#the good doctor is Drunk not incapacitated but very off balance

[5-htagonist]

i dont know how to connect these pieces together, except for something regarding how the characterization is done, but venture bros, homestuck, utena, house, some others i cant think of rn... something about the way the characters interact and build in these captivates me. the complexities, the almost... impromptu way these characters develop so naturally, and i think it comes from different places in most of these though homestuck and venture bros probably holds the most similarity in terms of expertly utilizing retroactive foreshadowing to create beautiful and complex character relationships. house feels like it moreso... accidentally happens upon great and logical character development lol. i usually wonder if im reading too far into it when i watch particularly great moments. and utena's characters feel so 3d because they really are-- the sheer amount of different utena stories that adds and expands and also contracts on different aspects of each character ends up building a very 3d and symbolic picture in the mind.

[need-a-fugue]

We Grow Together (7)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x OFC

Summary: Relationships can be tough, especially when one person is a recovering-from-being-brainwashed-and-tortured former assassin and the other is an overworked mutant scientist. But hey, every couple has their struggles. Right?

Warning(s): some angst, some emotional and mental turmoil… some bad language words… much fluff

Chapter Summary: After getting mind-fucked by by Ultron’s little friend, the team comes face to face with a secret that somehow Tessa had been privy to... And then they head out to go, you know, save the world.

“We could really use you,” he’d said. “I know how you feel about… fighting. But –”

“Steve,” she’d responded simply, throwing up a silencing hand. “Let’s go to find the crazy killer robot.”

What a mistake that was. It’s not like she turned out to be particularly useful. Just like the others, she got mind-fucked by that science experiment in a dress. In fact, she was the first to go down after making the mistake of thinking that she could take the girl out on her own. In her defense, she probably could have if the other freak hadn’t flown in at a million miles a minute and knocked her silly.

None of them were prepared. Not even a little bit.

And that… that… mind-fuck. What the fuck was that? Clint had called it mind control, but that didn’t quite seem to fit. They weren’t made to actually do anything. It’s not as though she had turned them into her puppets. They were just… mentally incapacitated.

It felt a lot like when Professor X would reach into her mind to help settle her – only this, of course, was anything but settling. But the feeling was the same, an odd sort of tickle at the back of her skull, a push and a pull deep in her center. What she saw… it was a dream, but it was also reality. A vision? Sure, that’s a better term, she supposed. But weren’t visions supposed to tell you something? Weren’t they supposed to warn you of something to come, or remind you of something you needed to remember? There was no portending… at least not for her. This vision just seemed to… hurt.

No one had said a word about what they experienced in their visions. Actually, most of them had said very few words at all since arriving at the safe house. And they all knew that it was only partially because an angry robot was hellbent on destroying the world.

“Hey,” pulls her out of her reverie and she turns to see Steve looming beside her. “Are you gonna eat?” She looks confused for a moment, but when he sits down next to her on the porch – Clint Barton’s porch, if you can believe that – she notices that he has a plate of sandwiches in his hand. He extends the platter out to her, and she shakes her head no.

“Get all that wood chopped?” she asks him with a put on grin.

He shrugs. “Most of it.”

“Can you believe this is all Clint’s?” she mutters, staring out into the open space in front of them. The sun was just beginning to set, the sky taking on a full array of pastel colors as it butted up against the trees in the distance.

“You knew about this, didn’t you?”

She turns and sees him looking at her with a knowing smirk. “I knew he had a family. I never knew where.”

Steve nods his head. “You didn’t really seem too surprised when we got here. And Laura, she acted like she knew you.”

She pulls her hair over her shoulder and begins picking at the edges of the long, thick braid. “We met once. Had dinner in Rome.”

“Rome?”

“A second honeymoon,” she says with a smile. “Laura always wanted to go.” She lets out a long sigh. “I was in Milan. Clint set me up with a contract position with someone who worked in SHIELD’s biomedical department. He said he wanted me to meet her. Laura, that is.” She looks at him, squinting a bit at the setting sun behind him. “She’s great, right?”

His lips quirk into a smile and he nods. Then they both turn to silently stare off into the distance. “Why did he tell you?” he asks after a few minutes.

“When we were in Minsk… he saw what I could do.” She drops her head to frown down at her hands, begins pulling at her fingers, bending and working them in an uncomfortable way. “I begged him not to tell anyone. But I figured he would. SHIELD had starting keeping tabs on me as soon as I went into the system. Monitoring potential threats, they called it. Me, my family, my friends and classmates. All of us who were… different. We were all potential threats.” She pulls her fingers apart and actually sits on her hands, knowing it’s the only way to keep from messing with them. “Anyway, Clint pulled me aside and showed me a picture of his family… his wife and kids. And he said, We all have secrets, Doc.”

Steve looks at her assessingly. “And you never told his.”

“Of course not.”

“And he never told yours.”

She shrugs. “You think SHIELD would’ve trusted a mutant to do any kind of work for them? Think they would’ve asked one to treat Captain America?” she asks with a twinkle in her eye.

“But,” Steve starts, suddenly confused. “Fury knows. He didn’t know then?”

She shakes her head. “It wasn’t until he asked me to come in to help you that they actually did a complete check – fingerprints, facial recognition, all that. That’s when Nat found out too. Fury told her to keep an eye on me. When she told Clint, well, he almost blew a gasket. Told me that they knew. Told Fury that I was cool, I guess. Told Nat that he trusted me…” She sighs. “He felt bad… terrible. He was the one who recommended me to Fury.”

“Clint was?” he asks, surprised.

She turns to him with a crooked smile. “Yeah. You didn’t know that?” He shakes his head. “He knew I was interested in the effects of the serum – from a strictly research-oriented perspective, not, you know, to replicate or anything.”

Steve laughs lightly. “Yeah, I know.”

She looks off into the distance again, watches as the sky grows darker by the minute. “He told Fury that he trusted me. He thought that’d be enough. That’s what he said… when he apologized.” A small chuckle escapes her. “He looked so guilty. And Natasha… I remember her saying something like, I don’t care if you turn out to be a shapeshifting polar bear. If Clint says you’re good, you’re good.”

“A polar bear?”

“Something like that,” she says with an amused grin.

“And you said they weren’t your friends,” he teases, bumping her with his shoulder.

She gives him a small smile. “Yeah, well… I still don’t trust Fury,” she says, tossing a glare over her shoulder and towards the farmhouse that the former director himself walked into less than an hour ago.

“Few people do,” he counters. “Come on,” he says, rising with a groan. “Let’s go hear what the old man has to say.”

She slowly rises to follow, wobbling when she gets to her feet. “Are you allowed to call people old?” she asks, leaning her hip against the porch railing for balance.

He reaches down and grabs a sandwich off the plate he’d been holding. “Eat,” he orders as he hands her the sandwich and opens the screen door. “And technically, the man you’re dating is four months older than me, so maybe you shouldn’t age shame.”

Three hours later and she can honestly say that she regrets eating that sandwich. Or maybe it was the two that followed. No one understands needing energy to function better than her – well, maybe understand isn’t the right word, as there’s so much about her odd mutation that truly perplexes her. But as a doctor, at the least, she gets that you need to eat to survive. But if the jet hits one more air pocket, she’s going to hurl into her lap. “And Tony just had this suit cleaned,” she murmurs to herself, rubbing lines into the leathery fabric on her thighs.

“What?” Bucky asks from across the aisle.

She looks up and sees him staring at her with a furrowed brow. He’s been tense since Africa. Well, they’ve all been tense. But his shoulders have yet to relax, and on his face lay a seemingly permanent frown. “Nothing,” she replies, shaking her head and dropping her gaze down. She takes a deep, steadying breath in through her nostrils, closes her eyes, and tries to think of anything other than the way her stomach feels. “I might throw up.”

He moves seats so that he’s next to her, runs his right hand in soothing circles along her back as she rests her elbows on her knees. “Probably shouldn’t have gotten so drunk the other night,” he mutters.

Was that only two days ago? “Probably not.”

“And you haven’t slept since then.”

“No one has.”

“And I bet almost everyone here feels like they might puke too.” She turns to look at him and he offers a small, reassuring smile. His hand snakes up to the base of her neck and she leans back into his touch as he gently kneads the muscles there.

“I can’t believe we just let Helen go back to Seoul,” she breathes out.

“We were supposed to know what was going to happen?”

“No.” She pauses, twisting her head to roll out the muscles he’s massaging. “But she’s not like us, you know? She hasn’t been through things like this before.”

“Things like the end of the world?”

She snorts out a laugh. “Yeah, things like the end of the world. Or killer robots. Or alien attacks. Or Hydra, or SHIELD, or anti-human mutant conspiracies. Or anti-mutant human conspiracies.”

“Those last two are new to me too,” he says with a grin.

She twists in her seat so that she can face him. “Did you see her face on Sunday morning? Before she left to go back home? She was terrified. Traumatized.” She shakes her head a bit, still maintaining eye contact with him. “He’s coming for her. For the cradle.”

“When you say she’s not like us, you mean she’s just a person, right?” His hand drops from the back of her neck onto her shoulder. “She’s what? Normal?” Tessa doesn’t answer, she just drops her gaze as if in thought. He moves his fingers to her temple and plays with the loose curls that sprung up after escaping her tight braid. “She’s smart,” he tells her, voice deep and firm. “She might not have powers, but that doesn’t mean she can’t handle whatever it is that comes her way.”

She shrugs. “Maybe.”

He watches her closely, sees her forehead wrinkle, her brows scrunch together. “You gonna tell me what else is going on up here?” he asks with a small tap on her temple. She looks up, her eyes lost in confusion. “What are you thinking about?”

She twists around and then leans back into him. His right arm drapes around her and she takes his hand in hers and begins playing with his fingers. “It’s the thing Bruce said… about Ultron. He wants us to evolve.”

“Yeah?”

She scoots further back and he instinctively wraps his other arm around her, holding her close. She can feel his chin on her shoulder, his breath in her hair as she says, “We have evolved. Some of us.” She stares down at Bucky’s fingers, rubs firm lines into the calloused skin. “I think he’s right. It’s right.” She shakes her head. “Does that make me an asshole?”

His chest rumbles with a soft chuckle. “No, I don’t think it makes you an asshole.”

“To be clear, I do not agree with his methods.”

He laughs a bit more. “That’s good.”

She lets out a long sigh. “People… humanity… everyone’s so afraid of change, of what bad things it might bring. They forget about the good. Instead of embracing the possibility of something better, they shun what’s different, cling to what they know.”

“Fear is a powerful motivator.”

“And everyone’s more afraid than ever. Especially since New York, since the invasion. Even Hydra and SHIELD… fear. That’s what Project Insight was really about.” She feels him tense at the mention of the project. “How much worse is that going to be now?”

He lets out a tight breath and nuzzles her hair. “I don’t know, baby,” he whispers to her.

“It’s true, though,” she says, folding his fingers into a fist. “He’s right. If we don’t evolve, we die.”

[pomrania]

Mindflayer discussion

Below the cut is the transcription of a Discord conversation between @eyeloch, @absolxguardian, and me (Jan). I think we came up with some pretty good ideas about Underdark society and economy, although most of it was accidentally turning illithids into a combination of something like the Matrix, and vegans. I might take the ideas and make it into a neat post, later on, or I might not.

Excerpts:

Jan Okay, so when someone's at rock bottom, there's three "traditional" options. Selling your body (really unsavoury prostitution), selling your soul (fiends), selling your mind (illithids).

AbsolxGuardian for the last one, you would have to have hit super rock bottom, since you'd need to be in the underdark as well

*

Eyeloch Drow also provide spiders spiders are vital for the economy

AbsolxGuardian oohhh, what if that's the function of the elder brain in this world (because i hate hiveminds with rulers. that doesn't make sense)

Jan Elder brain, is that mindflayers?

AbsolxGuardian yep although i also like the idea of it being the server room of the hivemind

Eyeloch !!

Jan Okay. I don't think of that so much as a "hivemind with ruler", it's more like... the elder brain IS the "mind".

Eyeloch CLOUD COMPUTING

Jan Ooze computing.

Eyeloch THE ELDER BRAIN IS A SERVER FARM

Jan And then mindflayers are like black hat hackers?

Eyeloch hehehheheh ooooh

AbsolxGuardian .....mindflayer colony that's mining bitcoin

Jan YES

Eyeloch psychic bitcoins

Jan OH, and you can only use them when you're "plugged into" the brain server farm!

Eyeloch mindflayer shopkeeper that's cordial to PCs but only takes bitcoin assures them that any brain can generate them

AbsolxGuardian yes!!!

Jan Honestly, I think this Matrix-esque mindflayer concept is a lot better than their official lore.

Eyeloch I'm reminded of Logopolis, the last Fourth Doctor story

Jan And like, they don't so much EAT the brains for physical nourishment, as they extract it for future use as processing. ...which would then imply that a mindflayer vomits out a brain once it gets back home.

Eyeloch where block-transfer computations can literally affect reality as they're solved

AbsolxGuardian yeah! the brains could be doing calculations for psionic magic to generate things like food

Eyeloch like ants that collect leaf cuttings to farm fungus, but they collect brain cuttings to farm psionic energy

AbsolxGuardian they don't eat the brains, they use them as magic computers (i guess a naturally psionic species/being would be able to do it while remaining conscious) they could just be casting food generation spells

Jan Oh, and like a living person COULD like "loan" their brain out for a while, with it still being in their head... but they'd definitely be incapacitated during that.

Eyeloch malware left in brains

Jan Would probably take some psychic damage too, depending on how careful the mindflayers were.

Eyeloch and now I'm horrified

Jan And yes, the possibility of stuff like that being left in one's brain. Which means there's only two situations in which somebody would do this: a) they really trust the illithid in question b) they're desperate Now I'm imagining this as like, one of the last-resort activities people get up to, like certain forms of prostitution, or knocking over fantasy gas stations.

AbsolxGuardian ......wait so does that mean that the gith are just a matrix sequel (although I assume you would just be unconscious)

Jan And it's all technically legal. They know, getting into it, that it'll hurt, and they might not survive.

Eyeloch "Over time, overmind. . .over time, overmind. . .over ti-ti-time, overmind..."

AbsolxGuardian because standard lore says that after dragons and giants, it was the mindflayers that ruled the material plane

Jan Okay, so when someone's at rock bottom, there's three "traditional" options. Selling your body (really unsavoury prostitution), selling your soul (fiends), selling your mind (illithids).

AbsolxGuardian for the last one, you would have to have hit super rock bottom, since you'd need to be in the underdark as well

Eyeloch ...if you're an adventurer, selling your body may mean roughing people up

Jan Rock bottom LITERALLY heh.

Eyeloch but much the same

Jan Although, there's nothing stopping a mindflayer from being on the surface, aside from that it's far from their normal habitat. OH, maybe that's why it wants to borrow people's minds: because it doesn't have the normal "computing power" of an elder brain. It's running mobile instead of desktop. And there's a whole bunch of bipedal wifi stations walking about.

Eyeloch "Well, this is kind of. . .well it isn't an elder brain. More of an adolescent brain. It still helps, though!" omg parallel core computing = multiple mind psionics

AbsolxGuardian i can't believe both of my dnd sessions have bitcoin cause my dragonslayers one has spell slot based arcanecoin

Jan This reimagining could also make illithids feasible as allies, I think. If they don't require the DEATH of sentient beings to function, that could also put them at Lawful Neutral, with Lawful Evil tendencies because it's hard to view "humans" as "people" since they're so different.

Eyeloch this is amazing

AbsolxGuardian also they don't have to only eat psionic food, it's just the most practical in the underdark

Eyeloch together, we've made some great concepts

AbsolxGuardian heck, they're probably the breadbasket of the underdark

Jan Maybe illithids are strict herbivores when it comes to nourishing their physical forms. And "eating brains" doesn't have it go down the digestive tract, just to another internal place for storage.

Eyeloch oh gosh, talking about how they're vegan, while literally stealing brains :joy:

AbsolxGuardian YES!! now i'm thinking about the underdark economy, and i'd imagine duergar provide weapons and raw mined material. deep gnomes provide more precise and detailed products. mindflayers provide food. and drow provide slaves and "protection"

Jan Pffft, "You actually have to eat MEAT to FUNCTION? I'm going to take your brain, and you probably won't even notice that it's missing, you're already basically an animal."

Eyeloch Drow also provide spiders

Jan I love how we managed to turn mindflayers into both hackers and obnoxious vegans.

Eyeloch spiders are vital for the economy

AbsolxGuardian (in all seriousness, a tamed giant spider is basically a beast of burden)

Jan Even smaller spiders, there's spider silk. And if you can communicate with them, you can get stuff woven to order I suppose.

Eyeloch you could potentially make garments with almost no additional stitching required

AbsolxGuardian yeah, they provide fabric!

Jan Thinking of mindflayers, there was an idea I'd had a few months ago. Where they like, provided protection to a community, in exchange for a few brains once in a while. Kind of like an organized crime gang, I guess.

Eyeloch protection racket

Jan And there was also, like, you know Intellect Devourers? Those things like brains on legs? A smaller version of them, that were basically used for recreational purposes. To turn your brain off for a bit, like getting drunk. To clarify, this is what the humans in town did. Heh, I don't know whether it's sad or impressive that like, three nerds, talking over maybe fifteen minutes, can turn the Underdark into a functional economy, when Wizards of the Coast hasn't.

Eyeloch hello and welcome to the town of mindfuck

AbsolxGuardian i mean, they see the civilizations of the underdark as a lot more evil. we went in more of a "creepy harsh life"

Jan Yeah.

AbsolxGuardian although it is funny that the economy is in such perfect balance, because "conquer the surface and crush others underfoot" are on the long term priority list of drow and mindflayers now i'm imagining a vetinari-like drow having to reign in warmongering drow

Eyeloch the alignment of Stupid Evil can stifle effective ability to actually do evil

Jan Oh, the illithid-protection-racket idea: there's no beggars around, because they all get approached with "if you lend us your brain for a bit, and you survive, we'll make sure you have what you need to be set up afterwards". The people who don't take that offer, they're creeped out enough that they leave the area.

Eyeloch I love it OH HELL

Jan And like, there's a lot of visceral "this is horrible" reaction.

Eyeloch i d e a "Server farm"

Jan But the people who complain most about it, it's not like THEY were doing anything to help the beggars.

Eyeloch which is like battery hens, but with people with "useful" brains though, honestly, some mindflayers probably think that's wasteful since enrichment activities slow the degradation of the hardware, don't'cha'know

AbsolxGuardian oh are we going with each hive being a full hive mind and more of a single enity or just very community focused telepaths

Eyeloch hmmm, IDK

Jan "Enrichment", oh that's good. The latter idea would work better. And like, a strong enough mind can subsume all the others into it.

AbsolxGuardian that makes sense

Eyeloch corporate merger

Jan Oh, how about like there's some ideological splits along that line.

AbsolxGuardian so each elder brain is their internet server

Jan Whether it's better to have every body under one mind, or just have each body connected.

Eyeloch "Mindflayers. When you talk, we listen."

AbsolxGuardian yeah there might be a few all hivemind groups

Jan There's no real conflict between the hivemind vs non-hivemind groups. Maybe some verbal sniping, or "oh that's what you get for using that form" when one of them suffers damage.

Eyeloch just some passive aggression?

Jan But a pro-hivemind illithid doesn't work well in a non-hivemind group... and an anti-hivemind illithid will make the hivemind less functional, if forcibly added.

Eyeloch so much telepathic noise, and all the tiny disagreements stressing the hive-mind fan more and more for self-evident reasons!

Jan That's probably the biggest philosophical divide in mindflayer society. And like, they all feel that they're superior to other life forms, and the world would be a better place in charge. Just every mind has a different idea on how to do that, and if it should be done. Some think that non-mindflayers are enough of a mess that you shouldn't even bother with them, it's like cleaning out a stable with a dining fork. Don't try to take them over; even if you manage, it won't be fun.

Eyeloch "elves, gnomes and those others lot are fine to do their thing.  Just I wish they'd go do that stuff somewhere else, you know?"

Jan Frick, what if illithids see "humans" (by which I'm including other humanoids) as animals, with all the variety that entails. As beasts of burden, as nuisances who need to be driven away, as scenery, as pets.... Most feel like it's not right to go out of one's way to hurt a humanoid, but if a few humanoids end up suffering to achieve illithid goals, it's not a big deal.

Eyeloch tie it back into the vegan thing from earlier!

Jan There's a few who actively try to protect humanoids. But they still see humanoids as "lesser" beings than illithids.

Eyeloch some would rather not see humanoid suffering, or directly benefit from it but in a kind of

Jan "I would NEVER extract a human's brain personally, but I'll buy one at the store." "Awww, look at those cute little dwarves, carving out a dwelling for themselves! It's almost like they're people!"

Eyeloch "we are superior beings, so we shouldn't sully ourselves with inferior creatures" vs "we are superior in every way, and humanoids are simply too inferior to realise the honour it is to help us in mind or body."