#star and i literally went through like ten different possible systems for how this could work before settling on this one

[vveakfish]

when Star and i started working on Dancing (With Another Man) there were two things we wanted to dig into

bird flash but messy

the world building of A/B/O

if you wanna see the mess go read the fic for yourself ;]

but right now i wanna talk about a little world building rabbit hole i fell down the other night @ 2am while fighting sleep.

ramblings about the genetic inheritance of dynamics below the cut

i really went into the weeds with this one y'all. I've always been interested in genetics and if i hadn't been dead set on going to art school i might have been a bio major instead. so this was definitely more than a little self indulgent on my part.

the main question i had was how are dynamics passed from parents to offspring. i broke that very vague question down into two more specific ones:

could a child only have one of the dynamics of their parents, or were the genetics more complicated than that

if a child COULD have a dynamic that their parents didn't have, how would that work.

so at first i was kind of just writing down my thoughts based on what i remembered of genetics (i haven't taken a bio class since sophomore year of college so i was a little rusty)

what i came up with made sense to me but i didn't have the energy that night to actually research different modes of inheritance, or to figure out if what i had come up with was scientifically sound in any way.

The next day i decided to hunker down and read a whole bunch of articles trying to refresh my memory on the basics of genetics, and also looking into modes of inheritance other than complete dominance.

I knew from the beginning i didn't want any one designation to be the 'dominant' trait, or for another to be 'recessive.' i just wasn't sure exactly what mode of inheritance would make the most sense.

after a few days of hashing out the science of it (and info-dumping to Star about my findings in our discord) i figured out a system that i liked, plus it made at least some sort of scientific sense.

this is, afterall, for an omegaverse fic so i wasn't going to break my back trying to make this work. BUT its going to come into play later in the story. So i wanted it to have SOME sort of logic behind it.

So there is one gene that determines a persons Dynamic. This gene has a total of 5 alleles and a persons dynamic is a result of which two out of those 5 markers they were born with. These alleles interact with each other using the incomplete dominance mode of inheritance.

the alleles are as follows

[A]: strong presentation of Alpha traits

[a]: weak presentation of Alpha traits

[O]: strong presentation of Omega traits

[o]: weak presentation of Omega traits

[x]: no presentation of dynamic traits [recessive]

[x] is the lack of a dynamic marker, so it mirrors what ever other dynamic marker it is paired with

now these alleles can be combined in a total of 13 distinct genotypes, 12 of which result in one of the three designations, and one where an individual has no designation at all.

Alpha/Omega Genotypes:

[AA] / [Ax] | [OO] / [Ox]

an individual with these genotypes displays a strong presentation of Dynamic traits. While this could affect their physical build, what its really referring to is how the body produces hormones and pheromones. People with these genotypes produce hormones and pheromones in excess. This could cause things such as a strong scent, intense cycles, and aggressive tendencies in Alphas. In Omegas this could mean being more prone to submission or falling into the Omega headspace more readily.

[Aa] / [Oo]

an individual with these genotypes would be considered 'balanced' . They produce dynamic hormones in 'normal' levels and outside of their cycles these hormones would not impact their daily lives.

[aa] / [ax] | [oo] / [ox]

these genotypes indicate a weak presentation of dynamic traits. these individuals would produce hormones and pheromones at a deficit, and therefore would probably have a weaker scent, and milder cycles. They might also need to use CIDs to jump start their cycles if their body won't do it for them

Betas are the result of a person possessing the genetic markers for both Alpha and Omega. therefore there is no way for a Beta to possess the [x] marker

Beta Genotypes:

[AO]

A Beta with this genotype would be balanced, in that they produce equal amounts of both Alpha and Omega hormones. Not enough for them to experience either cycle, but someone with this genotype could probably make the noises of either dynamic pretty convincingly.

[Ao] / [Oa]

a Beta with these genotypes would produce more of hormones of one dynamic than the other. This could cause increased aggression (Ao) or a tendency toward submission (Oa) and psuedo-cycles. This is often treated using suppressants or inducers to bring the hormone level back to equilibrium.

[ao]

a Beta with this genotype barely produces dynamic hormones at all. Their scent would most likely be weak, and they probably would have a hard time convincingly making the noises of either of the other two designations. But since they don't cycle there is no reason to 'treat' this condition.

and finally we arrive at [xx]

the most common examples of someone being [xx] would be Atlanteans and Amazonians. Both of those groups broke off from humanity before the rest of the population developed the genetic markers that give a person their designation.

But humans can also have the [xx] genotype, it is just extremely rare (about 8% of the worlds population has this combination, though most of that 8% is made up of Amazonians and Atlanteans).

So with the info dump out of the way, here are some examples (using characters from d(wam)) of how dynamics are inherited.

Dick

Dicks parents were both Omegas, which did mean dick was guaranteed to be an omega, but he does have an entirely different genotype than either of his parents Mary Grayson was, [OX] while John was [Oo]. meaning dick could have been [OO], [Oo], [Ox], or [ox]. He is [OO] and im sure if you have been reading the story this will come as no surprise to you.

Wally

wally is an interesting case. Rudy West is [xx], and Mary West is [AO]. Their family functions more as a typical family unit than a pack seeing as Rudy doesnt have a dynamic a all. However, often people who are born [xx] are just lumped in as a Beta since physically there is not much of a difference between someone with no designation and a Beta. Because of this Wally could Only be an Alpha [Ax] or an omega [Ox]. As im sure you've guessed Wally has the [Ax] allele combination.

Bruce

Both Martha and Thomas wayne were Betas, [AO], and [ao] respectively. This means Bruce had a chance to be an Alpha [Aa], Omega [Oo], or Beta [Ao] [Oa]. Bruce ended up with the [Ao] combo. For any of our readers who have been wondering "whats Bruce's deal?" this might give you just a bit of context.

#d(wam) #wik(ywm) #world building #ABO #omegaverse #𓆟 #fishfic #have a spent maybe too much time thinking about this? yes #but i promise theres a real actual reason for it #star and i literally went through like ten different possible systems for how this could work before settling on this one #but i think it makes the most sense & is as simple as we could make it for the part it plays in the fic #ok ok back to writing thx for reading #god y'all should see our excel doc we have...so much in there

[libraford]

We interrupt the feral celebration of ousting an oligarch to bring you a story about Yeehaw and his Branch of Mystery.

  It has been a while since we last had some co-worker drama, but man- has it been a weird summer. I mean... we all had a weird summer in 2020, but I don't think I was really expecting this particular... flavor of weird?

 This is a story about Yeehaw, but it starts off with a story about Aggie.

 Aggie was someone we were excited to hire and part of our excitement was that it's rare to find someone with prior floral experience and we'd concluded at this point that it does no one any good to be picky about new hires in the middle of a pandemic. So finding someone who knew the difference between a carnation and a rose was a big deal for us.

 I say that in jest, but saying that we do 'on-the-job training' means that we've had to explain that yes- the flower in my hand that looks like a carnation is a carnation and not some other flower that looks like carnation but is not a carnation. Floristry is a very straightforward practice and for the most part a rose is a rose and a daisy is a daisy and if someone asks for those things, you give it to them.

 The hard part is, as always, making them look good together.

 Which is why we were pleased with Aggie- who previously did weddings for her friends and seemed to have a basic understanding of how to do things with her hands. We were happy to have her aboard.

 ... until you gave her criticism.

 She made her vases embarrassingly short, and if you tried to tell her how to fix it, she'd snap back with "I'm not DONE yet."

 She was done until you said something.

 If you gave her an order for two dozen white roses, she would take it upon herself to mix white and yellow roses together 'because it looks better.'

 It did not.

 Hashtag: #selftaught

 When a client asks for all white roses, there is likely a reason they asked for all white. Given that 90% of our work is funerals, it stands to reason that they are asking for all white because that is a traditional color for mourning. Working with a client means doing exactly what they asked for. Doing a wedding for your friends may get you high praise from people who trust you to work in the same aesthetic as them, but in a shop setting you are being paid to follow things to the letter. Doing so shows that you can follow directions, and they may come back next time.

 You don't know customer entitlement until you've been torn another asshole for leaving out a single rose.

 This seemed to never occur to her, and so criticism was a painful realization that perhaps she wasn't perfect at an art that was exceptionally susceptible to criticism. There were plenty of opportunities to make something in her own aesthetic, it wasn't like she was being stifled. There was a considerable amount of downtime where she filled the front cooler with her own creations- enigmatically giving each of them their own names like "Autumn Walk" or "First Snowfall." (This is not something that we do, on the whole.)

 Not very many of those sold.

 But I think what bugged me the most is that she only ever designed. She didn't take out the trash, she didn't answer phones, she never helped customers. She just... did flowers. Nothing else.

 Oh... and the chatter.

 "Do you travel? Oh, you simply MUST go to Bali sometime! You've never been to Asia? Well, there's nothing like achieving inner peace at a Buddhist temple on a mountaintop in Nepal. They have temples here in Ohio, but it's nothing like the real thing! You say you've never even been off the continent? Well, what are you waiting for? You only live once, you know!"

 Ma'am... we're in the middle of a pandemic. Ma'am... I only get paid so much...

 While trying to relate, I talked about my summer in Montana and she gave me the BIGGEST stank-face. "Montana? Ew, WHY?"

 Look, lady- I lived on a mountaintop next to an active, world-destroying volcano system. If that's not cool, I don't know what is.

 But thankfully, she only worked on weekends. See, this was her fun job. The job she does to stay social during a pandemic and flex her creative muscles while she makes money at her much more lucrative,but boring,HR job. So I only had to see her twice a month when I was manager on duty.

 Then she got fired from her weekday job and went full-time at the flower shop. Poor thing wasn't used to waking up at 7am every day. She was full of suggestions.

 "I think it would be easier for me if we only opened at like... 11am."

"Don't you think we should be taking proper photos of our work? All we would need is a nice camera and a soft lighting setup. Couldn't be much more than $1000."

"Oh I know! We should be doing inventory on tablets instead of writing things down!"

 Okay, you go buy those things then. It took her about a week of making those suggestions to realize that she wasn't real clear on how things worked around here and stopped. She became quiet, less enthusiastic about her 'fun' job now that she wasn't immediately the star of the show.

 Enter Yeehaw.

 We were excited about Yeehaw, too. He didn't just have experience with flowers- he had experience with a flower shop. He gave a good interview, he seemed like he knew what he was doing and was very passionate about flowers. He was definitely an entire hippie, but about 1/3 of all plant people are. Most importantly, we still had like three spots to fill left from our pre-Covid staff.

 Hired.

 There was an overlap of about a week where Aggie and Yeehaw worked at the same time. His work was... immaculate. Just... astonishingly beautiful work. You didn't even have to show him how to make anything. He just... knew.

 Well, Aggie didn't  like that much- we had only nice things to say about this new guy but all she ever got was criticism. And if we complimented him on something he made, he would give a little 'namaste' bow. And I could see her fuming with rage each time he did this.

 One day, she rushed into the back to take a phone call and any time someone went back there for a vase she would lower her voice as if keeping a deep secret. Twenty minutes later, she called Grandpa into the back as well to discuss something. Ten minutes later, Aggie left the building with her Live, Laugh, Love bag, looking pissed.

 "Where did Aggie go," I asked Grandpa.

 "She got a new job," she said. "Doing HR somewhere."

 "She didn't even say good-bye," Blue said, appearing unsurprised.

 And so we went on with out lives without really putting much further thought into Aggie, apart from the occasional 'you simply MUST visit Bali' line thrown in for bougie emphasis.

 Which brings us to the next part of the story, and that is Yeehaw.

 There are some details to know about Yeehaw that are kind of difficult to fit into a story neatly. Here is a brief list that may come in handy to know later.

-He lives with his mother.

-He drives a Tesla.

-He can afford the Tesla because he was in a terrible wreck that had him hospitalized, and a lawsuit was won.

-Because of this, he has two screws in his head at the temples.

-Unrelated, he has hair that goes all the way down to his back.

- And...

 "Grandpa, we need to tell you something," Blue said. "In private."

 Blue and Kali pulled Grandpa aside while Yeehaw slowly put together a funeral order. "Grandpa, there's no polite way to put this: Yeehaw is drunk as fuck."

 "He smells like whiskey," Kali said.

 "He's stumbling everywhere."

 "And he won't stop... burping."

 Grandpa paused. "There's something I need to tell you," she said, and she reached for a manila folder. "Yeehaw has something called... what's it called..." She leafed through the file and produced a paper, reading from it. "Auto-brewery Syndrome. His body actually produces alcohol anytime he eats bread or sugar. If he's drunk, it's because he can't help it."

 We each had a chance to go over the doctor's note, verifying that yes- that sure does look official. Everyone had questions, but it did answer the one I had about why he was sitting in the break room literally drinking peanut butter from the jar.

 So that was incredibly interesting and we no longer asked about the burping or why he was so slow.  

 However, the fact that he was so slow was extremely frustrating. Our average number of orders runs approximately 100 per-day. This can be eased somewhat when we have a full-staff with five designers- an average of 20 designs per person in an 8-hour day, 3 per hour.

 But it's a fine line some days, and if one person cannot keep up it turns into a struggle for all of us.  

 We did our best to accommodate. We gave him all the day-ahead orders so that we wouldn't be behind and he'd have all the time he'd need to make his gorgeous pieces.

 We were willing to make it work.

 A number of factors came into play one day, but most notably: Yeehaw's Tesla wouldn't start and he had to take the bus. So he was late.

 I think I saw him make one entire item in the two hours that we were in the same room. He went to lunch around 12:30, I took mine around 1:00. I saw him stumble back in from lunch, looking... out of it. Just... absolutely incomprehensible- mumbling, barely upright, his hair out of the bun, quite possibly sleepwalking- who knows?

 I saw him for that brief Sasquatch moment... and that was the last that I saw him that day. It was around 4:00 that  Grandpa asked the question:

 "Where's Yeehaw?"

 And no one had an answer. We all had places that we thought we'd seen him: cleaning the cooler, in the break room, heading to the bathroom... but no one had really... seen him since he stumbled back in around 1:30.

 We checked all these places.

 None of them.

 The person who actually managed to find him was Sarge, who noticed his feet sticking out from behind the bushes behind the building.

 "Huh," he said, presumably. He gave the feet a light kick and Yeehaw slowly sat back up. "Hey dude. You... okay, there? They're lookin' for you inside."

 Yeehaw mumbled something to Sarge and got to his feet, stumbling back into the shop without further interaction. He appeared into the workspace, holding a branch in front of his face for mysterious reasons. There were still twigs entangled in his long hair.

 "Where were you at," Grandpa asked, concerned.

 "Oh, I was in the bathroom," he lied from behind the branch of mystery. "I'm pretty tired. Is it okay if I go home?"

 Bewildered, Grandpa gave him permission to leave. It was soon after he left that Scout found his phone in the empty sink. "Who's trying to wash their phone," he asked in the loud manner that is characteristic of old white men. It rang while in his hand and one of our designers snatched it from him. It was his mother.

 "Hello," said the designer. "Yeehaw went home early, but he left his phone behind. Can you bring it home to him?" Mom agreed, she was just over at Trader Joe's anyhow.

 We thought, of course, that we were doing something smart and nice. Yeehaw's mom looks just about what you would expect the mother of a 30-year-old hippie that drives a Tesla to look. Grandpa, in a polite way, explained that he'd fallen asleep in a bush. To which Mom seemed neither surprised nor concerned about his behavior.

 "Okay. I'll be at Hallmark."

 Somewhere between the bus stop and Bexley, Yeehaw must have realized that his phone was not with him and so he came back looking for it. Despite his mother being literally in the same strip mall as we were, he seemed irritated that we'd taken the initiative to make sure his phone got to him.

 "Well, I bet if you just went down to Hallmark she'd give you your phone and probably give you a ride home."

 He mumbled something and then left.

 This seems like a decent place to pause, because him leaving the second time in the day should be the end of the story. However... at 5:00 in the evening there was still two hours left in the work day and from past experience... that is plenty of time for a lot of things to happen.

 The thing to happen was a phone call.

 "Hi, this is Jade from the main store. We've gotten... some... interesting phone calls. Is there... a... hmm... is there a dead body out in front of your store?"

 Pause.

 "We'll take care of it, bye."

 Who wants to be the one to poke the cadaver on the sidewalk? A volunteer from the audience! Ms Crowe: won't you come down?!

 I have had it planted firmly in my mind that Crowe certainly understands the concept of fear but does not recognize it. Apart from being one of our most reliable drivers, she is also a performer, a street medic, an activist, and most notably... a fire-breather.

 You have your hobbies.

 Point is- she's brave enough to check to see if the person laying on the sidewalk was dead or simply overdosed.

 As it turns out, it was Yeehaw- curled up in the fetal position with his arm covering his face.

 "Hey," Crowe said, poking him with her foot. "Heeeeeeey," she said again but more firmly this time. He moved, blinking in the evening the sun. "Buddy, you can't be laying around on the sidewalk. You gotta move on."

 Again, he slowly got to his feet. At this time, his mother emerged from Hallmark to see him talking with Crowe. A group of four people escorted him into Mom's car while he stopped every few feet to perform another 'namaste' bow.

 You think this is the end. But what have we learned?

 There's always more.

 He came in the next day as if none of this had happened. Conversation was difficult because we both desperately needed to know what the fuck happened and also did not want to trigger something. So we didn't bring it up. He apologized for leaving early: chronic fatigue syndrome, you know.

 Other places would have fired him, but we're a very forgiving workplace. Falling asleep on company time is not, in any way, the worst thing that someone has done at this location while still keeping their job. There was Sugar and her drugs, there was the dude that used the company van to pick up prostitutes (this was before my time), there was the guy that screamed at customers over the phone... it's a long list.

 The primary concern of our employers is whether or not you are a reliable person. If you routinely show up for your job and do the work, you're going to be okay at least for a little bit. And Yeehaw, for all his impeccable fuckery, at least showed up every day.

 We kept this at the back of our minds.

 One day, after the Day We Found Him In a Bush was behind us, one of the designers mentioned that they'd seen where Aggie works now. It was not in HR.

 It was our major competitor.

 Now, Grandpa knows this competitor well. She knows all her competition. It is the nature of a lot of florists to, once they've gotten sick of one place, move on to the next one and spill the beans on their operations there. So Grandpa gets the dirt on everyone.

 This particular shop was very regimented. You don't wing it- you follow the recipe as listed. He's been known to pick discarded flowers up off the floor and tell you exactly how much  money you're costing the company by letting it fall, to the cent. If you get so far as to make casket sprays, he will take your first one and chuck it across the room if it even looks like the stems are in there too loosely.

 This is what I mean about us being an easy place to work.

 Hashtag: #ohfuck.

 People come in and out of your life like that, in little ways. Sometimes you just have to have a little laugh at it. But what I thought was funny was that she felt the need to keep her new employer a secret, as though we would get jealous or tattle. Curious thing.

 Now that the glamour of Yeehaw's arrangements had worn off, we were starting to see more and more odd behaviors that didn't seem completely related to drunkenness.

 "Did you just fart?"

 "No, that was a spider barking."

 Amazing.

 Conversation with him was becoming... difficult. As I sat in the break room with my quick lunch and he drank soup out of a mayonnaise jar, he mentioned his area of study in college.

 "Cognitive Psychology and Hindu Philosophy, huh? That's an interesting combination."

 "Yeah," he said, funneling an amount of squash soup down his throat. "It'll take the rest of the world about 100 years before they catch up to where I am."

 I sat, posed in front of my beef and broccoli which I was eating with a fork, trying to process a logical reason why the rest of the world will be sleeping in a bush in one hundred years. "Uh... huh."

 This was followed by another thirty minutes of silence where I desperately wanted to know what he meant by that but didn't want to be the one to ask him.

 People will tell you that a hippie is generally an ineffective, benign kind of person who chants 'love love, peace peace' in a circle and consider that to be an action for change. But I can say with absolute certainty that I have met some downright egotistical hippies in my life. Those were lessons in bias- which I will have to save for other times.

 Eventually, Grandpa became frustrated with his slowness. We presumed that his speed of choice was a combination of his meticulous nature and his various ailments, but with the Christmas season coming upon us it was becoming much more than a series of symptoms.

 Previous persons who lacked speed were chatty, would play on their phone, or get distracted. But Yeehaw... Yeehaw simply moved like a tranquilized sloth. He slowly picked off each leaf, each thorn, each guard petal and took a minute for each action. He would put in his greens and then contemplate it powerfully for ten minutes before putting any flowers in... slowly.

 In the time spent doing this, I had already made something of a similar size and was starting on the second one.

 It was during one of these times that Grandpa finally said something.

 "Yeehaw, that spray is due in thirty minutes. Is there a way you can go any faster?"

 He looked up from his greens, held one carnation to his face, and said:

 "If you wanted me to move faster, you would pay me better."

 Let me start by saying that we do not get paid well. We don't. Compared to other flower shops in our city, we are probably the lowest-paid. This is something that the company is starting to work on with benefits and raises, but any amount of change takes time. (And its still better paying than when I worked in retail. But that's another book.)

 Yeehaw had been here for exactly one month. I don't know a single workplace that gives you a raise after one month and still lets you sleep on the clock without firing you. He knew what he was getting paid when we hired him.

 So anyways, he slowly grinds down our nerves to a very fine dust- burping, farting, falling asleep on his feet, staring intensely into space, talking about how much he should be making but isn't, bragging about his enlightenment, and generally just slowing down production.

 And then Grandpa had her well-earned vacation week. Blue was in charge for the most part and the week leading up to Halloween is generally pretty slow, so it was a good week for her to have a break with few mishaps.

 Eh... hehe. Yeah.

 Yeehaw... disappeared again. We checked the cooler, we checked the break room, we checked the bushes out back, we checked the sidewalk out front.

 He was in the bathroom.

 So we left it.

 He was still in the bathroom an hour later.

 We had one of the male drivers pound on the door to check on him. When Yeehaw opened the door to the men's room, there was a wad of toilet paper on the floor that he'd been using as a pillow.

 If I may pause here to explain- our men's room is disgusting. I have deep cleaned it several times only for it to become a germ-fest once more in a matter of hours. I don't ask who is peeing all over the floor because, honestly, I have no desire to know what grown man can't aim his willy in the right direction.

 So in order to fall asleep in the bathroom, you have to be willing to sleep in pee. During a pandemic.

 He reappeared in the workroom, put his apron back on, looked around at all of us still working and said: "Wow, it must be really hard to get fired here."

 It was at this point that Blue informed Grandpa.

 "Tell him that he's fired," Grandpa said, clearly 1001% done with this.

 "I'm not going to fire him," Blue said. "I don't think I can fire anyone."

 So she had the driver that found him do it, which was confusing for all of us. He ended up calling Grandpa to clarify. And by 'clarify,' I definitely mean 'beg for his job back.' A synopsis of the 20 minute phone call went like this:

 "What do you mean, I'm fired?"

 "Just that. You're fired. I'm tired of it, Yeehaw. You don't work here anymore."

 "Why?"

 "What do you mean 'why?' You spend all day making a total of three arrangements and then you wander off somewhere and fall asleep."

 "I can't help it if I have chronic fatigue syndrome!"

 "This is a physical job. If your body can't handle an 8-hour shift without falling asleep for two hours, this isn't the job for you. Tell me: where is that fair to the girls that you do 3% of the work while they pick up the slack and you wander off to sleep on the clock?"

 "I simply do not care about them."

 "You don't care that you're shoving all the work on your coworkers, and that's why you're fired."

 "I wish you'd given me a warning."

 "Tell me, Yeehaw: how many employers can you find that will allow you to sleep on the clock for two hours and let you off with a warning?"

 End of discussion.

 Now, you're probably wondering where Aggie comes back into this. Just hold tight, I'll get there.

 The Sunday after he was fired, he came in to pick up his paycheck. I was busy handling a minor emergency where one of our funeral homes forgot to order a spray and I had to make one as fast as I could. We held a brief conversation while I made the spray in a hurry.

 "I'm here to pick up my check," he said while I greened the spray and leafed through the paychecks simultaneously.

 "Here you go," I said, handing it to him without much fanfare. I presumed that he was looking for sympathy or some kind of followup or... I don't know. Sorry you suddenly care about your job?

 "So what are your next plans," one of the designers asked, trying to coax more information out of him while I did the work of three people.

 "It's kind of funny," he said slowly... as he did all things. "I've only ever been fired from flower shops." He paused, thoughtfully. "I think I'm going to go apply to the shop in Bexley that Aggie went to."

#as the world turnips

[wanderinginksplot]

If you're still taking requests, can I request either Echo or Tech with hurtReader + fluff? 👀

(your writing is amazing and it melts my heart sndnfjdjdb)

Hi, friend! Thank you for the compliment - you're so sweet! I went a little lighter on the fluff than I meant to, but this is what I ended up with. Thanks for the request! Enjoy!

Tech + Injured Reader + (Minor) Fluff

*WARNING: Slight mention of gore. Nothing graphic, but a head's up.*

Watching the Havoc Marauder touch down was a ritual you followed every time the Bad Batch went anywhere without you on board. Tech liked to believe he was an excellent pilot, but you were of the opinion that flying took more than encyclopedic knowledge of a ship’s internal systems. It took instinct, a feel for the ship’s personality, and a good bit of luck to fly in a war zone.

Tech disagreed vehemently, but you had been assigned to them for a reason. Even if he had found your belief in luck - okay, slight obsession with luck - to be ridiculous, Tech admitted that you were an excellent pilot. It hadn’t been enough for you to accompany them on their mission, but it was something.

The real problem was that the members of the Bad Batch were insanely protective of anything or anyone they saw as ‘theirs’. Privately, you thought it was because they hadn’t had any personal belongings on Kamino. And they definitely hadn't had friends outside of their group. Unfortunately for you, you were also considered ‘theirs’ now and the Batch could be… restrictive when they felt you could be in danger. And since you were assigned to help them fight a literal war, you were always in danger and they were always protective. Especially Tech. You had been dating in secret for a few weeks now - too short a time for anything serious, but Tech let you take absolutely zero chances.

“Sir, we need to get you inside,” one of the troopers on deck told you, his light touch to your arm pulling your attention away from scanning the star-littered space above the hangar bay. The trooper's regulation armor looked oddly plain to you, even with the medic's symbol and the touches of gray that told you he was a member of the Wolfpack.

“I’m sorry, what was your name again?” you asked, partially to stall and partially because your luck senses were tingling.

“That isn’t important right-”

“Please?” you asked again. It was another quirk of luck. If a trooper touched you, you needed to know their name or they ended up dying. Statistically, you knew that probably wasn’t true, but who really wanted to mess around with fate if they didn’t have to?

The trooper blew out a sigh that crackled his annoyance through the speakers of his helmet. “Curl, sir. We really should be-”

“I’m sorry, Curl,” you apologized, interrupting the poor medic again. “I got separated from my team and I need to see that they’re back okay before I can leave. Does that make sense?”

“What team isn’t back yet?” Curl asked, seeming concerned. “I thought Commander Wolffe said that everyone had checked back in?”

“I’m with the Ba- with Clone Force 99,” you told him, changing your explanation to use the group’s official name at the last minute. Professionalism never hurt anyone.

“You’re with the Bad Batch?” Curl asked, sounding impressed despite himself. Without waiting for an answer, he gave a curt nod and lifted his wrist toward the speakers of his helmet. “Sergeant Sinker, Medic Curl.”

“Sinker here,” a voice answered immediately.

“Do we have an ETA on Clone Force Nine-Nine?”

“Hold.”

“Copy.” Curl glanced at you and you nodded to show that you were following the conversation.

“Curl, bridge says they’re inbound, expected to hit the hangar in about a minute.”

“Copy,” Curl said again. “Thanks, Sarge.”

“I’d stand clear,” Sergeant Sinker warned. “The good pilot isn’t on.”

“Are you the good pilot?” Curl asked you. You swore you could hear a smile in his voice.

You smiled back and nodded. “That would be me.”

“Understood, I’ve got the good pilot with me,” Curl replied over his comlink. “We’re gonna spectate, make sure they don’t scratch the paint job.”

“There’s no reason to worry,” Sinker said consolingly. “The GAR stopped springing for paint two months ago. There’ll be none left on that ship.”

Curl laughed aloud at that, shaking his head.

“Cut the chatter,” a harsh voice reprimanded. “This is an official channel. Save your jokes for the clubs on the Triple Zero, Sergeant.”

“Yes sir, Commander,” Sinker agreed chipperly.

The Solidarity’s deck shuddered as the hyperdrive activated, ready to take off as soon as the Havoc Marauder landed, and you stumbled with the movement. Curl caught you - his grip uncomfortable given the harsh plastoid planes of his armor - and shook his head.

“We really need to get you inside, sir,” Curl said again, sounding reluctant but concerned. “You have an appointment in the medbay with me, and I’ll be very offended if you’re late.”

You were about to point out that he would be late, too, when the Marauder zoomed up and around the Solidarity, clearly following a path to land.

“Wait, they’re right there,” you protested. “Give ‘em ten seconds to land and a bit longer for me to gloat, then I’ll gladly go to the medbay.” Curl hesitated and you pressed your advantage. “I’ll be a model patient, Curl. No arguments, no debates, no complaining.”

“I never believe anyone when they say that,” Curl said dryly, “but I guess you’ll survive without treatment for a little while longer.”

“Thanks, Curl!” your enthusiasm was a little… off… but you blamed it on the pain you were finally beginning to feel.

Tech was flying, you knew that beyond a doubt. Not only was he the only person allowed to fly, but the landing performed by the small cruiser was proof that the wickedly intelligent trooper was behind the controls.

As soon as they had landed, Wrecker burst out of the side door. “Ha! Told ya we would make it back in one piece.”

“More luck than skill, that,” Crosshair countered sourly, slouching from the door as well with Hunter behind him.

“As I said multiple times, everything was under control,” Tech disagreed. He caught sight of you and started in your direction, eyes taking in the way Curl’s gloved hand was still gripping your bicep.

“There, you saw ‘em,” Curl muttered to you. “We really need to go now.”

“I beg your pardon, but where exactly are you trying to go?” Tech asked sharply, glancing between the two of you.

“Medbay,” Curl replied, slipping into the vocal brevity of a career soldier. “Your pilot was injured, but wouldn’t accept treatment until you had touched down.”

“Luck, you know,” you told Tech, who was already scanning your form with his goggled gaze. You smirked at him and shrugged off Curl, who seemed ready to tow you to the medbay himself. “Also, statistical likelihood be karked! I stayed in the ‘safest possible place’ like you told me and I’m the only one who ended up injured! You should listen to me from now on.”

“What?!”

“Injured?”

"How? Where?"

The rest of the Bad Batch had surrounded you and Curl in a moment, all asking different variations of the same question. Hunter’s voice cut through them all. “Trooper, why is she not in the medbay?”

Curl held up his hands as if despairing of the entire situation. “Sorry, Sergeant. Your pilot refused to leave until we saw your ship land. It would be a big help to me if you would just issue an order to report to the medbay so I can start treating the injuries.”

For all that he liked to take a laid-back approach to non-combat leadership, Hunter took the safety of his team seriously and you knew he was about to do as Curl had suggested.

“It’s not even that bad an injury,” you argued before Hunter could speak. “I just got hit with some debris."

You tugged up the rough, canvas-like material of the uniform pants you wore while you weren’t actively flying and showed them your lower leg. You were busy looking at the faces of the Batch rather than the injury, but you knew something was wrong when Tech swore. Tech never swore.

With a frown, you glanced down at your leg. Your mind refused to make too much sense of things, but you saw smears of crimson and a pale flash of something before the dizziness returned worse than ever.

Fortunately, Curl caught you before you could actually fall and Wrecker scooped you up a moment later. He was already muttering soothing nonsense as he lifted you, and it was almost enough to keep you from noticing the pain. “All right, here we are. Everything is fine. Just don’t puke on me.”

“Medbay,” Hunter ordered severely. “Now .”

“Yes, sir,” you agreed, your voice more weak than you liked.

“Finally,” Curl muttered.

“Tech, go with them,” you heard Hunter say from a rapidly growing distance.

There was a sound of jogging steps, but when you tried to look for Tech’s familiar face, the Solidarity leapt into hyperspace and you felt like you might actually pass out.

“What will treatment consist of?” Tech asked. He was trying to mask his worry by being professional, but you could hear a hint of it in his voice.

“Some stitches, probably an antibiotic shot since the debris was metallic, and a check of the nerves in the area of injury,” Curl answered easily. The lack of concern from the medic was comforting in a strange sort of way.

The silence hung for a few moments, interrupted only by the sound of everyone’s footsteps. Eventually, Tech admitted, “I should have been able to calculate the risks more closely. This never should have happened.”

“Aw, how were you supposed to know?” Wrecker asked loudly.

“That’s right,” Curl agreed. “This is war. Unexpected variables are the norm and there are no safe spots. My only advice is to take all of your people with you. After all, your pilot accepted the assignment to be part of your team. Trying to keep people out of the action never works. Take the lesson, learn from it, and make adjustments in the future. You don’t need to do anything more than that.”

“He’s right,” you agreed, the sentiment muffled against Wrecker’s broad chestplate. “Let me do my job and trust that I’ll do everything I can to keep us all out of danger.”

You blindly stuck your hand out behind Wrecker’s back, searching until you connected with Tech’s familiar fingers. His grip was hesitant but steady, and you gave his hand a squeeze of reassurance.

“It’s probably true,” Curl said, apparently backing you up. “Pain is like a truth serum. And with that gash… it’s probably the truth. Even if you did lie about being a perfect patient.”

You chuckled at that, despite the discomfort from your injury, and relaxed a bit as you felt Tech press a kiss to the back of your hand.

---

A/N - This chapter could realistically be called 'Ink will do anything to avoid using the y/n designation'. For those who are unfamiliar, Curl is my OC medic for the Wolfpack and you can read more featuring him in Just for Kix on my masterlist. As always, I'm still taking requests! Thanks again, Anon, for this idea and I'm sorry again about skimping on the fluff! If you want me to rewrite or expand on it, please feel free to let me know.

#star wars #star wars the clone wars #star wars the bad batch #star wars fic #tech x you #tech x reader #tcw #tcw fanfic #sw tbb #tbb tech #tech #hunter #crosshair #wrecker #sinker #104th battalion #wolfpack #request #clone troopers deserve better

[saladejin]

Body Pillow

Taehyung x Reader requested by anon (May) | 27.) First cuddle

Warnings: Literally fluff and gentle pining, drunken shenanigans 

Word Count: 2.2k

A/N: This is poorly edited, oh god. 

I give up on trying to teach myself what a drabble is, because idk if I’ll ever understand what it means to write a DRABBLE. Anyway this is hella overdue but I’m still working on these cuddle prompts! Hope anonnie May is still around to read this horrible mess 🥺💕

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵  

<< prompt list >>

Wow, you were getting sleepy.

It was the alcohol, no doubt about it, but for some reason this time getting tipsy felt a little different. Usually you were quite reserved and withdrawn when mixing alcohol and social interactions, but tonight it was just you, your roommate Jimin and his close group of friends having a pizza night in.

Well, after half a year of getting to know them they'd fast become friends of yours as well, but they were still a pack of loud, goofy college boys that drove you mad with their testosterone stink 90% of the time. You really did have to take them in small doses to begin with, but all seven were amazingly driven people through and through. You loved them for it, and honestly sometimes you really just needed to be in their presence to relax and de-stress.

Like right now, actually. 

You were drunker than usual, and it all had to do with the fact that you were relaxed. Carefree and laughing up a storm with the boys as they joked and hollered over whatever video game or story was being played out. For the first time in a while ... you could simply chill.

Yeah, chill out. Not zone the hell out.

You blinked harshly, eyes coming back into focus as a hand waved in front of your face cautiously, and all of a sudden a handsome view leaned into your field of vision. "Hellooo? You're so fucked honey." Taehyung chuckled, eyes crinkling in amusement as he shared a glance with Yoongi behind him.

"I'm- no way," you huffed, trying to downplay the way your cheeks were heating up at his proximity by slapping his hand away.

"Okay, but you're getting there." Yoongi stepped forward and nudged Taehyung back to reach for your plastic cup. "We know you're not used to having this much so just slow down, alright?"

Any other day you would've been frustrated at how the two boys seemed to baby you, but it was clear by their smiles that they were also getting some enjoyment out of it. In all honesty, you were having a great time and you had to admit that ruining it all by blacking out or making a mess was the last thing you wanted to do.

You'd still only known them all for a few months, so you didn't want to somehow damage the already comfortable relationships you'd built in such a short time.

"Okay, you're right." You let Yoongi lift the drink away from you, trying not to smile when Taehyung lightly chuckled again at the way you swayed in your seat. The other boys were already getting loud once more as Jungkook overtook Jimin in Mario Kart, the whooping and shouts of anger mostly coming from the remaining onlookers, Hobi, Namjoon and Seokjin.

You grabbed another slice of pizza from the table and stepped around Taehyung to reclaim your spot next to Jimin, feeling the younger's eyes burn into your back the entire way.

~

Thankfully, Yoongi and Tae had forced you to take a break at the perfect moment, because you were really feeling buzzed now. It was an oddly euphoric sensation, feeling the world spin ever so slightly with laughter falling from your lips for barely any reason at all. Why hadn't you done this with them sooner?

"A package? Well it's not for me..."

Your eyes flew open upon hearing Jimin hum from the front door, lightly slurred tone curious and confused. The rest of you who were gathered in the living room fell quiet as the murmurs of conversation between him and the delivery man came to an end.

There’s a package at the door?

Then your brain cells finally kicked into gear, because oh … it was also your door.

"Wait, it's mine then." You shakily tried to put your glass of water on the table to get up, and Namjoon tutted in disapproval while darting out a hand to steady your drunk form as you rose. The faces of the other boys swam in your vision for a moment since you'd been sitting down for what felt like ages, and it was genuinely hard not to snort out a laugh at the sight of Jungkook having six eyes.

"What is it?" Jimin asked as he rounded the corner with a large plastic parcel in hand, his plump cheeks very pink from the liquor and blown out cutely. Your focus came crashing back to the mysterious parcel in his small hands.

You tried to scour the corners of your buzzing mind but couldn't remember what you'd bought online for the life of you. You gently took the package from your roommate and squinted down at your name written on the label, earning muffled sounds of amusement from the rest of the guys watching you attempt to read. "I seriously forgot, but anyway let me open it..."

"Uh uh, no way," a scolding tone came from behind you when you reached for the scissors on the kitchen benchtop. You squeaked in surprise when Taehyung yanked them away from your grasp, and he darted to the side playfully before you could even think of chasing him up.

"Yeah, if anyone it'll be Tae using the scissors since he hasn't even had a drink." Hoseok laughed, poking your cheek when you grumbled and pouted.

The others went back to the game playing on the TV while you, Taehyung and Jimin stood around to open the package. It was incredibly soft underneath the plastic wrapping, and the more that was peeled away the more you remembered your spontaneous buy.

"Oh!" You pulled up the massive lump of lime green and white cotton, the largest smile breaking out onto your flushed face. "It's the wearable blanket I wanted!"

"Wearable ... what now?" Yoongi murmured from his spot on the couch.

"Blanket," you finished, and threw the long, heavy bundle of soft material over your head. It acted as a hoodie of sorts, only oversized to the absolute max. The warm buttery feeling of the wool against your skin had you melting on the spot in the best possible way.

"What's it like?" Taehyung murmured quietly when your eyes began to flutter shut in ecstasy, any hint of the chill in the air vanishing in an instant. He seemed to be gripped in a childlike fascination for how truly extra the item of clothing - or blanket? - was. You tried not to flush even more when he stepped closer to gently pinch some of the material between his long fingers, large wonderful eyes widening at the feeling.

"So soft, and warm," you hummed in response to his question, stepping away from him to sink back into the couch now that you were quite literally drowning in fluffy blanket-like fabric. Your hazy mind could barely comprehend anything that was happening around you now that you were reaching peak levels of comfort.

Taehyung followed you down, and you vaguely registered the dip in the couch cushion as he perched himself next to you. Your eyes were closed in pure bliss, but the brief aroma of his lavender lotion swimming around your head told you it was him. You could never mistake this addicting scent; you'd grown to like it way too much in these past few months.

Too bad you were too inebriated to really act on your small crush now, considering he was literally sitting beside you and giving his full, undivided attention for the first time ... ever, actually.

The following hour flew by, but you were still completely lost in the softness of your toasty hoodie-blanket hybrid. There was no doubt that the novelty would last a long time yet, seeing how Jimin would whine out of jealousy every ten minutes or so until you finally caved, letting him have a 'turn' for an entire 60 seconds before demanding it back.

It was cold, and you were a cuddly drunk...

As the boys continued with their game, you soon felt a slight pressure rest on your shoulder ever so slightly. You cracked one eye open to see a mop of black curls out of the corner of your eye, but the haziness flooding your brain meant you couldn't really feel as flustered as you would've - say a few hours ago.

Taehyung's fingers still fiddled with the thick fabric of your blanket-sleeve, but you could barely feel his touch through the sheer amount of wool in between your arm and his hand. Something about that bugged you, but you couldn't muster the energy to think any harder at this point.

"It's the softest thing I've ever felt," he commented, a small smile evident in the way his tone tapered off into a chuckle.

You sighed and sunk further into the bed of cotton surrounding you. "Yeah, won't last long though considering how much I'm gonna use it during winter. Make the most of it while you can, Tae."

His lips parted in slight shock. "Can I?" the boy asked in a low tone, but for what exactly you still weren't quite sure. You turned your head and blinked open both eyes drowsily, grateful that you'd managed to sober up enough by now that there weren't two of him floating around beside you.

Well, more like on you at this point. You took a quick glance at everyone else to see if they were aware, but nobody was looking, and you were sure nobody would even care. Taehyung was quite touchy with his friends and you'd definitely seen it on multiple occasions, but never with you.

Not yet anyway.

He seemed to take your pause as hesitation rather than confusion. "You just look so huggable all wrapped up in it. I wanna know if it's as warm as it looks, but it's okay I can give you some room." His eyes flickered away from your face for the first time and you instantly felt the absence of his lively gaze.

He wants to hug me!?

"No Taetae c'mon." You allowed the nickname you'd always wanted to use break free - a slip the tongue thanks to the alcohol coursing through your system - and opened up your arms to invite him closer. You watched his eyes light up again like a million stars in the night sky.

"Really?" He giggled, and the sound was so adorable paired with the way his lips formed that box-like shape as he smiled, but he spared you no time for a response.

You felt the air forcefully leave your lungs when he crawled over into your heavily padded arms, his own then wrapping themselves around your waist which was swathed in mounds of cotton. You could feel the way he gently buried his face into a place near your chest. Oh God, did he just nuzzle his way in even further?

Where did he end, and you begin? Your drunken mind couldn't really focus on one singular thought, but somehow you were even comfier than before. You brought your arms back down to rest around his broad shoulders and decided to savour this moment, because you sure as hell weren't going to be able to look him in the eye after tonight.

You weren’t even that close. You being nothing more than his best friend’s roommate, and him a newfound friend you might be harbouring the tiniest crush on, but tonight was different.

"So warm..." he murmured and tightened the hold of his arms, though now you wished you could feel more skin and less wool. You imagined what it might feel like, just you and him and nothing but a normal layer of clothes separating you as you cuddled on the couch. It caused a pleased sigh to float from your lips, and you heard Taehyung let out an amused chuckle in tandem.

Could he be thinking something similar? Hopefully?

"I guess I must feel like a massive teddy bear to you," you managed to say without slurring your words, too drunk on the feeling of warmth and comfort and blossoming affection shrouding your mind.

"Damn right you do, sweetheart."

Even in the midst of all the liquid courage circulating your body you felt your heart skip a beat at the deep, relaxed tone of his voice, not to mention the pet-name. He sat up straighter and pulled you along with him, the expression on his face completely blissed out as he hugged you tighter to his frame. You could feel your heart hammering away in your chest, and just hoped to God there was enough fabric there to muffle the clamour.

There you both sat, locked together and bundled up in the mounds of cotton that was your wearable blanket, all until you drifted off to the best drunk sleep you’d ever had. It was the first of many cuddles you would share, unbeknownst to you at the time, but with a giggling Seokjin using his phone to take a blurry video of you both and a snickering Jimin egging him on, it was easy to see how one thing would lead to another the next day.

Sometimes, it appeared the key to winning over a man's heart was to not only become a body pillow, but become his body pillow. 

Copyright © 2020 by salade. All rights reserved.

#taehyung x reader #v x reader #btsghostie #btsgoldnet #taehyung fluff #taehyung drabble #taehyung imagines #taehyung scenarios #bts x reader #bts v #bts taehyung #handing out free apologies come get yours :) #requests #saladejin

[theuniversitychallengereview]

UC 50.13 - Manchester vs Edinburgh

Generally speaking, there are two kinds of all-conquering sporting dynasties - those that seem fair, and those that don’t. In the second category we have the likes of Michael Schumacher at Ferrari in the early 2000s or Manchester City and Chelsea in modern football. 

While there is undoubtedly a massive amount of sporting talent on show in each of those cases, there is something about the inevitability of their successes that makes them feel a bit unearned, be that by virtue of the vastly superior car the German had in at least three of his five consecutive championships, or the stinking piles of dirty money that has allowed Pep Guardiola to squander more than £400m on defenders in his tenure as City boss. 

In the other category we have Michael Phelps, or Serena Williams and the Big Three in men’s tennis. They have exerted a vicious dominance over their sports, but without any seemingly unfair advantage over their peers, other than their sheer talent and determination (obviously they will have had various advantages that allowed them to reach the top in the first place, but I think professional sports is one of the few places where consistent greatness is truly reflective of who the greatest people are at a given thing).

This realisation, as to why I always resented Schumacher his relentless winning, while simultaneously being annoyed when someone other than Federer, Nadal or Djokovic (or Andy, of course, one of the only people to ever make me cry) won a Grand Slam (how dare they break the streak), only came to me today when thinking about the Manchester University Challenge team. 

There’s just something that feels more organic, and therefore more impressive, about Federer making 34 consecutive Grand Slam quarter-finals than there is about the Golden State Warriors winning back to back NBA titles having signed MVP-calibre Kevin Durant off the back of the best season in NBA history (not sure how niche that reference will be to the readership here, but I already deleted a bit about him earlier on, and I’ve put a link to the story in so you’ll have to deal with it).

The Manchester Uni Challenge team of 2005-2013 fall somewhere in the middle of the two categories (so I guess there is, as with all things, another category that encompasses everything between two extremes). Those of you who have been reading this for a while (and I have no idea how many people will have stuck around even since last year) will have heard this spiel about the semi-final streak before (because I relish talking about it every time Manchester are on), but I’m going to go through it again because its a great story.

So, first of all, Manchester do have some obvious advantages over other teams competing to win University Challenge. For one, its pretty massive, with more than 40,000 students. This means its more likely for them to be able to put together a team who will make it onto the live recordings - and indeed there are only two teams (Durham and tonight’s opponents Edinburgh) who have made more appearances on the show in the Paxman Era. 

However, between them Durham, Edinburgh, York and Warwick (the other two most appearing-est institutions) have fifteen semi-final appearances out of seventy five. Manchester alone have ten, with nine of them coming in a ten year period when they didn’t exit the tournament before that stage. This historic run saw them lift the trophy four times, tying with Magdalen College, Oxford for the all-time record.

The source of their sustained excellence can be attributed in part to the coaching of Stephen Pearson, a man known as the Sir Alex Ferguson of University Challenge (I really do recommend reading the linked article here). Under his tutelage, successive cohorts of students were able to create a dynasty this quiz had never seen before (and isn’t likely to see again). Thats one of the things which makes it seem fair, that the system he built allowed different sets of four students to repeat the same results.

Another is that it broke up the historic duopoly that University Challenge is famous for. Between 2008 and 2019, Manchester were the only non-Oxbridge side to win the competition, and it is the teams from Oxford and Cambridge who you can most easily level the ‘unfairness’ tag at, what with their combined ten entries a year (yes, yes, I know. If you combined the college teams you’d create a monster team and no one else would ever win (I think they would, but that’s beside the point) but that’s beside the point).

Manchester haven’t reached the semi-finals since the end of that run in 2013, but with back-to-back quarter-finals in the past two years they look to be on track for a return to the top (I’m going to look very silly after all this if they lose tonight, which you probably already know, reader). 

I’d like to talk about Edinburgh too, my beloved Alma Mater who finally upgraded my degree after two years of appealing recently, but I’m conscious I’ve already spewed out a full article on my Manchester intro. I will say, however, that if Edinburgh win, there will be four Scottish Unis in the second round for the first time since ever (there are already there guaranteed for the first time since 1995).

Anyway, you’ll all be exhasuted if you’ve made it through all that, so I won’t bother with the rules; here’s your first starter for ten.

Edinburgh are introduced first, with Jeffcoat, who’s actually wearing some kind of tweed blazer rather than a coat, but I’ll let him off. Their mascot is possibly the best I’ve ever seen on the show - a framed photo of the moment Robbie Campbell Hewson won Edinbugh the title in 2019 (bottom right of below picture). They have a scottie dog too, but its the picture thats the real star.

Manchester have a pig in a hat (or possibly a scarf, or possibly something else entirely), but the main interest on their table is Jones-O’Brien, who has perhaps the first name I’ve ever seen to contain both a hyphen and an apostophe. Good job all round, there. 

It is his captain, Spacey, who kicks things off in a luxuriant velvet jacket, with Jane Eyre. Manchester take a full set on the bonuses, and then another, racing off into a 50 point lead. Jones-O’Brien is whats known in the game as a leaner, and rotates his body 45 degrees towards Spacey each time Paxman reads out a question. It seems to be working though.

Jeffcoat, who has a pen stored in his blazer just incase he needs to do some working out, gets Edinburgh off the mark and shoots his teammates a wink for good measure. They zap a hat-trick out quickly too to halve the deficit. 

No one gets the first picture starter, which is an arrow on a map to ‘Worthing’, and I’m not surprised - who the heck has even heard of Worthing let alone knows where it is on a map (offence to Worthing), but Manchester pick up the bonuses, which are more towns that have won Pier of the Year, as according to the National Piers Society, something I am extremely happy to hear exists but never wish to be a part of (I’m sure they wouldn’t want to write University Challenge blogs either).

Paxman laughs as Edinburgh’s Clarke gives an answer which suggests that a puffin makes a noise that sounds like the word puffin, and to be fair thats a pretty funny mental image (mental sound image?). The perfect bonus streak is over, though Manchester will manage a fourth set before they miss any five pointers. The music starter goes to Edinburgh, but they remain ten points adrift despite having been better on the buzzer, thanks to Manchester’s bonus-work.

Now, I’d actually been taking notes for once this week, but around this stage I got so caught up in the action that I quite literally was unable to pick my pen back up, so I’ll just go from memory (I know I could just slide the timer back on iPlayer, but I’m on a bit of a roll here and I don’t want to slow myself down).

Manchester went on a bit of a run at this point, opening up a lead that would probably be unassailable. By the time of the second picture round the gap was in three figures, so Edinburgh would purely be fighting for one of the high-scoring loser spots (tough first round draw for both teams this). 

Jeffcoat jolted them out of their stupor with Degas (who I almost spelled as Degat. For some reason I can never spell painters names correctly. For years I though Titian was Tischen), but only a single bonus followed (though Clarke did pronounce Seurat impeccably, both as a wrong and right answer). Spacey hit back with O, but Manchester struggled for the second time tonight on science-y bonuses. They wouldn’t score another point, but they’d already won. 

The two captains then guess the 8th and 2nd of December as the date of Jesus’ conception - the heat of the competition was getting to everyone - but Clarke makes up for it with Oak next time around, and Fricker comes up clutch with Flag on the next starter as well. 

A full set of bonuses saw them reach 150, which would be enough to see them make the play-offs, but Winter negged on the next to drop them down to 145 (which would also have been enough, as it turned out, so I was getting too excited at the end). Clarke then got them another to put me at ease for the final few seconds.

Final Score: Edinburgh 155 - 200 Manchester

Another excellent, high-scoring game - probably the highlight of the series so far for me - and I’m very glad we’ll be seeing both sides again. 

Phew, that was a long one. If you’ve made it this far (first of all, congratulations) then you might like the retro reviews I’m doing of the 2015/16 series of The Challenge over on my Patreon. To sign up for exclusive content, for as little as £1/month, you can follow this link.

Thanks for reading, see you next time out.

#university challenge #bbc2 #manchester #edinburgh #Jeremy Paxman

[post-itpenny]

Your Nature

Continuing with the story.... Peregrine’s idea of help is to hit things.

Hard

Maggie, Juno, and Vespers took the news about Circe and Ash… surprisingly well. Or as well as they could.

In a way it delighted Maggie and Vespers that their respective families had always had a slight connection. It was just a shame the connection was something so rotten as Keir and his descendants.

That being said all three surprisingly agreed with Peregrine that simply trying to ignore them would not solve the problem. Maggie even making a point to use her vision to sort out at least ten possible future timelines.

All of them ending with Magpie failing. Each one worse than the last.

Magpie needed advice.

It was Maggie again to suggest who to turn to. However summoning the elder was not an easy feat and Magpie could not just leave the planet while her shield was up. So she followed the instructions given carefully. Writing a note and placing it down on a table under a dish cover, then purposefully forgetting it. Considering how exhausted she was this was surprisingly easy. Meaning when Magpie dragged herself down for breakfast the next morning she nearly jumped out of her skin to find Lethe sitting at her dining room table.

The elder held up a folded piece of paper, “got your note. How can I help?”

So the fairies made tea and Magpie told her story. Reluctantly recounting what the siblings did to her as a child and what she had done with the shield now.

Lethe was patient, not saying a word as she sipped her tea and listened. On occasion Magpie could catch a glimpse of gold eyes or sharp teeth in the shadow of the elder’s hood and not for the first time she wondered how they were related.

When she finished Magpie slumped back in her chair. She was so, so tired and the thought of wanting to go back to bed so soon after waking up made her tear up.

There was the softest touch of fabric, Magpie looking up to find Lethe reaching out with long gloved fingers to touch Magpie’s cheek. There came a soft pop like a static shock and at once Magpie felt more awake and energized than she had in well over a week.

“Better?” Lethe questioned.

Magpie gave a small nod, not quite sure what had happened.

Lethe stood up, beginning to slowly pace the room.

“All things need comforting from time to time. But all things from time to time also need advice. Do you want mine?”

“Yes please.”

Lethe looked at her, “you do know the obvious solution.”

“...Yes.”

“Then why have you not killed them already?”

Magpie frowned, “well I… I don’t…”

Lethe shook her head, “this is your first opposition as an elder, but even if you didn’t have the title you’re easily strong enough to be rid of them for good. You’re not a frightened and unprepared child anymore Magpie, you are far stronger than they could ever hope to be and you know it. Kier was a horrid thing and nearly every creature with an ounce of his lineage is just as twisted. They act entitled and are quick to bully others. Even the ones who don’t have Keir’s gifts.”

“They aren’t really your family.” Lethe continued. “The bloodlines are separated enough, don’t feel any obligation on that front to show leniency.”

“That’s not it.”

“Then why is it difficult?”

Magpie looked away in annoyance. “You know don’t you? That’s what you do isn’t it?”

Lethe regarded the younger deadlight for a moment before sighing. “It's a noble desire, wanting to find a better solution than death. However you and I both know they are here to antagonize and will challenge you if they can.”

“Why would they?”

“You’re hiding behind a wall Magpie, you’re taking the cowards way out and they know it.”

“It may be cowardly to them but I just…. I don’t want to be that kind of person.”

Magpie gripped the hem of her skirt, biting her bottom lip. “I can’t make people behave how I want them to-“

“But you could.”

“But I won't.” Magpie insisted. “I don’t want to be that kind of person.”

Lethe sat down beside Magpie, taking her hand. “You’re far kinder than Blackwood…. kinder than I… but kindness for an elder has a fine line. You have an added responsibility to care for your family. You are not the elder of a kind thing, your dominion is creation.”

“But I think my job isn’t just to make things.” Magpie insisted, “that’s incredibly boring and nothing special really. Anyone can just make things.”

As if to prove her point Magpie snapped her fingers and a coffee mug appeared. “I made a mug, something that can be made in any factory or at the hands of any potter. Anyone can make anything with enough practice.”

The elder seemed almost stunned. Then, to Magpie’s great surprise-

Lethe started laughing.

It was a rather nice laugh, but the way the shadows seemed to warp at the sound made it a little unnerving. After a few minutes Lethe seemed to regain her composure. “You possess the power to will whatever you want into existence- planets, forests, cities, stars. You can make it and destroy it at a whim, that power literally at your fingertips. But you don’t see it as special?”

“Yes.”

“Then what is your job beyond just creation?”

Magpie smiled warmly, “to inspire others to create. It’s a beautiful and kind thing to do, something I’m truly proud of.”

Lethe watched Magpie as she spoke, the younger deadlight being sincere in what she said. “It is a kind thing, I could agree it is the most beautiful of your responsibilities… but think of the title more as who you are than just a job, you are your title as a rule. To create means to also destroy, is not destruction a creation in its own right? It is a part of your nature, it is the nature of one of our kind and very select few elders are exempt from this. You have little choice in this-“

“But-“

“And consider this,” Lethe insisted. “If they best you then one of them will take your place as an elder. It will put everything you hold dear at risk. You have a responsibility and that responsibility calls for you to get rid of them.”

Magpie glared at the ground, eyes glassy with tears that she held back. Lethe sighed again as she stood up to leave. “You’re very different Magpie, it’s a good thing. But you are the same as Blackwood in one thing- you both hate being told what’s good for you.”

Magpie rubbed her eyes, “no… but we both hate being told what to do.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Peregrine had no problem with wanting to be rid of Ash and Circe. He had only not acted sooner in an attempt to respect his sister’s wishes.

But this was getting ridiculous, and if Magpie was too afraid to act then he would.

He growled at the thought of those two getting near his children, his granddaughter. And if he could do at least one thing to care for his family it was this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There was a small asteroid caught in the orbit of the Earth. It was barren and cold and Ash hated it. But he stayed because the view was worth it.

Not the planet, the little backwater ball that floated through such a boring solar system was tacky in his opinion. But the light shimmer that surrounded it was hilarious.

Behind him Circe giggled as the shimmer flickered again, it had been doing that more and more as the days passed.

“Little freak’s getting tired I bet.” Circe snickered.

Originally they came after hearing about what had happened to the old fool Blackwood because the idea of harassing Magpie sounded like fun. They were bored and Circe suggested the visit, maybe even coerce her into helping with what they had originally came together Kestral for so many years before. But the moment the shield over the planet went up a bigger plan took shape. Magpie was scared of them- as she should be in the sibling’s opinion- and it was honestly hilarious.

There was an aura, someone approaching and fast.

Ash snickered “well, well, well, look whose coming to-“

WHAM!

Peregrine sucker punched Ash, sending him flying back at least a hundred yards.

He turned to Circe, cracking his knuckles.

Circe rolled her eyes at her brother, barely dodging Peregrine’s swing at her. He hit a wall of rock instead, a jagged crack ripping through it in an explosion of dust.

At once a wave of power slammed into Peregrine’s mind. He felt as if something was trying to crush his very being. He couldn’t breathe, gasping for air as he struggled to stand and push past the feeling. He knew it wasn’t real, he could breathe, there was no weight. Peregrine imagined a wall around his head and pushed out.

The feeling left, Circe stumbling back as is something shoved her. Peregrine charged, slamming down his fist onto her.

The ground split, Circe sent plummeting down in an explosion of rock. Ash came running only for Peregrine to turn around and kick him in the chest, sending Ash flying back again.

Peregrine turned back around at the sound of Circe crawling back out of the ground. Only to find a hand pressed against his face.

Peregrine froze. Circe grinning as she watched the struggle in his eyes. Peregrine grimacing as he reached up to try and shove her hand away.

Then stopped.

[bvlavender]

A Story A Day Keeps COVID Away – 05/06/20: Crisis #348

“Goddammit, when am I now?”

I froze. That’s not possible, I thought. You are alone, on a spaceship that is about to crash. Your panic about the engine is just manifesting into voices in your he-

“Ooo, microgravity. It’s been a while since I felt that.”

Putting up my fists, I whirled to face the person who couldn’t possibly be behind me. But the woman, floating towards the engine room door, utterly fascinated by floating fabric of her maroon dress, seemed so real that I nearly-

She was floating towards the engine room. I pushed off the control panel behind me and tackled the stranger into the portside window. Even though I held her pinned, could feel the odd stiffness of her – was that a hoop skirt? – I still couldn’t quite believe that she was there. “Who the hell are you.”

At my words, the woman beamed brightly. “Oh, English. How I missed you.”

In response to that baffling statement, I raised a fist. “Tell me how the hell you got on my ship in the next ten seconds or I knock you into the next solar system.”

She didn’t even flinch. “I get randomly transported to crisis situations in order to prevent and/or mitigate whatever catastrophe is happening at the time. I don’t have any control over it, I don’t know why it happens, and it’s been happening for a very long time, so if we could just skip the surprise and get to the stop-the-disaster bit, that would be great for both of us.”

I could barely process her story. I couldn’t decide if she was an excellent liar, or if the tale was so absurd it had to be true. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance.

Turbulence wracked the ship, slamming us both into the window. Through it, we could see the star that the ship was rapidly falling into. The emergency alarms, which had already been gratingly loud, increased their pitch and frequency. We both covered our ears.

The woman yelled over the sirens. “I presume that, whatever’s wrong here, fixing it is more of a two person job?”

Her deduction was correct. And regardless of the truth of her story, I doubted that she wanted to die a fiery death in the unrelenting heat of a red dwarf. “Do you know anything about flying a CJ-97?”

She shook her head. Of course. I made my way back to the control panel, unlocked one of the compartments underneath it, and tossed her a comms earpiece. As I set up my headset, she followed along.

“Comms online?” She nodded. “Alright. I’ll be going into engineering in a minute.”

Before I left the controls, I deployed the last of the liquid nitrogen reserves into the engine room’s cooling system. Now, the air in there should be warm instead of flesh-melting. Then, I positioned the woman in front of the panel, carefully maneuvering around her anachronistic dress. “Keep us steady towards the bearing on screen. Use the trackball to control the navigation system.” I pointed at the round sphere set into the centre of the control panel. “If we drift too far, use the boosters to put some extra juice into it, but don’t use them too much, the engine’s already about to blow. Lever to the left of the trackball is for port, lever to the right is for starboard. Don’t touch anything other than that. Do you understand?”

She nodded again, placing one hand on the trackball – which immediately slipped off, as the trackball was spinning wildly. Startled, she used two hands to grasp it with more vigor. The ship groaned, but steadied slightly. She grinned at her success. I tried not to hyperventilate at the sight of her obvious incompetence, grabbed my toolkit from under the control panel, and made my way over to the engine room door.

When I opened them up, a blast of hot air engulfed me. I prayed that nothing had caught fire. “Lady. Talk to me.”

“What?”

“Talk to me.” I unhooked my gloves from the side of my kit, and pulled them on. “I do better when I’m talking to other people.”

“Okay. Um. What’s your name?”

“Zaxy Renington. Yours?”

“Kimberly Zhu.”

I started unscrewing the hatch over the auxiliary engine. “Nice to meet you, Kimberly.”

“Pleasure’s mine. If you enjoy conversing with other people so much, why are you out here alone?”

My fingers fumbled on the last screw. “Wow. You do not waste any time. Cut to the chase, huh.” I popped off the hatch, and was buffeted by another wave of steamy vapors.

“You get good at that when you’re always stuck in other people’s worst nightmare. Care to share?”

Hesitating for just a moment, I began to take the aux engine apart. “Dropped my boyfri- ex-boyfriend off at his home station. I was making the return trip alone and… decided to blow off some steam. Made some risky maneuvers.”

“You literally flew too close to a sun!”

“I was trying to get a gravity assist from Gliese 163!” As I snapped at her, something snapped under my hand. A new alarm was added to the cacophony.

“You sure you don’t want me to shut up?”

I rewired the area around the new holes in the aux engine. Two of the alarms went quiet.

“…Alright then. Why’d you break up? You seem like a lovely lady.”

“One, we barely know each other. And two, I’m. not. a lady.”

There was quiet for a long moment. “Ah. My apologies. Is that why-”

“Yes.” I ripped out a piece of tubing harder than I’d needed to, and reconnected it to the main engine. “Even in the era of space exploration, some people are stuck in the stone age.”

“Well, speaking as someone who rarely ever knows what year it is, I think you’re better off without him.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I know. I was the one who decided to make the split. Doesn’t hurt any less.” I screwed the hatch back in place. “Doesn’t make me any less stupid for overclocking the engine while trying to vent my breakup blues.”

“How do you know how to fix an engine anyway?”

“CJ-97s are ancient. I bought this cheap, and then refurbished it myself.” Grabbing the now-spare parts, I made my way over to the main engine. “It’s still a bit of a lemon, but I’m in trade school for a reason. Eventually I was going to learn how to retrofit a proper nav AI into this thing myself, but if I hadn’t put that off for so long, I never would have met you.”

Kimberly laughed. “What a shame that would have been.”

With a final twist, I removed the hatch covering the main engine. “Kimberly. You see the big red button at the top of the panel? Near the screen?”

“Yeah?” Then, she made a distressed noise. “Does that-”

“Press it.”

“Will that cut the engines?”

“Yes.”

“Won’t we fall into the star?”

“Kimberly?”

“Zaxy, we’ll die.” As if to punctuate her point, the ship groaned. More alarms started to blare.

“This is the part where you shut up. Press the button. Once I’m out of the control room and I shut the door, press it again. Please. Trust me.”

There was silence on the comms. Then, all of the alarms went off, and the emergency lights turned on. She had cut the power.

I got to work. I could feel the burn of the engine parts through my gloves, but I gritted my teeth and kept going. The ship creaked and crackled, and I could feel the star’s gravitational pull growing stronger as we got closer.

“Zaxy.”

“Just a minute.” I winced as a half-melted screw nearly seared through my glove.

“Zaxy, we don’t have a minute.”

“Just… a… moment.” Sparks flew from the wires in my hand.

“We don’t have that either!”

“Good thing I don’t need it.” I replaced the last piece, and didn’t even bother to put the hatch back. With a well-placed kick, I flew away from the main engine and through the doorway, grabbing the handle and swinging the door shut as I went out. “Now!”

By the time she had pressed the button, I was at the controls. I grabbed the trackball with one hand and pushed the engine to full throttle with the other. I jammed my leg into a nook behind the control panel, so when the ship jolted from the push of its engine against the pull of the star, I stayed in place. Kimberly, however, crashed into the portside window with a cry of pain.

“You could have warned me!” she yelled, though she was muffled by the glass smushed against her face.

“Yeah, well.” I pushed the trackball harder. “You could have warned me before you showed up.”

“That’s not how it works!”

“Then tell me, how does it work?” The bearing we were on previously wasn’t achievable from our current position. I punched in a different route, one that we could get to if I was somehow a better engineer/pilot than I’d ever dreamed. “I work better when I’m talking, remember? And I’ve done all the sharing I care to. Your turn.”

In the reflection of the navigation screen, I could see Kimberly push herself up from the glass. Not quite enough of a push for get her too close to me, but enough for her to not be getting an eyeful of red dwarf. “I do this a lot. Like I said. Get people out of crises, save the day, yada yada yada. And then, once it’s over, I’m gone.”

I wrenched the trackball towards the proper bearing. “Out of your control? No going back?”

“No. Some people have tried to get me to come back, but… it’s not reliable. Lightning can strike the same place twice, but when it happens isn’t your call, you know?”

“I’m about to turn on the starboard booster.” By the time Kimberly processed what that meant, she had already bumped into the engine room door. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you that time.”

Kimberly’s laugh was a bit harsher. I heard the folds of her dress crumple. “No. You’ve got better manners than whatever force is stringing me along.”

We were just about to break free of the star’s gravity. “Hey. If you’re going to leave soon, then I just want to thank you. Pretty sure I would have died if you weren’t there to-”

I stopped. I had turned to look at her, to better see the woman who had saved me before she went to save someone else.

But no one was there.

#astoryadaykeepsCOVIDaway #coronavirus #covid-19 #writing #writers on tumblr #this is one of those premises that could theoretically go on forever without ever not making sense #which is the sort of continuous internal logic that I find very appealing #I’m sorry this is late #but I’m just happy that this time it was just me being dumb #instead of me being demotivated and miserable #also #I can’t believe it took me so long to make a story with characters that are #queer #you can make an argument for Dear Quincy? #but this one’s more upfront

[jbuffyangel]

The Code: Arrow 7x21 Review (Living Proof)

You guys know me pretty good by now, so it should shock no one that I love this episode. Tommy takes a vacation from heaven to argue morality with Oliver while he’s stuck in a life or death situation. SOLD.  

Of course, there are problems in “Living Proof” just like any other episode of Arrow. Unfortunately, Olicity is separated for most of it, but they are each struggling with the best way to protect their family. A common theme this year is Oliver and Felicity being on separate, but same trajectories. They reach a conclusion on an individual level, so they can come together and make decisions as a couple. “Living Proof” is a perfect set up for Arrow’s season finale and Olicity’s final episode.

Let’s dig in...

Oliver and Tommy

TOOOOOMMMMYYYY!!!! 

I’m always Laurel when I see Tommy Merlyn. I’m not kidding when I say I love him. It’s not just nostalgia of Arrow days long past. Tommy had a profound impact on Oliver and his journey. Oliver has lost a lot of loved ones, but Tommy’s death really changed his mind about how he should go about saving the city and what it truly means to be a vigilante. Tommy sparked Oliver’s desire to be more – to be a hero. So, it makes absolute sense Tommy appears to Oliver now to deal with his latest morality crisis.

Emiko blew up a building and Oliver is trapped underneath a giant piece of concrete. He’s uncomfortably close to some rebar too and the Tommy parallels are anything, but subtle. Oliver is literally in the same life and death situation that befell is best friend six years ago. Are the writers putting Oliver in this position, so his “hallucination” of Tommy makes sense? Perhaps… or perhaps something deeper happening unbeknownst to Oliver.

Source: smoakmonster

I firmly believe Colin was not allowed to grow a beard while on Arrow because it would overload whatever hotness Stephen Amell was bringing to the table and since he’s the lead that cannot be allowed. I know my truth.

Source: smoakmonster 

Tommy psychoanalyzing Oliver’s mind to explain his appearance is a hoot. Hallucination, concussion or just some good old-fashioned PTSD are all on the table, except for the one that’s the actual truth. But we aren’t there yet. We weren’t wrong to notice the similarities between Oliver’s current situation and Tommy’s death though. There’s always a reason my friends.

Source: smoakmonster 

Oliver escapes from underneath the concrete and Tommy helps with his dislocated shoulder. We enjoy some of Tommy’s patented banter (I missed him so), but he’s here to talk about family - sisters to be specific. 

HA! I love Oliver’s “Don’t sass me look.” At least everyone is agreed this storyline would be far more entertaining if Thea went all evil. Instead, we have Emiko and Tommy wants to know how Oliver is going to deal with her.

Tommy: Speaking of, what about Emiko? What kind of solution are you planning for her?

Oliver: The one she deserves. She let our father die.

SERIOUSLY OLIVER? KILLING? ARE WE BACK TO THIS? 

Oh, hang on I don’t have to yell at him. Tommy is taking care of it for me. 

Source:  ebett

See why I love him? He has a hot beard and says my words because we samesies.

Emiko dropped another bomb on Oliver last week when she confessed to knowing about Merlyn’s plan for the Gambit and letting their father die. Oliver is pretty ticked about it, which is understandable. His sister has lied and manipulated her way into his life while wearing his superhero suit no less (RUDE), she was an accessory to their father’s murder or suicide (whichever way you want to look at it), sent Oliver to hell for five years and, to top it all off, is a terrorist. She also dropped a building on him and the team.

Yeah, I’d say the angry face is warranted. 

Source: smoakmonster 

Emiko is the worst. Not just her actions, but she’s kind of a snoozer personality wise.  None of that means Oliver should kill her though. He must move beyond that kind of thinking.

As horrible as Emiko’s actions are, she unknowingly was the catalyst for Oliver becoming someone who could stop her. It’s a mind bender when you think about it. Oliver’s life is filled with loss and immense suffering. However, that suffering has led to immense love and joy. Oliver has created a family beyond the one he was born into. His life has traveled on a path no one could predict.

I’m not saying it’s okay that Emiko and Merlyn killed Robert or that Slade killed Moira. But we’ve glimpsed the “What if?” with Oliver already. He would be happy, but not a hero. If Oliver wants to serve true justice, then he must look at the bad and the good.

Barry: We both got a look at what life would look like normal.

Oliver: It would have been happy.

Barry: But not full.

Oliver: No. Nowhere close.

Barry: To things not being normal.

Oliver: To life being full.

Tommy tries to defend Emiko and I’m pumping the breaks right there. Listen my delicious bearded cupcake; there are plenty of fathers who abandon their children. It’s an epidemic from my point of view; however, they don’t all become terrorists. The “blame Dad” routine is tired. It is possible to hold Emiko responsible for her actions short of killing, but we don’t need to excuse the behavior either.

If you’re tired of the kill/don’t kill debate well then, I’m sorry. It’s an integral part of the show because this is how the writers gauge Oliver’s morality and his evolution as a superhero. They will always circle back to it just like they will always circle back to Robert Queen and the “sins of the father” theme. Family, guilt, responsibility, redemption, teamwork, heroism, sacrifice, killing, love, legacy – these are all the building blocks of Arrow. The bow and arrow will always be how Oliver fights crime. Killing will always be barometer for his morality.

But didn’t Oliver already decide to stop killing after Prometheus? Didn’t he stop blaming himself for Robert Queen’s death? 

He realized killing can create an unforeseen monster. Adrian Chase was the blueprint for what not to become, so Oliver forgave himself for Robert Queen’s death.  He also stopped viewing the mask as a conduit for his darkness.

So why are we talking about killing again? Oliver didn’t kill Diaz. He didn’t kill anyone in prison. He’s supposed to be a fully realized superhero, but here he is, trapped under rubble, and discussing putting an arrow in his half sister with his almost dead best friend. COME ON.

I know Oliver is not real and the writers refuse to drop this, but there is a reason for it. It’s always one step forward and two steps back with Oliver Queen. This is the biggest pine tree to ever live. Oliver continually circling back to killing feels extremely in character. He finds himself in situations where he believes killing is justified. When Oliver has exhausted all other possibilities he still believes killing can be a solution.

But what about Prometheus? 

Well, Oliver couldn’t kill him because that would be giving Prometheus exactly what he wants. Prometheus believed Oliver is a killer and it would prove him right if Oliver killed him. That’s not happening here with Emiko so TA DA! Totally different circumstances! It’s completely okay to kill her.

But what about Slade? 

Uhhh… Oliver made a promise to Tommy no more killing and he wanted to prove to himself he could be a hero without it. Mission accomplished! NO MORE KILLING!!!

Hahaha. Just kidding. Up next we have Ra’s Al Ghul. 

He had the League of Assassins, chucked Oliver off a mountain, tried to bio weapon Star City into oblivion and made him marry the only lesbian on the show. Ra’s had to die. Right? Right.

Damien Darhk killed Laurel and was a Terminator like magician, so Oliver was completely justified running him through with the pointy end of an arrow. On camera no less!

And round and round and round we go. I’m not arguing any of these people deserved to live. They didn’t. Oliver was always justified killing any bad guy and the world is a better place without these villains. However, it’s not really about the villain. It’s about Oliver Queen and his soul.

I won’t rehash all the reasons why I think Oliver should stop killing and it’s perfectly okay if you disagree with me. This is simply part of my morality. I don’t believe Oliver Queen gets to be judge, jury and executioner simply because he is the Green Arrow and has anointed himself savior of the city.

Oliver’s prison arc was in large part showing him the moral grey zones when it comes to villains. He was operating in a very black and white world when he determined which villains lived and died. Does Ben Turner deserve a death penalty for his crimes? Is he the same as Ricardo Diaz? Who gets to decide?

Ideally the justice system, which is why we have one. It is an imperfect system, but it’s one Oliver has tried to work within for most of the season and has succeeded at it until recently. The larger point is there is a third option for villains when choosing between life or death. JAIL.

And yet, here we are again with Oliver arguing the same moral quandary we’ve argued for the last seven years.  The reason we keep circling back to this issue is because Oliver Queen has no code. We can justify almost anything, which is why it’s important to have a moral code to check our justifications. We all need rules to live by, moral absolutes, which are unbreakable under any circumstances. This is the reason laws exist.

God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. Jesus gave us the Beatitudes and a whole new section of the friggin Bible to digest. If superheroes are fictional Christ like figures, then their hero’s journey needs to end with a set of rules he/she live by based off the lessons they’ve learned on the road to becoming a superhero.

If you want a less Christian perspective, then consider superheroes modern day mythology. Every mythological hero learned painful lessons which resulted in a morality the Greek and Romans lived by. Our democracy is fashioned from the Greeks. Suffering = lessons = moral code = righteous path.

Oliver needs a code he can apply to any given situation he’s faced with because being a superhero requires checks and balances. He needs something, a lens, to filter his morality through. His morality must set a high bar too because Oliver isn’t just your run of the mill everyday hero. He’s becoming someone else… something else. Oliver Queen is superhero. He supposed to be the best of us.

Oliver views Tommy as a brain concussed hallucination, but he couldn’t be more wrong. This is Oliver’s God moment. I’ve been waiting for Oliver to have a God moment since Barry Allen had his in Season 2 of The Flash. The Speed Force aka God took Barry on an out of body experience to explain that even though Barry has incredible gifts those gifts do not make him God. Barry doesn’t get to decide who lives or who dies. He doesn’t get to rewrite the past or change the future just because he’s experienced lost. Those decisions are outside the purview of The Flash. Barry has immense power, but those powers will not illuminate loss from his life.  

The Speed Force/Barry’s Mom: What you’ve become – it’s wonderful. A miracle even. But it won’t make bad things stop happening to you. Even The Flash can’t outrun the tragedies the universe is going to keep sending his way. 

At the end of the “The Runaway Dinosaur” Barry comes to terms with his mother’s death and accepts it. He achieves peace, healing and let’s go of some of the pain which has been a weight around his neck.  Until his father dies the next episode.

Barry chucks everything God told him out the window and creates Flashpoint to save both his parents.

This is the point where my relationship with Barry Allen began to crumble. HE LITERALLY HAD GOD TELL HIM LOSS WAS PART OF LIFE AND HE HAD TO ACCEPT IT. BARRY HAD TO ACCEPT HE WAS NOT GOD. And what does he do? He creates an entirely new timeline where Cisco’s brother is dead, Caitlin becomes Killer Frost, Sara Diggle is erased and replaced with John Junior. Oh, and I wasn’t allowed to be mad at him about it because he’s Barry.

I don’t know if Oliver Queen believes in God or a life beyond death. I’m leaning towards not given his reaction to Angel Tommy, but “some things are true whether you believe them or not.” City of Angels is an EPIC movie. Watch and thank me later.

Regardless of Oliver’s personal beliefs, he doesn’t have a Speed Force. There’s no higher power/magical whatsit sitting him down for a chat to explain how life works like Barry had in Season 2. Oliver has been flying blind for seven years. Until now.

Oliver: No Tommy! Because of what he did to you.

This is the first time I’ve ever heard Oliver blame Tommy for his death. Oliver is plagued by what ifs? What if Tommy listened to him? What if he got there a little bit sooner? But none of those things happened because Tommy was blinded by the fact that Malcolm Merlyn was his father. And he paid for that loyalty with his life. Oliver isn’t going to make the same mistake with Emiko.

Angel Tommy agrees with Oliver! He takes responsibility for his death, but not for the reasons Oliver stated. 

Tommy was stuck in a cycle of self hatred, one created by his father, and he couldn’t free himself from it until it was too late. Angel Tommy urges his friend to view him as a cautionary tale and break his own cycle of violence.

This isn’t the first time Arrow has referenced Oliver’s cycle of violence. We did a deep dive on it in “Level Two” during Oliver’s psychotherapy session. What that doctor was doing to prisoners was deeply wrong, but he did pull out a nugget of truth. 

Oliver created his vigilante persona to avenge his father’s wrongs. Those wrongs began with violence and death. Oliver has often avenged those wrongs through violence and death. There is a pattern here. There is a cycle even though Oliver has done so much good as the Green Arrow. 

Oliver doesn’t want William to experience the same pain and loss, so he must do things differently than Robert. If Oliver doesn’t want to saddle William with righting his wrongs, then he must break this cycle and be better. Oliver must walk a higher road if there’s any hope of his children being freed from the Queen family’s past.

Oliver: No. You’re wrong. This isn’t about me. This isn’t about my father. This is about Emiko. And the choices that she made? They are on her.

Like I said it’s always one step forward with Oliver and two steps back. He is soooooo close!!!! Everything he said about Emiko is true and showcases the stunning character growth Oliver has gone through these past seven seasons. He’s not blaming himself for Emiko’s actions. Hell, he’s not even blaming Robert. Oliver is holding Emiko responsible for her choices.

Typically, Oliver blames himself for everything. Lately, he’s been putting the blame squarely where is belongs and holding people responsible for their crimes.  He has freed himself from the crippling guilt which began on that raft with Robert Queen. YES. EMIKO IS TO BLAME. NOT OLIVER.

But thennnnn he takes it one step too far. Oliver believes Emiko deserves to die.

He may not be blaming himself anymore, but Oliver’s solution remains the same. He’s still stuck.

Tommy promises Oliver will eventually be free (BECAUSE HE’S AN ANGEL SENT BY GOD OKAY??!!!) but urges him to stay on the higher road because he has a shot at a clean slate. What’s wonderful about “Living Proof” is the writers give Oliver more justification to kill than any other time in the history of this show. Emiko is a threat to Oliver’s wife, son and unborn child. We won’t weep over this woman and no one will be angry if Oliver kills her because he’s protecting his family! If there was ever a justification to kill this is it. This decision is morally justified.

Oliver frees himself from the rubble, meets up with his team and comes face to face with Emiko.

This is all it takes. DADDY RAGE ACTIVATED.  

Source: olicitygifs 

Emiko tells Oliver she’s made certain his family will die and even though Diggle (the moral compass) warns him not to - Oliver kills Emiko. 

Source:  olivergifs

There’s an immediate cause and effect. Emiko is dead, but so is… JOHN?

 WHAT THE FRICKEN FRACK IS GOING ON? Oliver’s team is laid out Game of Thrones style. 

Source:  arrowdaily

Is the Night King here? 

I had no idea what the hell happened.

God happened. Oliver isn’t free. He’s still trapped. Angel Tommy gave him a vision of all his loved ones dying.

Oliver: What was that?

Tommy: How do I know? I’m just a figment of your imagination.

Note to self: When face to face with God don’t call Him a figment of my imagination. He gets cranky.

This is all a hallucination, right? If that’s the case, then how did Angel Tommy know about Emiko and the baby? 

Source: olicitygifs

She just threatened Felicity. Oliver doesn’t know that happened. Sure, it’s easy to assume Oliver just played out his worst nightmare, but he’s trying to morally justify killing. Why would he show himself a scenario where killing Emiko leads to losing everyone he loves? Why would he play out this horrible scenario when Oliver thinks he’s right to kill Emiko? Why torture himself over a person he’s ready to kill?

Source: olivergifs

In Oliver’s despair he calls out to God almost like an exhale. And God answers. Angel Tommy is much more than a hallucination. Losing loved ones isn’t new for Oliver, but God showed him this worst nightmare for a reason. Oliver is making decisions based on fear just like Robert Queen did. Angel Tommy briefly takes the title of Yoda from John (that’s ok he hasn’t had much use for it lately).

If Oliver wants a different outcome, then he’s going to have to do something different. Angel Tommy urges Oliver to embrace the best parts of him instead of giving into his worst impulses.

God gives Oliver Queen his code. What’s does a hero believe in? The Four Pillars of Heroism are Oliver Queen’s answer.

Does Emiko deserve Oliver’s loyalty, selflessness, courage and compassion?  No. She doesn’t not, but that’s not really the point. 

Forgiving someone when they don’t deserve it is quite possibly one of the most heroic things we can do as human beings. It’s a gift and, in many ways, it’s a gift we give ourselves too.

The beauty of these pillars is we all can embrace them. That’s what so wonderful about hero’s journeys. Heroes represent the best of humanity and are a shining beacon of the potential we could all reach. And yet, most of us don’t. Someone like Oliver Queen has a depth to his loyalty, selflessness, courage and compassion that is unparalleled. The reason why most of us don’t become heroes or saints (if you prefer a religious perspective) is because it’s too damn hard. We don’t want to make the sacrifices necessary to be one.

Oliver must offer the same forgiveness offered to him all those years ago through Diggle, Felicity, Tommy, Roy and Thea.  Oliver is one of God’s perfect examples of the power of redemption. If there’s anything he should believe in it should be that and what God wants, more than anything, is for Oliver to be a vessel. God is asking Oliver Queen to be a servant of redemption.

Source: smoakmonster

And it’s Tommy asking. So of course, Oliver will do it. That’s why God chose Tommy to deliver the code. Robert Queen’s death ignited Oliver’s mission, but Tommy’s death ignited his heroism. We must go back to the beginning when we reach the end.

Oliver is given the chance to say goodbye again in their final moments together and Tommy makes a him promise. Death is not an end to love.

This was Oliver’s God moment. This code was the final piece of the superhero puzzle. It’s a gift born from loss, pain, love, redemption and forgiveness. Oliver is the living proof for us all. He is a beacon of light for his family, team, city and yes even villaina like Emiko.

Felicity Smoak

I wish I liked Alena. It would have made her scenes with Felicity more fun, but I don’t so that’s that. Oliver is not the only one reexamining the way he’s doing things. Felicity is as well.

The SCPD tries to arrest her, which cements my belief they are the biggest twats to ever live and they will never be anything other than twats. But things take a dangerous and extremely emotional turn when Felicity and Alena come face to face with Emiko. Felicity must beg for the life of her child.

Source:  arrowdaily

STOP POINTING ARROWS AT MY PRECIOUS BABES YOU CRAZY BITCH! 

Emiko as a villain isn’t all that threatening, but Cookie Monster could be threatening Felicity right now and I’d get worked up about it. 

Source:  arrowdaily

The speech Felicity makes is gut wrenching. Hasn’t she been through enough? Just let her pregnant in peace.

This latest life or death situation causes Felicity to ponder what kind of life her child will have. Poor William has not fared so great thus far. Being a child of heroes is not an easy thing as we see in the flash forwards.

Is Arrow saying Oliver and Felicity can’t do it all? Are the writers saying Oliver and Felicity can’t be heroes and have a family? 

No, I don’t think so because Oliver and Felicity have been doing it all for the last two years. They got married, brought William into their home to raise 

and expanded their little brood all while actively fighting for the city as vigilantes. 

Oliver isn’t choosing between man and mask anymore. He’s embraced both personas and he’s been living in the light more than he ever has in previous seasons by working with the SCPD (twat factory that it is) and going hoodless.

Timing on Arrow is always a tricky thing. I didn’t expect to see Oliver live his happy life with Felicity for as long as we’ve been blessed to watch it. Most television shows end at wedding or baby, but not with this show. Oliver is a fully realized superhero. That evolution worked in conjunction with his relationship with Felicity and not as a “reward” for his superhero evolution. Oliver could never become a superhero without Felicity. He needs her. Felicity Smoak is Oliver’s superhero.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences to their choices. Sure, the show could tap out and maybe it would be all rainbows and puppies in the end, but probably not. Arrow isn’t that kind of show and there was always going to be pain right up until the final moments.

Personally, I like that the writers are examining the consequences of having a family and being heroes. We like to tell ourselves we can “do it all” but there are consequences to every decision we make. Once we go through a door another one closes behind us. 

Life is not about “having it all.” It’s about deciding the kind of life you want to live and accepting the ramifications of those decisions. There is no perfect plan. There are always negatives to every choice. We must determine not only if our choice makes us happy, but if we can live with the negatives.

What makes Oliver and Felicity happiest is fighting for their city, but they realize that puts their family in danger much more than if they’d chosen to be farmers or dermatologists. 

It’s a very real consequence that cost them William. He bailed. So, what about the nugget cooking in Ms. Smoak? Oliver and Felicity can proclaim their number one priority is keeping their children safe, but they are also actively engaging in behavior that puts their children at risk.

Felicity tells Alena about how she wants to be a better parent than her parents. I love Donna Smoak, so it made me a little sad to hear Felicity say this. I think Donna was a spectacular mom to Felicity, but I also understand they are opposites which probably drove Felicity crazy as she grew up. And of course, there’s always Noah Kuttler to set the parenting bar real low. Let us not reflect too heavily on Robert and Moira Queen either. Sure, they made the ultimate sacrifice to keep their children safe, but they were pretty much disaster zones of parents right up until their final moments on this earth.

Felicity always wanted to be a mother. There has been some debate on this topic over the years and “Living Proof” essentially ended it. Yes, she wanted children when she imagined what her life would be someday. Maybe she didn’t know how or with whom that dream would come to fruition, but motherhood is something Felicity wanted. This is great because… spoiler alert she’s pregnant!

It’s perfectly acceptable if Felicity didn’t want children, but I’m glad Arrow didn’t go down the “I changed my mind” trope we so often see on television. Like there’s something inherently wrong with not wanting children and thus the character’s mind must be changed. Nope. There isn’t anything wrong with it. It’s a perfectly valid lifestyle choice.

Of course, there are some who change their minds and that’s valid as well, but storytelling can fall into some uncomfortable tropes and the “change the woman’s mind about becoming a mother” is one I’ve watched too much. I’m also fed up with the “kill the lover/husband but the woman gets to have his baby” trope too in case you’re wondering.

Being a mother, however, was not something forced upon Felicity because Oliver wanted it or something she warmed to because of her relationship with William. It was a quiet dream she kept to herself. A dream William and Mia fulfilled.

Of course, Felicity is an amazing mother. The sky is also blue. This conversation with Alena is just one of the million ways the writers showcase Felicity’s A+ level mom skills. Yes, being a vigilante makes Felicity whole. It’s her calling, 

Source:  ebett 

BUT kidnappings and attacks by serial killers is a serious downside to this career choice. That’s just facts.

Source:  ebett

They say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If Felicity truly wants to keep her children safe, then perhaps she and Oliver need to change their nightly activities. At least for a little while. Our happiness doesn’t have to come all at once. The life we build can be put together in pieces, bit by bit, until we’ve found a way to incorporate all the things that make us happy while balancing the consequences (good and bad) of those decisions.

Oliver and Felicity love Star City, but they love their children more. Are they willing to walk away from everything they’ve built to keep their children safe? Is that even a question? Of course. They are parents.

Source:  ebett

William Clayton

The messiest part of this whole flash forward storyline is William. 

The writers wanted to keep Mia’s identity a secret which is difficult if everyone knows who she is. This gets dicey when it comes to her brother. Personally, I don’t think William and Mia being kept apart for 20 years was necessary. Sure, it was a great “OMG I KNEW IT” moment and it will be interesting to watch the two of them develop a relationship IF we get a spin off.

Source: arrowdaily

However, it doesn’t change the fact that this storyline is a dumpster fire. William continues to bitch about Oliver and Felicity abandoning him in the flash forwards. YOU WANTED TO LIVE WITH YOUR GRANDPARENTS WILLIAM. OLIVER AND FELICITY BEGGED YOU TO STAY BUT YOU LEFT FOR A NORMAL LIFE. Can we at least remember history correctly? Own your choices kid.

But we haven’t circled back to Oliver and the voicemails. Oliver just decides it’s perfectly normal his son isn’t returning ANY of his calls? He never goes to see William in Central City? REALLY?

And then of course there’s Felicity in the cabin for 20 years. I understand why she didn’t live in Star City and remained hidden. Maybe she thought William had a better set up living with the grandparents. He also apparently changed his name... sooo I guess he’s safer with them or something? 

Bottom line - Felicity is his mother. It’s difficult to process a situation where Felicity would not bring William home to her at some point.

This is where I understand William’s anger. Yes, Felicity believed she was keeping William safe, but the logic doesn’t really track. If Mia is safe living with Felicity, then so is William.  Keeping Felicity and Mia separated from William for 20 years just so the Olicity baby reveal is more shocking to the casual viewer and attempts to keep us fandom super sleuths on our toes for five minutes longer isn’t worth the collateral damage.

Dinah and Roy

Sweet mother of Moses where the hell do I even start? Dinah finds out the SCPD knows Roy murdered those two guards and she immediately starts bitching about her job.

Dinah: She lied about us being behind the Ninth Circle attacks, but she was telling the truth about us covering up those murders. We never should have done that.

Of course, Roy feels terrible his uncontrollable Lazarus Pit rage which resulted in the death of two innocent people and he will live with the guilt the rest of his life. But he ALSO cost Dinah her job and that is most important.

Dinah: He’s right. I’m sorry but the SCPD has already tried to arrest Felicity.  Its better one of us takes the fall than the rest of us spending our lives as fugitives.

It’s not surprising Dinah and Rene are willing to feed Roy to the sharks to save their own asses. 

We have alllll of Season 6 as evidence that this is exactly the kind of people they are, but unfortunately this DRIVES ROY TO SUICIDE. He volunteers to shut off some poisonous gas and the chances of his survival are next to zero.

And what do we get? Dinah crying. PICK A LANE BITCH. You don’t get to guilt Roy into sacrificing himself and then cry over his corpse. You had zero problems sending him up the river for a nice long stint at Slabside if it secured your 401K. But now she’s oh so sad because her new bestie is flinging himself into toxic waste fumes? I CANNOT WITH THIS WOMAN.

Roy survives because he’s the Parkour Prince and Dinah offers some mea culpa about how the world is a better place with a hero like Roy in it. NO SHIT! WE’VE BEEN THERE FOR THE LAST SEVEN YEARS DINAH. Hey everybody! Roy gets to stick around because Dinah said it was okay! 

I have whiplash.

Dinah: I was wrong. We all make mistakes.

Yeah, but you continually make the same mistake Dinah. It’s called disloyalty. What the team should have done is doctor the video, so it looked like Dinah killed the guards and handed it to Bingsley with a big red bow.

Stray Thoughts

Oliver had a building on top of him. Roy had cardboard. It's not always fun being the lead.

I really needed the show to be Tommy backseat hero-ing Oliver for the last six years.

Doesn’t Angel Tommy sound a lot like Felicity? It’s an absolute tragedy Tommy and Felicity never had any scenes together. I will forever blame L&urel for the joy she stole from me.

"I don't know how you ever breathe on this job."

"I don't." I love Felicity Smoak.

It makes me sad seeing Felicity’s genius corrupted like this.

ALENA WAS THE MAD SCIENTIST THUS CONFIRMING MY SUSPICIONS THAT SHE IS THE WORST.

Mia defending Felicity is a big mood.

I love you Roy. You are Olicity's first born son, but this is a lot your fault. So, I accept the guilty face. Next time tell Oliver you have homicidal blood lust tenancies before going out into the field. Okay cookie? Uh huh. Thanks.

Don't think about how we missed out on Tommy Merlyn for the last six years and put up with L*urel L*nce nonsense season after season instead. It'll never be okay.

It was weird Olicity didn’t hugh when they reunited. Made the scene awkward. I loved how Oliver almost slipped up and said “baby” though. Source:  olicitygifs

Completely unacceptable we only had one Olicity scene for Emily’s second to last episode.

Disclaimer: Any gifs on the blog are not mine. If you would like a gif removed from my reviews, please message me. 7x21 gifs credited.

If you’d like to support the blog, please buy me a cup of tea!

#arrow #arrow spoilers #arrow 7x21 #arrow reviews #oliver queen #tommy merlyn #felicity smoak #anti dinah drake #roy harper #william clayton #arrow season 7 #arrow season 7 reviews #season 7 episode review #season 7 episode reviews

[imagine-a-killingharmony]

V3 Boys + Cat Cafe

The V3 boys going to a cat Cafe with S/o!

Hi this is incredibly blessed??? I’m so happy I started an imagines blog because I get hit with such happy inspiration like this, this is completely adorable I can’t even lie.

I have two kitties!!! kitties are greaaaat!!! I’m sorry dog ppl fight me (please don’t I’m joking and my bones are like twigs,,,)

-Mod Shuichi

Kiibo

When you had been wanting to show Kiibo what an: “Cat Cafe” he was horrified, how could they serve kittens as food at certain cafes?

When he went inside, then he saw the small little kittens all in different colored varieties staring back at him he held back a robotic scream, especially when you were brought out into another room with even more cats waiting inside, you had immediately begun to coo the cats towards you.

He sat silently by himself, how did such a system work? Perhaps he’s just overreacting? He must be, a few cats stroll over towards him and purr as they rub themselves across his leg! Ah, they must be asking for affection yes?

He strokes the kitten’s head, their fur is soft... quite soft, they let out another mewl of appreciation that just tugs at his heartstrings.

“... S/O...? Can... Can we adopt a cat? Or come here more often, forgive me for the sudden request...” He picks the cat up, as carefully as he can. “... I... I-I think I’ve fallen in love... waaah....”

As soon as you leave, the two of you immediately go to buy a kitten despite how much: “responsibility” you keep telling him it will be.

Only reason you allow it? Kiibo let you name the lil’ guy “Ki-boo”, he can’t even bring Ki-boo to the professor’s lab, so you just got yourself a cat for your boyfriend to pet whenever he comes over.

This isn’t fair trade!

It really isn’t.

But... Kiibo’s happy? Yeah, no this still isn’t fair.

Shuichi Saihara

You had brought him towards the Cat Cafe since he was getting bags under his eyes again, he told you he was fine, but you kept telling him this was a one-time thing that you were just trying it out!

So he agreed reluncantly, when you had gone inside the establishment Shuichi took a clear look around the place rather surprised, the only sound being the quiet purring of kittens from afar.

When you finally sat down, not much cats actually came to him, you noted this.

You had a plan, the perfect diabolical one that could stop this problem within seconds, why faster than that.

Any cats that came to you? Just silently pushed towards Shuichi, he noticed, then even then he didn’t know what to do about the cats that were moving in towards him...

Does... he pet them? Yeah that’s right he’s supposed to pet them, but he’s worried he might press a little too hard against the cat’s delicate form, so... he strokes the kitten who leans in for the affection.

... So... So... cuuuute...

You see Shuichi flinch blushing the hardest he ever has as... he hesitatingly strokes them again, even meeker than the first time he stroked the cat.

Shuichi smiles go himself as he continues to give all the adoration he can to the cat who walked his way. “Um... I-I’m Shuichi... hey there.”

You’ve never felt happier for his sake.

Ryoma Hoshi

This? This is his hometown, his utopia, his paradise, if he had his own personal heaven? It’d be a Cat Cafe filled with Russian Blues, how could you possibly not come with him to a Cat Cafe when it always made him so happy?

Ryoma had asked you to come alongside him to some place that he frequents, considering you’d never saw the place, ever since you walked inside he laughed and smiled, even if they seemed like small little actions to other people...

It meant the world to you.

Well you think he’s happy, especially with the tiny reserved smile on his face as the cats pool towards him, trying to give enough love to any cat that walks by.

Why are they all going towards him? Is he some Cat God, c’mon save some for the rest of us!

“It’s alright... m’ not gunna’ hurt ya’, just continue to be carefree right’...? Do whatever, be free.”

“... Hey. S/O do ya’ want in on some of the affection? C’mere, all of em’ don’t scratch.

You take out your phone, rushing towards the scene, he blinks at you at first slightly boggled about what your about to do.

What he doesn’t realize is how precious the sight of Ryoma Hoshi smiling within a puddle of cats who are nuzzling up against him for love, the affection he is giving him truly is.

This? This is your wallpaper now, you aren’t ever going to change it ever.

Kaito Momota

“Woah? There’s a cafe where cats are just... lying around in the open? Well color me surprised! I had no clue!”

“Yes. Yes Kaito, we are literally sitting inside that cafe.” You motion towards the kitten sitting on the top of his lap. “How did you not notice until now?”

You had invited Kaito to come with you to a drive to a “Cat Cafe”, he said yes so you assumed he knew what it was, why he hadn’t even said a thing about the cafe being directed towards cats walking around until he laughed about how the owner liked keeping their pets around.

It took him a minute to put two and two together with a loud, “ooooooh” as he stared about at all the cat’s lying around.

You had to explain what a Cat Cafe was to him, the process was undeniably longer than you had hoped, but he understood.

And since he understood? He started to ruffle any cat who came nearby him, giving them little nicknames based off how they looked.

He picks up a white cat who purrs not even bothering to fight back. “This is Milkyway.”

He points in the distance to a black cat hissing at the two of you. “That’s Meteor!”

“Kaito you know we might not even come back here again right? How much cats have you just named?”

“... Twenty! N’ m’ looking forward to namin’ ten more-! That’s shooting star!” Huh, your pretty sure these little guys already have names, but this is fine. Kaito’s happy, who does it hurt?

Rantaro Amami

Rantaro Amami knows a lot of things.

He’s seen through a lot of things.

But most importantly he’s willing to try out a lot of things!

He’s never been to a Cat Cafe, he’s extremely foreign to the concept of it but he’s willing to try it out when you ask if you want to join him.

Rantaro’s more of a dog-person but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like cats, so when you went inside he was just adoring all of the felines with a serene expression...

Other than that? He doesn’t really have a reaction, just letting out some comments about how this place is just “so adorable”.

“Wow S/O isn’t this just purr-fect?” He end it off with a little chuckle, pushing back down into his seat satisfied with his own joke. “Mhm, I’m feline just fine.”

“Rantaro don’t you start doing puns on me. I trusted you.”

“What? I’m just telling you how meow-velous I feel about the fact you brought me here with you.” Rantaro gives you that charming smile, yet you can’t help but to groan as you sink down towards the floor.

Gonta Gokuhara

“Gonta thinks insects are better!”

“I know Gonta.”

“Do you think there might be a cafe with insects inside of it instead of other animal? Gonta sure hopes so!”

You cringe at the very thought of that continuing to lead him towards the Cat Cafe, he of course had no regrets in following you towards a place such as this!

Gonta’s a dog-person, he WAS raised by wolves but cat friends are friends too they are kind friends do you not startle them!

During the stay at the cafe somehow all the cats are hoarding Gonta to themselves, purring joyously as they muzzle against your boyfriend... Gonta looks excited too.

“Oh? What’s that? You don’t want Gonta to leave? It’s okay! Gonta won’t leave anytime soon, it’s a gentlemen’s oath!”

Those cats are stealing your man from you.

You crawl forward before nuzzling up against him earning a confused: “hm” from Gonta, you need your attention too! You aren’t going to lose some cats!

“What are you doing S/O? You aren’t making enough space for other kitten-friends...” ... You lost to some cats, this is the Ultimate Betrayal....

Kokichi Ouma

Kokichi? He heartily agreed with going to you towards the Cat Cafe without so much as a fuss, it was suspicious to you, very very suspicious but you kept to yourself.

Especially with that stupid smirk wide across his features, it was just begging to get some questions out of you.

Yet you held off.

At the start? It didn’t seem so bad, Kokichi was just telling the cats to come near him, with little hand gestures. Promising he didn’t mean any bad by it!

But the cats mostly hissed at him, he pouted to himself, the only way he could get any contact was to go towards the cats that had surrounded you.

His movements were quite precise when he got a cat in his hold, he touched them slightly roughly but other than that he did nothing!

That is until it was nearing the time you finally left the establishment, he took out a black garbage bag.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to cat-nap every feline I see so I can adopt them all into my evil organization? Isn’t that obvious S/O?” He places the cat in his hands into the garbage bag before running towards more of his prey, cackling!

“KOKICHI NO!!!”

Korekiyo Shinguuji

Humanity is magnificent for coming up with such genius ideas such as this aren’t they?

Korekiyo’s already done research on what a cat cafe is of course he has he knows everything and anything, but he’s never gone inside of one so this would be a new expierence for him.

It wasn’t as if he was entranced by simple creatures either, of course he knew folklores upon such creatures, as the bakeneko and nekomata which are stories for another day.

His reaction at first was nothing but silence as he followed along by your side, he looked at some of the cats, observed, that’s all.

“... Korekiiiiiyo.” You held up a black beauty of a feline infront of your boyfriend. “C’mon pet it, it’s begging for attentiiiiiooon?”

“Oh yes, this reminds of of a myth I heard, did you know that it’s myth that black cats are a sign of bad luck? Of course it’s only myth.” He strokes the kitten lightly at the top of it’s head

“Less talking more petting! This kitty’s so touched-starved see?”

“Then why don’t you pet it?”

“... Cuz’ you gotta’, just gotta man.” He continued to strike the feline you gave him a genuine smile, this was a happy moment shared between the both of you, a new one at that.

There was so much more to come after this, of course.

#mod shuichi #mod shumai #ndrv3 imagines #ndrv3 x reader #kiibo #shuichi saihara #kaito momota #kokichi ouma #rantaro amami #ryoma hoshi #gonta gokuhara #korekiyo shinguuji

[relatablyreid]

Important Notice - SR & LA

This should have been said such a long time ago, Spencer had felt incredibly stupid at this point. Even if it possibly was something so clear, that you could visibly catch onto. It was proper to warn your partner of these issues before you delve into a passionate relationship, and last for more than three months, right? You try to get the bad out of the way, so there isn’t much to scare him away at a later date? Now was sadly the later date, and Spencer had never regretted his cowardly decision to misinform Luke of his stimulation issues and sensory issues.

“Spence? Querida mia, eh, dónde estás? ¡Necesito que te dé mi sorpresa! No puedo dar un regalo sin mi querida cerca.” Luke rang, placing his bag beside the doorway and slipping both shoes off near the front door as well but to the left. Where all the other shoes were. Only Luke had much diversity in shoe choice, and that was clear to see beside the door. A pair of black and white splattered pool slides, a pair of nice faux fur covered slide on boat shoes, two different pairs of running sneakers with one more tattered than the other and then a pair of proper attire fitting sneakers for work. Then, sat Spencer’s two pairs of shoes he adored. His converse, and his nice work shoes with their brown twine laces and white stich thread leather. Besides that, there were no other pairs of shoes that showed further residents to the Reid and Alvez home.

“Spence! I’m not kidding, quierdo, I want to see your handsome face, it’s been a long day. Where are you?” Luke continued on, hoping that if Spencer had fallen asleep that he’d have been awoken by the calling. By now, Spencer likely would have woken up so Luke had no other real option than to assume he was in danger or in harm. “Spence!?” Luke shouted, walking through the kitchen and into the hallway to the right exit of the little kitchen. There was no way he had left, without the car or a note. Strict rule that the two had made considering the jobs they worked was that if anyone left the home without being able to text or verbally inform the other of it that they were to leave one another a note. Where, when, and when they’d return and a proper signiture on the front with a tiny star on the back. The tiny star was what let them know it was the real deal, only they knew about that little code detail. Instead of screaming for Spencer once more, he silenced himself and froze. Maybe he’d hear shuffling or crying, to find where he would be in the home. Hoping he was in the home, so to speak. There it was, and Luke thankfully traced the whimpering to the bedroom they shared. Much like that of a freshly scolded child, the whimpering was persistent and seemed to match pace to the male’s rocking.

“Spence, hey, are you okay?” Luke asked, and he bent down besides Spencer. There had to be a trigger, but nothing was in the room. The window was open, the candle was burning as it seemed to have been for a while and the cell phone that belonged to him was laying on the bed with the screen on and bright, too. This didn’t seem like a regular panic attack due to the way Reid had been balled up this time, or the rocking.

Spencer shook his head as much as he could manage from right to left as if to try to say no, and he gripped his nails as hard as he could into the back of his calves that held close to his chest. He had his knees directly to his chest, and he was so tense and tight that it visually was painful to even see. The head tucked in as much as it was physically able to hide, without the neck snapping and dislodging the head from the spine and shoulders it was bound to. His rocking was fast, and his balls of his feet were doing all the pushing and he seemed so stiff with these motions.

“Spence, can you let go of your legs, please? You’re hurting yourself, Spencer.” Luke kindly asked, whispering. This was now piecing together like something he’d seen before. Much earlier, as in his beginning of his college days was when he saw something similar to this. Yes, Mr. Luke Alvez had a brief passion for daycare and babysitting. He had always went to this one house at the end of the block towards the start of the next one onto the main street of his little town which he resided in. The boy was a maniac for music, he even walked and talked to a tempo consistently kept with his fingers, and he lived by it. Self titled, a two one one tempo. He’d tap his fingers twice, then once and then one more time. He stepped twice and then once and then once but if he was going fast enough it seemed so normal. To mimick it was so near impossible due to the natural tempo you set yourself to. This boy one afternoon had all his toys scattered and unorganized, thrown around the room as if they were worthless. Besides that unusual mess, the boy was beating at himself in his tempo pattern. There was constuction going on outside of the house, and music playing inside of the house. After a panicked call to the mother, he’d been told to shut all windows and turn off all music. ‘Try to make it as quiet as you can so he can breathe easy again. He’s overstimulated.’ As instructed, he even turned the lights down low. Slowly, the boys breathing evened and he stopped hurting himself. Luke waited for a little to give him an ice pack or two in hopes to avoid setting him off, again. It was something he figured he’d have to copy the process to and apply to Spencer but more specific and gentle to his situation. Maybe he wasn’t so stupid and blank in the brain after all.

“Querido, please, you can loosen your hands.” Luke whispered, getting up and blowing the candle out and fanning away the smoke. Then, slowly and smoothly shut the window to prevent the outdoor commotion of the rainy streets and cars from interrupting the genius mind that Spencer had from calming down, and on that same note, he put their phones both on silent so no one from the outside world would be able to stop the soothing process that was leading Spencer back to stability. After closing off all sources of noise he could, he sat back beside Spencer but left plenty of room so he could feel like he would be able to breathe. “There’s plenty of air around you, you are okay, Spencer.” Luke tried to further verbally encourage some sort of calm because he didn’t like seeing Spencer in pain, or in fear. It was a pair of emotions that he didn’t think Spencer had deserved to suffer with any longer, really. The boy had seen and been through so much, he figured that all he really did earn at this point was a warm and comfortable home to come back to at the end of a stressful day and some nice loving arms or a sweet and protective chest to lay beside and curl into when the world was making him tense. A pair of gentle hands looking to massage out all the kinks in his back, and to smooth out all the stressors sitting on his brain. That was what Luke wanted to give Spencer properly so, because the turmoil he’d already slid through was so excessive and he truly had better things in store with Luke by his side.

Spencer’s bony hands shook with such a strong tremble, but only were lifted in order for him to bring his hands together for a moment or two to make a heart out of them, and then press a finger to his lip. It was an; ‘I love you and your words, but please not now.’ Not in a rude way at all, it was just a lot for him to think about and it put more pressure on his threatening to pop brain. Luke signalled back his affection, and with the same little heart. Sitting there, he waited patiently as Spencer rocked out and squeezed out each and every little ounce of overwhelming feeling he’d processed, and he eventually fell somewhat limp. Looked much like someone who’d performed an soulfully draining surgery, and needed to sleep. He loosened his tight fingers off of his calves and he let his khaki covered legs leave the console of his chest, and loosen to lay flat on the wooden floor, plopping so. His hands and arms lay loose, still across his chest and his head leaned back, hanging at the seams basically. It was a pose of pure exhaustion, and that was how Spencer felt. Tears that had fallen had now left brief stains of previous existence on his face, his pants with ripples and bents in them where they’d been pulled up, and his fingers so red and sore looking from the consistent pressure he had them forcing on his calves. Speaking of his calves themselves, they were all pale except the ten spots where Spencer dug his nails into them. Each fingernail left a prominent mark, and about four of them were bleeding. With the rocking, it moved the nails so slightly with each shift and that scraped some of the skin with it and it bled, quite literally tearing the skin apart. His breathing had taken the time to slow and regulate, and Luke decided it was go time.

Now was the clean up crew, or well— really just Luke’s time to shine. Shine with all his love and compassion he had for his boyfriend and to demonstrate with caring for him. Standing up and taking his time doing so, he made his way into the bathroom linked to their room and reached for the drawer under the sink. The sink was hooked to a series of drawers and the plumbing system had gone through the wall behind the drawers, and the mirror covered the entire gap between the two. The first aid kit, barely touched was taken from the drawer with the bottle of peroxide and sterile gauze, prepackaged and separately packaged. New gauze for each use, nice and clean. Luke was highly considerate to Spencer’s germaphobia, and always tried to make things comfortable for the man he loved. “I’m going to try to be slow, so I don’t do anything that will be offputting.” Luke said softly, nearing a soft tone of talking but it was still a whisper. Easy to say, Luke was really awful at whispering but right now, he sure as hell was going to try his hardest. Silently his hands moved, taking the plastic wrapping around the gauze off and dousing the tabs of it in peroxide, pressing them into the four wounds. It was hard to stay calm when he was still worried internally for Spencer. He wanted to know what set him off, if it was something specific or not. He pulled out a large bandage, and he placed it over two of the cuts that were closer together, then a second large bandage over the other two wounds to protect them for a day or two until they would need to be uncovered. He then slid Spencer’s pant leg down, as with the other one. The poor man in front of him was exhausted. Drained like a case had never done to him, he looked like all his energy had been sucked out of him like air from a balloon. Lids to his beautiful eyes were shut, but he was awake. It seemed hard for him to currently put forth much energy into regaining his control or organization, and he didn’t seem like he was planning on moving much for the rest of the evening. His loose hands, once squeezed tightly around his calves to push out the pressure of his brain were now laying palm up and relaxed, none of the tendons in his hand currently tense. His fingertips had been red and furious, moments ago and now were soothed by the time given to calm down. Nails of his finger tips were clean for the most part minus the four with glimpses of blood, which would have to be scrubbed off at a later date. Hair disheveled, and a loose strand brought over his right eye and laid over his lip a bit too. Finally at peace, but at such a high cost that it didn’t seem too worth it for Luke. It lit a little bulb in Luke’s head, so he could comfort Spencer in a simple and non-problematic way.

“Hey, querido. Open your eyes for a moment, okay? I’d like to show you something, alright?” Luke asked, making sure Spencer was awake and would be okay with this. He didn’t want to spring something massive and intense on his partner, because he’d just released all these massive and intense feelings. It wouldn’t make sense to clean him up and then break him down. Unintentionally or not, it would be rude.

A small nod from his boyfriend would do plenty for him, and to see his eyes helped add to the assurance of his plan. Although the beautiful eyes of his partner were seemingly empty, and lacking much energy as the rest of him was, it soothed Luke to see them. The emotion— lack thereof in Spencer’s eyes instilled a minor fear in him, and he hoped he wasn’t annoying him inadvertently so. Still, Luke got up to retrieve the gift he’d purchased for Spencer. It was a small stuffed animal, a tiny little sea otter. No bigger than the size of a regular roll of black electrical tape. Something minor for Spencer to hold onto, or pet as need be and comfort himself with if Luke were not around in case of occasional sadness, or a possible meltdown. Maybe even if he needed to have something to fidget with, to internally soothe him beneath his surface. It didn’t have to have a specific singular purpose, Luke just bought it for Spencer because he loved it, and he loves Spencer and decided to combine both. Making his way back and beside his boyfriend of whom he loves so much, he tapped Spencer’s hand to get him to open it. He does, and Luke places the small stuffed animal there for Spencer to observe.

The eyes once not filled with any other emotion besides exhausted were not lightly brimmed with gratitude and appreciation, for Luke. The action may have been small, and seemed awfully childish but it filled Spencer’s heart to know he was cared for, and thought about through Luke’s day. It set a tone that reminded him just how considerate and compassionate his boyfriend Luke was, and it cracked a smile on his once plain countenance. Laying his right leg down against the floor, he’d placed the tiny otter on his thigh, and he put his hands together again to make the heart for Luke.

“I love you, really. I mean it. Thick and thin as blood will run, I’ll be here as well.” Luke promised, picking one of Spencer’s hands to give a gentle kiss to. They had a code. Kissing the back of one another’s hands gently was a signal of everything being okay. Right now, it was.

#luke alvez #spencer reid #ralvez #my writing #i wrote this because it shows a meltdown for spencer #it also shows how luke would likely handle it #it shows a compassion between two people that made me smile a lot #i hope you enjoy :)

[chaotic-writes]

Loss of sight Ft. Elliot/Korin

Loss of Sight. Ft. Elliot/Korin Prompt: Loss of sight Character(s): Elliot/Korin Universe/Fandom: Original Characters

Elliot was sitting in the woods a ways outside Hein and his home. He finally had time to go out, and sit without being bothered by the company. The company being Carina and the people she sent to find he and Hein. Elliot was tired of the random feats of suddenly being found by the Company run by her family. Though he was almost certain that her father had no idea what she was doing to those poor children. He and Hein had rescued so many, way too many. It was impossible to say how many children they had saved.

Elliot sat against a tree for some more time. The slow winds ruffling his hair and clothes. It could not possibly get more relaxing. The slightly chilled winds on a slightly warm day had caused him to grow drowsy, though it was not the kind of drowsy that would put someone to sleep. The leaves were green, the time not being of winter but of spring. Some of the leaves from the trees would fall on occasion, sometimes brushing past his legs or landing in his hair.

The boy watched the swaying leaves, a lizard scurrying up the other, slightly thinner tree next to him. Such a bright green on color the creature watched him, and climbed up again. Elliot watched before the creature went out of sight, it seemed that the birds were silent in this moment as well. The only thing you could hear was the slight sway of the winds. It was almost enough to rock him to sleep.

He moved his head to another sound, walking, footsteps. Someone else was here. It was easy to tell from the lack of other sounds that were around just a moment ago. There was a clear difference in step from the normal animals around here. It was clear that whatever it was had two legs, from the apparent sound of stomping, animals around here glided across the ground with each step, almost making no sound.

Something tall and dark caught his eye. It was obviously a person trying to be sneaky. Stomping around would not hide your steps, let alone the scent of strong cologne from miles away. Even if he did not have the adept smelling he would be able to tell the smells of a man coming this way. He noticed who it was before he could even see the person, Korin. The male had bothered him in the past, something about hurting his “people” though Elliot had no idea who his people were.  It could be those people in the forest that he collected. Societies rejects. Other shifters that went into hiding or just shifters that did not want anything to do with the normal humans, or others that wanted to stay in animal form.

Elliot was like that in the past, he wanted to leave his family and stay a wolf, in the forest he was in now. His black pelt and long legs running in the winds that ravished this area. But then he met Hein, the person that he’d come to love and now lived with, in the very forest he wanted to stay in before. And, he even got away from the parents he so dearly wanted to run from.

When the other finally showed his face, Elliot stood up. “Korin what are you doing here?” He said, narrowing his eyes that flashed red.

The other male stared at him with blue eyes, seemingly ready to start some sort of fight because of who knows what. “One of my people’s gone missing. A younger male. Your scent was found on the area, do you know what’s happened there?” Korin had said to him. Though Elliot was not known for visiting the place Korin’s “pack” had been located for the past few years, he knew his smell would drift that way from the wind that was constantly blowing, it was bound to happen, they shared the same forest.

Elliot was confused, however at one of his people going missing. Elliot and Hein had not contacted the others in the area for quite some time, he had to wonder how long the person had actually been missing for. There was no shortage of hunters and other predators in the area, so it was almost common for members to die or go missing in the past. Though Korin might not have come to argue with him if they’d found the body.

His eyes would not be red anymore, turning back to the normal shade of brown. He was only asking a question, there was no need for him to be ready for an attack quite yet, even if the other’s eyes were clearly blue and ready to shift rather than the normal color of hazel.

“One of your people went missing? Which one was it? I’ve not seen one of them in the area in a long time, not near where I’m at, at least.” He said. Elliot just had to hope that it was not one of the younger ones. There were so many cases of young children going missing lately and Elliot was not sure how much more he could take before he took Hein with him to storm the underground lab again.

That place was like a labyrinth. Full of mazes and other rooms that you could never find your way out of. A place that of a hellhole for a young child of the age of five. That was the most common age to go missing as of late. Easy prey to take since they don’t know any better then to follow a stranger because of ‘something cool’ or ‘interesting’. Elliot hated it. He hated how much this town would not do to keep its people safe, how little security was here, even if it was the best kind of place for the shifters to reside.

Last time he was there, there was a room littered from ground to ceiling with cages. All about the size of a dog kennel, not very large. Imagine putting young children in those cages. The whines and cries of the children wanting their mothers, or even their pets. It was a nightmare he often remembered. Children bleeding out, dying, slowly, steadily. Animal bodies with human brains, human bodies with animal brains. That of a lab made for combining the DNA of both things, to make one. New shifters.

The ones they called the “new generation”.

He met Hein in a place like that when he was young for the first time. He could not remember who was the one that put him in a place like that. Though the white hair of the other had always made him wonder what kind of life he had to hold.

Tables full of supplies like needles, syringes, many, many knives.

He could only wonder what it would be like for a child. Being forced to go through that kind of thing.

“One of the younger kids, her name was Opal or something like that. They don’t really have good naming skills. Easy to forget.” Korin mentioned.

Elliot sighed. So it was like he feared. “How old was she? She might have just wandered off, some of them don’t watch their children like they should.” As seen from what kind of parents he usually saw there, Elliot wanted to add on. Though he did not want to mess with the other’s emotions.

Elliot hoped to all the stars above that Opal was not younger then the age of ten. He did not need to see that again. The pains and agony of someone he could not save. Stomach and throat torn open like some kind of animal had gotten to it, eyes full of pain and shrieks of pain, shrieks of the children that had to watch. He almost wondered if the many scientists of the place had gotten her, but they did not know this location, at least for now.

Korin looked almost offended. “I have fixed that issue since then and you know it!” He paused. “She’s six.”

Elliot nodded, it had been a long time since he contacted them, but he could not be so sure about that. Their species was even known for not being able to have children at all. He had to wonder how they even got a younger person in the first place, especially someone as young as Opal. Their pack had to of broken a part of the code to get her there, unless they somehow found a bout in fertility. Elliot knew for certain that the entire species was infertile, and new ones had to be made with horrible ways. By the scientists.

He had to be lying, there was no proof. But why would Korin have come out here to bother him about a missing person if there was not one? Something was missing. That kid had to be human, and they would have to have stolen her from her parents for it to be plausible. Which was against the code the species had for themselves. They were already dying off, like an extinct species never to come back because of humans hunting them, except it was the other way around. The other animals would hunt them down, and the people would hunt them down. Plus the infertility, which meant none of them could have families on their own without going through immoral means.

“I’m not sure I can believe that, Korin.” He said, and then the shifter turned, the person’s body crunching painfully to make a new shape. Korin had to be used to the pain by now, shifting was one of the most painful things to go through, reworking the bone system entirely to make something new. Now, he could not turn human again for a good two hours. It was like that. Some sort of limit kept them from switching back and forth at will, if you shifted from human to animal, you were stuck like that for two hours, regardless of what animal you were. The most painful had to be birds and lizards. Literally nothing of your normal body could be kept, the egg bearing creatures could still lay eggs, but they could never be fertilized.

Elliot’s eyes flashed red again, though he was not ready to shift, to be stuck in the form of a black wolf with red eyes for a full two hours, he could still commune with Hein and the rest of the species like that, but none of the people that he might run into while he were like that, if he went to find the child in question, that he was absolutely sure did not exist.

“Korin hold on man. You know I can’t look for that kid, and you also know you broke the rules to aquire something like that. There was a case of a missing kid of six just recently, her parents found her.” He said backing up. That much was true now that he remembered. Though Opal had to be a fake name they thought for the kid. Hein was one that told him of the missing cases of the area, it was not uncommon.

He ended up backing himself into a tree. He either had to fight back or face the consequences of backing himself into a corner. Granted, the male could not have predicted something like that. Never something of the sort, the place where Korin’s people lived was miles off. There was no way the kid would make it out here.

Elliot had it, he would shift. There was sounds of bones breaking and going back into place, entire bones moving to be placed in differing areas, so many changes to the skull and mouth that it was almost enthralling for someone like a scientist to watch, but he was not shifting to be watched.

His black fur shone in the sunlight, and Korin came after him.

Elliot had regretted it almost instantly. Stuck like this for two hours, after this, he’d be stuck like this for an entire two hours. He’d be stuck not knowing what from what, and who from who, unless he were linked to that person. Unless he were with Hein.

Elliot went for the neck, first, the hardest place to hit, but the place that would do the most damage. The other got at his leg before he could do it and toppled the two of them over, Korin over Elliot. He growled, Elliot would not be having this. Before Korin could make another move, he bit the throat of the other and pushed him off. It was not difficult to do it, the two of them almost being the same weight, equally as skinny.

Blood hit is tongue, such a taste like iron.

He loved it.

Elliot let go when he felt the other struggling. He did not want to kill anyone this day. His leg was on fire, only achieving to up the adrenaline. He would have cackled if he were capable of it.

Korin came after him again, this time gripping the side of his face, the right side. Elliot tore his face away blinding himself. That could be taken care of later. He angrily, and rather quickly grabbed at the other to make a snapping noise, something broke.

The other wolf toppled under him as he let go. “Damnit Elliot. You got me again.” He grumbled, struggling to stand.

Elliot watched him, blood streaming down his face, one eye currently not cooperating. He needed to get that fixed, he knew Hein would help him. Elliot was not looking forward to the worry that would hit his face when he was left to pick up the pieces of this fight. Elliot growled. “Get out of here.” Before turning to leave the other behind, and let him walk on the leg that would not work for some time.

#badthingshappenbingo #original character #original universe #+2000 words

[starfleetdoesntfirefirst]

Philippa Georgiou headcanons, Part 1: A few different backstory headcanons

In the year and a half since I fell in love with this character, I've developed a bunch of headcanons about Georgiou, most of which I've only used in my writing or gabbed about to people. So, I thought I might as well toss them onto my blog, too. :)

So far, each of the fics I've written/am writing has a slightly different take on Georgiou's backstory, and then I have a few common elements to all of them (e.g. that she started as security track), which I'm putting in a separate post since this one got already got long enough for me to put in a cut. :D

Please talk to me about any of these at ANY time, I would love to gab more about them or answer asks or swap headcanons or anything else! :D

Backstory Headcanon #0.5

Ironically, the first time I wrote a fic about Philippa Georgiou--which I wrote after the “Starfleet doesn't fire first” trailer aired, several months before the show began--I initially started thinking of potential tragic backstories that could have led to Georgiou having strong feelings about Starfleet principles, and then thought to myself, “You know what, self? A fictional character having strong convictions because of a tragic backstory is a really obvious and common way to go. Why don't you experiment with writing a story that shows how a character could develop strong convictions about Starfleet without a tragic backstory? That would be interesting.” 

And I did that, and I'm glad I did that because it was interesting and fun, but...it is, of course, also ironic, since one of the few things we now know about canon Georgiou is that she does have a tragic backstory. (And, of course, that “I was a human who had seen a life of loss but still chose hope” is foundational to what I love about the actual character we finally got to meet; I'm not complaining about the canon there at all.)

(Like some other fans, I do think it'd be interesting if not every Starfleet officer had a tragic backstory...but that's not Georgiou; she does have a tragic backstory that she made her way through to become the person that she is, and I love her for it.)

Anyway, if I wrote a Georgiou backstory fic now with the same snapshots-of-a-life format as that first fic (which is here; blinking gif warning at the link), I'd come up with pivotal moments that fit the “life of loss” narrative, so, while technically that fic is still plausible (the character could, after all, have had other, additional horrible things happening to her as well as what's in the fic), it's on the back burner for me as far as headcanons go. Although there are some things included in that fic that are in the common-elements-to-all-my-Georgiou-backstories pile, like her having a cat named Captain Cat when she was a babby :D

(I just remembered that I also gave babby Janeway a teddy bear named Captain Tribble in a fic. Oops? :)

Backstory Headcanon #1

This headcanon fits pretty well with the beginning of that backstory fic, and is that Philippa has a pretty happy childhood and time at the Academy, then experiences losses and traumatic events in the service (and maybe in her personal life) as an adult.

I have an outline of a longfic set in this universe, which I will almost certainly never have time to write, where a 20something Philippa loses her entire team of colleagues in horrible ways on a mission gone wrong. (Sarek was also attached to the mission, which is how they first meet, and the two of them are the only survivors.) She then doesn't really get proper counseling because at this point there isn't enough oversight in making sure that all Starfleet counselors are able to address the kind of trauma she has experienced, and none of the counselors she works with are able to help her effectively. 

Feeling extremely isolated/grieving/angry, she ends up channeling those feelings into violence and gets involved with Section 31 or another similar, even shittier part of Starfleet (this plot point is inspired by mirror!Georgiou joining Section 31, as well as an arc where Seven of Nine is recruited to Section 31 at a vulnerable point in her life in Gina Dartt's “Just Between” series).

At the crux of an especially unethical mission, Philippa decides that this isn't what she wants to do or be, and makes the ethical choice on the mission. She subsequently helps unravel the Terrible Subset of Starfleet and throws herself back into real Starfleet and proper counseling and a renewed personal life. At the end of this fic-I-probably-won’t-have-time-to-write-but-really-wish-I-did, she bumps into Sarek again and they talk, a conversation that ultimately leads, many years later, to Sarek having the brainstorm that “hey, I know who can help my traumatized human daughter :)”

Backstory Headcanon #2

This backstory basically just exists in the world of my Chakotay x Philippa fic. In this universe, Philippa had a traumatic early life, joined Starfleet and went to the Academy because she believed in Starfleet principles and wanted to be part of the vision she had of Starfleet, had more traumatic experiences (and/or simply unfair and distressing experiences) at the Academy because of low accountability for staff/students from Starfleet families, and developed anger issues and got into a bunch of mutual fights as well. She ultimately decides to stick to the principles of what she believes Starfleet is/should be and channel her anger into making lasting changes, believing that in attempting to do so, she is going to not only fail to actually make any changes but also get kicked out by retaliating staff members. 

Instead, she actually does manage to kickstart some systemic change, and becomes known for having stopped a whole bunch of abuse and corruption, an achievement that jumpstarts her career. (Since I imagine Starfleet/the Federation as being a genuine utopia populated by genuinely decent people, 97% of Starfleet officers are THRILLED that Philippa exposed whatever problems had been festering at Starfleet Academy for the past few decades).

Backstory Headcanon #3

I'm using this one in a third fic that I am planning to finish at some point (it's a little crossover adventure ficlet where Uhura, Janeway and Georgiou meet)! At the end of the day, I think it might be my favorite of the Georgiou backstories I've come up with, so I might have it in mind when writing her characterization in other fics, too.

In this universe, Philippa didn't attend the Academy as (what we would currently think of as) a “traditional student,” instead joining Starfleet later in life. (Terminology note, because idk whether the same term is used elsewhere in the world: in the U.S., anyone starting their first year of college/university in the 17-to-20ish age range is a “traditional student,” while anyone older is a “nontraditional student.”)

Obviously, the whole tranditional-versus-nontraditional thing is something that I’d hope would be less of a division in the 23rd century; I'd like to think that by that point both civilian and Starfleet educational institutions would be much more geared toward serving and welcoming people from all phases of life, rather than mostly being geared towards 18-year-olds they way they are in the U.S. right now (especially at more prestigious institutions). (As a bit of a tangent--to its credit, imo the term “traditional student” is actually relatively good about not inherently holding some kind of value judgement. In a literal sense, it's just an acknowledgement of what kind of path has in fact been “traditional” in U.S. higher education up to the present.) 

However, what we see onscreen in Star Trek is that “Starfleet Academy” is an institution attended mostly by students who enroll in their late teens, just like modern U.S. colleges and universities (and modern U.S. naval/military academies, I assume, since that's what the whole idea of Starfleet having an Academy for its officers is based on, though I don't know as much them). 

That's what the student body looks like when we see the Academy onscreen, and most of the 23rd and 24th century officer characters who reference their education imply that they went to the Academy in that age range. So, my hewing-fairly-close-to-canon headcanon for Starfleet is that “traditional” students are still the majority, though older students are much more common than they are in our time. The upshot is that Philippa is still a little out of the ordinary for having had a longer, fuller adult life before she joins Starfleet in her thirties. 

The awesome thing about Michelle Yeoh being in her fifties is that this timeline is totally conceivable—she could enter the Academy in her early 30s, receive her first commission at 35 (three years older than Kirk at the start of his five-year mission, and only four years younger than Janeway at the beginning of Voyager), become a captain by age 45 (from Kirk, Janeway & co., we know that officers making captain after ten years in the service is possible and fifteen years is normal—and that's for kids graduating from the Academy as 22-year-olds with no life experience), and have been captain of the Shenzhou for several years before she meets Michael.

In this headcanon, when looking back over her life Philippa sees the value in her own path and is proud of it, though she's also a little wistful about not having had the “classic” Academy experience, and has faced some difficulties integrating with and relating to colleagues who had the “normal” Starfleet career trajectory. She tries to be especially welcoming and supportive to others outside the “normal” path, which is one reason she ends up being the captain who accepts Michael onto her ship when Michael joins Starfleet after attending the Vulcan Science Academy rather than Starfleet Academy.

Backstory Headcanon #4

This one is just a twist on Headcanon #3 where Philippa starts out (at any point in life) as enlisted personnel. (Give me a show with a captain protagonist who started as an enlisted servicemember, Star Trek. Give me that show, and have a flashback episode showing the Mars training base Memory Alpha says enlisted personnel train at. I WILL THROW ALL MY MONEY AT THIS, STAR TREK, PLEASE.)

So that’s my totally-not-excessively-long list of Philippa Georgiou backstory headcanons haha. Like I said, it would absolutely make my day if anyone wants to talk about these, or tell me about your own headcanons, or talk about Georgiou in any context, really :)

Just in case this is ever relevant, a note about credit...if you wanna use one of my headcanons in detail in a fanwork, I’d be thrilled, but please credit me! (I.e. I’d never expect credit for something basic like writing her as being in security track or having a bad time at the Academy, but would appreciate credit for using one of my backstory ideas as a whole, or for borrowing original details like Captain Cat). Thank you! :)

#meta #philippa georgiou #once again I had to debate whether to put this in the tag since it's just one writer's rambling ideas #but since the character tag is so quiet most days I feel like it's legit to go ahead and tag anything created in good faith #since at least a few people might like to see it #trauma cw #character death cw #georgiou