#the structural engineering comes later

[aelloposchrysopterus]

The time has come for the shameless self-promotion that is posting a link to my (first) Girl Genius fanfic:

It features Der Kestle, a Heterodyne OC, and a lot of trilobites.

[shapelytimber]

Ok hear me out.......... wlw Wilhuff Tarkin and Orson Krennic-

the dynamic very much is unhinged creative vs rigid control freak in a context of evil bureaucracy- and personally the context is why I love to read stories with imperials jdjdkd nothing is more crack cocaine literature for me than to make drama in a space office filled with awful people

More flavor text and me trying to sell you on why this ship of two truly terrible people is great below vvv

For Krennic, lean more into the evil genius artist. She's been up for 46 hours straight drawing schematics, she's rambling about incomprehensible shit, her only meals have been cigarettes and energy drinks, she's so full of herself she might one day think she's god, she's gonna die by 60. She doesn't care much about the politics of the empire, but they don't bother her either. She works for the imperials because they have a lot funds to give to engineers willing to build them a battle station the size of a moon capable of blowing up planets. Before that she worked on a lot a architectures on imperial center/Coruscant.

The imperial uniforms are a bit boring- so I'm taking full advantage of the fact Krennic is more of an engineer/architect to tweak her uniform a bit (and the cape was already not respecting regulations sooooo) For Tarkin I'm keeping it tho, this woman won't be caught dead without it.

For Tarkin, lean less into the whole buff survivalist aspect- she very much was in her youth, but she *is* a 65 year old woman based on *Peter Cushing*, and has been in a very high and prestigious position within the empire for the past 20 years. She still as an extensive knowledge on how to survive in nature, and fight with her bare hands or a knife, but that doesn't come up very often in her line of work anymore. She still killed a space bear unharmed when she was like 17 tho. She hates chaos and developed the main philosophy that drove the empire to this day : to govern with fear and impose order. She is a bloodthirsty woman in her sixties, with a never ending hunger for power, currently cheating on her wife with a coworker she hates.

They both love the death star more than they tolerate each other, but they did end up bonding over plotting the demise of one coworker they couldn't stand and digging out rebel spies. Make no mistake tho, this is very much a love triangle/trouple between two women and a giant battle station.

In the end, Tarkin killed Krennic by shooting her from orbit with the death star, the project was finally finished, she didn't need her anymore and she might have gotten in the way of her control of the station.

Tarkin dies a few days later during the battle of Yavin, along the death star, not willing to back down in her moments of glory.

PS : a lot of this is inspired by the fic "Propagating structure" by oneinspats ! it's what made me like and understand this pairing, and is truly a great work of fiction. I really think this fic is a masterful work when it comes to expending the character of Krennic, and extrapolating on existing things. Exploring his more creative side, his passion for his work, his truly abysmal lifestyle, giving him a hatred of nature and a background as an architect on Coruscant. While also keeping his horrific aspects, like reading his internal (or external) monologues sometimes makes my skin crawl with how disgusting his ideas are and how deep they run, but making him an interesting and compelling protag for the story. While all of it is surrounded by this delicious dramatic irony, because we know that no matter how hard they try to scheme (or fuck), the death star will blow up and it's incredible.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Hi Derin! Sorry if this has been asked before, but I'm amazed by the vast array of cultures and gender norms in TTO:U. How did you come up with all of it?

I just thought "hey wouldn't it be funny if there was a little guy" and then made them, and thought "hey what norms would exist in a culture under these conditions" and then made those.

In all seriousness, most of my worldbuilding comes down to tearing down assumptions. Brennans exist because I fucking hate gender and I'm sick of seeing the gender binary or "gender binary Plus Nonbinary Extra People (who still live in a world that assumes a gender binary)" as some immutable natural law that all societies will forever cling to, and I wanted to make a society that was harder for readers to inevitably sort into a binary as they always, always fucking do. (Partial success; I have seen some absolutely rancid takes on the TTOU gender ternary that make me want to break my computer.) The array of different cultural family structures exist because those are different ways that societies can be built on smaller units. The Arboreae and the two space elevators and the Khemin exist because that is a potential response to a critical climate crisis.

On top of that, most of my ideas are stolen. I once read a short story about people who lived under the ocean on an alien planet and spent most of their time just cruising around the ocean in big bubble-like biological submersibles and that was their job, because their submersibles cleaned the water by feeding on things in it; they were employed to be part of the ecosystem. The Khemin, wandering about the ocean as both environmental monitors and trash-gatherers, were inspired by this; from there, I just thought on what sort of family structure and traditions such a group would develop for a stable society. When I was a teeny tiny child I saw a guy on Ripley's Believe It Or Not who was trying to build a self-sustaining floating island to sail around the world on. Absolute disaster of a plan, man knew shit about ecology or farming, but a bit later on I got really into swamps for awhile and started thinking of using plant roots as water filtration systems and, with an eventual biotechnology degree, multiple years hyperfixating on ecology and evolution, and touch of Magic Future Genetic Engineering, that eventually became the Arboreae. The social structure of Hylara is somewhat inspired by CJ Cherryh's azi, particularly the way that Florian and Catlan are raised in Cyteen. The Hylarans are very much not azi (the azi being slaves brainwashed from birth via hypnosis) but the way they are raised fed into building a society batch-raised by robots and each other with no natural family unit. You can just steal concepts from the real world or from scifi and build them into your own thing it's fine.

Anthropologically speaking, the golden feature of any social structure or cultural practice is *stability*. This is the one feature upon which everything is judged. Just or unjust, productive or unproductive, authoritarian or free, structured or unstructured, when developing a society your key thing to worry about is "is this stable? Would a society survive for multiple generations on this norm?" and if your Weird Idea isn't stable, either ditch it or -- far more interesting -- adjust it and your parameters until it is. Different norms will be stable in different environments and built on different histories -- Khemin and Hylaran norms are not interchangeable because of the environments, tech, political climate and reproductive methods the two cultures have. But if it's stable, you can throw in whatever weird shit you want.

[spnbabe67]

Make My World Go Black

Kinktober Day 4: Friends to Lovers (T.O.)

Pairing: Tyler Owens x Fem Original Character

Warnings: Smut, Drinking, Soft and Slow sex

Summary: While visiting Loretta's hometown, the newest Tornado Wrangler gets a request to come pick Tyler up. The problem? Boone has the hotel key.

Word Count: 2962

Authors Note: Title and fic based on the song "Black" by Dierks Bently. (And yes, I know the character in the GIF isn't Tyler Owens, I couldn't find one that matched what I had in mind)

The last thing Loretta expected when Boone texted her was a request to pick up Tyler from the local bar. Sure, The Tornado Wranglers were in her turf, back home in North Texas, but usually it was Boone or even Lilly’s job to nurse their leader back to soberness. She had just crawled into bed, the time nearing 11, when her phone started blowing up with texts from her coworkers. At first she’d tried to ignore it, eyelids heavy from a long day of driving, but after the 5th text she’d relented, squinting at the bright screen. Most of Boone’s text was incoherent, the videographer clearly had a couple drinks himself, but through his copious amounts of spelling errors and incoherent sentence structure she gathered his message: come get Tyler.

So, Loretta pulled on a pair of jeans and a hoodie and pointed the headlights of her two-door Chevy towards the bar Boone had managed to type clearly. Loretta knew the bar well, a little hole in the wall downtown. She wasn’t surprised Tyler chose this place out of the list she’d given him to celebrate a successful season. They’d raised a significant amount for the communities they visited throughout the last couple months, and as an end of season celebration Tyler suggested they come visit Loretta’s hometown. She was the newest member of the group, having joined towards the end of last season when The Tornado Wranglers were chasing an EF4 in the Panhandle and came across Loretta who was competing at the local rodeo. She’d always had an interest in inclement weather growing up in the southern portion of Tornado Alley she’d seen her fair share of tornados, seen the devastation they left in their wake. Here she was, a little over a year later, picking up her boss who she’d had a crush on since he swaggered up to her at the bar after she’d finished competing. 

“Hey Doll.” Tyler gave her a lopsided grin under the brim of his white cowboy hat as Loretta approached him.

Boone or whoever had sat him down on a bench outside the bar, thumping base still audible through the walls. The air was tinged with the smell of cigarette smoke and grilling meat; it was a familiar and comforting aroma.

“Hey yourself, Cowboy.” Loretta quipped, ready to mockingly scold Tyler for getting drunk but it died on her tongue as he pushed himself up from the bench with ease, no sign of alcohol impairment. When she had read Boone’s text, she’d assumed his request to come get Ty;er was urgent, that Tyler was drunk. But here he stood, not drunk at all, buzzed if anything. 

“Thanks for comin’ to pick me up. Boone and the others are drunk off their asses with no intentions of leaving any time soon. We all carpooled and Lilly refuses to let anyone drive her car, so.” Tyler trailed off, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Loretta tried not to linger on how stupidly hot the motion was, eyes bouncing back up to his face from where they’d trailed down to his biceps that were outlined by his white t-shirt.

Loretta gave Tyler a half smile, nodding her head back to where her truck was parked. “Come on Cowboy, let's get you back. You drove more than I did today and I’m exhausted.”

Tyler huffed a laugh. “Me too.”

She let Tyler follow her as she hopped into the driver seat, cranking the key until her engine sputtered to life. “Alright, where did you guys hole up?”

Loretta looked over at Tyler as he whispered a curse under his breath, patting his pockets. “They only gave us one key and Boone has it.” 

He’d taken his hat off, ever the gentlemen, resting it on the dash. His sandy blonde hair was all mussed up, flat against his skull in some places and sticking out like a rooster's crown. His skin was tanned from years in the sun and it looked so damn smooth.

“I’ve got room.”

Tyler looked over at her, eyebrows raised and a half grin on his face. “Really? You got a spare room?”

Loretta tilted her head back and forth, bracing an arm over the back of the passenger seat as she backed out of the parking spot. “Eh, not exactly. But I have a queen sized bed and sleep like the dead.” She shrugged her shoulders as she drove them down the singular main drag through her small town. “Not like you have any other choice.”

“I can crash in my truck. Really Lor I don’t wanna impose on you.” Tyler tried to reason, sinking down lower in the passenger seat and Loretta had to force herself to keep her eyes on the road rather than watch as Tyler set his legs wider.

“It’s not imposing if I proposed the idea in the first place. So shut it and just let me take you home.” Loretta paused, feeling her cheeks go warm as she dragged a hand down her face to hide her sheepish smile. “That came out wrong.”

Tyler chuckled at her from the passenger seat, grinning at her. “Yes ma’am.”

“Fuck off.” Loretta jested, playfully shoving Tylers shoulder.

She ran a hand through her brown hair, tucking a couple errant strands behind her ear, trying to convince herself that the blush that still clung to her cheeks was because of her embarrassing statement and not because Tyler Owens was sitting in her truck and they were driving to her house. This felt right. The sky was full of stars, her house was far enough out in the country the light pollution was nearly nonexistent. With nothing but rows and rows of corn and soybeans with the occasional break for pastures for cows or horses, including the one that belonged to her acreage of land. The gravel kicked up around the wheels of her truck as she pulled down her driveway leading up to her raised ranch. 

“Well, this is me.” Loretta unbuckled her seatbelt, gesturing for Tyler to follow her. 

“It’s” She heard Tyler contemplate from behind her as she unlocked the front door. “Not gonna lie, it’s exactly what I was expecting.”

Loretta furrowed her brows as she let him into her house. “Is that supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?”

Tyler stuttered, running a hand over his head. “Good! Good! It’s a good thing I promise.”

Loretta giggled as she guided him upstairs. “I’m just fucking with you.” She stopped at the hall closet, pulling out a towel and a washcloth and holding them out to him. “Bathroom is the last door on the right, I’ll go grab you some clothes.”

“Thanks Doll.” 

Loretta held her breath as Tyler took the linens from her, tucking them under his arm before leaning in. It was everything she could do to not let her eyes flutter closed as Tyler's face got closer to hers, the heat of him leaking onto her. Loretta felt Tyler’s lips brush her cheek and immediately her chest tightened, that feeling of longing flooding her brain and heart. As brief as the kiss was, him pulling away was quicker, punctuated by that heartbreakingly sweet smile only a country raised boy could pull off. 

Loretta internally sighed, returning his grin with a toothless one of her own, patting his back. “Go get cleaned up Cowboy.”

Once Tyler snicked the bathroom door shut, Loretta retreated to her own bedroom, rifling through her dresser drawers. She knew her brother kept a spare pair of clothes in there somewhere for whenever he came to visit. There! She pulled a pair of boxers and another t-shirt from the back of her bottom drawer that seemed to be the right size.

“Just me.” Loretta knocked a couple times on the bathroom door before cracking the door open. The shower was running, the water hot enough to steam up the bathroom. “I found a pair of boxers and a shirt you can borrow for the night.”

“Oh, yeah, thanks.” Tyler said from behind the other side of the opaque shower curtain. 

Loretta hummed a response, fleeing the bathroom in the most nonchalant fashion she could manage, closing the door behind her. She let out a sigh, shaking her head trying to get rid of the images of Tyler naked not 5 feet from her separated only by the door and the shower curtain. He is probably soaking wet, lathered up with soap. No! Loretta went back to her own room, changing out of her sweatshirt and peeling off her jeans, changing them for a pair of sleep shorts and a long sleeve t-shirt from her alma mater. 

She turned the lamp on the bedside table on crawling under the covers, picking up the book she’d been meaning to finish, needing something to distract her from her less than pure road her thoughts her headed down. Absolutely not! He is your best fucking friend, your coworker! You fucking him would just make everything worse. 

Loretta’s eyes snapped up from the book cradled in her lap when she heard the bathroom door creak open and Tylers footfalls bring him into her room. She felt her mouth go dry at the sight of Tyler, dressed in just boxers and a shirt in her doorway. Sure, Loretta had seen him as well as the other Tornado Wranglers in various stages of undress. Chasing twisters required a level of get-up-and-go that didn’t leave time to worry about modesty. But it was the fact that he was here, in her room, about to sleep in her bed, that had her wanting to know just how good his muscled body would feel under her hands, against her body.

“Feel better?” Loretta managed to say, dipping her gaze back to her book to keep from ogling the man.

Tyler hummed somewhere from her right as she felt the bed dip under his weight as he climbed in beside her. “Nothing like a hot shower at the end of the day.”

It was Loretta’s turn to hum a noncommittal response, not trusting her mouth to filter the thoughts circling in her brain.

Tyler must have taken her minimal response as her being upset because his hand landed on her arm, causing her to flinch. “Lor, you okay? I can sleep on the floor, or on the couch.”

Instantly Loretta felt guilty, setting her book back on the nightstand.”No, no, no. Sorry, I’m just super tired. And don’t be spewing that bullshit. I’m not about to let you sleep on the couch let alone my floor.”

Tyler raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Alright, don’t get your panties in a twist.”

Loretta crinkled her nose at him,offering him a soft smile. She reached over, turning out the light with a quiet click, flooding the room into darkness save for the soft moonlight filtering through the curtains. She let out a sigh as she settled on her side facing Tyler, watching him do the same. Despite her bed being a modest Queen,Tyler was nearly chest to chest with her.

Loretta was glad the room was dark because she was sure her face was flushed red. The way the moonlight glanced off his face made her think Tyler looked like an actor in a black and white film, all James Dean with a titch of Marlon Brando.

“Hey Lor?”

“Hmm?”

Loretta could sense Tylers hesitation, the apprehension of her reaction to whatever he wanted to say. She felt him shift his arm like he was gonna reach out and touch her but the sensation of his hand against her arm never came, much to Loretta’s disappointment.

“Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?”

Loretta blinked, then blinked again, trying to process what Tyler just said. She huffed a laugh, thinking Tyler was joking. “You sure you didn’t have anything to drink Ty?” 

“Yeah, I am.” There was no mistaking the seriousness in his voice, no mistaking the way he was looking at her. “‘Cause I wanted to be completely sober when I did this.”

It was like Tyler was in slow motion, the way he carefully brought his hand up to cup Loretta’s face, thumb stroking the line of her jaw as he leaned in and brushed his lips against hers. Fireworks erupted in her belly at the feeling of finally having his mouth on hers after months and months of hopelessly pining. Well, not really hopeless now is it? Because here he was, deepening the kiss as she willingly opened her mouth to him. Part of her had a hard time believing this was real, that maybe this was just a dream. A really good, really real feeling dream. But the other part was hyper aware of the fact that one of Tyler's bare thighs had slid between her own, the hand not brushed against her cheek had slid to her waist, pulling her even closer to him.

Loretta felt like she was on cloud nine, a high not even Boone’s weed could touch. She threaded her fingers through his hair, whimpering as Tyler’s tongue swept into her mouth. His thigh was solid muscle between her legs, rubbing up against the ache that had slowly started to grow there. Loretta let out a small moan as Tyler’s hand slipped down to palm her ass, rocking her onto his thigh. Loretta moaned Tyler’s name as his lips made a hot trail of sloppy kisses down her jaw to her neck. 

“I know, Baby, I know.” Tyler murmured against her neck, his hands sliding under her long sleeve shirt, thumbs stroking the planes of her belly. “Let me make this feel good.”

Loretta arched her back, helping Tyler slip her shirt off before his hand pressed against her stomach, laying her flat on her back. She whimpered as the cold air hit her bare chest, her nipples hardening. The cold was short lived as Tyler's hot mouth closed around the right one, his hand kneading the other, pulling a gasp from her lips. Her hand shot to his head, holding his face to her chest. She arched her back, chasing the feeling of his tongue circling around the sensitive bud, his left hand tweaking and pinching the other, every action had wetness pooling in her shorts. 

Tyler pulled off of her breasts, a line of saliva connected her nipple to his lips as he kissed his way back up her body until his lips met hers again more heated this time. Loretta slid her hands under Tyler's shirt, pulling it up and off, letting her explore the soft ridges of his abdomen. As Tyler rolled them over back onto their sides, Loretta became aware of something hard poking against her lower stomach. A very large, hard something. Everything in her became focused on the fact that Tyler’s hands had slipped back down to her hips, pushing her shorts down. Loretta reached out, slipping her hand down Tyler’s boxers causing him to curse under his breath.

He reached down himself, shimmying out of his boxers until they were naked. Loretta kissed Tyler deeply as he ran the fat head of his cock through her soaked folds, hiking her top leg high on his hip. 

“Fuck, baby you’re so wet for me.” Tyler muttered against her mouth between kisses, rutting himself against her until the head caught on her core.

Loretta’s mouth fell open as the head of Tyler’s cock slid into her, Tyler hissing through his teeth at how tight she gripped him. His fingers dug into the plush of her ass and thigh, holding her leg up so that he could slot his hips between her legs. Loretta let out a keening moan as Tyler slid in and in and in, filling her until she wasn’t sure she could take it anymore from the amount of arousal coiling in her stomach. She gripped his bicep as Tyler settled into an easy pace, short and slow thrusts that had her moaning breathily every time his hips slapped against her own. 

“Takin’ me so good. Feel so good, Baby. Been wanting to do this for so long.” Tyler mumbled praises against her mouth as he fucked into her, his fat cock brushing against that sensitive spot deep inside her.

“Tyler.” She moaned feeling her climax starting to build

“I know, Baby. Me too. Let me feel cum for me, Doll.”

Tyler kept fucking into her at the same pace, slipping a hand between them to rub small circles on her clit. The sensation of his calloused thumb against her clit sent her over the edge, her pussy walls clamping down on him as her orgasm crashed over her in waves of euphoria. Tyler’s own thrusts became uneven and sloppy as he came, burying himself inside her as his cum spurted deep into her pussy. 

Loretta let out a shaky breath, smiling as she lazily kissed Tyler. Tyler gently shifted his hips, letting his softening cock slide out of Loretta with a low groan. She cupped his face, her thumb brushing his cheekbone as she pulled away from him enough to admire his face. 

“Been wanting to do that for a while, huh?” She teased.

“Mm.” Tyler hummed, pressing a kiss to Loretta’s shoulder. “Ever since I saw you after that rodeo last year. Just never knew you felt the same.”

Loretta huffed a laugh, stroking her fingers through his hair. “What about your saying.”

“My saying?” Tyler looked up at her from kissing her collarbone. 

“If you feel it?” Loretta grinned, watching Tyler’s confused expression morph into a grin of his own.

“Chase it.”

[httpvomitello]

Hi would it be okay to request a Rottmnt with a female reader who makes pastries or maybe works a some kind of pastry shop 🍰

Hello, hello! Hope you like a it ~ ♡♡♡♡

Pastry Shop *⁠.⁠✧

Shows up to your pastry shop all the time (not when people are inside, of course)

He’s not even subtle about it—he acts like it’s a casual visit, but everyone knows he’s there for you (and maybe for the pastries)

“Oh, hey, Y/N. Fancy meeting you here… at your workplace… again.” Cue his cheeky grin

Always “samples” whatever you’re baking

He’s the type to ask, “Do you need a taste-tester? Because I’m highly qualified.”

Pretends to have sophisticated taste in desserts. “Hmm, the balance of sweetness in this éclair is truly exquisite.”

But really, he’ll eat anything you make

“For me? Your favorite customer? C’mon, don’t act like I’m not your favorite.”

At first, he’s a little shy about coming by

But once he realizes how much you love baking, he’s all in

He always compliments your creations, even if it’s just a simple cupcake. “This is amazing, Y/N. You’re really talented.”

Buys way more pastries than he can eat, just to support you(he started saving money just for that)

His brothers constantly find random boxes of cookies and cakes in the lair

Always offers to help you carry heavy supplies, like bags of flour or crates of ingredients

“No way you’re lifting that on your own. Let me.”

You caught him sneaking one of your pastries into his pocket for later, and now he’s forever known as “the pastry thief.”

Doesn’t understand the appeal of pastries at first

He’s more of a “function over flavor” kind of guy, but he’s fascinated by the science behind baking

Spends a whole afternoon in your kitchen asking questions about how different ingredients work. “Wait, so gluten development affects the structure of bread? Fascinating.”

Invents gadgets to make your life easier, like a faster mixer or a temperature-controlled rolling pin

“With this, you’ll have the most consistent dough in the city!”

You catch him sneaking into your shop late at night to try and reverse-engineer your recipes

When you confront him, he denies everything. “I was… conducting research!”

His favorite thing to order is whatever you made just for him

He insists it’s purely because of your skill, but you know he loves the personal touch.

The biggest hype man for your baking

Every time he tries something you’ve made, it’s “THE BEST THING I’VE EVER TASTED.”

Wants to help in the kitchen but always makes a mess

Flour ends up everywhere, and you have to shoo him out before he burns something

Calls you “his personal pastry chef,” even if you’ve told him a million times that you bake for everyone, not just him

Has a massive sweet tooth and keeps begging you to make custom desserts based on his wild ideas

“Okay, hear me out—pizza-flavored cupcakes!”

Brings your pastries back to the lair and brags to his brothers about how talented you are. “Y/N’s the best baker in the world! You guys are missing out.”

[captainofthedauntless]

Integration

Bayverse Donatello x Reader imagine

Info + Warnings: Donatello finds himself all over your life. No gendered language, pronouns, or Y.N used for Reader, but they use Spotify. Friends-to-lovers type beat. Set a few years after OOTS.

Commentary: While it's not strictly necessary reading, this is the sequel to Glow in the Dark, and is set to this playlist.

Donatello has always prided himself on his observational skills.

He notices things other people don't. He recognizes patterns, he collects data, he observes.

It's why Leo turns to him first for mission analysis.

It's why April sends him documents to proof-read.

It's how he fixes codes that refuse to work and reverse engineers biological weapons and is able to turn scraps into functioning gear.

He sees.

Especially when he's already interested in what he's looking at.

Which is why, in the middle of the night, he glances at your activity in his Spotify sidebar.

It's just in his nature.

He does it every now and again- well, okay, every time he opens Spotify- and it's become a bit of a game for him, to try and hone in on your music taste and then casually send you very casually considered recommendations.

He's the most casual turtle alive, everyone knows that.

Sometimes, he spots you playing a song he's given you, and he gets a dorky little smile on his face as he alt-tabs his way back to work.

This time, it's a song he'd given you months back- StarWaves, off of the Oblivion soundtrack, by M83- and just as his lips quirk up and his fingers find his keyboard, he notices something else.

Just below the song, he spots the playlist title.

It's a purple heart emoji.

He hesitates, hand over keys, eyes lingering on his screen.

His timing is fantastic, because the song changes. Little Dark Age by MGMT, which he'd sent you when he last updated the surveillance system- still on purple heart emoji.

This is why science is such a comfort to him- it ties all of those constant observations to something concrete, makes them matter. Observation alone means nothing; study gives him structure.

This means nothing.

But further study- tabbing back and forth between his latest project and Spotify every three-or-so minutes, noting song after song that he remembers giving you- suggests that the purple heart emoji means him.

It makes his heart do something dizzy in his chest, to think that you've tucked his suggestions somewhere safe. That you've taken them with open hands and set them in a display case.

That you make use of them.

It's not even a week later when you come into the lair with a smile and your computer bag over your shoulders and bags of take out in your hands. You set your phone and keys on his desk, both tangled in your headphones, and head off to dole out food, and he can hear a Phantogram song heavy in the earbuds.

Another one of his, he notes happily.

You come back a few minutes later, a tired and amused expression on your face as you offer him his food.

"I take it Mikey found you," Donnie says in wry, fond amusement, and he's rewarded by a little snort of laughter.

"He did," You respond, setting your own food on the desk- next to your things- and shimmying your bag off your shoulder. "I swear, it's like you all let that guy starve when I'm not here."

"He does a lot of things when you're not here. Starve is not one of them."

He almost misses your response- "Tell that to him, he nearly tackled me for his lo mein!"- because something green catches the light of his computer and, in turn, catches his eye.

It's a little piece of circuit board.

One you'd helped him pull out of a haul of scrap tech, and once he'd deemed that piece useless you'd made a joke about it making a cute keychain.

He'd taken an old soldering iron and melted a hole in the corner, threading a keyring through it, and passed it to you before you left.

It was mostly a joke. You'd been joking. He'd just tapped in and taken the bit to the next level.

And the joke was somehow still in one piece, hanging off your computer bag.

It makes his heart do something fluttery in his chest, to think that you carried that silly (warm, safe, delightful) memory around with you.

It's nearly two weeks after that when he climbs in your window in the early part of the night, a little earlier than he should probably be out, with a bag of snacks hanging from his elbow.

You're in front of your TV, flicking through movie options, and he intentionally scuffs his shoe in the doorway to make sure you know he's there.

He somehow still isn't prepared for the way you tilt your head back to smile at him in greeting.

"I know it's kinda warm out, but I made hot cocoa," You say sweetly. "I got marshmallows on sale, so..."

"I brought those chips you like," He responds, slipping the bag to his palm and holding it up as though you can see through it.

"You're the best!" You chirp, slipping off the couch and leading him to the kitchen.

You already have two mugs set out, filled to the brim with marshmallows- he assumes there's cocoa beneath them somewhere, but has little proof from just looking at them.

One mug is your favorite, the one you've been using as long as he's known you.

The other is new.

It's dark purple and large, with an oversized handle. About the same size as the one he probably left on his desk when he left the lair. Large enough to comfortably fit his hand, he suspects.

It nearly stops him in his tracks.

"What is it?" You ask.

"Is this new?" He asks in place of an answer, nodding at the drinks.

"The mug?" You're using that carefully nonchalant voice you use whenever you do something nice. The one that usually obscures a lot of time and effort. "Yeah, found it at that antiques place I told you about. The one with the iron giraffe by the door?"

He remembers.

"It's- pretty," He says haltingly, trying to keep himself in a logical, reasonable headspace.

It isn't a big deal. It's a mug.

(It feels big. Feels huge. Feels like he's going to suddenly collapse under his own emotional weight and leave a black hole in your kitchen where he had been.)

(It's you adapting to his- and his brothers', he reminds himself sharply, trying to stay in the realm of reasonable and unimpacted- quirks and needs. It's you accommodating him in your own home. It's his color. He thinks his unwieldy feelings for you grow a size right here, standing in your kitchen.)

"I thought so," You agree lightly, your back to him as you grab bowls. "Thought you might like it. Thought maybe it would be nice to have one here. For you."

Reasonable is rapidly becoming less and less realistic as his heart skips a beat. There's weight in your words, despite your best efforts- he's more sure than ever than you'd set out to find this mug, that this had been a mission for you.

You never act this casually about something you're actually casual about.

"Vank- er, very nice," He stumbles over his words, slowing down to enunciate. "Thank you."

You shrug, turning to him with the bowls, eyes trained on them. "Since I like having you here, might as well, like, make it easier for you, huh?"

He's glad, in a way, that he's green. When he blushes, it's a lot more subtle on him than it is on somebody like Casey.

(He hopes you're not feeling particularly observant.)

"Being here is easy," He says quickly, a confession he hadn't really meant to make.

It's simultaneously huge and just-the-surface.

Being around you is easy.

You look up now, eyes meeting his with a searching look, and you smile. "I'm glad," You say, that weight still in your voice, some extra, unknown thing just beyond his ability to figure out. Then it shifts, and you're more smirking than smiling, and the air shifts from uncertain warmth to a familiar playfulness. "That means you can easily pick a movie. I'm sick of looking."

He stays long after the credits roll, listening as you look up tidbits about the movie and the cast and how the effects were done. He's on your couch, one leg crossed beneath the other as he angles his body to you and rests an arm over the back (staying very carefully on his side, thank you).

He chimes in as you read out trivia ("I'm pretty sure that should be lucis, but my Latin's a little rusty." "You're right, according to this. Wonder if that was an error or a stylistic choice?") and laughs as you stop mid-sentence to re-read twice because something is so littered with typos that you can't immediately tell what it's saying.

Neither of you look at the clock.

You finish the chips he brought, and you make popcorn, and the two of you finish that, too.

The movie trivia gives way to a story about your friend's dog, and the laughter from that flows into him telling a similar story about Mikey as a child- because apparently, chewing on skateboards is a more common behavior than he'd thought- which shifts into you showing him the meme Mikey had sent you earlier in the day.

Mikey'd sent it to him, too, but he didn't mention it. He let himself lean into your bubble to half-look at your phone, just to be near you.

When he finally gets home- late, very late, the sun's already planning its ascent- he's grateful that everyone seems to be asleep.

Until he hears a throat clear behind him and he winces.

"Hi, Donnie," Leo says, knowing and smug and making Donnie stifle a groan.

Leo asks how you are.

"Good," He says simply, turning and holding his oldest brother's gaze. "We had lots to catch up on."

"Clearly," Leo says, a clear undertone of teasing.

Donnie resists the urge to roll his eyes.

"I'm glad you had a good time," Leo says, teasing fading from his voice, leaving an earnest tone in its place as he bumps a fist into Donnie's shoulder. "Just let me know next time movie night turns four movies long, yeah? Keeping your dinner safe from Mikey isn't my idea of a good time."

Don can feel the blood in his cheeks again. He hadn't meant to stay so long- disrupting your sleep schedule isn't his idea of a good time- but it just... was easy. "Yeah. Will do."

Leo nods and smiles and takes his mug- strong green tea, if Don's nose is to be believed- towards his room.

Donatello exhales softly. He'd expected worse-

"Oh, Donnie," Leo calls playfully, "Mike's come up with several new songs including "k-i-s-s-i-n-g", so I'd brace myself for a musical breakfast."

This time, Donnie does groan, not bothering to respond as Leo chuckles and leaves.

He eats the dinner Leo'd kept guarded- pasta with meatballs, cold, because Donnie thinks that if the microwave wakes either of his other brothers and he has to deal with them before he sleeps he's going to ask you if he can just live on your couch- before shuffling into his lab and flopping into the chair at his workbench.

He leans back into the chair, stretching his neck out with a soft groan before his eyes land on the little glass sun hanging above him.

He watches it for a moment, a soft smile creeping onto his face.

Then he stretches out- too lazy, too tired to get up- and flicks the lights off.

The sun glows, and it looks almost as bright as his heart feels, and he feels himself sink fully into the chair and memories of you and the unwieldy, bright feelings you spark in his chest.

After a few minutes in comfortable, sweet silence, he shifts forwards and boots his computer up.

Just for some music.

Work will have to wait until he gets some sleep. You'd be livid if he jumps in now.

He pulls up Spotify and his eyes go to the sidebar out of muscle memory more than conscious effort.

Your username is the first on the list, right above a purple heart.

He lets out a little laugh, a you-shaped feeling turning bubbly and warm behind his ribs.

Deciding you have the right idea, he pulls up Random Access Memories and hits play on his favorite track, letting the bass softly fill the room and enjoying the feeling of it beneath his fingers as he quickly types out the few ideas he'd had while at your place.

He's asleep before the song ends, face buried in his forearms on the desk.

[midnight-melancholiaaa]

‘what the fuck was up with that first sol and mae conversation’ - an acolyte ep6 theory/analysis post

I think the start of this episode unfortunately put to bed the theories that Sol was aware of Mae’s identity and baited her onto the ship. So that got me thinking — at what point in the conversation did Sol realise he wasn’t speaking to Osha? What tipped him off? And, generally, what the fuck was that conversation??? Sol??? Hello?????

I think all of this can be explained, and the layers of their conversation peeled back in an interesting way, if Sol realised Mae’s identity earlier than I’d first assumed. I now think a few flags early in the conversation tipped him off, and a lot of his later lines are his response to Mae clearly projecting her own feelings onto “Osha”.

Theory/analysis below the cut!

First off, Mae’s lines and behaviour when she emerges from the engine room are dispassionate in a way we don’t expect from Osha. There’s an argument that this could look to Sol like someone numb with grief and putting on a functional face, but I’m going to list this as Red Flag Number 1. When she asks Sol what’s up with him, she sounds more confused and curious than she does concerned, again not something that tracks as Osha.

However, I think the red flag that dooms Mae is in the following exchange.

“How could I not have sensed that villain’s true intentions when we first met him on Olega”

“I think when you really want something, it can cloud your mind” (Sol looks up) “You see what you want to see. He fooled us all.”

These are some JUICY lines. We’re clearly encouraged to think of their pertinence to Sol, and the Order’s current ignorance of the dark side threat, as well as Sol’s own personal blinders with the Brendok mystery. But this is also the first time we see something key for the rest of this conversation - Mae blatantly projecting her own feelings onto half-hearted mimicry of what she assumes Osha might say.

In her projection, she expresses her own frustration at being misled by the Master, at wanting to believe his structure for Mae’s revenge against the jedi, and hence his shaping of Mae’s life path, was meaningful. I’ve seen Osha’s loneliness discussed a lot by the fandom, but Mae is winning a gold medal in the loneliness contest. She’s spent 16 years desperately searching for someone who understands her in the way she thought Osha did, and whatever kinship she hoped the Master had for her has just shattered. This adds another layer to her too-casual reaction to Sol’s grief. She doesn’t expect a Jedi to feel such love for their padawan, not just because she views the Jedi as dispassionate (which we’ll come back to later), but because her master never felt that way about her. In all these lines, Mae’s betrayal comes across beautifully.

But the mimicry of Osha? Mae failgirls that one. We know Osha to be a straightforward, direct person, rather than someone to speak in riddles, or spout superficially Jedi-style wisdoms with a distinctly-Mae core of cynicism.

This touches on another repeated theme of this scene — Mae clearly doesn’t understand how Osha feels about the Jedi, in a way that speaks to larger issues with understanding her sister as a person separate from herself, with different thought processes and values. When Mae speaks as Osha, it’s hard to tell what’s Mae speaking directly as herself, or Mae as how she thinks Osha thinks, but there isn’t much difference between those two — Mae assumes Osha reacts to situations as Mae would, treating her as a half of the same whole.

Feel free to skip this tangent if you’re just here for the Sol theory!!!!

I think it goes beyond not understanding Osha’s point of view — as the lovely @animazi put it, it’s as if Mae cannot conceive of Osha being a person outside their sisterly relationship and Mae’s coven-derived identity. It’s a complete disconnect of empathy, in that it doesn’t occur to Mae that she should try to empathise.

Mae wants to believe that they are fundamentally the same person. “You see what you want to see.” Mae wants to believe the only reason she and Osha are different is because one has been “corrupted” by the Jedi. She recognises that outside influences and different formative experiences have torn her apart from her sister, but she wants to believe that if Osha was plucked away from the Jedi, if she was taught rather than corrupted (haha I love this episode title), if she knew the ‘truth’ about Brendok, they could revert to a perfect sisterly harmony. A harmony based on Mae’s conception of them.

So of COURSE she doesn’t try to empathise with Osha’s current way of seeing, when she views it as both temporary and fixable, corrupted and false. Mae believes that, as soon as the falsehoods are stripped away, Osha will be herself again, in that Osha will be Mae. Mae believes Osha is simply Mae under a fragile Jedi veneer, explaining why so many of her lines in this scene are essentially Mae talking, with a half-hearted Osha bent.

Apologies for that detour, back to the scene. It’s very striking to me how Sol looks up for the first time in the middle of Mae’s mini-speech. There’s many interpretations for this look, yes, and you could argue he’s having a crisis about the Sol-related clouded vision stuff I mentioned earlier.

But he seems confused, almost frightened, and then the camera comes back to him after Mae finishes, and I think this is the moment.

Please look at these shots and tell me that’s not the face of someone for whom a thousand things have just clicked into place. We see him harden into some new realisation, and then…

“You found him.” (meaningful pause) “Your PIP droid.”

This line is such a non-sequitur that it’s actually what drove me to take another look at this scene. I assumed it was some janky prequel-esque dialogue, but now I’m not so sure. Saying “you found him” so soon after some ominous looks from Sol and the discussion of Qimir could, at the very least, be a nod to Mae’s role in everyone’s brush with the dark side. But, even then, Sol’s deflection to the droid doesn’t make full sense. And then I thought ‘oh shit’…………

After rewatching Episode 5, I’m convinced that Sol is aware PIP was sacrificed and really should not be back with “Osha”. For somebody afraid and grieving and running for their life to calmly find and fix their droid is… not Osha. It’s as if Sol raises the incriminating subject right after his realisation, just to confirm it to himself. And Mae, though slightly nervous, hands him that confirmation on a platter.

To bring back the clouded judgement line again, Sol was blinded. He wanted to have saved Osha, because he could not save anyone else. He wanted to have not failed Osha for the third time. Brendok, leaving the Order, now. It’s Sol in that room, looking at the holo. He wanted to have learned from his mistakes.

But now he knows it is NOT Osha, and the conversation gets 5000% more interesting. To me, his next few lines are gently testing Mae, playing along to see if he can evoke a reaction or a slip from her — if she’ll come clean or double down into the lie. It’s fascinating the way he’s half addressing a hypothetical Osha, and half addressing Mae.

So, first the droid lines, to see if Mae notices her mistake, and then…

“I noticed the way you take care of him, talk to him, love him. Even though he is just a machine.”

This seems like something meant for Osha. It’s something Mae would expect of her sister’s overabundance of compassion, and so something that won’t make her suspicious. But I think the implication of Osha’s loneliness is deliberate, in that we know Mae is also deeply lonely and searching for connection in places it isn’t reciprocated. Down to you if you think the machine allegory is in reference to Mae’s master, and what that might say about Sol’s view of Qimir, or if this is a more take-it-as-written line, but I think it still emotionally resonates with Mae even if she doesn’t want it to. Her expression in this pause does seem to imply as much.

At the end of this speech, Sol moves into that area of shadowy lighting, which I WILL discuss later.

Mae’s response, “I’ve always been like that. Even when I was little,” is also very telling. It’s her reminiscence of child Osha, as loving the small things, and having more reservations about… force-manipulating space hummingbirds? But, with Sol’s double meaning, this line is true of Mae too. Mae’s tendency to love clingily, desperately, in ways that aren’t “appropriate”, as we see in flashback Mae’s attempts to make her sister stay.

And then Sol’s response, a simple “I know”, fits this double conversation too. There’s a parental exhaustion, a heartache for his padawan, and his own (involuntary?) empathy for Mae, the abandoned sister. I think this’ll hit even harder once we know what happened on Brendok — Sol clearly knows more about Mae than he ‘should’.

The pause after this feels heavy, tense, even disappointed. Sol knows that Mae’s resigned to the act. With all this context and lead-up, Sol’s cagey behaviour in the last part of this scene now makes SO much more sense to me.

“I had to lose a lot of myself in order to become a Jedi. Even if I didn’t know it at the time.”

I think this is said to provoke Sol into guilt, but speaks to Mae’s false conceptions of the Jedi, and they way they approach love — she assumes Osha must have had to lose her compassion. More importantly, this shows Mae still does not understand Osha’s motivations for joining the Jedi, and remains emotionally raw about it. How could her “compassionate” sister choose to leave the family who loved her? How could she abandon Mae if the Jedi had not “corrupted” her, had not taken that compassion and loyalty away?

She wants to believe in the Jedi as a stealing, malign influence, because she wants to attribute Osha’s departure to anything other than the fact that Osha and Mae are, at their core, different people. In believing they are the same, Mae still cannot fathom why Osha would choose to lose their family, their coven, their grander destiny, and above all their sisterhood, because this is something Mae would never choose. So of course Mae does not see what Osha loved about the Jedi, of course Mae views the Jedi as merely an agent of loss. A false dream that she must “kill” to bring Osha back to her.

(And this is without even going into whatever the hell the Jedi did on Brendok!)

“I’m sorry if you feel that way.”

All this contextualises Sol’s cagey almost-apology. His body language is SO closed off and suspicious. I don’t think he’s even pretending to speak to Osha at this point — this is directly to Mae. He loves his padawan and supports her decision to join the Order, but regrets the collateral of that decision — a decision he still views as right.

I think that explains a lot about his reaction. He freezes up in the face of Mae’s depth of feeling, and is caught between his empathy and his loyalty to Osha. I’ll agree this is NOT the way to apologise to someone, but what he says is true to Sol — he’s not sorry Osha made the choice she did. But he’s sorry that Mae feels this way, has processed her loss the way she has. The reveal of what happened on Brendok will finalise what level of dickish this is, but it is at least LESS dickish than him saying this to Osha 😭

“How could I feel any other way” is exactly what I’ve said earlier. Mae cannot fathom how Osha could feel any differently than Mae does.

And Sol avoids her eyes and sighs. I think it’s a mixture of regret, of resignation, and of still struggling to confront his own mistakes. That avoidance comes through in the final part of their conversation — a part I’m still struggling to unpack, though I think next week will reveal all.

We’ve seen Sol make several insistences that he’d tell Osha the truth about Brendok, and even this episode we see him prepared to tell the council. So his avoidance now is intriguing. You could argue that he was always going to quail from telling Osha, the way he kept promising it and then delaying it, but I think there’s something else going on.

I think now he knows it’s Mae, the person most damaged by his actions on Brendok, he falters. Aside from Mae’s specific victimhood, there’s also a difference between facing up to someone you trust and hope will have sympathy for you, and facing up to someone who’s just shown how wedded she is to her own way of seeing. The realisation that this is Mae has come so suddenly that in this moment he freezes and avoids. His coldness here is also notable — you could almost think that he resents Mae a little, for ruining this moment that was supposed to be Osha’s.

But is he really doing this for Osha? Did he want Osha to know for her own sake now she’s an adult and the protection excuse is wearing thin, or did he want to seek absolution from her? Is he hoping for a level of forgiveness that he cannot get from Mae? I guess we’ll find out next week…….

A few more notes on Sol before I finish…

Yes this is finally about the shadow thing. My first reaction to this was “hey leslye, what the fuck, OW.” Aside from the classic symbolism of a character stepping into shadow, this specific barred shadow is super reminiscent of the scene where Anakin speaks to Yoda in Revenge of The Sith. Given the topic of that conversation was about fear, passion and anger as paths to the dark side, a topic that Qimir also brings up this episode, I don’t think this is coincidental.

That said, I don’t think the shadows are straightforward Sol-will-fall symbolism. I think they’re emblematic of the emotions he’s struggling with as soon as he realises Mae’s identity. Fear, of the consequences Mae represents more than any other person. Defensiveness from her anger at him and her challenges to his worldview (and, lest we forget, the fact that she could still try to harm him). Perhaps some anger towards HER, for taking Osha, and this moment with Osha as he’d envisioned it, away from him. Anger for her role in the deaths of the other Jedi, at himself for the role HE had in creating Mae’s revenge. But, warring with these darker impulses, also regret, pity, sorrow for his padawan’s sister. That final remorse, in the way his face just slightly changes before the lights come up and the shadows disappear. Such symbolism Leslye I am eating the walls.

Don’t get me wrong, Sol is a man on the edge and I’m excited (afraid?) to see which way the narrative takes him. I think he’s written deliberately enigmatic this episode, and his later scenes will make more sense next week. I have no idea why he switched off his comms and hyperspace jumped instead of facing up to the council. Well, that’s a lie, I have a few ideas…

The scene of Mae in restraints is also ambiguous, though I think it links back to Sol’s surprise at Mae’s identity, and initial freezing up when he realises he’s lost control of the Brendok-reveal. That final scene is him grasping for control back, to control some of his fears and put him in a (metanarrative) place where he feels able to monologue on his own terms next episode. I actually have a lot more thoughts on this scene, and the hyperspace jump, AND some predictions for next week, but they won’t fit in this post. Here [part 2] they are instead!

We’re absolutely meant to doubt Sol this episode. I think Teach/Corrupt is, like much of Episode 6, a title of deliberate double meaning. But I’m also struck by the fear and sorrow in his face in that lovely shot where he shoots Mae through the doorway. His fond, regretful tone of voice in “Oh, Mae…” Not to be Star Wars cliche, but I suspect the good in Sol will win out. If it doesn’t then that’s a heartbreaking twist and I’ll probably throw myself into the ocean!

Either way, this is an episodic mystery show and, much as I can unpick some of Sol and Mae’s behaviour, we’ll only know the full story with hindsight. Here’s to hoping at least some of my theory holds up, and thank you for reading!!!!!!

The Sol Patrol shall forge bravely (and perhaps delusionally) onwards! <3

[iliveforyouilongforyouvesuvia]

So Nadia likes to tinker and clearly has the kind of resources she needs to put together some intricate and incredible engineering ideas but did they ever mention where she keeps her setup? And how does that impact the way she does her job as Countess?

Advisors: "This summer is predicted to be hot and dry, Countess Nadia, we think we should start planning for ways to handle a potential drought."

Nadia: "Allow me five days to reflect on the matter."

-- five days later --

Advisors: "I wonder what budgeting or trade ideas she's come up with -"

Nadia, wheeling a behemoth of a metal structure into the meeting chamber: "I've invented a pump for freshwater wells that can go three times deeper than the technology we've been using so far -"

[awkward-walking-potato]

An Easy Fix

It's a cool autumn evening when your car decides to break down in the middle of nowhere. The engine sputters, coughs, and then gives out entirely. You curse under your breath, pulling over to the side of the road. It’s getting dark, and the last thing you want is to be stranded here overnight.

After a few minutes of trying to get the car to start again, you give up. With a sigh, you grab your jacket, step out of the car, and start walking down the road. Not far ahead, you notice a large, looming structure in the distance. As you get closer, you realize it’s an impressive, mansion-like building. There's a sign out front that reads "Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters."

The place seems both welcoming and mysterious, but right now, it’s your best bet. You approach the entrance and ring the bell. After a moment, the door opens, and you’re greeted by a tall, muscular man with red-tinted glasses.

"Can I help you?" he asks, his voice calm but commanding.

"Yeah, my car broke down a little way back," you explain. "I was hoping someone here could help me out. I didn’t know there was a school in the area."

The man nods, considering your situation for a moment before introducing himself. "I'm Scott Summers. I can take a look at your car. Wait here."

A few minutes later, Scott comes out with a toolbox in hand. You lead him to your car, and he gets to work, carefully inspecting the engine. As he does, you find yourself watching him more than anything else. There's something magnetic about him, the way he moves, the quiet confidence in his actions.

"Looks like a simple fix," he finally says, pulling out a few tools. "You should be back on the road in no time."

"Thank you so much," you reply, genuinely grateful. "I wasn’t sure what I was going to do."

"No problem," Scott responds, glancing up at you. "It's what I do."

As he finishes up, the two of you make small talk. You learn a bit about the school, and he explains that it’s a place for students with unique abilities. The more you talk, the more you feel a connection growing between the two of you. There's an intensity in his gaze, even through those red glasses, that makes your heart race a little faster.

Finally, the car is fixed. You thank him again, but as you’re about to get in and drive off, you hesitate. You don’t want to leave just yet. There's something unspoken lingering in the air between you.

"Listen," he says, his voice a little unsteady. "I know this might sound crazy, but… would you want to come back to the school with me? I could show you around, maybe we could… talk some more?"

You pauses, considering his offer. Then nod slowly. "Yeah,I’d like that."

Back at the school, Scott gives you a brief tour, but it’s clear that neither of you is really focused on the history of the building or the curriculum. The tension between you is almost palpable. When you reach a more secluded area of the mansion, Scott stops walking, turning to face you fully.

"There's something about you," he says quietly, his gaze intense. "Something that… draws me in."

You take a step closer to him, your heart pounding in your chest. "I feel the same way."

Before either of you can say anything else, you close the distance between you, pressing your lips against his. The kiss is electric, filled with all the pent-up tension from the evening. Scott wraps his arms around you, pulling you close as the kiss deepens, becoming more urgent, more desperate.

One thing leads to another, and soon you find yourselves in one of the more private rooms of the mansion. The rest of the world fades away as you lose yourselves in each other, the connection you felt earlier blossoming into something intense, something undeniable.

Afterward, you lie together in the quiet, the only sound your breathing as you both come down from the high of the moment. Scott’s hand gently strokes your hair as you rest against him.

"I guess I owe you more than just a thank you," you murmur, a smile tugging at your lips.

Scott chuckles softly, the sound rumbling through his chest. "I think we’re even."

[transmutationisms]

one thing malm mentions in that interview is the idea of 'overshoot'---the capitalist suggestion that we might be able to exceed a goal limit for global average temperature increase, because we'll bring it back down later through technological intervention. malm is rightly sceptical of that idea; i think it's worth keeping in mind that any kind of techno-utopic thinking that promises a miraculous solution to a politically situated problem, at some nebulous point in the future, is more a justification for the status quo than a serious proposal for change.

like, we don't need to worry about public transit because Sometime In The Future we'll have cars that are eco friendly enough for everyone to own one and drive it constantly. it's fine covid is running rampant, we're sure someone somewhere will biomedical engineer a solution to its long-term health effects. worst case scenario we'll just relocate humanity to mars. no need to worry about the structural problems of capitalist healthcare because personal wearables and home genetic testing will replace the old system any day now. we need more scientists to run for public office. we'll engineer green industry any day now, no need for the global north to reduce any consumption patterns.

these are not serious engagements with social or political or even technological problems as they exist; these proposals are somewhere on the spectrum from 'pipe dream' to 'lie' and they give cover for current situations to remain essentially unchanged whilst tech start-ups collect investor money on promises they'll never deliver. if someone has no fucking idea how a proposed technology could come into existence then believing them that it will is just, deeply credulous at best and head-in-sand at worst. it's theranos logic.

[bekolxeram]

I swear this is the last time I bring up that air tanker in 2x14 voluntarily. The bottom line is, if you believe Tommy did fly that plane, that makes him not even superhero level cool, but Jonny Kim level cool. If you believe he didn't, then he's just as cool, always knowing a guy from all walks of line, ready to help out with whatever resource on hand the second Chimney says the word. At the end of the day, he saved the 118 and a bunch of civilians either way, and he did it again in S7 flying to that cruise ship. He'll always be our cool heroic pilot no matter what.

With that being said, I have some thoughts about the CAL FIRE line from the news reporter in that episode. If you're not interested, please read no further. And if you don't want to see this kind of posts at all but still want to read my other content, please block the tag #aviation realism.

I know Bobby said "217 incoming" when he saw that C-130, only the news reporter mentioned it was with CAL FIRE. That's why I suspect the CAL FIRE line was shoved in after the actual scenes were filmed, because they realized or someone explained to them how impractical and dangerous for an urban fire department to own a giant air tanker and just dump tons of water all over the city.

I saw the same technique utilized for the tsunami arc in S3. Anyone who has taken geography in high school can tell that in reality, there is no megathrust fault capable of generating Indian Ocean 2004 or Japan 2011 scale tsunami off the coast of SoCal. So where did the tsunami come from? In 3x02, before Sue asks Maddie to "triage" the dispatchers, you can hear once again a news reporter saying the tsunami is triggered by an earthquake off the coast of Alaska. This takes the fictional tsunami scenario from having zero basis in real life, to possible in extreme cases and greatly exaggerated for dramatic effect.

I thank whatever divine intervention or persistent technical advisor that made the CAL FIRE line possible.

2x14 was first aired on April 15, 2019. What you might not remember or realize is that something notable happened across the Atlantic on the very same day: the Notre-Dame fire. The entire world watched the cathedral burned for hours while over 400 firefighters all over Paris tried to contain the flame. A certain f...... former US president then suggested on Twitter that "perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out."

The French immediately responded by pointing out that dumping large amount of water from an aircraft at low altitude could "weaken the structure of Notre-Dame and result in collateral damage to the buildings in the vicinity." A retired FDNY battalion chief also told the media that water bombing would likely make the situation more dangerous, as civilians on the street might be hit if you miss the target.

The entire internet was clowning on that stable genius for such an innovative idea all afternoon. Imagine if 2x14 aired later that evening with not even a smaller single engine one, but a large 4 engine airtanker somehow belonging to the LAFD, that would come off extra stupid, even meme inspiring. But with the CAL FIRE line, they could at least claim that it was the extreme and rare circumstances requiring additional assistance from other agencies in the area, and it was not part of 911-verse LAFD's normal operation.

If the writers had done their homework beforehand and the CAL FIRE thing was always part of the script, good for them. If it was indeed shoved into the scene last minute, then they should thank their lucky stars.

I can already imagine the headache Bobby is going to have working on Hotshots as a consultant.

[zyxoxox]

I CAME RUNNING SO FAST WHEN I SAW THE CHARACTER + SONG

So, hear me out, Romeo and Cinderella by our god and savior Hatsune Miku with Billy Kid? 👀

Idk why that is what my brain came up with but hmmm, it would be so silly

If you don't like the first combo tho, Bud Like You by AJR with Anton would be the other one I have in mind

romeo and cinderella.

note: YES HII!! this is my first time listening to this song, actually, i haven’t heard much vocaloid. it seems to be about teenage rebellion/ running away with your lover?? it’s also pretty suggestive but i’m not so good at writing that haha 🙂

i like how it’s about getting caught up in a moment and wanting to live in it forever, and moments like that for me are at the beach, so this is sorta structured like a beach episode!

send me a song + character!

billy kid x reader || 0.5k wc

“no, [name], not the water, my circuits are gonna burst!”

the cunning hares, after a long and tiring commission, needed a break. and while nicole still had her eye on their expenses and growing debts, she figured no harm would come from a simple beach day.

“your circuits will be fineee! and if they’re not, i’ll just fix ‘em up later. c’mon, anby, help me catch billy!”

for the last 15 minutes, you had been chasing billy around the ocean with a bucket of water, hoping to dump it on his head. he seemed to be firmly against the idea- not that you cared.

“but my hair! it’ll get all wet!”

“we’re at the beach silly, that’s supposed to happen!”

he shook his head vigorously and ran away, shouting for nicole’s help.

“you’re on your own, billy, i’m too busy getting a nice tan.”

billy had run quite a bit before stopping to cool down his engines. he was about knee-deep in the water, and you were- nowhere to be found? wait, that couldn’t be right.

it was eerily quiet, too quiet, in fact. had he outrun you so easily? that had to be it!

“haha, take that, [name]!” he laughed to himself. “nobody can chase down THE billy kid!”

he cockily held up his head in the air, looking back at the shore. “well, it can’t be helped, i’m much stronger after all. [name]’s probably gonna be super upset and make that cute pouty face! it’s alright though, i’ll buy them some ice cream to make it up to- aaaAAAAA!”

an icy cold splash of water crashed down billy’s head, seeping into his clothes and onto his body. he could feel the water crackle in his circuits, making his auditory sensors buzz.

“GOT YOU!”

in the split of a second you emerged from underneath him, jumping onto his back. the two of you toppled into the water, and you managed to fall flat on his face.

“ow! ugh, billy, you hurt to fall on,” you complained, rubbing on your forehead.

“that’s what you get for dumping water on me,” billy laughed, helping you soothe out the place you’d fell. “look at that, i managed to see your pouty face anyway. tit for tat, right?”

“you’re insufferable,” you huffed. he ruffled your hair with a laugh, throwing you back on your feet. you still looked a little sulky, billy thought. then he got an idea.

“hey anby, race you to the shore!”

without a moment’s hesitation he hoisted you onto his shoulders, making you scream in surprise.

“billy, what are you-“

“no time to talk, [name]! we’ve gotta catch up with anby!”

and so he ran, with you on his shoulders, as though you weighed nothing;as though he was a knight in shining armour.

but… if he was a knight, were you cinderella, who had found their prince charming? or were you juliet, whose future with romeo was unforeseen and uncertain?

well, it certainly didn’t matter now. right now, you wanted to live in this moment, not the ones ahead of you.

whatever tomorrow held could be dealt with later- after winning the race, that is!

[mvltisstuff]

Hi

I have a Buck (911) fic idea. Buck saved reader at the tsunami. Reader can't swim that good, so she was really scared and he comforted her. Reader took care of Christopher while Buck was saving other people. Two weeks or something after the tsunami they meet again. Maybe reader is working at coffee shop and they meet there. Reader can't stop saying thank you to Buck and maybe he asks her on a date at the end.

You don't have to write this if you don't want to. I got this idea and thought I'll send it to you.

arms of a stranger - e.b

summary: request above :)

evan buckley x reader

the tsunami had entirely taken out a whole community and a street of small businesses. it came rushing through, causing immediate calamity and jeopardy. not the most ideal first date, but definitely gets you closer to strangers.

the first wave had washed buck and christopher off of the pier, sending them away with bits and pieces of the structure. y/n had been shoved under the waves, which were horrifying but also marvelous. her lungs were filling with water and sand from the shores. it felt like every time she came up it wasn’t worth anything, as she would be pulled back under seconds later.

she heard the screams from buck, hearing the sharp yells of someone’s name. the adrenaline in her system kept her brain moving speedily and her heart beating fast. the red engine had sparkled out of the corner of her eye from the sizzling sun of california. she forced herself over, when the man gripped her arms and pulled her on. she bent over, coughing up water and leaning back on the truck.

“hey, are you ok?” he asks, worried.

“yeah, i’ll be fine. are you two alright?”

“we’re good, just scared shitless,” buck chuckles a little, trying to bring a little light to the disaster.

“same, i’m no mermaid.”

“it’s going to be alright, ok? i’m here for you,” he reassures immediately. he must have an instinct to protect people, she thinks.

y/n vividly remembers sitting next to christopher, watching buck save other people, and bring them to the top of the truck. she remembers the exact feeling of her jeans sticking to her thighs and her scraped arms from the wood and sticks in the water. he was just a little boy, he didn’t deserve to be in the middle of such a mess. when people had succumbed to the oceans, she covered his eyes to maintain his innocence whilst she couldn’t look away.

buck had come back and forth, saving several people. she immediately admired him. you have no idea the amount of courage and selflessness it takes to put yourself in the eye of the hurricane. and buck did that without thinking twice. most people would stay put, but he knows there’s no point to life if you don’t do everything in your power to make it a better place.

all hell broke loose when the truck shook, knocking several people off as buck watched christopher disappear in the waves. everyone was separated. no one knew how to get back, and everyone was shaking in fear.

hours went by and the sun went down and bucks panic didn’t go with it. he lost the one thing he was given to care of. christopher was a light in the tunnel and the one who truly got him out of bed. people only had good intentions and the world took that to an advantage.

y/n walked around, soaking wet after the water had started going back out to sea. she wandered around the town, looking for anyone she knew or something familiar. suddenly, nothing had become safe until she saw the sitting boy on the steps of a building, his eyes small and tired. the one she tried so hard to save from floating away, and she prayed he was going to be ok when she walked over. he was slumped to the side, his head leaning on a railing. “y/n?” christopher’s eyes focus, squinting at her.

“oh my god, christopher! you’re ok!” she runs over with whatever energy she has left. she pulls him into her, checking him over with her hands on his face. “are you? i’m so sorry, buddy, it all happened so fast.”

“i’m ok, i’m tired though,” he remarks. “where is buck?”

“i don’t know, ive been trying to find out for you, but the woman said there’s going to be units here soon. we can find him.”

“is he dead?”

y/n pauses, taken aback by his statement. “i don’t think so, chris. he’s a tough guy, really tough.”

“he just got hurt, what if he is again?”

“he was hurt?”

“at work.” y/n sighs, looking around again for anyone before moving to sit next to him. christopher leans on her shoulder, dozing off lightly as y/n happily allows it.

at least fourty-five minutes go by before ambulances and rescue personelle arrive to the scene. there were probably a hundred people clattering about, trying to find out if their family or friends were alive. y/n was given oxygen along with christopher, who shared the tank due to an emergency shortage.

they were transported to the nearest hospital right after sundown. christopher arm was tangled with hers for balance, trying to find his dad and buck. y/n observes buck and the other man, diaz on his name tag. they both have tears in there eyes as buck stutters on about the boy. eddie looks behind him, about to run out of there and search for christopher when he sees him limping over, exhausted. “christopher?”

“dad!” he yells, as eddie sprints over to take him. he checks him over the same way y/n did, making sure every single part of him is safe. y/n looks away as eddie carries him away to get checked out and she locks eyes with buck. he’s talking to his fellow firefighters, them observing his disoriented condition. when he stares into y/n’s pained expression, his knees give out but his eyes stay locked on her. he blinks a few times and somehow, she vanished right before his eyes.

he had a whole speech to give her. she saved christopher, and she saved him. he could have never made it out of this alone and he had to say that, but she was gone before he knew it.

two weeks had passed since an entire portion of los angeles had been demolished in two minutes. the city coming together to help everyone affected was truly beautiful, but something was missing in bucks eyes. he felt like he had to see y/n, but he had no idea how to reach her or where to find her. he wanted to give her anything she wanted for being there.

he roamed around on calls, taking a second glance at anyone who resembled her or her name. maybe he misheard it or something? he didn’t want to give up, but everyone had been telling him to let the tsunami go out of his mind with the tide. one of those ways was to avoid that day and the reminders. was it the best coping mechanism? absolutely not, but buck would try anything and everything to forget a trauma.

until he was asked to watch christopher again, he thought there was no point in bringing up the memory for especially you. you’d been there the whole time, being a bad swimmer and nearly drowning with no past disaster training. buck had that, and she was worse off than him, he thought. when christopher mentions her name, he realizes there is no point in trying to forget. this happened and there is no erasing it, maybe what he needed was y/n.

he took christopher for another day out, far from the shore and the non-existent pier. they’d gone to the indoor arcades and fun little places to hang out or just talk. buck was desperate for an energy boost, so he dragged christopher into the nearest coffee shop. it was an adorable little place with a few businesspeople sitting around on their computers. the smell of coffee and cakes hit bucks nose delightfully. his eyes land on y/n, casually making an latte like it’s muscle memory.

he stares at her in delight and christopher is the one to nudge him close to the counter. “hurry up, buck!”

“i’ll be right with you in one,” y/n’s sentence comes to a halt when she turns around to see buck, the man who saved her, standing behind her. “second. um, hey! how are you guys?”

“we’re good! i- im good, i didn’t know you worked here.”

“have been for a while, it’s easy money for school.”

“oh, nice. what are you in school for?” y/n explains her whole major to buck and why she’s here, practically giving a life story.

“sorry. that was a lot of information you don’t care about,” she laughs, pressing the cover onto the hot drink in her hands.

“i care a lot!” buck says a little too fast. “or, i care about you. how have you been doing?” y/n looks down at the boy with a radiant smile, wanting to show her bravery and strength in front of him, but it’s hard. “hey, chris. why don’t you find somewhere to sit?”

once he walks away to pick out a table, she begins again. “it’s been tough. my sleep schedules all messed up and focusing is like trying to fight a grizzly bear.”

“i’m so sorry, y/n. it’s been so hard trying to deal with it. but give yourself time,” he says sweetly. “you won’t heal if you force yourself.”

she gives him a little smile, appreciating his generosity and now starting to appreciate his looks. her eyes dart around his face, looking into his alluring blue eyes and his lips, and she couldn’t forget that birthmark that is perfect to her. he’s a beautiful man, but an even more beautiful soul. firefighters come with a lot of respect in society, but she had that for him even before she found out. he would never say something too fast, but he noticed her the first time he saw her and grabbed onto her. his rescue response had turned on and was stronger than ever, and the aftermath made him fall in love with her resiliency. she was insanely hot, he had to admit. buck’s gonna buck.

“thank you, buck. for everything. i want to give you the ends of the earth,” she grins. “but maybe we can start with a free coffee?”

“a free coffee sounds amazing,” he replies. he builds up the courage from his crushing self to ask her yet another question. a more bold on, at that. “do you wanna go out sometime? maybe not on top of a fire truck, in a flood?”

y/n’s heart burst right then and there. she had been dying to ask him to same thing, but figured he was too busy with work. besides, he does what he did for her every day so she figured it meant nothing. at the end of the day, it did. “i’d love too!” she shoots out her words rapidly, almost immediately curing bucks anxieties. she shakes her head quickly, trying to rub off her hyper mood. “i’d really like that. here, this is my number,” she writes down the ten digits on a scraped receipt, handing it to him and walking away to make his drink and a snack for christopher.

“perfect,” buck states with a sly wink. “expect a text or two tonight.”

y/n turns back around, heading to the employee room. she can’t find it in her to wipe the rich smile on her face. meanwhile, buck walks over to sit with christopher at the counter by the window. christopher’s grinning at him, high-fiving him and saying, “and buck has done it again!”

[yloiseconeillants]

Hey how are Tullioylal, Solution 9, and Sad Undead Disneyland in terms of urban design I want to hear these rants (as a designer in a different field [book layout & user interfaces])

I rushed through the second half of Dawntrail's msq so I have a lot less like Archived Thoughts on those than i do on like LMAO Garlemald but Tuliyollal I'm very interested in as a planned capital city, especially in contrast to Garlemald as another planned capital city (though the goals of each are INCREDIBLY different). I'm just gonna ramble a bit beneath the cut as thoughts come to me as opposed to any like, well thought through critiques:

Tuliyollal has some unique geography that provides both opportunities and challenges: the most obvious being the elevation of the mountainside they've built into, and the shallow coral reefs that prevent larger ships from docking. There's always necessarily going to be a limit to the flow of people through the city as a result, which provides a very structured set of experiences for a tourist, I think. You have to get on a smaller boat. You have to land at the docks to get processed, which is also conveniently where the market and inns are located. You see the Impressive Vista of the city, culminating in the palace on the summit. Everything draws the eyes up. The experience is similar coming from the north - you have to cross the engineering marvel bridge, or coming from the west means you actually walk through the city's mission statement (and see their airships!) before you get to the core of the city. It's an experience that I do think sort of tracks with the way that theme parks are built - there's a story being told to you through the environment. And to be clear, Tuliyollal is a young city. Most Turali would also be tourists.

Another thing about Tuliyollal that stood out to me was the fact that the deliberately designed houses in the Resplendent Quarter are like, actually open. This is more of a game design thing that I've been bitching about since ARR but I would LOVE to see more open indoor spaces in this game - contrast to like, Ishgard, where the only indoor spaces open to us were like, church infrastructure and the Fortemps Manor. Not so in Tuliyollal - actual houses where people live are open to us! And not just to the Warrior of Light - they are meant to be seen, to celebrate the diversity of cultures that the city is trying to bring together in a deliberate way. The NPCs in the area give a quick overview of locations and people we'll meet later, while repeating Tuliyollal's goals of cultural harmony:

It's definitely a comfy city to be in and easy to navigate because of the way the mountain separates and centralizes uses (it's helpful to think of it as a semi-circle, with administration, like the palace, the barracks, and the transportation infrastructure forming the outermost ring, the stuff useful for the player like the inn and markets and gathering/crafting hubs in the innermost layer, and rp spaces like the houses between the two). It's an inviting city! Slow down, get a little intimate, take a stroll and admire the sights! It's definitely one of my favorite hub cities in the game (i still have my return set to the Crystarium though).

Solution 9 feels a bit like an antithesis of this. I'm not going to outright call it hostile, but it is an awkwardly built city that requires teleportation and aetheryte travel to navigate, simply due to the amount of unused space. The one that I keep getting tripped up on is the platform that the government tower is located on. There's a HUGE plaza with absolutely nothing going on. If you're using the teleport platforms instead of the aetheryte, it takes almost a full sprint to get from the landing space to the tower itself. Like, with the game done, I know that's because this was a space where they put an instanced battle but I don't think we needed all that to be completely featureless. Like what's the point of it? It made me wonder if this was a space where there were once proclamations or festivals or installations of any kind, but given that there isn't even a day-night cycle and most of the people of Solution 9 are more concerned with Working than anything else, the idea never really got anywhere. The second thing I thought of was Haussmann's wide avenues in Paris:

(also like, i'm fucking convinced there are ascians in that tower so like. this all comes together for me Very Neatly)

But Solution 9 is a mall rather than a city. It is geared toward consumption of resources (credits and souls) and I know there's much more to the city but just based on what we're working with, it's much less city-like than the urban imagery suggests. I am a big fan of all the couches and tables everywhere though.

SAD UNDEAD DISNEYLAND IS A THEMEPARK and GOD it gets that across SO WELL. Other people have talked about all the unfinished buildings just behind the facades and the huge empty spaces (canal town in particular, even when still lit up, is a very good illustration of how half-built everything is here) - it's not a space used by people to live but rather play out isolated Experiences, so it's hard to critique its livability, since that was never the point. I mean. Zip lines as transportation between districts. Which like. LMAO was not terribly far off from an actual campaign promise from this guy who did not end up being governor of Oregon:

but even he scoffed at zip lines:

[d8tl55c]

woo! woohoo! weeheee! oh that took a while. i wanted to finish it during chosenweek and idc im extremely pleased. it turned out just how i wanted

here's the original page 3 before i

DEEPLY SCRUNHKGLED IT !

- - -

this document was created with the help of 5-year TCO handling expert, avast!, for the purposes of any other antiviruses coming across and wanting to keep useful HI-PWR StickFigures.

please be aware that the TCO variant in particular is the most dangerous to keep idle. its power core is an experimental device that WILL explode if unattended/starved for all types of input energy for too long (also see: BITE protocols).

upkeep shouldn't be too hard if you've installed the avast! ECL system, but still. don't mess around with it! serious!

this is why regulations exist, people! don't forget it in the Chest or you'll have a time bomb on your hands...

anyway it gets to the feathers bit way later than TDL's document. they're not as vital to a host PC as core maintenance, but still a thing to keep in mind.

if your TCO is especially agitated for a period of time, it may be molting... apparently feathered animals do this all the time, and someone went way too hard on the strength specs on its exterior armor so that'll take some effort.

when the User is idle, let the Cursor hang around near the Taskbar so the TCO can use the pointy parts as leverage (or just wait a while, it should get over it).

note: it might also complain for more food. don't worry, this is purely a simulation of the increased nutritional requirements of real molting. status quo should resume in a few days.

- - -

/lore dump over ``^^``

aaand the other point of this post is to ask you something.

yes, you. 💕

would u like to

ask me a question about one of the other bullets on my big ol diagram? :333

i have most of this information written out but,,, i didn't know how to structure it. so! YOU ask me first what you're most interested in uwu or ill just skip merrily through them one by one, no pressure.

perfect example question: "WHAT THE HELL IS AN ANTINODE/GAIN CRYSTAL/METADATA CLIENT"

ask either in my literal asks, or in tags on this post, or in the tags on my previous story post, or in my DMs- anything will do! \o_🎉

thank you!!!!!! i love engineering discussion!!!!!!!!!!!

[love-and-monsters]

The Ship and the Alien

5,486 words, GN reader X M alien.

Humanity sends the last of their species in hibernation pods to the stars. When you wake up an unknown amount of time later, you are on a different ship. Surrounded by aliens.

Content warnings: mentions of death and discussions of medical procedures and illness.

The Ship never had a name. People tried to give it one quite a lot. There was a naming contest first, which was a bad idea. You’d think the bigwigs would learn not to give this kind of power to the internet, but it never seems to occur to them until the two top names are ‘SaveyMcSaviorface’ and ‘The Biggest Dick Ever’ and they have to scrap the whole thing. ‘Eden’ was an idea they tossed around, but there were people who said it wasn’t inclusive of other religions and a bunch of Christians who didn’t believe in the concept at all who were pissed about the connotations of the name, so that didn’t work. ‘Destiny’ was another idea, as were ‘Eternal’ and ‘Onward.’ In the end, by the time anyone had even started to come to a conclusion on the name, everyone had started getting used to calling it ‘The Ship’ and no one was willing to change that for whatever sappy shit they engraved on the side.

Maybe they did eventually name it. I don’t know. I don’t know if it mattered, really. Anybody aboard The Ship wasn’t going to be calling it anything on account of being in stasis, and anybody outside The Ship wasn’t going to be calling it anything on account of being dead very soon. So. The Ship was a fine name to me.

The Ship was not actually one ship, at the time- it was technically seven ships, six stationed on different continents and one stationed at the north pole. They were designed to all lock together in one massive structure, but to be able to function independently, in case of a system failure. There were redundancies, ways to transfer assets between different ships if necessary, and about a billion other things that I never understood, but were probably very important for a metal tube hurtling through space. In all honesty, I didn’t pay much attention to its construction. Crushing despair combined with a vicious fight for survival every day takes precedence, you know.

You don’t know how you ended up on The Ship. You know the basics- engineers, designers, and construction workers all got immediate entry. That took up a few thousand slots. Then were the ‘important people,’ the sorts you would want if you were setting up a colony. Doctors, agriculturalists, building designers, all the big thinkers who can make sure that things run smoothly and work like they’re supposed to. Quite a few military members as well. After that, there was some debate as to who else could come on. Limited number of slots, after all. You heard a lot of very right people tried to pay their way on the ship, but it didn’t work so well. Money’s useless to anyone on the ship, and will be useless to anyone left on Earth. Some people traded favors and influence to secure their spots, but a decent chunk of people couldn’t do that and had to subject themselves to the same system as everyone else.

The way they picked candidates for the civilian slots on the ship was the same way anyone picks anything they want to be at least somewhat random: they made a computer do it. All civilians who put their names in a hat, basically, and the computer system drew them. No one could accuse it of cheating, because it was a computer. Well, people could, and they did, but the idea was that at least less people would accuse it of being impartial than if a human picked.

You were one of the picks. Placed into section 3, chamber 2, pod 3247. You didn’t tell anyone- you’d been asked not to, out of fear of retaliation from those who hadn’t been picked. You just left the shelter you’d been living in and headed to the launch site.

There was a brief physical, involving being stripped, shoved onto and into a ton of machinery, drinking some kind of gross shit that purged your body of what felt like everything you’d ever eaten, getting your head shaved, and an IV port implanted into your arm. You saw other people on occasion, going through the same thing before they were whisked away again. There were no opportunities to talk. Everything was brutally efficient.

You were allowed to sleep for a few hours on a hospital-style cot. You ended up just lying there and staring up at the ceiling. There were other people there, also trying to sleep and failing, but nobody talked. Everyone just waited.

In the morning, you were all herded into the body of the ship. It was massive, bigger than any building you’d ever been in, and still quite cramped when you walked into it. The room was cylindrical, with pods lining the whole thing. The walls rotated, allowing the pods to be lowered to the ground, people to be strapped in and put to sleep, then rotated up to the ceiling, ferris-wheel-style.

You were toward the back, so you got a good view of the people in front of you being placed into the pods, injected with the combination of fluids that would knock them out, hooked into the machinery, and then sent into ‘hibernation mode.’ On your turn, you were pushed into the pod, the fluid-filled bags that supported your body adjusting automatically. The fluid was administered through your IV port and the chill of it made your eyelids droop almost immediately. Your eyelids drooped. The world grew colder and colder as the pod lid closed round you and you were left in the pitch blackness of the pod. You couldn’t tell the difference between your eyes being closed and open, but you must have closed them at some point, because you did drift into the dreamless hibernation of spaceflight.

It wasn’t quite like falling asleep. It was more like closing your eyes for a couple seconds and suddenly everything felt like garbage. Your muscles cramped, your mouth was dry as a bone, your arm throbbed where the IV port had been attached, and your eyes couldn’t open. You coughed furiously as soon as you took your first breath.

The air that touched your skin was horribly cold, but your body couldn’t shiver. Despite having basically nothing in your stomach, your body kept trying to retch. Your limbs were locked up, barely able to move from the slightly-uncomfortable position you’d been forced into in the pod.

Something touched your arm and you screamed. Or tried to- your lungs forced the air out with a sound more like a grating huff. The touch was warm, blazing against your bare skin, and even the texture of it was unbearable. Being without sensation for so long seemed to have magnified your senses a thousandfold.

It was hard to tell how much time had passed before moving became tolerable. You tried to open your eyes a few times, but even once you could physically do so, the room was too bright to look at. You flopped helplessly on your back, squeaking and complaining whenever you were touched.

As your brain grew used to processing sensory input once more, you got better at figuring out what was happening to you. You were lying in some sort of thick liquid, with your head supported so your face was free of it. The thing that kept touching you was alive, presumably, because it was moving. It felt like you were being gently massaged. Kind of the massage used to help encourage blood flow in a limb.

You tried your eyes again. They cracked open, just barely. The light wasn’t so bad this time. Not good, but not bad, either. It stung. You could see someone, probably a person, moving around you, although you could barely even make out the silhouette. It was mostly a blur.

The massage was nice. It was sort of a more pleasant awakening than you thought you’d have. They’d briefed you on the awakening procedures- the pods would gradually warm up so you woke up slowly before ejecting everyone all at once. No one should be awake to care for you.  Maybe something had gone wrong? But not so wrong that you’d died, so it couldn’t be something you needed to worry about too much.

You took your time to come back to yourself, slowly warming up to your body again. It still felt like you’d spent a week and a half completely sick with the flu, but you were otherwise not so bad.

The room was slowly drifting into focus around you. It was actually quite dim, you realized. There were a couple of pale blue lights set into the ceiling far above you providing illumination for the whole room, so everything was dark and shadowy. There was still the silhouette moving around you, but they were sort of dark and it was hard to make anything out about them.

The silhouette moved closer, still backlit too much to make out features. There was something slightly off about the shape of it, with the head and the shoulders or something, but maybe that was some weird eye effect of the hibernation. Hallucinations sometimes happened after hibernation, they’d said. Nothing to worry about.

And then the silhouette spoke. At least, you thought it was speaking. It wasn’t using words, though. It made a low, sort of thrumming noise with the occasional pop or creak. They weren’t quite noises a human could make, or at least, not without great effort.

You froze. That was… weird. More hallucinations, maybe? Had the hibernation fucked with your brain so bad you’d forgotten how words worked? That wasn’t good- maybe that’s why you were getting woken up separately?

Before you had a moment to ponder that any longer, there was a mechanical click and a voice, sort of neutral and male, said… something. You still couldn’t understand what it was saying, but there was some confirmation that it was, actually, saying something because you recognized the language: Chinese.

There was a pause. The mechanical click repeated, and then the voice spoke again, in English. “Are you conscious and able to respond? Please raise an arm if you can understand what I’m saying to you.”

You raised your arm automatically, though it was a struggle to lift it out of the thick substance you were submerged in. The thrumming and popping noise started up again, followed quickly by a mechanical click and a voice in English. It reminded you of when they dubbed over someone on the news while they were still talking. “Please remain calm. You suffered some injuries to your extremities, as well as hibernation sickness. We’re attempting to stabilize you, but you’re in a delicate condition.”

You tried to talk, but your mouth was so dry your tongue was trying to glue itself to the roof of your mouth. If the person was bothered by that, they didn’t show it. They moved closer to your head, walking alongside the tub you were resting in. Your eyes tracked them. They were moving weirdly. Were they hurt, maybe? Alarm bells kept going off in your head, the uncanny sense that something was wrong, but nothing in your conscious brain could put together what it was.

The person moved so they were in one of the brighter section of the room. You could see more than just their vague shape. Your heart stopped.

They were not a person.

That was why their shape was wrong. You could see their torso, from their head to nearly their waist, and it was human only in the vaguest of shapes. Sort of a vaguely oval head, with a sort of human-like face, except it was flatter, with pointed, almost horse-like ears. Their eyes were a little deeper-set and rounder. Their coloration reminded you of a Doberman, almost, with black across the top of their face and a paler color underneath. Their torso was longer and more slender than a human’s with narrower, more sloped shoulders and long arms that folded up close to their chest. They made a sort of humming or purring noise as they leaned over you.

You struggled to sit up or scramble away, but you couldn’t move much. You couldn’t even scream, just sort of moan helplessly. One of your legs managed to kick out sideways and connect with the side of the tank. It wasn’t much of a hit, but that, combined with you straining the rest of your pathetic muscles to get away from the thing next to you, meant that you partially slid off whatever was keeping your head supported and your face went under the water.

It was thicker than water, but not by too much, so your head slid under it with disconcerting slowness. It was then that you discovered another disadvantage of your weak muscles- the substance was just thick enough to make moving through it, even just enough to lift your head out of the water, impossible.

You thrashed, but not really, since you couldn’t move. There was only about two seconds of panic, though, before hands locked around you and pulled your head out back out. You sputtered as the hands placed your head back on the little platform.

“Stay still.” Something was beeping frantically in the background, and you could both hear and see the creature shifting around to check on some machines. “The fluid is warming you back to proper temperature. You need to remain still and calm to avoid going into shock.”

There was no way you were not going into shock. But you’d used up all your energy in your near-drowning, so you couldn’t do much but lie there. The creature seemed to relax.

“I understand that you’re frightened. I promise, I’m trying to help you.” When you didn’t move, just watched them, they relaxed further. “Remain still. I will conclude the treatment.”

They fussed around for a little while longer, checking on whatever monitors were giving readouts for your condition. You weren’t sure what indicated that your treatment was over, since you didn’t feel much better, but eventually, they pressed a button somewhere and the fluid drained out of the tub. It was cold after the fluid was gone, and you were completely nude and shivering, resting on some pads at the bottom of the tub. The creature, thankfully, offered you warm cloths that you could bury yourself underneath.

Before you could even properly enjoy the warmth, there was the sound of footsteps approaching. A lot of footsteps. Summoning all your strength, you heaved yourself up and looked over the edge of the tub.

There were more of them. Only three, not including your creature, which didn’t seem to match up with the amount of footsteps you’d heard. And then you looked down a little more and realized why.

They were centaurs.

Sort of- their limbs weren’t hooved, and they weren’t really like paws, either. A bit more like bird talons, if birds rested mostly on their fingertips. Talontips. Whatever. They walked with their torsos bent further forward than centaurs, too, and they had long tails. A couple of them had horns, pointing back off their heads. They were wearing clothes that were relatively close-fitting, like most spacesuits you’d seen.

The one in front, with the largest horns and a sort of fancy marker around its neck, stepped froward. “On behalf of the First Branch of the Agrenier, we would like to officially greet your species. And offer our condolences.” This one also had their words picked up by the machine and recited in a language you could understand, though the voice the machine used was different, a little more feminine. Maybe this one was a woman?

The blankets hadn’t really calmed your shivering, but you managed to speak in a semi-steady voice. “Condolences?”

She scuffed one of her forelimbs, her ears lowering to the sides of her head. “Your ship was found drifting, nearly without power. There was some sort of error with major mechanical functions in the ship, which caused serious damage to the inner workings. Upon investigation of the craft, we discovered several hibernation pods, the vast majority of which were damaged.” She paused, still tapping a forelimb against the ground. “Two contained living members of your species, but you were the only one to survive the initial reawakening process. You have our deepest condolences.”             You opened your mouth, but you couldn’t think of anything to say. Your brain struggled to process anything. Two pods with living people. Only one survived the reawakening. That was- that had to be you, right? You were- the only-

Dimly, you were aware of the robot speaking again. It seemed to be rapidly switching between two agitated voices. People were having an argument, maybe? You didn’t care. You buried yourself under the blankets and hid in the warm cocoon until everything was dark and floaty and your brain didn’t have any thoughts in it at all.

Someone tried to tug the blanket away. You weren’t sure how long it had been, but it was quieter and your limbs were stiff from being in the same position. You tried to keep the blanket over your body, but there was another firm tug and you lost your grip. Your muscles were pathetic. And, as embarrassing as it was, you couldn’t help but crying out when the blanket was taken away. It was the one thing you had in the world and you couldn’t even hold onto it.

“I’m sorry.” The other voice, the one from your centaur, came again from the robot. It did a very good job at adding emotion to the voices- it sounded anguished. “You’re overheating, I need to take it, but I’m sorry.” You curled up on the bottom of the tub, unmoving. The centaur patted your head. It was a small gesture, but you leaned into it. What else did you have?

The centaur patted your head a few more times before moving on. “I know you’re probably scared, but we’re not going to hurt you. I’m going to help you. Your hibernation pod was the least damaged of all of them, but it still had some minor malfunctions. It was hard to wake you up, and you’re not going to be all there for a little while.”

You racked your brains. It was easier to think about facts. When you’d gotten on the ship, there had been a big disclaimer about the dangers of hibernation pods. They were designed to keep a human in a state of suspended animation, with body functions slowed down to the bare minimum. The upper estimate was that it could keep a human asleep and alive for over half a million years. Not that anyone had ever tested them before you. But they were also risky- even minor malfunctions could lead to an early awakening, damage to the body, or the hibernation process just killing a person outright. Even when they’d gone over that part, though, no one had left. Why would they? Between a one hundred percent chance of death and a twenty percent chance, who would take the former?

So the malfunction had probably been in the sleep-wake system, the part that regulated how the machine knocked people out and woke them back up. It was supposed to run through a wakeup cycle on its own when the main computer signaled it was time, but if that system failed, it could be manually activated, and if the waking system failed entirely, there were ways to safely bring a person out of the hibernation without machine intervention. They were always riskier, though, and even if everything was done perfectly, it didn’t guarantee a successful revival.

That must have been what happened to the other person, the one in the other surviving pod. They’d tried to wake them up and…

Nope. Focus on facts. You took a deep breath. “What happened to the ship?”

“We boarded and searched it, and transferred the central computer system over to ours, as well as the supplies we could budget the space for,” the centaur said. “I’m afraid I don’t know any more specifics than that. I’m sorry.”

“How was it damaged? You said it was damaged.”

“An impact, I think?”

“That doesn’t make any sense. The ship was designed with rotator shields and plating and redundancies to keep everything secure. It was safe. It couldn’t be-” You paused. “How many people were on the ship?”

The centaur paused, then turned to one of the machines and tapped something in. “About 45,000 hibernation pods were recorded to be on the ship.”

That was too few for the main ship, but it had been designed with redundancies. If the impact had left a portion of the ship crippled, it was designed to eject the damaged portion and continue on without it.

Which meant your portion had been spit out and left to drift while the rest of the ship continued on toward its destination.

So everyone on the ship wasn’t dead. They were just continuing on to their destination. Without you.

That should make you feel better, right? That they weren’t dead? But you just felt very, very… lonely.

“I’m sorry about your fellow passengers,” the centaur said. He was leaning over the edge of the tub, sort of draped over it so he was resting his arm and his chin there. “For now, you should rest.” He glanced toward the door and his lips lifted into a bared-teeth expression. “Before our first officer comes back.”

He lifted your arm and slipped a tube into the shunt. It took only a few minutes before liquid sleep was coursing through your veins and you fell into a deep sleep.

The awakenings happened on a more or less regular schedule, at least from what you would tell. Often they would happen in that warm bath again, with your centaur rubbing your limbs to encourage bloodflow. Sometimes there was the other centaur there as well, the female one. You were pretty sure she and your centaur didn’t get along. The robot didn’t often translate for their conversations, but they had the tenor of arguments, and your centaur was always huffy and quiet after speaking with her. You ended up keeping time by the awakenings.

After two awakenings, your centaur gave you food. It was all prepackaged meal sludge, which was designed for people who had awoken from hibernation recently, and it made your stomach cramp, but you ate it. After four awakenings, the cramps stopped and you could move on to a combination of meal sludge and broth. Whenever you could, you engaged your centaur in conversation.

“How’d you know what medicines and foods to use?” you asked as he pulled the line administering some sort of medication out of your arm and closed the shunt.

“We transferred the existing data of your ship’s computer over to ours. I’m using your ship’s guide, translated into our own language, and improvising with our own equipment where yours was damaged- the hibernation pod you’ve been staying in is one of ours.”

“It seems too small to fit you,” you said. You weren’t a small person- you were actually pretty average- but the pod was only a bit too big for you to comfortably rest in. The centaurs were bigger than you by a pretty big margin, even your centaur, and he seemed to be the smallest one you’d seen so far.

“Oh, yes, that one’s for children.”

“You put children in hibernation?” You tried not to make the statement accusatory, but it came out like that anyway. There had been no children on The Ship, for multiple reasons. First was practicality- having a population that could breed and work right away upon making planetfall was paramount, and children wouldn’t be able to do either. The second was that no one knew how hibernation pods would affect children. Would it damage their bodies? Their ability to age properly? Hibernation had only been tested on adults- it was hard to convince people to put children in pods that might kill or cripple them, even when the same people had no issue with adults, especially prisoner populations.

Your centaur seemed unbothered. “For medical purposes. That’s what hibernation pods are used for. Slowing the spread of disease until the person can receive medical attention. It’s highly risky to use hibernation pods for long term space travel.” His ears flicked. “Though under your circumstances, I can’t say I can judge you.”

Ah. If they had the computer’s logs, they all knew what’s happening to Earth. What had probably already happened. The planet had a scant few years left by the time The Ship left, and if you’d traveled far enough to come across real aliens, then you’d been traveling for a while.

The centaur walked around the pod as the entire thing shifted from a horizontal position to a nearly vertical one. “I’m going to unlock the restraints,” he said. There was a faint click and the straps that were holding you in place retracted.

Your legs wobbled. It took all your strength to keep your body upright. It was a strain to stand, to walk, even to sit up sometimes. But your centaur insisted on making you move around.

“Hands in mine,” he said, extending his arms. You placed your hands in his and stepped out of the pod. He supported most of your weight with barely a tremble as you took a few shaky steps. His hands enveloped yours, though that was partially because of their strange shape. Unlike human hands, his were six-fingered and bilaterally symmetrical, with four ‘fingers’ and two ‘thumbs, both of which were positioned closer toward the wrist and pointed further backward than human thumbs. Despite their alien shape, holding his hands felt remarkably similar to just holding a human hand. It was a comfort.

Just as you were completing your second circuit of the room, your legs trembling like a baby deer’s, the door opened. Your centaur glanced up and his ears lowered instantly. The centaur that walked in was the first officer, the female that you’d seen when you’d first awoken.

“Officer,” your centaur said. The machine that translated everything was apparently quite accurate with tone, so you could tell that he was being both polite and annoyed. “Good to see you.” He was not happy about seeing her. “I am in the middle of something, so if this is not a pressing issue, perhaps we could continue this at a later date?” Please, please fuck off.

The veneer of politeness he was using didn’t let her be outright annoyed, but the machine’s tone when it spoke for her suggested she wasn’t very happy either. “It concerns our guest,” she said, turning her gaze to you. “And it is somewhat pressing.”

Your centaur shuffled his back legs and swung his tail. “Very well. Let’s get you back to the pod.” He ignored her, focusing his gaze on you as he assisted you back to the pod. You let out a sigh of relief as soon as you were in it. Your centaur rotated the pod back into the horizontal position and started to fill it with the thick fluid that let you float comfortably.

The first officer approached, claws clicking softly against the floor as she did so. “The human will want to be awake for this,” she said. “It’s important.”

Your centaur huffed a bit, but he didn’t move to put the sleeping drugs back in your system and just folded his arms up to his chest, in a way reminiscent of a praying mantis, and waited for her to speak.

She cleared her throat and turned her gaze to you. “We’re coming across one of our stations. You will be placed on a shuttle to the station, and then sent on another ship back to Tenso-bara.”

You blinked. What was Tenso-bara?

“In my opinion, that’s not a good idea,” your centaur said. His ears were still flattened, his lips curling back from his teeth just a little. “The hibernation causes weakness and sickness, so it may not be a good idea for travel at this point in the-”

“We are not going to come across another station for several-” The translation stuttered here, blocking the word out. “And we are not in compliance with the endangered species accords. We’re required to send endangered species to occupied worlds that hold to the accords for proper categorization and preservation.”

“Those accords aren’t for fellow intelligent species!” your centaur huffed.

“They were initially designed for non-sapient life, yes, but they do not exclude sapient species. Given what we know, we may be sheparding the last member of the human species.”

“There might be others!” you said. The first officer paused, her gaze going piercing-sharp. “The Ship was designed to separate damaged segments to protect the undamaged parts. The part of the ship I was on was only a small portion of the full thing! There are probably others!”

The first officer paused. “How many others?”

“Um. I think there were around two hundred and fifty thousand. Maybe as many as three hundred thousand? I’m not sure- they were trying to add additional pods at the end, but I was put to sleep before that happened.”

“But there is no guarantee that these other people did survive. Nor do you have any idea where the ship is now.” The first officer’s voice wasn’t cold or cruel, but it wasn’t gentle, either. You drooped a little.

“No. There might be information on the computer about where we were when the impact happened, but if it’s not there, then I don’t know where the ship could be.”

“Then I apologize, but unless we have other living members of the species or some confirmation that the others are alive, then you are under the accords and cannot stay on this ship. It is required for you to be returned to a planet.” She stamped her two front feet in a motion you assumed was like a shrug. “There is nothing I can do.”

“If that’s the case, then I want to make a request,” your centaur said. He stepped forward, practically shielding you from the first officer. “I would like to request a transfer.”

The first officer swung her tail back and forth across the floor, making a soft schff, schff, schff sound. “You wish to go with the human.”             Your centaur’s ears twitched and he rubbed his wrists together. Maybe he was embarrassed at having been so obvious. “Ah, well. Yes. I think it would be a good idea to stay, since I’m already aware of the medical conditions and-”

The first officer stomped one of her feet firmly against the ground. “I will submit the request. But I cannot guarantee it will be approved.” She turned back to you, expression neutral. That you could tell, anyway. Their faces didn’t seem as expressive as a human’s. Or maybe you just couldn’t understand their expressions as well. “You will be transferred in two days.”

Without another word, she left the room. Your centaur made a noise somewhere between a relieved sigh and an irritated huff. Then he turned back toward you. “I apologize about her.”

“What was she talking about?” you asked. He picked up an IV line of sleeping meds and for a moment you thought that he was going to knock you out so he wouldn’t have to answer your questions. But he just fiddled with it for a moment before speaking.

“There are many species in the known universe, and the gradual colonization of these planets has left many of these species  in critical danger, which led to environmental accords. Severely endangered species have laws regarding their transport in space and species in critical danger need to be taken to preserves in order to breed them back to proper levels. Or just keep them until their species naturally goes extinct. Whichever.”

“I’m going to be put on a nature preserve?” you said, trying to sit up. Your centaur immediately tried to usher you to lie back down.

“Probably not for long. I’m sure they’ll work to give you freedom and self-determination and all that. We’re just… required to follow regulations.” He rubbed his wrists together again. “I do want to advocate for you, though, hence why I elected to come with you. And to give you medical care.” He made a series of thumping noises in rapid succession, which the robot apparently interpreted as laughing. “I didn’t get my xenobiologist degree just to hand a medically delicate specimen over to some idiot government worker.” His voice got softer as he continued. “You’re going to be okay.”

It was comforting to hear that reassurance. He slipped the line into the shunt in your arm and you closed your eyes, feeling an unusually peaceful sleep drift over you.

Part 2 here.