#you guys do not understand the splicing i had to do.

[emordnilap-fr]

[takes 10d6 psychic damage]

[starwrighter]

I am not a baby!! (Yes you are)

(Ao3) (Masterpost) (Previous) (Next)

(Chapter 12 lets gooo!)

The audacity of this fish! Eyelids still heavy, brain still longing to go back to sleep. Shooting the meanest glare he could muster at the fish, hoping desperately that his displeasure would be received as intended. Untangling himself from the curtain, Danny rubbed his face. The folds of the fabric imprinted on his cheek leaving a pink mark that was quickly fading with his continued consciousness.

Danny pulled a peeper out of his makeshift freezer. Thankfully, it was still frozen. At least some aspects of his powers stayed the same. Sucking in a deep breath chilled water trickled through the gaps between his fingers, peeper going limp in his hands. His little workstation lacked a stove, a massive oversight on his part, but an understandable one since he didn’t have nearly enough materials to make a stable oven. The only thing he could make at the moment was an explosive hazard that’d cook anything in a five-foot radius to a charred crisp.

Charred Danny was a limited-time special dish, cooked via portal, and was unfortunately out of season forever. Like a discontinuation of tuna-flavored Oreos, nobody would be sad about it not being available. Surely, his fishy stalker would prefer him burnt like a marshmallow, but Danny isn't willing to indulge that preference. If he was going to be eaten, you bet your ass he’d be making this unpleasant for both of them.

Sheesh, he needed to find that guy's name. Or give him a new one. An insult wouldn’t do. Names had to mean something. This isn't a DND game, he can't just use a fantasy name generator and call it a day. No, this name had to be cool, not another “Inviso-Bill” scenario. His legs almost gave out in despair at the thought of being the one to give someone a name so stupid! He hadn’t done anything to deserve a punishment like that. Sure, his whole tapping routine was a migraine and a half, but he hadn’t done any harm. Even when Danny attacked him, he didn’t do anything, despite the fact he could’ve killed Danny with a single swipe from those razor-sharp claws.

Gritting his teeth at the thought of dying a third time in such an embarrassing way, he glanced down at the floppy fish still in his hands. Completely inedible, but Danny was getting pretty hungry at this point. Finding the strength to freeze the damn fish was difficult enough, he couldn’t just shoot lasers out his eyes and suddenly have a fully cooked peeper in his hands! All they had right now was the fabricator… Ugh, he scrunched his nose at the thought, but really, there were no other options for him at the moment. Oh, the ways humanity suffered for survival. Reluctantly giving the thawed peeper to cook, Danny began brainstorming names.

More information would be needed, he couldn’t just name him based on nothing! Swiping back to the fish guy’s databank, Danny studied it thoroughly. According to the PDA, this guy’s DNA was spliced, altered. Not in the getting electrocuted to death sense, but the genetically modified as an embryo kind of way. A perfectly functional hybrid between two unknown species that Danny guessed shouldn’t have been able to breed. But regardless, they came together to make this behemoth of a creature who looked as if he crawled through the deepest depths of hell just to scratch his freaking window.

!!!

He was going to call this guy Dami, short for damnation. It wasn’t an insult, it was cool! Danny would have died a third time to have been given a name as cool as that! Anything would’ve been better than Invis-o-bill. If Dami turned out to be the one who set up the ecto dampener he’d take back his cool nickname.

With a loud ding, Danny’s attention is brought back to his breakfast, now steaming at the fabricator. A small temperature warning flashed on his PDA the tablet setting a timer to let the fish cool down. If this had been any other food Danny might’ve been offended. The true way to eat something hot was to stuff it in your mouth and breathe out steam like a dragon while your taste buds burned! But this was fish, and a fish cooked by a fabricator no less. It was sure to taste like chemicals and Danny wasn’t looking to prolong the experience by choking on said chemical-tasting fish.

So he listened to the PDA if only to avoid a Skynet situation. It might just be data corruption but the AI seemed to be at the end of its rope. Remembering this AI had the choice to kill him with misinformation, messing with it further wasn’t the best idea. He’d toe the line of trolling, but ignoring it now felt like an invitation for it to short-circuit in his hands.

When the timer went off, Danny snatched the fish off the fabricator. The fish was still warm in his hands as he tore into it. Flaky, a faint, ashy aftertaste, barely noticeable if you hadn’t expected the off taste. Gutting the fish took away most of the artificial taste. Who knew vaporizing bones, organs, and tendons could fuck over any kind of palatability? Lasers sterilized the meat, giving it a hint of Space salmonella wasn’t a disease anyone was eager to catch. Maybe he’d get an award for his discovery but he’d rather not be sick with an alien infection when medical knowledge was as limited as it was now. Access to the intergalactic network was pretty much non-existent. They were out of the space confederation reach, meaning he was completely and utterly screwed if he caught anything serious.

What could bandages do for food poisoning? A whole lot of nothing, that’s what! They could only hope a doctor survived the crash and they could find them before any significant injuries happened. … Significant injuries to other survivors, that is. Danny’s going to fight a big ass fish!

Launching himself out the hatch seaglide in hand, Danny began circling Dami. His gigantic tail dragged against the sand, and he could only wonder how he got here in the first place. The shallows were too small for him to be a native. His body was built for the extreme pressures of water up to 8156 meters deep. His preferred environment should be as deep as deep should go. The probable pressure difference between the shallows and Dami’s home habitat was tremendous! It can't be healthy for him to be this close to the surface. Is this a beached whale situation? Did the crash damage his home?

With a databank incomplete, answering any important questions became increasingly difficult. Alterra’s handheld scanner was built to understand the basics. Deeper scans could show him the most complex parts of his biology. If he could build a beefier scanner, it would make things so much easier for him.  Designing a table was several difficulty levels below designing a scanner that could record a species' entire makeup at a molecular level.  Mistakingly blasting a poor, unsuspecting fish with radiation just to understand how this leviathan functioned would end poorly for both of them. It was easy for him to forget Dami's a teenager for his species. If he went around taking bone, blood, and muscle samples, not only would he feel bad but he'd probably be disemboweled by Dami's mom or Dad. While he's willing to throw hands with Dami, a 3v1 wouldn't be fair for the leviathans.  Observation was what his self-preservation limited him to, and if this species happened to be one who liked getting into fights? That was a free blood sample right there. All he had to do now was stop him from destroying the coral tubes

Danny darted underneath Dami’s tail, the fish jolting backward, pulling his tail with him. Gritting his teeth, Danny continued to chase Dami’s tail, bringing the large fish closer and closer to the deeper grassy plateaus. Like dancing, a swing from Danny's blade triggers his partner into the right moves. Of course, the right moves were away from his fucking base!  Dami might mean well, but in the end, he was scaring the bladderfish and destroying the shallows with his sheer mass!

Swinging one last time, Dami finally got the memo and swam a small distance away. Not quite close enough to see his entire base, but close enough for Danny to see him through the window. Like a kicked puppy, Dami rested his head on his arms. It almost made him feel bad, but the trail of uprooted plants and panicking fish the leviathan left in his wake canceled out any guilt.

“Caution. Continued degradation of the Aurora’s drive core may result in a quantum detonation. Continuing to monitor,”

…Shit.

@ashoutinthedarkness @avelnfear @meira-3919 @thought-u-said-dragon-queen @hugsandchaos @blep-23 @zeldomnyo @bytheoldwillowtree @justwannabecat @shepherdsheart @starlightcat04 @stargazing-bookwyrm @pupstim @dragongoblet @noxcheshire

[oblivionbladetd]

Lily/Lorch’s video on Media Literacy is a lot to unpack, so I’m just going to start with the most important part —

She honestly believes that having a point is the exact same thing as being objectively correct, and that’s why villains can never have a point and still be villains in her eyes.

Do I even need to tell you how ignorant and dangerous this kind of mindset is?

Please explain to the youngsters in the audience why she’s utterly wrong in this belief.

I could preach ethics all day long, but who's to say mine are the same as yours? Or anybody else's?

If we want objectively correct, then we can just look at Ultron or Thanos. Statistically speaking, we will never know true, lasting peace. Also, statistically speaking, half our population just up and disappeared in an instant. As long as we can pull the inevitable socioeconomic collapse out of a 90-degree nosedive, it's still a net positive. The only problems they had were that for Ultron, it's that the save humanity by killing humanity is not exactly great for humanity. the world indeed probably would be better without us, but i will not be made to apologize for having a sense of self-preservation.... And with Thanos, the sticking point really is that when you are playing with true infinite, there are actually limitless better options than his initial one.

There are indeed a lot of problems if you just throw ethics to the wind and live in a world where the ends justify the means 100% of the time. Indeed, a lot of the greatest tragedies of human history are statistical non-issues, objectively unimportant. If the ends justify the means, then I guess eugenics and mass culling are hunky dory as well. It's logic that has already been used to justify horrible acts all around the globe from times modern to ancient.

If she wasn't just moving the goalposts in a stupid vendetta against a bunch of cheeky goobers, most villains have points. It's just good character writing. Outside of captain planet ass villains, nobody really sees themselves as a villain. There is a point to their cruelty, not always a great one, but a point nonetheless.

Let me tell you about a guy named Xykon for a webcomic called Order of the Stick. One of the protagonists, V, gets a humongous expansion to their spell list in a soul splice and fuck all else, full of bravado after nuking a dragon with a large amount of epic level spells gets it in their head the big bad ain't shit. After a brief bout of figuring out that hitting a spellcaster with far more practical experience and, more importantly, levels is easier said than done along with running a concentration based buff with a con of 6 means your epic super wizard transformation is good for all of three sturdy slaps being kinda ill advised. Proceeds to hit him with the single greatest speech in dnd fiction on how impermanent power is nothing and that whatever power you do have doesn't matter as long as you actually have it, proving it by showing that even the hail Mary of instant invisibility is nothing with little more than a higher than average spacial awareness and enough strength in their fleshless hands to crush a windpipe. Imagine being so outclassed an undead sorcerer that literally has magic imbued in his very bones switches to standard knuckle tossing just to put things in the ballpark of fair...

He has a good point and is very evil. Unapologetically so. If you are willing to let your mind explore and try to see through eyes that aren't yours, you will discover perspectives that will only ever enhance your understanding of the world. Hell, the very fact that there are war crimes is a widespread understanding that the only appreciable difference between the infantry of one country and another is a set of beliefs that might not survive the first time a soldier realizes he was a single inch away from being a corpse, so adding prolonged suffering is just needlessly cruel.

Hell, I'd welcome it as an open challenge to defend any villain as having a point because, again, short of stuff like has eaten bad vibes soup (chase young) or simply being a ancient force of nature. The list of bad guys that just are with zero explanation or justification is not as long as you'd think.

[davisexplainableart]

(hey guys, IRL Davis here)

(today (October 25, 2024) marks the 5-year anniversary since the premiere of "Mixels Watch")

(a collaboration between Mixels and Level-5 (creators of Yo-Kai Watch), it centers around Snoof, a somewhat arrogant and impulsive Frosticon, who, while lost in a forest, unlocks the secrets of a magic, talking key made of platinum, that not only turns into a wristwatch, but also gives him the ability to communicate with the ghosts of deceased Mixels)

(with the magic key by his side to keep him grounded, it's up to him (and later 2 other Mixels, but that's for later) to not only round up the specters, but also to understand the importance of living life to the fullest, especially in the face of numerous Mixels who never got the chance to do so before their untimely demise)

(the 1st season (which ran from 10/25/2019 - 12/27/2019), is about Snoof trying to find his way back home and beginning his quest of detecting any spirits that come his way)

(the reason behind the ghosts is that a certain Mixel (revealed later) has gone insane, becoming a murderous psychopath and cutting the lives of a handful of Mixels short. As such, Snoof is determined to complete any unfinished business that the ghosts had to deal with)

(since this is a collaboration with the creators of Yo-Kai Watch, there are MANY similarities in this show):

(the ghosts have the ability to possess (AKA inspirit) anyone they wish)

(the ghosts can be summoned using medals (or discs in this case) that are put into the watch (except here, it briefly makes the ghosts corporeal again, at least until their disc is removed))

(the color scheme on the watch's clock is the same as the Yo-Kai Watch's clock's color scheme)

(the Yo-Kai Watch tribe names (charming, eerie, shady, etc.) are included, with 2 ghosts for each tribe)

(a Yo-Kai makes a guest appearance in season 4 episode 6)

(each Mixel ghost has an ability they can use in battle (certain battle moves are taken directly from Calling All Mixels), similar to Yo-Kai, except in this case, it only happens when a Mixel is summoned)

(the summoning songs from Yo-Kai Watch season 1 are included, except instead of the summoning callout (once again done by Brent Pendergrass) mentioning their tribe (i.e. "Summoning Mysterious!"), it instead calls out the name of the Mixel being summoned (i.e. "Summoning Torts!"))

(the show's logo is the Mixels and Yo-Kai Watch logos spliced together)

(numerous tracks from the Yo-Kai Watch anime would appear in the show, alongside the pre-existing Mixels OST, which had been mostly absent in Mixels: 2035 and Mixels: The Golden Cure)

(Chilbo appears later on, except his voice (originating from Griffin Burns) sounds much closer to the voice of Nate Adams from the season 3 dub of Yo-Kai Watch (also by Griffin Burns), as shown by his delivery being more deadpan than before)

(the interesting thing to note about the last similarity, however, is that Chilbo had already been heard with this voice, specifically during his appearances in "The Twisted World of Mixels")

(I'm sure there's other similarities aside from what I just listed, but this is just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head)

(feel free to ask any questions you have about this series, I'd be glad to answer them)

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #150

Today is my 150th letter to you. It is the same as the number of my favorite Pokémon. So I am going to talk about him today. His name is Mewtwo, and he's a lot like you, actually:

So… I should probably tell you that I've seen only the version of his story that was localized to my country. So that is the version of the story I will tell.

Mewtwo was created in a laboratory. He was created from what was thought to be the most powerful Pokémon at the time - a Pokémon called Mew, which was thought to be extinct (there is precisely one Mew left in the world as far as I know, kinda like the Cetra). I'll explain…

Some guy named Giovanni was the leader of Team Rocket, which is a crime gang that is hellbent on generating profit in whatever ways they can, no matter who or what gets exploited or destroyed in the process; they're kinda like Shinra in some ways in that Team Rocket has huge armies and crazy resources and is interested in gathering up wealth and power. The easiest way to gain power in this world is by controlling powerful Pokémon, so Giovanni sought to create an enhanced living replica of Mew in order to have all the power and all the profit. Y'know… kiiiind of the same exact reason Shinra sought to create you.

So Mewtwo was created using a fossil that was found of Mew. It was spliced with human DNA (some other guy named Blaine, if I'm not mistaken). And just like that, Mewtwo was created and left to grow in a vat; he didn't even get to be born of a womb in the same way as you. Unlike you, too, he doesn't even have parents; there is literally nothing else like him in the world he inhabits; there never has been, and there never will be. Here is a video that details his childhood; I'll warn you, though - it's very sad:

…When Mewtwo woke up for the first time, he was already an adult. He realized almost immediately that he was created to be a test subject and a slave, and once he had that realization, instead of simply saying "no fuck you" and leaving (this is ALWAYS an option; you don't have to hurt people to get away from them), he became so angry that he used his powers to raze the laboratory he was created in to the ground, slaughtering everyone inside without so much as a second thought; all that was left was ashes and flames. In a lot of ways, this very closely mirrors what happened to you in Nibelheim.

…And, like you, after that, he was taken in by someone who cared nothing for who he was or for his desire to be loved and to have a sense of belonging. In Mewtwo's case, it was Giovanni. Giovanni lured Mewtwo into his control under the premise that they would work together as partners. Mewtwo would learn how to better wield his abilities in Giovanni's presence, but the way he learned was by doing Giovanni's bidding and destroying or exploiting anything Giovanni saw fit. Eventually, when Mewtwo realized that Giovanni saw him as nothing more than a commodity to be harnessed instead of a living, breathing thing to be loved and understood, Mewtwo lost his shit again and escaped, razing the building to the ground, and presumably killing everyone inside in the process. So... Mewtwo did a Nibelheim not once, but TWICE:

..."I was not born of Pokémon, I was created, and my creators have used and betrayed me, so... I stand alone." I can imagine that you might find such sentiments deeply relatable.

From there, Mewtwo quite understandably held a deep grudge against all humans. So he created a storm that would wipe out not only all humans, but also any Pokémon who ever befriended and worked with a human; Mewtwo had never met a human who was kind, and so he had assumed that all humans were dangerous, selfish creatures that manipulated Pokémon into being their slaves, and that all Pokémon who willingly worked with humans were pathetic, vile things that debased themselves for the sake of human approval.

…Coming from abuse, myself, I can understand why Mewtwo would assume that all humans are cruel and capricious things. I can understand why you might have thought similarly in the past, and might still think similarly now. I used to believe the same things, and for all the pain I went through, I bore a deep grudge against other people for a very long time. I thought that if I preemptively stereotyped all humans as things that would hurt me and pushed them away by hurting them before they had an opportunity to do the same to me, I would be able to protect myself and keep myself safe.

But that's not how it works; that's NEVER how it works, because when we apply broad, sweeping generalizations to large swaths of people, we end up dehumanizing them in the process, and in so doing, we become no better than those who have hurt us. I've made a lot of mistakes in the past; I only know better now because I got help, and I still have a lot more work to do in order to make up for who I was before. I'll never be "done". I'll never be "healed". But the work required to strive towards these things is still worth doing.

To create his idea of a "perfect" world, Mewtwo rebuilt the laboratory he destroyed, lured some very powerful trainers there, and then stole their Pokémon for the purpose of cloning them. He then pitted the cloned Pokémon against the originals, as though their manner of birth meant something about their worth (spoiler alert: their manner of creation doesn't mean a goddamn thing, because they're ALL living creatures, worthy of love, acceptance, and a place in the world). Mew showed up to try to talk some sense into Mewtwo, trying to tell him that it doesn't matter how anyone is born and that what counts is the contents of their heart.

But Mewtwo wasn't able to hear the wisdom of what Mew was saying; his eyes were too clouded over by the pain from the losses he experienced as a child, the abuse he went through as an adult, and likely the shame he felt about how he came into being. So he fought Mew with the intention of killing Mew. But their battle was creating terrible shockwaves of energy that were hurting all of the Pokémon on the battlefield that Mewtwo pitted against one another. Realizing that the Pokémon on the battlefield would die if Mewtwo and Mew didn't stop fighting RIGHT THE FUCK NOW, a brave and kind boy named Ash sacrificed his own life by putting himself between Mew and Mewtwo as they fought in an effort to get them to stop, even though there was no way of knowing whether or not it would work.

Mewtwo was stunned. He didn't know that humans were capable of such selflessness, and in that instant, it shifted his entire worldview. Mewtwo realized the terrible mistake he had made, and he turned himself around:

His most profound quote is, "I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant; it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are." I hope that this is one that you'll take to heart.

Here, this is his summary of his story in his own words:

Mewtwo, Mew, and all of the rest of the cloned Pokémon went to a place called Mt. Quena; it's a beautiful mountain with a lake in the middle of it with waters that have miraculous healing powers, and a system of caves in which to take shelter. Mewtwo lived peacefully there for a while, still working through his shame about being a cloned Pokémon instead of one that was more typically born, but Giovanni had been looking for him, and ended up finding him.

When Giovanni found Mewtwo, he immediately mobilized troops to go capture him and to set up a new Team Rocket base, polluting the water in the process. Giovanni demanded that Mewtwo walk into a machine that was designed to break his will via the application of torture, and he threatened to hurt the cloned Pokémon if Mewtwo did not comply, so Mewtwo did as Giovanni said. But Mewtwo's will did not break, and so he was nearly tortured to death before Ash showed up to break the machine. Ash then carried Mewtwo (yes, all 269lb/122kg of him) to the healing lake and threw him in the water, saving his life.

Mewtwo asks why Ash is helping him, since he is a cloned Pokémon that supposedly doesn't belong in this world. And in this one, Ash says something profound: you don't need a reason to help somebody; when you see someone in trouble, you just help them and that's all there is to it. Mewtwo then wonders if Ash is unique amongst humans, to which Ash replies that every human is unique. And when the waters of the lake heal Mewtwo just as they do to any Pokémon or person, Mewtwo is finally able to accept that he belongs to this world, regardless of the circumstances of his birth.

Mewtwo emerges from the waters reinvigorated, and from there, he uses his powers to wipe the memories of his existence from the mind of every Team Rocket member, including Giovanni. He also moves the lake inside the cave system of the mountain, so that no one will ever be able to exploit or pollute it again. Team Rocket leaves, and Mewtwo now gets to have a peaceful life in a beautiful place, surrounded by other living things who love him very, very much. Witness this, and engrave these words into your heart:

Sephiroth, you do not belong to anyone. You do not belong to Shinra. You do not belong to Jenova. You do not belong to the Gi or to the Cetra. You belong to you, and you alone. And you belong in this world. Sephiroth... can you imagine what it would be like if you used your amazing power to defend those people who are good to you and who are willing to try to give you new life?

Good people are everywhere, and they're not going to use you like a commodity or abuse you until you do what they say. Good people will hold you accountable when you do some stupid shit that hurts yourself or other people, though, because that's what the people who love you are supposed to do. They're supposed to challenge you to do better without exploiting you or breaking you down in the process. The world is full of people like this - people who can love and accept you as-is while encouraging you to become your best and most favorite self; all you have to do is open your eyes. All you have to do is try.

You are not much different from Mewtwo. You are not much different from me. If Mewtwo gets to be restored and have a happy, wholesome, joyful, love-filled life even after years of trauma, abuse, and mistakes, then so do you. If I get to be restored and have a happy, wholesome, joyful, love-filled life even after years of trauma, abuse, and mistakes, then so do you. All it takes is a willingness to learn and grow, and you'll never, EVER get me to believe that I am more mentally flexible and emotionally adaptable than you; it's never gonna happen, because I know in my bones that you are better and more capable than me in all the ways that matter, so don't even try to convince me otherwise; my faith in you is unshakable, so it's not gonna work.

Sephiroth. Please don't think you don't have anywhere to go or anywhere to belong. Mewtwo is literally the only one of his kind, and he still belongs with the Pokémon he calls family. They are cloned Pokémon, but all the same, they are not at all different from the other wild Pokémon that also inhabit Mt. Quena. A cloned Lapras can live with regular Lapras just the same. There isn't another Mewtwo. There isn't another Pokémon in the world that possesses the same level of power that Mewtwo has. But he still belongs. And he can still have a good life. He's not alone. You're not that different from him. So please try. Please?

That's all I've got for today. Please think about the story I told you. Heck, if your position at the Edge of Creation allows you to talk to Mewtwo somehow, please do; he's smart and wise and he knows a lot because he's learned much during the course of his life and has grown much as a result of reflecting earnestly upon all the mistakes he's made. He can help you.

I love you. Please stay safe, okay? I'll write again soon.

Your friend, Lumine

[welcome-to-the-flock]

Doctor Darwin Hardwick: September 4th we had our 32nd test subject Baxter Barnes, volunteer for farm work, and experimental gene therapy. He seemed to have a very abrasive temperament and was very anti social, Hoping to counteract these traits I was planning on integrating him into the sheep facility. I recorded his height and weight and before sending him off to go meet the sheep he will be living with. Day: 1 Baxter Barnes:

I sat in a strange office room, Talking to a scientist with a goggles that showed a strange green glow, An overly long flowing coat and long green boots. His outfit looked like some thing that came out of a Saturday morning cartoon.

Baxter: "So if I sign this contract when do I get paid?"

Doctor: "In a week."

Baxter: "And you promise to revert any changes? For free?! By the end of the month."

Doctor: "Yes. But you will have to live at the facility within that time frame."

Baxter: "Deal."

Baxter proceeded to sign the contract, Foolishly neglecting to read it first.

Doctor: "Great let me show you to your new home!"

I walked the with the scientist to a more rural looking farmyard like building with a large field of grass surrounding it. I was eventually brought to a location populated by weird sheep hybrids.

In front of me I saw a athletic sheep man with overalls a belled collar and a cowboy hat.

Randy: "Howdy, The names randy, yers?" He said confidently.

Baxter: "Its Umm, Baxter"

Randy: "Not used to folks like us are ya?

Baxter: "Well of course dumbass its not like you meet talking animals everyday!"

Randy: "Would you like to meet the others?"

Baxter: "I, Suppose, I could." I said dejectedly

Randy: "This is Brandon." I saw a short thin sheep man with a sweater vest round glasses a belled collar and shorts.

Brandon: "Hi, Ummm, Baaxter." He spoke softly and meekly.

Randy: "This is Hayley." She was curvy sheep woman with a belled collar a sheer airy dress and a sunhat.

Hayley: "Greeting, Newcomer its nice to see another join the flock!" She said excitedly.

Randy: "And This is Patrick." He was chubby sheep man with a belled collar a shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.

Patrick: "Nice to see someone n'ewe round here!" He said as if it was the funniest thing he had heard in his life.

Baxter: "...."

 "Really?"

Patrick: "I wool'd have guess your not fan of puns are ewe."

Growing furious from the strange sheep like clowns antics I snapped at him.

Baxter: "Shut the fuck up why don't you! I'm just here cause I need the cash. So I DO NOT want to hear any of your shitty ass puns!"

Randy: "Ya know its gonna be awfully hard for ya to live with us if yer gonna be actin like this."

Baxter: "Well its going to be "awfully hard" for ME, to get along with people if they are going to use dumb ass puns all the fucking time!"

Randy: "Damn you sure are gonna be a tough nut to crack. Since ya seem not to want anything to do with the rest of us then why don't you unpack yer bags yerself."

Baxter: "Fine, Maybe I will!"

I unpacked my bags and got comfortable. I had a bunch of emo stuff, Some videogame related stuff, Plushies.

Doc: "Hello baxter how are you doing today?"

Baxter: "Tired, Frustrated, Confused."

Doc: "Are you tired because of the day you had or because of how late it is?"

Baxter: "Both."

Doc: "Why are you so frustrated and confused?"

Baxter: "Having to live here, With weird furry sheep things its frustrating, And I'm confused whats going on with this weird ass place."

Doc: "Okay all of that is perfectly understandable."

He paused for a moment for effect.

"However..."

"you signed the contract. Thus for at least a month will be living here even if it takes alot of adjustment. So, what exactly is confusing about this place?"

Baxter: "Why do you guys bother with the weird furry animal things."

Doc: "Science for sciences sake I suppose."

Baxter: "You know just because you can, Doesn't mean you should."

Doc: "Well I came here for experimental gene splicing not ethics. Anyway would you please follow me?"

Baxter: "And where the fuck are we even going?"

Doc: "Lets just say, Its to help you adjust to your new living quarters."

Baxter: "Ohh, Kaay Why the fuck, would THAT, require a HOSPITAL?!"

Doc: "Heheheheheh. You'll see.~"

Baxter: (Oh god what the hell did I just get myself into!?!)

Doc: "So I'm just going to need to you to put this little thing on and sit down in the chair. Heheheheh."

Baxter: "Is THAT a FUCKING COLLAR?! Why the hell do you need me to put on a collar?!"

Doc: "Would it help you to know it was part of the experiment?!"

Baxter: "This better not be part of the contract!"

Doc: "Well I'm sorry to tell you but..."

Baxter: "GOD DAMN IT!"

Baxter begrudgingly despite his better judgement sat down in the chair.

The doctor injected a few vials of some strange formula. After having it flow through his system he started to feel strangely numb and woozy.

[gamerdog1]

Morbius Review

Yeah, I know I'm late to the party with this one, but better late than never, eh?

I think everyone knows, or has at least heard of the infamous Morbius movie. A film trying so hard to launch a universe of Spider-Man baddies without Spider-Man, that got launched into the spotlight through sheer force of meme potential. You couldn't take to steps anywhere on social media without hearing about it.

Fast forward a few years, and while picking out bean sprouts from pad thai I could've sworn I asked for without, I decided to give this living legend a go. And what I found, unfortunately, does not live up to the hype.

The film follows a doctor with rare blood disease, who spends his entire career experimenting to find a way to cure himself. When he discovers that splicing bat DNA into his own blood eases his symptoms, he thinks he's cured, but quickly realizes that he's become a bloodthirsty vampire. With the feds hot on his tail, Morbius tries to find a way to fix himself, save his girlfriend, and avoid the wrath of his rival.

Sadly, my wordy plot summary does this film more justice than it does itself. This film drags on more than a grandmother giving a stern talking-to. So much of this film is bland, stock set-up, and then when Morbius finally becomes a vampire, we quickly go back to human drama like its nothing. Its almost like the film doesn't think we should see him doing cool things for very long, so it forces the little freak to sit down, shut up, and be normal while it keeps spinning its yarn about hospital workers and rare diseases.

its quite an accomplishment, really, to make a story like Morbius' so dull. At times I found myself on my phone, distracted from all the mundane talking scenes. I now understand how my little cousins feel, when they ask me to skip to fight scenes in shows we watch.

Eventually, when the seriousness of this film bubbles over, it becomes accidentally hilarious. Jared Leto saying "stinky little pinky" nearly made me spit out my drink, and watching him and Matt Smith throw each other around like ragdolls had me kicking my feel and giggling. This film should not be funny, and clearly isn't trying to be, yet somehow it is. Maybe if all other crappy Sony movies like these did this, we'd be a better society.

However, I'm not counting out this film entirely. At various times while watching, I exclaimed "that was pretty cool" or "what a nice shot", unsarcastically of course. Within this ball of over-seriousness and accidental humor are some half decent shots, scenes, and effects, which injected some much needed life into the veins of this shambling corpse of this film. The swarms of vampire bats were a stand-out for me, mostly because I can't imagine how long it took to animate it, and I hope the animators got paid good money. The smoke effects during flight and echolocation were pretty cool to look at too, and are a fresh take on visualizing sound.

All in all, though, Morbius isn't what I expected. I came for a so-bad-its-good film about a silly vampire guy who 'morbs', and I ended up with a film that took itself way too seriously to make itself funny all the time. I'm a bit disappointed, but hopefully this doesn't dissuade Sony from making more crappy offshoot movies like these. If they can make them sillier, I'll watch them all.

4/10

[silverwings22]

Song of the Sea: Chapter 23: Homecoming

Chapter Warning: canon typical violence, generational trauma, mentions of slavery and medical torture Series Warnings: explicit smut, alien anatomy (it's a monsterfucker fic, guys), major character injury, grief, canon typical violence, autistic meltdowns, and my terrible attempts at Mando'a

Previous Chapter:

Next chapter:

Tech was working on getting the systems back online while Shiani and Echo worked on the Marauder's hull. They'd barely made it back to Ord Mantell without combusting, skidding to a landing and leaving half their landing gear across the hangar.

“This is taking too long, Echo! Hunter is in danger! We've got to get back to Daro.” Omega was pacing behind them. 

Shiani's head popped out of a panel she had wedged her entire body into to weld. “In what? The Marauder has more holes than that cheese Wrecker likes.”

Echo nodded, watching her disappear again. “She's right. Until the ship is fixed we can't. Pass me the spanner. Hunter can hold out until we get this repaired. Otherwise we're back at square one, or we're all in Imperial custody.”

Shiani finished her weld and squished back out of the hole. “It’s not the Empire to worry about. Until this is fixed, space is more likely to kill us.” She set the welding torch down and started checking the external riveting. “Even I can’t survive sudden depressurization.”

Echo nodded. “I'm almost done with this. Go check on Tech?”

The siren nodded and headed inside the ship. Her mate was half under the console in the cockpit, working as fast as he could. “Tech?”

“Weapons and life support are functional. Navigation and shields less so. And I'm struggling to find anything on the communications array.”

“I’ll fix the comm system. It needs a reroute through the new power grid you installed.” She sat on the floor and started stripping wire coating and splicing them together. They could hear Wrecker outside as they worked, saying he'd left Gregor with Cid but she wasn't  happy about it. 

“Cid’s never happy…” Shiani muttered as the comm came to life for her. “Uh oh.”

“Uh oh? Why Uh oh?” Tech frowned, getting the other systems up. 

“I got the comm working, but Hunter just activated his locator.” She looked up anxiously. “It’s not on Daro.”

“Where, then?”

Her expression could only be described as haunted. “On Kamino, Tech.”

“... uh oh indeed.”

There was no turning back, though. Shiani got up and waved the rest of the squad in. “We’re operational now. Come in, we plan as we fly.”

Everyone got secure and Tech took off, setting the navi-computer. “The Empire is using Hunter’s locator on Kamino as some kind of trap, though I do not understand the purpose.” Tech muttered.

“No land. It's easy to trap us if they control where we dock.” Echo groaned. “How the hell are we going to pull this off?”

“I know a platform.” Omega said quietly. “It's hidden, and no one will be guarding it.”

Shiani looked at her, eyes widening. “You mean the platform? I know that one. It’s near Tipoca, I could follow the lights from my cave.”

Omega nodded. “I know how to activate it.”

Tech nodded. “Then I will need the coordinates.” He gestured for Omega to set it in the navi-computer, and she did with a grim determination in her eyes.

Shiani’s foot bounced on the floor, anxiety radiating off her. “You okay?” Wrecker asked.

“I didn’t want to go back to Kamino.” She whispered. “... things will be different. Tipoca isn’t your home anymore, we might have to approach in strange ways. But no matter what, you must not go in the water. You have to promise me.”

Echo frowned. “Why?” He was bracing to have to swim up a drain pipe to find Hunter. 

“Other sirens aren’t like me.” She whispered. “They will drown clones if they catch them. They hate everything the long necks make, even if it's good. You can't go in the open water. Only near the cities is safe. Only where the lights can see.”

Tech reached over and took her hand. “We will be careful.”

She nodded, still anxious. They had to do this without running into her people… “I’m marked for death too.” She touched the chains that hung from her arms quietly. “I’m not ready to die. I’m not done with stars, or with you..”

The cockpit went silent with the weight of the task ahead of them. Omega climbed into Shiani's lap again. “I never wanted to go back. Hunter promised I wouldn't have to.”

“You’re so brave, Baby Mega. And you love Hunter so much.” Shiani said softly.

Omega nodded and let herself get snuggled. “Do you hate Kamino?” She finally asked softly. 

“I hate to be trapped. There was no way out on Kamino, until my new family took me to the stars.” She squished a kiss to Omega's temple. “No cages for us anymore. Chainbreakers, all of us.”

Omega nodded, eyes serious. 

“I do not see the platform you indicated, Omega.” Tech frowned as the Marauder dipped low through the rainy skies of Kamino. There had been three large Imperial Venators hovering just within the atmosphere, but they hadn't behaved as if they'd noticed the Batch. He was confident they'd avoided detection, but Echo was more skeptical. 

“You have to get lower.” Omega stood up to get a better view. “Straight down from here.”

Shiani tapped the ship's scanner, displaying a large structure beneath the waves. “Here. This will help.”

“It is several meters down. We cannot land on that.” Tech frowned. 

“Get lower.” Omega urged. “Trust me.”

He sighed. “Very well.”

They lowered down inch by inch, until the landing gear was almost touching the water. Tech tried not to over-agonize about what Shiani had said throughout the slow landing. He was trusting a child, and if she was wrong they would sink in a tin can to the bottom of the sea full of hostile creatures willing to tear them limb from limb if they didn't drown first.

You must not go in the water.

Just as he was about to abort the attempt and risk landing somewhere else, the platform came rising out of the water to greet them. They settled on it, secure despite the pounding surf. Shiani looked at Omega. “I used to climb on this thing.” She murmured. “I got in so much trouble.”

“How are we going to get to the city if we can't swim it?” Echo frowned when they stepped out, everyone getting immediately soaked to the skin by the driving rain. 

“We'll take the tube.” Omega walked over to the middle of a round marking on the platform and stomped her foot. It opened up from below and a round tram car appeared. The group loaded inside and the lift took them down to a transparisteel railway tube. 

“I could never get close to this before.” Shiani murmured, uncomfortable. Going into the longneck city was the ultimate taboo… but it was for Hunter. For her family, Tech's family and Omega who was her best friend. “It’s electrified outside, I got  zapped a lot when scavenging.”

Tech nodded, glancing at his datapad. “This doesn't appear on any schematics.”

“Kaminoans keep a lot of secrets.” Echo said darkly. Rex had told him what happened to Fives while he was missing, and with the discovery of the inhibitor chips he'd put the pieces together. Kaminoan secrets had ruined more lives than he wanted to think about. And the frightened looking siren clinging to his brother was just another reminder. 

“Nala Se told me about this tunnel. It leads to her private research lab.” Omega explained. “Other ones like it are all over Kamino. 

Shiani visibly shuddered. “Lab.” She muttered with an edge of terror in her voice. Omega wrapped her hand into the siren's, rubbing her purple wrist with a little brown thumb. 

“You two okay?” Echo asked gently. 

“All that matters is that we find Hunter.” Omega whispered. 

Shiani swallowed hard. “Baby Mega is right.” She had to keep telling herself that, as the thought of a Kaminoan lab was the stuff of generational nightmares. But for her family, she'd face it even if her voice trembled. 

When they arrived in the laboratory, it wasn't bloodstained or dark like Shiani expected. It was neat and smelled of disinfectant, but she hung back suspiciously. “Hunter's comm is still active.” Tech muttered. “That is a good sign.”

“I'll get into the system and see where they're holding him.” Echo turned to a console to scomp in. 

Wrecker looked around curiously. “What's so special about this place anyway? Looks like every other lab on Kamino to me.”

“I was made here. And you all had your mutations enhanced.” Omega whispered. “You won't remember, but I do… you were all so little.”

Wrecker looked at Tech. “Really?”

“How could I possibly know that?” Tech sighed. “If it occurred when we were infants, I would have no memory.”

Shiani looked at Omega. “You remember the Batch as babies?” 

Omega nodded, scooting over to cuddle to the siren's side. “Then they sent them to be with the other clones.”

Shiani gently stroked the girl's hair. “Baby Mega really is the big sister, then. No wonder you love them so much.”

“All files have been wiped.” Echo called with a frustrated expression. “We'll have to try tracking the comm and hope Hunter is-” Before he could finish, Shiani pushed Omega into his arms and dove behind a console with an aggressive hiss and bared fangs. There was a struggle before she stood up, holding a droid in her coils. 

“Sneaky.” She snarled, threatening its wiring with her claws. 

“Please do not hurt me! I am a medical droid. I-”

“AZI!?” Omega squeaked. “What are you doing here?!”

“Omega? Oh, I am so relieved to see you are well!” The droid wiggled in Shiani's arms. 

“You know this droid?” Shiani frowned. 

“He's my friend, the one I told you about. Let him go.” Omega nodded, and the siren released him. AZI immediately darted over to Omega. “Now what are you doing down here, AZI?”

“I was hiding. Soldiers started deactivating droids and forcing key medical personnel into transports. Anyone who resisted was eliminated.” He explained. 

“Clone troopers?” Echo frowned. 

“No. All clone troopers were reassigned off world. These were the new TK troopers. There is only one clone still assigned to Kamino,  CT-9904.”

“Crosshair.” Wrecker looked hurt as he realized his brother was probably in on Hunter's kidnapping. 

Shaini clicked her fangs together before she closed her mouth. “Crosshair’s not himself. We rescue Hunter, and maybe we can rescue him too. The droid can help us.”

The droid hid behind Omega. “I am not equipped for combat, Miss sea monster.”

“I’m not a se- you know what, forget it. No time to argue.” She grumbled, looking at Tech. “Track the comm, please?”

 Tech nodded, trying his best not to smile. It was a dire situation and she was genuinely under duress, but her indignation was kind of cute. 

While he worked, AZI looked at Omega. “You must leave. It is too dangerous here, you could be seriously hurt.”

“We're not leaving without Hunter.” She said firmly. 

“His comm is pinging from the central cloning platform of the city.” Tech said after a moment. 

Omega nodded. “Let's go then. AZI, you're with us.”

Shiani pointed a claw at the droid. “What is your primary function?”

“To protect Omega and provide medical care in the event of emergency….” It stared at her nervously. 

“Good. You keep her safe or I will dismantle you for parts.” She huffed, following Tech out of the lab. If she focused on being mad at the droid or worried about Hunter, she could stifle the unrelenting terror this place sent through every cell in her being. 

Coming inside to fight for someone's life wasn't the same as secretly peeking through the windows or sneaking into open hangars. The fact that she was even here was undeniable proof she wasn't the siren who'd left Kamino months ago. No siren would do this… but a Bad Batcher would. 

“The comm coordinates appear to be coming from directly above us.” Tech finally said. “The training arena.”

“We'll be sitting ducks for a sniper like Crosshair if we go through the main door.” Echo countered.

“Then we will take the lift.” Tech pointed up. “The element of surprise should be enough to get the upper hand.”

Echo sighed and looked at Omega. “You and Shiani stay here. If things get bad, I'll contact you with a beacon.” He looked at Shiani. “You can get her back to the ship through the lab and contact Rex.”

Shiani just looked at Tech, who gave her an encouraging smile. “I have no doubt of your capabilities, cyar'ika.”

She watched the three clones get into the lift and ascend, tapping her foot and groaning suddenly. “They forgot crucial information. Their plan won't work, it’s up to us now.” She grumbled. 

“How do you know?” Omega frowned. 

“Crosshair predicted the Batch on Bracca, and didn't fall for diversion on Ryloth. He knows them too well. The only reason we escaped is things he can't predict: Me getting Echo to collapse the weapons’ deck, or the Syndulla family knowing Ryloth better than him. He’s gonna know they would use the lift. They’ll come up into an ambush.” Shiani gritted her teeth. “I love Tech, but he forgets even genius can be wrong.”

Omega's comm device blinked as Echo set off his distress beacon. “You called it. What do we do now?”

“CT-1409 said to retreat to the ship you arrived in.” AZI nervously pointed out. 

“Not gonna leave them. Right Baby Mega?” Shiani started searching the room. There had to be something they could use…

“Right.” Omega nodded. “Hey, what about the training droids?”

Shiani looked at the rows and rows of droids hanging dormant. They wouldn't differentiate between Imperial and clone, but they'd make one hell of a distraction. “Good plan. Set them for live rounds. They did they same thing before Onderan, Tech told me. Imperial troopers aren’t as good as clones, droids might kill them.”

AZI made a pitiful noise. “You frighten me. Omega, this is not an appropriate friend for you.”

Omega just nodded grimly at the siren, and they darted opposite directions to start unleashing the droids. AZI was helping the little blonde reluctantly when Shiani froze. “Someone’s coming. Keep working.” She jumped up and suction cupped herself to the ceiling, hanging upside down as a trooper in black armor walked in.  

“Commander, I found the kid.”

“Put her in a shuttle off world.” The slink of Crosshair’s voice, which she'd only heard when he was threatening to kill her the last time she'd been on Kamino, was unsettling.

She twisted around so her feet touched the top of a storage unit and kicked it over on top of the trooper, knocking them flat. “Enough droids now. We’ve gotta go.” Landing delicately on her feet, Shiani held a hand out to Omega. “That trooper came from this way. The arena access must be there.”

They took off with AZI right behind them, coming through the front doors to absolute chaos as droids came from all directions. “I think you may have activated to many droids.” AZI quipped.

“I can see that.” Omega lined up a target with her bow and Shiani pulled out her pistol. 

“No time to regret.” Shiani shrugged, shooting a droid.

“Crosshair’s hitting Hunter!” Omega yelped.

Shiani glanced down as the sergeant grabbed his brother's arm and threw him over his shoulder. Hunter was more suited to close combat, but it was evident the entire thing was a grudge match between brothers. “Hunter’s hitting back. They’re fine. Cover me.”

Omega shot a droid as the siren dove into the fight, up close and personal where she was better equipped to fight. “Hello Tech.” She chirped as she popped up next to him and kicked a droid away from him.

“Hello, cyar'ika. What are you doing here? We told you to evacuate.” Tech ducked as she used one droid as a projectile, launching it with her tentacles.

“We had a better idea.” She grinned. “Cover your ears.”

Everyone but Crosshair slapped their hands over their ears, and Shiani let out a scream that shook the droids apart and sent the sniper flying. 

“Sorry!” She squeaked apologetically. “You okay, Crosshair?”

He groaned and got upright, leaning on his rifle for a moment. Before anyone could really process it, he turned and shot a droid, fighting with them now.  Hunter recovered his weapons as well, and the brothers tucked into a familiar formation. 

It took a few minutes to fully subdue the droids before Omega ran over to them. The sergeant was holding a pistol, staring at the now outnumbered sniper. “Come with us. We can help you get the chip out of your head.”

“I already had my chip removed, a long time ago.” Crosshair said coldly. 

“What? When?” Hunter's eyes widened. 

“Does it matter?” The sniper drawled.

Hunter flicked the stun setting on his pistol faster than Crosshair could get his gun up, taking him down in a pulse of blue light. “Pick him up, Wrecker. Crosshair’s coming with us.”

Omega's arms wrapped around Hunter's waist and he smiled faintly. “I promised you'd never have to come back here. I'm sorry.”

“You did it for me.” She looked up, eyes bright. “Everyone needs someone to come looking for them when they're lost.”

Shiani gave a proud nod. Wrecker threw Crosshair over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and they headed hurriedly out of the training arena. 

Tech glanced at his datapad. “Three Venators are closing in on the city.”

“Facility’s empty, ships coming down…” Shiani's skin turned pale. “The Empire is going to destroy Tipoca.”

“That is likely.” Tech nodded. 

“With us in it.” Echo blanched. 

“Run. Clones don't breathe water.” Shiani shoved them hurriedly down the hall. If those Venators opened fire, they'd drown or be killed by debris. She'd lose her family, and be alone in the wreckage that her people would eventually come to investigate when the lights went out. 

She'd die in the clone's tomb.

[riding-palominos-every-day]

May I hear your thoughts on Specs and/or Davey and/or Les? (Sorry I keep sending you so many characters at a time)

Please don't be sorry the more characters you send the more I get to ramble kjkdsdjk

(as per usual I splice all the canons together it's more fun that way lol)

Under the cut bc these will probably get long-

Specs

According to his trading card, Specs wants to create an alternative to glasses and has an active interest in helping other visually-impaired newsies.

As a result, he used to be closer with Blink. Back when Blink could still see a little out of his bad eye, he was interested in Specs' ideas for how to help guys see better. Then he lost sight in the bad eye completely and gave up on the idea. Specs still hopes someday he can find a way to restore Blink's vision.

He's the eyes and ears of the whole lodging house. Everyone goes to him when they need someone to confide in, he knows everyone's hiding spots and safe places.

He's also one of the best sellers, likely because he actively enjoys his job. He's taught more newsies how to sell than even Race or Jack (selling with Jack is "the chance of a lifetime" after all, he likely doesn't actually teach a lot of the new guys).

Davey

Being an older brother has put him in a good position to support the newsies. He is not a "mom friend" like some fans say, this guy is a big brother.

He and Les eventually go back to school, but Davey keeps a pretty packed schedule. He helps out with union stuff, he sells papers in the evenings, and on the weekends he offers lessons to the newsies. Some guys don't want to learn, too embarrassed to have how little they know revealed, but Davey's a patient teacher. He lets Finch read the same sentence over and over until he's finally managed to read it from start to finish. He uses old newspapers to explain history in a way Mush can understand. He lets Elmer teach him maths because how on Earth did that kid learn long division with no formal education-

Les

Gotta confess I don't actually think about Les much, so not many thoughts.

I do think he tries to be more like the older boys. Some of the boys like Romeo and Elmer are only a year or two older than him, but he skips over them to try and hang out with the 15+ boys.

He starts to change his mind when he and Davey stay at the lodging house one night. At first he's disappointed to be stuck in the younger boys' room, it makes him feel like a little kid. But laying in the dark, listening to Elmer talking in Polish in his sleep and Finch tossing and turning in his bunk...

Les wonders if maybe he's lucky to still feel like a kid. Most of the boys in the room had to grow up too fast. Faster than he's had to.

Romeo's only eleven, but the way he talks about political corruption he sounds grown up. Tommy Boy knows far too much about the local gangs to not have had experience with them.

So Les resolves to try harder to be friends with the younger boys. Maybe a new playmate will let them feel like kids again.

[unseelie-grimalkin]

Because you bully him so often, please say some nice things about the Master of Secrets. 🤭

OH, THIS IS EASY ACTUALLY

I BULLY HIM BECAUSE I LIKE HIM!

This isn't grade school sort of "haha I'm pulling your hair because I have a crush on you", this is very much "I want to understand you from every angle and faucet, you are fascinating to me, what is your DEAL"

Like okay. Flannán? To me, he is very much a very comfortable coat, I've had this coat for years, and it keeps me warm no matter what, I can always rely on this coat, Flannán mac Lugh is a character archetype I know and love dearly. I may not know every detail about him, but I know enough that is comfortable and it brings me back to him constantly. I know him in a way that feels intimate, even without all the details in place.

Keagan? I know this guy too. He's Jumin Han spliced with David Xanatos (which, yes, this specific association, with Xanatos, is one of the highest compliments I can give Keagan, dear anon, because it's David Motherfucking Xanatos) by way of Mister Miracle (2017) (warning: suicide discussion, gore, blood, unreality) in that Keagan has a lot of potentials, as a narrative arc, to go into a lot of fascinating and phenomenal questions. And, in spite of all of this familiarity, in seeing his face in different people, in seeing different I know completely people in him...I don't actually fully know him in a way that feels...complete.

Hence why I constantly propose putting him in numerous different scenarios that are tortuous for him, but also why I pair him with an MC who is, potentially, exactly what he needs: I want to unlock the puzzle box. Because I do like him.

[wytfut]

Work Ethic

Way back in the old timey days, when I first started out with Lincoln Hoot and Hollar... Being a young man with long hair...

I’m sure I was criticized regularly behind my back on the job. Long hair was still taboo, especially in this kind of work environment, and my fellow employees with flat tops and crew cuts....   this would be the tail end of this type of critique. After I started lots of “long hairs” came to the phone company. And to top it all off, absolutely no skills for this job.

I had zero experience in much of nothing. No idea what work ethic was. My folks in my opinion were easy to roll over on my wants and needs. Yeah, I was a selfish lil bastard... and didn’t even know I was doing it. Pretty much stumbled around in life completely out of reality of what was going on. I still to this day kick myself fairly regularly when I miss obvious situations. I am not captain obvious.

But to be real... all types of work with physical labor, does take skill. A simple shovel is a worthless tool in the hands of an amateur. A 2 pound hammer becomes dangerous. And hand drills become weapons. Climbing a pole was a terrifying thought.  A guy just doesn’t pick this stuff up his first time, and if he isn’t paying attention (me) it’ll be a very big learning curve. Before the phone company, I had done nothing, as I was sheltered from anything hurtful or dangerous.

Very hard to believe knowing all of this that I made it 30+ years there. 

My first day at the phone company, I was still under the impression I was going to be a mechanic (job I applied for). Quite the mental shock when hauled out to a job site, and I ended up rolling up “sod” all day, in a school yard.

Being a “long hair” and zero experience, I’m sure now the words were flowing from my fellow workers.

This line of work was hard physical labor. Much of it I couldn’t accomplish... mostly because I didn’t know how to do it let alone the strength of a 135 pound white kid. It had to get on everyones nerves. And I was far from a common sense kind of guy to be able to figure this out quickly. 

My first couple of years at the phone company, I was likely guy that none of the crews wanted. If I were to work on a crew, it most likely meant more work for everyone else, as I didn’t know NOTHING.

Thank goodness I was ignorant of my surroundings, and just stumbled thru it all, not knowing how it all really worked. Because of my oblivious ignorance, it didn’t bear down on my self esteem, .. um depression?

Must have been part of growing up... I don’t know when it happened, but from my memory, it wasn’t until the early 80′s that I was actually becoming accomplished with real skills. I was becoming a asset to the crews I was working with.

By the time I retired, new names were coming my way. Dinosaur, old school, old guard, etc. ...   you can decide whether these titles were compliments or not.

In the 90′s I became the Climbing school school instructor. I had some great assistants. I built the curriculum, and the actual physical structures, with help. Doug Schaefer, a fellow old school guy, and Ryan Koch a new employee fresh out of Norfolk linesman school. I don’t know how I got this position, but maybe Mike Michel thought I had the right temperament for it. And knew I’d do my very best at making it work to everyones benefit. I like to think that.

In this period at the phone company,  part of becoming a part of the construction dept. at LTT, you had to “experience and partake” in all forms of work, for a couple of months. And part of that, was working on the Aerial crew (climbing). 

We had a large run of new young guys with no experience with this type of work.... physical labor.

By this time I was was totally enjoying my career, well experienced, highly skilled in all the construction skills, with exception to splicing.

I never did understand the interest in that line of work, and I was never any good at it. Why would I want to do that, when I’m in excellent physical condition, especially for 45+ years old. I could outwork/climb all the new young guys easily.

Comments were in hushed tones “he climbs poles effortlessly, while my Dad the same age, can barely get out of his chair”. “how does he do that???”  “I can’t keep up with him” etc. etc. etc. 

As an instructor, and working side by side with these new guys on jobsites... I witnessed a few things that I still think about to this day.

Some of these guys wanted nothing to do with physical labor. Especially if they could get the very same money sitting on their butts splicing wires all day. 

And a lot of these very same guys had zero experience... just like me 20 some years before.  No skills. Don’t know how to “jump in and help”. DON’T KNOW THAT THEY DON’T KNOW. And there they were.. 

But there were a few, that trickled thru, with amazing natural skills, that adapted so quickly.....   made my head swim. Maybe their ethic was developed thru genes? Family events? 

Its very easy for an old guy my age and others to GROUP the whole age group as being “worthless” “no work ethic” “idiots” etc. etc. 

Not really sure where to take these examples of my life time. Maybe to explain that there are thru time always unexperienced guys. But as an old guy it appears there are more now than then? Scares me in the future. We will always need people with those skills.  

Today, I still chuckle when I see someone younger than me grab a shovel, with absolutely no idea what they are doing. Grab a hammer, and I flinch. 

[justbadcompass31]

The Bunker initiative: briefing

“Hel- Hell- Hello future friends and welcome to your new life as a member of bunker-”, the endlessly cheery voice cuts and is quickly replaced with that of a tired office worker saying the numbers “2” then “7”, amateurishly spliced together.

“Now I understand you probably have a lot of questions, “Who are you ?”, “How did I get here?”, “Where is my family ?”and other unimportant queries. You’ll be glad to hear that I’m here in order to tell you fine folk the answers to all of your questions, as long as they just so happen to be the one’s we thought you'd’ ask” the voice once again cuts and a sound like the laughing and hollering of a happy crowd echoes from the tired old speakers. It’s unnerving, it didn’t sound like a joke when you heard it. None of this sounded particularly funny.

“Starting from the top we’ve got “where am I”, well I've already answered that at the start of this, you have the pleasure of being a member of bunker [2-7] !” Another cut and this time the voice is switched out for the clapping of many people, wonder if those were the same people who were laughing earlier. “Aren’t you lucky ! Of course I’m sure you want more than that so I’ll do my best to give you a quick rundown of your new forever home.”

“Bunker [2-7] is one of a series of bunkers created and placed tens of kilometres under the earth as part of the ever so creatively named Bunker Initiative, this initiative was put forward by your government to preserve those it considered to be stellar examples of humanity in case of the worst. Which I’m sure you're keenly aware is a real possibility with the pandemic and the bombing and the rioting and looting and OH the list just goes on doesn’t it ! So depressing. But don’t be sad now you people hearing this are ever so lucky after all. Only a mere 10,000 people total get to be a part of this initiative, the bright among you will know this is less than 0.01% of our great nation's population! Of course we would have liked to save everyone but in times like this it's best to be pragmatic.”

“I’m sure many of you noticed me saying forever home back there and that's right! This bunker is now your forever home!” This announcement was followed with yet more clapping, and a small amount of cheering could be heard in the distance. “Now I’m sure this sounds scary to many of you, change often is after all, but you will soon see this is a good change. In this bunker your every need will be accounted for, for food we’ve got hydroponic gardens, let's say you’re more preferential to your meat, don’t worry ! We can grow that. There are of course room’s for you to stay, in fact each of you has your own personal room just for yourself, with this housing crisis that’s probably already a marked improvement for most of you”. Another attempt at a joke and another batch of laughter came pouring out those speakers so suddenly it was as if a dam had burst. The same laughter with- yep, that one random guy whistling right there towards the end. The laughter ended as suddenly as it started. “I’m sure some of you are sitting there wondering how this terminal is being powered and for that my friend we’ve gone NUCLEAR.” It was said like a gameshow host announcing the prize. Except the prize was the ability to use a lightbulb. “We even have a digital library on which every single piece of literature (that is of importance)” , this was said very quickly, like a child telling a secret,  “has been downloaded. There are of course other faculties included in this fine establishment but you will get to see those as part of your induction and I unfortunately don’t have time to go over all of them here.”

“You see we don’t know how long this crisis upstairs is going to last, could be a few years or it could be centuries. Could easily be long enough that you folks will never see the sun again!” The laugh track returned, it only became more unnerving when you realised you were listening to the laughter of dead men. “As such we want to make sure that you folk have the ability to educate the next generation, not only on how to operate and maintain this bunker but also how to rebuild a civilization. We want to make sure that when this whole mess clears up, whoever is living in this bunker is in the position to rebuild the world.”

“For our next question we’ve got “How did I get here”, another excellent question, and luckily quite easy to answer. I’m sure you will all remember going about your daily routine as you normally would and taking a glass of water last night and noticing you suddenly feel very tired. That is how you got here! Unfortunately due to the importance of these bunkers to the future of humanity we cannot leak their exact location or the details of how one enters these facilities. All you really need to know is your here now, and even if, for some strange reason, you decided you wanted to leave well I’m afraid to say that simply is not possible without the consent of the captain of this bunker,” The voice cut and the familiar tired office worker replaced it, lazily it said “Allen Clark”, the cheery voice rapidly overthrew this pretender “who I’m sure you’ll become familiar with soon enough. The captain will only open this bunker once it is presumed that the worst is over and it is safe for humans to venture forth once more unto the earth”.

“Now I’m afraid to say I only have the time to answer one more question, so I’m going to tell you lovely people why you have the luck you do and were chosen to be a member of this bunker. As I’m sure you're keenly aware, your government collects and processes a lot of data about you. You see we’ve been planning this project for years cause that's just how much we care about you”. A new sound this time, a condescending “awww” such as one that may be produced by a person who has seen a kitten. “And as part of this preparation we have gone through our data on every single person in this fine country based on things such as your education, jobs, age, and so on. We have chosen those who are capable and qualified to operate and maintain the essential machinery of this facility, as well as doctors to keep all you fine folk healthy and teachers in order to teach the next generation we know you will produce. Apart from them we have also got your captain”, the same tired voice returned for their finale, and said his line with the same enthusiasm he had done previously, “Allen Clark”. “As well as guards in order to make sure none of you get a bit cheeky and start doing anything you shouldn’t. Now I’m afraid that’s all the time I have, any further questions can be directed to your captain who should be entering nnnnnnow, so I will hand this over to him. Thank you and goodbye”, one last applause played across the speaker and was then cut short as it sparked against the wall and  seemed to finally give in.

Tara stood there for a moment processing the information he had heard. He had pressed the button out of curiosity and it had given him an answer. Just to a question he hadn’t had. He had wondered if this place was somehow still receiving power and it was. That means there was probably some seriously valuable stuff in there. You heard stories about Scav’s who had made their fortunes from finding bunkers like this,  though eyeing the rubble that laid in the place that was probably once a doorway he came to the conclusion that he wouldn’t be one of them. At least not today. Now he was just wondering what could have possibly happened to this place that was meant to survive the apocalypse, other people had survived and they weren’t from bunkers. So what had gone wrong here ? He stared at the walls around him, nothing more than cold, boring, crumbling white concrete on every side. He chuckled to himself, maybe boredom had killed this place. The speaker hadn’t exactly made this place seem appealing. Or at least he couldn’t imagine living in a place like this for his whole life. “Meh '', he shrugged, it was probably impossible to find out what had happened to this place. At least for him. So he returned to the task at hand, ransacking what was for all intents and purposes, a graveyard. “That speakers probably worth something”.

[thewadapan]

Not to place judgement on the lady I'm about to talk about by talking about her in a post tagged "bad mothers"—I didn't know her, and never really got the story—but a friend of mine and his two younger siblings very suddenly had to deal with their mother basically wanting nothing to do with the family. Which led to a lot of bouncing between various relatives' houses, strained phone calls, unanswered questions, and raw anger.

The game I would choose is Call of Duty. Specifically, the nazi zombies game mode, though I'd probably file the trademarks off everything. I have this image of the mum killing these undead nazis over and over, receiving instructions from a young man on the intercom who doesn't seem to like her but definitely seems to need her.

In zombies, no space ever stays safe for long, no matter how much you barricade the windows and make it feel like a home. It's just constant fighting, over nothing, it wears you down. You either escape or die.

I think it could be an interesting role reversal. The mother finds herself under total surveillance from this disembodied voice, ordered this way and that. But at the same time, it also highlights the feelings they have in common: that feeling of being trapped, under seige.

The setting of nazi zombies also gives a clear diegetic explanation for the isekai: it's a nazi experiment to try and break into another dimension, gone wrong! The mother's shitty one-bedroom flat is transported across universes, spliced into the facility. Perhaps there's a tragicomic beat along the lines of, "they were trying to summon a monster, you see". This also gives a clear objective: repair the machine, re-open a portal back home. Perhaps there's a twist via the in-game lore, where it turns out the person she's talking to is a son, or a father, or something with relation to her or someone who died in the experiment that brought her there.

My friend's little sister was much younger than us; I never knew her as a person, and I remember she was kind of caught between the parents a lot of the time. I think I would probably give the mother in this story three kids: a teen old enough to talk to her as an adult, a younger boy, and a four-year-old girl. They embody these three seperate stages of development and collectively they allow us to understand what she's like as a mother throughout their whole childhoods. In-game, I think there needs to be a fucked up baby: you know, there's always a fucked up baby in these things, a horrible thing in a jar with glowing zombie eyes and magic powers. This baby ends up being a mcguffin, something people are fighting over, and the mother finds this familiar.

At the end of the story, the emotional catharsis would be that the disembodied-voice character—the narrative-surrogate eldest son—has to make some kind of sacrifice: he needs to stay in a certain room to hold a switch or whatever. The mother is faced with the prospect of abandoning him. Perhaps by this point, she regrets leaving her family, and wants to return to them, but in doing so, is forced to abandon someone anew. Or perhaps she decides that door is closed, but that it's not too late to save this guy in the game.

I think litRPGs typically run longer than this story has the scope to be. The constrained setting and non-verbal enemies limit how much can happen before things get repetitive. But as noted in the original post, the very premise is lacking a target demographic; there isn't a cohort of single-mother webfic-reader shooter-fans who'd read this one week after week. It'd be better-suited to a short story or novella, something that doesn't demand as much from the reader, so people can inhabit this perspective for a short time without the gimmick wearing thin.

Most of all, for me, the impact of this pitch is that initial feeling of revulsion, this total lack of understanding, felt towards the child: why do you play this game, all day, shooting monsters on a screen? All that pain, all those years of my life... to make you?

I think to bridge that divide, in the course of the story, and end it in a place of love, after all the violence, is something that would move me.

Pitchposting: a wayward mother's litrpg

[cw: child abandonment, bad mothers]

I came up with this idea while trying to describe a non-standard litrpg that wouldn't sell, and it gripped me enough that I've been thinking about it. Now's the time to set that idea free.

Our protagonist is a woman in her thirties or maybe forties. She's divorced with two children, but she left the children with their father. She's got all kinds of issues, and felt trapped in the marriage and her life, and overwhelmed by taking care of the kids what felt like day in and day out. I don't think the age of her children really matters that much, but they need to be old enough to play videogames.

She gets isekaied into the world of a videogame that her children most loved, the one that they had been talking to her about for years, the source of their obsession. She gets a videogame interface.

Let's start with what I find compelling about the premise: the litRPG isekai stuff is being used to examine a relationship between a mother and her child(ren). We can have some power fantasy, as a treat, but mostly we have this very firm and unique lens through which to look at the world, and we have things that we surely must want to confront, revelations about motherhood and about this specific character, whoever she ends up being. In theory, the thing we're moving toward is a synthesis where to have excised the tension.

So, some questions that pop out to me:

How many children does this woman have? I don't know that it matters all that much, but where you have multiple characters who fulfil the same role, it's almost always better to condense them down. The flip side to this is there's maybe less to explore, and I think there's a different tenor to a single child and what we must assume is true of the character.

Does it have to be a woman? Is there not as much meat on the bone if it's a father who left his children? I think that this could also work, certainly, the reason it was initially a mother instead of a father was that I was trying to pick a protagonist that would lose as much RoyalRoad audience as quickly as possible while still being technically in the litRPG genre. (There are obviously different stereotypes about men and women. I kind of think the central idea of "your mom gets isekaied into that game you were obsessed with and she never really understood" probably hits right for more people, but I don't know.)

What kind of game? Alright, yeah, fair. The main point of the idea is that it's a game the mother is only passingly familiar with. Maybe she went so far as to throw a themed birthday party at one point, but she does not understand it, and maybe over the course of the story, gradually comes to understand (though really, understanding her child(ren) through the game is the main point). I'm thinking some kind of JRPG. Definitely better if it's a game with a story.

Should this game be real? Another interesting question! If the game is a real game, say FF7, then we can assume that the reader knows things, and there can be dramatic irony. If we invent a game, then we have a lot more control over what the game is, and can stay in the mother character's head better as we're in mutual ignorance.

Okay, I think those are all the most salient questions, time to stop workshopping this. I have more ideas than I have time to write novels. Thanks @thewadapan for the idea of pitchposting.

[house-of-slayterr]

I’m back on my…

✨Twilight Vampire Bullshit✨

Cw: Morbius Spoilers

Emmet starred at the human before him, narrowing his eyes and raising a brow. This went on for several minutes before any of the other vampires decided to speak up. It was a simple spring morning in the Cullen house, school was out for spring break so most of the other people were out of town. But the Cullens stayed home, enjoying the company of the only human Rosalie tolerated.

“Babe, what are you doing?” Rosalie asked, crossing the room to join Emmet and sit at his side.

Before Emmet could speak however, Edward cut him off.

“He’s trying to read their mind. Let me tell you brother, that’s not something you actually want to do.” Edward smirked, assumant present in his tone.

“But that’s the thing, they’re always thinking! How do you have so many thoughts? What are you planning? Tell me mortal!” Emmet bellowed.

You finally became aware of the fact that all eye in the room where now on you. You were a lone human in a house full of vampires, and they were all starring at you. But you couldn’t tell them what you were thinking, it was stupid, you’re thoughts were never truly important. Not when you felt relaxed and safe anyways.

“What have we told you about that nickname Emmet?” Esme warned her son.

“But they like it. Tell her.”

You shrugged.

“I’m actually quite curious too. You’ve actually managed to make Edward feel something other than his seemingly endless teen angst. And don’t even get me started on the emotions you’re feeling right now.” Jasper smirked.

You let out a deep sigh.

“I don’t think I will actually, I value what you guys think of me and I don’t wanna ruin that.”

“My dear, we could never think any less of you.” Esme cooed.

“Yes, and my children are stubborn, they won’t stop bothering you until you tell them. Not sure where they got that quality from” Carlisle sent a playful glare to his coven.

“Morbius” you muttered under your breath.

You knew they had heard it, but it was evident they didn’t understand. But you couldn’t contain your excitement anymore.

“After 5 years of waiting I finally got to see a Morbius in theatre last night! And let me tell you this man is the finest vampire I’ve ever seen-“

You slapped a hand over your mouth after realising what you just said.

“You went to see a vampire movie…” Emmet started. “Without me?!?”

“I’m sorry Em, you were busy. Besides I’m pretty sure you and Rose were having quite a bit of your own fun last night anyways. Let me have this.”

“You watch vampire movies with them?” Edward asked, bewildered.

“Why are you so surprised, you’ve know him for how long? Does anything Emmet does really shock you all that much anymore? Besides it’s no weirder than me watching movies about other humans.”

“The inaccuracy makes it more fun.” Emmet shrugged, smiling at you. “Now tell me about this Morbius you traitor!”

“Alright so he’s like this doctors who’s dying of an incurable disease right? And he splices his DNA with that of a vampire bat!”

“That’s not factually accurate.” Carlisle interrupted.

“It’s a super hero movie? Are you expecting accuracy? They have to embellish things to fit their own personal narrative ok.”

“Ok so I’m assuming he’s succeful?” Rosalie asks, now curious.

It still surprised the others when she was soft with you, or engaged in conversations she’s typically find grating or useless. But she loved to listen to you talk, didn’t really matter what it was about.

“Yes, it didn’t go as expected. He was hoping to just activate the anticoagulants from the bat DNa to help cure and possibly even reverse his blood condition. But because his experiment was kind of unethical-“

“And most likely illegall” Carlisle chimed in once more.

You didn’t mind when he did this, I meant he was listening.

“You hang out with Bella’s Dad far too much…”

Carlisle finally glanced up from his book to look at you. He rolled his eyes when you smirked at him.

“Let her finish her story My Love” Esme pleaded with her mate.

He simply glanced back down at his book, prompting you to continue.

“So he had to perform the experiment on himself obviously, because you can’t be double illegal and perform human experiments on another human. like what if they died, that would make you a killer.”

“Didn’t you say he becomes a vampire because of this though?” Jasper piped in.

“Yes, I’m getting to that. But being a vampire murder and a human murderer are two different things. Different species, different rules. So anyways he preforms this experiment on a cargo ship in the middle of the ocean right, and he’s not expecting to gain the blood thirsty aspect of the bats from this universe. So he blacks out and kills all the mercenaries on this ship and then jumps off.”

“Why would he jump off the boat?” Alive finally spoke up.

“Because my sweet Alice, he didn’t want to kill the last person on the boat. The girl that helped him transform. He’s had a crush on her since like college.”

“Awww that’s so sweet of him.”

“I know right. Anyways fast forward a bit, he gets arrest as the “vampire murderer” lame, I know. And his best friend who’s like a billionaire gets into the prison and gives him blood so he’s strong enough to get out. Said best friend also took the serum and is now a vampire and has been framing Morbius for murders like the whole week right.”

“So the best friend had the same blood condition?” Jasper asked.

“Precisely! But basically to wrap it up, Morbius makes something that can kill the both of them, cause he knows he can’t live off synthetic blood forever, and he manges to kill his best friend right? But bam it’s the end of the movie and he somehow turned his lady friend, but he has no idea she’s alive and he just runs off so he won’t get arrested again. Can’t prove he didn’t commit the murders since the person who did became a vampire because of him.”

“Interesting, you’re leaving out all the details you’re excited about.” Edward jeered.

“Stay out of my head lover boy! And your parents are here, not gonna say that in front of them.”

Carlisle cleared his throat and Esme giggled, leaning into him.

“So what makes this vamp so hot?”

You pulled out a picture of him, passing it around.

The reactions varied throughout the room. And you sighed in content when the phone got back to you.

“Why does he look like that?” Edward asked

“We’ll he’s a vampire because of Bat DNA genius, so he had other bat like features and abilities. God look at those teeth.” You complimented.

“He looks like a piranha” Emmet declared.

“We’ll this piranha can eat me any day.”

You looked around the room, realising you said it out loud. Emmet was howling and Alice and Rose were snickering under their breaths. Edward looked horrified and you could see the disappointment on Carlisle’s face.

“What, his bite alone isn’t confirmed to turn anyone, so like he could just bite me and I could move on with my life. I’d be into it.”

“You’re hopeless” Jasper said, patting you on the back.

“No I think the word you’re looking for is horny”

An: this is so bad. But I genuinely really liked Morbius. Wasn’t much of a storyline but I would love to see more of him! I love a good vampire movie 🥰

[fuck-customers]

Highlight of the weekend was the following exchange — the gravity/absurdity of which may not be readily apparent based on the reactions of non-retail workers/non-car acquainted people I’ve told.

I work for a big blue tech store and a young family (wife/husband/toddler) walk in: wife is holding a remote start she purchased from us and said she had questions about it. Figuring she was second guessing this particular model or had follow-up questions about it or other options, I pair her with a guy in the car tech department. He greets her and asks her what he can help with:

“Yeah, how do I install this?”

For those who may ask why this isn’t a reasonably request, the absurdity isn’t in the potential rudeness of their asking us how to install it when they bought it from us, in an attempt to circumvent paying for installation — but in the fact that if you have to ASK how to do this to your car, you should NOT be attempting to do it!

1. Remote starts take hours to completely install and are very intricate and complex systems involving wire splicing/cutting/etc. at any point the untrained bonehead can ruin vital wiring in their car, electrocute themselves, or damage important and expensive components.

2. Our technicians and literally any other (professional) installer has undergone extensive training to perform this kind of work and know what they’re doing. A YouTube tutorial isn’t the way to go, ma’am, and we aren’t willing to make ourselves liable giving you any kind of advice beyond scheduling installation with us (which bundles down to essentially free when you purchase the required parts). If you’ve never done it before, now isn’t the time to throw yourself in the deep end and give it a try when your car is on the line.

I respect the question was likely innocent but Jesus, I doubt you can even change a tire, because if you had even a novice understanding of cars you’d know that you don’t fuck with the Thing if you don’t know what you’re doing. Or at least you’d know when things were out of your pay grade.

A similar scenario may be something like buying jewelry from a piercing studio/tattoo parlor than asking the staff how to pierce yourself. While less dangerous, some things should very clearly be left in the hands of professionals if you want it done right, safely, and quickly.

[masterjedilenawrites]

I’m not good at making requests, so forgive me if anything come out wrong.

But, could you do something were reader and Tech are fixing some eletronics and listening to cientific things, and start talking about a wrong thing people said there, so they get distracted and when realize, they’re in to a awkward position (like him btween her legs or sth like that)

I love your writing and thanks (: <3

Omg I've been so soft for Tech lately and this prompt is perfect 💚 I hope this is what you were looking for, I really enjoyed writing it!

Tech x reader | 2k words

...making bacta the most important scientific achievement in history...

"Dank farrik," Tech huffed beside you.

You came out of your daze at the sudden exclamation and looked at your friend with concern, trying to quickly figure out what had gone wrong. You were helping him with a project, though what it was exactly you weren't completely certain of. All you knew was it involved digging into the walls of the ship and untangling a lot of wires. You'd been instructed to hold onto several of them, keeping them pulled taught out of the wall so Tech could fiddle with the other ends, and the dullness of the task had caused your mind to wander.

"What's wrong?" you asked, doubtful you'd understand any explanation, but wanting to be sure you hadn't done anything to mess up his progress.

He waved a hand at you dismissively, not pulling his attention away from the work in front of him. "Just the radio," he mumbled.

You hadn't been paying attention; it had only been turned on as background noise to keep you from going insane with boredom. And since it was tuned into some kind of scientific news frequency, you didn't really understand much of what was being said anyway.

...with the most influential application simply being in the field of medicine, providing us higher life forms with a versatile tool in maintaining our quality of life, and potentially even prolonging it...

Tech huffed again. Scoffed. Your mouth quirked at how upset he was getting. It was kind of cute.

But, you had to debate whether engaging with his frustration would be worth it. He had only recently calmed down from his outburst earlier that day, the only time you had ever seen him genuinely upset. Wrecker had accidentally knocked over a piece of machinery that was... well, something very important, apparently. No one was too sure. But Tech had spent most of the week carefully arranging its parts just-so, so that when all his hard work went crashing onto the floor, his breathing had suddenly resembled that of a charging Nexu. He'd drawn himself up, trying to match his brother's height, and ordered the poor guy to never step foot in this part of the ship again. The other Batchers had tried to defend him and were subsequently banned as well.

That left you as the only option for help.

Maybe that meant he wouldn't kick you out for debating him....

"Sounds like they're saying some pretty reasonable things. Am I missing something?"

Tech's fingers, which had been deftly working through the wires before him, clipping some and splicing others, finally froze. The clone's face tilted over to you, his eyes looking a little too judgmental through those glasses for your liking.

"You think bacta is the most important scientific achievement?" he asked. You didn't like his tone, either.

You scrunched your mouth in thought, actually giving the question serious consideration. While you mulled it over, Tech stood up from his hunched position in the wall and started pulling on some of the wires, unraveling them from their tangled mess.

"Yeah," you finally decided. "I think medicine in general is pretty important. And bacta specifically is the strongest known substance to deliver fast and effective healing."

Tech was mostly focused on the wires, but he spared you a glance.

"And treating symptoms is the most important thing for humanity? Here, hold this." He added another wire for you to hold in your hands.

You knew it was a loaded question so you chose to answer it with one of your own. "Well if it's not bacta or medicine, then what would it be?"

"Electricity," he said quickly and assertively, as if it was the most obvious thing in the galaxy. He continued to focus more on his work and you were annoyed he didn't seem to want to offer up an explanation to his opinion, despite having made you give one. He'd finally untangled the wires and was back to leaning into the cavern in the wall and setting them into their proper places.

"Why electricity?" You hated how dumb your question sounded; obviously you understood the concept and understood its importance. You just really wanted to challenge him to give you some explanations.

"For one, most medicines would not be able to be mass-produced were it not for the electrically-run vats in which they are made." He held his hand out behind him and made a grabbing motion. "Blue, please."

You sorted out the blue wire and passed it over.

"For another," he continued, his voice sounding distant as he leaned further away into the wall, "we must ask what constitutes a quote-unquote important achievement. For example, is an achievement worthy of the title simply because it improves our quality of life? Green, please."

You handed over the corresponding wire. "I'd say it's more about preserving life. Even outside of war, there's enough injury and illness that would end life were it not for medicine to heal them."

"Ah, but in that same reasoning, electricity also sustains life. It powers sources of light and warmth, which can also provide a means of boiling water and cooking food. All keys to survival. Yellow, please."

"So does fire," you shot back. "People survived long before electricity, and there's still plenty of civilizations living fine without it."

Tech finally emerged from the wall and took the last few wires from you, the red and black ones. He met your eyes with an earnestness that let you know how much he was enjoying this conversation. "And people have survived without medicine. At least the manufactured forms that you're arguing for, like bacta. Traditional medicine is as sufficient as fire."

Before you could respond, Tech moved to the side, motioning toward the wall with his head and holding up the remaining wires.

"Now, unfortunately these last ones need to be clipped in down below. I'm not able to fit through the lattice of the floor, but someone of your stature easily could."

You stepped forward and peered down. It was a mess of machinery and pipes and beams, but you could clearly see the port where the wires had been yanked out earlier. You knelt down, resting your stomach on the edge of the wall, but paused before bending over.

"If it wasn't for bacta, you wouldn't have been born." You were confident in your comeback and thus didn't linger for his reaction, turning to bend down into the ship with your wires instead.

You were disappointed to hear his soft chuckle from above you.

"And what do you think powers the bacta tanks that hold the clone embryos?"

You were glad he couldn't see the frustrated frown on your face. While you tried to think of a new point in your debate, you snapped the red wire into the proper port. But then you realized you couldn't quite reach the black one, and started carefully shimmying forward, deeper into the wall.

"It seems we have circled back to the initial question," Tech offered in your silence. You felt his hands hold on to your hips, steadying you as your legs lifted from the floor, most of your body now inside the ship. You didn't think anything of it, though, your focus split between your task and his words. "What makes an achievement the most important? Both medicine and electricity are capable of preserving life, but neither are essential to survival. So, what criteria are we left with?"

You were finally within reach of the last port and pushed the wire into it. "Sounds like you already have the right answer, so why don't you stop teasing me and just say it?" you called up to him.

"I...I didn't mean to sound like I was teasing."

You could hear the apology in his voice, how truly caught off guard he was to hear that you had perceived his attempts at a friendly debate, a conversation, as mocking or disrespectful. Your stomach knotted up in guilt, making your journey to wiggle back out of the wall a little more difficult.

"I'm sorry, Tech," you said through a grunt as you tried to push yourself back. "I didn't mean to sound rude. I just don't know the answer."

You felt his arms snake around your middle, pulling you the last of the way out. You came to rest on your knees, breathing heavily at the sudden increase in air supply. Tech was crouched alongside you, his chest against part of your back, his arms still holding you.

"I honestly don't know the answer, either," he blinked down at you, speaking quietly. "I don't know what criteria would constitute the most important scientific achievement. I thought maybe we could figure it out if we kept discussing it."

You craned your neck around to look at him, unconcerned about the discomfort it took to do so. You needed to face him fully. "Or... maybe we don't need to figure it out? I mean, does there need to be one achievement labeled more important than any other? Can they not all be valued equally?"

"I suppose..." he relented. But only a little. "It is a fun thought exercise, though."

You smiled at that, and it made your heart flutter a little to see him return the expression. There were a few seconds between you where you sat pleasantly in each other's arms... before the realization hit that you were in each other's arms.

"Uh," Tech stuttered first. His eyes looked about frantically as if the more he saw of you practically sitting in his lap, the more he would know what to do about it.

Your face was hot and your heart thumped forcefully in your chest. But you weren't panicking. Even though you'd been around the Bad Batch for a while now, this was the first time you'd gotten physically close to any of them, especially this dorky genius, who made you feel just a little better about life than the others did. You hadn't been sure why, not until this moment, your face being mere inches away from his own. Now it clicked.

His arms had removed themselves from your frame and he was starting to crawl backward on the floor. You quickly grasped his shoulder to stop him.

"Tech, wait."

He froze, looking at you with wide, apprehensive eyes. His shoulder was tense so you relaxed your grasp and simply let your hand rest on it gently. You gave him a small smile. Thankfully these little gestures were enough encouragement for him to lean back to you. He still looked at you timidly, but he wasn't pulling away anymore. It seemed like maybe he had been feeling the same things about you.

"Yes?"

He was waiting for you to make the next move.

"So, this project," you stalled, needing just a little more time to work up the courage. "What is it again? Why did I just crawl into the bowels of the ship?"

Your face was creeping closer to his, breath gently fanning across each other, warm but refreshing.

"I... I..." Tech seemed to be short-circuiting. "I was just, uh, re... redecorating."

Your nose had just brushed his when you suddenly frowned and moved back to look at him questioningly. "Redecorating... wires?"

You were very amused at how flustered he seemed to be in this situation. But then the tables turned as Tech rolled with it.

"Yeah, I didn't like the way they looked in there. Wanted to change things up. You know me."

The smile on our face spread as he talked and you couldn't hold back your laughter any longer. You bent forward, resting your forehead in the crook of his neck while your body convulsed with giggles. Tech laughed along, bringing his arms back around you to hold you in place. When you finally looked up at him and the shit-eating grin he had plastered on his face, you knew you'd finally found your courage.

"Oh, Tech..." you chided, pressing your smiling lips against his own.