#ur a brave soul bro FR I’d explode from anxiety

[your-royal-highness-of-trash]

I’m not necessarily indifferent on Ghost per se, I think they’re a fun ship and I get it!! It’s just that they’ve lost their jene se queef (or whatever that French phrase is) in my brain unless the writer is god tier!

OUGHHH OUGHH!!!! FIC CONCEPT FIC CONCEPT!!! 🚨🚨‼️

Faralex and Alex character study BUT!! From the perception of his Normal Guy PT trainer / helper. Imagine it. GOES INSANE!!!!! SO MANY ANGLES!!! Literally going feral.

Also OOF I loooove ur care package concept. I think(?) it’s a popular headcannon that Farah is very much a mechanical girl, so I could imagine her just somehow having a closet / workshop container that is just. Prosthetic Legs. Straight Up. She tries to tinker with them and see what had gone wrong, even attempting to make her own version in case Price’s support is somehow compromised and they have to improvise.

Random Urzik Private who stumbled into Farah’s makeshift workshop to see her surrounded by a concerning amount of prosthetic legs, pre official relationship with Alex: What have you got there…?

Farah who can’t stand the thought of not being able to help Alex because she’s internalized that his disability is her fault, and is trying to cope with romantic feelings she hasn’t felt Once in her Life: A smoothie?

And they are 1000% mentally ill in general AND about each other.

I like to hc Alex as being from a bigger family somewhere in the Midwest- he doesn’t seem like a northerner to me (<- opinion cause I’m from one of the basically Canadian states). Maybe like. Kansas? Missouri? Idk. I do definitively think he had some issues before the CIA though. He almost gives mommy issues?? But I can’t pin down Why.

@your-royal-highness-of-trash

Pulled out into TWO new posts b/c I cannot be subjecting my friends to one longpost but rather many smaller posts with the majestic read more tool. I hope this is cool.

(Context. My reply to This.)

THE FUN HALF lets ramble about character stuff yes pleaaaase they really did nail the characterization they did do that I hate how good of a job they did.

First it is so funny that you already know Bad Suns! I was literally introduced to them this summer by one of my D&D buddies on one of our driving days where we just hang out in the car listening to music loudly with the windows down and I was just, blown away by their sound. And then like a week later went. "Wait.... This is a blorbo song. This is an Alex pov Faralex song. This is him being filled with emotions oh my god"

Glad you are also just "eh" on Ghoap. Like. I've read some great Ghoap fics but like. Perhaps it's the hipster in me. I get the dynamic allure, I get the chemistry, I get that it's hot but I am just not insane for them like the majority of the fandom. Because I already have Faralex. And og Ghost Roach but WHATEVER.

I have posted about the Alex disability thing before already so I 100% hard agree. When I actually looked up the timeline for a prosthetic, just like, as a cursory google for the most vague of fic writing stuff, I was immediately like. OH THEY DID NO RESEARCH HUH. He would have still been in PT by the time they brought him into Warzone he would not be ready for it, but like. Yeah he's so? He's nice? He's a nice man and very friendly but he's also not a good man (we forget that these are not the same) and also sort of hyper focused on Farah and sometimes I think that it's easy to backseat his angst when Farah's right there for him to sort of focus on instead of his problems? He was a marine and a CIA agent and I'm sure he has some like very intense ingrained stuff about technically being actually genuinely disabled with likely chronic pain now and it probably isn't great! I love a healthy dynamic but I will not lie and pretend I'm not into a little bit into how his thing for her can 100% be a little unhealthy. I like a little smidge of the spice with that devotion dynamic. As you said, being mentally ill together. I like that she is in a position where she needs someone who is like, a little obsessed with her in a way that's Not Normal, and he is in a position where being Not Normal about someone probably gets him through some rough days but also watch out! Don't let that consume you!

I feel like he probably gets the prosthetic from Price (and Laswell later), but like. Surely it gets broken because, as you said, he is running around in the desert for hours at a time on combat missions. Farah gets her little care package of goods from Price and Alex just gets leg parts it's constantly leg parts every shipment there's a leg part in there you can tell he's been somewhere because we just have ruined liners everywhere and you can tell when stuff is really bad because there's just. A leg. Abandoned in some building somewhere and smashed half to shit.

Out of Alex I want 1) more disability stuff because yes. Like he has to use crutches a lot, right? Surely he does. How easy is it to shoot a gun in crutches I have to know! I want like "ah ha we have attacked the ULF off guard surely now we will be at an advanta-" *thudding sound of angry CIA deserter in crutches with a gun and still very capable of being dangerous* 2) We are so cagey about the whole "he is now a terrorist" CIA deserter thing. Does he have family at home? He died so like. Did his mom or dad get a flag? Do you get a flag when you desert? Surely they knew he was into some Incredibly Black Ops stuff so like when he vanishes off the face of the earth it was normal up until they get a letter like "lol sorry he's dead." (But he's not dead, you'll just never see the top secret blurry photos of him in the desert doing a terrorism, which was not all that different than what he was doing before he just enjoys it more now.) How many skeletons are in that closet boooy.

You should totally make a bookmark collection!! I know I value the heck out of people who do fic reviews and collections and stuff. Nothing like seeing that someone else is really enjoying a ship dynamic and collecting stuff that's their taste.

"Different Relationship" yes they are in love your honor. He would never intentionally mispronounce his beloved wife's name, he's just a stupid American and gets it 50% correct but he tries. I have never seen this video. Thank you so much for linking it.

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Ugh thinking in my brain again about like, do you think he would have ever brought Farah to PT? Like he's going to PT for his leg under some assumed name somewhere and has told the therapists some sort of half truth sob story about his life that is 80% CIA lies and 20% actual dynamics from his life so they are aware of Farah in a "I need to get better because there is someone in my life I need to get back to" way. And then he slowly phases out as he recovers and later he actually brings The Someone to one of his checkup appointments and it's this tiny middle eastern woman that he has really intense energy with where they are clearly having entire conversations just by staring at each other. Between his military tattoos and how she gets this edge to her every time there's a weird noise outside it's slowly becoming obvious that they are both military somehow but everything goes well until there's a global news update about Urzikstan and they both get really weird and quiet until Alex is like "hey lets change the channel now :)" and Farah says something in Arabic and he replies and they have some sort of laugh about it and it's like, uh oh these people! These people are somehow connected to global events in some nebulous way that you're not sure you should be thinking about!

Anyway shout out to the government guy who brought his concealed carry into the clinic! I don't think that was necessary! I looked it up and it was probably legal since we didn't have a sign at that point but why did you do that knowing full well you would have to take off your shirt for the scan and I would have to be uncomfortably near it the whole time! I will complain about this whenever I can! It was weird!