Sam count: 3/5

IYS count: 2/5 (Am I remembering this wrong? I felt like there were more? Then again, I’m only 5 episodes in)

#leverage #leverage ot3 #leverage rewatch #eliot spencer #parker #alec hardison #nathan ford #sophie devereaux #episode 5 #the mile high job #rewatch #ot3

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leverage-ot3 · 4 years

Text

notable moments from The Mile High Job

leverage 1.08

Nate: We need a key card.

Eliot: And I hate to say it, but you know who we could really use --

Nate: Don't even say his name. I don't want it spoken aloud

eliot begrudgingly admitting they could use hardison because although they may bicker all the time, he knows to appreciate him

- - - - -

[Leverage Headquarters]

(Hardison is watching a microwave, which dings)

Hardison: Yeah, buddy!

(he tries to pick up the pizza pocket but it is too hot and he drops it)

Hardison: Damn it!

(he blows on it and picks it up to eat it, then takes a watering can and heads out of the kitchen)

why do we (and parker and eliot) love this fucking idiot so damn much ???

- - - - -

(Hardison walks through the offices watering plants)

he’s such a nester + he’s probably watering parker’s plant too which is adorable

- - - - -

Eliot: All right.

(open the door to the hall to find Parker waiting)

Parker: So, what are we waiting for?

Eliot: How does she do this?

Nate: I don't even ask anymore.

Hardison: Don't bother with the stairs. I got you a ride down.

(elevator dings and they enter)

we love to see parker defying all laws of physics and logic and the team being baffled by it e v e r y time

- - - - -

(Nate, Parker and Eliot run into the lobby, headed for the door)

Nate: No, it’s right behind us, it’s right behind us!

(guards put their hands on their guns)

Parker: It’s furry, it’s big, it’s chasing us, get down now!

(they grab Sophie on the way out the door, leaving the guards confused)

Nate: Come on, we need to get to the airport, now!

that’s actually a really clever way to escape a situation ??? it was very effective to distract the guards ???

- - - - -

Hardison: What I.D.s have you got on you?

[LAX Airport]

Nate: Let's see...

(team begins looking through their pockets)

Nate: We got, Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy, and I have a Tom Baker. Yeah.

Sophie: Ooh, yeah, I have a Baker. Sarah Jane.

[Leverage Headquarters]

Hardison: Perfect. I now pronounce you man and wife. (typing on keyboard) Now go on and kiss that bride.

[LAX Airport]

(Sophie hands Nate a ring that he places on her finger)

hardison bases their ids on doctor who characters, what a fucking nerd

also, we gonna talk about how sophie carries a bunch of different wedding rings with her at all times or ???

- - - - -

Sophie: How did you both know there'd be an extra uniform in the bag?

Nate: Everyone knows flight attendants are required to carry extra uniforms in case they get called to work unexpectedly.

Eliot: Or if something happens to the one that they're already wearing.

Sophie: How does "everyone" know that?

Nate: Worked airport security.

Eliot: Slept with a flight attendant

sophie being exhausted + eliot never mentioned the gender of the flight attendant so let my bi heart dream okay

- - - - -

(security guard opens Nate’s luggage to find many BSDM items inside. Nate gives Sophie a look)

Sophie: What? We needed luggage. Lost and found.

Nate: You didn't check the bag first?

Sophie: We were in a bit of a hurry. (to guard) Yeah. Cuffs are his. Whip's mine. (slaps Nate’s butt) Second honeymoon.

Eliot (picking up his bag): Idiots.

me watching this scene: part horrified part secondhand embarrassed

- - - - -

Hardison (on computer): Let's see what we can learn about Nathan Ford today. Online poker? Online chess? Sudoku. Crossword. What... Damn. Somebody needs to get laid.

y i k e s

- - - - -

[Coach]

(Parker on P.A. while another stewardess demonstrates)

Parker: Place the mask over your mouth and nose and breathe normally. In the event of a water landing, your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device. But let's face it, if this thing goes down in the water, more than likely the impact will kill you.

(Eliot grabs the bridge of his nose while the other passengers get alarmed)

Parker: Please take a moment to locate the nearest emergency exits, because if this plane's on fire, you're gonna want to get out quick. Jet fuel burns at over 1,000 degrees. That's hot, folks.

Eliot: All right, Nate. We're here. Now what?

eliot looks exhausted like 300 different times during this episode

+ bless the other flight attendant that just carried on with the crazy white chick being crazy over the speaker

- - - - -

poor eliot with the guy sleeping on him, he’s so exhausted already lmao

- - - - -

Steve: Nothing. It’s just... I could've sworn I saw a maintenance guy get in that elevator.

Hardison: A- A maintenance guy? Wow. Real nice. I bet you think we all look alike.

Steve: That's not what I meant.

Hardison: You know what -- If I have to go to one more of those damn sensitivity seminars, I know who I’m blaming.

Steve: No, no, no.

Hardison: I know who I’m blaming.

Steve: It's not what I meant.

Hardison: I blame you! You! (walks away)

hardison using societal tendencies of racism is iconic every (every) time

- - - - -

(Eliot gets up and begins going through luggage in the overhead racks. One of the passengers watches him suspiciously)

Eliot (to passenger): Can I help you with something? Watch the movie.

what would you even do in this situation ???

- - - - -

Marissa: I know. It's just -- It's like a placebo effect. It's not really working, but it makes you feel better anyway.

Parker: Yeah? So, when's that supposed to kick in? (she moves forward) Look. Flying isn't really all that scary when you think about it. I mean, there are a lot more likely ways to die than on a plane. Car crash, house fire, electrocution, drowning, autoerotic asphyxiation. I mean, the fact is, death haunts us every day. No matter where we are.

(Parker smiles and moves away)

Y I K E S

- - - - -

Hardison: You kidding? Did you get the new expansion pack? Woman, I was up all night. Now, look, I mean “Burning Crusade" was great, but this new one is mind-blowing.

Nate: Hardison…

[First Class]

Nate: …you bailed on the job because you were up all night playing a game?

[Genogrow Break Room]

(Hardison turns aside and opens a cabinet door to hide his face)

Hardison: First off, "game" is hardly adequate, okay

hardison is DONE with them not taking his “games” seriously ,,, also LMFAO that’s why he was late

- - - - -

Hardison (opens door): The meeting's starting, sir. (closes door)

Haldeman: What meeting? (sighs and puts on his jacket)

that is such an effective tactic tho ???

- - - - -

Parker: Hatbox full of Euros, pouch of uncut diamonds, and a stolen Stradivarius. Now, I’ve never lifted one of those.

Nate: Parker..

let! her! steal! it!

- - - - -

Eliot: Ms. Devins, those payments were not made in error. They were bribes. He was trying to pay off the researchers so they would not testify.

Marissa: What are you talking about? What the hell is going on here?

(Parker sits down next to Marissa)

Parker: The guy in 1D wants to kill you. Ginger ale?

Eliot: Just – sh-she--

that poor lady is NOT having a good time

also eliot looks sO DONE WITH PARKER LMFAO

- - - - -

Eliot: Erlick's a pro. He had a ceramic knife. If anything was going down, he'd sniff 'em out when he saw them coming.

Nate: How would they do it?

Eliot: Easiest way? Take 'em out in transit.

Sophie: You mean bring down the plane they're on?

(everyone looks at her pointedly)

Sophie: You mean bring down the plane we're on?

Nate: Yeah

that’s interesting meta to know but we hate to see it

- - - - -

Nate: Okay, Parker, I -- Parker, I need you – (to Eliot) All right, we got to talk to Erlick now.

[Plane Bathroom]

(Dan is still unconscious on the toilet as Eliot and Nate come in)

Nate: Geez!

Eliot (patting Dan on the face): Hey!

(Dan does not stir, Eliot sighs)

Eliot: When I knock people out, they tend to stay knocked out.

Nate: Hey!

(Nate taps the guy on the face)

Nate: Luggage tags.

(they search Dan’s clothes and take his luggage tags. Eliot grabs the ceramic knife before they leave the bathroom)

eliot doesn’t fuck around lmao

also he did the flippy thing with the knife

- - - - -

Hardison: Parker, the device you found -- is it anywhere near an orange box?

Parker: Yeah.

[Haldeman’s Office]

Hardison: Oh, god. They tapped into the black box.

[Cargo Hold]

Parker: No, no, it's not black. It's orange.

[Haldeman’s Office]

Hardison: Yeah, the black boxes, they're orange.

[Cargo Hold]

Hardison: Makes them easier to find in the debris.

Parker: Oh. Oh…

[Haldeman’s Office]

Hardison: They've hacked into the flight's computer, which means they have access to the system, which means they can spoof the black-Box data all at the same time.

[Cargo Hold]

Parker: Crash the plane without anyone knowing it was sabotaged.

[Haldeman’s Office]

Hardison: Exactly

that’s terrifying

- - - - -

Nate: Listen to me!

[Haldeman’s Office]

Nate: You can do this! I trust you!

(Hardison looking very unsure of himself)

[Cockpit]

Nate: No matter how many times you goof off or screw up, you always come through in the clutch.

[Haldeman’s Office]

Nate: You're the only guy I can count on in a situation like this.

Hardison (cracks his neck): You know what? I-I-you... You're right.

You're right. I got this.

[Cockpit]

Nate: Yes! Yes! Yes, you can!

Hardison: You're right. You're -- I'm the man.

[Cargo Hold]

Hardison: I'm the man. I got this. I'm gonna do this.

hardison is amazing and they need to appreciate him more

- - - - -

[First Class]

(Nate and Eliot stumble into seats and belt up)

Nate: Sophie?

[Coach]

Sophie: Yes?

[First Class]

Nate: You okay?

[Coach]

Sophie: Yeah. You?

[First Class]

Nate: Ask me again in 10 minutes.

[Coach]

Sophie: You're gonna remember this one, aren't you?

[First Class]

Nate: Oh yeah.

everyone else on the comms: ,,, y’all have to flirt right this second ???

- - - - -

[Haldeman’s Office]

(Hardison watching footage on the Internet of the plane landing)

Announcer (on monitor): …emergency landing on the seven mile bridge…

Hardison: Whoa! (gets up and dances) Baby! Unh! Age of the geek! Smooth! Too smooth! Lord, I was so scared, I wanted to cry, call my mama. Y'all cool? Y’all cool?

Nate: Yes, cool.

Hardison: Family. All right.

hardison is baby + HE CALLED THEM HIS FAMILY !!!

#the mile high job #leverage 1.08 #leverage 1x08 #leverage season 1 #season 1 #notable moments #leverage #mine

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weakzen · 4 years

Text

(Not So) Small Detective Ask Game

(list here for anyone else who wants to do it)

alright, one sadsack detective and where she stands at the end of book 2, comin’ right up.

01. What’s their name and how do they look?

Alexandra 'Alex' Black.

Five foot three shorty. Twenty-eight years old. Light blue eyes. Long, bright red hair, usually done up in a big puffy Dutch braid. Athletic and curvy, with a decent amount of muscle. Covered in some gnarly scars too, mostly on the left side of her body. Buy her a drink and ask real nice about them, and she might just tell you about the time she got her ass kicked and almost died in a bar fight.

02. Why did they join the police?

Needed a job after crawling home to Wayhaven with her tail tucked between her legs. It was supposed to be temporary, just something to pay the bills while she worked up the nerve to jump back into academia.

Then years passed, applications remained unsent, and one day, she looked up from behind Reele's old desk and slowly realized she was never going to have the courage to get that PhD.

03. How did they get the promotion to detective and what do they think about it?

She turned the Chief down and kept turning him down for the promotion, right up until the morning he slammed a 'Detective Black' nameplate down on her desk and told her that she started in an hour.

After he stomped out of the station, she just sighed and spun around in her chair a few times.

That general mood hasn't changed since. But if no one else is stepping up, then she'll do the best job she can.

Not like she's really a mathematician anymore, so…

Might as well.

04. Can they handle blood/gore?

Yes. Very easily.

All that emotional detachment has to be good for something, right?

05. How are they with people?

Depends on how much those people like evasive sarcasm and bad puns.

06. What’s their relationship to Bobby?

First serious relationship. First love.

First person to stab her in the back so thoroughly she almost had a nervous breakdown.

You know, because of the whole threat of being kicked from her grad program and having her undergrad degree stripped away, the ongoing investigations of academic fraud, plagiarism, and theft of her TA answer keys.

And then, when the evidence for all of it wasn't lining up Bobby's way, the personal smears, the weaponization of everything she'd ever told him in confidence, until finally—the cherry atop the whole shit sundae—his accusation that she'd abused her authority as a TA to coerce him into a relationship.

All of that from someone she once truly believed when he looked her in the eye and told her she mattered to him more than anything.

These days, she avoids Bobby as much as possible. Because she fucking loathes that little ratfuck piece of shit, yes, but mostly because she's legit worried that she'll eventually snap and break his jaw if he keeps calling her 'angel' and trying to put his fucking hands on her.

She'd have to fill out an awful lot of paperwork if she did that, after all.

07. What’s their relationship with their mom like? How did it change?

When she was kid, she understood her mom wasn't around because of Work. Very important Work. She also understood that Work was the reason why her mom would constantly get up to take phone calls in the middle of dinner, or when they were sitting and talking together, and sometimes those phone calls would make her mom leave right after, even if she just got home.

She didn't understand why all of that bothered her though, just that it hurt for some reason and it sometimes made her cry later in her room. And eventually, after years of it, she started calling every nanny that stuck around for long enough her 'mom' instead, then begged them not to leave her too.

When she was a teenager, she stopped crying and started yelling. Started pushing back. Started avoiding home every time she'd walk up her street after school to see the lights on and the car in the driveway. She'd spend the night a friend's house instead, rather than endure another evening of emotional whiplash and half-hearted interest in her life and the constant reminders that Rebecca would rather take a work call in the other room than spend time with her or listen to her.

Because those calls were more important than her and anything she had to offer.

She frequently wondered why Rebecca even bothered to have a kid, then always rationalized that her dad must have talked Rebecca into it because there was just no way otherwise. And quietly, that gave her a small amount of comfort. Because if he managed to pull off that amazing feat, then he must have also really wanted her and loved her before he died.

Right?

As an adult, she no longer wonders about any of that. No longer cries. No longer gets angry. And she already knows what the answer would be if she straight up asked Rebecca 'Would you change anything, if you had the opportunity to go back and do it all over?'

She's firmly accepted that she never mattered to Rebecca, not the way the job did, and that she never will.

A one time stint with rule breaking doesn't change anything about that.

And it doesn't even hurt much, accepting that truth, as long as nobody pokes at it too hard and she doesn't think about it very deeply and Rebecca doesn't try to push any of those performative 'loving mom' displays of affection on her.

08. Who is their Love Interest and why?

Mason.

Because someone needs to put that asshole in his place. If he's gonna fuck with her, then she's gonna fuck with him right back. And if he's gonna fuck with her then, um… w-well, she's still gonna fuck with him right back!

He can have pleasure with her if he wants, but he is not getting it from seeing her back down.

That said, she does genuinely like the bastard, if a little begrudgingly. Thinks he's fun. Cute. Cares about his well-being too. Wants him to be comfortable and happy. Worries often that he probably isn't, considering how hard it must be to live with such painfully heightened senses.

And after Bobby, Mason feels safe. Comforting, in a weird way. She knows and accepts that the only thing he wants from her is sex, that he doesn't give a shit about her at all outside the bedroom, and that he won't ever pretend to either.

That's such a huge relief, to not be jerked around by somebody saying one thing but doing another. To have someone be brutally honest for once about what she actually means to them.

And if he ever does show any hint of affection, well, then it's probably because he's starting to see her as a part of the team. Maybe. Or he's just fucking with her again to provoke a reaction. Probably that. In which case, watch out buddy.

Two can play at that game.

09. What do they think of the supernatural?

Really interested in figuring out how all of it works, more than anything. It's magic, but there still has to be some kind of underlying set of rules and a logic to it all, right? She's definitely asked Nate to get her a baby's first book of vampire basics too.

At the same time, however, her enthusiasm for it all remains somewhat dampened.

She knows there's another Murphy out there coming for her eventually. It's just a matter of time. And until he shows up, she has to assume that every new supernatural she encounters is him.

Maybe that's unfair, but so was the target Murphy carved across her back.

10. How well did they handle the reveal that the supernatural exists?

Well, she already knew Unit Bravo were a bunch of shady-ass weirdos hiding obvious secrets, but… vampires? Not exactly in her top one hundred guesses for what one of those secret might've been.

Still, whatever. Didn't phase her. If she believes alien life definitely exists somewhere, then why should vampires be that impossible? Especially when she witnessed evidence of their abilities firsthand.

Oh, and since Felix was being such a little shit in the hospital room trying to scare her about it, she demanded even more evidence from him. Asked him to come closer to her bed again. Closer. Even closer. Then she put her face right by his and told him to prove it, and gestured for him to show his fangs.

Once he did, obviously, she did her best to look as bored as possible while she tilted his face between her hands to examine them. Gave him a glib little thanks afterward, for showing her his 'vampire teeth.'

And added that they were a lot smaller than she expected.

11. Do they have any tattoos/piercings?

Just the standard single-hole piercings through each earlobe.

She mostly wears tiny studs. Geometric shapes. Stuff that can't be grabbed and pulled during a fight.

12. What is their highest (professional) stat and why?

Combat (70%)

Guess that kinda happens when exercise is her primary mode of stress relief, and her favorite way to exercise for almost half of her life now has been to train in some form of martial art.

Rebecca is the one who encouraged it, too. Signed her up for lessons and said that if she was gonna fight, then she better damn well make sure she's the one standing at the end next time.

13. What’s their opinion of the Mayor?

Who, Mayor Fartman? She has definitely never slipped that into a conversation while talking to him and pretended she didn't afterwards.

Nothing but respect for her mayor.

14. Do they get along with Tina and Verda?

Absolutely.

She's not as close to Verda as she is with Tina, but she really appreciates his sense of humor and his overall chill, caring vibe. He's a good dude. And she loves asking him questions about his work too. Even better when those questions spiral into long, scientific bullshit sessions that leave them both grinning at the end like the huge fucking nerds they are.

And Tina, well…

After she returned to Wayhaven, Tina was the one who got her back on her feet. Pulled her out of one of the worst places she's ever been emotionally. Kept her marching forward until she could stand on her own again. And did all of that for her, someone still practically a stranger to Tina at that point, without ever asking for anything in return, other than for her to start being a little kinder to herself about everything.

Tina's an amazing person. Her best friend. She loves her. Trusts her completely.

And is totally fuckin' ride or die for her.

15. What do they think of Unit Bravo? How has that changed throughout the story?

Once all the secretive bullshit and obvious lying stopped, she was fine with them as a group. Overall, thinks they're good people. Likable, even. Fun. And they're using their time and effort to help others, and that's something she greatly admires.

But she doesn't feel like part of their team. Their family. Doesn't see herself as anything more than a temporary stop for them on the way to wherever they're headed next.

Not because of anything they've done, just… she knows probability. Wrote her thesis on it.

And after Murphy, the blood—her blood—she doesn't give herself great odds for reaching thirty.

In the meantime, though:

Adam

Well, first off, he deserved to get shot. She fucking warned him. And what kind of asshole tries to dismiss someone pointing a firearm at them as a bluff?! Secondly, the sheer audacity of this man! Who the hell does he think he is?! Thirdly, he needs to chill the fuck out. Or she's gonna drop a goddamn ice cube down the back of his shirt. Fourth, okay—admittedly, that combined take down of Murphy was pretty cool. They at least work well together in a fight. Fifth, well…

Shit.

She actually, really, kind of… respects him. Gets him a little, too. Understands him, in a strange way she can't explain.

Maybe it's because they're both far more alike than either one of them would ever care to admit.

Even so, he still needs to get knocked on his ass every once and a while. To keep him humble. And she absolutely can't wait for the day she finally does it when they spar.

Nate

Nate has always been great. Considerate. Welcoming. Warm. Thoughtful. A whole host of other wonderful adjectives that would definitely make the world a better place if more people aspired to embody them the way he does.

Yet… whenever Nate aims any of that kindness her direction, it unnerves her. Probably as much as her tattered relationship with Rebecca unnerves him.

She believes he's genuine about his comments and compliments, even as she swerves around them. They're just… hard to hear. She doesn't know what to do with any of them. Or understand why he's giving them to her in the first place.

They barely know each other, so how can he say stuff like that? Especially so easily?

Felix

She's real glad that unsolicited, near-kiss of his turned out to be a fluke—because it would have sucked to miss out on a fellow troll who can match her beat for sarcastic beat.

Felix is more her speed, so to speak. She appreciates his approach, the heart wrapped in levity and laced with a bit of shit-stirring. The playfulness. The excitement. Though, sometimes the sheer chaotic energy fueling it all can be a bit overwhelming, even for her.

Still, his fumes are infectious, and she can already tell they're gonna be terrible enablers for each other.

Mason

Unsurprisingly, she likes him much better now that his jerk dial is turned to 'playful teasing' rather than 'unwarranted hostility,' though she's still not quite sure what changed to make that happen. Not sure how long it will last either, any of it. Either way, she has no expectations of him and their non-relationship, no secret hopes for feelings or a future.

She's just enjoying the banter, the amazing sex, and the fun moments as they come with him, until they don't come any more.

Pun completely intended.

16. Do they have any pets?

Do houseplants count? If so, she has an amazing kentia palm.

17. What are their hobbies?

Sparring, running, and weight training, primarily.

Yes, that probably makes her a total douchebag bro. And no, she doesn't skip leg day.

She also likes reading, knitting, gardening, feeding the neighborhood birds, playing strategy games, doing logic and word puzzles, examining systems of any kind to figure out how they work, and spending time outdoors enjoying all the gorgeous mountain scenery, lush wilderness, and dank weed BC has to offer.

So, you know, a well-rounded douchebag at least.

18. What do they think of Douglas?

She knows how much it fucking sucks and hurts to have a parent who obviously loves their job way more than their kid. She also remembers how annoying she was as a teenager. That said, those bits of sympathy and understanding are really the only things standing between her and complete exasperation with him.

Still, it's probably only a matter of time before she switches his phone language from English to something non-Romance, probably Arabic. Something that would be really difficult for him to switch back anyway.

And if that doesn't work, well, then the entire station is gonna bear witness to whether or not their paper shredder has enough muscle to chew through a cell phone.

19. What does their apartment look like?

Minimalist. White walls. Warm woods and leather. Clean lines with pops of color from textiles, house plants, and cut flowers. Not a lot of clutter or material possessions.

Very tidy, too. Bed always made. Dishes washed after use. Baseboards, corners, and door frames dust free.

Of course, the building she lives in is pretty old, so all of that sleek, immaculate minimalism is wrapped around some hideously dated interior design. Hello, puke green shower tile and baby pink countertops.

20. What is their personality?

Overall, pretty chill and content to live and let live, for the most part. Unless someone's being an asshole or a bully. In which case, she's very inclined to get up in their face about it, even if she has to stand on her toes to do so.

Once she does that, good luck. She's fucking tenacious. And stubborn as shit too, so she won't be the one backing down.

She would prefer to keep things relaxed, though. Playful. She likes banter. Sarcasm. Teasing and being teased. Laughing and making laugh. And she absolutely loves deploying and receiving truly awful puns, the more eye-watering and cringe-inducing, the better.

The humor is enjoyable enough on its own, but it also lets her be friendly while still keeping a buffer of emotional distance.

Because holy shit is she guarded.

It takes her a very, very, very long time to feel comfortable opening up to people. Or to let herself feel anything deeper for them beyond detached affection. Or to reach out and ask for help, even when she desperately needs it.

She's far more accustomed to being on her own, looking out for herself. And, luckily, she's resourceful and competent enough to make that work, most of the time. It helps having highly analytical mind geared toward problem solving.

Well, it helps when she's not using that mind to construct defensive rationalizations to keep people out. And when that mind isn't busy encouraging her curiosity to pry into things and people to figure out how they work.

Terrible habit, her nosiness. The probing. The eavesdropping. The occasional snooping. Just the worst, really, especially from someone so reluctant to share anything deep about herself.

Like the fact, beneath everything else, she just feels completely alone and about to drown in unending sadness.

But, hey, that stuff down there doesn't matter.

It really doesn't.

21. Their favourite/comfort food?

Fish empanadas with pebre. Ate a lot of those when she studied abroad in Chile, and that was probably the happiest year of her life.

She still makes pebre all the time, but the empanadas are actually something she would break her vegetarianism to eat again, if she ever got the chance.

22. Do they go to the bar or stay at the station?

Stayed in. Not a big fan of bars anymore.

23. Their gender/sexuality?

Cis woman. And, well… straight?

Not a whole lot of sexual experience to draw from there. And it's a bit late to figure out whether she likes girls or just thinking about girls, right? That's the kind of thing she was supposed to have sorted before she turned twenty-five, not let sit until she's almost thirty and finally ready to see people again and then expect some poor woman to hand-hold her awkward ass through it, all while she shies away from making any real, intimate connection, partially because the thought of ever making herself that emotionally vulnerable again makes her want to throw up in fear, but mostly because it would be incredibly unfair to date someone with the mountain of secrets she has to now keep and also when it seems like her goddamn life expectancy is a just big fucking question mark these days.

So, yes. Straight.

Sure.

24. How did they handle the fight with Murphy? Did they get bitten?

She jammed that DMB syringe right into that fucker's neck with one hand, while her other pressed against her own neck to stop the bleeding.

Then she kicked him a few times after he was down. Hissed curses at him while she asked him who was making idle threats now, motherfucker.

25. What do they usually wear? Has that changed?

Usually something form-fitting, flattering, and fairly subdued and minimalist in color and pattern. High-waisted jeans. High-necked blouses, sweaters, and soft, stylish t-shirts. Lacey crop tops and a gambler hat in the summer. Boots, slightly heeled and slightly pointed, all year round. Maybe some rings and a metal cuff if she's feeling fancy. Sunglasses if it's bright. All of it paired with either a black denim jacket, a black leather jacket, or long black trench coat that swooshes when she walks.

Overall, she definitely channels that cowboy witch vibe.

#the wayhaven chronicles #twc #the detective #alex/mason #alexandra black

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jessmt · 4 years

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Unanswered Questions

Jesse promised he'd stop asking Lake questions about what it was like to live life as someone else's reflection. But now that they're off the train, and there's no urgency or anybody to fight, Jesse realizes there's something he's still pretty curious about.

(aka: a first kiss one-shot)

EDIT: I’m big dummie and accidentally posted the wrong version. This should be the right one.

AO3

Lake is sitting on her bed with a small stack of comic books beside her, mindlessly flipping through them when Jesse pops his head into the room. He’s being so quiet that she almost doesn’t even notice he’s there, and probably wouldn’t have save for the fact that he’s been in and out of her room all afternoon carrying new stacks of comic books for her to read. When he told her he had wanted her to experience “great art” first hand, she had been expecting…..an art museum, or something, but he insisted that comic books were the way to go. There had even been some flustered comment about how a lot of the superheroes reminded him of her.

Nerd.

She snorts. “If you’re here to bring me more, you’re out of luck. I haven’t even finished the last stack you insisted I read” she says, pretending to turn the page of her current book to make it look like she’s super invested in it. But to her surprise, Jesse doesn’t come plop another book next to her, or ask her how she likes the one in her hands like he had been for all the others.

In fact, he’s...not even saying anything at all. Lake looks up from her book to double check if it’s actually him, and not Nate, and it is Jesse, but he’s just...standing halfway through the doorway, looking like he’s debating if he wants to come all the way in or not.

“Jesse?”

“Huh?” he jumps, like he had been lost in thought, and makes the decision to come into the room and sit beside her on the bed. “S-sorry. I was just, um, thinking”.

She cocks an eyebrow at him. “Yeah? Well now you’ve got me all interested. Try me”.

The response makes him blush, and he turns his gaze away from her and towards his fidgeting hands. “Well, I…” he pauses, like he’s trying really hard not to screw up and say the wrong words. “I….know you said no more reflection questions, but I….couldn’t stop thinking about it”

She crosses her arms. “I’m not answering the question about the bathroom, Jesse”.

“Oh, no no no, not that one” Jesse puts his hands into the air in self-defense, but still refuses to look her in the eyes. “I meant, the other one, about, um...” he trails off, murmuring the end of the question too quietly for Lake to hear.

“What?” She scoots a bit closer to him.

Jesse grips his pant leg, and finally builds up the courage to look at her. He’s beet red, blushing harder than Lake thought was even possible. “The uh, the kissing one”.

Oh.

Her lack of immediate response only seems to worsen his blush, and he visibly backtracks to look for better phrasing. “If someone, say, uh, my friend, for this totally random example, wanted to practice kissing in a mirror because, uh, there’s this girl he really likes, named, uh…” he pauses. “...River, because he’s never kissed anyone before, and he really wants to…” he coughs, “…do it right, would his reflection be aware it’s happening? Would-would, uh, that technically count as his first kiss, if it’s with his reflection?”

Lake blinks in response, a light blush beginning to tint her own cheeks, until she starts laughing hysterically, one hand to her forehead and her other gripping her stomach.

“I-I’m serious!” Jesse squeaks.” My friend totally…..wouldn’t have wasted his first kiss like that if he knew!”

“I’m sorry,” Lake replies, between laughs. “I know you’re serious, I just can’t help it” she wipes at her eyes, and places her hand on his leg to get him to look her in the eyes again. “But you know, there are better ways of asking if you can kiss me.”

“Wh-what?” Jesse splutters, “How did you know I-” he begins, but before he can embarrass himself any more, Lake leans forward and presses her lips to his. She cups his cheeks in her hand, taking a moment or two to wind her fingers through his hair.

Jesse squeaks, but he’s quick to melt into the kiss, winding his arms around her back and rubbing it gently as he kisses her back. He’s soft, and sweet, and everything Lake never could’ve dreamed of back on the train. They’ve only been officially dating for less than a week, but the way Jesse’s kissing her and the way he’s holding her almost makes it seem like he’s wanted to kiss her for much, much longer than that.

If Lake had to guess, she’d say it’s been since the sunset they exited the train together. And she’d laugh at him for being such a dork about it, but if she’s going to be completely honest with herself, she’s wanted it for that long too. She sighs in contentment, deepening the kiss just a little before she pulls away, pressing her forehead to his. Jesse opens his eyes at the gesture, notices her close proximity, and closes them again, failing miserably to repress a fit of giggles as he presses his forehead to hers in return.

“See? What’d I tell you? Didn’t even need to ask me after all”.

Jesse snorts, and plants a quick, soft kiss to her forehead.

“I dunno,” he shrugs. “I think my method worked pretty well”.

#jesslake #infinty train #infinity train book 2 #infinity train lake #infinity train jesse #my writing #u////u

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jupitermelichios · 4 years

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Jupiter’s Top 10 Fic Series of the Decade

In no particular order (and belonging to no particular fandom)

Honourable Mentions: Of Hunters & Hellblazers by KittyAug - Self Help by maskedfangirl - Bad Jokes by hahaharley - Doubtful Sanity by DustToDust - Wilton’s Bakery ‘Verse by machine_dove & sproings - Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc by etothepii - New Favourite F Word by Polaris - little beasts by noctiphany & likewinning

drawn into something by Nonymos (Venom, Eddie/Venom, Dan/Anne, Eddie/Venom/Dan/Anne)

“Eddie, you… and him.”

“Yeah.” Eddie stares at the floor. “And… and look, Annie, I know it’s weird, but I can explain, I…”

His voice breaks, he’s damn near tearing up, panic rising again—and he jumps when Anne cups his face.

“Hey, it’s—it’s all right, Eddie.” She’s making a valiant effort to smile. “Don’t get so worked up. I’m not gonna run screaming.”

“No?” He laughs and sniffs. “Damn. Starting to wonder what it’s gonna take, at this point.”

This is not Nonymos’s only entry on this list. In fact they may just be my favourite fanfic author of all time. Drawn into something is everything everything I want from a Venom sequel, emotional, kinky, romantic, and poly.

OTP: Fight Club by MorganOfTheFey (Detroit: Become Human, RK900/Gavin)

"One hundred. Ten X," Nines says, voice flat enough it almost doesn't sound like bragging. "I would have been decommissioned otherwise."

"Ohhhh. Aw, that's sad. Just," She tries to snap her fingers and gets distracted for a moment when she can't. "Jus'like that?"

"Yeah RK, that's so sad," Gavin echoes. "Can you play yourself despacito?"

His own phone blares the song barely a second later. Gavin drops a few f-bombs fumbling to get it out of his jacket pocket and turn it off. Then as soon as he puts it back in his pocket, it starts up again.

"Thank you for the suggestion, detective," RK900 says. "This is making me feel better."

The fourth part of this is still coming out, and it’s the highlight of my week when the new chapter drops.

Dreams of the Waking Man by Lex_Munroe (Marvel Comics, Wade/Cable, Daken/Bullseye, Wade & Hope)

All at once, it hurts. It hurts worse than the day Nate died (because Wade couldn’t accept it back then, insisted that Nate had managed to timeslide out, that the busted old telemetry circuit would only let him go forward and he was just lost for a little while).

He sits in the middle of the floor, ducks his head, cries.

She was smarter than he was—than he is. She’d known all along. Brave girl.

Timesliding doesn’t work right on Wade, never has, and their cobbled-together sliding module barely had power to take one stringy teenager for one jump.

She’d known she was leaving her parents, that she certainly wouldn’t see one of them again and quite possibly wouldn’t see the other.

Wade allows himself a moment more for grief and shame and humility. Then he clears his throat and wipes his eyes and gets back to work.

This may be the cleverest fic I’ve ever read. Crossovers, theoretical physics, and the best love story Marvel never wrote.

The Mountains Are The Same by bonehandledknife & Primarybufferpanel (Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa/Max, Furiosa/Ace, Everyone & Healthy Coping Mechanisms)

“'Real isn’t how you are made’” Gilly said with the air of a quote, of a Remembering, “'It’s a thing that happens to you.’”

Rotor closed his eyes in a long blink, “A thing that hurts, innit it right?”

“Sometimes,” Gilly agreed, squeezing his hand, “That’s life though, when you are Real. We all become it bit by bit. But it doesn’t happen if you’re not strong, if you’re not soft, if you’re not sturdy.”

“ But how can y'be all of those at once ?” he wheezed out. It’s getting hard to catch his breath.

“You are all that right now, aren’t you?” Gilly asked him with piercing eyes, “No one else of all these Boys has had the strength to ask for me. And I will Witness you as I have kept all those of my sisters who’ve fallen these past days.”

This series is not always easy, it doesn’t shy away from the hard or the dark or the painful, but it is always worth reading.

The Unspoken Truth by Nonymos (MCU, Clint/Loki)

Barton glared at him like he was trying to decide whether he was being mocked or not, but the next second, his shoulders slumped. Loki was familiar with the feeling – that dreadful feeling of discovering something repulsive in one's own nature.

And then, he waited. He waited for Barton to think and connect the dots, to realize that an obvious solution was standing just before him, to remember how he had felt when waking up tied down, or being forced to drink down the water. The demi-god just stood there, hoping – almost praying for the first time in his life – that his enemy would look up at him with something else than hatred in his eyes.

No one writes kink quite like Nonymos writes kink, and this series is the perfect encapsulation of that.

The Stone Gryphon by rthstewart (Narnia, primarily Gen)

"Tools!" Richard was so shocked he was near speechless. He sat down heavily on the bench and began writing frantically in that strange code. "You are saying that you have observed ordinary crows use tools? Peter, that is… remarkable."

"Well, I've seen Beavers use fishing tackle and sewing machines, so it didn't seem that unusual at the time."

I’m not going to lie, this may not be to everyone’s taste. But, amateur theologian, lover of weird animal facts, and history nerd that I am, there are very few fics more exactly tailored to my interests.

Republic of Heaven Community Radio by ErinPtah (WtNV x His Dark Materials, Cecil/Carlos)

The greeting catches both her and Carlos off-guard. It's not wrong to talk directly to another person's daemon, but it's still a little weird. "Likewise," she stammers.

They're both waiting for the obvious next step, which is for Cecil to introduce his daemon. The fact that Carlos hasn't spotted her yet is understandable — a big community gathering in a small space, you get plenty of daemons breaking away from their humans to socialize directly with each other. Any of the dozen animal shapes currently within ten feet of them could be Cecil's. If his daemon has an unusually high range, there are even more possibilities.

What Cecil says instead is, "If you ever have any important experimental-theology news that you need to share with the town, call me any time! Everyone listens to my show." There's a touch of what Carlos hopes is nothing more sinister than smugness when he adds, "Everyone."

He steps out of the way to let someone else interrogate Carlos, and vanishes into the crowd. Carlos doesn't get a chance to see what daemon he leaves with.

This may be the most carefully thought out crossover I’ve ever read, and I’m a little in awe of ErinPtah’s skills.

The Soul in the Machine by missdreawrites & Troodon (Dishonoured, Corvo/Outsider)

“... Outsider?” Corvo asked, sitting down on the filthy floor. “In the published list of the people who died of the Plague… how many were registered Augments?”

“Son of a bitch, ” Corvo swore with feeling. “This is… look at this waste. We aren't even people to them, are we?” He looked down at the body next to him. “And I killed the one person who could help. I did this. I doomed an entire people to plague, and murder and…”

The cyberpunk Dishonoured AU I desperately wish I’d thought of, because it works so very well.

In Which Tony Stark Builds Himself Some Friends (But His Family Was Assigned by Nick Fury) by scifigrl47 (MCU, Steve/Tony)

“Do you know what the difference between a villain and a super villain is, Stark?” Coulson said, leaning his palms on the tabletop, looming over everything like a very snappily dressed gargoyle.

“Style?” Tony asked, pointing both index fingers in Coulson's direction like the gunslinger that he was. He added a wide grin to the gesture, but Coulson didn't seem to notice.

“A villain has a giant mass of robotic vacuum cleaners that he can sic on his enemies. A super villain gives them the ability to fly.”

“In my defense, I do not actually remember installing repulsor technology in the Roombas,” Tony said, choosing his words carefully. It had been a working theory, sure, but he still wasn't quite sure when he implemented it. Maybe sometime on Tuesday night... That one was a blur. “It was a very long couple of days. So I was as surprised by that as everyone else.”

This doesn’t really count as a rec, since everyone in the fandom has read it already, but it really wouldn’t be fair to draw up a ‘best of the 2010s’ list and not include this.

A Great and Gruesome Height by mokuyoubi (Hannibal, Will/Hannibal)

Bedelia lashes out but Will is quicker. He grabs her wrist, pressing hard between the delicate bones with his thumb, until she makes a soft noise of distress and drops the fork.

Hannibal purses his lips and leans in close to her ear. “Now that is disappointing,” he whispers, and Bedelia has the good sense to be afraid with that mouth so near her skin. He inhales her scent deeply and straightens. “I thought you and I were beyond such petty jabs.”

“Were it not for the fact that you required medical attention, I have no doubt I would have met a similarly crass ending at the hands of your pet,” she says, lip curling in disgust.

Hannibal smiles serenely and says, “Will is a creature entirely of his own making. It is not to me to guide his hand. Merely to share in the sublime perfection of his vision, when he allows it.”

There are many dark!Will stories out there, and most of them are a lot of fun, but few are quite at believable as this one.

#top 10 list #top 10 fic #stony #hannigram #symbrock #cablepool #reed900 #cecilos #frosthawk #fic recs

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letmetellyouaboutmyfeels · 5 years

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I just spent hours going through the search results for ‘meta’ on your blog, and there’s so much interesting stuff there, and it’s way too late at night now, but it was so worth it. Anyway, I love your leverage meta and was wondering if you could talk about the leverage crew interacting/working with others? (ie two live crew job, the last dam job), especially when they’re allies and/or people they’re actively working against in different scenarios (like chaos)

First of all, thank you so much nonny, that means so much to see that you appreciate my meta! I put a lot of thought into it and it gives me such joy to see that others appreciate my rambling and overthinking about fictional characters. Truly, you have made my evening. ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

Second of all, this is such an interesting meta question and I’m excited to answer it!

Oh man, if anybody was in any doubt that the Leverage team are hugely protective of each other, their interactions with their allies would blow that misconception out of the water. Note that I’m not including Sterling in this because that would be a whole post by itself and I personally don’t see Sterling as an ally. He’s been their ally at times but they’ve never really trusted him--he’s more like a comfortable antagonist. But anyway.

When the team has to deal with an ally, or team up with anyone really, they close ranks. Mr. Quinn is a bit of an exception since Eliot has no personal beef with him (more on that later) but Tara, Chaos, Archie? Slamming the fucking door in their faces. Maggie is the only real exception (gonna tackle her last). No matter how many squabbles might be going on, no matter if the rest of the team wants to strangle Nate with a piano wire (in a loving way), once someone else is introduced, they prove what a family they have become by uniting as one and going, and whom the fuckst might you be?

Let’s start with the longest ally relationship they have: Tara

Tara was, I think, a great addition to the team. I think she really challenged them and in ways that they needed. Eliot, Hardison, and Parker all quickly latched onto Sophie as a mom figure (in different ways--Eliot behaves like an oldest sibling with her, he’s old enough not to need her anymore but he knows he can turn to her if he needs her and she’s his ally when they’re making decisions, but Parker heavily relies on Sophie for guidance). Having Sophie ripped away from them forces them to stand on their own two feet more. It forces them to deal with Nate themselves instead of using Sophie as a shield. And Nate, well, we all see how he falls apart without Sophie and tries to blame her when it’s really himself.

The team closes ranks around Tara immediately. Nate doesn’t kick her to the curb for two reasons only: they need a grifter, and Sophie trusts Tara. Tara’s beautifully unapologetic behavior (insisting on getting a profit from their jobs, not babying Nate) doesn’t help in keeping the team at arm’s length, but Tara knows her worth and knows they’ll come around, and sure enough, they do.

Oddly enough, Tara’s really great for the team because they prove to themselves that they really are a family by her being there. Season one’s theme, as stated by the producers/writers, is all about family, and in season two we see the team really internalize that and realize that it’s true, they are a family. Through the adversity of losing Sophie and having to adjust, they recognize what they have truly become.

(I would argue that this is also the season where the OT3 realizes how deep their feelings for one another are as a result, but that’s another post for another time.)

By the end of the season of course we see them accept Tara as a friend and ally even if they’re loathe to admit it because all the members of the team are loathe to admit when they’re wrong about something. But their interactions with Tara show the team how they’ve become set in their ways, in their dynamic, and makes them question why, and makes them realize what a family they are.

Which is why it’s such a beautiful ending with Nate going to jail and the feeling of betrayal when they realize he’s not coming with them--they’ve spent all season going oh shit, we’re a family, we’re really in this together, okay, and then to have Nate make his plan without them and to abandon them even if you can understand that he did it to protect them...

So yes, the team’s interactions with Tara basically show them what a family they have become and set the entire thing up for Nate’s sacrifice at the end of the season, bless you Tara, you queen, I’m single, please call me.

The other ally that the team has that they’re automatically sort of forced to accept (the way that because of Sophie they were forced to accept Tara) is of course Archie.

That motherfucker.

Look Archie is a charming bastard but he’s still a rat bastard and I will punch him in the face if I ever meet him and y’know what he’ll probably understand. The fact that in The Last Dam Job we see him say to his bewildered daughter “that’s my daughter” about Parker, proving that he STILL, after EVERYTHING, hasn’t introduced Parker to his family? Ahaha. We are in a fight, sir, we are in a MASSIVE fight.

Archie only appears in one other episode but like Nate’s dad shows us so much of who Parker is and why she’s the way she is. We’ve got Parker’s family backstory, her asshole father whom she killed, but there’s still a big gap between that and how she became a thief, and Archie fills that gap. And the way the team reacts to him is fantastic because the only one who closes ranks around him is Nate.

Nate, who also has a rough relationship with his father, Nate who treats Parker like his own daughter, Nate who mentors Parker into becoming a mastermind. Nate who was also a father. Nate hates Archie, because Archie should’ve helped teach Parker to become a person, and instead he taught her to become a weapon.

Hardison, Eliot, and Sophie? They are extremely protective of course and they are not fans of Archie, but they are a bit busy getting Parker to safety, they respect how important Archie is to Parker, and they are proud of Parker. They know who and what she is. They know that Archie will see the proof in the pudding.

But Nate, Nate is so goddamn offended, and I think this is the moment he realizes that Parker really is like family to him, and really takes responsibility for her growth. I think this is the episode where Nate goes, oh, she’s going to be my successor. Parker is going to be the new mastermind.

It’s so great to watch as Nate’s the one knocked off-balance by an ally, rather than the OT3, showing his hand more than the others.

Then there’s the other main player during The Last Dam Job: Chaos

Oh Chaos. We all love to hate you. Chaos is absolutely everything that fuckboy nerds often are, the thing that makes women hide their love of geeky things, he is the gatekeeping asshole that thinks nerds are still the most oppressed class and probably goes on rants about fake geek girls.

The seething hatred that Parker, Hardison, and Eliot have for Chaos is hilarious but understandable, but what’s interesting is how nobody in the team seems surprised by what an asshole Chaos is. Sophie and Nate just kind of roll their eyes at him. Eliot’s angry at Chaos for Parker and Hardison’s sake. Hardison feels that his professional pride is offended, that anyone would ever consider Chaos and Hardison to be in the same category, and he’s angry at how Parker is treated by him. And Parker is pissed off by Chaos’s objectifying comments.

But none of them seem surprised.

You know the moments when the team is taken aback in disgust by someone, we see it all the time when a team member realizes just how awful a mark truly is. Even Nate has his moments where you can see him actively wondering if maybe he should just scrap the whole plan and throw the mark out the window. But with Chaos, it’s par for the course.

Because sadly, very sadly, as I said--Chaos represents what we expect nerds to be.

Okay so brief history recap, the whole ‘nerds get bullied’ was a thing that absolutely happened for a period of time back when reading comics and science fiction was considered lowbrow. Comics were for younger children, not high schoolers, fantasy writers were considered hack writers (you can read Ursula K. LeGuin’s excellent essays on the matter), and in fact a lot of parents thought reading comics and science fiction and the like was bad for you. Then when computers first came onto the scene, they were very new and difficult to navigate. Something parents are finding nowadays is how damn easy it is for their young kids to navigate and use electronic devices, and so kids will often, to the horror of their parents, get onto social media sites and see things they shouldn’t because the parents didn’t realize how easily their child could access and learn to use these things. Because back in the ‘80s, it was a lot harder to navigate the internet and computers. So if you were hugely into them, you were an outlier.

But those days of comic books, science fiction, and computers being things that only fringe communities got into are LONG gone. Women have always been a part of those communities although, surprise, nobody wants to mention it, and they’re even more so nowadays. Even when Leverage was being filmed, superheroes were cool! Several Batman movies had been wildly successful, the Sam Raimi Spiderman films had been box office hits, Lord of the Rings had won A MOTHERFUCKING OSCAR. In fact, it SWEPT THE OSCARS.

Geeks and nerds were no longer someone to laugh at and bully, especially straight white male nerds. And yet, these sad excuses for human beings continue to whine and bully and show their true racist, misogynistic, self-centered mindsets by insisting that they are bullied and ignored and can’t get dates because of their “nerdy” interests.

Newsflash: it’s not because of your interests, it’s because you’re assholes.

Chaos represents that. He is the WORST kind of nerd, and unfortunately, probably the kind of nerd that gets into the criminal world because he has a superiority complex and a chip on his shoulder. So if you watch the crew, they’re all pissed off by him, but none of them are surprised by him.

In fact, that’s why they recruit him for their team in The Last Dam Job!

Chaos tried to murder Sophie, he tried to murder Sophie’s old friend, he makes derogatory and objectifying remarks about Parker, and it’s all EXACTLY par for the course for hackers. Hardison is the hacking exception. He’s a gentleman, he’s black, he’s emotionally mature and aware, he’s thoughtful, and his “age of the geek, baby” catchphrase isn’t bitter and plotting “oh how I shall make you all rue the day you bullied me” it’s ecstatic and fun. He knows that the people who don’t appreciate his skills will come around in time. He’s not going to be an asshole about it.

The team recruits Chaos for the job not just because he’s the last person that their enemies will expect but because if they went out to find another hacker, they’d run into people who were just like Chaos in personality and behavior. Chaos is, at least (and ironically given his moniker), a known evil, he’s someone they understand and therefore can to a certain degree control. The team goes damn easy on him during this job. They could’ve taken the opportunity to make his life MISERABLE while he was distracted working for them. But they didn’t. They just roll their eyes and make quips about wanting to kill him.

Note that the other people in the Two Live Crew Job, the hitter and the thief, are treated very much as novelties. Eliot and Parker seem amused by them like they’re shiny new toys, but we also get the impression that they’re glad to see the back of them because the shine of these new toys would wear off rather quickly. Meeting someone who’s exactly like you is fun for a short bit but it can’t last--you’re too alike for any kind of relationship (platonic, romantic, or otherwise) to work long-term.

Chaos is hated by the team and they absolutely close ranks around him. Eliot and Hardison don’t even take their eyes off him and Eliot tells Mr. Quinn to do the same. The whole team works to keep Chaos away from Parker so that she doesn’t even have to deal with his presence. But given the insane revenge that the team has planned against others who’ve tried to kill them, and especially given that the last time someone made Parker upset Eliot and Hardison literally offered to kill the man, it’s unusual that they let Chaos off so easily. And it’s not out of a sense of “you’re our ally” honor. They screw over Sterling when he’s supposed to be their ally as well (although Sterling is also screwing over them, so...) so it can’t be that.

I honestly think it’s that they feel that Chaos is one symptom of a disease. He’s one type of cancer in a long, long line of cancers. Knock him down, and another incel asshole is gonna take his place.

So why bother? Why bother, when instead they can just keep Chaos on a tight leash. Better the devil you know, and thanks to his inability to shut up and his ego, they know Chaos very, very well.

Then we have Mr. Quinn, who is very interesting in that he’s one of those instances where you have to read into Eliot’s silences to get a lot about him. Now, unlike Moreau, I’m not saying that Quinn and Eliot were ever a thing. They could’ve been, sure, but I don’t personally get that vibe from them. What we get from Quinn is a window into how the rest of the criminal world sees Eliot.

Now, we learn in The Girls’ Night Out Job what the criminal world thinks of Parker. “You’re the Parker?” People know of Parker and how crazy she is, even if they don’t necessarily know her gender. We get a lot of what the criminal world thinks of Sophie, from Sterling to British nobility to everything and everyone in between. Hardison doesn’t have as much of a repuatation yet but as I’ve stated elsewhere Hardison is twenty-two at the start of the series, he’s still establishing himself, even in the relatively young game of hacking. But other than Damien Moreau, we don’t really get a huge look into what people think of Eliot (and Moreau isn’t even a proper look at Eliot the professional, he’s a look at Eliot the person, but I’m not recapping my entire goddamn Moreau/Eliot meta it’s under my tag y’all can go find it).

So Quinn is our one foray into how Eliot is seen by the criminal world, and the overwhelming emotion is: respect.

Unlike Chaos, or even Parker and her counterpart from the Two Live Crew Job, Quinn and Eliot respect each other and don’t take anything personally. They sort of accept that they’re on opposite sides out of a sense of honor--staying loyal to the person writing their checks--but it’s nothing personally antagonistic. And we see this with the other hitmen that Eliot tangles with 90% of the time. There’s no personal beef, it’s just doing their job, (and we get hilarious exchanges like Eliot being frustrated with amateurs, “how are you gonna improve,” etc), and that’s extremely fascinating considering how very personally Hardison, Sophie, Parker, and even Nate take it when they’re up against someone of their own field.

It all, for me anyway, harkens back to the talk between Sophie and Eliot in the boxing ring about Eliot’s rage and violence, and how he explains that he doesn’t let it own him and he has it under control. Being a hacker is who Hardison is, being a thief is who Parker is, being a grifter is who Sophie is (and that’s part of what spurs her season two journey to find herself), and Nate, well, we all see for five seasons how Nate struggles with his sense of identity. But Quinn and other hitter allies show us that being a hitter is what Eliot does, it’s not who he is. Eliot is a chef, he’s a boyfriend, he’s a lover, he’s a protector. He separates his identity from the job and it’s incredibly healthy of him and he’s possibly the only one of the team who can do that and I think that’s absolutely fascinating and another way in which the Leverage writing team uses Eliot to deconstruct the trope of the violent small-town white army boy hitman and blow it up to smithereens.

Because normally, Eliot would be the person most married to his job, the person least in touch with his emotions, the person constantly tempted by violence and to lose himself in his role. But instead he can walk away from it. In fact he wants to walk away from it, he wants to distance himself from the violent person he became and the things he did, he wants to become someone new (and did, when he fled Moreau and Toby taught him how to cook).

Mr. Quinn is our key to going, oh huh, hitters and bodyguards, ‘retrieval experts’, they don’t identify themselves with their jobs the way the other roles do, and that sets up a really interesting dynamic and I love it.

Finally, we have arguably the most interesting ally, which is Maggie.

A quick note on Maggie: While she is an ally, Hardison, Parker, and Eliot seem to view Maggie as separate from most of their other allies because she’s Nate’s ex-wife. Tension with Maggie comes more from Sophie and Nate. Eliot does flirt with her and score the date with her but the moment he realizes who she is he seems to go on the date purely for spying purposes for Nate--her being Nate’s former anything immediately puts her in this special category for the OT3 where they’re more excited to watch Nate responding to her than they are anything else. The OT3 don’t see her as any kind of threat--they rightly recognize that any interpersonal issues attached to her are Nate’s to deal with, and the OT3 have always been good about detaching themselves from Nate’s problems, calling Nate out on them, and not taking on Nate’s problems like they’re their own.

And I love how they write Maggie. She’s an ally who’s a civilian and the team treats her differently as a result. The OT3 want her for juicy information on Nate. She’s never once treated like a harpy, like a bitch, as a one-dimensional prop for Nate’s backstory. Sophie likes and respects Maggie. Maggie is a foil to the team because she reminds all of them of Nate’s fallibility, and she really shows them how they’re seen in the eyes of the public. She likes them, she’ll even join them occasionally, but she doesn’t 100% endorse them, and the team knows it, so they use her judiciously. In The Last Damn Job they use her precisely because she’s not a criminal, and you know that the team would welcome her into their lives if she wanted it, but also maintain a distance out of respect. They all adore Maggie, they find her fascinating, and it’s such a delight with the way ex-wives or ex-girlfriends are usually written.

They say that to really know a person, you have to know their friends and their enemies. And that holds true in this show. To see the status of the team, you have to look at how they treat their allies and their enemies, and so through seeing their allies, you see the team better. And I love that. A+ writing.

So those, nonny, are my random rambling thoughts on the team’s allies! Sorry it took me a few days to get to this, I hope you enjoyed it!

#mads answers things #leverage #leverage meta

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catflowerqueen · 4 years

Text

Hydrotherapy, Now with More Donuts (Supplies Pending)

It was funny, really, how much could change in a year’s time—even when mystical, magical, trauma solving/inducing therapy trains weren’t involved.

Sure, that first year after leaving the Infinity Train was hectic, full of the general chaos that followed a new life joining the general population of planet Earth. It was only further compounded with the fact that, typically speaking, those new lives didn’t come pre-packaged with twelve to thirteen years of personal history and trauma. Lake’s first year of freedom had been full of various appointments: appointments with school officials trying to gauge her grade level and then sway her into enrolling when they found out just how much she excelled in the STEM areas (she wasn’t quite as good as Tulip and didn’t enjoy it to nearly the same extent, but, hey, it was inevitable that after all those years reflecting her as she studied, Lake would have picked up a thing or two. Including, as a side note, the ability to read texts backwards and upside down, which she thought was actually a way cooler skill). Appointments with various different government officials and agencies to get her an official legal status, identity, and living situation figured out so that she could actually go to school. Appointments with numerous legal teams, all working together to make the previous things possible.

…Seriously, there had been so. Many. Legal teams. It seemed like every little thing had needed its own department to take care of it, and there so many different departments that the variety was almost overwhelming. Why did there even need to be so many? Like, Lake guessed it made sense to separate some things. After all, she remembered the sorts of things she’d overheard Tulip’s parents say when debating whether they needed to look into hiring a divorce attorney or if they should give couples’ counseling one last shot back when their fights had started to get more serious, and she could see how if there weren’t separate departments, then stuff like “inability to make or stick to schedules” and “spending too much time at work instead of with the family” would constantly be set aside in favor of, like, murder trials, which would mean kids like Tulip would be stuck in the limbo of a deteriorating family situation indefinitely… but why did there need to be so many?

There was even a department for “Tree Law.” It was apparently a very involved and complicated department, even though Lake only knew it existed in the first place because one time when she was complaining about how complicated the legal process was, Jesse told her about the camp he went to the previous summer. It was called “Camp Lawful Laurel,” and was apparently dedicated exclusively to the study of tree law. When she asked him why on earth Jesse would ever go somewhere that sounded so extremely boring, he explained that it was because one of his “friends” from swim team had asked him to. Apparently, the guy’s parents wanted him to do something “educational” over the summer so that he could “improve his CV,” whatever that was, and he figured that the high cost of the camp would be a pretty good way to show off his displeasure at not getting to spend the summer playing video games with his friends instead, and to get some petty revenge on his parents. But he didn’t want to be alone all summer studying with the “boring nerds,” so he’d asked Jesse to sign up, too—mostly because the first three people he’d asked had turned him down. But then the “friend” ultimately decided to go to a way cooler, but equally expensive, camp focusing on marine biology (where they got to hand-feed actual sharks!) and hadn’t bothered to tell Jesse until it was too late and his parents already submitted the non-refundable admissions fee—one that, because of how expensive the camp was, he’d had to help pay for using his own money that he’d been saving up so he could buy a really cool-looking dirt bike. The same dirt bike that he’d taped a picture of on the wall across from his bed, so that it would be the first thing he’d see when he got up in the early, early morning for his dog-walking gig, to remind himself just why he’d consigned himself to the torture that was an early morning wake-up on the weekends, earlier than he even had to get up for school or practice.

Honestly. If the Infinity Train hadn’t picked him up when it did, Lake had a feeling it would have only been a matter of time before he got forcibly dragged on and then immediately tossed into some sort of “Pillow Car” just so that he could get some adequate sleep for once in his life.

Anyways, the other appointments she had were with various doctors, mainly to try and address her unique “skin condition” that was previously unknown to the scientific and medical fields, and that had medical professionals even now calling every other day in the hopes of scheduling appointments with her wherein she would be poked and prodded mercilessly as they tried to figure out what, exactly, caused her chrome-like sheen and seemingly metallic feel and weight. It was something which she was no way interested in, and she’d begged off of as soon as she could. Though, to be completely fair to the doctors, it did seem like most of them were simply concerned about the ramifications of her “condition” for her general health and quality of life, rather than for any sort of malicious purpose, or to treat her like some sort of lab experiment. Given the way one of the dermatology specialists had been a little too insistent on brushing off the whole thing as “just a rather extreme allergic reaction to metallic body paint” and asking her whether or not she’d tried to emulate one of those living statue performers you see “on TV prank shows, or when you take a train up to those big cities like Chicago,” putting a special emphasis on the word “train,” she had a pretty strong theory that she wasn’t the first Mirror person that the doctor had seen, and privately wondered why someone like her, who seemed so professional and put together, had ever ended up on the Infinity Train.

But… Lake guessed that maybe that was kind of the point; that the reason that doctor seemed so put together was because she’d taken a ride on the train. After all, Lake had seen the effect such a trip had on Jesse—how much he’d grown and changed, and how he was taking those lessons seriously. Like, he’d cut his toxic “friends” out of his life so that he could spend more time with her and Nate. He’d told his swim team that he preferred free-style over butterfly, and asked his coach for the chance to see if he could qualify for that, instead. Or if he could at least put him on the roster as a backup free-styler, since school pride was a thing and he did want to give their team the best shot at winning, even if that meant him doing the butterfly. He’d even quit most of the extraneous clubs he’d been a part of, electing to only stay a member of the swim team, the tutoring club (mostly because he actually got paid for his tutoring sessions, and he’d started saving up for that dirt bike again—in addition to the tutoring looking good on whatever this CV thing was that Lake kept hearing about), the wildlife photography club, and the “Eraser Kids” club.

Though, honestly, that last club had kind of disbanded as an actual “club,” per say, after the president—who was only really in charge by virtue of being the oldest of the four kids total comprising the club (including Jesse and the semi-reluctant Lake)—finally admitted that he and the other non-Jesse or Lake member hadn’t formed the club because they had any real interest in eraser shavings, but because they’d been friends with Jesse since they were toddlers, and had noticed over the years as he’d gotten busier and busier, and they’d thought that the only real way they would be able to effectively guarantee spending time with him these days was to create an actual club with a defined schedule and meeting time that Jesse would be able to adhere to and plan around. After seeing Jesse quit all those other clubs, and hearing him cite his disinterest in their contents as the main reason why he quit them, they’d felt guilty about their ruse and come clean. After some apologizing all around, the three of them became even closer—and the other two kids welcomed Lake into their fold easily. They turned out to be pretty cool to hang out with, even though they still brough up eraser shavings from time to time as an inside joke.

Of course, the other main reason that Jesse opted to quit all those extra clubs was that he had a new time commitment, one he actually shared with Lake: they both had regularly scheduled appointments with therapists—actual, licensed professional ones who did not also double as types of transportation. She and Jesse had each met with their own therapists bi-weekly at the start, but Jesse’s had tapered off to bi-monthly after about half a year, and her own had switched to once a week by her tenth month of freedom.

It still surprised her sometimes that it was actually the therapy thing, more than anything else, which was the catalyst for all those other appointments. Lake hated Mace, and she would always hate Mace, but even despite the fact that he, and Sieve, tried so hard to kill her, she thought what she hated the most about him is how perfectly Mace laid out all her thoughts and insecurities about trying to live a life off the train back when Alan Dracula was protecting them all with his horns back in the Wasteland. After all, the high of freedom and adrenaline she’d been riding after giving herself an actual name and meeting Nate wore off pretty quickly when Mr. and Mrs. Cosay arrived at the lakeshore, looking a bit frantic. They’d been worried that Nate, too, had run off somewhere when they’d returned to the house from searching for Jesse—a search which had started anew after Nate swore he’d seen him finally return, only for Jesse to never come back inside (having been picked up by that blasted train yet again)—only to find that their younger son was now also missing. But their worries had given way to elated tears once they reached the trio of children and found both sons safe and relatively sound, immediately enveloping them in hugs and scolding Jesse to “never, ever, ever do something like that again, young man!”

Lake had taken a few steps back, suddenly feeling extremely nervous and out of place, Mace’s horrible words echoing in her head, and she’d frozen up in fear when Mr. Cosay finally glanced up from his son momentarily and caught sight of her. She froze up when he abruptly let go of his son and headed toward her, determination clear on his tear-stained face, and for a moment she was terrified he was going to attack her, or blame her for his eldest being gone for so long. It was, after all, basically her fault that he got called bac to the Infinity Train. But he didn’t do anything of the sort; instead he embraced her in a hug of her own, whispering his gratitude that she’d helped looked after Jesse while he was on the train—apparently, Nate had shared the stories Jesse told him about her in the brief period he’d returned home the first time. And if they hadn’t entirely believed him before, then actually seeing a person who seemed to be entirely made of metal and could corroborate his and Jesse’s stories was some pretty convincing evidence.

The thing about believing his stories about the train with the infinite number of cars that acted like something between a therapy tool and a horror show was that, well, it meant that they also had to believe that someone—something—had thought their son needed therapy. That there was something—maybe a lot of somethings—about their son’s life and mental health that they had missed. Something that they weren’t able to help him with—or, at least, that Jesse hadn’t thought they would be able to help him with, since he’d never shared anything like that with them—and that the only person/thing that had noticed and offered any sort of help had likely created even more problems for him. Or, well, no, there was no “likely” about it; The Infinity Train, despite its best intentions, had definitely created more problems for him, given that he’d actually reboarded it in the first place. That wasn’t even mentioning the fact that a lot of those new problems, in turn, were created as a response to someone else whose problems were very much tied to the way the train was supposed to run to begin with.

The Cosay family decided pretty much immediately that everyone involved needed some actual therapy to work through everything—and that Lake was included in that “everyone.” Of course, in order for Lake to get therapy, she would need to have an actual, legal identity, as well as a place to live, and things just spiraled from there as appointments were made to make other appointments so that Lake could actually have the life on Earth that she so desperately craved, and everyone could try and heal from the trauma.

It actually ended up being harder to find a good therapist than anything else. For all that Jesse’s parents believed him and Lake about the Infinity Train, it was understandably a bit harder to find a professional who would be able to listen to it all without assuming that the whole thing was just some sort of hallucination or delusion, especially when they were all a bit wary of revealing Lake’s origins or letting any of the doctors she’d needed to go to in order to get all her paperwork straightened out delve too deeply into her physiology or how it worked—especially after that one dermatologist who obviously knew what she was pretty much told them that it would be better to stay quiet about the whole thing due to just how insistent she was about her “paint allergy theory.” But that encounter had also made them realize they weren’t alone in this endeavor: People got on and off the Infinity Train all the time.

Jesse had. The dermatologist had. Even that one lunch lady Lake briefly saw (and who actually did turn out to be Mrs. Graham—and hadn’t that been an awkward lunch encounter. At least she hadn’t forced Lake or Jesse eat any celery) had. And since the point of the train was to help people heal and resolve their traumas, that meant that even those who gained new traumas on board would still be in a better place mentally afterwards and could go on to heal and lead productive lives in the normal, Earth way, right? So that just meant Lake and the Cosays had to figure out how they did it. And while they hadn’t had the chance to ask the dermatologist, and Mrs. Graham hadn’t even been an option until they’d already figured some things out, there was one other possibility available to them.

At first Lake was a little reluctant to contact Tulip, but… well, she knew Tulip would help her out. She had before, after all, even after Lake had tried to trap her in the Mirror World forever. Tulip had wanted her to be happy, to have a better life. She’d even apologized that the first car Lake had gotten to see after fleeing the Chrome Car was a boring one! (Which in retrospect, and after coming down from the initial rush of freedom, she could totally agree with. Banks were pretty boring, especially ones run by pencils who didn’t have mouths and, therefore, didn’t offer free lollipops because they had no use for them. She still kept that pen-chain, though, as a memento. …Also, because she was right that it would look totally awsome painted black and used as a bracelet—which, honestly, had been her first thought when she’d swiped it from the pencil people. It hadn’t even occurred to her the danger it possessed as a reflective object until she’d gotten off the train and caught Jesse trying to use one to make awkward small talk with his own reflection one day when the entire family was sitting in yet another boring law office, waiting for yet another lawyer to come and decide her fate. She’d never been more thankful for her awesome fashion sense than in that moment.) But more than that… she knew Tulip could actually help her and Jesse out in terms of finding a good therapist.

Mr. And Mrs. Olsen… they were good parents. They weren’t the best parents, and there were definitely things they needed to work harder on, but… they did the best they could. Even with the whole divorce thing, and how badly it was handled in the lead-up, everything they did was an effort to protect Tulip and ensure she would be okay. Tulip didn’t know this—or at least, she hadn’t before running away—but those arguments Lake had overheard as she reflected Tulip’s sleeping form from the blank screen of the turned-off television, the ones the Olsen parents had about whether they should try again for couples’ counseling or go straight for the divorce attorneys? They happened because they didn’t know if it would be better for Tulip in the long run to have both of her parents living together, even as they struggled and needed help to get along, or whether it would be best for them to just have a relatively clean break so that Tulip didn’t have to deal with any more fights in the house. That was why they’d actually been able to make a compromise, for once, and agreed to try a period of separation first; it would keep the fights out of the house and away from Tulip while they tried to work things out in a calmer manner, and if they did, ultimately, end up divorcing—which they had—then it would hopefully help Tulip ease into the idea. Which… it hadn’t, really, but that wasn’t all on them.

They’d tried to help their daughter, to engage with her. To get her interested in a life outside her room. They’d noticed her grades dropping and correctly guessed that it was because she was upset by the recent changes in her life. That’s why they’d come up with the contract, and the promise to send her to Game Design Camp if she brought her grades up. And, yeah, that had fallen through in a spectacular manner, but… they were only human. They were trying their hardest. And Lake knew that they would try just as hard for their daughter once she finally got off the train.

Which meant that they would have tried to find an actual, licensed therapist for her—especially since they’d already been debating on finding her one after camp ended if she still didn’t seem to be adjusting well. Given what ended up happening, there was no way they didn’t follow through on those plans. Even if Tulip was feeling better and more adjusted now about the divorce, there was no way the train didn’t leave any sort of negative experiences or memories on her, like it did on Jesse. Or on Lake. Or, heck, even on Nate, and he’d never even boarded the thing! And given that Tulip, like Jesse and Lake, had the same sort of concrete evidence of her story being real (the exact same evidence, actually, if in reverse—that being Lake’s existence on Earth and non-existence in the Olsen family mirrors, respectively), they would have shown the exact same concern that the Cosay family had in trying to find a good therapist who wouldn’t immediately claim that the whole thing was just a hallucination.

After coming to that realization, all (most) of Lake’s fears fell away, and it was pretty easy to contact Tulip for help. She knew all the passwords and usernames for Tulip’s social media accounts, after all, so it was a simple matter of sending her an email from her own address, and then giving her a brief update of what had happened after they separated, where Lake currently was (and that she’d named herself Lake), and then asking Tulip to either send an email to the account Jesse helped Lake set up, or to call Jesse’s phone.

The ensuing conversations were enlightening. Lake didn’t really feel like telling Tulip everything that had gone on—mostly because she still wasn’t quite sure where exactly she stood with Tulip, like, if she actually wanted to try being her friend and let Tulip get to know her the way Lake already knew Tulip—but Tulip seemed elated that she’d made it off the train. Though, how much of that elation was just the general “I’m glad you’re getting to live your own life now” kind versus “I’m glad that you, specifically, who is a denizen, managed to get off that hell-train” kind was unclear—mostly because Lake wasn’t entirely sure whether Tulip even knew about the restrictions denizens had in regards to the doors. Though, honestly, she probably didn’t—if Lake herself hadn’t known, despite technically being a denizen, then there’s no way Tulip could have. In any case, the elation was good because it meant that Tulip was, indeed, willing to help out in any way she could—which turned out to be a lot.

Lake’s predictions about the Olsen parents had been spot-on. After Tulip got back and they’d been able to assure themselves of her physical well-being, they swiftly dedicated themselves to trying to ensure her mental well-being. They’d already done loads of research on good child psychologists for the divorce stuff, and they quickly set to work on weeding down the list even more in light of Tulip’s new issues—in addition to doing further research into some doctors they’d skipped over before, now that the whole divorce thing was the least of Tulip’s problems.

Though, surprisingly, this still involved them trying to contact Megan’s divorce attorney. Apparently, he’d given her a list of good child psychologists to try out when Tulip had first come up during one of their appointments as they were figuring out the issue of custody. They thought that if they contacted him again, then maybe he would be able to help them find one who specialized in runaways, and how they could more easily integrate back into society when they returned home (because even though Tulip hadn’t meant to be gone for so long, that was still five months of life on Earth that she had to catch up with—including a lot of missed school). But, apparently, he’d never answered their emails. When they tried calling instead, his secretary informed them that he’d announced he was going on a sabbatical or something right around the time they’d sent their first email. She hadn’t heard from him since, so he probably hadn’t even seen them in the first place. But she’d had a few suggestions of her own, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Tulip told her that there had been one option that really caught her parents’ attention, some sort of boarding school called “Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.” It was apparently really good for runaway situations since it was small and offered daily therapy sessions along with schoolwork. They’d thought it might be easier for Tulip to go there, at least through the summer, so that she would be able to catch up with all the schoolwork she missed without worrying about being held back a grade—thus losing even more of a connection with her friends, such as Mikayla. Ultimately, though, they all decided it would be better to look somewhere else. Eleanor West’s school was in a completely different state, for one thing, even farther away than Oshkosh was, and Tulip and her parents were reluctant for her to be that far away when she’d already been gone for so long. Her parents also didn’t like the fact that Tulip wouldn’t be allowed to actually see the school until after she was already enrolled—the proprietor didn’t allow her to sit in on the initial meeting, and she didn’t even let her parents take a real tour of the school. Ms. West claimed it was for the students’ privacy, but how would Tulip know if she would like it there if she didn’t get to see it for herself, or to at least hear some firsthand testimonies from current students? So, they ended up going with just enrolling her in a summer school program and getting her a normal therapist closer to home.

Well. Normal aside from the fact that said therapist had apparently also boarded the train at some point during their childhood, and then channeled their experience into becoming a child psychologist in the hopes of being able to help other children so that they would never even need the train in the first place. But they were just as good at helping former passengers, too, as Tulip apparently wasn’t the first former passenger to find themselves in that doctor’s care.

Given that a lot of Jesse’s issues had stemmed from peer pressure, he and his parents thought that maybe Ms. West’s school would be a good place for him to start over, to learn how to make new friends of Lake’s caliber and to get him away from the toxic influences of his current “friends.” The distance, as in the case of the Olsen family, was a bit daunting, but the thought of a new start did appeal to Jesse, so they all took a trip to go check it out. (And, as Jesse later admitted to her privately, he and his parents also thought it might be better for Lake, too, since the population of Ms. West’s school was a lot smaller than the local high school. That meant that Lake could get a tiny taste of the normalcy and stability of life on Earth and being surrounded by humans all day before being thrown in the deep end. “After all, both of us know how bad you are at swimming,” Jesse had told her, a mischievous grin on his face that fell to a slight wince as he tried to playfully jostle her shoulder and forgot, yet again, that she was made of metal and wasn’t easily pushed around.) The whole family went on that particular scouting trip, because even if Lake and Jesse wouldn’t be allowed to sit in on the interview, there was no way the Cosays were going to leave them and Nate home alone for so long. The kids could just hang out in the nearby town for a while and meet up with the adults when they were done with the appointment.

But, just like Tulip, she and Jesse ended up not going there after all—mainly because Ms. West had caught sight of the kids as she was seeing the older Cosays to the entrance after their meeting, and then seemed a bit too interested in Lake, and had become very insistent, borderline demanding, that she and Jesse enroll in her school. Seriously. It was like some sort of switch had been flipped in her personality. And the lady’s never wavering stare after the initial shock of seeing Lake was both rude, and a little creepy.

They ended up emailing Tulip again and asking her to see if her therapist had any therapist friends in Arizona with similar experiences. There actually ended up being quite a few to choose from, and Lake was enrolled in Jesse’s school to start attending the next fall.

So, that was Lake’s first year of freedom—a whirlwind of appointments to figure out her legal identity to go along with the personal one she was still carving out for herself—one which let her leave her past on the train behind so that she could actually live.

Except… as the next year would show, things weren’t that simple.

Sure, there were no actual trains involved—be they either magical or mundane—but, as her therapist had warned her during her first session, the train would always be a part of her. She could move on from her experiences, sure, and the passage of time would inevitably dull some of the memories, but it would never fully leave her. Not entirely.

At first, she was furious about it—after spending so much time trying to get off the train, almost dying due to the flecks and the train’s own unfair coding, after finally, finally getting out and starting to establish her own identity… only to find out that it could never truly be her own, free from the taint of the Infinity Train? To say she took it badly would be a gross understatement. But… well, a lot can change in a year.

The therapy helped. Like, a lot.

One of the big things that she and her therapist worked on was how to deal with her emotions and problems in a healthier and more constructive way than she had been up until that point. There had been more than one destructive outburst from Lake during that first year. It would have been one thing if they had just happened after particularly long appointments with the various lawyers trying to determine her fate on where she would stay, or how to get her an actual identity. It wouldn’t have been great by any means, since it was embarrassing to lose her cool like that in front of Jesse—and especially in front of Nate—but it would have been understandable. Thing is, though, she would sometimes have those outbursts after smaller, inconsequential things—like the adult Cosays making her and Jesse turn off the TV by nine o’clock every night, or the teachers not letting her sit in the seats closest to the windows without giving her any reasonable explanations as to why. Or at least… not any explanations that she thought were reasonable. Which, in itself, was actually quite telling about what the core of her issues were. At least, that’s what her therapist thought—and after a few days of stewing in her room after that particular session, she reluctantly conceded the point.

Due to her experiences as a reflection, and especially with what happened with the flecks on the Train, Lake had a lot of problems trusting others. It was pretty easy for her to understand why she had so many problems with authority: The flecks had left a pretty big impression on her, and given their whole “conform or die” deal, she got why that would extend to teachers, or even the older Cosays. She couldn’t feel safe trusting them because doing so made her feel like she was losing control of her life, even though the reality was that everything they were doing so far was in an attempt to actually give her a life. This was pretty much literal in the case of the attorneys—if she didn’t have documents, an ID, proof of citizenship, etc., then she could have problems with the prime world’s equivalent to flecks (not to mention that she wouldn’t be able to get a job or buy a house or anything when she was older if she didn’t have a paper trail to back things up—she’d spent a lot of time in that bank car, after all, and even though things were slightly different for sentient pencils than they were for humans, she knew enough that stuff like that was expensive, and she wouldn’t be able to take out loans or anything if she didn’t actually have a legal identity). But even for the smaller things… the curfew was in place so that she and Jesse wouldn’t be tired in the mornings, and could actually be functional during the day and get enough sleep to stay healthy. And the thing with the windows was… well, okay, technically that one had been mostly for the other students’ benefit—it turns out that the way many of the classrooms were positioned made it so that they got tons of natural light, and apparently the glare caused by the sun reflecting off of her shiny, metallic body was inadvertently blinding the classmates who sat closest to her and making it hard for them to concentrate on their own work. …In addition to maybe causing some deterioration and problems with their eyes themselves, especially later on in life.

But revealing that particular incident to her therapist was actually pretty revealing in itself, as it turned out that a lot of her issues weren’t just with authority, and how to manage those necessary relationships in healthy ways, but also somewhat with the concept of empathy itself. Or, maybe not so much “empathy” as “the understanding of the consequences your actions can have on others before you act.” There had been, after all, a lot of things she’d done on the train that she now deeply regretted… but the most important thing that Lake could do—at least, according to her therapist—was to work through those regrets, to analyze and understand them so that she could move on and do better.

As her therapist had said during their first ever session—and then repeated during that first session a month or so in when Lake really started to get into the hard stuff that she usually tried to keep hidden from everyone—she wasn’t there to judge the morality of Lake’s actions. Not only were there species and cultural differences between the two of them that the therapist would never be able to understand, but much of what Lake had done on the Infinity Train was out of a sense of self-preservation. If she hadn’t acted how she did, she likely would have been killed. And at the time, she wasn’t really in a place where she could have stopped to list the pros and cons of each action, or consider the consequences—and with her upbringing, she didn’t really have the experiences she needed to do so, anyways. After all, before Tulip had helped her escape the Chrome Car, the only people she’d had to worry about affecting were herself and Tulip—and even then, Lake only really had to think about Tulip in terms of making sure she herself knew enough about what was happening with her prime’s life to make sure she was an accurate reflection for her own safety, rather than Tulip’s. Not to mention the fact that Lake was still a teenager, and teenagers weren’t really known for their capabilities to act like completely rational beings. But at the same time… when she’d actually gotten to meet Tulip face-to-face, she hadn’t cared one bit about the fact that her leaving meant that Tulip would be trapped—even as she’d admitted to Tulip how boring it was to be stuck on the reflections’ side of the mirror.

Yeah, she’d done all that because she wanted to live her own life. But by doing things in the manner she had, she’d actually put herself in far more danger than she probably would have been otherwise. After all, Tulip had been extremely sympathetic once they’d gotten the chance to actually sit down and talk to each other. Even after admitting to Tulip’s face that she wanted to trap her in the Mirror world forever, Tulip had still helped her—and, in fact, was still helping her even now! So maybe if she’d actually stopped to talk to her about her desires after switching sides and opening the door, rather than just immediately running away, the two could have worked out her solution with the multi-tool way earlier, and in a more peaceful manner. Like—sure, the mirror person assigned to One-One might still have called the flecks on her eventually, given that he was even more of a stickler for the rules than his prime was… but it probably would have given Lake a head start, and it may have even made Mace and Sieve be less intent on outright killing her (although she kind of doubted that last part).

Beyond that… there was also the lizard girl to consider. She was completely innocent in everything going on in Lake’s life, but Lake hadn’t stopped to think for even a moment about the girl’s own struggles, or why her pet’s death would have been enough to get her picked up by the Infinity Train beyond that self-admittedly insincere apology as Lake tried to steal her number. If she’d succeeded… what would have happened to the girl? Would she have been able to get a new number? Or would Lake’s actions have trapped her on the train for the rest of her life? If Lake had stopped to think about it, then maybe she could have tried dipping into the coding skills she’d learned along with Tulip to try and program the machine to give her a number of her own without having to get anyone else involved. Or she could have tried to use the porters to send a message to One-One or someone to try and get help in a calmer manner.

Sure, One-One hadn’t really been the most helpful when he’d actually shown up, but… in retrospect, it didn’t seem like it was because he didn’t want her to be able to live her own life. He had, after all, been instrumental in helping her escape the Chrome Car. It was more like he just didn’t understand why she wouldn’t be happy to keep living as a denizen and help other passengers while she lived her own life, the way that he and Atticus had done while helping Tulip. Or like how she’d realized that Alan Dracula was doing, and how he wouldn’t be happy the way she was now if the two of them had actually made it off the Infinity Train with Jesse that first time. After all, One-One himself had seemed a lot happier to be in his rightful place as conductor, watching over passengers and trying to help them get home. And from what she’d gathered about the process of making train cars, each one of them was tailor-made down to the smallest detail—including which denizens would be able to fit into that world and find it a comfortable place to live. But even then, One-One didn’t seem to care that denizens could and did move between cars—just look at Terrance, and all the places Randall and The Cat had gone!

If Lake had just taken the time to talk to him peacefully… well, she still might not have been able to get a legitimate number without resorting to that loophole with Jesse, considering that One-One was still very much bound in some ways to his programming. In hindsight, that paradoxical loop he’d gotten caught in when Jesse returned to the train was very reminiscent of the scene from that one game Tulip liked with the other British-sounding, spherical robot and the infamous lemon rant. The one where the protagonist—on the advice of another robot who had been the villain for the first third of game, but who had to team up with the protagonist in order to defeat the game’s ultimate villain—tried to use logical paradoxes to defeat said British-sounding, spherical robot, and the only reason it didn’t work was because he was too dumb to actually understand them. Or, maybe a better example would be some of those stories she and Jesse had to read for English class last semester—the ones by that Asimov guy who wrote about robots. Specifically, that one story of his called “Liar!” Anyways, the point was that One-One’s issues weren’t anything personal—even as much as it hurt to admit it. And getting back to the original topic… if she had been able to talk things through with him more peacefully from the start, maybe he wouldn’t have started freaking out so much when Jesse came back.

And… even before One-One or the lizard girl… there was something else she’d done that was probably far worse, whose consequences she definitely could have mitigated had she thought things through: hijacking that one old dude’s escape pod. If she’d taken a moment to just think, then maybe he wouldn’t have been stranded out there on top of the train, without having the benefit of One-One’s videos to know what was going on or how to get home… or even the (relative) safety of waking up on the inside of the train. She had no idea what happened to him; if he’d eventually managed to get inside the train, or if he’d fallen off the top—or been eaten by one of those weird bug creatures that lived outside—and she hadn’t even tried that hard to stop him from fleeing after she pulled him out. Yeah, she’d instinctively reached for him, but… she could have, like, called out or something. Or just… not hijacked in the first place. Not the way she did.

She could have made a smaller hole in the pod and then asked Alan Dracula to help strap her down as it reversed and went back to maintenance with the guy still safely inside. Or she could have even just ridden the pod with him to his intended car and then slipped inside for its return trip after the orientation video finished and he left the area. There were so many better things she could have done, and there was no way for her to apologize for any of it—either to him personally or to any family he might have left behind—since she didn’t know his name, or where on Earth he came from. But… that was just something she was going to have to learn to live with, and it was part of why she needed the therapy in the first place: Both so she could move on for herself, and so that she could learn to be better so that nothing like that would happen again.

To help facilitate this, her therapist suggested that she write out apology letters. Even if she never sent any of them out—and, really, the only one she actually could send would be to Tulip or to one of the Cosays—it might help her to work through some of her feelings, and maybe help her consider things that she hadn’t thought of before in regards to the Infinity Train. Putting herself in someone else’s shoes like that could help a lot—like how going into Jesse’s memories helped her to understand him a little more, despite how unconventional and, frankly, invasive that process was in hindsight.

In any case, the letters did seem to help. Writing to people she’d met on the train, apologizing for the things she’d done that may have hurt them… it helped to take some of the weight of guilt off of her shoulders. Mainly because a lot of the time after writing and re-reading the letters, she could see how absurd some of her adventures had been, and how absurd some of her feelings of guilt were. Like… recently she’d written an apology note to the carrot people whose dance she’d refused to join. She knew it was probably a silly thing to feel sorry about, but, at the time of writing, she’d been in kind of an emotional slump, second-guessing everything she did on the train and trying to figure out what, if anything, she could have done better as she’d travelled through the train, both on her own and with Jesse.

But after writing the letter, she realized that, yeah, it really was kind of a silly thing to be sorry about. After all, she hadn’t been rude to them or anything in her refusal—she just hadn’t wanted to dance at the time. And it wasn’t even because of her memories of having to copy Tulip’s dancing, either, during that year where her parents had made her take that dumb ballet class in an attempt to help her with her “clumsiness” before they realized the issue was that she needed glasses. She hadn’t even been thinking of Tulip at that point. Instead, she’d been thinking about how pretty the sky in that car was, and how nice it was to hear the dance music in the background as she explored, and how she didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere by being too close to the source of the beautiful music. That’s why she’d even offered the carrot-person who’d invited her inside a little smile as she’d waved him off. She really had been thankful for the offer, after all, even though she ultimately didn’t accept it. And that was okay.

It had been a bright little moment of calmness on the train. A moment where she’d been happy, and worry-free. And the more she thought back on that moment, and found more moments like that as she continued to write her letters, the easier it got for her to feel more at peace with her situation, and her complicated relationship with the Infinity Train. She still didn’t like it, the way that it just plucked people out of their lives and put them in danger when their problems could just as easily—and far more safely—be solved by seeking help on Earth… but she didn’t really hate it anymore, either. Ultimately, the train was just trying to help. It just… had a very weird way of showing it. But sometimes, maybe that’s what people really needed. If they didn’t have the courage, the ability, or the knowledge to seek out help themselves… then it made sense for someone else to try and step in. That carrot person and Alan Dracula had done it for her, and then he and Lake had helped Jesse—and he’d helped the two of them, too. And there were plenty of other denizens who’d helped along the way, or who’d at least been kind or funny even if they didn’t really help directly.

Like… Lake could remember this one mirror person she’d actually really liked, when she was little. The mirror person was part of the paramedics, or something, and she’d been really comforting and helpful after that one incident where the reflection of Tulip’s grandfather tried to kidnap her. It had been really weird, and really scary. Apparently, Lake’s last prime before Tulip had been the girl’s grandmother, and, because of how much time they’d had to spend together with all the reflective surfaces in their primes’ house, and how long the two primes had been married she’d had a really close relationship with that other mirror person. Supposedly, at least.

The grandfather’s reflection hadn’t taken it well at all when Lake’s former prime died and she’d opted for reassignment rather than becoming a fleck or paramedic. Thing is, though, since mirror people often got reassigned to the same general prime families—something about it being easier for them to reflect their primes, since similar mannerisms and body language tended to run in prime families, and, since not everything could be completely reset upon reassignment, the muscle-memory stuff made it easier when their new primes started to find reflective surfaces independently since both prime and reflection would still be kind of uncoordinated in that little kid way.

Anyways, since her old prime died while Tulip’s mom was pregnant with her—like, only a few days before Tulip’s birthday, actually—it was pretty clear to everyone (even Lake’s own former self, apparently) that Tulip was going to be her reassignment, so the guy had basically just had to bide his time until his prime inevitably got the chance to hold his new granddaughter at the next family reunion. And the second that Lake was in his arms, reflecting Tulip’s own position, and his prime walked away from the mirror he was standing in front of… his reflection tried to take off with her.

Thankfully he didn’t get very far, since apparently there was another reflective surface nearby where more of Tulip’s family was standing, and one of the primes happened to be facing away from it at such an angle that the mirror person assigned to them could grab her and keep her safe without endangering themselves by breaking character, since the whole place was busy enough that none of the primes realized that someone was being reflected when they shouldn’t have been. But the guy who’d grabbed her managed to escape into the crowd, so one of the flecks got the delightful job of standing in as Tulip’s grandfather’s reflection until they either caught him or an emergency reassignment could take place. As for Lake, she was put into protective custody for a little bit and had her own stand-in until they either figured things out or his prime was far enough away that he wouldn’t be near Tulip in any reflective surfaces, which would have necessitated the two of them to be in close enough proximity that he could have tried again.

Lake had been really scared, since, well, she’d been a little kid herself, and hadn’t really known what was going on. But the paramedic had stayed with her, and made sure she was all right, and answered her questions about what was going on, and why her prime’s grandfather’s reflection had tried to take her. She’d talked about things like love and loss, and how some mirror people took it hard when the primes of their friends died and their reflections got reassigned elsewhere, forgetting them entirely. Or how even if they opted to become a fleck or paramedic and didn’t lose their memories, the relationship still wasn’t the same since they had even less time to hang out together, since they couldn’t even have those purely physical moments of hanging out together in reflections anymore—which was actually why a lot of flecks and paramedics quit and got reassigned after only a few years of service.

She was also the one who told Lake exactly what happened to the mirror person who’d tried to kidnap her when it was finally safe for her to return to reflecting Tulip—the guy had been caught and sanded. Thinking back on it… that entire incident was probably a major part of why Lake tried to escape when Tulip made it to the Chrome car. The thought of forgetting everyone she loved, and then getting in trouble—getting killed—just because she wanted to see them again (though, granted, that dude had gone about it entirely in the wrong way—and it actually made Lake wonder if the two of them actually had been as close as he’d claimed, or whether she’d chosen to get reassigned specifically to get away from him, like those cases on TV where people went into witness protection or got new identities so they could get away from their abusive exes or whatever)… being stuck only looking at friends from afar because they couldn’t join her in reflections anymore… having to choose between that pain and an entirely new life on the chance that your prime did something stupid and got themselves killed… it really made her question the whole set up.

…There was also the fact that she never saw that paramedic again. Not just because she hadn’t actually needed to see one—that would have been one thing, and she probably wouldn’t have been so bothered if it was just that. But… part of that paramedic’s explanation of her kidnapper’s probable motives had included the fact that she could empathize with him a bit. Apparently, she’d already planned on retiring and getting a reassignment before the whole kidnapping attempt, for the exact reason that she could no longer stand seeing her friends being in pain and missing her without her being able to do much to comfort them after her own prime’s passing. She was just waiting on the news that someone from her old prime’s family had gotten pregnant, or that one of their partners had gotten pregnant, so that she could get reassigned as the eventual baby’s reflection. And since it had been years since that incident, it had probably happened by now.

Anyways—the original point was that through writing letters and having therapy sessions, Lake had slowly come around to acknowledging that not all of her experiences on the train were bad ones, and that she didn’t have to deny them, or the people she’d met, in order to be her own person. Which was a big change from last year.

And, as has been stated before, but cannot be stated enough… A lot can change in a year.

But what hadn’t changed much in a year, or in the previous year, for that matter, was how much Lake loved relaxing by the lake that was her namesake.

That’s actually what she was doing right now—relaxing by the lake as she waited for Jesse to come back from swim practice. Normally he didn’t have them on Sundays, but there was a big competition coming up and his coach wanted the team to be as prepared as they could, since they were facing their biggest rivals. Typically, she would spend times like those hanging out with Nate or playing videogames or something (or catching up on the homework she’d procrastinated on), but today Nate had invited a friend over and they’d decided to monopolize the gaming systems. She’d spent a little time watching them, but then they’d decided to break out the really old PC games and had started playing Shrine Circus Tycoon—reminding Lake of the Lucky Cat Car, and a few other apology letters she probably needed to write.

Like her most recent one, addressed to Randall.

Randall had always been… interesting to encounter on the train. He was always really friendly and amicable, but he had some really, really weird priorities. On the one hand, it made it really easy to get his help with things, so long as you could navigate the conversation properly. On the other… because of how fixated he could get on certain things (mainly donut holers, despite seemingly not knowing what donuts actually were beyond their relative shape), it made talking to him and getting things done extremely difficult when you were in a hurry and just wanted some straightforward help. That’s honestly why Lake had gotten so frustrated with him in the Lucky Cat Car. She’d been annoyed about the whole “rigging the game in favor of passengers” thing, sure, but it was the way he’d immediately blown past the unfairness of the situation in favor of his donut holer fixation that made Lake lose her cool and storm off.

Randall hadn’t deserved her frustration: he was just doing his job as both a denizen and employee of The Cat. And considering some of The Cat’s rules, and the fact that her car had a debtor’s prison on board, there were some pretty major incentives for Randall to stick to the rules The Cat set forth. Also… well, Randall had sort of bent the rules for them already—the fact that he’d whispered when telling them that the games were rigged in Jesse’s favor more than likely meant he wasn’t supposed to be sharing that information, and considering that’s actually what led to Lake and Jesse starting to outright cheat at the games, he probably was more at risk for any other creative punishments The Cat might have thought of if she’d ever caught wind of what they were doing and where they’d gotten their information. Beyond that… well, it had finally gotten through Lake’s head that it wasn’t that the Infinity Train itself had anything against Lake personally; its very design meant that a lot of denizens were perfectly happy being denizens, and helping out passengers, and might not even be able to conceive of doing anything else—like she’d already realized about Alan Dracula and One-One.

So, yeah, even if she would never be able to apologize to him directly (and, privately, wasn’t entirely sure that Randall would necessarily understand that said apology was for her brief outburst and not, say, because she decided not to buy a donut holer from him), she still figured that she owed him one anyways. Besides—it was good to reminisce about some of the better people and denizens she’d met on the train at times.

And speaking of people she’d met on the train…

“Hey, Lake!” she heard call behind her, making her immediately flip onto her back from where she’d been sitting sprawled chest-down, check pressed against her arm and fiddling with a pencil as she tried to think of exactly what to say that could actually keep the aquatic denizen on-topic. She sat up, and, just as she’d thought she would, spied Jesse waving an arm at her as he jogged over.

“Jesse!” she called, lazily waving back. “Is practice finally over?”

“Yeah, we got out a little bit earlier than I thought we would,” he said as he flopped down beside her. “I wanted to surprise you at the house, but Nate and his friend said you’d come out here, so…”

Lake made a sound of assent, turning back to stare out over her namesake.

“Were you writing apology letters again?” Jesse asked, after a minute or so of staring at the beautiful view afforded by the waters.

She gave a sheepish grin in response. “Yeah… did the stack of papers give it away?”

“Well, I mean… more the crumpled-up balls of it, but…” her friend said cheekily, making her shove him in response.

He winced a bit—though, honestly, he was being a baby about it since she hadn’t even pushed him all that hard—but he was still smiling a little when he asked “Who is it for this time?”

“Randall,” Lake admitted, looking back over the lake as it rippled just the slightest bit—which was a little odd, considering the lack of breeze. But, then again, there may well have been a slight one that she just couldn’t feel all that well. While her metallic body didn’t mean she lacked a sense of touch, exactly, it did mean it was a bit dulled in comparison to normal human skin.

“Oh, Randall!” Jesse exclaimed, oblivious to Lake’s musings about the weather. “He was pretty cool!”

“You think every denizen was cool.”

“Not all of them!” Jesse protested. “Like… I don’t think Perry was cool!”

“Yeah, but you totally did for most of the time we spent with him—not to mention you still rave about his trick and loophole about the hands every few days!”

Jesse blushed. “Well it was a pretty cool loophole… except for the fact Alan Dracula didn’t like it…” he muttered, twiddling his forefingers a bit. Then he cleared his throat. “Anyways… Randall was really cool. Like, he was always down to hang out and take pictures, and he didn’t mind me accidentally falling into him, like, three times, and he always knew exactly what he wanted in life, y’ know?”

“Yeah, I know,” Lake admitted. “That’s… kind of why I’m writing him this apology letter, actually. It’s just so hard to get into his headspace sometimes!”

“I know what you mean,” Jesse said, turning to stare over the water. “But, I think it’s okay if you can’t? He seemed pretty nonjudgmental, overall. And, like I said—the falling into him multiple times thing? He was totally cool about it. So, he’d probably understand if your letter wasn’t perfect.”

“I guess,” Lake sighed, even as she briefly glanced over her recent attempt and then crumpled it up to add to the growing pile of rejects.

There was silence for a while, as both friends tried to think of what to say—Lake on her paper and Jesse aloud—before Jesse coughed into his hand.

“Maybe trying to say your apology out loud would help?” Jesse suggested awkwardly. “Like… doing that rubber duck thing that you told me Tulip used to do with that ferret-guy on her book covers?”

Lake raised a brow, and Jesse glanced at her and started rubbing the back of his neck as if to forestall the embarrassed blush that had started to rise there. “It’s just… Sometimes, I like to come out here and imagine that those dark spots in the water are Randall’s eyes. It helps me to practice talking to people and asserting myself since I kind of, uh, don’t really feel comfortable doing that in front of a mirror anymore.”

Lake didn’t know how to respond to that—with a joke, or sympathy, or a brush off—but before she had the chance to decide, she nearly fainted from shock when she heard a familiar voice say, “Oh, well you should have mentioned that’s what’s you were trying to do!”

It took a few moments of stunned silence before their bodies caught up with their brains enough to truly understand the ramifications behind that voice sounding as familiar as it did, and when that finally happened the two of them slowly turned back around to face the lake, and then their necks craned up, and up, and up…

…Until their eyes finally focused on the form of Randall, in all his watery glory, rising out of the lake before them and towering over the duo with a smile on his face.

“I did always wonder why you were craning your neck like that—it looked very uncomfortable!” the denizen continued, blithely unaware of the total shock shared by the two teens sitting on his shore. “From now on I’ll try to make it easier for you to see my eyes.”

“I—what the—?!” Jesse spluttered, unable to form a coherent sentence as he scuttled backwards in complete surprise.

Lake, meanwhile, was no less surprised, but admirably covered it up by jumping to her feet and giving the coherent, if short, demand of “How?!”

Randall, completely misinterpreting the demand, answered seriously, but no less cheerfully, “Oh, I know I’m rather tall, but it’s easier than you’d think!” He shrank down fully into the lake before expanding its banks a bit—nearly to the teens’ toes, in fact—so he could pop his face back up to be closer and more level to Lake’s and Jesse’s. “I’m very flexible, you see!”

Jesse gave a dull sort of nod—his brain still unable to fully comprehend the absurdity of the situation before him, and latching on to what little bits of sense and rationality it could. Lake’s brain, meanwhile, had latched instead onto more familiar territory: anger at the unfairness of life, especially as it pertained to her own wishes and circumstances. “No!” she all but exploded, stomping her foot in childish, petty jealousy. “I mean, how are you even here?! How did you manage to get off the train without a number?!”

“Oh, well that’s simple!” Randall said, shuffling back and rising up a bit to better get himself in the proper mindset for storytelling. “I couldn’t help but overhear the two of you discussing apology letters, so I suppose that’s a good place to start! See, after you left my booth in the Lucky Cat Car, my buddy Randall told me that I’d been a bit forceful in my donut holer pitch. After mulling it over for a little bit, I realized that Randall right. So, I left my friends Randal and Randall to man the booth while Randall and I went after the two of you—since I had an apology to make and Randall would be able to give a much better pitch, you see, since he has a much better head for business than I do. Well, we finally caught up with you and, wouldn’t you know it! When this passenger here fell into Randall that second time, he must have accidentally swallowed some of him because, there he was, sweating my friend Randall! Randall and I got briefly sidetracked giving Randall a handshake, and then, wouldn’t you know it, by the time I let go I’d ended up by that house of yours, in full view of this beautiful lake.

“So, I thought to myself, ‘Randall, that would be an excellent place to set up a satellite donut holer distribution center!’ I told Randall my plan, and he was in complete agreement. So, when you got back on the train, Randall decided to hitch a ride back with you to establish a supply line—since, like I said earlier, he has a much better head for business than I do!—while I set up shop here and think up a better pitch, as well as an apology! Honestly, it’s taken a bit more time than I thought it would, but I think I’ve finally got the perfect one!”

Randall nodded decisively, lightly hitting a watery fist to an equally watery hand and completely missing the incredulity on Jesse and Lake’s faces as he shrunk down again once more to Jesse’s eye level. “As an apology for my earlier forcefulness, as soon as Randall establishes that supply line for donut holers, I’ll offer you the premium pick of the first shipment at half-price! How does that sound?”

He held out a watery hand towards the human, who—despite still being extremely shocked by this turn of events—took it (was enveloped within its surprising warm depths) with a hesitant “S-sure, Randall, that… that sounds great!”

Then the two of them looked to the side after hearing the “Clang!” of Lake’s palm meeting her forehead as all of the revelations about Randall she’d been thinking about not even ten minutes previously—like his one-track mind when it came to donut holers, and the fact that one had to keep that in mind if they wanted to get anywhere with him in conversation—came rushing right back to her.

And along with them came the new realization that, for all that a lot could change in a year… Randall would always remain the same.

Perplexing, amiable, and obsessed with donut holers.

#infinity train #fanficiton #writing #hitting a birdie on infinite par #aka #born on the train

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crepuscular-gloom · 4 years

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Poptropica Island Ratings

okay I saw a post on here a while ago and someone rated the Poptropica islands. I remember agreeing with a lot of them, but they only went so far so a lot of the newer islands were missed out. I came across it again recently and got hit by a wave of nostalgia so I’m gonna do my own now. Unoriginal content very good. i’ll put a keep reading link to stop it from taking up too much space

Early Poptropica - mega nostalgia but kinda boring. I like the original Poptropicans being pixely and there is a goth gf in the sewers however the giant green spider scared the shit out of me as a kid and the idea of an aircraft graveyard made me sad so 6/10

Shark Tooth Island - also nostalgic but I didn’t complete it for a long time for some reason.. very short. it has a story but its there is nasty shark and people stuck on an island so make a calming potion. the medicine man looks like he is from viva pinata so 6/10

Time Tangled Island - VERY GOOD AND FUN AND HISTORICAL FUCK THAT AZTEC THO DICKHEAD. quite lengthy for an island but this is good because that means more time periods to explore. it’s also educational but i just care about restoring time. very legendary the iconic just jumped out - 10/10

24 Carrot Island - stupid pun point taken off. introduces Dr Hare and people are THIRSTY. you can dye your hair with milkshakes. i thought it was creepy as a kid honestly. i think its mind control or something. but i like it, it still has nostalgia value 8/10

Super Power Island - very legend like. i loooove the antagonists, especially copy cat but i think i had to look up a guide to beat her because i was dumb af. you need a licence to be a superhero but you are a superhero!!! very fun i like this one a lot 10/10

Spy Island - i remember sucking at this one as well as a kid. i think it fucks with peoples hair and i only remember because my character looks fresh 100% of the time and this island fucked it up i think. i don't really remember it tho. 5/10

Nabooti Island - it’s based on a Choose Your Own Adventure book so good premise. go around the world is also good. you have to get jewels i think. ngl i didn’t finish this one because i sucked at it so i’m just going off the wiki and how far i got into it. fuck the animal puzzle 7/10

Big Nate Island - who the fuck is Big Nate. i only remember the school climbing frame and a stink bomb. fuck you big nate we don’t have your comics in England 1/10

Astro-Knights Island - medieval knights.... IN SPACE?!?! COUNT ME IN. crazy jester bard guy antagonist. people are thirsty for him too. i’m pretty sure you end up in another dimension or something. cyborgs and shit 9/10

Counterfeit Island - bruh i loved this island. pretty sure antagonist is also making people thirsty. you have to go back to Early Poptropica Island to complete it, very cool. investigating crime is cool idea it’s l.a. noire in poptropica. the wiki says there is a glitch called anti-social clown and i have to say relatable 9/10

Reality TV Island - i think i completed this like twice and i remember jackshit. you get to see past characters tho so very good. it’s just doing challenges. 4/10

Mythology Island - VERY GOOD. LEARN ABOUT MYTHOLOGY. you can fight hydra and other creatures, you meet Zeus you meet Hades, Aphrodite is a bitch. 9/10

Skullduggery Island - pirates are always good no matter what. apparently it is one of the hardest islands which explains why i never completed it but you fight other pirates and sea monsters for doubloons or some shit sounds cool to me 8/10

Steamworks Island - steampunk is good. i remember completing this and thinking it was interesting and weird to look at. i think the atmosphere is was lonely tho. there’s a boss battle against a plant i think. otherwise i don’t fuckin remember 7/10

Great Pumpkin Island - it’s Peanuts so it’s nice. very nice and simple. it’s just about the great pumpkin except you’re there. 6/10

Cryptids Island - GOD TIER. CRYPTIDS IS SUCH A GOOD IDEA. some of it is scary tho. the jersey devil just fucking staring at you from the window was a shit the bed moment for a kids game. also before the islands got rebooted, it was one of the only islands to have sound effects, i.e. when the chupacabra bursts out the box. honestly because of the balls on this kids game to scare children and also being good island 10/10

Wild West Island - the only thing better than pirates is cowboys. i don’t really remember it but you do go against an outlaw gang. i like cowboys 10/10

Wimpy Wonderland Island - Jeff I know you made doawk and poptropica but did you have to show it. ngl i liked it because i like doawk. but it’s kinda... creatively bankrupt i guess. 3/10 2 points because Rodrick is there

Red Dragon Island - i think more time travel but just to old Japan. you have to save a girl. that’s all i remember. also i think there is a nasty samurai guy. but also evil dragon. i can’t remember because for the longest time this was a premium account only island so i never got to finish it for the longest time. that was a dick move 7/10 for that alone.

Shrink Ray Island - cool premise but this island expects me to learn morse code 3/10

Mystery Train Island - detectives? on a train? very nice. basically murder on the orient express except no murder and thomas edison is there and also various other 1700/1800 nerds

Game Show Island - basically Reality TV except it’s to save the world from robots. 5/10

Ghost Story Island - wow iconic. this is the only island with voice acting and it’s to fucking jumpscare you i shat myself. ghost hunting, very cool 10/10

S.O.S Island - it’s basically Titanic mixed with Moby Dick. it’s ok 6/10

Vampire’s Curse Island - i reaaaally like this one. i like vampires. it has a vampire daddy in it so. he kidnaps a teenage girl tho because he thinks its the love of his life who is dead. kinda weird. he does stop being insane at the end tho and says sorry and dies. the girls bf is a dickhead tho. 9/10

Twisted Thicket Island - i think you’re saving a forest from becoming housing. i really like it because it introduces various folkloric creatures like the nokken. i only remember the nokken because i went on akinator to see if he knew what it was and i don’t think he did so i added it and it’s photo to his database. or maybe it was just his photo but i remember uploading something to akinator. 8/10

Poptropolis Games Island - i don’t think i liked this one 3/10

Wimpy Boardwalk Island - Jeff. 2/10 1 point added because Rodrick is also there

Lunar Colony Island - space is good. do i remember this island tho? no. i think theres aliens tho. 5/10 because i like space and aliens.

Super Villain Island - it brings back the most memorable villains like binary bard and black widow. you find out why they are evil. pretty chill 8/10

Charlie and The Chocolate Factory Island - what do you expect 5/10

Zomberry Island - the last of us except i think people are just eating nasty berries really. i like it it’s spooky 7/10

Night Watch Island - Paul Blart Mall Cop 6/10

Back Lot Island - you make a film. i can’t remeber it like at all. 6/10 because it sounds ok

Poptropolis Games Island Part 2 - fuck off 2/10

Virus Hunter Island - i don’t think i completed this one either. however it is one of those inside the human body things which is always cool if cliche. 8/10

Mocktropica Island - very satirical what if about if poptropica was run by assholes. ironic since a bunch of islands were made premium only for a while. pretty sure the bonus missions still are too which is why i’m not mentioning them. funny tho 7/10

Monster Carnival Island - spooky yes. people thirst over the ringmaster raven guy too. theres a spooky clown on the ferris wheel. i don’t remember much other than i liked it because it was about monsters in a theme park. 9/10 i remember it was surprisingly short tho

Survival Island - castaway except it’s you. i don’t remember it either lmao. i got out of touch with old poptropica real bad by this time so my next ratings might be unfair sorry. pretty sure it also becomes the most dangerous game tho and some guy wants to actually fucking kill you. ballsy. 7/10 because it sounds ok i should maybe play it.

Mission Atlantis Island - i like atlantis but i didn’t play this one either. you see deepsea creatures which are spooky so extra points 8/10

PoptropiCon Island - poptropica’s answer to comicon. now i did play this one for some reason but i don’t remember it too well either. i was 14 when it came out so. sounds like yu-gi-oh so good. 7/10

Arabian Nights Island - didn’t play it i think it’s just telling the story. it’s a cool story so 7/10

Galactic Hotdogs Island - what the fuck 1/10

Mystery of The Map Island - vikings are cool. island seems very short tho. 5/10

Timmy Failure Island - who the fuck. this would be more impactful if i read these fucking things but i don’t. who the fuck are you timmy. i guess it’s called failure for a reason. (that was mean sorry) 1/10

Escape from Pelican Rock Island - prison break, nice idea. you have like a twin in this one. seems a bit repetitive sometimes tho. theres like 7 days of doing similar things. 6/10

Monkey Wrench Island - it was created to be the new tutorial, i.e. an actual tutorial rather than Early Poptropica. very fast and boring, especially if you already know everything. 2/10

Crisis Caverns Island - i know nothing about this. even the wiki is incomplete. maybe that means its shit then. 1/10 the wiki doesn’t even care too much about this one.

Greek Sea Odyssey - more ancient greece is always good. you get to beat the shit out of zeus this time 8/10

Snagglemast Island - all you do is collect coins. another tutorial one. 1/10.

bonus: home island. legit just a hub. points added because you can do a lot of customisation here and pick up a pet that doesn’t cost credits. 4/10

DOUBLE BONUS: the little haunted house mini thing. very good because spooky costumes, spooky house fun little monster party. 10/10

#poptropica #feel free to add your opinions #do you agree #or disagree #i get unfair because i stopped playing a loooong time ago #tho i sometimes jump on #if you see me i'm called chilly skull #edgy i know but i made it when i was 7 #poptropica islands #this felt like writing a goddamn essay enjoy

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frccdomfell · 4 years

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So, this is only a little over 1600 words... I have a lot of people to thank. I’ve had Stevie boy here for five months, but I’ve been around Tumblr rp for a long time and thought I’d take this opportunity to thank those of you that have been such lights this year. This year has been extremely hard for me for a number of reasons I won’t get into in this happy post! So, this is for those who were there for me this year:

My Main Peeps:

@liftingxrocks : firstly, i have to thank my incredible fiance. you were here every step of the way this year and it has made all the difference. i couldn’t have gotten through it without you and i’m so goddamn lucky i get to call you mine. proposing to you was easily the best thing i’ve ever done and when you said yes was the single best moment of my life. we met through rp and I love every character you try your hand at. thanks for being such a light in my life, babygirl. i love you.

@bytheanchor : b! you total fucking nerd. god, you’re the best! i’m so glad to call you my friend and you’re definitely one of my best online friends. you never fail to be positive and brighten my day. you’re so kind and encouraging. we talk practically every day. those two weeks you went away were SO BORING! i love all your characters so much, you know that. writing with you is easily one of my favourite past times. you are always just as excited and willing to write stuff as i am and i love it. thank you for being such an amazing friend.

@spitefulandspectacular : i mean you never check your tumblr notifications, but i don’t care. you were so important this year so you get a spot on the list. man, you were such a great roommate. we each had our things, but honestly i’m so happy my first real roommate was such a quality person. i miss ya like hell and can’t wait to see you real soon hopefully. thanks for being such a great friend and taking care of our boy. you’re a gem.

@mangohub : monroe, what can i even say? you’re such an incredible friend and i’m so thankful for you. anytime i’m dealing with anything you’re right there for me, ready to listen. i don’t think i’ve met a better writer in my entire life, no joke. i love your alec more than life itself and writing with you is always such a fulfilling experience. even jut plotting with you is so much goddamn fun. you’re such a bright and loving person. thanks for being one of the good things about my 2019.

@warricrsbcw : my mollee. hey hun. i just want to thank you for being such a stand up friend since we reconnected. you’ve been there for me every single time i’ve needed it and i hope i’ve been able to do the same. you’re such a sweet person and you deserve all the nice things. not to mention that i love your alec to hell and back! magnus would go to the ends of the earth for that boy.

@lcdgerbled : hayley, you are so awesome! I’m so lucky that when i left my magnus blog i was able to take you with me in a way. you’re such an insanely talented writer and an even better friend. you’ve been so great and always there if i need anyone to talk to about my ED. your natasha is perfect! steve adores her with his entire heart and wants to buy a place in a new york and have ten kids with her lol. thanks so much for making this year a little more bearable.

New Friends:

@divabarnes : so, you were actually the reason i remade my steve into a blog. he was just available on discord but you reignited my love for him. your bucky sparked my steve back to life and i can’t thank you enough. i love him so much. your writing is so in character and makes my jaw drop every time. i love writing with you (even though im slow and trash). thanks for everything you didn’t even know you did.

@ivorysatin : i know we haven’t known each other a super long time but i absolutely adore you! you’ve been so kind and friendly and you’re writing is PHENOMENAL! your magnus, anna and blair! i’m so in love with all your threads and verses. every time i see your blair i’m so tempted to remake my charles so you need to STOP! but, seriously, you’re such a friendly bean, thanks!

@semiistable : hello friend! so i know we literally just met like four days ago, but in that time i have totally fallen in love with your writing and you so freaking nice and chill. my steve is head over heels for your bucky, and writing with you never fails to make me smile. i hope we continue to be friends for a long time.

@mischieftomake : bonjour jas! so i’ve been dying to write a loki/steve pairing for so long but could never find anyone that clicked with my steve. and, i’m so lucky that the one who did also has such a phenomenal mun! you’re so much fun to plot with and to play around with what we want to do. i’m loving our soulmate verses so much! i hope we continue to become close in the new year!

@tcnystcrrk : thank you thank you thank you! i’m so happy we met and i feel so lucky to get to write with you. my steve just gravitates to your tony. you’re actually the only tony i’m properly active with. i just love plotting and writing with you. you’ve been so kind and excited and it’s made me so happy. i hope to write loads with you both ic and ooc in the new year. stay frosty.

@heyqxeens : beep boop. we don’t write a lot, and that’s mostly because i’ve been hella busy and whatnot. but, i love your peter. even without writing with you i’ve been heavily enjoying reading your other threads. honestly just the fact that you're on my dash makes a huge difference in my tumblr experience. also, we still need to do that thread where they both work at the bugle lol. hope your new year is full of fun.

@hcpefell : nyxie. again, i’ve been bad at keeping up bc life is super hectic right now but thank you so much for being part of the harder part of this year. the second half really took a lot out of me and meeting and writing with you really helped! i love how you write gwen and steve adores her. thank you so much!

Honorable Mentions: (a.k.a. those i stalk)

@stolenparticles : so hi! i’ve been following you since even before i had steve i believe. even when i never thought we’d write together (bc of the vastly different fandoms) i still needed to follow you. cassie is such an interesting and complex character and i love to see someone taking her and just running with it. i love to read all your threads on the dash, it’s always such a good time.

@stormweathered : we’ve chatted here and there, but i low key am IN LOVE with your characterization. your thor is so beautiful and on point! i read all of your answered memes when they show up because your writing is just so impressive. one day i’ll stop being a potato and actually get to work on saying a proper hello.

@kendolled : SOOOOO... i lowkey stalk your blog daily! you’re right up there with @ivorysatin making me want to remake charles. every single time i read your replies alli can see is mr. archibald. i swear, you encompass him so well. ive been rewatching gossip girl for the past seven months or so (bc im slow and easily distracted) and trust me when i say your nate is spot on! i read literally almost everything you post because it’s so perfect!

@spidaeyaunt : so i lowkey adore you. all the love and devotion you put into may is inspiring. i love reading your headcanons and i adore your threads with tonys and peters. but i think the big reason i follow you is your personality. i love seeing your ooc posts on the dash and your tags always make me laugh! keep it up, you cool cat.

@exposestruth & @smallvxlle : i grouped you together because i found you through each other. smallville was such a huge and important part of me growing up. it will forever be one of my top three shows. having both of you bring these characters to life has meant everything. makes me totally miss my ollie every time i read your individual threads. plus all the smallville gifsets on my dash make me SO HAPPY!

@moqul : omg! your cat is FLAWLESS! i love reading your headcanons and your tags are always so freaking hilarious! i laugh so much whenever you’re on the dash and it’s something i value so much. i love supergirl so much, i played kara for a while and i still play barry (since hes a cw super) and your cat is just perfect. i don’t think anyone else could do her the kind of justice you do.

@hakune : OH MY GOD!! your steve *holds chest* I just love him so much. you write so well and your passion for our boy comes through so clearly. i love reading your threads and just watching you interact on the dash is a blast. keep up the good work, fellow steve.

@madebythejungle : you are so fucking talented, wtf? to take such a cool and interesting character and just explode him into life is so impressive. i love reading your stuff whenever i come across it on the dash. one day i’ll get up the courage to actually come say hi, but until then have this little thank you. thank you for making my dash that much better.

#°♡° magnus bane owns my soul | ooc #°♡° i know this neighborhood | save #thank you all so much #(i didnt proofread it but what else is new?)

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asocier · 4 years

Text

this post is going to be long, but i’d appreciate it if you could at least give it a skim if you’re interested in interacting with me, particularly if you want to interact with nate and cedric but don’t know how to or if you want to develop meaningful relationships with my muses ( re: sexually intimate relationships )

edit: fixed my wording on the last statement since i mostly talk about sexual relationships in the last part of my post rather than general meaningful relationships.

CEDRIC AND NATE

tl;dr: nate and cedric, while you can’t overlook what they’ve done to alison, are still muses with their own personalities beyond their actions, and i want to play with that more instead of making them out to be purely antagonistic because it’s more complicated than that. if you didn’t know about what they did to alison, nate and cedric have the potential to be approachable, and i want to emphasize their personal traits that make them just normal guys to stop making them out to be the villains because you really wouldn’t have known what they had done in high school if you met them after the fact.

...

i think about what to do about nate and cedric a lot. sometimes i feel like i should take them off the blog because they don’t garner enough interest and also because i don’t have very much muse for them. after some thought, i realize that why i might not have much muse for them is because i’ve reduced them down to a few basic personality traits, and that’s really boring for me. i forget that they’re so much more complex, and me simply reducing nate down to being overly aggressive, crass, rude, and a fuckboy and cedric down to being stuck up and bratty and also a fuckboy really limits what i can do with them.

these traits are indeed at the core of who nate and cedric are, but i really feel like i’ve made these traits all of who they are when there’s so much more to them, and i think that makes them kind of unapproachable and flat as muses. don’t get me wrong, i’m not trying to overlook the fact that they’re assholes who did terrible things to both alison and emile, like in no shape or form do i condone their actions. but i feel like sometimes i forget that nate and cedric aren’t such caricatures of their bad traits and also aren’t as sexual as i make them out to be in my head and sometimes in conversation with other muns?

like i make nate out to be someone who will pick a fight all the time, will curse you out all the time, will drink all the time —yeah he does all these things, but in a natural setting where he’s not provoked, nate actually does not give a fuck? like if he doesn’t think you’re worth fighting, isn’t agitated, or doesn’t have the energy ( which is often because he is quite low energy most of the time ) he will literally shrug, say “okay” in a monotone voice and walk away. he is low maintenance in every sense of the word. he just wants to eat like shit, have an inconsistent sleep cycle, and make music. he doesn’t have the energy for other people usually, and when he does, like when he’s clubbing, partying, dj-ing, socializing and sleeping around, it’s charisma and energy he pulls out of his ass to put on a persona to make people like him so he can forget about his life problems. sometimes it’s fueled by alcohol and party drugs. it’s all temporary though before he goes back to his usual lazy ways.

with cedric, yes he’s snarky, he’s snobby, he thinks he’s better than you, he’s rich, and already kind of unrelatable and unapproachable, but he’s actually a big closeted nerd. he reads, he wears glasses ( but refuses to let people know that so you’ll most likely only see him in contact ), he can cook but he fucks up all the time and always cuts himself in the kitchen, he loves historical sites and architecture of other nations, and yeah he’s a bartender but he actually drinks a lot of coffee over alcohol. he hates cats but loves dogs, he has a business degree and wants to start a small business soon.

all in all, i wanted to write this all out for myself and also for you all to understand what my thought process is with them and how cedric and nate really are since these aren’t things you’d get from the bio. you’d really need to interact with them or plot with me to learn these things.

SMUT ON THIS BLOG

tl;dr: smut is allowed, but i’d prefer to not write smut with cedric and nate unless i really dig a ship or think it adds to a plot. i’m not a fan of plotless smut with them since it’s not interesting for me. it’s more interesting for me to write smut with alison or emile because their views on sex is so much more complicated, and a smut thread with them has more potential to lead to something more. plotless smut is even interesting for alison and emile because it lets me explore the nuances of their sexuality whereas i don’t really get to do that with cedric and nate since they’re already secure with their sexualities. also, i want more plots that explore alison’s sexuality in high school and her time as a sex worker since that’s pivotal to her character, but i also want to respect people’s comfort.

...

yes. yes, this is something i want to do on this blog, but with one big caveat. i’ve thought about this a lot too, and it kind of goes along with how i’ve reduced nate and cedric to be real big fuckboys. i mean, yes, they are, but also, i don’t want every interaction with them to be smut. i don’t want every interaction with them to be flirty, sexually charged, sensual. in fact, i don’t want to smut with them. that isn’t to say that sexual interactions can’t happen -- our muses can hook up, but i’d prefer not to write it out with cedric and nate unless it adds to the plot or unless i’m just really feeling the ship because it’s not really what i’m interested in on this blog.

what i am interested in are the sexual relationships of alison and emile. alison and emile have very distinct, very complex views about sex, and to be sexually active and intimate with another muse isn’t just like, a one time thing with no consequences like how it might be with cedric or nate ( e.g. one night stands, a smut thread with no plot, just pure horny ) -- sex is taboo for them, and it takes so much vulnerability and trust for them to be intimate, especially emile when he’s with a male partner. alison has her own unaddressed trauma surrounding sex, especially with men, and she can’t have sex normally and right away when just meeting someone because her body will not let her and it will hurt. it takes effort to have emile and alison be willing to be intimate with another muse, and i want people to make that effort and to really develop a relationship with them.

additionally, i want to explore alison’s sexuality during her time in high school and post high school when she was being prostituted. this was a period of time where alison’s understanding of consent, kinks, fetishes, and her own sexuality ( sexual orientation, romantic orientation, what her own likes/dislikes are ) begin to form and get warped due to the inconsistent treatment she got from clients and her boyfriends. i know not every muse would spend a night with a sex worker, and muns might not be comfortable with such a thing either, which i respect. i just want to put that out there since this time period is so pivotal for alison’s development and i rarely get the chance to explore such a side to her character.

if you made it this far and actually read it all or skimmed it, thank you so much! i really appreciate you taking the time to do that since i want my rp partners to understand what my intentions are behind this blog. i want interactions, but i also know it takes communication, and i’m trying my best to be more transparent about my thoughts on this blog.

#ooc;#cw: long post #i might redo bios and add a disclaimer about smutting to my rules so that people don't have to read this long post lmao

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ihatecispeople · 5 years

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okay so this is a long post and it’s gonna be shared among different emotions but that’s fine sometimes. so like having been mostly invisible throughout my formative years, kinda culminating in high school where i wasn’t alone but never really became friends with any of my classmates and drifted between groups, hearing and internalising that people think about me when i’m not in their field of view, that they mention me to their friends because they think my name can add to the discussion, or like, existing in people’s lives outside of their immediate life with me is a really hard thing for me to come to terms with. anyways at the volunteering i partook in at the one big picnic i had two co-volunteers (and friends) introduce me to their respective friends, and they both said that they had heard so much about me from the introduces. and i was like taken aback a little. they were obviously super kind people and the things that had been mentioned by our mutual friends had only been good things, but it was such a (positive) shock for me. people think about me when i’m not around them or when it doesn’t directly concern them! i’m a concept that people want to share because they think i can offer something good to the person they’re introducing my concept to! that’s wild!!! that’s really a lot!!!!!

the first one was when a friend i invited to dnd with my new group im putting on introduced me to her friend whos a real dnd nerd and was interested in joining because he only gets to dm these days. obviously i’m fine with friends of friends joining so i was really happy to take him on--he knows our mutual friend’s work with interfaith lgbt organisations so when i talked to him about the premise of basing it on a levantine setting during the islamic golden age (YES the same setting as my running campaign, but different adventure! :D and a few decades before my current campaign is taking place too) he seemed really intrigued, and although i suspect he’s cishet he seems like one of those token cishet friends that are just cool with lgbt people voicing their frustration towards the cishet population around them. hopefully im right, but at least i have more than 2 players that was my original goal at least!!!

and then i was introduced to the cutest guy by one of my older friends. the guy is about my age or so and is a hindu, and it’s through interfaith connections he knew the older (white) pagan woman that introduced us. and like yeah he was extremely attractive physically (hes a manlet and i was like ALHAMDULILLAH) the reason we were introduced was apparently because our common friend thought our ideas about western imperialism’s impact on gender and lgbt solidarity and the reason for our distance to other lgbt people of colour esp those of different non-christian faiths would be somewhat the same and they really really were... but not like copies of each other. we only spoke for about 10 minutes at the event and promised each other to talk more yet i felt that we both got to hear ideas that the other had been trying to put words to but hadn’t been able to, so like we complemented each other really well when we spoke. so like yeah that whole discussion maybe made me get a mini crush on him before he left, but of the strict “PLEASE let us talk more and at least become good friends” kind.

but after both discussions with these friends-of-friends i left the conversations really in disbelief that people around me genuinely feel close enough to me that they not only remember me when i’m not sitting next to them in maths class but also remember me enough to introduce me to their super interesting and extremely handsome (😉) friends. in the end i had a glasgow lesbian introduce me to a cute guy but i thought it’d be the lesbians in my age range that wouldve done it (COUGH at hester and vera) but no it was a 50+ year old white pagan woman who saw two guys she knew have the same ideas about lgbt politics and though huh i’ll speak so well about nate that when i introduce him to ***, *** will give compliments to nate about all the good things he’s heard of him until nate doesn’t fucking know what to do with himself

#i have an urge to say god bless america but literally nothing relates to the phrase

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july-19th-club · 5 years

Conversation

legends but d&d

Rip: the DM, initially. did his best to create a well-rounded premise with simple rules and a decent first-round villain, then watched as his players careened quickly, gleefully, and inexorably off the rails. still having fun but becoming exasperated. has resorted to increasingly firm means to keep them in any sort of continuity, and following some basic semblance of "plot."

Sara: wanted to be a ranger, or a fighter, so she did both and crafted the token Revenge Character(TM) of the group but is too essentially fun-loving to get super grim about it. endlessly seeking retribution, sweet flips, and cute girls. oh my god, she's a Burnsides. has elected herself de facto decision maker in-game, and the table respects that. can de-escalate fights when necessary.

Ray: the guy who already knows ALL of the rules and won't hesitate to remind you about that fact. whether you wanted him to or not. plays a paladin and it's a little too on the nose, but also the person who brings snacks most regularly to sessions, and unflaggingly encourages the other players' hard work and good rolls. bit of a cheerleader but that's his best quality.

Leonard: made a Very Cool Rogue Guy and was determined to play neutral-to-neutral evil. somewhere along the way wound up firmly in neutral good territory. character got killed off at the end of the first big battle but he wanted to stay in the game, so now he just brings in what's essentially the same guy but "this time it's him from the past" or "this is his...identical double, glen, uh, smart, from...uh, from another universe...where he's gay.." does great over-the-top character voices.

Kendra: said she'd play for a few sessions only and stuck to that promise. creates a solid character with good emotional grounding and a strong backstory, and weaves it into the campaign creatively and professionally. could have done more with it if she'd stuck around, but strangely, once she's left the group can't really remember what she used to contribute. carter? well, he was always kind of an NPC at heart.

Amaya: creates a brilliant, moral warlock character, lawful good, with a firm purpose and plenty of depth. makes the mistake of agreeing to play a romance with another PC and super regrets it because now it's beginning to affect her actual stated goals and get in the way of her enjoyment of the game. good at breaking up arguments and getting the brainstorming rolling; not so much at the actual roleplay. eventually drags charlie along and watches proudly as she wreaks havoc on the party.

Mick: the dude who's basically just playing himself, but a barbarian this time instead of a guy who sits in a living room twice a month and eats very loud snacks at the table. found to his surprise that he was a better storyteller than anyone anticipated (even considering his frequent vocabulary mishaps) and is now many carefully typed pages deep into a tragic backstory involving the rogue and his own personal demons of the heart. kind of proud of himself if he's honest, and he should be.

Jax: brought his dad to the D&D group. has to keep stopping to explain the rules to his dad, and is trying not to resent this (he was the one who made the decision, after all). they build their character together and share custody over his actions, which leads to some contention when the ball really gets rolling. impatient and eager to make the magic happen; as a result gets ambushed frequently.

Stein: the dad that got brought to the D&D group. catches on quickly but pretends that he doesn't so that he can have an excuse for zoning out during the boring bits. always the player who's turned to for double-checking on plans, thinking through investigations, and searching through the rulebook and reading off the results in a Serious Academic Tone to settle disputes. keeps the atmosphere civil.

Ava: here because her girlfriend said 'you'll LOVE it come on PLEASE join our group.' she does NOT know if she loves it. she's often uncomfortable and feels the panic of public speaking every time she's asked to roleplay but eventually grows a little more at ease with the concept. didn't really know what to do about character building so it's basically a clone of herself but with a sword this time.

John: shows up to every session claiming he has WAY better things to be doing than sit around playing D&D with these plebes. comes religiously to every single meeting anyway. insisted on introducing his own homebrewed adjustments to the magic system so as to make it quote-unquote More Realistic(TM). leaves for a smoke break whenever he thinks things are getting a little boring. absolutely refuses to do character voices no matter how much anyone begs.

Zari: never was much of a one for fantasy before, having sat firmly on the sci-fi line of the nerd circle in the past. now plays a wizard whose powers are entirely technology-based, which makes things interesting since they're in a pre-industrial world more often than not. finds that fake fights in D&D are a great frustration outlet. double-classed into a paladin whose powers reflect her real-world faith, but her most important role? is as my girlfriend.

Nate: starts out as everybody's least favorite player but gets much better at building his character once he's not too distracted by his crush to focus on the game. finds a nice balance between 'fighter' and 'scholar' and is good at guiding the party through traps and puzzles. draws everyone detailed, beautiful illustrations of their characters, and is the only person who genuinely enjoys Ray's morals rants.

Charlie: dragged to the group by Amaya and subscribes to her own complex idea of what, exactly, a D&D game IS. plays a bard who is a punk rocker and decides almost immediately that her character needs to have specific, individual beef with all the other party members. enjoys getting missions off-track for mischief reasons and therefore pretty good at getting the group engaged again when enthusiasm is starting to flag.

Gary: took over as DM after Rip left to enjoy more time with his remaining brain cells. Mick was the interim DM, but being a good writer doesn’t always mean you’ll be a good games master so the story was in a really weird place by the time ol gare-bear got there. Quickly developed a bad habit of inventing monsters whose sole purpose is to punish the players for annoying him, but in his defense they SO often deserve it. Against all odds he is still putting up with them (they think THEY are putting up with HIM).

#my favorite FAVORITE things are those posts where it's like *insert group of characters here but it's their rpg campaign*#and since the legends canonically have a d&d game that gary apparently started and john inexplicably continued #i have to go whole hog #legends of tomorrow #oooooh boy

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takaraphoenix · 5 years

Note

“Luck? Nope. Skills.” - “If it’s skill then do it again.” ColdFlashWave. Thanks. ❤

Advent Calendar: Day 2

“Either you’re cheating or you’re insanely lucky”, accused Nate with a glare.

“Luck? Nope. Skills”, declared Snart smoothly, smirking.

“If it’s skill then do it again”, demanded Zari and gathered the cards together again.

Jax huffed and leaned back on his chair, watching Snart count his winnings. From across the room, he could feel Grey’s eyes on him, giving him a pointed look – what was he doing playing poker against not one but two criminals. And Stein had a point there. Playing poker with Snart and Rory was never a good idea. The thing was, for the past couple of days, it had been intensely dull and boring on the Wave Rider, so it was either playing poker with Snart, Rory, Nate and Zari, or watching Sara and Amaya spar and risking being forced to join them, or listen to Grey and Ray nerd-babble two tables over. He was honestly looking forward to the holidays at this point.

“And you’re sure you don’t want to go to the Queens’ holiday party?”, asked Nate curiously.

Jax shrugged. “Grey invited me along to go celebrate with his family. And I gotta gather some extra points as favorite uncle with Ronnie already, don’t I? Besides… that party sounds like a mess.”

“Why? Just because the big wedding you guys went to attend turned into a total disaster featuring Nazis from an alternate reality?”, drawled Zari. “I mean, that was an unforgettable wedding.”

Everyone at the table grunted at the memory of the fatal failure of the first attempt at a wedding between Oliver and Felicity. It had been supposed to be a grand beautiful event, but got kind of hijacked by the Nazis. Definitely unforgettable though.

“You will not be a bad influence on my grandson, Jefferson”, called Martin out pointedly.

“Wha—at? Never, Grey”, called Jax back with a broad grin.

“And let’s not forget the part where touching down in 2017 is going to mean having to watch Mick and Len make out with Barry”, tagged Nate on and made a face.

“It’s like a rite of passage to walk in on them having sex at least once”, offered Jax to Zari.

Zari raised both her eyebrows and shrugged at that. She had a pretty good grasp on what she would be walking in on considering she had read Mick’s polyamorous erotica novel and she figured he drew a lot from his own life and relationship with Snart and Allen. Her eyes found the two former – well, mostly former – criminals who had kept uncharacteristically quiet during the conversation.

/break\

Sara was sitting with Len in the library, supposedly researching. The two had grown to become an odd pair of friends ever since joining the Legends. After Snart had sacrificed himself to save them and they only barely managed to rescue him, the two had grown even closer. He had died, technically, but timey-wimey mumbo-jumbo had led to them bringing him back nonetheless because his conscience had still been around, haunting Mick. At first, Mick had thought he was going insane, but that was by far not the case. It took them some time to figure out a way to actually grow Snart a new body with Gideon – but hey, she made full limbs, she could do this – and move his consciousness into it. At the end of the day, both of them had died and come back.

“Do you ever regret joining the Legends?”, asked Sara curiously.

“Mh? I don’t think me and Mick would have returned to the Wave Rider after the disbandment if we would regret joining, don’t you think?”, countered Leonard.

“You rejoined the crew again because you two were going crazy in Aruba, mourning Barry. But they managed to free him from the Time Prison”, pointed Sara out. “If he had never been in there and you two would have gotten to return to him, heroes and saviors in your own right, redeemed from the deeds of your past… would you have truly left him again?”

“You’re not the type to get lost in what ifs”, mused Len thoughtfully. “I can’t attest for potential pasts, Sara. He’s safe and alive now and he has his own calling. Here, we get leeway. We’re not heroes. We will never be. In Central City? Have you met the Wests? They’re a bunch of goodie-two-shoes. One false step and the Detective will be willing to throw us back into jail. The really scary one in that family is and always will be Barry’s sister though.”

“Iris?”, asked Sara confused. “Why? She seems… very harmless.”

“But fiercely protective of her brother”, countered Len and grimaced. “If she thought me and Mick were still criminal enough to lead to a heartbreak for her brother then she would most likely tear us apart all on her own. No. That entire team? Too many goodie-two-shoes for us to be comfortable.”

“Your boyfriend is a goodie-two-shoes”, argued Sara amused.

“Yes, but he vibrates in bed”, replied Len with a dirty grin. “And does entirely different things in bed too. For him, the whole innocent puppy-dog eyes is quite… charming. And redeemable.”

Sara snorted and shook her head in amusement. She shouldn’t have asked.

/break\

Mick had been polishing his gun for the past two hours. And it was not a euphemism. Amaya and Zari exchanged a look over their breakfast. Mick was humming. In lack of a better word, one would describe him as happy. Which was wildly concerning, really. The last time he had looked that happy, they had just heard the news of vampires in Victorian London.

“Hey, buddy. You looking forward to seeing Barry again?”, asked Ray with a carefree smile as he entered the kitchen and sat down opposite Mick. “Got a Christmas present for him?”

“Yes”, replied Mick with what could only be described as an unholy smile.

“Oh, wha-”, started Ray interested.

“No”, interrupted Amaya rather firmly. “No need to spoil the surprise.”

“But… it’s not like it’s for me… so it’s not a surprise”, frowned Ray confused.

“But you’ll babble it on”, countered Amaya pointedly, though the real reason was a different one.

Mick’s grin widened even more. Still humming, he got up to return to his and Lenny’s cabin. Today was the day. They were going to the Queens’ party and they would get to spend time with Barry again. It had been far too long since they last got to be with their speedster.

“You’re in a good mood, Mick”, observed Leonard when Mick entered their room.

“Mh. Can’t wait to see Scarlet in our present”, grinned Mick.

Leonard huffed at that though the grin on his lips matched Mick’s. “Christmas is all about unwrapping presents after all, isn’t it?”

/break\

“Merry Chris—Woah, okay. Stand down, boys.”

Barry was staring wide-eyed, lifting his hands up in the air as both the Cold Gun and the Heat Gun were trained on his head suddenly. As soon as Lenny and Mick realized who had just broken into their room and woken them up, they dropped their weapons.

“Scarlet, how often have I told you not to sneak up on us?”, growled Mick annoyed.

“I wanted to surprise you”, huffed Barry with a pout, crossing his arms.

“You… couldn’t wait to see us, mh?”, asked Leonard knowingly, a smirk on his lisp.

Barry’s cheeks turned red to match his suit as he averted his eyes. “I mean, it’s… Christmas. And after waking up, I had to watch Joe and Cecille be all sweet and in love.”

“Ah, future stepmom”, teased Leonard amused. “She seemed impressive, during the Nazi-fight.”

“She is impressive”, grunted Barry softly. “I really like her, I like how happy she makes Joe.”

“So seeing your old man be all lovey-dovey made you wanna be lovey-dovey too”, accused Mick.

The grin on his lips matched Lenny’s as the arsonist reached out to wrap an arm around Barry’s waist and pull him down onto the bed. Barry yelped a little as he collapsed against Mick’s chest. Mick smiled pleased and tucked the speedster beneath his chin.

“How long do you think we have?”, asked Barry as he snuggled up to Mick.

“Don’t know. Don’t care”, grumbled Mick.

“Sara said something about landing early to drop off the professor and Jax”, offered Leonard as he laid down behind Barry, gently kissing the back of his neck. “So I’m positive we have some more time. You know how long Nathaniel takes to get ready in the morning.”

“Hair too”, grunted Mick pointedly.

“Yes, Raymond too”, agreed Leonard with a laugh.

“I live with Iris and Cecille. I know about having to wait my turn for the bathroom”, huffed Barry.

“You do know you’re old enough to get your own place, right?”, teased Leonard amused.

He trailed kisses along Barry’s shoulders, while Barry cuddled up to Mick some more. The large man was perfect for cuddling, warm and soft and comfortable. Barry sighed contently as Len spooned him from behind. With a very pleased smile on his lips did Leonard lean over to properly kiss Mick good morning too. It was downright endearing how pleased Mick looked, with their third tucked against his chest like that. Though Leonard couldn’t deny that he too was happy to have Barry back with them. What Sara had said, it rang true. If they hadn’t believed Barry to be locked away forever, they might have thought twice about leaving Central City.

“Have you missed us, Scarlet?”, asked Leonard teasingly.

“Obviously”, grumbled Barry pointedly. “Joe’s been… kind of frustrated ever since Wally left.”

“Why’d your brother leave?”, asked Mick confused.

Both Mick and Leonard had spoken with the kid before, worked with him. He was amusing.

“Too many speedsters around”, offered Barry with a sigh. “Got tired of being in my shadow, I guess. Being Kid Flash on Team Flash… Yeah, I get it.”

“Mh, and is your brother going to join us for Christmas?”, wondered Leonard.

“I have no idea. He’s barely been in contact with us since he left”, sighed Barry, pulling Lenny closer against himself. “I hope? But… your sister is going to join us for Christmas.”

Leonard raised his eyebrows curiously at that and exchanged a look with Mick. “She is?”

“You’re going to have so much fun with that”, chuckled Barry teasingly.

“Scarlet, what are you keeping from me?”, asked Leonard, nipping Barry’s neck.

Barry laughed and swatted at him. “Cisco and Lisa got back together a little while ago.”

“Mh. We get to threaten the pipsqueak some more”, grumbled Mick very pleased.

Leonard raised both of his eyebrows. “Now how did that happen?”

“After you… died, she started… coming around occasionally. Guess she was a bit… lost. And after you came back from the dead, well…”, shrugged Barry. “Turns out while you two were in Aruba and Wally was posing as me, apparently… they asked for her help and the Golden Glider became Miss Midas, a young upcoming hero.”

“How have I not heard of this before?”, grunted Leonard pointedly.

“It’s not like you drop by with a lot of social calls”, muttered Barry.

“We’re literally saving all of history, Scarlet”, defended Mick gruffly.

Barry laughed softly and leaned up to peck first Mick on the lips and then Leonard. “You can get all caught up on the party. But for now, you’re all mine.”

Read this here on FFNet & here on AO3

#coldflashwave #leonard snart #barry allen #mick rory #legends of tomorrow #fanfiction #phoe's advent calendar project #phoe's tumblr drabbles #nix-daughterofmagic

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