#changeling troubles

[crewofthegoldrush]

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about time i drew everybody all together! short character bios under the cut -

from my Eberron campaign, Montgomery is a dragonborn artificer/rogue ex-sheriff turned bounty hunter following banishment from her clan. She is currently the first mate of the airship The Gold Rush. Her signature weapons are her rifle, The Last Roundup, and her steel defender CHECKM8, who protects the entire party. Her girlfriend Aubrey is a changeling rogue assassin spy turned traitor who started the campaign as a villain. She is now a party ally and The Gold Rush's quartermaster. Her signature weapon is her pistol, Queen's Gambit, and she specializes in poison damage.

from my Witchlight campaign, Bailey is a tabaxi rogue urchin who grew up on the streets alone. He was transformed into a cat after he stumbled into the Feywild, and he believes he is on a quest to commit as many good deeds as it takes to change himself back. He dreams of some day leaving the streets to become a hero. His signature weapon is his unicorn horn rapier, Lady Amalthea. Toil & Trouble are two trouble making Brigganocks that took part in a side quest rescue mission. After a fight with a Witch, they decided to tag along with Bailey. On their backs are will-o-wisps that represent their souls. They know some versatile spells like Meld with Stone, Faerie Fire, and Spare the Dying

[innytoes]

Dark fantasy AU?

-In hindsight, as he's being chased through the forest, hunted by mythical creatures is not where Reggie thought he'd end up when his folks told him they were moving to Los Angeles. Honestly, considering how he used to roam the woods and fields near his Meemaw's farm, the fact that he'd stumbled into a fairy circle near the beach was almost insulting.

-It's not even that he manages to outrun them. It's that one night (he thinks it's night, though time moves differently here and light and dark are all tangled up and is the purple haze of the sky supposed to be dusk or dawn or just a dark stop of the forest?) he'd decided to just... give up.

He couldn't remember how long he'd been running, running from the pounding of hooves and the yapping of dogs that did not look anything like what a dog should look like. He couldn't remember a time where he wasn't hungry, or thirsty, or tired, but something inside of him just kept making him run and run and run

-But he'd had enough. So he just sat down, with his back towards the noise, and hoped they'll kill him quickly. And to comfort himself, he sang the lullaby his Meemaw used to sing when he was scared of the thunder.

-That's what saved him. One of the fae, Caleb, was so charmed by the song that instead of doing whatever it is they did with their prey, he bundled Reggie up and took him to his... castle. Dwelling. Domain.

-He was dressed in finery and made to sing as Caleb and the other fae danced and ate and did things that Reggie very much had not wanted to see, thank you very much. But eventually, they slept, and Reggie met... the other humans who were trapped here.

-Luke, a young boy who had run away from home to become a musician in 1875. He was distraught to hear Reggie tell him it was the nineties now. Even more distraught when Reggie clarified it was the 1990s.

-There was Alex, who had been cast out of his village for reasons he did not want to share, but that Reggie figured out pretty quickly when he saw the way he looked at Willie. He'd fallen asleep near a fairy circle, and the promises he'd been made had been so tempting, he'd said yes before he fully understood the deal.

-And then there was Willie. The boy who had been stolen from his parents, a changeling left in his place. Who had grown up here, a part of this world yet not really. Who did not know what the other boys meant when they talked about years, or America, or really the whole concept of 'family'.

-Luke's the one who tells them of their escape plan. Alex is worried they can't trust Reggie not to rat him out to Caleb, and Reggie is like: um excuse me I was just hunted for sport for who knows how long you think I wanna help that guy?

-But before he can Willie just tilts his head and says: his heart is pure.

-Which is very sweet but also a little creepy.

-Anyway, they do manage to escape Caleb's clutches somehow, and end up back in the human world.

-Being yeeted out of a little ring of mushrooms in the soil of a plant Ray overwatered in the big plant wall of the Molina studio was not particularly pleasant, okay. Considering a real human should not be able to fit through that. But Willie explained that as soon as a fairy portal grew, it was only a manner of time that the fairies would notice it and stake it out to see what they could lure to their realm.

-Somehow, Luke and Alex get thrown clear across the room, Luke slamming against the door, Alex dropping onto the concrete floor.

-Reggie's not sure if him crashing against a pretty wooden piano is better or worse. The sound it made was definitely worse.

-Somehow, Willie ends up sitting crosslegged on the little piano bench, and he turns and quickly crushes up the mushrooms to destroy the portal.

-Julie, of course, is screaming, Alex and Luke and Reggie are screaming. Willie is trying to explain to Julie she over-watered her fern and pouts when she runs away.

-No they're not ghosts but they are changed and they all have weird powers. Luke nearly cries with joy that he can still summon his guitar. Alex is really not okay with this whole 'walking through walls' thing. Reggie is sad he cannot summon a puppy or a pizza.

-Willie can teleport short distances and is shocked to learn humans can't just do that? You have to walk everywhere? Or ride a horse. What's a car? What's roller skates? He needs to see one of these skateboad things immediately, let's summon the human girl back to ask for one. What can they trade for a skateboard?

-They're kind of freaked out at the whole 2020 thing, but hey, Reggie's like: at least it hasn't been a hundred years like when I told Luke about the 90s.

-Queue canon but it's even worse and more chaotic.

[postsfromtheportalfuture]

(sorry I don't know how to format this in any way)

Snowonwinter asked onesmallstep

So, did you ever find out what the Changelings thing was about? I'm looking at doing pre history next year, and will be heading to earth for my foundation year - is that something I need to know about? I can't find any information by searching.

onesmallstep:

buddy, i have learned enough about changelings and runners in the past week to give me nightmares for a lifetime.

from what i can gather based on the helpful links that other users on this site have sent me, it's a topic that's not very well known outside of Earth, and it's not going to be covered in your foundation course, if that's what you're asking.

that being said, i do think it's something that people in every sector should learn about, ESPECIALLY history and medical students who are coming to Earth for their studies. it's one of truly dark parts of human history, but it's something that Earth children have to come to terms with at a very young age, something that continues to affect them to this day, and as guests on their planet the least we can do to show them proper respect as our hosts is to not turn a blind eye to all the terrible things that have been done to them.

[HERE] is a helpful link from University Earth America, for an article titled "Changelings and Runners: How a centuries-old tragedy continues to affect the children of today"

trigger warnings for: child abduction, murder, generational trauma, genocide, systemic discrimination, dehumanisation

#changelings and runners #cw changelings and runners #history #offworlder

[roraimae]

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: James Kirk

By Ames

We’re starting a new blog collection here on A Star the Steer Her By in which we’re shining the spotlight on each main character, series by series. It’s mostly so I don’t have to think of new topics every week, but it will also be a fun time to consider our favorite moments from all our Starfleet friends, and also some moments in which they don’t come out so shining.

Of course, we’re kicking it off with the man himself, Captain James Tiberius Kirk! He’s the model captain in a lot of ways, helped by the fact that he’s the first one we really get to meet and see as a fully realized character. He swashbuckles. He kisses SO many women. He juliennes fries. He does it all! Join us below and in this week's podcast discussion (Shat Chat starts at 1:08:30) as we boldly go with the biggest name in Trek.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best Moments

Leave any bigotry in your quarters In the season 1 episode “Balance of Terror,” Kirk shows us the kind of forward-thinking, inclusive captain he is, telling Stiles, “Leave any bigotry in your quarters. There's no room for it on the bridge.” It’s good to see our heroes making anti-racist statements like this, whether that be back in the 60s or today.

The advanced trait of mercy By refusing to kill the Gorn in “Arena,” Kirk impressed both the Metron and the viewers by showing that compassion and belief in the right to coexist can trump hate and war. These lizard-faced bullies may be our enemy, but Kirk reveals that deep down under that rubber suit and disco-ball eyes, we’re all just people.

No Kill I Similarly, not long after that episode, we see Kirk again protect a species being treated as the villain, this time the Horta in “Devil in the Dark.” And it’s a good thing too, because the Horta made it onto lists of both our favorite characters from TOS and our favorite races from TOS!

A dazzling display of logic We could have listed each time Kirk talks a computer to death, but our favorite was when he outsmarts Nomad in “The Changeling.” It was an impressive showing of quick thinking and cunning to make the robot admit he was in error and thus require sterilization. Unlike Kirk in this moment, this unit was not perfect.

My dear Captain Koloth The way Kirk wraps up the mystery at the end of “The Trouble with Tribbles” is spellbinding, like a good Agatha Christie story. He sees through disguises, he finds the culprit, he saves the grain! But all that is slight in comparison to how he gets one over on the smarmy Koloth, and it just feels so good to rub it in his goateed face.

A royal fizzbin An honorable mention on our list but worth including comes in one of the best comedy episodes of the franchise: “A Piece of the Action.” While many of the moments were clever and amusing indeed, it was Kirk’s spontaneous invention of fizzbin as a way to distract the gang members that we’d wager on any day.

Competition on the bridge This one is a more subtle moment, but worth a little bit of accolade. Kirk is fully ready to browbeat Decker for contradicting him on the bridge during the incident with the space potato in The Motion Picture, but when Kirk understands that Decker had more information on the subject than him, it makes for a humanizing and humbling scene.

Hours will seem like days Sure, this one might be a little bit more of a Spock moment, but we’ll count it for Kirk anyway. The Wrath of Khan is just full of tactical moves, strategy, and outwitting your opponent. And kudos to Kirk because his opponent is a superhuman genius. And whether it be 3D thinking, hacking into computer defenses, or using coded messages, he got it done!

His was the most… Human One of Kirk’s most praise-worthy moments (or maybe just one of Shatner’s) is the whole ending of The Wrath of Khan. His scene with the dying Spock is stunning. McCoy and Scotty having to hold him back from the contaminated chamber is some nice work. But the cherry on top of this tragic sundae is that lip quiver during a perfectly delivered eulogy.

I have had enough of you! On the flip side of that, there’s just something about Shatner’s delivery in dispatching Kruge in The Search for Spock that transcends campiness and ends up great. Is it the punctuating kicks? Is it the Shatnerian pauses? Is it Christopher Lloyd spinning off like a CGI paper doll into some flames? It’s all of it.

Row, row, row your boat Say what you will about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, but it’s actually got some good moments scattered throughout a lot of weirdness. And one of those highlights is the whole camping scene. I’d put it almost entirely on the charm of McCoy or the delightful strangeness of the marshmellon dispenser, but Kirk’s little speech about death and being alone is up there too.

Excuse me. What does God need with a starship? Okay, I just couldn’t help myself with this one. Again, there’s a whole lot of The Final Frontier that doesn’t work, and having some kind of god entity running amok is weird no matter how you slice it, but Kirk deciding not to put up with his nonsense is just classic Kirk. If only he’d tried to talk it to death...

—

Worst Moments

I’m Captain Kirk!!!! Some people could dismiss Evil Kirk’s behavior in the deeply problematic “The Enemy Within” because it’s just his villainous half conducting it. But we are not those people. Listen, if any half of your personality is a rapist, that is just not okay, and the fact that Kirk and crew just barely support Yeoman Rand during this ordeal before sending her away is disgraceful.

Untended space seedlings While it does lead to one of the best Star Trek movies (to some, the best overall), Kirk’s decision to strand Khan and his followers (and a Starfeet officer as well!) on some planet in “Space Seed” strikes us as just plain unfounded when you actually think about it. Is this how Starfleet sentences people? And then to never go back and check on him just adds neglect to insult.

A rice-picking accident There’s a ton in The Original Series that doesn’t age well, and it’s kind of a shame that an episode as good as “The City on the Edge of Forever” has such a cringe-worthy moment. But when Kirk proclaims to the police officer that his friend here is obviously Chinese and the ears are like that because of a rice-picking accident, it’s tough to set our jaws straight again.

Clouded judgment Throughout the season 2 episode “Obsession,” we see Kirk at probably his least professional. He puts the whole crew in danger because of some old grudge (and who can even say this is the same cloud as the one he encountered before? It’s a CLOUD!). For a captain as competent and cool-headed as he’s been portrayed to be, this is not a good day for Jim.

Brothels are the best medicine Kirk just plain wears his incompetence on his sleeve when he keeps leaving Scotty alone with women in “Wolf in the Fold.” Just, over and over again! Perhaps this episode’s main problem is that the writer decided that having one bad experience with women will turn you into a sexist asshole, but frankly, Kirk should have known better anyway.

Serpents for the Garden of Eden This infamous action made it deep into the “Don’t do this!” corner of our Prime Direction chart a while back, and for good reason! Kirk deciding to supply the Hill People with guns in “A Private Little War” is unconscionable. I know we break the Prime Directive all the time, but it’s usually for a better reason than “the Klingons started it”!

Keep it in your toga, Kirk While we usually just roll our eyes and go with it when Kirk smooches all the women (so many women!) throughout The Original Series, it is just uncomfortable to watch his scene with Drusilla in “Bread and Circuses.” She has no ability to consent because she is Claudius’s slave. And when he lends her to Kirk for the night and Kirk goes to town, I vomit in my mouth. Bad, Kirk! Bad!

Any excuse to play dress up While “The Enterprise Incident” ended up on a couple of our Tops lists from TOS, you do have to admit that Kirk’s plan to get himself captured by Romulans, convince them he was acting alone by being a jerk to his crew for days (if not weeks?), fake his own death via the Vulcan death grip, and then return dressed only slightly in Romulan makeup is absolutely convoluted.

One big happy fleet While we described above some of the mastermind planning that Kirk exhibits in The Wrath of Khan, it was just a fool’s move to refuse to raise shields against the looming Reliant. Saavik outright quotes General Order 12 and how you are required to raise shields when communication cannot be made, but Kirk has the wool thoroughly over his eyes at that point.

I need my pain “I don’t want my pain taken away; I need my pain,” says Kirk in The Final Frontier. While the sentiment is there and the message sounds a little like what Kirk had once said in “This Side of Paradise,” there’s just something about this scene that Chris wanted to make sure landed on our list. It’s somewhere between the Shatner acting and the Shatner writing that it falls flat.

They’re animals Ya know how we were just commending the captain for speaking up when Stiles was being a racist twat? Well, when suddenly Kirk is calling all Klingons “animals” in The Undiscovered Country and stating that we should “let them die” (even Koloth?!), it’s kind of a bad look, and frankly a little bit rushed as a character element. This is not the Kirk we know and love.

A bridge too far In Generations, Kirk gets dealt a death scene so milquetoast and unsatisfying that it sours our final impressions of the character. Not only does the movie end up barely using him, as does the fist fight with Malcolm McDowall look like two old men puttering around, but to get crushed by a bridge just seems like an insult to a character we loved for so many years. Oh my.

— Surely, that’s all skipping over a lot of other great or lamentable Kirk moments from across the series. What did we miss? What were your favorite moments from the command gold of yore? We’ll have more character scutiny next week, as Spock is up on the chopping block, so definitely keep your eyes on this space, follow along as we start a full watchalong of Enterprise over on SoundCloud or wherever you podcast, transport over to Facebook and Twitter, and watch out for that Finney-eject button! It’s so perilously close to the coffee button!

[changeling-rin]

Hi, I just binge-read your fic and first of all, it's SO great ?? Your writing style is immaculate, like I definitely laughed out loud several times, but you also master dramatic descriptions so well ! So thank you for this wonderful fic !

However, I am having a bit of a struggle understanding its state. From scrolling through your blog I saw several things that have not happened yet in the fic (like mentions of 'Oni'). I understood that it was a rewriting, but is the original fic still somewhere ? And also, do you plan on continuing writing this ? I'd love to read the rest but know how hard writing can get...

(Last little comment : even if you said you didn't enjoy writing it, the trains fight were amazing. Steam's first appearance is what made me go from "reading a nice fic" to "I think I am replacing some of my braincell with this fic" lmao)

I started writing DL on FF.net, and I got pretty far along before deciding that some things needed an overhaul. I believe there are 59 chapters total?

So if you're reading the AO3 version, which I only began to upload after I started rewriting (and thus made the executive decision to not deal with the hassle of changing everything the way that FF.net was having to deal with), then there's about thirty or so chapters of content that you just... haven't seen

This would be where Oni comes from, and also probably everything else you're seeing that doesn't quite make sense yet!

And also, I one-hundred-percent plan on continuing. I know it's been a while, and I apologize for that, but I'm plugging away at the next chapter as best as I'm able. I am currently 7,107 words in and am attempting a schedule of 500 words a day; I would estimate that I'm about halfway done, given everything that I want to cover. (I seem to have made the mistake of writing myself into a mindscape battle, and somehow this has made things worse than the trains ever were. I don't know why this is, but I'm annoyed about it, and I will be finishing this story through sheer spite if absolutely nothing else)

[kyofsonder]

❤️ Happy WorldBuilding Wednesday! ❤️

What are your cities or towns like? Feel free to talk about the layouts or the people or the architecture, etc. and to talk about more than one if you'd like!

Happy WorldBuilding Wednesday (what's left of Wednesday where I live) and thank you for the ask, this was really helpful to think about! It actually answered some of the questions I had about the plot of A Place to Return, one of my novel WIPs I've been stuck on for awhile.

It's long-winded as usual, so I'm putting my answer under a cut.

As a refresher for those who've seen me talk about it before and a quick summary for those who haven't, APtR is about a pair of boys who live on different worlds: a version of Earth similar to ours and a fantasy world called Ryedenne. When they're still preteens, they switch bodies and the story revolves around them growing up in cultures that are completely unfamiliar to them and having to pretend that they understand how these worlds work and that they belong in lives that aren't truly their own.

A lot of that story takes place on the (unnamed) main continent of Ryedenne, and the towns and cities there are what I thought about to answer this question.

A lot of the culture on [unnamed continent] is defined be 2 things: people's occupations and a berserker curse that affects people and animals almost entirely at random. It manifests at any age, hitting its most violent and unpredictable stage in the summer months. As a result, the cities here are shaped around career schools (called training halls), headquarters for specific careers (work halls), and the facilities (sealing and sanctuary halls) used to quarantine the cursed during violent surges and protect the non-cursed.

The average village has one sanctuary hall, the average town has a sanctuary hall and at least one work hall, and most cities have at least one sanctuary hall, at least one sealing hall (an official one that isn't just someone's house or a blocked off cave), at least one work hall, and at least one training hall. Sealing halls are typically situated on the outskirts of towns and cities to they avoid casualties if the cursed escape and to act as barriers against new arrivals.

The bigger the city, the more each work and training hall gets to diversify. Instead of occupational categories being grouped together in wings of a building or in singular offices, they can each have their own independent halls. This means that bugger cities are more valued, and those who got their training done there are more desired by customers, clients, etc. Smaller cities are seen as way-points and places where traveling workers gather temporarily. Towns are often seen as places for the untrained and the retired. Villages are seen as resting places for merchants and shoddy sanctuary from the curse and not much more.

Leo, the APtR lead born on Ryedenne, grows up in a village and has to travel to a distant city for mercenary training -- just like his older brothers did for medical training. Owen, the lead born on Earth, doesn't see this village for years. By the time he does get to visit, he prefers to stick close to cities in case the curse that manifested in him as a teenager spikes and he has to turn himself in to a sealing hall for a few weeks or months to keep others safe and avoid legal punishment.

I still have a lot of development to do for these cities, this continent, and the APtR story itself but this really helped me put their hierarchy and facilities into perspective and give me a better hold on Ryedenne as a world. So again, thank you for this ask!

[waspgrave]

My dnd character got to do The Romantic Cheek Touch as they talk about emotions and share secrets (her being a changeling and him showing his face) to her love interest yesterday and oof…Romance *is not acknowledging the traumas or the horrors*

[missing-sector]

What if instead of dolls they were ukagaka/ghosts?

Made with the help of this tutorial: https://www.ashido.com/ukagaka/walkthrough.html Designs heavily inspired by this work of art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jigpuThh3Qo

[bread-blogs]

If I may intrude upon this post with a couple of shots that made me burst out laughing

I just love star trek TOS so much???? Like it's so good and so stupid at the same time xD i can't watch it with a straight face xD The amount of absurdity is unimaginable xDDDD and it's still so good dunno if it's 60's TV or smth but they make it too good

[ficandkaboodle]

Analyses of Most Ghost Characters be like…

Terzo was a tragic and extremely deep figure who, based off observations provided by his ghouls and Bishop Necropolitis, was a brilliant mind whose ideas were bastardized and squandered, which resulted in a disappointed and bitter husk of a man who still made an effort to display kindness. However, we will likely never truly know the full story of who he was because he lied so damn often.

Most of how we perceive Secondo is arguably the result of Sister badmouthing him as well as ghouls being brutally candid about how he acted in interviews. However, there’s reason to believe Secondo might’ve been just as multifaceted as Terzo, in that he wasn’t being his complete self to the audience. There’s evidence that could suggest Secondo did not enjoy being Papa in its entirety so much as the perks, which were ironically also hindered by him being Papa at the end of the day. It’s not hard to interpret him as someone who might not have enjoyed being a part of the bloodline at the end of the day because of what it meant he had to sacrifice.

Copia is a manchild, likely as a result of how he grew up: Orphaned, likely a social outcast, very likely undiagnosed. As a result, he might’ve become convinced that the only way to rise above it was to become someone worthy of adoration: Papa. But even after he ascended, his troubles didn’t stop: He had to learn his parentage, didn’t address the fact that his brothers were now dead, and spent the last few months he had with the woman he now knew was his mother dissociating because he developed a fear of death. This fear, mind you, that easily ties back into the theorized likelihood that he placed his self-worth into his success. And this is before getting into his willingness to be a puppet —

Papa Nihil’s complexities come in the form of his tendencies to escape reality and the consequences these brought. He was very likely an absent father, which would have had effects on his sons (say, attention-seeking tendencies; a distrust in authority; abandonment issues). In fact, the only things he seems to seek from his youth is his extremely short-lived music career and his unstable relationship with a woman who ultimately kept quiet about their son(s) they conceived together and ultimately played his lust and delusions against him to play nepotism. And by leaning into this, he got his own children killed. He only “became a father” after he died, and it’s sad that he actually seems his most lucid then. What’s all the more mind-boggling and makes you wonder about his tenure is his ability to be in the moment and try and convince Cardi to learn to do the same. It makes you curious: Was Nihil actually a good Papa when he wasn’t distracted?

Sister Imperator is willfully emotionally constipated and will justify it as being “for the good of the church”. She has definitely been affected by her decisions and what she’s done, from her relationship with Nihil to her giving up her babies and watching them at a distance, only interacting from a work standpoint. She lies, keeps secrets, has people killed off, all to tie her spawn into the position as Papa, which is curious considering her position means she’s already above the station of Papa. She does care about Cardi, but she doesn’t care for him the way he needs to be and, as a result, arguably only exacerbates his anxious tendencies. She’s an extremely interesting character but it’s so easy to water her down to just being manipulative and evil.

………………

Analyses of Primo —

Primo is fucking crazy man I don’t — Like, he might be a serial killer; he would punch a panda for profit; we aren’t even entirely certain he’s human like I would legit headcanon that Primo is a changeling and the fandom would run with it because what choice do we have, he honestly actually could be!!!

[ladykailitha]

Steve is powered AU.

It's after Vecna and the Upside Down collapsing on itself before anyone finds out.

When Steve was seven, his mother had a psychotic break, saying that Steve was a changeling and tried to drown him the large bath tub in his parents' bathroom.

It was during this time she was admitted to Pennhurst.

They're cleaning up the Harrington Estate when his mother comes home and just starts screaming about the mess. Steve finally gets her calm down and tells Eddie that she didn't always used to be that way, she used to be a sweet and loving mother.

That's when Stella Harrington comes screaming back in that she didn't change. He did. He was the imposter. She knows her son and this creature before her isn't him.

But she won't explain how she knows.

Then a couple days later Nancy was talking to Robin about how someone should go back to Pennhurst to tell Victor Creel, that his son survived and is the cause of the all the destruction.

Robin is against it, because his mind was already shattered and that might destroy it. Nancy thinks he would want to know that he wasn't crazy.

When the name finally pinged in Steve's head. When they were trying to figure out who Vecna was, the name kept ringing a bell in his head. And just then it hit him.

His mother had been admitted there when he was younger.

But he keeps it to himself, because the last person he wants to know his mother was/is crazy is Nancy.

So he calls up the Hospital and requests her file and finds out that someone else recently accessed her file. Her doctor, Martin Brenner, had called just two weeks before the events that would lead to his death.

The receptionist asks if the address in Reno, Nevada is still good.

Steve's blood turns to ice in his veins.

Holy shit.

He corrects the address to Hawkins, Indiana and she brightens. Tells him that it's nice she's home again.

Steve needs to talk to El and he needs to do it away from Hopper. Because Hopper can't know about this. No one can.

Only Eddie starts noticing how withdrawn and twitchy Steve has become lately and manages to show up at the house when Steve gets his mother's medical files.

They learn that only reason Stella survived the Nina Project massacre was because she was on her to another facility for testing.

When Steve was seven his powers manifested so strongly, that his mother who was an empath, tried to suppress it so that Dr. Brenner wouldn't get his hands on Steve and it broke her mind. But Dr. Brenner didn't want Steve. Incorrectly assuming that she had succeeded, he wanted to harness her ability to break other's powers. Because if she could break Steve's, maybe she could break Henry's.

It was that research that led the device that controlled Henry's powers.

But Dr. Brenner realized that Stella didn't suppress Steve's powers. Steve did.

But his exposure to the Upside Down had eroded the block and that's why Steve was able to sense what was wrong with Nancy, knew that Max was in trouble.

He could sense it.

Dr. Owens tries to be respectful when asking Steve if they could run tests on him.

Everyone shouts NO at the same time.

But now everyone knows that Steve is powered, too, and El helps him learn to control it and take the break off completely. The first time they tried Steve got so overwhelmed with Eddie's love and affection for him that he passed out.

They were both pretty embarrassed that that was the way they got together. But Eddie liked to joke that his charm literally knocked Steve over.

Over the years it gets more fine-tuned. He knows Eddie is going propose before he does.

Knows when Max is pregnant with her first. Lucas couldn't keep his emotions down for shit.

Knows when Mike and El finally break up and realize they're better as friends. Their emotions are very angry for awhile before they mellow out.

Knows about Will and Mike's first kiss. Will is practically bursting with it.

[leth-writes]

Cryptid AU!

Cryptid batfam x reader

Bruce Wayne

I know people traditionally peg Bruce as a vampire, but I see him more as a mothman type. I mean, think about it! The cape as wings, the attraction to a giant light in the sky, the quiet disposition… I think it fits perfectly

As a friend or partner, Moth! Bruce is more possessive. He likes wrapping you within his big, fluffy wings, and he can be easily distracted with shiny baubles. Be careful! When it’s cold, he’s gonna spend days cuddling.

Dick Grayson

I actually could see Dick being a satyr, which I know sounds unconventional, but I think it fits really well. I particularly chose a satyr because of their boisterous personalities and penchant for dancing, which I see fitting Dick quite well. They’re also known for having many successful relationships, which I see fitting Dick quite well.

In a relationship, whether platonic or romantic, I can imagine Dick being loud and cheerful, successfully getting close to you and disarming any anxiety you may have through his kind and excitable personality.

Jason Todd

Phoenix, for the obvious connections of rebirth and coming back from the dead. I especially think this fits because Jason is often associated with themes of being reborn through the fires of trauma, and I associate him quite heavily with fire due to his loud, brash personality. Yet, there’s a softness present, a thread that connects his new and old selves. For this reason, I associate him with the beautiful phoenix.

In any relationship, Jason is both protective and sensitive. He’s able to effectively navigate emotional situations and definitely teaches you to defend yourself, just in case.

Tim Drake

Changeling. I see this associated with Tim a lot, and I honestly really agree. He;s got an otherworldly energy about him, and is often seen as less emotional and more calculating than the other batfamily members, who tend to be quite emotional. I also see a lot about him creating a place for himself in the family, rather than being picked up by Bruce like the others. Not in a malicious way, but like a changeling; they find their way into a family through no fault of their own, but by methods that may appear harsh to others.

In a relationship, you have to spend a lot of time reassuring Tim of your feelings toward him, whether platonic or romantic. Tim is a really anxious person, mainly due to feelings of inferiority and a massive case of imposter syndrome. You’ll need to constantly remind him you see him as the ‘real’ Tim!

Damian Al-Ghul

I had never actually heard of this before, but when googling I found out about Aqrabuamelu, who are half-scorpion men known for guarding sacred places. They’re generally known as quite protective, while being potentially dangerous to those who cross what they’ve sworn to protect.

Damian really fits this; he’s quite protective and very formal, which I usually associate with guardian characters, and while he tries to relate and be kind to his family, he has no trouble defending those he’s sworn himself to protect, including the citizens of Gotham

Cassandra Cain

I actually see Cassandra as a Selkie, primarily for her quiet and contemplative nature. She grew up alienated from her humanity, which I think is nicely represented by the mythology of selkies being forced to return to the sea for years on end before taking their human form again.

In any relationship, once it’s deep enough, I see Cass giving you her pelt to keep a hold of (not necessarily a sign of marriage in this iteration). I think this would be her best way of communicating her care to you, even when she struggles to communicate through words.

[nomsfaultau]

Dark SBI where Philza is a nice normal human man whose family slowly gets replaced by super natural creatures. The youngest is the first to go, replaced by 'Tommy', a shape shifting imp who decided he liked the skin of the kid and decided to keep it. He lives for chaos, but his motives falter when he experiences genuine love for the first time. Then 'Wilbur' replaces another son in classic changeling fashion, the boy taken to fulfill the whims of the fae and leaving in his place a bitter boy who knows he's an inferior version. Finally, the last son becomes plagued by dark voices that grow worse and worse, leading him succumbing to possession by 'Technoblade', who thinks he'll make the perfect new vessel after the last one was destroyed. 'Technoblade' doesn't want to lose his new vessel so soon after the last one, 'Wilbur' was trained from birth to mimic the human he would replace, and 'Tommy' wants an identity he can fall back on to play innocent if he gets in trouble. It takes awhile before the others realize all three kids are imposters. There's friction, of course, but they eventually make a pact to continue pretending to be a sweet and unsuspecting family.

The thing is...Philza isn't dumb. There's this awful feeling in his gut, and he has a sharp eye for details that don't add up. He's increasingly certain these things aren't his children. He quietly gathers evidence, and the moment he's sure...he does nothing. Philza carries on in a careful pantomime of a perfectly loving family, terrified of what they'll do to him if they realize he knows their true natures. He smothers his fear and offers them warm smiles and boundless mercy and tender affection the likes of which the imposter children have never known before. Slowly, it becomes a easier for everyone to pretend.

Maybe, if Philza's kind enough, they won't kill him, or worse. Maybe if he's good enough, their evil natures will soften. Maybe, if he's patient enough, they'll give him his real kids back.

And the moment they do, he'll slaughter every last one of the monsters who destroyed his family.

[obsessive-valentine]

Imposter/Changeling-husband x GN!Reader

A fae changeling seeking some trouble takes the place of your once verbally abusive and neglectful husband and grants you one day of a loving husband out of pity. Or maybe he’ll play along a little longer...

Life was exhausting, your days are long and tiring then you had to return home and continue working to your partners expectations, from making food before he gets home, the house has to be spotless and yourself be presentable. After all this work and effort into a one sided marriage, not one ounce of respect do you get, nor a chance to rant about your day, not a hug. Instead he retreats to his sofa to eat his food and watch tv alone usually only speaking to you briefly. That was what made today so odd, because none of that happened...

Well the day was long and unforgiving and you did rush home to cook and clean, standing in the kitchen keeping the food warm waiting for your partner to barge in, complain about their day and disappear. The door opened but didn’t hit the wall, shoes were wiped on the foot mat then followed with two ‘clip-clops’ as they were laid on the shoe rack... when did they start to care about tracking mud through the house.

“darling? You here?” He called as he walked down the hall towards the kitchen, it took longer than it should have to answered when your words caught in your throat. This was so out of character, even his voice was eerily soft, was he mocking you in a way? Unsure of the intent you choked out a answer with furrowed brows before he rounded the corner “I’m in the kitchen” it came out almost like a whisper but loud enough for his pace to become more confident.

“There you are, you wouldn’t believe the day I had” his eyes locked onto you but were softer than expected and a smile uncovered dimples you forgot existed, subconsciously the corners of your mouth tugged up and your brows rested. Such a unusual feeling of ease washed over you, and even more so when he greeted you with a hug; something was unsettling about the atmosphere but you chalked it up to him being abnormally nice. It was like settling into a old habit, it was how you fell in love with him, the same actions you’d dreamed about experiencing again; the ones that kept you from leaving your husband all these years.

He’d thanked you for cooking and praised your cleaning, you both sat and ate together and he listened about your day before insisting he clean the dishes. You’d been so wrapped up in this feeling you failed to notice his slight change in eye colour, his sharper teeth, the fact his limbs were slightly longer not enough to be concerning and how his smile dropped whenever you turned away.

...

He’d chosen your husband to become a doppelgänger of due to his position in the workplace, a secure one, one he could use to mess with people then disappear and choose a new target. But after weeks of watching and waiting for the perfect moment to jump in, he’d began to become disgusted with how this human treated his partner, even fae treated their partners with more respect than you’d been dealing with.

For a while he’d considered treating you so bad that you’d leave this shitty life and run for the hills in some sort of sick mercy or lesson. But as he walked closer to the door of the house knowing you’d be in the kitchen waiting for the verbal abuse or neglect the like every other day, he couldn’t bring himself to mimic the now dead man he’s taken the place of by opening the door harshly. Instead the door didn’t reach the wall with a thud, stopped by the tips of his fingers last second; sparing you a jolt of shock.

He huffed in annoyance once he’d realised he’d already messed up his plan, after straightening up his jacket he decided ‘this house will see one day of calm, then I’ll chase them off’. So he took off his shoes and placed them on the rack and faked a calm smile. The whole night he kept thinking ‘poor thing’, how fast you caved into the love bombing and denying the off putting atmosphere.

And at some point, maybe when he jokingly danced with you for half a song while you both cleaned up, or maybe when he went to bed with you and let himself drape a arm over you, maybe it was when he woke up to the alarm clock and saw you still peacefully still, he began thinking ‘My poor thing’.

So that morning one day of mercy turned into two and a growing possession over his naive little human. Maybe he will play happy marriage with you for a while, maybe when he gets bored of this world he will take you with him. Maybe he will settle down in this silly world and never reveal his true self...

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Montgomery Scott

By Ames

Bust out the green booze! We’re spotlighting The Original Series’s resident miracle worker this week on A Star to Steer Her By, where we’re giving you the best and worst moments of each character in the whole dang show. We’re donning our worst Scottish accents to give you a whole bunch of moments from Scotty, whose engineering prowess is only matched by his love of scotch. If you’re going to wear a red shirt on this ship, make sure you’re the chief engineer evidently.

Since we’ve already covered the main three characters (Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are all here), finding moments to highlight from the rest of the crew of the original Enterprise is going to be more and more of a stretch. Cut us a little slack here – the writers didn’t consider the secondary characters most of the time either. See what all we came up with below, listen to this week’s discussion on the podcast (jump to 46:48), and maybe you’ll break the laws of physics too!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best Moments

The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank We see Scott in command of the Enterprise a bunch of times because Kirk and Spock are on away missions, and his emphatically no-nonsense attitude is honestly refreshing, especially compared with all the times Spock utterly fails at leading. And in “A Taste of Armageddon,” Scott figures out Anan 7 was imitating Kirk and stands up to ambassador Fox about it like a boss!

Deus ex machina, literally Despite it being utterly futile, Scotty stands up to the literal god Apollo several times in “Who Mourns for Adonais?” and it’s a little bit commendable. Sure, he gets his ass handed to him. Multiple times. But we’ve gotta give the guy credit for trying! However, as you’ll see in a minute, his motivation may not have entirely been in the right place.

I meant to say that it should be hauled away as garbage Scotty is a genuine delight throughout all of “The Trouble with Tribbles” and he really gets to shine. We learn his idea of shore leave is curling up with a good technical journal, which seems right to us. But his big scene in the commissary in which he starts a massive brawl with Klingons in defense of the name of the Enterprise is just too good not to highlight.

We did it, you and me… put him right under the table Let’s also give Scotty a lot of credit for drinking that Kelvan under the table in “By Any Other Name”! He sacrifices a bottle of very old whiskey for the cause of distracting their captors, and he came out (or really staggered out) the other side a victor. They don’t call it Constitution class for nothing!

No order can stop me from frightening them Again, Scott is left in charge of the Enterprise while the three lead characters get to have an adventure in “Bread and Circuses.” Although under orders not to interfere while orbiting Rome planet over and over, Scott agilely side steps that order by turning off the power on the surface. There was NO reason to think that nonsensical idea would help in any way, but the gamble paid off!

It's the biggest guess I've ever made! Somehow, this is the first moment of actually engineering genius that we’ve included on the list (I suppose we just consider it Scott doing his job at this point), but installing a Romulan cloaking device on the Enterprise in “The Enterprise Incident” is a step above the usual excellent job he does down in the bowels of the ship. Now you see him, now you don’t!

Oh what adventures they’d have! I’m almost saddened we never got a spin-off series that was just the adventures of Montgomery Scott and the slug baby from “The Eye of the Beholder” because that would be a lot of fun. When Scott meets this hyper-genius child, he somehow works out a compromise with its people even though none of the other crewmen could so much as communicate with them! Even Spock!

My sister’s youngest Uncle Scott’s relationship with his nephew Preston in The Wrath of Khan is really quite lovely. We don’t get to see much of it (families in Star Trek are famously fraught), which means the moments we do get of them together are touching and sweet. And then James Doohan’s acting in Preston’s death scene is sure to pull on your heartstrings, something this movie does in spades.

Amazing grace Speaking of touching scenes from The Wrath of Khan, the film culminates in not only the perfectly delivered eulogy from Kirk (which has a special place on our Kirk spotlight post), but in Scotty’s playing “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes while Spock’s torpedo is spat into space. The fact that this was added at Doohan’s suggestion makes it all the more beautiful.

From one surgeon to another Let’s get further into the movies, where Scott (and the other minor crewmembers) seems to have the most to actually do. All the main TOS characters commit one hell of a treason to go search for Spock in The Search for Spock, and Scott is right there with them, sabotaging the Excelsior by pulling out some of the parts of its notorious transwarp drive.

Hello, computer! The Voyage Home shows us what a crime it was throughout The Original Series that they didn’t pair McCoy and Scott together more often. They play so well off each other as they go off to find material for the trip back to the future with some whales in tow. The comedy is spot on, their timing is down to the millisecond, and their shattering the Temporal Prime Directive is… well, you’ll see.

No bloody A, B, C, or D The Next Generation found a clever way to bring Montgomery Scott into the 24th century in “Relics” and it’s a generally good time! Sure, I have a better punchline for the “it’s green” callback somewhere in our episode coverage, but Scott wrestling with being behind the times, seeking out the familiar bridge of the Enterprise, and having a heart-to-heart with Picard are all lovely moments.

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Worst Moments

I’d like to get into her toga Despite finding Scott standing up to Apollo in “Who Mourns for Adonais?” sort of endearing because he is so outmatched, his motivation the whole episode long is that he wants to get in Palamas’s pants, even though it’s pretty clear she’s not interested in that way, and he spends the rest of the episode speaking for her and telling Apollo what she wants when she’s right there.

This unit is not perfect Not so much a bad moment for Scott through any fault of his own, but a bad moment in that it makes him look as much like a chump as he did in literally the previous episode, Scott gets freaking killed in “The Changeling” only for it to get undone when Kirk asks really nicely. It was also in defense of Uhura, whose mind had just gotten erased, but there just aren’t enough bad Scott moments, okay?

Alright then, we can do it the hard way We mentioned a handful of times in which Scott did a good job in command of the Enterprise, but sometimes he’s almost as bad as that pointy-eared hobgoblin. In “Metamorphosis,” he decides to search for the missing crew by scanning every single possible one in the 7000 bodies in an asteroid belt, which is just not how engineers solve problems! An engineer would write an algorithm or something. Yeesh.

Is your refrigerator running? Here’s another moment while Scott was in control that he just acted stupidly. In “Friday’s Child,” the Klingons set up the ruse of a false distress signal to keep the Enterprise busy while the away team is on planet, and Scott loses like a whole day to it before figuring out he’s been duped. And then we never even get to see the confrontation with Klingons on his return! What a waste!

I just need a wee bit of rest, that's all We’re scraping for crumbs to find more moments from Scott doing anything noteworthy, and I can’t help myself from bringing up the look on his face when his advanced aging is revealed in “The Deadly Years.” There's nothing wrong with the character, but “walk in and look sad” seemed like a boring sight gag to me. Then Scott barely has any lines despite being one of the affected crewmembers!

A walk in the fog with a bonny lass We’ve harped on “Wolf in the Fold” in both our Kirk and McCoy spotlights, and we’re just not done giving grief to an absolutely absurd inciting moment for an episode. Scotty is literally diagnosed with a medical case of misogyny by Doc, setting up a string of events that gets a bunch of women killed. And this show was supposed to be progressive at the time.

Where they’ll be no tribble at all… in death “The Trouble with Tribbles” is a genuinely funny episode, and the punchline at the end is meant to be a good button. But then you start thinking about it. And you realize that if Scott beamed hundreds (if not thousands) of tribbles into the engine room of a Klingon ship, they were either fried when they went to warp or brutally murdered by Klingons. And that’s less funny.

Look over there, a distraction! Here’s another one to pad out the list that I find kind of dumb. To distract Kara long enough to get a phaser from her in “Spock’s Brain,” Scott pretends to faint and it simply looks ridiculous. As if this episode isn’t bad enough, it’s also so uncreative that it uses a really half-assed plan to get out of this situation. Where’s something as creative as fizzbin when you need it?

Could it be the half a gallon of scotch? Even more half-assed is everything about “Spectre of the Gun,” which sees Scott volunteering to test a kludged tranquilizer on himself only for it not to work because his mind is too weak. Yeah, I don’t follow this train of thought either. How do they know Scott would have woken up in time? What exactly were they going to do if it did work? Force it under the Earps’ noses? Yeehaw!

I’m an engineer not a doctor We’ve already stated how sweet the relationship between Scott and Preston is in The Wrath of Khan, but I still cannot fathom why Scott brings his dying nephew to the bridge instead of sickbay after the attack. It’s only in the movie to get a reaction out of Kirk and not for any rational purpose because Scott is a professional who should know not to go many decks out of his way during a crisis.

How do we know he didn't invent the thing? I’m gonna call Jake out as a hypocrite for putting McCoy regrowing a woman’s kidney in The Voyage Home on his best moments list, but putting Scott giving Nicols the formula for transparent aluminum on his worst list, but here we are. It does break the hell out of the Temporal Prime Directive by a few more factors, so maybe it’s the negligence that makes the cut!

I know this ship like I know the back of my hand And to round things out, we finally reach The Final Frontier, which includes a joke that couldn’t even land if it had a barricade in the shuttle bay. How incompetent does Shatner think Scott is to have him literally concuss himself on a weirdly placed crossbeam (what were those crossbeams doing there anyway?)? It’s a bad punchline to a joke no one asked for and does Scotty dirty.

—

Well, we gave her all she’s got, captain. If you think some of these moments are already scraping the bottom of the barrel, imagine how creative we’re going to have to get for our Sulu spotlight. In fact, don’t imagine it; come back next week and find out! Also keep listening along to our podcast coverage of Enterprise over on SoundCloud or wherever you podcast, hail us on Facebook and Twitter, and keep your haggis out of the fire.