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commander-krios · 6 months

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Movie Night

Fandom: Andromeda Six Pairing: Damon Reznor/f!Traveler Rating: Teen Summary: Halloween is a good time for some cheap scares. Words: 1477 Additional Tags: Tilaari Traveler, Halloween, Horror Movies, Mentions of Horror Elements, Mild Gore, Medical Inaccuracies, Blood

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“Blood would not spurt like that.” Ryona said from the couch where she sat sandwiched between Bash and Ayame, waving towards the screen where a B-rated horror movie played. “It’s medically impossible for it to be that violent.” “I don’t know.” Vexx interrupted, kicking his feet up on the coffee table and leaning into the seat of the metal chair he’d smuggled from the kitchen. A bowl of popcorn sat precariously on his lap. “I’ve seen some interesting blood splatter when people are shot or stabbed. Nothing is impossible, Doc.” Ryona glared at him, but didn’t say anything else like the fact that she’d seen a lot during her time as an Archangel, opting instead to lean into Bash. Her boyfriend threw an arm over her shoulders, not once taking his gaze from the film. Astrea smirked from where she lay on the floor with Damon, hidden amongst a pile of pillows and blankets. He was stretched out on his back, one arm tucked behind his head while the other was wrapped around her while she rested her head against his chest. His fingers toyed with the edge of the shirt she wore, brushing against her hip every few minutes.

“Why? Why are they doing that?” Ayame asked with a squeak, covering her eyes with her hands, only to peek through her fingers to continue watching. “What is the point of any of this?”

Damon rolled his eyes and Astrea bit her lip to keep from laughing. “The point is to scare yourself.”

“Who wants to be scared on purpose?” Aya pulled her blanket up around her shoulders, hiding beneath the fabric.

“Oh come on, Aya. It isn’t that bad.” Bash pointed at the screen with his free hand, smiling widely until a victim got decapitated. He grimaced at the sight. “Oh, maybe it’s a little much.”

“It’s fake.” Damon muttered, turning his head to graze his lips over Astrea’s hair. “Besides, decapitation is too messy. Better off going for the jugular and being done with it.”

“You are not helping.” Aya snapped, throwing the blanket over her head so she couldn’t see the screen.

“It’s not even that scary.” Vexx stated, stuffing a handful of popcorn into his mouth. “You should lighten up.”

Astrea glanced up at Damon, but he was already watching her, a smirk curling his lips. Without even bothering to shift his gaze to his friend, he waited for the moment when she read his plans in his eyes to open his mouth. “Good thing there aren’t any snakes in tonight’s movie. Otherwise, carrot head would probably piss himself.”

Vexx nearly choked on the food in his mouth. When he managed to clear his throat, he glared in their direction, emerald nothing more than a sliver. “Astrea has a big mouth and I wasn’t scared. It surprised me.”

“You nearly fell into a fountain, Vexx.” Astrea added, only to draw Aya back out from under her blanket in a fit of giggles.

Vexx’s cheeks flared almost as red as his hair. “We’re missing the movie with this stupid shit.”

“Making fun of you is more entertaining.” Damon grinned at him, not even bothering to move an inch from where he was cuddled up with Astrea.

Vexx flipped him off.

All it did was get another laugh out of Damon. Astrea snuggled closer, her fingers trailing down his chest, her focus totally not on the movie and he didn’t mind that fact not one bit.

“Oh!” Ryona’s frown deepened, ignoring the rest of them to wave at the screen. “That’s entirely ridiculous!”

“I think you’re supposed to suspend your disbelief, Ry.” Bash said, a smile twitching his lips that he somehow managed to smother when she glanced at him. “Uh, I mean, it’s all in good fun.”

She sighed, rubbing a finger against her temple. “Yes. I know. I’m sorry.”

“No, keep ripping the film apart.” Aya said, no longer cocooned in the stupid blanket. “It’s not as scary if you destroy it with logic.”

“You’re still going to have nightmares tonight.” Damon called over to her. She threw the remote at him, only for him to grab it midair before it hit either him or Astrea. He held it out mockingly, shaking it a bit to drive home the point.

Astrea pulled the remote from his hands, shifting in order to press a kiss to his cheek. When he glanced down at her, his blue eyes softened the moment he noticed the smile aimed at him. “Let’s just enjoy the movie, okay?”

He returned her smile with a grin of his own. He found it getting increasingly difficult to deny her anything. “Yeah.”

Damon leaned forward, pressing a kiss to her waiting lips. Her responding grunt of delight was reward enough.

Ayame started to gag, getting a laugh from Bash (and most likely an eye roll from Ryona). He ignored them, tangling his hand in Astrea’s silver hair, pulling gasps from her mouth. It was barely a few seconds before Vexx’s entire bowl of popcorn was dumped on their heads, the kernels now covering their hair, their skin, their clothes.

Astrea turned away to sneeze, but Damon’s eyes were for the man standing a foot or two away, a dickish grin on his face. If Astrea wasn’t best friends with him, if she didn’t actually care about what happened to him…

“I’ll fucking kill you.”

“What the hell do you put on that popcorn, Vexx?” Astrea asked, shaking red powder out of her hair, sneezing again. “It hurts my eyes.”

“Chili powder and paprika.” He said with a laugh, moving out of Damon’s reach… not that he couldn’t get him with other means. Like a knife, in the shower, days later.

“You ruined a perfectly good bowl of popcorn!” Ayame shouted from the couch, jumping up to grab the empty bowl, her terror completely forgotten in her exasperation.

Vexx raised an eyebrow, but kept his eyes on Damon. “You can go make more.”

Ayame glared at him, violet eyes flashing dangerously. “I’m talking about the seasoning. It’s an affront to decent food. You heathen.”

“As if you know anything about ‘decent food’.” Vexx shot back, clearly offended. “We’re lucky if we don’t get food poisoning from the crap you make.”

“At least I can still feel my taste buds after I make something to eat.”

“As much as I hate to admit that Vexx has a point,” Damon cut in, getting a withering glare from the pilot. “You eat peanut butter sandwiches, Aya.”

“Don’t forget the jam she buys.” Vexx scrunched his face in disgust, as if he knew anything about the mass produced sugary shit that Ayame consumed on a daily basis.

Ayame chucked the bowl at Vexx and it bounced off of his big head, landing in Bash’s lap as he watched from the couch. “Watch it!”

Ryona cleared her throat loudly, cutting into whatever delightfully detailed insult Aya was cooking up. Which was disappointing, but it gave Damon the chance to dig beneath the blankets as Vexx turned to glance at the doctor, fishing out the little surprise they had for the former K’Merii.

“Hey, carrot head?”

When Vexx turned back around, he was immediately suspicious of Damon’s tone, slanting his eyes as he tried to figure out what he wanted before he asked. He failed. “What?”

“Catch.”

He tossed the object in his hands towards his friend, only for Vexx to realize halfway through attempting to grab it out of the air what it was. A snake.

The scream that came from Vexx’s mouth nearly made Damon lose it, but it was the expression of terror and the way he tripped over his own feet on the way out of the room that did it for him. Damon fell against the pillows in laughter, his breaths coming in short and painful gasps. Aya had joined him in the pile with tears streaming down her face before she buried it in a pillow, muffling the sounds from her mouth.

“That wasn’t nice.” Ryona muttered, but she couldn’t hide the twitch of her lips as she fought a grin, golden eyes on the rubber snake abandoned on the floor. “Can we continue watching the movie now?”

Damon inhaled deeply, willing air back into his lungs. It took a few tries before he could speak again. He stood, hauling Astrea along with him, helping her to pick out a few more pieces of popcorn before tossing it at Aya who was still in tears. “Good luck with that, Ry.” He tossed his arm around Astrea, pulling her tightly against him. “We have a date with a shower.”

A sound of disgust followed them out of the room and he laughed, content to spend his night far away from the idiots as possible. Especially if it meant more alone time with his princess.

#my writing #andromeda six #a6 #a6 fanfic #a6 traveler #damon reznor #oc: astrea #tilaari traveler #astrea x damon #f!traveler #f!traveler x damon #traveler x damon reznor #damon reznor x traveler #ayame ikeda #vexx serif #ryona mi'haden #sebastian ilahaj #bash ilahaj #halloween

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burntheupholstery · 2 years

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just played andromeda six’s episode 6, i see what the fuss was all about now. i’m not gonna say anything on that matter because i’ll wait for the full story (4 more episodes) before critiquing the frankly somewhat badly handled depiction of grief in episodes 1-5, but i do have something i want to say.

does anyone think the chemistry between the crew is ... lacking? feel free to discuss it with me, i bring it up because i’m trying to figure it out for fic, and i can’t seem to find in-text explanations for why they stick together, except possibly an anti-k’merii sentiment. that’s all well and good, spite can carry a person a long way, but this crew have supposedly been running together for several years now, so where’s the emotional connective tissue between them?

but burn, you ask, this is a romance vn, why is this important? shouldn’t the devs prioritize the relationship between LI and MC?

you’d be correct, imaginary audience! but what happens, i ask, to the LIs who you don’t romance? what happens to their plot, and what happens to them when their arc is over? i know i dislike a character who becomes a hanger-on. i especially dislike it when there are potentially rich inter-crew interactions to be had but they’re just left hanging. it’s nice to read about a group of friends who like each other anyway, isn’t it?

let me state before we go into the weeds that the aim of this post is for discussion and engagement (and my own analysis). pull up a carpet square, friends, we’re going down the character list by alphabet.

Ayame:

we know her relationship with Bash to be friendly, almost bestie-level, because they work together very often (such as on Cursa) and have similar interests (mecha). this is good! me like. i’d love to see more of their shenanigans! i’ll probably write a fic of them sparring or something, that’ll be fun.

we know her relationship with Calderon to be that of superior-subordinate, but also of friends, but we see very little of it aside from being told. i also wanna write a fic of the time Aya broke him out of jail, because you know Cal is gonna be pissed off she’s breaking the law, even if she’s breaking the law to help him.

we know she and June seem to have a Responsible-Older-Brother and Misbehaving-Little-Sister thing going on, which is alright, but still rather shallow. furthermore, do they bond over the loss of a sibling? do they know the other has experienced the same loss? that seems like a big oversight to me, maybe the devs will expand on that in the future?

we know she likes Damon enough to have slept with him (i don’t personally believe sex = a relationship; i’m more in the sex = lust camp, so just telling me ‘they slept together’ isn’t relationship shorthand in my book) and anyways it was a drunken thing, iirc. also, we see very little of them having a substantial conversation (the spar doesn’t count and i shouldn’t have to explain why) outside of work. i want to know what ayame thinks of their stabby assassin!! i wanna know if she likes cats as much as he does!!

we know next to nothing about her relationship with Ryona. I may be mistaken (i haven’t played the game exhaustively) but Ayame doesn’t have a scene in Ryona’s lab, nor do they interact a lot on-screen, and very little is said about what they think of each other aside from civilities.

finally, and perhaps most damningly, we have never seen Ayame react on-screen to Vexx, who has so much potential with Ayame. they’re both kitalphan, but Aya is first-gen and Vexx is second-gen, which is a perfect set up for conflict! (i go into this in my fic, come read?) but we see nothing on-screen. devs, is there a reason? you gave us the delicious hook of vexx’s parents being dead - why not expand on his kitalphan parentage a little, since Kitalpha imploding should’ve impacted his life as well. (i go into this in my fic ... come read?)

The most we’ve read about Ayame’s apparent distance from the team is revealed in Ep6, where she reveals some spoiler-ish facts about her attitude towards the crew, her brother Akira, and family. I eagerly await more news on her relationships for future episodes.

Bash:

i’ve covered his relationship with Ayame, and i’ll preface this section with the admission that his arc hasn’t come yet, so perhaps it explains the apparent lack of focus on Bash in the main plot.

see, Bash occupies the unique position as the one guy on the crew who’s connection with the two Pillars of Plot (Zovack and Peg’asi) to be extremely tenuous. everyone else has a big fat bone to pick with both Pillars, driving the plot forwards, but Bash ... i’ll wait and see.

back to his inter-crew relationships. we have nothing on him and Calderon. who recruited him? Oppo? how did the recruitment interview go? how did he switch careers from arena fighter to engineer? what was he doing before being a fighter?

we have nothing on him and Damon, except the odd line here and there about Bash’s hand-to-hand skills. give me something here, devs, both are skilled fighters and one has a metal arm, there’s so much potential here!

we have very little on him and June. presumably the crew knows about June’s history, and clearly there is some familiarity with June’s orionite-rages, but beyond that? ...

we know about his you-saved-my-life crush on Ryona. i’m hoping his arc in the future episodes will feature the resolution of this little thread

and finally, absolutely nothing about Vexx except the usual anti-k’merii sentiment. what does our resident engineer think about one rehabilitated k’merii on their ship? no one knows. as a Vexxmancer i’m a little disappointed. i still want Bash in my traveller’s life, y’know?

i’m not the most Bash-inclined player, so if anything i said in this section is false, do point it out to me!

i’ve been plugging the lack of Ayame and Bash interactions by coming up with wild hesdcanons in my fic. the most recent example is a shopping trip they took together, come read! and pass judgement

Calderon:

we’ve covered Aya and Bash, so i’ll start with Damon.

there’s a substantial amount here - we gather from context clues that Cal is the one to recruit Damon, and Damon knows quite a bit about Cal, but we’re not sure exactly about the when, how, and why of both the recruitment and the depth of their relationship. (how do they know each other? i bet there’s a juicy story there.) we also haven’t seen them do anything other than talk shop since the bar on Nos Vega. even the mission scene on Orion was rushed and devoid of detail. now, focusing writing efforts on the MC was the correct decision for the devs, but i want to see the crew fight back-to-back!! there could be so much to write about — the trust between them, where did it come from? Damon is flighty, as Alisa’s scenes demonstrated, so how come Calderon trusts him so much?

we know very little about Cal and June. the scene they share on Cursa - their only time on-screen together - doesn’t have much on their relationship at all, only that June looks up to Calderon for his compassion. this doesn’t help much, because we don’t know what Cal thinks of June in response. again, if i have missed a line or two here and there, do point me in their direction, but my point is we know very little about the dynamics of this crew, even though we’re now 6 episodes in.

Calderon and Ryona is also a mystery. we have vague hints that they’re close in a we-killed-people-together sort of way (cal is aware of ryona’s aversion to killing, but nothing is said on this matter during the Orion mission) and we know Ryona is aware and slightly disapproving of Calderon’s quick temper, but what else?

Calderon and Vexx ... erm ... hostility??

Damon:

we’re covered Ayame, Bash, and Calderon, so we’ll start with June.

i ... don’t know what to say for him and June. i can’t recall any notable moment where he and June have exchanged a meaningful conversation. if i am misremembering, do let me know. what concerns me about this duo is that based on the views each have expressed in game, i don’t think they like each other all that much? i mean, Damon has his views about death, and June is torn up about his creation as a tool of violence and the death of Jules. that? that’s perfect conflict! another exciting angle of conflict between them is their fighting styles — Damon is, to use video game terms, a close-range DPS, and June is a tank/sniper hybrid, which should place them as the ultimate unbeatable tag team, but despite all these rich story threads, they don’t appear on-screen together for any substantial amount of time.

Damon and Ryona, though, i really really like. my personal headcanon for the reason for their bond is that the first thing Ryona did with Damon was kill a man, and since Ryona was recruited right after her traumatic run-in with the K’Merii, this act of mutually delivering violence deeply bonded her and Damon despite their vastly differing worldviews. but that’s my headcanon, what’s the devs’ take on this? giving us an unusual friendship is all well and good, but it’ll be even better if an explanation of events happens in-game! am hoping episodes 7-10 will give us more Damon&Ryona content!!

Damon and Vexx, i can also say i genuinely love. they...!! are just...!! i can’t even put it into meta, i just wrote a LOT of it into the fic, so if you want more Damon & Vexx shenanigans, hop on by the fic and witness the love i pour into them!!

June:

we’ve covered Ayame, Bash, Calderon, and Damon, so there’s only Ryona and Vexx to talk about.

we don’t know much about him and Ryona, which is a very big shame, because he is clearly afflicted by a condition that he doesn’t like or want. Ryona, however, is a medic/physician/doctor from a planet renowned for its medicine. do you see what i’m getting at? there is great potential for them! how does ryona react to him being the only successful implementation of biological orionite infusion? does she know? if so, why did June - and under what circumstances - did he tell her? if he didn’t tell her, what has she guessed? how does that affect their relationship?

Vexx ... erm ... ???

Ryona:

there’s not much to say here, because i’ve covered it all already.

we don’t know the details about her and ayame, but presumably they get along. does ryona know about akira? why, why not? i hope this gets brought up in episode 7 and after, it’d be a great place for it.

Bash has a crush on her, but we don’t know what she thinks about it. Episode 7 seems geared towards Ryona, though, so my hopes are up!

we don’t know the details about her and Calderon. there just isn’t much to go on, and this guy’s her captain.

her and Damon, we’ve already covered, they’re fantastic, 10/10, 💯, please continue.

June... :/

Vexx ... :// we have faint beginnings of something in the form of a doctor-patient relationship, but it’s not enough. why is she committed to healing him? is it professional pride? is it out of love for MC? depending on the answer, their dynamic is different, and will be interesting either way.

Vexx (my bias, my love, my one and only):

son, i know NOTHING about you. ayame? nothing.

bash? nothing.

calderon? nothing.

damon? mm, good shit, but 1/6 isn’t much.

june? nothing.

ryona? :/

this lack of relationships is a crucial oversight because i don’t feel that Vexx is connected to any of the crew. except for MC, who else is he living for? who else does he connect with? if MC doesn’t romance this LI, what is he doing in the story with his disproportionate weightage of plot relevance? i love vexx, im a sucker for the princess-and-her-bodyguard, but when i play other routes, im constantly puzzled by him. what are you doing here, buddy, where you have no friends, no past, and no future? i’d go mad, if i were him. or into a depressive funk.

so that’s all the characters. you’ll note that there are gems in there! Ayame and Bash, Damon and Ryona, Calderon and spite/duty/honor, and June and his lizard Jules. but there’s a significant lack of lateral connection. some of it can be pinned down to plot reasons:

the crew has been running from one planet to another since they picked up the traveller and thus has had no time to rest and interact

the crew is dealing with a massive, system-wide upheaval in politics and power, and many of them are personally caught up in it, which makes for heavy dinner table talk, so they don’t talk

this is still a romance VN, so space has to be made for MC/LI interactions

these gaos may well be foreshadowing, and this game still has 4 episodes to go, so i hope that by writing these out ... man, i don’t know. if the devs don’t find time to implement the lore allusions then i guess its ... fanfic time?

i’ve been reading spaceship crew fiction for a very long time and i believe the gaps im seeing isn’t a figment of my imagination, just as much as i believe the devs have it in them to write well. they did a wonderful job with the DLCs, after all!

I’m using headcanons to resolve this in my fic and also using my fic as a platform to play around in the sandbox of the A6 crew (please read it, i love writing it and i love discussing scifi) but if the dev’s read this - you may not, but if you do - this isn’t a put down or a ‘gotcha’, i’d love to see more canon interactions between the crew! this post is meant as character analysis and critique, and in good faith. plus, now that they’re on tilaarin, they can rest, so it’d be a perfect place to put in a relaxing scene like the one in Nos Vega!

#andromeda six #one more silly nit to pick: a planet doesn’t EXplode - it hasn’t got the force for it #a planet is rock #its not a star #...unless orionite is some unholy ungodly Applied Phlebotinum #which i dislike on the level of principle #but. rocks don’t explode. best case scenario they collapse/implode #i will die on this silly hill #ayame ikeda #sebastian bash ilahaj #calderon lynx #damon reznor #june nyux #ryona mihaden #vexx serif

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