#ch: leo ashold

[tiredassmage]

sure, i'll use bounty hunter being one of the classes up for weeklies in swtor as an excuse to post len's growing list of nicknames for those he's grown fond of (it has developed into a sign of his affection if the name sticks, though he'd never admit this)

(these are all for other ocs, which does imply the need for me to nickname his crew as well. i'll have to workshop that.)

so. without further ado! callout post for len having a heart, i mean, len's silly little nicknames that he teases people (he likes) with:

Pup (for Shrike)

Runt (for Leo)

Spooks (for Yiress)

Sparkles (for Alucren)

Spikes (too apparent) Stripes (for Nikihlus)

... to be continued/I already feel like I'm missing some. The hell's with the 's' theme, too, old man kandflkansdfl;ksf

honorable mentions to blorbos belonging to @fromdeadstars

[viennen]

WIP Wednesday.

This is my first time doing this, so if I do smth wrong, plz tell me.

I've been working on this for a few weeks. Taken a while, cause of classes, but this is my take on Liv and Leo's last conversations before Leo leaves for Bergeren. I was thinking about what Leo could have done that was bad enough of an embarrassment for him and/or his father (Vorza) that he (Vorza) would decide being sent to Bergeron for a tour (military definition) was a suitable punishment. The next part to do is the argument between Father and Son.

In thinking about what would warrant such a punishment, I very much got vibes like that of what happened when Weiss snapped at the Beacon fundraiser/charity gala in Atlas in Volume 4 of RWBY.

In order to finish this WIP, I have a question/prompt for @tiredassmage: WTF happened? What exactly did Leo do? And how bad was it, that it warranted Bergeren?

A last Farewell?

Ashold home on Ziost.

Liv was in her room, a few books sprawled across her desk, while making notes on her datapad. Suddenly, she heard heavy footsteps come down the hall and stop outside her door. There was silence for a few minutes before she heard a knock at her door.

“Come in,” she called, continuing to make notes. The door opened, and Leo walked in. 

“Liv?” he called, not really wanting to disturb her if she was doing something, but he needed to talk to someone, and Viv or Xander would just make him worse. Liv looked at the door when he called her name, and a look of relief crossed her face.

“Leo!” she cried happily, then paused what she was doing and rushed over to him. She hugged him tightly. 

“Hey, I’m ok, Liv. I’m in one piece. Physically speaking, at least.” he stated, hugging her back. He guessed she must have heard something about what happened if she seemed this worried. Liv let go of Leo and stepped back. 

“I read the mission report. I’m sorry.” she replied. She couldn’t begin to understand how he felt about what had happened, but she knew he was hurting. She looked up at him and at the cybernetics now imbued into his face. “Does it hurt?” she asked, reaching up to touch it. She felt where the metal met his face. It felt strangely warm. She assumed that was just from the warmth of skin affecting the cold metal. Leo didn’t react to her touching it, and put this hand on top of hers. He’d missed having someone he could actually talk to about what happened. He could never talk to his father about what happened. The man was so staunch and strict about orders, and how things were done; he was sure if the mission was repeated, the outcome would have been the same, and he wouldn’t really have cared.

“Sometimes, but I’m used to it,” he replied, then let go when she dropped her hand. Only then did he realize she shouldn’t have been able to read the report.

“Hold on, no one outside the military has access to that report. How did you read it?” he asked. He was somewhat happy that she knew what had happened, so he didn’t have to relive it by explaining it, but he was curious. Liv hesitated a moment.

“I was worried about you, and Father left his study unlocked,” she replied. Leo raised an eyebrow. Their Father never left his study unlocked.

“Unlocked?” he asked questioningly. Liv hesitated again.

“More or less.” she replied. Leo smiled lightly.

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell him.” He replied, then looked up into her room. “What are you doing?” he asked, curious.

“Studying.” She replied, stepping back and letting him walk into her room. He picked up a datapad from her desk and skimmed it.

“The Academy exam?” he asked.

“What else?” Liv stated. “It’s the only thing I can do that’s not military or staying here.” she said. Leo paused. She was right. 

“I know it is,” he replied. “I worry about you, is all.” he explained. “And the Academy Exam is a big thing.” he said. He smiled. “You gonna be ready for it?” he teased. Liv smiled back at him. 

“Of course I am.” she replied. She took the datapad back from Leo and put it back on her desk. Before either of them could say anything else, there was a knock at the open door. They both turned to look and saw Celinya standing in the doorway. 

“Leo, he’s asking for you.” she stated. Leo sighed. He knew what was coming, but he also didn’t. He’d never done something this bad before, so he had no idea what the old man would decide for his punishment. 

“I’m coming.” he stated, and followed the Twi’lek out the door.

[tiredassmage]

it is exactly this kind of thought process that makes me subject even my blorbos who i never intended to be in the main character hotseat, let alone alliance commander kind of main character syndrome, to the kotxx electric boogaloo. there's a post or smth that lives rent free in my mind about something to the effect that "not so much blatantly out of character, but what circumstances would lead the character to do x or act in x manner" and smth about if you can find that you can make almost anything believable but it's that first part of the ~wisdom that's really given me a lot to chew on.

i think the only tech class i haven't super spent a lot of time plugging into the commander seat is bounty hunter, but len did make it that far at least once and i'll do it to him again now that i have a better grasp of who he is.

[i have too many blorbos so in the thought of sparing dashboards, let me put a cut]

if i get to die on the hill convincing muts and fellow swtor-ers that agent is actually an epic kind of character to put through the expansions then i'd die happy. it... makes sense to me in a way that idk if i can generally explain it very well and it's... incredibly individualized to what happens to the agent in their class story. tyr fits the role of commander in a way that i think some would still call surprisingly well, but there's the argument that what is 'commander' but another role or mask to play, and especially for someone like tyr who is invested in building his team because the better his team, the better he was able to do his own job, he's... a natural at it, really. and tyr has been the type that's been looking for a kind of change (in his life, in his own circumstances, maybe in the whole galaxy) for so long that regardless of being thrust into the commander's seat or not, he would've found himself in the alliance. a man so driven by his ideals finally getting an escape out of being a ghost in the rather binary system of the galaxy is almost a relief - sans, y'know, the ancient sith emperor bouncing around in his head, but he's dealt with migraines before, so it's another day that ends in y for cipher nine.

his trooper au edition handles it all with... a significantly less amount of grace, to put it nicely, lol. troopertyr was kinda unsteady by everything he endured in the class story era and the early expansions to begin with, and his anchor was his team, to keep things short. being shorn of that support network that helped build so much of his identity and sense of purpose brings out the worse edges of him. he unravels a lot under the pressure, but being in that kind of position, nobody else can afford to stop him and ask if he's okay, which lets him spiral pretty far and get into a series of behaviors that he'll loathe himself for and have to spend several years after the alliance is no longer in his hands (he doesn't want the pressure, and he'll turn down reinstatement to republic special forces even as he hands what remains of the alliance freely over to the republic and sets whoever doesn't want to go loose) trying to unlearn and recover from. arguably, the ex-co of havoc squad should be relatively well-prepared for a role like alliance commander, and that spin through the story really improved my thoughts on trooper and my love for it, but troopertyr i built a very... special kind of cocktail about how he came into special forces and havoc squad where it... wasn't really the best fit for him to be there to begin with, but it was the circumstances he was dealt, so the further pressures found the cracks that had already formed and just drove them deeper.

i have toyed around a little about what it'd do to leo, one of my smugglers - arguably one of the least qualified people to ever have to handle the situation based on his credentials and disposition for handling pressure and decisions, which.... naturally meant i just had to figure out sooner or later what it'd do to him, right? so, for leo, ending up with the whole valkorian problem and trying to wrangle the alliance starts with being in the wrong place at a really bad time, and it preys on his fears about loss. leo's not nearly as good an actor as my agents are - they're trained for those kind of scenarios so they come by it quite naturally in comparison, but at the end of the day, leo finds himself in situations often where he puts on some kind of mask to get through the situation. and he's desperate to protect the few people he cares about. he's a much smaller picture kind of person, rather than the grand overarching picture of the galaxy and its interwoven problems that most of my other characters have. leo making a deal with valkorian is less, initially, about personal power or ruling an empire as it is a don't hurt them. which is easy enough for valkorian - it's not really a lie to say they won't come to harm by his hand when they're barely significant enough for valkorian to notice, right? and not that leo is.... gullible, exactly, but he's... scared in that kind of scenario. scared enough to lose the few people he loved, and astronomically stressed and overwhelmed by the impossible nature of the task set before them, and not particularly a good leader. i think valkorian can manipulate him into spinning taking over zakuul as the kind of... become more powerful so they can't touch you kind of narrative. a bit similarly to what leo thinks of his reputation in the wake of nok drayen's treasure and taking down the voidwolf. no reason to not take advantage of the power and the fame in the ways he can, and double down on keeping the claws at hand gripping desperately to the precarious position it puts him in to have that kind of notoriety, right? it's.... incredibly unideal for him in a lot of ways, and something that could arguably make him worse without a counter from one of his old gang of friends and beloveds to steady his perspective on things. he doesn't become malicious out of ill-intent, exactly, but he... can be driven to lock down and lash out in the interest of self-preservation and protecting the few people he cares for. if he's going to be forced to run this shitshow, he'll.... make it work for them. it has to work... this is what they want, right? right?

and len is... on a superficial, baseline thought it's... it can be as simple as the fact that the man doesn't know how to turn down a challenge. he's bullheaded. and while he's "smart" enough to know in the throne room he can't simply put a blaster bolt through the immortal ex-sith emperor and solve everything so simply, so take his deal, he is also incredibly, belligerently independent and stubborn in a 'this is good advice, but don't tell me what to do' fashion that ends up making him mouthy with valkorian, anyway. and len, thankfully(?), has a background in imperial black ops prior to his career as a bounty hunter that gives him some military training in addition to his several years as a hunter and experience in the great hunt that make him a prepared fighter and, admittedly, a surprisingly decent leader as far as assigning forces. he's not the most emotionally available man there ever was, and as mouthy and belligerent as he's known to be, he also knows tossing his head too much and trying to fight being given the reins on the alliance won't actually achieve any of their goals for anyone. he'll still make comments about it, sure, he's got a reputation to maintain, after all. can't have all these whelps thinking he's gone soft or somethin' on 'em. but he's also nothing if not a man about getting his jobs done, and this is another job. and he fucking hates losing. xD

smushing every class into the Commander role isn't the best decision storywise but asking how your particular character adapts to the role - whether they're unfitting or not - is always very good for the creative cogs

[tiredassmage]

leo "if i don't start getting answers, i might just start frying people!" ashold + the circus crew runaways on rishi

[tiredassmage]

oc insights - what kind of love are you?

You know I love me a uquiz that'll diagnose the blorbos. Thank you so much for the tag @commander-krios! <3 Quiz link! I'm once again behind on tags 'n stuff, so if you see this and you wanna do it! :0 I'm tagging you!!!

This one turned out to be a delicious one because I could NOT stop putting my little guys in here. Activating my gotta catch 'em all instincts kaldnf;ladsfn. Eventually this just became a challenge to see if I could collect all of the results. I'm a little sorry I'm like this alkdfn;lkadsf /lh

tyr deckard - love as a threshold

Your love does not ask for much. Your love does not take. Your love is free, and unquestioned, and here for wherever needs it. When you fall in love, it is as gentle as a breath in the night. It is quiet, and it is effortless. It is tender. If your love was a house, it would readily welcome all who come through. If your love was a hearth, it would warm the hands of whoever stopped by, whether for a day, a month, a year, or forever. When you fall for someone, it is without strings, without conditions, without need. You love for the sake of loving, for the sake of caring for those who need it. You love with a giver’s heart and a giver’s hands and are made so much stronger for it. Being loved by you is to always feel at home. Your love may not always be well-received by those unprepared to linger, but it is unforgettable all the same.

alucren ellery - love as a performance

Your love is a masquerade, a dance, a work of art. You love with a veil across your face, unable to allow anyone to see the real you. Can that be considered love, you wonder? As a performer, you have all your lines prepared, and you know exactly what to say and when to say it. You’re charismatic and bold, seductive and hypnotic. Your love is a snake’s melody, the siren song of the sea. Your love is enchanting. Your love is melodic. Your love is afraid and fearful and longing. You ache to tear the veil off, you ache to cast poetry aside for the sake of something real and gritty. You’re terrified of the very thought. Being loved by you is to be loved by an artist; it is to be a muse. It reflects others beautifully, but never, ever yourself. Not really. Not truly.

leo ashold - love as a flaw

Cowering, your love hides in the dark. In shadows and under cover of night, your love runs from corner to corner, afraid to linger, afraid to be caught. Afraid, afraid, afraid of everything. When you fall in love, it is with alarm bells ringing. Your love is a mistake, a flaw in the code, a purchase you don’t remember making and desperately want to return. You didn’t ask for this. You didn’t want this. It’s a problem–– your problem ––and you would do anything to pass it off, burn it away, scoop it out of you with bare hands, or carved out with hooked knives before it can destroy you. Get it out, just get it out now. You don’t care who you hurt in the process, only that you can’t afford to be hurt first. Being loved by you is to be loved by a figment of the imagination. It is to be loved in halves, or not at all.

lensan ryaldar - love as a force of nature

Your love is like whiplash –– it comes in with the rain, it blows the doors wide open. When you fall in love, it is sudden and hard and immense. It is powerful. It is earth-shaking and world-ending. Nature is a force, and that force can be destructive if you're not careful. See how the world is doused in gasoline and set on fire –– your love consumes, your love takes, your love burns. You're hot and cold all at once, a hurricane and a wildfire bound together in skin, and when you're in love, it can feel like it's eating you alive from the inside out. When you love, it is with everything you have because it is everything you have. Be careful, darling, because not everyone survives the storm.

rhyst delavast - love as the dawn

Pastel, saccharine and hopeful, your love rises slow to greet the day. It tiptoes on doe feet and blossoms bit by bit, petal by petal. Love is new to you, isn’t it? A fresh discovery in a world you do not quite understand. Your love loves with bated breaths. Your love swoons and sighs and lingers under awnings. Your love romanticizes. Your love aches as tenderly as a bruise. You’re swollen with desire and idealizations. The perfect kiss, the perfect touch, the perfect partner in life. Your love is wide-eyed and innocent, naive and pristine and oh, so very easily breakable. Being loved by you is to be loved by a child, by a lamb, wooly-eyed and helpless. Oh. I really hope it lasts.

ambrose harding - love as youth

Your love is buoyant. Your love is bountiful. It is ageless, and it will never age. When you fall in love, it is breathless. It is joyful and endless, it is magnificent. You think it, like your youth , will last forever. Youth is eternal, and so is your love. Your love skips rocks and tells stories, your love roasts marshmallows over fires, and laughs freely. Your love does not take itself too seriously. Your love is jumping into puddles just to watch the water splash, and dancing in the rain, and it is watching Sunday morning reruns of cartoons to feel young once more. Your love is forever, forever young. Being loved by you is to be loved by the summer months. And those never end, do they? Well, I won’t tell if you don’t.

okay so there's 2 results i'm missing but my brain's shutting down on feeding more blorbos to the quiz mines so this is where i'll finally stop xD /lh

[tiredassmage]

I forget if I queued any of the boy's more recent adventures, but I think I shall return to them today, so have a 'Leo is wondering what he's doing in the narrative' collection <3

[tiredassmage]

out of one major inconvenience and into the next, my boy! <3

[tiredassmage]

LEO ASHOLD + TEXT POSTS

medic. gay disaster. imperial defector. smuggler.

[tiredassmage]

need this man to have the confidence to be more pissy in more situations. leo, babe, it's a great look on you <3

[tiredassmage]

So I started blastin'!

[tiredassmage]

what type of villain are you?

your honor, i do love a good uquiz diagnosing the diseases and problems of my fictional characters and also i might be slightly procrastinating a final paper. saw this one from @sasslett and simply could not resist :3 quiz link! for those who'd like.

swtor edition first!

tyr deckard - then let me be evil

You never wanted to hurt anyone, but the world never gave you a choice. You did the best you could with what you had, but every innocent mistake you made was held against you when it counted, every crossroads led you down the wrong path no matter which way you went. No matter what you did, the odds were stacked against you. It wasn't fair, and you are sick and tired of being told what a monster you are for things out of your control. Well, fine. They want a monster? YOU'LL GIVE THEM A MONSTER!

alucren ellery - the betrayer

You like to do things up close and personal. As personal as you can get. You are an excellent actor, and you do adore putting on a smile knowing your worst enemy, the one you hate the most, doesn't suspect a thing when they tell you their deepest secrets. Your only motivation is revenge, and revenge you shall get. Perhaps you loved them once, long ago, but any fondness for your target you once felt has long since warped and twisted into perverse obsession, laced with malice and venom and seething hatred. Good or evil does not matter to you. All that matters is they get what they deserve.

leo ashold - the coward

You didn't have another choice, honest! Have these people SEEN what the heroes are up against? It'd end you in an instant, whether that be a lovecraftian abomination with a hold on your soul, a rampaging monster that's destroying more than a hurricane and an earthquake could in one fell swoop, a shadow organization that has tabs on everyone you love and will end them in an instant, or just a particularly grumpy boss that might yell at you if you don't fall in with his excessively tyrannical methods, you can't go risking your neck for the poor saps that think they can stop it. No way, you're staying on the bad guy side, where it's SAFE.

rhyst delavast - for the greater good

Perhaps you do not believe what you are doing can truly be classified as evil. Perhaps some people will be hurt from the immediate consequences of your actions, but what the masses fail to see is the immense good that will come of your plans. Maybe you act in the name of science, or for your people who have fallen on great tragedy. Maybe you see cracks in a failing system and want to uproot it through chaotic, destructive means to avoid greater tragedy down the line. Maybe you're just in with a bad crowd, but you can't leave them, no matter how unsavory their intentions, because they're your only ticket to your ultimate goals. No matter what, your goals are noble, and you take no joy in wreaking havoc or hurting those in your way, but the evils you partake in are necessary. If you need to play the bad guy to ensure a better future, then you are willing to play that part.

savosta - no moral compass

You are cold, analytical, and you strive to be as objective as a person of flesh and blood can be. Either don't understand the concepts of good and evil, or you understand it perfectly and think it's a load of bull. Some may call you selfish, some may call you unfeeling, but you're just doing what you believe will yield the best results, plain and simple. Why bother with petty ideals of right or wrong when you can do what will actively help those you give a fuck about? Your goals may be selfish or noble or anything in between, but you will not let anyone make you feel like garbage for going after them. You couldn't care less about what people brand you as. You just care about getting shit done by any means necessary.

[tiredassmage]

Guess who’s back, back again~

[tiredassmage]

beloved disaster <3

[tiredassmage]

for the meme: ignore the fact i already know this im saying it for the bit because it's funny but i think leo likes to wear kitty cat ears and a collar with a bell on it and be called a pretty pretty princess <3 (im sorry leo this is the only thing i can think of) (i will send an actual real one as soon as i think of one)

He'd probably be more upset with me for posting this publicly about him if he wasn't so busy blushing in that little headband of his trying to insist that there's not a part of him that is considering kicking his feet like a schoolgirl but if this gets out to anyone on his crew, the fallout would devastate another star system.

Risha never forgets. This might be one thing that she'd consider wanting to if she finds out. Corso might half-know already in the sense that you can call Leo "princess" on a regular blue sky day and probably get a response out of him that - even if it is feigning at being mildly perturbed - probably still sees him blushing a few minutes later and getting more and more insistent he's Fine, quit looking at him like that.

[Do we tell the general public this started with the bunny ears? What's Leo gonna do, stop me??]

Anyway. Yes. Deep beneath the guy who insists he doesn't care about his own appearances even as he fusses over his partners' hair looking nice is a soft ooey-gooey center who really just wants to be told he did something even like. okay. okay even, not even good. for once in his life. And sometimes dressing like a silly little rabbit about it makes him happy. Way happier than he ever would've thought it would and honestly? He deserves that. He deserves to have a little fun with it. He's cute and he should get to hear it.

[tiredassmage]

anyway. your honor. back at it again at the krispy kreme.

[tiredassmage]

the prodigal goblin son returns <3