#If I were to make a killjoys show I would probably either base it on National Anthem and have it animated comic book style

[even-michael]

hi future filmmaker here 👍 go to war emos

[offbranddrpepsi]

Headcanons i personally have about the agents

These are some of my ideas or takes so please be kind!

Cypher’s wife may still be well and alive however i think she, as well as their child, probably don’t know HE is alive or thinks he walked out on them. If they are aware he is alive i imagine he has little to no contact with them to keep them safe

More Cypher: if his wife is dead i like to imagine he let his child get adopted out to someone he knows so he can be reassured they are safe. He keeps tabs on them all the time and gets regular updates about them. This is just my “if she is dead what about the kid” hc. Based on his revive voicelines i feel she is very much a live OR Nora is a relative that ISN’T his wife that is in possession of his child.

Chamber’s “condition”, if not just referring to him being only human, is either something that caused him to be in poor health for a while OR is referring to his life before becoming a weapon designer. I feel it would be really interesting if Chamber started life as fairly poor but basically got a kick start due to his natural talent with design and weapons, building himself up to surpass where he started. If it is an actual medical condition i feel its either made worse or was started by the radianite modifications made to his body to store his weapons as well as make him capable of short distance teleportation. I also feel he may be very dependent on those modifications to live his life as he does. I’d also like to note most people who are in perfect health and are wealthy don’t put as much care as he does into his day and life. He is shown to plan out or at least write down every single event of the day, this is shown in the art of living video where he has his entire days plan on his mirror, a person who has had life handed to them with little difficulty doesn’t really do that unless it was how they were raised and even then its not as religious as he does it

Astra’s powers were a mutation triggered by her visiting that lake. Basically i like to think she had what ever the other radiants had but it was dormant or incredibly weak with the visit to the lake fully triggering it 

Fade’s lost loved one is either a close friend or her brother. I feel he may have been taken during an extraction OR during some omega earth teleportation. That or he vanished and left something behind showing some involvement with radianite. I also have a tiny belief he may be dead and fade may know that but be denying herself it

Neon’s work for Kingdom may have not been entirely voluntary with her basically being pushed towards it due to her parents and powers 

Omen may have been caused by what ever event ruined Viper’s career as well as built her need for revenge

Sage may have worked with kingdom at some point given how her and viper know each other well enough that viper saw her when her powers were a lot weaker. if she did i imagine she may have only been a very low level employee OR didn’t work there long before moving on to do more humble work.

Sage has some doctorate or proper degree in something 

Killjoy didn’t go to college but instead got certified through Kingdom

Phoenix has a tolerance for radianite as do most radiants how ever it is harmful to some of them such as Neon. Chamber is has a tolerance to radianite however too much exposure causes him to get a tad ill and make his other health issues worse. Most humans can be around radianite but not directly.

It took Skye a while to even figure out she had powers let alone how to use them

Yoru’s rift scars relate to his ancestors in some way OR are injuries he’s gotten while rift walking

Jett doesn’t go out much due to her double ruining her reputation. When she does she tries to go out with other agents incase something happens 

Reyna’s little sister and Cypher’s child are around the same age or are close in age 

Kay/o has accidentally hurt a radiant agent before 

The Chamber’s view each other as brothers. I feel this may be because what ever is driving them is something they both share and that only the other could understand why it is they must do what they do. Basically they are the only person who understands and sympathizes with the other so they have some sort of brotherly bond or us against the world mentality.

Tinier HC: When first light happened it caused Chamber to be negatively affected health wise or made his health worse instead of gifting him with any form of powers

[eveningspirit]

The 2021/22 TV season is coming to an end. I watched a lot of shows this year. A LOT. All in search of some new inspiration, or hyperfixation, after the early-season fiasco that FBI MW turned out to be for me. Haven’t found one, but wanted to make a note for self, because of all those metas I wanted to write, but never go to it. ;) (behind the cut, because it turned out long, lol)

FBI MW first. I thought I made some note about it, but can’t find it, so I probably didn’t. I wrote about my expectations here, so I won’t be repeating that. Just to sum it up – I wanted to see more struggle with Kenny’s PTSS, but not in the sense of hurt, more like… a mention of therapy, him reaching out to his colleagues for support a bit more. Things like that.

I got a little validation in the form of Jess telling Maggie that “Kenny’s been struggling since the shooting”, but then… Well. He was gone from the show. Not dead, thankfully.

No worries, he still lives on in my head. He inspired me to create a new project (based on an old one, but re-developed) which is going to turn into a first draft of a novel during this year’s NaNo. So, I guess this could be called a fixation, ha! Not hyper, but still.

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Other than that, I watched a lot of police dramas. I guess I like the genre.

FBI – they now gave OA the PTSS therapy angle. We’ll see where that goes, if at all, but OA is not as intense as Kenny was, this is not the same for me. Other than that, the show is just a pass-time.

SWAT – I really, really appreciate that they never end a season on a cliffhanger. I’m sad to see Chris go, she was awesome. BTW, my fave on this show was (way back when -- does anyone remember her?) Captain Jessica Cortez. What is it with this show and female characters leaving? (no insinuations here, in case of Cortez it was actress’s pregnancy and her choice to be with her family).

Seal Team – oh my, I loved this season’s storyline of Jason’s TBI and him falling apart and Spenser’s dilemma and his eventual teaming up with Perry and supporting their boss. It was well executed. I would be more inclined to hyperfixate if it was Spenser in trouble. But perhaps not. He’s not THAT type of character either.

The Rookie – I LOVE this show. The problem is I wouldn’t fix anything here, so there’s no way I’d get inspired, I guess? Also, I don’t really see a lot of potential for whump and angst, so there’s that. But I love the humor of it, the occasional seriousness. I love Lucy, she’s ah-mazing and her and Tim are gold. The finale shenanigans were so ridiculous, they were just adorable.

NCIS: Hawaii – started watching it for the potential of Kai being a Kenny-take-two, but that didn’t happen. I grew to enjoy it in the same way I enjoy FBI – as a pass-time and I guess I’ll keep watching. I like Lucy here too, lol. What’s with all the Lucys? (remember Killjoys, @hithelleth? ;) ) and I see a lot of potential between her and Kai. NOT in romantic sense. FRIENDSHIP, there could be a great friendship between them. Or between Kai and Jesse (Jesse and Lucy have it already). Or… If anyone thought to write friendship, either on the show or in fics… *le sigh* If that was the case, it could be my hyperfixation (ETA: the finale had a little-bit of that. The Jesse, Kai and BoomBoom scene… um… not there yet, but)

Chicago PD – stopped watching early this season, returned for a couple episodes where Adam was whumped. Still think PJ Flueger is a fantastic actor and hugely underused on this show. Will watch the finale, but I guess I’ll give up again come next season. Too repetitive.

Chicago Fire – returned for a moment because of Brett Dalton casting, loved his character and the storyline. I know it’s a matter of interpretation, but it was such a validation for my feelings regarding the treatment of his earlier character by THAT show creators (no naming any names, but important people know what I’m talking about). Good job ChiFire!

Oh, I quit both 911s, btw.

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I haven’t watched any medical dramas for a while (probably since ChiMed disappointed me with their lack of knowledge abut how childbirth works early-on, and Code Black was cancelled), so this year I gave a chance to a few couple-season-old ones. Tried New Amsterdam and was bored, tried The Good Doctor and liked a few moments, but disliked most of them (the portrayal of an autistic character. Nope).

Then I gave a chance to The Resident and fell in love instantly. This is the show I would hyperfixate on if I watched seasons one and two as they aired. Then I would be disappointed, lol. Now, I still enjoy it a lot. Matt Czuchry can sure angst like the best of them. Because of him, I watched all the Rory & Logan scenes on YouTube (not the whole show, lol)--

--and the whole show Good Wife. The show was bad in the sense of everyone tried to undermine everyone, it was the opposite of the found family trope. But it was good in terms of storytelling and acting and such things, I can appreciate that. Season five was a true angst-fest with Matt in the main role, and I’ll probably be returning to it. It’s an old show though, so I’m not sure why I mention it at all, hmmm.

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I watched some sci-fi too. And here I have a feeling I’m forgetting about something, but maybe I’ll remember it later. For now, it’s:

Foundation – a spectacular show in terms of scenography, special effects and all that. Just beautiful. I liked the Emperors idea and execution. Didn’t like the ending, in that the creators were untruthful to the book. There, the individual didn’t matter on their own merit, but as a tool of the larger society, to “get things done”. Here – they created some unnecessary bloodline connections. Importance of the character because of who they were born to. It’s not about that at all. Anyway, I will certainly watch the next season, if only for the beauty of it.

Star Trek Picard disappointed me with… being all about Picard. LOL. Seven of Nine was fan-freaking-tastic, I’m so happy they found a use for this great actress after what she was made to wear in ST: Voy. Yeah, the progress in female characterization is great. And Jeri Ryan is really, really good. Raffi was great too. Love her. Captain Rios though… I mean. Captain Rios was fabulous, Santiago Cabrera could make me hyperfixate on him… If he had a storyline worth hyperfixating. And wasn’t left behind in the past. So, so sad about it. Don’t think I’ll return for this show.

I tried to watch ST: Disco too, but didn’t quite endure. And I started Strange New Worlds now, really liked the pilot, the next two episodes not so much, but the jury is still out.

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And last, but definitely not least – Cleaning Lady. I can’t say enough how good this show is. I wrote a short meta here, but I think it deserves another one. Maybe it will happen. Meanwhile, I’m eagerly anticipating the second season (or at least the announcement of Fox’s fall schedule in the hopes that they would get a full-season this time).

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What’s next? I’m looking forward to a few things, like Umbrella Academy, Motherland Fort Salem. And also Roswell New Mexico, but that’s only because it’s a final season. Otherwise, I wouldn’t watch it.

[kirain]

Hazbin Hotel and VivziePop Drama

I've been hearing/seeing a lot of drama concerning Hazbin Hotel and it's creator VivziePop, and while I don't know her personally or really care what people think, I do hate slander and the spread of misinformation. Truly nothing in this world upsets me more than when people believe rumours while making no effort to fact check, and that's exactly what's happening right now. That said, I wanted to try and clear up some of the rumours going around about Vivzie and the show, because I think some of them are absolutely outrageous and need to be addressed.

1. Vivzie hired an abuser onto the show.

Now, I’m not here to burn anyone at the stake, especially since I don’t know anything about Chris Niosi (the alleged abuser), who I believe openly admitted to the allegations? Regardless, this is a moot point. He’s not credited anywhere at the end of the episode. So either he was booted before production wrapped up or he had nothing to do with the show in the first place.

2. Vivzie supports bestiality.

Admittedly I thought this one might be true, since she draws so many anthropomorphic animals. In the very least, I figured she was probably a furry, but I haven't seen any evidence supporting this accusation either. Near as I can tell, this rumour started for two reasons. One, because of her famous Zoophobia comic, which revolves around a therapist named Cameron who gets assigned to work with human-like animals. Ironically, poor Cameron suffers from crippling zoophobia, which makes for some pretty decent comedy. I didn't read the whole comic because, quite frankly, it’s not my cup of tea and I just don’t have the time. But from what I saw there are no examples of bestiality anywhere in its contents.

Two, this message, which blew up all over social media:

To me, this just proves that people are more interested in virtue signalling than checking to see if their claims are actually true. Everything about this message is 100% false, which I’ll touch on in my next point.

3. Vivzie is a pedophile and she’s drawn child porn.

This is hands down the worst allegation and holy shit, I really wish people would stop using it to defame someone when they don't have any proof. This is a life-ruining accusation and you're disgusting if you believe it based solely on hearsay. This rumour began to spread when Vivzie allegedly shipped the two underage characters in the above photo and drew them NSFW-style. At the time, one character was 19 while the other was 14, and the relationship was a very illegal student-teacher relationship.

This is WRONG! The characters were not 14 and 19, they were actually 18 and 19, the legal age of consent! Additionally, the relationship wasn't student-teacher. One character is a student and the other is Alumni (a student teacher). This one pisses me off the most because it’s obvious the person who sent that message didn’t even bother to conduct any research. They said, “He’s a teacher, she’s a child.” Both characters are MALE!

Since then, Vivzie has apologised for any NSFW art she drew in the past and stated that it's not a reflection of her art today, and I'm inclined to believe her. Almost every artist has drawn NSFW content at some point in their career, and hers wasn't even distasteful. Other than this one example, there is no evidence anywhere that suggests she’s drawn “child porn”. In fact, she’s never even drawn explicit NSFW.

Please stop spreading this rumour. It’s dangerous and completely incorrect.

4. Vivzie said the "N" word!

No, she didn’t. It was a fabricated tweet. That is all.

5. Vivzie is copyright striking every video that criticises her!

No she isn't. YouTube’s DMCA is automatically striking people who are using full clips without permission. Vivzie has gone public several times, telling people exactly how to avoid getting a copy strike from the algorithm, which is something she absolutely does not have to do. At this point, she doesn't owe you anything. In my opinion, she should just sit back and watch these channels burn.

6. Vivzie copies and traces other artists’ work.

This is another one I’ve seen going around, but I looked into it as thoroughly as I could and failed to find any concrete evidence to support the allegations. As of right now, there are only two examples of Vivzie “copying” or “tracing” other artists’ work, and both of them can be explained. The first is a gif she made with a character from her Zoophobia comic, which looked a lot like the girl from ME!ME!ME!:

Damn, that’s pretty incriminating. She obviously stole-- oh, wait. This gif was part of a ME!ME!ME! MEP (multi editor’s project) and Vivzie didn’t take full credit, despite the fact that it’s not even a direct trace. It’s supposed to look like the original, which she fully cited. The second example comes from a short dance sequence from her Timber video, which seems to have been inspired by several Disney movies. As Vivzie herself stated, that was an homage to the original animations. Lots of artists and shows do this, including the beloved Stephen Universe series.

Regardless, this doesn’t count as stealing character designs or plagiarising someone’s work. It’s meant to be respectful, an admiration of other projects. Other than these two instances, however, there is no evidence of her tracing or stealing other people’s art. From what I’ve discovered, all other designs she’s been accused of “stealing” are characters she bought and paid for. They’re quite literally HER characters.

7. Vivzie supports problematic creators.

I’m getting really tired of guilt by association. Vivzie follows and enjoys some controversial figures, but who cares? We can argue all day about whether or not the accusations against them are true, but it ultimately has nothing to do with the show or Vivzie as a person. I do the exact same thing, to be honest-- follow and listen to people on all sides so I can learn, understand, and form my own opinions. The fact that some people think this is bad, to me, is absolutely mesmerising. Vivzie doesn’t control what the people she follows post, and if they do something overly questionable she publicly criticises and denounces it.

From Vivzie:

Now that that’s been dealt with, I’d like to address some complaints/claims about the actual show.

8. Vaggie is an angry Latina stereotype and a lesbian stereotype. Vivzie is appropriating Hispanic culture and misrepresenting the gay for profit.

First off, I see a lot of people passing around yet more misinformation regarding Vivzie's race. So many people seem to think she's white? Well, I'm here to tell you they're wrong. Very incorrect. Vivzie is in fact Latina, and Vaggie is meant to mirror some of her own personality traits.

Second, who is Vaggie mad at? Context matters, and if we take a look at the episode, we see that Vaggie is literally only mad at two specific people: Angel Dust and Alastor. Why? Well, for starters, it's her girlfriend's dream to run a rehab hotel for sinners, and Angel Dust nearly demolishes that dream single-handedly. Vaggie has every right to be over-the-top vitriolic. Then there's Alastor, a known sadist, narcissist, and murderer who loves trapping people in his nefarious schemes. He invites himself in, effectively takes over the hotel, and pushes both her and Charlie aside. At one point he even sexually assaults her by slapping her butt during his musical number. So yeah, I think her seething ire is totally justified. Keep in mind, however, that when she's around Charlie she's calm, collected, and happy. I wouldn't call that a stereotype.

Thirdly, the lesbian stereotypes. I keep hearing this argument but I really don't see it. Both Vaggie and Charlie have so much personality and trust for each other. Maybe I'm wrong, but the stereotype I know always totes a more butch, tomboyish woman with a ditsy, innocent, naive woman. Charlie is optimistic, but she isn't stupid. She refuses to shake Alastor’s hand because she knows he’s likely trying to screw her over. She’s also not entirely innocent herself and uses words like “fuck” and “shit”. I also wouldn’t call Vaggie butch or tomboyish. She has a cute, girly presentation, complete with a pink ribbon in her hair, lace stockings, and a dress. She's protective of her girlfriend, as I think we all are with our partners, and there's nothing wrong with that. They're flawed characters, as every character is meant to be. This isn't a problem.

9. The show is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, blah, blah, blah.

I’m amazed this is even an argument. The show is supposed to be a dark comedy that takes place in HELL. You know, the place the worst of the worst end up after they die? What were you expecting? Everyone gets a shot or two fired at them, but that doesn't make them bad characters nor does it make the show itself horrible. Take, for example, Katie Killjoy, the news reporter so many people are up in arms about. She says she doesn’t “touch the gays” because she has “standards”. Well, here’s a newsflash of my own: we’re not supposed to like her! She’s an antagonist. Not to mention ten seconds later Charlie insults her and isn’t the least bit slighted by her pretentious attitude. The characters are strong and don’t take shit from anyone, because to some degree they’re all terrible people who can throw down when it’s called for.

Obviously if you don’t like the show or think it’s offensive, I’m probably not going to change your mind. That’s perfectly fine. You’re entitled to your opinions and you don’t have to watch the show. Just stop lying and stop trying to take it away from everybody else. Stop attacking Vivzie and spreading misinformation without checking the facts. I realise a lot of people probably aren’t trying to be vindictive and only want to do something good, but just remember this: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[agentcherricola]

cherri with 6-23, poison with 12-17!

i'm gonna do the poison ones first and then put the cherri ones under a readmore bc it gets long!

what is the fastest way to upset them? if you even hint that you're making fun of poison to their face (unless you are a VERY close friend), they are going to tear you a new one. she's built up a very high image of herself and does not like being the butt of a joke

what is something that makes them uncomfortable? the texture of crushed velvet makes their skin crawl

what is something that never fails to make them excited? dancing! they love hitting up dance parties and just twirling around the room when their fave song comes on the radio. they're known to grab whoever's closest and make them join in, too

have they ever had their hair washed by another person? yes, they take a lot of showers with ghoul to save water and they'll wash each other's hair. there's a spot if you rub at the base of poison's skull that basically makes them purr like a cat when ghoul gives them a little head massage in the shower

what is the most romantic thing someone has done for them? when they and jet were dating (not too long after poison left the city for the first time), jet took them on a long drive just around the desert and pointed out all of his favorite places, cool sights, and other places to know. they drove until it got dark, and then they just parked and laid together on the roof of the car so poison could see the stars clearly for the first time. that's where she and jet had their first kiss, too. it's a memory she'll always hold fondly in her heart.

who is their favorite person(s) to spend time with? kobra, hands down. even if poison has a partner, kobra is still her best friend and someone who understands her in a way no one else ever will.

cherri cola

would they trust anyone with their secret? cherri keeps a lot close to the chest, either out of fear or showing weakness or just out of not wanting to burden others. but newsagogo knows a lot about him that no one else does. only when the burdens become too heavy

any family scandals? does your character know about them? cherri doesn’t know much of his ~birth family~, but his chosen family goes through all kinds of scandals. what makes it worse is pretty much everyone he considers family has a microphone and access to a radio wave, so his scandals can easily become everyone’s scandals

is there anyone they currently aren’t speaking to? why? (twitter canon) there have been plenty of times when poison (and the rest of their crew in solidarity) would give him the cold shoulder if he and her got into a fight, but it usually gets resolved (read: ignored) pretty quickly. post-sing he didn’t talk to dr. death for a while because he couldn’t take the no-questions-asked care the good doctor was trying to give him without feeling insanely guilty </3

what is something that would break them emotionally? newsie getting hurt :^((((

sacrifice the one to save many, or save the one no matter the cost? sacrifice the one for sure. and if the one happens to be himself? so be it

do they have any illnesses? i mean he has the PTSD that most killjoys have, plus anxiety on top of that. in terms of physical illnesses, he probably dealt with all kinds of fun infections when he lost his arm before he got cleaned up by the city

what is the fastest way to upset them? lying to him. you don’t have to be nice, just don’t lie. you don’t like him? fine, but just say it.

what is something that makes them uncomfortable? being touched suddenly by people he doesn't know

what is something that never fails to make them excited? cherri loves hitting that long stretch of route guano on a motorbike and just gunning it as fast as he can to feel the wind in his hair. racing kobra just the two of them down the road makes his heart race

have they ever had their hair washed by another person? yes! newsie and eventually chimp (when she and newsie have been dating for a while). newsie would wash it for him when it’s been a long time but cherri’s arm is hurting or he can’t get himself out of bed. the first time someone else did, newsie couldn’t wash his hair because they had been sick or injured. but chimp came by to take care of them, and when she was letting them rest, she gently coaxed cherri to the bathroom to wash his hair in the sink. she hummed while she did it and he almost fell asleep from how soothing it was.

what is the most romantic thing someone has done for them? kobra wrote him a poem for their one year anniversary and read it over the radio for him to hear for the first time. he stopped whatever he was doing to find kobra immediately afterwards and kiss him silly.

who is their favorite person(s) to spend time with? doctor death-defying.

neck kisses or shoulder kisses? neck. shoulder kisses are saved for being wrapped around your lover’s back when you both sleep, and he doesn’t usually do sleepovers.

how do they feel about public displays of affection? twitter canon/pre-sing, he isn't the biggest fan (unless for the purpose of winding his partner up). after getting out of the city though he doesn't waste a chance to give someone a hug or just squeeze their hand a little.

would they be the one to propose, the one hoping for a proposal, or no interest in marriage? cherri doesn't really think marriage is necessary. as a desertborn, most of his knowledge of "marriage" is from his city friends. but he sees his friends/partners very equally (the only difference being the kind of love they have for each other), and he doesn't think prioritizing romantic love is necessary.

do they prefer giving or receiving gifts? answered!

how indecisive are they? not very. cherri trusts his gut and knows what he wants.

what do they want most in life? to live unrestricted.

[snickitty-snake]

The agents living in the same base together (should be illegal)

No god please stop

It’s so chaotic

Atleast the first few nights when they moved in

In fact the first night they all moved in nobody was able to sleep

“No Raze this is not a sleep over party put the rocket launcher down” -every agent

The agents that kept everyone awake: Jett, Phoenix, Raze, Killjoy, Breach,

The ones that just wanted to sleep: Brimstone, Cypher, Omen (does he even sleep?) Reyna

The group mom trying to calm everyone down: Sova and Sage

And Viper: who can somehow sleep through all the noise they were creating

After they got past the initial move it was just like any other functional household (If you consider the occasional explosion from either Raze, Killjoy or Cypher functional)

Everyone would take turns cooking for the group but after the first cycle through their makeshift system it was quickly changed and so some agents were banned from ever cooking

Ahem that would be Raze (they had to remodel the kitchen afterwards), Phoenix (the real monster here he eats marmite), Omen (DOES HE EAT?), Killjoy (unless you wanna eat instant/frozen food for the rest of the day)

When the base is not in mortal danger because of an agent though it is very peaceful

After all these crazy events in their life strangely this is the only thing that gives them a sense of normalcy

Secretly I think they all just want a domestic life, maybe not the white picket fence life but a life where they can just live without thinking if they’re going to live to see another day

But they don’t regret taking this path (at least they tell themselves that)

Monday for them can easily feel like a Friday with the agents all together

I can see them all playing games together even if there isn’t enough controllers it’s entertaining to watch

Just don’t play with Cypher if he sees an opportunity to cheat he will definitely take it especially in card games

“Show me your hands!”

A very common line between him and the agents

Can we all agree that Omen is the house cat?

10/10 best housemate

Will offer to help with the chores or just take over so that his ally can get some rest after a hard mission

Naturally though the agents will take on some roles as they figure out who is better suited for what

Sage totally makes all the coffee and tea

Reyna does a lot of the mopping

Brimstone is holed up in his room strategizing for the next mission but will occasionally do everyone’s laundry

I’m sorry but Viper is probably the one reaping all the benefits without lifting a finger maybe once in a blue moon she’ll cook if she’s tired of the same agents cooking

Killjoy of course will be fixing all machinery that breaks

Cypher might help but is shooed away

But still no matter how long they’ve all been living together it’s unavoidable for chaos to erupt

Ty for reading this! It’ll help a lot if you interact w this post so that more people can see 💕 I would also put hcs of what their rooms would look like but I feel like that should be another post.

[chaos-in-bright-pink-hair-dye]

Mars AU Part 1

What if our favourite 'joys lived on Mars instead of California, scavenging for forgotten tanks of oxygen while there are S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W units on their tails. Night skies covered in neon colours and the cold grip of the red planet being the last thing one can feel out there millions of kilometres away from home. One last human colony called Battery city with handful of kids running on gasoline against it.

Ok just kidding they use solar energy not gasoline XD

word count: 1 368

tw: near death experience from second person's point of view

And thank you so much, @ordinary-dust for being my awesome beta tester

Jet was pissed, he spent hour driving to ruins of what used to be one of the biggest cities, hoping that its distant location would mean that it wasn’t completely raided yet like the others. And what was he rewarded with? One can of water, that has been laying around for years so who knows if it really is even drinkable, and a spare helmet that is probably older than the city itself. And as if it wasn’t enough, he had about forty minutes before sundown and the battery in his car was already running low, he will be lucky if he makes it home in time.

He just finished adjusting the solar panels on the roof hoping he could get few more minutes out of the setting sun when he noticed something that didn’t belong out there, just few meters in front of him. He did consider it nothing more than just few rocks before, nothing uncommon but now that he was closer, he could see it had too round and organic shapes to be part of the surface and he could recognize folds of fabric. As he got closer, he could recognize two people one laying on the ground, from how it seemed one was probably unconscious and the second one hunched over them probably trying to hide them from any dangers that could come.

As he stopped next to them, he could see that they were both around his age, possibly siblings? But for fucks sake how did two kids such like them get so far from the city? Based on their suits that even though not in the best state seemed quite new and like ones that Battery city's citizens or troops would wear, they couldn’t have been in the zones longer than for just few days. Sure, most killjoys wore suits like these but you pretty much don’t meet one that wouldn’t have their suit covered in patches, colourful fabric and pretty much any crap you can find out there. These two could maybe fool someone with their bright jackets that they had over their suits since that is very killjoy thing to do but when you paid even a slight attention to the way they looked it was obvious they were very new runaways.

The younger kid moved in front of the older one’s unconscious body to protect them with their own body when Jet stepped out of the car. But judging by the way they moved their oxygen was almost gone too and they couldn’t do much damage, knowing that, Jet slowly approached them. ‘Hey, I know you’re scared but I’m not gonna hurt you, okay? Look I’m not even armed’ Jet slowly showed the kid his empty hands. And for once it was true, he did leave his blaster in the car, not that it was really a gamechanger since he could take them with his bare hands but it at least seemed to work as in calming them down. He didn’t need his spacesuit either, thanks to the air field provided by the car but he could already feel the cold biting into his uncovered face and arms, he had to do this quickly.

‘Is that your sibling? They don’t look good, you run out of oxygen, right? I can help them. And I can help you, I can take you both to a safe place.’ Jet asked them to which they slightly nodded. Jet decided to take it both as an answer and as a permission to come closer. He went past the kid and kneeled down next to their sibling, the other one didn’t seem very happy about that, Jet could see they were still terrified but at least rational enough to realize that Jet was their only chance of surviving. ‘I’m just gonna take their helmet off so that I can have better look at them alright? You can take your helmet off too, there’s air around us.’ he was lightly annoyed at that point, he got that the kid was scared but there wasn’t much time left so some co-operation would be nice.

The younger sibling looked at them with very obvious distrust but they still took their helmet off, streaks of blond hair falling over their eyes. Jet took that as a sign of at least some trust and carefully removed the older sibling’s helmet too, covering the ground in bright red hair. They remained unconscious but Jet could see that they were still breathing, very mildly but there was chance for them. Just few more minutes and it would be probably too late, Jet couldn’t imagine telling the kid that was now sitting next to him, that their sibling is dead, he has seen many people die and he had to deliver the message to their families, friends or lovers too many times but for some reason this would be different, these two seemed to innocent, like they didn’t really belong into Jet’s world and yet one of them was lying almost dead at his feet. ‘They will make it, but only if you help me. We have to get them in the car and then somewhere where they can get real help.’ Finally, that was something that made the kid move, they got up helping Jet pick their sibling up. Jet still had to carry most of the weight but at least they weren’t working against him now. They quickly laid the red head down on the back seat of Jet’s car and the kid climbed in next to them nursing their siblings head in their lap.

Jet sat behind the driving wheel and got going. There was no way they could make it into his shelter in time and it wasn’t like he could help them much anyway, he had barely enough food and O2 for himself. The only option was Dr Death’s radio station. He hasn’t been there in months but apparently the universe was telling him it was time to pay his kind of adoptive family a visit again. ‘So can I at least know your names, since I’ve let two complete strangers into my car?’ Jet smirked and looked over his shoulder just to see the kid passed out too.

It was already dark when Jet arrived to the station and his breath was condensing in the cold air around. He parked right in front of the main door and rushed in. ‘Oh, look who’s back, I thought I would never see you again.’ snickered Pony without looking up from some video game he was playing. ‘Great to see you too, but where’s D I need some help.’ that seemed to get Pony’s attention ‘D’s on air right now but what’s the matter?’ he said as he stood up, his typical roller skates clacking on the floor. ‘Picked up some kids, must have escaped the city, gotten lost and run out of oxygen. One of them isn’t looking very shinny.’ Apparently, that was all he needed to hear because soon he was helping Jet carry the red head into the spare room with the younger kid right behind them, suddenly completely awake. They laid them on a mattress in a small dark room left for situations such like this one.

Jet left the room to go wait for D, leaving Pony to take care of their two guests, he was way better at it anyway. It didn’t take long for Dr Death to finish his part with Cherri taking his place. When they came into the room, they could see Pony had done quite a work, both of the kids had their space suits off and the older one was now in bed covered under several blankets while the younger one was sitting next to them holding their hand, they themselves were half asleep bundled up under a blanket of their own but they made it very obvious they weren’t leaving their sibling. Jet was really tired himself so after D stated that the kid would make it and that there’s nothing more, they could do at the moment he decided to go to sleep too, leaving the two foundlings alone. Not like they could disappear suddenly anyway.

[pixiedane]

Fic Writer Review

Thank you for the tag, @ussjellyfish ! I don't know whom to tag so I will just say to all of you: TAG, you're it (scroll to the end to copy paste the questions).

how many works do you have on AO3?

187

what’s your total AO3 word count?

373,260

how many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

The count is 74, but they're not wholly individual (lots of "all media types" for example). I have pseuds for Star Wars (68 works), Star Trek (63 works), and Marvel (18 works). There are 38 works in other fandoms including Leverage, Killjoys, Harry Potter, The Hobbit, House MD, Game of Thrones, Once Upon a Time, Law and Order, Peter Pan, Willow...

16 more questions beneath the cut.

what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

512 kudos, Let's Go Steal a Family (Leverage), 2044 words | The Leverage team decide they don't need to settle down in order to start a family.

This was written for the "Leverage-a-thing-a-thon" run in August 2015 (making this fic almost exactly six years old). It's about found family in the most literal sense.

415 kudos, catch a glimpse of sunlight (Star Wars), 2324 words + a fanvid | What if Anakin listened to Padmé more than Palpatine and Obi-Wan listened to Anakin more than Yoda? tldr; galaxy saved

Created for the 2016 Star Wars Rarepairs exchange, a canon divergent au where Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Padmé work together to take down the Chancellor and raise the twins as a triad.

253 kudos, and a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone. (Star Wars), 726 words | Luke wants to know about his mother.

Written for PadMay 2018, for the prompt "How should Padmé be remembered?". Wow, I'm surprised this is in the top five given it's a tiny ficlet in a giant fandom written for a challenge I made up myself. But I'm pleased! Padmé deserves to be remembered, that's why I started PadMay.

247 kudos, Serendipity (Star Wars), 1914 words | That time Padmé accidentally walked in on the wrong naked Jedi.

Another ObiAniDala AU written for the Star Wars Rarepairs Exchange, 2018 in this case. Two years earlier I'd made a random photo manip of Natalie Portman and Ewan Mcgregor drinking tea and it eventually inspired the fic.

221 kudos, Your Beating Heart Tonight (Star Wars), 3121 words | Padmé develops feelings for her other Jedi protector.

And another written for the Star Wars Rarepairs Exchange in 2016! And also another AU based in a storm of emotions between Anakin, Padmé, and Obi-Wan. I have a specialty.

All five of these are about family first and foremost. Three and a half feature polyamory. Three and a half are canon divergent AUs. None breaks 3200 words. All were written for an event/exchange.

do you respond to comments, why or why not?

For the most part. Sometimes I don't right away and it becomes awkward. And I generally don't respond to negative comments because who needs that.

what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Probably Abduction, a mirror universe story vaguely inspired by The Handmaid's Tale. My author's note: "It is not a happy story for anyone and implies the extreme emotional abuse of a child, as well as the coercion and torture of adults."

do you write crossovers? if so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I love crossovers! I've completed a few and have fifty more in wip folders. The most ambitious is War of Stars, a Star Wars/Game of Thrones fusion with 26,480 words, thirty chapters, and five different povs (Cersei, Anakin, Daenerys, Ahsoka, and Boba). Niche, but I am very proud of how it worked out.

I've also blended Star Wars with Mad Max, Kelvin Star Trek, Star Trek Discovery, Deep Space Nine, Sleeping Beauty, and Black Widow.

have you ever received hate on a fic?

I've had a few mean comments but they're basically "I don't like this pairing and I want you to feel bad about writing it" and I won't.

do you write smut? if so what kind?

No. Just not my thing.

have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I am aware of.

have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes, I've had a few translated into Russian, which just adds to the headcanon that I'm secretly Black Widow.

have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, back in the LiveJournal days I wrote many thousands of words with @vasnormandy. I am slowly posting those stories to AO3 under my Marvel pseud Amelia Danvers, my OC and main character.

what’s your all time favorite ship?

An impossible question because I multi-ship like my life depends on it. Anakin/Padmé is my most prolific ship followed by Rey/Ben, Kat/Lorca, and Carol Danvers/Peter Parker (the parents of Amelia above). But I've written alternate ships for all of the above.

You can read more about my shipping interests here.

what’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Oof. I have a lot of WIPs that I would like to finish but it's hard to get back to.

what are your writing strengths?

Dialogue. Introspection. I'm good at writing a specific point of view. Characters addressing their issues. I like to pull at threads so I've built up those skills. I love mixing and mashing fandoms and pairings. Complex relationships and the discussion thereof.

what are your writing weaknesses?

Action, like sex scenes or fight scenes, and anything plot heavy. I'm more interested in character and it shows in my writing.

I am also terrible at follow through and finishing things. It's why so much of my fic is written for challenges with external deadlines.

what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I'm not fluent in any other languages and I wouldn't want to do it without extensive research.

what was the first fandom you wrote for?

Either Star Trek (TNG, mainly the adventures of Beverly Crusher - as a preteen, at the Academy, as a single mom, and because I'm me I also gave her a Romulan lover) or Star Wars (the adventures of Han and Leia's daughter who was ME but also Jaina Solo before Jaina Solo existed because she was a twin who wanted to be a pilot more than a Jedi). These stories were written on notebook paper in colored pen and I'd do dramatic readings in the backyard, in costume, with only the trees (all of whom I'd named, mostly after heroines in books, like Elizabeth, Jane, Anne, Alice, Mary, etc.) as the audience.

what’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Well, the one I imagine as something more is Pas De Deux, my Jedi Dance Academy AU. I can picture the senes in my mind and I really enjoyed the adaptation process, melding two things I love into one. The characters and events are recognizable, but also very different and that's something I enjoy.

Questions for anyone who wants to complete it:

Fic Writer Review

how many works do you have on AO3?

what’s your total AO3 word count?

how many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

do you respond to comments, why or why not?

what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

do you write crossovers? if so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

have you ever received hate on a fic?

do you write smut? if so what kind?

have you ever had a fic stolen?

have you ever had a fic translated?

have you ever co-written a fic before?

what’s your all time favorite ship?

what’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

what are your writing strengths?

what are your writing weaknesses?

what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

what was the first fandom you wrote for?

what’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

[the-last-millenial-disaster]

I read ur hc's about omen! its really good~ as for the hc where omen makes rounds to check on everyone, what if one day he finds that someone went missing (not like seriously, the missing agent was prob doing something stupid where they never are found,,,unless you wanna go the angst route-)?

Okay first of all, thank you for the ask! I really appreciate it.

(this might get too long and off topic but oh well here we go)  

I had a bit of a dilemma with this one at first, because who would Omen miss if he didn’t find them during his rounds? For who would he blink twice? I kind of imagine Omen as a middle aged man employed in some university teaching physics or something similar. The proffesor that would be cool if he wasn’t so mean. Before Kingdom of course. So I believe that he generally cares for everyone around him, but doesn’t show it in any way. So assuming he’s the oldest or second oldest of the V protocol he adopted the same mindset about the agents as he had for his students - they need someone to challenge and push them to the very best of their abilities.

So when one of the chaos children in the V protocol isn’t in the building at 00.30 in the morning, Omen stirrs

Worry is not a good word for it, because he doesn’t necesarrily care where they are, or what they’re doing

But he’s curious - he likes to be aware of where the agents are

He isn’t one to form attachments easily

But after his transformation, after he left his whole life behind, these people were the only family he had

If Brimstone is the dad, Omen is like, the uncle noone knows how to feel about

So of course he’d prefer if they live

But then, kingdom decides to roll in another agent, seemingly out of nowhere

Enter: Skye

Omen being the distrusting ball of darkness he is, doesn’t approach her, doesn’t talk to her, nothing. Just. Observing.

He’s totally one of those people who will burn holes in your back with searing stares and expect you to hear their thoughts

Hurt one of these idiots and I will annihilate you

(This probably isn’t what you had in mind for angst, but I couldn’t pass it up I’m sorry)

Imagine this:

Omen is doing his rounds as per usual going methodically trough each room from the bottom floor up

He sees Breach going off on his punching bag, checks if Raze’s workshop’s still standing, oversees the labs with Killjoy up to her elbows in everyone’s broken equipment and even says hi to Viper

It’s one of his good days

But then he nears Skye’s door

He almost passes them, but then...what the hell why not

So he quietly checks the room...and it’s empty

A few questions pop into his head

Where is she and what is she doing

He continues his way and clears the complex of Skye

Where could a complete newcomer go, on one of their first days in the base no less?

He doesn’t like this. At all.

After checking on the last storey, he quietly shroud steps on the roof

The place is calm, Sage’s garden giving it a cozy ambiance while still keeping the space fresh with hints of wilderness that strech across the west grounds of the HQ property

Omen likes to read there, or simply just come to desocialize

A faint but beautiful bird song echoes trough his head

But

Hold up

It’s a good hour past midnight

What bird is singing such sweet melodies in the dead of the night?

A quick flash reflecting in the dome catches his attention

He amost immediately spots the source

It’s gone as fast as it started, but he caught a whiff of red hair dissapearing into the bushes

There you are

And so it began

Skye heard Omen teleport to the edge of the forest and ever since then they’ve been playing a game of cat and mouse

Sometimes Omen hunts, other times Skye tracks

Skye finds Omen fascinating - one second she has his trail and the next she has to find it all over again

Things escalate to short conversations can you imagine

You might think they don’t have much in common, but you’d be wrong

They’re both trackers, hunters, and that exact fact is why Omen started trusting Skye to not stab him in the back

Noone else knows about Skye’s nightly wilderness escapades

It’s almost like playing tag - Omen doesn’t know but Skye is keeping score

As for a little bit softer route:

Omen is very aware of his surroundings

A big part of it is his teleport - he can’t do shit if he isn’t familliar with the layout of the land

But he also likes to keep tabs on people

That’s why he’s doing rounds - or at least that’s what he’s trying to convince himself

Most agents are in the common room that night, watching some sort of an action movie

Omen never understood what people have to gain from that, but what he did know is that this is Cypher’s sort of gig

But he doesn’t see him anywhere

So Omen promptly makes his way to his room, dodging the tripwires and ignoring the warning signs on the door

Cypher isn’t home

He checks the comms tower

...and Cypher isn’t over there either

Now he’s got Omen’s attention

He goes to the conference room and checks the logs - Cypher might have gone to a minor or more of a hush hush mission

But he doesn’t turn anything up

Where is he?

Since he’d literally rather parnoia himself than initiate a conversation he makes his way to the shooting range

Cypher is smart, he’s probably fine

...right?

Like most nights, Omen hovers around the base, trying to decide what to spend his time on

If it were a normal night, he’d be poring over some scientific article or simply stealing a historic novel from Sova’s collection

But he couldn’t stop thinking about Cypher

He still hasn’t come back

And so Omen finds himself patrolling from one entrance to another, and just when he’s about to actually go outside and track that idiot down, his target staggers trough the staff entrance

If he didn’t know better, Omen would’ve thought he was drunk

But the way Cypher clutches his side, drags his leg and silently curses in arabic tells him that he’s injured. Badly.

Cypher doesn’t spot Omen

Instead, he limps over to the elevator, leaning heavily against the wall the entire time

He punches a button and sighs in relief when the doors open immediately

Since his little ‘walk’ wasn’t in the books, Omen assumes he’s not going to the med bay

He can practically feel Cypher’s pain and anguish from the rising elevator

If you won’t get yourself help, I will

Omen first makes sure that Cypher managed to get his sorry ass back to his room without collapsing

Then he straight up ults to med bay, scaring the crap out of the on-call physician

He goes to the only doctor that doesn’t ask many questions and directs him toward Cypher’s room

The medic’s intervention saved Cypher’s life

And he never found out how the doctor knew to come and treat him

Whenever he tried to question the said doctor, he got the same answer

I didn’t ask any questions, and neither should you

(A/N: Again, thank you for the ask and thank you for reading!)

[jae-canikeepyou]

| hey m.v.p. | j.jh

pair: jaehyun x fem!reader

genre: fluff

a/n: okay. this is not the first that i’ve written a scenario based on basketball, so i hope this can maybe(?) make your hearts giddy again? also! it’s really not proof read nor well written but please do enjoy reading! hehehe 🥰 ~j.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

the continuous, long, ringing sound of the impact from the bouncing amber colored ball boasted its decibels at the outdoor mini court.

today was another date with your boyfriend; a varsity basketball player of the university. unlike most couples, girls would wait for their darlings to finish a game. for you however, would join him for a one-on-one match. serious or not he’d always let you play; not because he would go easy on you, but because you knew how to take on his challenge.

jaehyun called a timeout, noticing how heavy you exhaled and your lungs struggled to catch breath. he tossed you a bottle and you gladly took it to quench yourself. he watched you standing at the center of the mid-court, the sun’s rays acting like your glowing background, defining beauty and a heaven-sent figure he was blessed to have.

feeling squirmy and shy around you was something he couldn’t resist to feel out in the public. he was affectionate with skinship and you didn’t mind that at all.

“baby!” you jogged towards your boyfriend, helping him wipe the rolling beads of sweat by his temples and forehead. “teach me how to nail a through-the-leg shot.”

“why?” he interlocked his fingers behind you so you wouldn’t escape.

he copied and mimicked your whines because it was the nth time you have asked him, and he always refused to teach you. “but every time i do it i miss a shot-” your words close to inaudible but jaehyun understood what you meant and he pressed his lips. “-or i end up falling.” you shrugged.

“y/n. your form’s okay. it’s just your jump landing and timing.” he pinched your cheeks lightly. “i wanna teach you but i don’t want my baby to get hurt, so no.”

you took the towel that was placed on his head as he took the ball, feeling bummed that this time yet again he wouldn’t teach you. he gestured you to go to him and you obliged no matter how salty you slightly felt towards him.

a short break was enough for you both to continue with the sport. with all the small matches you’ve played against him, there was one thing you’ve always known: jaehyun was very competitive, so whatever ball game or any game you both played, he was always, always going to play it better. you loved how concentrated his eyes were, the tiny smirk when you were open, the deepening of his dimples once the ball went in the hoop, and the victorious stretch of his arms as he celebrated.

he dribbled the ball and you tried to steal it away from him, but given your smaller frame with his, he probably held himself back and went a little lenient to you. “there’s a game that mark taught me. it’s called h.o.r.s.e. we played it for at least thirty minutes. wanna give it a shot?” he stopped moving and spun the ball on his pointer finger.

“okay!” you cheered, making him smile wider at the willingness you showed. “how does it go?”

“i’ll do a move and you follow what i do, but you’ll gain a letter if you failed to shoot. the game ends when either of us reaches ‘e’.” he tossed the ball to you. “i’ll let you start.”

“hold on, i feel hot.” you dropped the ball to hold in between your feet, and removed the thin layer of jacket sticking to your skin. you wore a loose white crop top over the new sports bra you bought and grey sweatpants.

jaehyun averted his gaze although he blushed unnecessarily at your carefree action. he cleared his throat from thinking of unnecessary thoughts entering his brain. he tossed you the ball again and the game started with you doing a simple free throw; followed by his layups and double clutch. the punishment were always the same; buy food for the other. this time you didn’t want to lose and made sure you make the shot while he misses.

he began to smirk, something he’d usually do to signal you. the battle was on. there was no way he would lose this, so he went for a move that he knew you wouldn’t do. you guessed it, the through-the-leg shot. however he groaned right after he realised what he had done, and was too late when you got the ball in your palms.

you attempted the move and just when you thought you had it, the ball missed the ring and fell— so was the view before your eyes, you were falling too. the good thing was you managed to get on your toes, but collapsing on your knees afterwards.

“aww, that’s an ‘e’ for me.” you hissed and laid down on the ground, defeated again.

“it’s okay.” he helped you up and hugged, but you immediately pulled yourself away from him.

“tsk, you’re sticky.” you ran towards the bench, to no avail he picked you up and turned you non-stop. “put me down jae.”

jaehyun loved spoiling you the way he could get his chance upon, that included almost every little thing you did— from the pursed lips when you were feeling embarrassed to your breaking smile that sent his heart flying everywhere. however, he wasn’t the only one you sent his heart flying and bursting in the sky.

it was a given that in the campus, you weren’t part of the ‘visual spectrum’ the students have created, but it was your beautiful soul and kind-hearted personality that attracted them to you. and jaehyun was pulled to you like a magnet once his friends continuously nudged each other that one time at the locker hall. since then he was one of those secret admirers who skilfully and secretly left you letters after class, a carton of juice or milk in your bag, and offered you an umbrella on rainy days.

you didn’t like the attention, in all honesty you weren’t even craving for some. there were worries whether if you had done something wrong that caused them to talk about you all the time despite being a transfer student of the creative media department. so that one day when your friend invited you to watch a basketball match, it was when you saw jaehyun for the first time.

the team noticed your existence at one area of the blenchers. imagine the impact they gave when they all stared at you like meerkats and yet smiled like adorable quokkas. one certain quokka however got your attention, well not because he had dimples, but because he was hit in the face with a basketball.

let us all say you became friends and he invited you to be in his group project. great chemistry and ideals for each other. what made jaehyun fall for you even more was that, you played basketball, just like him.

the memory of that time was interrupted with jaehyun leaving you at the bench, off to somewhere the heavens knew where. as you waited, your eyes led to the ball, tempting you to try out the skill you’ve always failed at. this is the chance, you thought. dribbling the ball several times, your attempts to try it failed miserably again.

you stood right at the arc of the lines beneath your shoes. determination fired your eyes and felt like goku from the dragon ball animation. the repetitive sentence echoed your ears, telling yourself ‘you could do it’. however that was stopped when players you’ve never seen before circled around you, almost hovering your small frame.

“hey, mind if we.. teach you?” they offered, but their intentions were very transparent. and you should’ve worn your jacket.

“no thanks. i pretty much can handle it myself.” you picked the ball up and went back to the bench, only to be stopped halfway when one of them grabbed your wrists. “let go.”

a smug look on their faces had you stepping backwards. “little miss killjoy, we’re offering you help-”

“she’s already gotten help.” jaehyun soon came behind you and your back hit his chest.

“who the heck are you?” they asked as if putting up a front would scare him.

“i’m her boyfriend and i’d appreciate it if you lot stop staring at her like that.” he let you sit on the bench once they scurried off, placing his towel on your head that was large enough to reach your lap. “from now on you’re wearing my my jacket and don’t take it off.”

you gulped when he stared into your eyes, full of worry and as if he sent protective shields to wrap around you. “the weather’s getting hot jae, and do you want me to die out of so much heat?”

“it’s better than getting your skin so exposed like earlier. you know you attract guys in the way i can’t tolerate.”

ah this argument again. more fingers and toes were needed to count because this wasn’t the first time jaehyun has been protective of you; although you couldn’t really blame him as to the whole campus— maybe to the majority of your admirers, he did win your heart. it wasn’t that you hated that side of him, you couldn’t bring it up to tell him that it limits you to be free.

a sigh was heard from your lips, catching his attention and he knelt down to see you properly. “but i’m not hiding anything!” you whined, removing the towel and jacket all at the same time, jaehyun startled at your childish response.

he arched his brows like he had something up in his sleeves. “really? you’re not hiding anything?” his palms reached for the ends of your sweatpants. he pulled and rolled them up until the fabric reached your thighs.

“what are you- look jae i swear i’m not hiding-” you then hissed at the pain soon as the wind hit your wounded, scarred knees.

“well?” he asked, tearing off the plaster packaging with his teeth and cleaned the wounds on both. “you’re not good at hiding something like this though.”

a spread of heat and embarrassment crawled your cheeks. “how did you know?”

jaehyun let out a soft chuckle. “you’re easy to read, honey.” he planted a kiss on your forehead and sat beside you. “you should’ve told me you’re in pain- why are you staring at me like that?”

he saw how your eyes widened and they asked for a quick stare contest. he was definitely lured into you, and that wasn’t new to him. “what?” he questioned again.

“ugh no good. i can’t read you at all.” you defeatedly laid on the bags. “i was confused why you left so suddenly. i thought you felt guilty because i lost the game and that you bought us snacks. i didn’t know you went all the way to tend me.”

“at the beginning of our relationship i told you i’ll treat you like a princess.” he pulled you close to him. “so let me treat you like one.”

“i’m no damsel in distress.” you rolled your eyes, a faint smile curving by the corners of your lips.

“uh clearly you were? i saved your butt from those guys.”

“and you saved me again with this.” you pointed at the carefully-plastered knees of yours and nudged him. “m.v.p.”

jaehyun felt you kiss his cheek, stunned with the title you named him. “i call you all cute nicknames and that’s all i’m gonna get? and you know i’m already the m.v.p.” his bummed voice caused you to giggle.

“not in basketball.” you reasoned.

“you expect me to play ‘guess the word’ now? because y/n, i’m not in the mood for-”

“you’re my valiant prince. m. v. p.”

jaehyun now laid on your lap, covering his ears at sudden nickname; obviously was awestruck and have never blushed so hard in his entire life.

[always-and-forever-a-killjoy]

Building Home Chapter 4

Hey fuckers and welcome to another chapter of Building Home! I've decided to switch to posting on Saturdays because Fridays are always chaotic, just a heads up, but I'll still be posting regularly for at least another six weeks, hopefully longer if I get my ass together enough to write the last six chapters of this in those six weeks (or at least like, Chapter 11 and 12). Anyways, the song for last week was so big/so small from dear evan hansen. This week's isn't quite so tricky, I don't think!

Title: Building Home

Chapter Title: I’ll keep you safe inside

Chapter Wordcount: 2263

Chapter Summary:

The crew settles into living with Autumn Assassin and the house of soup crew, and the Analog Wars suck ass.

POV: Dr. Death Defying

Warnings: Injury mentions, death mentions.. (If you want to know what parts to skip, go to the end notes on AO3- I also put a brief summary of any important info in those parts. Stay safe!)

Taglist: @wishiwasthemoon-tonight @sleevesareforlosers @stressed-depressed-emo-mess @tasteofamnesia @dagger-queen​ @no-braincells-here @piratecherricola (message me, send an ask, or reblog/reply to one of my posts if you want to be added or removed)

AO3 Link

Chapter 1 AO3 Link

Chapter 1 Tumblr Post

Chapter 2 Tumblr Post

Chapter 3 Tumblr Post

(Actual fic under the cut)

They stayed with Autumn Assassin for a while longer, talking with the killjoys of the household and generally having a better time than just living alone. It was a little strange to have three of them in one small room, but none of them minded much. 

“I shared a room with my sister in Battery City,” Cherri Cola told the others. D restrained any surprise from showing on his face- Cherri almost never volunteered information about himself, and especially not his past. It was something killjoys didn’t talk about much and rarely shared with anyone except their crew. So D just nodded in acceptance.

“D and I are used to sharing,” Lily agreed. “So we’ll just have to stick it out,”

Autumn Assassin, meanwhile, had taken Cherri under their wing. They had the common trait of being an excellent shot, and Autumn had managed to get him a much nicer ray gun. 

“Scarecrow model,” They informed him. 

Cherri nodded as they positioned his hands on the new ray gun. “Right. Look around what you’re aiming at, keep your hands in this position and steady as you can, and don’t hesitate. Hesitation will kill you, kid.”

D was watching the lesson just like he had watched Lily teach Cherri, making sure Autumn wasn’t too rough. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the other killjoy- White Lily trusted them, and that was good enough for him- but he wanted to make sure Cherri’s wound healed properly as well. So he was sitting and watching as they taught Cherri how to shoot better than ever before. Cherri was taking to the lessons eagerly, wanting to learn how to fight. 

“Don’t hesitate,” he repeated, and pulled the trigger. 

Autumn Assassin whooped as the can fell. “Good shot, kid!”

Cherri was grinning as he glanced back at D. “A hundred and sixty.”

“I saw,” D grinned back. “That’s pretty fucking incredible, Cherri.”

“He’s a quick one,” Autumn agreed. “Needs to work on his hand-to-hand combat and reactions in the heat of battle, but he’s a good shot.”

“I’ll do hand to hand if you want to teach me,” Cherri offered quietly.

“Of course I do, kid, you’re a quick learner and frankly a lot of fun to teach.”

Cherri’s grin grew even wider. “I’m seventeen.”

“And I’m almost thirty, what’s your point? You’re a kid to me, even if you kick ass at shooting and probably other things too.”

“Fair.”

“Ready to kick some ass?”

“Yeah!”

“Be careful of your stitches,” D warned, but it wasn’t his place to stop Cherri. 

“I will be, don’t worry. I don’t feel like getting hurt again,” the other said dryly.

“Good, I don’t want you to get hurt either.”

“Overprotective,” Cherri said with an eye roll, but he was smiling. 

“I’d rather not have one of my best friends die because he was an idiot and ripped his stitches, thank you very much.”

“I’ll be careful.”

Cherri was…less than careful, in D’s opinion, but he didn’t rip any stitches while training with Autumn Assassin so that was a something, at least. He did, however, get very good at fighting with a variety of weapons, including but not limited to knives, ray guns, older style guns, and even simple hand-to-hand combat. Autumn Assassin’s name included ‘assassin’ for a reason, and it wasn’t that they could poison people.

Meanwhile, D and Lily dedicated their time to the radio station and recruiting more people. Killjoys had started to settle in other houses and buildings in this little town area, given how intact many of them were. It was becoming a whole little community, arsonists and crash queens living next to medics and some of the most peaceful rebels. So while Autumn Assassin was teaching Cherri to be terrifyingly good at fighting, D and Lily were wandering the area and getting to know the killjoys there.

They met Legolas Greenleaf, fantasy nerd and excellent maker of crepes, apparently, although given that it was the desert they couldn’t really verify that. He and his crew dressed like fantasy elves and kicked draculoid ass while shouting things like ‘dishonor on your lineage!’ and ‘spawn of Morgoth!’. There was also Tommy Chow Mein, who both of them knew from the wars and was running a little general store out of what had once been the town’s general store, and his assistant was a kid called Penny Pincher who had copper-colored hair and was a bit younger than Cherri.

The variety of killjoys in the town ranged from a short, grouchy killjoy who simply went by ‘Fuck’ and was one of the best medics out there to a tall, freckled killjoy called Angel Kisses who was an absolute sweetheart but would absolutely fuck you up. Ages ranged from some of the oldest soldiers of the Helium Wars (“I’m damn near forty.”) to the younger siblings and even children of some killjoys (“She’s a bit under a year, just barely weaned but we had to get her out of Battery City.”) From the news others brought in, they knew this wasn’t the only community of killjoys, but it was by far the largest. Here was where the center of the rebellion would be for another few years, and the unsuspecting Autumn Assassin’s house was at the center of it all.

Their house was already somewhat of a town hub, being the most intact and the one with the most residents, and Autumn Assassin seemed to encourage this.

“What with the amount of people here, we’ve always got extra food, and extra rooms for travelers. We’ve got the resources, might as well use them. And I don’t mind these dumbasses hanging around the living room, they bring some life to the place.” That was what they told D when he asked about it, leaning against the counter as the two of them watched the chaos unfold in their living room like it did almost every day. 

“They certainly do bring life. Also chaos.”

Autumn Assassin cackled. “That’s true. Nothing wrong with a bit of chaos, though. We are killjoys, after all.”

“True, we are.” D frowned. “Do you worry about Lil and I bringing bli down on your head?”

“If you do, we’ll tell them to fuck off.” Their face grew more serious. “I’m not kidding, though, Doctor Death. We give no fucks about Better Living, and we do give some fucks about you and your little crew. I worry a little about putting the younger members of the house in danger, but all of them knew what they were getting into. And all of them know how to fight.”

“I’m assuming you taught them?”

“How did you guess?” Their voice was utterly deadpan. “Not all of them, but yeah. I insist on teaching everyone who comes through some basic hand-to-hand combat and how to shoot a ray gun, if they don’t know. It’s my way of keeping them safe. Like your radio station.”

It was true, 109 in the sky had many goals, but one of them was keeping the killjoys safe and informed. The more they knew about upcoming dangers, the better they could fight back, and WKIL served as a hub of information. Killjoys radioed in or brought news of whatever they had found, from a supply truck that had been raided and had some extra supplies to exterminators coming to the desert. Code words were a part of this too, a cobbled together mixture of killjoy slang and actual code that served as yet another line of defense. Even if Better Living Industries figured out how to listen in, it wasn’t as if they would understand half the words being said, and Dr. Death Defying knew they had to keep it that way. Secrecy was essential to a successful rebellion, as Lily had put it. So the code was an important part of running the radio station, alongside the technology and the consistent news.

Even as they began to travel around again, taking the news van to broadcast from different Zones as a way of confusing Better Living Industries, they continued to return to Autumn Assassin’s house and the town around it as a home base. The room that Autumn Assassin had given them at the very start was theirs permanently now, and Autumn always kept it open for them. Sometimes they would be gone a day or two, sometimes an entire week or even a month or more. It depended on how close they thought Better Living Industries was to catching on, and traveling around seemed to be working as a method of confusing the corporation. In addition to the FM radio station of WKIL, multiple AM stations had sprung up that took the info from D’s daily broadcast and spread it over a wider range. Their signal was much easier to interfere with, which was why the original WKIL was an FM station, but it got the news out to the entirety of the Zones, providing an invaluable service. 

So the rebellion continued to grow, month after month, until the Zones were alive with killjoys and color, loud noise and firefights. Cherri’s training at the hands of Autumn Assassin had only made him more bold, much to D’s worry, but he had to admit that Cherri’s borderline insane antics were a very effective method. He was one of the few killjoys unafraid to fight almost any level of Better Living Industries employee, and one of the most effective at it too.

Lily, meanwhile, was working on organizing larger raids and even attacking Battery City itself. D was her right hand, as always, but he was also occupied with the radio station and other things. So Cherri had stepped partially into their role, accompanying Lily when she went on missions and standing by her side as a very effective deterrent against exterminators. Better Living Industries had intensified their efforts to find Lily and D, and Cherri was now top of their wanted lists as well. He had gone from an unremarkable and frankly unintimidating sixteen-year-old to one of the finest shots in the desert and a highly wanted killjoy, the name Cherri Cola whispered almost as often as you could hear whispers of Dr. Death Defying or White Lily.

He had gained a reputation for being one of few killjoys who usually worked alone, often taking on missions solo (and giving D and Lily a heart attack when he stumbled back in with a stab wound or ray gun shot, bruised and battered). That wouldn’t change until their last few crew members joined up, and even then, Cherri was fiercely independent both as a fighter and a person. He was loyal, that was for sure, willing to fight just about anything for D or Lily, but he would always prefer solo raids or missions.

That scared D shitless, but they couldn’t stop him and they trusted Cherri to keep himself safe, to an extent. He was still more reckless than D or Lily would like, but neither of them could really blame him. 

“I don’t know what he’s running from, but there’s something.” That was Lily, plunking down in a chair next to them.

“We’re all running from something, aren’t we?”

“Dark but true.”

The two of them knew what each other was running from better than anyone else. Both somewhat happy children back in Battery City, there was nothing in their childhood that they ran from, only a faint sense of nostalgia, but the war they had fought in had changed them both in ways they didn’t like to think about. There was a past there to run from, horrors to set right. D knew that Lily had a sense that she needed to put things right, needed to atone in some way for her deeds during the Helium Wars. If that atonement, that fight, took her life, she would accept it as such. 

It might have been selfish of him, but he would not atone. They were trying, of course, to make the world a better place, fighting for the future they believed in, but the past was the past, and D refused to die for the crimes he had committed then. He had fought to survive for long enough that he wasn’t giving up now, regardless of what fate would be just for them. The best they could and would do now was fight for the future, not die for the past. 

It wasn’t easy for him either, watching young killjoys fight and be injured and even die, but he had to believe in what they were fighting and dying for. They would break the stranglehold of Better Living Industries, they would live free and bring the same for their children and all the generations that would come after them. All this wasn’t for nothing.

That was what D told themself as they watched Cherri curl into a ball in the corner of the room, protecting the slash on his side like a wounded animal. That was what they repeated when Lily’s sobs shook the mattress at night, keeping the others awake even if they didn’t dare break the silence of the room. D just prayed the others’ spirits wouldn’t end up as broken as their bodies after claps.

This pattern continued, day after day and week after week as their missions got more dangerous and Cherri grew even more reckless and solitary. It wouldn’t be truly broken until far after the final few members of their crew arrived, but the one who arrived next did by far the most towards that end.

[intothestarkerverse]

Paper Hearts

The Starker-Office AU the world needs.

Tony Stark is a paper salesman who hates his job but is secretly in love with the beautiful receptionist. A glimpse into their unorthodox courtship and happily ever after.

Tony Stark hated his job.

Selling paper was one of the most boring professions he could think of, and it had a very obvious expiration date that drew ever closer the more digitized the world became.  At best, he thought, he had another few years before he had to hit the unemployment line and look for another job he despised.  Nothing left to do but collect his paychecks until then, really.

His boss was an idiot.  

Scott Lang was no where near as funny as he thought he was.  His jokes caused Tony actual, physical pain.  The way the guy was a lapdog for Hope from corporate, that was even worse.  Didn’t help that for some reason Scott thought he and Tony were best friends.  The indignities he put up with for this job were not worth the pay check he took home.  Not.  At.  All.

The guy across from his desk was a killjoy.  You’d think Steve Rogers had some amazingly important job with how dedicated he was to it.  First one to arrive.  Last one to leave.  He was a puny little, sanctimonious nerd that Tony loved to play practical jokes on…which was really only one of two things that made the job bearable.  The second?  The second was Peter.

Peter fucking Parker.  

The receptionist.  

Light of his life.  

His reason for waking up in the morning.

The only damn reason he hadn’t left this fucking job in pursuit of something that didn’t make him contemplate using his letter opener to carve a giant hole into the middle of his chest.

Peter was young and beautiful and sweet and he sat directly in Tony’s line of view.  He caught himself staring at the kid way more often than he should.  He would day dream about running his fingers through those fluffy chestnut curls, tugging on the strands in the throes of passion.  He pictured what Peter’s lips would look like wrapped around more than just the straw of his water bottle.  He committed every centimeter of Peter’s face to his memory, knew every piece of clothing in the kid’s wardrobe…enough that he recognized when Peter had treated himself to a new sweater or pair of skinny jeans.  Tony stared because it was all he was allowed to do, and it was the only thing that got him through the day.  Peter caught him, too, but either the kid didn’t realize that Tony was head over heels in love with him…or he didn’t care.  

Tony really hoped it was the former, but it didn’t matter really because Peter had a fiance, Quentin Beck, some handsome asshole from the warehouse who had been promising Peter a ‘happily ever after’ that the kid had yet to realize was really a ‘never gonna happen’.  Quentin wasn’t ready to grow up, settle down, be a fucking man, and Tony had caught him flirting with people who weren’t Peter enough times to know he was a piece of shit.  Quentin Beck didn’t know what he had, but Tony did.  He hated that fucking guy, and the feeling was clearly mutual.

Someday.  Someday, Tony was going to sweep Peter off his feet, steal him away from the asshat and show the kid what a happily ever after should look like.

Someday.

If he ever worked up the nerve.

Until then…

***

Tony leaned against the reception desk, drumming his fingers on the Formica counter and waiting for Peter to finish his call.  Peter glanced up at him through a curtain of eyelashes, biting back a grin and holding a finger to his lips as he quickly scrawled a message on a notepad for Scott.

“Mhm, yeah, no, I’ll totally have him call you back…Yeah…Soon, for sure…Uh huh…Yep, I have here that it’s important so he’ll definitely get back to you…Yep…Cool, okay.  Bye.”  He placed the phone back in it’s cradle carefully and turned his attention to Tony, resting his head in one hand and blushing intensely under the other man’s gaze.  “That was corporate.  You could have gotten me into trouble.”

“I’d never get you into trouble, Pete.  I’d sooner die.”

“This job’s not worth dying over, Mr. Stark.”

“You might be…”

Peter choked out an embarrassed giggle.  “Stop it!  You’re the worst.  Did you just come over here to tease me or did you need help with the copier again?  For someone with half a degree in computers, you really suck with copiers, you know that?”

Tony shrugged, so what if that was one of his many excuses to spend a little time with Peter during the day.  He could hardly be faulted for that.  “Got you a present.  Wanted to make sure you got to enjoy it properly.”

“Oh yeah, what did you get me?”  Peter looked more than a little skeptical, and in all honesty, he probably had a right to be.

“Wait until Rogers gets back from his coffee break and then enjoy the show, Kid.”

“Oh my god, what did you do?”

Tony chuckled, stealing a piece of candy from the bowl Peter filled every week.  “I may have hacked his computer last night…sent him a very official looking email from the US Army inquiring about a very special kind of paper needed for a top secret mission and included a referral from one of his best clients.”

“You didn’t!”

“He’s always acting like his job is a matter of life and death, let’s give the geek a thrill, huh?”

“Mr. Stark, that’s so mean…”

“I could abort the mission if you really think…”

“I mean it would be a shame to waste all that hard work…”

***

“No.”

“Seriously, Steve, I haven’t even gotten to ask…”

“I know, but whatever it is you want, Tony, it can’t be good.  So, no.  My answer is no.”

Tony frowned, hanging his head in frustration for several seconds.  “I know you got Peter in the office Secret Santa thing…”

“How do you know that?  Did you just conveniently skip over the ‘secret’ part?”

Tony was trying really hard to be nice here.  Steve wasn’t making it easy.  “I asked everyone else.  Paid them.  Did them favors.  Tracked down the lucky bastard who was gifting Peter…and Fate hates me, so here we are.  Look, Rogers, I know we’re not friends…”

“Whose fault is that?”

“Mine.  Mine.  It’s clearly mine.  I accept the blame.  I do.  It’s just…I have something planned for Pete and I need to be his Secret Santa.  I will do literally anything.  Name your price.”

“I can’t be bought, Tony.  Peter has a fiance, or did you forget that?  Whatever you want from him, it can’t be good.”

Tony groaned, hitting his forehead against the top of his desk.  “I know Peter has a fiance, Rogers.  Believe me, no one is more aware of Quentin’s existence than I am.  The guy’s a jerk…a bigger jerk than me, and that’s really saying something.  You know it’s true.  He’s a piece of shit and Peter deserves better.  The guy is going to give him some generic piece of crap for Christmas, no thought at all.  You know it.  Peter’s a good kid.  He deserves…he deserves a lot more than that shithole.  Let me give him something nice.  I’m not going to break up his relationship.  I’m not going to lead him down the path of temptation.  I just want to give him something nice and make him smile without him feeling like he needs to do something for me, okay?  Rogers…I’m begging you.”

Steve stared at him for several long minutes before he sighed and nodded.  “Fine.  Yeah.  Okay.”

“Bless you, Steve Rogers.  Consider this our armistice.  War over.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

***

Tony had never wanted to hug anyone as badly as he wanted to hug Peter in that moment.

The kid looked defeated.

He was seated at a little card table towards the back of the comic book shop with several stacks of his own self-published comic in little piles all around him.  

No one was stopping to look at them.  To talk to him.  To acknowledge his existence at all.

His eyes were glassy.  The kid was literally minutes away from crying and he just couldn’t let that happen.

“Just your luck that you’d have your debut on a rainy day, Parker.”

Peter jumped, scrubbing a hand over his cheeks and putting on a brave face as he looked up at Tony with a paradoxical mixture of relief and fear.  “Tony!  You…you came.”

“Course I came.  Wouldn’t miss this for the world.  But seriously, you know rainy days are terrible for business, right?  It’s a proven fact.  Why…I’ve never seen so few people in here before.  Gotta be the weather.”

“Yeah…no, yeah, I’m sure you’re right.”  Peter looked like he didn’t quite believe Tony, but he was also apparently eager for an excuse to explain his lackluster turn out.  Had anyone else from the office even come?  Ass holes.  All of them.  And where the fuck was Quentin?

“So, let’s see…”  Tony reached out for one of the books, carefully flipping through the pages and perusing the content with a little humming noise.  “Hey, now, do you take inspiration from people you know?”

Peter was blushing.  “Maybe…”

“No maybe about it, Peter, you cannot tell me this handsome bastard isn’t based off me.”  He flipped the book around, tapping at an image of a roguishly handsome superhero in crimson and gold armor.  “You know I’m a raging narcissist, right?  I was going to buy a book anyway, but now I have to buy the whole series cause I’m one of the stars.  You in here, too?”

Peter nodded slowly, his blush darkening.  “Yeah…but I won’t tell you who.  You’ll have to figure that out…”

“I do love a challenge.”  Tony closed the book and reached out to add one from every pile to the one in his hands.  “So, how much?”

“Um…they’re ten a piece but…”

“But obviously that’s much too low so I’ll give you a hundred for the set of five.”

“Tony, no…”

“Fine.  A hundred and fifty it is.  You’re a tough negotiator, Pete.”

“Tony!”  The smile on Peter’s face was worth every fucking penny.  And who needed to eat, anyway?

***

“Mr. Stark!  You promised that the goatee was not because of my comics.”

Peter was standing at his desk with both hands over his mouth.  His face was as brilliantly red as the home made Halloween costume Tony had donned for work that day…the costume he had based entirely off of Peter’s comic and the character he just knew was based on him.  Had to be.  And dammit, if he was right…if he was right, than Peter had even made himself Tony’s fucking love interest…and wasn’t that just the most interesting thing he’d ever read in his whole damn life?

“So, I lied.  It’s not my fault. You’re such a damn good artist that I took one look at my comic book self with that awesome facial hair and said, ‘Fuck, Tony, why did you never realize that you’d be even more devastatingly attractive if you just had an impeccably groomed goatee?’  The world has you to thank for it, Pete, and I’m definitely keeping it because it’s been a hit.”

Peter’s hands dropped from his face to his sides.  He was chewing on his bottom lip, looking pensive.  “Who…I didn’t know you were dating anybody Mr. Stark.  I’m glad…they like it.  I guess…”

Tony didn’t bother to correct him.  Not yet.  A little jealousy might do the kid some good, let him know how much Tony wanted to choke the fucking life out of Quentin every time that piece of shit showed his face.

***

Peter was wearing a new soft blue sweater over a button down shirt and Tony was trying very hard not to swoon over how fucking adorable he looked.  He was playing with his gum, winding it around his finger before popping it into his mouth to begin again.  He had his phone concealed in his lap so no one could see him playing on social media while he was supposed to be working.  That was probably why he didn’t hear Tony approach until the man was standing directly in front of him, leaning against the reception desk and looking at Peter with what Tony recognized was something very close to the heart-eye emoji.  God, this kid.  

He really couldn’t take it anymore.

He had to make a move.

Be brave.

Be bold.

Be the fucking hero in that kid’s comic.

“What are you doing tonight, Pete?”

Peter jumped a little, looking up at Tony with a little flush of surprise.  “Tonight?  I don’t know.  Quentin’s got poker at Drax’s, so probably just going to lay in bed and catch up on Netflix.  Why?”

Tony smirked, dropping something on the desk in front of him.

“Oh my god, how did you get this?  It’s not even supposed to be released for another two weeks…”  Peter’s excitement was quelled by the sudden realization, “Is this a bootleg?”

Tony nodded.  He was never going to admit to how much he’d spent for a bootleg copy of something he cared absolutely nothing about because in the end…it was going to be completely worth it.  “Come over to my place tonight.  We can break the law together.”

“You think if the FBI raids your place while we’re in the middle of it that we could at least be cellmates, Mr. Stark?”

“Don’t worry, Pete, I’ll protect you in the prison yard.  No one would dare put a hand on you.”

“I’ve always thought you’d make a great prison husband.”  The witty banter ground to a halt with Peter’s last quip, his light brown eyes flaring wide.  His mouth had runaway without his better judgment, but Tony wasn’t quite ready to let it go yet.

“Oh, I’d make a great husband, prison or not.”  Tony held Peter’s gaze for a second longer than was probably comfortable for both of them, the kid’s face was red as a cherry tomato when they were interrupted by the sound of an exasperated sigh from behind them.

“Tony…could you just grow up already?  Some of us are actually trying to work…”

Peter giggled into his hand, leaning to the side to look around Tony at Steve Rogers’ desk.  “I thought you and Mr. Rogers had finally ended the Civil War, what did you do this time?”  He was careful to keep his tone soft enough that it didn’t carry.

“Hm?”  Tony was still distracted by thoughts of Peter as his prison wife, but managed to pull himself out of it to look back over his shoulder and shrug.  “I super glued everything to his desk last night.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

Peter was under his desk now, hugging his sides and laughing himself breathless.  

***

It was far from the first time he and Peter had spent time together outside of work.  They were friendly, in fact.  Quentin didn’t share any of Peter’s interests, and that left plenty of things for Tony to exploit.  Movies Quentin wouldn’t be caught dead seeing.  Video game releases.  Comic conventions.  Hell, Tony had even gone to a few games of D&D with Peter because he would take literally any excuse to spend time with that kid.

Now, they were cuddled up on Tony’s couch in his apartment with enough snack food to weather the apocalypse and a bootleg that Peter was dying to see.  Though, for something Peter was dying to see, he didn’t seem as enthusiastic about watching it as he had earlier that day.

“Pete?  You okay?  Something happen after work?”  He’d been fine when they’d said their goodbyes that day.

Peter ran a hand through his curls and let out a long, shaky breath.  “I think Quentin might be cheating on me.  I don’t have proof but…Drax didn’t know anything about a poker game tonight and it’s just, it’s little things, you know?  I found this little church I really liked for the wedding and I mentioned it to him, that we could maybe set a date…but he brushed me off.  MJ…you know from customer service?  She says I’m an idiot, that he’s never going to marry me and now I’m afraid she’s right…do think she’s right, Tony?”

Tony reached out, drawing the younger man close and inhaling the scent of his shampoo as he tucked Peter against his chest.  “You’re not an idiot, Peter.  You’re way better than that piece of shit in the warehouse deserves.  You’re beautiful and smart and funny and talented, and if you were mine…we’d have fucking eloped the second you said you’d marry me.”

Peter pulled back with a watery smile, “Yeah?”

“Mhm.  They increased the limit on my credit card last month.  Enough for two tickets to Vegas, a week long stay in a crappy casino and a quickie wedding chapel.  I’d lock that shit down before you had a second to realize that you could do better than me, too.”

“Better than you?”  Peter sounded as if that idea was more insane than eloping to Vegas minutes after a marriage proposal.  “Tony, there isn’t anyone better than you.”

“If you believed that, you wouldn’t be with that piece of shit, Quentin Beck.”

Now, Peter just looked confused.  “In what universe did I ever have a choice between you and Quentin?”

“This one.”

Peter’s head slowly canted to one side, brow furrowing and eyes narrowing.  “No…”

“Oh yes, Pete.”  Never in his wildest dreams had ever thought that Peter thought Tony was out of his league.  Was the kid blind?  Did he not own a mirror?  Did he not know how brilliant and funny and talented…  “Oh yes..”  Those last two words were repeated a hair’s breadth from Peter’s lips as Tony leaned forward to bridge the distance between them.

It was everything Tony had ever thought it would be and so much more.  Peter’s lips were soft, his whimpers were music to Tony’s ears.  Tony let himself bury his fingers in those chestnut curls and inhale the scent of him, revel in the taste of him, live in that moment as if it was the only one he was ever going to get.

The kiss went on until neither one of them could breath, until they were forced to pull back with heaving chests and swollen lips.  Peter stared at Tony for several seconds before he threw off the blanket and walked out of the room.

What.

What the fuck.

Tony was dumbfounded.  Was Peter not into it?  Had he just been shot down?  Was Peter not even going to talk to him…

No.

No.

Peter was back.

With his laptop?

Tony frowned, watching as Peter dropped the computer in his lap followed by something small and golden.  Glancing up, Tony caught sight of Peter’s now empty ring finger.

“Put your money where your mouth is, Stark.”

Tony stared. “What…”

“Two tickets.  Vegas.  ASAP.”

“Wait…”  He couldn’t be serious.

“No, you said you wouldn’t make me wait.  I already Snapped Quentin.  We’re broken up.  I’m single…but I don’t want to be.  So buy me those tickets to Vegas and a ring…when we get there.”

Tony slowly opened the laptop, stealing glances at Peter ever few seconds as he booted it and pulled up a travel site.  “You’re not…this isn’t a joke, right?”

“Not a joke.  You’re not the only one who’s been pining, Tony Stark.  Why do you think Quentin hated you so much?  He knew I was super into you…hell, Tony, I made you my lover in my comics…You’ve been my unattainable crush since I started my job.  You’re the nicest guy I’ve ever met. Most supportive.  We have fun together.  We have a lot in common.  We just…”

“Yeah.”  Tony was smiling now, not even second guessing himself as he typed in his credit card numbers.  “I don’t know if we can get a week off work…”

“Four day weekend is good enough for now.  I’ll call Mr. Lang and let him know we won’t be in.  I’ll have to tell him why…”

“God help us.”

***

Four days later when Tony and Peter returned to work in the same car, they arrived to find an impromptu wedding shower waiting for them.  Quentin had quit.  Left all of Peter’s stuff in the warehouse in a pile in the middle of one of the docking bays. But whatever, the less they had to see of that prick the better.  Scott seemed happier about their elopement than they were, and he’d gone to great lengths to print up t-shirts proclaiming that everyone in the office ‘shipped Starker’.  Even Rogers was wearing one.

Tony pretended to hate it.

Really he fucking loved it.  

Maybe his job wasn’t the absolute worst after all…

[drkinedits]

that’s... a lot to unpack. i looked into it and went ahead and watched the pilot episode because i don’t live in a bubble on tumblr.com and i like to make my decisions based on information i’ve seen firsthand. i probably don’t have 100% of the facts but this is my basic analysis from what i’ve gathered:

so hazbin hotel is an animated show about the princess of hell trying to open a rehabilitation hotel. the characters include charlie, vaggie, angel dust, alastor, and more. there’s candid lgbt representation in nearly every character so far, but vaggie has been getting the most heat for being the stereotypical ‘aggressive hispanic lesbian’ but i honestly don’t see her that way. she seems more defensive and protective than needlessly aggressive, she wants to protect her girlfriend and the hotel. angel dust also gets a lot of slack for being an lgbt “nympho drug addict”. he’s not a nympho just because he’s proud of his sexuality, and i really hate the overuse of the word addict. that’s a mental disease, not a character trait. he has a drug problem, sure, i’ll admit that, but when his drugs were destroyed, he seemed minorly irritated, not completely infuriated like addicts i’ve known irl. i know some people complained about the show being lgbtphobic, but the most i’ve seen of that was when katie killjoy said she ‘doesn’t touch the gays’ because she has ‘standards’, but you’re clearly not meant to like or resonate with katie, she’s supposed to be an asshole. not only that, but the setting of this show is literally Hell. the characters...aren’t supposed to be perfect. they’re all flawed in their own ways and i appreciate that. all in all, the characters were relatable more than they were offensive to me, but that’s my personal take on it. 

enough about the show though, let’s address the complaints leveled against the creator. i’ve seen the accusations about her working with and hiring an abuser. however, i didn’t see any mention of said abuser during the credits or anything, so he clearly wasn’t apart of the show. i don’t have time to go through the entirely of her zoophobia comic so i’m going to set the bestiality claim to the side, as well as the terf complaint-- i haven’t seen evidence for either of those things so i can’t objectively comment on it. if you have sources or proof, please let me know! however, i have seen the panel from zoophobia that people claim is underage pornography, but both characters are the age of consent, 18 and 19 respectively. a lot of the accusations leveled against vivziepop are from years ago and i think it’s important to allow a person to grow and change. i’m certainly not the same person with the same opinions as i was seven years ago.

i need to wrap this up, it’s getting pretty long. i think, overall, that the creator has made some mistakes in the past but those things are in the past. she’s an lgbt latina who made an animated show with adult humor and adult themes, unsurprisingly, for adults! it has mature content that isn’t appropriate for everyone, and that’s okay. i think it’s important that problematic themes be portrayed in media, as long as the problematic themes aren’t framed in a positive manner. i’m critical of all of my interests but i do enjoy content that portrays these themes-- as long as they aren’t glorifying the toxic behavior, it should be alright.

i can’t make you continue to follow or support me, that’s up to you. this is your online experience and you should tailor it to fit your needs. however, this is also my online experience and i enjoyed hazbin quite a bit. i’m not saying that it doesn’t have its’ fair share of issues, but i think the style is cute and the animation is fluid and nice to look at, and the characters are relatable, multifaceted, and interesting. i understand how people would be offended by the content of the show, but i personally don’t mind. that’s just me though. if i post about it anymore, i’ll tag it so filters pick up on it and you don’t have to see it if you don’t want to. feel free to unfollow or block me if you need to. i’m not gonna hold it against you, because i understand that this show isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s 100% okay. do what you have to to keep your online space safe!

alright. that’s all i have to say on the matter. if you have any further claims or evidence of vivziepop’s wrongdoings, or if you noticed something i mentioned above wasn’t accurate, feel free to send me the info, but i really don’t want to deal with drama about this. my blog is for multifandom edits, not discourse-y topics. thanks if you read this far, hope you all have a productive day!

- clover

[mcrflashfic]

Side Effects

Living in the Zones will change you. Literally.

Author: @justlookatthewheat

Content Warnings: Body Horror

Word Count: 2,999

Party Poison wasn't about to claim any kind of expertise on radiation poisoning, but he was at a loss for any other explanation as to why he woke up looking like a fucking Maraschino cherry.

His first thought was - well, his first thought was what the fuck is on my head as he walked past the diner windows on his way to take a piss. His second thought, then, was where the fuck did Ghoul get hair dye? Because this was for sure a Ghoul prank. But then that didn't make sense either, really. Party's hair had been black. He would have definitely noticed someone bleaching his entire head and slapping dye over top, unless he'd been, like, gonna-meet-the-Phoenix-Witch frying, which he knew he hadn't. (Even if he had, his hair would still smell like peroxide. Also, he'd be face first heaving into a bush right now, probably.) It took several minutes of staring at his reflection and pulling strands of his own hair out to inspect them up close before he started entertaining the possibility that he'd mutated overnight, though. And he didn't believe it until he wasted a whole bottle of water and some of the soap they'd salvaged from the diner’s dishwasher on trying to wash it out.

The sand wasn't even pink when he finished rinsing. Neither were his hands. He bent to peer into one of the side mirrors on the Trans Am - to his alarm, his eyebrows, lashes, and three-day stubble were all the same Pantone 485 C color as the hair on his scalp.

"How do you even remember the Pantone color names?" Kobra asked him, exasperated, like Party had fabricated this situation specifically to piss him off, at the exact same moment a totally fascinated Ghoul said "Does the carpet match the drapes?"

Kobra glared at Ghoul so hard Party thought he would sprain something. "Stop talking, or I'm filling your boots with dead spiders while you sleep."

Party'd gone to show the other three as soon as he realized how much the whole thing was pegging the weird meter. So far, they were handling it about as well as he'd expected, which was not at all. He sat on a chair in the middle of the diner floor while they crowded him and talked over each other asking questions.

"It's scientifically relevant. Like, is it all of his hair, or just the hair on his head?" Ghoul grabbed Party's arm and yanked it close, squinting at his peach fuzz; annoyed, Party ripped it back again and folded both arms tight over his chest.

"Yes, it's everywhere. Stop manhandling me, fucker."

Jet had been inspecting his hair with the back of a polished saucepan throughout the debate - probably checking to make sure whatever it was wasn't happening to him - and he finally put it down to join the discussion again. "It's weird that it's just you who's affected. I mean, we're all getting exposed to radiation, right? So why's Poison the only one in Technicolor?"

"And all at once," Kobra added, frowning. He leaned in closer to peer at the top of Party's head. "It'd make more sense as a mutation if it was just the roots."

Ghoul snickered. "Too bad you didn't snag 'Cherry Bomb' for your Killjoy name, Poison. Think of the thematic relevance it'd have now."

"Hilarious." Party rolled his eyes and dragged both hands through his new, inexplicably red locks. "Seriously, you guys. If it's radiation, where do the mutations end? Like, am I gonna get psionic fire powers next?"

The effect was not what Party was going for. All three of them instantly lit up with excitement - even Kobra broke his signature scowl to gasp out a "Holy shit, what if you did, though?"

Party dropped his head into his palms with a groan.

---------------------------------

Ghoul was next. Party was actually the one to discover it, while the two were picking their way through a dusty warehouse on the far edge of Zone 5 a couple weeks after the Hair Incident. It was oppressively hot inside despite the dim and the amount of space. They both had been stripping off layers as they sweated through them; finally, Ghoul tore off his t-shirt in a fit of heat-induced pique, chucking it in a heap on the cluttered floor, and Party gasped.

"Oh my God, Ghoul, your tattoos," he said, too loud in the empty warehouse - his voice echoed, and Ghoul nearly dropped his gun in alarm.

"What? What's wrong with them?" he asked, tinged with panic, and looked down wide-eyed at his torso. "Oh, Jesus fuck."

It was like something out of Harry Potter. Party gaped at Ghoul's skin in wonder - his tattoos were moving. Some flashed like neon; some, like the swallows across his hips, moved like their living counterparts. The grenade on his chest exploded and reconstituted on a loop. All the stars glittered; pieces in script flowed as though being traced in real time by an invisible calligrapher. Party couldn't help himself but reach out and touch one of them. It rippled gently beneath his fingertips.

"That is so fucking creepy," he said, hushed with awe, and watched the letters vanish before wisping, smoke-like, back into place. "Can you feel them?"

Ghoul shook his head fiercely, face pale. His eyes were so big Party could see white all the way around his irises. "No, I - I didn't even - oh shit, oh dude, look at my fucking hands," and he held them up so Party could see them, and he watched with a sort of horrified fascination as the letters swirled around Ghoul's fingers like stripes around a barbershop pole. "Is this fucking permanent? Party, what if it's permanent? They're all - it's all of them, oh my God," he babbled, high and strained, and clutched at Party's shoulders in distress. Party gave him a hug because he couldn't think of anything else to do, and Ghoul shuddered, and clung back.

Jet took it almost as poorly, once they'd gathered what they needed out of the warehouse and returned to base. He clamped both hands over his mouth the instant Ghoul rolled up his sleeves and reeled backward. "Abso-fucking-lutely not. Ghoul, what the fuck?"

"Dude, if I knew, it wouldn't be happening," Ghoul snapped. Kobra came closer, studying Ghoul's ink with his brows drawn together. He dragged his fingertip over the Our Lady tattoo on Ghoul's forearm.

"Party's radiation theory is looking plausible here," he said, sounding thoughtful, and glanced up to meet Party's eye. "I mean, I can't think of anything else that would cause this."

"Are we all gonna end up with freaky shit, then? Is it gonna get worse? Cause there is a big fuckin' difference between sprouting unnatural hair and living tattoos," Jet said, looking pointedly away from Ghoul. "Oh god, what if my hair turns into snakes or something?"

Kobra snorted, straightening up. "If anyone's getting a snake-themed mutation, it'll be me. Maybe I'll get fangs."

---------------------------------

He was almost right. It was significantly more disturbing than simple fangs, but it was definitely snake-themed. They were mid-clap when it happened and shit was already chaotic; Party was struggling to clear dust from his eyes with his shoulder when he heard a sickening crunch and then Jet shrieking Kobra's name. Heart in his mouth, Party whirled around with his gun raised, fearing the worst - but all he saw was Kobra, helmet on, going after a Drac down a wash. He glanced at Jet in confusion, and fired a slug at a Drac over his shoulder.

"What the hell was that sound?" he shouted.

Jet, looking like he'd seen a literal ghost, didn't answer him, just stared after Kobra in stock-still terror until Party ran over and yanked him down behind a rock embankment for cover.

"Fuck, Jet, get it together or you're gonna get dusted," Party huffed out, and shot back to his feet to fire off a couple rounds before ducking back down. "What happened?"

"That - he's not - Party, Kobra didn't bring his helmet on this raid," said Jet, and dug his fingers into Party's bicep. They locked eyes, Jet's wide and scared. "That's not his helmet. That's his fucking head."

Party blinked back at him, lost. "What? That doesn't - "

"CAN I GET SOME FUCKING HELP HERE, GUYS?" Ghoul's voice yelled then, and Party cursed before scrambling up behind the embankment, Jet on his heels. They helped Ghoul shake the couple Dracs that had ganged up on him, and then Kobra came running back up the dry creek, splattered with Drac blood. Back to back to back to back, they assumed their usual end-of-firefight position, Party and Ghoul checking north and south with Kobra and Jet looking east and west, guns drawn. Once everyone gave an all clear, they re-holstered and took a second to decompress. Ghoul wiped his face with the bandana tied around his neck, his tattoos whirling dizzily across his skin.

"Okay, so, what the fuck happened back there? I looked up and everyone was gone," he complained to the group, glaring at each of them in turn. "Didn't we talk about keeping eyes on each other the whole time during these things?"

"Sorry, Ghoul, there was sort of a - " Party started to say, looking up from adjusting his gloves, but he stopped short when he laid eyes on Kobra and Kobra's helmet suddenly deflated and disappeared into his collar with that same crunching noise he'd heard before.

"...What?" said Kobra, glancing between the three of them, puzzled. Party could feel the frozen shock on his face, but couldn't articulate any words; Ghoul heaved a dry retch and pressed his hands over his mouth, while Jet gestured frantically at Kobra while looking to Party.

"That! That's what fucking happened, except the other way! I told you it wasn't his helmet!"

Kobra touched his hand to his face, still looking confused. "Yeah, I didn't bring it cause we were in the Trans Am. Why are you guys freaking out?"

Party, acting on a hunch, quick drew his gun on Kobra and lunged, but didn't fire - Kobra leapt backward with a yelp, and sure enough, his helmet formed over his head with that same awful sound. Party shoved his gun back into the holster and grabbed Kobra by the wrist, dragging him toward the Trans Am. He pushed him in front of the side mirror. "Kobra, look."

He did. "What the fuck," he said, muffled.

Party laid a hand on his shoulder. "Dude. It's a cobra hood. The radiation made you grow a fucking cobra hood."

---------------------------------

By the time it was Jet's turn, the Fab Four were in full-on Buffy research mode to figure out what the hell was going on, and more importantly, if there was anything they could do to stop it. Dr. D didn't know anything but promised to put out feelers for them; they talked to other Killjoys at raves and underground gigs; they stripped tech off Drac bodies and raided Better Living outposts and scoured the airwaves for any stray bits of information. Meanwhile, their individual mutations got weirder. Party's hair color changed, first from day to day, then hour to hour, until it seemed like it varied with each breath. Ghoul's tattoos started multiplying of their own accord. The older ones resharpened, ink drawing up through the layers of skin - their motion, they learned by way of careful note taking, was dependent on his body temperature, faster when he was warm and slower when he was cold. Kobra didn't grow fangs or start sibilating, but he did figure out how to pop out the cobra-hood-helmet thing on command instead of just whenever he felt threatened.

"You know how with the summer monsoons, you can watch the rain sweep over the desert in a sheet until it finally gets to you?" Jet said to Party one day when it was just the two of them on watch. They were parked on top of the Vista de Nada Plano outcrop in Zone Six, waiting to intercept a Drac patrol coming from the east. "That's how I feel about this fucking mutation thing. I just wanna get it over with."

Party glanced over at Jet from the landscape sketch he'd been doing out of sheer boredom. Jet's jaw was clenched, gun in his lap, and he kept trailing his thumb up and down the barrel as he stared out over the scrub wastes. "It's not so bad being a mutant," he said, opting for levity. It only kind of worked; Jet snorted, but didn't smile.

"Easy for you to say. You got the Rainbow-Brite mutation. Kobra sprouted snake anatomy. That's like Storm telling Rogue to cheer up and embrace her power."

Hard to argue with that. Party shrugged, and tapped the end of his pencil against his sketchpad. "Maybe you'll get a softball one, too."

Jet ran his tongue over his teeth. "Yeah, maybe." He knocked his aviators up the bridge of his nose with his knuckle, and then suddenly sat up stock straight, clutching his gun with both hands. "Start the car."

"Huh? Why?" Party looked around, twisting in his seat to check behind them, too - no sign of danger, no dust from vehicles, just the rocks and larrea bushes.

"There's an Exterminator coming up the back side. They've got Dracs with them," said Jet, already shifting into shooting position in the passenger seat; Party cursed, and fumbled to get the keys back in the ignition.

"Fuck, I can't see anything - how do you know that? Where'd you spot them?" The Trans Am roared to life, and Party gunned it down the front side of the outcrop, keeping an eye on the rearview while he dug his gun out of its holster and passed it to Jet.

"I...didn't," said Jet, sounding surprised, and Party cut a glance at him; Jet was staring straight out the windshield, guns in both hands, aimed at the roof. "I just got a feeling."

A ray gun blast whizzed past the driver's side window and glanced off the side mirror. Party jumped, and looked back to the rearview; sure enough, an Exterminator car rose up over the hill behind them, with a Drac hanging out the back window. "Hell of a feeling," he said, and barked out a laugh. "Holy shit, are you psychic now?"

Jet, cranking the passenger window down, shot him a grin before he turned around in the seat. "I guess I'll let you know!"

---------------------------------

It was another couple months before other Killjoy cliques and Zone dwellers started complaining of their own mutations. They ranged from the superficial and mundane Party-esque changes all the way to the X-men level shit Jet and Kobra got. Only two factors were consistent across the board - everyone who got them had been living out in the Zones for at least three months, and they’d all had some kind of clap with Dracs. The major breakthrough came from Kobra, who’d appointed himself lead researcher, when he figured out there was a positive correlation between the severity of the mutation and how many Dracs you’d killed - i.e., the higher your body count, the crazier your mutation.

“I don’t know exactly what it is about killing them that’s causing this, though,” he admitted, after coming to the rest of them with the data.

“I bet it’s the masks,” said Ghoul. “Who knows what kinda freaky shit powers those things? They wipe your fuckin’ soul!”

“Yeah, but you don’t always destroy their masks when you kill them,” Jet pointed out, rubbing his exposed eye. The psychic thing only worked, they’d learned, when Jet’s regular vision was dimmed - he thought it was super annoying to wear sunglasses all the time, so he’d taken to wearing an eyepatch. It worked, and it was totally awesome. Party had sewed him a little star pattern for it. “It’s gotta be something you’re exposed to every time.”

Party frowned, thinking back to all the claps they’d been in since they got out to the Zones. Was there anything that happened every single time? Did he get near one of them every time? Definitely not. The closest he got to actually touching Dracs was standing too close when they got hit by slugs and bled on him.

Wait. Was that -

“Holy shit,” he said out loud, and the other three all looked at him. “Is it - is it their blood? Like, touching it?”

“Oh Jesus Christ,” Ghoul moaned instantly, covering his face with both hands. “Ugh, Party, that’s fucking disgusting, and the awful thing is I think you’re fucking right.”

Better Living themselves spared them the world’s most vile follow-up experiment by confirming their suspicions in a radio broadcast Dr. D picked up and recorded. Not in as many words - as usual, there was some jargon they didn’t know how to parse, and it was all in Japanese - but definitely something about how exposure to Drac blood could poison you. Of course, that concept set the collective Zone-dwelling imagination on fire; a nuclear answer to the age old question of what drinking vampire blood will do to a mortal, which apparently was superpowers. News hit the zine syndicate, and before the Fab Four could warn anyone that the mutations would absolutely get weirder the more you exposed yourself, the latest Killjoy craze was chugging Drac blood to see what kind of crazy shit would happen to you.

Which turned out to be: a painful physical ordeal in the vein of ayahuasca consumption, first of all. Once you got past the delirium tremors and projectile vomiting, though, it wasn’t all bad. And sometimes, if you were really lucky, at the end of it you sprouted wings or could blow shit up with your mind or talk to dead people.

Party never did have normal hair again.

[kogo-dogo]

i’ve never heard of the video game series u talked about in that last ask, but i loved ur character analysis for torque! i’m very curious to hear abt dr killjoy if you want to share ur thoughts there too? even just the name dr killjoy is bitching as HELL

You do not know how happy it makes me to talk about Dr. Killjoy.

Torque may be one of my favorite characters of all time, but Dr. Killjoy is… he’s up there. And he’s a lot more fun to talk about because he is a fabulous disaster, as well as the poster child for the phrase “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Since Torque is such a vague character, whose personality and backstory are revealed gradually and oftentimes subtly over the course of two games, Killjoy is really the motherfucker who steals the show and is very obviously the favorite of the creators. Even the other sentient spirits on Carnate Island take a backseat to him, and he ends up being a massive driving force in the plot and the one who actually helps the player unravel the man they’re playing as.

(I can’t even say “the guy who you’re put in the shoes of” because Torque doesn’t wear shoes.)

Spoilers follow, but I’ve already told y’all you probably don’t wanna actually play these games. 

Dr. Killjoy is the most well-intentioned, terrible person you will ever see in a video game, probably.

Dr. Killjoy is the spirit of a deceased alienist who was the head doctor at a facility known as The Carnate Institution for the Alienated in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Basically, he’s a psychiatric doctor who hails from a time when lobotomies were still in high fashion and experimental procedures on the mentally ill were less than savory, to put it lightly. Killjoy specifically was known for being rather extreme even at the time, having a very experimental mind and extreme delusions of grandeur. While it’s never outright said he was anything beyond “insane,” he operates in a perpetual manic state and is very, very animated and melodramatic.

How melodramatic? He acts like he has a live studio audience at all times. His whole schtick is that he appears from old film projectors. In a game that is mostly mired in the realm of realism (barring the ghosts and monsters), he creates a fucking weird-ass magic machine that lets you cast spells and basically says, “Ta-da! Look! I made brain magic that will cure your psychosis, Torque!”

(It does not, in fact, cure his psychosis.)

The problem with Dr. Killjoy is that he’s very much a product of his time, and obsessed with the idea of scientific progress over all else. He firmly believes that what he’s doing will further a cause that will eventually work out to help people, but the lives lost in the process are just par for the course. The remnants of his hospital (still used as of the first game, albeit as a hiding spot for COs to smoke, drink, and party) are littered with the mummified bodies of former patients and captured corrections officers that Killjoy decided to experiment on.

He will gladly tell you about all of the dead shit laying around his house, too. He loves to hear himself talk.

In the first game, he fixates on Torque as a special interest case and is absolutely obsessed with figuring out how to “fix” him. Most of the time this involves testing him in positively batshit ways. Sure, it probably seems like bad form nowadays to lock a guy in a burning cafeteria or a room full of monsters with shivs for hands, but to Killjoy? Makes perfect sense, since you can really see a man’s character based on how they react to high-stress situations, and what’s more high-stress than a near-death experience?

But whenever he shows up, whenever he has anything to say, whenever he decides to grace Torque with his presence, it’s always under the belief that he is doing something good for the guy. While he never outright says anything to the effect of “I care about you,” his chipper attitude and his absolute determination to coax Torque into doing what he feels will be for his benefit makes it obvious. He’s adamant about every death trap he lures Torque into or every “diagnosis” he tosses out or every “treatment” he devises, and is even the only character from the first game to follow him into the second…

… Because he feels like Torque isn’t well yet, and he cares enough about this random guy that he’s just going to tag along and try to find a way to help him out. In all the worst possible ways.

He’s equal parts a perfect foil to Torque and a driving force to the narrative, being the one who lays down most of the scraps you get about Torque’s mental health (though a lot of it is conjecture, outdated, and wrong), the island, the monsters, and even the drama in Torque’s life. He’s like a weird, gossipy old lady with a very out-of-date medical degree, and he is delighted whenever he sees his favorite patient and excitable about pretty much every goddamn thing he sees.

And it’s funny to watch Torque and Killjoy interact because Killjoy is so exuberant and loud, and Torque is just Very Done With This Shit. In the first game, Torque mostly responds to him by glaring at him stone-faced until he stops talking, and in the second game he seems actively annoyed whenever Killjoy has the audacity to open his mouth. And Killjoy? Does not give a single iota of a shit, and will just gleefully quote Othello at Torque as he’s trying not to get himself killed, or idly chit-chat with him while he’s struggling to figure out how to get out of a room Killjoy locked him in.

But I cannot overstate that despite how annoying, how unpredictable, how dangerous, and how utterly in love with himself Killjoy is, he is absolutely dedicated to the idea of curing Torque. There is actual good intent in what Killjoy is doing, and he seems to legitimately give a damn about Torque and vouch for him to pull through all of the trials thrown at him. Again, this man essentially built a magical machine to try to cure schizophrenia and, even if it worked about as well as shining him with a UV light, that’s some dedication.

Hell, when Torque escapes Carnate Island, as previously stated, he follows him just to double down on helping him understand what is going on and making sure he gets a shot at treatment. He’s so fucking flippant and apathetic with literally anyone else he encounters (all the people Torque is trying to save mean nothing to him), but he is rooting for this man so bad. So bad. 

There are hints dropped that Killjoy has known Torque for a while longer than even Torque was aware of (and even an implication that he was acquainted with Torque’s dead mother), and he’s just so disdainful of Blackmore, Torque’s nebulous nemesis, and when compared to the other spirits across both games, he’s actually the only one attempting to offer any assistance at all. Horace Gauge (the “good” spirit) mostly just whines about how much pain he’s in and how unfair life is, and Hermes (my EXTREMELY PROBLEMATIC THIRD FAVORITE of this series) is actively trying to kill Torque or convince him to kill everyone around him. Creeper and Copperfield in Ties That Bind are just irredeemably awful and… yeah.

Yeah. Don’t look up either of those last two.

Killjoy is of the mind that he and Torque are a team, it seems, and this ghost would follow him to the ends of the earth for no reason other than to make sure he succeeded at defeating his inner demons, basically.

… Ugh. Okay. I can’t really do Killjoy any more justice in words. Here’s every cutscene involving him from the first game. Ignore how ugly this game is. Also, I know I linked it before, but he also has a really good boss theme. 

[spectraspecs-writes]

Dantooine - Chapter 39 (Mission)

Link to the masterpost. Chapter 38. Chapter 40

tw swearing, drug use, drug mention, alcohol

A/N - Yes, I know, it’s been over a month since I posted a chapter. But then it’s been almost that long since I typed anything. Be glad the story is flowing from my head. Means more content just needs to be typed.

@isquirtleinyoureye thank you for reading you get a tag.

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No, I’m not pouting in the starboard quarters, I’m just thinking. Hard thinking - usually I can just do soft thinking about things, let it set in my head in the background while there's other stuff going on in the foreground. But when it’s something serious, I need to do hard thinking, devote all my focus to it. 

God, I feel so pissed at Bastila. All that high and mighty Jedi speak, make me feel like I’m the bad guy here for just wanting to take a little while to think about this, the implications of being a Jedi.

I hear a knock on the door. “Rena.” Bastila. “Rena, could you please unlock the door?”

“It’s not locked,” I say.

“I can’t open the door.”

‘Well, that sounds like your problem, not mine.”

“Rena, I told you, the Force…”

“Oh, fuck off, Bastila!” That was probably a bit harsher than it needed to be. Whatever. She leaves. I’m so sick of hearing about the Force and destiny and all that crap from her.

I lose track of time pretty quickly. Nobody else comes by until Mission knocks on the door at least a few hours later. “Hey, Rena, can I come in and grab my Pazaak deck?”

“Sure.” Mission comes right in. See, I told Bastila the door wasn’t locked. “Anything interesting going on out there?”

“Carth and Canderous almost started the second Mandalorian War,” she says like it’s nothing.

“I expected them to argue,” I say, shaking my head, “Who punched first?”

“Nobody did, but it still took Big Z to pull them apart.” I almost wish I hadn’t missed that. “Hey, can I talk to you? You seemed to be pretty bothered, and if you had something on your mind, I didn't want to bother you, but…”

“It’s nothing,” I say, even though it’s really not nothing but I’d rather talk to Mission than think about the Jedi, “What’s up?”

“Nothing, it’s just… I'm sorry for the way I acted before, when you asked about Griff and Lena.” (She says Lena’s name with a sneer.) “It's just that when it comes to Lena I tend to get a little worked up.”

“Why? What’d she do?” Is there drama afoot?

“My brother and me had a good thing going. Sure, Griff had his run-ins with the law on Taris. But we got by okay. Until Lena came and ruined everything. She was a dancer at the cantina where my brother used to go to play Pazaak. Griff could be a real smooth talker, and it wasn't long before the two of them were dating. But Lena was used to dating rich Tarisian nobles – guys with mountains of credits. Griff could never give her the kind of lifestyle she was used to, no matter how hard he worked.”

Gold-digging schutta. “So what happened? Did Lena dump him?”

“I thought Lena would brush Griff off when she saw how poor he was, but for some reason she stuck around. I guess she saw the potential for a big payday down the road. And don’t think for a minute that she actually liked him,” Mission adds quickly, “I saw Lena for what she really was – a busty, credit-grubbing cantina rat! She used Griff and took away the only family I had!”

“The schutta!” I didn’t think I’d be this into this drama, but Mission’s my friend and I love her, and if she’s passionate about it, so am I.

“After they'd been together for a few months, Griff told me he was leaving Taris. He and Lena were going to try and make their fortune off-world. He promised as soon as he made enough credits he'd come back and get me and we'd all live like royalty. That was two years ago – I haven't seen him since! I don't even know where he went!”

“What do you think happened to him?”

“Oh, I know what happened! As soon as she got him off Taris, Lena sunk her claws into Griff but good! She twisted him around her little finger and made him forget all about me!” What a bitch! “I know I'll probably never see Griff again. But part of the reason I came with you was the hope that I could find out what happened to my brother. Don’t worry, I won’t let my search for Griff get in the way of anything.”

“I wish I knew what ‘anything’ was. I have absolutely no idea what’s going on.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks. God, I love her.

“Not really,” I say, “I want to stop thinking about it, actually.”

We’re both quiet for a moment, until she reaches for me excitedly. “Hey!” she exclaims, “Guess what I found!”

“What?”

“Come on!” She grabs my hand and runs with me to the cargo hold. “So I was digging in the cargo containers, seeing what Davik had stored on this ship, and I came across a locked compartment, it wouldn’t open.”

“Until you opened it.”

“Well, duh!” I love her so much. “Check it out! Davik had some grade-A spice stored on this ship!” I stick my finger in it, and taste a little. Hot damn, that’s good stuff! Not glitterstim, but good stuff!

“So.” The voice makes us both jump and yelp. It’s just Canderous, but I was afraid it was Carth. If Mr. Republic finds this stuff he’ll turn it over to the first Republic official he finds, given that it’s illegal. But it’s just Canderous. “This is where Hudrow stashed the spice he stole. I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

“Wasn’t he being tortured for stealing the spice?” Mission asks. Evidently someone got her up to speed on the events at Davik’s estate.

“Yep,” I say, “And he was stupid enough to hide it on Davik’s own ship, apparently.”

“‘Stupid’ is a good word to describe Hudrow,” Canderous says, “I’d never met him before yesterday, but apparently the only thing he was good at was flying.” He sticks his finger in the spice and does the same thing I did. “That’s high grade stuff,” he says, sounding impressed, “Can I get some?”

“Only if you don’t tell Carth,” I say.

Canderous laughs shortly, as if the very notion is appalling to him. “I wouldn’t tell him if my life depended on it. I’m not about to let that Republic killjoy ruin my day.” He takes a handful and sits down on one of the storage containers.

Mission, uncertain but clearly eager to try something new, takes a much smaller handful and sits cross-legged on the floor, watching Canderous. “Aren’t you going to get some, Rena?” she asks me.

“Nah,” I say, “Spice doesn’t agree with me, I’m allergic to it.”

“Well. there’s some fire wine in the one with the broken seal,” Mission says, pointing at it. Her doing as well, I imagine.

I don’t know, I’ve really got a lot on my mind. “I think I’m good, guys.”

“Rena,” Canderous says, “You fought in a great battle, lived to tell about it. This is a victory that should be celebrated. And I will not let a fellow warrior sit and mope in her room while her comrades in arms celebrate the victory and toast the fallen with spoils from the battle.”

Seems like he cares a lot about this. I don’t think the destruction of Taris should be celebrated, but we did do something that would have been nigh impossible for anyone else. Found Bastila, won a swoop opener as someone who’d never flown a swoop bike before, broke into and robbed the Sith base, outlived Calo Nord and Davik Kang, stole the latter’s ship, fought off and outran Malak’s fleet, and lived to tell about it. I have had a very long week, and damn it I need a drink after all that. And besides, someone needs to make sure Mission and Canderous don’t hurt themselves. So I open the container and pull out the fire wine, and sit down near them. Canderous smiles, mumbles a Mandalorian blessing - it doesn’t translate well - and takes some of the spice. Mission follows his lead with a little less, and I take a swig of the fire wine.

It burns a little going down.

By the time Carth shows up, Mission has passed out. Canderous is still conscious and coherent, even if every other word is in Mandalorian. I’ve been pacing myself better, but fire wine is still quite strong if you’re not used to it. Things are a little… blurry. I wasn’t even aware Carth was here until he said something. “What the hell is this?” is specifically what he said. 

“According to Canderous, we’re toasting the fallen with the spoils,” I say, trying not to let my voice slur. I should swap out my implant, get sober quicker. But I don’t have one with me, so I guess I’ll have to do that later. Or not. 

“Toasting the fallen. Right,” he says, sounding really disappointed, “With spice? You’re doing spice.”

“I’m not doing spice, Canderous and Mission were. This is fire wine.”

“Mission is fourteen!” Evidently mentioning Mission was the wrong thing to do. “You just let her do that?”

“Carth, relax, it’s not like she was doing it alone, Canderous and I were here the whole time.”

“Right, because a Mandalorian being here makes me feel so much better about giving a kid illegal drugs.”

“Look, Republic,” Canderous finally says - his eyes look red but otherwise he’s fine - “She’s a tough kid and she’ll be fine. Once she sleeps it off, she’ll be perfectly fine.”

Carth sighs shortly. I guess he figures there’s nothing he can do about it now, although it’s obvious he plans to get rid of the spice just like we predicted. “Fine,” he says, even though he clearly does not think it’s fine, “Fine. Rena, would you help me get her back to the starboard quarters?”

“I’ll do my damnedest.” Wow, I haven’t stood up in a while. Is the floor paneling uneven? I feel like the ship is moving, even though if it were I would have heard the engine by now. Maybe it’s just me.

Oh. Hello, floor. That fire wine really did hit me harder than I thought. “Whoa!” Carth tries to catch me, but he gets there too late. “Looks like you’re not in a fit state, either. Canderous, will you…?” Canderous has fallen asleep. Carth sighs again, and looks at Canderous before shaking his head. “I’m not moving him,” he says simply. Then he looks at me. “If I help you, can you stand?”

“I would think so,” I say, trying to brace myself against one of the storage containers. I reach out my other arm for Carth and he grabs it, pulling me up, hot damn that is a muscular arm. (It might just be the fire wine, but that Dark Side part of that nightmare is out of my mind, and all I can think about is the passionate make-out session beforehand. I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything, just my brain going, “Hey, you think he’s cute, what if…?”)

He slowly guides me out of the cargo hold and towards the starboard quarters. “I didn’t think I’d ever have to do this, walk you home,” Carth says, and I feel like he’s trying to play but he’s also a little serious, “You didn’t strike me as the kind of person to get fall-down drunk.”

“I’m not, usually,” I say, “I have simply had a long day. Hell, a long week.”

“Does this have anything to do with your meeting with the Council this morning?” he asks, and before I can say anything he keeps going, “You looked pretty upset when you can back. What did they say?”

“They…” I start to say, before stopping. Well, I guess I have to talk about it eventually, don’t I? “They want me to become a Jedi.”

“Wow,” he says simply, and he sets me down on my bed, “That sounds… sudden. Do you not want to be a Jedi?”

“I don’t know! They never even asked,” I say, “And that pisses me off.” 

“I can understand that,” he says. It’s weird, when Bastila said it I didn’t believe her. But with Carth saying it, I do. “You probably feel a little trapped by the whole thing.”

“Oh, God, yes, exactly!” He gets it, yes!

“Well, if you want my opinion,” he says, and he gives me the chance to say no but I do want to hear it, “I think you should?”

“You do?” I say softly, “Why?” He looks a little put on the spot, uncomfortable, so I say, “I’m not looking to argue with you, I just… I want to know what you think.”

“Well, for one thing, you’re a natural peacekeeper. Watching you on Taris, standing up for people, trying to help them, you’re good at it. The way I understand it, that’s what Jedi are supposed to do, help people and keep peace.” This is already better than Bastila’s reasons. “Plus you’re a strong person, and I think you should try to become the best and strongest person you can be. Jedi training will certainly do that more than just being in the fleet will. If you can do it, I say go for it.” 

God, he’s so cute. He’s so sweet. “Thanks, Carth.”

“Yeah, sure,” he says, like it’s nothing. And maybe it is nothing, maybe the fire wine is making me super emotional. “I’m going to grab Mission, you try to sleep.” And he leaves.

Where is that implant, should take away my hangover. When I find it, I plug it into my head. And almost immediately pass out.