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heavenbarnes · 5 years ago

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come on, baby, let me get to you

Nancy Wheeler x Female Reader

Warnings/Contains: swearing, mentions of a cutting your finger, fingering, tit sucking, implied top! reader, implied bottom! nancy, pretty soft by my standards

Word Count: 2.8k

i think about er a lot, so it was only right that i gave you something to work with! x

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Nancy wasn’t even sure how she was dragged, maybe coerced, into this. Her eyes had lit up at the news of her younger brother going away to summer camp for nearly a whole month. That light had died the moment her mother told her she’d be going too.

She argued she was too old for a stupid summer camp, until her mom explained that she’d be a camp counselor. Rambling on about how it’d look good on her resume, and how her skin could use some sun, that was what got her here.

How she found herself stood up to her ankles in mud, the same slimy dirt splattered up her shirt and across her cheek.

The culprit who threw the mud ball directly at Nancy was turning pink in the cheeks, pulling his feet out of the dirt so he could hurry away from his counselor before she totally flipped out.

“Keep running before I make you scrub the whole kitchen for that!” A voice came from behind Nancy, and if she could've sunk down into the sludge, she would’ve.

If anyone could’ve found her stuck in the mud, covered in it and nearly fuming, Nancy really didn’t want it to be you. She couldn’t fight the tinge of embarrassment she felt twang in the pit of her stomach when her fellow counselor stepped around the side of her.

“It’s just because you’re new, we’ll whip ‘em into shape sooner or later.” You dropped an eye into a wink as you lifted one of her arms.

Wrapping it around your shoulders you crouched down to give yourself enough leverage to pull the other girl out of the predicament she found herself in. As her feet became unstuck, she sighed quite loudly.

“I wish the kids liked me as much as they do you, they all think I’m boring or something.”

Nancy wrapped her other arm around your front, almost enveloping you into a hug as you continued to pry her from the mud. Silently, you hoped to whatever was listening that she couldn’t feel your heart speed up at her touch.

“You just have to give them time, soon they’ll love you as much as I do.”

You wished you could pluck those words out of the air and swallow them as quick as you’d said them. Nancy’s doe eyes darted in your direction, if you knew any better you’d think she was wiling you to elaborate.

“I- I love your fun nature and- and your tenacity.” Stuttering only slightly, you filled the silence your comment had left.

Nancy huffed a breath out her nose. “You think I have tenacity?”

“You’re up to your shins in mud, had the stuff thrown at you, and you haven’t demanded to go home.” Finally you freed both her feet. “You’ve got tenacity and then some.”

Still using you for support, Nancy had the hint of a smile drift across her face as she tried to take her first step. The change in feeling was too much for her, sending her flailing out towards the ground.

She would’ve hit the mud with an almighty splat, had she not grabbed you tight around the neck. Your arms flew behind her back and anyone watching on might’ve thought you both were practicing the dip in your waltz.

Blinking up at you with those big eyes, you knew there was no doubt she could feel your pulse against her arm, beating like crazy. You told yourself that if she asked, you’d play it off as adrenaline from catching her. A bold faced lie when just watching her walk across the room had you feel the same way.

You cracked a grin at her, shaking your head gently as you looked down to her. “If you could stay vertical, that’d make this a whole lot easier.”

She giggled quietly, a nearly angelic sound to your ears as you both managed to make your way back to main camp. Walking beside her through the trees, you wished you could have the smallest glimpse into what she was thinking.

Nancy stayed dead quiet, overall just rather embarrassed that you’d had to rescue her like this. Especially as this was the second time you’d had to save her (if you consider Nancy forgetting her towel and having to ask you to get her one and bring it to the shower to be a disaster).

To her, you had this effortless way of captivating everyone. The kids and the counselors loved you, and she couldn’t blame them. She just couldn’t put her finger on the reason why she felt the way she did whenever you showed up.

There was a feeling stirring deep in her and she most certainly hadn’t felt it before, but the moment you laid even the softest touch on her, Nancy swore she could feel it long after you’d let go.

Arriving back at camp, that desperation to sink into the earth and out of view came back to Nancy in an overwhelming sense. Her younger brother, Mike, was stood with his friends and had a shit-eating grin take over his face as he saw the state she was in.

You picked up on Nancy’s energy before she even said a word, her whole body tensed up in an instant. You’d had a sweet little crush on the girl since the moment you laid eyes on her, you knew when things weren’t right.

“Now, when I say you look like the creature from the black lagoon I don’t-“

“Michael, say another word and you’re on firewood duty till the end of camp.”

Both the Wheeler’s turned to look at you with mouth’s agape, the eldest looked considerably more pleased with you.

“What? But she’s my sister I’m allowed to say crap like that!”

“She may be your sister, but here she’s my bunkmate and what I say goes.”

Mike’s shoulders deflated as he kicked his toes into the dirt, you continued on past him with his sister in toe. As you left him behind, you tossed the final say over your shoulder.

“By the way, that was another word so you’re definitely on firewood duty.”

“God damn it.”

Walking Nancy over to the shower blocks, you claimed it was so she didn’t fall into another ditch, but both of you kind of knew it was to have more time together.

Neither of you said a thing about it.

“What did you mean by “bunkmate” was that just to get my brother of my back?” She asked quietly, toeing at the loose dirt like the other Wheeler had.

You shot her a second of confusion before speaking. “Did they not tell you Fatima Torrence got food-poisoning? They’re putting you in my bunk until they clean your one.”

Now, Nancy never wished ill of anybody. But if she said she wasn’t even the smallest bit happy her old bunkmate had eaten that grey chicken the night before, she’d be a liar.

Nancy Wheeler didn’t often find comfort in lies, but she did in kind girls who rescued her from mud and 13 year olds.

Reaching the door to the shower room, you felt yourself sink a bit. She was only going to be gone 20 minutes tops, but if you could spend every moment with her, that’d be quite alright.

“Thank you for before, and thank you for not making fun of me.”

Smiling kindly at her, you couldn’t ignore that tinge of embarrassment that clouded her. For someone that, to you, made the sun rise in the morning - she didn’t have an awful lot of confidence just yet.

“Any time, I’d never make fun of you, I like you too much.” That stirred a smile on her cheeks. “Don’t forget your towel, I can’t be running back here or they’ll think somethings going on.”

Sending her another wink, the blush the crept up her neck was undeniable but her smile wasn’t able to be kept down. You wouldn’t make fun of her, but tease her endlessly? How could you not.

Chopping potatoes for dinner that night, you physically had to stop your mind from wandering to that steam filled shower block where Nancy was probably humming to herself.

Her hands were probably running across her whole body, that lavender soap was filling her senses and if you tried hard enough it’d do the same to yours.

She’d be dripping hot water and her hair slicked back and you could nearly feel it, nearly reach out and touch-

“Can you hear me?”

Jumping at the sound of that sweet voice, the one you’d just imagined moaning your name, the knife slipped from your grasp and across your finger.

“Fuck!” Bringing the pad of your pointer finger to your mouth, you sucked at the superficial cut.

“Oh my god! I am so sorry!” Nancy reached out to grab your other arm and pulled you towards the first aid kid. “I am so stupid!”

“No, you’re not.” You mumbled around your digit. “I was just lost in my head.”

Opening the case she rifled around for a band aid as she carried on about how she shouldn’t have given you a fright. You haphazardly retorted how you should’ve been paying more attention.

Finding the sticking plaster adorned with a panda bear, Nancy reached out for your “wounded” limb.

“Stop sucking your fingers and give them to me.”

Your head shot up to her, eyes widening to nearly the size of her own. Whilst yours opened wide, hers narrowed at you. “And get your mind out of the gutter whilst you’re at it.”

“Yes ma’am, sorry ma’am.” You saluted with your free hand.

Once the finger was bandaged and you could get back to the potatoes, Nancy stood by your side as she took on the carrots. Working together in harmony, you swore you could’ve stayed like that forever, listening to her hum quietly as you worked away.

You willed for her to come into your kitchen and be the main course, the starter, and the dessert.

After the campfire where Nancy had curled into your side, allowing you to drape your blanket around the both of you, you found yourselves walking back to your bunk room.

It was more plausible that nothing would happen, you’d both tuck into bed and that’d be it. But there was something in the way she held onto you in the cold air of the night, the way she looked at you as you said her name.

If there was something up there and listening, please throw plausibility to the wind.

Picking up your shorts and t-shirt, you head to the bathrooms to get changed. As you brushed your teeth, you wondered how you’d even get any sleep knowing how close the girl that’d captivated your mind for so long, was within reaching distancing.

The cool air brushed along your exposed legs as you went back to your cabin, opening the door to complete darkness. Figures, Nancy just wanted to go to sleep, that was more than plausible and you nearly cursed yourself for thinking something could’ve happened.

With your back to her, you put your backpack under your bed as you pulled the covers back. Your shoulders jumped slightly as one of the cabin lamps were flicked on.

The softest voice called your name.

Turning around, all the breath in your lungs were drawn from you, coming out in a breathy moan. “Holy shit.”

Nancy Wheeler, sweet and righteous, doe eyes and cheek bones meant to be held. Nancy Wheeler laid before you in the dim light of a lantern, only in her frilly pink bra and knickers.

Nancy Wheeler was beckoning you over.

Letting your feet move before your mind could catch up, you were kneeling on the end of her bed and making your way closer before you even thought about what was happening.

All that mattered was this girl was reaching out and grasping your arms, pulling you up her body until you were caging her in on that threadbare mattress.

“Is this what you want, baby?” Running your finger tips along her thigh to her hip, you felt her shiver. “I want to hear you say it.”

Her voice was a featherlight whisper just inches from your ear, it was your turn to feel a shiver wrack your whole body as she spoke.

“It is, I want you.”

So your fingers were hooking over the edge of her panties as you drew them back, feeling like unwrapping a present on Christmas morning. Every inch of skin that was revealed to you seemed to get even more beautiful.

Squirming beneath you, those wide eyes watched every movement you made as you took your time with her. You purposefully drew your nails along her as you undressed her, making her buck up into you.

Her own hands came to the cups of her bra, fingers gently tracing the puckered lace that rested there. You stilled for a moment, eyes casting up to see what she might do next. She was almost waiting for permission.

“Go ahead, let me see.”

With that, she drew down the fabric to expose her chest to you. Your breath caught in your throat as she tweaked at her nipples, pulling them with her slender fingers.

Your head swirled with the severity of the situation, the very real situation where you had the wonders of the universe at your finger tips. Turning back to the panties you had in your hand, you tossed them onto your bunk, hoping they’d get lost amongst your belongings.

Gently gripping her thighs, you pulled them apart and opened her up to you. Tugging her down the bed a bit, you slotted nicely between her long legs, like that was where you meant to belong.

Bringing a hand to her center, you ran two fingers along her and felt the sweet wetness that lay there. You felt your insides seize, desperately aching to feel even more of her. Nancy gasped, telling you that this wasn’t a feeling she was used to.

“You ever had a girl this close to you, touch you like this?”

Nancy shook her head as she tipped it back, feeling the way you dipped your fingers in and pressed them tight against her clit. She rolled her hips into your hand, trying to angle you down and closer to where she wanted you.

Giving into her easily, you gently dipped your fingers into where she was wettest. You couldn’t help but moan quietly as you slipped into her, watching the way her back arched off the bed.

Dipping down, you pressed your face into the curve of her neck to breathe her in. Slowly working your fingers against her, you curled them upwards to draw the most beautiful moans out of her.

Nancy wrapped her arms around your shoulders, pulling you in even closer. Feeling her breath against your skin was enough to send you feeling, peppering your lips along the soft skin of her neck.

“That- that feels so good, faster.” Her stuttered breath had her chest rising and falling quickly beneath you.

Doing as told, you sped up the movements of your wrist as Nancy called your name. You felt her head turn beside you, lips moments from your cheek as she moaned for you. Turning your head towards her, you found your own lips so close to hers.

She closed the distance, pressing her mouth so gently to yours before you felt her tongue slip past. If there was a moment in life you could keep forever, this would be a pretty good contender.

Nipping her lower lip, you rolled your fingers up into her sweet spot. The noises you pulled from deep within her chest were mesmerizing, your name had never sounded this good in your life.

Nancy’s thighs tensed around you, body going rigid as you continued to move against her. Angling your thumb up, you rolled the pad of it against her clit. Her whole body tensed tighter, hands sliding down you to grip the material of your shirt.

You left her mouth, coming down to take one of her nipples between your lips. The varying pleasure had Nancy’s voice breaking, a strangled cry of your name rolling off her tongue. Working her through it, you felt her whole body melt around you.

“That’s a good girl, let me hear you.”

Her fingernails gripped into your shoulders, dragging up as she continued to roll into your movements. You felt her wetness around your fingers, her moans still tumbling past her lips as she came for you.

Letting her catch her breath, you brought your fingers to your mouth, laying them against your tongue as Nancy watched with curious eyes. You smiled around them as she started to reach out for you again.

“Stop sucking your fingers and give them to me.”

#nancy wheeler smut #nancy wheeler x reader #nancy wheeler x female reader #stranger things smut #nancy wheeler headcanon

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aetherknit · 3 years ago

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i dont want to drag this out so ill answer everything in one fell swoop (or two. we'll see)

oh FOR SURE. the chat was a minefield i imagine the donos were the same. probably a shit ton of auto-blocking for keywords and then a manual approval requirement

by playing the moral high-ground, people are able to easily evade a difficult topic. imo, its a perfect showcase of how twitter's occasionally performative activism can really fucking suck. they rank breaking a boundary above literal crime i think. obviously d*xxing is disgusting to me but we cant use that as a reason to look away from evidence like this

theres a lot more to this anon but im just stopping it here to say theres more evidence than that. obviously im not going into it but there are summarizations around

after this i feel like i will never be befriending anyone i know from solely dttwitter again i was nauseous scrolling thru my tl

i am so sorry to be the bearer of bad news but if u backread my account u can find a good summary from lesbianwilbur sorry my brain is dead rn but its out there

defamation, d*xxing, etc. -- there's grounds to build a case against the original posters.

u put this perfectly. it makes me miserable to see the take that ppl thinking critically are being cruel to Dream -- i promise you i want Dream to be completely cleared and innocent more than i want anything in the world right now. but i can't comfortably sweep it under the rug until we get some kind of acknowledgment.

support needs to be to the victim, but the victim never asked to be involved so its a difficult position to be in. i think most of us dont even know a lick about the actual victim. right now, people are focused on what they can do imo. agree that people should have respect toward what the heart of this situation though.

i only tuned in for a bit but dream's nervousness came through clearly to me. i felt like he was rambling, occasionally snappish, etc. i wish i could have sympathy for him (and i do to a certain extent) its hard not to see a stream of a fan-favorite game with donos on as somewhat intentional.... good faith can only take us so far

so well-put, i really have nothing to add. i am so disappointed, but i want to emphasize empathy where its deserved. its such a hard situation.

anon who sent the long ask that included links: im not answering that bc im not spreading that kind of thing, but obviously i agree with the sentiment behind what you were saying

#if any of this is worded poorly i am saur sorry its really late for ESTers #ask #manatreed situation /#discourse /#critical /#negative /#LORDDD

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definitely-not-a-wasp · 4 years ago

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I'm okay with a bunch of disorganized rambling honestly 😂. But if I had to narrow it down then I guess I want to know about main and side characters and how they compare to the original?

I know that tumblr is the Prime Site for disorganized rambling, but I have perfectionism issues. But that is a great question, nonnie, and I will be happy to ramble is a slightly less disorganized fashion.

When reading Maximum Ride as a somewhat-formed adult who discovered they enjoy English classes about 3.5 years ago, I noticed that JP, when writing, doesn't understand consistency. At all. Which means, in many ways, I have a free sandbox to work with.

Spoilers for my rewrite WIP, because I strongly believe that if a story would no longer be good if one had spoilers, then it wasn’t a good story in the first place.

I'm trying to keep the backstories the same, plus or minus the scientific method and a few characters (RIP my OCs. I want to bring you back so bad but it wouldn't fit with the thematic narrative). I've mostly kept their (starting) abilities the same, too. Without further ado, I'm going to introduce some WorldBuilding. (If I'm good at nothing else, I'm good at world building)

First off. Logically.

How are they getting Cable?

How are they getting internet?

How are they getting money to eat and stuff?

JP's answer: handwave it off. Sometimes you need to ignore logistics for the sake of plot. This is an answer I'd accept from an author that I like, such as Julie Kagawa, that makes amazing worlds, characters, and narratives that I will happily handwave a few things that wouldn't work in the real world. James Patterson, on the other hand, did not make any of that; he made a cool concept, some good rough-draft characters, and nothing else, and therefore this is an unforgivable sin.

Wasp's answer: They are not getting any of that.

Introducing Cottagecore.

The house is off the grid. Solar Panels and a wind turbine create electricity. They have their own well. They grow their own food, raise livestock for eggs, milk, and wool, and trap fish for meat. They get money through dumpster diving and pawning. They still have to steal half of the necessities they can’t make themselves. They do have a TV, but it can access about three channels on a clear day. Internet is only a thing when they go to the public library.

Giving the flock a background that’s heavy in farming and livestock rearing shores up the plot holes mentioned above, but in my opinion, ties the flock more tightly to the environment, thus giving them something tangible to lose when they have to leave the E-shaped house. Because they’re not just leaving a house and a safety net— they’re leaving their entire way of life with no promise of getting it back. It also gives them a tangible connection to the earth in case I want to actually pursue the global warming themes.

Main Characters

Maximum “Max” Ride (Birthname: nonexistent)

First off, I'm letting her be Latina, James Patterson.

In the original, Max was very much the headstrong, independent, action girl. Leaning into Strong Female Character (TM), but overall she had a strong, solid foundation and enough character consistency through the first three books for me to not have to just make an entire new character. However, I felt that she was, in some ways, a bit too Action-Girl and Strong and Capable. Yes, Max is incredible and competent, but she’s also fourteen. She’s a child.

In the rewrite, Max’s character is still headstrong, independent, capable, and sometimes not the best at listening to others. All of that’s the same. But she’s that way not because of girlboss energy, but because there’s no one else to do it. She doesn’t want to lead, necessarily. She wants to get some rest and let someone else handle the problems life keeps throwing at her. But she knows if she did that, the responsibility of leader would fall to Fang and Iggy, and she can’t ask that of them. She doesn’t want to place that burden on anyone else (Look, there’s a reason I chose Ayano’s Theory of Happiness as one of her signifier songs, okay?). Her narrative is very much centered around burden, and also around loss. She lost her cultural heritage when she was taken away from her birth family, she lost her childhood to being a leader, she lost a good deal of her friends to the school (RIP my OCs), she lost Jeb, and then she lost her stability. And she’s going to lose a lot more before the end of the story. So a lot of her character arc deals with learning that there are some things she can’t fix, some things that can’t be recovered. She can’t get the E-shaped house back. She can’t get her Little Baby Angel back, even after they rescue her. She can’t get her friends back from the school. And instead of working so hard to recover those or find something to replace them, she has to learn to live with that sense of loss and move on with her life without feeling guilty for leaving things behind. And she has to learn that asking for help and sharing her burden is selfish or weak.

Other changes I made that don’t necessarily fit into her narrative arc, but you asked for rambling so rambling you shall get:

Max hallucinates, because mental illness is also a prominent theme in the rewrite. She doesn’t have a psychotic disorder, but her C-PTSD causes visual/audio hallucinations, especially when she’s stressed or sleep deprived.

Max ends up having a Gender Discovery throughout the story and goes by He/She pronouns eventually. I don’t know when, but it will happen.

As far as genetic modifications/special quirks go, she can fly faster than the rest of the flock, but not 300 miles per hour. She averages about sixty mph with diving speeds of 240. She cannot breathe underwater or shut down her organs on command. She also has the Super Special Power to predict the weather, but that’s not because of genetics, it’s because she has chronic pain in her right arm that gets worse when weather fronts change.

Her favored weapon is her trusty rebar that she picked up from a condemned building. I think she’s going to name it eventually but I don’t know what yet.

Fang (Birth name: Gabriel Xue)

In canon, Fang is characterized in early books by being the “dark, strong, silent type”. He’s probably the most reserved member of the flock, to the point of falling into the Brooding Mystery Man trope in parts of the book. They care a lot, but they’re not the best at conveying that, especially with the younger members of the flock, and at times their high empathy leads them to making mistakes. Despite the high empathy, he’s often compared to a robot due to his lack of expression and external emotions.

Well, first change is that they’re not a man, so jot that down—

If Max’s narrative is centered around burden and loss, I would probably say that Fang’s is centered around humanity and moving on. None of the flock was treated as human while in the school, but Fang was more often than not treated like a wild animal due to “behavioral issues”, and therefore had and continues to have a difficult time considering themselves real and alive, let alone human. This manifests through a several different ways— where in canon Fang definitely had a ‘fight’ reaction, in the re-write they have a ‘freeze’ or ‘shut down’ instinct. They’re selectively mute for multiple reasons (including derealization, jaw pain, the fact that they didn’t learn how to speak until they were 10, and genuinely forgetting it’s something they’re capable of), a period of Cotard’s syndrome, and a tendancy towards self-loathing and self-sacrifice. In short, Fang is still halfway stuck in the mindset that most of the flock grew out of when they escaped in the school, and doesn’t know how to move past it.

Much of their character arc revolves around not necessarily seeing themselves as human, but learning to treat themselves as human even when they don’t feel like one (or even feel real), and knowing that just because they don’t feel human all the time doesn’t mean anyone else can treat them the same. They never start easily expressing their emotions, and they’re always going to be selectively mute, but they learn to accept that those aspects of themself aren’t character flaws or signs that they’re sub-human.

Other additions to Fang’s character include:

They don’t get their hair cut in New York. It stays long through the entire series. They have the longest hair in the flock by the end of the series, and they can wear it in so many styles.

Fang uses they/it pronouns because themes of reclaiming the weapons used against it and, more importantly, Gender.

They’re actually really good at spelling compared to the rest of the flock, because they and Iggy communicate with Print-On-Palm when they’re nonverbal, and they’re nonverbal for some pretty long stretches of time.

They and Max have... zero romantic tension. At all. There is none. The number of times Max calls them her sibling/little sibling in the first arc alone is staggering, and that will not change.

Igneous “Iggy” (Birthname: Jamsetta “Jamie” Griffiths)

I’ve talked about Iggy before. Canon doesn’t give us much to go off of, but from what’s shown, he’s smart, sarcastic, has sharper edges than Fang and Max, and also has a sizable ruthless streak. So that’s what I have to go off of.

The big difference between Iggy and Fang&Max is that Iggy has a much better memory of the School. Most of the flock have areas (months or years) that they don’t remember, or people that they’ve blocked from their mind, but Iggy... doesn’t. So he’s the one that remembers all of the other AVIAN test subjects that were old enough to have names and identities but died due to complications. Max might have the burden of leadership, but he has the burden of memory. And that has lead to both a massive fucking guilt complex, because why did he survive when they didn’t, and, as mentioned above, a ruthless streak that he doesn’t shy away from.

Which is to say, by the end of the story, Iggy has the highest kill count.

I love, love writing Iggy next to Max and Fang. I love writing Iggy next to Gazzy and Nudge. Because, I say this with all of the love of the world, but Iggy is not a good person. He is loyalty and love incarnate, and the world can burn down if he and his siblings are safe. Max and Fang will always try to save as many people as they can. They will wonder what’s wrong with them the first time they kill and don’t have a mental breakdown about it. They are good in a way that Iggy is not. He’s okay with killing Erasers. He’s okay with killing humans. He’s okay with killing people who might not necessarily deserve it, if they show themselves as a threat or are simply in the blast radius. He knows perfectly well that most of those Erasers he’s murdering are four and five and he is okay with that, because a lot of the AVIANs were that age when they died. (Yeah, in the rewrite it’s not Fang who has an issue with Ari; it’s Iggy who wants the 7-year-old wolf-boy dead.)

And this is, of course, juxtaposed with Iggy being really, really good with Nudge and Gazzy (especially in the beginning). Because, again, he actually remembers being a child. He remembers a lot of kids that died and is therefore fiercely protective of the kids that didn’t, as well as fiercely protective of the innocence that he never got. So he’s the one that cooks their favorite foods when they’re having a bad day, always makes time when they want to talk about something, and convinces Max to let them go to that toy store in New York because, yeah, he Max and Fang aren’t kids. They never were. But Nudge, Gazzy, and Angel can be. (And if he has to be a murderer to preserve that, then he’s perfectly okay with that.)

He and Angel don’t get along very well, though. The telepath doesn’t like hanging out with the person with the most clear memories of the school.

Other additions:

Iggy is trans and says trans rights

He also has paranoid episodes, because C-PTSD. Sometimes they’re very helpful. Sometimes they are not.

I actually decided that he’s one of the flock that doesn’t meet their parents. I know in canon he did, but I always found that very clunky because it didn’t add to his character. He was one of the characters who, until it was convenient for the plot, seemed to care the least about his family. I’d much rather give that to a character whose arc would benefit from it.

Iggy! Gets! Older Sibling Rights! Seriously, he’s two months younger than Fang, he is just as capable.

Iggy does not know braille because Jeb decided it wasn’t necessary for him to know. Iggy is also the best speller in the flock, because Print-on-Palm was the only way to talk to Fang for a solid year. Yes he mocks everyone over this.

Iggy is the only member of the flock that enjoys swimming and can take into the air from water. Everyone else in the flock is incredibly jealous.

Nudge (Birthname: Monique Robinson)

If Iggy is defined by his memories, Nudge is his polar opposite. She was seven when she left the School, but she has next to no memories of it. She is missing a lot of time in the first year she escaped. And that causes... a lot of things. It makes her feel disconnected from her older siblings, it gives her the ability to function in society in a way the other’s can’t, it lets her feel less grief over the ones that didn’t make it and she doesn’t remember, it makes her feel guilty that she doesn’t remember what she’s old enough to know.

Basically, in order for me to keep the character of Nudge as I saw her (more extroverted, not afraid of the world, fascinated with humans like her siblings aren’t, desiring to fit in instead of isolate), I had to put a little bit of distance between her and the flock. Of course, she loves them— that will in no way change— but she’s old enough that she should remember the school (and her dead friends) unlike Gazzy and Angel, but she can’t, and she very much fears forgetting the flock if anything happens to them. So she’s trying desperately to keep the flock close and wants desperately to experience the world at the same time, and doesn’t know what to do when she can’t have both. That’s her biggest character conflict throughout the series, along with that in-between area where she’s not quite where her older siblings are but understands so much more than Gazzy and Angel, and where she stands in that.

So yeah. Nudge’s journey is that in looking for belonging in the world, in her family, and in herself.

This is why she’s one of the ones that gets to find her parent, James Patterson.

Other additions include:

She never straightens her hair. Never. Her resources at the E-shaped house aren’t perfect, but she still has learned how to take care of her hair and has a few styles she cycles through.

She becomes the default person Max sics on people when the flock is trying to befriend them. Also their de-facto diplomat around strangers.

As in canon, she does take some time away from the flock to expirience ‘normal life’. This does not last long due to the stress of being separated from her siblings/not being able to help them and [REDACTED]

Nudge is... not the only person in her head. I’m not focusing on it much because she doesn’t actually know and neither does the flock (I don’t know if they ever figure it out during the series, either), but she has dissociative identity disorder. She’s not aware of her alter(s?). Her alter isn’t super aware of her, either.

The alter that I’ve developed is named Oxy and is not super aware of the outside world. In her eyes, she’s still seven and they’re still at the School. She would not recognize the body as her own if she looked in a mirror.

Nudge actually leaves the flock for a while to pursue her dream of living a normal life. She deserves it. She learns how to make muffins and the basics of software development. These things are unrelated.

Gasman (Birthname: No first name, surname “Falk”)

Honestly, writing Gazzy is kind of hard for me. Partially because I’m not great at writing kids, and partially because I feel like he’s a pretty surface-level character in-series that... isn’t super compelling in canon. But even if that’s the case, I try to treat all of my characters with respect, so here we go. In my rewrite, he escaped when he was four, which was half a lifetime ago for him, so his memories are ill-defined. Therefore, he managed to circumvent a lot of the trauma that the rest of the kids have, and not in the way Nudge did, which is by creating an elaborate blockage in her memories.

Which means Gazzy... really doesn’t know how to deal with all of this traumatic stuff happening. So much of his development turns out to be a coming-of-age narrative. Learning how to deal with the horrors of what his siblings grew up with. Learning the fears that they had the entire time. Losing his innocence when everyone around him never had it in the first place, and being so terribly alone because of it. Because, really, how can you explain such a deep loss to people who never had what he had? How can they help in a way that matters?

Also, relationship-wise, I’m slowly deteriorating the relationship between him and Iggy. Slowly. Or, changing it, at least. Gazzy hero-worships Iggy in-series, and for good reason, because Iggy is super cool, especially in the eyes of an eight-year-old, and especially when Iggy has taken care to cultivate parts of his behaviors to be child-friendly. Part of growing up is seeing the flaws in your heroes, and Gazzy has to learn how to deal with it. End of the series Gazzy is much less closer to Iggy than beginning of the series Gazzy, and neither of them are really okay with that, but they learn to live with it, because that’s really all they can do.

Notes:

I’m keeping the mimickry! It plays a bit of a bigger role because that’s how Gazzy learned to talk. I’m debating whether or not he has his own voice or if he just borrows the flock’s as he sees fit. He also uses it to scream really loudly and occaisonally burst the eardrums of Erasers.

At one point he cosplays as Jessica Jones. No you don’t get any more context than this.

He has a horrible sense of fashion.

I’m changing his name eventually because it sucks. He’s either going to change it to Gannet, Garrison, or Ivy Mike temporarily, and permanently to Zephyr. (I never said I was going to make his name GOOD, because he’s eight, but it’s changing. You’re welcome.)

Angel (Birthname: No first name, surname “Falk”)

It’s just... a completely different character, at this point. I’ve changed so many things about her in an attempt to make her consistent and act like a six-year-old and work in the whole “telepath before she has a solid sense of identity”, so it’s a different character. Also, I’m tired of writing coherently or in paragraphs, so have some interesting facts.

She has epilepsy! Super severe epilepsy! I think she might also develop juvenile MS in the future because her brain has so many scars from being a fucking six-year-old telepath. There’s no way she could get out of that unscathed.

She has more memories of the school than Gazzy, but only because she keeps accidentally reading the minds of Max, Fang, and Iggy. On a related note, she interacts with Iggy as little as possible.

The mind reading means that she has a hard time developing as a normal child with a normal sense of identity or reality. She can’t tell how much people are individual people and how much they’re just extensions of her. Conversely, she can’t tell how much of herself is actually her instead of the thoughts/opinions/identities of someone else. It’s... kinda fucked? But also super not-her-fault.

She’s albino because white wings. Also, because I thought it was cool. This also means that her vision sucks, though. Also she has the biggest straw sunhat and the most stylish sunglasses a six-year-old can have.

She’s responsible for Max shaving her hair off.

She has the highest swear count because I think it’s funny. She’s the only person allowed to say the fuck word in writing. Everyone else can only say ‘hell’ and the occasionally ‘damn’ but she can say whatever she wants for dramatic and comedic value.

She is NOT THE FUCKING VOICE, J*MES P*TTERSON.

Honorable Mentions

Jeb

I’m skipping Jeb because of how little I care about him. He’s a little bitch, next character.

Ari

STILL HASN’T BEEN REVEALED AS AN ERASER. I’ve been writing for 50,000 words and he’s over here saying ‘nope nope not yet, not dramatic enough’. He’s had speaking lines but has refused to make himself known to Max. I am so frustrated with this seven-year-old wolf-child that I’ve already considered how I would kill him, if I decide I want to kill yet another child in my writing.

So, my main thoughts for Ari is that he... really just drew the short end of the stick in every possible way. While Jeb didn’t sign him up for Eraser expirimentation, he didn’t do anything to stop it, and pretty much cut his losses when he realized this expiriment made a wreck of his ‘perfect, unflawed’ son, because Jeb doesn’t consider children of any species to actually be humans. So, Ari really hates his dad, which makes things complicated, because he also really loves his dad and really wants his approval.

Which means that he also really hates Max, because she’s the child that always got Jeb’s time and attention, even when Ari was human. I think, on some level, he knows that trying to tear Max down to a less-favored level isn’t actually going to help his situation— infighting for the love of an abusive parent won’t make them any less abusive— but he’s also seven, and his development is already severely stunted due to becoming an Eraser, and he doesn’t see ‘leaving ITEX’ as an option like the Flock does. ITEX is his everything. It’s all he’s ever known, and they tell him he’s doing the right thing, and he wants them to love him. He wants his father to love him. He knows that if he ever questions ITEX, his father will never love him. So it must be his older sister that’s ruining his life and being a horrible child, and once Ari drags her back down to his level, Jeb will realize who the best child is and love him properly again.

Ari, on an even deeper level, does care for Max quite a bit, because she’s his older sister and he wants that to mean something in a way that ‘Jeb being his father’ obviously doesn’t. He wants what she made for herself, and he hates the Flock because she loves them and obviously doesn’t love him.

Ari, if anything, is the product of neglect, and both loves and hates everyone who shows a chance of caring about him. And he’s seven, so he can’t notice these patterns, let alone break them.

So. Notes!

He doesn’t look like an adult. I thought that was gross and unnecessary. He’s seven, but he looks closer to thirteen or fourteen. Still young enough that he looks like every Eraser’s little brother, and the Erasers high-key treat him like it.

On a related note, he’s the only Eraser who can talk. The others don’t have the mental capacity or vocal structure to replicate human speech, but they can understand language (at about the level of a two or three year old) and are very good at nonverbal communication. This is why Ari managed to climb the ranks despite only having three years of “service” and also looking like a tween.

He doesn’t have an expiration date because that is SUCH a stupid plot point.

I’m giving him a chainsaw! I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but he deserves to have a chainsaw and GODDAMN I will give it to him.

Emergency and Gene

The OCs that I love and also killed pre-series. They don’t have any scenes, because they’re dead, but their deaths greatly effected Max, Fang, and Iggy, and they are very commonly referenced. Their voices are probably Max’s most common hallucination, to the point where she sometimes pretends they’re ghosts that she can talk to. They’re not ghosts. They’re dead.

Dr. Valencia Martinez

I’m actually keeping her pretty close to canon— loving, supportive, the type of person to take in a gsw victim with minimal questions. The difference is that rather than kindness fueling her actions, it’s incredible guilt. She has three goals surrounding Max: Give her as much support in any way she can, teach her as much about chicane culture as possible, and never let Max know that she’s her birth parent.

(She’s probably going to fail at AT LEAST two of those, but it’s the thought that counts.)

Notes:

She has a pet fox named Robin Hood that she rescued from an exotic animal salesman that got arrested.

I think I’m going to kill her. I don’t know yet, but it’s on the table.

Anne Walker

Y’know, the fake FBI Agent. Who’s not actually a fake in my story because I hated that plot point. She’s genuinely an FBI agent who put the Flock into pseudo-witness-protection in order to build a case against the Institute of Higher Living, accidentally got attached to her prime witnesses, raised them for a few months, realized a [SPOILER] and promptly had to let them get the hell out dodge.

I really like the Anne Walker that lives in my head. She is a VITAL part of the Flock’s development, their mental/emotional recovery, and adding to their safety net to fall back on. She serves them as their first adult role model, and is the first adult to show them what parent/child are supposed to look like from a healthy perspective. Though she has several fuck ups, she becomes someone that the Flock genuinely trusts and loves, which makes it all the more difficult for them to leave when [REDACTED].

Notes:

She and Max do butt heads initially, because Max is paranoid and also afraid of becoming uneeded. This ends up being incredibly important because Max needs to learn how to live and find meaning in life without being the designated Leader/Parent/Big Sister

Anne, at one point, sits the entire flock down to teach them about consent, which was something no one ever talked about with them before. She goes in talking specifically about consent in a romantic/sexual sense (because they’re fourteen and that’s something they need to know), but quickly turns into a full-fledged no, people are NOT allowed to do that to you, what the FUCK.

She’s responsible for giving the flock a laptop. It’s because Angel is online schooled (bc telepathy makes actually learning difficult) and was therefore provided with a computer.

Anne is also allowed to swear, but only when it’s funny.

Michael “Grey” Rivers

Aka Grey from the Sewers Aka GR3Y H47 Aka Mike from the Bronx Aka Gifted Child Syndrome Incarnate Aka Would-be-in-MIT-if-his-parents-weren’t-horrible. He’s my son, your honour.

Basically, his backstory boils down to him being a genius, getting into MIT at 14, his (horrible) parents wanting a perfect child who could “make it out” of the Bronx and represent his family/neighborhood/borough to the world. When he inevitably failed their expectations due to stress, a schizophrenic-spectrum disorder that completely alienated him from the rest of his support network, and refusing to take his psych meds because the side effects were horrible and they made it harder to think (and therefore pass his classes), they kicked him out. He fully intends to go back to MIT when he turns 18 and has control of his finances/scholarships/medication/therapy.

So that’s how the flock meets him.

Mike ends up in a very prominent support role for the flock both in technological persuits (helping them track their parents, helping them get information from ITEX, trying to disable Max’s chip and failing multiple times until it becomes a matter of personal honour—), in helping the older members of the flock figure out how to deal with hallucinations/delusions (because he’s actually been to therapy, unlike them), and in being one of the only people who talks to them and helps them without any ulterior motive. He’s not trying to build a case against ITEX/The Institute of Higher Learning, he’s not double crossing them, he’s not plagued with guilt. He just genuinely wants to help them, and they genuinely want to help him, and that’s their first introduction to a healthy, non-codependent relationship.

My many disorganized notes on Michael Rivers:

He’s from specifically Morris Heights, Bronx, NYC.

He would say that his last name is actually Rivera, but his grandparents changed it to Rivers so it would sound more English, and his family has been in America for so long that he doesn’t know much about any Latino heritage he may or may not have. He identifies as African American, not Afro-Latino. He’s just bitter that his family felt the need to change their surname to have better opportunities in New York.

Nudge aggressively befriends him pretty much the moment she meets him, bullies him into teaching her how to code, and he very quickly adopts her as his pseudo-little-sister.

His delusions in the book seemed to involve government conspiracies, but as that’s the one delusion that is proved correct in the book, I’ve decided it would be best if his delusions and reality intersected a bit less if I don’t want to write him having a manic/paranoid episode in the second scene he has screen time. So his delusions are more based on “none of this is real”, “someone is recording everything I do and setting me up to fail” and “my ill-wishes on people can and will come true if I dwell on them too long.”. Government conspiracies are one of things he is skeptical about because he thinks most conspiracies are either “CIA admitted to this twenty years ago” or “antisemitism”.

He’s taking online free college classes that don’t actually give him any college credit, but they have good information and help him feel like he’s working towards something. He plans to double major in computer sciences and electrical engineering, minor in marine biology. He’s wanted to join NOAA since he was twelve and he is nothing if not stubborn.

There you go. These are my characters, now. I have custody.

#maximum ride on main #Maximum Ride rewrite

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oldsmobile-hotdogs · 4 years ago

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Questions for crossover jatp ghosts crossover fic: I hope Julian and the sunset curve boys talk about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Yugoslav wars that happened when they were alive + Bill Cilnton. I wonder what pat and the band would talk about considering that they would of been kids when pat died? Do you think Julie would think of Les Mis and Hamilton cos Thomas and Kitty are from about the same time period as those musicals? I hope Julie calls Fanny Mary poppins.

Anon, or "Mimi", or "Lulu", or, heck, maybe even "Carl Birtles": Update: Not Carl Birtles. Carl Birtles sent me an ask and is cool, actually.

Stop. Right now. I'd say stop while you're ahead, but you are so far away from ahead at this point it's laughable.

For everyone confused, this is that "commenter from AO3" I joked about making a 2017-esque story time video about.

A couple days ago I uploaded the first chapter of a Julie and the Phantoms/BBC Ghosts crossover fic.

You know what? I’m gonna promo it here bc it’s my callout post and I can shill if I want to: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30681704/chapters/76661471

It was generally very well received and I've had a blast interacting with readers.

Except for this.

Honestly, there's so much to get into, so I’m putting it under a cut:

This was their first correspondence (email notif bc I deleted the comment, the deletion to be explained later):

(Funnily enough, the links very much do not work on AO3, making the comment only more jarring)

I gave you *so much* benefit of the doubt when I saw this comment, and assumed that maybe you're an ESL user, just very enthusiastic to share ideas, and I pretty much said so in my reply, but know that at that point I'd already had friends- who fucking know about this, don't you dare think you're getting me alone- tell me that you were being very demanding.

Below was my reply (another email notif):

I'm gonna be honest, I think I responded really well to what I was given, and now that I'd replied, I was pretty certain the situation was dealt with. You, evidently, didn't agree, as shown by your reply to my reply:

A word of advice: when replying to someone, at least pretend like you read what they wrote.

At this point I'm left wondering two things:

What do they expect from me, if a general reply is not it?

How much more shit do they have waiting to tell me to put in my- reminder, JATP/BBC Ghosts crossover, rated T, comedic- fic?

In order to avoid finding out either, I freeze the thread on AO3. I'm liveblogging all of this on Discord.

It's then that I notice that the username on AO3 isn't clickable, so even if I wanted to block or report them I couldn't. I assume, therefore, that they've deactivated, and since them seeing their comments gone and getting angry was the only thing stopping me deleting the comments, I delete the comments.

It's also at this point I see "Mimi" never left kudos. I guess I don't deserve praise until I mention "Bill Cilnton".

There's relative calm for a short amount of time, until I get another comment:

This one is much kinder than the others and doesn't mention any specific, weird, historical events, so the extent to which I think this is "Mimi" is debatable, but bestie I'm weirded out enough that anything that even uses the enter bar unnecessarily and misses out conjunctive words like "because" and "and" is going to activate fight or flight. Update: Carl Birtles is not Mimi or Lulu. Carl was just being genuinely kind and I misinterpreted it and that's on me.

However, "Carl"'s case is not helped by the fact I can't click his account either, that AO3 offers me the ability to report it as spam, and that guess who replies to "Carl"'s comment: Update: Carl, having done nothing wrong as he has, is therefore also a victim in the situation that is being replied to by Lulu. It would seem Lulu is trying to correct??? some of Carl's commentary.

You must think I didn't get a 7 on my English Literature GCSE because you seem to underestimate my ability to compare two texts.

So clearly this is "Mimi", who has also just replied to "Carl". "Lulu" is also deactivated, and I've fallen off the end of my tether, let alone reached it, at this point so I mark it as spam. "Carl" gets to stay bc he said the idea for the crossover was good. Update: Carl also gets to continue to stay because I have it on good faith that he's a stand-up dude.

So at this point you've readily admitted through your inability to shake up your writing style to using at least one sockpuppet to convince me to talk about the "Yugoslav wars".

If "Carl Birtles" is the real(-est) of them, and "Mimi" and "Lulu" are the sockpuppets, by the way, I have questions and ideas about what you do on your free evenings and I want them neither confirmed nor answered. Update: This is slanderous and I want to apologise wholeheartedly to Carl for making assumptions about him and judging his character. Once again, he is not Mimi or Lulu. He's just a normal, cool guy.

And now you come to me, on the day of my daughter's wedding on a different platform, leave me an anon ask in the exact same format as you're so fond of, and expect any different ??

Well, yeah, then I guess I'll give you special treatment this time.

Here's exactly why I will never include anything you have told me to include:

Julian and the Phantoms discussing the Berlin Wall would be highly inappropriate for the largely fluffy, cracky tone of my fanfiction, especially given how recently the event occurred, how many Eastern Germans still experience prejudice to this day because they were born within the old borders of the DDR, and because of how nuanced this, essentially proxy war, was and how ill-informed a huge amount of the world is on the actual factors in play during this time and the Cold War in general.

Julian and the Phantoms will not discuss Yugoslavia dissolving, nor the fallout and conflict that resulted, because it was genocidal. There is nowhere I can fit Julian, pantsted, casually asking Luke “hey do you remember when the Herzegovinas were killed en masse by the Serbs?” Not gonna happen.

They won’t discuss Bill Clinton because all of them know who the current world leaders are: they don’t have amnesia, they’re ghosts. The fic is also rated T, so it would be inappropriate to make any explicit reference to “sexual relations”. None of them play saxophone.

Julie wouldn’t think of Les Mis or Hamilton because Thomas is Regency, not French Revolution, and Kitty is Georgian, not Colonial.

Julie won’t be calling Fanny Mary Poppins because she is perpetually stuck in a white dress, doesn’t wear a hat, doesn’t own an umbrella or a purse and was not the nanny or housekeeper of Button House.

The ghosts will not discuss the marvels of modern transportation or how long it would’ve taken to cross the Atlantic on dinghy because the ghosts have seen Friends. The house irl is on a flight path. They know airplanes exist. Alison and Mike pulled up in a car.

I will probably have the phantoms and Willie talk to Pat and Julian about being from the ‘80s and ‘90s. That I will actually probably do.

The Captain will not mention FD Roosevelt because, again, they all know who the current world leaders are, and I doubt he expects a ‘90s pop punk band to have any insider knowledge on the man.

It was interesting to think of the phantoms’ grandparents having been alive during WW2. I wasn’t lying. But there is nearly nothing I can do with this information.

But above all: both sets of ghosts have already adapted to modern life. Because the shows are shorter, and meant to actually be able to fit jokes in them.

If you want to see any of this, write your own damn fic. I don’t own the concept of a JATP/BBC Ghosts crossover.

What you will not do, “consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel”-nim, is hound me on multiple accounts and then change platform to hound me again. I’m absolutely not having it.

I have never received an interaction quite like this before, and I cannot help but wonder if this is because this is my first work in the Ghosts/HH/Them There/Six Idiots/Yonderland/Bill fandom: that this is where you primarily camp out.

So it’s at this point I ask the Them There/Six Idiots fandom if they have/if they know anyone who has had a run-in with this person or thinks they may have, or if anyone perhaps even knows who this is? Maybe I’m just one of many. Maybe this is a necessary fandom evil I was unaware of.

This experience has left me royally freaked out, as one might imagine, especially since my anxiety in general has been acting up due to it being exam season. I want to thank everyone who’s read my rambles on Discord and on here and even listened to them irl and offered support from the bottom of my heart.

I’ve enabled comment moderation on the fic. I will continue to write it, and I will put exactly what I, and only what I, want in it.

Believe it or not, I wanted to do literally anything else today.

Anon: Fucking Leave Me Alone.

Update: Just reiterating: Carl is not Mimi or Lulu. Carl is a cool dude and I want to sincerely apologise for having brought him into this mess, passing judgment on his character, and making him feel like he should stop practicing English online.

#ask #anon #callout post #ig #rant #parish notice #jatp #julie and the phantoms #bbc ghosts #ghosts #fic #fanfic #ao3 #literally any information about this would be helpful #six idiots #them there #horrible histories #yonderland #bill

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jcmorrigan · 5 years ago

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Right, since you asked me questions about my f/o, I'll fire some at you now! 1. Favourite place to go with them 2. How do you care for them when they are ill and vice versa 3. Had any playful arguments that you look at and go 'what were we doing??' I'll slide these over here and be on my way ;3

All right! So, as a reminder, I have three (3) romantic f/o’s - XR from Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Tony Dracon from Gargoyles, and Giovanni Potage from Epithet Erased. And for this exercise, I am going to answer all three questions FOR ALL THREE OF THEM! (If you’re following me for something other than selfship and you don’t wanna see me ramble for three pages, please block the tag “selfship” now)

1. FAVORITE PLACE TO GO!

I hadn’t realized until I thought about it, but it always seems to come back to a rooftop in the city. You think I like city lights or something? I do. I love city lights. I love cities.

Anyway, with XR, I decided right away that our favorite planet is Trade World, seedy underbelly and all. We can kill time there forever (and probably waste all our money on stuff that isn’t important). I haven’t written it yet, but one of the ideas I had for writing us was that after the big love confession, we’d have our first date on a rooftop restaurant there and watch the lights come on as the sun set, at which point I very sappily draw a connection between my love of city lights and XR’s eyes.

As for Giovanni, I have this whole oneshot about our first kiss that revolves around us trying to find the most perfect and fittingly dramatic place for it, and I ended up putting us on a rooftop at the edge of town where the Sweet Jazz skyline would be our background in all its luminescent glory. I imagine we’d go back up to that building again and again to talk about things if we’re not chilling at home or a base of operations. Just watching the night.

Then for Tony? I admittedly hadn’t given it too much thought, but I immediately got an image of us on, guess what, a rooftop, but of a skyscraper in downtown NYC. Now, Gio and I had to break onto ours by scaling the fire escape ladders; Tony would bust locks and we’d just take the stairs up from the inside. And that’s where we slow-dance when we want to be alone. Bring up a whole portable stereo and a mix of the schmaltziest love rock-ballads (think, like, REO Speedwagon or Journey). Come to think of it, I actually don’t know whether he’s made the connection that the Gargoyles operate out of the Eyrie, so we would definitely look at the freaking castle above the clouds and go “Next target” without knowing the law and order of the town that plagues our existence roosts there.

I’m also working on an AU that is compliant with my “Taking Back the Crown” crossover universe, and in that one, I’m thinking I’d be polyamorous with all three. While I haven’t picked a favorite spot, I do know that particular s/i would live in Twilight Town, and since Final Fantasy is piecemeal AU’d into KH logic (whereas none of those three are from canon KH worlds but it’s an easy crossover gateway so their worlds would just be intact), I actually have this design that Rabanastre from FFXII would be the capital of the nation Twilight Town is in and a few hours’ train ride away, and the four of us just LOVE heading over there and probably scaling some rooftops.

2. CARING FOR THE SICK!

Let’s start with me, in general. I’m a huge hypochondriac. I fear germs. I’m not really that good at taking care of sick friends/family, but for a romantic partner, I’d try to step up my game. I’d be on call. Now, if they were just ordinary sick, I might see if they’d be okay staying home while I got work done, with the caveat that I have my phone on me and can answer whenever. They’re stricken with debilitating nausea and can’t leave the bed? I’ll play hooky. But I’ll try to keep a reasonable distance whenever possible (chatting with them from across the room, where I am planted in a chair that is far away from the bed) and use a surgical mask and gloves whenever approaching. Yes, that may sound heartless, but I still wanna be available to bring them whatever they need, just with my armor on. And I’m not me unless I’m a raging hypochondriac who thinks she’s coming down with what her boyfriend’s got every five seconds. The exception, of course, is XR, who I envision would get sick as a visual gag of having a “computer virus” and exhibit all the symptoms of a head cold without actually being contagious.

Tony is low-maintenance and insists he doesn’t need to be babied, so he’s not gonna even ask me for that much except company. Giovanni and XR are both absolutely complainers and going to whine at me every five minutes, which will inevitably make my heart melt.

As for when I’m sick…

XR loves playing “nurse” (kinda like I had him in this oneshot where I sprain my shoulder) and will get me everything I want. This is for somewhat selfish reasons so I will talk up how great of a boyfriend he is when I’m sick. Also, there’s a good chance that any medical supplies he brings me might be “borrowed without permission” from Star Command’s med bay. He WILL bring me illegal narcotics, and I WILL turn them down. He’ll also call in sick to work himself to take care of me - and also because it gives him an excuse to not turn in to work. We’ll likely end up binging shows cuddled up together if I’m not sleepy or too nauseous.

Tony isn’t all that attentive; he knows I’m a grown-up and can mostly handle myself. If I’m seriously incapacitated, he’ll watch over me, but in most cases, he’ll take off to get his own work done, same philosophy as me: call me if you need anything. He’s not gonna rush to bring me things, but he will do smaller gestures - brushing my hair back if I’m asleep before he leaves, etc. After business is taken care of, if I seem stable and not contagious, he’ll assist me in setting up on the couch with blankets aplenty on one end while he sits on the other, and really, all my f/o’s know that when I’m sick, I just wanna binge TV shows, so that’s what we do.

Giovanni freaks out. He also wants to get me everything I need, but he’s kinda not used to taking care of sick people, so he’ll be running around like a headless chicken asking me if I need various medical supplies that don’t at all apply to the kind of illness I have (such as a splint or a tourniquet). And soup. He will bring me so much soup. Hey, he’s good at making it, so I’m not gonna complain. He also does unfortunately think cuddling will make things better, and want to sit in bed next to me or kiss me for reassurance. I tell him over and over and over that that’s just gonna get him sick. Less than 24 hours later, he’s caught what I have, and I’m just “GEE, I WONDER HOW THAT HAPPENED.”

3. PETTY ARGUMENTS!

XR and I are built on petty arguments. He fulfills my fantasies of a relationship based on tsundere rivalry. We will find things to argue about for fun. This is how we get our kicks. I call him a dumbass, he calls me a narcissist, we don’t mean it (…mostly). He once caught me singing and dancing, thinking I was alone, and taped it and circulated it as a meme. He thinks it’s hilarious if I trip and fall. Conversely, I think it’s hilarious if he runs into things when he’s not looking where he’s going. I keep a running record of stupidest spelling mistakes he’s made and will trot them out whenever appropriate. At the end of the day, though, we set it all aside. Don’t let anyone know we’re actually nice to each other behind closed doors!

Tony and I basically argue about one petty thing: the fact that he CANNOT DRIVE. Is there canon precedent to this? Not really, except for the fact that his henchmen always seem to be driving the getaway car. But I have it in my head that the people in our operation who should be driving are me, Pal Joey, and Glasses. The person in our operation who should not be driving is Tony. Guess which one of the four asks most often to drive? Yeah. And sometimes he wears us down and we have to deal with him nearly killing us by driving 20 mph above the speed limit. IN DOWNTOWN NEW YORK. THE POLICE CHASE HASN’T EVEN STARTED. If there is one thing that is the subject of our married-couple spats, it is THIS.

Arguing with Giovanni is more of a minefield because we both have a habit of pretending we’re not sensitive about certain things until one of us rags on that certain thing and then it explodes. I have a oneshot idea, may or may not write it, in which he insults my “nerd glasses” like he always does with Sylvie, and I’m legitimately hurt but trying not to show it, so I engage in a rivalry argument with him that lasts all day, up until he jokingly says that I have delusions of grandeur and I just say “Well, at least I don’t think I’m qualified to be captain when I’m not” about myself when I realize that my lack of filter made it sound like I insinuated he wasn’t qualified to be captain, at which point he will actually start crying and insist to me that words hurt. Everything’s made better when we sit down and have an honest talk about what we said that hurt each other and then hug it out.

#selfship #electric love #xrach #death by cupcakes #i'm at soup!#four of hearts

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reginasrandomthoughts · 8 years ago

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So when I finished reading chapter 4 (”Survival”) of A History of the World in 10 and a half chapters I knew that that was pretty much the end of the progress I made today with my reading list. For one, I have stuff to say about and for two, I have other stuff and exams to prepare for. (Hey, ho! Icons on Film essay, I am so not happy to see you)

So, I usually ramble on for myself and I have no structure to anything at all, so here I will try something different, and just write small reminders for me about each element or theme. Or will try. I know me and I have no illusions left.

I think that it is only fitting to start with the reindeer since that is what the story starts with. The reindeer that had premonition on Noah’s Ark and tried to run away from man, who will bring that bad thing on. The reindeer and animal cruelty.

Animal cruelty, animals paying for man’s sin is an established theme at this point and here it is very explicit: the Soviets exploded a nuclear bomb over Siberia and the radioactivity poisoned the food the reindeer ate and that poisoned the reindeer. But what humans cared about was that they could not eat its meat anymore. Since it became inedible for humans and they did not want to bury it, they fed it to an animal they thought unpleasant: the mink. This is how the story presents it. The mink of course gets slaughtered for its fur to make coats out of it and it still gets to humans, but the kind who would wear that coat presumably does not care about the radioactivity.

Another point of animal cruelty is the cats. Her boyfriend, Greg argues that they need to neuter Paul, the cat because he is too aggressive. Kath (whose name’s similarity to the word cat probably is not a coincidence) wholeheartedly disagrees. She thinks that mutilating an animal is a sin. ( I kinda agree with her on this. As a fellow owner of a male cat). But Greg is not the only one who is cruel to animals to fit his needs: in one version of the story Kath picks up another cat, Linda and keeps them on a boat with her and nearly starves them to death bc she is ignoring reality.

Now, here is a quote from p87:

“Burying things gives you a proper sense of shame. Look what we’ve done to the reindeer, they’d say as hey dug the pit. Or they might, at least. They might think about it. Why are we always punishing animals? We pretend to like them, keep them as pets and get soppy if we think they’re reacting like us, but we’ve been punishing animals from the beginning, haven’t we? Killing them and torturing them and throwing our guilt at them?”

For Kath this is purely a reference to the reindeer and what the government did to them. But she also connects to it through bringing in another topic, the inability to face reality and projecting. Out of Kath’s two alternative storylines she is torturing her animals: she disregards reality and does not notice that she is hurting them, argues that she is doing something good for them, feeding them fish (that she has no problem killing) but in reality she is starving them. An argument for this timeline can be made by her first claim that she feeds fish only to the cats while she eats canned food. She does not eat fish, because there is no fish to be eaten and reverts to eating the hallucination when she runs out of real food. In the alternative story, Kath’s reality, she is projecting her guilt on them, regardless of how real that version is. She is saying that she left everything behind to save them, as a modern Noah, she acts like protecting them will make her life better and wash the human sin off of her. And in case she is starving them, she projects her guilt onto them via the illusion: she feels guilty so she pretends they are getting fatter rather than thinner.

Since both the upper mentioned topics are still very big and interconnected let’s tackle two smaller ones first discrimination and abuse (and Kath).

Discrimination is going to be the easiest to start with, because I already talked about it. It is a major theme of the book. So far we have seen humans discriminating between animal species (ch1), humans discriminating between human nationalities (ch2), humans discriminating between species (human and animal in ch3) and now we see humans discriminate between genders. Kath and Greg, I am sorry to say, are both sexist: Greg thinks Kath is stupid and doesn’t get what the men are talking about because she is a woman. He degrades her by calling her a cow, he figuratively lowers her to the level of an animal, to something less than human. Kath, in turn views all men as irredeemable. All the man must be like Greg because to Kath Greg is the “typical bloke” and since he is an abusive jackass, the antagonist of her life, all men must be villains as well.

And Greg is abusive. He slaps Kath around, he degrades her, he belittles her. Yet Kath says that this is typical. Ordinary:

“Greg was an ordinary bloke. Not that I wanted anything different when I met him he went to work, came home, sat down, drank beer, went out with his mates and drank more beer, sometimes slapped me around a bit on pay-night. We got on fair enough.”

To Kath, him hitting her, a man hitting a woman is ordinary. Just part of the package. She was not looking for anything else. She oddly enough draws a direct connection between him hitting her and them getting on well by putting the two sentences next to each other. And from the hospital storyline (I am calling it that) we learn that that is, indeed, the case: Kath was looking for someone just like Greg, someone abusive, that she has a history with dating men like that, that she has Persistent Victim Syndrome. Now, in one timeline this is bollocks. In the other Kath is ignoring reality, really hard: she ignores that Greg being abusive is not okay, she ignores her dating history, she ignores the break-up. In this timeline there is no war, there is just one big fight, a bad break-up, the fall-out, and a post-Greg timeline, where kath is pushed to the breaking point and reality starts to slip because of all the stress and abuse of her life, and perhaps a natural tendency to ignore reality.

Kath has a tendency to ignore reality. She believes that reindeer can fly just so she can believe that anything is possible. Her faith in that is unshakable. She is a sensitive, deeply empathetic woman who is easily touche by the suffering of animals and is attuned to the stress and dangers of her time. She has a tendency to cling to the unreal even in the face of evidence to the contrary and she may or may not be going insane.

As a throwaway, I found it interesting that her name is Ferris. The first associations from that, for me, are ferris wheel, something that is just going round and round in circles, and ferryboat and ferry as in carry something. With these associations Kathleen Ferris fits into the theme about Noah and his animals: she like Noah gets on a boat to carry her animals to safety, but in the hospital timeline she ends up delusional and going in a circle, like a ferris wheel and, as she points out, humanity. In her-reality timeline, she insists that she is starting over again, and if that is the case she is starting again from the beginning, her being the new Noah, but purely for cats. Also in the hospital timeline, she herself becomes the ferryboat, carrying these ideas in her own head taking them away from reality, that has become uninhabitable for her. She says she does not look at the way she came because she does not intend to go back and in the end she makes up her mind to accept the her-reality to be the real reality.

Now as the finale let’s talk about the two timeline of events and how ignoring reality and projecting comes into play. There are two possible timelines:

In the hospital timeline Kath breaks up with Greg and that combined with the stress of a looming nuclear war makes her snap and she becomes delusional, believing that the war did broke out and that she needs to get her cat, and the other cat she randomly picked up, away from the war. She gets stuck on a boat where she goes around in circles while her cats starve. She becomes ill and tears her hair out but gets rescued and has lucid moments in the hospital that she interprets as a hallucination until she finally retreats into her make-believe world.

The other timeline, the her-reality is where everything is as Kath says: the war breaks out she grabs the cats, gets onto the boat, feeds them fish, gets sick from the whatever poison got into the air, finds an island where her cat Linda gives birth to the kitten of her other cat, Paul.

Now, me being a born pessimist, I lean towards the hospital timeline. But I guess each to their own? I guess. Anyway, what we are talking about is themes and not definitive answers. The Theme of ignoring reality play a part in both of those and roughly the same way.

In the hospital timeline Kath ignores reality from the point onwards when she broke up with Greg, so everything after that is just her blocking out reality. To her a fictional reality where she can step away from the complicated human society that has so many stress-inducing problems is appealing even at the cost of having the new reality that probably most people are dead now and the air is poison. This post-apocalyptic fantasy is escapism, escape from humanity, its sins, its problems. And Kath can escape from her own life and own choices as well: the choice to date Greg, the break up, everything. And because she retreats from reality she has to project her own into its place: her reality.

Her reality is that humans are ignoring the signs (we are) and that it has gotten t a point where the nuclear war broke out without anyone noticing. They are ignoring the reality to project a peace and to push the responsibility to solve the problem onto someone else. Now, in this line of events the flashes from the hospital-timeline are the delusions: they are Kath’s struggle to let go of the old world, to fight against escaping into a fantasy land where all of this is just a bad dream and she is just sick but will get better.

So from the perspective of the themes it really doesn’t matter which timeline is correct.

#Regina shitposts literature #getting better at it? idk but i hope so #i hereby declare these posts my daily writing practice that are here to get me to write more #next step is to write when i am not dead tired and can actually think #the history of the world in ten and a half chapters

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