#impulse and circumstances

[koneko-chan-hai]

"The rest of his sentence got caught in his throat as he suddenly found his face centimeters away from Komaeda’s. Both of them froze, two pairs of wide eyes taking the other in. When did the other get so close, he didn’t know. But it was impossible to ignore the sharp yet delicate shape of his face at this short distance."

Impulse and Circumstances

Rating:

Mature

Warnings:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories:

M/M

Fandoms:

Super Dangan Ronpa 2, Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope’s Peak High School

Relationships:

Hinata Hajime/Komaeda Nagito, Kamukura Izuru/Nanami Chiaki, Chou Koukou Kyuu no Sagishi | Ultimate Imposter/Mioda Ibuki (mentioned), Kirigiri Kyoko/Naegi Makoto

Characters:

Hinata Hajime, Komaeda Nagito, Kamukura Izuru, Nanami Chiaki, Naegi Makoto, Tsumiki Mikan, Hinata Hajime’s Parents, Soda Kazuichi, Kuzuryu Fuyuhiko, Pekoyama Peko, Ikusaba Mukuro, Munakata Kyosuke (Dangan Ronpa), Enoshima Junko, Kirigiri Kyoko, Hagakure Yasuhiro, Original Characters, Kirigiri Jin (mentioned)

Additional Tags:

Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Hinata Hajime, Alpha Komaeda Nagito, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Positively Yours AU, Hinata Hajime and Kamukura Izuru Are Twins, Hinata Hajime and Kamukura Izuru are Separate People, Mpreg, Unplanned Pregnancy, One Night Stands, Strangers to Lovers, Established Relationship, for KamuNami, Rating May Change, Getting Together, Nagito is Makoto’s older brother, Tags May Change, Not Beta Read, Discussion of Abortion, Aged-Up Character(s), only Class 77 though, Mild Sexual Content, Miscommunication, Kamukura Izuru Has Feelings, Alternate Universe - Non-Despair (Dangan Ronpa), Slow Burn

Summary:

“To some, those two lines could be the best news, the hope to create a family with their loved ones. To others, however, they could be the worst news.

Unfortunately, Hajime was part of the latter category.”

After years of celibacy, and after having his longtime feelings unrequited, Hajime decides to throw caution to the wind for one night. Needing to deal with the consequences of his actions, how can Hajime deal with the sudden interest of his one night stand towards him?

Words: 51,793 | Chapters: 11/? | Language: English | Updated: 2025-01-01

[mxtxfanatic]

The Most Un-Lan-Like Lan (Junior) vs. The Most Un-Lan-Like Lan (Married-In Senior)

Lan Jingyi is such an interesting character. He is very opinionated and often speaks his mind without considering how his words will come across. He is cowardly about the supernatural despite being a cultivator but brave against those in positions of power despite being a child, always willing to stand up for what he thinks is right. Lan Jingyi starts off the story with a low opinion of "Mo Xuanyu," usually acting rude, hostile, or dismissive:

When he turned his head, he saw the Lan juniors tailing him. “Children!” he shouted. Lan Jingyi said, “Who are you calling children? Don’t you know which clan we’re from? Just because you’ve washed your face, you get to act like our senior?”

—Chapt. 9: Pride IV, fanyiyi

Wei Wuxian went to the youngsters. “Am I seeing things right? Each of you is a disciple of a prominent clan. Haven’t your moms, dads, and uncles taught you that the dead can’t receive the paper money you’re burning? They’re dead, what do they need money for? They won’t be able to collect it. Plus, you’re burning the money right at someone’s door—“ Lan Jingyi waved his hand dismissively. “Move aside, move aside, you’re blocking the wind. The fire will burn out at this rate. Anyway, it’s not like you’ve ever died—how do you know whether the dead can collect the money?" ... Lan Jingyi knifed him in the heart again. “Even if you’ve been dead before and didn’t get any, it has to be because no one burned any for you.”

—Chapt. 42: Flora X, fanyiyi

It doesn't help that Wei Wuxian, playing into his "gay lunatic" persona, is intentionally trying to put everyone off:

Lan Jingyi said, “Why are you crying? You’re the one who said you like Hanguang Jun! Now he even brought you home. So what are you howling for?” Wei Wuxian’s eyebrows were wrinkled, his lips frowned, and his face was the perfect picture of misery.

—Chapt. 11: Elegance I, fanyiyi

Wei Wuxian took out the apple from the breakfast they had given him and offered it to the donkey. As expected, as soon as the animal bit in, it stopped braying, and began smacking its lips and crunching the fruit with its teeth instead. Wei Wuxian touched the back of its neck and thought about the jade passage tokens the juniors carried while pointing at the round, white rabbits covering the ground. “I’m really not allowed to cook them? So if I cooked them, I’d be chased off the mountain?” As though facing a major enemy, Lan Jingyi opened his arms and stepped in front of him immediately. “These are Hanguang Jun’s rabbits. We just help watch them once in a while. Don’t you dare cook them!”

...

“I can’t get up,” he said sincerely. “Uh, what’s happened to you now?” Lan Sizhui said. “What’s happened to me? Your clan’s Hanguang Jun ravished me!” Lan Jingyi piped up louder and fiercer. “If you keep spouting nonsense, we’re not going to let it go. Come out!”

—Chapt. 19: Sunshine I, fanyiyi

Yet despite all this, once Wei Wuxian sheds his "Mo Xuanyu" cover and begins to seriously lean into his mentorship role, Lan Jingyi becomes one of his most vocal followers amongst the juniors, seeing the man as both a steady pillar to rely on—on par with his idol, Hanguang-jun—and someone whose safety he is concerned with, so much so that he can even cast aside his fear of the supernatural to volunteer himself as bait in Wei Wuxian's stead:

Wei WuXian said to them, “When the second group of fierce corpses rushes in, I will lure them towards the Pool of Blood, and HanGuang-Jun will be in charge of slaying them. With this target here,” He patted himself, “They won’t bother you. Don’t be tempted by battle, just run.” For once, Lan SiZhui’s raised his voice, “No! We can’t do that. There’s no way!” Sect Leader OuYang had given up trying to hold his son still. OuYang ZiZhen, “Senior-Wei, we will slay the corpses too! I can slay a hundred more!” Meanwhile, Lan JingYi had already started to undress, “I’ll draw a flag on myself too!”

—Chapt. 81: Core Part 3, boat-full-of-lotus-pods

OuYang ZiZhen, “HanGuang-Jun, why did Senior-Wei collapse?” Lan WangJi, “Tired.” Lan JingYi was astonished, “I thought that Senior-Wei would never tire!”

—Chapt. 84: Core Part 6, boat-full-of-lotus-pods

Soon, he began again, “Speaking of it, why didn’t I see SiZhui and the squad this time back?” In the past, these juniors would’ve crowded around them and begun chirping all the way from the entrance of the mountain. Hearing him mention SiZhui and the juniors, Lan WangJi’s brows relaxed somewhat, “I can take you to see them.” After he led Wei WuXian to find Lan SiZhui, Lan JingYi, and the others, the juniors didn’t do anything apart from calling out in delight.

—Chapt. 114: Banquet Extra, exr

With such a fierce and impressionable personality, it's no wonder he's one of the few juniors whose name Wei Wuxian can remember 😂

[gideonisms]

eowyn should have been a lesbian. Eowyn/faramir is like, fine, but it misses the point of eowyn for all baby dyke eowyn stans which is not that she longs for glory in battle and doesn't realize war is ugly and brutal, but that she's caught between two awful options and she doesn't want to be given one based on her gender. She's not in love with aragorn, she envies him because she finds the tasks he has in life more preferable and she hero worships him. Is this the point Tolkien was trying to make? Well, no,

[starcrossedconverse]

Bart, an intellectual: when I was a baby, I had like. 300 bones. Now I only have like. 206 bones :(

Kon, who took bio in bumfuck Kansas: no way, I'm checking with Rob!!

Tim, knows everything about biology: I mean, yeah? Did you not know that?

Kon: NO TF I DID NOT KNOW THAT WTF

[feliciadraws]

Does anyone else think miqo’te have intrusive thoughts about pushing or knocking things off shelves and tables or is my brain just slightly to the left

[sarahlancashire]

i am the most well-behaved risk-averse person you can imagine but i've wanted more piercings than just my ears for years & i just impulsively filled in an online form to for an appointment/ consultation about a nose piercing on the train, got a message offering me one on thursday, and paid a deposit to confirm. very out of character for me but this is so exciting!!!

[whoscallingwhoafraud]

I'm a longtime Lana fan and when ppl are like you don't support her and her husband you hate her happiness??? It's so funny like no I don't support her hideous leather face MAGA hubby lmao

[koneko-chan-hai]

Anybody remember Impulse and Circumstances?

I assure you that I *am* working on it, but school and applications are rough and I barely have time to work on finishing the illustration for ch 11. But it is in the works!

In the meantime, I figured I could share some old and new sketches of the AU that I've had on me. And the pencil ones are from many months before I even posted the first chapter of the fic! It might not be much, but I hope you'll have a nice weekend regardless! Stay safe!

[james-p-sullivan]

i love sulley

[tryingtimi]

His Grey Fang

Something that needed to come out through one of my current favourite characters.

TW: MENTION OF DEATH | GRIEVING | CHARACTER EXPLORATION | WC: 1,276

The vigil neared its end when Dae first wished to leave.

It was a nudging feeling like the cold breeze in the birthing thought of coming dawn. Black shrouds hunched over the tables as if the guests, too, were waiting for their turn on the burial ground. The mass’s soft buzzing blended into the quiet noise of the city underneath, careful words and misty eyes mourning a man none could have known truly.

“Were you close?” asked a shrivelled elder Dae didn’t care the name of.

“Not really.”

The man’s slurring expression stretched into confusion and then blankness. Like everyone else, he too searched her face, dry cheeks igniting the silent resentment only this moment could. He didn’t bother her further.

Dae stayed put on the hard wooden bench for half an hour longer, hands wrapped around a barely touched, sour drink. She didn’t speak, she didn’t listen. She was avoided, alone in a crowd of hundreds. A few years younger girl sat at her family table with shineless eyes and a shaken posture. She clutched a portrait of Dae’s grandfather. Her father and aunt sat at the main table beside the girl, receiving condolences, and Dae found that right. The only ones with a right to grieve.

When she finally left, ashen skies waved over the city. People raced along in their graphite colours, and it was strange how the stopped time oozed out into the world from the vigil. Downtown had nothing to do with a closed-up, sickly man, but it misted for him, clouds like smoke hardly keeping their tears to themselves.

Bongju meandered beside Dae, hands in his pockets. “Are you going back to work?”

“’Course. Someone needs to, and I rather have Father have his time.”

Her friend nodded, understanding. He didn’t look at her face to find something, instead, he watched the sky, waiting for the inevietable drench.

“He was the one encouraging you to fight, right?” he asked after a time, the only person with an un-blurred face under a dawdling, white sun. Dae lit a cigarette, scoffing.

“Encouraging, sure. We haven’t talked besides the family necessities, he just bought me a punching bag and a bandage. Said I had talent, while he didn’t know who I was at all. He didn’t even try to figure it out. But you know well he had talent, yet he never offered to teach me. And when I chose to do something else, he didn’t ask, just went to find another — not even blood relative, might I add — grandchild to pester about it.”

“Are you angry with him?”

Bongju was generous enough to not sound surprised.

“No. I didn’t know him, Ju. I can’t be angry with someone whom I don’t even know.”

“Is that right?” he mused, standing aside while she opened the office’s creaking door. “I suppose it is. Then you're not upset at Inseo, either?”

Dae didn’t turn on any light, leaving only the grey-white outside brighten the small, musty area. She sat before the packed table, months of backlog watching her just as pityfully as the masses. “No reason to be. It wasn’t her choice to be nearly closer to the old bear than Father. They had something strong in common that no one did, was all.”

And no one could choose with whom they had that connection. Dae realised that long ago, hoping it would ease the yearning to find her own person for it. She pulled the first paper from the pile, remembering how her grandfather’s big eyes saddened when she first decided to join the office rather than the ring. He said she couldn’t be stirred away from anything she sunk her fangs into. The strangeness of the feeling gripped her chest again. She understood his passion, yet they couldn’t share it. A brick heart could not fill another.

Days had gone by like a black and white film, silent and faded on the edges. Dae worked, falling into the repetitive rhythm well. It could have occupied her mind if it wasn’t already full. Shards of moments made her stop in her tracks from time to time; moments with the old bear. Moments she thought she had forgotten. Moments she thought insignificant. The holidays where he recited the first moves he learned in his youth to her Father. The dinners where he never picked at the food, not eating, nor plumping, ever. The family gatherings, where the only topic he could think of was Inseo’s accomplishments, told to Dae with unending pride.

A skinny man, like every thin branch on the leafless trees. A white beard and ponytail, like the early morning wisps on the horizon. He became a ghost of her childhood, following around in corners Dae wasn’t aware of in a long time. There was no talking, yet there was always a thank you when she forced a conversation. There were no questions, yet there was always a praise when he caught her practising. There was sadness in not knowing her doing it. There was resentment in longing for a question from him. She worked, and remembered. She contemplated, and wondered: what to mourn if they had no connection at all? Could she truly lose the absence of someone? She didn’t know, so she continued working and remembering, until one day, it was time to empty his apartment.

Dae volunteered, finding it hard not to.

The grey horizon clung to that day, too. Mist tumbled within stone buildings and warm bodies in a stuffed, but somehow desolate city. It always calmed Dae, for reasons she couldn’t truly grasp. Her grandfather kept calling her Grey after Father told him that fact. Dae didn’t mind the sound of it.

She stopped before the apartment’s door, realising she never stepped over its threshold. She knew where he lived, but he never invited her in, never let her enter. The stubborn brick of her heart was thrown into a blaze. She pushed back the entrance with force, letting it shut behind.

Grey.

Dae stood in a wholly grey room, with so sparse of things she would have thought no one lived there for a lifetime. Essentials, bookshelves, a punching bag in the middle of the hollow living room, and practice dummies beside it. All the books, bandages on the one coffee table, or the bags’s leather spoke about a thousand usage. Few, easy, barely ever spoiling food filled the joke of a kitchen area.

Dae swallowed, taking the framed portrait of herself as a babe from one of the shelves. It was dated to a few days after her birth. She put it back, and noticed another one on the other case, two years later. That was how it went on, almost every shelf and commode holding a framed version of her, up until her present self. Beside those, there was Inseo, not overruling, but complementing her portraits.

None of his martial accomplishments were displayed like those pictures.

Dae choked on the lump in her throat. Her tears welled up, then warmed her cold cheeks as they fell. It wasn’t sadness, it wasn’t regret. It wasn’t anything like before.

She kneeled beside the coffee table, touching the used, but still sturdy red bandages. She picked it up, and ever so slowly wrapped around her knuckles. There was every drop of stubbornness in those tiny rips on the textile, one she inherited from the very man himself. A connection she yearned to have — and always had, after all.

[aceredshirt13]

So my buddy @oshawolt and I have watched the first two episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, and by far the funniest part about the show is that its complete inability to give teenaged Indy anything like a concrete logical reason to enlist in WWI results in it reading like Indy is willing to go against his friends, his family, his loved ones, all logic, and a significant number of his moral codes, solely because his bestie T. E. Lawrence signed up for the war, and he apparently values that above literally all other aspects of his life.

Like. Listen. In the first episode, Indy joins Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution because he wants to help people, but when a poor villager tells him how even the most just of wars inflict untold suffering on the innocents the soldiers claim to be fighting for, Indy becomes disillusioned with the war effort... only to read a letter + photograph he keeps with him from Lawrence, who says he's joining the war effort in Arabia because he believes it is a cause worth fighting for. And Indy proceeds to immediately forget literally everything he just heard that Mexican villager say and go "fuck it, we ball. and by ball I mean go to the trenches." Indy has decided that the Mexican Revolution "isn't his war", but he's American - WWI in 1916 isn't his war any more than the Mexican Revolution is. So that obviously can't be his justification??

Now, ostensibly he goes because his friend Remy, a Belgian guy he met in Mexico who was fighting for the revolution after his family was killed, decides to go back to Belgium and fight in his own homeland's war instead of the Mexican one. In fact, in the upcoming episodes, he and Remy are together quite a lot. But during the first episode set in Mexico, we are never given to believe that he and Indy are particularly close - they seem like acquaintances at best. Not much time is shown of them together, and we hoped that in the second episode, when the two of them disembark in London and enlist in the Belgian Army, we'd get some of that good old intergenerational friendship energy and really see why Indy, despite not necessarily believing in this war, might want to go to support his friend in Belgium, and his more distant friend in the Middle East.

Nah. Remy ditches Indy for a hot widow almost immediately, and for the entire rest of the episode his ass is GONE. He literally doesn't show up again except to give Indy the papers saying it's time to go to the army, and to be like "oh by the way I'm married now!" at the train station. Bro apparently does not hang out with Indy or tell him anything. Which would be understandable if they were acquaintances, but like??? Aren't they meant to be so close as friends that Indy would up and fight a war with this guy???

Meanwhile, Indy follows a cute girl to a suffragette meeting, they become best friends on the virtue of "speaking an unbelievably unrealistic number of languages" and "having literally identical backstories" (to the point where we found ourselves wishing she'd been Indiana Jones in this show instead, given that she's apparently just his cooler genderbent version played by someone who can act better), meet and get along with his tutor since childhood (who apparently is close enough with Indy now not to want him to enlist in the Army and endanger himself, despite the fact that she disliked Indy so much as a child and allowed him in so many absurdly dangerous situations that we became convinced she was deliberately trying to get him killed in a way that looked like an accident), and eventually fall in love. All through this, Indy helps with the women's suffrage movement, lends money to a poor woman and her children, watches his friend/girlfriend throw a dessert at Winston Churchill (who is in this episode for five minutes because Why The Hell Not I Guess), meets multiple people whose loved ones have been killed in the war, and is told by an older suffragette that one day of the good work he's put in today is worth one year of time in the trenches. At one point, while visiting the girl's family, he is asked why he joined the war effort, and gives an unbelievably vague and evasive answer that all but proves he doesn't even know why. And in the end, he wants to ask the girl to marry him, but she says no - partially because of the implication that she doesn't know him quite well enough to be willing to sign her rights away, and partially because she doesn't know if after the war they'll be two different people.

So let's look at the facts. Here in London, he has friends, family, someone he loves who he could spend a life with and eventually marry after they've established themselves, and a purpose he enjoys with clear, positive results. Sure, he's already signed up for the Belgian Army, but he enlisted under a half-assed fake name that couldn't possibly be traced. He scarcely ever sees Remy - he seems to owe him nothing, and owe his country no allegiance. Why not just... not go when his number is up? What reason on Earth could he have to do anything but stay?

So naturally, he just. He just fucking goes! For no conceivable reason - no conceivable reason other than that Lawrence is also in the war!

Indy's been friends with Lawrence since they met when Lawrence was 20 and Indy was a nine-year-old kid who couldn't act very well - Lawrence asked him to call him "Ned", and he still does (which, for the record, Indy's tutor, who has literally known Lawrence longer than Indy has and is on good terms with him, does not. Apparently she didn't get the nicknaming permission. Rip). Still does, because the only time Indy is able to give a concrete answer about anything in the war is when said tutor angrily asks him why he's enlisted, and he says that "Ned" is in the war! He knows this because apparently Lawrence actually kept his promise to write to him, and they've been writing letters and sending stuff to each other since Indy was a child! And - judging by every other thing in his life suggesting otherwise - Indy values the actions of his pen pal more than anyone else's opinions, his friends and love life, and his own safety and happiness! That doesn't seem like a normal way to react to the actions of a guy you only knew in-person for a few days as a child!

Unless...

...

...In conclusion, world-famous fictional film character Indiana Jones would not have become the person he is if it hadn't been for his gay little crush on real human man T. E. Lawrence.

[yeonban]

I was listening to an interview of Gagne's about her sociopathic condition and some of these parts really resonated with Tobias. Like her mentioning she's masking "right now" (during the interview) otherwise she'd be smiling and blinking far less, the story about how as a child she felt a pressure building up in her and when another kid who was sitting next to her annoyed her at the wrong moment she stabbed them and the stabbing made her feel startlingly euphoric, the way she was discussing empathy as something learned from society and intended to gain something from (a dopamine release/good feeling) because she doesn't understand any actions that are done by neurotypicals for no reason, her experience having to mimic her neurotypical sister to fit into society, the relief she felt when she met her husband who didn't shy away from her despite her unburdening herself to him about all of her (the bad, scary & unnerving qualities/actions/etc included)... there are a bunch of differences between her & Tobias' experiences too, obviously, but at least THESE parts were very on the nose. Especially one declaration that stood out to me: "Doing something morally unacceptable was a way to force a pop of color [in my life]" which is exactly why Tobias does anything he does. That pop of color. That derived amusement. The odd joy that follows which is the only thing he can really feel out of the positive cluster of emotions.

[gumy-shark]

re: the "would your blorbo take hrt" poll I do look at Ritsu a lot and think estrogen would save her. obviously Ritsu has other problems but there's one we can fix

oh yeah it’s like zero question to me estrogen would absolutely at least fix one of her problems. it’s just that i don’t know if ritsu would actually Think of it.

[simptasia]

[shannon rutherford voice] i've been through a trauma here!

[koneko-chan-hai]

“When he raised his head, Komaeda was looking at him seriously, no snobbiness in his expression at all. “Raising a child alone,” he clarified, “it sounds hard to me.””

Impulse and Circumstances

Rating:

Mature

Warnings:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories:

M/M

Fandoms:

Super Dangan Ronpa 2, Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope’s Peak High School

Relationships:

Hinata Hajime/Komaeda Nagito, Kamukura Izuru/Nanami Chiaki, Chou Koukou Kyuu no Sagishi | Ultimate Imposter/Mioda Ibuki (mentioned), Kirigiri Kyoko/Naegi Makoto

Characters:

Hinata Hajime, Komaeda Nagito, Kamukura Izuru, Nanami Chiaki, Naegi Makoto, Tsumiki Mikan, Hinata Hajime’s Parents, Soda Kazuichi, Kuzuryu Fuyuhiko, Pekoyama Peko, Ikusaba Mukuro, Munakata Kyosuke (Dangan Ronpa), Enoshima Junko, Kirigiri Kyoko, Hagakure Yasuhiro, Original Characters, Kirigiri Jin (mentioned)

Additional Tags:

Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Hinata Hajime, Alpha Komaeda Nagito, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Positively Yours AU, Hinata Hajime and Kamukura Izuru Are Twins, Hinata Hajime and Kamukura Izuru are Separate People, Mpreg, Unplanned Pregnancy, One Night Stands, Strangers to Lovers, Established Relationship, for KamuNami, Rating May Change, Getting Together, Nagito is Makoto’s older brother, Tags May Change, Not Beta Read, Discussion of Abortion, Aged-Up Character(s), only Class 77 though, Mild Sexual Content, Miscommunication, Kamukura Izuru Has Feelings, Alternate Universe - Non-Despair (Dangan Ronpa), Slow Burn

Summary:

“To some, those two lines could be the best news, the hope to create a family with their loved ones. To others, however, they could be the worst news.

Unfortunately, Hajime was part of the latter category.”

After years of celibacy, and after having his longtime feelings unrequited, Hajime decides to throw caution to the wind for one night. Needing to deal with the consequences of his actions, how can Hajime deal with the sudden interest of his one night stand towards him?

Words: 43,564 | Chapters: 9/? | Language: English | Updated: 2024-06-26

[twodiamondhoes]

intrigued by Recency Bias (from the WIP tag game) :3

Delighted by the fact that I got two asks for Recency Bias :D Ty for the ask!!

(Referencing this ask meme)

The Elevator Pitch for Recency Bias is that it is a look at the s9 Ren The King arc, but make it cyberpunk! I'm having a lot of fun with some very experimental (for me) writing techniques.

I am (not-so-secretly) a huge sucker for dystopian fiction, but my favorite thought exercise is always what happens next? What happens after the Tyrannical Government is overthrown and the rebellion takes their place? What happens to the people on the streets, whose entire lives have been upended and now have to adapt to a different political structure or, sometimes even an entirely different way of life?

So Recency Bias is that thought exercise taken to the logical extreme, complete with a bunch of cyberpunk bells and whistles. It's a Gem-centric story, and the main pairing focus is going to be Gem/Etho, with a heavy dose of platonic soup group shenanigans. The original working title for it was "Campbell's Rebellion."

Hilariously, I had one of Gem's subplots being street racing for extra money long before Wild Life aired, but Wild Life is what convinced me to make Joel a bigger part of the plot. Originally he wasn't in it at all, having not been a Hermit in s9, but... I mean, come on, I had to have the Family, right?

Under the cut is the snippet I call my "history lesson," aka the rundown of the original rebellion from the aforementioned dystopia, that eventually became the King's Court. It's mostly to keep me on track and jog my memory when needed, but imo it's also just fun!

After a brutal, bloody civil war, the United States of America found itself shattered, with no hope of a democratic revival. Fear of foreign powers swooping in to lay claim to the Land of Opportunity was at an all-time high, but someone else beat them to it. No one should have been afraid of foreign aid, not when the call was coming from inside the house.

Five corporations with a vested interest in expansion and the sudden lack of governmental oversight put themselves in the forefront of aid campaigns. Before the citizenry knew what to fear, the nation was again divided not by war or differing politics, but by the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar.

For over two centuries, technological innovation and rampant cost-cutting initiatives have led to a landscape that is nigh unrecognizable. Cars flew, goggles halted any advertisement and community initiative not sanctioned by the Corporation in charge of that district, and people were not a collective, not a unit… they were units, no better than the machines that tracked their workflow.

Until, that is, a group of folks from across districts discovered a glitch in their awareness–each other. Together, this disgruntled band of misfits: Cleo, Bdubs, Cub, Ren, and Etho realized how important community was, and how far they were willing to go to protect what they had discovered.

Together, they rallied the populace and set to work creating a new way of life, and, they hoped, a better one.

Unfortunately, change can be slow when you take care to ensure the safety of your subjects, and anti-competition software wasn't the only thing that the corporations were using to keep the populace in line.

Perhaps there was an underlying reason that there hadn't, in all that time, been another rebellion. And maybe it's too late now to start wondering.