#totally forgot superheroes have powers oops
Note
Hello, I really like your hero x villain writing and it's so entertaining scrolling through the tags and reading them! (Hope this doesn't come out as creepy omg ;-;")
If I can give a request... What about a villain who noticed poison in the oblivious hero's food/drink, then trade their meals, knowing fully well that villain will be the one who get sick? Thank you in advance!
“You,” the hero hissed, looking daggers at the villain without mercy.
“Me?” the villain didn’t even bother looking up from their newspaper, instead, they just continued to stare with the utmost boredom at their newspaper. They’d made it to the front page. Not really impressive, not really worth anything, at least of all their attention.
“You have held me captive for over a week now,” the hero said, their frown honest, their body language determined.
“A week? God, feels like a lifetime…” The villain seemed totally relaxed in this situation, totally content in public. They didn’t think the hero would do anything right now, right here. In fact, they knew the hero wouldn’t.
They would never ask anyone for help. Apparently they had this terrible mindset where they’d rather die than be a what they called burden.
“Let me go—”
“Eat dinner, darling. Or do you really want the most expensive steak in the whole country to be cold when you swallow it?” The villain put the newspaper away — they knew no one would read the news on a Saturday evening in a fancy restaurant but they also knew that they could do whatever they pleased by now.
Being rich had its perks.
As they looked at their grumpy nemesis, they reminded themselves that them being kidnapped would make them only richer.
Right now, a group of villains was roaming through the streets of the city and there was no hero to stop them. They’d paid the villain an incredible sum for that.
“Oh, honestly, I would love to see that look on your face when you get the check and realise that half of it was pure waste of money,” the hero said. They raised an eyebrow. Cocky.
“Do you think I care about money?” the villain asked with fake disinterest.
Initially, they had said yes because they wanted to get some information out of the hero but now that they saw a certain challenge, a certain play of power, they were more intrigued than ever. Of course, the villain didn’t want to show that, though.
They observed the hero’s food: the untouched steak, potatoes, the wine…
“Obviously you do. Why else would you dress like some rich ass banker?”
“Good taste?” the villain suggested.
“Oh, so you want to compensate your lack of character?”
“Your ability to speak is an insult to evolution,” the villain said. That wine looked funny.
“Oh really? Is running around being an arsonist a compliment to nature?” the hero asked. Oh, they were pissed. At least their red face and their fisted hands suggested that.
But the villain could only manage a sly grin as they leaned back in their chair.
“Actually, it is, darling. It’s lovely to spark a flame with my fingertips…it makes me hot.” They winked at their enemy.
However, they didn’t reckon with the hero’s reaction.
They rolled their eyes.
Let out a groan.
Grabbed the glass.
“God, sometimes I wish you weren’t.”
The villain’s periphery of their vision blurred completely. Time slowed down. They forgot to breathe. They started panicking.
And then, the villain slipped back into their calculating self.
Without a second thought, they snatched the glass out of the hero’s hand and downed the drink.
“Wow. What’s next?” the hero asked, somehow even more pissed. “I’m not allowed to eat? I’m the one who pays?”
The villain didn’t know what they’d swallowed but they knew it wasn’t wine.
“Sort of.” They needed to get home. “We have to leave. Someone knows who you are.”
pt.2
#totally forgot superheroes have powers oops#writing snippet#heroxvillain prompt#heroxvillain snippet#heroes and villains#hero#villain#hero x villain#heroxvillain#an answer for an ask#request
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Welcome Back
Today I will be rating Beck's
Potential Partners?
The question mark is because some of them were definitely his partners, others will not admit it, and some came to...circumstances preventing a declaration of their love...anyway.
1. Bodhi
Literally on screen for 30 seconds max
We all clocked that shit instantly
Never brought him up again (thx to retroactive backstory oops)
Beck was actually visibly sad about him tho to the point his boss/dad had to ask if he was ok
Absolute cute couple though
8/10 I knew him for five seconds and now I have to kill everyone in this room and then myself
2. Paige
Y'all already know. Everyone knows. The whole grid knows.
The sexual tension is palpable
Which brings me to some difficult questions about the nature of programs and what physical functions they may or may not have.
Ugh I'm a sucker for the rivals to lovers thing tho
12/10 top ten hottest bi power couple if they don't kill each other first
3. Tron
I went over this in my tron's exes list but I must reiterate cause reasons
Can you imagine meeting your hero, your icon, your savior and he's....a bit of a bitch??
But you learn and get to know him and he opens up to you and comes to trust you with his life UGH my heart
9/10 I rated this 7/10 before but I'm not scared anymore they're GOOD
4. Cyrus
Look, he gets in with his bffs and the first thing they say to Beck is "you didn't tell us you had a new bf!" (Totally NOT paraphrasing that).
The fucked up stalker/victim pairing is SUCH good tea
And then he tries to kill him later? Delicious.
7/10 this one's for the toxicity 😏
5. Lux (I had to look up her name)
okay this one loses points because they WANTED me to ship this when we already knew Paige existed
I don't like to be told what to do
I mean, it's ok Beck has two hands(more like eight at this point) I can work with it
loved her jaded perspective turning into hope before she was fridged for male pai- I mean derezzed for reasons relevant to the plot 👀 that was definitely neat
Consider: she is pretty though
4/10 they're both a ten but I'm a bitter bitch so sue me
6. Mara
tbh she's such a cutie and deserves way better than whatever incel shit Zed has going on
no wonder she's in love with Tron/the Renegade (I mean, same) I would beg a superhero to save me from him too
she and Beck have such a good dynamic
would be such a cute friends to lovers pair
can you imagine if she found out her bestie was the renegade she's been visibly/audibly thirsting after? Queen shit.
8/10 This one is actually the least toxic here
7. The rebellion leader whose name escapes me (it's Bartik)
so this guy appears in legacy as the rebel leader at Castor's before getting derezzed five minutes later (shocker there)
this one just kinda leaped into my brain when I binged the show directly after watching Legacy
can you imagine inspiring someone to change sides completely and then become the leader of the very fire you sparked long after you're probably gone? Endlessly romantic.
6/10 I have yet to have a really bad ship tbh
8. Pavel
I hate it, you hate it, we all hate it
But it's still pretty hot
8/10 bitch on bitch violence
9. Zed
Ahaha I hate it
he's way too comfortable with the evil bad guy shit happening around him.
honestly I have no idea why Beck is even friends with him
HOWEVER
jock/loser pairing
Beck CAN AND WILL fix him
3/10 I don't think we can save this one boys
BONUS ROUND:
10. Tesler
LMAO I just thought of this
Why do I love it tho
Something about the Darkseid omega beam hands that make me think weird thoughts
Now I wish I had put this on my tron list
1/10 or 9/10 depending on the day
I really do love that Beck is just the most specialest boy, he's the grid's next top model, he's batman, he's everything. Istg this is a harem anime in disguise and I ship him with everyone.
I can think of at least two programs off the top of my head that I didn't include because I forgot until now, so tell me about your rare pairs, etc. I was thinking about rating Clu's crushes that he handles in a completely normal way next but that might be too much. This is what happens when we have no new content for 10 years.
#tron#tronblr#tron uprising#tron beck#tron legacy#the renegade#i meant to post this during pride but#oops two months late i guess#anyway tron be upon ye
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Oops wait ive had this blog for months and forgot to mention who the hell I am lmfao
Hiya, my name's PJ. I'm Copper Spider. I'm the Spider of Earth 2908, and I'm based in Glasgow, Scotland!
I got my powers when I was fifteen. Went into hospital because I had a broken hand and then Shit Hit The Fan, which got me Spider Powers! Fun trade off.
I can shoot webs right from my wrists, which apparently isn't standard as far as spider-people go! They also go zap if a current goes through them!
So do I, which isn't so fun!
And I also eat them (and coins)
I am not kidding, I have caused a shortage of coins in Glaswegian tills. Cashiers hate me
My best friend is also a superhero and he's rather powerful (we still don't know wtf he is). You'll know if he's taken over the blog because he'll use proper grammar, and punctuation, and put a butterfly emoji because there isn't a moth
Wasp is some kind of total screaming genius! She's got bug wings and other traits, but she built a suit that allows her to shrink! She's so cool!
Despite Wasp's genius, Daredevil is our collective brain cell wielder and impulse control. Love you, Lucifer!
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Hey do you mind going a little more indepth on the whole fandom batcat thing? I totally get what you mean with spideypool and in general alot of bat ships tend to be blorbo-fied but I always thought batcat was a bit more realistic
First of all SORRY THIS TOOK A DAY OR TWO i wrote half of this response and then forgot to finish wksjsj
I do think batcat is a more realistic ship for batman in general! There's so many good reasons why bat and cat work well together (similar motivations, arguably similar priorities in that they both to their bones feel Gotham is their home and want to make it better, similar moral codes (despite her being a thief), etc.) even if the some of the recent batcat comics haven't been... great characterization wise (Tom King my beloathed)
My issue comes from kinda like with when people make Spidey pool aus with their blorbos, esp since the 2022 Batman movie came out I've been seeing a lot of batcat aus with people's blorbos and idk, some of it doesn't sit right!
Part of it I think is that so often people replace Catwoman with a white dude and while Catwoman isn't always a woman of color, she definitely is in the movie they are pulling from so that always feels a little sketchy to me. Some of it is that people obviously don't really know Selina outside of Bruce which can also make any blorbo adaption of them feel weird. Which is sad because Selina is awesome!
Selina is an amazing foil to Bruce, but also really dang cool on her own whether she is wrangling the Gotham organized crime scene like she has in recent comics, or simply taking young sex workers under her wing and giving them a place to get on their feet like she was often seen doing in the New Earth era!
(Honestly, even when she is just being a more "shallow" villain and just stealing cat themed items from museums and also having psychic connections to her cats is fun too.)
Controversial opinion, but I think people just get to stuck on trying to fit their blorbos into preconceived boxes based on comic power couples, and that superhero aus would be way more fun if they utilized lesser known ships, or learned the truth that comic book fans know, which is that at any time your fave could suddenly be in a whirlwind romance with a teammate or random other cape. Match up your blorbos with a character that actually fits them and shipping will come later ;P
(Sorry I am still a little wonky in the head rn from being sick so if this doesn't make complete sense.... oops.)
#anon#anonymous#asks#fandom wank#like one of the aus in a fandom that drives me nuts is that like i said they keep for one putting the rich boy as peter which is digjia#the other is that even if you role reverse so the not rich boy is peter (and honestly I think the backstory and other parts of his shit fit#wayyy better anyway)#you dont need his boyfriend to be deadpool or venom#those arent your only two options lol#mj harry osborne and johnny storm are all right there and fit the personality of the boyfriend much better#but people only know marvel tumblr fandom which is spideypool obsessed so they lock themselves in roles that dont fit#actually if they knew about flash venom that would be a great one too but i know they are thinking of eddie venom#anyway should clarify i do enjoy spideypool even if it isnt my top spidey ship but like it doesnt work at all for the aus i always see it#paired with
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Peas in a Pod
Day 20 Alt Prompt: De-Aged
(posted it on AO3 yesterday, forgot to post it here oops)
AO3
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“So let me get this straight,” - Tony massages his temple in effort to soothe his growing headache - “There was a wizard.”
“Yeah,” Ned nods. “And he was shooting off fireballs, like real fireballs, and it was awesome and kinda scary and-”
“Ned. Ned. Find the shortcut to the point. Because nothing explains” - Tony gestures towards the couch - “that.”
Ned blushes with embarrassment and nods . “Right! Sorry, sir. So, uhm, Pete was fighting the wizard guy and he was doing really good! Was totally kicking his ass! And then the wizard like, shot him with some kind of purplish black energy ray stuff? Like it shot right out of his hands. Then the wizard was gone and Pete was… like this.”
Tony eyes the kid on the couch. Same curly brown hair. Same doe brown eyes. It’s everything else that’s wrong. Peter is sixteen, a teenager, and this kid looks like he’s no more than five years old.
As for Peter, well, he looks content watching videos on Ned’s phone. Some children’s cartoon about dogs or something, Tony didn’t quite catch it. But the kid likes it and he isn’t crying anymore so Tony counts that as a win. Judging from the confused state the kid was in upon arrival, it’s safe to assume Peter’s memories are wiped. Or, rather, memories of his life in the present day which is a problem in and of itself.
“So,” Ned’s drawl catches his attention. “What are we going to do?”
Tony raises an eyebrow. “We?” he shakes his head. “No, no, you are going home.”
“What about Peter?”
Yeah Stark, what about Peter?
“He’ll go with his aunt.” Tony says simply. Easy enough solution.
“You mean you can’t like, fix him?” Ned asks. “What if he ends up staying like this forever?”
Tony waves off the teen’s concerns. “He won’t.” he assures. “Whatever the wizard guy hit him with will probably wear off in a couple hours. Easy peasy.” After all, the kid couldn’t stay like this forever, could he? That is just absurd.
----------
The effects don’t wear off.
Two hours later and Peter is still a child. Ned is gone, reluctantly dragged out by Happy who also delivered clothes that fit the kid better so he’s no longer swimming in the Doctor Who shirt Tony assumed belonged to one of the boys. During that time, Tony contacts May to fill her in on what’s going on. The woman is stuck at work (“We’re incredibly short staffed today, it’s ridiculous.”) and unable to leave before her shift is over.
It leaves Tony in charge of the kid which, while normally wouldn’t be an issue, he suddenly finds himself out of his depth. Teenagers, he can handle. No problem. They could be reasoned with. But small children?
“Mr. Tony?”
Tony jumps, spinning on hell with his hand pressed firmly against his heart. “Holy shit!” he gasps.
Peter flinches back, eyes wide and looking as startled as Tony feels. Then his bottom lip begins to quiver.
“No no, don’t cry.” Tony says in a rush. “I didn’t mean to scare you, kid. You snuck up on me. Ought to put a bell on you someday.”
That earns him a giggle which washes away the rising guilt. “Uncle Ben says that too.” Peter says. “Says I’m really good at sneaking.”
“You are good at sneaking.” Tony affirms. “What are you doing down here anyway? Thought you were watching TV?” Least that’s where Tony left him. Kid was content with watching the cartoon with the dogs and he figured he could get some work done tracking down the wizard guy.
“I was, but it’s over now.” Peter says dismissively, his eyes already wandering the workshop. Then he actually begins to wander. Tony watches him, contemplating on whether it’s a good idea to let a four year old wander his workshop. It isn’t exactly kid proof and if he knows anything about kids (which is very limited) it’s they like to touch everything. And put things in their mouths.
“What’s that?” Peter asks and Tony leans to the side to look past the monitors and equipment to see what the boy is pointing at.
“Oh that’s DUM-E.”
The robot chirps in response, clicking it’s claw as it peers curiously at the boy. Tony takes a couple steps towards them, immediately thinking Peter might fear the robot. Much to his relief, the boy’s mouth is agape with wonder and eyes equally wide.
“Wow!” he gasps. “Hi DUM-E. I’m Peter.” Peter reaches up to pet DUM-E’s extended arm, giggling as the robot chirps at him. “So is he a robot?”
“Yep. I made him.”
“You made him?” Peter gives him the same look of wonder and amazement. “Wow. Are there other stuff you’ve made?”
“I’ve made a lot of stuff.”
And so Tony gives the kid a proper tour of the workshop. Like his older self, Peter is sharp minded and incredibly smart. He asks questions Tony doesn’t think a four year old would know to ask and hangs onto every word Tony says. When he introduces Peter to FRIDAY, the kid is so ecstatic he can’t sit still. It warms his heart to know Peter keeps that same excitement as he aged.
After the tour, Tony brings him into the kitchen to feed him a late lunch. The kid sits on the kitchen counter next to him, watching Tony’s every move. PB&J sandwiches are the easiest thing he can fix and turns out to be the kid’s favorite.
“So you’re a superhero?” Peter asks curiously.
“Sometimes.” Tony replies as he spreads the peanut butter onto the bread.
“Like Batman?”
“Kiddo, I am way cooler and richer than Batman.”
Peter giggles and Tony thinks it might be the cutest goddamn thing he’s heard all day.
“My daddy is like you.” the kid says suddenly.
“Oh yeah? How so?” Tony asks, finding himself equally curious. He knows through his early research into Peter Parker that the boy’s parents are deceased. Father worked for OsCorp, mother worked for some type of law firm. Aside from the atrocious choice of working at OsCorp, both of them seemed relatively normal.
“Because he makes stuff. B-But not robots like you do. He makes other stuff and-and he white wears a coat and he helps people.” Peter gives a long, wistful sigh then and adds, “I want my daddy and mommy.”
Tony freezes, butter knife stuck in the jar of jelly. Quite suddenly he remembers something else about Peter’s parents.
They both died in a plane crash.
When Peter was four years old.
The man internally panics, mind going blank on what to do, what to say because what can you say?
“Mr. Tony?” Peter’s little voice draws him from his internal crisis. He tilts his head, looking at him curiously and, dare Tony say it, concern. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Tony sniffs and finishes up the kid’s sandwich. “Yeah, totally fine kiddo. A-OK. So you want this cut up?”
“Yes.” Peter replies, apparently moved on from the incident. Yet, as Tony puts the knife to bread in order to cut, the kid shouts, “No! No no, not like that! You have’ta make the X.”
“Huh?” Tony looks a little helplessly from the kid to the bread.
“The X!” Peter leans over and traces an X on the sandwich. “Like that!”
Tony cuts it up according to the kid’s desire and it’s only then that he sees what the kid means. “Yeah, guess it does look like an X when you cut it, huh? Well, here you go kiddo. Eat up.” He slides the plate to the boy’s side.
Peter takes a large bite and hums with approval as he chews. “‘Ood yob!” he says around his mouthful. It’s the additional thumbs up that makes Tony chuckle. He grabs a juice box from the fridge for the kid, something teenage Peter would have rolled his eyes and grumbled about. Toddler Peter says a polite ‘thank you’ and picks it up with fingers covered in grape jelly.
He decides to capture the moment for May and pulls out his phone. “Heads up, kiddo.” he says and takes a picture. Peter is caught in a half smile, peanut butter smeared on the corner of his mouth. There’s a glob of jelly on his shirt that’s run down the image of Thor’s hammer.
“I wanna see! I wanna see!” Peter instantly demands.
Tony moves to stand next to him and flips the phone for the kid to see the picture. Peter grins and immediately reaches for the phone. “Uh uh, sticky fingers.” Tony says, which gets the kid giggling about being called ‘sticky fingers’. He moves the phone out of reach and sends the image off to May.
“So,” Tony says. “What do you want to do after lunch? TV? Go play with DUM-E? Whatever that wannabe Merlin did to you took away your powers, or maybe just suppressed them. Maybe we ought to run some tests to figure that out.”
On second thought, maybe not. Teenager Peter detests needles; he imagines little Peter hates them just as much.
“DUM-E!” Peter says excitedly.
“You’re going to spoil that bot, kid.”
---
“Thank you so much, Happy.” May says as she steps into the Tower’s elevator. “You really didn’t have to pick me up. I could have drove.”
Happy directs FRIDAY to take them to the penthouse then shakes his head. “It’s no problem.” he says. “Boss wanted to make sure you got here quickly and with that guy who attacked Peter still running around-”
“Right.” May sighs. “Well, guess he could have done worse things than turn Peter younger. At least him and Tony seem to be hitting it off.” She smiles fondly as she recalls the image Tony sent her. She only hopes Peter has been good while they wait for her.
“Yeah, well, the kid’s grown on him.”
“I feel a little jealous, honestly.” May admits. “Peter was so cute when he was little.”
The elevator comes to a stop, the doors slide open to the entrance of the penthouse. It’s oddly quiet inside and the lights are dimmed. “Tony?” Happy calls out as he and May walk through the foyer into the living room.
It looks like a tornado hit it. There are papers thrown about with childish drawings covering them. A sheet covers the kitchen table which has been pulled away from the dining area and there are mini marshmallows covering the floor with some sticking to the large windows that overlook the city. A device that looks like a mini catapult sits on top of the table next to a pile of marshmallows and markers.
May follows the chaos, finding the TV on with the Incredibles playing on a low volume and both Tony and Peter fast asleep on the couch. Peter is still a toddler in every way May remembers, sleeping with his head on Tony’s chest. There are stickers on their faces and she spots marker smears not only on Peter’s arm but also on the hand that’s resting on Peter’s back.
“Did you find-” Happy starts, quietened as May shushes him. He comes to her side, expression softening at the sight. “Least they kept each other busy.” he remarks.
May nods in agreement as she pulls out her phone to take a quick picture of the two. “Like two peas in a pod.”
#webpril 2021 day 20#webpril 2021#peter parker#tony stark#irondad#ned leeds#may parker#happy hogan#spiderman#spider-man#iron man#marvel#mcu#duckie's writing
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First impressions of RWBY v8 finale, “The Final Word”
Finale time! uh. That is NOT a content warning I was expecting.
A suicide prevention hotline message? When I said Qrow might jump, I wasn't *serious*. Mostly. Damn it, there isn't a single character I want to die that way, villain or no. This is upsetting and I haven't even started watching yet.
GDI Rooster Teeth you better not have had that kind of end in mind for Qrow all along. I imagine everyone else saying something similar about their favorites. (My tentative guesses right now are Cinder or Harriet, but there are so many plausible awful possibilities.)
Dissolving whale, looking like the biggest murmuration of birds ever. So we're skipping back in time a bit. Something flickers in the ashes. Salem starting to reform? I can't tell.
GO WINTER don't you dare die here either. Ironwood's actually pleading his case with her, as he hasn't deigned to with anyone else. It's not a convincing argument, but he cares what she thinks of him enough to try.
Penny looking like a brilliant dragonfly, darting around with her swords like wings.
Just how far can that Grimm arm extend?
Jaune my boy! You remembered mission priority! You've grown so much since the fall of Beacon, when you forgot all about calling Glynda for help in favor of melodramatically smashing your phone. This is a horrible situation, but you've got a job to do and you know what it is.
...Maybe you should just stop trying to sound like Mignogna, Liebrecht. Right now you just sound like you've got a painful sore throat.
Harriet finally looks unsure of herself.
One last flicker of luck...was it real? I dunno. But Qrow certainly believes it.
Watts, what did you just do? I thought the bomb was already on a countdown. Did you stop it, or start one? And am I going to be right about where you want it to go off?
Ruby vs Neo round two! They've both improved a lot. Interfering with her umbrella is still a good tactic, though.
And YEET she goes through the portal to Vacuo! One threat deferred to next season. (I highly doubt she'll get there and start slaughtering refugees, she has no reason to. She'll fade into the background and regroup.)
- wait, how'd she do that?? The portals are one-way! Was that an illusion of herself that got yeeted? Someone explain this.
oh carp, Ruby's unarmed now.
30-second countdown. Harriet is right, that's not enough to escape. You were about to blow up thousands of civilians out of spite, woman - Vine, what are you going to do? You can't possibly shield a thing like that, how could you get it out of range?
You ARE going to shield. Huh. Qrow doesn't have a word to say - they never knew each other more than slightly, and there's no time to fumble with phrases, but he could've said "thank you" or "sorry".
I didn't think that would work, but heroic sacrifice gives you a lot of power points, we all know that from anime and superhero movies.
Yeek, they're really teasing this fall thing.
YEEK did not expect that.
YEEK
Knowing it was going to happen takes a lot of the shock out of it, but still. And *Penny* doesn't have any meta knowledge.
Jaune goes off mission, but despite what I said earlier, I can't fault him - Cinder's holding two relics! Ooh, and he and Nora don't know the portals are one-way yet. They weren't even present when Weiss announced the specs.
Oop, what's going on with the arm? She's had it under control for a long time, is it just coincidence that it would rebel now?
"She's back". OH.
Oh, that's disturbing. Almost as much as the bug she used on Amber. Cinder doesn't need proxies to Grimmsuck the power out of someone anymore.
oh no Penny - that isn't going to WORK is it?
oh, no, no, no, Penny
You can't ask that of Jaune. You just can't.
You did.
Aw man, now i'm crying.
I mean, that's seriously badass, and all, but - but -
Those frost birds are beautiful!
And that makes four.
That was Salem screaming, wasn't it? I can only imagine how loud it sounded outside of gatespace.
Why are the portals disappearing? Cinder didn't use the staff, she's just holding it. Did RWBY specify an end condition when they designed them?
Five! Did not expect that.
Could really use some Vacuo cavalry about now.
Or, y'know, a Maiden. That'll do.
Cinder, lying as rapidly as possible. She blames the loss of Ruby and the lamp's last question on others. Will Salem buy it?
She will!
They're just going to ignore Ironwood. Seems fitting. Why even bother?
Oh. Cinder *wasn't* lying about that part. She did use the staff, and that's why the portals disappeared. Can't really bring myself to mind much. (Especially since the portals being gone means they can't follow the survivors.) But I would’ve liked to see her talking to Ambrosius.
And Ironwood is left alone on a crashing Atlas.
Qrow, Robyn, Elm, Harriet, and Marrow overlook the rubble.
Oh, no....Qrow's getting the news through an earpiece, I don't know who from. I think we're all glad not to be able to hear him.
A flood? Pretty, but where'd the water come from?
Annnnnnnd that's a wrap. For Atlas and Mantle.
While the credits are playing, let me take stock. Where is everyone?
RIP: Ironwood, Penny, Watts, Vine.
The ruins of Atlas: Qrow, Robyn, Elm, Marrow, Harriet, Pietro, Maria, Salem, Cinder.
Vacuo: Nora, Ren, Oscar and Oz, Emerald, Winter, Willow, Whitley, Klein, and an unknown number of refugees. And Mercury and Tyrian and CVFY and SSSN. And presumably FNKI. And the rest of the Happy Huntresses, what was that about slimming down the cast?
Fallen: RWBY, Neo, Jaune.
(who *did* give Qrow the news? Maybe no one, and he’s just calling and not hearing any response. I’ll go with that, it’s less awful. He can hope they made it to Vacuo and are simply out of range.)
Post-credit scene! Water. Ocean of magic water. Beach. Jungle, with giant shells. Crescent Rose is waiting for Ruby. A very big tree. And that's it.
I'm...not really sure what I think, overall. Ironwood just seemed to fizzle out into irrelevance, and while I'm sure a lot of people will find that appropriate, none of it is what I would've hoped for his character arc. Penny's fate was moving and unexpected. (In contrast to her first death, they took care not to show her body or what Jaune had to do to her. They didn't want this to be gruesome.) Amity, Maria and Pietro just seemed to get totally forgotten. Watts didn't seem to have a plan for the bomb after all besides idle malice.
RWBYJNeo will be fine, but the others are going to spend the volume believing almost all their friends are dead. That's just brutally depressing. It does not put me in the mood for wacky Alice-in-Wonderland adventures. (Time travel or somesuch that shows us more about Oz and/or STRQ, that I'd still love to see.)
We didn't get despairing suicides, we got heroic sacrifices, and not wasted ones either. That part's okay with me.
Mmph. Mostly I think I feel numb. How about the rest of you?
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I realized before I get attached to the superhero name I just gave Skylar I should probably ask... are there any rules I should keep in mind? For the record the name I'm considering is "Chaos Bringer"
Oh wow, you’re going all out!!! I’m v excited to see this 👀
There aren’t any particular rules about hero names, tbh. Since I only use canon names, my personal rule is “hero name is best if connected to the kid in canon somehow, ala Orion and Optimus, otherwise it should just be someone with powers and similarities that can be extrapolated from the kid, ala Makeshift and Sixshot”. But since you’re using OCs, that gets tossed out the window!
ONE THING I REALIZE I COMPLETELY FORGOT TO MENTION: the changes in personality between kid and hero are reflected in their paintjobs. Starscream and Hellscream have the same colors! White is added to Hellscream, but it’s kind of a neutral color that heroes may or may not get. It’s the same with Orion and Optimus. That’s because their personality, goals, and drive does not fundamentally change at all, even when powered up with their relic. Their respective hero forms are just them, but bigger and better.
For other heroes, some colors carry over but others are changed, like Minimus and Ultra Magnus, Hot Rod and Rodimus, and Chromia and Elita 3. In Chromia’s case, her colors stay the same but for the addition of pink, which every Elite Guard has, to symbolize their unity as a faction. Her personality changes very little. For Minimus and Hot Rod, they become different people when they power up. Rodimus is brighter, quicker, louder than Hot Rod, which is reflected in his paint, but otherwise the colorscheme is fairly similar. Ultra Magnus has greater gravitas and duty than Minimus, shown in a sort of sombering of his green color in comparison to Minimus.
Some heroes have the same colors, just switched in emphasis. Blitzwing is mostly purple with tan, Triptych is mostly tan with purple. Likewise, Cheetor is an inverse of Blurr, with the addition of some orange fur from the color of Blurr’s optics and some brown spots. Even Makeshift and Sixshot are inverted. This is sort of a flip in personality! Blitzwing struggles with his triple fracture disorder and does his best to regulate it so he can live a normal life. Triptych, meanwhile, leans into the crazy, and doesn’t care if he messes up his own mental health if it means he can accomplish whatever goal he has at the moment. Blurr is nervous and clumsy, scared to talk even though he has a lot to say, and finds it difficult to reach out and make friends. Cheetor is the total opposite, outgoing and friendly and fierce, unafraid to speak his mind on anything.
Some have similar but darkened color schemes, like Arcee and Elita 2 or Thundercracker and Scourge. This is fairly self explanatory. Some have totally different color schemes, implying their motivations and actions have changed drastically, for better or worse. Megatron and Galvatron are like that, and Blackarachnia and Airachnid, and Deadlock and Drift. Their hero selves are more dramatically influenced by their relic, leading them to do things they probably wouldn’t do as kids.
BUT. The most important color change is in the optics. Paintjobs will give you insight, but if the optics have changed color, you know you’re speaking with someone completely different. Galvatron isn’t totally opposite of Megatron, as his optics are the same. Drift and Airachnid, however, have wildly different optic colors than Deadlock and Blackarachnia. Blurr’s orange optics turned red as Cheetor. Thunderblast has both different optics and a paintjob with no similarities to Nightracer, speaking to how unlike her civilian identity she is. Cyclonus has a darker colorscheme and slightly darker optics than Skywarp, showing how he’s become muted and stoic in comparison.
Soundwave’s minicons all have some of his colors, and a face screen in the colors of his own visor. Their sight and senses aren’t their own, they belong to him, and it shows. Soundwave himself has a weird purple blend of Rumble’s red and Frenzy’s blue, since he’s quite literally a mix of the both of them.
This meta applies to corrupted relic victims too! Some victims will end up with the same colors despite being corrupted, because they remain the same person at spark and the corruption they suffer isn’t their fault.
anyway
I should’ve posted about this awhile ago, oops.
#SORRY FOR THE LATE META INFODUMP#worldbuilding#cybertronian biology#corrupted relic#oh man how do i tag this
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Flirting With Danger, Ch7
summary: Virgil hates his job and also his life. Logan definitely, for sure knows how to talk to a cute guy without imploding. Remy tries to help, but like… not very hard.
words: 2,000 / ships: platonic sleepxiety, romantic analogical
notes: hi, did you miss us!! we’ve been at this for awhile but i’m very happy with the result!! @do-your-socks-have-holes-in-them is back at it again with lines that make me giggle helplessly :’)
read on ao3 |
Ch1: the first time | Ch2: *mcelroy voice* hotboy!
Ch3: sky soliloquy | Ch4: the interview™
Ch5: you have my heart | Ch6: the second time
Ch7: is this allowed??
“Rem… please. I have a splitting headache and you are not helping.”
The string of offended curses that followed weren’t helping either. Virgil rolled his eyes.
“Well, maybe if you would just tell me what happened last night, I wouldn’t have to bother you so much about it!”
Virgil took the bell ringing above the door as his chance to get away from his coworker and the relentless badgering. Remy had been at it since Virgil showed up for his shift — which had been a miracle all its own. Of course he hadn’t wanted to leave Patton home alone! Virgil was starting to think he shouldn’t leave Patton alone ever. Sure, he’d been clumsy and accident-prone in their youth but this was kinda getting out of hand. For as long as they’d been living together, Patton had never had encounters with superheroes or supervillains, and suddenly it happens twice in the span of a few weeks? If Virgil didn’t know any better, he’d guess that Patton did have powers, and they were of the bad luck variety.
“Babe. I’m going to find out one way or another.”
Oh, Virgil recognized that tone.
“That’s your ‘I already know but I want your version of the story’ voice.”
Again, spluttered indignation. Virgil knew people often didn’t disagree with Remy (something about his “charm”) but it’d never cease to amaze him how offended he was every time Virgil called him out on something.
“I have no such thing!”
“You kinda do,” Toby called from a booth in the corner where he was currently working on designs for tomorrow’s board.
Remy shot a glare in his direction.
“Linda, your caramel macchiato with soy.”
The moment Linda was out the door and their coffee shop empty, Remy rounded on Virgil.
“Fine! Why was the Prince at your apartment last night!”
Virgil, despite knowing that Remy knew, was still surprised.
“And why was he bridal carrying Patton as if they were newlyweds!”
Virgil blinked, wondering why Remy seemed so hung up on that of all things.
“Does this have anything to do with that attempted jewelry store robbery?”
“Why do you need to hear anything from me when you apparently have all the details?” Virgil frowned. “What the hell, dude, do you have ears everywhere?”
Remy waved his hand dismissively. “Hon, don’t worry about it, just tell me what happened!”
Virgil glanced around the coffeeshop. For the time being, it was empty. They’d just reached that rare slow time between rushes. Other than Toby, who Virgil didn’t mind overhearing anyway since Remy was likely to share with him afterwards regardless, there was no one around to eavesdrop. Sighing, Virgil let Remy wait a few more agonizing minutes while he cleaned up from the last drink and washed his hands before finally getting comfy leaning against the counter.
“Patton accidentally tripped the speedster while they were trying to make their getaway,” Virgil began, trying to ignore the anxiety doing its best to make him worry again. It was in the past! It already happened! Let it go, Virgil. “That kind of fucked up his ankle and then, when trying to remove himself from the situation, he hurt his hand on some glass that had broken from the door.”
Remy was looking more and more distraught with each word and Virgil wondered why his coworker was so worried about his roommate when they hadn’t even met.
“The Prince found out somehow and met Patton at the hospital and offered to help him home. Which, like, that isn’t totally weird. I’m definitely not bothered over this superpowered stranger being so good at finding my best friend, nope, no big deal at all.”
“Okay, okay, we get it,” Remy interrupted. “He probably talked to the police, babe, it’s fine. Besides, he already knows where you live so… whatever, right?”
Virgil scowled at him. “Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”
“Did you give him a piece of your mind?” Toby asked, getting them back on track.
“Did I — No shit, Sherlock!” Virgil snapped. “I’d been trying to get a hold of Patton because he was supposed to be home before me and he wasn’t answering and then I open the door to find him there, in the arms of that hot-headed prick?!”
“No proof that his highness has a temper,” Remy piped up.
“Shut up, it was a pyrokinetic joke and you know it. Anyway, Patton was… already pretty upset and my yelling didn’t help, so that… Uhm.” Virgil trailed off, looking guilty all of a sudden. Remy had a pretty good inkling as to why, but before he could mention it, the bell ringing notified them to another customer. They all quickly pretended they hadn’t been standing there talking for the last ten minutes, but as soon as Virgil looked up, he forgot how to act productive. Logan Roberts? In his coffee shop? It was, apparently, more likely than he thought.
“Uh- hey, welcome,” he said once he remembered how to talk.
Logan smiled, which wasn’t fair. “Hello, I hope I’m not interrupting anything important.”
Virgil thought he might have been teasing, but he still looked so serious, and anyway he was already spilling out words like the gay dumbass he was. “No—we were just, I was telling them about something that happened to my friend yesterday—sorry, I’m an idiot, what did you want? To order?” He cringed as internally as possible and started making plans to never speak again.
Logan took a moment to peruse the menu while Virgil wondered how bad it would look if he ducked out of this particular order and let Remy take care of it. Before he could do so, Logan looked back at him, smiled again, why did he keep having to smile, and spoke.
“I’ll take a black coffee in the largest size you have,” he requested, and Virgil wanted to disappear because of course it was Logan Roberts's first time at their coffeeshop and of course Virgil had to be the one to ring him up.
“On it, babe!” Remy chirped, getting started on the drink, and sounding suspiciously like he knew exactly the gay crisis Virgil was currently experiencing.
Logan's expression soured at the nickname and Virgil hurried to remedy it.
“Ignore him,” Virgil suggested, typing the order into the register. “I'm sure you've dealt with more annoying, anyway.”
“Hey!” Remy shouted.
Logan sighed and adjusted his tie. “Quite,” he agreed, taking out his wallet. “I'm going to need this to interact with certain of my own associates later.”
“At least you’re not interviewing any super-powered pricks today.”
Logan blinked, looking at him with renewed interest. “True. I have to say, it’s refreshing to meet someone else who doesn’t worship the ground he walks on. …Or flies over, as it may be.”
“Same thing I thought watching your interview, dude.” Virgil cracked a smile at the memory, which he hardly ever did for anyone but Patton. “It was, uh… good.” Yes. Great job, Virgil, that wasn’t lame at all. “Patton, though—that’s my roommate—he never shuts up about him. And now I can’t even be annoyed, ‘cause he went and got himself hurt yesterday…” Virgil realized he was rambling, only digging himself deeper into the hole of awkwardness.
Logan, however, had perked up even more.
“Patton Minett?”
In a heartbeat, Virgil was on red alert. He eyed Logan suspiciously as the reporter swiped his card to pay for his drink. “... No.”
“You’ve lived with him for years but go off, I guess,” Remy deadpanned in the background.
“Apologies,” Logan said hurriedly. “I merely wondered if this was the same Patton who prevented a robbery last night. I’ve been trying to find a way to get in contact with him in order to hear the details directly from the source, you see. …If you knew him, I might have asked you to aid me in that endeavor.”
Virgil crossed his arms, searching Logan’s face for anything to actually justify that first instinct of telling him to fuck off. … It wasn’t really his job to decide Patton shouldn’t do this, was it?
“If I know him,” he finally said, “which I’m not saying I do, I wouldn’t go around giving people his information just because they said they wanna talk to him. How about you tell me how to contact you, and then if I know him and if he wants to, he’ll call you or whatever.”
“That’s a lot of ifs,” Logan remarked wryly. “But I suppose I’m not opposed to your proposal.” He blinked, processed what he’d just said, and winced. “That, ah, was not intentional. Here, before I embarrass myself any further.” He pulled a tiny notepad out of his pocket, because obviously he was the sort of person to carry a tiny notepad around at all times, and scribbled down a phone number. “I hope to hear from you soon,” he said with a smile, and then left before Virgil could collect himself enough to respond. And also without waiting for his coffee. Oops?
“Huh.” Remy watched him walk away, not quite caring enough to run outside and remind him. “Guess he doesn’t get to see that I wrote your number on this cup now.”
“You WHAT?!”
Virgil grabbed the coffee cup out of his hand and slam dunked it into the trash.
“Aww. I was gonna drink that.”
“I’m not talking to you anymore, I’m going on break, do not even try to exist near me or I swear.” He yanked his apron over his head, balled it up, and threw it to the side with only a small glance to make sure it wouldn’t land in a bad place and, like, cause a fire or something. Which was his version of carelessly.
Toby spoke up from his booth, where he’d been shamelessly eavesdropping on everything. “He’s going to scream into a towel, isn’t he?”
“Yup.”
Logan realized he had no coffee before he’d even made it all the way out the door, but it was too late, there was nothing to be done at this point. There was no way he could go back and stand at the counter until it was finished… much like there was no way he could ever set foot in that coffeeshop again. What a disaster. Logan was very good at ordering coffee and very good at establishing contacts to assist in his work, but apparently when the two combined he became completely useless, which had nothing to do with any hypothetical cute baristas he may have particularly wanted to make a good impression on, why would some equally hypothetical person even suggest that? Preposterous.
The mood he found himself in for the rest of the day, resulting from various factors such as “no caffeine” and “series of interpersonal screwups,” meant that everyone else mostly avoided him. Unfortunately, this left him with a lot of time to think. He spent most of that time attempting to rephrase the thought “I hope Virgil calls me soon” into something a bit more professional. This was more difficult that it sounded, as each new clarification left him with the uncomfortable feeling that he was lying to himself.
Virgil didn’t stop screaming into a towel until it was almost the end of his shift anyway, and by that point everyone agreed it would be better if he just went home. He was scaring the customers. He barely remembered his walk back to the apartment building, what with his entire brain being taken up by “holy shit I have Logan Roberts’s number” and “oh my god I looked like such a weird rude idiot in front of Logan Roberts, I can never try to talk to him again ever.” All he knew was that he was at the coffeeshop, and then eventually, he was opening the front door.
“Patton,” he called out, knowing his roommate would be able to hear him from wherever he was. “Please don’t ask me to explain but we have to fucking move.”
#sanders sides fan fiction#sleepxiety#analogical#romantic analogical#flirting with danger#dani writes#nick's stuff
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You are getting *so many* asks from me and I'm so not sorry. ;) How about # 15 for Sparky, #14 for Scout, #17 for Hall, #1 for Cassius, and #19 for Roman. And for the new ones, I *love* the name Torren, so how about #18 for that character?
Hoo boy, thank you friendo :) that’s a lot!
#15: What is something about your OC that can make you laugh?
Just... Sparky’s random thoughts. Writing how random and off topic and funny his thoughts are is just so great and i often make myself laugh reading it back. I never knew i was so darn funny!
#14: If you had to narrow it down to 2 things that you MUST keep in mind while working with your OC, what would they be?
Well, definitely that Scout’s hard of hearing. That can get... hard to remember, especially because i have to write him signing a bunch of the time, meaning a lot of time on ASL learning sites. Also, that he’s anxious. In Take 2 i... totally forgot for the longest time and it’s Bad I gotta fix that rip.
#17: is there some element you regret adding to your OC or their story?
I think that Hall doesn’t use his powers because he’s afraid of them. It’s disappointing because I’ve had the idea for this superpower forever, and then the character i give it to... never uses them. And i can’t write them. it’s annoying. if i work with that world again (and i’m sure i will i love superheroes), then i’ll definitely be giving another character shadow based powers so i can use them again!
# 1: What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering?
The first element was definitely how Cassius acts cold to keep himself together. Its a front he has, to stop himself from breaking down in front of people. He acts emotionless. I actually forgot about that about ten pages into take 1 because of how he immediately opens up in front of Roman, so, uh... oops...
#19 What is your favorite fact about your OC?
Oh my gosh, so Roman plays this instrument, the faeries call it a myri, but its basically a flute, except Roman INSISTS it is NOT A FLUTE and i find it absolutely hysterical that he is so against the fact that he is playing a flute. It’s amazing okay, Cassius teases him about it constantly.
#18 What is the most recent thing you’ve discovered about your OC?
That he exists. No, lmao, i’ll do this for real. Uh... most recent... today while writing i discovered he uses dandy and gosh golly in his every day speech and i find it adorable.
Thanks for the asks friendo!!
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I definitely agree with you that Kara's powers should be integrated into her civilian life. S1 did a better job of this with occasionally having K use her heat vision to heat up Cat's drink or having her smash an alarm clock etc. You are totally fine. I had answered, but took it out bc the character limit...I may just send some asks in multiple parts (if that's okay?). Power: Hmm, you picked one of my go to's. I'd say impulse control, so exerting my will upon others seamlessly. (pt 1). 💙😊🌷
(pt 2) I admire that you’re pursuing something ur passionate about. I think that takes a lot of courage in some cases. Also, ur occasional attire sounds adorably geeky (that’s a compliment) I’ve done a similar thing with a red/white/blue plaid button up over an El crest t shirt. Anyway, have you seen Katie McGrath in Freakdog (Red mist)? Also, do you feel S2 has degraded the depth/quality of the Danvers sisters relationship? I feel it has to an extent. Hope you have a magnificent day/night. 💙
It’s fine, I can just do this 😉
I had thought about telepathy, but I don’t think I would like it all that much. That shit is too much, wee see Jean Grey suffering in every single version they make, so not thanks.
I’m not to the point of being proud of myself yet, but I’ll get there. It has been very hard to get where I am, to study and all, there’s still a lot of shit, so I’ll make the most of it.
And I have a lot of geeky attire, I know that, I’ll take the compliment, thanks 😊
I’ve seen a video with all her scenes. I do not watch horror things, and her last scene fucked me up (funny enough, I like some things that could be considered horror, like RE) I like slasher movies, but not horror and gory movies. Like I’ll watch Scream and even the show Slasher (the one with Katie), but never Chucky or Saw (I’m terrified of Chucky since I was 3, also Freddie Kruger… and clowns).
I feel like the best part of the show was Kara and Alex’s relationship, that beautiful bond the sisters had, and Cat mentoring Kara and calling out sexism and other bullshit, I miss both of those things, and I think it is a big part of why season two isn’t as good. Like, yeah, it has action and Supergirl hanging out at the DEO and all, but we never see her and Alex together anymore unless a passing line or another at the DEO, they are too separate and having their own relationships and it’s like their either too busy to have a sister, or the show forgot they are sisters altogether, when they could spare 2-5 minutes to show them having a talk and resolving their problems, yet even when they do talk, it’s to prop a romantic plot, and that’s not very good writing in my opinion. They might as well be coworkers.
We were promised Kara exploring her career and we lost that when we lost Cat. I feel like they only used her career so far as a prop to have her friendship with Lena, and even that was used poorly, they could have real interviews, real plots regarding something Lena’s done or is involved with, but instead we got fake interviews, what was supposed to be an interview that turned into the showing of something that could have been huge for plot but was set aside and scenes that feel like they are missing something. Maybe they’ll make it better from 2x18 on, maybe they’ll get it together in season 3, but right now, it’s very disappointing how they used her career so far. They kept having Kara say she was focusing on her career but we never actually saw that. One of the most important quotes when it comes to writing is: show, don’t tell. They are telling us, but they have to show us instead.
The show lost its core, the family bond, the values (all of them, literally all of them), the hope and optimism, the young woman trying to make herself in her career, find herself in her professional life more than romantic life, the easy going overall cheerfulness and silliness… at this point it’s just another soulless superhero show but the title character is a pretty girl who flies instead of a tortured man, with a few exceptions here and there. The first season they were making something great and different, but now it’s just the same as everything else with a good cast that is not being used to their full potential. The original cast, Melissa, Chyler, Jeremy, Mehcad, David, and the new inclusions, Katie, Ian, Sharon, they are all great, like amazing actors, and they’re being wasted a lot of the time to give way to the ‘CW audience’s interests’ and not even they are very pleased with it. So it’s quite sad to see such a good thing just crumbling a little more every week.
There I go again with the ranting, oops. 😳
I hope you have a terrific day/night. 💙💚😊🌺
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You reblogged an OC meme! Thank god, tell us about Josie!
oc profiles meme!
…oh my god, i was so excited to click post and babble about josie at people that i initially forgot to come back and fill in the placeholder with something about how excited i was to talk about josie (—it’s like 4:15 AM where i am, which is probably part of the problem but i digress)
Full Name: Josiah Daniel Quinn — but, please, they explicitly prefer to be called, “Josie,” so unless you’re one of their bosses over at S.T.R.O.M.A*, whom they’re in no position to argue with, call them Josie. If not that, then use their surname. But if you can avoid it, just please do not call them by their full given first name, okay?
Shiny mutant superhero codename: Lyaeus — derived from an aspect of Dionysus who is traditionally invoked as a reliever of pain and a deliverer from anxiety and emotional turmoil and so on, which is one of their preferred uses of their psychic abilities and one of Josie’s larger goals in life (for them, it’s a mix of, “If something bad is going to happen, and you can do something to stop it and choose not to, that’s on you” and, “The world is a mess and largely sucks, but that’s no reason not to do what we can to take care of each other”).
Their codename is doubly special to them because although they were raised loosely Catholic and have a Mormon extended family who mostly doesn’t acknowledge their existence (and hasn’t for their entire life, since their Mom left the Mormon church to marry Josie’s Dad, oops), Josie is a hellenic pagan whose primary relationship is with Dionysus.
They thought for a long time and did a lot of reflection about whether or not it was too presumptuous of them to use one of his aspects as a codename, but eventually, they went with it because they see their codename and its meaning as someone who they’re continually striving to be and a set of values that they’re always trying to bring to bear in the world, and they feel like Dionysus is probably okay with that.
Gender and Sexuality: DMAB Genderfluid. // Bisexual.
This isn’t actually specifically about their gender or sexuality, but I couldn’t think of where else to put it: Josie grew up around all things Rocky Horror. Like, their parents were highly involved in the local community theatre, which did a semi-regular RHPS shadow-cast, and Josie’s parents brought their kid with them often enough that Josie grew up with their blood family and their, “Rocky family.”
Josie would rather deal with their Rocky family than their blood family a lot of the time, because their Rocky family was more immediately there for them during a lot of rough stuff while they were growing up, and their Rocky family handled it better at the various times when they came out, and their Rocky family didn’t say shit like, “Wait, I thought you were gay, why are you going back in the closet” when they came out as bi or ask invasive questions when they came out as genderfluid and was more supportive in general of Josie’s evolving sense of their own identity, and so on.
Pronouns: They/Them/Theirs.
Josie does also answer to He/Him/His pronouns, but that isn’t a choice on their part, so much as it’s an issue of, “Well, I can be out at work and open the door to potential harassment and people who will invalidate my gender identity and likely flat-out refuse to respect my pronouns, which will create more difficulty for myself in a job that’s already difficult because it’s stressful to begin with and I hate working here — or I can suck it up and just be grateful that my friends and parents are all good about this”
Like, one of the things that Seb does when he and Josie first meet that makes Josie go, “I’m still not totally thrilled at being assigned to help out the newbie (especially since I know I’m only getting this assignment because: 1. our bosses are playing a game of, ‘lmao just toss the LGBTQ ones together’ because the newbie’s gay and pretty much everyone here thinks that I am too; and 2. Deputy Director Gray is still cranky with me over that MSNBC round-table that I did last week where Yael kept pushing me to voice my own opinions and not the Bureau’s official line) — but maybe it won’t actually be completely awful and maybe he’s going to be okay as a new partner”?
…is noticing that Josie wears two woven yarn bracelets on one wrist — one of them in the lavender/white/chartreuse colors of the genderqueer flag, and the other in the pink/white/purple/black/blue of the genderfluid flag — and first waiting for them to be alone in Josie’s office, then going, “Oh, so are you genderfluid? What are your pronouns?” and then listening and respecting it when Josie explained that they’d rather Seb just kept using he/him/his at work
Species: Human (mutant with aforementioned mutant psychic powers)
Race/Ethnicity: White, and the only real part of Josie’s ethnic background that’s ever been important in their life was that their late paternal grandmother was very proud of being Irish.
Like, her parents had come to Ellis Island from Ireland — though she was too young to have any actual memories of the passage herself — and she wasn’t so insistent about it that she objected to her son marrying a Mormon girl instead of a Good Irish Catholic Girl, but still, the Irish thing was a big deal for her.
Josie, personally, doesn’t get it beyond, “I’m white and I have a particular aversion to St. Patrick’s Day because first of all, some of my extended family members can turn into a bunch of rowdy, off-putting little shits on St. Patrick’s Day, and I always had to suffer through that because we always had a party for it, first because Grandma wanted one, and then in honor of her memory.
“And secondly, because as soon as anyone hears that I’m partially Irish and/or a Dionysian, it is just assumed that I want to go get wasted on St. Patrick’s Day, which I don’t, but I still end up going out into environments that are absolute Hell for someone who has both telepathy and hyper-empathy, because the spaces are crowded, emotions are running high, and there is basically nowhere to escape to where you can get some peace and quiet and a break from the sensory and emotional overload of being at a rowdy bar on St. Patrick’s Day.
“And I endure all of this with people whom I may not even like that much just so they’ll have a designated driver, because I would feel bad personally if I didn’t go to make sure they all got home okay, and just because they don’t understand my god or might want to get something else out of him than I do, doesn’t mean that I should brush them off and risk them getting hurt while they’re completely shit-faced.
“Which doesn’t make this any less exhausting and awful, but it’s better than taking the chance that they might get hurt, y’know?”
Birthplace and Birthdate: Saratoga Springs, NY. // 22nd February, 1980 — they’re a Pisces (Libra rising, Gemini moon).
Guilty Pleasures: High-quality dark chocolate, high-quality makeup even if they can’t wear most of it as often as they’d like^, the original Vampire Chronicles novels (and though they will sometimes claim that only the original six ones, “count,” Josie owns everything that Anne Rice has published, even the ridiculous Jesus books), binge-watching reruns of Project Runway…
And they don’t feel particularly guilty about it, but one of the simple things that makes Josie happy is playfully teasing their emergency contacts/best friends over how their parents named them after Beatles songs
Jude, naturally, was “Hey Jude” and Rocky got named after, “Rocky Raccoon” because, at the last minute, his and Jude’s parents decided to veto naming him Desmond because he’s a character in “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” but his name is not in the title, which was apparently a deal-breaker because of reasons
Rocky also sometimes gets playful ribbing about all things Rocky Horror, because he and Josie are ridiculous nerds, and RHPS isn’t their exclusive thing because Josie will share it with anyone who gives them half a chance to do so…… but it is still a thing that is special to Josie and Rocky, so here they are
If you ask them, Josie will tell you that they don’t believe in associating pleasure with guilt, and in their defense, they do believe in encouraging people not to feel guilty for enjoying the things that make them happy or that help them survive, because as long as those things aren’t hurting anyone — yes, that includes you, person Josie is talking to — then you have a right to be happy and a right to take care of yourself
The reality is that Josie says this to people so often because it’s something that they often struggle with themself, and even though they’re better, in some ways, than they have been in the past, there are still a lot of places where they need work
Also, Josie wouldn’t call some of the more poppy music that they like, “guilty pleasures” — especially because, if you ask them, there is no reason to feel guilty about listening to, for example, Beyoncé or Nicki Minaj
—but it is still the case that, if they were going to have a mini-reunion with some of the old goth crew friends from high school whom they don’t keep in touch with that often, Josie probably wouldn’t mention Nicki or Beyoncé, unless it was by accident or until they were sure that the old gang wasn’t going to do the judgmental goth kids thing they used to do of going, “ugh, all pop music is soulless empty bullshit for posers” and so on
Also also, there is almost no chance of them ever admitting this to most people, but…… Josie kinda loves the goth kids from South Park. Like, Josie really kinda loves them.
There’s basically no chance of them ever admitting it to most people because for one thing, it’s embarrassing to them, due to the whole South Park of everything.
For another, they’d feel the need to give someone a lengthy, tedious disclaimer about how they don’t actually watch South Park or enjoy it very much, they just know about the goth kids because one of their best friends went, “Oh my god, Josie, you have to watch this, the new Goth kid characters are so you” way back when, after the first episode with them in it aired and said friend (Rocky) was still taping new eps on VHS to watch after he got home from night classes
And…… well. Josie still wouldn’t give South Park much credit for anything else, but they do really love the goth kids, and they agree with Rocky’s, “omg it you” moment because the South Park goth kids are often eerily similar to shit that they said and did as a weird little goth kid back in high school
At one point, Rocky actually made Josie little plush dolls of the goth kids that he’d designed himself, and they are a big reason why you’re not allowed in Josie’s room until they trust you.
Other reasons include:
Josie doesn’t want most people to touch their makeup or put any of it out of order, and they keep most of it in their bedroom, on their dresser, in front of the vanity mirror that they found someone just throwing out shortly after they moved to Baltimore, even though it’s a perfectly good mirror so wtf;
some of Josie’s favorite and most personally meaningful religious and spiritual paraphernalia is in their bedroom (they keep their actual shrine to Dionysus and their, “worship workspace” in a different room at their place, but some of the more personally significant things are in their room most of the time, and they’d rather you didn’t have a chance to touch them);
Josie just tends to be an incredibly private person who places a lot of value on their personal space and having spaces that are set aside as Theirs. They were like this even before their psychic abilities kicked in and made them value even more their personal space, and ability to have a place that is set apart as Theirs Exclusively where they can go to get some distance from all the mental, emotional, and sensory overload that comes from feeling almost everyone’s feelings and hearing many of their thoughts**, to some extent or another, almost all the time;
and the few albums of old photos and framed old photos, some of which are just garden variety embarrassing like, “yes, my hair is naturally blond, here is photographic evidence from before my parents let me start dyeing it, and oh yeah, that was probably backstage after the community theatre production of Oliver! that I did in eighth grade — oh yeah, definitely that one, there’s my Artful Dodger costume and my glaringly blond hair”
but others of which are, for lack of a better term, fairly emotionally complicated for Josie. There are several different reasons why any of these photos might be kinda complicated — ranging from, “they feature Josie’s one particularly heinous ex-boyfriend who used his wealthy family’s connections to get Josie blacklisted from working in fashion after they graduated from Pratt’s School of Design” to, “they’re from the year in high school that Josie wound up having to do over because they had to spend a few months getting inpatient treatment for their eating disorder”
^: even before getting recruited to S.T.R.O.M.A., Josie got really good at finding a balance between the, “I don’t want to look pretty, I want to look otherworldly and possibly like a vampire fairy from Wonderland” style of makeup that they want to wear, and a “more professional” style that is less likely to make their clients feel uncomfortable or get them harassed — but god, do they wish that they didn’t have to strike said balance.
It wouldn’t actually make their fondness for high-quality and often expensive makeup feel like any less of a guilty pleasure, for several reasons — on one hand, their awareness of how makeup is always politically Complicated, at best; on the other, if they got to wear their makeup exactly how they want it every day, they would end up spending more money on makeup, and it would make them feel guilty because they’d feel like it’s very irresponsible and probably going to screw them over down the line because they bought makeup instead of saving the money or putting it toward something else; and on the tentacle, a whole laundry list of other reasons
—but they would still feel more comfortable with themself and more at ease with everything because they’d be presenting exactly as they want, instead of censoring their own personal gender expressions (which they’re more okay with doing when it comes to their clients because that’s a case of compromising part of their well-being in the name of [probably] helping people who need them and pay them for that help, whereas toning it down at S.T.R.O.M.A. is tedious and Josie would seriously rather not)
(They have more than once said that the degree to which they have to tone things down for S.T.R.O.M.A. makes them feel like Ned “I’m not a Satanic sex god anymore, used to be a super gothed out androgynous rock star, but is now a straitlaced and nerdy substitute teacher” Schneebly from School of Rock.
This is not a good feeling, in Josie Land. They don’t like it and they live for the weekend because, barring any major incidents that get them called in to S.T.R.O.M.A., they get to wear what the fuck they want, forego pants in favor of their favorite skirts, do their gender how the fuck they want, and wear makeup that makes them look like a vampire fairy from Wonderland)
Phobias: Josie’s biggest fear, in the immediate sense, is losing control of their psychic abilities and ending up hurting people and/or destroying themself somehow.
Underlying that, they have a bigger and more further-reaching fear of being out of control of themself and their own actions, in general.
They’re simultaneously afraid of crowds (largely because they can get really overwhelming for Josie, really fast), and afraid of isolation, which ends up making them a lot like the sort of cat who goes all like, “cuddle me cuddle me cuddle me please please please i need love and affection… no wait, fuck you, this is stifling me and i need to get out of here… wait shit i’m lonely someone please love me… no, not you, you fucking suck… why am i so lonely, why won’t anyone pay attention to me… and so and so forth ad nauseam”
That said, when I was doing Pottermore quizzes for my kids because that is the sort of thing I find both fun and useful, Josie’s picked, “Isolation” for the, “Which is your greatest fear” question on the wand quiz
They picked, “An eye at the keyhole of the dark, windowless room in which you are locked” for the, “Which nightmare would frighten you most” question on the Sorting Hat quiz
Other miscellaneous fears and squicks: Worms, eels, and anything like that (but snakes are okay, snakes are great).
The possibility of never finding love (which they know is kind of ridiculous, because they do have a lot of love in their life… but Josie does want to be with someone romantically, and all their miscellaneous issues with their blood family aside, it’s weird and kind of disheartening for them that most of their cousins have gotten married or settled down with someone, so yeah, Josie knows that this fear is based on a lot of ideas that they generally don’t like and don’t want to live by, but still.
They’re 35, their closest friends both have longstanding romantic relationships, they’re one of the few cousins left who doesn’t have a plus-one to bring to the next family wedding, and they want a romantic relationship, so being perpetually reminded that they’re not in one kicks them in the larger fear that there is something about them that is just fundamentally unlovable, so they might end up being forever alone).
What They Would Be Famous For: Realistically? Probably how they’re going to start a new superhero team with Lucy, Pete, and Sebastian — later accumulating others — and how they’re all going to kinda stumble into trying to foil some other mutants who also happen to be neo-fascist supervillains. But had Josie’s one ex, Danny, not effectively gotten them blacklisted from working in fashion, Josie might well have made a pretty big name for themself there.
They used to joke about being famous for going on Project Runway and winning, but… this started after they’d already gotten onto the path that led them to therapeutic practice, and seen that they had the potential to do a lot of good in the world by continuing on that path, so the chances of them actually doing the Project Runway thing were almost nothing
What They Would Get Arrested For: While they haven’t technically been arrested before, Josie could have been arrested for illegally overstepping the bounds of what their particular level of metahuman license allowed them to do, and if they get arrested in the future, it is almost definitely going to be for something like protesting or some trumped up nonsense charges that actually boil down to, “getting on the wrong side of neo-fascist supervillains who have wealth and connections and political power.”
OCs You Ship Them With:
Romantically: Pete is my favorite here, but: 1. I’m also going to make them work for it, because they would be good for each other, but it wouldn’t just happen super-easily for several reasons, both about the two of them individually and about how they get on together;
and 2. I’d also dig shipping Josie with Seb, Stephen, Vince, Sylvia, Izzy, Raphael, and Cynthia — though tbh, I like non-romantic Seb/Josie better than romantic Seb/Josie
Platonically: As mentioned, Jude, Rocky, and Sebastian. Aside from them, Margot, Lucy, and Sara Grace (who are all ruled out as romantic options by the three of them being lesbians), and Josie being genderfluid, yes, but not identifying with womanhood enough for them to consider romantically pursuing someone who identifies as a lesbian. Todd (who I kind of feel bad for, because he’s sort of the loser in love so far, but otoh, that’s partially his own damn fault and he has a lot of growing to do before I’m letting him have a romantic relationship that actually lasts). Yael and Elizabeth. Really, everyone on the romantic list is a good platonic relationship, too.
“this is not a ship that i condone but i find their relationship interesting, and exploring Not Good relationships is Important to me”: Julian, who actually hasn’t met Josie yet, and won’t for a while, and their relationship will be…… tricky, in a lot of ways, many of which have something to do with how Julian is a huge tool who has a charming tendency to take his own self-loathing and insecurity out on everyone else while acting campy and making sarcastic quips as though this makes his behaviors totally okay.
Pretty much everything about Julian makes him someone who would make Josie say, “the Lord is testing me”
(only for someone — probably Lucy — to go, “But you’re not Christian” and get told either, “I was raised as one, maybe Jesus’s Dad is still grumpy that I found someone who’s better for me. Anyway, you know what I meant, right?”
or, “Fine. The Almighty Thundering Zeus, lord of the heavens and king of Olympus and He Who Was Cheating On His Wife With Everyone Ever Before It Was Cool, is testing me. There. Does that version make you happy?”)
But, yeah. Julian would make Josie go, “someone is testing me” because so much of who and what he is makes Josie want to help him, but so much of what he does makes Josie want to punch him
(an impulse that Josie largely won’t be acting on because, unfortunately for them:
1. they did not get any super-strength kinds of mutations and in an RPG, Strength would be one of their lowest stats;
and 2. first, they need to learn how to throw a punch without hurting themself more than the other person.
Punching neo-fascists isn’t their strong suit. They can let Seb and Lucy do the actual punching.
And Pete, even though Pete really shouldn’t because Pete also doesn’t know how to throw a punch without hurting himself more than the other person, so Josie is more likely to try and stop him from punching a neo-fascist supervillain in the face.
Not that Josie will always succeed in that, but… well. They and their teammates are all only human.)
Anyway, uh. Josie/Julian isn’t a ship that I’d personally want to see as the endgame of anything, ever, but I find their dynamic and the potential interactions between them interesting, and they’re something I’m looking forward to playing around with more, when it’s their time
OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Conrad will kinda want to, because he finds Josie’s sense of ethics to be, “tedious and outdated,” but ultimately, he wouldn’t go through with it because Josie’s creativity would intrigue him too much.
Senator Huntington would also want Josie to die, but he wouldn’t do any of the actual murdering because he doesn’t do his own dirty work.
All things considered, Edward and Desmond are probably going to end up with the job, “Go kill the weird effete one who looks like some kind of vampire fairy from Wonderland” because everyone else is busy, and they will fail at it, because that’s kind of what they do.
They are Those Two Bad Guys, and they kind of suck at almost everything that they try to do.
Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Fantasy, vampire trash, psychological thrillers, magical girl everything, and horror (pretty much all kinds of horror, though Josie’s most fond of monster horror, anything with revenge-y themes, and religious or cosmic horror. They will probably tell you, “The weirder and more pointlessly, aesthetically symbolic, the better”).
Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Josie would tell you that it’s how much romanticized abuse there is in paranormal romance, and to be fair, they do hate that…… but they still read it or watch it and get invested in these fictional relationships, even without necessarily coming up with a counter-reading of the text’s opinion, beyond, “this relationship is abusive even if the author doesn’t get that”
Which, to be fair, doesn’t mean that they don’t hate the prevalence of romanticized intimate partner abuse, just that it’s an, “I hate this thing” where they still engage with it, and not just because there aren’t always a lot of options without it
(Horror flicks that demonize and stigmatize mental illness are a thing where Josie doesn’t like the thing, but suffers through them because there aren’t a lot of other options otherwise)
But one trope that will make them, “nope” out…… uh.
Josie is really sensitive about The Uncanny Valley, and while they may not fully, “nope” out of things over it, they need to take more time than most people to prep themselves for seeing it and recover after seeing it
Also, not a trope, but Shia LaBeouf will make Josie “nope” out of anything. They have no rational reason for disliking Shia LeBouf, so much as he Just Irrationally Bugs Them, but they will “nope” out of things if he’s involved
Talents and/or Powers: Okay, so, a lot of Josie’s actual superpowers are discussed elsewhere, especially in the footnotes, so let’s talk about their other, non-mutant superpowers. They can sew. Even without having been actively designing anything for a while, they can still pull out a good design and they are capable of following a pattern pretty well. They know their limits fairly well, and better than pretty much everyone in the main team (this doesn’t mean that they always). And it’s almost 4 AM, so this answer is getting cut short by, “I am tired and I want to sleep” (and the next two answers will suck for the same reason)
Why Someone Might Love Them: Josie is creative and curious and once you get them to warm up, calm down, and stop worrying so much about anything, they’re a complete dork who, among other things, gives people, “C’thulhu kisses” (done by sticking your hands in front of your mouth and wiggling your fingers like tentacles, and maybe making a silly noise and saying, “C’thulhu kisses!” like you’re Sailor Moon shouting her transformation phrase). They have a pretty good sense of humor about themself, outside of their precious few no go areas. Josie is compassionate and they do genuinely want the best for most people, even people they don’t personally like very much. They try to be patient with people, even when they really don’t want to be, and even if they don’t always know what the best option is, they still try to actually do things and choose the best option for creating positive change.
Why Someone Might Hate Them: Their cycle of indecisiveness that leads to recklessness that leads to self-punishing thoughts and behaviors that leads to more indecisiveness, and rinse lather repeat. Their tendency to be really judgmental, even while acknowledging that being judgmental is something that, in their experience, causes more harm than good, and that they want to avoid more often. The way that they can lapse into talking like a high school goth kid who’s up-talking the superiority of goth subculture and doesn’t realize that they sound like an elitist, conformist prick, just like the people they’re complaining about allegedly do.
How They Change: Well, for one thing, Josie has some things to learn about how they relate to people and manage their relationships — which doesn’t necessarily make them special because this is just kind of a Thing for most of my main characters in one way or another. Josie’s specific issue wrt relating to other people has to do with their reluctance to trust people and open up and try to build any new relationships, which has often led to them practicing a sort of interpersonal-level isolationism that has hurt them and other people.
They also have something to learn about managing the façade(s) that they present to the world, much like how Seb has to learn something about his habit of acting like everything is okay while he’s suffering and thinking anyone believes him anymore because he doesn’t want to deal with his problems
and like how Pete has to learn about how…… yeah, okay, he is genuinely angry about a lot of things — some of them fair and really more, “righteous indignation” than anything else, and some of them less fair — but a lot of how he acts that anger out in the world is not actually as truthful as Pete feels like it is, but more a way of keeping people at arm’s length, testing them and testing his relationships with them, and trying to push them away before they can get the chance to hurt him
In Josie’s case, their façade(s) are a bit different because most of them came into being less because of an emotional choice on Josie’s part — e.g., Seb doesn’t want to deal with his problems because they’re painful and terrifying and they feel like they’re too big to handle — and more out of pragmatic decisions
……but then Josie came to rely on them in contexts other than the ones in which they were originally created, and balancing that many different versions of yourself is stressful as fuck-all, especially for someone who already has to do a lot of work to keep reminding themself of where their personal boundaries are, and Josie hides in their different façades every bit as much as every other character who has one, and largely only gets away with that because most people in their life don’t know them well enough to notice this, and their façades do still have pragmatic value, so most people who do notice don’t say shit about shit
Then, there’s Josie’s relationship to time, which
I’m going to explain this really badly now, because it’s 3:33 and I’m tired, but basically, I see Seb, Josie, and Lucy as complementing each other in how they relate to and orient themselves in time, and the negative side-effects that they create for themselves because of these behaviors
On one hand, Seb is way too prone to being stuck in the past. He clings to it too much — but also has a selective relationship with it, where people he cares about get forgiven too easily and Seb tries to deny that he still feels upset about anything (even when basically everyone around him knows that he does feel upset and is just trying not to deal with it), while Seb forgives himself for nothing and defines himself so much by all of his past mistakes
—and he goes past the point of, “honoring and respecting history, such as by not ignoring times when he did fuck up (of which there are many)” to, “actively impeding his own progress in life because, for example, he keeps trying the same shit over and over and over again, even though it literally never works, because it’s what he did before.” Plus, some of his ideas about the past are distorted by various factors, or missing entirely (most often due to intoxicated blackouts and/or head trauma that would have had more disastrous effects on him if not for his mutant healing factor), or otherwise unreliable, so that’s a problem.
On the other hand, Lucy is future-oriented and totally jazzed up about trying new things and meeting new challenges head on and doing things!! also STUFF!!!!! there is an entire world full of THINGS AND STUFF AND BY GOD, LUCY IS GOING TO DO ALL OF IT OR AT LEAST AS MUCH OF IT AS SHE POSSIBLY CAN AND THINGS ARE GOING TO GET BETTER SO HELP HER GOD OR JESUS OR SATAN OR WHOEVER EXCELSIOR YAH YAH YAH!!!!
……which is great and all, but she charges headlong into shit without an actual plan (seriously, most of her plans follow the good old, “step one: do this thing / step two: ………… / step three: PROFIT!” formula), and she’s a case of someone who is averse to learning from history at all because she doesn’t want to be shackled to it, but having no sense of history can be just as bad as being overly chained to it like Sebastian, and… well. You can try to outrun the past like she does, but it doesn’t tend to work out very well, and it’s not going to work for Lucy either
On the tentacle, we have Josie, who ostensibly has a balance between the past and the future orientations that we see in Seb and Lucy, because Josie’s primary focus tends to lie on the present, and at most, the very near future or very recent past
—but that’s not actually a balance like Josie wants to believe, because (among other things), it makes it very easy for Josie to ignore past lessons that are older than maybe the past two or three months; and it means that while Josie can see all kinds of potential consequences, their ability to predict what they could be gets a lot less reliable as you go further into the future; and it means that Josie has trouble actually putting together a longer-term plan, which is part of their problem with wanting to create positive change in the world but not knowing how
Josie also has a tougher road (imltho) to go on about finding a new and better balance here, because their focus on the present is something they learned in recovery, as part of learning about mindfulness, and it does help them sometimes — but on that personal level, Josie’s presentist focus can also hurt them because, even when they notice certain behaviors in themself that could get Bad For Them, they can also overlook some of these budding patterns because they’re not Obviously Bad Enough to feel like a major concern, or they look different from other past manifestations of Josie’s behavior patterns so Josie doesn’t think they need to worry about these behaviors, and so on
I’m mean to my characters and I’m going to make them work to be happy, but they will all be happy, eventually
Uh. Barring most of the villains, because letting the neo-fascist assholes win in the end would be a complete downer that would probably end up undermining a lot of the whole, “just because the world is a crapsack hellhole doesn’t mean that it has to stay that way or that we should give up on it” idea
Why You Love Them: Okay, so, this needs a bit of a story.
See, Josie is a retooled character from an old RP that I was in way, way back. I loved them a lot, and they weren’t entirely wrong for the game — they had a good run in their first incarnation — but they also weren’t entirely right for it, and they kind of floundered a bit because I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with them.
A large part of this was due to how Josie was a senior at their school and, because of the year they did over, they were itching to get out and go to college, and the closest they got to an actual arc was how they didn’t want to leave behind their ex-boyfriend turned best friend (who was in the class below them), but did want to go to college already and get to the rest of their life
and how they had some trouble with accepting said best friend’s new boyfriend when Josie really wanted to be compassionate, because New Boyfriend was mentally ill and dealing with some trauma and Josie sympathized and wanted him to be well because why the Hell would you wish for someone to be *UN*well jfc — but also had trouble with that because New Boyfriend was sometimes aware of how some of his actions affected other people, but sometimes not, but sometimes he was and did the stupid things anyway, and even in working on his problems, he made the mistake that a lot of people do where they focus on getting well as defined by and in order to please the people around them, rather than doing it for themselves
—all of which Josie was sympathetic to in a big way, having been in some similar places before themself…… but they had a hard time always being as compassionate as they wanted to be because New Boyfriend’s actions had been hurting Best Friend, and even knowing that this wasn’t entirely something that New Boyfriend could be entirely blamed for (for several reasons), Josie still had a hard time trying to overlook the, “this lovable weirdo is my friend, my best friend, and even though we aren’t together anymore, I love him, and you hurt him, so yeah, I’m kinda mad at you for that” thing
And this all goes back to why I love Josie because one thing that they’ve kept in a big way, in getting retooled and updated and worked into my dumb little stories about neurodivergent and/or mentally ill LGBTQ mutant superheroes (and Pete, who is not actually a mutant but is neurodivergent, gay, an abuse survivor, and a superhero and I will fight anyone who says otherwise)
(I mean, ffs. Batman doesn’t have any mutant superpowers, and Iron Man wouldn’t have any actual superpowers without his ridiculous power-armor and, depending on the continuities, his arc reactors. So, no, I don’t think that Pete needs to have literal superpowers to count as a superhero — but that’s beside the point and to be fair, I will admit to being biased because I love Pete more than George RR Martin loves Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister)
Anyway. As I was saying.
One thing that Josie has kept in a big way is that ongoing fight with themself over two equally powerful impulses or reactions to things or desires — like their, “I want affections and I want to be around people…… okay no this is overwhelming and I don’t actually like these people fuck this I want to be alone…… oh but being alone sucks and now I’m lonely, I want to be where the people are, let’s go to the movies…… oh my god why did we go see the new Star Wars while it’s still a relatively recent release, I barely remember anything about the actual movie, I was too overwhelmed by the feelings of everyone else in that completely packed theatre… and so on” relationship with other people and being around them or not
Or like their big struggle in the first book of wanting to help people and create positive change in the world, but not being able to do too terribly much on their own for a lot of reasons (some of which are about Josie personally, and some of which are about the whole Lone Superhero thing be a lot of hot fucking nonsense that is fundamentally unsustainable), but not having an official team to belong to because although they work for S.T.R.O.M.A., they don’t like S.T.R.O.M.A., and while they are part of the extended Wardens family, they’re not a fully-fledged Warden and so much of the Wardens’ everything is based around Yael and Elizabeth’s school, so being one and not being up in Poughkeepsie would be weird and mean you end up missing out on a lot and, in Josie’s case, end up feeling like an outsider even when you’re surrounded by people who, for the most part, love you and accept you exactly as you are, but also not entirely doing everything they can to find a team because, in fairness, it can be really difficult to do that even if you don’t work for the U.S. government……
Basically, I love Josie because I love making my characters deal with internal conflict, and while all of them have a lot of it, I’m really fond of Josie’s particular brand of, “self-reflective, doing things but not things that add up to bigger things in the ways that Josie wants, trying to remedy that but it’s hard, not sure what to do or if going after these new possibilities and new ideas will make things worse, getting fed up with themself and needing to try something, but but but five million different elements all converging on each other but but but” internal conflict
And I’m really fond of it in Josie’s case because Josie is savvy enough to know that they can’t fall into the same, “do fuck-all nothing about anything until the last possible minute” trap, but their frustration is less about, “I can’t do anything” and more about, “but what do the things that I do actually mean, who am I helping, am I actually helping them or not, how can I do things that create more significant positive changes or is there a way to do that at all”
And, well. There is, Josie, but it requires you to trust some new people, bond with some new people, build relationships with them and work on maintaining said relationships, find strength in numbers, and learn more about loving and letting people love you back because one of your biggest problems in your previous relationships has been that you don’t open up — not, “you open up slowly” but, “you don’t open up with most people, period, despite knowing that this is not a sustainable way of doing things” — so yeah I’d say you need to learn about that, and learn to stop being such a lone wolf because do you know what generally happens to lone wolves? Either they find a pack somehow, or they die (without making any kind of positive changes in the world around them, relative to the size and interests of, y’know, wolves).
……Because I’m a lonely and bitter and it makes my half-dead little heart happy to make my characters find more strength together than they do apart and learn to love and be loved in return without it coming off as one-sided, like it can do in a lot of takes on that trope that are aimed at children, because…… uh, last I checked, the whole point of a relationship is that it is not exclusively about one person’s needs or desires???
Also, Josie is a compassionate but grumpy grown up goth kid who is trying to be a good person, and doing a better job than a lot of other characters, but definitely has a problem with their judgmental tendencies and how they sometimes externalize them and get super-judgmental of others, because on some level, their mind is like, “fuck, can i get a break from always punishing myself over here, jfc” and I don’t know, it’s almost 4AM and I have lost track of how long I’ve been writing this
Josie’s a nerd and a cat who can’t make up their mind about whether they want to be outside chasing butterflies or inside sitting on your keyboard so that you have to pay attention to them and not your computer and idk, I love them, the end
(except for the footnotes oops)
*: Special Taskforce for the Regulation and Oversight of Metahuman Affairs — or in plain-speak, the FBI’s wing of people who get involved in all of the shiny, extralegal superpowered mutant hijinks.
They have a pretty good working relationship with their counterparts at the Department of Health and Human Services (who actually end up handling most mutant affairs, because this world treats the question of super-powered mutant licensing as more equivalent to getting a driver’s license, and frankly, most mutants in the U.S. just want to go about their lives in peace — like, go to college, get a job, go on dates, come home and watch the Daily Show, and not be bothered about or make trouble for anyone else with the weird superpowers that most of them did not want or ask for — so there’s rarely any actual reason for the FBI to go stick their noses into anything, and there are plenty of cases where they get called in, only to find that they aren’t actually needed after all), but… yeah.
S.T.R.O.M.A. is a faction of people who exist. Josie works for them, for all they would really rather not. Unfortunately for Josie, particularly powerful metahumans tend to wind up on a lot of S.T.R.O.M.A. watch-lists, and they are more likely to do so when they have powers that the people at the FBI consider particularly useful or desirable — for example, telepathy and hyper-empathy, in Josie’s case. For the most part, these watch-lists don’t actually amount to anything because they don’t end up being relevant to most of the cases that S.T.R.O.M.A. has to deal with.
—but then you can have situations like Josie’s, where they were one of many mutants who got in a brief spot of trouble over genuine confusion surrounding a new bill that had just gone through Congress and revised some of the definitions of and privileges associated with/afforded to people at the different levels of metahuman licenses. (Since this is still America and we’re still talking about the FBI, there are also plenty of even worse potential outcomes for people who end up on their miscellaneous mutant watchlists — which is one of the big points that gets brought up by people who either want to reform or do away with the whole metahuman licensing thing — but in fairness to most people, they don’t know the full specifics.)
Anyway, Josie got in trouble because they are an actual therapist and, although they prefer not to use their powers with clients and extensively brief anyone who asks about trying that approach (about the potential benefits vs. potential risks, all the drawbacks, all the potential unintended consequences, etc.) while offering them plenty of chances to change their mind and go, “okay, let’s not do this,” they do still let their clients know that they’re a telepath/empath and that they can use their powers in a therapeutic context but it’s not the best thing to try as a first approach
Which is all great, except that Josie had been assured that they wouldn’t need to get a different kind of license to continue doing this, after that bill passed… except that they did. And this probably would’ve continued with no actual interference from anybody because Josie is hyper-responsible about using their powers with clients, about keeping up on all of the latest research and debates about therapeutic uses for psychic abilities and the ethical issues surrounding this, and so on…… except that one of their clients was a teenager who needed parental consent to go through with this, and one of their parents worked for S.T.R.O.M.A.
Relevant piece of context: Josie was absolutely not the only mutant who’d had some confusion over the revised licensing scheme. Josie wasn’t even the only mutant in the greater Baltimore area who had similar confusion on this issue.
But Josie was one of the only ones who was already on S.T.R.O.M.A.’s radar when they got in trouble, partly by virtue of being a “telempath,” partly by virtue of having trained with Dr. Elizabeth Woodham (who is: one of the most powerful telepaths in the entire world; a respected professor, activist, and philanthropist; one of the first mutants in the States to register for one of the early, “superhero licenses” [not their official name, but that’s the gist of what they are]; and with her wife, Dr. Yael Lehrer, one of the co-founders of the Wardens and co-headmistresses of one of the most respected schools for mutants in North America), and partly by virtue of having a lot of (mostly untapped) potential power.
And, see, one of S.T.R.O.M.A.’s problems is that it is perpetually under-staffed, in all areas but especially in terms of mutants who work for them, and moreover, mutants who will actually do fieldwork (like, Pete’s cousin Emerson is a mutant and he does work for S.T.R.O.M.A., but he’s lower on the powers scale than most of their employees who do active fieldwork, and he has no desire to do fieldwork when he could do lab-work instead). There are a lot of reasons for this problem of staffing, but one of the more noticeable end-results is that S.T.R.O.M.A. can be somewhat unethical in some of their recruitment bids. Like, yes, sometimes, you just get a visit from Some Guy Who Is Totally Not Nick Fury, who offers you a chance to be a part of something bigger than yourself and to use your abilities to help people
Other times, you get treated to a few hours of what S.T.R.O.M.A. sees and treats as the interview portion of applying for a Very Important Position somewhere, except that they don’t tell you that this is what they’re doing and they use “interview” (read: interrogation) techniques that people in law enforcement usually save for wrangling confessions out of suspects.
It will not look like it, but they are actually trying to figure out some specific things about you, including but not limited to: how you handle high-stress and high-pressure situations (like, for example, being accused of using your powers for any extralegal vigilantism, and maybe knowing things about [the biggest mutant-related news of the day] that they don’t; being threatened with a trip to one of the U.S. prisons designed to hold mutants; etc.); various details about your backstory and who you are as a person and what your biggest Deals are (i.e., getting you to help them run a damn background check on yourself); and how in control of your powers you are (since they trust the DHHS evaluations, but prefer to supplement them with firsthand evidence).
Then, once they’ve figured out what they want to know, you might very well be offered something to the tune of, “Alright, this is your first offense, and based on your dossier and this interview, we think that you could be an asset to S.T.R.O.M.A., if you wanted. If you like the sound of working for us, at least as an analyst or consultant if not a fully-fledged special agent, then we can make all of this legal trouble just go away. If you don’t like the sound of that, then……… well… *deliberately trails off to let you draw your own conclusions while still staying within the letter of the law, because hey, they didn’t actually tell you that you’d for sure end up getting prosecuted and going to prison*”
So…… yeah. S.T.R.O.M.A. and Ethics are not always on speaking terms.
Add this recruitment story to Josie’s frustrations with how metahuman employees at S.T.R.O.M.A. tend to get treated — e.g., they, themself, are often trotted out to go liaise with different media outlets as a public face of Mutants Who Work Here, Look We’re Trying Our Best So You Should All Just Totally Cooperate With Us, but they’re discouraged from voicing any of their own opinions and advised to just stick to these Bureau-approved talking points — and at having to be closeted and fairly masc-presenting at work because S.T.R.O.M.A. thinks they’re a cis man, and…… yeah, uh.
“Josie would really, really rather not work here” is an understatement af… but they continue working here anyway because: 1. as a consultant, they can still usually balance things enough to keep working as a therapist;
and 2. Josie wants so badly to help people, and for all S.T.R.O.M.A. is highly unethical (sometimes) and part of the goddamn FBI, most of the people who work there also want to help people and use their work to create positive changes in the world — and it’s not an unfair observation that, on their own, there really isn’t much that Josie can do (because the idea of the solo superhero who works alone… isn’t sustainable, like??
Aside from the political and ideological issues with that whole aspect of superhero mythology, it’s not actually feasible for one person, working on their own, to create any positive change. It would be massively unhealthy for them, there’s only so much they can do as one person, there are no actual safeguards in place if they ever get corrupted, and as multiple deconstructions of the genre have shown, it’s really easy for a classic lone vigilante model superhero to slide into a mindset like Rorschach’s — which is full of hypocrisy, double standards, misogyny and homophobia and ableism, and total moral absolutism that simultaneously allows no room for compassion and keeps Rorschach from being able to appreciate the big picture outside of his little myopic Objectivst bubble — or Frank Miller!Batman, who is often only a step or two off from actual fascism, but we probably won’t call it that because he’s wearing the Batman suit).
At this point, Josie has even had it all but confirmed that the agents who came to recruit them definitely “avoided certain truths to manipulate them” on purpose, so they’re reasonably certain that they could probably leave S.T.R.O.M.A without having their previous step out of bounds dredged up and handed to a D.A. who’d be pressured to prosecute them for it…… but they want to help people, and S.T.R.O.M.A. is one of the only options that they can currently see where they get to help anyone.
So, here they are. Working in a position that they’re not a fan of, looking at the motivational posters of gothed out kittens that one of their best friends drew for them, and trying to take, “hang in there!” kitty’s advice and tough it out at S.T.R.O.M.A. for the sake of doing some good in the world.
**: This mostly happens if Josie doesn’t have the energy enough or keep focus enough to keep their mental walls up — which they are usually very diligent about because on one hand, hearing other people’s thoughts kind of sucks actually (Josie would definitely agree with the sentiment that, a lot of the time, being a telepath is like having a youtube comments section screaming at you in your head)
—and on the other, um, hello, telepathy can, in the wrong hands, become a walking violation of civil liberties. Like, if you ask Josie, telepathy has a lot in common with wiretapping, though they consider it potentially even more dangerous than that, because it’s harder to prove that telepathy has been involved in something, since:
1. yes, the traces of telepathy can show up on a CAT scan or an MRI of the brain, but you’d need a neurologist who is well-trained, very attentive, and up to date on as much of the current research into telepathy as possible — or hey, a team of neurologists might not be a bad idea, if you can get them all, because one neurologist might miss something
—but otoh, the traces of telepathy can sometimes also be mistaken as signs of something else, especially if someone is neurodivergent and/or mentally ill, has suffered any serious and/or recent head injuries, has a history of substance abuse, is sleep-deprived at the time of the tests, may actually have something else going on in their brain in addition to the traces of telepathy
Seriously, just about anything that affects the brain can make it harder to tell whether or not someone’s been hit with telepathy
Plus: telepathic abilities are sort of mid-level common among mutants, and some mutants use them without even realizing it because their powers haven’t manifested in ways that are for sure Outside Three Standard Deviations From The Non-Mutant Human Mean, so some minor telepathic scarring is common, even in people who haven’t been hit by something as awful as, say, memory modification, or having someone go in and pick around in their brain like they’re flipping through an issue of Us Weekly
—and without a keen, well-trained eye, it can be really hard to tell those types of telepathic scarring apart
2. some of the traces of telepathy are more subjective, and while they might show up on a brain scan, the best evidence of them will come from the people who’ve been hit with the telepathic whatever
—but that’s going to be a problem because, in a lot of cases, they won’t have any memory of it, or they’ll have a false memory of it, and there’s no guarantee that further telepathic probing will be able to help here, and it could just make things worse. Plus, there’s no guarantee that the people who’ve been hit will actually be aware that what they’re experiencing is related to telepathy.
This is especially true with experienced, exceptionally powerful, and/or highly meticulous telepaths, because some of them can dick around in people’s heads and leave barely any trace that they were there
Like, for an example of what a more subjective trace might look like: Conrad is a telepath, and unlike Josie, he doesn’t really care about ethics or the rights of most other people. About ten years before the story actually starts, he took an interest in his new brother-in-law’s youngest brother (Sebastian), because he could sense something in Seb — he didn’t know what it was, exactly, but it was definitely a something — that made him go, “huh, maybe this emotionally troubled nearly twenty-year-old boy is also a mutant”
(I mean, he’s not wrong. And the something that he got a sense of back then is the part of Seb that he’s eventually going to call, “La Bête,” because if he’s going to go for the superhero thing and need a codename, then, “Gévaudan” makes sense to him because his family is insistently French [despite not having lived in France since about 1781, apart from one ancestral namesake of Seb’s who stayed in Paris for their Revolution (and Severin Sebastien Moncrieff was a confirmed bachelor, so he left behind a partner but no heirs), well before La Bête du Gévaudan was a Thing, and despite not being from the region of France where that happened] and hey, he can apparently turn into a giant wolf-man, now
—and if he’s calling himself, “Gévaudan,” then, “La Bête” is just thematically consistent. But that’s beside the point.)
Anyway: Conrad wasn’t new to his powers ten years ago, but he was much more reckless with them — especially when he believed that he was absolutely right and would stop at nothing to prove it — and he had less finesse in using them.
So, he left behind plenty of traces when he decided to use his little sister’s wedding reception as a chance to go telepathically play around with Seb, trying to either figure out if his new brother-in-law’s little brother actually was a mutant, or maybe triggering his powers into fully manifesting (plus plying him with alcohol and adding rohypnol to the mix based on the notion that either it wouldn’t affect Seb because he’s a mutant, or if not that, then it’d trigger his abilities into manifesting).
The underlying logic of the rohypnol idea was actually not wrong, because toxin filtering is one of the more common mutant abilities you find in the States (and it happens to be one that Seb has), and some mutants have had their powers manifest in response to poisoning, drugging, exposure to carbon monoxide or other toxic fumes, and even being given antibiotics or certain medications
The idea was still morally wrong and ethically skeevy, but the mutant-related logic actually did work. Where Conrad went wrong on that count was that he overly simplified the situation, only looked for two potential reactions, and didn’t know what to make of how Seb was affected by the rohypnol but not nearly as badly as he should’ve been, so he went, “Was he affected or not?? I don’t know????”
[Here is where I cut a whole big tangent explaining that whole story, but it got way, way off the point, so.]
Anyway, the gist of the story is that Conrad is the only person who consciously remembers everything that happened, since most of the people who cared about it were not present for the encounter itself, and Conrad screwed around with Seb’s memories, both telepathically and not.
Like, Seb has more memories of it than he would if he weren’t a mutant, considering that he got dosed with rohypnol, but he also has false memories about some of what happened, and Conrad repressed Seb’s memories of certain events (like how many times he tried to break away from Conrad, or turn down the offer of another drink, because he’d promised his big brother that he wouldn’t get drunk and make a scene at Max’s wedding or the reception, and it was important to him to honor that promise)
Fortunately for Conrad, Seb is not one of the mutants who has an increased resistance to psychic attacks — largely because, contrary to what Conrad thought until about two years before the story starts, someone’s ability to resist to psychic attacks has nothing to do with whether or not they’re a mutant (aside from some special cases where someone has a resistance to any psychic attacks that falls outside three standard deviations of the non-mutant human mean)
—so, despite the feelings he sometimes gets that something about those memories might be wrong, Seb totally believes that they’re real and he doesn’t notice any of the incongruities unless someone points them out, which almost no one has any reason to do because there isn’t usually a reason for Seb to talk at length about the details of this particular incident that happened almost ten years ago
(there would be, if he ever brought it up in therapy or at AA and/or NA, or dwelled on it when he did, but that has yet to actually happen)
Unfortunately for Conrad, he did a sloppy job of this, and while it would be hard for a neurologist to tell the physical signs of his telepathic probing apart from the other brain damage that Seb’s accrued, the hardest thing for most other telepaths would be trying to find the right memories. The crap-shoot nature of telepathically digging through someone else’s mind is one of the many reasons why Josie doesn’t like using their powers as a first approach in therapy, because you can never guarantee with any reliable certainty that you’ll get at the parts of someone’s mind that you want
—but if someone did get to Seb’s memories of this incident, it would be really obvious to them that they’ve been modified. Like, images might be blurred around the edges, it might glitch like a video or audio track that’s skipping, the voices might get distorted, the colors might look wonky, and so on. Prodding a bit more would also be able to undo Conrad’s memory-blocks without doing too much damage to Seb’s brain (not so much on an emotional and psychological level, but the damage there would be more like the painful truth that hurts now but leads to something better)
Anyway, it’s much harder to get proof of this nature when you’re dealing with more skillful, more attentive, more powerful, etc. telepaths, because they aren’t as messy as Conrad was with Seb
and 3. Wiretapping operations usually involve more people, which doesn’t make them ethical or necessarily justified, but it does mean that they’re easier to find evidence of because there are more folks who can spill the beans and point you to it. Telepathy only needs two people to happen, and one may not even be aware of what’s going on, depending on how sensitive they are and whether or not they’re dealing with an ethical telepath
For example: while not metahuman levels of resistant to psychic attacks, Pete is exceptionally sensitive to them and he’s naturally better at resisting them than some people, so if someone wanted to paw through his mind, he has a better chance of recognizing that he’s being telepathically invaded and getting them out
Sebastian, on the other hand, is Bad at recognizing and resisting psychic probing. Unethical telepaths have an easier time of getting through him because at his best, if he isn’t told in advance, then he feels ill at ease, inexplicably anxious (not that it means much, because he tends to attribute that to his shitty mental health), kind of nauseated, and maybe like he’s being spied on. At worst, he doesn’t even notice.
So, basically, Josie considers it a moral and ethical responsibility on their part to do everything they can to not inadvertently spy on people, because there is already so much about telepathy that can go really bad and poses a lot of ethical problems — but they are only human, and there are a lot of ways for someone’s mental walls to come down or reasons why they would.
Letting their empathic walls down usually makes it easier for Josie to focus on keeping up the telepathic walls, since the empathic ones are a lot harder for them to keep up, but it’s only a temporary thing because if Josie takes those walls down, they open themself up to a looooooot of potential overwhelm from outside influence, and there’s always the option to find a balance between the empathic walls and telepathic ones, but sometimes, it’s easier said than done.
Josie is usually too hard on themself for it when any slip-ups on their part happen, even knowing that every other telepath and every other empath has moments like this and even if they got too overwhelmed to actually remember anything and/or heard nothing.
It’s such a big deal to them because the potential for psychic abilities to violate other people — and especially the potential to manipulate people and compromise or outright remove their agency — is something that Josie never wanted. They went into counseling as a profession, after their original plan of going into fashion went up in smoke, but part of it, for them, has always been about trying to help people get their lives back, or manage them better, and so on. Granted, they knew about their telepathic and empathic abilities before they officially went into therapeutic practice, but that, for Josie, was part of how they developed their approach to being a therapist.
Furthermore, on a more personal and less professional note, Josie never wanted mutant superpowers to begin with. After having their telepathy and empathy first manifest in full, they might’ve done plenty of things that they normally wouldn’t even consider, if they thought it could take their powers away.
Partly, that was because their powers manifested toward the end of a really bad mental health downswing that ended in Josie going back to an inpatient treatment center for their eating disorder. Any of these elements on their own would’ve been bad enough, but having them all come down on them at once was Hell for Josie, and worse, trying to get well while you are in an inpatient center and can feel everyone else’s feelings, hear a lot of their thoughts, and are currently having trouble sorting out which parts are your own feelings, which parts are coming from your eating disorder, and which parts are coming from everyone else (not least because you don’t have any proof that you are feeling things or hearing thoughts that are coming from other people).
Josie eventually got help for that part because one of the therapists at the center was a metahuman and had gone to the Woodham and Lehrer School before deciding that she didn’t particularly want to be a superhero in the traditional sense. She reached out to her old teachers, and Josie got help for that while doing more intensive outpatient treatment until they got better at tuning out other people’s thoughts and feelings.
But there’s a lingering problem here that goes back to the feelings that underlie Josie’s ED. When they are at their absolute worst, Josie can be an absolute control freak, and they tend to turn it inward more than outward because they realize that taking it out on other people isn’t fair and they don’t feel good about it. Additionally, feeling other people’s feelings as intensely as they do gives Josie an additional incentive not to take their issues with control out on other people (and did even before their powers fully manifested, because they’ve always been pretty sensitive). On some level, Josie realizes that they can’t control things like how people react to them, whether or not bad things happen to good people, and so on, but that doesn’t always help because it can lead to them feeling even more of a need to crack down on controlling themself.
Having psychic powers becomes problematic for them in two big ways, here:
1. It’s unfortunately very easy for Josie to slip into overly self-punishing thought patterns if they feel like they aren’t as in control of their abilities as they, “should” be — which happens very easily because Josie’s standards for themself aren’t always realistic, and they usually aren’t the best judge of whether or not they’re being fair to themself.
It’s even more noticeable, for them, when they try to do more complex and demanding things with their powers.
This was one of the big reasons why they’ve stayed on good terms with their friends and mentors at the Lehrer and Woodham School, and among Yael and Elizabeth’s Wardens, but consistently rejected any invites to become a Warden (and then regretted that when S.T.R.O.M.A. got them instead, since Josie would much rather be one of the Wardens than working for the FBI).
Basically, Josie trusted Elizabeth’s guidance, and they really, really wanted to trust Elizabeth’s faith in them to handle their full power responsibly…… but it was hard to believe that when they already didn’t feel like they controlled their powers as much as they, “should” have been doing, and Elizabeth wanted to push them further.
For Josie, it felt like the choice came down to, “be a superhero and do more cool superhero things, at the expense of my own well-being, which means I eventually won’t be able to help anyone and could hurt more people than I help”
or, “quietly go back to training for an entirely different career than I expected, keep in touch with Elizabeth and work on honing my abilities, and maybe not get to help people in as big a way as members of the Wardens get to do, but at least, as a therapist, I will still have the ability to help people and will probably be less likely to screw that up by virtue of losing my control over my powers”
(To her credit, Elizabeth was disheartened by this, because she believes in all of her students and wants them to believe in themselves, and really wanted Josie on her team — but she’s learned that the superhero life isn’t for everybody, and that it’s not her job, as a teacher and mentor, to tell people what they should do; it’s her job to show them new approaches, teach them how to learn, help them find what paths and methods work best for them, etc.
So, disheartening as it was, she’s been nothing but supportive about Josie’s choice not to be a Warden, and compassionate about how much Josie doesn’t like working for the FBI — and without trying to turn it into some kind of, “this could be super-beneficial for us, if Josie wanted to give us any advance warning about S.T.R.O.M.A. business that might negatively affect us here” thing like Yael)
(To her credit, Yael really does believe that she’s helping when she says things like that, because she is so fundamentally a doer, rather than a thinker, feeler, planner, or anything else. She is absolutely capable of all of those things, but she has an approach to life and problems that goes, “Okay, this is a Thing and it’s a setback, but what can we do about it, how can we use this to build something even better”
—so her idea of how to help one of her and Elizabeth’s students and comrades with an unexpected and unwanted “recruitment” to S.T.R.O.M.A.… is going, “But look, see, we can still potentially make something good out of this, and just because a government agency snatched you up doesn’t mean that you have to forget your own values or let them control you, this can be a good thing if you take advantage of the right pieces and opportunities”
—for a moment of MBTI nerdery: Yael is an ENTJ (***) vs. Josie’s INFJ (***), so while she has Extroverted Thinking (Te) for a dominant cognitive function and primarily approaches the world based on how to get results, Josie’s dominant function is Introverted iNtuition (Ni), and while they have an orientation toward the future that appreciates where Yael is coming from with her drive to get results, Josie’s primary approach to the world looks less at objective things and objective results, more at patterns and theories and trying to find the, “higher purpose” or, “deeper reason” behind how stuff happens
Which, oddly enough, is part of why Josie and Yael get on so well. They can butt heads with each other, sometimes, but at the end of the day, they complement each other really well because both of them have vision and the drive to act on it, but Yael is better at actually getting shit done, and Josie is better at checking things through the processes of making them happen, finding potential problems that Yael may not have seen coming and trying to work addressing them into the fabric of her plans.
Their Feeling functions also complement each other really well: Josie is a high Feeler, with Extroverted Feeling (Fe) as their auxiliary function, which keeps them more attuned to the state of the group and all the people in it, while Yael has a very good relationship with her inferior Fi (Introverted Feeling), which enables her to better evaluate how their actions and plans are helping or hurting their causes, where their ideals fit into everything, and so on.
So, basically, Yael is better at making sure that they all remember who they are and what they stand for, both individually and as parts of the whole, while Josie is better at attending to people’s emotional needs and keeping the whole intact by caring for the individual members of it.
And because they both respect and admire each other, neither of them devalues the other’s contributions to anything — and it doesn’t matter to Yael that Josie has a badge and would have an easier time getting a gun if they weren’t really uneasy about guns; Josie’s a mutant, they’ve been one of her students, and they care about helping other mutants, so officially being part of S.T.R.O.M.A. doesn’t mean that they aren’t part of Yael’s (larger, mutant) family
—which all means a lot to Josie because, in a lot of ways, they still haven’t entirely outgrown their early experiences of being one of the weird art freaks at school (which, even for someone who wound up being part of a subculture/clique that’s all about going, “fuck you, I’m gonna do my thing and you can love it or shove it,” gave Josie some trouble because, goth of not, they’re sensitive), and they have a huge tendency to be overly harsh with themself and don’t always love themself very much, so this whole unconditional acceptance thing is a Big Deal to them
But I digress.
2. Having psychic powers also gets Problematic for Josie because, in their mind, they’ve spent so much of their life fighting their eating disorder and their overall mental health to keep control of their life, and it’s difficult, periodically degrading, often horrific, and something that they wouldn’t wish on anybody, period…… so having the power to take away someone’s ability to control their own mind? Having the power to violate someone’s agency, potentially with more or less complete impunity? That’s horrifying, and Josie doesn’t want it
One of the easiest ways to make Josie go off the handle at you is to dismiss how hard it is for them to maintain any sense of composure. Like, okay, they can handle people teasing them about some of their self-care habits because humor is how a lot of people come to be comfortable with and accept things they don’t understand at first, and how a lot of people show that they’re comfortable with you and like you.
But if you act like Josie doesn’t have to work, impossibly hard and daily, on their own well-being, because if they don’t, then they could lose control of psychic abilities and this would be Really Fucking Terrible for everyone? ……Uh.
Just don’t do that. It’s not pretty, it’s not fun, it’s mean and please, just don’t do it.
An even easier way to make Josie snap at you is to play what they call, “the Aslan card” — which means telling them that the proof that they can handle the responsibility of psychic powers, is their own fear that maybe they can’t, their awareness of and attentiveness to the ethical and moral problems attached to them having psychic powers, the fact that they’d rather not have psychic powers in the first place because it can — and often does — feel like these powers and their attendant responsibilities are too big and too potentially Terrible Forever, For Everyone
Which Josie calls, “the Aslan card” because, uh. The first time they heard it was from Elizabeth (whose heart was in the right place in saying this, but she didn’t think about how it might end up sounding to Josie), and the first thing Josie was reminded of was Aslan telling Prince Caspian that he’s ready to become the King because he doesn’t think he’s ready
It’s just…… Josie understands where this idea is coming from, and they appreciate the underlying sentiment
But, to them, it always sounds more like, “why are you upset about how hard this is for you, at least it’s happening to you and not someone who doesn’t give a fuck about ethics or how they treat other people, quit whinging and cheer the fuck up”
Which…… yes, Josie knows that this isn’t what most people mean, but it’s still pretty upsetting for them to hear because of how much it reminds them of things that they’ve told themself so many times, when they’ve been at their worst, in terms of their mental health and emotional well-being — especially the things like, “My eating disorder isn’t bad because it’s only hurting me, not anyone else, and it’s only hurting me because I’m weak”
—and yeah, okay, Josie appreciates that you’re trying to help, but they already have enough work to do on keeping themself from slipping back into the comfort of those thought patterns, so if it’s all the same, can you maybe find a different way of trying to comfort them or praise them or whatever? Please?
Thank you, they’d like that
#derekslaura#memes for ts#oc questions#josie quinn: empath disaster#that story with the mutants that i should find a working title for fml#mine: writing#sebastian moncrieff: mutant disaster#pete arden: dramatic disaster#josie x seb#josie x pete#lucy murphy: hemokinetic disaster#josie & lucy#yael lehrer: probably done with your shit#josie & yael#telepathy#okay i'm probably going to miss some cw tags and i'm sorry for that#if anybody needs anything that i miss tagged plz let me know and i'll get it after i sleep <3#eating disorders cw// mental health issues cw// manipulation ref// consent issues cw//#('consent issues' meaning 'yeah that conrad guy i mention periodically? he's a tool who uses telepathy to#manipulate people as well as using it to sexually assault and rape people with more or less total impunity so far'#but the discussion of it is fairly inexplicit & mostly used as an illustration of#why josie is so hyper-vigilant abt the ethical issues & responsibilities attached to having telepathy in their set of mutant superpowers)#misgendering ref// biphobia ref// homophobia ref// (these are also mostly inexplicit but still present)#longish post//
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Iron Man
Cracking a beer and getting stuck into the first film of the series: Iron man. He's a man made of Iron apparently so I'm expecting a lot of rust related plot devices #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Oh yeah! I can already tell this is going to be good because there's army cars and AC/DC playing. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Oh but look who it is, in a suit, with a glass of brown alcohol and wearing sunglasses, its RDJ. My man! Always appropriate for any situation. About to go into combat? No problem I'll just grab a bottle of jack and my cuff links. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Obviously he treats everyone else like shit too. Obviously. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Oops! Didn't see that coming. Can't go 30 seconds in a superhero movie without an explosion though and now a war's happening and I'm getting a Saving Private Ryan flashback. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
That’s not good. Better text the wife and tell her I won’t be back for dinner. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Oh Shit! It's terrorists, and they've got guns! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Flashback on Tony's past. No wonder 'Big T' has an ego problem. Bet he pulls some ridiculous shit in vegas. Also I wonder how much that casino paid to get in this movie? #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Bloody knew it!
Dude’s like: “why the fuck did he just hand me a big glass dildo?”
Just a quick argument with a supermodel journalist to set up a parallel with US foreign policy in the subtext. Yeah, I make loads of money selling weapons that kill people but look how cool and attractive I am. Lets fuck! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Oh no! That’s your best comeback?... surely you’re not going to let that win you over Everlove? Surely?!
Well I guess we all have moments of weakness.
And literally all it took was a couple of gadgets for her to drop all her morals. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Poor Pepper, He's literally a nightmare to work for and now he's flirting inappropriately! Also he forgot her birthday and she didn't care... yeah right. #realwomen #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Of course his private jet is a strip club. Where is that pole coming from exactly? #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Why is the business owner doing the job of a salesman right now? Does he really need the commission? #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
All that technology, like genuine future stuff, and he has literally the shittest phone in the world. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Good thing that mad scientist guy happened to be captured by those guys too. Also didn't we just see that he was wearing a bullet proof jacket? How did shrapnel get anywhere near his heart? #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
PROOF!
Oh no! The weapons got into the hands of the naughty men! isn't that what sexy journalist/supermodel woman was talking about? Maybe you should have been paying attention to her argument instead trying to sleep with her? #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
“But Tony... You promised!” :(
They went all that time without exchanging names? Guy saves your life but nah, funny accent, not worth getting too close. Also NOW you want to small talk, right when he’s holding a pot of molten metal in a pair of forceps?! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Oh yeah, just make a couple of rings, stick them together with some copper wire and there you go magic chest battery. Step one, make a ring. #Therestofthefuckingowl #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
And here we are having a bash at step two...
Hey presto! That was easy.
Well to be honest its about time that the wrongens noticed something wasn't quite right. Man had a massive glowing thing on his chest that looks like its from the future and nobody seemed bothered. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
For a man who we've established is intelligent Big T has no game. Yeah just leave the blueprints to the secret plan you're working on out on the table. Fortunately the baddies are totally negligent. I'm surprised they remembered to lock the door #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
We've already seen that they have CCTV of what Tony and his mate are up to but some how they aren't seeing him assemble a full suit of weaponized armor under their noses? Even after they've been caught with the blueprints?? #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Could they be any more blatant about what they’re up to?
Also why build a suit that leaves the one vulnerable part, the battery that powers it and keeps his heart from being shredded, exposed. 10/10 for visual aesthetic -10000 for common sense. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Seems to hold up though, even when shot point blank in the head. Shame his assistant had to die. There could have been some serious competition for chief romantic interest with Pepper later. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Yeah, no shit. This guy had expendable character written all over him.
What is going on with his legs? Seriously, who has hips that wide? #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Ahahaha! Silly baddies! Haven’t you realised that your guns are useless!?
Oh no! He's gone down! Looks like the terrorists are going to win after all. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Oh... no they fucked it.
Good thing he can fly!
Also good thing that that, way bigger explosion didn't have any nasty shrapnel in it this time. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Ah, phew! Good thing the military are here to save the day. Held off till now though obviously because PLOT #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
“Taxi!”
Also yeah, I want an American cheeseburger and a... (hint at sex but surprise with) a press conference. Definitely don't want to go to the hospital, not even after spending days(?) in the desert following a firefight and crash in a metal suit from 100m #MCU #Marvel #IronMan
Fast food and a quickie?
Seriously had enough of his shit...
Of course Burger King got that contract. I'm a little bit surprised that Tony didn't ask for a mac book and a bottle of new mountain dew red alert, available in a convenience store near you...#MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Don't tell me he's grown a conscience! Big T! Think about what you're going to the military industrial complex! What about the economy!? All those people who came out to clap at you getting out of a Rolls Royce are jobless now! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Hashtag UN-nesesary segway #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Okay Pep, just reach into the massive hole in my chest and grab that loose wire. Don't mind all the puss and blood. Oh you fucked it up, never mind, should have had a doctor do it. To be fair, could have done it himself but wouldn't want to miss this opportunity to flirt #MCU
100% uses that sentient robot arm to wank #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Yep, just walk into a military base and start talking shit to the commander because you're Tony Stark #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
"working on a secret project are we Sir?" - You can trust me, I'm a web connected AI with the same voice as HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Speaking of wrong hands, who's this with a useless remnant of scrap metal. I think I know who the main antagonist is going to be! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
“What did you just say about my sunglasses!?”
That looks like pretty complex stuff T! Good thing you've got Wankatron to help you out. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Oh shit... that's at least 3 months in hospital. Also wouldn't a man of science have worked out exactly how much thrust 10% capacity would generate before testing it on himself. Why not test it on a crash dummy first? #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Also, hats off to Wankatron for the excellent comedic timing. That bit with the extinguisher. GOLD #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Okay, how does he still have an arm after that? Tony Stark is a normal human right? I'm not going to find out 10 movies in that hes actually from the planet Joopizoop where everyone is a demi-god am I? #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Where does he buy those shirts with the hole cut out of the chest? Reckon that's a custom job. Another example of Big T's genius. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Oh yeah. Let's do this highly experimental test that is likely to end in something exploding or going catastrophically wrong in the garage along side 3 to 6 expensive super cars. #justbillionairethings #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
What did you expect dude? I’m getting tired of your bullshit!
WHAT KIND OF HERO RUINS ICECREAMS FOR CHILDREN?!?! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Oh! Did it go wrong? Well that will teach you for ignoring HAL 9000!
With great power comes incredible lack of responsibility. There’ll be a pothole there for weeks now. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Wankatron giving Tony a taste of his own medicine.
Just as well that ghetto Iron Man is looking like something off of scrapheap challenge #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Well that was a slap in the face... are there any women who his ‘hero’ does respect?
Also, of course he knows Hugh Hefner. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Wow. Pepper is looking on point, must have guys lining up and she still puts up with that crap from Tone. "Am I making you uncomfortable?" Shit man...you're making ME uncomfortable and I'm watching this from my bedroom, in my underwear. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
“I need a new job.”
Wait! Isn't that supermodel/journalist from before the hostage situation? Oh and she's got some leverage this time... #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Oooo! Looks like uncle cigar might be the main antagonist after all.
Somebody’s having a little sulk in the man cave are they? Angrily adjusting your super complex future cyber arm with a screwdriver. I mean...seriously? Screw drivers only do one of two things. They tighten or loosen screws. How much tinkering is really going on there? #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Wow... wankatron had a few upgrades! Now he comes out of the floor and gets you dressed in the morning #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Terrorists are on the rise again. Oh! You've got a gun, have you? Well here's a massive punch in the stomach.
Or why not have a blast of my...wait, what is that stuff that’s being blown out of my hands? Is it just pure bad-ass?! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Oh shit... now he's screwed, no way to save the hostages at gun point..
SHOULDER GUNS! BANG!
AUTO-TARGETING, NO RECOIL, EAT THAT YOU BLOODY WRONGENS! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
“Cheers mate!”
Uh oh...
Tank gun to the face?
No prob bro. JUST WALK IT OFF #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Bogey just went supersonic. Good thing that people from Joopidoop are impervious to the effects of instant acceleration or his bones and organs would be jellified by now.
Also good thing that he though to add in some knee flares... you know for disco scenarios and this... #MCU
Whiplash is right... ejecting is no joke. Most people never fly again and are left with severe spinal injuries. Cheers T. NICE ONE. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong
When your missus catches you having some fun with your newly upgraded wankatron... #mcu #ironman #tweetalong #marvel
Ghetto ironman looks still looks shit..
no wonder the baddy used his weird sound torture lanyard on him. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
OH SHIT! Pepper out. So that was the stick that broke the camels back eh? Developing a sense of responsibility and taking the initiative to do the right thing...oh hell nawh! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
I knew she was bluffing. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Wow... how awesome do computers look in this film. I want to work with an interface like that. Who cares that all the icons are on the wrong side!? You can literally type translate and it starts speaking English! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Jesus! She’s not a piece of meat! Damn, the main baddy is kinda creepy. Even without all the murdering and crazy sound torture dongle! RUN POTTS! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
OH NO! Not Big T! He's gone all pasty 'cause of the torture lanyard!
“You’re not going to try and kiss me are you?”
Oh no, no. Just going to syringe the future battery out of your techno pacemaker... You know.. Baddie stuff.
Wait... is his name Obediah? Seriously how didn't anyone guess he was evil? #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
YES! COME ON WANKATRON! POP IT IN THE HOLE! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Pepper is the real hero in this story. Just look at that power walk. Either that or I have a massive crush on 2008 Gwyneth Paltrow #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Shitt... ghetto iron man been hittin' the gym! How did we get from scrapheap challenge to beefcake overnight? I want that protein shake! #therestofthefuckingowl #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
LOL that whole family are like: Holy shit what is happening?! This never happens when we stay with daddy! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
lets hope it wasn't dad following behind on that motorcycle #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
HE KNOWS THE MATH WANKATRON! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Ha Ha yeah... chill out Obediah. You've been iced out. Don't you realize that you're just an overweight imitation? #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
those disco knee flares are are literally a get out of jail free card. I've said it before and I'll say it again... bloody good thing he thought of them. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
“Nooo! Not the disco knee flares! How did you know my only weakness was the boogie!?
Yes Pepper, flip every god damn switch! Meanwhile the masks are off... #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
PUSH IT! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
God dammit Pepper! What are you waiting for!?
wait for it....
Oh thank goodness for that... it had been almost a whole minute without an explosion! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Lets see if we can't shoehorn in a little post action office romance between boss and employee before Tony pars off supermodel/journalist for the third time and does the obvious thing by letting his ego overtake everything. #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Yep.
At least we can enjoy some well earned Black Sabbath as the credits roll #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
Wait... WHAT IS THIS!? The film is over but there's more? Is this a thing? Oh my word! GET THESE MOTHERFUCKING SUPERHEROS INTO MY BADDY FIGHTING CLUB! #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
The end.
Hope every one of my 27 followers enjoyed that. I'll be posting it to my blog soon in a special post with bonus content and screen shots to accompany each tweet. Look forward to tweeting @ you all soon when I watch The Hulk (2008) next time #MCU #Marvel #tweetalong #IronMan
*UPDATE*
Uh oh, looks like one of my followers didn't like that at all. Good riddance I say! To the remaining 26: PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME HERE ALL ALONE! :(
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