#(Chances are they didn't implement the feature until later on. But still.)

[rad-hound]

Just realized that a good chunk of my reposts on Bluesky didn't tag properly with the # function, and there isn't an edit button for posts. 🙃

[ty-bayonet-betteridge]

@hyperfocusedcloneshipper chapter 2!

Ty had posed Edgar about four dozen more questions about Mustardseed, Base, and himself,

the separation of questions about Mustardseed and questions about Edgar is interesting. this narration is somewhat from the POV of Edgar, so it shows a split in how Edgar views his actions - apparently considering Mustardseed as a persona adopted as a means to an end rather than another name for himself.

most of which Edgar refused to answer.

Edgar withholding information about Base is also interesting - other characters withhold information from Ty out of loyalty, but Edgar doesn't have any loyalty to Base, only to OVER!Mike. the reason is that the information is currently the only resource he has at his disposal; if ANYTHING is going to be useful, its information, since he doesnt have any power through direct access right now.

"It's fine. With the size of your compound, it's only natural that you'd run into space issues every now and then." Edgar's smile dripped with venom.

Edgar, didnt anyone ever tell you size doesnt matter?

issuing a 'correction,' as you call it

does the Compound not call them corrections? is that established in canon? i guess they do split them into more categories, Retrieval for instance, so its possible that corrections isnt in their lexicon.

Edgar got into the shower in case they were watching him. He didn't need one of course, he was a morning-shower sort of person; he just wanted Ty out of the room so he could think.

this is another instance where i think i maybe could have left Edgar's explicit motivations out of the picture and trusted my audience to pick up on it, though im not sure how many people remember the episode where its established in canon that Edgar takes morning showers. (its... 46, i think? 45? somewhere in there.)

To do that, he'd have to get Michael to suggest it. That shouldn't be too hard. Michael was stubborn, but he was also haunted by his guilt. All he had to do was play into that - emphasize the horrors of the compound, the trauma that he'd be facing if he stayed here. If Michael felt guilty enough, he'd look for a way to let Edgar and Mikey go.

Edgars plan was to guilt-trip Michael into letting him walk free which is very funny to me, especially because it might have WORKED if he had the chance to do it :P also, i think this is a good characterization for Mustardseed - this sort of very level-headed and straightforward evaluation of the situation which amounts to "i am going to exploit this mans guilt over his dead husband until he does what i want" is the sort of thing that makes Edgar and especially Mustardseed so beautifully fucked up.

He'd been doing pretty good coming up with plans on his own recently. With any luck, he'd be out of here and back to his Mikey in a week or two. They might still be working for Base, but he could iron that out once he was out.

oh my little schemer you just never stop huh <3

Then he heard gunshots. A shotgun and a pistol.

Edgar's living rooms must be pretty close to the experimental quarters for him to be able to hear Michael's breakout. i dont think thats necessarily unrealistic, but it is convenient for storytelling purposes. whatever, its a story, conveniences for the sake of such are a natural thing.

"Mm. What time is it, Ty?" "I'm afraid I can't tell you that, standard protocol. It's time to be up, is the time it is! Lots to do today."

compound subjects not being allowed to know the time as a safety feature was established in season 4. its never made clear if thats a standard protocol or just something for mikey in that one season, but i think it makes sense as the former so i implemented it here.

His body clock told him he'd been asleep for a normal amount of time - given his schedule, that meant it was maybe eight, nine in the morning, since he'd gone to bed a little later than usual.

this assumption only works if the time he was transported to is the same as the time he was transported from which is a WILD assumption to make and not one i wouldve expected from Edgar. its very careless for him.

"Changed in what way?" Edgar tried to keep his voice neutral.

"tried to keep his voice neutral" is a bad way to frame that sentence, i shouldve mentioned the specific emotion he was feeling that he had to suppress there. anxiety or panic, probably. whatever. i dont like to do editing :P

"Ah, you see, Michael escaped last night." Ty said this casually, in a way that made it seem like he didn't care. "What?"

Ty in this scene is on CLOUD FUCKING NINE he got everything he wanted without lifting a finger.

I have decided not to correct this incident, since we still have other Michaels under our care to rebuild with - but it does mean that Michael has violated his agreement with us.

technically Michael didnt do anything to violate the agreement - he explicitly had to be restrained, tied up, and transported against his will because he DIDNT want to break said agreement. but Ty has no reason to frame things that way, so he doesnt.

Edgar was quiet for a while. "Is this a trick to make me obedient, Ty?" "Certainly not! Cross my heart." "And I'm sure you'd tell me if it was." "Well, I like to think so, but no amount of reassurances I give can necessarily convince you, and I think you know that. So let's not waste any more time talking about it, hm?"

this is almost identical to a conversation Ty has with one of the Mikes at some point and i dont remember the context but its a very Ty Betteridge way to approach the question "are you lying to me"

Here - I know I'm no Mike, but what if we had that breakfast together?

"i may be one of your worst enemies instead of your husband but im just as good right?" mr. betteridge there is something wrong with you

Biscuits and gravy? I know you're gluten intolerant, but with access to every restaurant across time and space, I'm sure I can find somewhere that can accommodate your diet that we can get the food here from.

this is one of the subtle ploys that i DONT point out explicitly so i'll talk about it here - whereas Edgar had to tell Michael it was okay for him to have gluten once, Ty explicitly says that they're going to get gluten-free biscuits and gravy for him, implicitly suggesting that he cares for Edgar's wants and needs more than Michael does

"Alright, sure. I'd love to."

he said like a goddamn liar

i forgot how Short this chapter was lol

Gimme directors commentary for Two Liars Lying To Eachother please!

its been a while since ive thought about this fic in any capacity lksajdaskdfld lets see if it still holds up! directors commentary for chapter 1, i'll be doing the others separately later :D

Each of his hands was cuffed to one of the table's legs, somewhat restraining his motion. He hated it; he preferred being able to fidget.

autism edgar but this also isnt the sort of autism i tend to see him as having? idk the idea of edgar stimming is very weird to me

That was a somewhat good sign. He took another glance at the large, mirrored wall of the room, which he had no illusions was reflective on the other side. The only question was whether anyone was in the viewing room to catch his knowing glances.

theres an XKCD about how fun it is to occasionally announce "i know you're listening" to an empty room, because if you're wrong nobody will ever know and if you're right it will freak the HELL out of them. thats basically what Mustardseed is doing here.

According to Michael, he had traded himself in to the compound in exchange for catching Mustardseed - for catching me, Edgar thought, smiling faintly.

seamless exposition, me. i had to establish that this Edgar was Mustardseed, but the narration is roughly tied to his view of things, and Mustardseed doesn't think of himself as Mustardseed, just as Edgar, so the narration couldn't call him Mustardseed.

The door swung open and in came Ty Betteridge. He was a few years older than the last time Edgar had seen him, back when he'd killed him inside of Tier Two on the night Base was formed,

...wasn't that Hunter? or did it become Edgar that killed young!Ty in the post-72 timeline? i am confuse

Well, I appreciate making me feel like a criminal after you plucked me out of the middle of my normal day.

hes so bitchy and for what?

If you're worried about unpredictability, why does the cowboy get to roam free? He's been rather hard to keep under control, in my experience.

i wanted to make it clear just how bitter Edgar is towards all members of Base, so of course five seconds into this conversation he tries to fuck Michael over

Ty's grin was somewhat predatory.

this fic is 90% me looking for different ways to describe smiles. Ty and Mustardseed are both very smiley.

They called you OVEdgaR,

i think im the only person who capitalizes ovedgar that way

"With my husband, yeah." Edgar smiled and raised his left hand to show off the simple wedding band. "Mm. Congrats. Mike told me he wasn't married to you, how odd."

I FORGOT HOW DISMISSIVE TY SOUNDED HERE. he cares of course but

Base Mike and Edgar aren't married.

i try to be very precise about the names characters use for each other, because i think its a very quick way to characterize relationships. Mustardseed always refers to them as "Base Mike" and "Base Edgar", while Ty refers to them as just Mike and Edgar, or possibly Mikey and Edgar, depending on context.

"Hm. You're much less trouble than the Mikes; each one of them ties so much into their name. It's a little exhausting keeping track of them, to be honest." "Well, I never really had trouble with it, but I suppose it is easier if you care about him." Edgar smiled like he hadn't just thrown out the barb. Ty laughed. "I care about Mike Walters more than you can imagine, Panther." Ty grinned, waiting to see if Edgar would respond to the pet name. Edgar kept his face neutral and pleasant.

Edgar definitely won that exchange :P its important to me that Edgar feels like he's in control of the conversation even though he very clearly isnt in control of the situation, because that's the vibe he gave off in ep 84.

Moving on… you established a campaign of terror against Mike's base in an attempt to free yourself and your… husband… from their control. Is that right?

Ty is reading these questions off his clipboard and the prompt on it didnt say "husband," it said "OVER Mike." HOWEVER the pause before saying it was something Ty probably did deliberately to keep up his veneer of indifference.

"I'd rather not put Michael through any more undue stress. He's had a hard couple of days, especially with all the strain you've been putting on him."

this is so funny to me, because it IS another barb, but its also sort of Ty trying to guilt-trip Edgar like thats gonna work??? :P

I have a lot of sympathy for Michael too, but as far as I know, he's never had anyone threaten him at gunpoint to stay in Base.

i'll be honest, he probably has. Michael's seen some shit

"I am sorry for your situation, Edgar, I really am. But you do keep pulling me away from the questions, and the sooner we get these done, the sooner we can get you out of those cuffs and moved to your quarters."

this is a very Ty Betteridge thing to say. like yeah, im sorry that YOU keep delaying me from getting you comfortable. hes so...

So he was listening when Michael and I were talking.

reading it back, i feel like i didnt give the audience enough credit. they probably could have picked up on these little jabs and maneuvering tactics without me having to point them out. anyway yes, ty is doing this interview only half for actual information gathering reasons, the other half is just to waste edgars time as a form of basic psychological warfare

Your Base may be rudimentary, but I believe that you are a smart man, Edgar.

i keep pointing out the little jabs and not having much to say about them, but theyre still so good to me. "i know all your friends are stupid but i didnt think you were too"

"Sometimes smart people do dumb things in the heat of passion." "And is that the only reason you made those thirty-two duplicates?" "It's the only reason I'm going to be telling you."

i'll be honest, i have no idea what i was hinting at here. i think canon at one point suggested there might have been an ulterior motive to the Mustardseed escapees, but i didn't make any sort of plan for what that might be. if i had to retroactively justify it, i'd say Mustardseed's future scouting told him that the escapees would be consolidated into MW, and that MW's existence was important to his plans somehow.

"I've got all day, Ty." Edgar smiled across the table, a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

i just ctrl+f'ed and the word "smile" appears 7 times in this 1k word chapter.

[xtruss]

'NATO Has the Watches, We Have the Time'

Unless the U.S. shows resolve, the Taliban will simply wait us out.

— Wall Street Journal | By James Shinn | October 26, 2009

David Klein

Those of us in the Bush administration who were responsible for its "Afghan Strategy Review" kept our mouths shut when we handed over the document to the Obama transition team last fall. We didn't want to box in the new administration.

And when President Barack Obama and his advisers rolled out their own Afghanistan strategy on March 27, I was quietly pleased. It came to basically the same conclusion we had: The paramount goal was to squash terrorism through counterinsurgency and better governance in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs promised the press corps at the time that its strategy would be "fully resourced." Later, in August, Gen. Stanley McChrystal's assessment of the situation in Afghanistan was leaked. It was a road map to implement precisely the Obama strategy that was announced in March.

But one key element of both the Bush and Obama strategies is getting lost in the debate—that we must apply the military and economic resources for the time required to achieve our goals. As the Obama administration's March 27 White Paper notes, "There are no quick fixes to achieve U.S. national security interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

The average counterinsurgency war lasts a decade and a half; the successful British campaign in Malaya in the 1950s, for example, took 12 years. Even if Gen. McChrystal gets the 40,000 additional troops he has requested, there is unlikely to be short-term progress in meeting any of the security "metrics" that opponents of the war in Afghanistan will try to insert into the defense appropriations for carrying out the president's strategy.

What the White House says—or doesn't say—about a long-term commitment is hugely important. Americans are famously impatient, and there is cruel wisdom in the oft-quoted Taliban boast that "NATO has all the watches, but we have all the time." Most Afghans are sitting on the fence, waiting to see who wins. Our allies are nervously looking for the exits, and the Pakistanis and the Iranians are hedging their bets in case the U.S. decides to pull the plug.

Meanwhile, as the Obama national security apparatus publicly wrings its hands over strategy, the media promote half-baked solutions to Afghanistan that further confuse friends and enemies while ignoring the crucial matter of time. Three of the least sensible solutions are "remote control" counterterrorism, a grand regional solution to disputes between neighboring states (including a resolution of the Kashmir territorial dispute between India and Pakistan), and the negotiation of a peace deal with the Taliban.

Replacing the hard work of counterinsurgency and nation-building with Predator drones and Special Operations defies geography and common sense. A Predator has a range of 400 miles: It is 600 miles from Pakistan's Waziristan region to the Arabian Sea.

From where are you going to fly the drones? What intelligence will be available to guide the drones or special ops if we abandon Kabul and Islamabad to fight on their own?

A "regional" solution that convinces India, Pakistan and Iran (among others) that their interests are better served by a stable Afghanistan than by backing proxy forces there is a laudable undertaking. But it would take years of patient diplomacy, in which the terms and pace of NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan will be the central item of negotiation. Fat chance of striking a deal if you're already gone.

As for a deal with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and his leadership council, the Quetta Shura, forget about it. They have no incentive to lay down their arms if they still think time is on their side.

The Taliban will eventually come down from the hills, probably in dribs and drabs, when they've been sufficiently pummeled by the combined Afghan National Army and NATO forces, seen their base among the Afghan people undermined by improved governance, and had their sanctuaries in Pakistan squeezed from the East. This is going to take time.

Time was very much on the mind of Afghanistan's Minister of the Interior Hanif Atmar recently, when I visited him in his office in Kabul—shards of glass still on the floor from the suicide bomb attack on the nearby Indian Embassy a few days earlier. "All the Taliban have to do is blow things up," he said. "We have a lot more things to worry about. Despite the deteriorating security situation in parts of the country, we still have a window of time to prevail, if we and our American allies have sufficient resolve."

I also visited Mullah Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil on a dusty street in the Karte Char district. A sleepy policeman with an AK-47 outside was the only symbol of his house arrest. He was Mullah Omar's secretary and then both a spokesman and foreign minister for the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan until his capture in 2001. Today he remains an interlocutor between the Karzai government and the Quetta Shura up in the mountains. I thought he'd be a good judge of Taliban resolve.

Time was on his mind, too. He was puzzled by the drawn-out pace of the Obama administration's strategy deliberations. He took care to distance the Quetta Shura's objectives (to govern Afghanistan and remove foreign troops) from the goals of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan across the border (which are close to those of al Qaeda, namely to bring down the government in Islamabad and establish a greater Islamic Caliphate).

In response to my skeptical questions, he also drew a distinction between the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda. "But the longer this war drags on, the harder it is to separate our interests from theirs," he said.

Mullah Mutawakil's sparse quarters featured a Koran, several volumes of Islamic jurisprudence and a television. "I watch the news, and the Turkish soap operas," he confessed with a smile. He wasn't wearing a watch.

Mr. Shinn was assistant secretary of defense for Asia (2007-2008) and one of the authors of the Bush administration's Afghan Strategy Review. He previously served in the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency.