#if only he wasn’t so terminally heterosexual

[theonlyuniquepersonleft]

On the third-to-last chapter of Death’s End and in a very fragile state because of it

[lesbian-archives]

hey! how are you? i was wondering: was dworkin a lesbian? bc some feminists say she was married to a gay man and it wasn’t a real marriage but other ones say she was for real married to a man. do you have some source abt it? i’m asking genuinely, i’ve read so many things and i’m not certain anymore. here the discourse about who was a real lesbian or not is insane.

Hello! I'm great, thanks! I think I've spent the last two hours digging and trying to make sense of it myself, here is what I found! Let's start off with the foreword in Intercourse, in short it describes: - Some of Dworkin's friends say they never saw her ever actually have a relationship with other women. - Political lesbianism (heterosexual and bisexual women using the word lesbian as a political identity to describe them identifying with other women, which is a usage I do not agree with) was popular at the time and the likely one of the reasons why she identified with it. - Dworkin had a chronic illness that eventually lead to her death and Stoltenberg's insurance could cover her medical costs if they married. The Wikipedia page about her relationship with John Stoltenberg paints us more detailed picture: - Moving in together, their agreement was that while they would always live together, they could have relationships outside of their partnership. They planned never to marry unless one of two things occurred. As Andrea stated to The New York Times in 1985, "unless one of us is terminally ill or jailed for political activity." - In Martin Duberman’s biography, Andrea Dworkin: the Feminist as Revolutionary, John is quoted describing the sexual dimension of their relationship. Andrea’s relationship with a woman, Joanne, was unwinding though the last half of the decade, and John maintained gay relationships with men throughout their time together. But their love was expressed sexually on occasion, intimately and with affection and passion. - Although Dworkin publicly wrote, "I love John with my heart and soul", and Stoltenberg described Dworkin as "the love of my life", she continued to publicly identify herself as lesbian, and he as gay. Stoltenberg, recounting the perplexity that their relationship seemed to cause people in the press, summarized the relationship by saying, "So I state only the simplest facts publicly: yes, Andrea and I live together and love each other and we are each other's life partner, and yes we are both out." To me it seems that she identified as a lesbian to describe her sexual attraction to women, political alliance, and overall devotion to other women, but not solely as a sexual orientation nor as the way we understand lesbian meaning women exclusively attracted to other women. She did have a relationship with Stoltenberg but the legal marriage itself was motivated by insurance. You can find her definition of lesbian in her speech at the 1974 rally for Lesbian Pride Week in Central Park here. Honestly, I'm not too invested in proving whether or not she was exclusively attracted to women (I don't think she was exclusively, there are a lot of contradictions, and it's really confusing to parse through what is true or not). I'm much more interested in her writing, ideas, and impact! It's impossible to truly know what her sexual orientation was, but I think the foreword, the 1974 speech, and some snippets of the Wikipedia article can be helpful in understanding what her motivations/reasonings may have been in identifying with the word "lesbian" (and the contradictions that came with it). This is by no means the only information out there but this is the conclusion I came to after some brief research.

Below the cut are the paragraphs from Intercourse that explore this and here is a link to the PDF:

Many of Dworkin's friends did not find out that she and Stoltenberg were legally married until they read her obituary in the newspapers. "We hated being called husband and wife," Stoltenberg says. "When pressed, we would say 'spouse.' Spouse or life partner are words that we used." Friends knew, of course, that the two had lived together for more than 30 years, but there are various reasons why Dworkin would not have wanted her marriage to a man to be public information. For one thing, there was the matter of her being a lesbian.

Dworkin spoke about this many times. At a rally for Lesbian Pride Week in Central Park in 1974-- when she was already living with Stoltenberg-- Dworkin said, "This love of women is the soil in which my life is rooted." She went on to talk about "erotic passion and intimacy" among women, and a "wild, salty tenderness," but this is harder to get your head around if you are familiar with her oeuvre. In her writings, there are too many smoldering descriptions of heterosexual sex to count, but the mentions of lesbianism are either bloodless-- "There is pride in the nurturant love which is our common-ground"-- or funny: "Q: There are a lot of rumors about your lesbianism. No one quite seems to know what you do with whom. A: Good" (as she wrote in a satiric piece called "Nervous Interview". Catharine Mackinnon told me, "Lesbian is one of the few words you've got to make a positive claim about identifying with women, to say I'm with women. It doesn't necessarily mean without men. Women are socially defined sexually as an inferior class. Lesbian is a sexual word; that's why it's stigmatized. In addition to her history and feelings, that's a lot of why Andrea identified by it, I think." Another of Dworkin's closest friends had a different take on the matter of Dworkin's sexuality: "In 30-plus years of knowing her, I've never heard of a single romance with a woman-- not one."

Regardless of how and whether Dworkin practiced lesbianism, the fact remains that it was important to her to have be identified as a lesbian. It's a label many people have difficulty claiming, yet to Dworkin it was a badge of rebellion against the patriarchy, a system she had warred against throughout her entire life. But has the institution of marriage not been a fundamental building block of that very system? Dworkin had questioned and probed and rejected every expression of male dominance she could think of, even intercourse, with remarkable creativity and devotion and yet she married-- in secret. Why?

At a memorial for Dworkin held at the National Arts Club in New York City about a month after her death, Stoltenberg suggested to the hundred or so assembled friends and fans that the reason he and Dworkin wed was partly practical. If Dworkin had not been his legal wife, she would not have been covered by his health insurance, and the bills for the frequent surgeries and hospital stays that punctuated the end of her life would have left the couple in financial ruins. So Dworkin had real-world reasons for playing within the rules of the system, even if it was a system she'd always abhorred.

[nesrinadem]

❝ mismatched furniture, a stack of unsent letters held together with fraying string, worn photographs tucked into the pillowcase, sentimental jewelry and thrifted sweaters two sizes too big; hard conversations whilst hiding in an unfilled tub, chugging another sip just to speak, home isn’t a house it’s where your heart is, facing down ghosts and demons no matter how bleak the outcome might seem; anxious smiles, haunted eyes, cuticles torn from too much fretting, a heart that aches with too much want and longing, goodbyes she’ll forever be regretting; a lonely violin sat untouched in the corner, clipping coupons and counting change, disheveled hair, the bright surprise of an unexpected laugh, learning how to separate self from shame.

NAME: Nesrin Adem

NICKNAME(S): Nes, predominantly, Nessy to a rare few

AGE: Thirty-four

RESIDENTIAL AREA: Mount Pleasant

OCCUPATION: Administrative Assistant

LENGTH OF TIME IN VANCOUVER: Ages 6 to 16, recently returned for 3 years

       BIOGRAPHY | CONNECTIONS | STATS | PINTEREST

basics.

BIRTHDAY: tbd 

PLACE OF BIRTH: Antalya, Turkey

GENDER IDENTIFICATION: Cis Woman (she/her)

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Heterosexual

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single

POSITIVE TRAITS: Adaptable and Nurturing

NEGATIVE TRAITS: Secretive and Avoidant

family.

MOTHER: Ela Adem

FATHER: Yusef Adem

SIBLINGS: Two, ages and gender tbd

CHILDREN: Selvi Aileen Sullivan, age 17.

OTHER: Lila Durmaz, cousin.

tldr.

nesrin is the eldest of three children.

she grew up in a very strict, traditional/conservative household of which her father asserted his will as the head of household constantly.

through him and the values he reinforced, nes grew up with a deep understanding of duty, obedience, and honoring her family name. she came home well before curfew (most of the time), maintained her position on the dean’s list, and served as a role model for her younger siblings.

TW: TEEN PREGNANCY because of this, it perhaps came as a quite a shock that, when she was seventeen, nes discovered she was pregnant.

she’d been dating matt sullivan for several years at that point and, although she was absolutely in love and wanted a future with him eventually, that day wasn’t meant to be so soon.

TW: ABORTION while matt wanted to keep their baby, nes wasn’t so keen and her plans to terminate ultimately brought their relationship to an immediate end.

nes left town for what was only meant to be a brief "college tour” as far as her parents were concerned but, in reality, she’d left to seek out a discreet clinic several counties over. it was at that point, sitting out in the parking lot far past her scheduled appointment, that she realized she couldn’t give up her baby.

TW: ESTRANGEMENT/ABANDONMENT the call with her dad did not go well. at all. he accused nesrin of shaming herself, their family, etc. by not only having premarital sex but by falling pregnant while she was at it. in very harsh, no uncertain terms he left her with a choice: do what needed to be done to hide her “incident” and spare the family, or be outcasted indefinitely. 

and for many, many years that was the last time nes ever spoke to her parents. she still kept in close touch with her siblings but, believing she’d lost everything back in vancouver, she emancipated herself and quietly moved to a small nowhere town, finding whatever way to survive on her own.

life wasn’t pretty or glamourous or kind to nesrin but she made it work. she held several jobs to make ends meet. eventually she managed to study and sit for her GED.

now, their daughter is 17 and preparing to soon go off and make her own way in the world. nes is just trying to navigate life back in vancouver while co-parenting and co-existing with the first and only love she never really let go of.

although it’s a far cry from her lifelong dreams, she’s working as an administrative assistant at sofia and theo’s practice. the job is stable, even if the pay leaves something to be desired, and gives her the ability to make ends meet while still having time leftover to spend with selvi.

[nesrinadcm-archived]

NESRİN (Neh-SRIY-N) : noun; turkish variant of the persian name nasrin, meaning “wild rose” ADEM (uh-DAEM): noun; arabic origins, meaning “made of / of the earth”

full name: nesrin adem

nickname/preferred name: close friends may call her nes/nessy, but she honestly has no preference

age: 33

birthday: tbd

zodiac sign: tbd

birthplace: antalya, turkey

hometown: antalya, turkey ( birth - age 4 ) ⇾ atlanta, georgia ( ages 4-6 ) ⇾ heartsdale, georgia ( ages 6-19 ) ⇾ montpelier, st. helena parish, louisiana ( age 19-present)

current residence: suffix mills

occupation: administrative assistant

relationship status: single

sexuality: heterosexual

children?: yes, a 13 year old daughter named selvi

TLDR // TW TEENAGE PREGNANCY, ABORTION CONSIDERATION, ESTRANGEMENT/ABANDONMENT: older sister. disowned daughter. single mother... until now. nesrin was born into a super strict, super traditional family. for most of her life she went to great lengths to be the kind of daughter they expected, but... then nes fell in love. @mattsullivan​ was everything to her, but when she eventually realized she was pregnant, barely out of hs, things went swiftly south. nes decided to terminate, driving the final nail into the coffin of their relationship, and left town. except the thing is... she couldn’t actually go through with it. the choice to keep their baby led to a total estrangement with her parents (her father essentially said do it or don’t come back) and she’s only very recently had any contact with them. now she’s back to attempt a reconciliation with her parents && finally tell matt the several years too late news. “congratulations, daddy. it’s a girl!”

nesrin is the eldest of three daughters. 

although they remained married, her parents essentially lived separate lives. she, her mother, and her sisters moved to heartsdale when she was six and her father, who remained behind in atlanta, came to stay with them on the weekends. 

it was a very strict, traditional/conservative household, though, and, despite the arrangements, her father remained an active head of it all. 

through him and the values he reinforced, nes grew up with a deep understanding of duty, obedience, and honoring her family name. she came home well before curfew (most of the time), maintained her position on the dean’s list, and served as a role model for her younger sisters, @halimeadem​ and yasemin.

because of this, it perhaps came as a quite a shock that, when she was nineteen, nes discovered she was pregnant. 

she’d been dating matt sullivan for several years at that point and, although she was absolutely in love and wanted a future with him someday, that day wasn’t meant to be so soon. 

while matt wanted to keep their baby, nes did not. her plans to terminate ultimately brought their relationship to an immediate end.

nes left town for what was only meant to be a brief "visit to a friend” as far as her parents were concerned but, in reality, she’d left to seek out a discreet clinic several counties over. it was at that point, sitting on a bench outside the doors, that she realized she couldn’t give up her baby.

the call home did not go well. at all. her father accused nesrin of shaming herself, their family, etc. by not only having premarital sex but by falling pregnant while she was at it. in very harsh, no uncertain terms he left her with a choice: do what needed to be done to hide her “incident” and spare the family shame, or not come back at all.

for many, many years that was the last time nes ever spoke to her parents. she still kept in close touch with her sisters but, believing she’d lost everything back in heartsdale, she quietly moved to a small parish outside of baton rouge and found a way to survive there.

life wasn’t pretty or glamourous or kind to nesrin, but she made it work.

selvi, the daughter she shares with matt, is now 13 years old, looks astonishingly like the both of them, and is full of more questions than nes knows how to answer.

it was that, and the recent efforts of her father to reconcile with the daughter he disowned, that brought nesrin and selvi back to town. she needs to deal with her own traumas, needs to heal. but, more than that, she needs to finally tell matt he’s been a father all these years. 

although it’s a far cry from her lifelong dreams, nes works as an administrative assistant at the local school. the job is stable, even if the pay leaves something to be desired, and gives her the ability to work the same schedule as her daughter’s, eliminating any lost time between them

[sudades]

pls ignore this

... cameron waite , 

Is that CAMERON WAITE? Wow, they do look a lot like DYLAN O'BRIEN. I hear HE is a TWENTY ONE years old JUNIOR who are studying FILM at Luxor University. Word is they are a(n) REGULAR student who is AGAINST The Unhinged. You should watch out because they can be IMPULSIVE and BOASTFUL, but on the bright side they can also be FUNNY and QUICK WITTED. Ultimately, you’ll get to see it all for yourself.

FULL NAME: cameron james waite AGE: 21 STAR SIGN: gemini PRONOUNS: he/him BIRTHPLACE:   queens, new york ORIENTATION: heterosexual (questioning bisexual) ALLERGIES: kiwi allergy HEIGHT: 5″11 FAMILY: mother - betty waite, father - donny waite, sister - alycia waite TATTOOS: n/a PIERCINGS: n/a PETS: dog back home at his parents CHARACTER INSPO: peter parker (spider-man), dave hodges (the first time), dick grayson (nightwing), joey tribiani (friends), luke (modern family). 

biography: - trigger warning mention of terminal cancer and homophobia

(0-20) cameron was raised a happy, outgoing boy. he knew everyone in his neighbourhood and was always rounding up people to get in his home videos. his most prized possession was the camera gifted to him on his 7th birthday. he’d spend his days vlogging, or recording strangers passing by. he was a people person, thrived on being around humans, watching their day to day life. he wanted to capture every moment he could on film, and he was always dragging his sister into his stupid ideas. he lived a very normal life for the most part, he came from a happy family in queens, privileged and quite happy with it. his sister came out as a lesbian when she was 16, and although their parents said they were okay with it, deep down the siblings knew that their parents didn’t wholly approve. 

(20+) it was around the time of his 20th birthday that cam ended up fooling around with one of the guys from another university in state. he tried to not think anything of it since he was well aware of how his father felt about men kissing other men. but out of sight, and out of mind, cameron continued to explore this new and exciting relationship of his, falling in love with the man. it wasn’t his first love, but it was definitely the most exciting one of all. he wanted to be with him, and by the time he was ready to finally come out to his father, they were struck with terrible news. cam’s father was sick, he had leukaemia and he was too far gone for it to be treated, there was no cure, only options to delay the inevitable. the news hit cam hard, and now coming out seemed so fictitious. he ended things with the man he was seeing, ghosting completely as shame began to set in. he couldn’t tell his father, not while he’s on his deathbed, and so now he keeps his secret close to his chest, not wanting to let down the man he has looked up to his whole life. 

[pochapal]

I hate doctor 11 but ive never been able to explain why in like words lmao. He feels like such a mary sue character imo and like theres something about his characterisation that was always just really ineffective (like the stuff about fishfingers and custard or whatever it was). Imo i'd love to hear you give top 5 worst things about the 11 era because i rlly just love when it gets torn apart

i hold nothing but a seething contempt and loathing for that man. every time he appeared on screen i felt ready to snap like a riled up chimpanzee in my enclosure. i am frothing at the mouth and overcome with a desire to start flinging heavy objects. this might be incoherent and inconsistent but i started this rewatch in feb 2020 and only finished this week so i got through 11′s episodes last august/september time and i refuse to revisit it to jog my memory or fact check anything i’m saying here because this man does not deserve the space in my mind for that.

the first thing is i can’t fucking STAND the quirky whimsy timey wimey bit he has going on all of the time. i can’t even say this is because this is a kids show and i was a teen and then adult when i first properly watched him but actually!! when i was eleven years old i’d sleep over at a friend’s house most weekends and it always coincided with the airing of a new season 5 episode and i remember we watched the finale with the dumb time hopping to get out of the box prison that was never explained and didn’t make sense and i thought at the time “this is really stupid”. and before that my only other doctor who exposure was watching the david tennant christmas specials with another friend and throughout childhood my only opinion on doctor who was “this is a tv show that is not for me but is one that all the boys i am friends with like so i will put up with it to maintain our friendships” but at least those episodes were both suspenseful and engaging enough to keep me watching all the way through. like who the fuck does an end of the world sci fi plot and approaches it with an “oopsy woopsy i am a funny little alien man who is going to stop you all by making you do a hecking silly” like it’s unneeded and self-parodies an already cheesy show to the point where it becomes unwatchable and makes it impossible to ever take this man seriously.

next thing that downright sucks ass so badly is the stupid fucking overwritten constantly escalating plotlines. like everything from season 5 up until his regeneration at the end of season 7 is meant to be this grand interconnected cosmic plot about how...the doctor trying to bring back his planet will end the universe or something so all the top powers across all of reality tried again and again to stop him from doing that except he doesn’t know what’s going on so he keeps thwarting these people who supposedly mean good?? i mean i sure don’t fucking know what they were trying to say!! like for some reason we never get the doctor suddenly becomes this superdemon that threatens everything so these people (whoever they are) decide to, in sequence: suck him through a time rift to erase him from existence, trap him in a prison and remake a universe without him, take his companion’s baby and turn her into a perfectly trained doctor killer, form two(!!) secret societies to hunt him throughout history that are only stopped by his companion splintering herself across his personal timeline to protect him, and repeatedly cause reality collapsing events because it’s a kinder outcome for the universe than what he will do. this grand and terrible event turns out to be...he spends a few hundred years chilling by a rift that leads to his home planet and protects a few generations of children from monsters which convinces them to give him infinite regeneration power then fuck off back to their pocket universe. and it’s like!! what is the point of anything that happens in this man’s era when everything is always “the darkest moment” or whatever the fuck!! i don’t care!! we never get a compelling reason to believe this bumbling clown of a man could ever be a universal threat!! the whole thing is so dumb i hate it!!!

thing number three i hate is how the eleventh doctor is ALSO characterised as this abrasive egotistic male supergenius to the point where he becomes genuinely indistinguishable from bbc sherlock. genuinely who enjoyed seeing this guy constantly tell people their tiny human minds can’t comprehend what he’s doing and then basically just wave his magic wand to solve whatever problem each episode is facing. 2012 is the year of human sin because this fucking shitsmear character archetype somehow became both a redditor role model AND a tumblr sexyman and it’s like!! nobody is enjoying this stop making this seem cool! him saying timey wimey thing any time he does anything is frustrating and dumb and locks the viewer out of giving a fuck about anything that is happening! smartest man in the room syndrome is a disease and the eleventh doctor is terminal with it. like remember how they established river as an accomplished scientist (when she wasn’t being a child soldier or a time paradox or whatever the fuck) and every time that came up mr doctor eleven man was like “oh this thing is obvious because i’m a genius and you didn’t realise because your brain is tiny so get out of the way and let the grownups think” or that time it turned out amy had been replaced with a slime clone for half the season and the doctor chewed rory (audience surrogate) out for somehow not realising this fact we didn’t know right from the start and like. this served no purpose other than to draw into severe question why the doctor is also this super beloved magical figure implicitly trusted by all children everywhere like. mr steven moffat is totally allergic to writing and solving mysteries in his tv show and fuck you for wanting to figure things out as you go along based on the new evidence you uncover at strategic plot intervals just let this asshole man use magical thinking to reveal he knew the answer all along and you’re a fucking idiot for not also realising this thing which had no basis or precedent anywhere else in the show.

speaking of dumb things let us not forget the absolute shitshow that was minority representation in this era. i’m not even talking about the low hanging fruit of how genuinely unironically sexist amy and clara were written where each episode moffat either seemed to loathe them or was incredibly horny over them and they had no character growth or arc or fucking anything. i’m talking about how fucking shit terrible the incidental representation was. god remember how every single fucking gay person who appeared in this era was written as one incredibly fucking stupid joke and how the women were all either sexy dominatrix, feeble girl in love, or Mother (or all three in some really terrible cases) and i’m not qualified to talk about this but also how incredibly white this era was and how on two separate occasions we had monarchs reimagined as sexy girlbosses with a gun played by black women who the doctor leched over. nothing about any of this was good ESPECIALLY coming off the back of rtd who was surprisingly forward thinking for 2005 and did a really good job of positing travel with the doctor as queer allegory. in comparison moffat gave us THE MOST heterosexual shlock i’ve ever had to endure. amy and rory could have been interesting characters were they not hemmed into this domestic bickering young straight married couple bullshit that was in no way changed or altered by traveling with the doctor except for the quasi incestuous river song reveal that was dumb and bad and stupid.

the last major mega gripe i have with the series is moffat’s fucking jingoistic boner for british military aesthetics. this carried over throughout his entire tenure as showrunner but was super terrible vomit inducing in eleven’s era. the unironic admiration for ww2 britain and winston churchill is downright wretched. are you incapable of telling a second world war story outside of churchill’s london and plucky blitz fighters. shit gives me hives so badly. and then!!! that weird church owned army that features in the future that end up being bad not for the concept of what basically amounts to an imperialistic intergalactic rendition of the fucking crusades but because they’re part of the nonsense go nowhere puzzlebox narrative that says the doctor is a not good man who will do bad things to the universe :(. remember how rtd’s doctor was a freshly traumatised man hot off the war criminal press who time and time again vehemently refuses to engage in military violence, but who tragically inadvertently turns every one of his companions into soldiers in his own personal army, and he has this moment of complete horror at the realisation and it is this which causes the downward spiral that ends in 10′s regeneration. and then how there’s this cringe line about how there’s a force of people who are “the doctor’s army, always ready to fight his battles when he’s not around” or some shit and then it turns out this is actually massive literal military operation and we’re meant to celebrate this. fuck off.

bonus round because this needs to be said but i have never hated anything like i hated that fucking human tardis episode. everything about it induced violent anger in me from the sickening overindulgence of that softgoth dark whimsy helena bonham carter tim burton aesthetic to the bafflingly terrible evil carny stereotype of those junk scavengers to the overblown sudden tragic shipbait romance of human tardis and the doctor. every word out of her mouth was trite shit and the fact that the death of her body was presented as this super emotional dramatic scene despite there being no buy in or incentive to care and the fact that every single person on tumblr in 2012 ate that shit up like it was fucking gourmet. i loathe every single thing about that episode so much.

[bennett-miller]

name: bennett edison miller.

age: 38.

birthday: june 01, 1982.

zodiac: gemini.

gender: cis male.

pronouns: he/him.

sexuality: heterosexual.

neighborhood: summit lake.

occupation: pediatric surgeon.

PHYSICAL

height: 6′1″

weight: 175 lbs.

hair color: black.

eye color: blue.

tattoos: one. a tattoo dedication to his wife. it’s her initial (whatever that might be) on the inside of his ring finger.

QUICK FACTS

trigger warnings: cheating, divorce, mentions of terminal illness in children.

bennett e. miller was born and raised in providence peak, colorado. his father was a family practitioner and his mother was a general surgeon at providence peak memorial. it wasn’t unusual to see young bennett around the hospital some days and no one was shocked whenever they found him fast asleep in the on call room when his parents schedules overlapped.

growing up, ben wasn’t really much of a troublemaker. he played sports, worked hard, and stayed under the radar for the most part. he was a good guy with a good heart. he made the best of having busy parents, but he didn’t take advantage of having such a big place to himself in summit lake. instead, he kept his friend circle small, afraid of the judgement his parents would bring upon anyone they deemed unworthy of their son’s friendship. they were harsh, but it was all for his benefit, or so they explained.

when it came time for college, ben didn’t have a choice on what he’d be going for, but he didn’t mind it. he wanted to improve the medical field his parents had been in for so long and it helped having someone with him who felt the same. in undergrad is where he met his future wife. they shared a love for a future career and together, they made it through undergrad without a hiccup. after graduation, ben wasted no time to propose and after they’d both gotten their acceptance letters to their med schools of choice, they officially tied the knot as a commitment through whatever medical school offered.

it was during residency that ben found his speciality. sure, he loved general surgery, just as his mother did, it was his passion for helping children that answered every question he needed. while assisting on a clinical trial, ben was able to make a discovery that helped shape a new technique in treating terminal illnesses within children. it was a moment he was proud of and a moment that helped solidify his career in pediatrics.

ben has been with providence peak for six years as a pediatric surgeon. it was only within the last year that he found out his wife had cheated on him. now, he’s working through that and trying to start up another clinical trial, but the board is giving him a hard time in terms of funding.

WANTED CONNECTIONS

college friends.

neighbors.

childhood friends.

friends of his wife.

clients of the hospital.

[xofaddiction]

                           𝕠𝕙 𝕕𝕠𝕟'𝕥 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕨𝕠𝕣𝕣𝕪 𝕪𝕠𝕦'𝕝𝕝 𝕗𝕚𝕟𝕕 𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕣𝕤𝕖𝕝𝕗                                𝕗𝕠𝕝𝕝𝕠𝕨 𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕟𝕠𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕖𝕝𝕤𝕖                             𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕔𝕒𝕟 𝕕𝕠 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕠𝕙 𝕓𝕒𝕓𝕖 𝕚𝕗 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕥𝕣𝕪                      𝕒𝕝𝕝 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕀 𝕨𝕒𝕟𝕥 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕞𝕪 𝕤𝕠𝕟 𝕚𝕤 𝕥𝕠 𝕓𝕖 𝕤𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕤𝕗𝕚𝕖𝕕                                       𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕓𝕖 𝕒 𝕤𝕚𝕞𝕡𝕝𝕖 𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕕 𝕠𝕗 𝕞𝕒𝕟

full name:  gabriel vincent craine

nicknames:  gabe

age:  34

date of birth:  sept. 7

zodiac: virgo

gender:  male

pronouns: he/him

sexuality:  heterosexual

physical

hair color: blond

eye color: blue

height: 6′2″

weight: 194 lbs

personality

morality:  lawful neutral

positive traits: efficient, practical, diligent, focused, intelligent, thorough, shy.

negative traits: hypercritical, demanding, hard to please, self-conscious, reclusive.

job: lawyer

skills: organized, good at time management, unshakable, can speak a few languages (english, spanish, french, and japanese), writing, small guitar skills.

family

parents: vincent and gloria craine.

siblings: isaiah craine ( location unknown deceased )

backstory and details - ＴＲＩＧＧＥＲ     ＷＡＲＮＩＮＧ :                                      mentions of alcoholism, miscarriage/abortion, gun violence, divorce.                                              feelsy shitTM

                                               ✴   ✴   ✴   ✴   ✴   ✴     ✴   ✴   ✴    

home life was good. born to vincent and gloria craine one sunny labor day weekend, gabriel was their miracle baby. he was a blond haired, blue eyed, chubby cheeked toddler who captured their hearts and affections beyond what they could ever imagine. even when their youngest was born, isaiah could and would never live up to his brother’s name.

his family was very catholic, and even in that he was diligent. mass on sundays, easter and christmas, confirmed and baptized, he did what was expected of him as a man of his faith. he was thankful academics kept him too busy to become an altar boy, indulging so deeply he only passively believed in felt like sacrilege beyond what he thought himself capable of.

he was a happy child that grew into a golden boy. valedictorian of his high school, gabe was heavily involved in choir, track, debate team, student council, and won prom king in his junior and senior years without much effort. it wasn’t because he considered himself popular, but because he was personable. he wasn’t snooty or above hanging out with any and every faction of people around school. he found bits of himself in everyone and was always willing to help or tutor in any way he could.

when it came time for college, it came as no surprise that he was fit for ivy league. his choice was dartmouth, somewhere with a liberal atmosphere where he could study without the competitive, stuck up harvard-yale students hounding him to do more and be better. he double majored in english and history and chose to minor in computer science. his degrees were achieved and he finished top of his class.

he attended law school at oxford, electing to study abroad in the uk and take in more than what chicago and new hampshire could. he knew what he learned in litigation for foreign law wouldn’t be useful in america, but it was important for him to understand the nuances of european law as someone interested in international law.

while at oxford, he met danielle fournier, a law student in his class that shared interests with him; from music to art to history and philosophy, she bewitched him body and soul and he fell in love harder than he thought possible. for the moment, he thought she was the endgame for him.

when it came time for him to move back to america, danielle came with him. he enrolled at yale law and worked a full-time job as an assistant in a law firm, doing what he could to support himself and the girl he loved. he did everything right; he went to school, got a dream job, moved off to new york and worked himself to success, proposed to the girl and married her. everything was was it should have been.

he was a shining beacon of hope and an example to everyone in his family, most of all his younger brother. he knew that isaiah had an odd sort of idolization over him. he was the big brother, the one who encouraged and stood as a confidant and first friend for isaiah.

the family seemed complete; two perfectly happy parents, a son with a wife and a bright future, another dating a young, successful woman. they seemed the picture of perfection, but there was some nagging presence that spoke otherwise. his parents were more friends than husband and wife- they stayed together for appearance sake. gabriel was a ceaseless workhorse, and though he did his best to be the good man who came home by 7pm, when he did come home, he found his wife drunk and drowsy, always reeking of expensive wine and stake perfume. and as for his brother and his girlfriend; there was something that felt off, whether it was in their relationship or his own, he did not know. however, something in the back of gabriel’s mind that knew his and katerina vasile’s stories would not end as they had began; acquaintances that only spoke at family gatherings.

he never believed in soul mates or twin flames, despite believing in the presence of a soul. he never understood that even upon a single meeting someone could mean so much to another person right up until the moment it happened. he barely knew katerina, and yet he saw something in her he knew he wouldn’t ever be able to forget. she would stay in his mind forever, and though he loved danielle with everything he had in him, he knew that even in the darkness when he lay drifting, it was her eyes he’d remember.

he would never act on it; he was married and happy to be, and whether the relationship between himself remain stale and passive or grow into platonic companionship, he was glad for either, though he would prefer the latter. if it meant being to keep those eyes in his life, it was worth it. he liked katerina, cared for her and paid attention to what she said, far more than his brother seemed to, though his interaction was not inappropriate.

it wasn’t often he had to be strict or commanding over the younger sibling that so adored him, but a family christmas party changed that. isiaiah was showing off; acting like a prick to katerina for the sake of bolstering himself in his brother’s eyes. gabriel hated it. excusing himself and his brother with a charming smile, gabriel gripped isiaiah by the flesh on the underside of his arm and dragging him to a quiet section of the house, gabriel’s voice dropped low and dripped venom that had never before passed his lips in the presence of family: “if i ever fucking see you treat that girl like that ever again, i’ll drag you outside and break your face against the goddamn curb, got that?” he threw his brother’s arm and stormed back in before another word could be said, plastering on a smile as he went to keep danielle from pouring another drink.

danielle was always a big drinker, but her usage escalated well within their marriage. she got pregnant and while gabriel thought she was happy to be, she was not. behind his back she was taking doses of a prescription drug that halts progression of pregnancy. she lost the baby and gabe was devastated. he’d never really thought about being a father, but the when presented the prospect of it, excited him. he thought he could be a good father, not only because he was stable and happy, but because he loved the baby from the moment he got the news.

though hurt beyond measure, he was hopeful; they managed once, they could manage again when the time was right? if there was a god that saw his diligence, surely he’d bless them with another chance?

danielle’s guilt drove her to drink and drink heavily. she lied to the man she loved and couldn’t quiet the raging inner monologue that scorned save for drowning it at the bottom of a bottle. more than one argument came of gabe begging her to slow down and her subsequent refusal. he lost a child, he didn’t want to lose his wife, too. he stood with her through it all, hoping that one day everything would be better.

over a year later, happy news came once more. danielle was pregnant again, and she seemed elated. gabriel was over the moon. overnight everything seemed to improve: his wife had stopped drinking, he was going to be a father, they were a picture of happiness ready to work their lives around a new baby. not not everything was as it seemed.

one night, roused by a work call, gabriel realized his wife wasn’t in bed beside him. worried she might be feeling poorly from morning sickness he followed the trail of light into the bathroom and glanced in, just in time to watch danielle throw back a pill. he would have ignored it, but something in his gut told him otherwise. when he pushed the door open further, danielle jumped, frightened and caught off guard. the pill bottle fell to the floor and rolled to his feet. when he saw the label, he recognized the prescription name as a pregnancy terminator from a lawsuit he’d once worked.

his heart shattered in an instant. it’s important to note that gabriel never would have forced danielle to go through with a pregnancy she wasn’t comfortable in. and while it would have hurt, he would have accepted her decision with grace and understanding. it was the fact that she bold-face lied to him. she lied about being happy, she lied about wanting to build a life with him, she watched his grief and kept everything locked away, and was set on doing it again.

gabriel wordlessly moved back into the bedroom and got a suitcase to pack a bag. he wasn’t ready for a separation or divorce, he just couldn’t have her in his ear when he so desperately needed to think.

while his back was turned, danielle reached into his bedside table and pulled out a loaded gun he kept in case of emergencies and held it to his back. she demanded he hear her side of it before going anywhere. and so he did. for two days he was kept downstairs in the kitchen at gunpoint, allowed to do nothing except watch her drink and listen to her rant and beg his forgiveness.

she waved the gun around recklessly, throwing empty bottles on the wall behind him and the floor in front of his feet. he watched her do this with a distant, cold, dejected demeanor, never jumping or shying away from the blows she had to throw. he was hurting, more than he realized he ever could and numb to her wallowing. the suffering he felt was her cause, he was angry. hurt. he didn’t want to hear her, he didn’t want to look her in the eyes. there was a grim sense that they would both die there in that house, that she would put the gun to his temple and shoot and then die in any which way she chose to do.

it took all of his resolve and none of his might to realize that what he saw in her was a facade. for so long, he’d been the best he could be: for her, for his parents, even his undeserving brother. and where did it get him? alone. his parents never worried; he was the exalted heir, the good boy, they didn’t have cause. and his brother? he had taken all of gabriel’s shining example and corrupted it into nothing more than pretense to get where he needed to go before he commanded rule over dominion that was not his; an abusive, negligent tyrant no better than the pharaoh of egypt who let his people die for the sake of his pride. and his wife, the woman he’d devoted life and happiness to, turned on him with a glock aimed at his chest.

a beacon of hope came on the morning of the third day when his partner at the firm kept calling. when you’re a good lawyer, you make enemies with dangerous people. when you’re a great lawyer, you guarantee those enemies become lethal. gabe was a great lawyer. radio silence for two days was uncharacteristic for gabe, everyone had reason to worry. although the same could not be said for isaiah. danielle grew steadily more and more frustrated by the noise and gabriel told her to let him talk down the situation to keep the firm from calling again. she steadily agreed. it was the first time gabe had ever thanked god for making his wife an alcoholic.

for a long time, he and his partner established code words as a safety measure. different words had different meanings, the most rehearsed of which was BOOTH. as in john wilkes booth. as in someone was holding a gun to his head. so when gabriel said: “hey, i had to rush out of town for a family emergency, can you email me the details of the BOOTH case to look over when I get home?” danielle was none the wiser. but the partner knew to dial 911.

when the cops and ambulance showed up, everything went to shit. danielle panicked and shot the gun when they kicked in the door, frightening her into pulling the trigger. the bullet lodged in gabriel’s left shoulder and knocked him into the broken glass on the floor. realizing her mistake, she brought the gun to her head. the cops wrestled her down before she could pull the trigger for a second time.

once discharged from the hospital, gabriel drew up divorce papers, a restraining order, and a lawsuit. he got his divorce, he got the restraining order, and danielle was placed in prison.

gabriel left new york after that, electing to go back home to chicago. once back in the windy city, he looked for work as a private lawyer, one who wouldn’t join a firm until he could scope out which councilors he chose to have on his side and those he chose to fight.

working for the vasile family wasn’t planned, but he seemed to find his niche there. he’d seen plenty of violence in the world, he knew how ugly it could be, and he knew that even those closest to him were monsters in disguise. it was his time to chose to have on his side and who to fight for, rather than against.

seeing katerina again hadn’t been his motive, but he couldn’t say that those eyes wouldn’t bring just a little bit of light to his darkest days.

[romanmorales]

full name: roman thomas morales.

nickname(s): rome, morales, the jackass.

gender & pronouns: cis male & he/him.

age: thirty-three.

face claim: michael trevino.

orientation: heterosexual.

birth date: april 04, 1987.

astrological sign:

height: five foot nine.

hair color: brown.

eye color: brown.

hometown: 

current residence: providence peak, colorado.

neighborhood: downtown.

occupation: real estate agent.

moral alignment: chaotic neutral.

trigger warnings: death, drugs, foster care.

Roman Thomas Morales was born in nowhere Virginia to parents who had thought they were ready to take on the world. Not even two years into life, his parents quickly decided that they hadn’t been ready at all. Instead of stepping up and attempting to raise, they opted to terminate their rights and handed him over to the state. At the age of two, Roman was thrown into his first foster home. He was cared for and adored and the goal was always adoption. It was a slow moving process, despite having no other resource options. He stayed there until he was six and his foster mother passed from an aggressive form of breast cancer. HIs foster father at the time had realized he wasn’t ready to parent alone, leaving Roman in the hands of placement once more.

His second foster home wasn’t a good fit. He was one of five children in the home and it felt more like a circus than anything else. He was shoved into his grief counseling, sports, and other programs that were meant to keep him busy and help him develop. He was only in that home for another two years before he met his third foster family. It with was the Gilmore family that he stayed for eight years. He was sixteen and fit in perfectly. Throughout the years of his placement, the idea of adoption had come up many times, but it was always pushed off by the courts for one reason or another. He didn’t understand it; he’d found a home with the Gilmore’s and everything finally felt right.

Until it wasn’t. He was sixteen when he caught a petty charge for a misunderstanding. He’d let a friend use his locker at school and when a random drug search was conducted and an ounce of marijuana was pulled from his locker. While he swore it wasn’t his, at the end of the search, it didn’t matter. He was charged and after a lengthy court process, it was ultimately dismissed. It was the midst of said process that Roman was moved to his fourth and final foster home. He was seventeen and knew better than to believe anyone would go through the trouble of adopting him. So, when he turned eighteen he was given a choice; stay in foster care until the age of twenty-one or sign himself out of the state’s custody and do whatever he pleased.

Roman opted on the latter and signed himself out the day he turned eighteen. He was given assistance on finding an apartment and was even given a full ride to college. He went to college for business and it was during that time that he finally felt like he belonged somewhere. He made friends, dated, and lived up the college experience the best he could. After graduation, Roman dabbled in a few careers before finally advancing toward a real estate license for the state of Virginia. It was only after he’d obtained licensing that he earned his first spot in a realtor group. He was good at sales and had no problem working his way up the chain.

It was during this time that his best friend was getting married and had asked Roman to be a part of the process. The thought of marriage panicked him entirely, but it was when he met a woman by the name of Dilan Barak that his thoughts shifted. She was helping his best friend plan the wedding and somehow, he’d fallen for her hard. Maybe it was late night phone calls or the constant texting in between, but he found himself ready to commit. He was twenty-seven when he proposed, but it couldn’t have waited a second longer. He loved her and he knew that he loved her.

A year later was more than enough time for his wife-to-be to plan their perfect wedding. While the days got closer and she grew more excited, Roman found himself getting cold feet. His fear of commitment was only growing more and more as days past, but he couldn’t run. At least he’d convinced himself of that until the day of the wedding. He’d just straightened out his suit when his a groomsman from college came over and put a hand on his shoulder. He explained the ups and downs of marriage and just how tough it could be. It was the wrong pep talk to give someone who was already having second thoughts, but before he could back out entirely, he was being ushered to the front of wedding. He stood there as long as he could, but he’d made his mind up the moment he’d put on that suit. It wasn’t until the ceremony was almost complete that he leaned in and quickly apologized before he hurried out.

He hadn’t looked back, afraid that if he did, he would’ve turned around. He was impulsive in his actions and without a plan, he moved made the move across the states and settled in Seattle. He hadn’t told anyone that he’d already been looking at jobs there. All he needed to do was pass the licensing exam and he’d be set. Within a few months, he was settled, but he wasn’t happy. It was hard to be when texts, calls, and other forms of messages lingered all around him. He’d left a good woman at the altar, but truth was, she was better off without him.

For five years, Roman worked hard to sell what he could. He’d once again rose to the top of sales. He buried himself in work and women to forget the pain of his past, but nothing completely took it away. It was only when he caught word of a big development arising in Colorado that he got curious. Apparently, there was a ritzy neighborhood called Summit Lake that had some upcoming homes that their sister company was looking to hire a prized realtor for. He put his name in the running and to his surprise, he was picked. So, once more, he packed up his things, took yet another exam, and made himself at home in Providence Peak.

[hvandenbrg]

Have you seen HARRY VANDENBERG? This THIRTY-SEVEN year old is a TROPHY HUSBAND who resides in MANHATTAN. HE has been living in NYC for TWO YEARS, and is known to be EMPATHETIC and PROTECTIVE but can also be RECKLESS and VOLATILE, if you cross them.  People tend to associate them with EXTREME SPORTS and GREEN SMOOTHIES.

I’M BACK BABEYYYY. i bet y’all thought you’d seen the last of me!! but... here i am! harry’s bio has changed a little bit so feel free to check it out if you want! other than that i am excited to be back and happy to be able to write with you all again! 

thank you so much for all the support and the patience you’ve given me these past few months. y’all are the best, and i love you with all my heart. 

about —

full name: harry bram vandenberg age: 37 birthday: august 9, 1983 (leo) sexual orientation: heterosexual gender: cis male pronouns: he/his

bio — tw: injury, infertility, cheating, pregnancy

harry has a younger brother and a half sister. his parents divorced when he was young, his father re-married and had one more kid, a girl. there was no drama between his parents, though… at least as far as the children could tell. they were civil in front of them, which is what mattered. harry and his siblings have always been friendly, even if the youngest wasn’t around as often — mostly because his mother didn’t want her around the house much. understandable, yes, but harry and his brother still managed to spend an ungodly amount of time with her growing up.

he was born in brighton, england (his parents were on a ‘last vacation before the baby comes’, and he just happened to be born during said vacation) but was raised in london. besides the abnormal family dynamic, harry had a decent experience growing up. decent in the sense that he often got himself in trouble for staying out too late, getting into fights — because he liked it. not that he was a bad kid, but he had an issue with constant boredom, which he learned to let out in strange ways such as those. in his teens, he decided to skip sixth form and join the british army as an infantry soldier.

still young and lacking tons of experience with real life, harry started a relationship with his neighbor — the girl who’d been his best friend ever since she’d moved next door. truthfully, as his mother had once said, it was only a matter of time until they started a relationship. and harry’s embarrassed protests eventually led to their marriage a year later.

it was a good marriage. they got along pretty well and loved each other pretty much. they had a flat in london where they lived. however, things began to get complicated when harry was deployed to afghanistan for a year, and after a lot of rigorous training, he got selected to join the special reconnaissance regiment — a promotion that posed a legitimate threat on his life. and this, in turn, gave harry the excitement and glee of a child with a new puppy. his wife, however, did not like this at all, and understandably so. his oncoming deployments back to afghanistan and siria really put a strain in their relationship, especially with how excited he always looked when he left, and so unenthused when he returned. this attitude of his sparked many arguments between the couple, which soon after escalated into cheating accusations, which harry both denied and ignored, for as long as he could.

INJURY TW. during a deployment to siria, harry received a bullet to the leg — during his adrenaline rush afterwards, harry kept going by foot, which ended up in a twisted knee and a ligament tear. despite many protests from the man, he had to be sent home and later on discharged from his role in the regiment, and the military altogether.

as the ‘glass half-full’ kind of person that harry’s always been, he tried to look at this sudden change in his life as an opportunity to reunite with his wife, fix his marriage. it seemed to work for the first few weeks as it was her who had to drive him to things such as rehab and therapy. but after a while, he began to realize that the two of them had very little in common anymore — and it was heartbreaking. after being a unit for the majority of his life, he suddenly couldn’t connect with his love anymore.

not to mention that, despite the fact he couldn’t do much for a while, the cheating accusations never stopped coming, even if they were slower and farther in between — he was always on his phone too much, it seemed. 

INFERTILITY TW. so of course the solution was to expand the family! of course. what else could prove that he was loyal to his wife and save his marriage all at once? a child! it hadn’t been his idea, but he agreed. harry was personally terrified of fatherhood. being in charge of your own body is one thing, but being responsible of a completely new human being seemed like a nightmare to the man — but but his wife, he would do it. so they tried — and failed. and tried, and tried, and tried, and kept failing. harry had fully healed from his injury when they decided to maybe see a doctor about it, maybe said injury had done something to harry’s ability to procreate. but it turned out it wasn’t him — and the news devastated the woman. a product of grief and frustration, their relationship only kept on crumbling.

once he was back on comission, harry landed a security job in london with the royal family. it paid well and allowed for the couple to do more things together, things to keep them distracted from the state of their relationship. this glee, however, didn’t last very long; a year into his new job the accusations of cheating began again. now, according to her, he was cheating with diplomats and princesses and so on, so forth. he couldn’t stand it anymore.

CHEATING TW, PREGNANCY TW. sooner than later, something in harry snapped, and he decided to give his wife what she so desperately wanted. she wanted him to be a cheater, so he became one. it started with one of the maids in the palace, then a nanny, then a personal assistant. and sooner than later, he found out he had accidentally gotten someone pregnant. that, for harry, was the signal he’d been looking for. he confronted his wife with the truth, and in what seemed like a minute, she filed for divorce immediately, citing “irreconcilable differences” as the cause. to harry’s luck, it seemed that the other woman in question was either hiding from him or didn’t want him to be a part of the process, which harry respected. he had to, as he had no way of reaching out to her. he met his child the day they were born, and has helped with everything he was allowed to from a distance. after all, with the job he had, he barely had time for himself anymore.

these issues with the job made harry’s time at the palace somewhat difficult, but things stabilized once he was assigned to be princess cecelia’s husband’s bodyguard. harry had never liked cecelia. she seemed spoiled, air-headed. and the things her husband said about her only fueled these thoughts. however, said thoughts went away as he spent more time with the couple, and some, erm, tension built between him and the princess — which ended up exploding into a full-fledged affair. an affair that went way further than harry expected it to; he wasn’t expecting to fall in love with her, with her children, and just… anything that involved cecelia.

PREGNANCY TW. so when she came to him with the news — she was pregnant. with his child. his divorce wasn’t even finalized, but he did not care. it was just a matter of time, right?

when cecelia decided to move to new york following the divorce, harry knew he had to go with her. he requested to be assigned as her bodyguard for the move, which was granted. their secret was safe, and he would be able to move with her.

then it came to revealing their relationship and his paternity to the public — harry knew he was in a proverbial pickle. he had to get his divorce settled and secure a new job before the baby was born. the divorce part was the hardest of both, but it was resolved in the end. job-wise, harry needed to find a new job before the truth came out, as he wouldn’t last long in the United States without one, as a holder of a work visa. thankfully, the birth of his son would help his case and make it easier for him to live in the country. he received diplomatic help, as well as having his professional record speak for him, and he somehow made his way to the nypd’s emergency unit service, where he worked for only a few months before he was terminated for the public attention harry seemed to bring to the department. 

PREGNANCY TW. cecelia told him they were expecting their second child together. he’s of course very happy, although not completely sure about how he feels about not being able to give theo his full attention — and extremely nervous about fathering a girl. the reason seems questionable even to him, as he’s raised penny (for the most part). just seems scary to have a baby so small again.

headcanons —

harry loves extreme sports and combat sports. rock-climbing is a big passion of his, boxing a close second.

he loves portraying himself as a MANLY MAN but ya boy cried at the end of toy story 3. he also cried when his son, theo, was born.

speaking of theo, henry was terrified of becoming a father. but he got some practice with jack and penny, so he thought he was out of the woods. tiny humans? easy! however, he was not expecting just how difficult caring for a miniature human would be. he still loves it, though. theo is his pride and joy.

he owns a collection of little trinkets he got from his different deployments, all in a shoebox. get a scrapbook, ya fool.

while he is slightly apprehensive about the baby, he was the same about theo, it really is only a matter of time until he warms up to the idea of being a father for the second time. what a move for a dude who didn’t want kids in the first place !

but also, scratch all that he’s married to @olliestonem​ :-)

[eliseafox]

[ Olivia Munn, cis female, she/hers, 40 ] Wanted, dead or alive is [ Elise Fox-Mancini ]. They are a [ Corporate Business Attorney ] who have been in New York City for [ nineteen years ]. They are affiliated with [ syndicate ] and serves them as a [ associate ]. People say they are [ observant ] and [ methodical ] but their enemies would say they are [ shrewd ] and [ vengeful ]. They are described as [ matte red lipstick and six-inch heels, an ice cold gaze that pierces straight through you, the scent of petrichor after a warm summer rain ].

trigger for miscarriage, terminal illness.

small stats.

name: elise amelia fox-mancini. age/dob: 40 / april 8. occupation: corporate business attorney, syndicate associate. sexuality: heteromantic heterosexual. nationality: american. languages spoken: english, italian, spanish and mandarin chinese. hair color: dark brown. eye color: hazel. height: 5′4″. build: hourglass figure, fit and athletic.

backstory.

born in kent, connecticut to an affluent old money family, elise fox was never once in her life left wanting for anything. an only child, she was the apple of her father’s eyes ---a man who worked for a hedge fund corporation and had the ideal american royalty life to the public eye, complete with beautiful trophy wife hanging off of his arm.

elise was always busy: ballet lessons as a girl, fencing, archery, piano, flute, language lessons ... one after the other until her schedule was booked solid. for a period of time her mother had her attending photo shoots in her youth (you can find old ad campaigns or commercials with a young elise in them to this day), anything to keep her daughter busy and honest.

it was very clear that her mother’s affections weren’t earnest: a vain attempt to keep her own accomplishments in her own younger days alive through elise. she grew to harshly resent her mother, aware that she was more like a cat to the woman than she was a child.

her relationship with cecelia fox is strained at best, to this day, with elise keeping her further than an arm’s length away.

a brilliant child, elise excelled in her schooling and graduated from her private boarding school at 17. she was accepted into cornell law school and shifted through her law degree with relative ease ---something that takes 7 years to complete took her only 6 and at 23 years of age elise fox graduated and took her bar examinations. 

a combination of excellent grades and her father’s notoriety had her falling in with the mancini family, but if you ask elise she’ll tell you that the exact details are blurry at best. on paper she’s an attorney for one of new york’s finest law firms (with some of the harshest sharks for lawyers on staff). her spot at entry level was quickly recognized and pushed forward ... it seemed everything elise touched was fast-tracked through sheer force of will.

by 27 she was handled several accounts of her own, on retainer for a handful of bigger corporations should they need legal representation. considering her affiliation with the mancini family, a considerable amount of her accounts are business funded by the mancini family themselves. it’s more about her capabilities as an attorney than an easy pass, where elise fought hard to keep her affiliations with the family from influencing her business otherwise.

at 29 she married luca mancini, the son of her boss, after a courtship spanning many years. the two have been married for 11 years, though estranged for 5 of them.

a year later elise’s father passed away from illness. it was the final nail in the coffin of shutting her relationship with cecelia down. elise hasn’t spoken to her mother since (maybe once or twice).

understanding that family would always come first to her husband. elise was careful not to toe into his business where it wasn’t hers ---she’d never allow her relationship with him to influence her place in the mancini family or her work outside of it, just as she never expected his relationship with her to affect his work in any fashion.

at 35 she was expecting, though after 5 months of pregnancy she miscarried - a factor due to her genetics (mother’s side). elise was heartbroken, and more-so when it seemed as if her husband was more interested with business and family matters. instead of attempting to work through their shared tragedy, elise took time to physically recover.

it was during this time that luca took the reigns to the mancini family, that work picked up more for him ---poor timing, or perhaps an easy way to lose himself and express his grief, elise saw the failure in a spiteful light. two months after the loss of their child she packed a bag and left when he was away working for the night.

she spent a year in upstate new york recovering mentally, handling accounts for work remotely but mostly retaining a sabbatical. she returned to manhattan when she was sure she was well-enough, and resumed business as usual, unwilling to speak of or acknowledge her personal tragedy, or her seeming separation from luca.

for the past 3 years elise has been handling her accounts, working her ass off for her firm, and keeping her head down, generally. the business with gregory bianchi’s death has been handled with as much grace and elegance as possible, with elise maintining a prim public facade.

personality.

shrewd, concise, and no-nonsense, elise carries her work as a corporate attorney into her personal life more often than not. her general attitude around those she hardly knows or finds herself only just affiliated with can come across as incredibly cold, when in reality elise is a devil in the details individual. she champions the facts over emotional investments, though she’s obviously not immune to them.

she can be quite warm around those she’s comfortable with, though it’s generally difficult for her to express emotions she was typically denied as a child, considering her mother’s attitude and behavior in general.

driven as hell. a dog with a bone: if you give her a task she will see it through to completion, come hell or high water. it’s part of how she willed herself toward completing so much of her education early (in combination with her intelligence), but it’s carried through to all aspects of her life.

extra.

very fit and enjoys working out. she runs regularly, takes self defense classes four times a week, and practices yoga each morning.

still dances - ballet, to be specific, though obviously not professionally. it’s more of a hobby than anything else.

of the many instruments her mother threw her into, the only one that stuck was violin. elise isn’t a flawless player, and she has a small collection of violins that are more for display purposes than not.

lives in a penthouse suite in manhattan. it’s immaculate.

has a cat named mogwai  (like the gremlin), that’s incredibly and unrealistically spoiled. he’s an american maine coon and she loves him more than you, honestly.

has a lot of suits. has a lot of clothes, really. her suite has 2 walk-in closets and both are full to the brim with various attire and shoes.

always well-put together, even when she’s not working. you’ll never catch her looking frumpy or rushed ... even her sweatpants days are presentable.

has never once let the -mancini in her name be the reason she achieved anything. and despite being estranged from luca, she never dropped or changed it. she’s still married to him, after all.

[ellisonhaney]

Rose, 26, GMT, she/her, vomit ⇢ i swear i just saw MARGOT ROBBIE out on the streets but it turned out to be ELLISON HANEY. SHE was born on APRIL 19TH making them only 31 years old. They’re known to be +RESOURCEFUL, +CREATIVE and -PROUD -WOUDED. They spend most of their time being a RECEPTIONIST. Rumour has it they’re HETEROSEXUAL, and can be found in VAN NUYS. You know you’ve found them when you come across PILES OF BABY LAUNDRY, SLEEPY MORNING VOICE, AND THE SMELL OF HONEY.

(miscarriage tw, cancer tw, death tw, divorce tw, infertility tw)

BIO

Ellison was born in Highland Park, Texas, hailed as the seventh most expensive superb in the USA with an average annual household income of $358,994 it was no surprise that the girl had a very cushy lifestyle. Both her parents were said to be ‘old money’ with basically a never-ending income that they were more than happy to spend on holidays and the best of the best. When the girl was seven she was vaguely aware of her mother and father setting up a charitable organisation to help spread the wealth of the 1% to those who weren’t as blessed and as she started to understand what that meant the pride in her family just grew. Sure they had a lot of money, but they helped others as well, so there was no need to be embaressed about indulging.

The typical southern family her mother was a society lady, her father spent a lot of time at country clubs, their house was filled with their rare art collection and played host to elaborate parties. Every single one Ellison would get a new dress, prancing around in fairy wings before graduating to tight designer cocktail dresses inside, she loved everything about it. She was raised with a strong sense of family so when she met the man she ended up marrying it was always with the intention of becoming a housewife and raising his children in some pile of a home. Probably still in Texas because after all that was her home, her community, and she loved it.

Always with a creative streak the girl loved to design small dresses for toddlers, imagining she might one day get to put her own daughters in them, launching her own designing line called Toddler Delights. Never needing it to make money but just because she wanted to share what she loved. Nothing Ellie ever did was because she needed money. Meeting the love of her life at the age of twenty four the two of them were married in a lavish southern wedding two years later with the intention of starting a family. Sadly the girl’s father passed away not long after she returned from her (month long) honeymoon, but still with the support of her mother the newlyweds started trying for a baby. To say it didn’t go to plan would be an understatement. Not only was she seemingly unable to conceive naturally for a long time, when Ellison finally did fall pregnant she wasn’t able to maintain the pregnancy.

By twenty nine she’d suffered three miscarriages, two rounds of IVF that had failed altogether, and the couple’s relationship was hanging on by the skin of it’s teeth. To add insult to injury in May of 2018 Ellison’s mother was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. Everything was falling apart around the family that had not long ago seemingly had everything, but the determined blonde wouldn’t be deterred and in August of that year the couple officially filed to be considered for adoption. Thanks no doubt to her parents charity work as well as her own family wealth it didn’t take long for them to be approved, whoever said the adoption process could be arduous was being dramatic if you asked Ellison at the time, but by the time they were informed they would become parents to a baby boy in June of 2019 the damage to their relationship was too far gone. Holding things together long enough to push through the adoption her husband Grant promptly left Ellison two months after Walker was born, leaving her devastated.

On September 13th 2019 her mother passed away from terminal cancer, leaving her with no living family apart from the baby who was now her entire responsibility. Medical bills for her mother had been extensive, and it was when Ellison started to formulate a plan to pay them from her parents funds that she realised the devastating truth. Not only had the family never had the money she’d thought they’d really had, for the last twenty two years Mr and Mrs Calhoun had been funding their 1% lifestyle from the money they had been apparently giving to charity from a plethora of fundraisers and drives.

Once the news got out their daughter was shunned from the society she’d grown up in, the people she’d grown up calling friends turning their backs on her with limited exception, and with nothing now keeping her in Texas the two person family left for Los Angeles. Most people don’t believe her when they find out about how she grew up living, especially since the young mother is now a receptionist living hand to mouth in Van Nuys, Los Angeles in a one bedroom apartment with more issues than assets. The money she makes from her part time job and limited sales from Toddler Delights which was once a hobby and was now a lifeline, everyday was a struggle. Not to mention she was still paying off her mother’s medical expenses. Still, Ellison kept her married name for both her and Walker’s sake. He deserved his fathers name and she deserved the anonymity it would occasionally buy her from her family scandal, though it was always a matter of time before people found out.

Other:

Ellison had suffered the worst humiliation she could imagine in every way possible, and so her pride was all she had left in her own eyes. The woman refuses handouts even from those who are her best and oldest friends. She sees it as pity, and hates that more than anything.

Despite everything her love for her parents runs as deep as it ever did. Maybe people don’t understand but she knows they weren’t bad people, whatever they did was likely done to protect her, rather than hurt others. It might not be true, but it helps her fall asleep at night.

Ellie hates her job but knows she has to do something to support her family. It’s not mentally stimulating at all, so she just goes through the motions, and would much rather talk about her designing than she would ever her reception work.

Walker was born on June 22nd 2019, so he is about to turn one, and she will protect him with everything she has even if things didn’t pan out exactly how she’d wanted them to. Because she has no family now apart from him, and he has no family apart from her.

Sometimes she can be angry because of leftover emotion about what she’s been through in the last two years. A lot of it hasn’t been dealt with properly because she’s too intent on survival. Ellie just doesn’t have the time to stop and take stock, she is just trying to keep her head above water.

Ever since she was a little girl she’s used the same honey body wash that her mom introduced her to, and that will never change. A year ago the company that makes it announced they would be discontinuing it, so she bought a hundred bottles. This was before she no longer had access to her ex husbands credit card, but she made sure she kept those bottles in the divorce.

She seems to have the look of someone without enough hours in the day 90% of the time, her apartment is full of piles of unwashed baby onesies, and last nights dirty plates are in the sink. It’s not because she doesn’t want to get these things done, it’s because she physically cannot do everything required of her, the woman never stops. For mental healths sake she has to step away to see friends or let loose sometimes, but this costs getting in a babysitter or convincing someone she already knows to watch Walker, and these are favours she doesn’t want to end up running out of.

Sometimes that side of her that was a southern pageant girl, a debutant, a kept woman, rears it’s ugly head. But mostly she tries to blend in as best she can because then people ask less questions.

[drkoestersmithrpg]

Have To Go To Bed - it gets MUCH steamier from here...

Then there was John’s new information from (the books.)  After many lengthy conversations with Robin, his recently-acquired and very-well-taught familiar, Lavern Post did not actually one familiar.  According to John’s studies, and according to Robin, she had four.  The very idea made Peter feel exhausted.  John hadn’t actually come out and said that he intended to acquire all four, but he was hinting very strongly at it.  Peter head swam at the concept.  [description of how the newly acquired Robin had to feed at Peter’s witchesmark for three days before he was strong enough to feed from John, description of the four of them in Peter’s bedroom (damn he was glad they had enough money to pay for ben and may’s retirement living in style.)  Peter leaned into Tony’s arms.  Robin, looking very much like an earnest, pale brown-eyed boy, about 17ish, with a strange English accent and shy, halting voice, feeding at Peter’s mark (with Tony’s permission, Peter would never have dreamed of doing it without Tony there) The familiar (Tony insisted it be called a ‘little spirit’) seemed terrified of Tony, but was convinced to feed from Peter’s witchesmark as long as the Apostle Luke stayed close.  Peter actually had fond memories of that night.  Peter would always think of John as “terminally straight,” but he was also a damn good-looking guy, and Peter enjoyed watching him treat Robin so tenderly.  They were all snuggled together on the bed – Peter leaning into Tony’s strong form, Robin feeding from his mark, sandwiched in between him and John.  Tony kept a firm hand on Robin’s chest.  In the early days, familiars were able to speak very little, and Tony served as an interpreter.  Every few minutes he would turn Robin’s head away from Peter and the familiar would feed by sucking John’s fingers.  When Robin fed from Peter, John stroked his hair gently.  Peter found himself doing the same, only to find Tony pulling his hand away.  But Tony didn’t mind at all when Peter reached out to touch John’s hair, nor when John touched him.  

It was sweet, but each night turned into a bit of an ordeal, waiting for John to carry Robin in his arms out of the room into the privacy of the room down the hall.  Then he could allow Tony to take care of the problem that feeding from the mark always caused, no matter how much Peter wished otherwise.

The acquiring of Robin had been an educational and eye-opening experience, and left Peter with two pieces of information.  One, that he was very ready for Matty to acquire his familiar.  John as a friend, and their friendly touching was sweet and peaceful (and peaceful was the key word, especially as the feeding went on into the night and Peter’s head began swimming and he began losing track of whose hands were where.)

But Matty and Peter?   They had a special kind of friendship, the kind that sometimes involved both of them and Tony at the same time.  And that made him look forward to the acquiring of Matty’s familiar.  

And Two, that after Matty, he was going to have to get Tony to create another witchesmark.  One that wasn’t connected directly to his groin. Something different from the one Tony fed from.  Farther away from his heart.  Maybe on his left foot, for instance.

John, naturally, wanted a witches mark of his own, and while that was an excellent idea, that was just one more thing on Peter’s absolutely endless todo list, which was what was making Peter exhausted.  He was currently laying on the couch, watching something ridiculously heterosexual and porny on HBO, but he was simply too exhausted, emotionally and physically, to do anything about it.  He couldn’t’ even find the moral fortitude to get up when he heard Sarah come back into the kitchen, where she was now engaging an exasperated John, trying to cram in a few more minutes of studying his medical text books, in yet another conversation about how she was in the right and Missy was in the wrong.  

The only think that did get him up off the couch?  The knowledge that Anton would be visited his bedroom, probably in a few hours, looking for him.  Peter might not be awake when that happened, unfortunately.  The day had taken its toll.  

But that, by itself, wasn’t terrible.  Peter had a very fond memory of something Tony had told him, directly after they had become lovers.  Really lovers, not just lovers in dreams.

It had been their very first night together, in fact.  The house had been completely empty, May and Ben visiting the DeSlaughters for a meal (suggested by Tony in a dream) and leaving Peter behind.  After it was over, Tony had startled Peter by asking if Peter wanted him to leave.

Peter pulled him close in alarm, and was gratified to feel Tony’s arms around him, holding him, it seemed, in relief.

“Is that what they asked you… after they were… after they were done with you?  You were supposed to just leave?” Peter whispered, wide-eyed. He was still trying to wrap his brain around the enormity of it all, what they had done, and what it had meant. The idea of being alone, now, was just terrible.

“Sometimes I would be sent out to check on the animals,” Tony was saying gently, but Peter felt like Tony was just trying to excuse the behaviors of his previous masters.  

At least Peter knew that, hundreds of years from now, Tony would also speak well of him.

“I’d rather stay with you,” Tony was saying now, gently placing kisses on Peter’s forehead, where the sweat was cooling.

“Because you like to feed while I sleep.”

“No, because I like to watch.”

With that knowledge Peter trudged to bed.  He would wake up in He was too tired for a shower, too tired to do more than take of his shirt and shoes.  He would wake up in the arms of Anton, who would help him undress the rest of the way. Sleeping in Anton’s arms was certainly not the worst thing in the world.  Anton could feed while Peter slept, and then watch him sleep to his heart’s content.

“But who I need is Oberon,” Peter realized, even as he collapsed onto the bed.  He barely had the energy to get his head to the pillow. “Oberon would explain it all, would make it all make sense.”  He couldn’t call Oberon of course, Oberon had a full docket tonight, just as he had every night.  (explanation of how many politicians Oberon visited every night and why.)  But someday Oberon would be free, and then Peter would ask him for advice.  Of the four kings, that was king that was supposed to contain all of Tony’s dreamweaving skills, and as a side effect was a profound understander of human beings. “Oberon will tell me what to do,” Peter mumbled, sinking into the bed.  “Oberon will tell me how I’m supposed to keep going.”

 Peter’s eyes were too heavy to keep open, and yet sleep eluded him.  He sighed in frustration… and woke himself up.  Dear god, he hoped it wasn’t going to be that kind of night, but he feared it would.  Dream after dream about being awake, dreams that didn’t feel like rest at all. Mostly of arguments or bad news about even more best-laid plans falling into pieces like [description of mice and men poem].  He was settling into yet another dream-argument with someone, someone he didn’t even recognize, when he felt gentle lips pressing against his forehead.

He opened his eyes and smiled in wonder.

“Oh… oh why are you here? Oh I thought you’d be too busy… oh you came…” he whispered between kisses.

Oberon lay beside him on the bed, gently kissing him on the mouth and gently stroking his face. Sometimes he would pull back enough to trace Peter’s lips with his fingers, and smile.

Peter loved it when Oberon smiled.  His hair and beard where shot with grey, far more than Peter had ever seen on Tony. He was still devastatingly handsome, especially when he smiled.  Peter reached out and lovingly stroked the crinkle’s on the king’s face when he smiled, the crinkles at his eyes and at the corners of his mouth.  When Tony looked this way, it meant he was very sick or else very tired.  But this was Oberon’s guise at all times.

Oberon’s guise also involved a body that only existed from the waist up, which is why Peter reached down to haul a blanket up from the foot of the bed, covering the king up to his chest.  Then he lay back down.  He had to grin… it was just like when he was sixteen, kissing Tony with a blanket inbetween them.  But he didn’t care.  He stroked Oberon’s face, kissed his mouth, and smiled.

“But I’m keeping you from your work, you have so much work to do…” Peter whispered.

“My dreams were brief tonight,” Oberon whispered back (but Oberon never spoke over a whisper.)  “Brief dreams are very effective.

“Oh… is that true my king??” Peter teased with a smile.  “I thought the most effective dreams were epics…

“Oh,” Peter said, suddenly pulling away.  “Epic dreams are your favorite, and you gave that up for me?  To be here?”

“You needed me,” Oberon murmured, pulling Peter close.  For quite a while they lay that way, kissing and talking.  Sometimes Peter called him “Oberon,” and sometimes “my king.”  And sometimes he called him “Tony.”

“You can help me sleep tonight,” he said finally.  “I’ll need your help.  You can give me pleasant dreams.  I need good dreams.”

“There is something else you need, my master…” Oberon began.  Peter opened his eyes to find out what it was… he put a lot of stock in Oberon’s advice…

…then his eyes went wide as he felt Anton’s weight behind him on the bed.  

He tried to turn to great the other king, but was even more surprised when Anton put a firm hand in his belt loop… dammit he had been so tired he hadn’t even taken off his jeans… and yanked him into position.  Before  he knew it, he had Anton’s sizeable erection pressing against his ass while Oberon kissed him on the mouth.  Even worse, they were moving together, Anton’s trusting against him as Oberon’s tongue moved in and out of his mouth.  Peter’s eyes couldn’t open any wider… Oberon’s kisses were always so sweet and gentle. Not since that first night that the four kings were created had he been so overtly sexual.

“Is this what I need?” Peter gasped, pulling his mouth away for air.  He loved the king’s wicked smile.  “Oh, well, if you say so.  Who am I to argue?”

[cetacian]

The Orca (Bio)

Grace Balin (former human form)

Grace Balin as Orca

                                 Bio: Under Cut For Length

   Name: Grace Balin

   Metahuman Alias: Orca

   Sex/Gender: Cisgendered Female

   Height: Eight Feet

   Age: 32

   Species: Human-orca hybrid (formerly human)

   Sexuality: Heterosexual

   Religion: Still considers herself Catholic, but has complicated views.

   Nationality

: American

   City of Residence: Gotham City, New Jersey

   Education: Graduated from Gotham Gate College with degrees in Bio-            Medicine and Marine Biology, specializing in Cetology.

  Marital Status: Married (Estranged, Main Verse), Married (Injustice Verse)

  Family: Terry Capshaw (estranged husband, Main Verse), Martin Balin (father), Sadie Balin (mother), Prudence, Temperance, Faith, Hope, Justice, and Courage Balin (brothers and sisters), Jonah Balin (nephew, deceased), Waylon Jones/Killer Croc (husband, Injustice Verse), Unborn Child (Details Pending, Injustice Verse)

Bio: Grace Balin was born into a large family that struggled with low income. Seeing the poverty that her family and the community around her pushed her to work hard to achieve her dreams of helping others. Her hard work paid off when she received a full academic scholarship from Gotham Gate College. It was during her freshman year that she would see the Northern Atlantic Ocean and fell in love with the sea. She soon earned her Ph. D.s in Marine Biology (specializing in cetology) and Biomedicine (specializing in gene therapy) and took up a position at the Gotham Aquarium.  A chance encounter at a party of mutual friends lead to Grace meeting Terry Capshaw, who she would soon marry. Three years later, Grace and Terry would work together to found an after-school program so that inner-city children could experience the beauty of the sea. Grace would later expand her desire to help the less fortunate by founding a soup kitchen that she worked at in her off-hours.

   While Grace and Terry planned on having children of their own, a car accident would cause Grace to becoming paraplegic and require the use of a wheelchair. Grace soon became obsessed with regaining her mobility, pouring money in gene therapy studies, concentrating on the possibility human regeneration of spinal cord tissues from orca spinal cord tissues, taken from the aquarium’s resident orca Esther. Grace was eventually able to create a chemical formula that not only temporarily allowed her mobility she craved, but also allows her the immense strength and swimming prowess of an orca. However, her unauthorized gene studies and numerous human trials resulted in her grants for the aquarium being terminated. As she faced eviction from her place of work and desperately needing funds for both her soup kitchen and other charitable endeavors she hope to accomplish, Grace created a specialized suit and took on the moniker of Orca in order to act as a Robin Hood-esque vigilante. Her first act of theft was the Flame of Persia, a valuable diamond owned by rich fashion mogul Camille Baden-Smythe. Camille was not a random victim, nor entirely innocent herself, as she had made her money from sweatshop labor and well as being a slumlord for the neighborhood Grace lived and worked in (including owning the aquarium and desiring to see it shut down and the area rezoned for commercial use).

    Bruce Wayne happened to be on Camille’s yacht when Orca stole the diamond, putting Batman on her trail. He visited the Gotham Aquarium, hoping to learn more information on orcas from Grace, not suspecting her due to her handicap. Later that night, Grace sent her friend Salman Jared to try to fence the diamond, which ended with him getting shot when the potential clients decided to steal the diamond. While Batman wasn’t able to save Salman, he was able to prevent Orca from murdering the treacherous clients and learn from a dying Salman that Orca intended to use the fencing funds for charitable causes and that Grace was involved in some way.

   Batman then followed Orca back to the aquarium, leading to a confrontation that ended with Batman being thrown into Esther’s tank. Batman managed to escape, finding Grace’s torn clothes, her chemical formula and the eviction notice for the aquarium, mistakenly believing that she had either been murdered by Orca or committed suicide to avoid implication in the former’s crimes. While Batman asked Alfred to look into further information on the evidence he found, he deciding to investigate Grace’s soup kitchen, going undercover as a homeless veteran. At the kitchen, he found that Grace was still alive and, via lip reading, discovered that she planned on extorting Camille for the diamond’s safe return, rather than risk anymore of her friends’ lives. Upon leaving the kitchen, Batman left a sizable donation and prevented a young boy from burning down the aquarium, discovering that Camille had threatened the kid into committing the act under penalty of having his family evicted from their home.

   Later on, Batman followed Orca back to Camille’s yacht, but was unable to prevent her from from being attacked by the armed security forces aboard. Once Orca reached Camille and demanded payment for the Flame of Persia, she was devastated to discover that the gem didn’t legally belong to Camille and that she wouldn’t pay for its return. Enraged, Orca leapt at Camille, who shot her twice in the chest. Running on adrenaline, Orca grabbed Camille and leapt into the harbor. Batman chased after them, learning from Alfred the nature of the chemical formula, the fact that Grace’s clothes had been torn from the inside out, Camille’s ownership of the aquarium and the real owner of the Flame of Persia. Batman made a strategic attack, which forced Orca to take notice of the fact that Camille was quickly running out of air. Unfortunately, the gunshot wounds inflicted on Orca turned out to be fatal, forcing Batman to bring both her and Camille to the surface.

   As Grace was dying, she changed back to her human form, revealing her identity to Batman and Camille. As her life ebbed, Grace informed Batman that she had more of the chemical formula on her and taking it all would heal her mortal wounds, though at the cost of trapping her permanently in her hybrid form. Batman allowed her to take the formula, which worked as Grace said it would, transforming her into a more monstrous from that no longer required the specialized suit. She then escaped, saying that she would let Batman live and that she intended to continue her criminal career in pursuit of helping others. While Batman was able to bring Camille’s crimes to light, give the Flame of Persia back to its real owner and use the reward money (along with an exceeding donation from Wayne International) to greatly improve the community Grace fought so hard for, she was forced to leave her former life behind.

    For a time she went to Bludhaven, at first working with the former rogues turned heroes group the Run-Offs, but her self loathing for her new existence lead her to abandon them in favor of a robber group called the Whale’s Enders out of a desperate desire to not be seen as a monster. However, after the group had a violent encounter with the Blockbuster form of Roland Desmond, Grace came to her senses, having realized early on that the group wanted her formula for becoming orca hybrids, something she refused to give them. She would then go on to assist Nightwing and the Run-Offs, helping to cure the city’s population when they were exposed to the Blockbuster serum by Raptor and Pigeon.

   Grace would later return to Gotham City, acting as a violent vigilante against pirates, poachers and human traffickers. However, he return became fraught with tragedy as her young nephew Jonah (who she hadn’t yet met) was one of many lives lost in a mad scheme by Melmoth The Wanderer. She soon joined the Gotham City Monsters, a group of mutated and supernatural beings who had all lost someone or otherwise been harmed by Melmoth in a quest to stop him from potentially destroying the Multiverse. Joining forces with Batwoman, the team was able defeat Melmoth and then go their separate ways once more. Since then, Grace has been willing to work with both heroes and villains alike for the greater good and hopes to gain the courage to reconnect with her family one day.

[serendipitous-magic]

My Initial Rant - Warning, Spoilers!!!!

No, seriously, SO MANY SPOILERS. OKAY? This is your warning.

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For real, look away now.

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Okay, my main problem with this trainwreck of a season? It completely lost touch with the emotional aspects of the story. Like... entirely.

There was a plot there, but a) it didn’t address like... anything that they set up in the first two seasons, emotionally, and the plot felt more like a cheesy, over-the-top comedy/action/adventure/??? than anything else, and b) it was not character driven at all. The plot just kind of happened to the characters

Moreover, the first two seasons felt like they were about real people. Season 3 felt like it was about characters. Empty, one-dimensional characters. Every single character was reduced to a cheap caricature of themselves - and I mean every one. I’m not sure I can think of a single moment that felt emotionally complex or even in-character. The writing of seasons 1 and 2 felt like we were hearing and seeing real people talking and reacting to things and relating to one another - this season felt like every single line was from a bad B-list movie. I mean, the actors did the best they could with what they had, I’m sure, but... The writing did not sound like real people. It sounded like the characters were just being fed cheesy, over-used lines that would further the (action-and-drama-driven, paper thin) plot.

They reduced Hop to a bumbling moron who doesn’t even act like a cop, much less his real self. I mean, really, who in the fucking hell is this new character? I don’t know him. He’s just an alcoholic who stumbles around saying, “I’m the chief of police, I can do anything I want,” punching people and being a fucking dick to Joyce.

They reduced Joyce to just... yelling. Like, her character just became this somewhat headstrong woman that yells. No complexity. No character at all, really. She’s barely even seen trying to take care of her kids except for saying, “Our kids are in danger!” once or twice. Who. The fuck. Is this?? Where’s Joyce Byers? Because I don’t know this woman who looks like her.

They reduced Will to a non-entity with maybe half a relevant moment. He just becomes an evil-barometer, and that’s about it. He’s the main fucking character. And we get a single scene that’s actually about him, it never gets closure, and after that he’s shuffled over to the sidelines.

They reduced Mike to a jerk. Like he’s just a walking stereotype of a teenage guy. Like, I see none of Mike’s character in this season. Where’s his kindness and empathy? His earnestness? His leadership? His nerdiness? His (relative) emotional intelligence? His intelligence? His loyalty? His relationship with Will (and that’s even besides being shippy - like, the first two seasons hinged on Mike being very close to Will, and them being best friends since they were five, and Mike being determined to get Will back and then keep him safe, and now it’s like... Do they even know each other? At all? They seem like vague acquaintances.)

I think they might have forgotten about El’s backstory and personality entirely. The only good thing I can say for her in this season is that she did get her character arc of going out in the world and establishing her own personality more, outside of the lab or the cabin or her boyfriend. But aside from that arc, in this season it was like she was just a magic bullet. They reduced her to her powers. She slammed shit around with her mind for a while and went into the Void and like... giggled with Max? And don’t get me wrong, I really appreciated the Elmax content, but it just seemed like it was not earned in the slightest. She did not feel like the same character. (Like all the other characters tbh.)

And that’s not even to get into all the other characters that just kind of moved around like puppets on a stage depending on what the plot required of them, who got, like nothing as far as actual character content or arcs. (Nancy, Jonathan, Steve, Dustin, Lucas...)

And speaking of plot? Nothing felt deserved. Nothing felt built-up-to or significant. The characters got beaten up and thrown around a lot (seriously, there was a lot of violence in this season, and all of it felt very unnecessary and artificial), but none of it really... Meant anything? Like, Steve gets the crap beaten out of him and almost tortured by Russians (??? why the Russians. Why. Whyyyyy.), Jonathan gets the crap beaten out of him by the not-zombies, Nancy gets beaten up and thrown against a wall by the not-zombies, El gets choked, B*lly gets hurled around a fair amount, Hop both takes and deals a fair amount of violence (apparently for no reason??? like none of it really makes sense)... But none of the action or violence really seemed to have a reason or meaning beyond just “look, action!!” It didn’t mean anything beyond just moving the plot forward to the next shock-factor scene.

Why was the Party never together?? Like, ever. I think they had like two scenes where the Party actually had plots that touched at all. Other than that it was like they were just off doing their own thing in like 3 or 4 completely separate stories. We didn’t get any moments of them crossing paths, really, in the organic way that stitched together the interweaving plots of seasons 1 and 2. 

They treated women like shit in this season??? What the actual fuck. And not just the season, but the characters treat each other like shit! Hopper tells Joyce to “stick to sales”! Jonathan tells Nancy that she should give up on her case! Not to mention that Nancy is humiliated and treated like shit at her job, and it is not handled well at all by the writers - it feels like a bad, cheesy movie where the villains just holler out some sexist shit and then guffaw about it, and that’s like... Never addressed. Lucas and Mike call girls “a different species.” And then they spend the rest of the season doing their weird girls-are-mysterious-creatures-that-you-can-win-back-with-presents thing???? The cougars at the pool were unnecessary and really uncomfortable. Robin was a cool character until all the sudden they had to be like “oh and she had a crush on Steve in school!!!111!!11!!” ......... why. 

And on that note, why any of the heterosexual bullshit?? Why?? It didn’t even feel deserved or organic in this season. At least in season 2 the straight ships felt well-deserved (mileven, lumax - they were built organically, over the course of the season, and their love story felt like it meant something). Here it’s like they just paired up as many male-female pairs as they could and shoved it in our faces, with no real emotions or meaning behind it. Even Jopper, which was a great ship in seasons 1 and 2, just got... uncomfortable. Like, they treated each other like shit. It was really uncomfortable. They had no chemistry. They just bumbled around like idiots, being mean to each other. I.... I don’t understand.

Furthermore, why did Billy get a kind-of-redemption-arc?? Why did they have to do the whole “oh, he was abused as a child and that’s why he’s a monster, boo hoo!” thing??? The message they send with that is so fucking awful. Billy is a human piece of shit (abuser, violent, racist, sexist, etc., etc., etc.) and they’re like “But we show you his shitty childhood, which means he’s pathetic and worthy of redemption!!!” FUCK. NO.

The monster made no sense. I mean, emotionally. Symbolically. All the setup they did with the Mind Flayer in season 2? All the foreshadowing about how only the undead can defeat it (aka Will, zombie boy)? They made a fantastic monster and villain... And then they just made it into a gooey meat monster that turns people into zombies for shock factor. And its whole connection with Will, and all that? It was used as, like... like Will was just an evil barometer who occasionally said, “He’s here,” and that was it. The Mind Flayer went from being a fantastically horrifying, effective, interesting, powerful villain to... a cheesy movie monster.

Why the Russians. ... Why. There was literally no reason for them to be there. To open the gate, I guess, but... Honestly what significance did that whole plot have? Okay, so the Russians infiltrated Hawkins to take advantage of the Gate, to try to open it again, and they used the mall as a front to do that, and one of them was basically the Terminator and he was after Hop and Joyce (which also just felt so artificial and contrived), and... And they were in cahoots with the mayor...? Honestly, from a storytelling perspective, they could (and, I think, should) have used either Hawkins Lab or Brenner or Kali or something, anything they’d already established to fill that exact role!! Because the Russians in Hawkins just felt like stereotypes that marched around holding guns. They added no emotional relevance or impact to the story. They didn’t really add anything to the story except for some convenient plot devices (that weren’t even very clever or compelling). They could have had Brenner come back (they hinted he wasn’t dead) with the New Hawkins Lab or whatever and fulfill the same exact role, plot-wise, and that would have been so much more emotionally relevant than just shoveling a bunch of Russian stereotypes into Hawkins and making them punch people.

The fucking ending. The Byers leave? That’s it? That’s the story? After all that pain and suffering and struggle and victory and relationship building and everything (I’m talking about S2 here), they just... pack up and leave? And there’s a 30 second scene of Will crying while he hugs his friends and then Joyce shuts the door and that’s it? The end result - the ending is that they need to cut ties and move on and grow up? That’s the moral? After all that, “sometimes change is good even though it hurts,” and the Byers leave all the people that care about them? How in the hell is that an emotionally satisfying ending? How is that an ending at all? And I’m not even talking about ships here (again, that’s a whooooole ‘nother rant). Just for the story, it fell so completely and entirely flat. It did not feel deserved. It did not feel meaningful.

And honestly, I think that’s the problem with the whole season.

It did not feel deserved, or meaningful, because there was no emotional connection from the beginning. We never connected with the characters emotionally. There was hardly anything there to connect with. It started out off-key and kind of bland and emotionally distant, and it stayed that way through the entire season, to the point where I wasn’t even engaged. I was just watching so I could be done with it.

The plot was rushed and driven by shock factor. It felt over-the-top and cheesy, and not in the good-old-fashioned-80s-movie-nostalgia way. The characters were treated as side notes, and all of them felt paper-thin and completely out-of-character for themselves, lacking any complexity or emotional depth. Very few things in the plot actually engaged me or made me feel for the characters, because it was all so rushed and meaningless. None of the relationships (family, friends, ships, etc.) felt real or genuine at all, and frankly many of them were just uncomfortable because they were jerks to each other the whole time with no real closure or arcs. 

Not to mention they completely threw away all the interesting loose ends from season 2. What happened to all that hinting that Will has powers?? What happened to Brenner possibly being alive? What happened to Kali? What happened to “it was the best thing I’ve ever done” and that whole arc? What happened to “the way to defeat the Mind Flayer is with an army of the undead (Will, zombie boy)” (which they turned on its head and made the Mind Flayer into zombies???? What?? What?)?? What happened to literally every good and interesting and complex thing in the show, and why did they replace it with meaningless, unearned, paper-thin, badly written action and drama, coming from characters that are bumbling imitations of themselves?

Y’all, I’m fucking mad. Like. I don’t even know what the hell to say right now. I don’t fucking know if this fandom is even salvageable. I don’t fucking know.

And that’s not even to really get into byeler, which... fucking ouch. I was expecting angst, but we didn’t even get that - we didn’t even get that! We got nothing. We got a single 30-second interaction of them one-on-one, in which they’re fighting, and then their relationship is literally never addressed in any real capacity again. After S1 hinges on Mike trying to get Will back. After “crazy together,” after “we won’t let him,” after “it was the best thing I’ve ever done,” after all that - it’s like they barely know each other. Are they even friends, let alone best friends for life? Do they know each other? Do they even look at each other? They hug for half a second and we’re supposed to believe that Mike and Will - attached at the hip for the entirety of S2 Mike and Will, who have been one of the main close relationships on the show, who the show focused on as being one of the most complex and deep relationships - they just hug for half a second and walk away, while there’s narration about how “change is painful sometimes but it’s good, time to move on.” Fuck. This. Entire. Season.

[tyrell-garner]

ABOUT TYRELL GARNER

   FULL NAME: Tyrell Garner

  AGE: 38

  NICKNAME: Ty

  SEXUALITY: Heterosexual

  GENDER IDENTITY: Cis male

  HEIGHT: 6‘7

  WEIGHT: 240 lbs

  SPECIES: human

OTHER

   DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Hard to overlook. Tall and bulky.

  OCCUPATION: Police officer.

  HOMETOWN: Arcadia, California, Bayview

  PERSONALITY: goofy, loyal, protective, reliable, melancholic

VIEWS

   SYNTHETICS: Tyrell does not like Synthetics at all. He doesn’t want anything to do with them.

  HUMANS: Tyrell likes humans in general. He wants to protect them.

ABOUT

   Looking at Tyrell, you would expect a hard shell, soft core kind of situation judging from his figure, how tense he gets when he is deep in thought and the police uniform. It’s the other way around though. You see, Ty is the softest dough in town. He’d wrap the whole community into a big bear hug if he could and fix all the lost souls out there. Reaching out like that has brought the second of seven Garner children no luck though, so he sticks to being friendly and only really opens up to very few.

  Ty had been the golden child. Basically all of his siblings were. Their parents loved them like crazy and did everything in their power to make sure they had everything they could possibly want and need. Their tight bonds didn’t safe the Garner family from harm though.

  The oldest of the seven children had left the family in his childhood due to an accident. It had been child’s play gone bad. The four eldest Garner children had escaped their mother, had followed their oldest brother Hector out of town right out of Arcadia. Down unpaved roads until they could have no longer even been called trails. Between the trees and puddles of mud, the two boys and girls played their games, chased through nature, tested their own and each other’s strength. Ty had never been one to challenge Hector. He was his right hand, the two of them stood tall against the rest of the world. Xenia, their oldest sister, tried to gain a place among the boys whenever she could, so they did contest and dare after dare, just to see who would do better this time. Rematch followed rematch until slick fair skin slipped on moist moss. Three children had cheered for the one that had climbed higher than them all. The fall had been quick, the landing dampened by more moss but the breakage of bone had been louder than any noise that Tyrell would ever hear in his life to come. It echoed through the woods like his mother’s cries over the cemetery.

  Even though Tyrell was now the oldest of six, he had never once thought of taking over his brother’s place as the leader of the group of children. He took care of his family and was in every other aspect the big brother that he was supposed to be, but he was simply not born to be the leader. Xenia took over the position until most of the children had left town for university or because of love once they all got older – but she could never get ahold of them all.

  Curtis, Ty’s youngest brother, was the next to leave them. He had been different to them in a lot of ways. According to Tyrell’s mother, Curtis was a different kind of special. All siblings knew that Curtis was their mother’s favorite, but he was all of their favorite, so it was alright anyhow. He had an aura of light and a voice of happiness. Ty sometimes wished his mother wasn’t the only one left to talk to and halfway taken from dementia so he would be able to talk to her about him. Apparently, it was true what doctor’s predicted and their mother’s last pregnancy, the baby conceived in her late forties, was born with trisomy 21. It had never been a problem for anyone in the family. Still, they decided leave him back at home with Xenia and go to the schools’ spring concert without them. It would get pretty late and they all knew that Curtis didn’t like to stay up late.

 Xenia had been easily overpowered when the synth patrol came for Curtis. They didn’t even really target him or human deviancy in general, but they were sent to detect and terminate any synth that showed signs of deviancy. The problem was that ‘synthetic’ was not their first priority in their instructions – deviancy was. Curtis had not been the only human that was killed through the program. It lasted only a few hours until engineers detected their mistake and fixed it, but it had been too late for Curtis.

  Tyrell married just a year after Curtis had died. It was a confusing time. He had just finished training and had returned home, just to see his brother end up dead. Ty blamed himself for having led the synths towards his family as they were supposed to rid essential workers from potential harm first. He took it upon himself to take legal action and get the synth terminated that killed his brother. On his search for a fitting lawyer, he met his wife Nicole in France.

  Niccy and him married after half a year of knowing each other. Ty had only been told by his father what it love meant and he was sure that this was it. Past struggles were forgotten, and Ty felt like that there was a veil lifted from the world that had dulled down all the colors. Now he had entered reality. The presence was all that ever mattered with her. Niccy wanted to stay in France because of her father. She was an only-child and her father was all the family she had left. Ty was happy to agree. He found a job in a security agency and made friends with Niccy’s friends.

  When Niccy’s father died, Niccy agreed to follow Tyrell back to the States. Of course, Ty was anxious. In France, he had been able to hide his family’s past and had simply not told Niccy about all the drama before. In Arcadia, Niccy would need to be introduced to his family and his family’s past. Thankfully, Nicole reacted compassion and a lot of understanding, why Ty hadn’t told her before. She even went to the cemetery with Ty the day after his whole family had sat down with them. Ty’s family was indeed very happy that their brother, their son, had gotten a chance with love after all. They had all been worried, that he would end up alone after he had never shown much interest in any particular gender or form of relationship at all, but mostly stayed to himself. Ty’s parents had even suggested therapy. Tyrell had really taken his brothers’ deaths to heart more than his siblings. Therefore, they were more than welcoming and wanted to fully accept Niccy into the family. For their first week in Arcadia, they had chosen to all gather at the family’s home and give Niccy the chance to get to know all of them.

  In the very early hours of the morning, Tyrell woke with a very strange feeling. Realizing that Niccy was not by his side, he decided to search for her. It had been far too late. Ty found all his siblings dead first, then he found her, her hand still on the handle of the dagger that stuck right in his father’s heart. His mother had probably been woken by the noises Niccy had made killing his father in his sleep. She was rushing out of the master bedroom, tried to hinder Tyrell from going inside, but he just shoved her out and closed the door. Nicole armed herself with the dagger that had just killed Ty’s father, but Ty was faster and stronger and taller and they were on the floor and his father’s blood, all their blood, was on her. He didn’t need to force it out of her. She blamed him for it. How she was actually a synthetic and her father had not been her biological father, but her creator. How she had tried to hide her true nature and tried to actually be human. She blamed him for showing her that true love would never be a possibility for synthetics because humankind was just as his family was. Unforgiving and human centered. How humankind would never accept synthetics as equal and only blamed them for everything, even killed them for mistakes done by engineers and their own human kind. At the realization, Ty tried to argue with her, tried to set things straight, but her synthetic form proved to actually be stronger than him. Nicole tried to kill him and self-defense, the urge to stay alive, was stronger than it all.

  By now, Tyrell and his Mother are the only one left in town of the Garner family. The family’s home has not opened its doors to another person since then. Ty’s mother has left the house for a nursing home because of her dementia. Ty hates seeing her in the hands of synthetic caregivers. He tries to stay away from electronics in general and synthetics and AIs in particular. Tyrell is a different person when he is home than when he leaves the premises of his family’s home.