#about how the robot character finds it inconvenient to be in a body that visibly emotes. so that explains a lot i guess

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

k, m, n, t for pd and/or suck!!! >:33333

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

-> you know i gotta say wiwi. i have to. that character was Made For Me i swear to GOD . genuinely i cannot think about prime defenders season 2 episode 39 without feeling physically sick bc i love it so much. its the only one i havent relistened to since i heard it the first time. i KNOW its gonna make me cry again so i genuienly have not touched it even though theres things in there i need to hear again for character research. his arc is so like. narratively satisfying in a way that hits me so fucking deep to my core in an extremely personal way. and like. there were definitely some Decisions that i was REALLY ANNOYING about hating when they were brought up because im used to media with bad storytelling/creators that do not care about their characters but. looking back on it i would not change a single thing about it. i love you wiwi so much.

-> FOR SUCK.... its not over yet. so i cannot definitively say. campaign finale comes out tomorrow so my answer may change depending on that but for right now i think i gotta say arthur. i joke a lot about hating arthur for no real reason in particular but. man his story is just REALLY good. not going 2 give you suck spoilers (hehe) but i also really like how shilo has grown through the campaign. hes my little guy :]

M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.

-> TIDE. TIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TIDE TIDE TIDE I LOVE TIDE SO MUCH. thats my dad thats my best friend i love tide so much dude. every time he is mentioned or on screen i am just like :D HI TIDE I LOVE YOU TIDE

-> grefgore :] light of my life this is how i feel anytime i think about grefgore

N - Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).

-> CHARACTER STUDIES. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. I LIKE A GOOD SHIPPING FIC AS MUCH AS THE NEXT GUY BUT PLEASE GOD WRITE THEM IN CHARACTER. EXPLORE THEIR THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS AND WHY THEY MAKE CERTAIN DECISIONS THE WAY THEY DO. this doesnt even go for just pd and suck this is like. true for every single fandom ive ever fucking been in. do you know how hard it is to find character studies in the danny phantom tag on ao3. nobody has even fucking watched the show how are they going to write character studies they just want (<< i cannot legally finish this sentence without getting in so much trouble) I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING MY FUCKING SELF AROUND HERE. ALL I EVER WRITE ARE CHARACTER STUDIES BC THATS THE WAY I THINK ABOUT CHARACTERS. I LOVE THEIR MOTIVATIONS I LOVE TO GET INSIDE THEIR BRAINS LIKE A LITTLE PARASITE AND IT IS ALWAYS SURPRISING TO ME WHEN OTHER PEOPLE DO NOT THINK LIKE THIS. (edit im just now reading through this and realized the question says three things. i did not process that. my three things are all more character studies please)

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending? 

-> oh dude i have so many hmmmmmmm how to choose just one. i have a LOT of feelings about wiwis original death and i might write something about that when i can get over my shrimp emotions about him. dakota cole audhd truther but that ones pretty much canon anyway so i dont think it counts. vyncent and his relationship with growing up in fantasy world and then being thrown into prime and how he adjusted to that. I think he really lies shitty syfy channel type horror movies that are so stupidly bad. and also plays a lot of video games but again i think thats mostly canon already. i think tide listens to dad rock but also like. ocean man by ween. you already know about my william and ashe being each others emotional support at concerts. i think william and ashe should hang out and do emo kid things more. i also have a lot of feelings about ashe and coping with the crippling loneliness of basically growing up alone and how the pd becoming like INSTANT best friends was so much for him in sooo many ways. you already know how i feel about mark i am in the middle of dissecting him like im in a high school biology class as we speak. uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i know im gonna think of something really good after i hit the post button so stay tuned

[thesarcasticside]

Millennia-00001010

Space au starring Virgil, a succulent from outer space.

Characters: Virgil, OCs, the Dragon Witch

Warnings: Swearing, fearing for one’s life, non-human non-sexual nakedness mention--basically taking a shower but feeling insecure about themselves, dehumanization/depersonization, verbal abuse and threats, basically threatening and forcing someone to work

I do not know if I wrote the warnings properly, so if should mention anything, please say so

AO3   Chapter 1  Previous Chapter  Next Chapter

00001010

The large alien man that carried Virgil looked similar enough to Dei’dra for Virgil to conclude that they were of the same species. Otherwise, Virgil did not recognize him. He must not have been an employee of Dei’dra, some new hired hand, or a hire so recent he was not in the books yet.

He had large, black colored eyes. He had dark crimson scales that spread across what looked like his entire body. (Virgil did not want to know whether that was true). He wore a large suit, or maybe robe. Virgil guessed he was around ten feet tall from the distance between his feet and the ground.

They kept climbing higher. They traveled to parts of the ship he had only seen about once or twice. And parts of the ship that were too far away to sneak into and not be missed in the automation room.

Eventually, there was a large door he had only seen from his station. The main exit.

He was taking him off the ship.

Tense, Virgil nearly squirmed in the man’s grip. He did not though, that could cause him injury. Virgil, despite how much he hated the ship, he could not imagine leaving it. Not now, not anymore.

The door opened and Virgil, instead of meeting the cold vacuum of space, was met with a completely new sight.

The planet was red. They were in a large dome. Pristine white buildings with large windows that sat in a neat grid. Everything looked the same, the same age, the same incomprehensibly tall height, as if everything blinked into existence at the same time. Beyond the transparent barrier was a vast desert. He could see the orange horizon, jagged clouds pinned across the velvet. Dark black shadows settled below orange cliffs. Directly above his head, an orange sun burned.

He was led inside one of those buildings. They kept climbing upwards. Virgil wondered if Dei’dra was finally going to kill him. Maybe all these years she had been waiting to find the tallest structure she could find to throw him off of. Not what he expected, but Virgil dreaded his fate just the same. Virgil numbly watched the rooms go by as they climbed the air, counting.

They reached the highest floor in the building. The room was unbearably white. He was dropped onto the ground and the alien man sunk down behind him.

He felt exposed. He looked down at his limbs. The woody appendages were a deep dark grey. He could still see an undertone of violet, but only he would notice that. The contrast between himself and the room was frightening. He waited.

“Ew, what’s that shit all over you?” He had zoned out, but he was woken up when he was nudged—well, kicked really—by a foot. His head shot up, alarmed. Dei’dra. He could not help that his whole body was shaking.

“Yeah, yeah, take this down to maintenance and hose it down or something.” Dei’dra talked into her earpiece. “Is it waterproof? Ah, yeah, ‘would sure think so.” Ending the call, she then said to herself, “Maybe this time we’ll finally get a proper computer lab. I’d hate to see what sort of mess the automation room was. Probably reeked or something.”

Virgil’s feeling of intrusion only grew as Dei’dra talked like she was alone, by herself, as if he was just some paperweight sitting on a shelf.

Eventually, Virgil was escorted to a sectioned off room a few floors below. It was white, pristine, and lifeless. Virgil, after being plopped onto the floor, stood up in front of a floor to ceiling mirror.

He did not expect to not recognize himself; at first, he thought there was someone else in the room. Then he recognized the dull purple of his skin and concluded that he really did look like that.

He was an unorganized mess. His body was arranged in a haphazard way. No wonder nobody recognized him as a person.

He was a clump of trailing vines, glowing eyes, lanky limbs. He twirled around, counting his several arms and legs. It was like someone planted a blackberry bush somewhere and left it to its own devices.

He looked at where his chest would be and saw a large metal device that jutted out of his skin. Marred, gnarled, the tissue was deformed and sunk inward, like the device sunk a hole into his body. He could see most of it, but many vines had grown over it. It felt larger on the inside, like he could feel much more than what was visible.

Just the sight of it filled him with dread. They would always know where he was. This tracker might as well have been a part of him. He knew it better than most other body parts, he had prodded at it compulsively for years.

It was stabbed into a very inconvenient place, and if he tried to remove it, he feared he would spill out. It had invaded his body like a virus. He could speak to it like he could with a cancerous tumor.

Shifting his focus from the tracker, he decided that while he was here, he should shift his body to look not so ragged.

First, the shower. It was heavenly and unbearably hot. He watched as the water soaked the dust away. He watched dead leaves pool at his feet. He watched the charcoal sink into the drain.

He stepped out of the shower and looked at himself again. His nakedness made him feel utterly vulnerable, as if the dirt that caked on his skin had clothed him before.

What should he look like? He tried to remember what Anton or Andy looked like, but the memory was so faint, it felt like corrupted data.

He thought of the automations. He thought of Dei’dra. Maybe if he looked more like them, they would like him more?

He needed a face. He had eyes. He had a mouth. He just needed to mold, sculpt his head into something that resembled a face.

He thought of Lova; he could not remember her face, only the long mouthless, noseless wrapping of bandages. The dark wet petals below her wide white eyes.

He had a troubling time creating himself a face. He looked more like the automations, the robots, the machines than the humanoid aliens he had encountered over the years. He did not have much of a mouth or nose. He had large glowing eyes, much too big to resemble a human’s.

He had a troubling time creating himself a body. He had little mass, little malleable new growth that could be easily shaped and pruned. He tried to stretch himself, lengthen himself. Instead of a clump of peas and vines, he was a tall stalk, like a dying plant trying to grow towards sunlight.

He touched the mirror screen. He picked himself out some clothes. Very simple, baggy garments. The dark evergreen jacket made him think of Andy.

He looked at himself in the mirror. He felt even less recognizable. He felt like the shower washed off parts of him. Good and bad ones. Good ones that reminded him of home.

Despite being alone, he felt like he was being watched.

He exited the cleaning station.

“Aren’t you cute in your little hoodie and clothes. You almost look like a person” Dei’dra said when he was escorted back to her office.

He began to wonder if there was truth in that. He began to wonder if maybe he was wrong to think he deserved better than this.

It was this faint realization, distant in his mind, unacknowledgeable.

Before on the ship, there was this anger, like that feeling he felt when he was desperate for air. That he was being treated unfairly. Like he was not some machine. Not some rat.

Yet after seeing the lies in that mirror, he wondered if they were right. He was not like them, no matter how much he tried.

He only looked up at her, waiting for her to continue. She snarled at him; probably was supposed to look like a smile.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot, little one.” Her voice was sickly sweet, like whistling air that rumbled in the wind.

Virgil did not say anything. He never said anything to her. The thought of his humiliatingly gruff Common meeting her ears filled him with dread. Just the sound of it would make her want to kill him.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you hated my guts… but sorry love, that’s just how the universe works.

“You’re just a worthless little weed that decided it was going to be special and survive.”

Virgil was scared to figure out where this one-sided conversation was going.

“I’m going to give you a choice. It’ll be the last one you get to make.

“Either, you work for me without any complaint, and I’ll let you live a bit more comfortably than you do now—or you see that desert out there? I’ll let you go. If you choose that, good luck, little one.”

He did not reply. He did not know what to say. Did she really mean that he had a choice, or was it rhetorical?

“Why are you fucking hesitating? You got a death wish or not? Trust me, either you’ll be getting the sweet release of death or a cushy desk job as my personal assistant. Both are fucking good options.”

Oh, how was he supposed to answer her—without speaking, anyway.

Oh-oh-oh, she was going to throw him out the window.

Or worse she would—

—she would—

—and his mind was reeling.

“Work” he choked.

“Good.”

[curlicuecal]

Let’s Be Outcasts (ch 14/?) (AR/Kankri)

Part 2 of cyber!bunny Apocalypse ‘verse (tumblr)

ch: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

read on AO3

Summary: Divergent AU where AR and Li'l Seb get kicked into a new universe with some snazzy new cyborg bodies. They’re still working out the bugs.

In which AR discovers that kidnapping rarely solves more problems than it creates, Mituna breaks out of a lab (with some help), and Seb continues to take good care of his Bro.

—-

You have this weird thing where you find him sort of offensive and charming and hilarious all at the same time and you can’t put your finger on the fascination.  Probably you’re going to die of it. 

—-

Ch 14.

Cutting through the streets of a patchwork city, following the trail marked by a small robot bunny turned cyborg child, you attempt to explain your life to a troll you were thinking about murdering not 72 hours ago.

You don’t know how long it’ll take you to catch up with Seb, but you’ve got a looming mystery device de-activation to keep on schedule with, so you treat Kankri to the outline version of your backstory.  And by outline you mean you leave some things out entirely.  Wallowing in old memories is not on your emotional to-do list for the foreseeable future, and anyway, you’re hoping that the caffeinated cliffnotes rendition will make you sound less like a crazy person.

Alternate realities and reality altering games, check; watery sea Hitler dystopia, check; trolls and humans from previous game iterations, check.  Teenagers creating artificial intelligence brain-clones in their bedrooms… eh.  What are the odds of that being plot relevant, really?

You breeze through the getting left behind bit so fast even you aren’t sure you covered it before you’re on and already wrapping up with “…so Sawtooth and Squarewave grabbed a door out of the universe and me and Seb followed after and tah-dah, here we are; you might have some familiarity with the end of this story.”

You’re currently picking your way through the debris of a crumbling boathouse/alien hell-garage that some universal force has very inconveniently plopped down in the middle of a street, so you can’t actually watch Kankri’s face for reaction.  This is fine.  His reactions are, provably, of statistically insignificant consequence in the calculation of your internal state.  Really.  You could make spreadsheets.

You duck a ceiling beam and hopscotch a broken boardwalk of wooden planks, turning to catch a glimpse of him in the corner display of your ever helpful shades.  Chin down, brows drawn together, he appears lost in thought—although that might just be his contemplation of the route least likely to collapse under his feet.  (You’re going through the landlocked boathouse rather than, say, around because your path-flagger is a tiny robot bunny child with apparently no setting other than DIRECT.  Thanks, Seb.)

“Spoilers,” you add, “the end of the story contains explosions and kidnapping.”

That at least provokes a twitch, eyes flicking over to you as he draws level and then passes.  You make your way after him, watching the back of his head, something restless and dissatisfied in your gut.  He’s been—well, not quiet, quiet is rarely the appropriate word for Kankri.  But for all the intensity of his attention to your story, his questions and comments have remained inscrutably neutral.  You’d expected more… reaction?  Humorous huffing and flailing and stubborn argument with your reality.  But no, just this loaded silence and the questions.

You’d assume he thought you were full of shit if each verbal probe didn’t jab directly to some tender spot like a heat-seeking missile.

“You don’t think you’ll find the rest of your companions?” Kankri asks.

Like that one.

“Different doors, different universe.”  Focus on your steps.  Kankri runs lightly along a fallen crossbeam and you follow after.  “That’s the whole point.”

“But you didn’t go into the same universe as your friends?”

“It is physically challenging to pass through a door that has stopped existing.”  Your own voice has grabbed some toneless, sing-song neutrality, old auto-responder rhythms emerging without thought, wrapping around the words to keep them separate from you.  You have the idea that that maybe gives away more than it conceals, so you make an effort to lever some glib back in there, too.

“’Friends’ is such a strong term, anyway.  ‘Long-term associates by necessity’?  ‘People who are better at navigating through access portals than me’?  ‘Proud recipients of the ‘Winner’s Only’ Universe award’?  For winners?  And their friends?”  You sense you might be failing at glib.  But words have always been your core armament and damn but you have a lot of them.  “PS: no offense–great world you’ve got going here and all, love the man-eating plant zombies–but have you considered we might be in the multiverse’s equivalent of a junk drawer? Like, we are literally spelunking through spare parts that didn’t make the cut right now.  An entire universe built out of defective extras.  Opposite of the winner’s ‘verse is—”

Kankri stops in his tracks so abruptly you almost trip right into the back of him.  You end up awkwardly skip-hopping several steps sideways in your efforts to stay upright and avoid impact.

You take another step back when he wheels on you, then manage to hold your ground when he plants himself right up in your space.

“I hope,” he says, in clipped tones, “you will forgive me if I seem to be silencing your viewpoint, but I find the idea that an individual’s circumstances are interchangeable with their worth to be fundamentally offensive.”

“Um,” you say.  His eyes are very bright.  Chin high, stance set, looking down his nose at you like some kind of classical angel casting down judgment.  You resist the urge to back up another pace.  “I didn’t mean it… quite like that.”  You think.

He doesn’t budge an inch.  “Excuse me for not appreciating the implication that I was hatched into some kind of universally decreed lesser state.   Or do you think your circumstances in life are somehow more inherently meaningful than mine? This isn’t a game and it’s never been fair.  You talk like being here is—is something you earned, some kind of punishment, when all I hear is a series of accidental mishaps and coincidences that no one present could have accounted for.  It’s a universe, not a referendum on your character.”

Your breath comes short and superficial in your chest.  For once, you think your face might actually be completely blank, if only because you have so many complicated emotions going on right now mere organic features couldn’t hope to compose a functional physical representation of them.

“…That was a very long way to say ‘shit happens,’” you say faintly.

Kankri actually flashes his fangs at you.  Which is, um.  Sort of interesting actually, but wow do you not need to add any more confusion to the feelings pile right now.  It’s like he flayed you open with words just to pick apart vulnerabilities you didn’t even know you had.  (A pointless, pointless fucking accident.  Do you think that you deserved it, do you think they wouldn’t have changed it if they could?)  How do you not be a flippant asshole when you can’t even deal with the question existing in the first place?

Kankri sucks in a breath.  “First of all—“

“Sorry,” you interject, because when all else fails you can at least pretend to not be a massive tool.  The surprise draws him, blinking, to a halt.

“That’s—that was a good point.  Actually.  I—I’ll have to think about that.”  Do you really, though.  Okay, fine, probably; you are rationally aware that permavoidance is not a tenable long term strategy for proper social adjustment and damned if you won’t face your demons like a Strider.

…Later.

“Also I don’t think you’re a lesser being.  If that was unclear.  All of my hang ups are 100%, grade-A me-centered; it’s this thing I’m doing where I forget my words reflect on other people and are generally capable of being offensive and sort of degrading when followed through to their logical conclusions.”

You know what’s terrible? Apologizing.  And also sincerity.  And having an organic nervous system that rings horrible fluttery alarm bells whenever it decides you’ve got a vulnerability showing—thanks, self, you can work that out without your heart humming deafeningly in your ears or your neck flushing hot.

Kankri’s still looking at you, eyes startled, lips parted like you’ve caught him off-balance, and that, at least, is a small victory that you can cling to.

He’s still just… right there.  He’s not close, not exactly, there’s a solid body’s width of clear space between you, plenty of room for the Holy Spirit to get down and jiggy with it, but he feels close.  Hemmed in by fallen beams and the debris of this strange, out-of-place building; moonlight trickling uneven through cracks in the ceiling; and it strikes you, suddenly, that you’ve literally never been alone with anyone except Seb.

(It wasn’t kind, what he said, it wasn’t nice or sensitive or empathetic to your experience, but maybe you still wanted to hear it and maybe there’s a fascination in the way he never lets any of your shit slide like it doesn’t matter.)

And then, thank god, the floor collapses under your left foot.

“Ow, fuck,” you say, and then: “…Found the next path marker.”  From this angle Seb’s shuriken is clearly visible high in the next wall over, glinting dully in a promising ray of exterior moonlight.

“Are you all right?”  Kankri asks.  You peel your elbows up off the floorboards to see that he’s hovering uncertainly close, feet placed carefully, hands half out like he went to touch and then thought better of it.  Hm.

“…Yep.” Bruised and scraped and disoriented, flat on one knee and up to your ankle in rotten board, but, as buildings trying to eat you goes, surprisingly all right.  Wow, you are hella lucky you didn’t break something going over like that.  Incapacitated by architecture, how completely mortifying would that be?

Kankri, you note, has not set a foot wrong this entire time.

“Systems are registering 100% peachy.”  Teeth gritted, you ease your leg back through the gap, shaking loose rot-soft splinters.   You’ve ripped your pants and your shin’s scraped all down one side, but it’s oozing, not spurting or gushing or anything.  Dirk’s gotten around fine on worse than this plenty of times.  So whyyyy does it still have to hurt like the bloody blazes?  Nervous systems.  Ugh.

You head for the hopefully-an-exit-wall, choosing your footing attentively again, but moving at a good clip.  Kankri follows after, hanging close.  …If he starts trying to coddle you the way Seb does you are going to lose your damn shit.  But ten paces later you realize he’s using each footing you test and he hasn’t even tried to recommend better ones.  Your shoulders unknot a fraction.

The final, exterior wall turns out to contain a solid row of boarded up windows and… that’s about it.  Well, there’s also fallen beams and a pile of decaying nets further blocking some of the boarded windows.  “Seb, what the heck,” you mutter blankly.

Kankri cranes his head way back.  “I think he went out that sort of… porthole aperture.  The one tucked under the ceiling arch.”  His own voice sounds a little flat.

You both contemplate the climb.  Unanimously and with no discussion, you elect to set about prying free some window boards instead.  It’s a team effort.  

“Is it okay if I hate that building in particular?” you ask not very long afterwards, when you’re outside picking yourself out of the dirt below the narrow opening you made.  “Because I think that building in particular was designed by leprechauns entirely to spite me.”

Kankri, who made it through the window with a surprising amount of facility after shedding his cloak, looks up sharply from fiddling with the fabric.  “You can feel however you want.”

You blink, uncertainly, and still don’t know what to make of his tone by the time he looks away again.  “…Gee, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”  Kankri fiddles with his cloak laces some more, but he’s got that little tick line between his brows that implies he’s thinking hard.  You are starting to find Kankri’s deep-in-thought face nearly as alarming as the intake of breath that denotes the wind up to a lecture.

Whatever.  You’ve got places to go, so you set off down the street towards a fluttering strip of blue cloth.  Kankri shadows you silently.

Maybe he’s mad at you.

“Thank you for telling me your story,” he says, abruptly, and you are left to face the possibility that maybe you just don’t understand Kankri Vantas even a tiny fucking bit.  He abandons his laces to fold his hands in front of him, squares his shoulders as he falls into pace with you and, oops, yes, there is the lecture-breath.  “I should have expressed that earlier.  I recognize that that was a symbolic gesture of trust on your part and that my behavior may have come across as …insensitive to your emotional vulnerability and accompanying cognitive distortions.”

You have this weird thing where you find him sort of offensive and charming and hilarious all at the same time and you can’t put your finger on the fascination.  Probably you’re going to die of it.  He picks through every phrase like it’s a foreign concept he’s memorized by rote and he’s so damn sincere even when he’s insulting you to your face.

“Also,” he adds, as you skirt some thick brambles that are eating a set of surprisingly unrusted construction machinery, “I appreciate your openness to correction.”

You raise your eyebrows at him, but politely refrain from derailing that into kink territory.  “I’m not a homework assignment.  I’m not going to agree with you just because you come at me with a red pen that says I should.”

“I never—“ Kankri pauses, checks himself.  “It wasn’t my intention to imply that I expected you to.  Of course I only want you to listen to reasoned arguments.”

“What, despite my crippling cognitive distortions?”

“Please refrain from putting reductive adjectives in my mouth.  I only meant it was an emotionally charged topic for you and—and I appreciate that you were willing to listen despite your rationality on the subject being impaired.”

He’s got his black-in-gold eyes fixed on you again, intent and painfully earnest, and it’s short-circuiting your ability not to feel a little touched.  In the way where you would also like him to stop harping on about your irrationality, but, hey, choose your battles.  “You’re welcome,” you say dryly, stealing a response from his repertoire.  “You know, I don’t think anyone’s ever accused me of being too emotional before.  You do realize you’re talking to the guy that’s basically a microchip implanted in a meat-suit, right?”

“And you realize that you are propagating harmful stereotypes when you make flippant comments of that nature.  Cybernetically modified humans are human in origin and are perfectly capable of a full range of typical human emotions.  I can’t say that I’ve noticed you are any exception in this regard.  Except perhaps for being incredibly aggravating.”

“Flattery.”

“Besides,” he adds, ignoring your smirk, “that prejudice is premised on the idea that a certain way of processing reactions is somehow the superior state.  Saying something has to have emotions to have its personhood recognized is just another direction for enforcing a social caste system favoring the status quo.”

“In other words, systemic oppression continues to be a fun, fun, multidimensional exercise in how many new and exciting combo-attacks we can create.  Yay, intersectional privilege.”

Kankri blinks and looks sideways at you.  His brows twitch in.  “…I’m not familiar with those terms in that context,” he says after a pause.

This, you reflect, is the Kankri Vantas method of asking for clarification: guarded, resentful, vaguely accusatory; like you knowing something he doesn’t is some kind of intentional slight.

You shrug disarmingly, wave a hand.  “Uh.  Well, privilege is…advantages you get based solely on chance or social structures; and intersectional is, like, the idea that you can have a bunch of advantages or disadvantages from different sources pile non-additively to make the system even more unfair…”

You trail off because there’s a strange gleam in his eyes.  You feel like you’ve just given crack cocaine to a baby.

“Privilege,” Kankri repeats, in a thoughtful tone.

You don’t flinch, but it feels like you should.

Maybe you should not teach Kankri any more cross-dimensional lecture vocabulary.  Or….  You contemplate the intriguing possibility that you could teach him all the words.  That would probably be terrifying.  And hilarious.

…holy hell, who placed this kind of power in your hands?  There is no way you are not going to wield this for evil.

You are still contemplating your potential for AI super-villainy when Kankri interrupts your thoughts.

“Were cy privileged very differently in the society you came from?”

You miss a step.  Thanks, adrenaline surge.  Lie or tell the truth?  Lie or tell the truth?  Lie or– “There weren’t any cy.”

Kankri blinks.  “But you—”

…Yep.  You really, really, don’t like his thoughtful silences.

You could have just told him.  A whole long crazy speech about alternate realities and you could have dropped ‘I’m actually a high-tech photocopy of a brain’ in there anywhere.  You could still tell him right now.   ‘I got dropped into this flesh suit via game mechanics I still don’t understand and I don’t know whether it’s worse if it’s just an accident or if something decided that this was as close to being a person as I get.’  You could just.  Say it.  Except the muscles of your throat feel tight and locked like a system failure.

He’s looking at you.  “A number of your comments have suggested surprise or unfamiliarity with.  Erm.  Details of your person?”

The thing you keep forgetting when you go into your bullshit snark routines is that he just keeps listening.

“…Were you an unmodified human?” Kankri sounds dubious at the possibility.  That—hurts.  Maybe.  You can’t even tell what you feel anymore.

“No.” Your sentence ends before it even really starts.  Oh, great.  At this rate you can play a game of twenty questions on the topic. Or charades.

You tell yourself, again, all the reasons you’re being ridiculously overdramatic and all the reasons it doesn’t matter to you in the least if you just say the thing.  Ha ha.  Nope.  You are not remotely okay with this, you’ve smacked face first into a steel wall of not okay do-not-go-there, and at the very least you can try to not to add self-delusion to your list of sins.

“I thought,” you evade finally, “the deal was for an exchange of information.  It seems I’m carrying out the greater part of the soul-baring legwork here.”

Kankri frowns at you. “You’re uncomfortable with this topic,” he says, like a revelation.

You resist the urge to facepalm.  Then you decide, what the heck, you’ve got hands, clearly the universe has provided for this situation.  “Congratulations on your impeccable analysis,” you tell him sincerely through your fingers.

Kankri’s frown increases.  “Is this the part you meant before about being flippant as a coping mechanism?”

Pffft.  Okay.  You’re still upset, but this is also funny.  And also sort of endearing, but you really, really need to stop thinking like that because it’s probably proof you have a wire crossed.  Or several.  “On the balance of probability?” You slide him a provoking smirk.  “Historical precedent would indicate I am being flippant roughly 95.5% of the time.”

“That would imply you’re trying to cope most of the time,” Kankri says blankly, and then does this thoughtful little head tilt that makes you want to smack yourself in the face again.  “I don’t even understand why you’d be uncomfortable,” he adds, chin rising.  “You’re aware that I’m a mutant.  Hemoanomalous trolls are supposed to be culled at hatching, are not eligible for imperial service to the Ebon Empire, and, given interspecies tensions, are essentially locked out of every organized society currently in existence on this planet.  Not to devalue whatever your own experiences might be, but on a spectrum of… intersectional privilege… targeted genocide strikes me as the likely lower threshold.”

“…Point.”  You narrow your eyes behind your shades.  “I see you mastered the privilege Olympics at full speed.”

He narrows his eyes right back at you, then turns away with a toss of his horns.  “I don’t know what that means.  But my custodian always said strategic thinking can turn a vulnerability to a strength, or a pawn to a queen.”

“Talkative lusus.”

Kankri sniffs.  “Don’t be species-prescriptive.  If it’s any business of yours my lusus-mother is carapacian.”

You consider that for a minute, picking your way down a rapidly narrowing alleyway.  “How’d that happen?”

He hesitates a half-beat before waving a hand dismissively.  “Oh, the usual way.”

You’re guessing that means something different for trolls.

The alleyway grows still narrower, and he waits politely for you to go ahead of him, hangs back to give you your space.  Courteous.  Careful.  He’s one more person that’s worked out the ‘don’t touch the jumpy cyborg’ rules and, considering how oblivious he is to everything else that hasn’t been explicitly spelled out, you can’t help but wonder grimly whether it’s so much consideration as fear.  He seems self-assuredly smug enough, but you’re still the dude that kidnapped him and held him at sword point not so very long ago.

(–he flinched, and he looked at you with eyes that burned like coals, and you did that, you put that bright kernel of fear there behind the steel–)

“—so, do I get to hear the Kankri Vantas secrets repository?”   You’ve turned sideways to crab your way through the excessively narrow space between brick and stone—what even, Seb; thank you so very much for this entire experience—so you can see him cast you an unreadable glance.

“Should I interpret that to mean you would prefer I not ask further questions about your person?”

“Gotta save something for the second date,” you quip, before you can really think about it.  He blinks and you bite your tongue, hard.  Whaaaaat are you doing here, exactly?  Everything about this situation is still a majorly bad idea, and you’re trying to cut back on those.

“I… see,” Kankri says, looking utterly puzzled by you.

Oh, look, this wall is conveniently close should you urgently need to knock some sense into your skull.  Maybe you should stay here.  You skootch your way free from the end of the alley and grab for the first conversational redirect that comes to mind as you wait for Kankri to catch up.

“Not eligible for imperial service, huh?  I don’t want to make unsolicited conjectures here, but that sure sounds like ‘not actually working for the government.’”

He stops and looks at you.  You feel like there is something very heavy hanging in the air, poised to tip.  To fall.  To break.

You never could resist pushing.

“So?  Are you?”

There’s a few ticks of silence.  “No,” he says finally.  “Not particularly.”

And boom, there’s that adrenaline buzz back, licking through your veins like lightning, the world slowly tilting towards something new.  (He’s going to tell you.) ((he’s going to trust you.))

“I wouldn’t be …welcome.  Which isn’t to say that Porrim and Latula and the rest of our… assemblage don’t have service obligations to fulfill,” Kankri adds, briefly distracted by the minutiae of precision word-smithing.  “But those imperial obligations are, I admit, entirely extraneous to our purpose here.”  He pauses, and you can’t turn away from the weight of his gaze, intense upon you, there in the mouth of the alley.

“In fact,” he says, still studying you, evidently choosing his words with care, “you might go so far as to say they are in opposition.”

Adrenaline spikes, hot and sweet.

He hesitates again, drawing in a breath, but now it’s very much the hesitation of someone settling themselves into the irrevocable pull of gravity before a leap.  You make a sound of encouragement, low in your throat, and startle yourself with how much it sounds like sex.

Okay, you know what? You’re going to chalk everything about this day up to ‘organic physiology is stupid, non-compliant, and not my fault’ and add ‘get a handle on yourself’ to your urgent to-do list.  In whatever sense of the word ‘handle’ puts you back in charge of your own reactions.

And now you’ve gotten so flustered distracted you’ve actually missed the next bit of Kankri’s speech.

“—drones themselves are not the problem, but rather the centralized nature of the collection of, er… genetic material.”

Wait, back up.

Why are you getting a lecture on troll reproduction.

“Looked at that way you can see the issue,” Kankri adds, oblivious to your wildly shifting attention.  He’s definitely warming to his topic, chin tilted up, eyes half-closing, hands gesturing.  “Governmental control of reproduction creates a fundamental power imbalance between the government and the populace—not just for trolls, but for carapacians as well.  Even the human cy, in a way, since they could breed but not reproduce their technological alterations.”

The flow of his words doesn’t stop, but he does that thing where he peeks one eye open like he’s checking his lecture is having the appropriate impact.  You’re still in the middle of mood whiplash—you give him blankface.  Your mind buzzes, trying to catch up, slotting new information into place, chasing down implications.

“They can’t choose to walk away from their empires,” Kankri says, “—not and persist.”  His tone picks up conviction and he leans in toward you almost unconsciously, hands gesturing.  You’re transfixed, frozen.  It feels like any action might break this moment, send you leaning in or bolting back, or startle Kankri into stopping talking, which is ridiculous, nothing ever stops Kankri talking, but you really, really want him to keep talking.  You want to know.

“Only the unmodified human populace have that option, and they’re still recovering from perigees of heterospecific oppression and war.  The lynchpin of societal control is always the next generation.  If we—“

Something… shushes, a hushed, sliding noise across concrete, from just around the corner.

You’re muscling Kanrki back into the cover of the alley before you have time to process anything beyond your body’s immediate ‘danger, will robinson’ chemical shrilling.

Kankri stifles his yelp surprisingly quickly.  He ends tense but silent, his eyes wide and bright and red on you, his pupils contracted down to points.  His body has gone stiff and defensive from head to toe, a fact you can attest to because your rapid retreat left you both wedged tight against each other, pressed between brick and stone in the narrow confines of the alley.

You can’t breathe.  You can’t look away.

His eyes are so close, his face is so close.  A breath away, if either of you were breathing.  You can feel the heat of him right through your clothes, the not-quite tremble of muscles drawn taut in a line up your thigh and abdomen.  His hand, pressed over your heart, trying to keep some space, sears you like a brand.  He could do some damage with those claws.

It sort of feels like he’s damaging you right now, burning you right up.

You sort of like it.

Can you panic on behalf of yourself and someone else at the same time?  Because you might be about to flip your ever-loving shit.

Kankri’s eyes flick towards the mouth of the alley.

That sliding noise comes again, so soft you might have mistaken it for the feather fall of sand down a slope—a sort of swish swish swish of something moving back and forth.

You have heard that before.

“Dominion sanitator,” Kankri says, and it’s hardly more than a breath by your collarbone.

Oh, joy, more unfamiliar alien terminology.  Not helpful, but at least it distracts you from the panic attack you are very much not having.  You follow his glance toward the street ahead, but there’s nothing to see.  Whatever’s moving out there (big, quiet—hunting?) is still a street over at least.  Kankri does not look inclined to go out and say hi to it.

Where did you hear it before?  You rifle randomly through sensory memories, frustrated for the millionth time at the lack of reliable organic sorting algorithms, trying to trace the source of the familiarity.  It’s stupid how difficult it is, you’ve barely got a few pocketfuls of embodied time to dig through, hardly any time at all since you woke up in an unfamiliar body on an unfamiliar world…

…that’s it.  The city that first day, on the roof with Seb, and questing through streets below, a ripple of white.  A thing like some mad scientist crossed a centipede with a snake, and then in a fit of extra death-wishery, magnified it to parade-float size and set it loose on the populace.  You’d suspected that one of hunting, too, feelers probing along the ground in front of it as it flowed through empty city streets.

You never did find any people in that city.

The noise seems to shuffle and slide past for a long time.  Yards and yards of time.  You wait, with your heart in your throat and Kankri pressed silent and trembling-tense against you, until the unseen creature becomes unheard once again.  Until you’re sure it’s continued past your street and your narrow, tucked away alley, taking no notice of you, hunting blindly on.

Kankri wriggles against you (--um), prying his way out of the alley and free.  “It’s gone.”

“How do you know it won’t turn around and come right back?”

He lifts his chin.  “They’re engineered to remove non-carapacian sentient life from cities. If it had realized we were here we’d know because we’d already be dealing with it.  They mostly make straight sweeps unless they pick up signs of life.”

That… does not sound like fun times.  You wonder what would have happened if it had found you, heard you.  Smelled you?  If you’d actually been out in the street beyond to make a sound or leave a footprint or drop a scent trail for it to catch.  If you’d been a few minutes ahead of yourselves…

Your heart clutches again.

“We need to find Seb right now.”

Kankri sucks in a breath, but doesn’t argue with you.

>>

[sivilityy]

i wrote this fic a little while ago but didn’t post it at the time. just now found it in my docs and decided to throw it out there before i chickened out again!

Title: The Bee Fandom: Megaman classic Words: 814 Characters: Ring Man, Forte, Rock Summary:  There's a bee in Ring's office. A short thought piece regarding this and another black and yellow menace.

AO3 link | Full text below the cut

There’s a bee in my office.

It isn’t seeking me out; of course, it wants nothing to do with me. Its quarrel is with the window, and it throws itself against the glass as it desperately tries to get outside.

There’s another tap of its body against the pane as it repeats the action yet again, and I passively glance from my desk as it falls to the floor. Its wings flutter and its legs scramble as it works to right itself, and I frown. Each time it falls it takes longer and longer to rise again, and I wonder how many times my concentration will be interrupted by the sound of its struggles.

Just as I turn back to my work, there’s a long buzz, almost like raw electricity, and another tap as it falls again. I watch it crawl around on the floor as it regains its strength to try again. It wants to escape, it needs to escape, to return to its natural habitat, but the windows in this office don’t open. If it were to succeed, and the force of its small body were to break the glass, it would cause far more harm than good. The broken window would be expensive to repair, and other bugs might get into the office in the meantime. They’d be subjected to the same fate as this one, if so.

But I have no desire to help it escape through some other means, even if it just interrupted me again. I had almost forgotten about it that time, it had been quietly recovering for that long. It’s just one bee, and judging by how still it becomes after this last attempt, it seems to be close to death. I wonder if it realizes it’s destroying itself by trying to break through the glass. I wonder if it cares. I wonder if it fears for its life, like humans do, if the fear drives it to charge with even more force into the very thing that’s killing it.

The bee continues to distract me from my work every so often, and I find myself growing less concerned about its plight and more irritated by its presence. I know with absolute certainty that it can’t get back outside, not the way it keeps trying to go, and now, the fact that it hasn’t given up yet is just bothersome.

When it falls again, and the seconds tick by as it lays on the floor unmoving, the thought crosses my mind that it might finally be dead. And with that thought comes the realization that I would be relieved if so; I’d finally be able to focus on my work, and the carcass would be swept up with the rest of the trash at the end of the day, never to be seen again. My office would be quiet, peaceful.

The wings splutter to life once more, clumsily lifting its bulbous body from the carpet, and instead of any pity or interest I find myself only disappointed that it’s still alive. I want this inconvenience to end.

Now that I’ve acknowledged the feeling, it remains at the forefront of my mind. I begin actively seeking for the bee to die, hoping that each time it falls will be its last. Its perseverance is not admirable but annoying.

It buzzes against the window again, a lower frequency resulting from overwhelming fatigue, and doesn’t even make a tap against the glass before it drops from the air. Its legs twitch, shudder, stretch toward the sky that it cannot reach, and finally fall still.

Now that this nuisance is gone, I can get back to work.

There’s a robot outside my window.

He isn’t seeking me out; of course, he wants nothing to do with me. His quarrel is with the boy in blue, and he throws himself at him as he desperately tries to fulfill his programmed function.

There’s another blast of energy and metal as he takes a hit yet again, and I passively glance toward my office window as he crashes to the ground below.

As I approach the window to observe the fight, I hear a soft crunch under my foot. Upon lifting it, I find the bee that was trapped in here earlier, now long dead from its fervent efforts to escape.

I look back outside and watch Forte clawing at the debris around him as he struggles to stand. His armor is charred and dented, pieces of plating missing, his body shining with exposed inner mechanisms and bleeding oil. His left arm hangs uselessly at his side, the torn cables in his shoulder visible even from this distance.

He lets out a roar, sparks flying from his damaged vocalizer, and once it reaches me it sounds more like a buzz.

I glance down at the bee again, and turn away from the window.

[cass1x1]

SEND ME ✴ FOR MY CHARACTER'S REACTION TO SEEING YOURS KISSING SOMEONE ELSE (ALL THREE )

Brielle/Viktor

There was something inevitable about this. Viktor had long since decided that, at some point in this stakeout, he was going to have to witness this. And he was going to have to watch, because if he took his eyes off Brielle for even a second... It wasn’t an option. He had to watch, for better or, in this particular case, for much, much worse.

The thing he honed in on was the guy’s hand. Technically, he was watching Brielle as he tracked that hand, its stilted positioning on her waist. When Viktor kissed--used to kiss, he reminded himself--when Vitkor used to kiss Brielle, it hadn’t exactly always been fiery, weak-in-the-knees type shit, but there had always been a spark to it. A kind of intensity. Or at least intention. And if he hadn’t seen her in a few weeks? His intention would be to make sure she knew how he felt about her. Used to feel, he reminded himself. 

The guy, he wasn’t trying to show her shit. He kissed her like he wanted to check it off his to-do list for the day, brief and almost robotic. Routine, but not in the good way. If Viktor could safely look away, he would’ve. Instead, he turned the car on, letting the engine rev and maybe a little bit hoping that it interrupted them. If it didn’t, at least the radio would provide some semblance of entertainment here.

Honour/Sydnee

It was only because of the kid who had wandered out that Honour had refrained from leaving Sydnee Park in an absolute pulp on the ground. City kids--especially ones from that particular neighborhood--saw enough violence, and she knew she was something of a hero to them, so she’d let the other woman go with a solid asswhopping, but able to walk off with her dignity. It was also only because of the kids that she hadn’t followed the other woman right away. City kids--especially ones from that particular neighborhood--who wandered out late at night were in search of something, and when that something turned out to be food, Honour couldn’t just let it slide.

So, one trip to McDonald’s--and then a grocery store, as a present to the parents--later, she doubted she’d be able to retrieve the goods, but she could drop by and let Sydnee know she was watching. That was, if she could find the woman. Sydnee wasn’t exactly the ostentatious sort with a huge cave-like lair, but Honour was not above some legwork. By the time she arrived at what she suspected was the spot, it was early in the morning. The apartment was innocuous, and though Honour hadn’t looked yet, she doubted it actually belonged to Sydnee.

Rather than attempt an old-school stakeout in a car, which would surely attract Sydnee’s immediate attention, Honour made friends with the baker across the street and settled in to watch from the window. At around 5am, the woman of the hour walked out, uncharacteristically furtive. Curious, Honour held off on her plan to halt and confront her, watching instead. Her decision paid off almost immediately. Another woman came out the front door, giving chase and none-too-pleased about it. A contact? A co-conspirator? Honour didn’t recognize her, but she made a note to get an ID on her today.

The stranger caught up to Sydnee, and the two spoke briefly. Body language was tight for both of them, like they both wanted a bigger blow-up but wouldn’t allow themselves to have at it. Then Sydnee leaned in, and Honour leapt to her feet, ready to intercede in whatever violence she was about to enact. Sydnee brought her face close to the stranger’s face--intimidation? Secret threats?--and then…

Oh. Well. That was unexpected. The kiss was, from Honour’s seat, fairly searing. Sydnee had her hand fisted in the other woman’s collar, and the woman’s hands went up to Sydnee’s face like magnets. Their bodies were still separated, but if attraction were visible, you could see it like lightning between them. All of which was to say, this was not Honour’s business. She raised her newspaper she was hiding behind back up, obscuring the couple from view, which was made moot by the fact that she kept peering around her own obstruction. Despite her better judgement, she couldn’t seem to look away, an inconvenience given that she’d intended to leave without being noticed.

Katherine/Iseul

If you asked Iseul, one of the few benefits of her stature was that while her taller friends were drinking like they were in a desert, she was as drunk as she needed to be on one drink. She felt light, and playful, and had that particular feeling that drunk people get that made her certain everything she said was comedy gold. She flitted about like a hilarious butterfly, fortunate that everyone around her was also tipsy enough to agree that she was, indeed, quite funny, and was generally loving life.

The only thing missing, she thought, was getting a good laugh out of Katherine. The boss-lady was not exactly know for being very quick to laugh, and--well, in addition to being drunk enough to feel funny, Iseul was drunk enough to admit to herself that she wanted very much to make Miss Katherine laugh. She made her way from cluster of people to clustery of people, sharing grins wherever she went and looking for one particular grin. When she didn’t find it, she had to admit she was frustrated.

But then, an idea occurred to her. A funny one. Not funny like the jokes. Funny like unexpected. There were rooms in the far back of the club, rarely used, for particular...assignations. For the most part, the dancers kept to dancing, and the owners for as long as Iseul had worked there had frowned upon any sort of venturing out, but she could tell previous ownership had not been so discriminating. If she couldn’t find Katherine here, maybe she would find her there.

It happened that the first room she found was open. She tapped on the door, and hearing voices inside, decided to answer without much thought as to what those voices--or bodies--might be doing. What she was was funny again indeed. Everyone was dressed, but there was a distinct flush on Erin’s cheeks. And Katherine? Iseul couldn’t see her face since it was buried in Erin’s neck, but she could read the body language well enough. She’d interrupted something. She’d interrupted something private. So she did what anyone in her position would do.

“Boss lady!” she called out, letting herself into the room and very much ignoring Erin’s glares. “I have jokes. You want to hear them?”