#Hey Ho

[saffronscales]

living in the era of a 2000s furry artist

[godwantsit]

[walkingstackofbooks]

My vision for endgame Data/Julian which has consumed me ever since I watched Picard 😅

A few months after the Dominion war, the Enterprise docks at DS9 for a short while allowing Data to meet his long-time pen-friend, Julian, again. Julian's not doing well, but since he seems to enjoy Data's company, Data decides to take a couple more weeks of leave to spend some more time with his friend. However, Julian starts becoming more and more withdrawn and anxious, and after an incident one evening where he becomes agitated to the point of storming out, Data reaches out to Deanna to see if she can give him any insight into his friend's behaviour. She has some ideas, but also suggests that Data ask Keiko, and after talking with the O'Briens, Data believes he understands what's wrong. When he asks Julian if he's correct in thinking that his impending departure is what's upsetting the doctor, Julian's surprise at the question is enough that he answers truthfully - yes. To Data, the solution is obvious: if Julian is distressed by the idea of someone else leaving him, then Data will not leave. (Julian begs him not to make promises he cannot keep, and has a minor breakdown when he realises that Data is deadly serious.) After a lot of conversation, some favour-cashing, and the fortunate coincidence that one of Beverly's doctors was beginning to look for a promotion to CMO, Julian ends up transferred to the Enterprise: technically a demotion, but after so long having so much on his shoulders, it's actually a relief.

While on Enterprise, Data and Julian get closer and closer. Their relationship brings some difficulties when it becomes public, though: some see the fact Julian's dating an android as proof that he's not really human; others wonder how Data's affection can be real, and feel that if he were as human as he wants to be, then he wouldn't be dating an augment. Julian's parents definitely berate him for wasting all the gifts they gave him by marrying an android - if only he'd talked to them before the wedding, they could have adbised him against it! - making him a zillion times more grateful Data talked him out of inviting them every time he started to feel guilty about it. But that's by the by. They're together, happily married, endgame Julian/Data achieved, right?

... Wrong. I hate Nemesis, but imagine Julian following Data down before he throws himself into space, knowing he could probably stop Data from doing this if he asks. Data saying, "I know I promised never to leave you," and Julian shaking his head and barely being able to choke out the words "It's okay," and then Data's gone. And Geordi's trying to reassure Julian (Geordi's trying to convince himself...) that Data will be alright, he's got the emergency tranport unit, and they get back to the bridge, and Picard transports in, and Data's still on the ship that's blowing up, and Deanna's asking what happened and Julian's sliding down against a wall, horarsely whispering "I let him go..."

20 years later... Picard season one. I haven't quite decided when I want Julian to appear, because the idea of Julian fighting for android rights is everything to me, but also I kind of like the premise of changing as little as possible in canon... (Maybe Julian had tried to be part of the movement for android rights, bu the media had really latched onto his augment status and used it as another reason to discredit the movement, and so he'd withdrawn from it, as it seemed his presence was doing more harm than good….) So the Picard crew all return to the Riker-Troi household after the final showdown and Deanna welcomes them in with a "Guess who we finally managed to get in contact with" and bring them into the lounge where Julian' anxiously waiting. And of course the initial introduction is awkward and Julian's talking a million words a minute until Will pokes him and then over the next few days he's trying to keep his distance so that Soji doesn't feel that she needs to let him into her life... And meanwhile Soji is still, you know, coping with ALL the feelings and trauma that the last - what, week? - have given her and so she has no idea what to do with this man, who was apparently her father's husband, especially as she has no clue how he feels about the whole suddenly-having-an-android-stepdaughter thing. But eventually they do manage to have a conversation (/are forced to talk it out) and they get on so well and Soji realises how much Julian genuinely wants to get to know her for her sake and while Julian's terrified at the prospect of having a daughter, he's also delighted (and Will and Deanna make them both stick around for a whole while, 1. because they do enjoy having them both around, 2. because Kestra adores Soji, and the two are pretty good for each other, and 3. because, while they have kept in contact with Julian over the years, they also know how long he's been on his own for, and they want to make sure he's got a solid base and people to lean on. As much as Julian wants to be a good father, Soji deserves more than one traumatised, lonely man doing a best that would quite possibly not be good enough...)

Picard season 3. Julian and Soji are visiting Geordi at the museum when the Picard crew come along, and are swept into the action... Julian learning that Data's alive - kind of... Julian tenderly kissing Data before they take down the partition, telling him he has to win so he can meet their daughter... The two of them barely having time to reunite before having to rush off to their respective duties in saving the ship... (I have VISIONS of Soji and Julian working desperately together to find a cure for the transporter virus, while Julian's augment physiology has done something weird to make it that he's turning, but very, very slowly. Julian making sure that Soji is armed, and making her promise to shoot him if he turns too quickly. Soji telling him he has to keep fighting it and refusing to think about what it might come to. Julian realising he's about to lose control and getting Soji to restrain him. Soji despairing that she won't be able to find a cure by herself - she's not a doctor doctor like he is - and Julian reassuring her that he believes in her, she just needs to do her best... but most importantly, if she doesn't find it, it's alright, it's not her fault, and he loves her. Resistance is futile. A phaser shot.) And afterwards, when Soji's found the cure and it's been distributed, Julian wakes up to find Data sitting next to him and Soji hovering nearby. He tries to scramble up and leave to help the rest of the crew, but Soji informs him that just as he took longer to turn, he took longer to get better, and he's the last one to wake up from it. And then she makes to leave, to give the two of them some time alone, and Julian tells her that's nonsense, she needs to meet Data, and Soji says that it's fine, they've been talking while he was asleep, and Julian replies that now he feels left out, so she definitely can't leave, come here, sit by me, I'm not letting either of you out of my sight.

[mrsreinhart]

Lili Reinhart for Lancel Paris 2023.

[blamemma]

I know it was a joke but why does everyone get so weird about their relationship as if no one earth has had something casual turn into an actual relationship

look i dont usually wag discourse and this will be the one and only ask i answer about it but nothing wrong with something casual becoming an actual relationship...done it myself....was good for a while, then it wasnt, but we're not talking about me. but from what we see of their relationship, it is a lil weird how little they spend time together etc etc. if it works for them great, happy for them but if that was my boyfriend and i was that unemployed i'd follow him around the world happily

[fre-mood]

[coldercreation]

Random WIP, likely to remain a WIP

(--) “Boy! C’mere! Take this to the captain‘s (rooms?)??” the cook called, gruff and short, but not unkind.

?? skirted around the kitchen hands, ducking under pots, trying to avoid getting underfoot (??) (--)

“Me?” ?? asked, taking the covered tray that was being handed to him. “But-"

“The quartermaster called for you, son.”

“The quartermaster?” ?? repeated, frowning. “But... Why?”

“Still askin’ too many questions,” the cook grumbled. He piled another nice plate on top of the already heavy tray, eyeing ?? critically, probably to make sure he wouldn’t topple over with the food. “Do as ye’r told.” The cook stuffed a bite of warm bread in between ??s teeth. -- He?? grinned around the mouthful, eyes squinting pleased as the doughy, savoury taste exploded on his tongue. The cook scowled, waving him off. “Now, get!” 

-- ?

?? was slow going up the stairs, wrists straining and arms shaking. Even after all these months at sea he hadn’t been able to build the same sort of mass most of the crew seemed to put on so effortlessly. Still as puny?? and birdlike as ever, precisely what the courts and ballrooms had expected a fresh, malleable, noble youth like him to be.

Somehow ?? had managed to grow up to seem exactly what everyone around him had wanted him to be, whilst also being the absolute opposite of that.

A tarnished, wasted, angel, one of the ma’ams had called him --?? And she hadn’t even known the ‘worst’ of it; just an elderly lady scoffing at a young man’s carelessness, horrified that someone of his stature would be caught running about the gardens, barefoot and clothes damp with dirt.

“Sneaking a bite?” Crew?? asked, callused fingers reaching towards the tray. ?? shouldered past him, turning his back so the food would remain untouched. “Oi! Who’s that for?”

“The captain. And quartermaster. I think?”

“Why’s the cook not takin’ it ‘imself? Did y’steal that, y’rat? Hey!”

?? Ignored the questioning, knowing they just wanted a piece of whatever the tray held.

Not that they weren’t right to be suspicious. ?? definitely wasn’t the one who would normally interact with the captain’s quarters, nor the men who’d frequent it the most.

He knew to stay out of their way. The less they saw of him, the better. 

It was a miracle the first mate had even allowed him on board; too skinny, too polished, and too ignorant to be of any real help. 

Too naive, they had called him. Won’t last a week. Made of that posh sort of glass, not a cut to his soft hands. The sea, she’d eat him alive.

All true. Humiliatingly so.

But ?? had vowed to make it worth it for the first mate. Had given all the money he had stolen from his father and his older brothers. The steep earnings he had gotten from secretly selling one of the estate’s best stallions. 

The merchant sailors had looked at his offerings as if they were meagre pennies. Looked at him like he was just a wealth-ruined son of a lord(??) Too gullible and coddled, blind to the reality of life outside the riches he had grown up in.

And perhaps they had been right.

Perhaps someone less coddled would’ve been able to tell merchant sailors apart from the navy, and the navy apart from the... 

Well.

The pirates took his money, gladly, but at least they also took him, holding their end of the deal.

They said that, in time, he’d make a good decoy; sun bleached hair creating an aura of innocence, pale skin that burned pink in the summer heat showing he wasn’t used to the elements. He looked like a lord’s son, even in his ratty clothes. Posture pin straight, hands always politely placed, blue eyes 'pure like his bloodline'.

No one’d suspect him, they said. He looked useless, out of place, here. They’ll let their guards down for someone like him.

A decoy, they said. All ?? heard was that he was disposable.

Which he supposed he was. 

An inconvenience, more than anything. A spoiled brat who’s father and uncles were powerful enough to be wary of, who’s mother was wealthy enough to pay someone to find ??, if she’d feel inclined to do so.

Not that she would. 

Not after her maids had tattled to her about ??s games with the stable hand.

?? pushed the image of his chronically stern-faced mother out of his mind, instead focusing on the problem of knocking on the captain's door when both of his hands were occupied.

He used the worn point of his shoe, wobbling slightly balancing on one foot.

(--)“Why’s the runt here?” the captain asked tiredly, clearly having expected the head cook, as usual. The man barely glanced at ??, eyes flitting between the food placed in front of him and the books on his desk. “I thought you said we have someone who can help.”

The quartermaster rolled his eyes. “He can read and write.”

The captain paused, rings clinking against the gold trimmed plate he had been reaching for.

“That’s it?” the captain asked. His tone made ?? shift uneasily, eyes to the floor, hands behind his back. “We‘ve been sailing aimlessly for weeks... You think a lad who can read will solve our problems?”

“And write,” the quartermaster repeated, shrugging. He didn’t seem too concerned by the storm building in the captain’s gaze. “Better than nothing, surely.”

The captain closed his eyes, a deep, tortured cut pressing in between his brows. The man sighed, for a moment looking like he was praying, even though ?? knew that these men prayed to nothing but the devils living deep below the seas.

“Fine. Gods... Fine.” The captain grabbed a fork, lifting the cover from the tray to stab through a deliciously steaming potato. ?? himself had eaten barely nothing but gruel for months, their last docking just a distant memory. 

The quartermaster ushered ?? to the desk behind the captain’s more impressive decorative piece, leaving the darkly scowling man to his dinner. --

Although nothing like the main desk??, the smaller piece of furniture was still made of fine wood, its surfaces sanded smooth. It was bolted to the wall and the floorboards to keep it in place against the rocking of the ship. 

The quartermaster had a smug air to him as he piled some of the heavy books and scrolls in front of ??. He even pulled a fresh candle out just to light the space some more, the wax smooth, wick catching easily despite how damp everything on board usually was. (??)

“Anything you find about a gannet’s nest, you mark with a clear tag. Write it down, and tell one of us, or the first mate.” The quartermaster snatched a pot of ink from the captain’s shelf, pressing a silky white quill in ??s hand.

“A gannet?” ?? asked, pulling one of the scrolls closer to him, eyeing the messy cursive pensively. -- If only his old tutor ?? could see him now... “The seabird?”

“Aye, the seabird.” The quartermaster’s heavy hand landed on ?? nape, his fingers squeezing down briefly, pointedly. “Blue bill, golden cap, eats like the devil’s about to take our tomorrow. Write down anything that even hints to it, and not a word ‘bout it outside these rooms.”

The last bit, it wasn’t a question. Not even a request.

?? frowned in confusion, but he nodded all the same.

“Good lad. I’ll tell the ?? that I’ve taken you off his hands, for now. Do well and maybe we can consider keepin’ you off the – - ”? 

?? knew he wasn’t particularly smart. 

He wasn’t quick on his feet and he knew nothing of the street smarts most of the men under this sail had needed to find over the years. 

Maybe ?? wasn’t the cleverest son of a lord, but still, he refused to be thick enough to believe that the 'gannet’s nest' he was told to look for was referencing an actual gannet. 

Perhaps another ship?

Perhaps a cyphered coordinate? A sea current? A term for astrology and sailing maps?

The captain cleared his throat, dark wine spilling into his tall glass when ?? turned.

“Start with this,” the man said. Two of his smallest fingers flicked towards a thick book, the rest of them lazily wrapped around the stem of his drink.

The book was titled ‘Gannets’. 

?? tilted his head, confused, and silently questioning the sanity of these men. 

(--?)

Captain's orders, ?? read on.

The book was about... gannets. 

(--)

[poisonedfate]

me: i'm not gonna make this about magic

also me:

[wilsons-three-legged-siamese]

So jealous of people who can draw digitally

[deviltownresident]

I don’t know you but tell me more

ohohohohoho you have no idea how long i have wanted to rant about duolingo. where to start... probably texts i once sent about it to @the-lemonisinplay

"my dad knows duolingo doesn't help but he still uses it, he's obsessed with the leagues, my mother doesn't care but she thinks it helps her skills, it does not. i want to start a chatroom of people who hate duolingo bc I can't be the only one. you know what I hate? duolingo. more specifically, other people doing duolingo. and practically shouting into their phones in a language I don't understand. and the phrase 'I have to do duolingo'. no. it's not true, you don't have to do it. you picked it up for fun and now you're getting brainwashed into doing useless activities each day instead of what? instead of people actually enjoying being in your presence. get a life. every single day. do you want to do X thing? no. you have a fucking fictional owl cartoon to spend time with. you know what else you have to spend time with? other people. my dad does duolingo twice a day, sessions of about 20 minutes? they're trying to learn Dutch atm, and it's not even helping. they're not learning anything new. they're just obsessed with staying in the right league. but the thing is they know duolingo isn't helpful and they hate it most of the time but they're still obsessed. let the world feel my wrath at the scary owl app."

i think that pretty much sums it up. i know a lot of that is about my parents but i feel like this must have happened to lots of people- it's a real problem how companies try to sell their product by giving people a false sense of accomplishment by endorsing it. and yeah, maybe i have a vendetta specifically against this stupid app, but i'm not the only one who critiques its ability to actually teach languages - anyone who's been on it for more than five minutes will know that most of the vocabulary it teaches you is bogus - ie, sentences like one my mum had, "my snail can't eat salt" - and that it's completely ineffective for teaching grammatical rules. you need a proper teacher, or at least a human fucking being to teach you that, not a corporation out there purely to scam you for your time (don't get me started on duolingo plus)

anyway. sorry this is literal months late it's been in my drafts for forever. if you made it this far... well done and i'm slightly in love with you.

[walkingstackofbooks]

Discovering that Rokassa JUICE is served in a mug while Tarkalean TEA is served in a glass - ????!

It's mildly annoying that I assumed it would be the other way round, and wrote this scene before checking... I'm sure no-one would notice, but I would know, so now I have to rewrite that bit! 😅

[candont]

[adenial]

@legendscried

ㅤㅤtakes a little cloth to clean some blood off astarions face ♥

[im-a-king-baby]

Hi ! 11 and 14 for the ask game about your year ?

Hope you the best for the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024 💝

Merry 2024! I had a lovely end of the year with family, friends and fireworks, and now we're going into 2024 jet lagged and procrastinating on writing #startasyoumeantogoon XD

11. Something you want to do again next this year?

Complete a long story that I'm super proud of. ELYN took so much longer than I expected to edit but I feel like it was worth the time and I learned so much about myself and my writing from doing it.

Currently I'm hoping to put that energy into a novel, but also hopefully I'll write some more fic this year (maybe I should do some kind of short fic prompt game... do people still do things like that? Would you guys want to read that?)

14. Favorite book you read this last year?

OCEAN'S ECHO Ocean's Echo Ocean's Echooooo. I feel like this may not come as a surprise as I have mentioned it... multiple times... but RARELY do I read a book that is SO MUCH my jam as this one. The characters are so incredibly well built, the voices are perfect it is a story about FAKING A SOULBOND TO SIDESTEP A MILTARY CONSCRIPTION and it is in SPACE and I want to live in this universe FOREVER.

Also Our Wives Under the Sea which I knew nothing about going in and it was this gorgeous creeping horror and also amazing character work and the ocean is deep and amazing and DEEP.

And since I read 99 books last year (it was a slow reading year), let's throw in honourable mentions to Lockwood & Co, I'm Glad my Mom Died, Light from Uncommon Stars, The City We Became, and Lessons in Chemistry

[ace-malarky]

Hello! Just stopping by with a question about writing XD Do you have any characters who's role grew bigger than you expected? Any surprising changes your characters went through during the writing process?

hallo @did-i-do-this-write, thanks for swinging by!

and oh boy do I!! I do have a definite weakness for some of my side characters and so many of them end up being bigger than I expect lmao

The biggest one that comes to mind, tho, is Merlie. She was a side character in my first ever nano novel (so we are going back years) and was kinda mysterious, clearly up to something, meant as a foil to the actual main character and did end up getting sacrificed in MC's place. like that wasn't exactly what I had planned for her at the beginning but also I didn't have a plan at the beginning.

Cut to the year after when I was writing the next nano and another novel and I went "hey wouldn't it be fun if Merlie turned up here also" because I was toying with interlinking everything and WCC was also going strong so I could make it fit in fun ways

Which made it a prequel, so Merlie was kicking about and I went "oh she's a spy that explains a few things" like actually what she was doing in two different countries in consecutive years and why she knew things etc etc

and then I got to the end of that book and the MC there went "so I'm in love with Merlie" and I, newly realised Queer, went "ah shit I can't kill her off that would be mean" because I am weak

and I still haven't gone back to rewrite either of those novels yet but I probably should because that needs fixed and also it's been like. over ten years. But also it's been ten years and like. I'd have to read old stuff, you feel me?