#but still. can definitely workshop this. for more inanity | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

asset35-maya · 3 years

Text

Reed900 meet-cute: disciplinary action (3/3)

“Be yourself.”

“What?”

“Just be yourself now.”

Gavin and Nines exchanged incredulous looks. They were approaching the end of the disciplinary workshop. Wasn’t the whole point to not be themselves?

Simon smiled in his usual mild manner. By now they had learnt it could only mean trouble.

“I’ve read your files. Neither of you know how to mince words. Neither of you are gentle.

Your Homicide colleagues consistently complain about your hostility and lack of respect, Detective Reed. And you, Agent Nines. You have a history of being rough with everyone you encounter on the field. Even civilians.

I can see you’ve both been on your best behaviour the past three days. Not sure who you’re trying to impress...”

Simon glanced between them, still smiling sweetly.

“But you can be yourself now.”

He took a step back and waved at the group to begin the last activity:

Jenga.

Giant Jenga.

Pairs vs pairs, with one person blindfolded and the other giving instructions.

Gavin groaned as they found themselves facing Allen and Sixty. The two grinned back, well aware of their competitive advantage. Who could be better coordinated than two SWAT teammates turned lovers?

Definitely not Gavin and Nines.

After a twisted ankle and three fallen jenga towers, Gavin ripped off his blindfold and rounded on Nines.

“Your directions suck.”

“My directions are fine. It’s not my fault you can’t comprehend them.”

“It’s literally your fault I’m picking the wrong blocks!”

“My communications modules are the most advanced-”

“Shut up and switch with me. I’ll give the instructions. I outrank you anyway.”

Nines took the blindfold coolly.

“I don’t need your instructions. My perception and cognition software is more than enough.”

He shoved past Gavin to get to the tower of blocks. Sixty was waiting for him, smirking.

Nines proceeded to ignore all of Gavin’s barked commands… and fared just as badly as the human had. When their opponents decided to indulge in a makeout session after a particularly spectacular collapse, Nines faced him angrily.

“Stop distracting me!”

“Not that advanced, huh? This is why you should listen to your superiors.”

“Superior? How insecure do you have to be to pull rank in the middle of a bar game?”

Easily inflamed as ever, Gavin barged up to the android.

“The fuck you say to me, plastic? INSECURE? I’ll show you insecure!”

Nines’ LED went bright red. He put his hands on Gavin’s chest and shoved the human out of his personal space.

A scuffle began.

A much needed adrenaline surge after three days of inane indoor activities.

An outlet.

An irrational sense of relief.

A heavy blow to a steel midsection. An uppercut that only narrowly missed a jaw that was broken twice before. A mechanical hand catching a calloused fist.

It ended with Gavin pinned to a wall. There was silence as the other cops stopped tinkering with their block towers. Allen sat down with a sigh and Sixty climbed into his lap to watch the fun.

“Whatcha gonna do, big guy? Snap my neck? They’ll have you shut down in no time.”

There was only a deep growl in response. Gavin struggled against the iron grip.

“That all you got? Try showing off with something you weren’t built with!”

Nines released him immediately and slackened against the wall beside him. He stared at his own hands in shock.

With the return of blood flow to his wrists, Gavin released that he had just put himself in very grave danger. For the second time in his stupid life, he had tried to fight a military grade android. His head suddenly felt sore where Connor had given him a concussion a year ago. It started to sink in that his volatility was a serious problem. He was a danger to himself. Feeling faint, Gavin leaned against the wall.

LED spinning a calm blue, Simon strolled over from where he had been mentoring another group.

“Oh good. That’s what I was waiting for.”

The two merely looked at the blond android, eyes unfocused, chests heaving.

“I honestly thought the SWAT lovebirds would be the pair to implode first, but no matter, this is still a teachable moment. Gather round, everyone.”

The others approached cautiously. The pair looked like they would relapse into violence any second.

“You must have all realised that my activities have little material value themselves. You must be wondering what any part of my workshop has to do with police discipline… Allow me to explain.

Day One served to profile each officer beyond the complaints made against them. I then matched pairs based on the closest personality dysfunctions. Day Two was used to build a working relationship within each pair, and Day Three, today, was the stress test. The intent… was definitely to give everyone a taste of their own medicine… but also to let you all see how exactly your toxic behaviours could have developed… using your partner as a mirror.

Detective Reed and Agent Nines. Let’s unpack what happened here. You’ve gotten to know each other fairly well by now. You recognise each other’s competence and drive. You’ve shared laughs at other people’s expense. You even empathise with each other’s seeming lack of emotional intelligence. I think you might even have taken a liking to each other, no?”

Gavin and Nines chanced a glance at each other. There was a mutual feeling of foolishness. Simon went on.

“You both were on your best behaviour… until you succumbed to your superiority complexes and quick tempers. The only thing different from what usually happens at work was the person on the receiving end. This time, it was someone who could take it… and maybe even someone who deserved it. Detective, it’s been long since someone gave back insults as good your own, no? And Agent Nines, isn’t this is the first time a human has even tried to resist your use of force?”

Sixty had stopped listening and was trying to move Allen’s attention back to himself. The older man had the audacity to shush the android in his lap… and then the second squabble of the day begun. Simon smiled indulgently and held up a finger.

“I’ll be with you two in a moment, gentlemen. Let me wrap things up for this pair.

My point to the both of you is… you might go around thinking you’re the big bad wolf, but there’s always another wolf just around the corner. He might even be bigger. So there’s no pride to be taken in putting down the sheep around you. It’s embarrassing, really. So stop it. My sincere hope is that you will both remember what happened here the next time an impulse to terrorise an innocent colleague arises.

But if you simply must be a wolf… I suggest that you find your pack, for a lone wolf is a danger to himself and everyone around.”

Simon turned away and reached for Sixty’s hand to interface. He then began to break down the reasons for the mutual over-dependence between the SWAT android and his captain.

Gavin and Nines remained slumped against the wall. Even the RK900 seemed exhausted after the emotional rollercoaster they’d been on… from irritation and anger, to shock and bewilderment. Several moments passed and then Gavin suddenly reached within his jacket pocket and produced his phone. He held it out sideways to Nines.

“What?”

“He said to form a pack.”

Nines hesitated, but then quickly touched a finger to the device. Gavin glanced down at the new contact. It was saved as “Alpha 9Z”.

He looked up with a half-smirk, half-snarl on his face and found the same expression mirrored on the android’s face.

#reed900 #gavin reed #rk900 #dbh fanfic #dbh rk900 #dbh nines #fic post #dbh #dbh simon #Reed900 disciplinary action AU

69 notes · View notes

thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 4 years

Text

Disability and Loren

@zarohk asked for my thoughts on a Disability Studies/Media Studies perspective on the disability depictions in Animorphs. Which was foolish, because I’m teaching an entire dang class on the subject of superheroes and mental health, so I have Many Thoughts. [PLEASE NOTE: I am nondisabled, so if I err, please tell me so.]

Loren’s role in #49: The Diversion does a lot of things right, and a lot of things wrong. She incurs a traumatic brain injury that results in memory loss and blindness a couple of years after Tobias is born, and lives with said injury for about ten years before Tobias finds her and gives her the ability to morph, which restores her sight but not her memory.

A few places where I commend the depiction of Loren:

It gets into the massive underemployment of disabled Americans. Loren is smart, canny, athletic, compassionate... and working a call center job in exchange for state benefits. Said state benefits do not afford her a decent standard of living; Tobias notes that she has few possessions and almost no time for leisure activities. Americans with disabilities are twice as likely to be unemployed as those without, and those who do have jobs are ten times more likely to be paid less than minimum wage, e.g. in sheltered workshops.

It shows how inaccessible a lot of systems are in the U.S. Tobias notes that Loren accidentally grabs an expired quart of milk — because nothing on the label is printed in Braille. Putting raised text and/or Braille on food packaging is a health and safety issue, one that the U.S. ignores even though it violates its own laws (e.g. the ADA) because companies tend to do what they want and “what they want” is usually not to spend more money on packaging. The call center and bus system are both marginally more accessible, especially when Loren has Champ to help, but they’re still clearly spaces set up for sighted people that don’t take blind users into account very well.

It shows some of the workarounds that help deal with accessibility problems. Loren’s house is set up so that there are clear paths to and from all of the relevant spaces. She’s doing that to allow herself to move around comfortably in that space, because she’s made it accessible for herself. She memorizes the layout of the local store, and uses that to get around as well. All of those details help show that she’s adjusted, and actively interacting with her own circumstances.

It drives home the difference between service dogs and pets. This distinction is extremely important, and it gets ignored all the time by entitled ableists who want to bring their pets into stores. Tobias and Marco both assume from the outside that it can’t be that hard to become a service animal — just do what Loren says to do, right? — but it takes Tobias 0.02 seconds to realize that it’s not that simple and that he cannot imitate Champ’s lifetime of training on the fly. He says that he manages to get his mom home in one piece, and that that’s about all that can be said for his sad performance as a guide. Champ has skills like ignoring interesting smells and applying exactly the right amount of pressure to the harness that most pets don’t have and also most pets can’t learn. Champ is not a pet, at least not while he’s in that harness; he’s a gainfully employed expert assistant.

It rounds Loren out as a character, and definitely does not just make her into a lesson or problem for Tobias. Loren is gently humorous, tolerating her coworkers’ teasing and Ax’s attempted juvenile delinquency with an eye-roll. She’s compassionate, listening to other people’s problems on the phone with genuine concern and not swatting flies if she doesn’t have to. She’s tough-minded and stupidly brave, chucking rocks at Visser Three’s head and flying at attack helicopters as a three-pound bird. She’s fallible, unable to support Tobias emotionally even when he asks her to do so and unwilling to check in on him after leaving him with her sister. She’s a fully rounded person, one whose personality is informed but not defined by her disability.

It talks about some of the unromatic aspects of a Traumatic Brain Injury. Too often in other works of fiction, we see a person get bonked over the head and wake up with no episodic memory but all other brain functions intact (*cough* Rachel in MM1 *cough*). Loren actually gets into the fact that she forgot huge chunks of language, forgot how to brush her teeth, forgot how to walk across a room. She obviously lost her sight as well, and she mentions lifelong balance and coordination problems. Even her amnesia isn’t absolute — she has some traces of recall, but can’t make anything coherent of her impressions. Her injury isn’t 100% realistic, but it’s more so than many TBIs we see in fiction.

It focuses on the intersection of disability and social class. Tobias notes that Loren is under a compounded threat because of her inability to move to a more secure neighborhood and her obvious vulnerability. He feels a lot of disgust with himself when he and Marco and Ax are harassing Loren, because it’s so clear that this isn’t the first time she’s been harassed. Tobias understands that his experience with poverty as a nondisabled male minor is different from Loren’s for those reasons.

A few places where Loren falls into the common traps of implied ableism creeping into fiction, as written about in Narrative Prosthesis:

She gets “cured.” Loren falls into the “kill or cure” dichotomy, like most of the other disabled characters in Animorphs. In her case, it’s that she gains the power to morph and in the process regains the ability to see. It isn’t a complete cure, true — she still has no memory — but it means that she’s no longer blind for the rest of the series. Having the occasional character no longer be disabled sometimes isn’t automatically problematic; having every disabled character get either “fixed” or killed off inherently treats the disabled body as a problem that needs to be solved, through sci fi nonsense if no other way is available.

She implies that she’d rather die than continue to be disabled. When injured by dracon burns, Loren initially refuses to morph out even though Tobias tells her she’ll die if she remains a bird, because (they both assume) to morph out is to return to her blind human body. This moment buys into the stereotype that it’s better to be dead than disabled, again inherently devaluing the lives of actual blind individuals.

There’s a certain amount of mystery around how she became disabled. It’s interesting that we never actually get a definitive answer on that one — Loren says she was told it was a car crash, but there’s also an implication that she was attacked by controllers, and we don’t know for sure. However, the fact of her disability is treated as an aberrant state that needs to be explained, the book inherently asking “why are you like this?” By contrast (for instance) she doesn’t ask Tobias “why are you in the body of a hawk?”

She views herself as a burden, and the narration doesn’t do enough to contradict her. Loren says that she couldn’t possibly be expected to raise a child while also blind and coping with a TBI. Real blind people raise kids all the time, however, including blind single parents, and it’d be nice to see some evidence in the story that Loren’s assumption is wrong. Loren also apparently assumes that she can’t begin to play a role in Tobias’s life even now that Tobias is more self-sufficient, again because she views herself as relatively helpless and non-contributing due to her disability. There are some hints that she’s wrong, but we don’t really see her either begin to contribute to the resistance or build a relationship with Tobias until after she’s become un-blind.

Tobias’s view of Loren is often pitying. As much as Loren doesn’t initially view herself as a potential maternal figure to Tobias, he doesn’t view her as a potential mentor either. He repeatedly expresses horror or sadness at her life circumstances, and assumes that her life must be barren due to the spartan nature of her home. (Of course, that begs the question of why the hell a blind woman living alone would ever bother hanging pictures on her walls or putting doilies on her coffee tables, but Tobias doesn’t consider that angle.) Again, Tobias is allowed to assume that her life must be meaningless if she’s disabled, but it’d be nice to see some contradictory evidence in the form of her having close friends or inane hobbies or some other proof that to lead a disabled life is not to automatically lead a lonely one.

Loren expresses bitterness and desperate desire to be nondisabled. Again, it’s fine for any character to say “I wish my life was different,” and it’s a common consensus among blind writers/bloggers that being blind is often a pain in the butt. However, views as extreme as “you need vision to have a fulfilling existence” or “vision is part of what makes us human” are ableist crocks of shit. Loren doesn’t go so far as to espouse those extreme views, but she also doesn’t seem to view herself as having a well-rounded life in spite of her disability. It’d be nice to see Loren talking about sight as handy or enjoyable or a thing that the designers of 99% U.S. environments assume everyone must have, rather than a necessary precondition for a minimum standard of life.

Loren’s disability is somewhat medicalized. Same caveat as above: disabilities are by definition medical things that some bodies do or have that other bodies do not. However, discussing disability primarily through “this is how your body is different from Implied Normal of Nondisabled Body” and focusing on doctor’s notes, diagnoses, physical differences, etc. can serve to disconnect the lived experience of the individual from their body. It also tends to focus on the ways that the body is “the problem” rather than focusing on the ways that environments and attitudes are problematic, which then prevents anyone from asking hard questions about the environments and attitudes. Loren’s doctor’s note, discussion of scarring and loss, and repeated physical descriptions are somewhat more medical than social. It’d be nice to see a little more emphasis on the social factors that make blindness a disability (e.g. improperly labeled milk), and less on “your eyes are different from those of Implied Normal Nondisabled Person.”

#animorphs #animorphs meta #long post #loren fangor #ableism #disability studies #disability representation #accessibility #social model of disability #animorphs criticism #blindness representation #49 #the diversion

189 notes · View notes

do-your-socks-have-holes-in-them · 5 years

Text

Metamorphosis

Summary: Logan is tired of being human, with all these things like "needing to sleep at some point" and "having feelings" distracting him from his work. He creates a robotic assistant, Patton, to aid him in becoming a robot himself, but of course things don't quite go according to plan.

Warnings: referring to someone as “it” and saying they’re not a person (because robots), knives mentioned, broken arm (but, again, robots, so it’s different)

Pairings: Logicality

Words: ~3.4k

Read on AO3

Logan smiled. This was a rare event, as the few people who knew him would attest, but he believed the occasion was worth it: the completion of his most impressive invention so far. It marked a considerable step towards his ultimate goal, his life’s work… but now wasn’t the time to get caught up in future plans; there was still work to be done in the present. He stepped forward and pulled a lever on a nearby control panel to activate the machine.

Some gears whirred, and some lights blinked, and with very little fanfare, the android lying on the table in front of him sat up and looked around. Logan waited patiently while its eyes scanned the room, taking in as much information as possible, before finally landing on him.

“Hello,” it said, “my name is Patton. Do you have any instructions for me?”

Logan already knew the android’s name, being the one who named it and all. On the other hand, he also programmed it with that greeting, so he had no one to blame for this redundancy but himself. “Hello, Patton,” he responded. “I am Logan, your creator. You will be my assistant, and as such you will perform various tasks for me within this workshop. More specific instructions will be provided as they become necessary.”

The android, or rather Patton, nodded to confirm understanding. “Is there anything else I should know?”

“Yes. You were created to be similar to a human, including human methods of learning information. When you have questions upon encountering new things, ask me and I will answer them as far as my own knowledge allows. That said, do you have any questions right now?”

“Yes… should I ask them? Oh- wait, I just did.” Patton smiled, evidently very easily amused. Logan supposed that could happen when one had literally never heard a joke before.

“Go ahead.” When Patton looked confused, Logan clarified: “A phrase meaning ‘proceed.’ Ask your questions, Patton.”

Patton visibly stored that knowledge away for later. “Okay. Why did you make me like a human instead of making me know everything you know and have octopus arms?”

“Because I already have a robot like that.” He gestured to a corner of the room, where a group of eight metal tentacles was flailing, each holding a knife. “It didn’t end well. I also wanted to prove it was possible to make you nearly indistinguishable from a real person.”

“Oh. I see.” Patton filed that information away as well- in a mental folder labeled Things to Never Go Near, in the case of the octo-bot.

“Any more questions?”

“Yes, can you explain birds to me? I have some information in my memory but I don’t really get it.”

Logan sighed. This was going to be a very long day.

A few hours later, Patton finally ran out of things to ask about and Logan was able to begin a tour of the workshop. Of course, this spawned even more questions: what does this bit do? why can’t I touch it? what would happen if I did stick my hand in it, though? It was like dealing with a child, although fortunately, this particular child was made of metal and nearly indestructible, and actually listened when told not to do things. Still, with so many interruptions, it was night by the time the tour was finished. Logan put Patton in “sleep” mode and then went to bed himself in the apartment above the workshop. Hopefully, the endless inane questions were just a first-day-of-activation thing and he’d be able to actually get something done tomorrow.

The next day, Logan returned to the workshop and, rather optimistically, instructed Patton to help him right after waking the android up. For a short while, everything went smoothly. Patton was quite competent as an assistant, which didn’t surprise Logan, but did allow him to feel pleased with his creation. But then the questions started again.

“Why are you wearing different clothes today?”

“Because the ones I wore yesterday are dirty now.”

“Why don’t I wear clothes?”

“You’re a robot, you don’t need them.”

“Can I have them anyway, just for fun?”

“...Maybe later.” At first Logan had wished he’d given Patton more knowledge to start with, just to save himself some trouble, but now he suspected it wouldn’t have saved him regardless. And Patton really did seem to be struggling with the concept of birds, for some reason.

“Is this a pigeon?”

“No, Patton, that is a butterfly. Stop bringing living things into the workshop to ask me if they’re birds or not.”

Patton wilted a little and put it back outside.

Not everything he wanted to know was so trivial, however, and before long Patton asked him what exactly it was they were doing. Logan had anticipated this, but struggled to explain his project in a way that didn’t… sound bad.

“Well, you see, I find it inconvenient to deal with biological needs and emotional fluctuations, so I’m going to transfer my mind into a mechanical body like yours in order to avoid those things and have more time for my work.”

“Oh. Okay.”

…There were definitely benefits, Logan decided, to having a recently created android with no concept of what humans would consider weird and creepy as his assistant.

“Why don’t you want emotions, though? I haven’t had them very long, but they don’t seem that bad.” That was a slight understatement: so far, Patton had only experienced about two. He knew that happy was how he felt when Logan praised his work, telling him he’d done a good job; on the other hand, when his creator grew impatient with his questions earlier and told Patton to leave him alone and let him work for a while, what he felt was sad. And while he didn’t like sadness, and anger didn’t seem very fun either from what he’d seen of Logan yelling at a malfunctioning piece of equipment, he did very much like being happy, and that was how he’d felt nearly all the time so far.

Logan sighed and looked away from him, focusing on the part in his hands. “I don’t expect you to truly understand. The emotions you experience aren’t real, merely simulated reactions. As realistic as you may appear, the fact remains that you are not a real person, and so I doubt you’ll ever have any idea how truly distracting they can be.”

“Oh,” Patton said distantly. He turned back to his own work. He was having a new feeling, and he didn’t know what it was or why it was happening- Logan had only stated facts they were both aware of, after all- but he knew it wasn’t one he liked.

Whatever had happened there, it was quickly pushed to the back of Patton’s mind and he and Logan got back into the rhythm of working together. He liked working with Logan, and focused on that, not thinking about anything else until the end of the day. Before Logan left the workshop, instructing Patton to clean up before shutting himself off for the night, he told him he’d done well today, and listed the things Patton had done he’d especially approved of. He’d done the same thing last night, and Patton knew that his purpose was to help him improve by knowing which actions he should try to repeat. Still, it made him very happy, at least until he recalled Logan’s earlier words.

He wasn’t really a person, at least according to Logan- and he knew the right answer for almost everything, and always admitted when he wasn’t sure, so it had to be true, didn’t it? Well, if Patton really was just simulating his emotions, he’d like to turn off the ones that felt like this. Somehow, it was one thing to know he wasn’t human, just designed to seem like one, and another thing altogether for Logan to say it to him like that.

When Logan entered the workshop the next day and brought him out of sleep mode, Patton experienced a new type of happiness, as if everything from the previous day had been forgotten.

This wasn’t unusual, to be fair. He had only existed for a few days. Almost every experience he had was new, and soon pushed aside by the next one. But this one felt special, somehow; it was warm and bubbly and made him feel slightly ill- not that he was capable of being ill, but he knew what it would feel like, in theory. As soon as he was finished cataloguing it he went up to Logan, excited to tell him about his new feeling.

Logan frowned at his description. “That isn’t one of the emotional responses I programmed you with, and there’s no reason to have any emotional reaction at all to merely waking up. It was most likely some sort of glitch. If you continue experiencing feelings with no apparent cause, let me know and I’ll see what I can do to fix it.”

Patton nodded slowly. He knew it wasn’t his fault, yet that still felt like… not an insult, exactly, but… Logan seemed disappointed with him. “Okay, I will. What do you need me to do today?”

It was Patton’s first ever lie, only a few days into existing. He wondered if he’d set some kind of record.

Logan didn’t know what was happening, and he didn’t like it. Patton had been acting… off. It was as if his approximation of emotion had gotten stuck somewhere around sadness, but he insisted there was nothing that needed fixing and became defensive when Logan pressed him about it. On the other hand, he’d also been even more helpful than before- sometimes anticipating what Logan might need before he even asked- so maybe it wasn’t anything to worry about, and would resolve itself in time without negatively impacting his main function.

Logan wondered, for a moment, if mentally referring to the android as “he” was a sign of getting too attached. He quickly dismissed the concern, however. It simply felt strange to refer to Patton as an object when he looked and acted almost entirely human. It didn’t mean he was actually thinking of him as something other than what he was, or anything like-

There was an enormous crash from downstairs, and a scream. Logan scrambled out of bed and ran down to the workshop. “Patton!”

Ten minutes ago, Patton had been almost finished tidying up the workshop for the night. He hadn’t mentioned the new feeling again in the few days since it had first appeared, but that didn’t mean it had gone away- in fact, it had only been getting stronger. It returned every time he interacted with Logan, and… and it was starting to hurt. Especially when he was reminded that he wasn’t a person to him; he certainly wouldn’t appreciate it if Patton announced that he’d done a bit of research and was fairly sure he’d fallen in love with him. It almost wouldn’t change anything when Logan went through with his plan to get rid of his emotions, the chance of him ever returning Patton’s feelings was already so minuscule.

Still, though, he couldn’t bear to let Logan “fix” him. Even if it hurt, it felt too important to just get rid of. He wanted to love Logan. And as much as he knew it was hopeless, he couldn’t help trying to get at least some kind of positive reaction from him. That was why he’d been working so hard to be helpful- and it was also why, looking around the workshop, he decided to surprise Logan and get a head start on tomorrow’s work.

…Well, Logan was definitely surprised.

Patton wasn’t in any shape to be cheered up by a technicality, though. In the process of working on a tricky mechanical part, he’d become lost in his thoughts and slipped up, resulting in both the part and his left arm being crushed. The shirt Logan had found for him earlier was ruined. Patton didn’t have the ability to feel pain, thank goodness, but he certainly had the ability to panic. When Logan got there, he was cradling the twisted metal where his hand used to be and emitting a soft whine as his mind overloaded with another new emotion- fear.

“Patton! Patton, what happened?” Logan took him by the shoulders and had him sit down against a wall, lest he damage himself any further. “Please calm yourself, and tell me what just happened.”

“I- I was just trying to help,” Patton managed after a few seconds. “I broke it, I’m sorry, I just wanted to- make you happy…” He covered his face with his remaining hand, shoulders shaking in an approximation of crying despite not being equipped to actually produce tears.

“You broke…?” Logan looked over at the destroyed part in question and sighed. “We can remake it. Just don’t do that again.”

Patton nodded quietly.

“Come with me and I’ll see about fixing your arm.”

Logan didn’t get much sleep that night. It took him hours to repair Patton, as he essentially had to replace the entire arm. The android watched him work anxiously, his right hand clinging to Logan’s shirt and face half-hidden in his shoulder, and Logan found himself pausing occasionally to reassure him. He didn’t even think twice about it when Patton indicated he wanted a hug before going into sleep mode… or at least not until he was finally back in bed, and found he was unable to go to sleep himself.

He felt bad, somehow. Patton had only been trying to do something nice for him- the first time anyone had done so in a long time, really- and it had ended in what he could only imagine was a very distressing experience, even if the distress was simulated. Maybe… maybe he should be more considerate of how he talked to Patton. He shouldn’t feel like he needed to go to such lengths to get Logan’s approval. He didn’t ever want to see him panicked like that again.

Wait. What was he doing? Why was he thinking of Patton like… well, he couldn’t even call it like a friend. Logan didn’t exactly have friends. The “mad scientist” vibe tended to scare people off. In any case, he seemed to be getting… sentimental. This was exactly why he didn’t want emotions anymore. (Part of the reason, at least.) It led him to do the most irrational things.

It was good that his project would be ready soon, even with the setback of Patton’s accident. Until then, he would simply do his best to deal with it, and detach himself from any emotion-based impulses.

Logan was not doing a very good job of dealing with it, although sleep deprivation may have been a factor. In the interest of keeping his schedule as intact as possible, he woke up at the usual time, despite having spent most of the night awake. He stumbled downstairs only to be greeted by Patton, who had a smile and a cup of coffee for him, and immediately faltered in his resolve to be detached.

In fact, he failed completely. “Thanks,” he mumbled, taking a long sip despite the fact that it burned his mouth. “You’re sweet.” Ten seconds passed before he realized what he’d said, at which point he nearly dropped the mug.

Yeah, he really needed to hurry up with that “getting rid of his emotions” thing. Preferably before he had to look Patton in the face again.

Over the next two weeks, Logan failed miserably at not getting too attached. He continued pushing the feelings aside, telling himself it wouldn’t matter soon and absolutely refusing to consider what it meant that he couldn’t look at Patton anymore without getting the urge to smile. Patton had been unusually clumsy and kept dropping and misplacing various things ever since Logan replaced his arm- he’d yet to find the cause, but he must have made some sort of mistake while rebuilding it- but even with those setbacks, they made steady progress.

When the day finally arrived, Logan wondered why he didn’t feel as satisfied as he had upon completing Patton. No matter. Soon he wouldn’t need to worry about feeling anything at all.

The final preparations went by in a blur. Logan knew he’d double checked everything, but somehow couldn’t remember any of it, and now he was strapped into a machine next to a robotic copy of himself and could only hope everything was in order. He looked over at Patton, standing by ready to activate the machine, and realized with a start that he looked miserable. In fact, Logan wasn’t sure he’d seen him truly happy in the past week. He leaned forward to get a better look at him and ask what was wrong, but Patton misinterpreted the movement as a nod that he was ready and flipped a switch. Logan’s vision went dark.

Once his task was done, Patton stood in front of Logan’s new body and waited. He waited for nearly twenty minutes before anything visibly happened. The mechanical form shifted, like a human slowly waking from sleep, and finally opened its eyes.

He stepped closer. “Logan? Can you hear me?”

Logan blinked a few times and focused on him. “…Patton?”

Patton gave him a small smile, although his chest ached. “How do you feel?”

“Everything seems to be in order. I…” He took a small step forward and stopped, looking down at his hands. His body felt new and strange, and yet his mind… “Why do I still feel the same?”

Patton’s eyes widened, and he jumped forward to catch him when Logan tried a bigger step without thinking and nearly fell. “What do you mean?” He tried not to sound too hopeful, but he wasn’t very good at hiding his feelings yet.

“I, I feel- I feel, Patton, that’s the problem!” Logan practically shouted. He pulled away from Patton’s grip and fell to his knees, hands curling into fists. “It didn’t work! That’s what I mean, I- I spent my entire life working towards this and I failed and I don’t, I can’t-” He curled in on himself, shaking, and Patton’s heart broke for him.

He knelt in front of him and wrapped his arms around Logan’s shoulders. There were a lot of metallic clanking noises involved. “There, there. You’ll be okay. You’re strong, I know you are, and I’m here to help you.”

Logan instinctively latched onto Patton’s shirt, suddenly very glad he’d agreed to get proper clothes for him. This was so strange- not only because he was an android being hugged by another android, but… nobody had comforted him like this since he was a child. It was weird and he didn’t want it to stop, and he didn’t understand how Patton could be such an amazing person when he wasn’t supposed to even be a person, and suddenly not all his feelings were bad because his heart felt like it was going to burst-

Oh. Oh, no.

“Patton,” he said in a shaky voice. “Patton, I- I love you.”

Patton froze for a moment, then hugged him even harder, pressing his forehead against Logan’s shoulder. He was shaking a little. “You do? Really?”

“Yes, I think so, I can’t believe it took me this long- I can’t believe I had to become a robot to figure it out, but- I do, Patton, I can’t believe I tried to give this up- you’d think such a genius wouldn’t be such an idiot, but here I am…”

“So… you don’t want to get rid of your emotions anymore?” Patton asked hopefully.

He shook his head. “No, no, of course not, what a stupid idea that was-” He laughed somewhat bitterly. “Years of my life, and now I realize I shouldn’t have been trying…”

“Oh good,” he sighed. “Then you won’t be mad that I sabotaged it.”

“…You what?!”

Patton held up a crucial piece of the machine and laughed nervously.

Logan’s face went through an impressive variety of expressions, considering its mechanical limitations- from shock to anger to, finally, something softer. “Thank you,” he finally said. “Thank you… I love you.”

Patton grinned, feeling like he could float away on a cloud of joy. Only about a month into existence and he’d already achieved the seemingly impossible. That had to be some kind of record.

“I love you, too.”

#sanders sides #logicality #logan sanders #patton sanders #romantic logicality #my post #my writing

92 notes · View notes

iwrotemywayto-revolution · 7 years

Text

Can you imagine?

Request: You’re reading for Maria at the Hamilton workshop, but you’re far more interested in Eliza than Alexander.

Pairing: Phillipa Soo x reader

Warnings: none

Word count: 1,733

A/N: here’s day six of the @hamwriters‘ writeathon a bit late- also known as first time day! I know Pippa wasn’t actually part of the workshop cast but I’ve fiddled with it bc reasons. I’ve not written pippa x reader before so here goes

The room was empty except for a circle of chairs and a piano. You paused awkwardly in the doorway, checking the room number you had hastily scribbled down again. It definitely said room twenty, but what if you had heard wrong over the phone?

You wiped your hands on your jeans and walked in. “Hello?” you called apprehensively, peering around. You had had the call last night- Lin-Manuel Miranda of ‘In the Heights’ fame wanted you to read for a part in his new musical.

Which was apparently a rap musical about Alexander Hamilton. Okay.

Since no one else seemed to be there, you sat down in one of the chairs and fiddled with your phone, debating the merits of downloading an inane game to pass the time. You started to hum the song that had been on the radio in the taxi that had brought you there.

Almost ten minutes later, just as you were halfway through singing What the heck I gotta do, someone appeared in the doorway. “Hello, hello, hello!” Lin-Manuel Miranda grinned as he walked in, “sorry I’m late.”

You looked around at the other empty chairs. “It’s alright- you’re not the only one.”

He frowned, as if he’d only just noticed that the two of you were the only ones there. “That’s weird.” He pulled out his phone and fired off a text.

“I’m Y/N,” you said, half-getting out of your chair, “I’m reading for-” you checked your notes, “Peggy Schuyler and Maria Reynolds?”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Lin held up his own script, which was covered in scribbled annotations in messy handwriting, “I’m your Hamilton.”

You raised an eyebrow and were about to respond when the doors open again and a couple of people arrived- you recognised Chris Jackson from In the Heights and Daveed Diggs, whose music you had started to listen to as soon as you found out he would be in the show.

You stayed sat in your chair as everyone started to settle down, some stopping to say hi to others before they made it to their seats. You looked to your right and felt your jaw drop. A beautiful girl, her dark hair pulled back in a high ponytail, and wearing a flowery scoop-neck and knee-length skirt, had taken the seat beside you.

She looked up and met your gaze. You hastily smiled. “Hi,” you said, voice higher than usual from nerves that made your heart thump particularly hard.

She smiled back and you knew you were lost- her smile was soft and gentle, her eyes kind and a dark brown. “Hi,” she said, “I’m Pippa.”

“Y/N,” you returned, throat dry, “Nice to meet you.”

Before you could make a fool of yourself, Lin clapped his hands and stood up. “So,” he grinned, “you’ve all heard my admittedly terrible demos, you’ve all got scripts. I’m Lin and this,” Lin gestured to Alex, who stood up from behind his keyboard and waved, “is the genius behind the music, Alex Lacamoire.”

Everyone murmured a hello as Lin took a seat. Alex cleared his throat. “We’ll run through the songs in order,” he said, “starting with Alexander Hamilton.” He sat down again and played a couple of scales. “Is everyone warmed up?”

You nodded, having done some exercises before everyone else arrived. Everyone else nodded too, and you wondered if that had been why they were late.

Scanning the lyrics for Alexander Hamilton again, you remembered that you only had the one line in it: “Me? I loved him”, so you settled back to hear everyone else.

Utkarsh grinned and introduced the musical as Burr, looking as if he wanted to be moving about the room even though it was a read-through. Chris, Javier, Joshua, and Daveed joined soon after. It felt somehow tense but freeing to be in the room- it felt like the beginning of something, you realised.

Then Pippa started to sing- quietly, soprano- and you saw her face change with real emotion. Too quickly her part was over and you joined in with the others to sing the ensemble part.

Alex gave feedback after you finished running through the first two songs and Lin scribbled furiously all over his script and sheet music, muttering about tempo and line changes as he did so. He asked Chris to try some new lyrics, got Daveed to swap a line with Joshua, and asked Pippa to sing her line with a crescendo instead of diminuendo and a slightly different inflection.

The next two songs went much the same, except that you only sang the ensemble parts, watching Lin rap his way through My Shot with impressive speed. Then you moved onto Schuyler Sisters. You, Pippa, and Anika all got up so Lin could see your dynamics, standing in the middle of the circle of chairs.

Utkarsh narrated again from the sidelines and your stomach did a flip when Pippa took your hand to ‘tug’ you into the circle properly. You bumped your hip against hers when you sang your first line, almost stuttering when she returned the gesture. Everyone sang the ensemble part and you stepped forward.

You put your hands on your hips and turned to face your ‘sisters’, “Daddy said to be home by sundown-”

Anika shrugged. “Daddy doesn’t need to know.”

You pouted. “Daddy said not to go downtown-”

Pippa raised an eyebrow and pointed towards the door, "Like I said you're free to go-"

After Schuyler Sisters you didn’t have much to do beyond singing the ensemble part. Instead you sat on your chair and watched Pippa perform Helpless, something twisting tightly in your chest when she kissed Lin at the end.

You wondered if you could change Satisfied to be about Eliza instead.

It was lunch time before you reached the end of the first act. “Well done,” Lin called to everyone after the end of Non-Stop, “you can all take an hour or so for lunch and afterwards we’ll work on Act two.”

“After we try some changes to Non-Stop,” Alex interrupted firmly, making everybody grin. There hadn’t been a single song that hadn’t been followed by Lin scribbling on his script and Alex on his sheet music, followed immediately by calls for corrections or alterations.

You grabbed your bag, wondering where to go. You didn’t know many places around the are but surely there’d be a Starbucks or something nearby. As you stuffed your jumper into your bag, you heard someone clear their throat.

You straightened to find Pippa standing there, a nervous smile on her face. “Do you have plans for lunch?” she asked, adjusting the strap of her bag, “I was wondering if you wanted to grab something- there’s a nice café around the corner-”

You were so surprised that you did nothing but gape for a moment. Pippa’s smile faded. “If you don’t want to-”

“No I do!” you found your voice and interrupted her, “I’d love to.”

Pippa’s smile returned full-force and she fell into step beside you as you headed out, waving goodbye to Lin and Alex where they were hunched over Lin’s script, whispering and scribbling.

You and Pippa settled down in the corner of the café, hot drinks and sandwiches cluttering up the tiny table. “So,” Pippa said as she pulled her hair out of its ponytail, “how did you end up here?”

“I worked with Lac on a project a couple of months ago,” you explained. You took a bite of your sandwich, “I wasn’t singing for him, just managing some stuff- but he heard me in the break room.”

Pippa laughed and raised her cup. “To what a little break room singing can do,” she suggested. You giggled and raised your cup too, tapping it against hers. You both took a sip, wincing when you realised it was still a little too hot to drink.

“Broadway, huh?” Pippa gazed dreamily out of the window in the direction of the Richard Rogers, “Can you imagine?”

You could see Pippa up there, inspiring joy and sadness and astonishment. “Yeah,” you murmured. Her hand was resting on the table and you wondered if it would be too soon to take it.

The first song after you came back was ensemble time for you again. Pippa joined you as you welcome Daveed, cocky and enthusiastic as Jefferson, home again. Then you sat back to watch Lin and Daveed spit their arguments to each other and then watched Javier and Pippa try to persuade Lin to take a break.

Javier knelt down to be Philip, miming the piano tune that Lac played in the intro. You stifled a smile and bit back a laugh when Pippa tried to beat-box. “I’ll learn,” she promised Lin in the feedback session. He gave her a hard look but nodded.

“For this one, Y/N,” Lin said, “your job is to be sexy.”

You felt your cheeks heat up and stammered out your agreement. You saw Pippa grin out of the corner of your eye and steeled yourself to try your best. Lin had reassured you that you didn’t need to kiss him, even though it was scripted.

Utkarsh introduced the scene again, handing over the narration to Lin after a moment. You stared at your line and anxiously calculated your cue. “I know you are a man of honour,” you sang, meeting Lin’s gaze. He was giving you his best smoulder and you fought back a grin, “I’m so sorry to bother you at home.”

You gathered your things, ready to leave. Lin and Alex had praised everyone’s efforts and reminded you to return next week to work with any changes that they might have made during the week. You shouldered your bag and turned to go, only to find Pippa standing there.

“This is starting to become a regular thing,” you laughed, stepping back a little.

Pippa laughed. “I was wondering...” she looked uncertain, poised on the balls of her feet as if she was about to run for it, “if you wanted to grab dinner with me.” She flushed a pretty pink and lowered her gaze, “you know, as a date.”

You took her hand hesitantly and squeezed it. “I’d love that,” you said quietly, relieved when she squeezed back.

The two of you headed out, hands hesitantly linked between you. You could have sworn you saw Lin wink at you as you passed him, but brushed it off. You’d rather have Eliza.

#phillipa soo x reader #pippa soo x reader #hamwriters #hamwriters writeathon #hamilton cast x reader #phillipa soo imagine #phillipa soo imagines

290 notes · View notes

thecosydragon · 6 years

Text

My latest blog post from the cosy dragon: Interview with Catherine Evans

An Interview with Catherine Evans, author of The Wrong’un

Catherine Evans’s novel, The Wrong’un, was released by Unbound in May 2018. She’s the founder of www.pennyshorts.com, a website which offers short stories of all genres to readers around the world. She’s a trustee of the Chipping Norton Literary Festival and sponsor of the ChipLitFest Short Story Competition. She lives with her husband in Oxfordshire and has a daughter and three stepdaughters.

Everyone has a ‘first novel’, even if many of them are a rough draft relegated to the bottom and back of your desk drawer (or your external harddrive!). Have you been able to reshape yours, or have you abandoned it for good?

I abandoned my first novel for good. It was a thinly disguised memoir of a very turbulent time in my life. It’s intensely intimate, like reading my own secret diary.

Over the years, what would you say has improved significantly in your writing?

Observation. The older you get the happier you are to just sit and watch.

Some authors are able to pump out a novel a year and still be filled with inspiration. Is this the case for you, or do you like to let an idea percolate for a couple of years in order to get a beautiful novel?

If I was a hermit I’m sure I could pump out a novel a year. My head is always way ahead of my hands; I have the next few books juggling around in my head.

I have heard of writers that could only write in one place – then that cafe closed down and they could no longer write! Where do you find yourself writing most often, and on what medium (pen/paper or digital)?

I can write anywhere, usually directly onto my laptop, often with pencil and paper. The kitchen table is my favourite place because it’s warm and close to the kettle and I really don’t mind interruptions. I love working late into the night when everyone else is asleep; often I realise with a start that it’s 3am, my hands and feet are iceblocks and I have to get up in a couple of short hours for the school run, but I go to bed happy as I’ve done 3,000 words. Those are good nights.

Before going on to hire an editor, most authors use beta-readers. How do you recruit your beta-readers, and choose an editor? Are you lucky enough to have loving family members who can read and comment on your novel?

I have an old schoolfriend who is a natural bookworm, and several other friends from the writer’s groups that I’ve been part of for the past 15 years who are always happy to read whatever I give them, so I’ve never used a beta-reader. My publisher, Unbound, assigned me my editor after I specifically requested her, as she had done such a wonderful job editing ‘A Thing Of The Moment’, by Bruno Noble, a friend with the same publisher. I was lucky she was available; she was forensic in her thoroughness and she really cared about the manuscript, the story, the voice and the characters. I accepted 99% of her suggestions, and I feel that the resulting book is ours, not just mine.

I walk past bookshops and am drawn in by the smell of the books – ebooks simply don’t have the same attraction for me. Does this happen to you, and do you have a favourite bookshop? Or perhaps you are an e-reader fan… where do you source most of your material from?

I love the look, feel and smell of a real book, the covers, the blurbs and I like to know exactly how far along I am and to be able to flip back and forth between the pages. E-books are very useful for travelling, and I often download the sample chapters, but there’s very little I love more than browsing for books, whether it’s in bookshops, in charity shops or at car boot sales, and whenever I go to someone’s house, I can’t stop myself from looking at the books on show. E-books will never replace real books.

I used to find myself buying books in only one genre (fantasy) before I started writing this blog. What is your favourite genre, and have your tastes changed over time?

I’m happy to read any genre as long as I care about the characters. I love books that confound genre, for example David Mitchell’s ‘Cloud Atlas’. I don’t much care for romance (reading about it, that is), but I loved David Nicholl’s very unconventional love story ‘One Day’. My tastes have definitely changed over time. I’ve become a much more critical reader, and I seldom finish a book without thinking about what the writer could have done to make it stronger.

What do you do when you’re not writing?

I perform all the usual tasks that fall under the role of mother; feeding, instructing, lecturing, nagging, hectoring, threatening, bribing and chauffeuring. I’m a trustee of the Chipping Norton Literary Festival, now in its seventh year. We’re always scheming and dreaming up new ways to raise cash, including running writer’s workshops and Open Mic events. Every year in the run-up I wonder why I do it, then I always enjoy the Festival weekend so much and the feedback we receive always fills me with renewed passion for the following year. I’m the Editor of www.pennyshorts.com, a website which publishes short stories of all genres from writers around the world online, making them available for free download. It now features around 200 stories from new and established writers and is steadily growing.

Social media is a big thing, much to my disgust! I never have enough time myself to do what I feel is a good job. What do you do?

Much to my disgust too. Social media provides an anonymous forum for the most appalling rudeness and sheer vitriol, which then spills over into all other spheres of life. I seldom read a thread that doesn’t disintegrate into childish name-calling, and the inane virtue-signalling, loud calls for apologies and screams that this or that is ‘offensive’ can get incredibly boring.

Saying all that, when I add new stories to pennyshorts I tweet about them with a suitable picture and also post about them on Facebook with some info about the author. I’ve been told to open an Instagram account and to start an Author’s page on Facebook, but there never seems to be enough minutes in the day. That doesn’t mean I won’t do it, it just means it’s not high up on my list. It all seems to be a giant echo chamber. I’ve had a twitter account for three years, and have never read a book promoted by a tweet. Sometimes I get unsolicited direct messages from Indie authors, one of which was ‘I’d drink battery acid to get you to download a sample chapter of my book.’ Really? Please don’t, and no thanks.

As you don’t maximise social media, what do you do instead?

I think old-fashioned word of mouth is the most powerful way to promote books. Books demand something of their readers, and if you inhabit the world of a novel for a few hours of your life and love it, you will want others to share that experience. When a friend whose judgement I trust tells me that they loved a particular book, I pay attention, and will read it. I love reading book reviews in newspapers and magazines and online too. I get a lot of ideas from the Sunday Times ‘Culture’ mag.

Now that your first book is out, what’s next?

I’m actively working on two books simultaneously: a novel which examines the pernicious effects of early sexualisation on young girls and a non-fiction book about the philosophical teachings of Martial Arts, and how it can be of benefit in all spheres of life. Once I’m done with those, I’d like to write my mother’s life story. She grew up on a farm in rural Transvaal in the 40s and 50s and studied at the University of Cape Town in the 60s, where she met my father. She’s not a writer, but she’s a born storyteller, and has a unique perspective of South African history and apartheid and many tales to tell about farm life, relationships, neighbours, family and community dynamics. Lastly, I’d like to turn a three act play I wrote several years ago into a novel. So that’s four books in total that have yet to see the light of day – should keep me busy for the next few years.

Answering interview questions can often take a long time! Tell me, are you ever tempted to recycle your answers from one to the next?

Not at all. It’s like free therapy, innit?

from https://ift.tt/2O1OJQN

#book bookreviews authorinterviews lovereading bookworm

0 notes