#also getting arrested for unspecified SOMETHING

[covertblizzard]

sometimes jaykyle is about the battle between Kyle i-can-fix-him Rayner and Jason i-can-make-him-worse Todd of which they're both simultaneously winning and losing

crucially if this is a teen jason-lives au, it becomes Jason i-can-fix-him Todd and Kyle i-can-make-him-worse Rayner

[johnnycakesswitch]

Some of y’all are so mean about Steve and Two-Bit omg 😭😭😭 some people act like their only personalities are Two-Bit being an alcoholic and Steve being mean to Pony and liking chocolate cake like let’s be fr. Let’s clear the air w some canon details about the two most forgotten greasers bc they deserve better and some of y’all pay them absolutely dust as if they’re not important to the story also

Let’s start w pookie Steve

• “Steve Randle was seventeen, tall and lean, with thick greasy hair he kept combed in complicated swirls.” Ok so here’s some physical description, I’ve seen so many people say that Pony only gave Steve one line of description, there’s actually much more in the rest of Steve’s paragraph 😀

• Pony goes on to describe Steve as “tacky, smart, and Soda’s best buddy since grade school.” He also says that Steve can lift a hubcap quicker and quieter than anyone else in the neighborhood and also knows cars inside out and backwards and can drive anything on wheels. Pony takes time to emphasize that Steve is in fact smart (he’s still in school so this is important) and how skilled he is when it comes to cars

• Steve has been arrested before for unspecified reasons

• Pony says that Steve and Soda both have too much energy and feelings, which is why they get into fights and drag races so often

• Steve (and Two-Bit and Soda for that matter) would’ve joined in on Dally’s dirty talking to Cherry

• Steve and Soda will buy Pony bottles of soda and let him help work on the cars when he goes to the DX

• Steve was the one who saw Johnny’s jacket on the ground when he got jumped and picked it up with the plan to bring it back to him and was the one who looked closer and saw the blood on the jacket and the ground. Also- “Steve closed his eyes for a second and muffled a groan as he dropped on his knees beside Soda.” Steve was clearly very distraught to see Johnny in the state he was after being beat up so badly, which mirrors his reaction to when Dally died. Steve feels very deeply and has a hard time hiding it

• Steve threatened Sylvia when she was talking to Johnny and gave Johnny a lecture about girls- big brother energy

• he has a “soft, bitter voice”

• Steve and Two-Bit were the ones who started goofing around the time they went to church and Steve was the one who dropped the hymn book and embarrassed Pony and Johnny 😭

• Soda and Steve never fought

• Steve’s dad kicks him out about once a week which really bothers Steve and is likely a reason for his hatred for his father which Pony mentions earlier on. His dad usually gives him money to make up for it. He often sleeps on the Curtis couch (Pony says it’s “usually” Steve on the couch)

• Two-Bit and Steve were so happy to see Ponyboy after the fire, they immediately started roughhousing and teasing him

• “Don't worry about it," Steve said, cocksure that he and Sodapop could handle anything that came up. "They don't do things like that to heroes.” Steve was quick to reassure Pony that he wouldn’t get taken out of Darry’s custody

• the only time Soda was ever mad at Steve was when he called Darry all brawn no brain

• “Hate to tell you, buddy," Steve said, still flat on the floor, "but you have to wear clothes to work. There's a law or something.” Steve teasing Soda 😭

• Steve was “surprisingly angry” when Pony asked about Sandy, more than likely because he knew how upset Soda was about it

• Soda, Steve, and Pony all put in extra hair grease before the rumble to look cool

• he and Soda were “playing cards and arguing as usual” before the rumble

• Steve fights for hatred

• he had three broken ribs after the rumble. He looked “feverish and bewildered” when Pony came back from the hospital. Despite how hurt he was though, he immediately went running with everyone when Dally was in trouble

• “Steve stumbled forward with a sob, but Soda caught him by the shoulders” again, Steve was so visibly distraught when one of his friends was hurt, even more so now because Dally was dead

• Pony, Two-Bit, and Steve usually leave school together at lunchtime to go to the store

• Steve and Two-Bit were backing Pony when he used the bottle to defend himself from the Socs

• “Is that all that's bothering you, that switchblade?" a red-eyed Steve had snapped at him.” Just more of Steve and his emotions

So even though he is a side character, Steve is so much more developed than we give him credit for. He’s deeply loyal, emotional, has a strained relationship with his father, and would do anything for the people he cares about. Additionally, it’s so important that he’s Soda’s best friend too- who do we think was there for him when Pony ran away and Sandy left him or when Pony and Darry are arguing all the time?

Now for Two-Bit

• he would’ve come to get Pony from the movies in his car if Pony had asked

• Pony says life was one big joke to Two-Bit

• he had a wide grin and “couldn’t stop making funny remarks to save his life”

• famous for shoplifting and always mouthing off to cops

• he likes fights, blondes, and school

• Pony likes him a lot because he kept them all laughing at themselves and other things

• Pony says Two-Bit could put things into words good

• offered everyone cigarettes at the movies and paid for everyone’s drinks and popcorn

• Two-Bit gave Pony a similar lecture on girls to the one Steve gave Johnny

• Two-Bit “gallantly” offered to walk Cherry and Marcia the 20 miles home. He talked them into letting him drive them home which is where they were headed, to get his car, before Bob and Randy showed up

• “Two-Bit said, "Don't get mouthy, Ponyboy” his big brother energy is coming out y’all

• Two-Bit hit Pony hard upside the head when he said what he did about Johnny not being wanted at home

• “Shut up talkin' like that," Two-Bit said fiercely, messing up Johnny's hair. "We couldn't get along without you, so you can just shut up!” I’m crying

• he waved at everyone when they all turned to look at them after they all caused a ruckus in church 😭

• Johnny and Pony get Two-Bit and Darry on their team for football 😌 so we can assume Soda and Steve have Dally

• Two-Bit broke the windows in the school building

• Two-Bit got jumped while Pony and Johnny were gone but it wasn’t too bad because he’s a good fighter

• Dally and some other greasers wanted to jump Cherry when she came to talk to them but Two-Bit stopped them

• he was gonna go to Texas to look for Pony and Johnny 😔

• Pony says people like Two-Bit, Dally, and Tim Shepard forgot how to cry at a young age

• again, so excited when Pony got home. Picked him up and swung him around and immediately started making fun of his hair

• “What I like is the 'turn' bit," Two-Bit said, cleaning the egg up off the floor. "Y'all were heroes from the beginning. You just didn't 'turn' all of a sudden.” This quote is SO important. No, they didn’t just turn heroes. Two-Bit recognizes that Johnny and Pony had always been special even if others didn’t see it

• Two-Bit knew all about Pony’s nightmares and was interested in hearing about them when Pony told Darry about his dream

• immediately offers to babysit Pony when Darry is hesitant to leave him home alone

• Pony says it’s just about impossible to get mad at him

• Two-Bit wouldn’t take no for an answer when the nurse told them they couldn’t see Johnny

• he was closer to tears than Pony had ever seen him after snapping at Johnny’s mother

• gave Dally his switchblade, his prized possession, with zero hesitation when Dally asked

• could tell something was up with Pony and felt his head for a fever, really wanted to tell Darry but Pony said no

• Two-Bit fights for conformity

• he had four stitches in his cheek and seven in his hand after the rumble

• “Two-Bit came blubberin' over here with some tale about how you were running a fever before the rumble and how it was all his fault you were sick. He was pretty torn up that night.” He feels so guilty about Pony being sick :(

• was worried when he thought Pony was getting tough and relieved when he realized Pony was still his soft, sensitive self after picking up the broken glass

So we see that Two-Bit is definitely more developed than Steve and he is a super important character. He’s silly and goofy which is what they need sometimes in their hard lives, he’s got such a nurturing personality, he’s a gentleman at heart, and is so quick to praise/defend any of his friends, even against themselves like when Johnny talks bad about himself. Overall, he and Steve are both very much important to the story. Treat them better. The end.

[cogentranting]

A little collection of untangling the knot of Tim's thought process:

A direct line from "I led my men into a situation that got them killed" to "I can't let Lucy be involved or I will also get her fired/arrested/killed/worse."

A slightly less direct line from those two thoughts to "I can't be with Lucy because my judgment/character is compromised overall and so I will lead her into [unspecified bad thing]"

He's being forced to face some decisions he's made that call into question his entire view of himself and the principles that he's built as his foundation

Tim actually did the leaving and that's significant because I don't think we've seen him do the leaving before. Certainly not with Isabel or Ashley, but even with Rachel where it was closer to mutual, even though she did ask him to come with her she is still the one who moved away and left him. But especially with Isabel and Ashley there is a very strong sense in which they ran away from him. I don't think it's as directly correlated as him reacting to that by leaving Lucy before she can leave him, but I think there's something there.

[britcision]

Happy Leap Year friends! Another little present from me to you, this time we have a totally sweet little story about Pattadol and Marcille bonding over who is actually bravest 🥰

Just. Don’t look at Kabru and Lycion behind the curtain.

(I cannot be the only person who finds it suspicious that Mithrun was notorious for specifically his warden colleagues dying.)

Warnings: implied past unspecified abuse, definitely actual past murder, abuse of power over prisoners

——————

After Dinner Mints - Death Rates

Honestly, Marcille had to admit that she quite liked Pattadol. Even when they’d both been operating under the assumption that Marcille would be going back west with them as a prisoner, the elf hadn’t treated her badly.

She was kind, a little nervous, and honestly seemed even more out of her depth than Marcille felt. So it had been a bit of a relief that the other Canaries had apparently decided that Pattadol would be her arresting officer.

She probably wouldn’t have been able to relax if the captain had been the one to keep an eye on her; either Captain Mithrun or Captain Flamela, who just seemed lost now that she had nothing to be angry about.

They’d got to talking even that first day, and Pattadol had admitted that the Island’s dungeon had been her first ever mission with the Canaries. First, and probably last, which none of them really knew what to do about.

And then Laios had gone to the Canaries and just told them that he’d be keeping Marcille unless they actually wanted to explain ancient magic to him, which absolutely everyone knew wasn’t going to happen.

So Marcille was sort of, kind of free now.

(Privately, she wasn’t going to count on anything until Laios had died; elves could afford to wait out one human. Maybe even a few generations, if Laios had children or enshrined her place in law.

That wouldn’t be too bad though; she wasn’t sure she’d want to stay in Melini without her friends. But they had decades ahead of them, so she wasn’t going to worry about it yet.)

All of the free Canaries were avoiding her now though, all except Pattadol, who wasn’t exactly comfortable talking to them either. Almost all of them were a century older and decades more experienced than she was, and while she’d officially been blooded in a dungeon now and been part of destroying all of the dungeons… well, it turned out she was actually closer to Marcille’s age than her fellow Canaries by a lot.

Marcille was pretty sure someone had been ordered to keep an eye on her; it didn’t feel like a coincidence that one or two Canary convicts tagged along to whatever she was doing.

(That was weird too; these were the people who understood the most about ancient magic, and Marcille would have loved to just sit and talk theory with them all day. They’d been forced to direct all of their skills to dungeon breaking, sure, but still.

Any one of them could have a useful insight, resources she’d only ever been denied! Which, they’d been denied too. Obviously. And then found anyway.

The thing was… even the ones who actually cared about the magic itself seemed to have split themselves into two camps when it came to her; they all thought she was still a child, since she was fifty.

But some of them insisted on treating her like she also didn’t know what she was talking about, like she hadn’t been the ruler of the dungeon and directly linked to the infinite the ancients had pulled from, like she hadn’t pulled off a resurrection that should have been impossible! And would have worked perfectly, if Thistle hadn’t come along.

And the others treated her like a cute little kid, maybe one who’d done something impressive, but in general someone to indulge and not take too seriously.)

So. She liked Pattadol, who treated her like an equal, and she didn’t mind talking while they both worked. Marcille actually had more dungeon experience than Pattadol, which definitely helped even if no one would ever be getting any more.

Which was how they’d gotten onto the subject of deaths in the dungeon.

“Oh, my first death was to a slime on the very first floor,” Marcille admitted with a laugh, fondly remembering how excited she’d been. Honestly, flooding the planet with mana would probably have sounded like a good idea back then.

Pattadol smiled along, but didn’t quite manage a laugh. Then again, her first death had almost been to Marcille, in a roundabout way.

“Honestly, I can’t imagine the bravery it takes to go into a dungeon so unprepared… we train for years to be ready, and people told me so many times about the captain’s other partners, but I was still so scared when I thought it would actually happen…”

It reminded Marcille of something Senshi had said, a while back. Not liking how comfortable adventurers became with death… then she paused, something else the elf had said catching in her mind.

“The captain’s other partners? What about them?” She looked around on reflex, but the only member of the squad nearby was Fleki, who was busily chatting up someone with a fresh basket of mushrooms.

Pattadol did laugh this time, an embarrassed little sound and flicked her hair back off her face.

“Oh, not our convicts… actually, most of them have been with him for a while, only Cithis arrived just before me. I mean the other wardens. Captain Mithrun has… had a reputation, because a lot of his other partners died,” she explained with a slightly sheepish smile.

Marcille’s brows furrowed.

“Well, sure, but that happens a lot in the dungeons. People die and then they get brought back, it happens all the time,” she pointed out. Pattadol forced another laugh, most of her attention now firmly on the dough she was kneading.

“Oh, yes, for other people. But ah… when we go into a dungeon, it’s usually to close it? So if the mission is successful, but someone isn’t revived before it’s over, they… sometimes can’t be? And Captain Mithrun lost a lot of partners… which wasn’t his fault, obviously! He’s incredibly skilled; he had never actually died in a dungeon at all until you…” she trailed off again, and Marcille ducked her head and got back to kneading too.

The rhythmic, firm motions helped anyway. She still couldn’t believe she’d actually blown a person’s head open. It had seemed so necessary at the time, like she didn’t have a choice, but… still.

Still, the rest of what Pattadol had said kept running around and around in her head.

Going into the dungeon, walking down to face those monsters and knowing that if everything went right… you could die and stay dead. That had to take a lot more courage than any of the adventurers that made their living in dungeons.

Finally she couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

“You know, there was something Senshi said about the dungeon too while we were in it… he never liked resurrections, because they made people not care or think about dying. That when people stop believing that death matters, they get out of step with the cycles of nature.”

Pattadol made a soft noise of encouragement, and Marcille looked up enough to give her a quick smile.

“I was never scared of dying in the dungeon because I never thought it was going to count. I died my very first time, and all it did was make me excited with the possibilities of magic down there. I think what you did was actually much braver than what I did… I don’t know if I could have gone down believing I would die forever.”

This time she got a smile that she actually believed, Pattadol’s cheeks flushing pink. She really was quite pretty, in an awkward sort of way. It reminded Marcille of Falin, when she got flustered.

“Thank you… you know, not many Canaries have ever retired without having been killed in the dungeon at least once, it’s quite an honour. It might just be me and Captain Flamela now,” she added thoughtfully, and Marcille grinned back.

“Then I’m even more glad that you did survive the dungeon, because she already seems hard enough to live with,” she teased, and maybe she’d been hanging around with Laios too much to even have the thought, but Pattadol’s scandalized gasp and nearly dropping her bread bowl made her laugh long and loud.

**

Kabru slipped away from the two elves thoughtfully, an armful of dirty dish-ware in hand. He hadn’t intended to spy on Marcille and Pattadol; he wasn’t even sure it could count as spying.

They hadn’t kept their voices down, or seemed to care if anyone heard them. He’d just wandered by, and happened to overhear.

And one thing stuck out to him like a sore thumb.

He hurried back through to drop off the dishes for cleaning, barely giving a smile and a wave before hurrying back to the dragon’s clearing. Although, he didn’t think this was something he would be able to ask Mithrun…

The captain might not even know, but from what Kabru understood, he’d been assigned Otta and Lycion before any of the others, and Lycion was currently keeping an eye on Captain Mithrun in case he collapsed.

Kabru was… about sixty percent sure that Lycion liked him. It was hard to tell, but even when they’d disagreed (and when Kabru had been directly getting in his way) the elf had been more mildly irritated than angry.

More importantly though, Kabru was pretty sure he knew what buttons to push to get Lycion to talk. It was actually kinda nice; a lot of Captain Mithrun’s squad seemed to have followed the captain’s example, and were pretty open with information if they didn’t have a reason to keep quiet.

Lycion and Fleki especially enjoyed oversharing, especially if it could get a rise from anyone. Kabru didn’t mind giving them one, if it got him what he needed. Half the time it was less feigned than he might like of course.

He was in luck as Lycion already looked bored, lounging against a tree while Mithrun busily hacked his way down a dragon’s ribcage. The hole he was digging was already past his thighs. The pile of frozen meat inside wasn’t too high, so Kabru hurried directly over to relieve the elf.

Lycion perked up when he saw him, giving a nod and straightening to smile.

“Hey, Kabru. Did you wanna take over with the captain? I had him down for some water a couple of hours ago, but he’s probably due another break soon.”

And, well, that was the other thing he could use as leverage. Apparently Kabru was the only person not in the captain’s squad that Captain Flamela had approved to keep an eye on Mithrun, and absolutely all of them were happy to trade a favour for taking a shift.

(Kabru didn’t mind, actually. He wasn’t a great cook, and really didn’t want to touch the dragon meat more than he could help, and in his books keeping an eye on Captain Mithrun beat running pots and pans around or doing dishes.

Although he was pretty sure all four convicts used him taking their turn as an opportunity to go nap, run into town, or cause trouble instead of actually helping.)

So he beamed back at Lycion, bright and welcoming.

“Sure! Actually, there was something I wanted to ask you first, if you don’t mind?” He asked brightly.

Lycion sighed as if heavily put upon, and leaned back against his tree. He was still smiling though, so Kabru didn’t worry about it.

“Yeah, sure. What’s on your mind?”

Kabru closed the last of the distance between them, glancing around to make sure they were alone. Or at least, not being observed by anyone who would care.

“Oh, it’s just something Pattadol said, about a lot of Captain Mithrun’s warden partners dying.” Watching closely, Kabru caught the moment where the elf froze, his relaxed posture suddenly deliberately, carefully lax.

So he wasn’t wrong, then.

Brightening his smile, he did his best “eager and excited child” impression, which usually went down well with elves.

“I was just wondering how that happened, since you were so quick rushing to retrieve everyones’ bodies when you were… when the others fell while we were waiting for backup,” he stumbled a little feebly over the end, remembering the shaky ground he’d stood on at the time.

Sure, he’d joined the fight and helped as best he could once Laios had been found, but he’d probably been headed back to Milsiril in disgrace right before that.

The look Lycion shot him told him the elf remembered all too well, but oddly he didn’t take the obvious diversion. Instead he cocked his head, giving Kabru a thoughtful look.

“Oh? What did Pattadol say, exactly?” He asked with a carefully studied innocence that Kabru immediately latched onto.

Lycion would feign ignorance with his usual untroubled smile, but this felt different. He matched the tone as best he could, leaning against the tree beside the elf.

“Oh, she was talking about how once you successfully close a dungeon sometimes you can’t bring people back. It sounded really worrying, but I didn’t think closing a dungeon was that spur of the moment. Like you rescued Pattadol from the giant mushrooms before she went down, and said it’d be a pain if Water Walk fell on the others but you could still get them?”

Watching from the corner of his eye, he caught the jump of muscle in Lycion’s jaw. Yeah, people usually didn’t like when Kabru showed how much he’d been paying attention.

For a moment, he wondered if he wasn’t going to get an answer after all. If he’d finally reached the end of Lycion’s laid back patience.

Then the elf hummed softly and Kabru chanced a glance over to see him staring at the sky.

“Did you know that before your little friend blew his head off, Captain Mithrun had never died in a dungeon?”

Kabru flinched. It wasn’t like he’d been on Marcille’s… the dungeon lord’s side at any stage. He just… hadn’t wanted it all to be swept under the rug. Before he could speak though, Lycion waved a hand at him.

“Relax. It’s… pertinent. You also know how we Canary prisoners are bound, right?”

Still wary but willing to wait, Kabru nodded.

“You can only use magic with permission from a warden. You were already transformed, though.” He didn’t think Lycion would be forced back into an elf shape without a warden, but he wasn’t exactly an expert.

Lycion shook his head though.

“Not the point. I don’t really do much healing magic anyway, even with permission. We all learn a bit, basic wound healing and poison stuff, but I can’t even do a simple revival. Pattadol’s…” he paused, searching for a word, then sighed. “She’s annoying, and formal, and over eager and a pain in the ass, but she’s one of the good ones. And a damn good healer.”

Kabru couldn’t help but agree with that; he hadn’t gotten an up close look at what Marcille had done to Captain Mithrun, but enough people who had had come to congratulate her after everything was over that he had to believe them.

Lycion nodded along with him.

“So. Let’s say, hypothetically, that you’re a Canary prisoner. You always need at least one warden alive and up to give the orders to fight or heal. And, one way or another, you’ve gotten assigned to a captain who’s a bit weird. A bit high maintenance. But they leave you alone for the most part, no weird orders or creep shit, and they’re the scariest fucker you’ve ever seen in a dungeon. Nothing seems to touch them. So you can be pretty sure, that guy is going to stay up.”

He cocked his head enough to raise a brow at Kabru, who nodded slowly, already trying to work ahead. To see where the story was going.

He kind of didn’t like what he was seeing.

Lycion nodded again.

“Yeah. I can see you’re with me. And you’re thinking our lives aren’t worth theirs, right?” He asked, still with that dreamy smile on his face.

Kabru stiffened and frowned, looking away reflexively. It. Wasn’t that, he didn’t think anyone deserved… what Lycion was implying, for any crime. It just.

“There have to be rules, don’t there?” He asked quickly, spitting the words out before Lycion could keep going, could say anything else. Could think that maybe he would be on the side of that kind of person. “That kind of abuse of power can’t be allowed.”

Lycion chuckled softly, draping an arm easily around Kabru’s shoulders.

“You’re a cute kid. Yeah, there’s all kinds of rules. Regulations, punishment for anyone who gets caught. But in the end, if it’s a warden’s word against a prisoner, who do you think is believed?” He asked lightly, as if they were discussing what to have for dinner.

Kabru flinched again, caught himself hunching, and forced himself to straighten.

“Captain Mithrun wouldn’t…” and then he stopped, wondering. He was completely certain that Mithrun would never perpetrate that kind of abuse, or approve of it. But… the man couldn’t even eat or sleep on his own.

Lycion gave him a friendly pat on the chest.

“Oh, he wouldn’t tolerate anything that’d affect the mission. Damn hard to get too creepy with that dead eyed stare on you, too,” he agreed cheerfully, raising a hand to wave at the captain.

Then he turned just a little, facing Kabru so that no one else could see his face. Lowered his voice so that even Kabru strained to hear him.

“Unless that’s what you like. Not all of them were giving us trouble,” he added quietly, darkly, and Kabru’s eyes widened, staring past him to the captain, still placidly cutting in his hole.

The captain, who didn’t care where he slept, what he ate, or about anything at all.

A sudden surge of anger and disgust washed through him. Lycion chuckled softly, nodding and leaning in until he was talking directly into Kabru’s ear.

“Not everyone took working under a former dungeon lord well, and while we did the grunt work, it was the other warden’s job to make sure he was alright for a while. They didn’t all like that, either. We lose a lot of people in dungeons, and…” he shrugged, his voice still lazy and calm, and Kabru’s fists clenched, “we’re not against losing a few more.”

Suddenly Kabru was pretty sure things had gotten a lot more direct than just not finding someone’s body. And if he were honest with himself, it wasn’t all that different from some of the things he’d done.

So why should it make a difference if it was for the captain or for the convicts?

Sucking in a deep breath, he nodded stiffly, then blew out his tension along with it. Lycion straightened like nothing had happened, still all smiles, and Kabru caught his hand before he could pull back.

“I’m sorry. You’re right, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’m… glad you had each other.” It didn’t feel adequate, but there was nothing that he could say that would be, or that wouldn’t break their careful bubble of deniability.

Lycion grinned at him, turning and leaning back against the tree again. Out beyond him, Mithrun had actually paused of his own volition and was watching them. Lycion gave him a wave and Kabru fixed a brighter smile onto his face.

“Of course, some of them we did properly lose by accident. There’s all kinds of weird shit a dungeon can do to you to make you impossible to resurrect,” the elf noted cheerfully, nodding towards the hole hiding the remaining mass of Falin, “and I’m pretty sure someone was onto us come the end. We got Cithis… two dungeons ago, I got switched under our other warden, and that one… well, they’d worked with Cithis before. Otta reckons she held a grudge, but I think they were just reckless. They’re fine, retired now,” he added quickly, but Kabru hadn’t planned to ask.

He nodded slowly, watching the captain turn and get back to his cutting. He’d not believed that the Canaries were all noble heroes for a very long time; Milsiril and Helki hadn’t actively discouraged it, but they’d been sure to warn him when he first said he’d wanted to join.

He’d known the kinds of crimes the convicts were usually in for, and long suspected that at least some of the wardens could be corrupted by the amount of power they held over them. Honestly, Lycion hadn’t told him anything he hadn’t already wondered about.

Captain Mithrun’s people just got away with more because their captain honestly didn’t give a shit.

He mulled the thought over for a while, and though he was pretty sure he had the shape of the answer… it didn’t hurt to check.

“You’re very loyal to the captain,” he noted quietly, letting his voice stay soft. It was something he’d noted in the dungeon, at pretty much every turn; Mithrun’s convicts didn’t treat him like a warden, or their jailor. Especially not the way they treated Pattadol, which was full of surface level respect with barely concealed eye rolling.

They treated him as something like an older sibling, or a family friend. Someone to be respected, yes, but not bother with formalities for. Someone they cared about, and cared for in the ways he needed with patience and a fond inevitability.

(In all honesty, Kabru wished he’d seen more of how Cithis in particular usually cared for him; it had been second nature to make sure the captain ate and slept after the week they’d spent together, and he’d kept on being his primary caregiver even after the other Canaries caught up.

Looking back on it, he’d rationalized it by assuming that it was still part of his penance, and that if he didn’t make himself useful they’d just give up the pretence and tie him up the whole time. In actuality… he hadn’t questioned why they passed the captain’s food to him first, or let him take the lead on rest.

Now, he was pretty sure they were intentionally fobbing the captain off on him to slack off since he’d done a good job, even if technically all four convicts were still on the roster with him. Which meant he actually didn’t know anything about how they usually handled him.)

Lycion chuckled softly, running a hand through his hair.

“Does that surprise you? We know a good thing when we have it,” he noted lightly and Kabru nodded slowly, wondering… how to ask without saying the question.

“Honestly? Yes. I understand wanting to keep him alive, and the extra expectations Captain Mithrun needs. I understand the risks of dungeon breaking and trauma bonding, I just… I suppose I’m surprised by how much you care,” he finished with a shy little smile, carefully calculated to flatter.

And Lycion just snickered, reaching up to ruffle Kabru’s hair instead.

“Never, ever let Cithis hear you say that,” he teased… no, that was probably actually a sincere warning, there was too much gravity in his eyes. Kabru noted it obediently.

For a long moment, he thought he’d have to try again, kept trying to frame words to the shape of what he actually wanted to know that didn’t make it sound so… cold. Before he could, though, Lycion had shrugged and straightened, turning to face him again.

“Cithis excepted, obviously, none of us are heartless. The captain is… safe for us, sure, but it’s not just that. He treats me… well, as normally as he treats anyone; he doesn’t look down on me for my body, and so long as I don’t get into trouble he never asks why I want to change. He lets Fleki take her familiar out whenever she wants to, doesn’t bother Otta about her constant flirting with half-foot women, and I’ll deny ever saying this if you tell her, but I do think even Cithis is fond of him,” the elf added, pointing warningly at Kabru.

Who just barely remembered to nod in time, his mind already spinning with questions, calculations, new information. They’d been pretty open with him in the dungeon, answered any questions he actually dared to ask, but…

Well, one of the things Kabru had always wished for was people just telling him how their minds worked. He might still be sceptical of how much he could understand an elf, but this might be as close as he ever got.

Lycion seemed to approve anyway, chuckling again and flicking a ponytail over his shoulder, glancing back to look fondly at the captain.

“He does whatever she wants, when we’re not in the dungeon. Which, y’know, takes all the fun out of it on her side, but I think she respects that he could tell her no but doesn’t bother. It’s not that he cares to make us happy; we know he doesn’t. But he accepts us as we are. Doesn’t try to shame us, or make us feel shitty for whatever crimes we committed.” Lycion paused at that, his brows furrowing for a moment. “Actually, I don’t even know if he knows. They’ll have told him every time, obviously, but if he remembers he’s never said.”

And then, like there was just a string connecting word to action, the elf just walked away. Wandered a little closer to the still frozen pit of dragon.

“Hey, Captain! Do you know what I’m in for?” He yelled, turning the heads of everyone currently collecting the meat Captain Mithrun was dicing. It was piling up at the inner edge of the pit again, and starting to get trickier to haul out.

Realizing that his mouth was hanging open, Kabru closed it quickly (his mother used to warn him a bug would fly in) and hurried after the elf, unsure what he’d hope to accomplish. Unsure what the hell Lycion was looking to accomplish.

For a minute it didn’t look like he’d even gotten Mithrun’s attention, and then the rapid teleporting stopped, Mithrun turning with another thin sheet of flesh in his hands. He squinted at Lycion like he was trying to remember who the elf was… and remembering their encounter with the shapeshifter, Kabru wouldn’t have been surprised if it was true.

Then he shrugged and tossed the sheet aside too.

“You’re our beastman.” And he bent, knocked the loose slabs of flesh aside, and pulled up his cloak to keep going.

Lycion clapped his hands and laughed, turning back to Kabru like he’d just won a prize.

“See? Isn’t he something? Other people keep doing stupid things like asking why I’d want my infinitely superior body, but he just loves me as I am, don’t you Captain?”

The captain did not deign to respond, but Lycion clearly didn’t care. Hurrying back into whispering range, Kabru chanced the direct question. While the elf was in a good mood.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what are you in for?” He asked quietly, and once again Lycion gave him a look a little sharper than his usual calm.

Then he shrugged and gestured to his torso.

“Oh, I have a life sentence. Can’t stop having an illegally modified body, so it’s not like they can let me go.” He paused, brow creasing momentarily before relaxing. “Oh yeah, and the murders. Probably some assault charges. It’s been a while since I saw my rap sheet.”

Aware that his mouth was hanging open again, Kabru closed it quickly.

It. Wasn’t that he was shocked, honestly. No one was sentenced to the Canaries for minor offences, though Lycion may have been right about his transformation being what forced him in; regular murderers weren’t eligible for service.

It just. Wasn’t what he’d expected. Either the crimes or the light, airy tones Lycion spoke about them in, like none of it mattered. The elf even laughed at the look on his face.

“Oh, relax. Most of them were in totally consensual pit fights, first floor of a dungeon and everything. Apparently it counts as homicide even if you can all get resurrected,” he added with a roll of his eyes, like they weren’t discussing actual murder.

“Or maybe you were convicted for the ones that weren’t?” Kabru felt compelled to ask, and Lycion actually looked honestly thoughtful.

“Y’know, that might be it. Mostly I’m still in for being too beautiful for this world though,” he preened, flicking long silver hair around again. And then one eye slid sideways to lock onto Kabru, and Kabru would swear it was the wolf’s. “So you know what’s coming to you if you hurt the Captain.”

About to try to get back on track, Kabru was abruptly dumbfounded.

“I… you… was that a threat?” He asked weakly, mind playing back over all the rest of their conversation. He had thought Lycion was being remarkably candid… but why would he think Kabru even could hurt the captain?

The elf chuckled softly, the light sound suddenly much more menacing than before as he patted Kabru on the shoulder.

“If Milsiril ever asks, no. And if you ever do anything to hurt the captain, in any way, you’re going to need to run straight back under her skirts as fast as you can,” he told Kabru sweetly, his smile still gentle and warm, his eyes dangerously cold, “I know your scent. You can’t hide from me.”

And then he cocked his head and the moment passed, and Kabru would swear he saw his pupils round out to a human shape again.

“So, was that all you wanted to ask? I’ll take the captain for a bathroom break before I head out, and then Fleki should be along in a couple of hours for dinner,” Lycion asked brightly, for all the world as if they’d been discussing the weather. Or, maybe, asking for advice.

It felt entirely inappropriate, but Kabru laughed in spite of himself.

What the actual fuck was his life? How had any of this ever happened to him? He’d left Milsiril thoroughly convinced that a long-lived person could never truly understand a short-lived one, and yet…

An illegal werewolf just gave him a fucking shovel talk. On top of admitting to numerous other murders, which did lend an air of sincerity that Kabru had to admire.

And, in all honesty, Kabru was quite sure he’d never understood anyone more in his life than he did Lycion in that moment.

(Well, possibly still not the whole “preferring a beastman body” thing, but he was also wise enough to understand that he didn’t need to see the appeal personally; just to understand that Lycion clearly did. And, apparently, had made some pretty persuasive arguments about the benefit that body had for others to at least Fleki and Mithrun.

Kabru was blatantly refusing to even discuss beastmen in Laios’ vicinity, because he was well aware the fucker would have all kinds of potential details and information and the greatest curse of Kabru’s life was his all-encompassing hunger for knowledge. Given the chance, he’d ask.

And he was pretty sure he would not let himself survive the answers.)

It might just have been the ongoing nervous breakdown they’d all been going through in fits and starts, but Kabru couldn’t stop laughing long enough to draw breath, tears welling in his eyes.

Lycion caught him as he sagged, giving him a cheerful pat on the back.

“I’m going to call that a good sign,” the elf declared as Kabru clung to him, because it was that or sit on the forest floor and laugh til he puked.

And then abruptly Lycion shifted, growing larger and hairier (probably to support Kabru’s weight; they were about the same height, but he had a tallman’s more solid build and bone density), and their gentle sway was brought to a stop.

Finally regaining at least a little self control (or being swamped under new curiosity, possibly), Kabru giggled himself to a stop and managed to look up and see Captain Mithrun standing in front of them, apparently out of the pit of his own accord.

He looked… a little confused, honestly, his head cocked to one side as he studied Kabru with an intensity that suddenly made him very self conscious.

“Are you alright?” The captain asked, apparently blatantly unaware that it was the most interest he’d ever showed in Kabru, and definitely unaware that he was contributing to Lycion getting entirely the wrong idea. “Sometimes Fleki gives mushrooms to people and this happens.”

His mouth already opening to form the question, Kabru abruptly decided against it.

He could hunt Fleki down later and ask for more details… or Otta or Lycion, honestly, since even when he’d been threatening to kill him Lycion still apparently liked him.

He. Did he just get Lycion’s blessing to date the captain? That was what that kind of gesture usually meant for tallmen, in a roundabout way.

A grudging one, sure, but the unspoken part of “if you hurt this person I care about” was “because I accept you’re important to them enough to hurt them”. That… might be a cultural difference between elves and tallmen, but Kabru doubted it.

It was actually really sweet in its own way, and the idea of even trying to explain to the captain made him want to shrivel up and die, so Kabru just smiled at him and nodded.

“I’m alright… Lycion was just explaining more about the dungeons you used to seal, and he said something about my step-mother that caught me off guard.” It was mostly the truth, even, so Kabru firmly told himself he did not feel bad even when Captain Mithrun’s lower lip slid out in a pout.

It probably wasn’t actually intentional that he turned a very reproachful eye on Lycion; Captain Mithrun wouldn’t have bothered using puppy eyes on anyone on purpose, but that didn’t make it less effective (or Kabru less glad that it wasn’t on him).

Lycion just grinned, straightening Kabru and pushing him back to his feet, and then ruffling his hair with all that stolen werebeast height.

“Kabru came to see if he could help you, Captain, and I promised to tell him some more stories about Milsiril and Fleki later. You know, the one where Fleki tried to get her to take mushrooms and manipulate dolls with her?”

And honestly Kabru almost missed the moment where the switch of the Captain’s attention flipped, he was so pointedly not watching his every move so that Lycion didn’t get the wrong idea.

(He would probably get that story out of him later though. Just. For continuity’s sake. Definitely not burning curiosity.)

But he didn’t. Not the slight widening of his eye when Lycion said Kabru was here to help, or the way he completely ignored the entire rest of the sentence, his gaze tracking back to Kabru as something curious and warm. The slight smile that pulled at his lips.

“Oh?” It wasn’t even a full question, just a sound of curiosity.

Kabru found himself returning the smile without thinking, his own carefully practiced smile becoming something real. There really was something charming in Mithrun’s complete lack of artifice.

Everything he managed to feel wrote itself across his entire face, perhaps muted compared to anyone else, but still so powerful from him alone. Every expression felt like a tiny victory against the demon.

Unfortunately, he was also very aware that Lycion was now looming over the pair of them, and he had more than enough practice with kobolds to know when a fucking wolfman was grinning at him. Smugly.

Trying to defend himself would only make things worse, so Kabru took a leaf from the Captain’s book and made a show of ignoring him entirely.

“Yes, if you don’t mind, Captain? No one else seems to need me around here, and I’d like to be useful.” That was even mostly true too, and Captain Mithrun especially had to know why Kabru didn’t think he was remotely qualified for cooking.

He’d kept them both alive for the week, sure, but the hardtack had been a blessing. There was no greater condemnation of his culinary skills.

The captain watched him for a long moment, then nodded and stilled, watching Kabru expectantly. Half expecting him to go straight back to cutting, it took Kabru a moment to realize what he was doing.

Was… was the captain waiting for permission? Their changeover did usually include a list of questions that the captain barely acknowledged, but it was part of the routine. Him taking an interest could only be a good thing, couldn’t it?

Before Kabru could ask, Lycion had slung an arm around the captain’s shoulders, still grinning smugly at Kabru.

“Let’s you and I take a quick bathroom break, Captain, and then you can get back to Kabru. Unless you’d rather go with him?” It was far too innocently phrased, enough so that it even caught Captain Mithrun’s attention.

The elf twisted up just enough to squint at Lycion suspiciously, and Kabru suddenly really, really wondered what a shapeshifter would have made of the other Canaries from Mithrun’s head. He’d actually really like to know, almost enough to willingly go near a monster even.

Whatever he saw, the captain just shrugged curtly, turning to walk away.

“No, it’s fine.” And then he paused, glancing back at Kabru, and Kabru had to wonder how the elf saw him now. Still the same vague, barely human sketch? Or had their time together rendered him more memorable?

He almost missed the captain’s next words.

“If it’s time for a break again, I can also tell you stories.”

One of the orcs across the clearing swore abruptly as Kabru swore Lycion made a sound that only other canids could hear, then the wolfman had dragged the captain away cheerfully, chatting a mile a minute about stories Mithrun should tell Kabru.

And left Kabru staring after them, entirely dumbfounded.

Was… Captain Mithrun jealous that Lycion had made him laugh? Was jealousy even an emotion he could feel anymore? The elf had been so certain that the demon had eaten that out of him along with his desires, since it had apparently been one of his core features forty years ago.

Would that make it a good thing if it was coming back? After all, jealousy only happened when you wanted something that someone else had, didn’t it?

And. If the thing Captain Mithrun wanted was Kabru’s attention.

Oh no, his cheeks were flushing. He could feel it. Kabru tried to tell himself it was all Lycion’s fault, putting ideas in his head, but he was unfortunately good at spotting a liar. Even when it was himself.

Hurrying across the clearing, he busied himself carrying the most recent hunks of dragon meat up and over to the piles where Senshi was currently sorting and butchering them. Anything had to be better than wasting his time thinking impossible things.

It was probably nothing. Kabru had been laughing hard enough he’d almost taken Lycion to the ground with him, and then Lycion had transformed, which was an even bigger way to get everyones’ attention.

The captain heard they were discussing stories, and he had stories to tell. And no desire to avoid sharing them. It would keep his next break from being boring, or torturous for both of them as Kabru searched for some way to distract him.

It was that simple.

Absolutely no chance of anything else.

And, if down the line, there was a tiny chance that the captain would actually desire anyone… or maybe Kabru specifically… to pay attention to him, well, that would be fine anyway. Kabru was coming to accept that his fascination with the elf wasn’t going away even without forced isolation; it was better for Mithrun to start by wanting something that Kabru could happily and easily give.

And that was probably all there was to it.

That and a nosy, interfering, smug little shit werewolf who had apparently decided to get involved in absolutely everything that didn’t involve him and probably didn’t even exist.

Because when Captain Mithrun came back from their bathroom break, he was shirtless, wearing only the tiny shoulder-piece and sleeves over his skirt and boots . And apparently mildly confused about why he was so, handing Kabru the overlarge shirt that Kabru was rather certain was actually Laios’.

“Lycion said it would be too hot to keep working. I don’t feel hot,” he said bluntly, which Kabru always found a little funny whenever he said that sort of thing.

Who knew better than Mithrun that he couldn’t feel tired, or hungry, or hot?

But this was just silly, because it wasn’t the middle of summer anymore and the afternoon was wearing on, and Captain Mithrun always ran too cold anyway. Kabru firmly handed him the shirt back, determinedly not looking anywhere but his one dark eye.

“He’s just overheating because he’s furry, Captain. Maybe he forgot that it’s colder for those of us without a beast form?”

Which would actually probably be for the best, since Lycion never actually wore much clothing anyway; it would just be destroyed when he changed, which was as often as he could feasibly get away with. Honestly he owed Kabru already for having given him an excuse to change at all.

Captain Mithrun didn’t seem to buy it, giving Kabru a sceptical look but he accepted the shirt back and pulled it on, then shoved at the sleeves until they finally bunched in place on his arms instead of flopping down to cover his hands.

That wouldn’t help; they’d only fall down once he got moving again, and Kabru caught his hand quickly when one started to slip and irritation flashed on the elf’s face.

“Captain, let me fold those back for you. They’ll slide about less… actually, we should probably get you some clothes that fit you, don’t you have some on the ship?” Kabru asked suddenly, struck by the absurdity even as he painstakingly folded the sleeves over themselves up the captain’s surprisingly muscular arms.

The elf shot him an unimpressed look.

“I don’t need armour now.”

Done one arm, Kabru got started on the other.

“Not your armour, some casual clothes. Something you wear when you’re not on duty?”

Even less impressed, somehow, Mithrun tried to turn away.

“I only wear my uniform. I don’t need the armour now,” he reiterated, like Kabru was misunderstanding him on purpose.

Kabru’s brows furrowed. It… probably shouldn’t have been a surprise, since even when Mithrun had bathed he’d dressed straight back into that overlarge shirt. It still felt almost inconceivable.

He knew the Canaries only ever wore their uniforms when on a mission, but all the wardens got to bring a handful of personal belongings; it was one of their perks. A set of comfortable clothes for after the mission’s end was such a basic comfort…

That Mithrun wouldn’t even think of. He might not even have any personal belongings at all, which was terribly depressing.

(And if he did… what were they? Kabru would love to know, and he could certainly just ask; Mithrun had no desire not to answer. But it wouldn’t be the same as seeing those things, and how the captain treated them.)

Sighing to himself, he finished folding back the other sleeve and gave the captain a hopeful smile.

“Well, maybe that’s something we can do after you’re done today? Go into town and see if we can find some better fitted clothes, or back to the ship for your spare uniform,” he added when Mithrun cocked his head, looking confused.

Then the elf looked down at the baggy shirt, then back up to Kabru.

“This is fine,” he said slowly, like he was actually trying to look ahead and work out what Kabru’s objections would be.

His smile becoming fond and more genuine, Kabru nodded.

“It’s working, but better sleeves would get in your way less, and it’ll give us something to do while your mana recovers?” He offered instead, hoping he could appeal at least to the captain’s irritability. It was easier when he had a fixed desire.

Captain Mithrun fell silent again, his head turning as his eye slid over to Senshi, still butchering his way through the meat along with several others.

Kabru hesitated. That… was happening more and more lately. When Mithrun was unoccupied he often wandered off, but more often than not these days Kabru could find him by finding the dwarf. Which was actually really cute.

And way more convenient than scouring the island for a bored teleportation expert with no regard for his own body.

Chuckling softly, Kabru shook his head.

“Alright, instead how about we ask Pattadol to get someone to get your spare uniform, and I’ll run to get one of my old shirts in the meantime? It’ll still be too big, but at least the arms will fit better?”

The captain’s old uniform wasn’t an option; made of arachne silk or not, being back inside the spider had done something horrible to the armour tunic that absolutely refused to come out. The under-armour had managed slightly better, sleeves and skirt scrubbing down well enough, but that left him with a frankly irresponsible expanse of skin between shoulders and waist.

Even the boots were barely salvageable, but at least they still bent.

Captain Mithrun examined his rolled sleeves for a long moment, then looked back to Kabru and nodded. If he was giving Kabru a more appraising look, it was probably just to consider the size Kabru’s shirt would be on him.

Kabru resolved to get something with shorter sleeves. Or maybe just tack them down with a sewing kit.

It had to be better than Laios’s anyway; he was large even for a tallman, and Captain Mithrun could probably get any two of the other Canaries in there with him. It even nearly covered the green slats of his armoured skirt.

Finally the captain nodded, turning back towards the dragon.

“Alright. I’m going to keep going.” And honestly? The fact that he wasn’t just teleporting himself back down was also progress, and Kabru immediately hurried after him to help heft him down onto the remaining lump of dragon.

And figured fuck it, he could lift out the last of the cut chunks since he was already over there. At least while it was frozen he could pretend it was just ice that he was touching.

“Just a second Captain, let me get down first to take a look and then I’ll help you,” he said quickly, suiting word to deed and hopping into the hole away from most of the meat scraps.

It was actually beginning to get pretty deep, a little past Kabru’s waist now when he was just on the uncut surface; they’d probably need a ladder by tomorrow. Kabru made a mental note to ask around for one, and ask if anyone knew just how deep Falin’s dragon portion would sink into the ground.

Based only on the shape he could see… they’d probably need to get someone on clearing away the dirt from the back too, the bones were beginning to curve.

Laios would know exactly what shape and position the dragon was in, probably. Maybe that could be his problem.

Captain Mithrun had obediently stopped at the edge of the hole, looking a little impatient as Kabru took just one moment to survey the situation. Before he could decide to just jump down and probably land in the pile of cut pieces, Kabru hurried back, holding up his hands to help the elf down.

“You’re making a lot of progress! I’ll get a ladder tonight, and maybe some pulleys and things to get the meat back up; we might not need it today, but it’ll make things easier if we have it ready before we do,” he called up, giving the captain an encouraging smile.

Mithrun was light enough on his feet that he’d almost certainly be fine, and able to recover his footing even on a block of ice covered in smaller, melting shards, but he was about equally likely to take Kabru out by accident as he did it.

Or teleport a lump of meat in annoyance without picking a destination, and they really did need to eat as much as possible. Apparently. Never mind that “without a destination” had meant into people more than once.

The captain did give his hands a sceptical look before taking them, clearly humouring him, but Kabru wasn’t about to complain. Or say much of anything, actually, because that was about when he noticed that for a change, the flash of pale between boot and skirt as the elf stepped forward <wasn’t> his leggings.

That was bare skin.

Mithrun’s pale, bare skin. Kabru’s eyes travelled upwards in an uncontrollable slide, his head just barely above the elf’s knees, and Captain Mithrun’s hands slid into his and those were his thighs and they were close enough Kabru could just lean forward and he’d see everything-

And he was so frozen and stiff he nearly toppled over when Mithrun swung down, the elf’s slight weight just enough to knock him off balance while his brain short circuited.

At least he managed to catch them both before they both hit the wall, his whole face suddenly burning and mouth working soundlessly. The captain gave him an odd look and stepped away, not actually asking why Kabru wanted to give him a hand down when he clearly couldn’t even stand upright himself, but he might as well have.

For the best. Kabru wasn’t sure he could make his mouth work well enough to form words.

Not until Fleki arrived, anyway, and then he was going to go and find Cithis and tell her that Lycion had been telling him how sweet and gentle she was with the captain, and that he should ask her… no, that Pattadol would be coming to ask her how they developed such a close bond.

Because the bastard hadn’t just sent Captain Mithrun back to Kabru shirt in hand to fuck with him. He’d also fucking left with the captain’s pants.

All sorts of vengeful thoughts were welling in Kabru’s mind, cut off only by the sudden press of a small, cold hand to his temple. Well and truly snapped out of it, he stumbled a little and blinked, bringing Captain Mithrun’s frowning face back into focus.

The elf made a soft, considering noise and removed his hand, looking at it with mild interest.

“Perhaps Lycion was right. You’re overheating. Sit on the ice.” And he reached out and planted a hand on Kabru’s chest, shoving with a strength Kabru still wasn’t used to seeing and sending him ungracefully to his ass.

Still trying to catch his breath, he watched Captain Mithrun walk away, bend down (and he’d never been more grateful for the length of Laios’ shirt or the armoured skirt because his heart was already hammering against his ribs), and pick up his cloak to get back to work.

It took longer than he’d like to get his breathing under control, or for his pulse to stop pounding in his ears, and for once in his life Kabru couldn’t even use the time to think.

Well. Except one thought, that wouldn’t stop playing on repeat through his head.

Maybe Lycion was more observant than he’d thought.

[trashymichi]

If you have any lore/info you'd like to share abt corey/coreymichi I'd love to hear it! (I love his design. Such a little guy.)

thank you 🥹 I am genuinely flabbergasted anyone is curious about corey jacob “cj” larkin……

The general plot of his story is that he’s an american foreign exchange student who is essentially “shipped off” to another country for a year to study and make better of himself.

…corey is a 15 year old boy from new york city and comes from a shitty neighbourhood and a shitty school (as if he actually attends school to begin with lol)

…he’s known to be quite volatile bc he struggles with violent anger issues and a nicotine addiction. His anger issues stem from untreated, moderate to severe ADHD and a rocky upbringing (dad’s in jail, mom has issues. His anger outbursts were a lot worse when he was a smaller kid), but he attends community counselling for his issues and is on mood stabilizers for his anger. When he takes them, he’s a lot more lethargic and nonchalant in his day to day life..

…nearly his entire friend group all have unspecified gang affiliations, except for him and his best friend and though he tries to stay out of that business, he is still valued by a lot of his gang friends…and alas still ends up in a lot of trouble with the law, regardless. He steals for his buddies a lot, beats on others when he’s mad, particularly on a rich spoiled brat kid named Riley, spends nights in jail/juvie…he gets arrested for something a lot more serious and narrowly misses getting tried as an adult for it, but i’ll go more in depth into that possibly later or on a separate post…

On his literal first night in Japan, he accidentally runs head-on into Takemichi on the street making michi drop his food on the ground. This triggers him to absolutely HATE corey with a burning passion—but like. how could he not. Corey looks like an entitled tourist, speaks clumsy japanese, and has a standoff-ish and lethargic personality…

…so for the entirety of the summer break leading up to the start of school, Takemichi and his boys pick fights (not just ass whooping either) with Corey, and much to Takemichi and Corey’s anguish they end up attending the same school.

…they start become more friendly with one another after Corey is tasked with helping Takemichi with his math lessons (my man’s is failing so hard), and with every study session, they grow to understand one another more and more and there are homoromantic undertones to their friendship

also michi doesn’t really tell Corey about Toman business bc he doesn’t wanna involve some random american in that shit (and i’m undecided if i even want corey to have any connection with toman to begin with because he doesn’t rest fit into all that…but…we’ll see…), so this is precisely where the lore gets messy and needs some revising….

[killed-by-choice]

Donna Heim, 20 (USA 1986)

California resident Donna Heim was 20 years old. She was perfectly healthy other than a history of asthma. In 1986, she found out that she was pregnant and ended up going to Her Medical Clinic (which was actually an abortion facility) when she was in the second trimester.

On August 11, 1986, an unspecified HMC employee inserted laminaria dilators and told Donna to come back the next day. Donna was not warned about the risks of abortion and had no idea that she was going to die.

The next day, Donna underwent the abortion at the hands of abortionist Mahlon Douglas Cannon. HMC had not bothered to check Donna’s medical history other than a brief record of the past two weeks. It was already documented that Donna had asthma, but HMC didn’t bother to make sure that Donna was receiving any oxygen or that the drugs administered were safe for her. Donna was also not given a pre-op exam.

During the abortion, Donna suffered bronchospasms and/or laryngospasms. A nurse anesthetist started trying to get Donna to breathe normally, but did not check her medical records or administer any treatment that could have actually helped. Cannon was aware of the situation, but he didn’t help try to save Donna or call 911. Instead he just continued the abortion.

4 or 5 minutes later, Cannon actually tried to do something about his dying client— in a completely incompetent way. Instead of giving any medicine that might have had a chance at saving her, he attempted the Heimlich maneuver. It is unclear why he thought this would do anything. When Donna still couldn’t breathe, Cannon laid her down flat and put his fingers in her mouth. It didn’t help.

By the time someone finally called an ambulance, it was too late. Paramedics arrived to find Donna in full cardio-respiratory arrest. They desperately tried to save her, but she was declared dead shortly after.

The next month, another young client named Liliana Cortez who was perfectly healthy other than having asthma was killed by HMC in strikingly similar circumstances.

(Medical Board Documents)

[angie-j-kay]

Good unspecified time of day! I have 5 hours of sleep in me and I feel like bothering some people. Feel free to use this ask as a space to talk about anything on your mind. If an unspecified question is too daunting lemme put some forth!

If you could go back to experience a wonderful time in your life, what would it be?

Would you rather be able to forget a movie to watch over again or a book?

What would you consider is a skill that doesn't get enough hype? (Like doing your own taxes, growing a garden, being knowledgeable about the local flora and fauna)

Brownies from the edge, side, or middle?

Is there anything small (or could be considered small) that you accomplished or had happen recently that just made your day?(folded laundry, made a good drink, took a nap in the sun)

I'm taking the skill question, because it's a RANT.

The ability to make one's own clothing is a skill that is SEVERELY underrated in the modern world. The fast fashion industry controls so much of what's available to us, and has for so long, that we just sort of accept these days that we've got to accept inconvenient, uncomfortable, unsustainable clothing that's going to fall apart in just a few months' time because that's all that's available.

What do you like to wear? Doesn't matter, you only get what's on the market this month. Can't wear certain fabrics? Hope you have buckets of money and a mess of free time to go looking for clothes. Favorite colors? Nope. You're at the mercy of WalMart and Zara. If you're a woman, it's even worse, because gods help you if you want to wear anything that actually lets you go live a life and do stuff. And if you're a dude? Get ready to be bored. It's just variations on the same drab theme from now until the day you die.

As an added bonus, most of what you find in stores is only kinda-sorta designed to fit a certain body type, and if it doesn't fit you perfectly then you're implied to be too [whatever you are] to wear "nice" stuff. This is your fault, don't you know?

If you learn to sew, and it's not nearly as hard as people think, you can make things specific to your clothing needs for cheaper than you would ever be able to buy them. And your clothing will last WAY longer than anything you'll find in a shop. Also, if you want to wear something that just isn't made these days... look, no one's gonna arrest you for wearing a floor-length cloak or a pirate shirt out to the grocery store, okay? Trust me, I know. I wear 18th Century stays and petticoats to work on the regular.

[addictedtostorytelling]

Was the comment made by Sara about Grissom stopping LH from killing the nazi doctor creep meant to imply that Grissom had given her that info? Or was it more “you didn’t tell me about your relationship with her but I have known”? What’s your take? I have to believe the writers had her say it (as opposed to anyone else) for a purpose. Thank you!

hi, anon!

it is very possible and i think even likely that grissom did fill sara in on the events of episode 06x15 "pirates of the third reich" at some point after the fact—and particularly as they were dating at the time when said events were taking place, so it would have made sense for him to confide in her—however, it is also possible that sara learned about heather's attack on leon sneller/jacob wolfowitz from some other source than him.

presumably, after grissom halted heather's attack, he would have called medical and police services to the scene to tend to sneller/wolfowitz's wounds and arrest him, so there would have been other lvpd employees who witnessed the immediate aftermath of the event and heard directly from grissom the story of what had happened. also, as we learn in episode 07x23 "the good, the bad, & the dominatrix," heather was charged with an unspecified crime in connection with the attack (presumably either assault/battery and/or attempted murder); even though she ultimately escaped conviction of said crime due to her connections to a local judge, what she had done would have been a matter of public record and definitely would have been something that was discussed around the lvpd/lab (i.e., "did you hear that supervisor grissom stopped a dominatrix from whipping a nazi to death in the desert?!"). her actions also likely would have been brought up at leon sneller/jacob wolfowitz's trial, at which the entire team, including sara, likely would have been called on to testify, as they had all worked the case.

in any case, whether grissom told sara what happened directly or she found out in another way, i don't believe her purpose in bringing up the events of that night is to insinuate that she knows more about grissom and heather’s bond than grissom has ever told her.

i think that sara's reasons for bringing up that particular incident from grissom and heather's history have more to do with her drawing attention to heather’s (in her view) criminal tendencies than anything else. 

while of course sara is preoccupied with the notion that grissom and heather may be having a sexual relationship during the events of “immortality,” she is also attempting to work a serial murder case in which, at that moment, heather is the prime suspect. however, her efforts in this regard are receiving a lot of pushback from none other than grissom himself.

ever since grissom showed up in vegas, sara has been going back and forth with him, trying to get him to at least entertain the notion that heather could potentially be the perpetrator behind the serial bombings—just as all of the evidence to that point in the investigation seemingly suggests—however, grissom has stubbornly refused to do so. 

sara’s frustration with grissom has mounted as the man who always used to preach to her to not allow her personal feelings to cloud her professional judgment and to “follow the evidence” above all else has basically stuck his fingers in his ears and gone, “la, la, la! i know you’re saying that all of the material and circumstantial evidence in this case so far points toward heather, but i’m not listening because she’s too special to me!”

of course, sara’s fears about the nature of grissom and heather’s relationship atm and her annoyance with grissom’s comportment regarding the case go hand in hand: she can’t help but think that the only reason why grissom is being so pigheaded about insisting that heather is innocent is because he’s involved with her somehow—and that possibility smarts to acknowledge (particularly given that sara feels as if grissom didn’t ever “fight for her” when they were married/heading toward their divorce in the same way he seems to be fighting for heather now).

however, for as much as her personal feelings about grissom and heather’s relationship are coloring her actions throughout the investigation, they’re not her sole concern.

she does also care about solving the case, and to do so, she needs to get grissom on board with following the evidence. she also cares about grissom’s safety and welfare because, goddammit, she’s still in love with him, even if he’s moved on from her and so wants to warn him about (what she views as) the real danger heather poses to him.

so when henry walks in bearing news that one of the major pieces of evidence so far in the case is the dismembered body of a man heather once tried to kill, sara seizes on the opportunity to remind grissom that heather is perhaps much more prone toward violent and even homicidal behavior than he has to date been willing to allow.

her saying “he's also the man that lady heather almost killed, until you intervened” is tantamount to her being like: “look, gil, i know you don’t want to admit that heather might be involved with these bombings, but you can’t deny that she has a history of violence! the only thing that stopped her from killing sneller/wolfowitz was you showing up when you did and bodily pulling her off of him. the leap from ‘attempted murder’ to ‘murder’ isn’t a big one. do you really think it’s totally outside of the realm of possibility that she could (as the evidence suggests) be guilty in this case? really, when you better than anyone have seen the kinds of things she’s capable of doing when provoked?”

essentially, she is pointing out a pattern to him. 

she means to confront him, in a way: to make him own up to the fact that, despite his high opinion of her, heather does have it in her to kill.

and, yes, she does want to make this point due to her own feelings for grissom and jealousy over how she perceives his bond with heather: because there is more than a small part of her that is so deeply hurt by what she views as his unconditional loyalty to heather compared to his conditional (and ultimately “broken”) loyalty to her; because she wants to make him see that this person he (in her view) has “chosen over her” doesn’t deserve his allegiance.

but she also does so for the sake of the case: because they can’t afford to keep ignoring large swaths of evidence due to personal attachments.

and she also does so for the sake of him: because she doesn’t want something bad to happen to him because he’s putting his trust in (in her view) the wrong person—and especially not someone as potentially dangerous as heather.

there’s jealousy there, sure.

but there’s also frustration.

and there’s also genuine concern.

and underlying everything, there is a feeling of impending doom, like, “why can’t you see what’s right in front of your face?! this woman is trouble, and i can’t stand the thought that you might get hurt because you’re so blind to who she really is.”

she’s trying to give him a wakeup call, to force him to acknowledge, whether or not he wants to, that at this point in the investigation, all roads really do lead to heather as being the mastermind behind the plot.

particularly now that grissom has become a specific target, she feels it’s important for him to be aware of what’s in front of him.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

[hotgirlmythology]

Margaery, scourge of arranged marriages

as you may have gathered I am not a big fan of arranged marriages so I made a character who dislikes them as well

Margaery is a rather whimsical character, born to a Viscount who cared more for fighting and feasting than diplomacy. His third child, and first daughter at that, he was woefully underexperienced in raising her the "proper" way. Her governess gave up on keeping track of her after she came very close to getting her chest stoved in by a horse kick when she was meant to be learning to identify herbs, and then was essentially put under house arrest so she was forced to learn all of these extremely important womanly things (sewing, herbalism and being able to sit a horse would actually come in very useful later), while being restricted from inviting any more horses to break her jaw. This extreme boredom went on for a couple of years until, on her birthday, her handmaid conspired with a stable groom who knew vaguely how to swing a sword to smuggle her out for a late night go around on a horse and give her a bit of a sword fight. Now, although this may seem extremely hastily put together and disorganised, that is because it was arranged a mere 3 days beforehand, after Margaery went on a half-hour long rant about the fact she was "fucking bored" of "poking bits of cloth with a malnourished sword" (translated into modern english). Margaery was also not told about her birthday present.

On the night this issue became apparent very quickly, as Margaery was not about to crawl out of the window along with her handmaid on some unspecified mission. After the stableboy showed up and started hissing curses at them for pulling him out of bed for no reason it all got a bit out of hand and Margaery gave up and went along with the fiasco. The horse ride was alright, as was the swordfight. Margaery was suspiciously good at swordfighting, and her handmaid watched it all with a faintly raised eyebrow, especially after she disarmed the stableboy for the fourth time in a row. Margaery was of course simply magically gifted with the sword, which is a common side effect of having a small angry fey stuck in the upside down planks of your bed feeding you dreams of fire and war for 6 years and thus somewhat unavoidable. After this fun endeavour, Margaery returned to being slightly more indifferent to her allotted life than she probably should have been. The fey living in her bed for its part was well happy with the fact that the person who lay on top of it 8-10 hours a night was finally doing something with the wide variety of angry dreams it had concocted. Margaery, for instance, would often find herself yelling in rage at her pillow until realising it was in fact a pillow. Eventually, at 16 she discovered a brilliant trick called barefaced lying, which she used to go on many "herb gathering" trips (sword fighting sessions) and absolutely under no circumstances did she dig out history and geography books and learn about a world that was greatly more interesting than a pokey little village in the backgarden of great shittington (one day to become shitting-on-the-wold).

As is common of people who learn about places that books insist are vastly more interesting than where you live, she decided that under no circumstances was she going to be tied to her home for the rest of her life. However, cunningly, the plot has a way to subvert this too. She got betrothed to a lord about her age at 18 years old, started courting him after the fact, and then got married at 19. She did not like him very much, which is to say, she loathed him with every fibre of her being, mostly because he kept on being interested in things like diplomacy and noble standing. This bored her stiff. The one time he tried to show off his brilliant sword skills was a bit invalidated when she smashed his sword out of his hand in the first ten seconds with a big stick, which might have contributed to this sense of not wanting to talk fighting with her. It did not come as much of a surprise to him when he woke up one morning to find his bed empty and the sword he'd been given as a wedding present stolen (as a matter of fact he was rather relieved - he hadn't wanted to marry very much either. Too many emotions involved.)

A couple of weeks later, the stableboy she had been in cahoots with all that time ago had mysteriously vanished, alongside the scullery maid he'd been courting. Her bed had by then been completely deconstructed, and the fae had escaped it. Said fae, however, was not about to let 6 years of high quality angry dreams just walk off, so it zipped off after Margaery and her entourage of 3 as they walked off into the wide world to go and annul some marriages, which they had all agreed was a pretty good calling. The angry fae spirit would then follow them, flowing into Margaery's sword at opportune moments to set it alight with eldritch fire and also, just because it wanted to show off, make her eyes light up. It didn't know this, but the eyes lighting up were actually Margaery's doing, or rather what she had done in all those dreams it had fed her. One day, she would be called the Faerie Knight, the scourge of order and christendom, crossing the country wearing a hunting dress and a drab sword and showing the knights of the realm exactly what she thought of their loveless relationships and destruction of the hidden places that pagans still worshipped at. Though she would only occasionally witness it, the eyes of the Seelie court would watch her every move through the wilderness of England and beyond, and those she wished not to lay eyes on her would quickly find themselves led completely astray.

Basically an adventure loving gal who by dint of having an angry fae living in her bed and an upbringing of steel became a demon with a sword and alongside her plucky friends and also the entirety of europe's fae population set out to keep the wilderness wild and love lovely.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

MMA-fighter-turned-porn-actor Aaron Franklin Brink had an immediate reaction when he learned his 22-year-old son had been accused of slaughtering five people and injuring 18 others last weekend in a mass shooting at a Colorado Springs nightspot catering to the LGBTQ community.

A defense attorney called Sunday night and told Brink, who lives in Southern California, that Anderson Lee Aldrich was under arrest for the massacre at Club Q.

“They started telling me about the incident, a shooting involving multiple people,” Brink said Tuesday in an interview outside his San Diego home with CBS 8. “And then I go on to find out it’s a gay bar. I said, ‘God, is he gay?’ I got scared, ‘Shit, is he gay?’ And he’s not gay, so I said, ‘Phhhewww…’”

Brink, who has appeared in such films as My MILF Boss 8, I Wanna Get Titty Fucked, and Latina Slut Academy, told CBS 8, “You know Mormons don’t do gay. We don’t do gay. There’s no gays in the Mormon church. We don’t do gay.” (The Mormon Church has confirmed that Aldrich was a member but had not been active in some time.)

In a court filing late Tuesday, lawyers for Aldrich, who in 2016 changed his name from Nicholas Franklin Brink to escape his father’s sordid past, said Aldrich is non-binary, saying “they use they/them pronouns.”

However, booking records list Aldrich’s gender as male. Additionally, in text messages from the day of the shooting, which were shown to The Daily Beast by a source close to Aldrich, Aldrich’s mother referred to her son as he and him.

The Daily Beast was unable to reach Brink for comment. A call Wednesday morning to a number in Brink’s wife’s name was answered by a woman who declined to give her name but said she was a “relative.”

“We’re just taking it one day at a time,” she told The Daily Beast. “There is nothing really to do, after everything’s said and done.”

Aldrich allegedly opened fire at Club Q shortly before midnight on Nov. 19 before being subdued by two bystanders. Aldrich was initially hospitalized with unspecified injuries but was transferred to the El Paso County jail on Tuesday, according to authorities.

Aldrich, Brink, and Aldrich’s mother, Laura Voepel, have long raised red flags among others in the family, a relative told The Daily Beast shortly after Aldrich’s arrest.

“I don’t want anything to do with that part of the family,” the relative said, asking that their name not be used to avoid becoming tangled up with them again. “They’ve always had issues, a lot of problems… I’m totally disgusted by that side of the family right now.”

In Brink’s interview with CBS 8, he apologized for Aldrich’s alleged actions, saying there’s “no excuse for going and killing people. If you’re killing people, there’s something wrong. It’s not the answer.”

At the same time, Brink, a recovering methamphetamine user who once appeared on the reality show Intervention, said he “praised [Aldrich] for violent behavior really early. I told him it works. It is instant and you’ll get immediate results.”

Brink also said he didn’t realize Aldrich was still alive, telling CBS 8 that Voepel called him in 2016 and said their son had changed their name to Anderson Lee Aldrich, then died by suicide.

“I thought he was dead,” Brink said. “I mourned his loss. I had gone through a meltdown and thought I had lost my son… His mother told me he changed his name because I was in Intervention and I had been a porno actor.”

A notarized affidavit filed in a Texas court almost exactly a month before Aldrich, still Nicholas Brink, turned 16, states, “Minor wishes to protect himself + his future from his birth father + his criminal history. Father has had no contact with minor for several years.”

Six months ago, Brink said a very-much-alive Aldrich called him out of the blue. The two hadn’t spoken in six years, but the conversation quickly devolved into a sparring match, according to Brink.

“He’s pissed off,” Brink, who described himself in the interview as a conservative Republican, told CBS 8. “He’s pissed off at me. He wants to poke at the old man.”

Even before the Club Q shooting, Aldrich had been accused of using violence.

Last year, Aldrich was arrested after cops said they threatened to blow up the Colorado Springs house where Voepel was living. The charges were later dropped, and Colorado’s red flag laws, which would have allowed cops to seize Aldrich’s guns, were apparently not triggered. (The rifle used in the Club Q shooting was bought legally, according to reports.)

Brink, who did federal time in the late 1990s for marijuana importation, said he still loves Aldrich in light of the accusations, and offered an apology to the victims.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he told CBS 8. “Life is so fragile and it’s valuable. Those people’s lives were valuable. You know, they’re valuable. They’re good people, probably. It’s not something you kill somebody over. I’m sorry I let my son down.”

Aldrich made his first court appearance Wednesday afternoon. He was ordered held without bail.

[dandelionsprout42]

Police departments in mahou shoujo shows aren't particularly smart.

Let's take H2O G1 as an example. Had I been a police constable in southeast Australia, it'd take me a mere 10 episodes into season 1 before I'd caught them wide open.

The approach would be simple: • Navy anti-torpedo radars would detect seeming torpedos blasting around at freaking 130km/h forth and back between Unspecified Australian City and Mako Island. • Once the "torpedos" stop to a halt, local boats' fishing radars would detect something at the stop area that was the size of a small dolphin or three.

Already at that point the mermaids would be an easy deal to find. It wouldn't take like 9 seasons across 4 generations to do. But just in case: • Set up detection equipment and underwater cameras along the approximate route. Set the cameras to a recording livestream, and also look out for if any equipment get damaged in unusual ways (Safe to say coastal Australia in mid-summer doesn't have cameras freeze to ice). • To hammer the deal, set up wildlife cameras along the west, south, and east beach-to-forest treshold, and a few inside the forest too. Plus some cameras outside local surf shops and piers in the city.

At that point, it's game over for the mermaids, but they'd be paid big money™ to fix underwater pipe leaks at 150m depth and to join swimming shows. Quite possibly would people find out how to transform more people into mermaids. They would not be dissected, no matter how much District 9 four years later claim they would.

(And this isn't even getting into how I'd get Hawkmoth raided and arrested in Paris within 4 weeks.)

[officialcreature]

For some reason my brain just decided it would spend today really picking apart how in medical settings I'm expected to set achievable and measurable goals, but governments just get to say shit like "War on Terror" and spend more money than a human mind can comprehend.

Like, "Destroy Hamas." What do you mean by destroy? Arrest, kill, prevent from being able to take action in some way, get them to agree to something? Who do you mean when you say Hamas? Specific government and military officials, anyone involved with them, all Gazans? Like we just let people say their goal is something as nebulas as "destroy Hamas" and go with it.

Depending on how you define 'destroy' or who you define as 'Hamas' the goal could easily be unachievable. The lack of specific objective also makes it impossible to measure progress or when the goal has been achieved.

I mean there are obvious reasons for this, such as changing situations, the pressure to act quickly, the ability to change how you're classifying things in order to say you achieved the goal, not giving away your specific goals to prevent the opponent from shifting resources to prevent it, justifying all sorts of things because you can bend them to fit the goal, etc., but it's wild we just do entire wars without set goals.

There are also obvious drawbacks like the fact that you end up in interacted conflicts with no set goal because you overextended yourself, you end up involved in conflicts that literally never benefited you in the first place, it's easy for different actors to take advantage of the unspecified goal to get funding/backing for their own goals.

Also fuck Israel and Zionists, this was just the example that is most being discussed right now so it's what my brain was attaching it to.

[cyarskaren52]

Trayvon Martin.

The Paul young man in Kansas City.

Trauma we relive way too often.

Thinking about Sandra Bland too. The policing of Black bodies is overwhelming.

Ron desatanist this is the Florida you want and don’t you dare say otherwise!

HOMELATESTCULTUREENTERTAINMENTBEAUTY/STYLEAWARDS SEASON 2023

RACE MATTERS

Woman in Fla Was Fatally Shot by Her Neighbor, But the Shooter Walked Free. Why?

This will anger you: Ajike “AJ” Owens was shot and killed by her neighbor who was allegedly yelling racial slurs at her and threatened her children.

By

Kalyn Womack

Published3 hours ago

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How does a woman get shot and killed and her shooter is still on the loose? Residents of Ocala, Florida are asking the same question in the killing of a Black woman who was gunned down by her neighbor Friday. According to NBC News, the incident was the result of an ongoing feud.

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Ajike “AJ” Owens’ children were playing in a fieldnear an apartment complex when suddenly, a white woman came from the area and began yelling racial slurs at them, according to an account from attorney Benjamin Crump. One of the children accidentally left behind their iPad which the woman seized. When the child went to retrieve it, the woman allegedly threw the device both hitting the boy and cracking the screen. The woman also allegedly threw a pair of roller skates at the children as well. 

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Naturally, the children went back home to tell their mother what happened. Owens then walked over to the neighbor’s door to speak to her about the incident but things took a fatal turn.

“She knocked on the door, and at that point, the woman allegedly shot through the door, hitting AJ, who later died from her injuries,” Crump said in the statement.

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Read more from NBC News:

At a news conference Monday, Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods did not confirm or reject Crump’s account, telling reporters he was not “going to stand here and tell you what they’re putting out there is inaccurate. It’s just I don’t know yet.” Here’s what the sheriff said he does know: - There had been a long-standing “neighborhood feud” between the shooter and Owens about her children. - The children may have been hit by an unspecified object. “Was something thrown at them? Yes, but not directly at them of what we’re being told now,” Woods said. “It just unfortunately may have hit them.” He added: “The children are a big part of answering a lot our questions.” - When Owens came to the shooter’s door, there was a heated exchange. Owens was shot through the door. - At least two of Owens’ four children may have witnessed the shooting, which occurred about 9 p.m.

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Because Florida is a good ol’ “stand your ground” state, law enforcement must determine whether Owens posed an imminent threat or was simply acting as a mother trying to get to the bottom of an attack on her children. While they dilly dally on that decision, they are not authorized to make an arrest, the Sheriff Woods said. 

Well... they made an arrest when Andrew Lester shot 16-year-old Ralph Yarl from behind his front door - the same manner Owens was shot - despite Lester’s self-defense claim that he was frightened by the teen. 

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“A closed, locked door. The door never opened. My daughter, my grandchildren’s mother, was shot and killed with her 9-year-old son standing next to her. She had no weapon. She posed no imminent threat to anyone,” Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, said via NBC. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0221GBwwquPMbu6X7jpLb1TBsK8dyzwxzempQ4thD1EMkKSwkpXspW6GDJ87tdeRzGl&id=26423400230&mibextid=ncKXMA

Sent from my iPhone

[alexiavonv]

Seas of Treachery EP 1 - Warm Welcomes From The Shining Star

(The Ol' Treachery Arc | previous post | this epsiode's song)

As a reminder, this is part of the summaries recounting each session of my D&D campaign, Seas of Treachery. I'll write a little TLDR at the end of each post in case you'd like it! I'm gonna be including some images here and there, but I am no artist, so most of the time I will probably be using heroforge minis to represent people. Regardless, enjoy

-

The campaign starts with our characters sailing in to the city of Barthélonia, the shining star of the sea. The city is known for being the home of the Tribunal, the Acqeuduct of a Thousand Years (an over 100-foot tall aqueduct/bridge connecting the island of Barthélon Norte to Barthélon Sud), it's massive industrial district, and being the "center of the seas". Each of our characters had their own reason to come to the island - Izzy was looking for a rare ship component, Srian was looking for a forbidden biology book, Alyssane was hired for an unspecified "job", so on and so forth.

The Crew was brought here by a frogman named Rob-Rōnna - a tall, green bullfrog man with a large afro and white disco suit, done down a few extra buttons. He's a fisherman that seems to know just about everybody in the Barthélonian Sea who does any kind of seawork - pirates, squeadores, navymen, fishers, even just random dockworkers. He's an amicable man, even to the people he hates, and thus, he has earned himself somewhat of a chill reputation across the sea. He's the adoptive father of both Triggerfish and Rosemary, and the rest of the crew were able to hitch a ride with him and his kids to come to the city. When the crew left the ship, he did also, stating very firmly "Don't come with me, I have some business I've gotta take care of on my own."

Too bad Trig has authority issues.

Triggerfish decided to follow him, as he led her into the shady back alley black markets of the city. Narrow alleyways, bustling crowds of people, stalls of various illicit, rare, and dangerous materials scattering the dank, musty alleyways. She was in her humanoid form, attempting to keep at least a little bit of attention off of her. Rob walked into a café on a cornerside, sitting down at a stall with a cloaked man who asked "Do you have it?", to which Rob responded "It's all there." Trig found out he was trading some sort of golden idol, likely for cash.

Unfortunately for him, this was a setup, as Admiral Lucia Kirikoban (one of the leaders of the tribunal and its navy - pictured below) walked in with a troupe of navy soldiers. "Rob-Rōnna! Good to see ya', bud! You didn't think you'd be able to run forever, didn't 'cha? Well, the law never forgets, and the law never forgives!" She said to him, getting handcuffs ready to arrest him.

"Oh great, the little pig came out to play! I'm craving bacon." Trig finally piped up from the other seat.

"Who is she?"

"I don't know, who is she?" Rob tried to save face for Trig, telling her he had a plan before handing her a talking head - a magical stone that works like a radio/walkie talkie. Trig is too hot-headed to handle things normally though, and she decided to poke the pig until the pig demanded her dogs kill the snake. Or, for those confused, Trig made Kirikoban amgy, so Kirikoban had her guards attack.

The fight wouldn't last that long, however, as Rob used his Espíritu Power: Bubble Cage on Trig, encasing her in a bubble before kicking her out onto the streets into relative safety. She bounced around, ran over a few horse-riding guards (no biggie), then went back to the ship, where everyone else met.

(Pretty much everything up till this point was part of a pre-campaign side session with Trig's player)

The group all talked about their days and their quests, but Trig scrunched herself awkwardly into the corner with a look of wanting to say something, but refusing to on her face. Eventually, however, Izzy forced the story out of her. With this, the crew decided to at least follow the string he left behind, and they used the talking head.

A mysterious feminine voice came from the other end. "Who are you, what do you want, and how did you contact me?" Was their introduction to a woman named Sarah Saunders (pictured below), who they met in a café next to the industrial district. Around the town, unions and workers have begun striking and protesting, leading to clashes in the streets that even our crew almost got swept up into. The source of these riots all came back to Sarah and her group, Las Unionistas.

Sarah didn't meet the group on very nice terms, cutting straight to business. She said she had a plan to save Rob, and essentially just thanked them for telling her. Trig and Rosemary weren't okay with this, and asked them to let them help save him. Sarah had no trust in them, but through Izzy and Rosemary's combined silver tongues, she was eventually swayed to let them meet Las Unionistas. A half-orc private of the navy walked into the cafe with his guards and shouted at her - "Sarah Saunders, you're under arrest for inciting a riot!" said Private Arbor Whey (pictured below), to which Sarah responded "No need, Arbor. They're in." The two originally planned to test the crew's loyalty by having them beat up Arbor to protect Sarah.

The Crew, Sarah, and Arbor all went down to the basement of the café, then through a false stone wall into the Las Unionistas HQ - a large stone basement with an exit out of a drain pipe into the local canal. Sarah then told the crew that before she could get any work done on saving him, she needed intel from the man himself, who was beind held in the Judicial Fortress. The Judicial Fortress is a massive, 100-story tall stone fortress on a small island in the west Barthélonian strait (only a few minutes from Barthélonia). The Fortress is known for its high security, as well as being where the worst criminals are tried by the Tribunal themselves, and thus was quite an intimidating thing for the party to take on.

Arbor Whey piped up, saying that he could get them in there. "Tribunal law states that you have the right to a lawyer, and I just so happen to have a law degree, as well as experience in the Fortress itself!" He said he could get all the Intel they needed, and that he knew how to get them in. The party decided to begrudgingly take him up on his offer, and thus, the episode came to an end!

-

TLDR; The Funsize Crew came to the city of Barthélonia with their frogman friend with a boat, Rob-Rōnna. They had their own adventures, but Rob went to a café as Trig was following him in secret, where he tried selling a golden idol, but was instead busted by Admiral Lucia Kirikoban of the Naval Tribunal. Trig tried to fight, but Rob used his Espíritu Power to get her to safety after giving her a talking head (communication device). The crew used the device and met Sarah Saunders, who didn't want to work with them to save Rob at first, but was convinced to. They met a man named Private Arbor Whey who could help them get intel on where Rob was being held, and they begrudgingly accepted.

[runawaymarbles]

Hii!

I don’t understand what’s going on with AO3 and the election? I’ve been using it for about a year so this is all new to me! Is Tiffany getting elected actually bad?

I hate censorship, so seeing posts about them censoring stuff is concerning but idk how much truth to it there is 😳

I just want to be informed, and understand!

Hi! Welcome to AO3:)

since I'm not sure how much you know already, the background (background as interpreted by me: I am not speaking on behalf of the OTW) is: Ao3 is run by the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the nonprofit that also runs Fanlore and publishes Transformative Works & Cultures. Anyone who has donated $10 to the OTW in the last year, and chooses "yes I want to be a member" at checkout is an OTW member. (This is not the same as having an ao3 account.) Every year, there is an election to fill either 2 or 3 seats on the Board of Directors. OTW Members (i.e. people who donated between 7/1/21 and 6/30/22, in this case) get to vote on this.

Most of the time, this election is only really followed by people on fail_fandomanon. Sometimes, it isn't.

Things the Board of Directors does: writes posts to send out to the general public when Things Are Happening (the recent csam attacks, the requests for more antiracism measures.) Writes posts to send to volunteers when Things Are Happening (see prev.) Keeps track of what all the committees are doing and how it ties in with whatever the strategic plan says they should be doing. Deals with the IRS/US laws. Approves large funding requests. Deals with emails that someone else has deemed outside their own wheelhouse. Herds cats. Proposes priorities. Points at something shiny, pats the org on the flank, and says "walk that way, walk that way!! Come on buddy, you can do it!!". etc etc etc.

Things the Board of Directors doesn't do: unilaterally determine ao3 content policy. Let us use the word "porn" on ao3 drive merch. Make decisions that are going greatly affect other volunteers' work without input and some level of agreement from said volunteers.

Anyway. This year, one of the five candidates for the three open board seats is Tiffany G. (More information about all the candidates and their platforms is at https://elections.transformativeworks.org)

Tiffany is a tag wrangler from an unspecified country that is, from context, assumed to be China. The candidate Q&A can be read here. Her answers were a little bit confusing, but she said she wanted to update the ToS policies on 'pedophilic and illegal content' because, quote, "people think we host child porn content and such things... It might... be helpful to clarify that to the public." Further down she said:

a) I support 100% “maximum inclusiveness of content”, yet there is always a boundary to everything. Since OTW is already an influential org, we need to protect our image and hold a better image to the public. I want the public to think of us as an inclusive and socially responsible community. So in general, we have to do something to change. Things like making the rating system more specific and obvious to users will be what I want to do. b) Not really restricting the content being posted. I hope it is like more warnings and ratings for posting work so people know what to expect. And all of these are not surprising to people who do not wish to see this.

I took this to mean "she wants to clarify to outsiders that ao3 does not host csam, is not only for erotica, and update the ratings and warnings system." I don't think that those things are necessary or should be a focus of the org, which is part of why I didn't vote for her.

Other people took it to mean "Tiffany is against pornographic or underage works and wants them to be banned." Some people took this, combined with her nationality, to the conclusion of "Tiffany is a secret plant of the Chinese Communist Party who wants to join the board, get all the ao3 user data, and then have the users from mainland China arrested" (despite the fact that this is not information the board would have access to, if for no other reason than ao3 is blocked in China so anyone trying to view the site from mainland china has to use a VPN anyway.) Some people are upset that the OTW elections committee "allowed" her to run in the first place, because they think that not letting anyone with opinions the current board or elections committee didn't like is an absolutely great precedent to set.

There are a bunch of comments on tw.org, and some in fail_fandomanon, that give more context to her comments in terms of Chinese fandom (though most posters still disagree with her position.)

This got... longer than planned. But to the question "Is tiffany getting elected actually bad" - If my interpretation of her statements are correct, I think it would be annoying, because she does not have the experience I think that being on the Board requires, and focuses on priorities I disagree with. Which isn't to say she'd never have a valuable perspective or ideas about something, but there are four other candidates that I think are much better suited to it at this point in time. If the people who think she is an antishipper bent on censorship are correct, she could probably make life very annoying for the rest of the board-- but considering the rest of them are not pro-censorship, I can't see how she'd have much influence in that direction in the org as a whole.

If the people who think she's doing espionage on behalf of the CCP are correct, then... look, I can't even finish that sentence because I find the idea of the CCP deciding that a) they need to get ao3 user data and b) the way to do that is to run a clearly unqualified candidate in a public board election absurd.

the tl;dr of this tl;dr is that there's a lot of fearmongering going around, and a lot of accusations and hate (and racism. let’s be real a lot of this is racism) directed her way. I don't know her, so I don't know what her "real" opinions are, but regardless of who wins the board election, ao3 is not going to be censored any time soon.

if for no other reason than if the Abuse team was told on top of all their other work, they now had to assess and remove fics reported for being "problematic", they would say "we'd prefer not to" and then proceed to not do it.

It's awesome that people are realizing the board elections and OTW membership are a thing now, though. We kept talking about how to encourage membership, and "running a very dramatic and wanky election" did not occur to us. In retrospect, I don't know why.

[lurking-latinist]

(also I’d I’m allowed a second ask, I have to once again be predictable and query about the Aftermath Of Trial Story With Brax. because that sounds like a GREAT premise.)

no you may NOT make my askbox more interesting. HOW DARE. lol.

ok so this would be a sort of thematic sequel to The Wrong Idea, my fic about Brax during Invasion of Time. That one's all about Brax thinking the Doctor is a genuine traitor (and probably the real Deadly Assassin) and getting an entirely, well, wrong idea about who he's become.

(The Gallifreyan outsider's POV of the Doctor's career is fascinating--we get a bit of it with Spandrell and Engin in Deadly Assassin, but there's lots more potential. He's a well-connected ne'er-do-well who made the planet too hot to hold him in some unspecified way and fled. Arrested, tried, and convicted, he definitely cuts some kind of secret deal with the CIA [Season 6B]. He eventually leaves them--but does anybody really leave the CIA? they continue to use him for odd jobs--undergoes his sentence and becomes a mercenary. [I mean what would you call working for an alien paramilitary organization in exchange for nice clothes and fancy cars? Even if you don't technically draw a paycheque.] Having regenerated again he is arrested for the murder of the President, for which he gets off by the skin of his teeth, through the most transparent of legal fictions. We've all seen the way he behaves in IoT, even though it's unclear how much of that is eventually remembered. He runs off with the heiress of Heartshaven and apparently misplaces her in a different universe--for which he doesn't seem the least bit sorry. His public reputation, at least among those in the know, is a little better by Five's era, when at least they apologize for trying to execute him for no fault of his own, and he does some national heroics in The Five Doctors and ends up as President again. But then they depose him in absentia and he ends up on trial for his life again. He's a criminal turned the shadiest possible kind of politician turned public figure turned criminal again. Bear in mind that Brax is the respectable one.)

Sorry. Digression. What was I saying?

Oh, yeah, that was all of the misread-backstory that I'm not explaining. I really only have the concept of a scene from this that I'd like to build around. The only way I can make sense of Six not going back to look for Peri is if he tries, and there's some kind of temporal cordon around the whole space-time area that stops him getting there. He keeps getting stopped by CIA agents--proper ones, in uniform--and he's getting very frustrated. He makes a scene. Several scenes. Which reach the ears of Braxiatel, and even though he hasn't actually been part of a We Need To Do Something About Theta conversation for several centuries, he decides that we do, in fact, need to do something about Theta and goes off to find him and give him a talking-to about the terrible mess he's made of his life.

A bunch of old misunderstandings get hashed out, and this is how Brax and the Doctor get from where I left them at the end of The Wrong Idea to, you know, being able to speak to each other in the VNAs.

Oh yeah, I also wanted to do a scene set earlier, during Trial, during the court recess between Mindwarp and Vervoids, where Brax tries to convince the Doctor to accept a court defender. That scene would be a failed attempt at a reconciliation--from Brax's perspective he's trying to help save his thoroughly undeserving brother's life, but from the Doctor's he's just trying to get him ensnared in Gallifrey. And the Doctor, who doesn't know that Brax believes his adventures are those of a professional mercenary and paid agent, has no idea why Brax is treating him with ill-disguised contempt.