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blue-mood-blue · 4 years ago

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Juno’s vision fizzes out right around where the man’s face should be.

He rubs his eye. The interference doesn’t go anywhere, and he sighs. He’s already tired - always is, lately - but this, at least, is not on him. Will the wonders of modern technology never end, he thinks, and there’s a ping at the back of his head of what is probably admonishment. I’m right, he thinks back, stubborn.

The man sits down at his table. Juno leans back; the shadow already obscures his features, but something about not seeing the expression on the face of his unexpected guest makes Juno want to sink farther into the darkness. He doesn’t like being looked at - call it paranoia, call it being shy, whatever. When you have one person in the world - another ping at the back of his head - one and a half people in the world, being generous, most people’s attention loses its appeal.

Juno waits. He doesn’t talk much, anymore. His voice is... uniquely recognizable.

The man is probably smiling; his tone sounds teasing, and that’s about all Juno can glean from the unnaturally stilted sound. Audio distortion, too - whoever this is, the chip in Juno’s neck is throwing a blanket over Juno’s head in an outdated and unneeded attempt at protection. He would get angry, or suspicious, or march over to his partner in crime with a scalpel and demand it out of him, damn the consequences... but he knows the feeling of that shadow in his head, now. The chip doesn’t know why this is happening.

“Do I have the good fortune of speaking to one of the pair people are calling ‘the new Buddy and Vespa’?” The man is tall and skinny, and folds himself into the seat across from Juno like it was left out for him. Juno feels one of his fists clench and hopes the scowl isn’t clear on his face, visible or otherwise.

He’d like to correct the man; he’s not trying to be anyone else. Juno doesn’t speak. His voice would be a dead giveaway.

“Not much for conversation, hm? That’s fine. We don’t have much to talk about.” The man leans closer. Juno guesses that the look directed at him now is one of quiet intimidation; he can’t say, since the features are blurring out like static on an ancient television screen. “You’re here for the Maxine Rutherford job. I’m here to tell you to drop it.”

Juno tenses, and the thief - because that’s what he must be, if he’s here to talk another thief out of a job - must pick up on it, because he chuckles. “It’s a big ask, I’m aware. There’s a pretty penny to be had - that experimental technology is worth an incredible amount of money on its own, and that’s not even touching what might be gained from selling her out to a competitor.” There’s something in the way the thief is sitting, the set of his shoulders - or maybe it’s just the chip in Juno’s neck, setting off urgent warning signals. This is a threat. “But I need you to understand something. Maxine Rutherford is mine. And you do not want to be in my way when I get to her.”

Juno pushes the panic button in his head, the one that will bring Jet running. And he’ll need to run, because Juno’s about to do something incredibly stupid.

“Not if I get to her first,” Juno says in two voices. The thief is still, and if he’s afraid, Juno doesn’t blame him. He remembers the way he felt, the first time he heard the Theia layered under his words.

~~~

The detour wasn’t part of Buddy Aurinko’s plan. Even calling it “on the way” would have been generous; the Carte Blanche should have passed it like it had a hundred other space stations, and it would have. It would have, except for the seven names Rita had been listening for ever since she left Hyperion.

“It doesn’t hafta mean anything,” she’d told Juno, holding her tablet to her chest and looking nervous. He remembers thinking it wasn’t her usual kind of nervous, with fretful energy and too much talking - she’d been holding onto the tablet like it was the only thing keeping her tethered to the ground. “Maybe it’s not even the same person, but. But I was doin’ some listening, you know, and a name came up, and.” Juno remembers thinking she looked almost sick, saying it out loud. “One of those names. And the soul.”

Juno doesn’t know what he thought he could do about it. He’d wanted to try, and when he and Rita went to Buddy, when he’d forced the bones of what happened in Hyperion from his throat and onto the kitchen table during a family meeting... they’d all wanted to try. Maybe that had been his mistake, Juno considers. He could have been quiet. He could have let it go.

It started with an infiltration. The Dogstar Space Station was small, relatively, but it was still the size of two major cities; finding Maxine Rutherford in the crowd would take some looking, with or without Rita’s ‘listening.’ Juno and Jet would go first, bumbling tourists who might, if they were lucky, stumble across a newly-acquired lab space. The idea was to uncover everything they could - location, security systems, layout, plans - and then get back to the ship to decide a next step. Juno packed for a short surface stay. He pulled the last Theia soul from where he’d stowed away in the back of a drawer and, after a long moment and with no clear reason, put it in his pocket. He squeezed Rita and whispered in her ear that he’d be okay when she had a hard time letting go. He kissed Nureyev and promised to call. He walked away and he didn’t look back.

Twenty-four hours later, the siege started.

That’s what the reporters on the hotel’s screen called it, while Juno and Jet sat on the edge of the couch and watched everything change. Some kind of hostile takeover, a grab for power or property or... something. The reporters didn’t know, and if the way they looked off-camera during their reports was any hint, there wouldn’t be time to find out.

If there are gaps in his memory after that, Juno thinks it can only be that he doesn’t want to remember. There’s him, running behind Jet through streets that are eerily quiet and terrifyingly loud by turns. Hiding, and running, and hiding - the thought that it’s a good goddamn chance Jet seems to know where he’s going because Juno is already lost, the shouting of soldiers behind them, the emblem on a ship Juno spends just a little too long looking at because something is wrong. The two of them finding a back entrance to the docks, using the chaos to cover them. The... wreck.

Juno will never forget the wreck.

They must have hit the docks first, is his first thought. It’s the last semblance of reason over the high, keening sound that’s enveloping the rest of his brain - they must have hit the docks first so no one could get out, they must have destroyed every waiting ship to keep the people of the Dogstar Space Station right where they were, because there is nothing but wreckage and broken parts.

Juno might have screamed. It might have been Jet. It might have been someone else, any voice out of hundreds speaking for all of them: loss, despair, desperation. It didn’t matter; the damage was done, and they were alone.

Jet held his hand. Weeks, months - however long they survived on the Dogstar after that, it was with Jet holding his hand and Juno clinging back. There were names they didn’t say for a long, long time but they held onto each other while the soldiers-who-weren’t-soldiers rounded up stragglers and led them to the government facilities that didn’t belong to any government Juno had ever heard of. They were lucky enough to have each other, but it didn’t feel like luck; it felt like borrowed time.

(He said he would call, and he did. He called, once, and he didn’t know what he expected - but he got no answer, and if he dropped his communicator the next time they ran, well, who was going to miss him?)

“I get it, if you hate me,” Juno said into the dark of the shelter they’d found, a hidden nook between big, steel beams of a bridge. “For her. For all of them.”

“I do not hate you, Juno.”

He didn’t know if that felt better or worse. “You should. You’re the only one left to feel anything about it, and they deserve -” He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to; Jet knew already.

A relapse, Juno will call it later. Healing is not linear, not when the wounds are torn back open every other day or so, and these things happen. Sometimes there’s a stumbling block on the way to better. And Jet will look at him, ask him if he’s any closer now, and Juno will tell him “a day closer than yesterday.” Jet will nod, because that’s all Jet ever asks of him.

Survival became an exhausting thing. When Juno knew the streets of a couple of districts of Dogstar like the back of his hand, he felt like a rat in a maze, nudged back and forth along pre-determined paths by uniformed sentries and reinforced vehicles. Jet had the kind of patience a person worked for, and Juno could see him clinging to the shreds of it; just shreds, because the hope of patching it back into a serene whole was less likely with every hole the two of them were flushed out of. It had always been only a matter of time before they stood outside of the lab doors and asked each other if they were going to do what they came here for.

Maxine Rutherford was on Dogstar. Maxine had been on Dogstar a long time, plenty long enough to set down roots for a research facility and collect a space station’s worth of subjects by force. If it looked like anything else from the outside, well, that was just a pretty face to convince everyone else that it wasn’t their problem and it wasn’t worth getting involved. The first news reports were of a siege, and that was the last outgoing message anyone received; by the time the theory fell apart, communication outside was an impossibility.

The reality was that Dogstar was a testing ground. Maxine had the Theia, and she had plans.

Juno and Jet became her personal annoyance. And it felt good, for a while; Juno felt alive, Jet laughed sometimes, and at last there was a purpose in being the ones left behind beyond dumb luck and timing. It felt good like another hit felt good, like dodging blaster fire close enough to feel the heat of it on your face felt good, and they would take what they could fucking get. There wasn’t anything else.

(They needed something, in that hell of a prison they were trapped in, with no guarantee that the people they saw were people the way they used to be. The reports they stole were horrifying and complex, and Juno was as frustrated as he was relieved he couldn’t parse the science of it. Bioengineering, maybe, or technology taught to behave like biology - a machine fed raw materials that grew them into circuitry, twisting and growing like roots into a person, along muscles and bones and into the brain and good luck, Hanataba, coming up with instructions to rid a person of an infestation that deep. Juno put down the reports. He pulled out his own Theia, considered crushing it under his foot - looked at the way Jet looked at it and knew he would understand if Juno gave in to that little violence - and then put it away. He talked about close escapes and running guards, and Jet laughed, and who cared if they were running along a cliff’s edge because they needed something.)

A relapse, Juno will call it later. An instinct he thought he’d put away, dragged back out of him into daylight. In hindsight, he could even see it coming.

Maxine had gotten sick of them, clearly; her guards were better armed every time Juno and Jet went in, and the escapes were getting closer. The thought of can we afford to do this anymore had been pushed back by well, what else are we going to do and it was a compelling argument, especially to a couple of people carrying their grief along with them everywhere.

It only took a second. Out of the corner of his eye, Juno saw it: one of the guards unclipping something from his belt. There was just enough time to think he wouldn’t, he’s too close, he’d get caught in the blast, just enough time to see the look in his eye and think if he has the Theia and he thinks this is for the greater good, he would. Just enough time to push Jet forward and press the button for the door.

Jet has to tell him what happened next, and he does, eventually - by stops and starts, in pieces, and it’s the way he tells the story that tells Juno how much it hurt. When Jet opened the door, Juno was... broken. He may have been dead already; Jet didn’t stop to check. He scooped him up like a doll and carried him away, deeper into the lab until he found a room with a reclining chair and a looming machine hanging over it.

Here, he always pauses. “I could not be alone, Juno,” he explains. “I could not lose you too, after everyone else. I could not.”

There were instructions. He needed a Theia and he had one, fished out of Juno’s pocket. He didn’t know if he was making the right decision, so he held his emotions at arms’ length, leaned into his work with the quiet, steady determination required of him in a dusty clinic hidden beneath Mars’ surface, and he knit Juno back together again with filaments of woven metal.

(So much later that it feels like a different life, Juno gets to see it. The scanner picks up the roots that wrap around him, concentrated on the back of his neck at the base of his skull. They’re in his muscles, his bones, around his brain. Tiny, delicate, firm, and Juno can trace the fault lines that would have killed him in their paths.)

Juno didn’t dream, he tells Jet later. When he woke up there was just a heaviness in his mind that he didn’t understand yet, the lab, and Jet standing next to him. When Jet looked down on him, he looked so angry that Juno was sure he was going to scream until he was hoarse - but Jet pulled him close and held him like he was something breakable.

“Never again,” he whispered, and he sounded so pained that Juno was already nodding into his shoulder, agreeing to whatever he said. “You will never do that again. You will not make that choice, for me or anyone else.”

They stayed away from the labs. Jet held his hand all the time while Juno remembered and relearned how to walk, how to move his body, how to deal with the heaviness of his mind. Every time he spoke, Jet squeezed his hand harder... and eventually, Juno just spoke less. He could hear it talking from his mouth. If he had more energy, that would have terrified him. But Juno had other things to be afraid of.

There was something else in his head. It didn’t speak; it could have, maybe - it had the last time it had been there, supplying him with information and rote instructions and orders. The Theia didn’t use words anymore, by choice or by limitation, and it’s presence was still inescapable.

Juno didn’t talk about it at first, the ideas and images that came from nowhere. They were tentative and reserved, and it was so unlike what he was used to that he was half-convinced it was all him and the disjointed feeling was just... the result of shoddily-repaired brain damage. That was a thought awful enough that it didn’t bear repeating to Jet, who already looked at Juno in the silence sometimes like he was asking himself how much he’d broken by trying to fix him. Juno shoved the whispers back into the shadows, and they went willingly; he never met resistance, and that convinced him he was right. His head didn’t work the way it used to, but nothing did; it was another adjustment while they picked their way over the ruined station.

And then he answered a question Jet hadn’t asked.

Juno stormed into his own mind. Jet saw the glaze of his eye, took him by the shoulders and called his name to coax him back out, but Juno was flooded by frantic, overlapping images of radio towers and the repair of something he didn’t know was still floating in his blood. For communication, the Theia said without words. For the kind of communication the chip knew better than spoken language - direct transmission.

Direct transmission.

It was the beginning of an idea. It was the only thing stopping Juno from doing something they’d all regret, ripping the chip back out and to hell with it.

Juno spent a lot of time in his own head after that. He poked, he prodded, he looked for traps. The Theia didn’t have anything to offer - the Theia didn’t have anything to hide. He was given the impression of a long, dark quiet, a nothing; even disconnected and not operating, something in the chip had... stayed awake. Being where it was now felt like a second chance.

There are a lot of other people I’d rather give second chances to, Juno snapped out bitterly, silently. The chip already knew. Hard to keep secrets in his own head.

Juno pushed farther. He pushed out, and sometimes Jet turned to look at him, a strange expression on his face. Sometimes, a radio hissed and whined with feedback, or a screen popped and shuddered, or he and Jet stopped walking when Juno’s view was suddenly too high. Whatever Juno’s head was doing, it didn’t work like it had before - where that invasion used to operate something like a two-way knife, now it was a battering ram, ungraceful and swinging wildly. The repair the machine and the chip had attempted in tandem was a miserable patch job at best, dangerous at worst, and Juno pushed anyway. Jet asked him about it once, and Juno let him into his head instead of answering, invited him right in to see the mess of complicated feelings and uncertainty. Jet reached for his hand.

Every day, Juno found something new. It was the worst kind of game, running up against walls: a new rat maze that he was running mostly alone, but never really alone because he was never really alone anymore. He stuttered like anything over Rita’s name, out loud and to himself. The chip caught stray transmissions and placed them right in Juno’s head, a disorienting mix of updates from the lab and tentative calls from survivors. Some memories took a long time to recall, and some weren’t his. And he ached, he ached with every step while his body healed around him.

They walked. They hid. They planned. And when they reached the dock’s communication hub, Juno leaned his forehead against a transmission tower, exhausted all the way through, and gave everything to one last attempt.

(“Symbiosis,” he says later, so much later in a different life and a different world, the kind of life that has room for beds and money for transport to other places; the kind of life that calls them thieves instead of survivors. Jet looks over at him with a raised eyebrow; if that word in two voices upsets him, he’s good at not showing it - but Juno knows better. He knows. “That’s the word for it.”

“The word for what?”

“For me. For... us.” Juno looks up at the ceiling. Jet knows which ‘us’ Juno means - he knows. “We’d be dead without each other. I get held together and it gets to exist. Symbiotes.”

Jet hums. “You are more than a chip’s second chance to be, Juno.”

“But I’m that too,” Juno says in two voices. “I’m always that, too.”)

They get away from Dogstar. Of course they do; if Dogstar and its destruction couldn’t kill them, if a tossed bomb and losing absolutely everyone and everything couldn’t finish them off, maybe they just weren’t meant for death. One call makes it through the communication barrier with enough memorized confidential information to send several planetary governments scrambling into action and Juno sleeps for a week, but no one besides two and maybe a half people know the connection. Jet carries Juno onto one of the ships sent in to clean up the mess and hides them in a distant corner; they don’t speak, and eventually concerned authority figures leave them alone. When they land somewhere - anywhere - else, Jet leads them away from the ship.

It feels like a rebirth. It feels like a second chance that Juno isn’t sure he deserves, but won’t waste - if not for his sake, for theirs. For Jet’s.

Maxine Rutherford gets away, too. She’s long gone by the time the authorities descend, no doubt trying to sink her roots into some new place, and when Juno picks up that transmission from a closed, secure line and shares it with Jet, there’s no discussion. They’ll do this, one more time, for the right reasons. After that? After that is anyone’s guess.

Jet and Juno waste no time; the flurry of criminal activity in their wake inspires rumors and nicknames, and when Juno thinks to ask Jet if that bothers him, Jet chuckles.

“The legend lives on,” he says. “I think they would be pleased.”

~~~

“I’m guessing that means you poached our contact,” Juno mutters. He’s annoyed enough about the waste of his time that he has no reservations about subjecting his guest to more of his voice - and the thief is unnaturally still, which is satisfying and offensive at the same time. “What, did the people who told you the nickname not warn you about the voice?”

“Let me see your face.”

The flatness of his tone is obvious, even with the audio distortion. Juno frowns; he can’t picture what kind of expression goes along with a tone like that, and it makes him uneasy. “...why?”

“Please.” He hasn’t moved an inch. Juno would wonder if he was still breathing except that he keeps talking. “I just need to... please.”

Not without seeing his first, Juno thinks. He doesn’t have to ask the chip to know that it’s working on it, but it’s the kind of work that’s going to take months of concentrated effort - reclaiming Rita’s name taught him that, and that’s still not a sure thing.

Jet, stop where you are.

I am almost there.

That’s great, big guy, but I need your eyes for a second and if we do that while you’re moving, you’re gonna run into something.

Juno can feel the skepticism; no lying to him in his own head. If you say so, he says anyway. What do you need?

Somebody stole our meeting and I need to see his face - the distortion on this guy is something else. Can you take a look and tell me what you see?

Jet doesn’t answer in words; he doesn’t need to. He looks, and the inside of Juno’s head is quiet for a long time. Juno, he thinks, and there’s a strange echo that usually only comes from him -

“Juno?”

Juno, it’s -

But Juno doesn’t need to be told. He knows. There’s no evidence for him to point to, but he knows the person who would say his name like that, can hear what it would sound like in the right voice in his memory.

Juno leans forward. “Nureyev?”

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the-antichrists-plus-one · 4 years ago

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Shout out to the $30 Penumbra patrons for being the funniest mfs in this entire fandom.

#tpp #the penumbra podcast #tpp patrons #tpp vague #juno steel #junoverse

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currenthyperf1xat1ons · 8 months ago

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⚠️ vague spoilers for juno steel and the terrible waste pt 1 ⚠️

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i think my favorite juno steel introduction so far is “lovesick moron”

second only to “i think it’s safe to say ive got it bad”

#the penumbra podcast #tpp #junoverse #juno steel #our fav bi pi #how am i supposed to wait two weeks for this shit 😭#junoverse spoilers #junoverse vague

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skeletaltoad · 4 years ago

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concept that i hate and will probably be shot on sight for: ramses is maybe. their birth father.

#THIS POST IS SO VAGUE #i might not tag it just to be funny #but i will #i gotta get it out there #tpp #the penumbra podcast #junoverse #juno steel #ramses o'flaherty #JUST A CONCEPT #im gonna be crucified for this

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pldubrahs · 5 years ago

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well. its my bedtime but i cant wait for more of the tale my new desert daughter ig

#squid at the penumbra #this is all so stressful #i miss last season and i miss rita #i miss juno being Vaguely happy. this is all so painful #bout to go read an au fic where juno gets to kiss peter and be kind #junoverse

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junosteelyourgirl · 3 years ago

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junoverse characters as out of context quotes from buzzfeed unsolved

juno

nureyev

mick

nureyev after leaving juno yet another cryptic, vaguely flirtatious note to meet him someplace

juno

rita whenever juno talks about his childhood

min kanagawa re: the family business

juno

literally just all of season 2

#juno steel #penumbra podcast #jupeter #junoverse #peter nureyev #tpp #penumbra #podcast #juno #rita penumbra #mick mercury #min kanagawa #cecil kanagawa #buzzfeed unsolved #ryan bergara #shane madej

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grasslandgirl · 2 years ago

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HELLO oh I am :eyes emoji: at every single thing on that list, your wips sound so. cool! absolutely dying to hear more about leverage ot3 amnesia ideas & juno steel and the case of the lost memories, whatever you are interesting in sharing <3

oh with JOY will i talk about these jade, with JOY!!

i'm gonna put this below a cut cause i'm gonna answer and give snips for both and it's gonna get LONG bc i Cannot Shut Up xox

for the leverage ot3 amnesia au i dont have a TON written, it was more just a collection of amnesia au ideas for all three of them that i was putting down so as not to forget them- i'm such a sucker for amnesia aus where the concrete memories are gone, but the sense memories and the gut instincts, and the muscle memory remains; and i think that trope carries over really interestingly to the leverage ot3-- parker who feels herself physically relaxed around these two strange men she doesn't know, eliot who instinctively lets these strangers touch him because some part inside of him he can't remember knows they won't hurt him, etc etc

i haven't written a ton of it, but i do have a dash of eliot pov i'll slide your way <33

Everything’s fuzzy. Eliot hates when things are fuzzy. He blinks against the crust in his eyes, but whatever room he’s in is clinically bright. His mouth is dry and his whole body is a single dull ache- heavy medication. Someone’s drugging him. In the back of his mind, Eliot’s furious about that; wants to rage until everything is burned out of his system and he can think clearly again, but he can’t remember why. Why he’s- wherever he is. Why he hates mind-numbing medication so badly. Why he needs it in the first place. The alarms in the back of his head are clanging- telling him, danger, threats, wake up, get up, fight your way out- but Eliot has to fight to open his eyes all the way. He’s in a hospital. And- yeah, okay, that makes sense; even if it ignites the same anxious-angry pit in his stomach the meds do. Glaring halogen ceiling lights and clinical white walls and a softly beeping heart monitor and an IV plugged into his arm (he fights the urge to rip it out, if only for the moment) and- a man. Sitting in the chair next to him.

:)))) eliot pov my beloved....... i should write more leverage fic, huh?

and then SIMILARLY juno steel and the case of the missing memories is ALSO an amnesia au ksjvnskfjvnsfb

the concept was that at some point vaguely s3 on the carte blanche, juno gets a bad hit and loses all his memories of basically the plot of the show- so he can remember everything before the case of the murderous mask- but he doesn't remember anything with the kanagawas, or meeting nureyev, or the martian pill, or losing his eye, etc etc etc

so he wakes up on this ship- off mars for the first time in his life- still in a pre-s1 headspace, with only one eye and a bunch of people he doesn't know. and rita :)

tbh i only got like. a couple eps into s3 of junoverse and then never got caught back up (whoops) so like. idk what really happens during s3 and this fic was a big project in terms of like. going back to s1 juno characterization and foiling that against who s3 juno is and who s3 peter is, and how this kind of regression effects their relationship (or lack thereof, at the outset of the fic, bc they're not together yet) and while i did and do think it's really interesting, it was also like. a big thing to undertake and i got wary of like. characterizing juno effectively in it? and i wanted to slow roll him regaining his memories in bits and pieces and was having trouble pacing that effectively, and so it ended up on a back burner i never returned to </3 alas

but maybe someday when i finally go back and relisten to and catch up on tpp i'll go back and wirte more of it! in the mean time, have some snips:

He heard soft footsteps, almost silent, sliding across the hard floors of the ship behind him. Juno froze on instinct, senses sharpening to a knife’s point as he tried to focus on the steps over the blasting audio from Rita’s stream. If Rita noticed Juno stiffening, she didn’t say anything. Even though Rita had told him, again and again, that he could trust his fellow crew members aboard the Carte Blanche, that they were a family, Juno couldn’t shake the paranoia he’d known his whole life. He didn’t trust easy, he’d learned that the hard way over and over again as all the people he’d let into his life had betrayed or abandoned him. Except Rita. If he’d ever known how, Juno had long since forgotten how to be a part of a family, and this motley crew of criminals was no exception. The footsteps neared, and Juno’s mind- as fuzzy and slow-moving as it still was, even three days after whatever accident he’d had- spun, trying to remember where the closest gun was, just in case. In his periphery, Juno saw the figure approaching. Tall, with taller hair and narrow shoulders- Ransom. Some of the tension dropped from Juno’s shoulders. He still didn’t trust Ransom, there was something off about the guy, something about how he watched Juno and spoke so carefully around him that made Juno think he was hiding something. But there was something- a gut feeling Juno had about him. A deja vu kind of trust and comfort and uncertainty. Juno didn’t remember where it came from, but it was there. He trusted Ransom more than anyone else on the ship, other than Rita, even though that wasn’t saying much. Ransom came close enough to catch Juno’s eye. Raised his eyebrow in a silent question- the same one every person on the ship asked him every time they saw him: do you remember me yet? Juno shrugged, trying not to dislodge Rita too much. Ransom nodded, his expression never changing from the smooth, impassive mask he always wore. It itched at Juno, that impassivity. He wanted to know what was under it, wanted to know what Ransom was really thinking in that pretty head of his. The only people who were that careful and inscrutable were people with something to hide. Juno was a PI- he should know. As Ransom turned to walk away, Juno realized that the closest entrance to Ransom’s quarters was on his blind side. That he’d gone the long way around the ship to enter and exit within view of Juno’s periphery. Something uncertain and heavy and familiar squeezed in Juno’s stomach.

[i can't help another snippet, it's taking everythig i have not to give like three more on top of this, i forgot how good this au was skjfnvsfb sav from two years ago was crazy]

“Juno,” Ransom said, his voice infuriatingly even. “Ransom-” that was the other thing. The other muscle-sense-memory bullshit that made Juno’s head ache. It felt- wrong, every time he called him Ransom. Every time Juno saw him, or thought about him or started to say his name, he had to correct himself, make himself say Ransom; instead of the other name he had rattling around in his head. He didn’t know where it came from, or why he associated it so strongly with Ransom, but Juno was ready to fucking know who Peter Nureyev was, and why he could’t stop thinking about him. Patience wasn’t ever a strong suit for Juno. He bit the bullet. “Why do I have another name for you in my head, Ransom?” There. The flash of- of something, of emotion Juno had been waiting for. It was brief, something Juno might’ve missed if he hadn’t been looking so closely for any kind of reaction, but it was there. Shock, uncertainty, grief, flickered across Ransom’s face before settling back into his perpetual inscrutability. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Juno,” Ransom said, but there was a tremor, barely there, under his composed tone. Juno had shaken him, and he was going to get answers, damnit, come hell or high water. “Really?” Juno challenged, and he’d forgotten a lot, but he hadn’t forgotten this: the chase, the interrogation, cornering somebody into admitting and confessing and telling Juno what he wanted- what he needed- to hear. “Then who the hell is Peter Nureyev?” There it was again; the flickering, uncertain emotion, the disappearance of Ransom’s composure, the twist in Juno’s stomach that meant he was onto something. “I- Juno, do you-” “No.” Ransom’s face fell, if infinitesimally. “I don’t- remember. Not really, but there’s… I don’t remember you, but I look at you and my brain says Nureyev, and I don’t fucking know why.”

:))) i just reread this whole wip- and it's almost 7k long- bc i didnt remember a lot of it and. oohohohoho. god. i was deranged.

thank you again for sending in this ask, jade!! sorry (not sorry) it got so long skjfvnksfjbn

send me the name of a wip off of this list and i'll reply with a snippet and/or my thoughts on it !!

#asks #tpp #leverage #brrbrbrrrrr head full had FULL

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hawkfurze · 2 years ago

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wait what happened with penumbra podcast? i dont listen to it currently but i used to

It's gonna be a bit long and I might get some details wrong as this happened around last September. Also please note: I haven't been keeping up with anything involving Penumbra Podcast and the people who worked on it since these events happened, nor listened to the podcast past S3, before these events, and everything I saw I saw through Twitter, where these events happened, and through videos on tik tok from the TPP community there. I'm white and a lot of other creators, ones more affected by this than me, have made more detailed videos about this on tik tok (I never check the TPP tag here but there most likely are more better posts about it on here too). Also I don't condemn this post being used as an excuse to harass the people involved cause I'm not about that. The best thing to do is just to stop listening and posting about Penumbra Podcast.

CW for racism, ablieism, and transphobia

TDLR if you don't want to read the whole thing: The TPP creators hired an artist with a lineup of the Junoverse story characters portrayed with racist and abliest caricatures. After people expressed their concerns, Harley makes a vague thread about bullies that was targeted towards people that expressed their concerns about the racist art, pulling more of the fandoms attention towards the situation. The thread is deleted and the TPP creators are silent. The artist makes their own apology, holding themself accountable for the art they have made and promises not to make the same mistakes in the future. After a week, TPP posts a public statement made by the other creator of TPP, Kevin, shifting the blame for the events and "apologizing" for what had happened but giving no clear plan going forward to make sure this doesn't repeat for a third time. Harley theirself still hasn't apologized for the thread they made. I don't listen to The Penumbra Podcast anymore and you shouldn't''t either.

So last year, a couple weeks before the first episode of Season 4 was supposed to come out, TPP announced the artist they hired for the art for the new episodes of S4. You can go on their Twitter and find the artist there if you really want to, but a lot of people were not happy with the choice, specifically because of the artists lineup they made around 2 years ago (at the time of the announcement) of the main cast of Junoverse, mainly because of their designs for Buddy, Peter, Vespa, and Alessandra. Buddy and Alessandra's designs were both racist caricatures of black women, Peter's of east Asian men, and Vespa, a canonical paranoid schizophrenic woman, was portrayed as violent and bloodthirsty (I also saw some comments saying her design was also transphobic, but I believe this lineup was made before it was confirmed that Vespa is trans).

A lot of people were vocal about their choice for the artist saying it wasn't a good idea and that they should consider hiring another artist to do the promotional art for TPP because of this line up. They could have listened or made a public post about peoples concerns, but instead threw more fuel into the fire. I don't know how long after the announcement this post was made, but one of the creators, Harley Takagi Kaner, conveniently and undoubtedly was targeted towards the people pointing out the artists racism in their work, made a thread about "bullies." I admit, I don't remember everything that was in it and don't have screenshots as the thread has been deleted, but the timing of the post as well as the content of it, made things boil over and the fandom was collectively pissed. Kevin Vibert, the other creator of TPP, says Harley gets a lot of transphobic messages sent to them, but that's not an excuse when it's pointed out that the artist you hired has made racist and abliest fan art of your show.

The thread got deleted a day or so after it was made, but the damage was already done and there was only silence from the TPP creators as people directed their messages to the artist in question. The artist did apologize and promised to not lean into those caricatures again, though they used the word "goofy" instead of calling it what it is, but was left to deal with the fallout by theirself with silence from the TPP creators.

About a week later they announced they will issue a public statement, and one was made by Kevin. In the statement, Kevin apologizes and talks about the harassment Harley receives (even before this event) vs the harassment he receives, mainly these messages being transphobic attacks towards Harley, focusing more on this than on the fact that most people were respectful when raising their concerns about the racist art before Harley made that thread calling members of their own fandom bullies and that everyone only wanted to hear some kind of accountability from the creators. Kevin also admits that of the two POC people they had hired to review the artists they were considering hiring, neither of them were black, despite most of the cast for Junoverse being headcannoned as such, and that what pushed him to make the statement in the first place was because the Patreon was losing patrons as people pulled their pledges away from the show because of these events. He talks about the show being a part of his and Harley's livelihood but no real clear indication about how and if they will try to stop something like this from happening again, especially since this was not the first time this has happened (tho I didn't find that out until after this whole thing). Harley hasn't made a public apology yet, at least on twitter, and I think is taking a much needed break from Twitter. The apology, as a whole, was a messy thing that shifted blame and highlighted the mistakes behind the scenes, without giving some kind of clear statement of if the creators even intend on making sure that nothing like this will happen again.

Personally I think the way this situation was handled was sloppy and unprofessional, and as Harley Takagi Kaner still hasn't made an apology on Twitter, I am not holding out much hope that they will say anything about it at all, though I am glad they're taking a break from Twitter as they very much need it. I can't support a show that claims to be inclusive and diverse when you are alienating a whole part of your fandom, especially if you are actively encouraging people to design the main cast of characters as POC, and behaving like this when people point out your racism instead of apologizing and trying to do something better. Also by taking so long to even announce that there will be a public statement made, leaving your artist to handle the backlash alone, but, in Kevin's case, still being able to do a livestream while the shows fans are practically begging for some accountability, and only making a statement once it started affecting your patreon, doesn't make me feel like there will be any changes in the future when it comes to how things like this will be prevented before they even have the chance to happen, and how they will be handled when they do.

If you were unaware of this having had happened, I highly encourage you reconsider continuing listening to the show, and if you must must must listen to it, figure out how to without directly supporting the creators, as well as not post about the show anymore. I haven't listened to TPP since this all happened, even though it was one of my favorite shows at the time, and there are other creators out there who can and have had handled situations like this more sensitively than how the TPP crew has. Racism from the creators shouldn't be ignored in favor of the queer rep The Penumbra Podcast brings, and no show should call itself inclusive if it's creators are going to treat it's non-white audience like this.

#damn it hawkfurze #the penumbra podcast #tpp #racism tw #ablism tw #transphobia tw #yeah thats why I dont post about tpp anymore #and again dont go harassing the creators or the artist again cause this is year old drama and honestly it'd be better if you just #stopped posting about the show and find something new with gay people to listen to

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stubbornjerk · 3 years ago

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Why people keep telling you to block them if you support Pholo (Penumbra Edition)

Or: why jitterbug-juno really deactivated

I love when people categorize this as fandom wank. Really makes you feel like you’re putting the onus on either side of the conversation.

I’m making this post not because I want to stir up spoiled milk, but because I want it out there that this wasn’t a purity culture war.

The TL;DR version of this is that fans of color tried to tell Rab (prev. jitterbug-juno) not to post her Omegaverse (or A/B/O) fic. And instead of taking the L, she posted it on Ao3 and deactivated.

But, if you want context, well, buckle in. CW for mentions of racism and transphobia.

What did jitterbug-juno do?

Before I get into this I do want it out there that I will not be linking Rab’s fic, but I will show you this screenshot of the summary of it.

[ID: It is a screenshot of a fic, “As You Are” by Pholo.

Summary: Peter can hide his scent glands behind cologne; makeup; concealer pads. He can quash his heats with suppressants. He can divert the urge to nest and fawn.

But he can’t feign another gender’s subvocals. He lacks the anatomical capacity. Mag taught him to distract from his silence with fast, flashy words. For longer heists he relies on social convention. Traumatic mutism is uncommon, but remarked upon by enough war vets and soap operas to be widely recognized. Peter’s marks assume he’s been harmed long before they assume he’s a closeted omega. It would take quite the backwater brute to ask why he doesn’t murmur or chuff or growl.

On the 'Blanche there are the usual furtive glances. Juno makes clear to Peter that should he ever want “to talk about what happened,” he’ll be there to listen. The gesture annoys Peter more than comforts him.

‘Nothing happened,’ he wants to scream. ‘There’s nothing to talk about!’

There are 14 comments, 85 kudos, and 11 bookmarks /end]

You decide what you’re doing with that information, but honestly, I’d rather you don’t give it anymore engagement than it deserves.

There was a period earlier this June (yes, even though it’s only the 10th, at time of writing) when Rab was posting snippets of the aforementioned fic on her blog and tagging it appropriately, putting it in the attention of pretty much the entire Penumbra fandom.

What’s Omegaverse or a/b/o and why is everyone so against Rab for it

If you know what Omegaverse is, I don’t have to tell you why it’s controversial. If you don’t know what Omegaverse is, well, Fanlore said it best:

a kink trope wherein some or all people have defined biological roles based on a hierarchical system, with the terms originating from animal behaviour research. There may be werewolf, knotting, or other animalistic elements involved, or the characters may be otherwise purely human.

The term is generally written with slashes (a/b/o). Many fans, particularly ones from Australia and New Zealand, are uncomfortable seeing the term without slashes because it is also an Australian slur for aboriginal people.

I won’t get into the history or the heaps and tons of other discourses (mostly about fictional male pregnancy, homophobia, transphobia, sexual assault, etc.) that go on within that. We’re here specifically on Rab v. Penumbra fans of color and we’re staying there.

Anyone who’s been in Penumbra enough to realize that everyone draws the Junoverse characters in a certain way knows that a) Juno is black, b) Nureyev is Asian, and c) as a fan you have to be aware of what you’re subjecting or saying about either of them because of the political repercussions that come with it.

And despite that, Rab proceeded to write Peter Nureyev, a gender nonconforming gay Asian male character that is widely headcanon’d as trans, into a fic using a kink trope that relies heavily on animal behavior.

Unlike most people new to fandom, Rab is aware of what Omegaverse is and is very much white. She is (and if she isn’t, should be) aware of the racist undertones that writing him in would get.

I couldn’t get a screenshot of what snippets Rab was sending out into the ether, seeing as a majority of my friends would rather not have seen any at all (I have all of the usual tags blocked so I wouldn’t have seen it either way), but needless to say, Rab got attention for it. Both positive and negative.

Anne (@hopeless-eccentric) even posted a satirical fic, in the odds that Rab was just writing this thing to be “the first” to write Omegaverse fic in the Penumbra tags.

But, I’m assuming more than one fan of color came into Rab’s inbox and messaged her about it, but someone I know (who would like to remain anonymous) was gracious enough to take a screenshot before he sent his in and let me use it for this post:

[ID: A message to jitterbug-juno about to be sent by a sender whose name is censored with a black bar. His messages says:

“as someone who is a person of color i think the nature of the fic you are writing right now is extremely racist and attributing animal characteristics to lgbt people of color is not at all appropriate, especially when you are someone who is white. i have to ask you to not publish this fic and to reflect as to why you would want to write this in the first place, these tropes are extremely harmful and”

There are 33 characters left to write into the message. /end]

I can’t speak for whoever else sent asks about the fic she was writing. If anyone was actually not-so-gentle with her, well, minorities don’t really owe it to you to be gentle about what they can tell is bigotry-tinged behavior.

But, the message was clear: this is different from your garden variety, lily white straight male character m/m kink fantasy. This is an actual queer Asian character that a lot of queer Asian people feel attached do. Do not post the fic.

What happened next: the beginning of the end

The next morning, I woke up to most of my friends being frustrated by this post on Rab’s account:

[ID: Dated 5 June, a post by jitterbug-juno:

“Gonna leave the fandom for a while. Wishing you all well.”

The tags say the following: not sure if i’ll be back, thank you so much to everybody who’s read my fics, and who’s sent asks or engaged with my art or any of that, you’re amazing and I’m sending love /end]

That... was not what fans of color wanted, but it was definitely an action they took. Some celebrated, as they were very much wary of Rab for having caused much of the same category of drama in fandoms like Voltron: Legendary Defenders and Warrior Cats. This also meant that she was probably not going to post the fic either.

Some, myself included, were relatively pissed, as they’d wanted even just the measly bit of accountability. An apology or an acknowledgement of having been called out in private and that they’ll take time to consider why. But instead we got Rab leaving in the face of fans of color telling her not to post her Omegaverse fic.

Well. The next day...

[ID: Dated 6 June. A post by jitterbug-juno titled, “Well... that was short-lived”

“I gave the situation a lot of thought yesterday. The reaction to my omegaverse previews made me figure I should leave the fandom. It seemed like the safest option.

But you know what?

Hell.

I don’t want to leave. The fic discusses the tropes of omegaverse and I spoke to several POC on Twitter, and I’m going to post it with plenty of tags so people can avoid it if they wish. I’m not going to be chased out of this space.

Thank you to everyone who sent messages yesterday. I shouldn’t have made that post about leaving. It was really reactionary. I’m okay and I appreciate your support so much.

(bolded on the post) To those who are angry and uncomfortable with me: Please block me. If you’re going to talk about this fic on Tumblr and Twitter– and this may sound odd– PLEASE NAME ME as Jitterbug-juno or Pholo. Don’t vague me. That way people who don’t want to see this discourse can add my name to their block lists.“ /end]

That certainly was short-lived, she wasn’t kidding.

This got a lot of outrage. Again, the fic is up on Ao3 and she has not taken it down. A lot of POC were pissed and I didn’t see a single fan of color actively support what she was doing, at least, not in my friend group. Everyone started making those posts to block them if you liked the fic or Rab’s content in general, in accordance to what Rab wanted.

Perseus (@mraudiodrama) noticed/pointed out that Rab deleted the part where she said she spoke to several POC about releasing her fic, as well as the part where she said she refused to be chased out of the fandom. This was an incredibly pointed detail to edit out, according to some.

[ID: A screenshot of jitterbug-juno's last post taken 11:00PM. Much of it is the same except the following bolded words are removed: "The fic discusses the tropes of omegaverse and I spoke to several POC on Twitter, and I’m going to post it with plenty of tags so people can avoid it if they wish. I’m not going to be chased out of this space." /end]

That same day, Rab deleted her blog. I actually caught this one on tape, believe it or not.

[ID: A screen recording taken at 12:01 PM of someone scrolling down jitterbug-juno's account. The posts and asks about Omegaverse and her post about leaving and coming back are conspicuously absent. /end]

Initially, I thought she deleted all mentions of it. I wanted to see firsthand if the rumors about her deleting portions of it were true. If she added things where she was saying that she wanted to write it because she was autistic and wanted Nureyev to be autistic too, regardless of the numerous QPOC telling her not to do it.

Instead, it turned out, she deleted her blog.

And now, we're here. The fic is still up. Her blog is down. Rab's public Twitter account @nataclinn is quiet about this. Her @cushfuddled Twitter account is on private after her run-in with the Warrior Cats fandom, according to a friend. And her Tumblr @cushfuddled account has nothing but memes.

Again, I didn't make this post to stir up drama. I wasn't even obsessively making this post as a call-out because she isn't in the fandom anymore. I just want it out there that this isn't a purity culture thing that got out of hand in a fandom as niche as Penumbra. This was a case of someone being called out and failing to acknowledge it before running away. And I want all that out of the way before I say:

If you are on Rab's side of this debacle, I, a queer person of color, want nothing to do with you either.

#the penumbra fandom #jitterbug-juno #pholo #racism #white drama #im not tagging this as fandom drama or fandom wank because that erases the fact #that this was legitimate criticism of a white person #the penumbra podcast #junoverse #i put it in a readmore so its not gonna clog up much #but if anyone doesnt want me to tag this w the fandom tags i'll remove it #once again though this is the furthest thing from anti/proship discourse

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