Rent-A-Parahuman @bug4932

Drama in the subreddit when it’s revealed one of the most popular setups was built by a Thinker pretending to be a tinker

r/TinkerLivingSpace

I bet he made designated break and snack times

True Facts (TM): Breakthrough is possibly the best fictional squad ever to put into a random incorrect quotes generator.

Also, hired killer love triangle

Man this world is fucked up

Man this world is fucked up

Rare fanart of Thomas Calvert and Emily Piggot, posted from the artists instagram with permission

Only hate against Dean for being a chump who died to Leviathan

do you think victoria ever really stopped feeling like a stranger in ashley's home?

like obviously it was weird at first, being alone in someone else's home always is, but ashley had specifically gone out of her way to make the apartment her own. every piece of furniture and every piece of art was as deliberate as ashley's outfits and the way she carried herself. it had to feel particularly intrusive, especially for someone as prone to overthinking as victoria. just looking around feels like snooping.

then when ashley comes back she brings along her sisterclone. now she's intruding in this weird impossibly intimate relationship. she was only just starting to understand swansong in the first place and now there's two of them and they're exactly the same except for all they ways they're not and if it fundamentally stands to reason that ashley uses the white towels and other ashley uses the black towels what the fuck towels does victoria use?

i think if there was ever a time when ashley's apartment felt like home it was shortly after other ashley left. when she managed to set up her little office and she and ashley made each other breakfast and argued about towels and imp tried to set them on fire. but maybe not. maybe the routine reminds her too much of home on bet, with amy. maybe that nagging feeling stays in the back of her head, keeping her from ever really settling in.

and then ashley dies. and we're back where we started. alone in someone else's home.

The missing finger nail :((

[ID: A digital drawing. Two hands press against a wet shower wall. The right hand is covered with a swirl-patterned burn scar. The left hand has a large patch of scarred skin, stretching to and including the index and middle finger. The index finger is missing a fingernail.]

My hands pressed against the wall, my posture like I was pushing against that wall and preparing to push it down, water running down my head and back, face aimed at the swirl of water disappearing down a black void, no doubt to be recycled, because you didn’t have a complex this big, take the trouble to pump water into it, and use that water once.

— Sundown 17.7 in Ward

I think what’s worse is that Vic probably did feel like she had a family with Ashley and Kenzie.

Like, this is close to her dream life back with Dean, raising a child, living independently.

only for it all to be ripped away in the span of a horrific week

do you think victoria ever really stopped feeling like a stranger in ashley's home?

like obviously it was weird at first, being alone in someone else's home always is, but ashley had specifically gone out of her way to make the apartment her own. every piece of furniture and every piece of art was as deliberate as ashley's outfits and the way she carried herself. it had to feel particularly intrusive, especially for someone as prone to overthinking as victoria. just looking around feels like snooping.

then when ashley comes back she brings along her sisterclone. now she's intruding in this weird impossibly intimate relationship. she was only just starting to understand swansong in the first place and now there's two of them and they're exactly the same except for all they ways they're not and if it fundamentally stands to reason that ashley uses the white towels and other ashley uses the black towels what the fuck towels does victoria use?

i think if there was ever a time when ashley's apartment felt like home it was shortly after other ashley left. when she managed to set up her little office and she and ashley made each other breakfast and argued about towels and imp tried to set them on fire. but maybe not. maybe the routine reminds her too much of home on bet, with amy. maybe that nagging feeling stays in the back of her head, keeping her from ever really settling in.

and then ashley dies. and we're back where we started. alone in someone else's home.

love how transphobes keep coming up with ways to misgender trans people in a way that is just subtle enough to be deniable. birth-registered females is the new one i've seen

Thinking about the Taylor and Victoria roleswap AU me and @heyitschartic have been working on for a while now.

The drama of Brian x Victoria with toxic masculinity

Taylor and Chris bonding as loners

Taylor feeling betrayed by Rain secretly being Fallen all along

Victoria struggling to handle the idea of cape families when Alec's family is revealed...

A lot more we discussed.

I really am surprised there are no Pact x Supernatural Fics

Deadheading is a process of pruning by which old growth and seed heads are removed from the plant to promote new growth and re-flowering.

And credit to @echon-10, but it’s pointed out that Victoria was shot and nearly murdered by the Chorus when she was 15 years old.

She’s no stranger to the danger and death of being a cape

This exchange between Antares and Tattletale in 13.6 perfectly encapsulates how Victoria's entire attitude towards capes comes from a point of privilege and why, in turn, she's so goddamn annoying to me so much of the time.

For a person whose entire life was crafted around capes, Victoria was remarkably untouched by the damages of being a parahuman, up until Leviathan and the Slaughterhouse Nine. From the moment she triggered, she had the support of a nuclear and extended family (ignoring the fucked up dynamics therein since they didn't become fully apparent until S9 anyway). She went to school and had friends and a boyfriend. She joined the Wards, a government-regulated institution that was basically a parahuman work-study program for kids. Her earliest encounters with villains were hand-picked to be age- and ability-appropriate. Caping, to her, was equal parts performance and intellectual exercise.

And then you have Lisa: teen runaway, whose career - for lack of a better word - as a cape began when an underground criminal mastermind decided to use her and a group of other equally struggling teens as pawns in his long-running game. Lisa didn't get to choose who she fought against; when she met Taylor, the Undersiders were being pitted against Lung, for fuck's sake. If she decided she wanted to step back from being a cape for any reason, Coil would've had her thrown out on the street at best and straight up killed at worst.

During that pause after the "wriggling pieces" comment, was she thinking about Dinah, kidnapped and drugged and kept as a pet precog? Was she thinking about Alec and the rest of the Heartbroken, the horrible things they had done to them and were forced to do simply because of the circumstances of their birth? Was she thinking about the schoolkids forced to join the ABB? Was she thinking about Noelle? Was she thinking about Bonesaw, who was drafted into the Slaughterhouse Nine when she was six fucking years old?

To Victoria, kids being chopped into wriggling pieces was something reserved for only the most heinous S-class threats, while to Lisa, it's not too far removed from the grim realities of being a cape that she's been immersed in from day 1. And to Victoria, who had the blinders on for so long and has been so conditioned to care about the squeaky clean image, bringing up those grim realities is a bitchy, underhanded move and not just like an acknowledgment of how fucked up the world is.

Victoria is so accustomed to being on the high road that she thinks viewing things from anyone else's perspective means she's lowering and debasing herself, and that anyone operating on a different level from her is dealing low blows on purpose and not because they were forced to by external circumstances.

For worm/ward questions: Who would be the most interesting Undersider and Breakthrough members to swap teams?

I think Bitch and Ashley are similar enough that you could plausibly see them sticking with each team or being recruited, while also having radically different outcomes.

Ashley is of course far more destructive without therapy or her medication, and her power makes fights a lot more deadly for everyone involved while removing the option for the Undersiders being getaway experts. On the other hand, Lisa isn’t out in the field due to Ashley not caring, so they likely switch up tactics completely.

She would like Brian’s professionalism but they had a LOT of conflict of personality and her desire for leadership. She and Alec would probably get along decently well, barring moments he pokes fun at her and things go awry. Lisa might latch onto her like she did with Taylor, if she gets the right info, but that could go really well or really poorly. Taylor would absolutely hear Ashley talk and think she’s a bona fide evil villain, maybe even comparing her to Emma, but I can see a chance for Taylor to see past her mask in quiet moments where Ashley tries to stop infighting. I think the big thing that can sway this is that Ashley would probably not stand for Coil treating Dinah this way. I’m 50/50 on her attacking him outright or shocking Taylor by siding with her immediately, because what Coil does pushes a lot of her buttons (plus she wants his spot). That would be interesting, to imagine this unlikely duo working together, and it might actually ruin the plan to return to the Undersiders post Leviathan if it’s not sincere enough.

Bitch is interesting, because WB has mentioned that she could benefit a lot with therapy and a positive environment with other kids her age, which I presume happens if she’s with Yamada. Entirely possible she gets sent to the same Asylum that Kenzie, Vic, and Sveta were at, having meet some or all of them before.

I imagine she’ll always be gruff, but a lot more overtly aware of that and sensitive to others, maybe having long since begun to treat them like dogs (affectionate). I can see her sympathizing with Byron’s situation of dealing with family while also coming to respect Tristan as a potential leader like she did Brian. Absolutely takes to Rain immediately like in canon, the two of them often discussing survivalist stuff and her becoming an unofficial protector for him. Chris and her actually get along fairly well, especially when they talk shop about dogs and medicine for them. Kenzie, Sveta, and Vic depends on what she knows of them. Possibly sees Kenzie as a very excitable and overly attached puppy, so some of her methods of dealing with her can be blunt, maybe too blunt at times. Sveta and Bitch may be a bit frayed, because Sveta can be a bit overbearing and preachy, and Bitch isn’t sensitive about the same things Sveta is, but they get along and understand how powers fucked them up. Victoria and Bitch, again depends, but I can see Victoria feeling trauma by comparing the mutant dogs to her flesh coffin, and Bitch being naturally wary of the new comer. I think there’s no real conflict though, not with this timeline switch, and ultimately they come out respecting each other like in canon. Bitch might help Vic understand Chris and bridge the two of them together…

i'm gonna try and be brief because 1) it's difficult to and 2) you might have already been recommended it but

russian caravan is that good of a fic. it's complete. a really good rendition of victoria is a main character, with fragile one as a major character, though the latter doesn't show up for a good while.

the fic is still 2.5 million words though. you get ample time with both. and, again, it is that good.

short synopsis: russian caravan is a worm au where a bunch of horrifying lovecraft mythos stuff has been going on in the background since before scion showed up on bet.

taylor, alongside an eclectic mix of OCs and canon characters, falls headfirst into more and more of said lovecraft mythos stuff and tries not to go insane. the story, though it quickly goes off canon rails, is in deep thematic conversation with canon worm.

i want to go into a lot more detail but i promised to be short(ish): one of the best wormfics ever written. let this ask stand as testament among the recommendations.

I’ve had it recommended to me before, I just never have time to read it. I barely have any time for myself these days