#yes im on a first name basis with all these characters.

[velvetjune]

initial photography of the actors for tim, saga, and kiran!

#yes im on a first name basis with all these characters. #alan wake 2 #saga anderson #kiran estevez #tim breaker #video #remedy #mostly posting this so i can use this as a reference if i try to draw any fanart

[thatcheeseycandle]

//tw for some swearing and mention of a not so great event

Now now let me just let this out to the world just incase no one else has yet.

(OH AND THIS IS MY FIRST RANT POST??)

SO I WAS JUST YKNOW TRYING TO RESEARCH ON HIRO'S BASIS BECAUSE IM TRYING TO FORM FAMILY TREES FOR THE ENGINES RIGHT?

WELL IF YOU LOOK AT HIRO'S BASIS ITS A JNR CLASS D51 AND IT'S DESIGNER IS HIDEO SHIMA

(Yes thats their actual name no shit-)

SO IM LIKE "OH ISNT THAT A NICE LAST NAME" CUZ YKNOW WHEN YOU PUT THE TWO NAMES TOGETHER IT REMINDS ME OF THE CITY

But then I realized that if anyone were to look at that name, they would be reminded of.. YKNOW YEAH.

AND IF YOU DONT SEE WHAT I SEE. WRITE DOWN HIRO'S NAME NEXT TO THEIR NAME AND YOU WILL SEE IT.

Now you may be asking, "Hey whats wrong on this? We can just ignore that thing ever existed and-"

NO. NO NOONNOO NO NO. I AINT IGNORING THE FACT ITS LITERALLY SPELLING OUT THAT AND I CANT UNSEE IT.

Now you would also ask "hey why not change it to somethibg else or just soemthing different or not give Hiro a last name at all-"

Lets just say due to my main au headcanon that a character's designer's (aka the designer who designed their basis) last name would be the said character's last name, now I think I'd have to change up that headcanon a little due to this discovery. WHO KNOWS MAYBE I SHOULDNT GIVE HIRO A LAST NAME-

But hey if Hiro X Henry does become canon in my au (which I will have to think about for awhile due to the age gaps and yknow that bullshit..) I think the two would be married and Hiro gets Henry's last name (being Stanier since I have a headcanon that after Henry got rebuilt into a black 5 he carried the last name of the Black 5s' designer being Stanier, making Gresley Henry's middle name.)

WHO KNOWS MAYBE I MIGHT AS WELL NOT MESS AROUND LAST NAMES

#cheesey/shit posts #ttte #ttte hiro #IM SCREAMING IN A NOT SO POS WAY. #I JUST REALIZED THIS MY GOSH WHY HASNT ANYONE NOTICED THIS?? #My bad for the people who uses the last names of (insert ttte character) 's designer's last name as (insert ttte character)'s last name.. #Cheesyversial rants #ttte henry

[princessofxianle]

Do you mind if I ask your top 10 favorite characters (can be male or female) from all of the media that you loved (can be anime/manga, books, movies or tv series)? And why do you love them? Sorry if you've answered this question before.....Thanks...

well THANK YOU for asking, you are the first to!

tbh ive been meaning to do this on my main blog bc I take these wayyy too seriously lol but ANYWAY heres my top 10 faves (in no particular order) that I can think of (tbh theres prob more i forgot about, or i wanted to keep only 1 per fandom... except tgcf)

Huge Spoiler Warning: for ALL of tgcf, 2ha, aot, AND JJK MANGA!!!

1. Feng Xin (tgcf)

do i even need to explain this one? loyal to a fault, just a cute lil puppy, one hell of a sculpted archers back, and he's head over heels in love with Xie Lian (but tbh same) i have a lot of thoughts about him on a daily basis on this blog (and also theres the #fx backstory au tag)

2. Noé Archiviste (the Case Study of Vanitas)

MY BABY

the absolute bestest boy of EVER... with a LOAD of unprocessed trauma (yknow the typical stuff like seeing your childhood bff get decapitated in front of you) and a lot more to come once we find out how he kills his boyfriend best friend, Vanitas...

i ALSO think about him a lot but over on @noes-pillow

3. Sejanus Plinth (The Hunger Games: tbosas)

hated reading as a child... HATED it... picked up the og trilogy when i was 12 and i was a goner. The funny thing is i still hated reading for YEARS up until i picked up the prequel novel then in 2020, and now ive read all of tgcf, 2ha, and more fanfic than i could ever imagine... all because this stupid boy (i love him) chose to trust the WORST person as his friend, rip sejanus my baby

the movie is v good btw, if you havent seen it you should

4. Xie Lian (tgcf)

*Taizi Dianxia Fang Xin Guoshi General Hua Xie Lian*

how this man survived 800 years of being physically unable to die and never went insane is a mystery i will never be able to fully comprehend (aaand im in love with him... hmm i wonder why...)

5. Mihael "Mello" Keehl (Death Note)

the chocolate-addicted blonde boi that was my first anime crush... by proxy I must also add Mail "Matt" Jeevas because they are a package deal

these two are also the reason i started writing fanfic so they will ALWAYS hold a special place in my heart

6. Xue Meng - (2ha)

*sigh* he's just everyone's fav peacock (yes technically the image is XM 0.5 but he had a cool ass bird so im using this photo bc its COOL anyway...) mengmeng is another one of my trauma bois who has lost next to everything and yet is STILL kicking ass and taking names #thatsmyfuckingsectleader so proud of you my son

also this might get me into hot water here but imma go ahead and say it...

this is what i wanted Jiang Cheng to be... (i LOVE my angy grape but...) through thick and thin, despite EVERYTHING, and even mo ran fucking abandoning him he will still call mo ran his "ge"...

fgjhdfhfdg THEYRE BROTHERS, OKAY???

7. Howl Pendragon (Howl's Moving Castle)

ok this one i just simply do not need to explain... if you think i do, go watch this whole movie and then there ya go thats your answer...

GENDER

8. River Song (Doctor Who)

aside from being the character that unlocked my unhealthy obsession with :) Main Character Death :) at the ripe ol' age of 8 YEARS (although Will Turner from POTC also helped on that front... Orlando Bloom my beloved) River's story was a stroke of absolute GENIUS from start to finish and i simply love how Alex Kingston played her...

"You don't expect a sunset to admire you back."

I just love the doomed ones, okay...

9. Satoru Gojo (Jujutsu Kaisen)

look... theres *gojo girlies* uwu and then theres GOJO GIRLIES... i couldn't give 2 shits about how he's fan-serviced (tho im not complaining) but have you SEEN the amount of grief pumped into that man? he could explode in a fit of fucking insanity at literally any moment and take the whole goddamn world down with him bc what happened with suguru WASNT FAIR to him and satoru has more than enough power to go apeshit... but he DOESN'T... even after losing so many of his co-sorcerers... he still puts on a brave face to the end in order to protect the childhood of his students even tho his own youth was stolen from him during hidden inventory...

SEE? The DOOMED ones!

10. Levi Ackerman (Attack on Titan)

i read the manga during my last year of uni and when i tell you i SOBBED at the end... yes ofc for obvious reasons, but mostly bc my little Levi loses EVERYTHING. He is the SOLE survivor of the veteran scouts. He's missing multiple fingers, an eye, and the ability to walk. He was the strongest (yowaimo) but wasn't even granted the mercy to die at the end of his narrative! Broke my fucking heart.

BONUS: Morph (Treasure Planet)

he's a morph!!! nuff said <3

fin

#thanks for the ask friend! #gonna rb this to my main too bc i needed a new one of these #alex talks #asks #i swear im gonna wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night remembering a character i forgot lol oh well i tried

[lcevinolusola]

hello, I hope you're well. I live for hetalia and was rec'd to ask about your pirate au! I would love to hear about it if you'd like to tell :)

my first day on tumblr in what feels like a week and i come back to a question that makes me want to ramble like a madman for DAYS. you are so sweet for sending this to me (and im sorry if this ends up being an essay you were not asking for). fun fact: i have had to rewrite my answer to this ask no less than 3 times bc every time i started talking, id go on a tangent about pirates that was in no way relevant to your ask. apologies for taking so long, but yes! here we go! im putting it under a read more bc i cannot for the life of me shut the fuck up.

i do have a pirate au!! maybe one day it will eventually end up seeing the light of day, but as of right now it is sitting in my google docs next to a 95-page doc of all the sources and fun facts and tidbits that i find interesting about pirates. pirates are kinda my thing, idk if thats obvious or not. insert marge simpson i just think theyre neat meme here.

essentially, its pirate!antonio and venetian-not-quite-nobleman!lovino. im still playing around with that venetian part, but idk ill probably keep it, since it makes sense with lovino's family and all that. the entire premise of the story (and what sparked the idea in the first place, apart from me just thinking antonio would look sexy in a pirate captain fit) is that one scene in the strips where romano is reading a history book about how spain spent a ton of money on him when he himself was in rags. we all know spain canonically showered romano in wealth and money, even when he himself was wearing tatters. that idea sat with me for YEARS before i decided to do my own spin on it, culminating in the characters of pirate captain antonio with a grudge against the world and too much to prove seeing bastard lovino who lives in a family of nobles and cannot have any of it, even if he is loved and adored by his family, and who just doesn't????? understand him????? doesnt get why he chose to stay with that family for so long????? without leaving that world behind and being free and cutting himself loose????? he doesnt get the familial attachments and the sense of responsibility lovino has to his family, even if he cannot and will not inherit the title that comes with the vargas name.

antonio ends up raiding their merchant ship they were sailing on and kidnapping him for money or something idk im still playing around with that part, and lovino is just this absolute mystery to him, but ofc this is antonio who is bullheaded in his stubbornness, which i find to be enchanting and cute, and thus we slowly get into the love story of two people who were fucked over tremendously by their societies and their worlds and who just wanted and tbh deserved more, something different, a freedom they would never be able to have in their average life.

smash-cut to however long later and the entire basis of the story is lovino 'i am surrounded by status and wealth and prestige and will have none of it to my name' vargas being adored and cherished by antonio 'love me and i will give you the world, love me and i will give you everything' fernández carriedo. bc!! i!!! think!!! thats!!! neat!!!!

anyway yeah thats kinda where the idea for it came from. i have a few spamano stories written, but i am shamefully lacking any historical hetalia, which is terrible considering history is my entire degree, but im getting there. i hope this in some way answered your ask!!! youre welcome to also hit up my asks or dms if you ever wanna just chat hetalia or anything else, since i too live for this wretched fandom, and have since i was like. idk 12. thank you so much for sending this! i love having an excuse to word vomit about my hyperfixations, and this story has been bouncing in my brain for a frankly disgusting amount of time, and i have only recently decided to put it to paper and make something out of it!

#you are so sweet for this thank you so much #also id love to know who rec'd my au bc i need to kiss them like what a compliment #sorry again for how long this took to answer! ive been away so my tumblr time has been sorely limited #i do hope this answer was worth the wait ghjkjh #appleblondie0397 #asks

[meruz]

ive been neglecting my inbox so im answering all the asks rn. sorry...if you’ve been waiting for a response.

yes go ahead!! Also ik it is hard to access my FAQ from the app but btw this is in my FAQ its very comprehensive because I get this type of ask a lot LOL. dw it’s not annoying though its easy to answer and I’m glad ppl like my art enough to use it and also care abt crediting!! its in my faq not because i dont like to answer but more so u guys dont need to ask LOL

thank you!! I dont see much infinity train content ever either. when i was making infinity train fanart everyday i felt like i was on an island LOL...

honestly I feel like cahiers are decent with posca because theyre not really absorbent and posca marks tend to sit on the page as opposed to soaking through anyways. umm i wouldnt like... use it to do a whole posca piece or anything but i use poscas just for pops of color in my sketchbook pretty often and it holds up ok. sometimes u can see the shadow of the color through the paper bc its thin but thats mostly it. i took pics of some sketchbook pgs and how the back of the page looks so you can see for yourself ( cw for bakudeku LOL ) ...theres a lot of like.. normal brush pen ink and india ink that penetrates the paper more like even compared to the black posca

thank you!!!! I love drawing assorted cephalopods... their proportions remind me of drawing digimon characters LOL.

not right now u_u I’m busy.... but you can always email me at [email protected] to check abt it! sometimes i will do commissions even if im busy because it sounds cool LOL...

lol thank you!! idk if i ship(?) them either but its interesting to think about!!! theyre funny characters to bonk together and i feel like most fanart ive seen doesnt address how funny their relationship could be if it were more exploratory i guess

yk that scene is kind of a meme now but it like genuinely still makes me emotional. when colette makes lloyd promise not to tell the others at the end it breaks my heart

yeah here you go

I feel like I’ve probably talked about this before in another ask post but i dont really think about style because its one of those things that artists should try to change depending upon intention, what you’re drawing and what you want to communicate etc. what people often recognize as style are quirks that an artist maintains throughout changing their subject and approach.....ANYWAYS. thats all to say my style probably just comes out of normal stuff like looking at other art and thinking “I want to do that” or trying out different mediums and methods and settling with whatever feels the best LOL. It’s always changing & growing! Because I’m always learning new stuff!

Theres a lot! I really like the scene when daisukes lying awake in bed thinking abt how ken’s heartbeat felt. And the scene when they have a sleepover and ken wakes up first and looks over to daisuke sleeping LOL idk subtle stuff you can read very clearly as like burgeoning queer moments.. theyre recognizable from my own queer childhood and i love that in a kids anime. also at the end of the series when theyre fighting the final boss dude and ken grabs daisukes arm to ask him to jogress but hes shivering and daisuke just turns to say “youre shaking....” and in revenge of diaboromon when ken goads daisuke into endurance running by taunting him about soccer LOL (jock romance). but one i rly want to mention is theres this youtube video about how ken and daisuke’s honorifics change over the course of the series and how significant it is when they switch over to first name basis and honestly i think about it a lot THEY HAVE GREAT SCENES!! I love ken and daisuke

wow!! thats rad... the sad truth is its just my name with like a shitton of letters taken out. sometimes i abbreviate it even further as mrz and i think to myself haha ... mister z.

#ask #xx-all-purpose-nerd-xx #pepsiiwho

[myst1calx]

unironically i kinda hate how sonic feels and acts in newer media (specifically prime and a bit of idw)

rant/tangent time wooo

note: might be a bit unorganized due to this being on my old azz galaxy s7 edge lol

alright. So i just finished reading the idw sonic comics allll the way up to the the most recent side comic, Scrapnik Island #4.

So like, while reading the main idw comic i kinda felt like.. sonic was just kinda a dick near the end for no reason??? Like yeah hes mostly fine in the beginning but once we get to the point where people put these high expectations on him and hes basically under a lot of pressure (which i understand) but i feel like the way they are characterizing him is just :

"haha sonic doesnt care and acts on inpulse like a dick and doesnt recognize the shit hes done and is basically a little shit lmao he also is just kinda and idiot and seems to forget things on the basis of when it most convient for him !!!"

i didnt really feel much of it in idw until the later chapters, but it started to get prevalent when i was reading these in between me watching Sonic Boom. (The Show, which is my favorite outside of AOSTH.)

Now personally, i think Sonic Boom's charactasation of Sonic is probably the best one we have had in a long while. Although its a comedy, i like how sonic is aware of what's going on and takes into account what his friends are suggesting.

Like the episode where he does something that affects a citizen of the town, (minds going blank on what the towns name is lmao) and when his friends (and the other villagers) let him join the whole "talk about our feelings" club thing,

at first, he opposes the idea of apologizing saying that calling people "people" isnt bad, (ik this was played for jokes it still supports my argument.) they encourage him to recognize that what he did was wrong,, and they tell him to go apologize, and he does, albeit with a bit of "ok fine i admit it pls go away" but atleast he doesnt outright deny it or seem stupid for trying to do so and failing.

Thats my issue with prime, sonic just seems like an oblivious idiot who doesnt recogize how to read the damn room and listen to his friends when it matters most. He acts like a tiny child, which doesnt make sense to me, because hes been through adventures and times similar to this and for most of the newer media they dont wanna recognize sonics shortcomings and upbringings as a character at all??????? Like i think frontiers got it right with the story, and sonic who understood what was going on and stopped every once in a while to smell the roses and help his friends!

But in newer media outside of frontiers, it seems like sonic doesnt know how to smell the fucking roses every once in a while and stop thinking on impulse, like they are making him seem like he only acts on impulse, all the damn time, with no regards of what was or is being said to him or even taking it into account???

Like yes, we fucking get it sonic can sometimes act on impulse when hes in a stressful situation thats what makes him seem real, makes him seem human.

But, when you make him into this douche canoe who acts on inpulse all the time, disregards his friends when it matters most, and casually dissapoints them when ever he feels like it, or when it benefits him (cough cough the picnic scene in prime), i dont think most people would want him to have a good time, which im sure is the reason why most people, including myself, thought sonic deserved that punch from shadow. (who is great in prime btw, was okay in boom too but needed more time to flesh him out outside of 3 eps hes supper immature and i love him lmao) He's a dick. And i dont like him.

So, i hope to god they rewrite sonics character in prime s2 because he was unrionically just a giant fuckin dick instead of a snarky but caring 'anti hero' (like in boom) and that makes me really mad grahhhh

[also side tangent i dont hate prime (lemme make this clear) this whole sonic rant was just me nitpicking how sonic is currently in media outside of frontiers

ALSO ALSO SIDE TANGENT 2 HOW DID THEY FUCK UP SONIC SO BAD BUT GOT SHADOW ALL GOOD AND SHIT????? WHATT???? BRO THEY ARE POLAR OPPOSITE CIRCLE GRAPHS WHICH OVERLAP THEY ARE NOT THAT HARD TO MAKE SOBS INTENTLY]

#myst1calrambles #sonic the hedgehog #sonic #sonicidw #sonic prime #sonicboom #sonic rant #sorry for ranting so much grrr #i was tired of this thing #had to get out at some point #prime just made me rly mad #sonic prime spoilers

[penelopeminded]

my thoughts on cme 16.6, true conviction

let me just say i'm DREADING this episode actually

wow they actually gave us the whole first scene i was sure this was more spread out

THE JET I'M CRYING

it's so empty 😕

HES OKAY WHAT

no way they just drove right past the guy

where's mister mommy issues is he dead already

oh poor kid but i'm really interested in the backstory

NO INJURIES SERIOUSLY?? so boring i wanted a hospital love confession 😐

emily with a ponytail yes please

luke actually looks really good rn i love his messy hair

true he is in fact already dead

they probably should be going to the hospital are you kidding me

dude was raised to be a murderer fr

i am loving doug's character arc

GARCIA MY QUEEN

aw that's sad but at least he's finally got closure

HES SO FUNNY (it wasn't that funny but i laughed)

aw this is so nostalgic 🥺

NO BODY NO CRIME emily's a swiftie

i hate that they're on a first name basis

AW this isn't nearly the reunion i wanted at all but it's cute "even luke" and his smile 🙄

WOAH

some of you are gonna say that's hot 🧐

mommy 😩

they're cute i'm glad this didn't lead to a fight and i'm guessing in aj's episode we see this time off

one thing about jj is she will absolutely never sit in a chair normally

IS THAT A NEVER BEFORE SEEN PENEMILY PIC I LOVE IT

she's so sweet 😭

ugh i've seen this hairdo before and I'm still gonna throw up looking at it

i love boobs

UH OH GF IS MAD (partly rightfully so)

"don't say that" IM CRYING NO

NO DONT DO THIS PLEASE NO

garcia is me i LOVE gossip

jj is so cute bye

tarvez besties 🤩

let's talk about BOTH your love lives over a beer, please

i adore tara and i need tarbecca to last

HAHAHA i love everything about this except for the implications behind "go feed that cat"

aw 😕 poor penny

NO

NO

NO KSDKSHDJS

SHES SO FUNNY

over your dead body dude

tarily!

aw i feel so bad for her

and BACK to the comedy

😐😐 that's not funny. i feel nauseous. i'm crying. please take it back PLEASE

NOOO I CANT TAKE ONE LOSS AFTER ANOTHER

what the hell. what. what. r u joking. this is cruel.

yes PLEASE give me some good news

i better fucking not see luke happy about this

penelope garcia you continue to be a genius but i'm mad at you.

mkay anyways if we don't at least get jealous luke out of this IM gonna be the next sicarius

i'm done bye that went about as bad as i thought it would

#criminal minds #criminal minds evolution #cme #criminal minds spoilers #cme spoilers

[oflgtfol]

“its called the mandalorian not din djarin, so of course its fine to switch main charactsrs to other mandalorians”

are you cray cray? if you want to argue it literally on a name basis, then yes, the first season he literally is The Mandalorian, he is literally consistently called The Mandalorian, that is how he is introduced to us, that is how he is introduced in universe, and even after we the audience and a select few characters learn his name, he is still consistently called The Mandalorian anyway. like in the scope of this show, YES, he is THE MANDALORIAN

besides the literal interpretation, its just. the show was fucking set up to be about din. Two entire seasons were about this character. it is so fucking stupid to say oh yeah we can just completely shift gears and keep up the illusion that this is still the same show, and justify it by saying oh well the new main character is also a mandalorian. like do you use your brain do you realize how stupid this is. lets name a show like, “The European” and then just keep flipflopping between different europeans as the main charactsr bc well theyre all european arent they

also its literally THE mandalorian. singular. if they had the goal of flipflopping between different protagonists shouldnt it just be called like, Mandalorians. or Mandalore. or something to imply that the show isnt just about one single guy

This is just such a stupid argument to me i cannot believe people are pulling this to try to justify what s3 is setting up like do you even hear yourselves. i cant even argue against this properly bc its just so common sense that im utterly flabbergasted that people are still too bull headed to think with common sense

#brot posts #mando posting #WHAT IS HAPPENING !!!!!

[jaccsonhyde]

finally finished perez's wonder woman run, have a lotta feelings on it. i love it, first and foremost. perez you could tell was a writer who deeply cared about diana as a character and respected her and her ideals and i love the groundwork he set up that was set to be the basis for the character for a long long time.

diana herself i think was overall really well done, you could feel how much she cares but she also gets to be genuinely powerful and smart when she needs to.

i really like julia and vanessa kapetalis in this run, i love that wonder woman gets a concrete family and essentially base of operations and i like how relatively grounded both the characters were. vanessa sometimes was just a caricature of Every Teen Girl through the lens of an adult man which was funny but by the latter half i was surprised by the shift her character shift being about her mental health and such. julia ofc is just a really grounded, level headed parent figure for diana and it works for diana as her intro to mans world. i know the kapetalis' will be dropped shortly and im not looking forward to that

steve and etta are... pretty boring. i dont have many opinions on them one way or the other im mostly ambivalent to their story and romance but i do at least like them

hermes was one of my favorite characters of the run and i loved his relationship with diana when it wasnt romantic. a major question of the book is essentially "Are dianas gods worthy of her and everything she does for them?" and of course diana and every amazon would answer yes, so imagine my surprise when hermes comes in and says no actually, theyre not, himself included. i like the mutual respect they garner for each other and i especially like how towards the end of it, diana speaks to hermes rather bluntly. instead of in a way of reverence, more in the way of an equal. she questions him and his plans irt the dr psycho arc and he listens to her and complies which while it doesnt sound like a lot, this was someone she worshipped. to see them develop from patron/worshipper to comrades in arms was one of the highlights of the whole run for me. and it helps hes the only olympian consistently willing to stick his neck out for diana.

the amazons and themyscira themselves i overall like buuuut overall wish more was done with them and we explored more of their complexities. i like seeing how diana essentially reflects them and their ideals, how you could see where she learned specific traits from. the question of are the gods worthy of diana is briefly expanded to include the amazons as a whole instead of just diana which makes sense but didnt go far enough. thats a common complaint with perez's themyscira. when heracles was brought back and hippolyte forgives him, i wont necessarily say that was a misstep, i think it works, and i know for a fact george knows of the complexities of this topic, he brings them up more than once through the voice of my favorite of the amazons from the run, Hellene, whos shown to be a naysayer to diana and essentially her philosophical antagonist. shes rarely ever mean about it but she often voices really good opposing points to dianas sentiments. irt heracles, she asks, are they all obligated to forgive their abusers? does this mean men have a free pass to abuse women but be absolved as soon as they apologize? and to me it shows that georges heart was in the right place but its equally frustrating as these questions mostly serve to lampshade the complexities of the topic and just acknowledge them rather than actually explore them. it becomes even more frustrating when hellene herself is killed off screen right before war of the gods. a really interesting character that imo shouldnt have died especially as she filled a really important role among the amazons. the rest of the named amazons are mostly fine i dont have many major issues or opinions on them.

the bana mighdall, however, are a whole different story. an idea of georges that couldve been so so interesting and been a step further into hellene's ideas that instead becomes a vehicle of racist caricature upon racist caricature. the idea of an amazon faction that became disillusioned with the gods and the amazon's secluded ways that they go to mans world to try and enact real change, no matter what, couldve been such a good foil to themyscira as a whole which couldve made both factions incredibly well rounded. instead we get a bunch of gray skinned misandrist barbarians whos main driving force is a lust for blood. i dont wanna rant too much on them or else ill get legitimately angry, all I'll say is the bana deserved better.

as for the series other villains, lets blaze through some first. ares is barely a villain imo, hes more of an origin story and works well as one. eris was a fun villain for that one arc where diana takes a bunch of global representatives to themyscira. decays a cool concept but not much more. dr psycho. cheetahs alright but bordering on very ableist tropes and in general the cheetah isnt often an interesting villain to me. valerie beaudry's silver swan is proooobably my favorite iteration of the villain, both in story and in costume, i think shes so pretty and i wish shed show up more

CIRCE! if you know me, you know circes one of my favorite dc characters ever so seeing her completely in power here was amazing. i love everything about this character. i love her haughty, devillish personality, i love her stupidly convoluted and endlessly cruel plans. i really love her simple green robe design from this run. i love her as a complete opposite of diana in almost every single way. i love her dialog i love her motivations i love every panel shes in i just simply love love love this character and cant wait to see more of her eventually.

overall im so glad i went and started reading this era of wonder woman. i miss george perez every single day im reminded of him and i love him and the work he left in this world. i cant wait to continue the volume and i especially cant wait to eventually reread cassies first appearances

#dc #diana prince #wonder woman #george perez #wonder woman volume 2

[celcstialls]

KNOWING YOUR PARTNER WELL CAN POTENTIALLY MAKE WRITING TOGETHER A LOT EASIER. ( REPOST DO NOT REBLOG ! )

★ NAME Seelie (bo beelie) ★ PRONOUNS they/she/any ★ PREFERENCE OF COMMUNICATION Discord~ Cause tumblr ims are fucky wucky and I can send my meme emojis on discord ★ NAME OF MUSE(S) Uh. Yes. Most active? Traveller Twins, Kujou Sara, Sandrone (Also, Mun of @kabvra-ya and @dollctten)

★ EXPERIENCE/HOW LONG (MONTHS / YEARS?) Uhhhhhhhhhhhh I'd say since I was a teen so? Probably around 12 ish years?

★ PLATFORMS YOU’VE USED tumblr, discord, skype, fucking dark spyro chatrooms, ---club penguin??? They were dark times.

★ BEST EXPERIENCE My best experience so far was when I was in a big OW comunity on skype, some of them I am still friends with to this day granted we don't talk much anymore. It was just a lot of fun and chaos.

★ RP PET PEEVES/DEALBREAKERS Dash drama or just drama in general. Negativity or vent posts not under readmores/untagged. Not deleting tbd posts. Untrimmed posts. Ship discourse. Elitism (generally thinking that people are better than others due to writing styles, layouts, edits and graphics). Pressure to be replying constantly or at the same speed as a rp partner. People shitting on others for wanting to only write certain dynamics (eg. shipping focus or storyline focus blogs.)

★ FLUFF, ANGST OR SMUT ALL. Fluff/Angst > Smut tho, mainly cause I get flustered easily in regards to smut and I just enjoy writing out character interactions and dynamics a lot

★ PLOTS OR MEMES I prefer plotting first just to get a basis on how our characters may interact and vibe with one another before just.. Throwing them out into the ocean. Memes are typically more for fun/not to turn into threads or for people I have plotted with

★ LONG OR SHORT REPLIES It really depends on my mood and how much my partner writes. I feel painfully obligated to match my partners length in replies due to getting one para'd so many times when I write out long-ass stuff in the past.. It sucks! So yeah.

★ BEST TIME TO WRITE Late at night is typically when my hyperfocus/random insomnia seems to kick into gear. It's also when most people are asleep or just waking up so I don't get distracted by others chatting with me.

★ ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S) I have so many muses that all have very different personalities so- it's hard to say no? I'm sure I am like some of them in some ways. Though, I have been told that I am pretty much a mixture of Hu Tao and Bennett rolled into one. Mischievous, fun-loving and puppy-like.

tagged by @rosemourne ♥!! ILY GOOSE BESTIE tagging nobody; I posted this super late and feel embarrassed because of it. Cnbf tagging anyone. Please steal

#✧‧₊˚ — ooc #a little about meelie ;

[house-in-the-cerulean-sea]

Ich habe 314 Mal im Jahr 2022 etwas gepostet

Das sind 254 more posts als 2021!

48 Einträge erstellt (15%)

266 Einträge gerebloggt (85%)

Blogs, die ich am häufigsten gerebloggt habe:

@islanddads

@luciinthesky-w-diamonds

@house-in-the-cerulean-sea

@poethicsapphiccat

@hoothalcyon

Ich habe 139 meiner Einträge im Jahr 2022 getaggt

#the house in the cerulean sea – 78 Einträge

#tj klune – 47 Einträge

#house in the cerulean sea – 44 Einträge

#linus baker – 20 Einträge

#arthur parnassus – 18 Einträge

#&lt;3 – 15 Einträge

#island dads – 13 Einträge

#headcannon – 8 Einträge

#island wives – 7 Einträge

#fanart – 5 Einträge

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#he talkes about how he sometimes wants to take all his videos down and leave social media forever and i mean nothing has happened on tiktok

Meine Top-Einträge im Jahr 2022:

#5

I did not remember Linus calling merle "Bastard" and it completely caught me off gard.

Also i love how zoes reaction to that basically is

"the boy can curse? Welp time for first name basis then. Let's be friends."

Similarly to how she heard Helen say "daft little bitch" and immediately created a dream wedding pinwall on pinterest

105 Anmerkungen – Gepostet 26. Juli 2022

#4

The last time Linus Baker wears a Tie is a few weeks before his wedding while trying on wedding outfits, after wearing it for less than a minute he decides that no this isn't it, Arthur would still love him whatever he's wearing and nothing makes him more uncomfortable than ties these days and so he instead wears the red sash that Arthur wore on their first adventure

108 Anmerkungen – Gepostet 27. Februar 2022

#3

One of my favorite things in fics is when Arthur and Linus talk about their experience, like the ones where Linus tells him he's insecure because he doesn't have any because first of all yeahy healthy communication! And also i love the ones where Arthur is like "im a gay philosophy major and father of six, in a racist/homophobic town, you really think i got game?"

I love everything so much! The authors, the author, the island dads, the island wives(even tho they don't have anything to do with this particular thing, they're just important anyway)

169 Anmerkungen – Gepostet 23. April 2022

#2

Hi yes i just realized Linus love language is gift giving? Like he probably spends most of his money on calliope (s. The discribtion of how he got her)) and then when he buys toole for Talia and wants to get a jacket for Chauncey and vinyls for Lucy and that makes him getting a present from them even more meaningful, right? Like they just instantly hit his love language? He hadn't gotten a present in years? Maybe that's even why he was so brainwashed by diacomy, bc they gave him monogrammed pjs and noone else got him a present since his mum died oh my poor baby boy! I'm actually crying do you think calliope sometimes killed things for him? Do you think that of course Linus was a little disgusted by it but also couldn't help but feel grateful? Bc his cat is the only one to get him presents?

186 Anmerkungen – Gepostet 12. Juni 2022

Meine #1 des Jahres 2022

Linus : hey guys look what i found: Jenga! Do you wanna play?

Talia: put that away! Are you mad?

Chauncey: we don't play that here anymore.

Phee: never again. Never again.

Linus : what why? What's going on?

Lucy: because of him

Arthur, pulling a plate from a staple of plates the other ones dropping onto it neatly and without breaking or disrupting: :)

Linus : isn't... Isn't that physically impossible?

Lucy : it is and he doesn't care.

398 Anmerkungen – Gepostet 13. Januar 2022

Hol dir deinen Tumblr-Jahresrückblick 2022 →

#tumblr2022 #Jahresrückblick #Mein Tumblr-Jahresrückblick 2022 #Dein Tumblr-Jahresrückblick #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #not me being my own third most reblogged from person

[theseancekid]

GET TO KNOW YOUR WRITING PARTNER! (repost, don’t reblog!)

NAME? Ash

PRONOUNS? She/her

PREFERENCE OF COMMUNICATION? literally whatever lmao! im’s, discord, messenger pigeon, you name it

NAME OF MUSES? Klaus (and also Louis de Pointe du Lac at @sangcreole!)

EXPERIENCE / HOW LONG? I think 11 years now?? I first started during my freshman year of high school...so y’all can do the math lmao

BEST EXPERIENCE? Oh gosh, there are so many, I’ve met so many lovely people through tumblr rp!! I think one of the highlights was meeting a friend through my Louis blog, who then asked me to start a Vampire Chronicles podcast that kind of blew up, so that was really wild?? The vampire chronicles rpc really popped off in like 2017-2019 so that was really fun to like have a podcast that people actually listened to, and then have people follow my blog and send in questions. 

RP PET PEEVES? I don’t think I have any real pet peeves...I mean, I think the biggest thing that makes it harder for me to write with people is if we have a thread together and my partner doesn’t do anything to forward the plot. Like, I know sometimes in fluffier plots, there’s not much to move forward, but if i’m having to carry the entire conversation then it doesn’t feel like there’s much point to the thread y’know?

MUSE PREFERENCES FOR ANGST / FLUFF / SMUT? I think all 3 have their merits! I tend to gravitate towards angst just because...klaus has A LOT of baggage to unpack and he’s one of those characters who is always teetering on the edge, always just shy of falling apart, so there’s a lot of fun tension to play around with there. Fluff threads are sometimes harder if there’s nothing propelling the plot forward but listen Klaus deserves so much love and i want to give that to him. in fact, a lot of my fluff threads end up turning angsty, or vice versa, because klaus just doesn’t know how to be loved or how to be soft, so it’s really great to explore that. and as for smut...i mean, it’s kind of a given with klaus that things will get a bit naughty LOL. i’m not a huge fan of writing extremely gratuitous threads unless there’s like...an emotional or dramatic tie-in, if that makes sense. like, i don’t like just writing sex for the sake of sex, but i like the weird, funny, angsty, intimate emotions surrounding it. i really LOVE exploring characters’ relationships with intimacy, so yes, this blog will occasionally get smutty

PLOTS OR MEMES? oh my god, MEMES PLEASE lmfao i’m so bad at plotting!!! my social energy is extremely limited and while I love gushing about klaus, it’s hard for me to like commit to things and plan things out. I definitely prefer memes because they give me a general direction, but also give me the freedom to completely improvise.

LONG OR SHORT REPLIES? I have a hard time limiting myself with short replies lmao listen klaus is an agent of chaos so i feel like all my replies kind of go off the rails with him. there’s nothing wrong with short replies but like...i will gladly take all the content i can get with my rp partners!!! i swear, y’all are so talented, you could write me a novel and i would obsess over every single word.

BEST TIME TO WRITE? deadass i’ve conditioned myself so that i physically CANNOT write any earlier than 11pm. i’m usually lurking on this blog in the evening, but the actual writing doesn’t get done until 11pm-1am lmao

ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE? I used to think Klaus and I were total opposites just on the basis that he’s an absolute extrovert party animal and i am a textbook introvert nerd, but there are definitely a lot of similarities between us. On a surface level, my wardrobe isn’t all that different from Klaus’— I wear skinny jeans and converse sneakers every goddamn day of my life and I would absolutely wear crop tops if it was work appropriate LOL. But beyond that, I think we both have a deeply sensitive nature. I am...too empathetic for my own good, but I’m also extremely good at hiding my emotions when I want to (god, I’m the most Gemini gemini you’ll ever meet) so I’ll always relate to that side of Klaus lmao

Tagged by: the lovely @tempportal Tagging: @littleshcp @downpaths @murdcck @nofinalgirl @fightknife

#*【 ☂ ┊ ❛ Just need to sober up ❜ 】 ➤ OOC #;tagging game #*【 ☂ ┊ ❛ Ex-squeeze me? ❜ 】 ➤ Queue

[whonsper]

Which oc’s are the ones you made at the same time?

SO GLAD YOU ASKED

i actually made all my oc's as pairs, one cant exist without the other. they bounce off each other and become stronger characters (mayhaps why they feel lacking as individuals but im working on it!)

sgt gunther and lancelot were my first two oc's. almost ever. at least the first two i made with the purpose of being proper fleshed out oc's. i made them last November (so not too long ago, theyre babies all things considered). they exist as fully conscious oc's, aware of the fact that they're oc's, living their best enemies to lovers life with their daughter within the endless void that is writers block.

abraham, mickey, jasper, oliver, nestor, and ambrosia all were made at around the same time. i think they all got names on the same day actually. they mightve existed before january, but i didnt consider them anything more than faceless concepts until then, when i gave them a name and a goal

abraham and mickey, my angel and human pair, were actually originally characters in a fanfic i wrote years ago that ive recently reworked into more complex original characters, in the process changing literally everything about them except the basis of their story

jasper and oliver, my vampire and human pair, are off of another fanfic idea that only stayed a concept for ages, i havent been working on them as much since that ones a side project as of rn, but ive written a couple fun scenes of the climax of their story

nestor and ambrosia are my immmortal and reincarnater pair, destined to love and lose each other over and over through time. their plot is still on the drawing board, but i love them. theyre on the same level as gunther and lancelot in which theyre just guys i put in a fucked up scenario and called it a day

some of my newer oc's still dont have names, or even looks. they exist only as concepts until i can muster the brain juice to think about them for more than three seconds and give them a name. do they have a story? yes, but a name? god no who do you think i am

that being said my newest ocs include a gecko, a snow leopard, and a weasel. i really like them and want to figure out more of their friends and where their story goes, but for now theyre animal friends hanging out in my head lol

#idk if i properly answered this question im sorry ;-; #but thank you!!! i love talking about my silly guys #my brain is so mushy recently so thinking about my oc's is so hard but so fun

[tacit-semantics]

i'd like to know more about madam im adam.... whomst is he

YES absolutely I’ve got you adamposting under the cut. Warning: it is long

So madam-I’m-Adam, through and through and through, is my ‘fine, I’ll do it myself’ character, by which I mean people Do Not tend to work like I do, and thus a lot of characters Do Not tend to work like I do which can get frustrating of course and so! Here we are.

At his core, Adam’s intended to be a character who understands the divide that exists between him and most people and chooses to lean into it; thus, he’s very comfortable with himself, but with other people and his environment at large? Not so much. He’s very isolated, and he knows it, and tries to play it off a lot with humor and of course all the word games he integrates into both his speech and his narration. Those are important because they form the basis of his character in that they a) illustrate connectivity in the way that he understands it b) simultaneously foster a bit of difficulty in terms of understanding things as they actually ARE, and c) thereby serve as something that connects and alienates him in the same breath, if that makes sense. metaphors aside, it’s meant to be a snapshot into the really fucking complicated process of accepting yourself and how you work when other people and the world at large might not. Also, I love language on a structural level, and I wanted a chance to freely fuck around with it.

Adam’s companion character god-dog is meant to be one of those places where his perception and like the rest of the world overlap. Not someone like him exactly, but a basis for identification and acceptance and just yknow the realization that there ARE people and things like you out there.

Also, Adam was conceived after god-dog, who in turn came from one of the nonsense poems I made up on a walk one day never wrote those down. I also remember the iamb lamb who was a walking pun that I can’t remember for the life of me. There’s no theological implications to their names other than that a) I wanted a palindrome to match god-dog and madam-I’m-Adam is well established and fits conveniently well, and b) I think it’s the funniest thing on earth to have my first real oc be named Adam.

Anyways, he still only exists as a concept and a few half decent lines, but I am proud of those lines so I’m gonna finish this off with a few more excerpts because honestly I feel like they get the point of him across much better than I managed to up there akjsjs

“I live down south, in a small house a half mile from all the other small houses, at the center of a series of backroads that wouldn’t even lead to Rome. On days like these I tend to walk a careful path back and forth between the trees, meandering my way from one pointless landmark to the next.

Today, however, I am feeling a little less kind. And as I can’t exactly take that unkindness out on anyone or anything else- I would much sooner die- I decide to do the next best thing and take it out on myself. Playing the martyr is and always has been the one thing that I’ve got going for me- it’s the curse of the chronically useless but ostensibly bearable. This is a long way of saying that I’ve got a pretty face.”

“Old Mrs. Jones is infamous for her hatred of the neighborhood children, her strange dog (this is important) and her sharp hearing. I am infamous for my tendency to do stupid things when I am bored.”

And, one last round:

“…then old Mrs. Jones will come roaring out her trailer with her broomstick and her hair pulled back tight as can be, and she’ll stand straight and tall and jab at the little black sign in the fence and, as a matter of course, she’ll put the fear of dog in you.”

And that concludes adamposting!! thank you for asking about him I was looking for an excuse to ramble cjxjhd. He is. My friend <3

#I’m very sorry if this is incoherent I got excited dbdbd #replies

[line-of-fire]

SHIPPING INFO — ♥ answer the following for your muses so people know how shipping works on your blog !!

WHAT IS YOUR OTP FOR YOUR CHARACTER(S)?

I honestly don't know if I can properly answer this considering I write ocs here? As far as my personal writing goes, because even counting rp that's the only thing that I can really go off of, I've started to love Pixie x Sommer, specifically in the 'standard' verse as well as their Omega variants in their Val verse. I'm huge on multi-shipping, even with my own characters, so truthfully an 'all time fav' is difficult to name.

HOW LARGE DOES THE AGE GAP HAVE TO BE TO MAKE IT UNCOMFORTABLE?

It kind of just depends? Anything more than 8 years will have me looking at things a little more closely, but it's muse + situation dependent, and my 'tolerable age gap range' varies depending on the age of the younger muse. General rule of thumb? 4-5 years for muses between the ages of 18-25; then the 8 year rule for muses older. But I also acknowledge experience and maturity is a critical factor in these sorts of things so... case by case basis at the end of the day.

HOW FAR DO STEAMY MOMENTS HAVE TO GO BEFORE THEY ARE CONSIDERED NSFW?

i think a combination of ' the bikini rule ' and intent should be considered . ' the bikini rule ' covers , metaphorically , touches anywhere a bikini covers , so once touches start to be focused in those areas with sexual intent , i ' d start considering that nsfw . touching someone ' s butt as flirtation is nsfw , while jokingly patting someone ' s butt is more friendly , but still suggestive ? goodness knows i ' ve reached over and bopped a friend in the tit as a joke , with no sexual intent behind the move .

ARE YOU SELECTIVE WHEN SHIPPING?

I'd like to think not? When it comes down to it, I tend to let my muses take the wheel with shipping, and I'm typically open to it provided there's chemistry and past interactions to go off of. Heavy emphasis on established chemistry prior to bringing up shipping because in all honesty, I'm a little paranoid about accidentally forcing ships/writing my own characters ooc for the sake of one

WHO ARE OTHER CHARACTERS YOU SHIP YOUR CHARACTER WITH?

As far as ocxoc ships go... Like I said earlier, Pixie/Sommer has got me in a chokehold lately... And as far as other, 'non-official' ships go with Pix and other ocs; gotta love going for Brook,

DOES ONE HAVE TO ASK TO SHIP WITH YOU?

Hard yes, without a doubt, both for my own personal comfort and for the sake of future interactions and the like. Very few of the muses I write here are 'easy to ship' for varying reasons, the most common being severe trust issues + emotional self isolation due to trauma and other factors. Some, like Wolf, Sommer and Phoenix, are violent and abrasive as a primary response. To put it simply; most don't play nice.

ARE YOU SHIP-OBSESSED OR SHIP MORE-OR-LESS?

I kind of just go with the flow? With writing and rp, I have the philosophy of thinking of threads and stories as a vehicle out on the freeway, and while technically we're the ones in the drivers seat at first, these characters we breath life into have free rein to take control of the wheel at any time on a whim, and sometimes you get kicked out of the car entirely and lose control. I love ships, don't get me wrong, but if it happens, sweet; and if it doesn't, I can live with that, sometimes ships aren't meant to happen .

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SHIP IN YOUR CURRENT FANDOM?

None I'll admit to I'm a secret fan of König/Stiletto in cod and spitfire in animated young justice.

FINALLY, HOW DOES ONE SHIP WITH YOU?

Just have a thread or two with me then shoot me a dm if you think there's potential for something! I promise I'm chill, I'm just awful about reaching out first (yay for communication related nerves), but trust me, if you think there's Something There, more often than not I'll be all for it. I'm usually good about checking my tumblr ims, but I've got discord too I'll share if you want- I'm usually lurking there anyways and sometimes you can catch what I'm listening to there as well

tagged by stolen from : @toxichem tagging : just steal it lmfao

#ooc: off duty #dash games

[thetriggeredhappy]

in the dadspy au, what if jeremy was just going to be an assistant/cook/janitor at the base while his dad was being the mercenary (since spy didnt want him to follow the "career" but didnt want to be separated from him), but then jeremy turned out to be even better than the hired scout so they promote him to that position and spy is not happy with this at all

ok i was gonna put this in the queue to post but im impatient because im happy with this one. only thing i didnt have was spy being upset by this development

(warnings for canon-typical violence, discussion of mercenary-type things, paranoia, alcohol, and exactly one proper fight scene. consider this pg-13)

-

“Would you prefer the good news first, or the bad news?” Dad asked.

Jeremy looked up at him from where he’d snatched up the sunday comics from his dad’s newspaper and was doodling little hats on the characters while they waited for their food to arrive. “Uh,” he said, “good news first.”

“Alright. The good news is, do you remember that line I’ve been tailing? The one in New Mexico?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jeremy said, then nodded a little more confidently. “Immunity, safehouse, somethin’ like that, right?”

“...Something like that,” Dad agreed carefully, and that made him raise an eyebrow. “It went well, and I think there’s the very real possibility that I’ve all but closed the deal, all they want now is an interview.”

“...Interview, singular,” Jeremy said slowly.

“That’s where the bad news begins. Unfortunately... merde, how to phrase this?” He drew a hand down his face. “They’re fully willing to hire me on, but this is a more... corporate affair than I’m used to. They have rules, stipulations. Long story short, they will not hire you as a mercenary on the basis of your age.”

Jeremy tensed. “What?” he demanded. “That’s stupid, I’m old enough to drive and buy guns and whatever the hell else.”

“But not rent a car, at least in many places in the United States.”

“But—“ he started, and remembered they were in public, and lowered his voice to a hiss, leaning in. “We’re hired killers, thieves, criminals. Do they really think we’re above having fakes? False documentation?”

“Actually, that is one of their requirements,” Dad said dryly, taking a paper from his jacket and consulting it. “I’m not happy about it either, mon lapin, but those are their rules. Already they have slightly bent them for one individual, and already I am on thin ice. But I may have a way to manage this.”

“Yeah?” Jeremy asked, nervous now.

“I know the woman responsible for new hires and managing the team I’ve applied for. She owes me a favor—a fairly hefty one. When I go in for the interview, one of my demands will include you being hired on, not as a mercenary, but for... for custodial purposes, something like that. Cook, janitor, security guard, secretary—whatever job there is that needs doing there, and I am sure that there will be one. Something to allow you to live there. Pay will likely be her stipulation, and the play I hope to make is that really, you’re overqualified for the position and she’s lucky to have someone so competent available, and in the worst case scenario, the pay is still good enough even for just one of us that we will not cut too deeply into the savings.”

The savings. That made Scout blink, because they only ever brought up the savings when—

“You think this could be it?” he asked quietly. “Like, it it?”

A hard exhale, and he leaned his cheek on his hand. “Potentially,” he finally said. “I don’t want to get your hopes up, but the job promises a variety of things. Medical attention available, extremely low levels of danger, and most of all, confidentiality. The only people who will know any name we give them would be the woman in charge of hiring us and their singular medical professional. There is no mode of communication to or from the compound outside of emergency lines to the organization and a single secure payphone located two miles away, there is no civilization within a twenty-five minute drive minimum, and this operation has been going long enough that the local authorities have long since grown used to being paid off, and likely don’t even remember what for anymore. I cash in a few valuable favors and ask this employer to turn a blind eye, we’d have somewhere remote and secure to spend our time after our deaths are faked and once the contract is over, we can start over. No ties to the past.”

“Freedom,” Jeremy marveled.

Silence for a few seconds, broken only by the quiet chatter of the rest of the diner. “I want to warn you, this work may not be glamorous. It may not even be particularly easy. I’m giving you the option of saying no,” Dad said.

“What?! Yes, hell yes, are you joking? To get us to living like normal people? Steady work? Livin’ in one place? Count me in!” he laughed.

“What if the job is something you won’t enjoy? Long hours, boring work?” Dad asked, entirely serious.

“I’m still on board.”

“What if the other people working there are rude to you? Disrespectful?”

“Well most of the people I meet through our job now try to kill us, so really it’s an upgrade.”

“What if there’s no diner nearby?” he asked, and there was a glint of humor in his eye.

“Damn, sorry, that’s the dealbreaker,” he joked right back, and that made him snort, shake his head, greet the waitress as she came back with their coffee and soda and then informed them that their food would be out shortly.

“I’ll ask,” was what Dad said once she was gone again, and that was that, and they started driving to New Mexico two nights later.

-

“—A warm welcome to our two newest recruits. This is the Spy, and this is the Guard.”

“Guard?” asked one of the men at the table, his accent thick and distinctly Russian. It made Jeremy tense slightly, but he didn’t let it show.

“Night Guard,” Jeremy answered, voice clipped.

“He’s not technically hired on as a mercenary like you all, he won’t be joining you on missions,” the short woman apparently named Miss Pauling (Jeremy was fairly sure it was a fake name) said, hands folded in front of her neatly. “He’s here to work security. Keep an eye out during the night, filter through the camera footage, handle the archiving, things like that.”

“We’re hiring on a civvie now?” asked another man, thick Scottish accent a little harder to digest than the eyepatch and the grenade he was in the process of fiddling with the internal mechanisms of.

“He’s combat ready, and will still be armed. His job is to essentially make sure you’re all safe enough to sleep through the night,” Miss Pauling said.

“I’m not some chump,” Jeremy agreed. “I know my stuff.”

“How old is he?” another man asked, this one in a hardhat with a heavy drawl, looking concerned.

“Twenty, for your information,” Jeremy said, a little sharply, eyes narrowed.

“If you have any other questions, there’ll be time later on. For now, I do need to show our two newest recruits where they’ll be staying,” Miss Pauling cut in.

There was an audible scoff from one of the men at the table, a dramatic rolling of eyes. Jeremy glared at him. He unfolded and refolded his extremely tattoo’d tree-trunk-like arms, tugging the visor of his hat between. “Sorry,” he said, accent thick and distinctly Californian. “I just don’t have the most trust for some scrawny kid in slacks and creep in a ski mask.”

“Scout, don’t start,” Miss Pauling warned.

“Just saying,” this man, apparently called Scout, muttered under his breath regardless.

“Don’t,” she said again, more firmly, and ignored the second eye roll she got for the trouble. “If you two would follow me.”

And they were shown around the base, and Jeremy in particular was shown into a room stuck behind three locked doors, where he found camera feeds and recording equipment. She gave him a basic overview and a thick packet of instructions and policies labelled ‘highly classified’ and a phone number to call if he had any further questions, and a set of hours that were apparently meant to become the new standard for him (with the quiet addendum that if he finished early that was alright, and that technically he could turn in early if two or more members of the team were already awake for the day and he was caught up on the archiving of old tapes).

Then he was left to “get used to the equipment”, which he assumed meant his dad was getting a similar rundown of his job, and it took a pretty quick glance through the packet to understand that clearly this place ran on an extremely secretive and closely monitored series of systems. In the packet, between the sections on camera maintenance and operation hours, were a few sheets detailing what were apparently the movement patterns of the various members of the team, including frequented locations and previously recorded large-scale infractions (mostly on the part of the Soldier, the Medic, the Scout, and one from the Demoman).

He wasn’t the one with the title Spy, but fuck, it seemed like he might as well have it. His entire job wasn’t even necessarily to keep the team safe overnight—he was just meant to watch all of them to make sure nobody was anywhere or doing anything out of the ordinary.

The next time he saw his dad, waiting outside the infirmary to get some sort of physical evaluation, his face was arranged carefully enough that he could tell he’d figured out something was up, too.

“Got your job assignments?” he asked quietly in French, glancing towards the door into the infirmary.

A nod, a glance. “I’m intrigued by the methods used in employee evaluation,” he deadpanned. “Especially the fact that apparently, they’re willing to assign employees for the explicit task of doing them.”

“How often?”

“Weekly.”

“Thorough,” Jeremy deadpanned, and glanced towards the hall at the distant sound of laughter, echoing from somewhere else on the base. “That’s basically mine too.”

There was a long silence, and when Jeremy looked back over, his dad was giving him an almost expectant look, waiting. All he had to offer him was a shrug, which was returned after a moment with a vague shake of the head. “I don’t believe it will be a problem,” his dad said simply. “Not for us, at the very least.”

Jeremy nodded. “Yeah. Uh, anyways, good luck with the… physical, or whatever,” he said, and received a pat on the shoulder before he walked back off down the hall, hoping to figure out what exactly he was supposed to do with an entire room all to himself. He’d almost never had one before.

-

He was used to time changes and jet lag, to needing to switch his sleep schedule on the regular, but the switch to a straight up night shift was a rough one.

His nine-to-five was actually a ten-to-six, as in 10 PM through 6 AM. This meant that, assuming he managed to get his schedule in order, he’d be able to join in on the team dinners if he woke up early and could eat breakfast with them before he went to bed.

Very quickly he realized that going to dinner and breakfast with the team was going to become a staple part of his routine, because it didn’t take long before he began to feel extremely lonely all of the time. In a dark little room, everyone else asleep, scrubbing through tapes from during the day while half keeping an eye on the live feed from around the base that never showed much of anything, it was brutal. It was suffocating.

It was easy, at least. It didn’t take long before he got efficient at it and could start zoning out, and it wasn’t like he was under much pressure. His was the only room without any cameras in it. Security risk, apparently. 
And to be honest, what small amount he and Dad interacted with mercenaries and other criminal types, Jeremy didn’t really tend to like them much. A lot of them were loud and rude and had the potential to turn around and try and kill them whenever they felt like it. He didn’t expect that he’d like the team as much as he did. He especially didn’t expect to like them so much without ever really talking to them.

But watching the camera feeds from throughout the day, seeing what they were up to, they were just... nice people. Soldier out by the dumpsters practicing rocket jumps and wrangling raccoons and apparently trying to learn how to spin a rifle, Pyro’s regular minor explosions in the kitchen while cooking and the surprised and frantic way they cleaned it up every time, the Demoman’s tendency to whistle wherever he went, watching through the feed as they all played cards and argued and jostled each other. They all seemed really nice. Really cool. Really dorky, too, but mostly just really nice and really cool.

And there were a few of them he was less sure about—he couldn’t get eyes on the Medic most of the time, what with the one camera in the Medbay being tilted down at an angle that made it hard to see much of anything but the occasional bird (probably by those same birds). The Heavy tended to just sit and read, and was pretty much silent most of the time otherwise. The Scout tended to leave the base pretty often. And the Sniper didn’t even live on base, he had a van outside that he could only occasionally see movement in when he squinted at the far edge of the camera leading outside. But even then, Heavy and Sniper mostly just seemed quiet, and Medic just seemed busy, and the Scout just seemed like a little bit of a dickhead.

But then one day when Jeremy was at breakfast the Heavy caught him leaning to try to get a look at the cover of the book he was reading, and he blurted that he was just wondering what book was so great that he’d stay up until like four in the morning reading, and then the entire team was gawking at him and asking questions and insisting that it was insane that there was someone actually watching all those cameras, and he shrugged and said there was always supposed to be someone watching the tapes back it was just usually some office worker type a hundred miles away. And they seemed almost... upset with him. And maybe that was fair, it wasn’t like he ever talked to any of them much, mostly he just spent breakfast and dinner half-asleep and listening to their chatter. And Demoman admitted that he’d honestly assumed that Jeremy slept his entire shift, he just always looked so tired at breakfast. There was almost this discomfort. This distrust.

And so, now that the jig was up, he made it a point to say some things to certain members of the team. To tell the Medic that his camera was tilted down so that he couldn’t see most of the room, and to very pointedly say that it was weird how that happened and that he didn’t know why they set it up like that in the first place, but it was really none of his business. Made it a point to warn the Engineer in the morning that the previous night, Soldier had been doing something in the fridge for a while, and to maybe check the labels before he made breakfast. Made it a point to tell the Demoman that the camera in his workshop was right in plain sight, and that if he moved one of his blackboards an inch or two to the left, it would obscure the room a pretty hefty amount. Made it a point to tell the Sniper that the camera on the rooftop seemed to be glitching out, and it’d just sort of lost the tapes of the previous two nights, and that it was really unfortunate since for all he knew there might have been someone ignoring the signs about there being no personnel allowed up there.

In return, he found that Pyro would sometimes make little sparkly notes with smiley faces on them and stick them to the door to the security room. That Sniper started tipping his hat at the camera above the door into the base from the garage. That on occasional drinking nights, the team would suddenly turn and start waving at the camera, laughing the whole way. On one night in particular he could hear through the low-quality and tinny speakers that they were trying to cajole him into leaving the security room for a while to join them for cards, and god, but he wanted to.

And he noticed more things. Soldier walking with a slight limp some days when rocket jumps had rough landings. Being able to count the doves in the infirmary and even tell them apart to some extent through blurry close-ups. The Engineer making it a point to sweep really regularly regardless of what project he was working on.

And then he noticed a weird thing.

It took him a long time to get used to the patterns of hallways, the cameras not really lined up linearly after a while, too many branching paths. He learned to follow progress, to flick from one camera to the next as someone walked around corners. And for a while he thought maybe he wasn’t very good at it.

Until he realized two things. First of all, that in a hallway where he knew there were five doors, he could only see four—apparently the door to Pyro’s room was just barely out of sight of the camera. He only figured it out because one day it swung open wide enough to almost bang against the wall.

And then, when he realized there was somehow that massive blindspot, that there was a corner with a blindspot too. One where that Scout kept disappearing.

He watched a few more times to make sure, and yep. He’d see the Engineer walking around the corner, flick to the next screen, and there he was, continuing down the hallway. And then later that same day, the Scout, walking, and flick to the next camera, and he wasn’t there.

One of the worse parts of the job was that he never got to see Dad anymore, never got to just sort of hang out the way they did all the time when he was growing up, and he knew he would miss it but he didn’t know how much. And he found it was even worse when he had something important to say, doubly so when he had something important to say but no idea if it was actually important.

He tried to bring it up casually, in the like ten minutes of time he ever got alone to talk to Dad. Dad was fighting the kettle trying to make some tea and he was trying to stay awake long enough to figure out how he was going to say this.

“Uh,” he said, and Dad looked at him. “So, uh, what’s the read you’re getting on that Scout guy?”

“Lazy,” Dad shrugged, looked back at the kettle. “Arrogant. He seems to care very little about doing his job correctly and has horrible communication on the field.”

“Right, right,” he nodded, fought a yawn down. “Uh. So like, kind of a dickhead.”

“Indeed,” Dad said, nodding vaguely.

“So uhhh... not the best.”

“Where are you going with this?” Dad asked, arching an eyebrow at him.

“I, I dunno, the guy just likes hanging out in this one blindspot in the cameras, and it’s kinda freaking me out,” Jeremy said, scratching at the back of his neck.

Dad frowned. “Strange. I wasn’t aware that there were any blindspots in the cameras.”

“There’s only a few, and only for pretty small spaces I think? But apparently he just likes hanging out in one of them.” Jeremy scuffed his shoe on the ground, glancing over as voices started echoing down the hall towards them. “Just thought it was weird.”

“I’ll look into it,” Dad muttered, voice quiet, and then raised it again slightly. “I refuse to keep up with sports.”

“C’mon,” Jeremy said, knowing this game well, changing subjects into something more normal as people entered earshot. “I’m not even asking you to keep up with sports, I’m just saying, I’d kill to go to a baseball game right about now.”

“The American Pasttime!” Soldier called from the room over.

“Exactly,” Jeremy agreed, nodding at Soldier as he also entered the kitchen, a half-asleep Demoman in tow.

“Any ghosties or ghoulies on the cameras last night, lad?” Demo had enough energy to ask, blinking blearily at the contents of the fridge.

“Oh, a billion,” Jeremy said.

“Guard!” Soldier barked, the most awake person in the room. “Should these ghost-ghouls appear again, don’t be afraid to point me in their direction! I have significant experience with them already and do not fear the likes of them!”

“Yeah sure,” Jeremy shrugged.

“You’re a champion, Guard,” Demo said with what was either a really disoriented blink or a wink, slugging him on the shoulder and wandering back out into the common room with the entire carton of milk in his other hand. Jeremy gave him a mock-salute that Soldier copied with absolute conviction. He and Dad shared a glance after the two of them left, and Jeremy was the first one to break, snickering under his breath.

“I’ll look into it,” Dad said, and also left the kitchen, and Jeremy nodded and started trying to remember what else he’d been planning on doing before bed.

-

“So,” Dad said a few days later, materializing next to Jeremy when he was in the middle of his jog and making him almost jump out of his skin, skidding to a stop.

“You’re enjoying that new watch way too much,” Jeremy panted, out of breath and still very much startled.

“Maybe,” Dad said, and he was smiling. “But as I was saying.”

“All you said was ‘so’,” Jeremy pointed out, giving him a look.

“There’s a juvenile joke here about how I’m your father and so of course I say ‘so’, but if you wouldn’t mind it, I did have something important to say, mon lapin,” Dad replied, and Jeremy rolled his eyes hard at the horrible joke and cheesy name, fighting back a smile of his own.

“Go for it,” he said, and took the opportunity to bend and tighten his shoelaces.

“So. Regarding that Scout and his habits. You mentioned he spends time in blind spots of the cameras, oui?” Dad asked.

“Yeah. Keeps, uh, I guess he keeps getting infractions for going off base too much, too. I’ve logged him leaving like three times this week already,” Jeremy nodded.

“Indeed. Well, considering how new we are to the team, I did not want to jump to conclusions, and so contacted Miss Pauling and asked on your behalf for any older records, and I found out something very... intriguing.”

Jeremy looked up at him, blinking. ‘Intriguing’, historically, had always been a very, very bad thing.

“Apparently, it has been two years since they last had a Guard situated on base. The previous one was a much older gentleman, retired from being a full member of the team due to health complications but not entirely ready to part with the company. The previous guard was somewhat strict, and the Scout—the same as we have now—very much disliked the man. He continued acquiring near-constant infractions under the man’s watch for leaving when he was not meant to, so much so that the previous Guard proposed enstating trackers on the team when they went off-base. And before this policy could take hold, the previous Guard left the base one day and did not return, and finally was found dead a state over, one month later.”

Jeremy blinked once, twice. “Holy shit,” he said, and took note of the wary look on his face. “Okay. So we’re thinkin’ the same thing, right?”

“I would assume so. And…” Dad hesitated, moved to fidget with his cufflinks. “And I would not be particularly concerned about this, as I’m confident that you wouldn’t have gotten his attention from what you’ve been up to lately, and therefore wouldn’t be in danger yet should history attempt to repeat itself, but… he’s already taken a disliking to you.”

“What?” he asked, eyebrows shooting up.

“I believe it’s something as simple as some sort of shallow jealousy. Another American on the team, also relatively young, filling the position of someone he disliked previously. He regularly complains about the fact that you don’t need to go do the same job as the rest of us.” Dad shrugged, glanced over at him. “That, combined with the fact that you have somewhat conflicting duties, well, he tends to rather tetchy. He claims that considering he’s meant to be the first line of defense, they shouldn’t also need a guard at night.”

Jeremy had a number of opinions about that, but he stuck to the most relevant ones. “I really don’t like this guy,” he said. “Might be, uh. Worth keeping an eye on.”

“Agreed.” Dad glanced back over his shoulder towards the base, then at his watch. “Enjoy the rest of your run. Don’t forget to eat.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, hit the bricks already, old man,” Jeremy scoffed, waving him off, and Dad rolled his eyes, disappearing again in a cloud of smoke. “You’re gonna be using that thing all the damn time now, aren’t you?”

“Oui,” came a voice from nowhere, and Jeremy huffed a laugh, meandering his way back into the rest of his jog.

-

Jeremy hummed along to the radio, flicking between cameras on autopilot and wondering when exactly to take his lunch break.

He didn’t face the clock or anything, so he wasn’t sure, but he thought he had a pretty solid rhythm at that point. Click, click, click, between the camera to the road, the camera to the main entrance, and the camera in the hall towards the middle of the building, for about one second each. At just about any time after 11 or 11:30, those were the only three in real time that he needed to keep an eye on, mostly for people coming back late from bar hopping or if Miss Pauling was rolling in on a delivery. All the other cameras he could see out of the corner of his eye, and any movement he’d pick up on pretty quick, even if it was usually just the doves fluttering on the camera to the Medbay. After he cycled through those (and there was almost never anything there) he’d cycle back through to the tape he had in, put it on high speed, and watch it for about two or three minutes, get through a chunk of that time. Mostly he’d just be making sure nobody had been in the base while the team was away ni o(which indeed there never was), so there wasn’t much of a reason to take it off high speed, and the second part of the night would be watching the tapes for the time the team was back on base.

Movement on a camera made him click the pause, and he glanced off to the side. One of the doves had shuffled to face the other direction. He rolled his eyes, looking back at the bigger monitor again and pressing play.

The second half of the night was a little more interesting. He just had to look at the tapes for the time the team was there, check for discrepancies that might point to Dad messing with the disguise technology off-the-clock or the enemy Spy having infiltrated. For the most part things were straightforward, but he at least got to see his teammates up to funny things sometimes. Pyro’s antics were usually entertaining. Soldier he only caught some of, on the basis of him often walking off out of range of the cameras when he went on his excursions. Demo was funny sometimes. Honestly, just seeing the Sniper anywhere but as a fuzzy distant shape was interesting.

Movement on a camera. Same dove. He ignored it. Click, click, click, all three cameras clear, back to the fast-forward of the same empty hallway as before.

He really needed to figure something out, for the Scout. Maybe he and Dad were just being paranoid. It would be insane for him to try to outright kill anyone who inconvenienced him, not to mention reckless, and stupid to boot. Acting like that in their line of work would make him a lot of enemies extremely quickly. It would make more sense for the old Guard disappearing to be unrelated, to be honest.

Yeah. Hell, he barely knew the guy, and here he was assuming he’d straight up whacked a guy for getting a little too on his case about something. Maybe they were wrong.

Movement on a camera. He glanced over and froze outright.

It took him five seconds to come to his senses enough to pause the playback on his screen.

Figures. Shapes. Not at the front entrance, in the hallway, there next to the back way, by the garage. At least three, moving carefully, hard to make out in the darkness.

Okay. Okay, don’t panic, focus.

Jeremy ran through a few things in his head. He’d already done a headcount, the only people he wasn’t sure about were the Sniper and the Medic, but he hadn’t seen the Medic in any of the hallways out of the infirmary. Three figures were two too many to be any of the team, and besides that, they didn’t look like the Medic. Too short to be the Sniper, moving differently. Different clothes.

Three people. He hopped up, rushed over to the wall, yanked open the panel he had there. Three buttons, which he needed to hit in order. The first would send an alert to Miss Pauling, the second to whoever was assigned to be on alert that night, the third would set off the alarm.

He hit the first, hit the second, and hesitated on the third.

Okay. Technically if he didn’t hit that third button, he’d be breaking protocol, which was, according to the manual, ‘grounds for termination’. He was pretty sure that meant a long swim with some concrete shoes. And it was apparently recorded every time he hit these buttons, so they could deduct from his pay on false alerts. So they’d know if he didn’t hit this third button. He needed to think fast.

This was a different button than the alert button. The alert was more subtle, set for just one person. The alarm was throughout the entire base, over every loudspeaker. Louder than a fire alarm. If he hit this one, these intruders would hear that there was an alarm going off. Anyone smart would book it, high tail it the hell out of there. But he still didn’t know where they came from.

There hadn’t been movement on any of the screens, and he looked at the camera feed facing the road already, a few times even. He should’ve seen them. And if they found their way in once, they could do it again.

If he didn’t hit the button, on the other hand, whoever was on alert would wake up and wonder why they’d gotten an alert but the alarm wasn’t going off. If they were clever, which they probably were if they’d lasted this long, they’d come to the security room to see what was up and they could work from there.

He closed the panel again and moved to wait.

A minute later, still no movement from the hallway where most of the rooms were. That was fine, they’d just woken up, and probably needed to get dressed and grab their guns.

Another minute later, no movement, which was fair, they just needed a second to get their bearings. The intruders, meanwhile, were just lurking, slowly making their way down the hall.

Another minute later, no movement, and he opened the panel to press the button again before he continued waiting. Maybe they didn’t hear him the first time.

Another minute later and he took to standing next to the panel, mashing the button rapidly, eyes on the screen where the intruders were passing the kitchen, starting to get pretty far into the building.

Another minute later and he stomped his way into his sneakers, grabbing his flashlight and gun and guard cap from where they were hung on the wall. “Fine, I’ll fucking do it myself,” he grumbled, and carefully shouldered open the door, taking one last glance at the camera before he shut the door behind himself.

He kept his footsteps quiet, squinting into the darkness, waiting for his eyes to finish adjusting as he crept towards where he’d last seen the figures. It was near-silent in the base at night except for the distant, quiet hum of generators and occasional shift of plumbing. It was getting more and more familiar, and he found himself able to tune it out somewhat, instead listening intently for footsteps besides his own, making sure to click the safety off his gun while he was still alone and not when he was close to whoever had decided to break in.

Okay. Dad did this all the time. He could handle this.

He slowed as he approached the corner near the kitchen, peering around as carefully as he could, tugging down the brim of his cap to try and hide any potential shine from his eyes. He caught sight of a vague shape standing near the doorway, hesitating before it crept inside, into the common area.

Not ideal, on the basis of that being their goddamn kitchen, but at least there would be cover.

By the time he managed to sneak up to the doorway, he could make out the sound of vague whispering. It was far enough that it gave him the boldness to peer into the room, and just slightly lit by the glow of the clock on the oven he could see two shapes there in the kitchen, the third lingering nearer to him, there by the table.

Jeremy was only just starting to make a plan, relieved to have the jump on them, when there was the distant sound of a generator humming to life, and all the figures stopped, paused for a moment.

“Fucking spooky here,” one whispered, barely audible.

“Calm down,” another whispered. “What, scared of ghosts?”

Jeremy inhaled, exhaled, shifted onto the balls of his feet and started creeping a little further into the room. If he could just get all three of them to one side, so he wouldn’t need to pivot so much…

“You don’t know, maybe there’s ghosts here,” the first protested, and swore quietly at what sounded like their winging their elbow against the corner of the tale, and Jeremy tried to stick near the wall, managed to creep half-behind one of the chairs, trying to keep his silhouette indistinct. “These guys kill people.”

“So do we,” the third mumbled, moving out of sight in the kitchen, and Jeremy bit down on a swear, starting to inch behind the couch. “Don’t be a coward. And stop making so much noise.”

“You can’t shoot a ghost,” the first pointed out, moving a bit closer to the kitchen, giving the table a wide berth now. “Or punch it.”

“I can try,” the second said, and stopped at the sound of a rustle.

Jeremy held his breath, weight half-balanced against where he’d tried to step, newspaper trapped beneath his foot.

“That one wasn’t me,” the first whispered. There was another, more significant rustle throughout the room, and Jeremy could see a glint as the intruders drew their weapons.

Jeremy inhaled, exhaled, and just barely managed not to swear out loud.

The first one was the closest by, lingering beside the arm of the couch Jeremy was crouched in the shadow of. “Do they have a cat here?” they asked, voice quiet.

The second was approaching into the main room more carefully. From the sound of the footsteps, trying to keep a shoulder closer to the wall, clearly paying more attention to the door. “Are you stupid or something?” was the reply, voice also quiet.

The third didn’t speak, but huffed out a laugh, which was enough to tell Jeremy that he was out of the kitchen.

Jeremy inhaled shakily, exhaled shakily, shifted his grip on his handgun and flashlight, and took a split second to think. Inhaled one more time.

He leapt to his feet, swinging his flashlight like a billy club and clobbering the first figure across the side of the head, sending them tumbling to the ground. From the sound of the impact, a dislocated jaw at the very least. One down.

A shout from the other side of the room, arms moving to try to aim, clearly struggling to see him, but that third figure was in the doorway, silhouetted against the faint light from the oven’s clock, and that was enough to figure out where the head and chest were. He aimed, fired, got what he was pretty sure was the neck considering the brief spray of blood that splattered against the oven, darkening the room completely.

A swear from the second figure, and Jeremy wanted to swear too, because he’d hoped that second figure would be stupid and try and charge him, but now he was ten steps away and didn’t have time to fiddle with and cock the gun again, other hand full with a flashlight and no way to—

Oh, duh.

“Stay where you are,” the second figure ordered, but Jeremy’s eyes were a little better adjusted and besides that, he wasn’t the one talking. He lifted his flashlight and clicked it on.

The second figure cried out, recoiling at the sudden blindingly bright light in what had been near-darkness, and Jeremy had time to finagle his thumb up to cock his gun again, now able to aim with absolute accuracy, this shot connecting with the figure’s head.

He exhaled.

It took Jeremy two minutes to remember to fire a bullet into the chest of the unconscious guy, and another minute for the other mercenaries to start showing up, half-dressed and armed. Dad, presumably to prove a point, showed up pretty close to the middle of the pack almost fully dressed. Jeremy wasn’t entirely sure how long it took before Miss Pauling showed up, but he wasn’t even halfway through their questions by that time.

“Guard, headcount?” she asked before she even bothered saying hello, still wearing her motorcycle helmet and looking more than a little bit miffed.

“Uh,” he said, eyes drawn away from where Medic was assessing the bodies on the kitchen table, “seven present and accounted for. Sniper’s probably out at his van, don’t know about the Scout.”

“Alright. Pyro,” she said, and Pyro stood at attention, bunny slippers squeaking at the movement. “go wake up Sniper and get him in here.”

Pyro nodded, handing their weird unicorn plushie thing to Jeremy as they passed by, giving him a solemn nod before hurrying away.

“Okay. Guard, hit me with a rundown, then,” she said, and shot a glance around the room. “No peanut gallery needed. And Medic, please don’t take them apart too much. I gotta get rid of those later.”

“Uh. Spotted these guys on the cameras, hit the first and second alerts,” Jeremy said.

“And not the third?” she asked pointedly.

“They were, like, right next to the door, and—here’s the thing, Miss P, is I dunno how the hell they got in here,” he said, and there was a general balk from the room. “No, seriously. They didn’t come in on the main road, they were in one of the back hallways by the garage. There’s gotta be a hole in the cameras or something, because I seriously don’t know where they came from. And if they booked it, they’d take whatever vehicle they used to get here, too, and we might not figure it out. Thought I’d just wait for whoever the hell was supposed to be on alert so we could… I dunno, at least see which way they went.”

“Guard,” she admonished, and he shrank a little bit. “That was incredibly reckless. What if nobody had shown up to help you?”

“Uh,” he said, blinked, “but… nobody did show up.”

A pause. She blinked. “What? You’re the one who did that?” she asked, entirely shocked, pointing towards the three bodies on the table.

“Uh, yeah? Isn’t that my job?” he asked carefully, shifting the stuffed animal under his arm.

“No, you’re—you’re just supposed to be the Guard, you’re supposed to watch cameras, not—“ She paused, taking a second to push up her glasses and rub at the bridge of her nose, inhaling, exhaling. “Okay. Points for… going above and beyond, here, but Guard, don’t do that again.”

“Sure thing, Miss P,” he mumbled, tugging on the brim of his guard cap, and sighed to himself as Miss Pauling moved away to try and stop Medic from attempting to covertly steal a few organs from the corpses. Dad clapped him on the shoulder supportively, and that did make him feel a little better. He wasn’t expecting a clap to the other shoulder, and looked up, surprised to see Heavy there, looking just slightly less grim than usual.

“Little Guard man is credit to team,” he said simply, solemnly.

Jeremy straightened up slightly. “Oh. Hey, thanks,” he said. Heavy nodded at him.

“It’s true,” Demo called, and he looked over, got another approving nod. “Really saved the lot of us, lad.”

“I, I mean, hey, it’s… what I’m here for. Or, uh. I thought that was it, anyways,” he shrugged, glancing away. “I mean, yeah, I’m pretty cool, though.”

Dad bumped his arm for the last part, and he snickered. “My question,” Dad continued, doing his best to ignore him, “is primarily regarding who, precisely, was supposed to be present to help Guard with this. Who is meant to be on alert?”

“It’s meant to be Scout, ain’t it?” the Engineer asked from nearby, frowning. A general murmur of agreement. “Could he have slept through it?”

“Heavy doubts this,” Heavy grumbled, looking troubled.

“Why’re we awake?” asked Sniper from the doorway, and various teammates called out a greeting. Sniper seemed half-gone, and completely grumpy, but not as grumpy as Pyro, and not nearly as gone as the man leaning heavily against Pyro’s shoulder.

“Hey,” the Scout managed, grinning, speech garbled, visibly sloppy and unbalanced. “What’s up, guys?”

Groans from parts of the room. “Drinkin’ again, Scout?” the Engineer drawled, visibly irritated.

“That’s my trademark, lad, go on,” Demo laughed, but the enthusiasm wasn’t entirely there.

“Scout,” Miss Pauling said, voice firm in a way that made Jeremy almost flinch in sympathy. “Are you aware that we’ve had a situation here while you’ve been sleeping?”

“Weren’t sleeping,” Sniper murmured, and eyes turned to him. He scratched at the back of his neck. “Came stumbling in ‘round when I was heading in. He was out for the night. Bar, looks like.”

“What?” Jeremy demanded. “Why the fuck didn’t I see him leave on the cameras?”

“Alright,” Miss Pauling said, and Jeremy looked at her. Her expression was hard to read. “It’s possible he went through the back tunnel.”

“Back tunnel?” Jeremy asked, and glanced around. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t heard of it.

“For emergencies only. Scout’s the only one who I’ve given a key card to. I have one too. It’s supposed to be used for transporting especially sensitive information, most of the team isn’t supposed to even know it exists. If there’s a gap in the cameras around the back of the building, he might have been using it to… sneak out to go to town, even though he knows he’s already in hot water for leaving the base so much,” Miss Pauling said, glaring at Scout, who was looking increasingly annoyed.

“Whatever, it’s not a big deal,” he protested, scoffing.

“That tunnel is for emergencies only,” Miss Pauling stressed. “I trusted you with the privilege of knowing about it account of having worked here for so long, and you’re using that privilege and key card to mess around?”

“He was coming back from around the front of the building, at least,” Sniper chimed in, and Pyro nodded. “Not that I’d understand the point of sneaking out if he’s going to just walk back in the front door.”

“Key card?” Medic repeated from near the table, eyebrows furrowed.

“Yeah, it’s, it’s a magnetized card, that can be read by a card reader, used like a key,” Miss Pauling explained, deflating a little bit.

His eyebrows furrowed further. “Would it happen to look anything like this?” he asked, picking up a lanyard from the table and holding it up, showing the room the card clipped onto the end of it.

Two beats of silence. “Spy, would you mind?” Miss Pauling asked politely, nodding towards the Scout, who had gone pale.

“Not at all,” Dad said just as politely, and walked over towards the Scout and Pyro, then circled around behind them, and sank a blade into the Scout’s spine. He promptly crumbled to the floor, dead.

“Well. At least that’s that mystery solved,” Miss Pauling sighed, and rubbed at the bridge of her nose again. “Now I’ve gotta block off time tomorrow to get rid of three bodies, and then hopefully that’s the last we’re gonna hear of this or else the Administrator is gonna kill me.”

“What about the Scout?” Heavy rumbled.

“…Scratch that. Four bodies,” she mumbled, face dropping into her hands. “And then I need to find his replacement. Ugh.”

“Can’t imagine you’d need to go far,” Demo said, and Jeremy looked up, and Demo was very obviously tilting a thumb in his direction.

“He’s proven himself to be better at this job,” Dad agreed, shrugging. “And I would say on a bad day he’s still a better runner than the previous Scout on a good one.”

“He can clearly handle a firearm well,” the Engineer noted, looking over one of the bodies.

“And a blunt object,” Medic chimed, just a bit too pleased. “This jaw is almost completely shattered!”

“Okay, okay, fine, sure,” Miss Pauling waved off, one hand still pressed to her face, clearly overwhelmed and tired. “We’ll get his paperwork in tomorrow. Congratulations, you’re the new Scout, any questions? Can the questions wait until morning? Great, thank you. Good night, everyone. Medic, have the bodies in bags for me at least, okay?”

A distracted thumbs up from Medic, and Miss Pauling was groaning, wandering back out of the room, and most of the team followed, yawning amongst themselves. Sniper half-attempted to ask again why the hell any of them were awake, but gave up halfway through. Pyro, for one, made sure to at least retrieve the plushie from Scout’s arms before wandering off, giving him an appreciative pat on the shoulder.

“So,” Dad said, and when he looked over, he was smiling. “A promotion, mon lapin. Congratulations, new Scout.”

“Do I gotta wear that stupid outfit he always wears?” Jeremy asked, entirely serious. His reply was a laugh and a pat on the shoulder before he disappeared in a puff of smoke. “Pops, I’m serious. Do I? Dad!?”

-

“—So that’s why I figured, y’know, might as well tell you guys,” Jeremy finished rambling, hands in his pockets, continuing down the hallway. “Because… I dunno. I could tell Miss P, but it’s nice having secret stuff, y’know?”

“You think this is how they actually got in?” Demo asked, looking dubious. “Little blind spot in the cameras?”

“Only a couple feet wide, you said?” Sniper grumbled.

“Sounds possible,” Heavy said hesitantly.

“I dunno. Maybe. But if I tell Miss P about it, they’re gonna fix it,” Jeremy shrugged, turning the corner and stopping. “There. I knew it.”

They stopped with him, following his line of sight. “You’re takin’ the piss, mate,” Sniper deadpanned. “You want to tell me he’d been climbing out a window like a teenager?”

Jeremy shrugged, moving to open the window in question. It swung open easily, just large enough to push through with only a little bit of a problem, barely needing to turn his shoulders. “He’s not much bigger than me, and what the hell else would he be doing here?” he pointed out.

“Heavy cannot fit through that window,” Heavy deadpanned.

“Yeah. Sorry, big guy,” Jeremy apologized, leaning back inside and closing it again. “But hey, mystery solved, right?”

“Well, if I ever need windows to climb out of, now I know just the lad for the job,” Demo said, nudging him. “Thanks, Guard. Or, er, Scout. Och, now that’s going to take getting used to, aye? Might just stick to calling you ‘laddie’, laddie.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he laughed, nudging him right back. And as much as they ribbed him for it, he did see a kind of appreciation there. Just like he’d figured, they seemed to take note of him taking their side and not just Miss Pauling’s.

Now he just needed to switch back over to the day shift.

#father-son bonding au #dad!spy #tf2 #team fortress 2 #shut up me #my fanfiction #everybody talks #really happy with this one even if it took Way Too Fucking Long