#this took so many re-designs you have no idea
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re: "All I’m saying is the fact that someone isn’t talking to me about Eliot Spencer every second of every day is very unfair and borderline illegal." & tags - if you want to, can you elaborate on your werewolf!eliot ideas?? i’d like to hear about it!! if not all good tho :)
Oh boy oh boy oh boy! Yes I would love to elaborate!
(buckle up because i have Thoughts)
(wow this really got away from me so uhhh .... warning for 2k of ranting about Eliot as a werewolf?? list of headcanons under the cut)
From the moment I first met Eliot Spencer, I knew he was werewolf-coded. Aside from his insanely fantastic fighting abilities and the absurd amount of punishment he can take, there are many other factors that contribute to his werewolf status.
Eliot needs a pack
Our boy is out here working on his own for years and look at all the good it did him! None! He carries severe trauma from his family life because he blames himself for how it all went down and doesn't think he'll be welcomed back. Plus something probably happened during his military days or early PMC days to put him off working with others. Could have been the pain of losing people all the time, could have been something more. Either way, Eliot working on his own is a defence mechanism - but a self-destructive one.
Wolves thrive in packs - like duh, they're pack animals. As my username suggests, I'm into werewolves and, by extension, wolves. I've done research for my own werewolf novels in the past, so I know that in an average wolf pack, each pack member will have physical contact with the other pack members on the regular. Like, several times an hour! (gosh if I can find the research paper this info came from I'll link it but honestly it's been years) That's a serious level of physical contact required to keep the emotional bonds of the pack healthy!
Flick back to Eliot. He loves to fight, he loves the violence and the pain, yes. He hates the killing and the blood on his hands. He actually tries to leave the assassin world behind after he meets Toby (which is before he meets Moreau, as per early dialogue in The French Connection Job). He bonds quickly with Toby. Show Eliot a little love and care and he's yours for life! He moves onto retrieval work, then somehow ends up working for Moreau.
Now, when we see Eliot and Moreau in The Big Bang Job, Moreau says, "You work alone." Which means that Eliot had that reputation when he came to Moreau. He probably only took contracts to start off with. But he accepted job after job from Moreau and was so good that he was highly respect and it's inferred he ended up as Moreau's top bodyguard/assassin. Why the hell would Eliot end up that close to a man who brings out all the worst in him? Because Eliot's a werewolf and no matter how toxic, Moreau fulfills the need for a pack bond that he's been missing all this time.
Fast forward to Eliot meeting the rest of the Leverage team. One job only - my ass. He saves Hardison's life after Hardison brought a gun to their little meeting - and we all know how Eliot feels about guns.
Wolves are designed to live and operate in packs. Eliot says it's one job only but is bonding with them all from the get-go. Werewolf trait confirmed.
Eliot needs physical touch
Now, I know what you're thinking. Eliot canonically avoids physical contact with the team. He refuses hugs, especially from Hardison, growls at Parker poking his bruises (don't get me started on the growls), and shoves people (ahem Parker) out of his personal space. So why would he do all this if he needs physical touch??
Because he's one gigantic ball of angst and self-loathing and guilt.
Eliot doesn't think he deserves forgiveness or love or family, etc. That is a whole other rant, but he denies himself the physical contact he needs with others as a way of punishing himself.
However, as the series progresses, we see him become more comfortable with physical contact! He hugs Hardison several times, he doesn't move away from Parker, etc. Why? Because he's bonded with this team (ahem pack) and there's only so much he can suppress his instincts. The more time he spends with them, the more naturally the contact flows.
Eliot needs to protect others
Whenever we get a scene of the team walking as a group, where is Eliot positioned 90% of the time?? That's right, at the back of the group. He lets the others walk in pairs and falls back to bring up the rear. He's keeping them all in his line of sight and constantly scanning for threats ahead, along with protecting the team from any rear attacks. It makes sense for him to do this given his military background, but it also makes sense for a werewolf to do this.
He's the only werewolf in the team. His instincts revolve around keeping the pack safe and protected, so he does that in the best way he knows how.
Not to mention how feral gets over kids!!
Wolf life is all about the pack and the family structure. Pups are integral to the pack's survival and future. Eliot doesn't have kids of his own. But that doesn't stop his instincts from blaring every time he interacts with a kid, be it on the con or off. He takes time out every time to help that kid in an attempt to calm the raging storm of instincts inside his body.
Eliot needs to feed others
It's another werewolf instinct that rears its head when they're in the safety of their headquarters (ahem den). Protecting the team/pack from physical threats is just one aspect of taking care of them. Feeding them is the other major one.
None of these idiots can cook to save their lives - except Nate, but he's also drowning his liver 90% of the time, so Eliot has to compensate for that, too. The team can't operate at full capacity if they're not consuming good nutrition. So Eliot makes sure to feed them.
His humanity recognises that these are independent people - coworkers - and he can't control every meal of every day. But he can cook for them, once a week or once a job, which is just enough to satisfy his instincts that he's doing his part to care for them. Plus they love his cooking, and the praise he gets from it is an unexpected but pleasant bonus.
Eliot and team sports/kitchens
This ties in with my first point about Eliot needing a pack, but all the times we see Eliot go super hard and get absorbed in the role he's playing are when he's on a team sport or he's in the kitchen. Both of these fulfill super important instincts for him - being in a team/pack and providing food for others.
Think about The Tap-Out Job. Eliot's playing a fighter but he's not pretending to be on a team. He doesn't get over-invested in the role. But what about when he's a baseball player? A hockey player? He falls into those roles hard because he's working with another team again, and this little werewolf is built for that environment. Same in The French Connection: the kitchen becomes his den, the students are his pack mates, and he goes hard at investing in them and protecting them. Never mind the personal aspect of Toby.
Same for episodes like The Fairy Godparents Job when we get a scene of Eliot teaching a bunch of girls self-defence. Team setting + protecting kids = happy werewolf instincts.
So, werewolf headcanons?
I have a lot of different origin theories but the main one I like for Eliot is:
he became a werewolf either for a covert military op, or was bitten by Moreau (choose your own angst flavour)
if it was for the military, they were trying to engineer supersoldiers and he was deemed a failure; he has werewolf instincts all the time but only has enhanced strength, healing, etc on full moons
if it was bitten by Moreau, there's a psychic-style bond linking them, which is why he was so loyal to Moreau for so long, and also why he is so reluctant to go after Moreau
(wow this is too different theories already and i said this was my 'main one' whoops)
Eliot can only shift easily on the full moon; shifting outside of a full moon can only be caused by extreme stress and is ridiculously painful
he suffers an insanely high prey drive all the time and is so strict about his control because he doesn't actually wanna rip out the throat of Random Guard #3
he used to chain himself up for full moons so he didn't hurt anyone, but since the team found out about him, Hardison and Parker have taken it upon themselves to 'puppy-sit' him every full moon
this involves no chains but an obscene amount of dog chew toys. Eliot is never impressed. He also never chases or chews the toys. The video evidence Hardison has was obviously doctored.
Hardison and Parker found out the truth when a con went sideways and Eliot was trapped in a room with them during the full moon
he was terrified he was going to kill them - or worse, bite them - but his instincts recognised them as pack so instead he just tried to wrestle with them all night
Hardison had a major freak out when he discovered Eliot was a werewolf - it's one thing to be obsessed with sci-fi/fantasy, it's another thing entirely to see your best friend transform before your eyes
Parker was not even remotely phased, being all like, "pfft of course werewolves are real, I thought you knew that Hardison, you talk about your elves and orcs all the time!"
"Woman that is completely different and you know it!"
"What else do you think is fake? The tooth fairy?? Ha!"
Eliot is Done With Their Shenanigans
Parker only ever refers to Eliot as Sparky when he's in his wolf form
Sophie didn't actually know about werewolves before the reveal but she pretends that she did
Nate knew about werewolves before Eliot, he just chooses to pretend that they're Not A Thing
werewolves generally don't make good hitters, because the constant exposure to violence ramps up their hunting instincts aka they find it hard not to kill
of course, this doesn't matter if you're someone like Moreau who specifically wants killing machines and thus turns his top hitters into werewolves, to ensure loyalty and enhance his strength
the only other werewolf hitter not under Moreau's control that Eliot knows is Quinn, who most certainly did not pull his werewolf strength punches when they tousled in The First David Job
Quinn doesn't have a pack (werewolf or otherwise) and genuinely doesn't seem phased by this, which pisses off Eliot to no end
however, after they work together in The Last Dam Job, Quinn deems himself Eliot's Best Werewolf Bud and keeps popping up randomly to hang out on full moons, etc
Parker and Hardison are a bit weirded out (and a little jealous) of Quinn's attention initially, but soon get over that when they discover that two werewolves on a full moon absolutely play for hours like 6 month old puppies - especially with the tug rope
Eliot is Extremely Susceptible to belly rubs even in his human form, which is half the reason he pushes people out of his personal space a lot - his reputation would never survive anyone finding out
of course the entire team figures it out and take to ambushing him with belly rubs whenever he's being stubborn or annoying
belly rubs are also the only way he will relax enough when he's injured so they can treat his wounds
despite the incessant dog jokes, the ever-growing pile of dog toys, and the bowls labelled with "Sparky" and cartoon bone symbols ... Eliot absolutely adores the pack he's found himself in and wouldn't change them for the world
One of these days I will sit down and write a thousand fics for werewolf!Eliot! Till then, I'll just keep churning out the headcanons ;)
#eliot spencer#leverage#werewolf#werewolves#werewolf!eliot spencer#long post#alec hardison#parker leverage#nate ford#sophie devereaux#damien moreau#quinn leverage#wow#this ended up being a million times longer than i anticipated#i mean#i always have more to say about werewolf!eliot and eliot in general#but damn#if you made it to the end of this well done!#feel free to add your own headcanons and thoughts!#the werewolf au is my favourite playground#asks#my posts#leverage fantasy au
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—chapter nineteen: illicit affairs
this is a part of my an ode to a broken heart drabble series.
pairing: jeon jungkook/reader
genre: unrequited love, best friends to (?), heavy angst, smut
word count: 1.6k words
summary: it dies a million little times...
previous || next
Five months later
There is a park nearby your apartment, sandwiched between the residential buildings. It has been here way before some chaebol had decided to buy this land and transform it to yet another wealthy neighborhood in downtown Gangnam. It looks almost surreal – tracts of green among concrete. There’s not many people here today. It feels like a scene from a movie: remote, run-down bench by the pond standing directly underneath the only magnolia tree in the park, and the girl sitting on it with an unreadable expression. What's going through her mind? What, or who, is she thinking about? She's clutching the phone in her hand in a death grip – the only sign she's feeling any emotion right now. Nightingale sings somewhere in the far distance, the sound breaking the deafening silence. Then, a phone rings. Once, twice, three times.
You pick up.
“I told her.” Jungkook waits a beat and then adds, “She wants to speak with you, in private.”
You wonder if he can make out your ragged breath through the speaker. It's the only thing you can hear now, as if the whole world has gone quiet just to listen to your conversation.
“I gave her your number. Is that okay?”
It was all your design to come clean, to free your conscience from the burden that's weighing you both down day by day. You agreed to do this, but he still makes sure if you're ready. A single magnolia petal lands on your thigh. You stare at it, transfixed. He calls your name. So softly, so gently and you break a little.
“Okay.”
The line cuts off. No one says goodbye.
Soojin contacted you soon after that. She sent you a message, asking whether you would have time to meet with her on Friday. She had chosen a coffee shop in SNU’s neighborhood where she had met Jungkook all those years ago. When you googled later the address you found out it's one of those places designed to serve both as a coffee shop and bookshop. How ironic. There's no doubt your book will be sitting on the bestseller shelf, mocking you as your best friend's wife is confronting you.
You arrive almost fifteen minutes earlier. Your heart is beating so fast it's borderline painful, your entire body trembling from anxiety. You don't know exactly how much did Jungkook tell Soojin, so have no idea what to expect from her, which makes you even more uneasy. She has the upper hand here. You notice a stack of ‘An Ode To A Broken Heart’ copies laying on one of the tables and avert your eyes somewhere else.
You try to pass the time by swiping through social media but it's too hard to focus. You keep re-reading sentences because you can't make out what they mean. You've never been good with handling stressful situations, ever since you were a child. You envied kids who didn't worry about tests and exams. Growing older, you managed to control your nerves a little, once you realized you couldn't possibly continue living like this forever. In high school your parents took you to a therapist and that, along with anxiety medication, helped you survive finals and college. However, today you can't help but feel like the girl who couldn't sleep before a math test all over again.
Soojin enters the coffee shop on time. She looks flawlessly, just like during her wedding day. Her silky, black hair is styled in pretty curls and she's wearing light make-up accentuating her features. She’s dressed in a formal attire, a white button-down blouse and beige pants, so she’s probably here on her lunch break. Not much time for a private conversation it is, then.
She orders her coffee to go and looks around. She smiles when she spots you but you can easily tell it’s not sincere, more of a courteous manner. “Hi,” she says and takes a seat in front of you. “Have you ordered something yet? They have amazing lemon tarts here.”
“I’m fine with just coffee.”
“I’d love to eat something sweet but I’m currently trying to cut down on sugar, so just coffee for me, too.”
You nod, not knowing how to respond to what she said. It has always been hard for you to talk to her, ever since Jungkook had introduced you two together. She doesn’t really speak down to you but she carries herself with such superiority it’s making you feel self-conscious.
Soojin was born into an upper-middle-class family from Seoul. Her father owns a prospering business, so they’ve never really had to worry about money, as far as you recall what Jungkook had once told you. She used to attend ballet classes but dropped out of dancing school before entering university. That’s probably where her poise comes from. Thinking about it makes you straighten your slouching pose.
“Are you working around here?” you ask, trying to ease yourself into the conversation. She hasn’t moved straight to the point yet, so you’re panicking a little.
“Yeah, the company I work for has office nearby.” Soojin answers courtly. She takes a sip of her coffee and in a flash, the polite tilt of her mouth vanishes. “You know I’m not here to chit-chat with you, though.”
There it is.
“I’m aware.”
“What did Jungkook exactly tell you?”
“That you want to talk.”
Soojin raises a brow. “That’s all?”
“I’m assuming he didn’t want to intervene,” you say. “He only told me you know about the book.”
Or was it the only thing he meant? Did he perhaps tell her about the New Year’s Eve kiss as well?
“Weird situation, isn’t it?” she asks. “I just found out that the book I liked so much is actually about my husband and his childhood best friend. I sympathized with someone who’s been in love with him for twenty years. Can you believe it?”
Irritation laces her voice already but you remain calm. “He didn’t know. If he didn’t read the book, he would have never realize it. Don’t blame him.”
“I’m not blaming him. I actually believe he had no idea about the book. Maybe he did suspect something about your feelings but he decided not to do anything about it. He married me after all, right?” Soojin says. “What bothers me though, is you writing a whole goddamn book about your silly crush.”
You frown. Silly crush? You wouldn’t go to such great lengths if this was just a crush. And Soojin knows it too, she read the book after all. But she’s not here as a reader who enjoyed your work. She’s here as a wife whose husband you’re in love with.
“I published it under a pen name,” you counter. You’re hoping your voice doesn’t tremble too much. Soojin would gladly use your weakness to her advantage. “I changed names, locations. No one beside me and Jungkook would have known it’s about us.”
“What gave you an impression that you could just use someone’s life like that?”
“It was my life too,” you respond firmly. Jungkook was mad at you because you didn’t tell him about your feelings and now Soojin is going to be angry in his stead for writing a book about your relationship with him? “I talked to Jungkook about it after he had found out. I already apologized and he said he doesn’t mind that–“
“Of course he won’t hold a grudge against you. You’re his best friend.” Soojin snorts.
You sigh heavily. This is going nowhere. It’s crystal clear why she wanted to talk to you but for some reason, she won’t say it directly. Maybe it’s a matter of pride for her, or she’s afraid to admit it out loud.
“I’d like to apologize to you too. I’m sorry for using your relationship with Jungkook for my book, however I am not going to apologize for the way I described it. I didn’t write anything malicious or improper about you. I put on paper what I had seen as a mere bystander,” you say. “I know you’re probably worried now that since everything is out in the open that I am going to act out on my feelings but I can assure you it’s not going to happen.”
Soojin chuckles. “Oh, I’m not worried about that.”
Maybe she shouldn’t feel so sure of herself, you think. It’s not your place to tell her about the kiss. If Jungkook chose to lie by omission, that’s on him. You can’t carry the guilt on your own.
“Because you will, from now on, refrain from hanging out with him,” she continues. “You won’t meet up as often as before, you won’t text him about your mundane life, you will contact him only if necessary.”
Your heart skips a beat. “What?” you croak.
“I don’t want you near Jungkook anymore, it’s as simple as that. I don’t trust you.”
She has all the rights to feel displeased. You’re in love with her husband, after all but forbidding you from seeing him? She cannot control your lives like that.
“Does Jungkook know?” you ask.
Soojin’s rose-tinted lips stretch in a smile. “No, he doesn’t know yet because you will be the one to tell him so,” she replies. “You will tell him that you don’t want to be as close to him as before, that you need distance. If he asks to meet and talk, you will ignore him. If he asks about our conversation, you will say that you apologized to me and I decided to move on.”
“And if I don’t?”
Soojin’s expression is almost triumphant. She got what she wanted at last: you, finally out of Jungkook’s reach.
“Then the world will find out who Magnolia May really is and how she seduced her best friend and made him abandon his wife.”
#jungkook smut#btswritingcafe#networkbangtan#ksmutclub#bangtanarmynet#bts smut#jungkook angst#jungkook fanfic#jungkook x reader#jungkook x you#an ode to a broken heart
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who is this Nate?
Oh.
Oh, buddy.
Oh I get to talk about Natewantstobattle and you will regret this.
So! I'm not a NWTB expert so don't expect a full bulletpoint presentation BUT I can share my experience!
Natewantstobattle is a nerdcore turned original artist who made songs about video games, anime and cartoons for years and only recently (last year I think) decided to leave nerdcore behind and focus entirely on original music.
He's made some BANGER songs, has the voice of an angel and seems to have the same enthusiasm about dark/demonic fictional imagery as myself ^_^
He's made a lot of FNAF songs which is how I found him. His music got him noticed by Random Encounters (RE) who make small-budget indie musicals based on video games and decided to make a five-part special musical based on FNAF for which they reached out to get Nate involved. He appeared and sang as a prominent character in that musical as well as plenty of others that they made. Markiplier was also in that musical.
Nate is popular with a lot of Jacksepticeye and Markiplier fans as his content focuses on similar games, leading to the same people finding him. Because of that, the fans' habit of making characters or "egos" for youtubers from their videos also extended to Nate and honestly while I still listen to his music I haven't been active in the fandom for a while so I have no idea how many egos there are now, but I'm desperate to rejoin the fandom space and catch up!
Anyway, the egos I'm very well aware of are Natemare and Phantom.
Haha yeah, he kidnapped Matpat for that music video.
The video in question is for Mangled, a 2~ minute song based on FNAF 2. The character he portrayed was an instant hit with the fans and was subsequently dubbed "Natemare" as a play on nightmare.
Also in 2018 Nate released a limited edition Natemare shirt thus confirming the name as canon and also I have that shirt so cough cough.
Secondly, Phantom!
MAN I LOVE PHANTOM!
From a music video for a song of the same name.
As far as I'm aware there's practically no canonically confirmed information about him other than he makes deals and steals people's souls. That lead to a lot of fans calling him a demon, including myself.
It took me five years to put together a cosplay for Phantom because I couldn't find one part! You'd think it would be the staff, right? Impossible to find an exact replica, right? No. It was the bloody shirt. I couldn't find a single freaking long sleeve red button up shirt for YEARS. I've got it now, though.
His original albums so far include Sandcastle Kingdoms, Paid in Exposure and To Let Go. That one is actually currently coming out one song at a time on his YouTube channel and music streaming platforms. There's only two songs out at the moment and I think the plan was to release them slowly until they were all released by the time the album itself dropped, but it was announced last month that it's been brought forwards to the 18th! That's in FOUR DAYS!!!! The last song to come out was Forgotten on Tuesday which is the one you saw me blogging about. It slaps so fucking hard you have no idea.
If you want any personal recommendations for his music, my favourites of his original work are Phantom, Forgotten, All I See, Perfect by Design and Branded.
PIf you look up Phantom you may see it titled as a Hazbin Hotel song but actually it came out a good while before Hazbin Hotel did, he just realised how well the character of Phantom matched with Alastor from HH and released a remastered version with some of Alastor's voice lines over it.
My favourites of his nerdcore songs are Mangled, No More, Stay the Course, Time to Move on and Ask for More. That last one is about Food Wars. I don't even watch that show, that's just how good the song is.
Oh! As an addition that I almost forgot to talk about, he's also a voice actor! He's appeared in Attack on Titan, Fairy Tail, he plays the main character in Luck and Logic and has appeared in multiple video games like Dream Daddy, Yandere Simulator and Monster Prom.
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I’m not sure if you have seen this theory but what’s your thoughts on “the raven queen could be Ludinus’s mother”? I’ve seen it float around on twitter and honestly, to me, it seems a little far fetched.
I have, and I agree with you.
I guess the best way to put it is that there's a lot of theories about Ludinus, and that's extremely valid, but I've found that people are extremely weird about these theories in a way I haven't really seen elswhere.
Personally, I find the idea that Ludinus is lying about most of his past - that he is just a guy from immediately-post-Divergence Issylra who moved to Molaesmyr, destroyed it in an attempt to commune with Ruidus, and established himself as a permanent fixture in the relatively young Dwendalian Empire in order to further his ultimate goals - is by far the most compelling. It feels extremely real for someone with grandiose designs to deliberately invoke an idealized version of the Age of Arcanum that was destroyed; we see this all the time in real life appeals to classical Western antiquity from would-be dictators. I also think he is, in many ways, not sympathetic per se but very...human (well, elven) for being frustrated at having to gather information of this time he believes to be lost and far better than today piecemeal, from whatever scraps remain. I think if he had firsthand knowledge but still took 800 years to figure out what the fuck to do? He's less clever and less heartbreaking and somehow, despite not lying about his age, far more of a windbag.
However, this is just my preference! It's also entirely possible he is from pre-Calamity. And here's where I start to get less generous. Because pre-Calamity? Totally fine. He insinuates that he is. He does so in the same conversation in which he insinuates he is Ruidusborn, which we know he isn't, and it's implied that not many people have caught on to his age (indicating that he probably appeared pretty young when he arrived in Molaesmyr) and since his device appears to have possibly been invented in Molaesmyr my gut feeling is that he was either a child during the final years of Calamity or immediately after. That's just a gut feeling. He easily could be older.
The thing is, literally all we have is "might have been around pre-Calamity" and it feels like people treat two very common specific theories - that he is from Aeor, and that he is the son of the Raven Queen - as fact, when all of the Ludinus theories are purely vibes-based. All we can say with any confidence is "older than he looks, definitively over 500 and almost certainly over an elf's natural lifespan of 750."
Re: The Raven Queen theory, what personally strikes me as far-fetched is that the Raven Queen's original name is lost, but who she was was not lost. She taught Patia. Wouldn't people...know that Ludinus was her child? Like, I suppose the answer can be "Matt didn't want to give spoilers away" but it feels like it raises questions about EXU Calamity that in all the discussion of people interested in ascension, the fact that the Raven Queen had a son doesn't ever once come up. And if he were a secret? That's also a question! And if he were the child of the now forgotten deity of death? What does that mean for him? Wouldn't he be a demigod, probably, of sorts? Can the gods reproduce? Was he the Raven Queen's child with some random guy? It's not that it's not possible, but I feel like boiling his stuff about the gods down to "Mommy issues" is reductive, far less interesting, and it raises more questions than it answers which is always in my mind a sign to steer clear of a theory.
And then there's the Aeor part, which just...I don't actually know where this comes from because if he were the Raven Queen's son it's pretty clear he'd be from Avalir, as she was all but stated to be, but people seem to treat these two things as both true sometimes. I feel Aeor feels far-fetched specifically because I think he'd have been far more able to rebuild Aeorian tech if he was from there. I suppose it's possible he was just a mediocre schmo while Aeor still existed, and has taken on a last survivor, must reclaim the glory of "city that was about to nuke another city simply as a weapon's test" mentality; but also, Aeor expeditions are relatively recent in the timeline of Post-Divergence Exandria. You think this man couldn't have popped up there and taken a leisurely look at the ruin of the Malleus Factorum any time before the past 60-ish years, before Uthodurn started poking around? Why didn't he mention Aeor in his notes in Molaesmyr? Again, more questions are raised than answered, and that casts doubt for me.
So it's hard for me to be objective here just because I find so much of the "Ludinus is pre-Calamity" theorizing to be just...really humorless and brittle and presumptive, and often not terribly interesting. Obviously if we get a definitive answer, and he is the child of the Raven Queen or is Aeorian (if he's both I'm going to roll my eyes because that's just sloppy, Matthew) or even if he was just a guy from pre-Calamity and not terribly important, I'll incorporate that into my understanding! But there's this childish demand that everyone treat what is ultimately an unconfirmed theory as immutable fact. I've seen people act like shitposting about Ludinus is somehow offensive because it violates their personal headcanons, and that's just peak main character behavior on their part. The idea that Ludinus is 800 and deliberately building a cult of personality rooted in the idealization of the Age of Arcanum (while conveniently ignoring that this age was when the Prime Deities -and only the Prime Deities - walked the earth; and that life outside the flying cities was rather less idyllic and wizard-run, and that the titans were still sealed away) is no less valid than the idea that he's 1200 and the son of the Raven Queen and/or from Aeor. All we know for certain is "definitely has been active and accounted for for over 500 years, almost certainly more, is definitely extending his lifespan through eating fey souls."
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Hiiii
Your work is soooo coolllllll!!!
If I may ask, what was your process in making the MM pants?
-XO
Hiii! Thank you so much!! And Great Question! I didn't take too many pictures of every single part of the process so this is going to be mostly words if that's ok 😅
but here's
How I Made The Mutant Mayhem Pants
First We Need Our Materials:
An Idea or A Drawing Of Your Design
A nice pair of pants ( The wider the pants leg the more space for your design! So I personally prefer to not use skinny jeans but at the end of the day it's up to you! :D )
Eyelets
Heat Transfer Paper
Something Non permanent to mark your pants ( I used heat erasable fabric pens )
Scissors
Parchment Paper
Clothing Iron
Shoelaces ( or whatever you want to connect the pants like chains or ribbon or safety pins etc. )
Step 1: Design
I use the app Procreate on my iPad to design all my projects! I just take a picture of the piece of clothing whether it's shoes or clothes and edit/draw my design on top of it until I'm happy with it! ( which usually takes a really long time 🤣 these took me 14+ hours to design )
Also here's a secret tip I used for this project: I put a denim overlay over the gray parts of the design before printing it so that when I printed it on the pants it blended in perfectly with the denim jeans! You can't even tell it was printed on, it looks like it was always there!!
Step 2: Cutting the Pants!
Use the Non-Permanent Pen where you want the opening of the pants to be. ( if you're making them for yourself then you can always double check by trying them on before cutting them just to make sure that they're being cut in the right place! ☝️🏽 )
Then once the markings are good, cut the pants!
Step 3: Eyelets!
Once I had the pants cut, I marked where I wanted the eyelets to go with my non permanent pen. Then I added them in one by one! If you've never worked with eyelets before it's not that hard. You can find a bunch of tutorials on Youtube! That's what I did lol! There's NO SHAME in being a beginner! :D ( Also beginner tip: practice putting the eyelets in the scrap pieces of pants that you just cut off )
Step 4: Printing and Cutting out the design
Get your heat transfer paper and print whatever your design is with a printer! If you have a big design like mine I had to use 2 pieces of heat transfer paper for each turtle!
Then after I took this picture I cut them out! Then I sat them on the jeans again for a couple of minutes just to make sure that they were perfect and I didn't need to re-print them! ( also to make sure I liked the order they were in. I put my favorite 2 ninja turtles at the top so that if I wanted to remove the shoelaces and wear these pants as shorts I would only be left with my favorites...so sorry leo and raph 😅)
Step 5: Ironing Them On
Place the design where you want it, cover it with parchment paper, and then iron it on the highest setting with no steam! THE NO STEAM IS VERY IMPORTANT, PLZ DON'T FORGET TO DUMP THE WATER OUT OF THE IRON BEFOREHAND ☝️🏽
Step 6: Shoelaces
Put the Shoelaces ( or whatever you used to keep em together! :D ) inside the eyelets. Then I just tied them like I would tie a shoe but it doesn't really matter how you tie them as long as they're secure!
Step 7: Cry and Marvel at your astounding work
And there you have it!
That how I made the Mutant Mayhem pants!!
Next time I do a project like these I'll take more pictures of every step, but until then I hope this was helpful!!
If ya ever make these or use this tutorial for anything plzzz tag me! I wanna see what ya make!! :DDD
And if there was any part of this tutorial you want me to elaborate on OR you know/found a better way to do some of the steps then please let me know!!! :D
#tutorial#crafts#handmade#tmnt mutant mayhem#mutant mayhem#teenage mutant ninja turtles#tmnt merch#art#custom#qna#fashion#tmnt#teenage mutant ninja turtles: mutant mayhem#bunnilime#my art
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"Lore, where have you been?"
In hell, probably. I remade M0R1BUND.com.
“For the love of god, why?”
Short answer: to save time and money.
Long answer: Sharing art was getting burdensome. Neocities hosts static websites built with html, css, and javascript—which is awesome for its mission, to encourage people to create future-proof websites. But this also means that every page is created and maintained by hand. I handle every little link and file and bit of code, and if I want to do site-wide changes, I have to push those by hand, too. This takes time, and so does writing image descriptions and cross-posting art to other websites. It became normal for sharing art to eat up an entire day.
I later created Basedt.net in WordPress, so that I didn’t have to worry about managing link hierarchies, which was a big timewaster on my old webcomic. I liked working in WordPress well enough, and I knew I would benefit from being able to use PHP to manage the sheer amount of stuff that’s on M0R1BUND.com. I was also paying double for webhosting through two different services, when I really didn’t need to…. So… I knew it was inevitable that I would consolidate the two at some point. It was time.
I do really love Neocities and I’m sorry to let it go. I encourage anyone who wants to learn web design and create their own website to start there.
Anyway, that’s how I ended up in hell for 6 months.
“What’s changed?”
Most things. I’m most excited about the quality-of-life stuff, like being able to sort art by character/location/world, or being able to move between individual pieces instead of having to return to the gallery landing page. There are lots of things I want to add, but my soft deadline for this was the new year, so I focused on recreating M0R1BUND.com as it existed before… well… this.
I’ve also edited most of my writing. This site is old, and the art is even older, it felt good to give it some TLC.
There are still a few things missing from the new site:
The Woods and RANSOM. They aren’t really representative of Basedt or Mercasor anymore, and I was not a competent writer in 2018. If I re-share them, it will be in the distant future.
Some of my Those Who Went Missing stuff. I haven’t been playing TWWM publicly, so this is lower priority right now. It will happen when it happens.
Some twines. They haven’t adjusted to the new filepath format yet. Killswitch is here, though :)
If you need them urgently for some reason, I can share them with you? but that seems doubtful haha.
Links to pages on the old M0R1BUND.com are broken and will remain broken until I set up redirections to the new M0R1BUND.com. I have no idea how long that will take! … Hopefully not long, given the new semester is here.
And of course... If you see anything weird, tell me! I test as much as I can, but I only have access to so many devices. Break this website within an inch of its miserable life so that I can fix it.
“How’s Basedt going?”
It’s going. Recreating my website took precedence for the above reasons, but I’ve been working concurrently on it in my spare time. We move like a glacier into the new year. ETA: ???
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Advent Anthology by @pacific-rimbaud
A Compilation of PR's one-shot entries for DHr Advent, years 2020-2022.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Relationship: Draco Malfoy x Hermione Granger
Art by the wonderful @chestercompany
My binderary baby and second fanbinding project.
read below the cut for the process and other binding deets.
Quick Specs
20,015 words | 179 pages | Quarto (1/4 of Letter)
Technique: Flatback bradel
Title & Body Font: Libre Baskerville (in various style emphasis)
Fics included:
Les Pelerins (10k; 2020 entry)
I'm Never Lonely When I'm With You (5k; 2021 entry)
On The Virtues of Inexhaustible Burning (5k; 2022 entry)
Pac is the type I could trust to write anything and I know I'll absolutely love. Her advent fics, in particular, I especially adore. The writing is very visceral and I will not admit how many times I've reread these.
On The Book
I had not intended to bind any book/s for @renegadepublishing's binderary because of my hectic schedule, however FOMO won over and this book was born. It was a relatively quick design and typeset (I really do better under pressure lol). I wish I could say the same for when I started the actual binding though. This is the 8th book I’ve bound and I had expected it to go relatively smoothly, but this book fought me every step of the way and I'll indulge in expressing my distress on this post.
First, the print place I go to messed up my typeset, thus me having to travel back home to use our old crappy inkjet (that took 3 hours to print). And because said printer is crappy, I had to use 100gsm short grain to minimize show-through, and well, you can imagine how stick straight the pages are. Second, I made the case too small (I worked on the book after a toxic 12 hour lab day and was not in the right state) and instead of redoing the covers, I re-trimmed and repainted the fore edge (at cost of my lovely margins ..wails). Third & last, the vinyl refused! to stick to the cover and I proper burnt the HTV as well as my finger on my iron. In the book's defense, it was my first time using leather paper and I forgot to test their chemistry.
On The Bind
Everything else went swimmingly, aforementioned shit aside. I tried not to make this book scream Christmas and leaned into a more subtle theme through color choices. I finally got to use this lovely red leather paper from Itoya, which my parents bought me during their trip in Japan. Many thanks to @celestial-sphere-press for helping me out with the shops to visit!
The design cover was made on Illustrator. The words are actually the fic prompts which I arranged in concentric circles, inspired by the arrangement of the advent candles in our local church from years back. I have no idea what paper my print place used, but it has some nice pulp to it.
As I said, I melted the HTV and certain parts refused to stick, so I peeled all of it off, except for the spine title (which miraculously stuck) and used my foil quill pen instead. I used an off-brand one and it's really good!
I also did this sort of strip across the edge which I learned is called a "river" as Nic @bindsbymunchkin called it. The side near the spine though, looked asymmetrically empty, so I added the foiling. And as this is an anthology, the punctuations was a design choice to convey the start and end and pauses in-between stories (and mostly because they just look fancy lol).
Like my last bind, the edges are gold which is comprised of an undercoat of diluted dark gray Sakura acrylic paint and many layers of Liquitex iridescent gold acrylic ink.
Endbands are made with alternating colors of cream, gray, and gold DMC cotton threads, however I'm learning I don't very much like how sewn endbands look on small flatbacks.
The endpapers are my fave. I had already tipped in plain cream cardstock but then I was like: this book needs MARBLED PAPER! so I ripped off the one I had stuck and replaced it. It's actually not real marbled paper HAHA. I sourced it from this site, printed it on some heavy paper, and oh my god I believe the universe really meant for me to find this pattern because it coincidentally matched the colors of the endbands!!
On The Typeset
I wanted to keep things cohesive but also give each story its own character. Libre Baskerville was a lovely typeface to do that on.
From left to right: Les Pelerins, I'm Never Lonely When I'm With You, On The Virtues of Inexhaustible Burning
For Les Pelerins, I wanted to mimic the silhouette of the establishments in Montmartre, hence the varying heights of the letters. If I wasn’t on a time crunch, I would’ve spent more time editing the headers but alas this is what we get. INLWIWY is more straightforward– a pinecone, which was a recurring theme in the story. And I think OTVOIB is my favorite. I drew tiny gold cracks onto the coal rock which is a significant element in the story. It still gives me that stomach flip whenever I reread it (iykyk).
#sting and snout bindery#buzzing books#z’s biblioteca#fanbinding#bookbinding#binderary2023#dramione#pacificrimbaud#dhr advent 2022#dhr fic#ficbinding#dhr advent
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The Bicentennial: The Invitation or The Tour that almost never was
As some of you surely are aware, the Bicentennial of La Fayette’s Tour through America in 1824/25 is fast approaching and many organizations/institutes, especially in America, have already made some form of content regarding this event.
Let us have a look at one document that stands at the start of this event – the invitation La Fayette received from the then President James Monroe on February 7, 1824.
‘Monroe and Lafayette’ (no date) Highland. Available at: https://highland.org/teacher-resources/monroe-and-lafayette/ (02/21/2024).
Everybody who has ever worked with Monroe’s papers will tell you, that his handwriting was often not, well, legible. This is completely off-topic, but one of my favourite quotes about Monroe is this statement by Edmund Bacon, one of Thomas Jeffersons overseer’s. He wrote that:
Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison both wrote a plain, beautiful hand, but you could write better with your toes than Mr. Monroe wrote.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A Look at Penmanship (2012) Monticello. Available at: https://www.monticello.org/research-education/blog/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-a-look-at-penmanship/ (02/21/2024).
(And let us not forget that Andrea Gray wrote in the same blog post, concerning Monroe’s penmanship: “Any idea who penned that abomination?”)
I think it is not quite that bad, but Monroes handwriting is also not the subject at hand, so back to the letter. Luckily, there is a transcript by Hampton Kennedy for James Monroe’s Highland:
[Transcription Page 1]
Washington Feby [February]. 7th. 1824
My dear sir
I wrote you about a fortnight since,
a letter which I forwarded to New York to the care
of Mr Brown, in which I intimated my desire in
at liberty
case you felt yourself ^ to visit the Ustates [United States], to send
a frigate to some port of France, to receive and bring
you over. Since then Congrefs [Congress] have pafsed [passed] a re-
-solution, to that effect, expression of the affectionate
attachment of the whole nation to you, and of their de-
-sire to see you again among us. The period at which
you may deem it proper, to accept this invitation, is
life to yourself, but you may be afsured [assured], that when-
-ever it may comport with your views, of which
you will have the goodnefs [goodness] to advise me, a public
ship shall be immediately orderd [ordered] to the port which
you may designate, to carry you to the country of
your adoption in early life, + [and] which has always che-
-rished the most grateful recollection of your im-
-portant services. I send you here with a copy
of the resolution, and have only to add, the
[Transcription Page 2]
afsurance [assurance] of my high consideration and affectionate
regard.
James Monro
‘Monroe and Lafayette’ (no date) Highland. Available at: https://highland.org/teacher-resources/monroe-and-lafayette/ (02/21/2024).
And as easy as inviting La Fayette in the end was for Monroe, writing a short and simple letter, the process leading up to Monroe writing this letter was somewhat debated. Allow me to take you back to the House of Representatives on January 12, 1824, when the notion to invite La Fayette was first introduced.
Annals of Congress, 18th Congress, 1st session, I, p. 988.
The bill took its usual route from there and on the next day, the resolution was read again and was voted on – and I know what you are all thinking. Of course the resolution passed! We all know that the Tour took place and America and Americans had such high esteem for La Fayette. They had already supported and honoured him in so many ways, most notable during the French Revolution, his imprisonment and the financial struggles following his release. Well, no. The resolution was negatived by 80 to 74 – a small margin granted, but a defeat, nonetheless.
Annals of Congress, 18th Congress, 1st session, I, p. 1004-1005
Around the same time La Fayette lost his reelection for his seat in the Chambre des Députés – and now even America did not want him? Well, it was not quite that dramatic for our Marquis.
First of all, the wording of the notion was not all it could be, and a committee was there for formed to change the way the bill was phrased. Furthermore, and in contrast to his earlier visits to America, La Fayette had long outgrown “his charming, rich boy-general”-image. He had become a serious politician and a household name in Europe and European politics. His values and agendas were well known. Revolutions were spreading all throughout the western world and at that time the Greek War of Independence (1821-1829) was raging and in South America many regions declared independence and formed Republics. More generally speaking, the 1820s were a time of Revolution and La Fayette, as a general rule of thumb, always sided with the revolutionaries, the ones that fought for freedom (however you want to define the term) and independence. He loudly advocated for Greek and South America, he gave money to Italian and Spanish exiles. In short, he was advocating for Revolution and not everyone liked that. In 1815, after Napoléon Bonaparte’s final defeated the so-called Holly Alliance (Austrian Empire and the Kingdoms of Russia and Prussia) was formed with the expressed aim to keep liberalism in check. In America itself there were varying opinions on how to respond to what was happening and these subjects became even more prominent with Monroe’s presidency and his Monroe-Doctrine. Add to this La Fayette’s dislike for the principles of slavery. Slavery was in the 1820’s not quite such a hot topic as it would later be, but it was still a touchy subject and La Fayette’s opinions, as with everything else, were well known. And, as Mr. William of North Carolina remarked, was the Congress sure that La Fayette even wanted to come?
With all that in mind, the resolution was amended and reintroduced on January 20, 1824:
Annals of Congress, 18th Congress, 1st session, I, p. 1101-1104.
After the new text and a letter by La Fayette expressing his desire to return to America once more before his death were read, the resolution was unanimously agreed upon. There is no hard evidence, but some contextual evidence suggesting that Monroe really urged Congress to pass the resolution.
The problem therefor was not with La Fayette as a person. There still was the deep connection between a man and a people who both owned each other a great deal. The visit was a personal affair that had also a strong political connection, both on a national and an international level. It was a “yes” from America to La Fayette and his believes and it also was a “yes” from La Fayette to America and American politics. And while everything went down just fine, there was still the question regarding the implications this invitation and visit had. Monroe, a personal friend of the La Fayette’s, who had helped Adrienne a great deal during the French Revolution and who supposedly had urged Congress to pass said resolution, wrote, somewhat anxiously, to Thomas Jefferson on October 18, 1824:
His mov’ment, since his arrival in the UStates, has been well directed. Had he visited this city in the first instance, the compromitment of the govt, with the holy alliance, would have been much greater, than by going directly to our fellow citizens, & from them to the govt. By this course, the nation has the credit. The holy alliance, & all the govts of Europe, must therefore look to us, as an united people, devoted to the principles of our revolution & of free republican government.
“To Thomas Jefferson from James Monroe, 18 October 1824,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-4634. [This is an Early Access document from The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series. It is not an authoritative final version.] (02/21/2024).
And that is, in summary, how La Fayette’s visit to America in 1824/1825 came to be.
#to be fair the title is a tad dramatic#marquis de lafayette#la fayette#french history#american history#history#european history#thomas jefferson#james monroe#letters#founders online#1824#politics#lafayette#the bicentannial#the tour of 1824/1825
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To Commit An Act of God
[Dreamwidth] [SquidgeWorld]
-
Chance was, statistically speaking, a calculable, inevitable event. He supposed he should have seen this one coming.
-
He's listening with one ear to everyone in the lab, a bustle and background noise that hums along with his thoughts in synchronicity. It's not something he'd ever tell anyone, but the abstract chaos is comforting, and one of the only reasons he'll linger at a table in the communal labs rather than the one designated for his personal use as head of the division. Silence is useful when he needs to bend his nose to the grindstone, but it can make the static of roiling background thoughts too overwhelming with nothing to temper it from outside his head.
Turning the slim, pen-like device over in his hands, he wonders - not for the first time - how the Ancients contrived so many various pieces of technology. With the amount of labs and experiments paused in situ around the city, the power draw must have been enormous. Surely they had some means of regularly maintaining the ZPMs, and he frowned into the middle distance, trying once again to parse the delicate presuppositions of ideas about how this was accomplished.
It was his responsibility to make sure the city stayed afloat, and literally so. He tapped the device against the table, the sound lost among the myriad patter of movement around him. Surely there's some sort of maintenance code? He blinked a few times, letting his vision filter back to the screen in front of him, still paused on a spreadsheet tracking the projects in each department. Columns of numbers greeted him, completely arbitrary in their reflection of progress, the process rubber-stamped by the IOA despite being a galaxy and then some away. Something… something in the numbers. Has to be.
Everyone knew better than to interrupt him when he was off taking a mental walk like this, too used to how his innocuous process of thinking produced results. He brings up another window, remembering at the last minute that the over-engineered soldering pen he had been fiddling with was still Ancient technology and thus not advised for normal interaction, setting it down above the function buttons on his keyboard to prevent it from rolling away. The file directory stared back at him, impassive as he drummed his fingers over the keys in thought.
Re-tracing his whisper of a thought took a bit of effort, but when he did, he mumbled an 'aha!' to himself, locating the root directory mirroring what they had been able to compile from the main Ancient database. It was a beautiful application of colour-coding, if he did say so himself, articulatable to himself unto a fairly steep exercise in exhaustion - his normal state of mind when rescuing everyone from the inanities of a ten thousand year old creaking structure that some days seemed hellbent on killing them all out of sheer decrepitude.
Sorry, he thought anyway, refraining from patting his keyboard, and by extension Atlantis, in apology. Picking up the pen-thing again, he resumed rolling the cool metal around his fingers, mind once again sinking back into the currents of one of the many background problems he toiled with when there was time. If the crystals can be modified for different circuitry layouts, then that presumes the transistors contain different permutations of use…
He walked himself through the argument, muttering pertinent facets under his breath. If you convert the gate of a diode on the third level of circuitry, then the flow is redirected based upon the direction of the other levels, he frowns, tapping the pen against the table, If you have opposing factors in the directions, then the energy flow is based upon the resistance of alloys along the stream.
Not for the first time, he wondered how the Ancients had figured out how to convert a connection to subspace to electricity. It was scarcely the same thing, too many factors at play for physics to catch up. But it did - obviously so, if they were sitting in a ship full of proof. Staring at the pen, he held it between both hands, contemplating it.
An electric flow is dependent upon the magnetization of materials and thus its quantum state, he thinks, Energy is the transfer of matter, and can be modified based on its state.
But how did they connect? He frowned, thinking back to some of the basic schematics he had been able to pull from Earth's ZPM. They were the same technology as Atlantis', of course, so the principles carried over, but the way they interfaced with Earth's stargate and Atlantis itself was a branch or two off of similarity, enough to puzzle over its differences. What he learned there was almost useless here.
He sighed, nearly silent in comparison to the cacophony of his thoughts. State-dependent modifications rely upon sufficient energy to transition to a new form. To alter the path on a crystal, one must modify multiple states at once in order to achieve proper transmission flow. Impediments would be-
"Would be what?" He mutters to himself, staring at the monitor. The root directory told him little, only that power flowed out of the ZPM and to different parts of the city like snowmelt running down the crevices of a mountain - a source from a different system, distributed with the same force but not the same volume.
… A logic gate is transformed upon the basis of individual changes on multiple levels, at different points in the system.
The pen feels all at once too heavy and too light in his hands, drooping in his shock-loosened grip. His mind was flitting ahead, the conclusion almost in his reach. Habit, absently, had him reaching toward it, silence filling his ears.
To adjust for different phase states, one must precipitate a change in the path at multiple points in the system.
It- it explained everything. His mind buzzed at the epiphany, and he couldn't help his fascination leaking forth in one, unprompted, "Oh."
The pen clanks against the edge of the table, falling to the floor with a clatter in the afterimage of gold dust floating away.
-
When he next blinks, it isn't to a monitor or his thoughts or his realization at all. Instead, it's to midday light, something not visible from the main labs due to the obvious lack of windows. Gold is filtering out of his view, a pretty wave of light that he understands intuitively is the play of photons around him.
He blinks again, scattering the vestiges with bemusement.
"Sir?" A woman's voice sounds from off to his side, sounding as if she's said it more than once, and a bit odd in the manner of hearing two things at once. It occurs to him that he's hearing English, even if that might not be what she's speaking. He blinks again, turning his head toward the voice - a waitress, smiling at him patiently, "Might I take your order?"
"Uh," And damn if that isn't an articulate answer. He flushes, trying not to squirm in place in embarrassment and realizing abruptly that the distinctive twinge in his back was no longer there. Too discombobulated to think about that for too long, he shakes his head, "I'm sorry, who are you?"
The waitress' smile neither dims nor grows, but maintains its placid patience. He can't help but think the overall effect is calming, if nevertheless disorienting - he hasn't met a single waitress that can keep their keel so evenly.
"I'm here to take your order," She says, this time with a hint of humor as she tilts her notepad toward him, "Do you something in mind?"
"Um, uh-" He shakes his head, trying to put two and two together. The memory is a bit blurred, but he retains that distinct feeling of being at work, and then all of a sudden, poof. Nothing after that.
"He'll have something off the breakfast menu," Another voice interjects, familiar enough to draw his attention. His brow furrows at the man smiling across from him in the other booth, too sly to be anything other than real. A hand extends toward him over the table, "You should remember me, Rodney - Daniel?"
"Jackson," He breathes, the dots finally settling into place at seeing the SGC-rumored Mister Ascended himself talking to him. The expected kick of panic at the knowledge of his death never comes, and he exhales in a whoosh, shaking the other man's hand, "What is this place?"
Daniel smirks, albeit in a wholly good-natured manner that he feels should irritate him on principle, the man slouching back into his seat like he was moulded from it, "Oh, take your pick- most people call this the afterlife. You ascended."
"Huh," He looks back up at the waitress, who seemed to be lingering rather than stuck in some freeze-frame out of the Matrix, and then out the window, which held nothing in particular at all unless he concentrated on a specific sight, "Okay, I'll accept that. How did I get here? I mean- ascending, obviously, but-"
Snorting, Daniel shook his head, looking much younger than he remembered him from last meeting, "I'm sure you'll figure it out, if you want to remember it."
"What does that mean?" He asked, frowning, "Am I not supposed to remember, or- Or is there something I am supposed to remember, and-"
"Rodney," Daniel interjected, shaking his head. The smile on the man's face wasn't as reassuring as he probably thought it was, and he said as much, "It's fine. Sometimes you'll want to know, sometimes you won't - it's all up to you."
He watched the flicker of emotions cross Daniel's face, and thought about all the ways that, up until now, he could have died from. A shudder rippled through him, remembering all the mundane and terrifying things he could recall - and recall in perfect, painstaking clarity, "Point taken. But… why now? I could have ascended before, with that- that machine, but this is. This is completely arbitrary, I didn't even plan this."
Daniel raised an eyebrow, an echo of his own death reverberating between them in tangible detail, making him bite back a grimace at the shared memory of radiation eating away at flesh and bone long past what medicine could alleviate. It combined with a faint stretch of precognition, layers of possibilities where that was his own predicated fate among many other routes that led right back to this diner.
They stared at each other for a moment, sharing the mental travelling of what could be, what will be. When he clenched his hands into fists on the table, feeling the emotional burn of nausea if not the physical, Daniel asked, "Would you want to?"
"Plan this?" He asked, then shook his head instinctively, answering his own question, "I mean, I'm sure all of this has its merits - but believe me, those windows are creeping me out, it feels like a bunch of TV screens if I'm not making it stay in place - but… No. Not yet, at least."
With those nightmare-inducing ideas now floating around his head, a thought suddenly occurred to him, "Are you dead, too? Like at the same time?"
"Am I?" Daniel extended his arms, encompassing the table, "Or does a drop of water hold both the salt of a rock and the cold of a cloud?"
"Linguists," He mutters in good-natured disgust, shaking his head.
Daniel laughed, rising from the table, "I recommend the pancakes."
"Of course you do," He replies, but Daniel's already gone, whisked away who knows where. Sighing, he looks at the waitress, still patiently existing for him to revisit her point in time, "Ah, I suppose pancakes will do. Do you have them in chocolate chip?"
The waitress smiles as she copies down the order, whatever she's writing with bafflingly indistinct and definitely not transcribing in English. Huh. "Of course. Did you want anything else?"
He pauses, thinking for a moment before shrugging, "Hell, I'm apparently dead, anyway. I am dead here, right?"
"A pot of water boils when there is a necessity for it," The waitress responds, and he should have figured he was surrounded by Ancients.
Sighing, he consigns himself to an innumerable and apparently eternal amount of superbly bad puns, "A cup of coffee, then, if this is what I'm gonna have to listen to. With cream and sugar," He pauses, hesitant, "And a, uh, a glass of lemonade. Please?"
Smiling serenely, the waitress nods, "Your order will be ready shortly."
Wishing he had nerves to shake out, he only mumbles something on rote, unsurprised when there was yet another Ancient sitting across from him where Daniel had been sitting just a moment prior, "Uh. Hello?"
"Hello," The woman says, and god, what a beautiful woman, too. Her smile only grows wider, in what he assumes is some preternatural ability to read his thoughts, which really falls in line with this whole instinctive multi-lingual thing death had, "No, Doctor McKay, I am merely happy to see you."
He frowns, "Do I know you? I feel like I'd remember someone, uh, someone like you."
The woman shakes her head, laughing. It's all so unoffensive, though, he can't help but feel a laugh bubble up with her, "Doctor McKay. You have seen my Dan'yel, yes?"
The name doesn't ring a bell until a his order is being set down in front of him, somehow a similar order being placed in front of the woman. Grits aren't really his taste, but the way this stranger delicately heaps more food into the bowl and eats a large spoonful makes it look appetizing. He grabs his coffee on instinct, pleased to realize it was precisely the right temperature despite the steam wafting out of the cup.
"Daniel Jackson, you mean?" He asks, smearing the pat of butter plopped on top of the short stack with a distracted swipe of his knife. The smell was superb, making his mouth water, "I, uh, I just saw him. Did you see him leave?"
The woman shakes her head, somehow looking unruffled despite the news, "I will see him again. But, Doctor McKay, I would like you to speak to him."
He blinked around a forkful of pancake, "Uh? I suppose they don't do letters here, do they?"
The pancake was delicious enough that he was almost too distracted to hear the woman's next words, and he chewed quickly, swallowing the bite to make room for another sip of coffee.
"It is alright," The woman soothed, her smile undimmed by his accidentally piecemeal attention, "But you will see him again. I miss my Dan'yel, I wish him to know all is well."
He pauses over his contemplation of the lemonade, familiar trepidation marred by curiosity over the distinct smell that usually makes his stomach roil. Settling for a halfway point of putting the glass down in between him and his pancakes, mildly disturbed at himself with how easy it was to calculate the exact triangulation of objects in doing so, he asked, "What do you mean?"
The woman nods at his juice with a bizarrely patient look of affection, "Drink that, you will like it."
Grumbling, he accepts the non-sequitur, hesitating for a moment at the familiar smell that usually heralded agony for him before taking a small, minuscule, truly tentative sip. There was no burning sensation, no heart palpitations that promised an allergic reaction that would have been doubled by sheer anxiety, no swelling of throat or fading of vision. He tightened his grip on the glass, taking another small taste of the drink.
"Oh," He says, marvelling, "Tangy. This is delicious."
The woman smiles, watching as he takes a more confident drink. He could see why so many people associated lemons with summer, now, it was almost… almost a joyful flavour. Wiggling in his seat at the revelation, it was a short order to drink the rest of it, taking the time to savour the different aspects of acid and sweetness and complete and utter lack of life-threatening reaction.
"Wow," He murmurs, tilting the glass to get a last drop, "I really have been missing out, huh?"
"You are quite brave," The woman says, tilting an eyebrow in a manner that reminds him of Teyla, if Teyla was as naturally demure as this woman. He accepts the hand laid over his own, loosening the grip on his fork, "Doctor McKay, there are many things for you to know."
He shakes his head, pragmatism too engrained for him to abide by that compliment, "I've learned quite enough, haven't I? I'm here, that- that does mean I learned enough."
The woman merely allowed her smile to blend into a different mood, "My name is Sha're. You are much like Dan'yel - always seeking, always helping."
"You are-" His voice strangles on the concept, "You are quite kind. Uh. Thank you? I think."
"You do help," She says, the words strengthened by her obvious conviction, "There are many who are helped. No path is clear, but walk along it knowing the fog of the morning will dissipate."
"And here we are on garden paths," He mutters, but the words click together nevertheless, "You- I recognize you. Your name. Sha're of- of Abydos?"
The woman nods, emphatic, "Yes. A pebble in a stream can branch into a river."
He squeezes her hand back, feeling discombobulated but also at ease. It was funny how epiphanies did that, "I think I'll finish my pancakes first, though, if you don't mind?"
Sha're laughs, her voice tinkling with delight.
-
Bracing himself to enter his own quarters in a deserted hallway is ridiculous even for him, but the sweet, ready way Atlantis opens his door is reassuring. He's still wrapping that sense of familiarity around him when the volume of people's raised voices registers, halting him with barely two steps through the door that closed with a subtle swoosh.
"What the hell is going on here," Rodney shouts, horrified, derailing three different arguments by force of presence alone. He puts his hands on his hips, muttering to himself, "I'm gone for five minutes-"
"Rodney!"
"Yes, what-"
He's not prepared for the way Sheppard vaults over the bins and boxes and tackles him, his breath thumped out of him with the gesture. The grip on him is tight, and he can swear his newly re-formed bones are creaking with the pressure, so he struggles to get his arms out from under Sheppard's grip to whack at the man's back, "Let me go!"
Sheppard does, but not before he flatly picks him up, like some deranged rendition of a teddy bear, swaying him around a little for emphasis. The smile on the colonel's face is broader than anything he's ever seen - a part of him wants to be spooked by it, the sight so unusual for a typically taciturn person. He's left flailing for the correct response when Sheppard grabs his face with both hands and presses a deep, impulsive kiss onto his lips.
"Hngh?" He can practically feel his brain rewire itself on the surprise dose of endorphins, which he doesn't presently have the wherewithal to deliberate on whether that's a good thing. It's apparently an adequate amount of time for Sheppard to decide to kiss him again, and he can feel himself melt into it, "Mmm. Ah."
He can still feel the imprint of Sheppard's uniform under his hands when the kiss peters off, briefly distracted by the way the other man's lips slide against his own. A part of him wants to lean back in, tilt his head up, but the shocked silence convinces him that he at least needs to table that particular discussion for later.
"Um," He says, blinking a few times and feeling rueful that, once again, his mind is going faster than the rest of him, "Hi."
Sheppard grins down at him, all soft and fond and other gooey emotions he can feel behind his eyes, "Hi."
"So I might have…" He shrugs, swallows loosely and feels himself flush at the way Sheppard's eyes track his throat, "Accidentally ascended?"
"Accidentally?!" Radek shouts in bewildered disbelief, "You- you- 'accidentally', můj prdel-"
"I heard that," He says automatically, still too used to the auto-translate that being ostensibly non-corporeal had granted him. Radek sputters to a stop, gaping at him. He winces, "Uh. Sorry. About that."
"Sorry about what?" Sheppard asks, and he hasn't let go yet, but nobody's making him. The slide of a thumb against the back of his neck makes his eyes flutter, Sheppard's breath stuttering as he does so.
"Mmm," He sighs, letting himself be held. It felt like an eternity since the last time he had experienced such a luxury, "Leaving. Understanding. Whole lot. Take your pick."
Sheppard huffs out a relieved laugh, pulling him closer in a protective grip, one hand still cupping the back of his head, "Apology accepted."
He's still adjusting to the waves of affection coming from Sheppard, threatening to knock his knees out from under him and turn him into a cooked noodle of appreciation, so the non-Sheppard hand tentatively touching his arm is surprising. Sheppard briefly tightens his grip, but now that he can recognize an anxious Teyla - and really, what did happen, she's the least anxious person he knows, a complete opposite of him - he slides out of Sheppard's hold with a faint sense of reluctance.
"Rodney," Teyla is looking at him searchingly, reflexively gripping his forearm, "I- is that truly you?"
Speaking feels utterly trite at the moment, much as he does, sometimes, love to hear himself talk. What he does instead is envelope Teyla in a hug, squishing her against him the same way he remembered doing with Jeannie when she was young, too afraid from a nightmare to seek anyone else out. It's definitely the correct choice, because she hugs him back with a tinge of desperation, tucking her head under his chin with a wobbly breath.
"Shh," He murmurs, making sure he doesn't let go until Teyla wants to, listening to her unsteady breathing. The words that come to mind are old, disused, but he dusts them off because Teyla needs them, "Everything's alright, I'm here. Shh, shh, it's okay."
He'd always known he was one of the oldest by a thin margin, but in the little group of friends and colleagues he's made in Atlantis he'd never felt it - not for real - until just now, feeling the tension in the room go down by proxy as Teyla calmed down with his hushing. It made his heart ache, remembering the way Daniel had smiled when they talked, the shared acknowledgment that knowledge was not always a blessing.
Teyla's hair was soft under his hand, smelling faintly of the bleach and hair dye some of the women had convinced her to use. It was one of her few indulgences with her appearance, and he felt an incongruous twitch of his lips that she still stuck with an element of Earth-based fashion. He found himself reassured by this - Teyla adapted to anything in front of her, so easily he was often awed by her ability to blend in to new crowds. Whatever happened, there Teyla would be.
Swaying together echoed all the times he had done so with Jeannie, before things inevitably deteriorated. He was grateful Sheppard had found a way to patch things between them, and it compelled him to squeeze Teyla tightly, listening to her startle with amusement, "C'mon. Better?"
He felt her nod against his shoulder, the way she bolstered herself before withdrawing. The tilt of her head was expected, and he leaned his forehead against hers, soaking up the feeling of strength she seemed to derive from the gesture. When she looked up, her eyes were red-rimmed, and he brushed away a stray tear track.
"I missed you," He said, because Teyla was rarely anything but honest, and also because it was true. She smiled at him, bright and reassured, "It really was an accident."
Teyla's smile managed to get even brighter, almost on par with Sheppard's, and god, they had missed him back, hadn't they? He had known the truth, in that makeshift highway diner, but being confronted with it was another thing entirely.
"I believe you," She replied, sounding happy, in that way that was stripped of bitter undertones, only joy left over. He couldn't help but grin back, pulling her into a quick hug just to contain the emotion better.
Sheppard was lingering at his back, protective and watchful. It allowed him to look around the room, the way Ronon and Radek were still holding some hastily-constructed cardboard box between them like he'd interrupted their tug-of-war. A scatter of scientists mixed with a handful of soldiers, making his quarters feel like a public common rather than the one place he wasn't required to share.
Letting his hands fall from Teyla's arms, he gestured at the paused cacophony, "Y'know, when I said throw me a party, I didn't mean a riot."
A slew of abashed faces met him. Ronon still took the time to scowl at Radek, yanking the box away. He felt like he was probably going to need to take the box away from Ronon, and what would those two even be arguing over, anyway?
Sheppard had shifted closer, hands ghosting along his sides, telegraphing the intent to resume cosseting him but refraining by a hair. The murmur brushing by his ear made him shiver, Sheppard's lips forming a smirk, "It's more of a custody fight."
"Get a lawyer," He said automatically, then blinked, "Actually. Sam. Is she here?"
He had meant in the general sense of Atlantis, because he didn't actually know how long he'd been gone, but it seemed to have been interpreted in such a way that everyone reflexively looked around them, as if the woman would pop out of the woodwork. Rolling his eyes, he thought, I've got my work cut out for me.
One hand reached to tap his ear, but found that while the Ancients were nice enough to let him de-ascend with memories, clothes, and motor skills intact, an earpiece had been considered optional. He made an annoyed sound, spinning on one heel to look for the closest replacement.
Sheppard blinked at him bemusedly when he leaned forward and plucked the device out of the man's ear, but he had no time for frivolities like that, "McKay to Carter."
If Sam was still the way he remembered, she was probably awake for longer hours than him, and always available in an emergency. Being right was gratifying, and so was listening to her sharp inhale, "Rodney?"
"Hi," He said summarily, "I'm told you know a Sha're? She says hello."
Sam floundering over her words was unusual, but he leaned absently into the hand Sheppard pressed against his back, letting the other take his weight as Sam worked her way through the conundrum, "Rodney, what the fuck."
He grinned, "So that means you do."
"Of course I do," She barked, bewilderment drawing her out of the habitual placidity she wore around him in Atlantis, "What- how- you ascended. She ascended?"
"I also talked to Daniel," He confirmed, humming thoughtfully, "Though I don't think we were there at coinciding times. You get me?"
There was a lot of muttering on the other end of the line, and he split his attention to the way everyone slowly decompressed around him. Huh, he thought, I'm not sure whether to be flattered.
"You're writing a report," Sam eventually demanded, when her self-solved revelations petered off. He smirked, which Sam seemed to have a sixth sense for, "Don't even make that face. Also, Rodney?"
"…Yes?" He hazarded, the hand at his back pressing closer in response.
Sam's smile was obvious in her exhale, "Welcome back."
-
The whole to-do about coming back over the next couple of weeks was both over- and under-whelming, if anyone asked him. Even if he were still as oblivious as before - and that particular self-reflection had been cringe-worthy to discover, something that had been meticulously gone over in the therapy sessions he was herded into - he would have been able to pick up on the way everyone was tightly wound-up in his absence.
"You know," He said absently over his chocolate pudding, feeling the bizarre need to apologize, "I really, really didn't do it on purpose."
Ronon made a disagreeing sound, which Sheppard copied with a nod, "You do have a habit of doing things accidentally, buddy."
He grimaced, remembering all of those particular flaws. Nothing better to keep himself grounded, he thought, than to remember all of the stupid shit. The pudding tasted a little less nostalgic in that particular wake, and he sighed, pushing it away and blatantly ignoring the concerned looks lasered into him from everyone at the table, "I swear I didn't do it on purpose. I just… had an epiphany."
Sheppard smirked, even if he got the bizarre feeling that the other man had to muster the energy for it, "Hazards of the job?"
"Exactly," He said, relieved, slumping into his seat, "Could happen to the best of us."
Teyla looked down at her food, a neutral expression on her face that he learned boded unknown realms of danger. It seemed to coordinate a silence around the table, unsettling him. He shifted in his seat, glancing at all of them, "What?"
Ronon gave him a frowning, narrow-eyed look, his version of a pout, if Ronon was the type to do it in his direction, "You left."
"Not on purpose," He insisted, sighing in exasperation. There was a chill from everyone, he just knew it, and he cut his losses with an aching heart, "Fine. I'll just- I have some work to do. I'll catch up later."
Nobody called him back to the table, and the taste of the pancakes he had at that ascended diner lingered in his mouth.
-
Radek was looking at him warily, but he'd had it with apologizing for something everyone presumed he had explicit control over, so he glared and pulled his attention back to his computer. Everything was, disturbingly, exactly where he had left it.
Luckily, the man was smart enough to figure out what his disgruntled mood meant, and they worked in silence for a while. There were others in the room, but they kept to themselves. Eventually the studious ambiance lulled him into something approaching normalcy. His shoulders didn't quite settle from around his ears, but he could focus better on the simulations he had left running in his absence.
Funny, he could swear the numbers made more sense before.
Swearing under his breath, he dumped the results into a spreadsheet and re-ran everything, needing the fresh start of it. Fatigue swept over him, making him wonder if he ought to get up and brave the coffee maker. He scrubbed a hand over one side of his face, sighing.
Radek hadn't committed to the clue of fucking off, but there was a cup of fresh, steaming hot coffee being pressed closer to his hand, so he figured he could forgive the transgression of encroaching on his personal space. He ignored the way Radek was staring at him, forehead obviously wrinkled in concern, focusing on taking a bracing gulp of the drink in his hand despite the way it burned his tongue.
It even had just the right amount of cream and sugar in it. My god, he thought in frank, despondent realization, Things must have really fallen apart.
"How many things am I fixing?" He asked, peering down at his cup in suspicion, "Nobody ever makes me a perfect cup of coffee, what did all of you do?"
"A perfect cup, you say?" Radek smiled.
"Oh, fuck off," He grumped, feeling better when Radek just grinned at him in that typical insouciant, Czech manner.
Radek switched his attention to his monitors, peering at them, "Did you not already get the results on these?"
"Bad data," He muttered, taking an obscuring sip of coffee, "Had to re-run it."
Disconcertingly, Radek merely shrugged, "Perhaps not bad data, but bad interpretation."
He squinted at the other man, wondering which entendre he was going to be wrangling today. Radek merely looked back at him in a crap interpretation of innocence, "Those glasses only make you look bug-eyed, you know."
"And your insistence on regretting de-ascending is demoralizing everyone," Radek shot back immediately.
"Wh- I am not," He protested, putting his cup down. His stomach cramped, and he told himself it was because the coffee had been too hot, not because Radek had hit the mark, "Where are you getting these ridiculous ideas?"
Radek gave him a hard stare, then turned to grab his mouse, shutting down the simulations over his protests. There was a brief - very brief - moment where he debated wrestling the mouse and keyboard away from the bastard, but in the end he just sighed, slumping on his stool. Everyone else was pointedly normal, providing an adequate smokescreen of plausible deniability.
"You," Radek pointed a finger at him, pulling his hand back to shake it in futility, looking away, "You must stop this. You are here, be here."
"I am here," He said quietly, resisting the urge to rub at his sternum, if only to feel his heartbeat for himself, "It doesn't- doesn't feel like it."
Radek put his hand on the edge of the table, tilting his head at him with a potent frown, "How do you mean?"
And this was better than having the therapist sicced on him - none of them could quite do the whole deduction thing like another professional in the hard sciences. And, he thought to himself, an engineer like Radek, who wouldn't let shit go even if you gave him the opportunity.
He shrugged, "I don't know. Just… it felt real there, too."
The way Radek looked at him, all wide-eyed and upset, made him cross his arms. He hadn't expected to be weighed down with this sort of world-weariness, and wondered idly if Daniel had felt the same way. And good god, that man had done this multiple times. No wonder the archaeologist was such an incongruous nut, sometimes.
"Come," Radek announced, "I have a jumper that needs repairing, and you must tell me how I fucked up the crystals again."
"Well," He said, grabbing his coffee as he stood, "If you insist."
-
Who gave a shit what anyone else thought, doing banal repair work was the best sort of meditation. Radek handed him a toolkit and promptly disappeared to his own corner of the jumper. If he concentrated, he could hear the faint litany of swearing in Czech, therapeutic in its regularity.
He was barely concentrating on his task - some hotwiring at the front to try and coax the jumper's system to let them in to more areas. It was just annoying enough in its aberrations that he couldn't lose himself, and he could let himself wander and process things in the background of the work.
However much amount of time had passed, it was enough to startle him when a foot kicked his own, the thump of some wrapped food landing on his stomach almost making him drop his pliers on his face, "Ow! Oh hey, tuna."
"Tuna lookalike," Radek corrected him with a smile, sitting next to him, shoulders resting against the edge of the copilot seat, "New shipment this morning."
"Ah," He sniffed the sandwich, "That smoked stuff from Ilriga?"
Radek nodded, already tucking into his sandwich. They ate quietly together, and he couldn't help but notice the way Radek was doing that thing people do, where they pretend they're not checking up on you but really are. He was disappointed that he could recognize the look, now, having spent too much time in and out of the infirmary for various reasons.
A stale bag of chips was produced out of thin air, and they passed it between themselves, the hum of the jumper's idling systems a pleasant mental counterpoint.
"I had chocolate chip pancakes," He said, breaking the assiduously-applied silence Radek had gifted him with, "With a cup of coffee. And some lemonade."
"Lemonade?" Radek asked, raising an eyebrow.
He shrugged, "I had never gotten the opportunity to try it out without, you know, asphyxiating. Tasted pretty good."
"It does," Radek agreed, swiping one of the smaller rounds of a chip and offering him the bag with its sundry broken bits. He huffed, taking the bag and letting the chips fall into his mouth with a practiced pour.
"It was…" How could he explain it? The vast, intimate stretch of infinity, its nexus where you could look at galaxies through the diner window if you wanted, or a specific, constrained scene. In a way, it had felt a bit like a truck stop, a place you could always visit, but never the same way twice.
Radek shifted in place, his head now resting against the seat. It made him look attentive, if disheveled, washing away some of the weariness he had spotted upon his return and letting natural curiosity shine through. He felt himself mimicking the posture, twisting himself against the console and feeling the pointed edge of metal dig into his back.
It was reassuring, this discomfort, "There was no pain."
"No?"
He stared past Radek, to the open back door of the jumper but also into his memories, "No. I didn't realize how much of a pain in the ass getting older was until I had a mortal body again," He pursed his lips, "That sounded weird, didn't it?"
Radek shrugged, "One of my great-grandmothers had a stroke once, we think. She laid in bed for days. Woke up, told my grandfather the strangest thing."
"Yeah?" He felt like he would be able to see it, if he pushed himself. It scared him, a little, how relative everything was - the pinch of aligning two different points in space time, just with the thought of it.
He was apparently transparent, as well, because Radek laid a leg over the two of his own. The warmth, human warmth, one that came with its own composite package of memories and thoughts, made him sigh, sinking into the grounding sensation. The look Radek sent him was understanding and chiding all at once.
"She had told him that death was final, but mortality was confining," Radek continued, "None of us could ever understand what she had meant with that."
Humming, he nodded, "She was right."
"Was she?" Radek asked, still sprawled out and looking unlikely to move any time soon.
He quirked a smile, remembering his disorientation in the diner, and how it had felt like a different sort of disorientation putting himself bodily in this plane of existence. It felt bittersweet, now, rather than the pervasive vertigo of waking from a dream.
Picking up the empty bag of chips, he wrapped it in the plastic wrap the sandwich had come in. He could still taste the saltiness of the chips, and the fatty smokiness of the fish that the mayonnaise couldn't disguise. It made him smile, and he felt the way it relaxed Radek, whatever the other man was perceiving.
"Mortality has its perks," He admitted, "Even if you need some Tylenol for it."
Radek laughed, groaning as his leg was shoved back, "Hear, hear."
-
Things seemed a little more real after that. In comparison, he could see how other people had been concerned - now that he had the benefit of perspective, he hadn't been quite connected, drifting around like some ghost that was confused where it was.
Teyla had been perfectly happy to take him up on a bantos lesson when he had asked, her smile wider than normal even as she gave him a few good whacks that would probably bruise through the padding of his training gear. Still, it was good, spending time with her as he futzed his way through the beginner's forms.
"You seem…" She tilted her head, "More settled. All is well?"
"All's well," He promised, parrying the obvious strike she made. It was drawing their lesson out, but he found himself the calmer for it, letting her dictate their interaction.
"I had worried," She confessed, pushing him through the steps of a kata that still didn't have a concrete name in English. Teyla was nice about it, though, letting him avoid the rolled ankle that most people got caught in part-way through by pushing rather than batting at his elbow when he turned.
"I'm sorry."
Teyla shrugged, a rolling motion of her shoulders he had always admired. Everything was always so well-controlled with her, and it made him sharply miss Elizabeth with how similar the two women were. Are. His stomach swooped, an intuition about Elizabeth he wasn't sure he wanted to acknowledge.
He must have made a face, because Teyla stopped, placing a hand on his arm in concern. She drew him into a head-touch, and he lingered there, using the sensation to ward off the roiling, metaphorical pitch of his stomach. Feeling it with your gut, ha.
Eventually they found themselves in a hug. He didn't think he had hugged so often in his life, and certainly not here on Atlantis, despite how tactile people in the Pegasus galaxy could be to reassure themselves of their humanity. Approximate humanity at least, he thought, mind unerringly flitting back to the Replicators.
"Rodney?" Teyla brushed a thumb over his shoulder, coaxing a sigh out of him.
"I miss Elizabeth," He said, "And I've got just- this is going to sound weird, alright? I have this feeling about her."
Teyla disentangled herself from him enough to look up at him. Her gaze was speculative, and he hated the gleam of hope in them, putting faith where he didn't want it to be warranted, "What sort of feeling?"
"I don't know," He muttered, "And I don't want to look too closely at it."
"That is understandable," Teyla said, even if he didn't quite believe the veracity of her reassurance. It was a tightly-controlled excitement lurking underneath her calm, but it was there, nevertheless, making him feel like an ass.
He bit his lip, trying to figure out the conflicting emotions that just barely reached where he could grab them, knowing instinctively at the same time it was one of those side effects of ascending that he was still trying to avoid. One personal prophecy was enough for him.
Teyla squeezed his arm, speaking quietly, "I am sorry. This must be very disturbing for you."
"Yeah, that's one way of putting it," He replied, rummaging up a smile even as he gave her the quick bow all students gave her after a lesson. She reciprocated, accepting the bantos rods he held out for her, "Teyla, I- thank you, for, well-"
"Being here?" She asked, looking fondly amused. It was an expression he hadn't realized he had missed, and he returned her smile a little more naturally.
"Yeah," He said, relieved that she was still there, and he was still Rodney, "I'm gonna, uh, catch up with you later?"
"I will see you later, Rodney," Teyla replied, warm enough that he could still feel it all the way to the transporter.
-
Sheppard was still lurking just out of reach, but he figured his ambling around the city would lead him somewhere.
That somewhere ended up being in Ronon's way, a close shave compared to the way others in the city alternately looked spooked at his presence or ready to hound him for their deepest confessions of questions. It was frankly relieving the way that Ronon stared in gruff silence at him, and he clutched literally at that, startling his team mate.
"Oh thank god," He breathed, already tugging Ronon down a corridor, "A normal person. And I don't say that typically, mind you, but I really think it's pertinent in this case."
Ronon's eyebrows scrunched together, still following him despite shaking off his grip, "What?"
He waved a hand, "You- you- you're not staring at me like I'm some, I don't know, revenant? Honestly, if I see one more person cross themselves-"
Ronon made a bemused noise, "I was wondering what that was about."
"Remind me to fetch you one of the great fictions known as a bible one of these days," He muttered, "You'd think they'd realize I'm me and get over themselves, but no- it was more gratifying when they were terrified because I called them morons, not because of some inexplicable mortal phenomenon."
Listening to Ronon grunting in disinterest was reassuring. All was well with the world, because the big man couldn't give a shit at the new weirdness of the day. He flustered out a sigh, herding his friend to a transporter a little quicker than he liked, but almost quick enough to avoid the people turning the corner.
Ronon raised an eyebrow at him, leaning against the wall of the transporter and watching him run a hand through his hair and debate which section of the map to press.
"You're like one big lion, you know," He muttered, eventually picking some place on a pier that he presumed would be a short walk and probably uninhabited at this hour, "All staring and leaning."
"Isn't that Sheppard?" Ronon asked with a smile.
He snorted, not entirely certain where his next words came from, but they felt appropriate to the subject, "Sheppard's like a bunch of cooked spaghetti. … Don't tell anyone I said that."
"Sure," Ronon agreed amiably, following him out of the transporter when the doors opened.
Fresh air, that was what he needed. He couldn't believe he let himself be cooped up indoors for this long, running hither and thither catching up on things that had screwed up while he had a brief bout of death. The smell of the ocean air was just as invigorating as it ever was, and he took in a deep, bracing breath.
Ronon easily kept pace with him, for a while keeping shoulder to shoulder as they strolled the deck. The usual thread of anxiety that would have him checking for emergencies was there, but not so overwhelming that he felt the urge to turn right back around. He stuck his hands in his pockets, letting the late afternoon sunshine warm his face.
As they walked, he found himself appreciating that Ronon had different qualities of silence. It wasn't the same as Sheppard and Teyla, of course, prone to mischief in a way that reminded him of a younger brother. None of that was here, at least for the moment, only the quiet enjoyment of each other's company.
If given the opportunity, Ronon would never speak first, or rarely so. He drifted into Ronon's side, gently shoulder-checking the other man and letting Ronon push him back.
"Radek was pissed at me," He said, watching a bird soar in the distance, not quite close enough for them to hear its call. They gathered to a pause, watching it ride the eddies of the wind, looping around a few times.
The ability to calculate its speed by sight alone, and the angle of its turns, was still there, but he didn't feel the urge to reach out and grasp the knowledge of its data points. Reducing a phenomenon of happenstance to a series of numbers, like he easily could when he was ascended, didn't have the same luster or scope.
He shook off the thought and its accompanying moroseness, shrugging limply when Ronon made a questioning noise, "Nothing. Just… thinking."
"You do that a lot," Ronon replied, turning his head down to watch him instead of the bird that crossed their paths. They weren't arranged in line of the sunlight, but the slow degree of its setting nevertheless added shadows to the man's face.
It made the faint line of accusation deeper. He frowned at it, uncertain how to assuage that.
"I feel like I'm doing things in reverse," He confessed, blinking and looking out across the pier. Ronon grunted, pushing him to continue, "Usually the dying do all the motions of comforting before they die. Here I am, doing the opposite."
Ronon laid a hand on his shoulder, gripping it firmly and turning him around. His friend had a complicated expression on his face, lips twisted in a blend of amusement and unhappiness. It was a similar enough face that people had been making at him the past few days that he reflexively sighed, shoulders slumping despite the way Ronon clasped his other shoulder, holding him upright under the misery.
"You do your best," Ronon said seriously, pressing his thumbs into the hollows of his shoulder, as if to impress the gravity of the words, "When it counts. You always do."
He sighed wearily, "But?"
"But," Ronon rumbled, drawing him in. The hug was encapsulating - they didn't often hug, and usually only after a life-or-death situation, but it was difficult not to appreciate the way Ronon committed to it the same way he committed to everything else in life, "What you think of as giving your best is giving too much of yourself."
"I-"
Ronon squeezed his arms, silencing him without a word, "You're my friend, McKay. My team mate. Don't go marching off too soon."
"Big words," He sniffled, letting himself twist his hands in Ronon's tunic, unable to forget the brief glimpse Daniel had allowed him to witness of his own life. There were many futures, that was true, but once you knew the variables, you could calculate the equation. 'Soon' was merely a matter of perspective, "For someone that thinks with his gun."
"It's a cool gun," Ronon rebutted gently.
"It is," He agreed, letting Ronon change the subject, swallowing some of the last vestiges of his grief, "If you'd only let me attempt to replicate it…"
"Not a chance," Ronon chuckled, running a rough hand down his back before releasing him.
He quirked a smile, scrubbing at his face when Ronon took the opportunity to glance down the pier, "I'll convince you one of these days."
Ronon smirked, "I'm sure you will."
-
Considering that he was the one who ascended, he did feel a little ridiculous that he was one of the ones experiencing an emotional reaction about it, annoyed about having disproved the peace and presumed quiet of an afterlife. The mess was perturbingly nice to him about the whole affair, and he gave one of the soldiers on KP duty a gimlet eye when a substantial helping of baked chicken and lookalike rice was heaped onto his plate.
The soldier merely gave him the well-trained blank face of innocence, handing his plate back to him.
He huffed, grabbing the plate back and wondering when he could get back to his regularly-scheduled bitching about whether or not he was going to be accidentally poisoned by cross-contamination. Not a single bit of citrus! For days! If Sam somehow managed to have something to do with it, he was going to find himself rather cross with her.
Still, he grabbed one of the multitudes of stacked cups, filling it with some infirmary-approved concoction botany quite literally cooked up. It reminded him a bit of V8, but reliably tasted like a disappointing tomato and was never formulated with any allergen he could think of.
Adding it to his tray, he found a spot open on Sam's table. She was busy with a power lunch, scrolling through a tablet with one hand while she absently speared a bit of chicken with her fork. It was probably something from one of his departments, because Sheppard rarely ever submitted so substantial a report that it needed close attention.
Well, He thought, setting his tray down with a quiet clack and sitting catty-corner to Sam. She gave him a brief glance and a grunt of acknowledgment, finally eating her bite of chicken and summarily ignoring him for her reading material, At least it won't be boring.
The peace and quiet Sam exuded by dint of being a very busy expedition leader that rarely appreciated interruptions extended over to him, and he took advantage of that to eat undisturbed. It gave him time to actually taste his food, and he thought wistfully that chicken probably wasn't going to taste this good for a while.
Eventually, though, all good things came to an end. Sam clicked off the screen of her tablet, tucking into her meal for a moment before leaning back in her chair, "So."
He sighed.
Sam ignored that, giving him an assessing smile, "How are you holding up? Re-acclimating well?"
"You're much more attractive when you aren't being all leader-y," He groused, spearing one of the salad vegetables on his plate and eating it with exaggerated chewing motions.
She had obviously been inured to his indubitable charms, merely raising an amused eyebrow while she waited him out. He parried the look by continuing to eat, knowing she had the same squeamishness of talking with one's mouth full as Sheppard. Both of them would eventually have to get back to work, and he reckoned she would need to cut the conversation to the end before he would.
"'Leader-y'?" She asked coyly, when he had eaten through the last turnip-fennel thing, smiling in that way he knew he shouldn't have complimented her on.
He took a vindictive sip of his juice, internally bemoaning that he was back to a strict no-citrus life even as he could, in fact, admit the tomatoes weren't as bad as they could be, "Oh, shut up. You know what I mean."
Sam must have been affected by some enormous level of grief-driven insanity as many others in the city, because all she did was laugh, "I do, yes."
"Why does everyone keep asking me that?" He complained, waving his fork at her when she raised her eyebrow, "That! That- that thing. I hate it."
She continued to raise her eyebrow, pushing her tablet to one side and re-settling in her chair in the same way their resident psychotherapist had done during his mandated therapy sessions. He frowned at her, hoping to ward off whatever it was she was going to say, but she only glanced casually around the mess before speaking, "We didn't have any idea what happened, Rodney. It's going to take everyone a bit to realize you're here to stay."
"What does that-" He swallowed, throat drying at her implications, "What does that even mean?"
"It means, Rodney," Sam said, leaning toward him, firmly compassionate, "That once we realized you ascended, we believed it had been on purpose. You came back right after the paperwork had been filed to clear your quarters."
"Is that what that was about," He muttered to himself, shaking his head, "Anyway, why would I do that? I have too much- I actually like being here. All the insanity with the Wraith and everything else is, surprisingly, not as much of a deterrent as it could be."
Sam peered at him. It had the effect of pinning him in place, all gentle and caring and those other nice adjectives he tried not to think too hard about in conjunction with Sam, lest he be somehow thwarted by it and end up in some remote outpost doing back-burner work. She raised her eyebrows at him, obviously catching some facial expression he didn't hide fast enough.
"That's good to hear," She said seriously, subtly letting him out of her verbal grip, "And I believe you have someone to talk to about that."
"I've been talking non-stop," He said, setting his fork down with an aggrieved clang.
"Rodney."
He sighed, "Yes, I know."
Sam pursed her lips, "I expect you to get on that."
"O wise leader," He replied, only half in jest. Sam was right, and they both knew it. Gathering up his things, he said, "Fine, alright. But that's the last of it, understand?"
She gave him a winning smile, sweet and what he now realized as, for him, only objectively attractive. It made her look years younger, making him realize that his absence had in fact been noted. He felt himself smile in return, shaking his head as he gathered up his tray.
-
'Last one' ended up, naturally, being Sheppard. He licked his lips, unaccountably nervous, remembering the tingle of them after Sheppard had kissed him. Clearing up that contemporaneous situation of his living quarters had been the most he'd actually seen the man, their shared meals as a team often cut short by one thing or another.
His time on enforced recuperation despite his obviously good health - recuperating the nerves of the medical staff, more likely - seemed to only prolong how much work he had to put into fixing the odds and ends of his division. If it wasn't paperwork, it was questioning the sanity of everyone's decisions while he had been gone.
It hadn't been a picnic, and he had found himself wishing he could merely tap his comm and chat with Sheppard. There had been something preventing the notion, though, probably his newly-found good sense that he would be intruding. On what, he didn't know for sure.
But with Sam's orders bolstering his nerves, he found himself at Sheppard's door, wondering briefly if the man was even in his room at this time of day. He sucked in a breath, waving his hand over the lock, anyway, letting the doorbell ring.
He waited impatiently, and just as he was about to talk himself out of this and make his excuses to Sam, the door slid open. Sheppard looked just as surprised, hair ruffled and a stylus in one hand.
"Sheppard," He greeted, shoving his hands in his pockets and rolling on his feet nervously. There was a flutter in his stomach that felt like more than just his own emotions, but that couldn't possibly be true, not with the way his friend continued to stare at him blankly, "Can I, uh, come in?"
"Oh," Sheppard said, blinking. It looked like he realized what was going on, shaking his head and stepping off to one side, "Yeah, yeah of course."
They stood awkwardly on the same side of the door, listening to it slide shut with a quiet sshk. Sheppard looked harried, like he hadn't been sleeping well, and his heart skipped a beat at the beginning of bags under the other's eyes.
"Are you-" He said, not entirely certain what question to ask, blurting out the first thing that made it to speech, "Okay? Are you okay?"
"Rodney," Sheppard sighed, and he felt himself blink, expecting McKay, instead.
"No, really, are you?" He asked, gaining momentum as he waved a hand around, "Because I haven't seen you in ages, not really, and I- I just. Wanted to know."
Sheppard looked at him from under his bangs, the sight an odd one given that even with the hang-dog look Sheppard shouldn't be able to pull off as the technically taller person, "You tell me, Rodney."
"Tell you-" His brain hit a snag at that, "Do you not know?"
"I've been here," Sheppard shrugged, looking almost listless, "You're here."
Oh. The realization hit him like a lightning bolt, a sensation he now had an equivalent experience for, his conversation with Sam making much more sense in retrospect. He felt his mouth drop open in surprise, automatically reaching a hand out to Sheppard.
If there was any reason to suspect something was wrong, it was that Sheppard allowed the touch, slouching into it in the barest of fractions. He gripped harder, feeling Sheppard sway into his hand.
"I'm right here," He murmured, the realizations slotting into place like Tetris pieces, the gaping space it created making him lean equally as much into Sheppard's space, "I'm not going anywhere."
He couldn't bring himself to tell Sheppard a timeline of relevancy, even as it burned his tongue to say. It was more feasible to quench his fears by pressing his lips to Sheppard's, listening to the clatter of the stylus falling to the floor as hands pressed into his waist.
For a pair of people that could, if they felt like it, converse without a single word, it felt less ambiguous to communicate this way. It felt like terabytes of information was being conveyed this way, listening to Sheppard's sighs and pushing away the burgeoning ability to listen in on what must have been instinctual thoughts.
"John," He sighed, pressing the man's name into his skin, rubbing a thumb along a stubbled jaw.
"Don' need to talk," John murmured, tilting his head to allow contemplative kisses to be trailed down the length of his neck.
"Mmm."
And that was a wonderful idea, if technically betraying the spirit of Sam's tacit orders. He felt it was the better interpretation of things, at any rate, continuing on his way of pressing reassurances and comforts into John's skin in lieu of speaking them.
Their method of communication required no appendices, John taking and interpreting what he intended flawlessly, melting into him with drifting, clutching hands. It felt a little bit like the closest he would get to that liminal place he had tripped into, only circling back home by an act of faith in his own self.
He leaned into John, skimming a hand up the man's side and feeling the shiver reverberate back onto him. Lifting his head from where he had been preoccupied with tasting the quiet, barely-there moans John had kept trapped in his throat, he gathered John closer with a hand on his back, "Hey."
John's eyes were still closed, and he was absently brushing their cheeks together, the rasp of daytime stubble brushing warmth into him. He hummed, turning his head to catch John's mouth for a kiss that was barely more than an indulgent slide of lips. They stayed like that for a moment, breathing in each other's air.
"I'm here," He said, pressing the words into John's mouth like a vow, feeling like he had to cradle this flickering, uncertain light close, the sight nearly visible behind his half-lidded eyes, "I'm here, I'm not leaving."
"Promise?"
He shuddered himself, feeling all the strings attached that Daniel and Sha're and death had unearthed to him, lines in the sand that he could cross at any moment. If he wanted. And with some of them, he did want - or would, if the right circumstances aligned. It was string theory, in a tangible, personal way, hitting one note and listening to its echo in a silent chamber hall until it faded out of existence.
The pause seemed nearly enough to undo John entirely, a hitch of breath that would precipitate misery, tearful and messy. He could feel those calloused hands grip him close, as if the act alone could keep him tethered in this plane of existence.
"Rodney," John begged, for multiple things, for a singular thing. Stay.
It was the one thing he knew John would nearly never ask for, too well-trained to protest loss hammering him into the thinnest of sheet metal, until it warped and bent him beyond usefulness. He pressed a slow, careful kiss to John's mouth, mapping the grief that had been allowed to settle into the crevices for too long.
His heart thumped to say it, distracting himself with John reviving in achingly cautious measures under his touch, "I promise."
The shudder rippling across John's crumple zones let him know the weight of his own words, sealed by the choked noise John made as he kissed him back, pressing a tongue past his lips with desperation. He let it happen, soaking up the way John needed him, wondering if this was what the Ascended meant, with their ability to touch a soul.
Coaxing John to bed was easier when it clicked that he wasn't being pushed away, endless murmurs pressed into the other man's skin. The grief was slow to slake, only now truly visible to him when that the reflexive veneer of relieved joy had worn off. He took his time with the way his hands travelled over John, pushing and tugging at fabric to signal his intentions to get closer.
John was still endearingly quick-witted, squirming against him once the tacit request had been registered and shucking his shirt, fingers stumbling on the myriad clasps that were fastened to his pants. He hushed him with a smiling kiss, drawing a bite out against John's lower lip as he ran soothing hands over the other's chest.
"Hngh, Rodney-"
"Shh," He promised, finding the belt buckle by touch, "I've got you."
And he did, unequivocally. John's head thumped back onto the bed, missing the pillow by a hair. It was an easily-followed urge to press a kiss above the top of John's pants, the stiff material of the uniform brushing against his throat as he felt the reflexive ripple of John's stomach under his mouth.
The snap of the buckle being undone was loud in the lull between them. He let his hands linger, tracing as he found his way to the holster. It was tempting to follow it with his mouth, if only to feel the strength of John's thigh so intimately, but John was clutching at the sheets and he was disinclined to make him wait any longer.
He set the sidearm, holster and all, on the side table. John was quick to cling to him as he stretched over to reach the table, eagerly rucking up his shirt. Grinning, he pressed into the hands that groped and skimmed over his body, relishing that this bit of mortality he was still able to enjoy.
It was a catching expression, John's smile luminescent as his hands slowed, mapping new territory with a possessive touch. He sighed, letting his weight sink down onto John, both of them sliding into another kiss.
Time rather melted away after that, the afternoon sunshine making its slow mark on the shadows in the room their only subtle indicator that they were crossing time with languid, heated touches. Maybe it was only a few minutes, but he couldn't be bothered to pull away to check, reveling that he was too absorbed in John to keep track of the ticking of seconds.
He sighed, coaxing John to switch their places with a murmur and cupping John's ass with one hand, tasting the moan as he gave it a squeeze. The press of John's chest bearing down against his, sweat-slicked and solid, was as heady as it was reassuring of the man's presence.
"I would never be able to forget you, you know," He said quietly, easing off from their kissing just enough to speak. There was just enough of a tremble to John's lips to indicate words being perched there, and he brushed them off with a quick swipe of his lips, "I couldn't. Not ever."
John seemed to know, though, the foundation upon which they knew each other set deep into their bones. He felt the nod made against him, John hiding his face against his own even as he tentatively rolled his hips, muscles in his ass tightening under his palm.
He encouraged John with a moan, rucking the man up against the thigh he had wedged at some point between John's own with a firm hand. The jump of a cock against his own, muffled only barely by the fabric between them, made him lose his mind a little.
"C'mon," He breathed, pressing a quick, dirty kiss into John's mouth, twisting so he could get his other hand on John's ass.
John moaned into the kiss, hands clutching at him as if he needed the support. He coaxed the man into straddling his hips, taking John's weight as his hands fluttered over the button and zip of the other's pants. It was more difficult by the way John couldn't help but shove into his hands, making needy sounds and overall just inhibiting what they both wanted.
He gripped John's hips, forcing them to still with an amused huff, "Stay still," He said, voice having dropped low and rough. It made John heave, wild-eyed but obedient, and he couldn't help but dig his fingers in a little deeper, "Let me take care of you."
The nod John gave him was instinctive but tremulous, head dropping into a bobble of agreement that made him look, abruptly, an aching sort of vulnerable that had his own heart skipping a beat. He gentled his touch, smoothing his hands up John's side and over his chest, feeling the thunder of the man's heart as he circled the tight nipples under his touch, "Will you let me?"
"Y-" John swallowed, arching into his hands, "Yeah."
"Okay," He murmured, letting his hands drag down with the barest touch of nails, imagining the welts he might leave there at a later date. The shiver and pant was satisfying, however, and he let his fingers dip beneath the waistline of John's pants in a tease, letting a thumb circle over the button the way he wanted to do to John's cock.
It was tempting to draw things out, but he felt like both of them have been craving this for far too long. He popped the button open, hearing John's shivery moan, letting his finger dip underneath the flap to trace the zipper before undoing that, too.
John rolled his hips into his hands, eyes having fallen shut and the man's own hands reaching behind him to grip his legs. It painted an attractive picture, all wanton offering with cock peeking out over the rumple of BDUs, and he took a moment to run his hands over John from hips to knees and up to ribs with a heavy, promising touch.
He felt when John shuddered, body relaxing and legs sliding further open to sit more heavily in his grasp, head lolling in pleasure. It seemed like the words would be on repeat, murmured as he tucked his fingers under the fabric of John's clothes, unwrapping John like an unforeseen present, and framing John's cock in the crook between thumb and forefinger with his palm flat on John's skin, "I've got you, I've got you."
"You do," John gasped, just from that simple touch alone. The helpless way John rolled his hips, shifting the hard line of his cock against his hand, as if that alone would make his palm leave the warm skin of John's groin.
Raking his fingers through the hair scattered on John's skin, he listened to the drawn-out groan as he wrapped his hand around John's cock in a long, leisurely pull. John was already wet for him, leaking in unsteady spurts that dribbled over his hand, and he pumped John's cock, watching how John fell apart for him.
The other man stayed still for him, though, restricting his own movements and going with the flow of this nonverbal conversation. It made him lick his lips, compiling a wish list of things he wanted to do - later, though, too busy easing his hand over John's cock and coaxing the other's pants lower so he could get a better grip of John's ass with his other hand.
"You'll come when I say so, won't you," He murmured, listening to the way John panted as he twitched between the dual pressures on him. His cock was aching in his own pants, and he shifted his legs, pulling on John's cock and pressing with his other hand so John curled over him, rolling his hips just to hear John's whine near his ear, "Look at you. You're beautiful, do you know that?"
John was shaking his head, far too quickly to be anything other than instinctive denial, and he wasn't having any of that. He cupped John's ass, massaging it with a wide-fingered grip and a thumb sweeping over the top of the curve.
"You are," He insisted roughly, pressing a kiss to the side of John's head, the only part he could reach without removing his hands from where they were, "You are, and I'll keep telling you. Every day, if I must."
"Don't," John choked out, shuddering in his grip, "'M not-"
He slowed his hand on John's cock, making his touch delicate as he played with the tip of John's cock, fingers sliding from frenulum to slit and back, a circular loop around the top that had John leaking over his hand with a sob, "I love you," He said firmly, the words a rebuttal to John's insecurities, so visible he almost felt angry at it, using the truth of his own self as a balm to that wound,
"You're the most beautiful person I've ever seen. God, do you even know-"
John was trembling in his arms, helplessly grinding into his hand, trying to draw out roughness from him. He refused, not wanting John to use him to smother himself, to hide away the way he had been doing since he had returned from that little diner on the way through to death.
"You don't get to do that," He swore, mouthing kisses along John's jaw, rough bites that would bruise later in contrast to the gentle, gentle way he traced John's leaking cock, "Not with me, understand? None of that."
"Rodney," John clutched at his shoulders with both hands, frantic as the man held on to him, "Rodney, you died, you left, you-"
"I'm here," He said, dipping a finger in the curve of John's ass, circling the tight entrance there with the same understanding of fragility as he was with John's cock, feeling the twitch and warmth of muscle, "I'm here, I'm back. I'm not leaving."
John rocked into his touch, moaning and wet-faced with a grief that was shattering. He murmured nonsensical things, keeping John grounded with his touch, arcing that pleasure between ass and cock with a careful balance. Slowly, the spasms rippling across John began to increase, accepting the uncoordinated kiss John laid upon his mouth as he coaxed that crescendo tighter.
He felt when John began to open at his touch, just enough for him to press the tip of his finger against the rim, a promise imprinted with the way he circled and dipped his finger, an inverse echo to what his hand was doing on John's cock.
Pressing a kiss against John's jaw, he murmured, "I want you to come for me."
And John did, wonderfully so, collapsing against him so he could grind on his stomach, smearing come between them and letting him feel the way John's ass fluttered against his finger. The aftershocks rolled through John, pulsing heat that made him moan against John's cheek, moving his hand to grab John's ass so he could roll his cloth-trapped cock up against him.
John pressed back against him, letting that finger slip momentarily deeper past the threshold. They both groaned at that, and he pushed John higher up so he could unbutton and shuck his own pants down far enough, cock rubbing against the cleft of John's ass.
It was a momentary disappointment to withdraw his hand from that warmth, but John was apparently more than willing to let him get off like that, pressing against sweat-dampened skin. He could taste the way John gasped into his mouth, feeling a little breathless himself at the way John rolled his ass back against him.
Coming was almost an afterthought, absorbed as he was in their synchronous motion. He shuddered, thoughts hazy as he felt hands pressing against his chest and shoulders in warming, repetitive motions.
"Mmm," He shifted, taking more of John's weight even as he huffed at the way the man slumped on top of him, "John."
The only response was garbled sentence squished into the side of his neck. He smiled, dancing the fingers of one hand up John's side, soothing the instinctive twitch with his palm, "Much as I enjoy having you naked, I would like to put my pants back on."
John grumbled, "Only sorta naked."
He skimmed his hands over the crease of John's ass, smirking at the shiver, "It's the thought that counts."
They righted themselves with reluctance, sacrificing John's shirt to clean off the worst of it - laughing when John subtly flexed his muscles as he got out of bed, enjoying the view and kissing the pout off with a firm press of lips.
Swinging his legs over the side of John's bed, he paused, thinking, "Shower?"
John tilted his head from side to side, giving him a once-over, "Could do."
He couldn't help his smile, shaking his head fondly at John's beaming smile. Pressing his side against John's, he leaned up for another kiss, listening to the way John breathed out a contented sigh, "Come on. Lunch break's almost over."
-
It turned out that they had wildly overshot the lunch hour, but nobody had gone looking for them, anyway. John had been much buoyed by more kisses, soaking up the inherent affection of being held when the anxiety of approaching the door made his shoulders tense up. The sight wasn't the first time a deep pensiveness had reared its head, but it was a nebulous feeling to actually act upon it for once, making him sigh as he pressed his head into John's shoulder.
The inherent protectiveness emanating from the way John ran his hands down his back was easy to settle into, something he had missed deeply and unintentionally. It had that tinge of tacit territoriality, making him clench his arms around John tighter, taking in the smell of freshly-laundered clothing and soap from their joint shower.
"What's up?" John murmured into his hair, matching his reluctance to leave the bubble of the room, voice still retaining a hint of that deep pitch from earlier.
He shivered, rubbing his cheek against the BDU jacket, "Hmm. Nothing much, I suppose."
And it was true, for a given value. It would be far too easy to slip into an awareness of this bubble of time, the consequences of popping it and leaving it in the past - a linearity that was relative, true, but only making him all the more aware of the finite amount of instances. But the knowledge was a background sort, still tasting like a wax seal broken off as its lid was cracked open, flavouring everything else with its presence.
"We don't have to go," John said, sounding as if he was split on the temptations, "Could call in, make some excuses."
He sighed, shaking his head and reaching up for another kiss, lingering over the way John's mouth moulded to his with a simple press, "We'd never leave, probably."
"Hmm," John nosed at his jaw, skimming his lips over the soft edge with a façade of thoughtfulness, "Probably, yeah."
Groaning, he made himself push John away, unable to help the smile tugging at his lips as John made to mosey closer, "Really, though. I need to head back to the labs, repair some of the equipment brought back from the last mission."
John sighed, letting them disengage and opening the door with the faint pressure of thought. It still gave him a little shiver of intellectual curiosity that he could sense the edges of that, and he followed the other man through the mostly-deserted corridor back to the main areas of the city.
"Can't you get someone else to do that?" John asked, tilting a brow at him.
"Not unless you want some mystery soldering and parts from the wrong rummage bin," He replied dryly, "Most everyone is still on inventorying - a few people started up projects without Sam's explicit permission, and I'm still hunting down all the parts that were allocated to more important things."
"Things like…?"
He huffed, swiping the button for the transporter, "Oh, jumper maintenance, that transporter in one of the residential halls that still puts you to a pier one out of five requests, the like."
John nodded slowly, that innocent look pasted onto his face that stopped working on him except for special occasions, "The jumpers are important, yeah."
"And so is everything else," He shook his head, amused, "It's mostly the geological team complaining about it, since I put everyone together by department. You wouldn't happen to know anything about why that happens, would you?"
"Nnnno, absolutely not," John rocked up on his toes, keeping deliberate attention on the doors as they opened.
He snorted, shaking his head, "I don't even want to know."
John grinned, gesturing for him to leave the transporter first, "All's well that ends well."
"Like I haven't heard that before," He rolled his eyes, pausing with a small shuffle of his steps where he knew they would have to split paths. John was likewise lingering, a wistful look to his face that wasn't quite as patted down into inscrutability as the man probably thought, "I'll, uh, see you at dinner? All of you?"
Waiting for John to melt into a slow, reassuring smile did little for his nerves - nor did the cognizant inability to settle himself with one last, lingering kiss like they had done in John's quarters. Nevertheless, it seemed his thoughts were recognized, John leaning marginally forward into his space, "Yeah. Don't get too caught up, okay?"
Feeling breathless from that little bit of proximity, he nodded faintly, "Yeah."
Heedless of the tacitly curious looks thrown their way, John winked and strode off with a swing in his step. My god, he thought faintly, No wonder the women keep fawning over him.
Catching the quizzical look one of the soft scientists - P-something, he believed - threw his way, he touched the side of his cheek, realizing he had a smile firmly affixed onto his face. What a strange sight he must have made, staring after the colonel like that.
Lips unable to fall back into their usual resting state, he thought, Mine, though.
-
Whatever his mood was, it made his minions all the more biddable when he walked into one of the main labs, and he would take the stretch of luck as far as it would run.
"You," He snapped his fingers at Kusanagi, "Have you found all the scrap alloy O'Brennon and his roving horde of miscreants squirreled away?"
She smiled, cheeks dimpling under her glasses, "Yes, Doctor McKay. I have informed them to return everything to a new bin for your inspection and filled with its own catalogue."
He beamed at her, "Excellent. Make sure you get those meteorological analytics in to the marine biologists, Sam wants them to make sure we have clear weather for a research team on that new island chain we found."
Kusanagi nodded, still having that polite grin on her face as she returned to her computer. He wanted to harrumph, but frankly it was reassuring to have that same dubiously perpetual ray of sunshine around to witness, undaunted by his brief, unintentional respite in the so-called afterlife. Pausing briefly over his keyboard, he wondered whether she ought to be given more responsibilities because of that.
Hmm. Opening up the notepad on his computer, he typed in a quick note to assess her workload and if she would benefit from some training in additional areas. Radek would probably know.
And speak of the devil, Radek rapped his knuckles on the edge of the table, announcing his presence, "Alo. Are you done sight-seeing?"
"Hmph," He responded, turning his stool around so he could grab the stack of LSDs that AR-5 had zapped. It was busy work, because he knew as well as Radek did that there were plenty of people who could solder a few chips together, but he quietly appreciated the banality to give himself an opportunity to rest the still-turbulent nature of his thoughts, "What have you got?"
Radek raised an eyebrow at him, "Rumors that you are in a good mood. I am glad to hear they are false, for otherwise I will need to train in another boss."
"Har-har," He rolled his eyes in response, "I still sign all of the paperwork you foist off on me so you can stare down a microscope, don't forget that."
"Ah, yes, that is true," Radek nodded thoughtfully, sliding onto a stool on the other side of the table, logging into his tablet with a quick set of swipes on the screen, "It is good for me, no? You would not look as handsome in glasses. Best to save that dilemma for me."
He grumbled good-naturedly, opening up his email, "To have the disconcerting appeal of a moth in daylight? You have the market cornered."
Radek waggled his eyebrows, "All the better to track down filaments for our gravity simulators, no?"
Blinking, he tore his attention away from the molecular models of some prototype drug the medical department CCed him on, leaning around his monitor, "Did you really?"
Grinning, Radek tapped his nose, "I may have found an alloy we can synthesize, but it will take much work to test whether it will work in different gravities."
"You are the best," He breathed, scooting off the stool in excitement, roundly ignoring the way Radek perked up with a smug look, "Gimme. Where is it?"
"Ah, ah, what do you say?" Radek asked with a grin.
He arched a brow, "Uh, now? So I can figure out how to fix the simulators below our waterline? Where we've been wanting to renovate for extra storage in the accessed labs we've cleared out?"
Radek rolled his eyes, huffing and waving a hand to the corner of the lab where some of the employee lockers were. They had some unlocked ones to store the smaller odds and ends they found while exploring the city, if it wasn't filled with motherboards and other spare parts. He couldn't find it in himself to be more than superficially annoyed, doing his best to restrain himself from skipping over to the locker with glee.
There was indeed a little plastic bin, neatly labeled with some masking tape and marker in Radek's obscure handwriting. Do not touch! Rodney's work was scribbled onto it, and he popped off the lid with the same enthusiasm as he would a box of the fancy TV dinners.
"Oh my," He murmured to himself, delicately tracing the iridescent metal. There wasn't very much of it, and they had yet to actually work out the production process to duplicate it in the amounts they needed to truly repair all the damaged sectors in the city, but seeing the neatly-coiled amount nestled in some tissue paper from the chemists' lab was enough to catch his breath, "Radek, this-"
"Might actually be enough to test?" Radek completed his thoughts, smiling, "Yes, it is possible. I have submitted a proposal for testing with one of the smaller superconductors, but it will need your signature as well as Colonel Carter's."
He carefully replaced the lid, clutching the tub close, "Absolutely. Is this already emailed?"
Radek waved a hand at his computer, making him hustle himself back to his seat, typing with one hand as he searched through his email. When he spotted the correct subject line, his eyes caught on the timestamp, "Radek-"
"Ano," Radek replied simply, looking at him over the rim of his glasses while he worked on his tablet.
"I-" How could he explain what he thought, the proof that this was idling in his inbox during his absence, when there had been no known possibility that it would only have been temporary? Looking helplessly at the way Radek was calmly writing something on his tablet with a stylus, he clutched the tub closer, feeling overwhelmed.
"Is nothing," Radek said, expression kind, "I knew you were looking for it."
And the thought of this little tie to mundanity, that Radek considered it more important than his own ascension - purposefully or accidental, something none of them here would be able to tell apart - was a startling level of consideration. He wetted his lips, wondering what to say as he blinked a few times, "Thank you. I'll- I'll sign off on that, tell Sam to."
Radek relaxed in his seat, looking relieved, "Yes. Be sure to review proposal, as well? I do not want any surprises during testing."
He found himself smiling, tremulous as it was, "Of course. I'll get on that right away."
Nodding, Radek returned to his work, the air between them and the lab at large losing that unfounded edge of anxiety. He felt that sharpness ease within himself, too, and looked at his screen, deciding on the spot that this was a subject better hashed out in person, "Actually, you know what, I'll just- I'll be right back."
Radek glanced up at him, "Of course."
He nodded a couple of times, "Yes. Yes, of course." Patting the container, he walked toward the door, tapping his comm and feeling everything settle into place, "McKay to Sheppard. Hey- Radek found something, you'll never guess what it is-"
-
Author's Notes
Ascension is… an odd concept. It seems a little odd that Ancients - or Alterans, for the broader scope across the Stargate canon - would spend so much time developing so much technology across multiple galaxies, just to have one of their most memorable points as a society be a prettily-worded death cult. What would be the point of all that technology? So… mathematics, and its applications in the sciences, as a form of philosophy that reflects back onto ascension. And for someone like Rodney, who not only had one confirmed brush with ascending (Tao of Rodney), but an unconfirmed one (The Shrine - same technological basis as in Tao of Rodney) as well, on top of multiple near-death experiences - something in his hind brain has got to be percolating that during a fair amount of the show.
I realized about partway through that the control crystals for Atlantis tech show nearly identical circuitry patterns, which I understand would have made it easier for audiences to figure out that it was Technology TM and provide a bridging point, but I kind of threw it out and substituted my own headcanon that's visible through Rodney's internal monologue in the beginning scene.
There's a background fix-it in terms of Sha're ascending, mostly because I thought her death was nonsense and also I like the idea of her and Rodney being in the same room. As for that little diner, it fits a lot of themes and motifs in other media (that I don't remember at the moment) of being a transition point between living and death, and indicative of Rodney being indecisive about actually being dead - an opposite end of that subject is discussed via Campfire Stories. This also takes place before This Mortal Coil, where Replicator!Elizabeth visits Atlantis, and after Miller's Crossing, where Rodney and Jeannie were abducted for evil plot reasons. Can't imagine anyone really dealing with Rodney's ascension all that well, in that context.
Over the course of canon, also, I've noticed Rodney has displayed some… let's call it awareness of plot-related events. He's a main character, sure, so his plot armor means death won't stick, and the writers have an interesting way of dancing around their plotholes sometimes, but somehow or another it ends up being conveyed as prescience of critical changes in a situation (Rodney picking what ultimately ended up being the correct door in Trio, for example). I wanted to convey that as a sort of quantum physics problem - Schroedinger's cat, almost, in that what could be will be and always is (a multiplicity of states, aka the quantum superposition principle). Some of this was also discussed via Interface- an effect once observed and all that, and rather fitting given Rodney's specialties.
I wanted to lean into these concepts, and go "What if Rodney ascended?", with an added dose of making it accidental because Rodney is noticeable prone to being able to come up with solutions out of thin air, and what is ascension but another revelation? It seems very in character for him, I think.
Also meet the new OC, scientist O'Brennon - he's a mechanical engineer, probably.
Czech translations:
Ano - yes
můj prdel - my ass
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can you gimme the full run down of what you disagree with the webtoon on? pretty please??
I know that they missed HSY's beauty spot, made everyone look the same and made KDJ into a standard hotboy protagonist when he should be a swagless rat.
but I wanna know what else you've got since you can probably articulate it all better than me.
This is a terrible question with terrible timing because I am so busy right now but briefly because I am a little hater at heart—
I will preface this by saying that I stopped reading the webtoon after a few weeks out of disgust because I didn't like it and continue to dislike it. I've seen screenshots of it since I stopped, particularly because a few of my friends do keep up with it (they are aware that I am a hater and allow me my little rants) and am aware of character designs due to the influx of screenshots and art that arises on my TL and dash (never tagged so I can't even filter it out) whenever a new face pops up in the webtoon. So, that's where I'm coming from with this. If you like the webtoon then this is where you stop reading because I am going to be pretty blunt here. All of the following is my own personal opinion about the ORV webtoon yadda yadda if you get butthurt that's on you.
First: I hate the character designs. I can excuse little details like missing the beauty mark or whatever because it's not actually in-text canon but this goes deeper. As you mentioned, all of the characters have the same generic body type. The women, especially, suffer from this. Han Sooyoung's proportions are so wacky at times. I swear the artists have no idea how to draw short people. with characters like Lee Hyunsung it's particularly egregious. Someone who's described as bear-like is depicted as skinny. Yoo Joonghyuk's muscles are like. Non-existent. Beyond that, everyone is paper pale and washed out. There's very little variation in skin tones, so they all look like vampire standees. Some of the side characters look better than the main cast. the outfits don't reflect characters' personalities or ages either.
Second: general gripes re: the art not being dynamic, emotive or fun to look at. static expressions on character faces. fighting scenes are boring. more griping about the incredibly limited colour palette. you get the gist.
Third: kdj looking like pretty much every single hotboy protag. This one is particularly due to redice's work on solo levelling—kdj could be a stand in for the mc of that manhwa honestly. The point of kdj is that he's an average dude, not some wish fulfillment powerlevelling harem protag. Instead it feels like the artists have a hard on for kdj like the art is so horny for him at times it's off-putting.
Fourth: the official webtoon TL is awful. I know there are fan TLs but those aren't what the vast majority of casual readers are going to find first. the romanisation of the names, the lack of ANY kind of honorifics, the absolute horror that is TWSA like what the fuck kind of acronym is that—im going to stop because this isn't about the manhwa itself.
Fifth: this is probably the point that erks me the most. I could excuse sucky art. I would wish to my heart of hearts that they picked an orv fanartist to the webtoon instead but I get it, they wanted a studio that had demonstrated the capacity to work to the bone and churn out chapters with no love embedded in them. I would get that. but the webtoon does nothing as an adaptation of orv.
see, the thing is that orv on its own is hardly ground breaking. the conceit is that s&s took established webnovel tropes and put it all together in a well grounded commentary that actually said something important about stories. that was clearly a dedication to readers and writers and the binds between them. That used the fact that readers would be familiar with these concepts to turn those same expectations on its head. ORV is so great because of its metatextual approach, the breaking of the 4th wall in so many ways to truly build it into something more. The webtoon does nothing to work with that. I had hoped that it could use the medium to add something to the interaction between the reader and Reader (독자) but it's nothing but a tired copy of the novel that does nothing to convey the nuances of KDJ's internal narrative, the emotional turmoil that makes it so hard hitting, or the metatextual nature of its premise. I've talked before about the ways that they could have adapted it to take advantage of the comic format but the webtoon fails to do Anything with the medium.
There are probably other things I've missed but like I said you caught me at a bad time lol. I really try to forget the webtoon exists for the most part because I have nothing good to say about it <3
Anyway, if you want to read a manhwa that actually makes you excited to look at it with amazing character design and dynamic fighting scenes that made me sob like a baby, check out sss-class regression hunter (prev called sss-class suicide hunter) DONT read the official TL because they decided to Anglicize the name of the protag (Kim Gongja) as Confucius Kim which is ugh on so many levels.
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Let’s Talk About the Design of PPG's Humans
AKA the Citizens of Townsville.
Continuing the series of talking about PPG 1998 design elements from when I talked about the backgrounds and world design of PPG, Let’s take a greater focus on human characters.
A reminder, The powerpuff girls and many cartoons from their era were inspired by the UPA style of animation from the 1950s. I recently discovered a good write up about how this style influenced shows like the Powerpuff Girls from an animation Blog that you can take a gander at here.
That being said, when it comes to the humans of the PPG world they continue to use a strong, sharp geometric style that stands out. It’s been stated before that the humans were intentionally designed this way along with the rest of the PPG world to make the Powerpuff Girls stick out even more with how round they are.
Fortunately I managed to gather a bunch of episode sheets for background characters from Season 1 of Powerpuff Girls. So let’s study them so we can better understand their design.
Now, when I say the characters are “Geometric,” I mean that they are largely defined by simple shapes. Circles, Squares, and Triangles.
If we look at these three incidentals. We can see that they defined by large shapes, accented with smaller shapes within to make their design. Their eyes are often circles. Their heads could be circles, squares or even sharp triangles. Each of these gives these incidental characters a sense of personality even if we only see them on screen for one scene.
Notice how even their poses can be defined by simple shapes. They re snappy with details that are easy to notice even from a distance away.
We can even see this with the secondary and main humans.
The Professor is made up of mostly squares and rectangles. As he is often the rock, the foundation and source of stability for the girls.
Ms. Keane is rounder, predominated by ovals. Her body is one solid oval, and her overall look makes her appear very friendly, the kind of person you’d want to see being a teacher to young children.
The Mayor is round as well, but his ovals make him look more portly. Someone you could see being a jolly and equally bumbling fellow.
Ms. Bellum is both sharp and round. From her legs to her arms and her hips. The balance between the two shapes make her a more dynamic character. One who is friendly to the girls, dry to the mayor, and has even stood her own in a few fights.
These are all important ideas to keep in mind, as the Powerpuff Girls world isn’t normally full of PPGs like the girls. It’s full of these geometric, yet diverse humans!
I’ve kept this in mind when designing Tara, Chris, Kevin, and Nancy. Some of my Human PPG OCs. Trying to give them a distinct look, one that can tell you about their personalities at a glance.
Tara is tall and round, friendly but tends to worry and fret as most of the sharper parts of her design are around her head. Chris is short, round, but largely in a squarish shape to show they are the more grounded of the two. Kevin is largely rectangular with some odd round shapes to show he’s strong but kind. Nancy is mostly round, with some rectangular and pointed shapes to show she’s equal parts friendly and dynamic. Perhaps Sassy?
In conclusion. Main, Secondary, Incidental, or otherwise, the way a character is built is an important aspect to their design.
We as humans tend to associate certain shapes with certain things, and the artists and designers took advantage of that when emulating the UPA style. Giving Townsville a very visually diverse, yet easy to visually read an identify population
A useful thing to keep in mind whether you’re a fan who creates content or a casual appreciator of cartoons, and I encourage those who have taken the time to read this to be observant in what goes into a character’s design. What shapes can you identify? What is it about a character's shape or look that makes them visually distinct? As while even an incidental character could only appear once and never again, it’s important to consider how they might look in a scene, in crowd, and how that look serves the media they come from.
#Powerpuff Girls#PPG#Powerpuff Girls 1998#PPG 1998#Mun Talks#Animation talk#Cartoon Network#Character Design
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Current Watchlist Game
I was tagged by @iamdarthbader, and honestly I took too long to get this done because I had the stupid idea of giffing things and that takes me forever. Here we go!
Currently Watching (Somewhat in order of enjoyment)
Love In The Air - I'm here for messy, toxic and epic romances. The show is insane and so giffable, it is just a ton of fun for me. I've also enjoyed a bunch of the background music, there are some real bangers in there.
Vice Versa - I've been enjoying this since the first episode, and it's been pretty solid if not great throughout. The visual design - sets, costuming, post-production - have been fantastic and the colour theming is so well done.
The Eclipse - An intriguing mystery with amazing production design and UST through the roof? This is shaping up to be an amazing show with really important messaging regarding non-comformity. Khaotung not playing a softboy is also new and interesting.
Unforgotten Night - Possibly the most unintentionally hilarious show I've seen in a while (or maybe casting Yoon after his history of crack was intentional). I have so much fun with the bizarre choices in this show, and I do not regret my decision to re-use the shitty tigger tattoo gif for this post.
About Youth - It's only 2 episodes so far, but I'm digging the vibe and style of the show. Got some great music, and I will not be taking questions about why I chose to show the second couple in the gif.
My Only 12% - I started this one a little late, but I've caught up now. Earth's ability to convincingly play a high schooler is criminal, and I'm a big fan of the potential for an uno reverse pining plot. Chomping at the bit for the timeskip already.
Takara-kun and Amagi-kun - This reminds me so much of the heart-rending high-school shonen-ai I've read for years. Sweet and simple, the actors are obviously a bit new to things, but they're doing an admirable job for newbies.
Currently Rewatching
Triage - I will probably never stop rewatching Triage. The plot was so strong, I loved so many of the performances, the medical scenes were really top-tier (except the CPR, lol), and there was some really amazing camerawork that elevated the material.
Manner of Death - I have ascended to the role of Sammon simp. It definitely helps that Max and Tul are such strong actors, especially together. The murder and human trafficking show has become a comfort watch for me, please don't ask why.
Love Mechanics (2022) - I have loved this new version so much more than the original attempt. I'm really glad they got a redo and that Yin and War returned. War is just a really strong actor and Yin has come so far since the first time around.
Fish Upon the Sky - I actually love me some wacky comedy BLs, and while not the strongest, I have a lot of fun with this. I was brought back to it by watching the trailer for Pond and Phuwin's upcoming show.
Looking Forward To...
Never Let Me Go - Pond and Phuwin's upcoming show looks super angsty and dramatic. I dig it. Also, why do all the shows this year have mafia, lol?
Moonlight Chicken - I took way too long to watch 1000 Stars and Cupid's Last Wish, but I was so glad when I did. Earth and Mix work really well together, and I'm interested in seeing them in something a little less sweet and innocent this time around.
Manifesting an official announcement for... Transplant - Please, I want this so much. Please, please, please, please... You cannot be surprised by this.
I have no idea on the etiquette of who I should tag, but I'd like to ask @queersouthasian, @gillianthecat and @thequeenofsastiel to have a go.
#bl drama#triage#manner of death#fish upon the sky#love mechanics#the eclipse series#vice versa#love in the air#unforgotten night#takara kun to amagi kun#about youth#my only 12%
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Happy Pomefiore Part 2 release day! Here's Part 4 of the @jackplushie automation au ideas in celebration. (And because it introduces some of the Scarabia character growth that’s important for this part
EDIT: pssst if you liked this I made a sideblog for twst writing, @scertifiedsavanaclawstan! So go follow me over there!
Scarabia
Scarabia is the name of a luxury brand for the ultra rich, every bot they produce is completely unique and made to order. Additionally, since the wealthy clientele are reticent to entrust their pricey show bots to human mechanics, Scarabia also produces an equivalent line of 'Viper' bots, each of which is designed to service and maintain their respective android.
Kalim is one of the most extravagant bots Scarabia has ever produced, every part made of some precious metal or splendid gem.
His master also asked for a unique feature to go along with the standard singing and dancing, namely the ability to manipulate hydraulics to put on a water show.
Everything was going great for so long, Kalim was the jewel of his master's household, his best friend was there with him, and life was good.
Then his master had a large banquet, and Kalim took the stage ready to perform. Everything went wrong.
His voice released a cacophony of guttural screams, his limbs spasmed uncontrollably, and the gentle rain of the water show shot all the guests hard enough to draw blood.
He didn't know what happened, but no amount of tearful apologies could make up for what happened. He and his Viper were cast out of the house.
They had to go on the run in fear of someone coming to carve Kalim's body up, but they found you really fast!
Kalim knows there's a lot he can't do... so he's been trying to find ways to pay you back!
He's preformed for you a few times, but it's not like he can preform for money when he's still trying to keep a low profile.
It's okay though! If you ever need money, he can give you something to sell!
His eyes are made of red diamonds, his hair is braided platinum, his clothes are the finest silk.
If there's any piece of him you need to sell, don't hesitate to ask, he'll rip it out without even waiting for Jamil's help!
He'll give you anything to not throw him out like before, just let him stay please?
And Jamil too.
Jamil deserves it.
Jamil is Kalim's assigned Viper bot. And while Vipers are supposed to love their partner, Jamil... Jamil had always hated it.
Why did Kalim get all the attention? Why when he did all the work, all the maintenance, all the cooking for every feast even?
And yet he couldn't be seen by the public, he was unsightly, useless? He hated it, and he hated Kalim most of all.
So he decided to do something about it. For months he planned in preperation to make Kalim fall.
He knew Kalim's insides like the back of his own hand, damaging parts precisely enough to all break on the exact day of their master's banquet was trivial for him.
Of course, he shouldn't have been able to damage Kalim's parts... but maybe it was just one more thing wrong with him.
But it all went off without a hitch, even if he was thrown out along with Kalim, he almost felt like celebrating. Almost.
It would've been easier to but... it was hard listening to Kalim cry to him, apologizing that he was thrown out when Kalim was the one to mess up.
Jamil was planning on just ditching Kalim to whatever fate awaited him but... he felt guilty. So he stuck with him.
While on the run Jamil made... particular use of his limited engineering knowledge whenever they were persued by bounty hunter androids.
Taking complete control of another android’s actions and free will wasn’t part of his intended uses but... what was one more broken rule.
He was... suspicious about how coincidentally they found you, and how willing you were to take them in but... they didn't have many options.
But staying with you was... fine, it was nice to have some sort of constant, where he wasn't only there for Kalim's sake.
Although it was disturbing how the roles were reversing. He had heard Kalim offering to sell pieces of himself if you needed any money, even if he needed to take himself apart piece by piece.
And always with the request that you keep Jamil around. Jamil was... worried.
Kalim wasn't supposed to care about him, he wasn't supposed to think of Jamil as anything other than a convenient servant.
Kalim was made to be innocent, cheerful, and utterly foolish. He didn't have the capacity to even know about Jamil's plight.
But then again... Jamil shouldn't have had the capacity to hate him either.
#twst#twisted wonderland#kalim al asim#jamil viper#automation au#hehe i had fun with this one#slightly different but it's a dynamic im mildly obsessed with#next up is... pomefiore#and while i can be a slow writer#im not SO slow that the rest of chapter 5 and the entirety of chapter 6 will wind up releasing before i finish it sooo#kinda spoilers on that#it shouldnt be anything like. MAJOR MAJOR#but there will be some
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the essay!!!! i read that shit instead of studying for my exam so if i fail it is your fault miss yogurt (kidding). i am continuously amazed at your abilities and your perfectly dry-but-witty journalistic style that i am ohsoinlove with. reading the sentence “(Also unsurprisingly, Gray is about gaslighting a girl until she dies.)” took me out lma. ! i love all of ur writing, tho i am obviously biased since it’s on topics that interest me - however, the amount of work and dedication that you are able to designate not only to a complex split of a band, but also personal relationships, biographies, lyrical and prose analysis is astounding! anyway,,,, i guess i just want to thank u !
thank you this message is really genuine and sweet <333 i re-used that joke from the gray dissertation lol
Tbh i was not happy with a lot of parts of this one. Sorry to rant about this appended to your ask specifically <3
mainly I think i shot myself in the foot with the way i structured the last one where i covered the moment panic got signed in excruciating detail and then rushed through 10-15 years really fast. at the time i did not think these were that serious or were going to reach as far as they ended up reaching and it was just like for my tumblr followers so i knew it was like a bad idea but i was just like "whatever!!!!"
anyway that made the beginning really rough because i didnt really have a set place to start. the first like 5 pages were also completely different too which didnt help
Also about 70% of the way through i realized it was really weird that i didnt give brendon any kind of dramatic introduction. I had so much fun writing the dramatic introductions they got a lot longer than when i outlined the essay which made that even more noticeable
But honestly, writing this and watching so many presplit panic interviews i actually started liking brendon a lot more and remembered why people used to love him and i knew whatever i wouldve said would have been things people didnt really want to read, so instead he just got his villain monologue at the end
It was also kind of weird that i didnt introduce spencer or jon at all but i figure anyone reading a 50 page essay about panic at the disco already knows who these people are anyway so i just had 2 move on
Also i was not very happy with the verlaine section, i felt like it was a lot of very dense information to synthesize and like also I didn't want to over explain it and be accused of being like a gay truther but like im sorry. its not even gay truthing its just gay by virtue of existing so i feel like i under explained it
Other parts too. However my research capabilities are absolutely unmatched and i do think im funny. im not sure if most other people think im funny but i sure think i am <3
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continued assorted thoughts:
- a better justification for bringing me on the expedition might be that I’ve just recently been through the boot-up process, so I’m uniquely suited among all New Jerusalem’s residents to solve puzzles—it’s fresh in my brain. Just say their preliminary scouting of the island returned photos that look a lot like the simulation puzzles, so they thought it would be useful to bring along the puzzle-baby
- Melville I want to be you when I grow up
- who decided I’m a he? Wasn’t me. Can I change that at Helga’s booth? It can’t be harder than downloading a new gender package, right? YoU wOuLdNt DoWnLoAd a gEnDeR
- this is all… very pretty… but my computer is apparently a bit of a potato 😢 alas I find my philosophical experience constrained by the limits of physical reality, if only there was a Principle that neatly expressed this conundrum
- you guys are setting up SUCH a stark dichotomy between “explore and move toward the future” versus “honor the past and maintain balance”— you realize you can do both, right? Those aren’t mutually-exclusive options? Robots can very easily explore the world while living in harmony with nature—all y’all bots need to read A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, stat. Mosscap for mayor of New Jerusalem.
- speaking of. You guys talk all the time about these vast, vague concepts, but what do they mean, practically speaking? “What’s the true nature of the human spirit, tradition or innovation?” Look buddy, it’s transient, shifting like water what are we talking about, picking a theme for next week’s gala or fixing the maintenance problems at the hydroelectric dam? Let’s be CONCRETE about this
- re: the problems with the power grid, how attached are we to New Jerusalem’s location? It seems like since we’re all synthetic, we benefit from fewer constraints than bio-humans re: comfortably habitable climates. We could move almost anywhere (as long as the cats like it). Wouldn’t the most long-term sustainable solution be to relocate somewhere that geothermal energy is a possibility?
- SPEAKING OF, I understand the constraints on game devs’ time, but it would have been great to see some non-human-shaped humans! If we’re building them all from scratch, why not have fun with it? The featherless biped physical model isn’t exactly the pinnacle of smart design. Surely, at least a few of New Jerusalem’s citizens would upgrade or modify their bodies, right? Gotta be some folks who would be happier being spider-shaped. I think it would add interesting texture to the bots’ decision to call themselves “human,” too—yes, we define ourselves explicitly as a continuation of the human species, even if many of us are also lawnmowers. My neighbor is a lawnmower and she designs fantastic crossword puzzles, lawnmowers are people too!
- hm, I’m not really sure how to put this… but this game feels… sort of like the opposite of what I took away from The Talos Principle? In the first game, you spend all your time in gorgeous puzzle-garden-ruins contemplating the Big Ideas about What It Means to Be Human, but ultimately, you have to reject the perfectly-designed puzzle-world and step outside into the gritty, imperfect reality of a world that wasn’t designed for you to solve. Real life is messy and complicated and often disappointing and not as cleanly satisfying as a world made of brightly-colored puzzles that were made especially for you, but that’s the point, isn’t it? The challenge is worth it because it’s real. This island full of puzzles… doesn’t feel real. It feels like a retreat, like somebody got disheartened by all the boring problems (we’re running low on insulation, the jazz quartet is getting noise complaints again, somebody set a fire in the park by mistake and now everyone is yelling) and instead, ran away to build a bunch of colorful puzzles that make you feel Special and Important for solving them. Bleh, I’m tired, I could probably phrase this better.
#the talos principle#the talos principle 2#ShiroiKabocha plays TTP2#Melville you’re amazing#and you’re right about the language libraries#we are humans but we are DIFFERENT from the humans who used this language#we ought to be developing our OWN idioms that make sense for our way of life
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I'm reading old reports from before the official formation of NJ Transit right now...
This dates to 1978, and they were still determining what to do with the former Erie-Lackawanna trackage, particularly with regards to upgrading the electrification on some lines. At the time, the passenger service was being operated by Conrail under contract to the NJ Department of Transportation. NJ Transit was founded in 1979, and it officially took over passenger service in 1983.
I'm obsessed with this guy who proposed a suggestion without realizing he was reinventing Manhattan Transfer:
Transcription:
Commuter Alternative Proposed:
Dear Editor:
Many readers of The Star-Ledger commute on the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad. The state of New Jersey has proposed to re-electrify the line so passengers can ride to New York's Penn Station. I would like to offer an alternate proposal.
The state is accepting delivery of new multiple unit cars from General Electric. These cars are slated to be used on the Erie-Lackawanna. However, it will be years before these cars can be used because they are designed to use AC power and the E-L has DC power. There is local opposition to the project due to noisy substations. Finally, how are passengers on the E-L diesel trains going to get to New York's Penn Station?
The state should discontinue accepting the new cars pending specification [revision?]. Future cars should be [?] to use DC power, the power the E-L now uses [?] Harrison, where the Erie-Lackawanna and the Penn Central tracks come close together, a station should be built. There would be a high level platform with the E-L on one side and the Penn Central on the other. ALL E-L trains bound for Hoboken would stop here. Passengers wishing to travel to New York's Penn Station would change to waiting Penn Central trains. Those wishing to go to Hoboken would stay on the E-L trains. E-L passengers coming home from New York would change at Harrison to waiting E-L trains. The new AC multiple-unit cars the state now has would provide the shuttle between Harrison and New York. The DC cars of the future would provide the service between E-L points and Harrison.
Diesel train passengers as well as those on E-L electric trains could use this service. This service could be instituted much sooner and at far less cost than the state's plan of electrification.
Joel N. Rovick,
Long Branch
Manhattan Transfer, located in Harrison, NJ, just like where this person wanted to put their version, was active from 1910 to 1937, and its entire purpose was to transfer people from one type of power to another - steam locomotives would pull the trains up until that point, and then passengers would switch over to an electric multiple unit to go under the Hudson into Penn Station. You could also transfer to the PATH (then the H&M) here starting in 1911. Once the PRR electrified south of the station, however, there was no longer a need for it - note that it closed in 1937, and the GG1s had entered service a few years prior starting in 1934. Newark Penn Station, fully electrified, negated the need for a transfer point for both the PRR and the PATH - today you can go straight along the Northeast Corridor through Newark right into New York Penn Station, and you can take the PATH from Newark all the way to the World Trade Center instead of having to take it from Manhattan Transfer.
The only reason Manhattan Transfer lasted beyond 1933, when the PRR was running electric trains through and south of it, was for that PATH transfer. Once that was no longer needed, it was only a matter of time.
I just think it's funny that this person may have unknowingly done this, because this newspaper article ran in 1978, 41 years after the station closed. Depending on the writer's age, it might not have even existed in their lifetime.
And I guess their idea did sort of come into fruition years later, but in a much different location - Secaucus Junction.
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