#Character uses a specific set of pronouns and everyone decides to toss those to the side in favor of other (gendered) pronouns

[redysetdare]

"This fandom is so queer friendly!" This fandom literally hates, bisexual, trans, nonbinary, and aspec people but ok.

[daryl-dixon-daydreams]

Words: 8714 Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Reader Reader pronouns: she/her Era: the Greene farm Warnings: Language, violence, gore, blood, severe injuries, fear, anxiety, death of a character A/N: This is the FINAL part of a miniseries! You can find the other chapters on the Masterlist! Summary: Y/N and Shane go missing.

Your name: submit What is this?

Two weeks later

“I can actually do it myself,” you insisted, feeling a blush in your cheeks as Daryl pulled your hand over onto his lap and bent over it, luckily oblivious to the pink glow now filling your cheeks.

He huffed at you. “I’m sure ya can,” he drawled, “but it’s definitely easier for someone with two hands, don’t ya think?”

You watched as he methodically and carefully snipped the stitches in your hand and pulled the sutures away, apologizing if they tugged at all. A lot had happened in the last two weeks. Pretty much everyone had come around to the fact that Shane had hurt himself in an attempt to get the group to abandon you. There had been a massive fight between him and Rick and since then Shane had been confined to his tent while he healed. When Hershel found out what had happened, he told Rick that Shane couldn’t stay, but Rick had already decided that he had go. His best friend seemed to be growing more bitter and more unstable by the day.

But Shane was still around temporarily, and because of that Daryl had refused to leave you to sleep unguarded at night. You’d argued that it would be fine and that you didn’t really think Shane would try to pull anything else, but the archer was insistent. Eventually, you caved. Daryl had hauled your cot and bedding to his tent and set them up along the opposite wall from his, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck at the strange nervousness and yet gratitude he felt knowing you’d be so close.

You both fell into an easy routine together. Your physical closeness may have been borne out of necessity but the other growing closeness developed organically. Spending time with Daryl was easy. He didn’t mind when you were quiet for hours on end, lost in your own head as you aimlessly tossed twigs into the fire. He didn’t mind when you wanted to talk about something specific or nothing at all, and you felt the same way about him. The silences didn’t bother you with Daryl and every time he did open his mouth it was either to make you laugh or to say something you were genuinely interested in hearing. He was constantly checking on you over the smallest things. If you shivered in the evening as you spent time around the fire, he’d insist that you moved closer to the flames or he’d go get a blanket from his tent and toss it down on your lap without a word before he took his place again. He’d make sure you were eating and would refill your canteen whenever he thought about it. You did what you could to return the favors but he usually seemed to beat you to it.

“I guess with these out I can finally start hunting again,” you said. “And going out and gathering stuff.”

“Mhm,” Daryl hummed, his eyes narrowed as he focused on removing the very last stitch. “There.” He straightened up and looked at the slightly raised pink scar down the center of your palm. He wasn’t sure what made him do it, but he ran a finger lightly down the length of it.

You startled at the unfamiliar sensation, a little strange due to the altered sensation along the length of the scar, but even more so because of the way your heart jumped at the touch of Daryl’s fingers so light on your palm. You involuntarily pulled you hand back and your eyes shot up to meet his.

He gave you a sheepish look. “Sorry. Did that hurt?” He regretted it the moment he’d done it, worried about your reaction.

You shook your head. “No, it just—”

“Hmm?”

“Nothing,” you finished quietly, chewing on your bottom lip a little anxiously. He quirked an eyebrow at you but simply stood up.

“Alright. Well, couple more days and that asshole will be outta here,” he growled, glancing over in the direction of Shane’s tent. He wasn’t yet allowing himself to acknowledge that he was worried things would go back to the way they were before once Shane was gone. That is, you’d retreat back to your space and back to yourself. He was really liking his time with you and he didn’t want it to end. The archer shook his head and glanced back at you. Your eyes were now on Shane’s tent, too but your expression was fretful. “S’matter?” he prompted you.

You sighed. “I just feel like it’s my fault he has to leave…”

“Nah. Nah, it ain’t. Y/N, if it weren’t you it’d be somethin’ else. He’s been spiralin’ down since Rick showed up alive and took his family back. It ain’t got nothin’ to do with ya, not really.”

You still looked unsure but the worry lines in your forehead eased a little. “Yeah. I suppose so.”

“Listen, I told Carol I’d go help her with that new tent. Ya gonna be alright over here?” he asked.

You nodded. “Mhm. I’ll be right here. Andrea gave me a new book.” You did glance a little longingly over your shoulder at the far tree line and Daryl was always amazed that even after the traumatic incident in those very same woods that you still wanted to be out there almost every minute of the day.

“Hey,” he said, calling your attention back to him. “We’ll go out and hunt tomorrow, alright?”

You nodded. “Tomorrow.” You watched his broad shoulders fade toward the main camp.

Carol was waiting when Daryl arrived. Her old tent had started to leak and Daryl had promised to help her get the new one they’d found set up. She stood up as he strode over, already flustered by the number of pins and ropes and metal poles. “If I’d known I’d be living out of a tent I definitely would have stuck with the Girl Scouts when I was a kid,” she said, giving Daryl a helpless look.

He let out a gruff laugh. “Ya got that the wrong way around,” he said, pointing to the pole she’d already slipped through the tent. She stared at it and sighed. “S’alright. That’s why I’m here right?” he said. “Gimme that,” he said, grabbing the bundle of poles in her hands and setting to work. In no time they had the tent upright and were going about staking it down. Carol handed Daryl another stake and he pounded it into the ground securing down the corner.

“So… what’s going on with you and Y/N exactly?” she asked him.

The archer froze and shot a look at her before returning his eyes to what he was doing, grateful for a task to focus on even as he felt his ears growing red. “What’d ya mean?”

“Well,” Carol continued, “you’re sharing a tent,” she said with a smile.

Daryl scoffed. “So? I shared a tent with T-dog once. Ya gonna ask me if we held hands?”

Carol laughed and smirked at him. “Well, did you?” Daryl rolled his eyes at her and she laughed harder.

“We’re sharin’ a tent cuz there’s a psycho that probably is blamin’ all his problems on her. And I don’t want shit to go sideways.”

“So, that’s it? You’re just sharing a tent for purely practical reasons,” Carol said. Daryl could hear the skepticism in her voice and he straightened up after tying off the knot to the stake.

“The hell are ya on about?” Daryl growled. But even as he tried to act gruff and brush her off, he felt that heat growing in his chest that was becoming familiar when he thought of you.

“You two just seem to get along,” Carol said. “That’s all.”

“Mmm,” Daryl hummed, moving to the next corner of the tent. Something about that response made Carol laugh again.

“You’re so sensitive,” she murmured, eliciting an eyeroll from him. “Daryl, I just like to see you happy. And lately, since you’ve been spending so much time with Y/N, you’ve been happy,” she pointed out.

He couldn’t deny that. She was right. He chewed on his bottom lip for a moment, his hands still on the last length of cord before he tied it off and pounded in the stake. He stood up and stepped back, taking in the structure. “Alright. All done.”

“Thanks,” she said gratefully, surveying it. She gave his shoulder a friendly squeeze and smiled. “Do me a favor?”

“Hmm?” he hummed, chewing on the side of his thumbnail, glancing up at her.

“If you really like her,” she paused and shrugged, “tell her. Life is short these days.” She knew that as well as anyone. A husband, abusive asshole or not, and a precious little girl were gone to this world.

Daryl only ducked his head and lazily twirled a piece of grass between his fingers. “I’ll see ya,” he murmured, turning and heading back toward his tent. He was expecting you to be sitting beside the fire where you’d been when he left, but that spot was empty. He approached the tent and stopped outside the door. “Y/N? Ya in there?” When there was no answer, he unzipped it and peeked inside. No sign of you. The book that had been in your hand was on the tent floor and he bent and picked it up, setting it on the upturned box that was serving as a nightstand next to your cot. That’s when he realized your knife was there. He’d been thinking maybe you had to go use the bathroom, but you never left camp without your knife at your hip, whether it was for two minutes or two hours. And it wasn’t like you to leave a book on the ground. You treated the damn things like they were some sacred tomes. He felt panic start to grow in his chest and left the tent in a hurry, his blue eyes scanning the area where everyone else was set up and the tree line. He didn’t see you anywhere.

Daryl grabbed his crossbow and took off running toward the main camp. He found Lori and Carol preparing some food for dinner and stopped beside them. “Hey—have ya’ll seen Y/N anywhere? She come through here at all?” He directed the question at Lori since Carol had been busy with him getting the tent set up.

She stood up and dusted her hands off on her jeans, shaking her head. Her eyes went a little wide with worry as she registered the deep concern on Daryl’s face. “No, I—I haven’t seen her. You can’t find her?”

Daryl didn’t even stay to answer. He just tore off in the direction of the farmhouse and bounded up onto the front porch. Glenn and Maggie both stood up at the expression on his face. “Ya’ll see Y/N? Did she come up here?”

Maggie shook her head. “No,” Glenn answered, immediately worried. “What’s going on?”

Daryl swore under his breath and paced a restless circle, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “I—I was gone for maybe an hour helpin’ Carol and now I can’t find her anywhere. She wouldn’ta gone off without her knife or nothin’,” he said. His jaw clenched and Glenn watched the muscle twitch. Daryl’s eyes quickly landed on the tent Shane was confined to and he took off at a full sprint toward it. Glenn was on his heels now.

“Daryl! Daryl, take it easy!” Glenn yelled after him. It drew the attention of the rest of the group and soon Rick and Andrea were standing beside Glenn as Daryl ripped back the entrance to Shane’s tent.

Daryl’s stomach twisted. Shane’s tent was empty. He kicked out at a milk crate that had some of Shane’s things on it and it toppled over. “Shane’s gone and Y/N is missin’!” he roared at Rick.

Rick gulped. A hard pit formed in his stomach. “Daryl—Daryl, just calm down,” Rick said.

That had the opposite effect. “Calm down? Calm down?!” he roared. “This ain’t no coincidence! I told ya he didn’t deserve to stay here to heal up, and now look what’s happened!”

“We’ll find them! We’ll find them. We will. Just—”

“Nah. I’m gonna track that fuckin’ prick and if he’s laid so much as a finger on her, he’s a dead man.” Daryl took off without another word, racing back to the last place he’d seen you, his eyes scanning the ground the whole way, hoping for a track, a trail, something.

“Dale, get the guns,” Rick said. “Lori, you and Carol take Carl up to the house and see if you can wait inside with Hershel and the girls.” Lori nodded and gave Carol’s arm a gentle squeeze. Rick rubbed a hand over the stubble on his face.

Andrea was stunned. “What do we do?”

Rick shut his eyes for a moment and pulled in a breath. “We get our guns and we look. We hope Daryl can pick up a trail and we hope we aren’t too late.”

You had been sitting contentedly by the fire reading when you decided you wanted some tea. You knew there were still some dried spicebush leaves in your pack from your last foraging trip and you went in to get them. You were crouched beside your pack, digging in the pocket when you heard a metallic sound that was easily identifiable. It was the slide of a pistol being drawn back and released, a bullet moving into the chamber. You froze with your hands in your pack and slowly turned. You could see Shane outside the window netting and his gun was aimed right at you.

“Get up. Slowly. Leave all your shit.”

You gulped and did so, replacing your pack against the wall and abandoning your book on the floor.

“Come over here. Zip the tent up and don’t even think about trying anything because I will kill you right here,” Shane growled, and you believed him. “Let’s go. Now.”

Again, you complied. You glanced desperately toward the main camp, hoping with every part of you that Daryl would be headed back or somehow happen to look over and see what was happening, but you knew you didn’t have any options except to comply. Comply and hope for an opening to save yourself.

Shane’s gun was still trained on you as you stepped around the outside of the tent. He was gritting his teeth in anger as you stared back at him. You were determined to remain calm and in control.

He nudged the barrel of his gun in the direction of the tree line. “Move. Let’s go.”

You felt sick, knowing that once you went into those trees the chance that you would ever come back out was low. But what choice did you have? He had a fucking gun on you and you had nothing.

You made your way toward the woods. Shane pressed the muzzle into your back. “Faster. And don’t even think about making a fucking sound. I will shoot you right here. I don’t even care. At least then I wouldn’t have to worry about you going all psycho-killer. Wouldn’t have to worry about Lori anymore. Or Carl.”

You bit your tongue to stop a retort.

Soon, you were under the dark canopy of trees, cloaked in shade and moving further in with Shane’s gun at your back. He was nervous, on edge, and understandably so, because you knew if Daryl caught him… he’d be dead in an instant. You decided your best course of action was to try to reason with him. You really did believe that he was just fucked up from being in love with a woman he couldn’t have. This was all misplaced blame and aggression. He really wanted to fuck Rick up, but that loyal part of him, that police partner, wouldn’t let him. Some part of him couldn’t bear to do that to Carl and Lori, even while another part of him was desperate to. You were an easy target, the next best thing to blame for his failed attempts to get back into the place he wanted to be, to regain some control, to prove he knew best and was still The Protector. If he had been able to show everyone that you were really a threat and that he and not Rick had taken care of it, he really thought maybe that would win Lori over. But that had all backfired. Now you were just easy to blame for all his problems.

“Shane, I know this isn’t really what you want,” you said quietly.

“Shut the fuck up. You don’t know a goddamn thing about me,” he growled back, nudging you sharply with the muzzle of his gun again.

“I don’t want you to have to leave either. I know it isn’t fair,” you continued. “You took care of everyone for a while before Rick showed up.”

“I said shut up!” he spat again through clenched teeth. “Ya know what? Sit the fuck down. Right there, against that tree.” He shoved you hard and you stumbled, barely catching yourself with your hands on the large oak before your face would have collided with it.

You obeyed and sat with your back against the tree, gulping at the dryness in your throat, and turning to stare directly at the gun pointed in your face.

Something about how calm you were being, how steady, was completely freaking Shane the fuck out. He wanted you to snap. He wanted to be able to say that he was right about you and you were a danger to everyone in camp, like you were some unpredictable monster. But you just sat there looking up at him, now completely silent, your eyes flickering between the muzzle of his gun and his face. Shane swore under his breath and paced back in forth in front of you. Your eyes followed his movements. You bided your time, trying to come up with something that would defuse this whole situation.

“How is this going to fix anything?” you asked him. “This is only going to make everything worse.”

He didn’t stop pacing and occasionally shooting a look at you that made your blood run cold. You were starting to think that maybe there was no reasoning with him…

“You can just let me go. I’ll just tell everyone I needed to get out of camp for a bit. You can wander back in like nothing happened,” you said.

He pointed the gun at you again and his lip curled. “There’s no going back from this. No going back from everything that’s already happened. And I know there is something wrong with you. I know it. If I’m not going to be here to keep an eye on you, I need to end this now so you can’t hurt anyone. Because I know you will snap eventually. I saw what you did to those men.” Shane got right into your face, poking you in the shoulder with the muzzle of his gun.

“I was defending myself,” you said quietly, feeling guilty and horrified at yourself even as you tried to justify it to Shane.

“So you say,” he growled, his pistol now aimed at your forehead.

“If I was going to snap like you’re saying, wouldn’t now be a good time?” you said quietly. “Obviously you’re a threat to me. But I’ve done everything you’ve asked.”

He scoffed and straightened up again, resuming his pacing. “What—what the hell happened to you, huh? What fucked up thing twisted you to the point where you could do what you did to those men? Do you even remember it? Do you even know how many times you stabbed them?” he pressed. He was trying to agitate you, but it didn’t work.

Your stomach was churning with the foggy memory of being covered in their blood, of seeing their corpses on the ground, but you only stared back at Shane. No way in hell you were divulging what you’d been through to Shane, gunpoint or not.

He ran his tongue over his teeth and you watched as the muscle in his jaw clenched. He charged toward you again. “You know what? I’m done with this,” he growled. He pressed the gun to your forehead, aiming at a downward angle. The metal bit into your skin. You stared up at him briefly, eyes wide but surprisingly calm, and Shane watched in some disbelief as you finally just shut them and seemed to resign yourself to the fact that you were about to die.

That hesitation was all you needed.

You shoved Shane’s arm away and the gun with it and snatched the knife at his hip, ripping it free from its sheath and slashing at him, leaving a good gash on his arm. But a knife wouldn’t be any match for Shane with a gun. He was a firearm instructor and you knew his aim was deadly accurate, so before he could entirely recover from his surprise you ran at him full force and the two of fell to the ground hard. The pistol flew from his hands and landed in the leaf little a few feet away. You began to crawl desperately toward it, trying to put distance between you and Shane as quickly as possible, but you let out a yell as you felt him grab hold of you and pull you back.

The next thing you knew he was over you, trying his hardest to get the knife from your hand. You were slashing at him desperately, catching him on the forearms as you struggled beneath him. You caught him with a particularly strong slash but the next moment he had your hands pinned in his and he wrenched the knife from you. The rush of blood was loud in your ears and now you were on the defensive. You shielded yourself with your arms as best you could and continued to struggle beneath him, but his weight was too much.

Shane suddenly managed to push your arms out of the way and you saw the knife coming toward you as if in slow motion. It was heading straight for the center of your chest. You thrust your left arm out and felt the blade pierce it deeply before ripping clean and lodging in your left shoulder. You let out a scream of pain, but as Shane was now leaning over you, you managed to get your knee up underneath him and thrust it as hard as you could into his groin.

He let out an agonized yell and rolled off you, abandoning the knife that was still lodged deeply in your shoulder. You gritted your teeth and were vaguely aware of tears streaming down your face and the fact that you were trembling. But there was no time to stop. You couldn’t stop if you wanted to live. You clutched at the knife in your shoulder, staring briefly with shock at how deeply it was embedded, but didn’t dare to pull it out. Rolling over and holding yourself up on your lacerated forearms, you fixed your eyes on the gun and made a desperate lunge for it. You felt hands on your legs again, dragging you back.

Back toward the edge of the tree line, Daryl had picked up the trail easily and was frantically tracking. Rick and the others were on his heels, glancing around nervously, straining their eyes in the veiled darkness beneath the canopy and their ears in the closeness of the trees. But it wasn’t long that they had to trail behind the archer because soon a strained yell made it to their ears. Daryl felt his blood run cold.

He paused hardly for a moment before he tore off through the trees in the direction he’d heard your voice echo from. “Y/N!” He wanted you to know he was on his way. He needed you to just hang on. He pushed himself to run through the nausea that had risen when that sound, your pained voice, had met his ears. He tore through the foliage, the sound of pounding boots on the soil loud behind him as the others followed.

“Daryl! Daryl, slow down! We can’t just—” Rick paused as he had to bust through some shrubs. “We can’t just barrel in there!” But it was as if the archer hadn’t heard anything. He just continued running, trying to listen over his own gasping breath and pounding pulse but simultaneously afraid of what he would hear.

Crack.

The unmistakable sound of a gunshot.

Daryl skidded to a stop, frozen. His face blanched, almost ashen as Rick caught up and glanced over at him. Sweat was pouring down from their foreheads and running down their necks, soaking the thin cotton of their shirts. A small strangled noise escaped Daryl’s lips as he searched the ground frantically again for the trail, needing to know he was running in the right direction. He spotted it. Direction confirmed, he took off at an even madder pace than before. “Y/N!” There was no answer.

But he couldn’t allow himself to think the worst. He couldn’t. That couldn’t happen to you. After everything you’d already been through… how could he have let this happen? Why had he turned his back on you for even a minute with that prick still around? He felt shaky and weak even as he ran.

The group had just pushed through another thick swath of understory when Daryl saw a bundle ahead, lying motionless on the ground. His breath caught in his throat and his boots rooted into the soil for a moment. But he pushed himself to move forward again.

Behind him he was vaguely aware of a gasp from Andrea and some murmur from Glenn.

As he moved closer, he realized there was a second shape ahead and as his eyes refocused, he saw that it was you. You were leaned up against a big oak tree, propped up against the rough bark, your head lolled toward your chest. Some pained gasp or muted scream, catching mostly in his throat, left his lips before he tore off toward you again. As he fell to his knees beside you, he took in the soaked crimson of your shirt. Your arms were cut up and absolutely covered in blood. Then Daryl’s eyes landed on the hilt of the knife still embedded in your left shoulder. His hands shook as he hesitated before lifting your chin, terrified that your skin would be cold and lifeless. You were bruised and battered, bleeding from a swollen and split lip and a gash near your hairline, but there was some semblance of warmth still in your skin, though you were pale. More miraculously yet, when he gently lifted your chin, you started to stir and Daryl watched in desperation as you struggled to open your eyes, eventually succeeding.

“Hey, hey. S’alright. I’ve got ya. I’ve got ya…” He could hear his own voice shake as he spoke.

You gulped, wanting to clear the taste of iron from your mouth. “I had to,” you managed to croak out. “I had to.”

Daryl knew you were referring to Shane’s lifeless body behind him on the ground. “S’ok. It don’t matter. Don’t talk now, alright? Just rest. I’ve got ya.”

Daryl felt someone behind him and turned to see Glenn just behind him. His face was pale as he took in your condition. “Her shoulder... Oh my God,” Glenn gasped.

“She’s gonna be fine,” Daryl said forcefully. He carefully slid his arm behind your back and another underneath your knees. You were fighting to stay awake. “Daryl…” you murmured. You felt so small in his arms as he lifted you. Daryl was vaguely aware of your fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt, gripping it hard before you fell unconscious again, going limp in his arms. He turned and started heading back to the farm, moving as quickly as he dared with you in his arms, conscious of the knife still wedged cruelly into you. The sight of it protruding from you made him sick with rage. Rick was kneeling beside Shane, his face downturned, as Daryl breezed past. Andrea stood just behind him with a hand pressed over her mouth, watching as Daryl carried your bloodied body past her.

As Daryl’s broad shoulders disappeared, Glenn bent and retrieved the pistol lying on the leaf litter among streaks of your blood. It felt like a lead weight in his palm.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Daryl sat slumped in a chair beside your prone form laid out on the bed, covered over in the blankets. He was leaned over forward with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands clasped so tightly that his knuckles shone white.

After days of agonizing waiting, there was a soft noise from you and his eyes shot up urgently to see you stirring a little on the pillow. He rocketed to his feet so fast that the chair he’d been in clattered backward loudly to the floor. “Doc!” he yelled out. Hershel rushed in a moment later.

You dragged your eyelids open with a great amount of effort and the first thing you saw were Daryl’s piercing blue eyes looking down at you with immense concern. You moistened your lips with your tongue and cleared your throat, which felt dry and scratchy, preparing to speak. He watched as your expression melted into a veil of confusion. “I’m not… not dead?”

Daryl felt a painful pang in his chest as he watched you spinning with disbelief.

Hershel leaned over you with a kindly and somewhat sad expression on his face. “You most definitely are not. Though you surprised all of us after what you went through,” he said putting a gentle hand on your uninjured shoulder.

Your eyes turned back to Daryl’s. “Shane—” His name seemed to strangle and catch in your throat. “I—”

“I know. Ya had to. S’alright,” Daryl drawled, his brow furrowing low over his eyes.

You mouthed wordlessly for a moment, your eyes brimming with tears. “Is he—did he—?”

Daryl nudged his nose up in a nod, his expression full of concern. “He’s gone.”

You felt that you already knew the answer but it still made your stomach churn. You laid more heavily into the pillow and shut your eyes, a pained expression crossing your face. When your eyes finally fluttered open again they were still a little glassy. Daryl wondered at this display of remorse, of regret you had for a man who had clearly taken you into the woods to kill you.

But what Daryl saw next was you clearly struggling against some flashback. You squeezed your eyes shut and your breathing quickened. Beads of sweat broke out on your hairline and your face tensed.

Daryl’s hand shot out to gently grab yours before he even knew what he was doing. “Hey.” He gave it a gentle squeeze. “Y/N. S’alright. You’re safe,” he drawled.

Your eyes opened and you glanced down at your hand in his. Daryl withdrew, suddenly self-conscious. You nodded and seemed to come back to the present.

You reached across yourself to grip your left shoulder, a wave of pain running through you and a grimace tightening your features. You felt thick gauze beneath your fingers. As you moved you became aware that you had many little rows of stitches on your arms and a few gashes wrapped up in bandages as well. Even your hands were cut up from your attempts to defend yourself. You extended your arm in front of yourself and took in the damage done by Shane’s knife.

“I don’t understand,” you said softly. “I thought for sure I was going to die out there.” The way you said it was so matter-of-fact and Daryl felt a rush of anger overwhelm him for a moment. Shane was lucky he was dead when Daryl had gotten there… He’d gotten off easy with a single round to the chest.

Hershel nodded. “You have a lot of strength in you. Rest. Everything is going to be just fine. You’re going to heal up and be back to normal before you know it, though that shoulder may need a little extra TLC.” The doctor took his leave and your eyes found Daryl’s again. He read worry on your face.

“What is it?” he drawled.

You gulped. “I’ll leave as soon as I’m healed up,” you said, now avoiding his eyes.

Daryl’s brow furrowed more deeply. “Why the hell would ya do that?”

His tone was forceful again and drew your eyes back to his. “The others—after what happened, I can’t imagine they want me around anymore.”

Daryl sighed heavily and righted his chair again, sinking down in it close at your bedside. “For once yer wrong about somethin’,” he said. “Nobody wants ya to leave. Ya didn’t do anything more than defend yourself, just like ya did with those men before. Anyone can glance at ya for one second and see that.”

You shifted in bed, trying to make your injured shoulder more comfortable, laying your other hand over it absently, and you chewed on the inside of your cheek. You still looked unsure.

“Y/N, when we found ya you had a damn knife sticking out of your shoulder.” He paused and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck a little anxiously. “I—” his voice seemed to catch in his throat. “I thought we lost ya.”

You peered at him curiously.

He leaned forward. “Listen to me, if anybody even so much as looks at ya like ya shouldn’t be here, they’ll have to deal with me.”

Daryl watched, a little anxiously, as your lips parted softly. “I’m not sure I deserve that from you,” you finally managed quietly. “You’ve already done enough. Daryl, I suspect you saved my life.” You gulped and stared down toward the edge of the blankets. “In more ways than one…”

The archer averted his eyes down toward his boots and chewed on his bottom lip for a moment, nervous and wavering between his insecurity and need to reassure you, not allowing himself to really think on what you’d just said. “Hey. Yer a part of this group, even if ya ain’t always felt like it.”

You studied him for a long moment before you spoke again. “So are you,” you said perceptively. His blue eyes shot up to meet yours and you gave him a weak smile. “Can you do me a favor?”

He nudged his nose up in a nod. “’Course.”

“Can—can you help me take a walk outside? I need some air,” you said quietly.

“Are ya sure yer up for that? Ya had surgery on that shoulder. Ya lost a lot of blood. Ya just woke up after bein’ out of it for three days. I don’t think it’s—” Concern creased his forehead.

You nodded. “I’m sure. You won’t let anything bad happen to me. I’ve at least learned that by now.” You felt a bloom of warmth in your chest as you spoke those words, coupled with the realization of their truth almost at the same time as they left your lips. That burst of heat you felt was reflected in a pink hue in the archer’s face and the tips of his ears.

He looked a little bashful but nodded and acquiesced to your request. “Alright. C’mon,” he said, gently taking your hand, avoiding the injuries carefully, and doing his best to ignore how nervous he felt when his fingers closed around it. He helped you out of bed and steadied you as you got to your feet. You glanced up at him, and your expression was so open and earnest he was frankly shocked by it. Could it really be that you were looking that way at him? His fingers were light under your elbow and his other hand was ghosting behind your back, centimeters away from making contact if needed as you started toward the door. “Ya alright?”

You nodded and gulped at the rush of feelings his hand around yours had brought, trying your hardest to ignore it. All you could do was nod. The two of you emerged onto the porch and Glenn and Maggie stood up immediately from their place nearby in the seating area. Both of them were all smiles to see you on your feet.

“You’re up,” Glenn said, looking at you with a bewildered smile. “This is amazing. It’s so good to see you awake!” His expression was nothing but kindness.

“How are you feelin’?” Maggie asked.

You nodded, glancing back over at Daryl and relaxing some as you saw one corner of his mouth was twitched up. His blue eyes were fixed on your face and he couldn’t look away. Seeing you actually awake and already on your feet was a huge relief after many days of sickening worry. “I feel alright. A little tired,” you admitted. Almost as if one cue you wavered a little on your feet, your knees feeling suddenly weak.

Daryl’s hand landed flush against the small of your back, immediately steadying you. “Easy,” he rumbled. “Ya alright?” You nodded, quite sure your cheeks were pink, and when you glanced back at him and mumbled a small “thanks” you thought maybe his cheeks were pink too. You turned back to Glenn and Maggie and your eyes drifted to all the numerous stitches on your arms. “I’m definitely a little worse for wear. But could have been worse…” you trailed off.

“Definitely,” Glenn said, giving you a sympathetic look. “We’re all just so glad you’re okay.”

Just at that moment you heard boots on the stairs and you looked up to see Rick, thumbs slung into his pockets as usual. Your heart rate increased with anxiety and you gulped at the sudden tightness in your throat. You’d killed his best friend. You’d pulled the trigger and killed Shane. “I’m sorry,” you said to the Sheriff.

But Rick was smiling at you with tears in his eyes, shaking his head slightly. “This is my fault,” he said suddenly, a rasp in his voice from emotion and your eyes widened in surprise. “This is my fault and I am so sorry. Daryl told me—and I should have listened. Shane was way more of a threat than I was willing to admit. This should have never happened to you,” he drawled. “And I hope you can forgive me at some point.”

You stared at him for a long moment, blinking in the sun and breathing in the freshness of the outside air. “It’s already forgiven,” you said softly, nodding at him.

Daryl stared at you in awe of how, despite everything you’d been through, you still could extend that forgiveness so easily.

Daryl sensed some shift in you and his brow drew down low over his eyes. “Let’s get ya back to bed. C’mon.”

You allowed him to help you back through the farmhouse and even into bed as you struggled not to put any weight on your left shoulder, wincing as you moved. Daryl watched you settled in and stood a bit awkwardly at your bedside. He nervously ran a hand back through his hair. “Well, I’ll let ya get some sleep,” he drawled, turning to leave.

“Daryl.”

He turned back to glance at you and your expression was a bit hesitant. “Hmm?”

“Would you stay? …please?”

He didn’t need to hear anything else. He planted himself right back down in the chair at the side of the bed and watched as some of the tension on your face eased.

“Thanks,” you said quietly with a sigh. Daryl watched as you closed your eyes and shifted, trying to make your shoulder more comfortable, but a moment later your eyes fluttered open again and met his. “He put the gun to my forehead,” you suddenly said quietly.

Daryl’s stomach plummeted and then swirled with anger. He stared back at you, incredulous with rage easily readable on his face.

“I made my peace with the fact that he was going to pull the trigger.” Your voice was somewhat disconnected, distant. “But then… he hesitated. And I took the chance and I fought.”

Daryl gulped. “Ya made it. Yer alright.”

You nodded and looked at him for a long moment, seemingly on the edge of saying something else, but you finally just sighed and your eyelids, now heavy with exhaustion, closed again. Soon, you were asleep. And Daryl stayed at your bedside and drifted off himself. _ _ _ _ _ _

Some time later You tossed down the game stringer, loaded with squirrels, in front of Daryl. “Ten,” you said, a wide grin spreading across your face. “What’d ya get?”

He looked up at you and affected an unamused expression. “Nine,” he drawled, pointing to his harvest waiting to be cleaned.

“Ha! I win again,” you said, absolutely brimming with joy. “I thought you said you were good at hunting?” you teased him.

He rolled his eyes at you and looked over as you sank down beside him. “Ya beat me by one. Ain’t exactly a landslide, is it?”

“A win is a win,” you announced with satisfaction.

He rolled his eyes again, but his expression quickly turned to concern as he caught you rubbing your shoulder. “Sore?” he asked you, his brow drawing down. “Maybe ya shouldn’t be hunting with that bow again yet.”

Your face softened as you caught his blue eyes. “I’m fine. It’s just a little tired, that’s all. Hershel says I need to build my strength up again.” Daryl’s eyes caught on the scar where the knife had been lodged into your shoulder. It was matched by many smaller ones on your arms, all with the same pink hue due to their newness. He could also see the brand on your arm, 1048, the remnant from your time under The Copperheads. Before, you would wear long sleeves in the height of the Georgian summer just to avoid anyone seeing that mark. Now there were a lot more scars added to it, but you didn’t seem to care. It was like you finally had a weight lifted off your shoulders and you felt free for the first time in a long time, unencumbered by your past.

“We should get ya a crossbow, like mine. Then ya wouldn’t have to hold the draw with that shoulder.”

“I like my old-fashioned recurve bow,” you said, pulling it over onto your lap and looking down at it fondly. “Especially because I can still beat you with it,” you smiled at him.

Daryl seemed suddenly fidgety and you picked up on it immediately. His eyes turned down and his expression was suddenly serious.

“What? What is it?”

He shrugged, still seemingly avoiding your eyes. “Can I ask ya somethin’?”

“Mhm,” you hummed. “Always.”

He flicked his thumb along the sharp edge of his knife. “How—with everything that ya’ve been through, how come ya ain’t just angry? I’m angry just thinkin’ about it. And it didn’t even happen to me.”

“Mmm,” hummed thoughtfully. Your eyes turned out across the verdant pasture, toward the trees you’d spent the day under. “I am angry sometimes. But,” you shrugged, your right hand shielding over the scar on your left shoulder absently, “being angry doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t fix it. It all still happened.”

Your eyes grew a bit far-off, a bit distant. Daryl took several forced, deep inhales and gathered his courage before reaching over and taking your hand in his, pulling it away from your shoulder.

You looked over at him in surprise. Your hand felt small between his. Your gaze was questioning. Daryl’s heart was pounding so hard in his ears he couldn’t hear anything else. He gulped, trying to clear his throat so he could talk. “‘M gonna make sure nothin’ else bad happens to ya. As best I can,” he murmured.

You nodded almost imperceptibly, your eyes still a little wide from the unexpected action of him taking your hand in his. “Only if I can do the same thing for you.”

You saw him gulp nervously before he nudged his nose up in a nod at you. “Yeh, I think—I think that’d be alright,” he said.

You gave him a half-smile that he found incredibly endearing and his nerves finally got the better of him and he released your hand, clearing his throat and awkwardly rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “I’m, uhh, just gonna go grab some more firewood,” he drawled, standing up abruptly and internally cursing at himself as he left you sitting alone by the fire. Fuckin’ coward. Despite all his attempts at denial, Daryl had realized over the last couple weeks that he couldn’t ignore how he felt about you anymore, but now he was stranded in this place between where he was and where he wanted to be with no idea how to bridge the gap. He wandered back with an armload of firewood, internally frustrated and kicking himself, but his frustration vanished almost immediately when he had dumped it next to the fire circle and glanced at you again. You were looking at him with that open expression, this time with a little inquisitive lift in one of your eyebrows.

“Hmm?” he hummed, pulling his bottom lip back in between his teeth and worrying it anxiously.

You tilted your head toward the place he’d previously been sitting and he gulped as he sat down, still feeling your eyes steady on him. He thought that now you looked a little nervous. “Can I ask you something?” you said quietly.

The archer nodded, nervous flutters flitting to life in his stomach.

“Umm… is it just me, or have you slept like shit, too, since I moved out of your tent?”

Once you were no longer staying in the house healing up, Daryl had moved your things out of his tent for you since there was no longer any need to worry about Shane. It wasn’t that you had asked him to, or that he’d even wanted to, it just seemed like he should…Afterwards, you’d actually moved your whole campsite closer to his, directly next to it, but you still found yourself tossing and turning on your cot, unable to fall asleep or stay asleep.

Daryl stared back at you for a moment in disbelief. He’d slept like garbage since you’d moved back, and he hadn’t even had the heart to fill the cleared space you’d once occupied with the stuff he previously had kept there. Now the emptiness loomed, drawing his eyes, the physical manifestation of how he felt something was just missing. When you slept on your cot across from him, he’d wake up in the middle of the night and look over at the shadow of your sleeping form. He always felt some swell of relief and maybe something else he couldn’t quite identify… Something about listening to your calm breathing always relaxed him and he found himself able to shut his eyes and drift off again. Maybe he’d gotten used to it. Maybe he shouldn’t have. But since you’d left, he’d been restless and anxious at night, wishing the material of his tent and yours would vanish so he could check on you.

Your nerves were growing with each moment of silence as you anxiously watched him, waiting for him to say something. “No, I—“ he had to clear his throat, nerves making his voice come out strangely strangled, “I’ve—” he let out a scoff of a laugh, almost incredulous he was about to say it to you, “I’ve slept like shit since ya left.”

“…really?”

He nodded, finally meeting your eyes again. “Mhm. Can’t fall asleep, can’t stay asleep, just feels like I lay there all the time w—”

You grabbed him by his lapel and pulled him toward you, pressing your lips softly to his, your eyes shut tightly, overwhelmed with nerves even while you melted into him. Your fingers cupped his face gently, like he was something fragile and Daryl was reeling.

By the time he reached back for you and got over his surprise you were already withdrawing and he blinked, bewildered, as he took in the wide-eyed expression on your face and your partially parted lips.

“Uhh—was that—okay?” you breathed, anxiety ratcheting up with each passing moment of uncertainty.

“Ya,” he drawled. It spilled from him like warm molasses. He watched as your face broke into a relieved smile and your cheeks burned pink.

“Good,” you murmured, unable to look at him any longer.

“Only I—I wasn’t ready,” he murmured. Your eyes flickered up to his again. He gulped nervously and reached out to move a strand of hair out of your eyes before clasping your face. His blue eyes were flickering between yours and then down to your lips. You could tell he was nervous and it brought a small smile to your face. Your eyes fluttered closed and you leaned toward him, only having to wait a second before you felt his lips crashing against yours.

This time the kiss was heated and urgent and he pulled you into him gently with his hand at the nape of your neck. You happily leaned in, smiling against his lips, your hand pressing flush to his strong chest and the other landing lightly on his side, driving him crazy. Daryl’s hand smoothed over your shoulder and down your bare arm, electricity rising in its wake.

When you broke apart this time, you were both all stunned smiles again, though now you couldn’t look away from each other.

“So, uhh—ya wanna stay with me tonight? Sounds like we both need some real sleep, ya know, and I dunno…” Daryl wasn’t used to asking for what he wanted so blatantly, or making himself vulnerable, but somehow you brought it out of him and he was willing to jump off that ledge if it meant he got to kiss you and touch you and hold you all night… things he had thought about plenty when he was lying on his cot, unable to sleep, but never saw as a reality.

You nodded, that same smile you always gave him glowing on your face. He was constantly amazed by the light you exuded; despite everything you’d been through… everything you’d shared with him.

He needed that. He needed the light. He needed you. You gave him hope.

That night you settled in against him, nervous but melting into the safeness of his arms around you. Daryl worried he was too overwhelmed to sleep, but moment by moment he realized how natural having you against him felt, how safe, how perfect, and before either of you spoke another word you both drifted off in blissful silence.

[oh-no-an-opinion-blog]

I really liked Lanque’s Route in Friendsim, especially the “problematic” endings

Discourse and Spoilers, don’t read if you’re just looking for rage fuel. Or do. You control your own actions, and as long as you take responsibility for them everything will be Gucci. We good? We good.

Fight me if you want, but I’m putting it out there. I am happy to have a character who is trans, but who also has other elements to their personality even if they aren’t innocent. Yeah he’s got flaws, so does everyone else. Alternia is an alien planet with a culture is clearly different from ours, and that needs to be taken into account when considering what’s “problematic”. We’re talking about a planet of kids being raised by animals or by themselves on the streets into a classist society where they are allowed to murder each other for a physical trait that they can’t control somehow permissible but as soon as someone acts like an ass and tries to get some serious action it all goes to the fan? There’s a lot more “problematic” behavior we could be worrying about but we only hyper-focus it on Lanque because he’s canonically trans. Not every trans person is a good person, and characters who are trans shouldn’t be sheltered from some more tricky personalities to handle.

Idk man, I fuckin loved how V straight-up went out and said that you had to own up to looking at the problematic material. They called out the discourse, and after writing a route like the one they did for Marvus none of us should be surprised. The idea of it being Hussie is one I personally like, but even if it’s not I think it’s great that they don't hold back just because of what some fans think. They deal with characters like they’re actual people, meaning that some will be what others think is problematic. 

I’ve seen a lot of people upset at the fact that Lanque called out Lynera, and don't get me wrong that was hella uncalled for, but have y’all considered that maybe since we haven’t known Lynera for the last 2.43 sweeps (which is what, about 5 years? As long as a middle or high school career?) we don't know the kind of shit she’s been talking? It’s a bit unfair to judge yet, really. He doesn’t take her feelings into account, but then again was she taking his when she was saying shit?

Lanque is selfish, but dare I present the fact that he’s gotta sacrifice himself to the caverns when he goes off-planet? Maybe he’s projecting a bit when he is so crude calling out Lynera, holding on to the little bit of freedom he can still take before the trials. I dunno, food for thought.

If the issue is the sexual nature of this route I would like to remind people that the MC still has the ability to make choices for themselves, shown when they refuse the drugs even after Lanque tries to coerce them into it (good job protag I love you) and aren’t being forced to do it in a fashion similar to how Ardata controls them early on in the game. That, and after being denied Lanque doesn’t force the MC to do anything. Yeah he pokes fun, but he still stops. As for dancing, it's sexual, and the MC even states that they know what he wants and it might be more than they’re willing to give, but they go with it because it “feels good”. That’s kinda why people do things like this in the first place, isn’t it? And in the bedroom scene, again, the MC doesn’t say no because you as the player consented at the start to seeing the kind of material that the mature content warning covered such as sexual situations, language, and coercion. The decisions of the MC are executed based on the presumption that you followed the rules Ardata set when you first agreed to play through this version of the route(aka being of legal age to see mature content, being aware of the specific mature content contained, and knowing yourself well enough to know whether or not you could handle possibly problematic content). If you looked at the warnings and thought “I can’t handle some of these aspects” and yet continued on anyway, that’s on you. If you did it just to fuel your rage against Lanque, same deal. You could have played it safe, and even if you didn’t whether the MC and Lanque “pail” is up to you. You either consent by keeping your mouth shut like Lanque tells you too or you don’t by calling Bronya in to take care of the situation, which you get rewarded for by getting the good end. Even the Hiveswap team knows that there’ s only so far they can go reasonably, literally labeling the option as “Call in his mom. This has gotten problematic enough.” 

Yes, opting out of it does get you some grief, but it’s a reflection of the general crowd that wanted to see a “safe” character in a world that really doesn’t have them (not to mention the nicely added piece in there about bi erasure, especially since trolls have a default bi/pan sexuality but as soon as same-sex attraction is seen that concept is thrown out the window). They gave some people what they said they wanted, but not without a clear jab to say that they’re not doing it necessarily because they want to. And don’t worry folks! Us sinners who decided to go all the way and then get tossed aside got dunked on too (but hey alien coochie amirite). So teasing for both sides! Equality! Yay!

The team honestly had the right to pull this. We couldn’t even behave when we first learned his damn pronouns. TWO LETTERS threw everyone into an uproar. Let’s not forget that this is considered THE SECOND ROUND OF DISCOURSE and there will probably be more when he reappears in Hiveswap Act 2. They were damned either way they tried to go, so they did both. It’s a spiteful move, but the Homestuck fandom is one of the few places where that can be done thanks to the unique relationship between us as players and readers and community creators, and them as canon creators and the facilitators for the whole thing. 

I’m sick of flop/problematic/discourse culture. I’m sick of overused exclamation points!!! being used!!! to try and make a point more valid!!!! and right!!!! I’m sick of wig-snatching, tea-sipping, uwu-ing, social justice phrased-as-if-you’re-above-all-of-this bullshit being perpetuated as legitimate discussion. Yeah, I sound like a dick here and I’m being petty, and that’s the point. This isn’t so much satire as it is how I close I can get to posting something related to discourse. I’m not putting out a twenty-page analysis on how “bad” Lanque really is or isn’t until my hand is forced to give my evidence over and explain how I as someone who is over 18 with reasonably neutral views sees him not being that problematic compared to a lot of other content I’ve seen with similar themes and actions. I’ve played Dramatical Murder and Boyfriend to Death, and if you want problematic I dare you go play one of those games.

TL;DR Ardata warned you, everyone complaining about how problematic her party was is playing right into the hands of the team, and the only ones to blame here for the drama are ourselves.

If you get owned, fucking own it. And boy, we sure as hell did.

[morsmordrehasbeensaved]

CONGRATULATIONS HALEY, YOU HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED AS BENITO ORTIZ WITH THE FACECLAIM OF ETHAN CUTKOSKY!

Halsey!!! You know I absolutely adore all of the characters you already have, but I think Benito might be my new favorite! The amount of detail you put in and the dedication you show to this character was absolutely spectacular, and I can not wait to have him on our dashboards

Check out our acceptance checklist right here on what to do next!

♔ OUT OF CHARACTER INFO ♔

NAME/ALIAS:

Haley

AGE:

20

PREFERRED PRONOUNS:

She/Her

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY:

PST (damn..) and Hella Active

TRIGGERS:

nah

ANYTHING ELSE:

nah

♔ IN CHARACTER INFO ♔

FULL NAME:

Benito Carlos Ortiz, with a few select people who call him Benny

FACECLAIM:

Ethan Cutkosky

BIRTHDAY AND AGE:

December 10th, 1961. He just turned 17.

HOUSE AND YEAR:

Sixth Year, Hufflepuff

AFFILIATION:

Neutral as hell

BLOODSTATUS:

Muggleborn

PRONOUNS:

He/Him

SEXUALITY/ROMANTIC ORIENTATION:

Just a regular ole’ straight guy. Heterosexual/romantic

EXTRACURRICULARS:

Art Club

DESCRIPTION:

You’ve never been give a fair shot at the shiny things in life, and this has left you bitter, distrustful, and angry. No matter how hard you’ve worked, you’ve never been able to have what other people have. So, you’ve decided that you’ll just start taking them for yourself. The muggle world let you down, and so has the wizarding world, and you’re starting to believe that there is no such thing as a good person, only those that are willing to take their lives into their own hands. With your work ethic, and your creativity at solving seemingly impossible problems, you know that everything is yours for the taking. So, go on and take it.

PERSONALITY TRAITS:

(-) Audacious: Living in the slums, as well as being the youngest of his siblings forced Benito to learn how to stand up for himself. Whether that meant fighting with his older brother and sister to get the most comfy spot on their shared bed, or if it meant a risky steal so that he could put some food in his belly later that night. To survive in the area he did, one had to learn to be brave, or else they would never make it. It also gave Benito a certain aggression against the “haves”, considering he was decidedly a “have not” so sometimes, he just like to steal the purse of some rich old lady when she wasn’t looking. Sometimes it was for survival, sometimes it was not.

(-) Fierce: It was hard to make it in Benito’s house, and in order to be heard, one had to be loud and proud in their emotions. He feels things intently, whether that be happiness or anger. If happy, he might dance like fool or shout giddily into the air. If angry, he’s prone to throwing objects and is more than willing to get violent. While sometimes this helps Benito, more often than not, it doesn’t make things better.

(-) Hedonistic: Being forced to live a life that withheld a lot of life’s pleasures (vacations, good food, a room of his own, etc) has led Benito to believe that he ought to snatch up fun whenever he sees it. Unfortunately, this can manifest in both good and bad ways. Sometimes, it could be good. He might skive off class to work on a sculpture, but he also would never tell anybody no for a drink, even if he might have a class later that day to show up for.

(-) Greedy: Growing up as neglected and poor as he was, he has a tendency to seek out the better things of other people. He wants to have the same luxuries as other people, and is angry about how hard it is. He’s come to believe that he deserves what they have, and will take any measure to get there. Money is important to him, perhaps too much, and it is his main thing that drives him.

(+/-) Bold/Brash: Benito wasn’t scared of anything, at least nothing so far. Sometimes, it was to his benefit, because more often than not, most people assumed he was bluffing when he said he wasn’t afraid to fight. Other times, it was to his detriment, like when he attempted to curse someone of a far superior dueling skill. There isn’t much that he isn’t willing to do if he truly wants to, and there isn’t a single person he would back down from, for better or, for worse.

(+) Hard-working: Laziness wasn’t an option for Benito, not if he wanted a new pair of shoes, or the really cool toy that everyone else in primary school had. Or, at the worst of times, if he wanted to eat. In the Ortiz house, everyone worked for their share, from the moment they were able. He had to throw himself into what he was doing, no matter what it was, and it created within him an excellent work ethic. However, he is only hardworking on the things he feels have value, not those imposed on him by other people. He has his own goals in mind that are often different to those around him, and that is what he is always working towards.

(+) Confident: Benito is a hard worker, and he’s creative too. He has all of the traits to put his ideas into motion, and this has given him confidence. He trusts in his ability to follow through with his plans, and he knows that if he works hard enough, he can accomplish any goal he sets his mind too. Whether the goal be to beat someone up in a fight, or to best them in a duel, or to get Imogen to forgive him for something stupid he did, or to find a way to steal that necklace from that new Gryffindor girl without her noticing. He can do it, he knows it.

(+) Vivacious: Benito’s life was rough, yes, but it was not all bad. All of his family were very loud and outspoken people who knew how to have a good time. If there wasn’t a fight occuring in the house, then there was a party. His father’s laugh was booming and loud, and his mother spoke too excitedly when she was having fun. His brother often like to dance around the kitchen, and his sister was never afraid to trap Benito in a friendly headlock. This has given him an appreciation for fun, and the good times in life. He enjoys them wholeheartedly, and without reservation.

(+) Loyal: Benito is not a very trusting boy. He’s been let down too many times in his life for him to find it easy to trust someone, or something. It takes a long time for him to let down his walls enough to truly dedicate himself to something, but once he does, he extremely dedicated. He will do anything, no matter the risks, if it something he believes in. He’s committed to Imogen, and would do anything for her. He’s committed to the pursuit of money, and damn it, he would be rich one day. He’s committed to his family, and helping them make it in the world. It would be a cold day in hell for Benito Ortiz to back away from something he has pledged himself to

BIOGRAPHY:

“Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards.” That was a quote from Galileo, some scientist, or whoever, that he had heard a little about during his primitive years of schooling. Benito Carlos Ortiz put a lot of stock into names, as was tradition among his father’s side of the family. Benito’s father, Hernando Ortiz, was born in Mexico during the winter of 1930. His name meant adventurous, as would prove to be true when the young boy grew up. Mexico was experiencing a lot of change during Hernando’s youth. President Cárdenas rose into power when Hernando was a boy, and began attempting to enact a vast amount of social change. However, the Ortiz family was very poor, living in a small rural village, and many of these benefits never reached them. They stayed in a single room shack together: his mother, his father, and all four of his siblings. Life was hard, and Hernando felt as he got older that it only got even more difficult. When Hernando was ten years old, World War II was ravaging the world, and his father enlisted in the Mexican Army, which was planning to help America after the attack on Pearl Harbor. That was the last time that Hernando ever saw his padre. Six years later, Mexico had a new leader: President Alemán. Life had been tough, and scary ever since his father had died, and things were more divided than ever between the rich and the poor. So, with one bag tossed over his shoulder, Hernando walked away from his village at the tender age of sixteen, to see if he might fair better somewhere else in the world.

He snuck upon a supply ship to Portugal and lived off of the few items of food he had brought with him. When that ran out, he ate the rats that scurried to and fro across the lower deck. It was hard, but Hernando was used to such things. Eventually, however, he reached Portugal, and life truly began. He spent a year in Portugal, sometimes managing to scrounge enough money to stay in an inn, but lots of times he just had to sleep on the street. After Portugal, he headed to France, hoping he might have better luck in the Country of Love. However, he didn’t find it quite to his liking, and quickly moved on over to Spain. Hernando loved Spain a lot, for he knew the language they spoke. He’d had quite a rough time these past two years, struggling to learn different languages in order to converse with the people around him. Spain was a nice break from this. He was seventeen when he arrived in Spain, and he stayed there until nearly his twentieth birthday. He worked a variety of odd jobs and stayed in a small, rundown flat with three amigos he’d met at work. However, as his name demanded, Hernando had a thirst for adventure, and eventually, he moved on. From Spain, he headed to Great Britain. As with France, he didn’t stay long, and moved again before the year ended. From Britain, he headed to Northern Ireland, Belfast specifically, where he would find himself staying for quite a long time. It was on his twenty second birthday when he got the job at the local Ship Carpentry. It was fine work for a single man, and he was happy where he was.

Two years after his move to Ireland, in the year 1954, Hernando met Annabel Buckley.

Annabel was also born in the winter, but in the year 1938. Her name meant delight to be around, and the surname of Buckley meant servant. Both of these things would prove true, for awhile anyways. Annabel was born into a quaint, small, and loving Irish family. She had an older sister, whom she loved dearly, and she got on splendidly with her mother and father, as most toddlers did. When she was of the tender age of three, Annabel’s mother was killed in the 1941 bombings of Belfast. At the time, Annabel’s father was fighting on the war front against Germany, where he too succumbed to battle. This left Annabel and her older sister alone and orphaned. Annabel doesn’t remember this too much, considering her young age. Her older sister, however, worked hard to make sure that the pair was provided for. Eventually, after an entire year of living on the street with many other orphaned children, Annabel’s older sister was able to find work in a Belfast pub, ran by a kind, elderly couple. They allowed Annabel and her sister room and board in exchange for work, and this is where the girls stayed for most of their lives. As she grew up, Annabel took on more and more responsibility in the pub, eventually becoming one of their more favored servers. She was beautiful, with golden blonde hair and shining green eyes. Her cheeks always had a rosy sort of glow to them, and she was wonderfully charismatic to boot. It was no wonder that Hernando couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. And, to remind you, her name did mean ‘delight to be around.’

Annabel was sixteen when the devilishly handsome, and worldly travelled Mexican man came into the small village pub in which she resided. She sat him at his table, and immediately, the two couldn’t keep their eyes off of one another. The chemistry was almost touchable in the air between them, and it didn’t take long for the two to come together in an incredibly passionate, heavily romantic relationship. Annabel often remarked that Hernando made her feel like the woman in the romantic moving pictures at the theater, and Hernando often claimed that she was the first thing that truly made him feel alive. They were awfully in love with one another, and that love culminated in a pregnancy, two months from the day that they met. Hernando, who truly did love Annabel, wanted to do right by his amor, thus, the pair was married just a month after they discovered the pregnancy. And, for a bit, they seemed every bit the picture perfect family. Eight months after their marriage, in the (again) winter of the year 1955, Elena Ortiz was born. Hernando chose her name, which meant Light, for he considered his darling daughter to be the true light of his life. He fell into fatherhood with a delightful ease, and found that he could spend hours cooing and smiling at his hija pequeña. The small little family did not have much money, but they had more than enough love to fill their one bedroom house. For the first time in his life, Hernando Ortiz felt grounded and settled. For the first time in her life, Annabel Ortiz felt like she had a full and complete family again.

A year and a half later, when Elena was in that adorable early-toddler stage, Annabel fell pregnant again. Like with Elena, this had been an accident, but Hernando and Annabel were decidedly less excited about it, this time around. Another child would cost a lot of money, and they were only barely making ends meet at the current moment. Not to mention, they lived in a house with only a single bedroom. This brought Hernando back to his childhood, reminding him of the one bedroom shack he’d shared with his large family. He wanted to do better by his own children, so he relocated them to a different house, one with two bedrooms. However, it was a bit more expensive, and when their son was born, both Hernando and Annabel felt that they were at their wits end. Like he had with Elena, Hernando chose the name for his eldest son as well. Leonardo Ortiz, whose name meant Brave As A Lion, was born in the early summer, June of 1957. The family began to struggle in a way they never had before, just to put bread and cheese on the table. Hernando started working a lot of doubles, and began drinking a lot to cope with it. Annabel, who had always been a bit of a drinker, did the same. The resulting stress, drunkenness, and anger that came from this began to sour the previously loving and devoted relationship that Hernando and Annabel shared. They grew violent, the both of them, and it was began to be commonplace for the neighbors to hear loud screams and breaking glass over the sound of small children crying.

Still, Hernando and Annabel had made vows to one another, vows that they refused to break. They hoped that one day, things would be easier. They kept faith that one day they would find a way to love each other like they used to. Unfortunately, those days never came. The months continued to tick by for the Ortiz family, and they lived in a sort of limbo for many years, flipping rapidly between awful fights and wonderful family bonding. Around the time that Leonardo was two years old, Hernando fell back into contact with the family he had left behind in Mexico so many years ago. He began speaking to his mother again, and his brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts, and even his abuela, who was somehow still alive. He began to make annual visits to them, though he could never afford to bring his wife and children along with him.

Years later, in the early spring of 1961, Annabel fell pregnant once more. The family, at this point, had gotten used to their low income and had found means to survive around it. They weren’t happy, but they weren’t necessarily unhappy either. It was in this strange middle ground that Annabel and Hernando’s third child, and second son, was born. Like his father, mother, and sister, the child was born in the month of December. Hernando, as was tradition by now, chose the name. He gave the boy the first name of Benito, which meant Blessed. He hoped that the name would rain down good fortune on his son one day, and that the good fortune might trickle down to the rest of the family. Benito Carlos Ortiz always kept this in mind, believing it to be his duty to gift blessings to his family one day.

With Benito’s arrival, the Ortiz was complete, and the real story can now begin.

Benito was a happy baby, and an even happier toddler. He shared a room, as well as a bed, with his big sister and brother. During these young years of his, he was quite close with Leonardo, who was only four years older than him. From the moment that Benito was walking, the two brothers ran all around the house, causing mischief for their mother, father, and sister. Leonardo was Benito’s first role model. However, that’s not to discredit Elena. Elena, his bright and smart big sister, was the one who taught him how to survive in a world as poor as theirs. Not to mention that she also sacrificed a lot of her own toys and happiness so that her brothers might enjoy a happier childhood than she had. The family was close, despite the rather wild fights they often got into, and Benito has always looked back on this as his happiest time, the only time he could remember his family truly being a unit, albeit a dysfunctional one. Sure, their family could fight. In fact, they knew how to do this very well. Benito’s spent his childhood watching his mother throw a fist in his father’s face, and then watching as his father threw her to the ground in retaliation. He had never really been too bothered by such things, figuring that this was just the way life was. Besides, as much as they knew how to fight, they also knew how to have a good time. Alcohol permeated their family, and the community around them, and Benito honestly couldn’t remember one of their good times that wasn’t helped by the influence of alcohol. Some of his fondest memories were watching as his father and brother tapped their glasses of tequila together in a companionable gesture before tossing the liquid down their throats. He looks back fondly on their nights seated around the kitchen table, playing cards and singing old traditional family songs together: Irish and Mexican alike. Benito and Leonardo often wrestled, and while Benito never won, he always had fun. His sister loved to dance, and even more than that, she loved to wrangle her reluctant brothers into dancing with her. His childhood, while not perfect, was not entirely awful either. Sure, it was hard, and there were nights that he went without food. But there was love in his heart, and in his household, so he knew that he would be alright.

However, all of that changed when he was just seven years old.

For all of his life, Benito knew that his father had family back in his home country of Mexico. After all, he left home for a two weeks once a year to go and visit them. However, one day, just after Hernando had returned from his weekly visit to Mexico, Annabel found something while looking through his suitcases. There was a small envelope, hidden beneath a secret little flap, that was filled with pictures. Pictures of Hernando with some woman, a woman who was not Annabel. And, if that weren’t bad enough, there pictures of children. Two, to be specific. They were both girls, and they both looked to be similar to Benito’s age. There with pictures of the girls, of the woman, and of Hernando with all of them together. Annabel dug a little further, and dug up some love letters, written to Hernando by a woman named Amanda, who she presumed to be the woman in the pictures. She couldn’t understand them, for they were written in Spanish, so she brought them to Elena to translate. Elena read them, growing angrier and angrier with every word her eyes ran over, and when she finished, she looked up to face her mother with furious tears in her eyes. It seemed that Hernando had started another family, all the way across the world, and he’d kept it hidden from them for years. Now, it made complete sense why he had never brought his wife or children to meet his mother, or grandmother, or brothers and sister. Annabel wondered if he had brought this Amanda to visit them, or the two little girls. She wondered if his mother even knew about Elena, or Leonardo, or Benito? For the first time in her life, Annabel wanted to be rid of Hernando.

And so, she confronted her husband one day, after he had finished a fifteen hour shift. He stepped through the door, looking weary and tired and in dire need of a shower. Annabel didn’t care, and she flung the photos and the letters right into his face. The resulting fight was spectacular, the worst one that Benito had ever seen in his seven years of life. Leonardo jumped in at one point, trying to use his lanky eleven year old body to protect his mother. Hernando was enraged at the disrespect shown to him by his son, and things looked as if they would continue to get worse. But, then Elena stepped in. Faced with his beloved daughter’s disappointment, rage, and hurt, Hernando couldn’t face it. He fled up to his room, packed a bag, and walked right out the front door, never to be seen again by the four remaining Ortiz’s.

The absence of their father shattered the family, and from then on, they began to splinter off into different directions. Annabel turned even more so to drink, especially now that she had to work to support the children alone. She grew angry, and bitter. Benito didn’t think her name was true anymore, for she was most definitely not a delight to be around. She was mean, and she was always drunk. It became commonplace for her to pass out on their couch, surrounded in a pool of her own alcohol, or, if she was really drunk, a pool of her own vomit, or urine.

Elena grew angry too, and stopped looking out for her little brothers quite so much. The three children had to contribute to the household now, and since they were eleven and seven, Elena considered them old enough to do so. After all, she was thirteen. It was high time she started looking out for herself after spending so many years helping those around her. She grew closer with Annabel, however, and never blamed her for her drunken depression. She placed the blame firmly on the shoulders of her padre, who she know hated with a fiery passion.

Leonardo felt the same way, for he had never gotten along with father. To Hernando, Leonardo’s arrival had signalled the beginning of the bad times. To Leonardo, Hernando was angry, drunken man who couldn’t appreciate the loving family that he had around him. Leonardo was only eleven when his father left, but he was now the man of the house, and he took it upon himself to start bringing in money. For the past year, he had begun to spend more time with the other boys in the neighborhood, since the age and maturity gap between him and Benito had become a little much. The boys that Leonardo was spending his time with were other poor street kids like himself, and they’d developed a reputation for being a band of troublemakers. It wasn’t that hard for them to turn towards things a little more illegal, especially to make some money, so by the age of twelve, Leonardo had made a small name for himself by selling marijuana. The work wasn’t always safe, especially where they lived, but it brought in money.

Benito, only seven when his father left, wasn’t quite sure what to do, but he very quickly found his calling. It wasn’t all that hard, really. He discovered that if he went to the more wealthy side of town, many people didn’t lock their cars or back doors. It was all too easy for him to slip inside and fill his pockets with their expensive watches and jewelry. He was quite good at it, too, what with his small size. He could hide in spots that adult burglars could never, and he made a heavy profit from it. Soon enough, he grew more and more bold. He taught himself how to unlock a locked vehicle, using his neighbors beat-up lemon of a car for practice. From there, came stealing from stores. First, petty shoplifting. But, soon enough, Benito could walk out of a store with a bag filled and not a single employee wise to his crimes. Sure, every now and then he had close calls. He was eight years old the first time that someone caught him, but he was fast, and he easily made an escape by sliding down the flagpole next to the apartment building.

He was nine years old the first time that it wasn’t so easy to get away, but he’d surprised the man by giving him a swift kick to the bollocks. Grown adults were always surprised when children fought back. It was almost nothing for Benito to dash through the front door to escape from the foliage. There was a thrill in stealing, and a pride that Benito did not get from anything else. He often laid in bed at night, turning his wrist over so that he could examine whatever flashy and new watch he had stolen that day. It made him feel rich, which was ever so relieving since he was ever so poor.

It was actually during one of his little escapades when he noticed something very strange about himself. He was ten years old now, and he was in someone’s house. He had no shoes on, only his socks, because it made it easier for him to slip around unheard. He was being risky today, sneaking into a house while the owners were home, but he was confident that he could do it. He had just scampered onto their dining table, hands extending for the diamond coverings on their chandelier, when he accidentally knocked the vase on their table over with his foot. He swiveled around in alarm, lunging for it so that he could stop it from rolling off the edge, but he was too far. It rolled, rolled, and then began to tip over, and despite knowing he couldn’t stop it, he reached for it anyways. But then the most peculiar thing happened. Rather than falling off the table and loudly shattering all over the ground, it simply returned to its original, upright position. Benito thought he had imagined the whole thing, for he just couldn’t explain it. Not then, anyways.

He was eleven years old when a very strange man came to his house. He was tall, and he had a beard that seemed to go down forever. Not to mention, he looked very, very old. Perhaps the oldest man that Benito had ever seen. He would never forget the day when the man came to visit. He knocked on the door mid-morning. Benito was on the couch, in only his underwear and socks. He had a bowl of cereal in his lap and was trying to make out what was happening on their television, which was very cheap and only in black and white. Elena had answered the door, and when she came in with a strange expression on her face and told Benito that someone was at the door for him, his life changed forever.

It hadn’t been too hard for Benito to believe, not after the man demonstrated his strange powers. Turns out, the man had a strange name too. Albus Dumbledore. The surname sounded foreign and blocky on Benito’s lips. Albus Dumbledore, apparently, was the headmaster of a wizarding school. A wizarding school that they wanted him, Benito, to go to. He was shocked, and so was his family. After they got over their initial disbelief, they had a million questions to ask. Professor Dumbledore was patient, and he answered everything they had to ask. Benito felt embarrassed when his mother asked if the school cost any money, and then scared a second later. Would he be denied entry to this school simply because he was poor? Thankfully, Professor Dumbledore said they had a fund for helping underprivileged students. He said that Benito would have to get most of his things secondhand, but that was fine. Everything else he owned was, anyways.

And so, when summer rolled around, Benito and his family followed the directions left by Professor Dumbledore to travel to the wizarding village of Diagon Alley. It was hard to get there, since London was no easy drive from Belfast. Benito was half scared that the Professor Dumbledore wizard-man had been lying, and this was all just a scam! A clever, genius, well thought out scam, but a scam nonetheless. But, as it turns out, it was no scam. Diagon Alley was a real, live place and Benito and his family stared in awe at the sight of it. Annabel hurriedly made her way to the Leaky Cauldron to see if wizarding alcohol worked the same as muggle alcohol. (It worked better). Benito, however, set off on his own, wandering through each and every shop in search of his supplies.

Benito had just stepped into Ollivander’s Wand shop, when he saw her. She was about his size, though she looked a lot less out of place than he did. What on earth was everyone wearing? It was strange. Some people looked as wild as some of the strange figures that wandered the area of that one weird alleyway by his house! She got his wand first, and when he saw the sparks shoot from the end of it in a wonderful display of color, he couldn’t help but to exclaim in surprise. That had drawn her attention, and the two fell into conversation. He found out that her name was Imogen, and that she was also starting at Hogwarts in the fall. They didn’t talk long, but he felt good when he left the store, hardly taking the time to be surprised that he had warmed up so quickly. Once he had his wand, he was finished, and he headed to the bar to collect his extremely inebriated mother.

Now, all Benito had to do was wait.

September the First came quickly, and before he knew it, Benito found himself seated alone in a compartment on a train called The Hogwarts Express. He’d hoped to sit alone for the ride, but that seemed impossible. However, to his happy surprise, the face that popped into the compartment was one he recognized. It was the Imogen girl he’d met at Ollivanders! The two ended up sitting together, and when they arrived at Hogwarts, they were sorted into Hufflepuff as well.

Five years later, Benito is in the peak of his sixth year. His grades are alright, but he doesn’t really care about that. He had no intention of going into the Ministry of Magic, or really working at all in the Wizarding World. No, no, Benito Carlos Ortiz had bigger plans than that. After all, he was born to be blessed. No, Benito planned to use his magical powers and natural aptitude for sneaky things to live nice and breezy in the muggle world. And in the meantime, he would steal from his fellow wizards. After all, many of them didn’t respect him for who his parents were, so why should he show them the respect of allowing them to keep their belongings? The war is heating up around him, and Benito is more than ready to defend himself. But, he means to only defend himself. He had learned a long time ago that it was a dog-eat-dog world, and he knew better than to think the wizarding world was any different.

Benito Ortiz decided to not concern himself with the opinion of people that didn’t matter. He had Imogen, he had the Hufflepuffs, and he had his family. Nobody else mattered, and he wouldn’t lie and pretend that he thought they did. What he planned on doing was making as much money as he possibly could, in any means that he possibly could, and if he could, he’d try to find his dad along the way.

CONNECTIONS:

Imogen Connolly: His first friend and current girlfriend. Benito and Imogen have been together for what feels like forever, and there isn’t a single person on the planet that he feels more love for. He feels like they’re soulmates, and can’t imagine his life without her.

Katherine Bradbury: She’s new to the school, and she looks rich, so he’s got his eye on her. He doesn’t take her seriously, not really, and he finds it rather funny that she’s an American. But, he did hear a rumor about her ruining a debutante ball, so perhaps there is more to her than meets the eye.

Lucius Malfoy: Malfoy stands for everything that Benito detests, so he often tries to get on his nerves. But, more so than that, Benito has been stealing from him here and there for six years now. He has so much money that its almost easy.

ADDITIONAL INFO:

He’s a Sagittarius Sun, and an Aries Moon. Some quotes from this website that apply to Benito are, (1) “Even though you are smart and perceptive, your emotional growth lags behind your understanding.” (2) “A Sagittarius-Aries is fearless about speaking their mind and has been so since a young age. No other mixture personifies such blunt outspokenness. You have no inhibitions but have the courage to say precisely what you feel. You are active, capricious, and very independent. Everything is as you see it. It does not matter what others think, you are forthright and fearless.” (3) “You need be careful of that rather big ego of yours.”

Benito really likes the movie, “The Godfather”

Benito speaks Spanish, though not as well as he used to

Benito is really into sculpting, and astrology.

His class schedule is: Charms, Arithmancy, Divination, Potions, Transfiguration, and Defense Against the Dark Arts

[amorremanet]

You reblogged an OC meme! Thank god, tell us about Josie!

oc profiles meme!

…oh my god, i was so excited to click post and babble about josie at people that i initially forgot to come back and fill in the placeholder with something about how excited i was to talk about josie (—it’s like 4:15 AM where i am, which is probably part of the problem but i digress)

Full Name: Josiah Daniel Quinn — but, please, they explicitly prefer to be called, “Josie,” so unless you’re one of their bosses over at S.T.R.O.M.A*, whom they’re in no position to argue with, call them Josie. If not that, then use their surname. But if you can avoid it, just please do not call them by their full given first name, okay?

Shiny mutant superhero codename: Lyaeus — derived from an aspect of Dionysus who is traditionally invoked as a reliever of pain and a deliverer from anxiety and emotional turmoil and so on, which is one of their preferred uses of their psychic abilities and one of Josie’s larger goals in life (for them, it’s a mix of, “If something bad is going to happen, and you can do something to stop it and choose not to, that’s on you” and, “The world is a mess and largely sucks, but that’s no reason not to do what we can to take care of each other”).

Their codename is doubly special to them because although they were raised loosely Catholic and have a Mormon extended family who mostly doesn’t acknowledge their existence (and hasn’t for their entire life, since their Mom left the Mormon church to marry Josie’s Dad, oops), Josie is a hellenic pagan whose primary relationship is with Dionysus.

They thought for a long time and did a lot of reflection about whether or not it was too presumptuous of them to use one of his aspects as a codename, but eventually, they went with it because they see their codename and its meaning as someone who they’re continually striving to be and a set of values that they’re always trying to bring to bear in the world, and they feel like Dionysus is probably okay with that.

Gender and Sexuality: DMAB Genderfluid. // Bisexual.

This isn’t actually specifically about their gender or sexuality, but I couldn’t think of where else to put it: Josie grew up around all things Rocky Horror. Like, their parents were highly involved in the local community theatre, which did a semi-regular RHPS shadow-cast, and Josie’s parents brought their kid with them often enough that Josie grew up with their blood family and their, “Rocky family.”

Josie would rather deal with their Rocky family than their blood family a lot of the time, because their Rocky family was more immediately there for them during a lot of rough stuff while they were growing up, and their Rocky family handled it better at the various times when they came out, and their Rocky family didn’t say shit like, “Wait, I thought you were gay, why are you going back in the closet” when they came out as bi or ask invasive questions when they came out as genderfluid and was more supportive in general of Josie’s evolving sense of their own identity, and so on.

Pronouns: They/Them/Theirs.

Josie does also answer to He/Him/His pronouns, but that isn’t a choice on their part, so much as it’s an issue of, “Well, I can be out at work and open the door to potential harassment and people who will invalidate my gender identity and likely flat-out refuse to respect my pronouns, which will create more difficulty for myself in a job that’s already difficult because it’s stressful to begin with and I hate working here — or I can suck it up and just be grateful that my friends and parents are all good about this”

Like, one of the things that Seb does when he and Josie first meet that makes Josie go, “I’m still not totally thrilled at being assigned to help out the newbie (especially since I know I’m only getting this assignment because: 1. our bosses are playing a game of, ‘lmao just toss the LGBTQ ones together’ because the newbie’s gay and pretty much everyone here thinks that I am too; and 2. Deputy Director Gray is still cranky with me over that MSNBC round-table that I did last week where Yael kept pushing me to voice my own opinions and not the Bureau’s official line) — but maybe it won’t actually be completely awful and maybe he’s going to be okay as a new partner”?

…is noticing that Josie wears two woven yarn bracelets on one wrist — one of them in the lavender/white/chartreuse colors of the genderqueer flag, and the other in the pink/white/purple/black/blue of the genderfluid flag — and first waiting for them to be alone in Josie’s office, then going, “Oh, so are you genderfluid? What are your pronouns?” and then listening and respecting it when Josie explained that they’d rather Seb just kept using he/him/his at work

Species: Human (mutant with aforementioned mutant psychic powers)

Race/Ethnicity: White, and the only real part of Josie’s ethnic background that’s ever been important in their life was that their late paternal grandmother was very proud of being Irish.

Like, her parents had come to Ellis Island from Ireland — though she was too young to have any actual memories of the passage herself — and she wasn’t so insistent about it that she objected to her son marrying a Mormon girl instead of a Good Irish Catholic Girl, but still, the Irish thing was a big deal for her.

Josie, personally, doesn’t get it beyond, “I’m white and I have a particular aversion to St. Patrick’s Day because first of all, some of my extended family members can turn into a bunch of rowdy, off-putting little shits on St. Patrick’s Day, and I always had to suffer through that because we always had a party for it, first because Grandma wanted one, and then in honor of her memory.

“And secondly, because as soon as anyone hears that I’m partially Irish and/or a Dionysian, it is just assumed that I want to go get wasted on St. Patrick’s Day, which I don’t, but I still end up going out into environments that are absolute Hell for someone who has both telepathy and hyper-empathy, because the spaces are crowded, emotions are running high, and there is basically nowhere to escape to where you can get some peace and quiet and a break from the sensory and emotional overload of being at a rowdy bar on St. Patrick’s Day.

“And I endure all of this with people whom I may not even like that much just so they’ll have a designated driver, because I would feel bad personally if I didn’t go to make sure they all got home okay, and just because they don’t understand my god or might want to get something else out of him than I do, doesn’t mean that I should brush them off and risk them getting hurt while they’re completely shit-faced.

“Which doesn’t make this any less exhausting and awful, but it’s better than taking the chance that they might get hurt, y’know?”

Birthplace and Birthdate: Saratoga Springs, NY. // 22nd February, 1980 — they’re a Pisces (Libra rising, Gemini moon).

Guilty Pleasures: High-quality dark chocolate, high-quality makeup even if they can’t wear most of it as often as they’d like^, the original Vampire Chronicles novels (and though they will sometimes claim that only the original six ones, “count,” Josie owns everything that Anne Rice has published, even the ridiculous Jesus books), binge-watching reruns of Project Runway…

And they don’t feel particularly guilty about it, but one of the simple things that makes Josie happy is playfully teasing their emergency contacts/best friends over how their parents named them after Beatles songs

Jude, naturally, was “Hey Jude” and Rocky got named after, “Rocky Raccoon” because, at the last minute, his and Jude’s parents decided to veto naming him Desmond because he’s a character in “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” but his name is not in the title, which was apparently a deal-breaker because of reasons

Rocky also sometimes gets playful ribbing about all things Rocky Horror, because he and Josie are ridiculous nerds, and RHPS isn’t their exclusive thing because Josie will share it with anyone who gives them half a chance to do so…… but it is still a thing that is special to Josie and Rocky, so here they are

If you ask them, Josie will tell you that they don’t believe in associating pleasure with guilt, and in their defense, they do believe in encouraging people not to feel guilty for enjoying the things that make them happy or that help them survive, because as long as those things aren’t hurting anyone — yes, that includes you, person Josie is talking to — then you have a right to be happy and a right to take care of yourself

The reality is that Josie says this to people so often because it’s something that they often struggle with themself, and even though they’re better, in some ways, than they have been in the past, there are still a lot of places where they need work

Also, Josie wouldn’t call some of the more poppy music that they like, “guilty pleasures” — especially because, if you ask them, there is no reason to feel guilty about listening to, for example, Beyoncé or Nicki Minaj

—but it is still the case that, if they were going to have a mini-reunion with some of the old goth crew friends from high school whom they don’t keep in touch with that often, Josie probably wouldn’t mention Nicki or Beyoncé, unless it was by accident or until they were sure that the old gang wasn’t going to do the judgmental goth kids thing they used to do of going, “ugh, all pop music is soulless empty bullshit for posers” and so on

Also also, there is almost no chance of them ever admitting this to most people, but…… Josie kinda loves the goth kids from South Park. Like, Josie really kinda loves them.

There’s basically no chance of them ever admitting it to most people because for one thing, it’s embarrassing to them, due to the whole South Park of everything.

For another, they’d feel the need to give someone a lengthy, tedious disclaimer about how they don’t actually watch South Park or enjoy it very much, they just know about the goth kids because one of their best friends went, “Oh my god, Josie, you have to watch this, the new Goth kid characters are so you” way back when, after the first episode with them in it aired and said friend (Rocky) was still taping new eps on VHS to watch after he got home from night classes

And…… well. Josie still wouldn’t give South Park much credit for anything else, but they do really love the goth kids, and they agree with Rocky’s, “omg it you” moment because the South Park goth kids are often eerily similar to shit that they said and did as a weird little goth kid back in high school

At one point, Rocky actually made Josie little plush dolls of the goth kids that he’d designed himself, and they are a big reason why you’re not allowed in Josie’s room until they trust you.

Other reasons include:

Josie doesn’t want most people to touch their makeup or put any of it out of order, and they keep most of it in their bedroom, on their dresser, in front of the vanity mirror that they found someone just throwing out shortly after they moved to Baltimore, even though it’s a perfectly good mirror so wtf;

some of Josie’s favorite and most personally meaningful religious and spiritual paraphernalia is in their bedroom (they keep their actual shrine to Dionysus and their, “worship workspace” in a different room at their place, but some of the more personally significant things are in their room most of the time, and they’d rather you didn’t have a chance to touch them);

Josie just tends to be an incredibly private person who places a lot of value on their personal space and having spaces that are set aside as Theirs. They were like this even before their psychic abilities kicked in and made them value even more their personal space, and ability to have a place that is set apart as Theirs Exclusively where they can go to get some distance from all the mental, emotional, and sensory overload that comes from feeling almost everyone’s feelings and hearing many of their thoughts**, to some extent or another, almost all the time;

and the few albums of old photos and framed old photos, some of which are just garden variety embarrassing like, “yes, my hair is naturally blond, here is photographic evidence from before my parents let me start dyeing it, and oh yeah, that was probably backstage after the community theatre production of Oliver! that I did in eighth grade — oh yeah, definitely that one, there’s my Artful Dodger costume and my glaringly blond hair”

but others of which are, for lack of a better term, fairly emotionally complicated for Josie. There are several different reasons why any of these photos might be kinda complicated — ranging from, “they feature Josie’s one particularly heinous ex-boyfriend who used his wealthy family’s connections to get Josie blacklisted from working in fashion after they graduated from Pratt’s School of Design” to, “they’re from the year in high school that Josie wound up having to do over because they had to spend a few months getting inpatient treatment for their eating disorder”

^: even before getting recruited to S.T.R.O.M.A., Josie got really good at finding a balance between the, “I don’t want to look pretty, I want to look otherworldly and possibly like a vampire fairy from Wonderland” style of makeup that they want to wear, and a “more professional” style that is less likely to make their clients feel uncomfortable or get them harassed — but god, do they wish that they didn’t have to strike said balance.

It wouldn’t actually make their fondness for high-quality and often expensive makeup feel like any less of a guilty pleasure, for several reasons — on one hand, their awareness of how makeup is always politically Complicated, at best; on the other, if they got to wear their makeup exactly how they want it every day, they would end up spending more money on makeup, and it would make them feel guilty because they’d feel like it’s very irresponsible and probably going to screw them over down the line because they bought makeup instead of saving the money or putting it toward something else; and on the tentacle, a whole laundry list of other reasons

—but they would still feel more comfortable with themself and more at ease with everything because they’d be presenting exactly as they want, instead of censoring their own personal gender expressions (which they’re more okay with doing when it comes to their clients because that’s a case of compromising part of their well-being in the name of [probably] helping people who need them and pay them for that help, whereas toning it down at S.T.R.O.M.A. is tedious and Josie would seriously rather not)

(They have more than once said that the degree to which they have to tone things down for S.T.R.O.M.A. makes them feel like Ned “I’m not a Satanic sex god anymore, used to be a super gothed out androgynous rock star, but is now a straitlaced and nerdy substitute teacher” Schneebly from School of Rock.

This is not a good feeling, in Josie Land. They don’t like it and they live for the weekend because, barring any major incidents that get them called in to S.T.R.O.M.A., they get to wear what the fuck they want, forego pants in favor of their favorite skirts, do their gender how the fuck they want, and wear makeup that makes them look like a vampire fairy from Wonderland)

Phobias: Josie’s biggest fear, in the immediate sense, is losing control of their psychic abilities and ending up hurting people and/or destroying themself somehow.

Underlying that, they have a bigger and more further-reaching fear of being out of control of themself and their own actions, in general.

They’re simultaneously afraid of crowds (largely because they can get really overwhelming for Josie, really fast), and afraid of isolation, which ends up making them a lot like the sort of cat who goes all like, “cuddle me cuddle me cuddle me please please please i need love and affection… no wait, fuck you, this is stifling me and i need to get out of here… wait shit i’m lonely someone please love me… no, not you, you fucking suck… why am i so lonely, why won’t anyone pay attention to me… and so and so forth ad nauseam”

That said, when I was doing Pottermore quizzes for my kids because that is the sort of thing I find both fun and useful, Josie’s picked, “Isolation” for the, “Which is your greatest fear” question on the wand quiz

They picked, “An eye at the keyhole of the dark, windowless room in which you are locked” for the, “Which nightmare would frighten you most” question on the Sorting Hat quiz

Other miscellaneous fears and squicks: Worms, eels, and anything like that (but snakes are okay, snakes are great).

The possibility of never finding love (which they know is kind of ridiculous, because they do have a lot of love in their life… but Josie does want to be with someone romantically, and all their miscellaneous issues with their blood family aside, it’s weird and kind of disheartening for them that most of their cousins have gotten married or settled down with someone, so yeah, Josie knows that this fear is based on a lot of ideas that they generally don’t like and don’t want to live by, but still.

They’re 35, their closest friends both have longstanding romantic relationships, they’re one of the few cousins left who doesn’t have a plus-one to bring to the next family wedding, and they want a romantic relationship, so being perpetually reminded that they’re not in one kicks them in the larger fear that there is something about them that is just fundamentally unlovable, so they might end up being forever alone).

What They Would Be Famous For: Realistically? Probably how they’re going to start a new superhero team with Lucy, Pete, and Sebastian — later accumulating others — and how they’re all going to kinda stumble into trying to foil some other mutants who also happen to be neo-fascist supervillains. But had Josie’s one ex, Danny, not effectively gotten them blacklisted from working in fashion, Josie might well have made a pretty big name for themself there.

They used to joke about being famous for going on Project Runway and winning, but… this started after they’d already gotten onto the path that led them to therapeutic practice, and seen that they had the potential to do a lot of good in the world by continuing on that path, so the chances of them actually doing the Project Runway thing were almost nothing

What They Would Get Arrested For: While they haven’t technically been arrested before, Josie could have been arrested for illegally overstepping the bounds of what their particular level of metahuman license allowed them to do, and if they get arrested in the future, it is almost definitely going to be for something like protesting or some trumped up nonsense charges that actually boil down to, “getting on the wrong side of neo-fascist supervillains who have wealth and connections and political power.”

OCs You Ship Them With:

Romantically: Pete is my favorite here, but: 1. I’m also going to make them work for it, because they would be good for each other, but it wouldn’t just happen super-easily for several reasons, both about the two of them individually and about how they get on together;

and 2. I’d also dig shipping Josie with Seb, Stephen, Vince, Sylvia, Izzy, Raphael, and Cynthia — though tbh, I like non-romantic Seb/Josie better than romantic Seb/Josie

Platonically: As mentioned, Jude, Rocky, and Sebastian. Aside from them, Margot, Lucy, and Sara Grace (who are all ruled out as romantic options by the three of them being lesbians), and Josie being genderfluid, yes, but not identifying with womanhood enough for them to consider romantically pursuing someone who identifies as a lesbian. Todd (who I kind of feel bad for, because he’s sort of the loser in love so far, but otoh, that’s partially his own damn fault and he has a lot of growing to do before I’m letting him have a romantic relationship that actually lasts). Yael and Elizabeth. Really, everyone on the romantic list is a good platonic relationship, too.

“this is not a ship that i condone but i find their relationship interesting, and exploring Not Good relationships is Important to me”: Julian, who actually hasn’t met Josie yet, and won’t for a while, and their relationship will be…… tricky, in a lot of ways, many of which have something to do with how Julian is a huge tool who has a charming tendency to take his own self-loathing and insecurity out on everyone else while acting campy and making sarcastic quips as though this makes his behaviors totally okay.

Pretty much everything about Julian makes him someone who would make Josie say, “the Lord is testing me”

(only for someone — probably Lucy — to go, “But you’re not Christian” and get told either, “I was raised as one, maybe Jesus’s Dad is still grumpy that I found someone who’s better for me. Anyway, you know what I meant, right?”

or, “Fine. The Almighty Thundering Zeus, lord of the heavens and king of Olympus and He Who Was Cheating On His Wife With Everyone Ever Before It Was Cool, is testing me. There. Does that version make you happy?”)

But, yeah. Julian would make Josie go, “someone is testing me” because so much of who and what he is makes Josie want to help him, but so much of what he does makes Josie want to punch him

(an impulse that Josie largely won’t be acting on because, unfortunately for them:

1. they did not get any super-strength kinds of mutations and in an RPG, Strength would be one of their lowest stats;

and 2. first, they need to learn how to throw a punch without hurting themself more than the other person.

Punching neo-fascists isn’t their strong suit. They can let Seb and Lucy do the actual punching.

And Pete, even though Pete really shouldn’t because Pete also doesn’t know how to throw a punch without hurting himself more than the other person, so Josie is more likely to try and stop him from punching a neo-fascist supervillain in the face.

Not that Josie will always succeed in that, but… well. They and their teammates are all only human.)

Anyway, uh. Josie/Julian isn’t a ship that I’d personally want to see as the endgame of anything, ever, but I find their dynamic and the potential interactions between them interesting, and they’re something I’m looking forward to playing around with more, when it’s their time

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Conrad will kinda want to, because he finds Josie’s sense of ethics to be, “tedious and outdated,” but ultimately, he wouldn’t go through with it because Josie’s creativity would intrigue him too much.

Senator Huntington would also want Josie to die, but he wouldn’t do any of the actual murdering because he doesn’t do his own dirty work.

All things considered, Edward and Desmond are probably going to end up with the job, “Go kill the weird effete one who looks like some kind of vampire fairy from Wonderland” because everyone else is busy, and they will fail at it, because that’s kind of what they do.

They are Those Two Bad Guys, and they kind of suck at almost everything that they try to do.

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Fantasy, vampire trash, psychological thrillers, magical girl everything, and horror (pretty much all kinds of horror, though Josie’s most fond of monster horror, anything with revenge-y themes, and religious or cosmic horror. They will probably tell you, “The weirder and more pointlessly, aesthetically symbolic, the better”).

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Josie would tell you that it’s how much romanticized abuse there is in paranormal romance, and to be fair, they do hate that…… but they still read it or watch it and get invested in these fictional relationships, even without necessarily coming up with a counter-reading of the text’s opinion, beyond, “this relationship is abusive even if the author doesn’t get that”

Which, to be fair, doesn’t mean that they don’t hate the prevalence of romanticized intimate partner abuse, just that it’s an, “I hate this thing” where they still engage with it, and not just because there aren’t always a lot of options without it

(Horror flicks that demonize and stigmatize mental illness are a thing where Josie doesn’t like the thing, but suffers through them because there aren’t a lot of other options otherwise)

But one trope that will make them, “nope” out…… uh.

Josie is really sensitive about The Uncanny Valley, and while they may not fully, “nope” out of things over it, they need to take more time than most people to prep themselves for seeing it and recover after seeing it

Also, not a trope, but Shia LaBeouf will make Josie “nope” out of anything. They have no rational reason for disliking Shia LeBouf, so much as he Just Irrationally Bugs Them, but they will “nope” out of things if he’s involved

Talents and/or Powers: Okay, so, a lot of Josie’s actual superpowers are discussed elsewhere, especially in the footnotes, so let’s talk about their other, non-mutant superpowers. They can sew. Even without having been actively designing anything for a while, they can still pull out a good design and they are capable of following a pattern pretty well. They know their limits fairly well, and better than pretty much everyone in the main team (this doesn’t mean that they always). And it’s almost 4 AM, so this answer is getting cut short by, “I am tired and I want to sleep” (and the next two answers will suck for the same reason)

Why Someone Might Love Them: Josie is creative and curious and once you get them to warm up, calm down, and stop worrying so much about anything, they’re a complete dork who, among other things, gives people, “C’thulhu kisses” (done by sticking your hands in front of your mouth and wiggling your fingers like tentacles, and maybe making a silly noise and saying, “C’thulhu kisses!” like you’re Sailor Moon shouting her transformation phrase). They have a pretty good sense of humor about themself, outside of their precious few no go areas. Josie is compassionate and they do genuinely want the best for most people, even people they don’t personally like very much. They try to be patient with people, even when they really don’t want to be, and even if they don’t always know what the best option is, they still try to actually do things and choose the best option for creating positive change.

Why Someone Might Hate Them: Their cycle of indecisiveness that leads to recklessness that leads to self-punishing thoughts and behaviors that leads to more indecisiveness, and rinse lather repeat. Their tendency to be really judgmental, even while acknowledging that being judgmental is something that, in their experience, causes more harm than good, and that they want to avoid more often. The way that they can lapse into talking like a high school goth kid who’s up-talking the superiority of goth subculture and doesn’t realize that they sound like an elitist, conformist prick, just like the people they’re complaining about allegedly do.

How They Change: Well, for one thing, Josie has some things to learn about how they relate to people and manage their relationships — which doesn’t necessarily make them special because this is just kind of a Thing for most of my main characters in one way or another. Josie’s specific issue wrt relating to other people has to do with their reluctance to trust people and open up and try to build any new relationships, which has often led to them practicing a sort of interpersonal-level isolationism that has hurt them and other people.

They also have something to learn about managing the façade(s) that they present to the world, much like how Seb has to learn something about his habit of acting like everything is okay while he’s suffering and thinking anyone believes him anymore because he doesn’t want to deal with his problems

and like how Pete has to learn about how…… yeah, okay, he is genuinely angry about a lot of things — some of them fair and really more, “righteous indignation” than anything else, and some of them less fair — but a lot of how he acts that anger out in the world is not actually as truthful as Pete feels like it is, but more a way of keeping people at arm’s length, testing them and testing his relationships with them, and trying to push them away before they can get the chance to hurt him

In Josie’s case, their façade(s) are a bit different because most of them came into being less because of an emotional choice on Josie’s part — e.g., Seb doesn’t want to deal with his problems because they’re painful and terrifying and they feel like they’re too big to handle — and more out of pragmatic decisions

……but then Josie came to rely on them in contexts other than the ones in which they were originally created, and balancing that many different versions of yourself is stressful as fuck-all, especially for someone who already has to do a lot of work to keep reminding themself of where their personal boundaries are, and Josie hides in their different façades every bit as much as every other character who has one, and largely only gets away with that because most people in their life don’t know them well enough to notice this, and their façades do still have pragmatic value, so most people who do notice don’t say shit about shit

Then, there’s Josie’s relationship to time, which

I’m going to explain this really badly now, because it��s 3:33 and I’m tired, but basically, I see Seb, Josie, and Lucy as complementing each other in how they relate to and orient themselves in time, and the negative side-effects that they create for themselves because of these behaviors

On one hand, Seb is way too prone to being stuck in the past. He clings to it too much — but also has a selective relationship with it, where people he cares about get forgiven too easily and Seb tries to deny that he still feels upset about anything (even when basically everyone around him knows that he does feel upset and is just trying not to deal with it), while Seb forgives himself for nothing and defines himself so much by all of his past mistakes

—and he goes past the point of, “honoring and respecting history, such as by not ignoring times when he did fuck up (of which there are many)” to, “actively impeding his own progress in life because, for example, he keeps trying the same shit over and over and over again, even though it literally never works, because it’s what he did before.” Plus, some of his ideas about the past are distorted by various factors, or missing entirely (most often due to intoxicated blackouts and/or head trauma that would have had more disastrous effects on him if not for his mutant healing factor), or otherwise unreliable, so that’s a problem.

On the other hand, Lucy is future-oriented and totally jazzed up about trying new things and meeting new challenges head on and doing things!! also STUFF!!!!! there is an entire world full of THINGS AND STUFF AND BY GOD, LUCY IS GOING TO DO ALL OF IT OR AT LEAST AS MUCH OF IT AS SHE POSSIBLY CAN AND THINGS ARE GOING TO GET BETTER SO HELP HER GOD OR JESUS OR SATAN OR WHOEVER EXCELSIOR YAH YAH YAH!!!!

……which is great and all, but she charges headlong into shit without an actual plan (seriously, most of her plans follow the good old, “step one: do this thing / step two: ………… / step three: PROFIT!” formula), and she’s a case of someone who is averse to learning from history at all because she doesn’t want to be shackled to it, but having no sense of history can be just as bad as being overly chained to it like Sebastian, and… well. You can try to outrun the past like she does, but it doesn’t tend to work out very well, and it’s not going to work for Lucy either

On the tentacle, we have Josie, who ostensibly has a balance between the past and the future orientations that we see in Seb and Lucy, because Josie’s primary focus tends to lie on the present, and at most, the very near future or very recent past

—but that’s not actually a balance like Josie wants to believe, because (among other things), it makes it very easy for Josie to ignore past lessons that are older than maybe the past two or three months; and it means that while Josie can see all kinds of potential consequences, their ability to predict what they could be gets a lot less reliable as you go further into the future; and it means that Josie has trouble actually putting together a longer-term plan, which is part of their problem with wanting to create positive change in the world but not knowing how

Josie also has a tougher road (imltho) to go on about finding a new and better balance here, because their focus on the present is something they learned in recovery, as part of learning about mindfulness, and it does help them sometimes — but on that personal level, Josie’s presentist focus can also hurt them because, even when they notice certain behaviors in themself that could get Bad For Them, they can also overlook some of these budding patterns because they’re not Obviously Bad Enough to feel like a major concern, or they look different from other past manifestations of Josie’s behavior patterns so Josie doesn’t think they need to worry about these behaviors, and so on

I’m mean to my characters and I’m going to make them work to be happy, but they will all be happy, eventually

Uh. Barring most of the villains, because letting the neo-fascist assholes win in the end would be a complete downer that would probably end up undermining a lot of the whole, “just because the world is a crapsack hellhole doesn’t mean that it has to stay that way or that we should give up on it” idea

Why You Love Them: Okay, so, this needs a bit of a story.

See, Josie is a retooled character from an old RP that I was in way, way back. I loved them a lot, and they weren’t entirely wrong for the game — they had a good run in their first incarnation — but they also weren’t entirely right for it, and they kind of floundered a bit because I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with them.

A large part of this was due to how Josie was a senior at their school and, because of the year they did over, they were itching to get out and go to college, and the closest they got to an actual arc was how they didn’t want to leave behind their ex-boyfriend turned best friend (who was in the class below them), but did want to go to college already and get to the rest of their life

and how they had some trouble with accepting said best friend’s new boyfriend when Josie really wanted to be compassionate, because New Boyfriend was mentally ill and dealing with some trauma and Josie sympathized and wanted him to be well because why the Hell would you wish for someone to be *UN*well jfc — but also had trouble with that because New Boyfriend was sometimes aware of how some of his actions affected other people, but sometimes not, but sometimes he was and did the stupid things anyway, and even in working on his problems, he made the mistake that a lot of people do where they focus on getting well as defined by and in order to please the people around them, rather than doing it for themselves

—all of which Josie was sympathetic to in a big way, having been in some similar places before themself…… but they had a hard time always being as compassionate as they wanted to be because New Boyfriend’s actions had been hurting Best Friend, and even knowing that this wasn’t entirely something that New Boyfriend could be entirely blamed for (for several reasons), Josie still had a hard time trying to overlook the, “this lovable weirdo is my friend, my best friend, and even though we aren’t together anymore, I love him, and you hurt him, so yeah, I’m kinda mad at you for that” thing

And this all goes back to why I love Josie because one thing that they’ve kept in a big way, in getting retooled and updated and worked into my dumb little stories about neurodivergent and/or mentally ill LGBTQ mutant superheroes (and Pete, who is not actually a mutant but is neurodivergent, gay, an abuse survivor, and a superhero and I will fight anyone who says otherwise)

(I mean, ffs. Batman doesn’t have any mutant superpowers, and Iron Man wouldn’t have any actual superpowers without his ridiculous power-armor and, depending on the continuities, his arc reactors. So, no, I don’t think that Pete needs to have literal superpowers to count as a superhero — but that’s beside the point and to be fair, I will admit to being biased because I love Pete more than George RR Martin loves Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister)

Anyway. As I was saying.

One thing that Josie has kept in a big way is that ongoing fight with themself over two equally powerful impulses or reactions to things or desires — like their, “I want affections and I want to be around people…… okay no this is overwhelming and I don’t actually like these people fuck this I want to be alone…… oh but being alone sucks and now I’m lonely, I want to be where the people are, let’s go to the movies…… oh my god why did we go see the new Star Wars while it’s still a relatively recent release, I barely remember anything about the actual movie, I was too overwhelmed by the feelings of everyone else in that completely packed theatre… and so on” relationship with other people and being around them or not

Or like their big struggle in the first book of wanting to help people and create positive change in the world, but not being able to do too terribly much on their own for a lot of reasons (some of which are about Josie personally, and some of which are about the whole Lone Superhero thing be a lot of hot fucking nonsense that is fundamentally unsustainable), but not having an official team to belong to because although they work for S.T.R.O.M.A., they don’t like S.T.R.O.M.A., and while they are part of the extended Wardens family, they’re not a fully-fledged Warden and so much of the Wardens’ everything is based around Yael and Elizabeth’s school, so being one and not being up in Poughkeepsie would be weird and mean you end up missing out on a lot and, in Josie’s case, end up feeling like an outsider even when you’re surrounded by people who, for the most part, love you and accept you exactly as you are, but also not entirely doing everything they can to find a team because, in fairness, it can be really difficult to do that even if you don’t work for the U.S. government……

Basically, I love Josie because I love making my characters deal with internal conflict, and while all of them have a lot of it, I’m really fond of Josie’s particular brand of, “self-reflective, doing things but not things that add up to bigger things in the ways that Josie wants, trying to remedy that but it’s hard, not sure what to do or if going after these new possibilities and new ideas will make things worse, getting fed up with themself and needing to try something, but but but five million different elements all converging on each other but but but” internal conflict

And I’m really fond of it in Josie’s case because Josie is savvy enough to know that they can’t fall into the same, “do fuck-all nothing about anything until the last possible minute” trap, but their frustration is less about, “I can’t do anything” and more about, “but what do the things that I do actually mean, who am I helping, am I actually helping them or not, how can I do things that create more significant positive changes or is there a way to do that at all”

And, well. There is, Josie, but it requires you to trust some new people, bond with some new people, build relationships with them and work on maintaining said relationships, find strength in numbers, and learn more about loving and letting people love you back because one of your biggest problems in your previous relationships has been that you don’t open up — not, “you open up slowly” but, “you don’t open up with most people, period, despite knowing that this is not a sustainable way of doing things” — so yeah I’d say you need to learn about that, and learn to stop being such a lone wolf because do you know what generally happens to lone wolves? Either they find a pack somehow, or they die (without making any kind of positive changes in the world around them, relative to the size and interests of, y’know, wolves).

……Because I’m a lonely and bitter and it makes my half-dead little heart happy to make my characters find more strength together than they do apart and learn to love and be loved in return without it coming off as one-sided, like it can do in a lot of takes on that trope that are aimed at children, because…… uh, last I checked, the whole point of a relationship is that it is not exclusively about one person’s needs or desires???

Also, Josie is a compassionate but grumpy grown up goth kid who is trying to be a good person, and doing a better job than a lot of other characters, but definitely has a problem with their judgmental tendencies and how they sometimes externalize them and get super-judgmental of others, because on some level, their mind is like, “fuck, can i get a break from always punishing myself over here, jfc” and I don’t know, it’s almost 4AM and I have lost track of how long I’ve been writing this

Josie’s a nerd and a cat who can’t make up their mind about whether they want to be outside chasing butterflies or inside sitting on your keyboard so that you have to pay attention to them and not your computer and idk, I love them, the end

(except for the footnotes oops)

*: Special Taskforce for the Regulation and Oversight of Metahuman Affairs — or in plain-speak, the FBI’s wing of people who get involved in all of the shiny, extralegal superpowered mutant hijinks.

They have a pretty good working relationship with their counterparts at the Department of Health and Human Services (who actually end up handling most mutant affairs, because this world treats the question of super-powered mutant licensing as more equivalent to getting a driver’s license, and frankly, most mutants in the U.S. just want to go about their lives in peace — like, go to college, get a job, go on dates, come home and watch the Daily Show, and not be bothered about or make trouble for anyone else with the weird superpowers that most of them did not want or ask for — so there’s rarely any actual reason for the FBI to go stick their noses into anything, and there are plenty of cases where they get called in, only to find that they aren’t actually needed after all), but… yeah.

S.T.R.O.M.A. is a faction of people who exist. Josie works for them, for all they would really rather not. Unfortunately for Josie, particularly powerful metahumans tend to wind up on a lot of S.T.R.O.M.A. watch-lists, and they are more likely to do so when they have powers that the people at the FBI consider particularly useful or desirable — for example, telepathy and hyper-empathy, in Josie’s case. For the most part, these watch-lists don’t actually amount to anything because they don’t end up being relevant to most of the cases that S.T.R.O.M.A. has to deal with.

—but then you can have situations like Josie’s, where they were one of many mutants who got in a brief spot of trouble over genuine confusion surrounding a new bill that had just gone through Congress and revised some of the definitions of and privileges associated with/afforded to people at the different levels of metahuman licenses. (Since this is still America and we’re still talking about the FBI, there are also plenty of even worse potential outcomes for people who end up on their miscellaneous mutant watchlists — which is one of the big points that gets brought up by people who either want to reform or do away with the whole metahuman licensing thing — but in fairness to most people, they don’t know the full specifics.)

Anyway, Josie got in trouble because they are an actual therapist and, although they prefer not to use their powers with clients and extensively brief anyone who asks about trying that approach (about the potential benefits vs. potential risks, all the drawbacks, all the potential unintended consequences, etc.) while offering them plenty of chances to change their mind and go, “okay, let’s not do this,” they do still let their clients know that they’re a telepath/empath and that they can use their powers in a therapeutic context but it’s not the best thing to try as a first approach

Which is all great, except that Josie had been assured that they wouldn’t need to get a different kind of license to continue doing this, after that bill passed… except that they did. And this probably would’ve continued with no actual interference from anybody because Josie is hyper-responsible about using their powers with clients, about keeping up on all of the latest research and debates about therapeutic uses for psychic abilities and the ethical issues surrounding this, and so on…… except that one of their clients was a teenager who needed parental consent to go through with this, and one of their parents worked for S.T.R.O.M.A.

Relevant piece of context: Josie was absolutely not the only mutant who’d had some confusion over the revised licensing scheme. Josie wasn’t even the only mutant in the greater Baltimore area who had similar confusion on this issue.

But Josie was one of the only ones who was already on S.T.R.O.M.A.’s radar when they got in trouble, partly by virtue of being a “telempath,” partly by virtue of having trained with Dr. Elizabeth Woodham (who is: one of the most powerful telepaths in the entire world; a respected professor, activist, and philanthropist; one of the first mutants in the States to register for one of the early, “superhero licenses” [not their official name, but that’s the gist of what they are]; and with her wife, Dr. Yael Lehrer, one of the co-founders of the Wardens and co-headmistresses of one of the most respected schools for mutants in North America), and partly by virtue of having a lot of (mostly untapped) potential power.

And, see, one of S.T.R.O.M.A.’s problems is that it is perpetually under-staffed, in all areas but especially in terms of mutants who work for them, and moreover, mutants who will actually do fieldwork (like, Pete’s cousin Emerson is a mutant and he does work for S.T.R.O.M.A., but he’s lower on the powers scale than most of their employees who do active fieldwork, and he has no desire to do fieldwork when he could do lab-work instead). There are a lot of reasons for this problem of staffing, but one of the more noticeable end-results is that S.T.R.O.M.A. can be somewhat unethical in some of their recruitment bids. Like, yes, sometimes, you just get a visit from Some Guy Who Is Totally Not Nick Fury, who offers you a chance to be a part of something bigger than yourself and to use your abilities to help people

Other times, you get treated to a few hours of what S.T.R.O.M.A. sees and treats as the interview portion of applying for a Very Important Position somewhere, except that they don’t tell you that this is what they’re doing and they use “interview” (read: interrogation) techniques that people in law enforcement usually save for wrangling confessions out of suspects.

It will not look like it, but they are actually trying to figure out some specific things about you, including but not limited to: how you handle high-stress and high-pressure situations (like, for example, being accused of using your powers for any extralegal vigilantism, and maybe knowing things about [the biggest mutant-related news of the day] that they don’t; being threatened with a trip to one of the U.S. prisons designed to hold mutants; etc.); various details about your backstory and who you are as a person and what your biggest Deals are (i.e., getting you to help them run a damn background check on yourself); and how in control of your powers you are (since they trust the DHHS evaluations, but prefer to supplement them with firsthand evidence).

Then, once they’ve figured out what they want to know, you might very well be offered something to the tune of, “Alright, this is your first offense, and based on your dossier and this interview, we think that you could be an asset to S.T.R.O.M.A., if you wanted. If you like the sound of working for us, at least as an analyst or consultant if not a fully-fledged special agent, then we can make all of this legal trouble just go away. If you don’t like the sound of that, then……… well… *deliberately trails off to let you draw your own conclusions while still staying within the letter of the law, because hey, they didn’t actually tell you that you’d for sure end up getting prosecuted and going to prison*”

So…… yeah. S.T.R.O.M.A. and Ethics are not always on speaking terms.

Add this recruitment story to Josie’s frustrations with how metahuman employees at S.T.R.O.M.A. tend to get treated — e.g., they, themself, are often trotted out to go liaise with different media outlets as a public face of Mutants Who Work Here, Look We’re Trying Our Best So You Should All Just Totally Cooperate With Us, but they’re discouraged from voicing any of their own opinions and advised to just stick to these Bureau-approved talking points — and at having to be closeted and fairly masc-presenting at work because S.T.R.O.M.A. thinks they’re a cis man, and…… yeah, uh.

“Josie would really, really rather not work here” is an understatement af… but they continue working here anyway because: 1. as a consultant, they can still usually balance things enough to keep working as a therapist;

and 2. Josie wants so badly to help people, and for all S.T.R.O.M.A. is highly unethical (sometimes) and part of the goddamn FBI, most of the people who work there also want to help people and use their work to create positive changes in the world — and it’s not an unfair observation that, on their own, there really isn’t much that Josie can do (because the idea of the solo superhero who works alone… isn’t sustainable, like??

Aside from the political and ideological issues with that whole aspect of superhero mythology, it’s not actually feasible for one person, working on their own, to create any positive change. It would be massively unhealthy for them, there’s only so much they can do as one person, there are no actual safeguards in place if they ever get corrupted, and as multiple deconstructions of the genre have shown, it’s really easy for a classic lone vigilante model superhero to slide into a mindset like Rorschach’s — which is full of hypocrisy, double standards, misogyny and homophobia and ableism, and total moral absolutism that simultaneously allows no room for compassion and keeps Rorschach from being able to appreciate the big picture outside of his little myopic Objectivst bubble — or Frank Miller!Batman, who is often only a step or two off from actual fascism, but we probably won’t call it that because he’s wearing the Batman suit).

At this point, Josie has even had it all but confirmed that the agents who came to recruit them definitely “avoided certain truths to manipulate them” on purpose, so they’re reasonably certain that they could probably leave S.T.R.O.M.A without having their previous step out of bounds dredged up and handed to a D.A. who’d be pressured to prosecute them for it…… but they want to help people, and S.T.R.O.M.A. is one of the only options that they can currently see where they get to help anyone.

So, here they are. Working in a position that they’re not a fan of, looking at the motivational posters of gothed out kittens that one of their best friends drew for them, and trying to take, “hang in there!” kitty’s advice and tough it out at S.T.R.O.M.A. for the sake of doing some good in the world.

**: This mostly happens if Josie doesn’t have the energy enough or keep focus enough to keep their mental walls up — which they are usually very diligent about because on one hand, hearing other people’s thoughts kind of sucks actually (Josie would definitely agree with the sentiment that, a lot of the time, being a telepath is like having a youtube comments section screaming at you in your head)

—and on the other, um, hello, telepathy can, in the wrong hands, become a walking violation of civil liberties. Like, if you ask Josie, telepathy has a lot in common with wiretapping, though they consider it potentially even more dangerous than that, because it’s harder to prove that telepathy has been involved in something, since:

1. yes, the traces of telepathy can show up on a CAT scan or an MRI of the brain, but you’d need a neurologist who is well-trained, very attentive, and up to date on as much of the current research into telepathy as possible — or hey, a team of neurologists might not be a bad idea, if you can get them all, because one neurologist might miss something

—but otoh, the traces of telepathy can sometimes also be mistaken as signs of something else, especially if someone is neurodivergent and/or mentally ill, has suffered any serious and/or recent head injuries, has a history of substance abuse, is sleep-deprived at the time of the tests, may actually have something else going on in their brain in addition to the traces of telepathy

Seriously, just about anything that affects the brain can make it harder to tell whether or not someone’s been hit with telepathy

Plus: telepathic abilities are sort of mid-level common among mutants, and some mutants use them without even realizing it because their powers haven’t manifested in ways that are for sure Outside Three Standard Deviations From The Non-Mutant Human Mean, so some minor telepathic scarring is common, even in people who haven’t been hit by something as awful as, say, memory modification, or having someone go in and pick around in their brain like they’re flipping through an issue of Us Weekly

—and without a keen, well-trained eye, it can be really hard to tell those types of telepathic scarring apart

2. some of the traces of telepathy are more subjective, and while they might show up on a brain scan, the best evidence of them will come from the people who’ve been hit with the telepathic whatever

—but that’s going to be a problem because, in a lot of cases, they won’t have any memory of it, or they’ll have a false memory of it, and there’s no guarantee that further telepathic probing will be able to help here, and it could just make things worse. Plus, there’s no guarantee that the people who’ve been hit will actually be aware that what they’re experiencing is related to telepathy.

This is especially true with experienced, exceptionally powerful, and/or highly meticulous telepaths, because some of them can dick around in people’s heads and leave barely any trace that they were there

Like, for an example of what a more subjective trace might look like: Conrad is a telepath, and unlike Josie, he doesn’t really care about ethics or the rights of most other people. About ten years before the story actually starts, he took an interest in his new brother-in-law’s youngest brother (Sebastian), because he could sense something in Seb — he didn’t know what it was, exactly, but it was definitely a something — that made him go, “huh, maybe this emotionally troubled nearly twenty-year-old boy is also a mutant”

(I mean, he’s not wrong. And the something that he got a sense of back then is the part of Seb that he’s eventually going to call, “La Bête,” because if he’s going to go for the superhero thing and need a codename, then, “Gévaudan” makes sense to him because his family is insistently French [despite not having lived in France since about 1781, apart from one ancestral namesake of Seb’s who stayed in Paris for their Revolution (and Severin Sebastien Moncrieff was a confirmed bachelor, so he left behind a partner but no heirs), well before La Bête du Gévaudan was a Thing, and despite not being from the region of France where that happened] and hey, he can apparently turn into a giant wolf-man, now

—and if he’s calling himself, “Gévaudan,” then, “La Bête” is just thematically consistent. But that’s beside the point.)

Anyway: Conrad wasn’t new to his powers ten years ago, but he was much more reckless with them — especially when he believed that he was absolutely right and would stop at nothing to prove it — and he had less finesse in using them.

So, he left behind plenty of traces when he decided to use his little sister’s wedding reception as a chance to go telepathically play around with Seb, trying to either figure out if his new brother-in-law’s little brother actually was a mutant, or maybe triggering his powers into fully manifesting (plus plying him with alcohol and adding rohypnol to the mix based on the notion that either it wouldn’t affect Seb because he’s a mutant, or if not that, then it’d trigger his abilities into manifesting).

The underlying logic of the rohypnol idea was actually not wrong, because toxin filtering is one of the more common mutant abilities you find in the States (and it happens to be one that Seb has), and some mutants have had their powers manifest in response to poisoning, drugging, exposure to carbon monoxide or other toxic fumes, and even being given antibiotics or certain medications

The idea was still morally wrong and ethically skeevy, but the mutant-related logic actually did work. Where Conrad went wrong on that count was that he overly simplified the situation, only looked for two potential reactions, and didn’t know what to make of how Seb was affected by the rohypnol but not nearly as badly as he should’ve been, so he went, “Was he affected or not?? I don’t know????”

[Here is where I cut a whole big tangent explaining that whole story, but it got way, way off the point, so.]

Anyway, the gist of the story is that Conrad is the only person who consciously remembers everything that happened, since most of the people who cared about it were not present for the encounter itself, and Conrad screwed around with Seb’s memories, both telepathically and not.

Like, Seb has more memories of it than he would if he weren’t a mutant, considering that he got dosed with rohypnol, but he also has false memories about some of what happened, and Conrad repressed Seb’s memories of certain events (like how many times he tried to break away from Conrad, or turn down the offer of another drink, because he’d promised his big brother that he wouldn’t get drunk and make a scene at Max’s wedding or the reception, and it was important to him to honor that promise)

Fortunately for Conrad, Seb is not one of the mutants who has an increased resistance to psychic attacks — largely because, contrary to what Conrad thought until about two years before the story starts, someone’s ability to resist to psychic attacks has nothing to do with whether or not they’re a mutant (aside from some special cases where someone has a resistance to any psychic attacks that falls outside three standard deviations of the non-mutant human mean)

—so, despite the feelings he sometimes gets that something about those memories might be wrong, Seb totally believes that they’re real and he doesn’t notice any of the incongruities unless someone points them out, which almost no one has any reason to do because there isn’t usually a reason for Seb to talk at length about the details of this particular incident that happened almost ten years ago

(there would be, if he ever brought it up in therapy or at AA and/or NA, or dwelled on it when he did, but that has yet to actually happen)

Unfortunately for Conrad, he did a sloppy job of this, and while it would be hard for a neurologist to tell the physical signs of his telepathic probing apart from the other brain damage that Seb’s accrued, the hardest thing for most other telepaths would be trying to find the right memories. The crap-shoot nature of telepathically digging through someone else’s mind is one of the many reasons why Josie doesn’t like using their powers as a first approach in therapy, because you can never guarantee with any reliable certainty that you’ll get at the parts of someone’s mind that you want

—but if someone did get to Seb’s memories of this incident, it would be really obvious to them that they’ve been modified. Like, images might be blurred around the edges, it might glitch like a video or audio track that’s skipping, the voices might get distorted, the colors might look wonky, and so on. Prodding a bit more would also be able to undo Conrad’s memory-blocks without doing too much damage to Seb’s brain (not so much on an emotional and psychological level, but the damage there would be more like the painful truth that hurts now but leads to something better)

Anyway, it’s much harder to get proof of this nature when you’re dealing with more skillful, more attentive, more powerful, etc. telepaths, because they aren’t as messy as Conrad was with Seb

and 3. Wiretapping operations usually involve more people, which doesn’t make them ethical or necessarily justified, but it does mean that they’re easier to find evidence of because there are more folks who can spill the beans and point you to it. Telepathy only needs two people to happen, and one may not even be aware of what’s going on, depending on how sensitive they are and whether or not they’re dealing with an ethical telepath

For example: while not metahuman levels of resistant to psychic attacks, Pete is exceptionally sensitive to them and he’s naturally better at resisting them than some people, so if someone wanted to paw through his mind, he has a better chance of recognizing that he’s being telepathically invaded and getting them out

Sebastian, on the other hand, is Bad at recognizing and resisting psychic probing. Unethical telepaths have an easier time of getting through him because at his best, if he isn’t told in advance, then he feels ill at ease, inexplicably anxious (not that it means much, because he tends to attribute that to his shitty mental health), kind of nauseated, and maybe like he’s being spied on. At worst, he doesn’t even notice.

So, basically, Josie considers it a moral and ethical responsibility on their part to do everything they can to not inadvertently spy on people, because there is already so much about telepathy that can go really bad and poses a lot of ethical problems — but they are only human, and there are a lot of ways for someone’s mental walls to come down or reasons why they would.

Letting their empathic walls down usually makes it easier for Josie to focus on keeping up the telepathic walls, since the empathic ones are a lot harder for them to keep up, but it’s only a temporary thing because if Josie takes those walls down, they open themself up to a looooooot of potential overwhelm from outside influence, and there’s always the option to find a balance between the empathic walls and telepathic ones, but sometimes, it’s easier said than done.

Josie is usually too hard on themself for it when any slip-ups on their part happen, even knowing that every other telepath and every other empath has moments like this and even if they got too overwhelmed to actually remember anything and/or heard nothing.

It’s such a big deal to them because the potential for psychic abilities to violate other people — and especially the potential to manipulate people and compromise or outright remove their agency — is something that Josie never wanted. They went into counseling as a profession, after their original plan of going into fashion went up in smoke, but part of it, for them, has always been about trying to help people get their lives back, or manage them better, and so on. Granted, they knew about their telepathic and empathic abilities before they officially went into therapeutic practice, but that, for Josie, was part of how they developed their approach to being a therapist.

Furthermore, on a more personal and less professional note, Josie never wanted mutant superpowers to begin with. After having their telepathy and empathy first manifest in full, they might’ve done plenty of things that they normally wouldn’t even consider, if they thought it could take their powers away.

Partly, that was because their powers manifested toward the end of a really bad mental health downswing that ended in Josie going back to an inpatient treatment center for their eating disorder. Any of these elements on their own would’ve been bad enough, but having them all come down on them at once was Hell for Josie, and worse, trying to get well while you are in an inpatient center and can feel everyone else’s feelings, hear a lot of their thoughts, and are currently having trouble sorting out which parts are your own feelings, which parts are coming from your eating disorder, and which parts are coming from everyone else (not least because you don’t have any proof that you are feeling things or hearing thoughts that are coming from other people).

Josie eventually got help for that part because one of the therapists at the center was a metahuman and had gone to the Woodham and Lehrer School before deciding that she didn’t particularly want to be a superhero in the traditional sense. She reached out to her old teachers, and Josie got help for that while doing more intensive outpatient treatment until they got better at tuning out other people’s thoughts and feelings.

But there’s a lingering problem here that goes back to the feelings that underlie Josie’s ED. When they are at their absolute worst, Josie can be an absolute control freak, and they tend to turn it inward more than outward because they realize that taking it out on other people isn’t fair and they don’t feel good about it. Additionally, feeling other people’s feelings as intensely as they do gives Josie an additional incentive not to take their issues with control out on other people (and did even before their powers fully manifested, because they’ve always been pretty sensitive). On some level, Josie realizes that they can’t control things like how people react to them, whether or not bad things happen to good people, and so on, but that doesn’t always help because it can lead to them feeling even more of a need to crack down on controlling themself.

Having psychic powers becomes problematic for them in two big ways, here:

1. It’s unfortunately very easy for Josie to slip into overly self-punishing thought patterns if they feel like they aren’t as in control of their abilities as they, “should” be — which happens very easily because Josie’s standards for themself aren’t always realistic, and they usually aren’t the best judge of whether or not they’re being fair to themself.

It’s even more noticeable, for them, when they try to do more complex and demanding things with their powers.

This was one of the big reasons why they’ve stayed on good terms with their friends and mentors at the Lehrer and Woodham School, and among Yael and Elizabeth’s Wardens, but consistently rejected any invites to become a Warden (and then regretted that when S.T.R.O.M.A. got them instead, since Josie would much rather be one of the Wardens than working for the FBI).

Basically, Josie trusted Elizabeth’s guidance, and they really, really wanted to trust Elizabeth’s faith in them to handle their full power responsibly…… but it was hard to believe that when they already didn’t feel like they controlled their powers as much as they, “should” have been doing, and Elizabeth wanted to push them further.

For Josie, it felt like the choice came down to, “be a superhero and do more cool superhero things, at the expense of my own well-being, which means I eventually won’t be able to help anyone and could hurt more people than I help”

or, “quietly go back to training for an entirely different career than I expected, keep in touch with Elizabeth and work on honing my abilities, and maybe not get to help people in as big a way as members of the Wardens get to do, but at least, as a therapist, I will still have the ability to help people and will probably be less likely to screw that up by virtue of losing my control over my powers”

(To her credit, Elizabeth was disheartened by this, because she believes in all of her students and wants them to believe in themselves, and really wanted Josie on her team — but she’s learned that the superhero life isn’t for everybody, and that it’s not her job, as a teacher and mentor, to tell people what they should do; it’s her job to show them new approaches, teach them how to learn, help them find what paths and methods work best for them, etc.

So, disheartening as it was, she’s been nothing but supportive about Josie’s choice not to be a Warden, and compassionate about how much Josie doesn’t like working for the FBI — and without trying to turn it into some kind of, “this could be super-beneficial for us, if Josie wanted to give us any advance warning about S.T.R.O.M.A. business that might negatively affect us here” thing like Yael)

(To her credit, Yael really does believe that she’s helping when she says things like that, because she is so fundamentally a doer, rather than a thinker, feeler, planner, or anything else. She is absolutely capable of all of those things, but she has an approach to life and problems that goes, “Okay, this is a Thing and it’s a setback, but what can we do about it, how can we use this to build something even better”

—so her idea of how to help one of her and Elizabeth’s students and comrades with an unexpected and unwanted “recruitment” to S.T.R.O.M.A.… is going, “But look, see, we can still potentially make something good out of this, and just because a government agency snatched you up doesn’t mean that you have to forget your own values or let them control you, this can be a good thing if you take advantage of the right pieces and opportunities”

—for a moment of MBTI nerdery: Yael is an ENTJ (***) vs. Josie’s INFJ (***), so while she has Extroverted Thinking (Te) for a dominant cognitive function and primarily approaches the world based on how to get results, Josie’s dominant function is Introverted iNtuition (Ni), and while they have an orientation toward the future that appreciates where Yael is coming from with her drive to get results, Josie’s primary approach to the world looks less at objective things and objective results, more at patterns and theories and trying to find the, “higher purpose” or, “deeper reason” behind how stuff happens

Which, oddly enough, is part of why Josie and Yael get on so well. They can butt heads with each other, sometimes, but at the end of the day, they complement each other really well because both of them have vision and the drive to act on it, but Yael is better at actually getting shit done, and Josie is better at checking things through the processes of making them happen, finding potential problems that Yael may not have seen coming and trying to work addressing them into the fabric of her plans.

Their Feeling functions also complement each other really well: Josie is a high Feeler, with Extroverted Feeling (Fe) as their auxiliary function, which keeps them more attuned to the state of the group and all the people in it, while Yael has a very good relationship with her inferior Fi (Introverted Feeling), which enables her to better evaluate how their actions and plans are helping or hurting their causes, where their ideals fit into everything, and so on.

So, basically, Yael is better at making sure that they all remember who they are and what they stand for, both individually and as parts of the whole, while Josie is better at attending to people’s emotional needs and keeping the whole intact by caring for the individual members of it.

And because they both respect and admire each other, neither of them devalues the other’s contributions to anything — and it doesn’t matter to Yael that Josie has a badge and would have an easier time getting a gun if they weren’t really uneasy about guns; Josie’s a mutant, they’ve been one of her students, and they care about helping other mutants, so officially being part of S.T.R.O.M.A. doesn’t mean that they aren’t part of Yael’s (larger, mutant) family

—which all means a lot to Josie because, in a lot of ways, they still haven’t entirely outgrown their early experiences of being one of the weird art freaks at school (which, even for someone who wound up being part of a subculture/clique that’s all about going, “fuck you, I’m gonna do my thing and you can love it or shove it,” gave Josie some trouble because, goth of not, they’re sensitive), and they have a huge tendency to be overly harsh with themself and don’t always love themself very much, so this whole unconditional acceptance thing is a Big Deal to them

But I digress.

2. Having psychic powers also gets Problematic for Josie because, in their mind, they’ve spent so much of their life fighting their eating disorder and their overall mental health to keep control of their life, and it’s difficult, periodically degrading, often horrific, and something that they wouldn’t wish on anybody, period…… so having the power to take away someone’s ability to control their own mind? Having the power to violate someone’s agency, potentially with more or less complete impunity? That’s horrifying, and Josie doesn’t want it

One of the easiest ways to make Josie go off the handle at you is to dismiss how hard it is for them to maintain any sense of composure. Like, okay, they can handle people teasing them about some of their self-care habits because humor is how a lot of people come to be comfortable with and accept things they don’t understand at first, and how a lot of people show that they’re comfortable with you and like you.

But if you act like Josie doesn’t have to work, impossibly hard and daily, on their own well-being, because if they don’t, then they could lose control of psychic abilities and this would be Really Fucking Terrible for everyone? ……Uh.

Just don’t do that. It’s not pretty, it’s not fun, it’s mean and please, just don’t do it.

An even easier way to make Josie snap at you is to play what they call, “the Aslan card” — which means telling them that the proof that they can handle the responsibility of psychic powers, is their own fear that maybe they can’t, their awareness of and attentiveness to the ethical and moral problems attached to them having psychic powers, the fact that they’d rather not have psychic powers in the first place because it can — and often does — feel like these powers and their attendant responsibilities are too big and too potentially Terrible Forever, For Everyone

Which Josie calls, “the Aslan card” because, uh. The first time they heard it was from Elizabeth (whose heart was in the right place in saying this, but she didn’t think about how it might end up sounding to Josie), and the first thing Josie was reminded of was Aslan telling Prince Caspian that he’s ready to become the King because he doesn’t think he’s ready

It’s just…… Josie understands where this idea is coming from, and they appreciate the underlying sentiment

But, to them, it always sounds more like, “why are you upset about how hard this is for you, at least it’s happening to you and not someone who doesn’t give a fuck about ethics or how they treat other people, quit whinging and cheer the fuck up”

Which…… yes, Josie knows that this isn’t what most people mean, but it’s still pretty upsetting for them to hear because of how much it reminds them of things that they’ve told themself so many times, when they’ve been at their worst, in terms of their mental health and emotional well-being — especially the things like, “My eating disorder isn’t bad because it’s only hurting me, not anyone else, and it’s only hurting me because I’m weak”

—and yeah, okay, Josie appreciates that you’re trying to help, but they already have enough work to do on keeping themself from slipping back into the comfort of those thought patterns, so if it’s all the same, can you maybe find a different way of trying to comfort them or praise them or whatever? Please?

Thank you, they’d like that

[penumbra-rp]

Congratulations Aman, you have been accepted for the role of Alastor Moody!

This does mean that he has unreasonable standards for the world, sometimes. He can expect it to be…better than it is. He feels the presence of the younger order members a lot and considers it a personal failure that they’re involved. The ‘adults’ should be handling this on their own.

Admin Ash: Aman, it was all about the details when it came to your application. The fact that you didn’t shy away from Alastor’s disabilities ( the lost sight in one of his eyes and his utilizing a cane to get around after his leg amputation ), the fact that he’s so close with his little niece to allow her to interview him for her school project, the way that you carefully selected traits that showcased both the positive and negative points of his personality, even the pleasantly surprising music minor he took in school! All these things and more added something to our rough and gruff Moody that made him all the more human, all the more intriguing, and those special touches are why we can easily leave him in your capable hands. I, for one, am rooting for Order Dad Moody try to fix the world to his vision of ‘better.’ 

Please check out our checklist for joining Penumbra.

01. Out of Character

NAME: Aman

AGE: 24

YOUR BIRTHDAY: 9/11.. Why do you need this

PRONOUNS: She/her

TIMEZONE: PST

02. In Character

CHARACTER: Alastor Moody

CHARACTER’S PRONOUNS: he/him

FACECLAIM: Charlie Hunnam

CHARACTER’S BIRTHDAY: November 5th

PERSONALITY: Let’s go with 6 personality traits, and throw some negatives and positives into both of them.

Decisive

He’s not one to linger over decisions. He decides where he aligns very quickly and sticks with it unless something contrary smacks him upside the head. This includes but is not limited to how he feels about people, his alcohol of choice, and what fruit to toss in his bag for a backup snack later.

He’s a creature of habit. A lot of decisions he’s made are because they work (or because they’ve worked once).. Or even the other way around. He ate shrimp and got food poisoning once? Alright, forget shrimp, who needs it anyway.

He can usually fit things into neat boxes. We’ve got good, bad. Any shades of gray are tossed right into the bad. Better safe than sorry, after all.

Steadfast

Once he commits to something, he’s gonna do it. Doesn’t matter if it seems impossible, he’ll figure out a way. This can and definitely does lead him into some messy situations, especially because he’ll sidestep some rules to do it.

He’ll often butt heads with people who feel differently than him. It is very possible for him to argue for hours over something. He likes to think that eventually, enough reason will make someone change their mind. So yeah, he’s the old dude that gets into facebook arguments with the person who posted an anti-vaxx article. And then he’ll spend the next hour grumbling about it to everyone around him.

He’s not easily won over by the ups and downs of mass media. Whatever the hell Amazon did now is gonna have no sway on whether or not that HDMI cable is getting delivered to his place.

He can be a very strong pillar in times of doubt. He might not be the warmest, but he definitely is there to remind you you’re doing the right thing. Or call you out when you’re being a shit.

Extroverted

He gets energy from being around people. It helps him keep his head straight when he’s with company he enjoys. A lot of his friendships are built on mutual respect and bickering.  His sense of humor has grown a little twisted over the years.

That being said, he picks and chooses who he trusts very carefully. People fit in very specific roles and tend to learn about him accordingly. It’s very possible that those he works with might not know about his sexuality or that he adopted a dog last year. He tries to keep talk of work out of his romantic relationships, which has definitely led to a weird encounter or two when they stumble across his guns.

He can be pretty candid in situations and knows how to deal with the consequences of his actions/words… or at least he thinks he does.

Adventurous

He can be a bit of a thrill seeker. He’s spent a lot of his younger years with various adventure sports and enjoys the outdoors. Mountain biking, hiking, ziplining, skydiving, paragliding, and outdoor climbing have been a thing.

He’s been in a shit mood about his injuries fucking up his ability to do some of what he’s used to. He has definitely had to reassess his limits, but… he definitely gets a rush out of pushing himself to his limits.

The rush can come inside a city, too. He isn’t the type to sit still and is always poking his nose into something.

Obsessive

He can be very single-minded and has a tendency to hyperfixate. Often times, his cases take the spotlight (at the moment, it’s about The Dungeon). It can be hard for him to pull away even when work is over. He’ll spend his free time doing research, recon, lining up clues. This leads to a lot of falling asleep at his desk and then waking up with a bad neck.

Sometimes he’ll sidestep his own care while doing it. His leg, for example, definitely needs some attention every day. He’ll eat rushed meals just so he can get done faster.

The obsessions can def go somewhere else. He’ll get a crockpot and spend 3 weeks trying out different recipes and make more servings than can fit in his tupperware.

He has a lot of miscellaneous knowledge of random things.

Idealistic

His niece dragged him out to watch Captain America: Civil War a couple years back when he was visiting (shut up). Since then, Captain America is his fav superhero (fuck off, he’s never gonna say this out loud). He likes a man who knows his good from his bad and sticks up for his ideals. Doesn’t matter what the government says, what the red tape is. You should know where you stand.

This does mean that he has unreasonable standards for the world, sometimes. He can expect it to be… Better than it is. He feels the presence of the younger order members a lot and considers it a personal failure that they’re involved. The ‘adults’ should be handling this on their own.

He tends to hold himself to a higher standard, often involving pushing himself beyond his limits. He struggled a lot with losing his leg, since he still wants to do everything he could before.

BRIEF BULLET POINT BIO:

Irene Moody likes to blame her gray hair on Alastor. Honestly? She might not be wrong. A healthy baby boy should not have found himself in as much trouble as her son did. But where there’s a will, there’s a way– he’s a Moody, after all. The young Alastor collected bruises, scabs, and scraped knees like most boys collected comic books. Hell, she’d even bought a stack of them in the hopes that he’d sit down. It’d worked for the month that it took him to read through them all, and then he was jumping off beds with the sheets tied off as a cape.

It’s a good thing his mother is a nurse because the boy found himself back in the hospital on a monthly basis. His father claims that they could have bought a yacht with how many bills piled up, but as a writer, he’s always been a man of hyperboles. Alastor never quite minded the hospital atmosphere when he was younger. He’d lay back on his bed with his eyes open to all the possibilities in the white walls.

Their cozy little apartment was never quiet, between the two kids squabbling over toys, the radio cranked up to full volume in the kitchen, and the TV buzzing in the living room. His father was possibly the only person in the family who could keep an inside voice for longer than an hour. Alastor likes to think that things have calmed down since then, but their yearly Christmas gatherings show otherwise.

With a sister 3 years his elder, Alastor’s the baby of the family but was never quite treated like it. In fact, he complains that he got all of the problems with being the youngest with none of the benefits. Marie would argue back that he never actually fetched anything she asked him to so he’s not allowed to complain.  The pair would argue over everything, only ever aligning on the decision to get pizza for dinner. Leaving them alone always led to markers to the wall, ruined cushions, shredded bedsheets and, if their parents were unlucky, a food fight. Prank wars were not uncommon in the Moody household.

As a child, he picked up on concepts quickly, but would have a hard time keeping focus. His grades fluctuated as he danced from subject to subject. When he looks back, all he remembers are his red hot ears, ringing, and unable to process the long lectures from his father. Once they began, they never quite stopped. He began to dread the updating of the progress sheets that were fixed to the fridge, with more frowny stickers than smiling ones.

Alastor his report card once. He’d lied and said it’s delayed while forging his mother’s signature. For the month after, he held his breath around his parents, waiting for it to come around and smack him in the face. Miraculously enough, it never did. His sister likes to blackmail him with it even now.

At age ten, he discovered the Hardy Boys. Despite all his indecision, he latched onto the concept of becoming a detective and never looked back. The boy collected memorabilia and had about 3 different magnifying glasses. Grabbing his dad’s glasses from the other room became the mystery of the missing spectacles. Figuring out what to wear became the Closet Case. There was an unfortunate year where he insisted on wearing a detective hat at all times. He’s tried to consolidate and burn all the evidence, but a few pictures keep coming out of the woodwork… another mystery.

The kid never quite managed straight As, but he excelled where he applied himself. A little elbow grease and some late nights set him up for an admission at Hogwarts. Hit parents never quite got off his back about his performance, however, slipping away to college made it easy to unsavory hide the bits and pieces. He quickly picked a major in criminology and settled into it.

The music minor wasn’t planned. In truth, it was him foolishly following a crush into a entry level piano class. He fell in love that year. With piano, with music theory II, with the history of rock 101.

Before he knew it, his college years were over and he was thrust into a job in law enforcement. With his sights set on detective and an unwavering determination, he muscled his way into the role within a few years.  They blur together quickly as he hops from case to case, head bent down, crease between his eyebrows and small frown on his face. His days and nights are spent wrapped up in his newest obsession.

Never one to turn down a good adrenaline rush, Alastor took to adventure sports quickly. At first, it was simply a few good hikes and some mountain biking, but outdoor rock climbing, hang gliding, and bungee jumping quickly became favorites. He’d poke and prod people into trying things out.

Alastor’s the type of person who’s cut out for being a detective. He’s the type who can’t sit still when he knows he can be doing something. It’s probably why he keeps going back. The first accident involved losing his eye. The second, breaking his nose. The third, his leg’s amputation. Plenty of scars and bruises litter the spaces in between. Each time, he was put on desk duty and each time, he found a way to remind his peers that he’s still up for the job.  The loss of his leg’s still fresh but the invitation to join Operation Auror is one that he’s meant for.

Misc Headcanons/Thoughts

His colleagues are pretty smh because he keeps getting hurt and coming right back. There’s a betting pool somewhere about wtf Moody’s gonna end up getting himself into next.

He’s actually a bit of a klutz since losing his eye.

He adopted his dog, so he didn’t name her. But he really wants a dog named Jovi

His sister lives in America and his parents spend most of their time there

He has a really nice sound system set up in his place

He can play piano, guitar and is currently learning the flute

He has a bad habit of biting his nails

INTERVIEW:

i. How do you feel about your current occupation?

“Alright, kid,” Alastor starts gruffly, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, looking down at his niece. A flicker of regret flashes across the ten year old’s face as she sits in front of him, worksheet in hand. He grins and gets going before she has a chance to pick someone else to interview. “Let’s get one thing straight. If I didn’t like this job, I wouldn’t be doing it. You’re gonna be hearing this damn debate your whole life.” He puts on a voice as he continues, pulling a face as he mocks the voices that he remembers looking up to as a child. “Do something you love so you’ll be happy. No, you don’t need happiness in work, just stability. Blah, blah, blah. It’s all bull. Do what works for you. You’re the only one who knows what you need… This job, though? With what I’ve got going on’d, it’d drive a guy crazy if he didn’t live for it. ”

ii. What song would you say describes yourself?

“Ah…” He trails off, scratching his beard as he thinks over it. “Ya ever heard of Akimbo? It’s by Stradeus. This beat that gets me every damn time, you can feel it in your bones. Actually, hey Google.” Alastor leans back, squinting a little to see if it lights up in response. “Play Akimbo.” He nods and sits up a little more as the music fills the room. “You can just feel the tension build in this song. It just keeps going, and going, like when you know you’re onto something.” He holds up a hand, listening, forcing his niece to sit through the rest. “And right there in the middle, it backs off, for maybe just a second to breathe. Everything’s just still, pulling itself back together, then we’re going hard again.” His fingers strum against his thigh along with the music as he squints down at his niece’s page. “What’s next.”

iii. Does reputation matter to you?

“I mean I’ve done plenty and people better damn well respect that. But you’re not gonna find me tripping over my feet trying to kiss ass for approval, if that’s what you’re asking.” He’s been told it might make things easier, sometimes, especially with all the damn red tape in the department. Alastor, mind your own business. Don’t be so rude. Be careful about how you approach them. But then, maybe in the end it just comes down to the question of how well you’re willing to compromise yourself just to take the easy way out.

iv. What is your relationship with your parents like?

Alastor doesn’t answer this question immediately. Like any relationship, it’s changed over the years, and peeling back the layers is a process that could take a couple hours in it of itself. His parents have always pushed him to be his best, whether that be in grades or etiquette. He’s taken some of the lessons, shunted others, but there’s no denying that he wouldn’t be the man he is today if not for them. But none of that is a conversation for their grandkid. “Not bad. They in your hair, kid? Get overbearing sometimes, don’t they?” he asks, deflecting any further questions.

v. What languages can you speak?

“I had to learn French in high school, but that’s a bit rusty. Damn French people get annoyed when we use English and then get snarky when we use broken French. Can’t win unless you figure out how to dislodge the sticks from their asses. Anyway, I picked up some German a couple years back when I was working on a case. Mmm, that’s about it.” He pauses, then frowns, as he thinks about the ex who taught him some Arabic, but that was only enough to figure out when her parents were talking about him.

vi. If your home was on fire and you could only save one item, what would you choose?

“We’re going to use the term 'item’ loosely and say Luna.” He gives a small nod towards the dog asleep on the rug by the… fireplace. He frowns. “Oi, that wasn’t a hint, was it? Go put out the fire and turn on the heater.” He responds to her hesitation by picking up his cane and knocking her legs gently.  He has to smother a smile as she grumbles and gets up. “Go. I’ll wait.”

vii. Which Hogwarts University faculty did you study at? The Gryffindor School of Applied Science, the Ravenclaw School of Humanities, the Slytherin School of Social Science, or the Hufflepuff School of Art?

“Slytherin, criminology. Want to know the secret, though?” He leans in a little, smiling playfully, and doesn’t wait for an affirmation before going on. “There’s a bit of puff in there. Did a minor in music. See, now get what I mean about the what you love, what makes money debate? I’ve heard everyone talk shit about the other twenty times over.”

vix. What is your social media username?

“AlastorMoody. Luckily I’ve got a unique name, so it wasn’t taken. Not gonna lie, if I had to come up with some nonsense, I wouldn’t have made one.” He might enjoy the avenue for arguing with people online, but any butchering of his name leaves him cringing. His unique name has opened up to more ridiculous puns than he knows how to respond to. Alastor shakes off the thought and continues. “Let me know if you take a look, there are definitely a few articles I’ve linked to that I think you should read.”

[hogwartselementumrp]

Congratulations Laura on your acceptance as your OC Cash Martin! He is a character archetype we currently do not have and should bring a lot of interesting and exciting connection and plot opportunities with him to all sides. I can’t wait to see what you do with him!

Out of Character Information

Name/Alias: Laura

Preferred Pronoun: She

Age: I don’t know about yooou, but I’m feeling Twenty-twooooo

Timezone: GMT

Activity Level: As we all know I am around a lot at the moment - I am in the midst of a gap year

How did you find the RP (new members): I didn’t find the rp, the RP found me

Original Character Information:

Desired Character: Cassius ‘Cash’ Martin

Face Claim: Lucien Laviscount

Now, please check our dorm page! To see which house is needing a character and in which year!

School Functions (check Quidditch availability’s): -

Character’s Sexuality: Bi/Pan

Why do you believe this will be a good character in this specific roleplay?

Cash, I believe unlike a lot of my ‘aligned’ existing characters, will be a character who is able to generate and partake in a really wide range of plots and interactions, and is a bit of a fresh-air to some extent. He comes from a very different background to lots of the characters in the rp, and he’s a lot of fun. His potential links to Mayte, Marks, the Aurors, the Order, and just about anyone with a coin in their pocket makes him an interesting go-between. He sees and hears a lot from the world of the dodgy dealers and petty criminals that other characters just don’t see and hear, whether he choses to actually share it is more complex.

This is the bio layout, we ask you fill it out changing it with the right info!

Cash Martin is 24  years old, is an ex-Hogwarts Student, where he was in the house of Ravenclaw, and now works as a ‘Free-lance Entrepreneur.’.

                                          ❝One trick ahead of disaster, they’re quick but I’m much faster. Here goes, gotta throw my hand in, wish me a happy landing!”

↳ MAGIC

Cash’s magic is pretty dubious, but he knows enough to scrape by - often by guess-work. He left Hogwarts after his fifth year, deciding he wasn’t really cut out for academia, and has a handful of pretty poorly graded OWL’s to his name. Instinctively his quick reactions and a strange knack for pin-point accurate apparition tend to get him out of trouble more often than not. His skills as an air elemental are also fairly limited, he knows a few showy tricks and a few things to help with his games, but are nothing special. He does, peculiarly have a talent for muggle ‘magic’ - really it’s all just slight of hand and card tricks, but it gets a few smiles and coins.

↳ BACKSTORY

When Cash’s mother, a muggle woman who grew up in a close-knit family in London, found out that her new husband was in fact a wizard, and was claiming that magic was actually real - a whole world that she had to keep a secret, she assumed he’d lost it. Their relationship fell apart in the storm of arguments that followed, and his father had been forced out by the time his mother had even found out she was pregnant with Cash. She watched his oddities growing up, becoming increasingly worried by the strange occurrences that took place around him. Eventually they were visited by an official from the Ministry, who did his best to explain. Cash’s mother, heart-broken at the realisation she’d been wrong all the years, or perhaps that despite her best efforts her son had turned out to be something she couldn’t hope to understand, she was never quite the same again.

At the age of eleven Cash headed off to Hogwarts, bright-eyed and excited, a cheeky boy who wasn’t quite sure what to expect. What he hadn’t expected was the complete snobbery of so many of his peers and classmates who looked down their noses at a scruffy boy from central London with no manners, no idea about the wizarding world and no family name. Not everyone was like that, but enough to get under his skin and leave a chip on his shoulder. He was never all that academically gifted, only really succeeding in Charms, where his flair for the showy came in handy. He quickly found a gap in the market, and by his third year was earning his pocket money by investing in buying up Honeydukes and Zonkos products to sell back to students during term. By his fifth year he was smuggling things in and out through the secret passages, more and more including booze and cigarettes. When it came to OWL year, his Professors breathed a slight sigh of relief when he decided not to come back.

Ever since, well… he would describe himself as an entrepreneur. The Auror office would describe him as a persistent pain in the behind. Running just about every scheme to get himself some money, from selling less than authentic charms and talismans to cauldrons that fell off the back of a broomstick, to pouring pints and running muggle magic tricks to earn cash from passers-by. Managing to afford a tiny flat in a shabby block, and to keep some food on the table, it’s never exactly comfortable. But he has a few invaluable talents that keep him with cash in his wallet - mostly his knack for being able to get his hands on anything you can be looking for. Restricted potions ingredients? He knows a guy. Old and definitely illegal charmed artefacts? He knows a guy. Recreational substances? He knows lots of guys. But he sees and hears more than most people realise. That, and his continuing tendency to just hover around the edges of the legal, are one of the reasons the Auror department haven’t just locked him up yet. That and his disarming smile, he claims.

↳ PERSONALITY TRAITS

» {+ positives} Quick, creative, witty

» {- negatives}  Cheeky - one day it’s going to get him into trouble, Self-preservation, A fairly wonky moral compass, Stubborn

↳ BASICS

» blood status: Half-blood

» elemental power: Air

» affinity level: Weak Affinity

» date of birth: 31st March

» wand: Sycamore and Phoenix Feather

» faceclaim: Lucien Laviscount

NAME CHARACTER IS PLAYED BY YOUR NAME

Sample Para (3+ paragraphs- at least 400 words, in character, third person)

“Alright, alright, 5 sickles in, 5 sickles, if you beat the dealer you win the pot - what about you Sir? Yeah? You want to give it a go?” Cash grinned. The guy didn’t stand a chance now he’d stepped up to the table. “Alright, alright now don’t go easy on me sir, let’s do this fair and square - we’ll do a trial run first, yeah?” He spoke at 50 miles an hour, already watching the guy struggling to keep up with him as he shuffled the deck from one hand to the other, elaborately fanning it out to him and turning his face away. “Pick a card sir, any card, any one you like, take it out and show it to the crowd please - make sure you all remember it or this trick’ll get a whole lot harder for us both,” he teased, turning back as the man showed the card to the crowd, which wasn’t large, but gave a few polite laughs and nods. “Perfect sir,” he grinned again, noting the smug look of superiority on his mark’s face as he held the card, “You got that remembered, yeah? Sure about that? Don’t want to check again? Alright then sir pop it back in the pack, anywhere you like. Anywhere you like, makes no difference to me,” he kept rambling on, one eye following the card as it went back into the pack, but all the time showing off for the crowd. Every blinding grin meant another set of eyes on him, exactly where he wanted them, and not on what he was actually doing. “We’re going to shuffle these up now, we’re going to give them a good old shuffle,” he continued, flashing the cards from hand to hand and making an excellent show of shuffling them. “Are you happy with that sir? Are you happy those are definitely shuffled?” He laid the cards back on the table and flashed his hands to the audience, showily demonstrating that his sleeves were empty to them, to polite smiles. “Alright then sir, so if I can find your card, are you happy to give me a couple of sickles for my troubles?” The man nodded, feeling the pressure of everyone’s eyes on it. “Alright, alrighty then,” he grinned, picking the cards back up and making a show of sorting through them. “Hmm, maybe, maybe, noo, no. Not that one, not you… Hmm, where’s she hiding,” he teased. “Is this your card?” He asked, raising a card from the deck. The audience, almost as one let out a triumphant laugh. His mark, chest puffing up, shook his head and announced. “No.”

Whistling through his teeth and shaking his head, Cash stepped back from the table, hands on his hips. “Well that’s embarrassing, isn’t it. Sorry about that. Looks like you’ll be keeping your coins then… I tell you what,” he began patting down his pockets, “I’ll give you five sickles instead, since you beat me -” the crowd were nodding approvingly, the mark flushed with his own cleverness in outsmarting the trickster. “-Ah… Wait a second,” Cash grinned, his smile turning wolfish for a moment. “I’ve definitely got some coins somewhere…” he kept speaking, more softly, more carefully. “Or…. What’s this then,” he said, pulling a bouquet of flowers out of his jeans pockets. The audience let out a delighted ‘ooh.’ “Hang on then… I reckon I have some under here-” Reaching up and removing his hat, Cash pulled out a playing card, and showed it to the audience with a flourish. Several kids gasped. “What.. ohhhh, is this your card?” he beamed, a knowing laugh sounding. The mark, now rapidly deflating and shaking his head in bemusement dug in his pocket for a fistful of coins.

The audience trickled away as Cash tossed the sickles into his now upturned hat, gratefully receiving a few more knuts as other people left. “Very nice Cash,” a voice sounded, that made the young wizard roll his head as he looked up with a slightly forced grin, “You got any more things we should know about stashed away in that hat of yours? Anything you shouldn’t have?”

“You can frisk me if you’d like McLaggen,” Cash shot back sarcastically, holding his arms up to her. “Care to play around? Pick a card? Or we can do three-card monty?”

“You’d have more luck with a disappearing act sunshine-” The auror stepped towards him. The stocky man stepped back a few paces. With a flick of the wrist his table of trick all disappeared within a billow of deep purple silk that then stowed itself inside his pocket, but he didn’t quite flee. “I think you’ll find, I don’t need a license for a public display as long as I move once an hour and don’t become a nuisance to shops or shoppers,” he warned her, but found his shoulder being grabbed in a vice-like grip anyway as the auror steered him into the alleyway between two shops.

“We’re going to have a word Cash.”

“Oh bleedin’ heck we’ve already had at least twenty. Not sayin’ it’s not a delight, but you’re scarin’ off my customers with that scowl of yours” he grumbled, the protests going unheard.