#anyway caboose and delta are like

[leonardalphachurch]

so i was inspired by @rvbrarepairweekdos to see what the least common ships on ao3 are but i couldnt really find a good way to sort that so. i made a spreadsheet.

nothings really all that surprising, but theres some interesting stuff here! such as:

there are 194 ships with only 1 tag. the most surprising to me was lopez/simmons. youd think there'd more than just one, with the actually having a pretty interesting canon dynamic and all. the one that hurt the most is temple/tucker........ i mean i know im also not writing it but T-T

the highest ship that made me go "huh?" was delta/maine at 66th. i guess guns for hire was very popular, wasnt it.

wash is absolutely the fandom bicycyle; he has the most tags, the most ships, and the most unique pairings.

grimmons is 1st in terms of number of tags, which puts simmons and grif and 3rd and 4th, respectfully, but in terms of ships theyre all the way down at tying for 14th. grimmons makes up 94% of grif and simmons' tags. the next highest ship for grif and simmons after grimmons is simmons/wash at 49th and grif/tucker at 54th. people really dont ship those two with anyone else, huh!

tuckington makes up ~47% of wash's tags and ~73% of tucker's tags. he also only has ~64% of the amount of ships wash does. free my boy tucker he deserves to slut it up.....

andersmith has the largest discrepancy re: number of tags to number of ships, going from 49th to 32nd (+17). other notable differences are simmons going from 3rd to 14th (-11), allison going from 27th to 39th (-12), south going from 16th to 7th (+9), and caboose going from 14th to 6th (+8).

there are 210 M/M ships, 116 M/F, and 43 F/F. M/M has 8253 tags, M/F has 2481, and F/F has 659. the most popular f/f ship is south/ct, coming in at 13th, with kimball/carolina close behind at 14th. the next f/f doesnt come until 45th with carolina/grey. not a very sapphic heavy fandom are we...

this was gathered using this page on ao3 on 8/9/2024. the data i have is based on how many TAGS a ship has, not how many FICS it has. some people tag their fics with the same ship in multiple ways. i dont really have anyway to sort that out with the method i used. is there a better way to get data about ships? maybe! but this was made MOSTLY just because i had so much fun playing with the data and spreadsheets and organizing. im probably gonna keep playing around with the sheet bc i have fun with data but im not sure if im going to add more ships in. maybe like a year from now. i dont really have a good way to clean the data except semi manually so.

[brixbraxium]

DELTARUNE: The chapter where they're on a train

A while back I had a really, really, really funny idea for a DELTARUNE Chapter that absolutely is not happening. This is not a theory. This is an elaborate fan idea with zero legitimate proof or evidence or anything. But, it is so cool that I wanted to post about it anyways. This isn't even really a fantake because I don't even think this would make much sense in the story itself. This is like, sheer Hype Moments and Aura. But sometimes that's still fun. So... Without further ado, for your consideration: A dark world adventure... that takes place on a train. The entire train. From the driver controls to the caboose. The entire train becomes One Dark World. Perhaps, one day, The Knight decides that their plan isn't working, and attempts to flee hometown to create Dark Fountains elsewhere, where the heroes of legend won't be. Kris and Susie learn of this somehow- maybe the Main Boss of the previous chapter overheard the knight muttering to themselves. So, Kris and Susie get on the same train to pursue, but don't quite know who The Knight is yet. A proper mystery.

The train ride starts normal at first. But, rather quickly, The Knight realizes that the Delta Warriors have somehow traced them, and, to buy time and mask their identity, creates a Dark World, covering the entire train. The adventure starts cozy at first- It's a train ride through the countryside, how fun! Maybe in Dark World Lore, the train is like, abstracted into the way you get between all the dark worlds or something, hence how Queen knows who King is, etc. Maybe you can see through the windows and see dark-worlds-that-could-have-been as the train passes by different buildings, etc. Maybe every car in the train is, like, its own different region, with large great-door style doors separating each 'car'. It's fun! Until Kris and Susie realize something. ...The Train is a dark world. Who is driving? Nobody is. There's no train controller anymore. If the fountain isn't sealed, the train is going to eventually crash. The stakes are set, and the timer's ticking, as they have to figure out who exactly The Knight is and get to the fountain before it's too late. Eventually, The Knight is located, their identity obscured, and they do battle with us. Maybe the battle is half-overworld, half turn-based, with the TP bar never quite leaving the screen as the knight jumps around and continues attacking us as we approach to put an end to this nonsense. The Knight is starting to lose and is out of options, so they cast some insanely powerful attack spell that we only barely manage to dodge, creating a giant crater in the floor. And the moment that happens, suddenly, the wind picks up and everyone around is pulled into a current that keep getting faster and faster up into the air. The attack broke one of the couplings. Kris, Susie, and The Knight get ejected out of the Dark World, perhaps landing on top of the train. (Perhaps the Knight's identity is revealed here, as we can see them clearly in the Light World without their armor?) With the train coupling broken, the car we were in has began drifting away, no longer tethered to the engine. The only thing keeping it from drifting away completely is the constant stream of darkness connecting the car to the previous one, as the Dark World desperately tries to maintain its grip on its domain, but it's slipping with every passing second. Our battle with The Knight continues in Light World, but the Knight eventually manages to shove us into the darkness stream and we land in the car that's drifting. But the Dark World won't hold, and is in some sort of weird limbo state, phasing in and out of shadow, as more and more space is lost to friction, more air between the two cars, more darkness being lost by the second. With their victory assured, The Knight is able to return to the Dark World through a side door or something. Out of options, and in panic, Kris and Susie do the only thing they can- they make a second Dark Fountain in the drifting car, adding more darkness, allowing the darkness to stabilize, pulling the two cars back together- at the cost of adding a second fountain's Will into the Dark World. Now able to traverse back to the other part of the train, we are able to finally finish our battle with The Knight, which we finally manage to stand triumphant by luring them into the new fountain's domain, sealing the Dark Fountain Kris made, returning to the 'main' dark world, and closing the carriage doors from within, before The Knight can follow. By removing the fountain from the cut-off car, and closing the doors, the Dark Fountain cannot reach that car, and so there's nothing keeping it attached to the train, leaving the Knight stranded on the rails- a victory, at the cost of allowing them to get away. Finally, we're then able to seal the Dark Fountain within the train itself, with minor opposition, allowing the train to be brought to a halt safely.

And that is my idea. A cozy trainride adventure turned high stakes train chase. Something I really hope that DELTARUNE ends up actually doing is more interesting stuff with the Dark Worlds themselves. There's so much that you could do with the ability to create a Dark Fountain and transform a room, and I would love to see that analyzed. It probably wouldn't happen to a level this severe, though. Regardless, I got the idea of a train car drifting away, held only by a constant stream of darkness, and knew that I had to come up with a larger idea for it. also, ralsei was there too

[tvckerwash]

okay so idk how popular "other freelancers get epsilon and take wash's place" au's are these days but one problem I've always had with them is that I feel like people don't understand that wash is so perfect for taking down the meta and pfl that I honestly don't think anyone but him could succeed in the way he did. (utc again because it's kind of long)

the other freelancers (imo) lack the same 'wait and see' calculated nature and skilled subtlety to play the director and the counselor's waiting game like wash did, because while they always knew wash was going to betray them, they didn't know when he would betray them, or what he even knew in the first place. wash's long memory and his ability to hold a grudge is his greatest strength, he will remember what you've done long after you've yourself forgotten, and that's when he'll strike.

wash going around collecting the blues (and the reds) in s6 was more than him just trying to find people with experience with project freelancer to help him take down the meta—I mean at first that's all it was, but by the time he comes across church with caboose he definitely started to piece together the whole alpha puzzle, and at that point is when he switched gears and he was now looking at the blues (and reds) as people he could trust with his insurance policy when shit finally went down.

wash gave epsilon to the reds and blues for the same reason that ct gave tex a copy of her data in pfl, that being of course because he knew that there was a good chance he wasn't going to make it out alive, but he still wanted the director to pay for what he did even if he wasn't the one to put him behind bars. wash decided that the simulation troopers were the safest place to hide epsilon until they could get the chance to turn him in to the unsc—if it was good enough for the director to hide alpha, then it was good enough for wash to hide epsilon.

but back to the meta, wash was the ideal freelancer to take him down because wash had an advantage with the meta that no other freelancer did. wash was the only freelancer who understood maine even after he lost his voice, and it's heavily implied that they were fairly close going by the like 1.5 interactions they had in pfl and all of s8. wash's advantage of being able to read maine—and subsequently the meta—in ways no other freelancer ever could, meant that he could predict the actions the meta would take and plan accordingly.

wash also wasn't dumb enough to think he could take the meta head on with no tricks and live, and I personally think that's exactly what happened with north and south—they were so confident in their skills and abilities that they thought they could beat the meta, but they were wrong and they both paid the price. north with his life, and south who was stuck with the guilt of knowing that she inadvertently got her brother killed (and whether she did so intentionally or not is debatable and up to interpretation, I personally don't think it was intentional and I think wash believed the same thing, but he decided to use it as one of the many excuses given by delta to shoot her anyway because the guy is PettyTM and he didn't want to have to worry about her shooting him in the back again and ruining his plans).

another advantage wash has is his ability to (mostly) remove his feelings from the situation at hand ("I said that I didn't like it, not that I wouldn't do it."). wash and maine formerly being close friends did not change what he needed to do, wash and south being former teammates did not change what he needed to do, alpha having a life as away from project freelancer as he could did not change what he had to do, caboose just wanting his friend back did not change what he had to do, carolina being his former leader did not change what he had to do, etc etc.

slightly off topic but the above is probably where locus got his idea of wash being some perfect soldier who always follows orders from. he misconstrued wash's ability to push his emotions and morals aside in order to get a job done (something that is admittedly seen as an ideal trait in a soldier or anyone who is in a position in which you shouldn't question authority), as a point of similarity between them without recognizing that the reasons why wash did that are totally different from locus' own. wash's definition of what it means to be a soldier is of someone who is fighting for the sake of something bigger than themselves, someone who is fighting to protect and preserve humanity and ensure the survival of their species. locus was using his identity as a soldier to justify the atrocities he not only committed himself, but to justify the atrocities of others as nothing more than "just following orders". that is why wash is a true soldier, and locus is just someone who had been indoctrinated.

that aside, if we compare wash and carolina for example, I don't see her being able to take down the meta, and it has nothing to do with skill or even any of the above reasons, carolina is characterized as having waaaay more emotional baggage when it comes to pfl than wash does, and considering how she reacted to epsilon bringing up the meta in s13 ("don't you dare talk about maine like you knew him.") even if she was at the peak of her revenge quest I think she's too emotionally attached to the other freelancers to do what wash did.

south, north, and york all feel a bit too....self centered? to care about bringing pfl to justice, like yeah north and york had that "we're the good guys, right?" conversation and they both helped tex during the break in but it's pretty obvious york's main priority was to try and convince carolina to come with him, and north really only cared about south and theta. south based on what little we know of her really doesn't come across as a justice seeking type, wyoming and florida were still working with the director and pfl, maine is very difficult to say anything for certain because we know very little about him prior to becoming the meta, and while I think there's a chance for beta tex I think she really only cared about alpha (I didn't watch s1-5 on my rewatch though so maybe I just don't remember shit lol. I'll have to watch those seasons and come back), e!tex wanted to find the director, but I think her want to do so is because epsilon himself wanted answers only the director could provide.

[jade-kyo]

RvB 20th rewatch: s12

Aaaagahhahhsjshaj the mid point to the end…. Fucking agony

I never noticed the cabose written in bullet holes on the wall. Nice reference.

“I AM FUCKING AWESOME” that single moment made me fall in love with Felix…. Yeah that didn’t last

“Yay I have friends!” Me too Caboose

“You’re oddballs that don’t exactly fit in” I feel like the Chorus trilogy is just a love letter to what these characters represent to… well people like me who found comfort in a group of loser assholes finding strength and connection in each other

There is a warthog that is absolutely freaking out in the background AGDKHAKSHS

AYO Ray and Michael cameo!!!

SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER

Grif’s mental breakdown

Hmmmm thinking about Locus and Felix not being able to return to normal life after the war…

AAAAAHHHH THEIR STRENGTH IS THEIR IDIOCY

I do feel that sometimes they overuse animation in this season… I think animation should be reserved strictly for the most necessary and funniest of bits and bad ass action scenes

Caboose gets to be the one with a good bad idea!!!!

WHY SNOWMAN

DR GRAY!!!!!! MY BELOVED

It really was a big brain move to make the feds actually not evil at all and kinda just as pathetic as the rebels

HOLY SHIT HES BILINGUAL PLEASE DONT KILL ME

“You give meaning to meaningless objects and meaningless people and then risk your lives to protect them, where’s the sense in that” I’m telling you this arc is a love letter to what this show means

Gray is unhinged- she fits right in!

Bro just got incinerated

FELIX YOU RAT BASTARD

I felt so betrayed- in hindsight I really should’ve seen it coming but I thought Felix was funny

Yo I never actually caught that Locus hands the grenade to Carolina- for some reason I always thought she just had a grenade on her

CAROLINA BABYGIRL!!!!!!!

YOU FUCK!!!!! (Just so we’re clear that was an absolutely necessary animated bit 👍🏼)

AAAAHHHH EPSILON AND CAROLINA MY BELOVED AHSKHAKSHSKHSKSH

THEYRE SO SILLY

DELTA!!!!!!

THETA!!!!!

I love the fragments ajkdhakshksh

“Just you and me sis” I AM SO NORAML ALANSKLA IA AMANA SNORNSMNSK JAKAHSNLAJANKSJSKSHWKBSKSNKSHWKSHMSK

PSYCHOANALYSIS FOR EVERYONE!!!!!

Love that Caboose is the only one who didn’t do something to the ship

I AM AN EMOTIONAL TIME BOMB Jesus Christ

“I believe he said he was paid in babies”

Lopez a real one for being the only one to remember Doc

Love the conversation between grimmons back at the crash site. nuance about Simmons and leadership or something… if you catch what I mean… Restoration (what who said that)

“MY LIFE JUST FLASHED BEFORE MY EYES!! IT WAS AWESOME!!!” Quoted line

AAAAAHHHHHHH TUCKER AND WASH!!!!!!!!

Dr. Gray my beloved

TUCKER CABOOSE MOMENT!!!

Wash was pretty dumb to just accept Freckles without question but also I never questioned it either so I can’t exactly judge

CABOOSE MY BELOVED AHAJSJAKDHKSJSKDN

SO SHUT UP AND GET OVER IT!!! Caboose finally gets to be the one to tell someone to shut up!!!!!

“Just say you’re sorry” agskahkshskjsksAJGDKAHSKHDKSGSKVDKDJKSN THEY CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER SO MUCH

CHURCH TUCKER MY BELOVED!!!!!

“Seriously? That’s it, no ‘I’m sorry’ nothing?” Carolina I feel you but also if these guys weren’t completely emotionally constipated at all times I probably wouldn’t love them as much

Also Tucker and Church’s little moment of poking fun at Carolina is so cute omg

Trocadero you are truly something to behold

TUCKER YOU ARE THE BEST OF THEM!!!!!!!

Imagine if Tucker and Church had also gotten caught in Locus and Felix’s teleporter… wouldn’t that have sucked please god I already have a big fic I’m planning I don’t need another

COLONEL SARGE

Why is Carolina so damn BIG next the chairman in that picture ajhdkahsj

P.S. suck our balls

Being completely honest I do think s12 is a little bit of the weak link in the chorus trilogy. It’s not bad but I just find more enjoyment in s11 and s13 but it is possibly Tucker at his best GOD I love him… anyway, pain 🙂

[correctrvbquotes]

Washington: Delta, can you shed any light on this?

Delta: Not without further data.

Church: So why does it want these A.I. things anyway? I understand the equipment part, at least that lets you do cool stuff. But these A.I. things are just kinda annoying. They're just constantly yapping and causing trouble.

Delta: I am going to ignore that.

Washington: A.I. help us in battle, depending on their functions. We couldn't run half our equipment without them. And if you get your hands on a smart A.I., you can be damn near unstoppable.

Church: What, like, smart like Delta here?

Washington: Not exactly. He's just the logical one of the family. Smart means something entirely different for A.I.s than it does for people.

Caboose: Now let's not go throwing around words like smart for no reason.

Delta: Wash is correct. We are more analogous to what you would call a fragment.

Church: Actually, I don't care, so I wouldn't call you guys anything.

Caboose: And I would never talk about someone's "anal gus". Especially not in public.

Delta: There is one smart A.I. in the Freelancer program.

Washington: Delta-

Delta: The Alpha is a fully formed-

Washington: Delta! That's enough.

Church: What's Alpha?

Washington: The Alpha A.I. It's nothing, it's a myth. A fairy tale.

Delta: It is hardly a myth. Agent Washington, you must have memory of the Alpha-

Washington: Delta! Command. Offline.

Delta: Complying.

Delta turns off

Church: Oh. Sounds like somebody has a secret.

Washington: I just get tired of hearing these things talk about their Alpha. And you will too. They get obsessed with the idea of it. It seems like it's all they care about sometimes.

Church: But what is it?

Caboose: Yes, if it's something really scary, you don't have to tell us.

Washington: The whole purpose of the program was to study soldiers with experimental A.I., but rumor has it, they could only ever get one. So they had to copy it. The original was Alpha, then Beta, and so on.

Church: They copied them? Yeah, I k- I like that. I guess if one is annoying, then twenty of them are gonna be awesome.

Washington: The copies became obsessed with this idea of the Alpha, the original. In debriefings they would always steer conversations toward the topic of the Alpha. Where it was, if they could see it. Some even took... drastic steps.

Church: Like, shooting their partner in the head drastic? Or-

Washington: I told you, she shot me in the back first!

Caboose: And we believe you. Even though we don't think shooting a friend in the back occasionally is that big of a deal.

Washington: Some Freelancers tried to get to Alpha on their own. They broke in to the secret storage facility where it was kept. They almost got to it. After that they shut down the-

[ashen-sky]

Red vs. Blue: Restoration

Writing this as I watch, Spoilers ahead

Doc and Wash's conversation feels like an exposition dump, and I can't tell if it's because Wash is being interrogated or the dialogue really is that clunky.

THE AIS ARE BAAAACK. Also poor Tucker, being conscious through it all and knowing Sigma wants to kill him.

I feel like Church's animated explanation feels kind of out of place, not because it's not something he would do but because it feels so modern compared to where the Chorus reds and blues left off. Like it feels more like a dig at the audience than a joke in universe because up until this point they got by with verbal explanations. It would have felt more natural for Church to day "Since we don't have time for you guys to not understand, I made a video" instead of "Since no one can understand anything without fast moving pictures" (or whatever the exact line was).

Also, Church's inability to predict what Caboose says is so funny.

This whole thing is just Valhala and the hunt for the director all over again. Which is fine because at least there's no cyclops. This isn't a complaint, just an observation.

Anyways Church should have withheld Omega, not the memories of why combining is such a dumb idea. Like, one of the pieces that build the basis of his sanity (I.e Delta, Theta, ect.)

Was the pilot supposed to be 479er?

Lmao, Simmons getting "Shut up Caboose"'d and Caboose apologizing.

Caboose still has the confetti gun!

"It looks more like they're making fun of the last four years, which is fine because that's what it started as" -my dad, who I agree with when you look at it like that

Anyways, that was prompted by the security team working from home, which was a funny bit

It was 479er! Pretty sure the VA is different, do love her re appearance.

Love Tucker taking control, Caboose telling him not to blame himself, and Sarge going back was a really nice sequence.

... THEY KILLED SARGE, NOOOOO. I mean, I guess it's character growth for him but... the idiots were all supposed to leave together.

Why does Blood gultch look a bad 3D rendering?

Griff finally got discharged and he stuck around!

It kind of feels like this was roo focused on being the end. Like that campfire scene? It was cute, and the memories were nice, but it felt too final.

Nothing will beat Church's hero speech, but Caboose's speech? The story of Allison and memory? Definitely a favorite

It's also fitting that Tex and Carolina took Meta down, along with the reds and blues, because the Meta exists because of them. And it tormented them. It was their closure, and Carolina getting to fight with her mother made it necessary and not just a rehash of Alpha letting Tex go and the director dying. Also, Tex finally got to do what she wanted. She got to choose her fate.

Also, that twist with Doc made that clunky conversation make more sense. Seeing the freelancers made me happy, and holy fuck finding out Doc was dead was sad.

Wait, I never saw past s16, is one a reference to something? Also, one sounds like 479er, is that the real 479?

Tucker’s after credit scene was sweet... Bow-Chika-Bye now!

All in all, this wasn't a bad finale. I definitely think it would have been better as episodes because the tone wasn't consistent enough for a movie, those Wash bits early on felt a bit shoehorned in. But I don't really think anyone's characters were butchered, even Sarge dying is understandable.

Red vs Blue is about cycles, and this put an end to them all. The AIs are gone, Wash isn't letting the memories of the dead control him, Sarge isn't stuck in endless search of battle, and Griff is free of the military.

The show definitely isn't worse off with this finale, and the memory speeches (both Caboose's and Carolina/Wash's halucinations), are definitely in the top 3 with Church's hero speech for me. I am kind of glad they did this though, because the end of s13 did sort of imply that the AI fragments would be back and this finally and truly put them to rest.

EDIT: I FORGIT THE MOST IMPORTANT PART! Tex being able to kick Meta's ass because she was the Reds and Blues memory and not Alpha or Leonard's was a nice touch. I thought when Caboose was telling the story of Allison it was because it was such a huge driving force for Chruch, but it was because it was Tex and she needed to know who she was.

[aromanticasterisms]

tbh if all of the ais come back and caboose isnt paired with delta then what is the fucking point

[str4ng3rdanger]

red vs blue au list (any could be altered - i've finish the shisno paradox trilogy but just haven't thought about anything past s15 yet lol)

evocation au - temple recovers church before s15 and is trying to recreate biff with him. church's memory is struggling and so the conflict is increased as the events of s15 carry out and are even warped with this new added twist. it is VERY chuckerboose-centric.

doomsday au - (started as a shitpost au and is still treated like one as a result, but has had some intense lore created for it to the point that i am invested in the plot beyond jokes. characters are most out of character in this one as a result.) essentially, something goes wrong with loco's time machine in the s15 finale and when the portal opens things go horrible wrong, and some kind of explosion goes off that transports tucker and caboose to another planet with no way of getting off or contacting the guys for the foreseeable future. the planet happens to be apocalyptic as hell and caboose swore he saw church before the blast rang out ... it is chuckerboose centric ... and, due to everything being so hectic, they call it planet doomsday.

downloaded au - delta was able to make a backup of himself during the freelancer saga, so why couldn't epsilon with the right hardware? essentially, caboose was paranoid of losing church again at some point in s13 before the latter half of the season. they find an old smartphone and decide to have caboose use his engineering skills to reinforce it and also give it ability to run on solar power - then, they make a backup of church into it. come the s13 finale, they happen to have church still! only...he is hardwired into a phone and they don't know how to get him out of it without damaging him and/or losing him. chuckerboose-centric. (and so it's a slight comedic au i got from the idea of church inhabiting a phone to send texts to tucker and caboose from inside.)

firewall au - extremely underdeveloped, but stemmed from the idea of felix in s13 being too fed up with hargrove that he plans to steal epsilon to use the meta suit for himself to kill the reds and blues all for his sadistic gain. maybe even threaten hargrove while he's at it and get his reward anyway. of course, this alters a lot of the latter half of s13 around. in this au, felix lives his fall and continues to affect the plot later on. chuckerboose and lolix are the focused ships of the au.

lighthouse au - maine survives after the s8 finale and somehow, with the help of washington and the reds and blues, finds himself with the blues alongside his former freelancer friend. it is mainewash-centric (of course, chuckerboose is there, though) and spends the earlier parts of the au following maine as he recovers from everything that went on as well as him trying to be himself again. by the time we reach s10, i imagine he has a wavering self control when it comes to epsilon that is focused on, but all in all, this au has mostly good endings and maine somehow makes things 100 times better by being there. church lives. what more could you want

memory au - it's the good ending to evocation, which is also my main "church lives" au. chuckerboose-centric as a result, but the concept is that everything from their adventures settles down and the reds and blues try to readjust to living on a colonized planet (either earth or something resembling it). there are some more trials and tribulations and such in this au, but as promised, it is a good ending and by the end of it, everyone lives happy domestic lives nearby each other and they remain friends. ("memory ending" is used to describe scenes from the end of the au that are completely domestic with none of the au's ongoing plot involved.)

if any more get made i will add them :)

[rvb-happens-here]

Church is the (single) mom friend

No matter what iteration, no mater the age, Church embodies the mom friend energy

The bitter looming, sarcasm, the memory of everyone's needs, spouter of great quotes-

The following below is a checklist, directly referenced from {13 Signs You're The Mom Friend}

1. You're a traveling picnic basket

Of course, this doesn't exactly represent Church well, given that half the time he doesn't even have a physical body, much less pockets. Still, he helps to pack essentials and meds whenever the Blues are going on an adventure that he won't go on.

2. You know your friend's assignments

Well, that's easy to prove. After all, Church is mainly the one in charge of the assignments. Alpha/Epsilon/Delta/Theta all help their friends remember things, given that they literally are kind of made of memories (technically data but I want to humanise them)

Church runs missions, do a lot of calculations, all for the chance for his friends to stay alive.

3. You care for your friends as if they are your (adopted) kids

Okay I just recently read a series of fics where Church is a rich billionaire and runs an 'orphanage' (but he's already adopted them)

https://archiveofourown.org/series/2598343 here's the fic

"You may have a hard time showing it, but you care for your friends to an extreme that the usual ones don't. However, how you choose to show your care can be questionable. You can coddle and suffocate them with your love and support, or, you can literally suffocate them with the leering, judgmental scowl you should have mastered only after your first actual child. You can either be a warm blanket for your child-friends, or a looming, bitter mother." - the website. Well, Church is definitely more of the second one

4. You are always the plus one in any of their relationships

Well, idk about relationships, but Church is technically the first to see Tucker's alien baby (other than the Doc and maybe Tucker, but he's already knocked out and also Caboose, who's like a nurse / food source)

5. You tend to be the sober one during most outings

Being an AI/robot makes it hard to drink, so he's got to be the only sober one in any outing.

Also, outings = missions and I got to say, Church is one of the least insane out of the old Blood Gulch Crew

"Your children are prone to making bad decisions and it is up to you to ward them off and prevent them from happening. One or two glasses is your max, after that - the over-protective switch is up and it is protecting time." - This is a quote that Church will relate to.

6. You clean up their messes

Especially true when you're the best friend of Caboose.

7. You begin to call your friends 'your children' in your head

"Yeah, I already packed up Caboose's meds for this field trip. Remember, 2 pills a day, Tucker!" - Epsilon quote that I'm remembering from the top of my head.

"Remember, Caboose needs to take those pills 2 times a day" - Alpha Church quote that I'm also remembering from the top of my head

8. Your friends always quote something you say

I don't know much about that, but I do know that Church has some insane quotes. Delta: memory is the key. Epsilon: A good love is like a great memory.

I do know that 'memory is the key' keeps being repeated, which, good on you Delta!

9. People turn to you to keep them from making bad choice

I feel like this is true, but mostly it's Church stopping them from making a bad decision before they even think about doing it anyways. Being an AI in bullet time has its perks.

10. "Be safe," and "Make smart choices," are stuff you always say

Remember Alpha Church's little pep talk to Tucker before the group went on the journey? You can't always be there with them, and so you hope your cautionary words are enough to at least steer them away from bad choices before they turn into regrets.

11. The parents always let their children go anywhere as long as you are there

Okay, most of the characters are old enough to make decisions for themselves. But do you guys notice how the Freelancers treat Church like he's one of them? Also at the end of Season 13, where Carolina and Washington were fending off Mantis droids on the ground and Church went to the tower of communications with the Reds and Blues. Yeah, Tucker's also there, but Tucker also needs someone to look out for him.

12. You're the one who gives Reality Checks

I'm not too sure about this one, it seems more fit for Tucker, but Church is usually Mr. Obvious and Obnoxious, and he complains a lot. Sounds just like my mom.

13. Your group doesn't have a mom friend

Now, I find this the most important bit. Blood Gulch didn't exactly have a mom friend, and by that I mean the Blues. Church had to step up and be unofficial leader, after all. You can argue that the Reds had Sarge as a father figure, but idk how well that is. in fact, Simmons wanted to join blue team wayyy too many times, even after Alpha Church originally shooed him away (now, is Washington the mom friend for the Reds and Blues?)

In conclusion, Church, in whatever state he might be, is the mom friend.

P.S. Tucker's first words to Church was 'are you a chick' and Church was also genderbent in one of his Epsilon simulations. Guess his subconscious was trying to tell him that he's both bi and the mom friend.

[toaarcan]

RvB 15-17 Condensed

The working title for this was “RvB 15-17 but not crap”.

Now, this might seem a little presumptuous to include Season 17 in this, which, at time of writing, has yet to be released, buuuut I’m basically mashing S15 and S16 into a single block which would make S17 actually the sixteenth season in this version. So the rewrite is that Season 17 happens a year earlier.

Now, I have my problems with RvB 15-16.

I don’t want to start off on such a negative tone, but I feel like I need to establish that before we go ahead.

While Season 15 was at worst, a mediocre RvB Season with tonal problems and inconsistent characterisation for our leads, Season 16 is all of those problems made worse. Like, it’s not Season 9 bad, but it’s still bad, and while I’ve mostly covered those issues in past posts, I haven’t really covered how much the setup for the climax is just plain stupid.

Like the setup for the finale, and thus Season 17, is as follows:

Atlus: Don’t do the thing.

Wash: Don’t do the thing.

Huggins: Don’t do the thing.

Carolina: ... Alright guys let’s do the thing.

[Time breaks because they did the thing]

It’s a little more complex than that, but not by much.

Now, I ummed and ahhhed over how to make this work for a while, but ultimately, I came to the conclusion that this is how I would do it.

For starters, 90% of Season 16’s plot is getting dumped. If not all of it. Legitimately all I’m keeping is the ending. Sorry, it’s not exactly a big loss.

Second off, I’m not heavily altering Season 15. While there’s definitely a good Season 5-13 tier plot that could be told with a fake BGC, this isn’t it, and attempting to alter that leads into a completely different set of stories. So Season 15 is mostly unchanged, just assume Temple is actually a competent villain and the plot isn’t driven entirely by the BGC being dumber than usual for a week.

So the timeline is now Season 15 -> Paradox -> Season 17.

We’re also scrubbing Wash’s injury from Season 15. It’s going to be an unnecessary complication for the lead-in to the next season anyway. If we’re going straight for the time paradox, then having Wash be injured is kinda pointless. Given that Season 16 ended on a warped Blood Gulch way before Wash ever showed up, there’s nothing to gain by having him out of action. He’s already imperilled enough by time being fucked.

“But wait,” I hear you say. “If Wash and Locus are with the heroes when they take on the Blues and Reds, surely they catch up to Temple quickly enough that the time machine doesn’t get turned on!”

Ah, but that’s the beauty of it. Whether the time machine is turned on or not is not the focus of the paradox here. And because that’s not a vital plot point, we’re free to have the characters just Travel At The Speed Of Plot, and arrive precisely in time for the actual climax.

You see, rather than changing history around Wash’s injury and thus fucking the timeline up, the key to the paradox is Church. Specifically, what happens when Church is removed from their history because someone pulled him into the present before the events of Blood Gulch really happened.

In the actual show, when Church appears in the portal, Tucker tells Caboose to pull him through, and Caboose refuses, instead bidding farewell to an extremely confused Alpha and allowing the portal to close. It’s a big moment for Caboose’s character, and it’s one of the parts of Season 15 which is pretty well-executed.

Obviously, I’m not going to overturn that and have him not have the growth. So, how does Church end up being pulled through?

“Tucker did it!”

Now, I’m not a big fan of Joe’s Tucker. In fact, that’s an understatement. I hate the way Joe writes Tucker, and I’d rather not fall into that same trap, so I’m going to explain in detail why Tucker would make this mistake.

 1) Tucker just had Epsilon die on him. Inside his head. And at the same time, the other remaining pieces of Epsilon all faded away too. And Tucker didn’t even notice it was happening, by the time he realised what was going in, the fragments were gone and he was left in a very empty and very non-functioning suit of power armour. Given how heavy this armour is, with it non-functioning, Tucker was probably unable to move until his friends removed most of the suit, so he was trapped in a coffin that was emptier than it should’ve been.

2) Struggling to cope with his grief, Tucker does something frankly stupid and activates the Temple of Procreation.

3) A while later, Tucker is starting to recover from his friend’s death, when Dylan shows up and he finds out in short order that A) Someone is committing terrorist acts while disguised as him and his friends, B) The planet he sacrificed so much, and Church gave his life for, is being blamed and might be invaded, and C) Church might be alive. This effectively halts Tucker’s recovery.

4) The consequences of his fuckup with the Temple of Procreation come back to haunt him, and suddenly, something Tucker has always been proud of- that he’s a great father to Junior- is called into question because he’s now an absentee dad to a fuckton of Chorus babies, which deals a blow to the poor man’s ego.

5) Shortly after that, the fiasco where Temple manages to manipulate him happens, and it makes things even worse for him. He should’ve seen through it after Felix, but he didn’t. And now, Wash and Carolina are hurt because of him, and the message from Church was a fake.

6) Finally, after all of this, he’s face to face with Church, and he has the chance to save him, and while maybe he could follow Caboose’s example… there’s one key problem. This isn’t Epsilon, it’s Alpha.

Y’see, there’s a big difference between those two. As has been pointed out before, Epsilon was always kind of a total prick to Tucker. A lot of this can be chalked up to Epsilon’s knowledge of the BGC coming entirely from Caboose, who purposefully left Tucker out of his recounts of their many adventures.

But this isn’t Epsilon. It’s Alpha. Tucker’s best friend, Alpha. Alpha, who went off and died without Tucker being there. Without Tucker ever getting a chance to see him once again. They got separated and one year later, Alpha died, in denial about a fact that Tucker had figured out long ago. Maybe Tucker could’ve helped save Alpha if he’d been there. Maybe Alpha wouldn’t have had to leave the safety of Wash’s suit and end up vulnerable to the emp if someone else had been there to hold the Meta’s attention.

 Tucker decides to save his friend. He’s at the end of his rope and after all the crap he’s been through on this journey, which he set out on because he wanted to save Church, he’s going to damn well save Church.

Additionally, by tying Tucker into the portal scene properly, there’s now a proper narrative throughline from the characters receiving Church’s message to the portal. Caboose has been covered, but Tucker hasn’t.

 Time paradox.

Despite his best intentions and hopefully understandable motives, Tucker has just pulled Alpha-Church out of their history before it even got started. And given how much of Seasons 1-13 was motivated by Church in some form or another… well, they’ve just unmade themselves.

The final twist is that time isn’t rewound to Season 1. We don’t need to see that. Season 1 retreads aren’t needed. If they want to remake Season 1, they should just bite the bullet and do a full remaster of the early Seasons to clean up the audio, rather than forcing new Seasons of the show to ape it.

Instead, we see a Blood Gulch wherein the same amount of time has passed since S1E01, but with none of the elements that Church brought in having happened.

Tex never goes to Blood Gulch. She spends her time hiding from Freelancer and desperately trying to find her other half, whom she was ripped away from and now will never be able to reunite with.

Tucker loses his friend, and is left with Caboose, who already doesn’t like him.

Caboose, for his part, doesn’t get brain damaged by Omega, but he still has his air shut off and Church still convinces him to drink Scorpion fuel, so he’s not doing much better.

Kai probably gets deployed to Blood Gulch faster, since Blue team is undermanned. She’s stuck in an empty box canyon with the rest of them.

York lives on, not getting recruited by Tex, until the Meta comes for him. The Meta takes Delta and leaves York to die alone.

Wyoming is not sent after Tucker, and doesn’t get the chance to formulate the plan with Omega.

Junior is never born.

Because Wyoming’s plan doesn’t happen, Wash is left to try and combat the Meta without the aid of the Reds and Blues. He fails.

The Meta remains free to hunt down and murder its former comrades. Like Tex, it ends up searching endlessly for the Alpha, which it will not find.

Without the Project’s downfall, and without Epsilon’s activation, Carolina remains in hiding.

The Director remains in hiding, endlessly repeating his attempts to perfect his remake of Allison. He never finds the answer.

Chorus is destroyed by perpetual civil war, all according to Hargrove’s design.

And as the galaxy darkens, people who would’ve been friends die or are left alone to rot, and the Project that put them there tears itself apart until only Tex, the Meta, Carolina, and the Director remain, scattered to the winds and pursuing impossible tasks, Blood Gulch remains. Its purpose is lost without Alpha, and the Project is gone, but with no new orders, VIC perpetuates the “war” between Red and Blue teams, and so it goes on. Static. Unchanging.

Cue the ending, and the setup for the next season. A Blood Gulch without Church.

[leonardalphachurch]

right so like. delta’s making it into the bracket, right? and really the ONLY place to put delta would be versus york. which is fine bc grif v york was weak anyway. but that leaves grif without a joke. so if bitters wins that’s bitters v grif easy clean beautiful.

but if SMITH wins. grif v smith? what the fuck is that? no, smith needs to be against caboose. which leaves donut without a home. so you say, okay, donut v grif, that’s a fine pairing. and SURE, it is, but having two of the reds face off while sarge is against locus and simmons is against wash is like. that doesn’t work! and grif v donut is literally the most boring pairing there! so what, do we mix up the reds now? grif v simmons, donut v sarge? locus v wash? no WAY can you have locus vs wash in the first round, that’s literally finals type shit. so what, locus vs grif? sarge vs donut? that simmons vs wash pairing there still feels so awkward though. and don’t say “oh sarge vs wash simmons ha donut” bc simmons vs donut is equally as boring as grif vs donut. sarge vs grif is the best there but that’s what, donut v locus? what is this, avghd? no, no, i can’t base my bracket on obscure horror aus. so it’s grif vs simmons, but you leave sarge where he is. donut vs wash? they traveled through time together, sure, but is this REALLY all that compelling? maybe we switch another pairing up. donut vs kai? sexual innuendo twins. to leave us to tucker vs wash? i ask you again, you want that in the FIRST ROUND? well what about the audience participation slot, i hear you cry. surely you can use that as an extra spacing! and oh, sure, but that’s against felix right now. but so, what, felix isn’t as popular as he used to be? he doesn’t need to be considered a heavy hitter anymore? so i should put the blank spot against wash now? oh, and you want me to put felix against tucker? the sword fight you’ve all been waiting for? if we do that ghost is going to get DIVORCED, do you not understand???

if you vote andersmith that’s what you’re voting for. our host to get divorced. are you all happy with yourselves????

[secretlystephaniebrown]

Corgis for Everyone!

I'M BACK!

Sorry for this major delay: my laptop died unexpectedly in early May, and it took forever to get fixed. But I'm back! And there's fic!

The Corgi Verse is now officially open for business: my plan is to just treat this like a drabble series, writing whatever strikes my fancy, being open to prompts and suggestions, and probably eventually adding every single character. We're starting with York, because, well, it's me. Anyways, keep an eye out for more, and if you've got a request, hit me up!

Also on Ao3

The Temple of Second Chances, huh?

Well, Tex has some opinions about that.

The first opinion is that the universe better not be making a judgement on her character, because she’s a bitch, sure, now more literally than ever, but Felix and Locus were genocidal dickwads, and even at her worst, she was never like that.

Okay, maybe she’s got some things in common with Sharkface, but he tried to kill Carolina, and she never went that far. (She doesn’t think about Connie.)

She sizes them up, and decides that, well, there’s only one thing to do about it.

Tex is pretty sure all that shit about wolves having “alphas” and shit is bullshit. And she’s always been more of a Beta.

But one thing is for sure, and that she is not just any bitch. She’s the Queen Bitch. And she’s going to make sure that these mercenary dogs know who’s boss.

The second thing is that being a dog really isn’t so bad.

It’s pretty damn hard to fail as a dog. All you have to do is protect your people, wag your tail, and eat your food.

And the third opinion is… well.

If the universe is handing out second chances…

Church better be on the fucking list.

He deserves something good, even if it is life as a dog.

--

Here’s the thing about Midnight. She doesn’t get along with anyone. She doesn’t get along with Tiny, she hates Trouble, Tic-Tac and her only get along when they’ve both decided Trouble needs to be stopped, and, in her defense, Terror started the fight that ended up with half of the kitchen in shambles.

So when Carolina brings home the one-eyed Corgi mix named Lucky, she fully expects to have to get out the squirt bottle.

Instead, Midnight starts to wag her tail and bark excitedly.

“What, did you two know each other before?” Carolina asks, placing Lucky on the ground.

Midnight practically tackles Lucky, and the two of them begin to run in circles around each other, barking excitedly and tails wagging.

“Tex!” York says. “You’re here! You’re here!”

“Thank God,” Tex says. “I could use some backup here.”

Locus looks between the two of them, thinks about what he knows about Agent York and Agent Texas, which mostly involves Agent York losing an eye and a space ship crashing, and retreats to the safety of Kimball’s office.

--

York is pretty sure he was dead.

And now, he’s a dog.

Well, he’d say he’s had weirder experiences, but honestly, he’s probably lying.

But at least Tex is here, even if Dee isn’t.

And Carolina! And Wash!

York sincerely wishes the excitement was a product of being a corgi.

Tex brushes up against him, trying to get him to focus.

“Right, right. So uh, the guy with the flame thrower who we dropped a building on is the Labrador and we have to fight him to sleep in Carolina’s room?”

“Exactly.” Tex says.

“Can’t we just take turns?” Sharkface—apparently his name is Terry, and Carolina calls him Terror, but there’s no way York is going to pass on an opportunity to use Sharkface on a day-to-day basis—complains. Tex is currently perching on top of his back, looking very smug.

“You tried to kill her, you lost all right to the bed,” Tex says sternly.

“Didn’t you try to kill the pink one?” York asks, unable to help himself.

“I don’t try to sleep in his bed,” Tex says smoothly.

“Does he not like dogs? Is he a cat person?”

“He is definitely not someone who I would think has a soft spot for pussy.”

York has nothing to say to that.

Locus and Felix are the other two dogs that are around, York learns, and Felix isn’t allowed to go near the one named Tucker, because of attempted murder. Locus is on “thin ice,” but Felix is “like Wyoming, but worse,” so York is under strict orders to ensure that Felix spends every day of their lives in the metaphorical doghouse.

That gets a lot easier when Caboose comes home with a sleek tabby cat with familiarly green eyes.

“Dee!”

“… York?”

“Motherfuck,” Felix says, three seconds before Tex knocks him off the sofa.

--

Sharkface, to be frank, is very tired of fighting with Texas.

Sure, she kind of tried to kill him, and definitely dropped a building on him, but somehow… the more time he spends as a dog, the less important all of that seems.  

All of the rage, the rage he’s spent so long stewing in, the anger and hurt he’d been cultivating for years… somehow, all of that is ebbing away. He bites and snarls and barks, but then someone pets him or he gets to go swimming or he gets to chase a ball, and it vanishes.

He’s not a fighting dog. He’s a Labrador and Corgi mix. He isn’t meant to put up a fight in this body. He’s not meant for this.

Fighting Texas wasn’t worth it when it was just her, and it’s certainly not worth it now that she has York and the Artificial Intelligence Delta to back her up. In cat form.

He doesn’t want to hurt her. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone anymore.

To be frank, all he wants to do is to get to spend time with Carolina, who is the best at throwing the ball, and likes going for walks by the lake, and has a very nice bed. He likes others, sure, but she throws the ball so far. It’s really great.

But Texas doesn’t want him to spend time with Carolina, and makes him fight her for the right. And he can’t beat her. He’s not sure anyone can.

Well, maybe if he teamed up with Felix and Locus, and if something inconvenient happened to York and Delta. Maybe.

But the point is, he doesn’t want to fight. He just wants to spend time with Carolina. And be a dog. He’s really enjoying being a dog.

He’s not entirely sure how he’s supposed to ask for a truce, however.

He decides that trapping Felix under a laundry basket is probably a good start, however.

Texas looks at him, and then looks at Felix, who is ramming himself against the walls of the basket, screaming incoherently, and bares her teeth in her version of a smile. Her tail wags lazily.

“Alright,” she says. “I guess we can work something out.”

“Traitor!” Felix howls.

“I have some ideas,” Sharkface says, his own tail wagging in response.

Carolina comes into the living room that evening and sees Terror and Midnight and Lucky all curled up together, with Einstein the cat perched on top of Lucky, purring like a motor.

She squints. “When did this happen?”

Tucker shrugs, and takes a picture.

--

Kimball hears the very loud barking, recognizes it as Trouble, and immediately goes to investigate.

She doesn’t know what, exactly, she expected, but she has to admit, finding Trouble had managed to close himself inside an industrial washing machine and then someone had started it was not what she expected.

She slammed the stop button and let him out. He was covered in soap and disoriented, whining pitifully.

“Were you trying to nap on the clothes again?” She demands.

Trouble whines, pawing at her.

“You know you’re not supposed to go in there,” she scolds. Then she sighs. “You fell asleep and someone started it, didn’t they?”

He barks.

“Yeah, okay, let’s get you cleaned up,” she mutters, scooping him up, soap and all. He wiggles and squirms like he always does when he’s picked up, but she ignores him.

She almost feels sorry enough for him not to kennel him that night but then she finds him trying to attack Lucky, so to the crate he goes.

She thinks that Lucky and Midnight look particularly smug that night when they pad after Carolina to go to bed, but she’s sure that’s just in her imagination.

“Vanessa! I was framed! They locked me in there! Let me out of here!”

[sco07ut]

ok this is getting attention again so i finally decided to finish off the storyline for the au

it’s another long one so it’s going under the cut <3

in this au, blood gulch and desert gulch are sort of swapped but some of the events that happened to the bgc still happen . basically, instead of desert gulch being the prototype, blood gulch is. they’re the originals that carolina and texas are sent to train with. during the fight, grif is crushed by the blue’s tank, manned by carolina but the reds are unable to save him and he dies.

(oh btw tex does not come back to blood gulch after this, she doesn’t team up with the reds n blues at any point- mostly bc the reds would try to kill her on sight, she instead goes to desert gulch- don’t ask me why bc i haven’t thought of a reason yet, and all the major plot events that i don’t mention here are handed over to the blues and reds)

this starts tearing simmons apart at the seams and he starts to really question why they’re all here, in some gulch in the middle of nowhere, dragging the rest of the reds n blues with him on his search for answers. like in canon, tucker is a bit too loud about his findings and wyoming is sent to get rid of him but then the whole alien baby plot thing happens and tucker gets his sword

the reds use it as an opportunity to gather more intel while command’s focus is elsewhere and they discover the truth behind the red and blue ‘war’ via vic’s terminal. round about this point kaiaina comes to blood gulch and simmons basically steals her for red team. after he explains what happens to grif she officially teams up with them in their goals to take down pfl.

wyoming then comes to blood gulch to kill tucker himself and the time distortion thing goes down, creating the massive wyoming army. in this au though, instead of helping tucker, simmons uses the chaos of the fight to get tucker killed and take his sword by getting caboose to ‘help’ him. simmons initially plans on pretending it was an accident but everyone’s kinda jaded towards death at this point. the reds don’t care since he’s kind of their enemy, caboose didn’t like tucker anyway and church was a bit annoyed but simmons reminds him that he ‘always hates tucker the most, right?’ (he’s a little fucked up in this one).

not long after this the great war ends but simmons, who has now sort of become the leader of the reds and blues orders everyone to ignore their relocation orders and stay in blood gulch so that they can start putting their plans to take down pfl into motion. while doing more digging, they realise that church is actually the alpha, leading simmons to implant him into himself.

through reading the transmissions between hargrove and the director they learn about the meta’s existence and simmons, in his somewhat deluded state of mind, thinks ‘ah, that guy looks like a good ally’. they lure him in using tex’s method of putting church into a robotic body, then damaging it so that the recovery beacon goes off, however instead of trying to kill the meta, they focus their attacks on removing his ai.

church, now back in simmons’ implants guides him and together they manage to remove all the ai maine gathered. while maine recovers mentally and physically from the attack, simmons finally agrees to sarge’s cyborg surgery, but in this au it’s just so that he can become more powerful. the reds and blues insert the rest of the ai into themselves but to prevent anything dangerous from happening, they discard gamma, omega and sigma. simmons initially wants to destroy tex’s chip, but church stops him, reiterating that grif’s death was carolina’s fault, not hers.

delta is given to caboose, theta is given to doc, eta (fear) is given to sarge, iota (happiness) is given to donut and texas/beta is given to kai.

once maine is coherent again, simmons recruits him onto the team so that he can get revenge on the director and counsellor for giving him an unstable ai and not removing it, even when there were signs of something dangerous going on.

they figure out where the director is hiding and head over to the storage facility to kill him, only to find out someone has already beaten them to it. a separate group of soldiers, the blues and reds, have been having their own misadventures along with carolina and washington, however when the reds and blues try to track them down it’s almost like they’ve vanished.

yeah i’m giving the chorus trilogy to the blues and reds. while they spend like a year dealing with that, the reds and blues start fortifying the caves under blood gulch to be their evil lair, and make preparations to start killing off the remaining freelancers.

post-chorus the blues and reds go into hiding. i’m sort of tempted to say that felix’s key went to one of the bnrs but idk yet . buckey to parallel tucker?? biff so that biff n simmons can have a cool sword fight?? gene so that gene n simmons can have one? idk u guys can decide x

so yeah they’re in hiding, and the reds and blues start their killing-off-the-freelancers mission, using the same method temple did to keep them frozen in their suits until they die.

once they’ve managed to kill every freelancer other than carolina and wash (and also maine, obviously) they then start working out a way to lure their last 2 enemies in. since in this au they can’t use the ‘original alpha church is in danger thing’ since they don’t have a particularly strong connection to him, they instead make this their video message:

“To our allies, the Blues and Reds, you are all in danger. If you were not already aware, the UNSC is targeting you and everyone associated with project freelancer, namely the agents. We- the Red and Blue SIM troopers of Blood Gulch- are reaching out to you in an attempt to confirm your safety, and to offer you a proposal, because if our message manages to find you then the authorities surely will. We ask that you join us in Blood Gulch, where we are already sheltering the Alpha, his fragmented A.I.s and agent Maine- who I believe is an old friend of your agents’. As much as you care for your privacy, you must realise that you are no longer safe where you are. Sincerely, the Reds and Blues.”

they send it out into space where it’s intercepted by chorus, however they’re incapable of delivering it like in canon because of the blockade. all the stuff with dylan happens, she tries to track down the real blues and reds, ends up running into the reds and blues, gets acquainted with their guns and then eventually finds the actual blues and reds via kimball and delivers the message she’s given.

what she inadvertently does, however, is lead the reds and blues straight to iris. the message was outfitted with a tracking device, when the rnbs noticed it moving again a few of them boarded stolen unsc pelicans, dressed as standard unsc soldiers and made their way out to iris. dylan plays the message for them and they’re initially a little bit sceptical, because after all, these things can be faked. they don’t rush into action like in canon, they let dylan stay on iris for a few days to do her interviews and when she leaves they decide to just stay on iris since nothing disastrous has happened.

cue dramatic irony; another few days later ‘unsc’ pelicans begin to attack their bases, driving them out & mimicking a real unsc raid. collectively they’re all like fuck should’ve listened to thta message and escape off planet in their own ship to the coordinates they were given: blood gulch.

once they arrive at the gulch they’re greeted by simmons, sarge, caboose, kai, doc and maine, (in this au without the near-shootout) and usher everyone into the caves below the gulch where their lair is. simmons then lies about explains the situation a little more clearly, explaining that the unsc already did a sweep of their base, forcing them to retreat underground to hide.

carolina and wash immediately demand to know how maine is with them- notably not the meta anymore and simmons like sort of tells them the truth?? he tells them that For Their Own Safety, they had been keeping tabs on pfl’s actions, and when they heard about the meta they didn’t see it as an enemy, but as a victim of the system and instead of attacking tried to help it by removing the ai. and to prove himself, he shows them the locked case where they keep sigma, omega and gamma. they ask to know where the other ai are, leading the reds and blues present to reveal that they’re carrying them in their implants.

carolina, now knowing that tex is a version of her mother is a little bit unnerved by seeing her again and the two probably do have a talk about things at some point, likewise, church apologises to wash on epsilon’s behalf. despite how strange everything is, the blues and reds begin to feel a little bit comfortable in the caves with people who are so similar to them and gradually everyone begins to relax. the next day, lopez and donut arrive back in blood gulch in a falcon (having switched out the pelicans elsewhere on the planet), claiming they had been out on a supply run to explain their absence. of course, in reality they were actually bombing the everloving shit out of iris.

despite the overall security, temple and biff keep catching simmons giving them weird looks, and debate asking about the absence of the rnbs’ orange soldier. buckey is also kinda weirded out by the fact that he doesn’t have a clone but isn’t nuanced enough to understand social cues like temple n biff and just outright asks the reds and blues what happened. a blunt question gets a blunt response though and simmons tells him that tucker died ages ago at the hands of a freelancer. bc he’s kinda stupid he gets a little wary of carolina and wash after that, reflecting how canonically, tucker was tricked into trusting temple.

simmons gets sarge, donut, caboose, lopez and doc to keep their respective counterparts busy and try to get them into the same mindset as buckey: a little distrustful of the freelancers by dropping little snippets of their violence here and there, just enough to make them question how truthful carolina and wash are being about their pasts. meanwhile, he, kai and maine work on the freelancers, temple and biff who might just be smart enough to put things together.

so, in this au the armour lock function isn’t actually called armour lock . it’s just called armour crush, bc (as per simmons’ instruction) caboose was basically told, ‘make the armour lock feature, but once they’re stuck in place make it just completely compress and destroy anyone in it’. like the springlock suits in fnaf basically. i don’t think simmons would go for temple’s slow and steady style of death, he would want something violent and instantaneous that directly matched the way grif died.

anyway he lures carolina and wash to the human meat grinder room and activates the armour crush on them, which kills them horribly and gruesomely (sorry) and tells the blues and reds that they still felt unsafe in blood gulch and were doing an extended patrol around the area. since it’s a more solid lie than what happened in canon everyone believes it without doubt.

the rnbs continue chipping away at surge, cronut, buckey and loco in the hopes that they can persuade them to switch sides, but since simmons isn’t actually paying any attention to gene, there’s nobody to stop him from snooping around the base. he hasn’t been fed the same lies as the others and definitely doesn’t trust simmons since they’re meant to be reflections of each other and simmons is very clearly not a reflection of him.

eventually, he stumbles across the meat grinder room and Almost gets away with telling the others but maine catches him and drags him off to the murder room where simmons activates armour crusher 3000. at this point, temple and biff begin to realise that a few of their friends have been missing a bit longer than they should’ve, and share their concern with the rest of the group. there’s a bit of an argument since surge, cronut, buckey and loco are being influenced by rnbs’ lies and everyone kinda goes their separate ways.

this results in their downfall though, as it allows the rnbs to pick off everyone they deem unimportant to their ultimate mission, surge, cronut, buckey and loco are crushed in their armour leaving just temple and biff. here’s where simmons’ ultimate goal comes into play.

the rnbs capture the two of them and reveal that they killed everyone else, including all the freelancers (okay wait disregard what i said earlier about not knowing who to give the key to- temple has it). temple and simmons have a small sword fight that ultimately results in temple’s death considering how utterly and completely outnumbered he is.

biff is left wondering why the fuck he’s still alive as the rnbs take him to their base on earth where the drill is set up. they activate it and the door to the past opens, except this time, instead of it leading to church in blood gulch, it opens to grif a few moments before he’s crushed by the tank. using church, simmons hides himself and biff with active camo and steps through, running over to where grif is. at the last moment, he shoves biff towards the tank (which removes him from the camo) and grabs grif (making him camouflaged), pulling him away from the path of the tank. the past version of simmons still witnesses an orange soldier die, with a corpse too mangled to see the face and simmons pulls grif through the portal back to the present.

so, all in all simmons gets a happy ending. it sucks for everyone else though. actually once grif finds out what he did it’ll probably suck for simmons too.

anyway, evil simmons occupies a large part of my mind. thanks for reading <3 if parts of this don’t made sense just pretend that they do bc i cba proofreading this

i wholeheartedly believe that if the reds and blues & the blues n red’s positions had been switched, n simmons had to watch grif die he would have had the exact same character arc as temple ,, but he would’ve won

[robboybot]

BEFORE I forget about it again I wanted to write some ideas for fun I made up for Red vs Blue thanks to the recent season having time travel

i’m gonna put it under a cut because it’s a bit spoiler-y ish, but basically it’s a bunch of ‘what-if’s dealing with the AI nuked with the EMP bomb in the meta’s head, and what if they were recovered

okay so first off recently I remembered gamma had time travel capabilities of his own that were shown to create some weird paradoxical situations with church’s copies (and possibly alternate timelines...hoo boy jax if only you knew)

What if last second before the EMP went off erasing the AI gamma ejected the chip housing ALL the AI including Alpha church like he did with Wyoming, and sealed them in a sort of time-bubble situation, stuck outside of normal time and unable to pull them out of it because they’re inactive inside a chip until someone comes across and saves them

Now, here’s several ‘What-if’ scenarios for this situation:

-Alternate personality omalley hunts down this bubble with the time machine to fuse with AI omega, and use the other AI for power messing up Doc’s mentality like original meta creating a NEW meta-ish problem

OR

-one of the reds and blues finding this little ‘time pocket’ and taking the chip from it, possible not knowing what it is but ALSO possibly knowing and thinking ‘holy shit is church alive’ 

I have a bunch of other ‘what-if’s in this regards

-tucker finding the chip and getting either reluctant to delve into church stuff again or PISSED!! pissed that everytime he thinks he’s moving on from church his feelings get ripped open again and he’s angry to be hopeful to have his friend back when he WAS getting along fine without him; how many times will he have to say goodbye for nothing just for him to come back? but also possibly thinking ‘thank god he’s back, I want a break from ‘leader’ and a guy to talk to again besides wash’

-caboose either happy to see delta his buddy again and ecstatic for church, or strangely desolate in disbelief claiming ‘that’s not church. the real church isn’t here right now’ or something similar. he’s in denial or moved on, and possibly feels it’s wrong to just bring back church this time.. or he’s oblivious and welcomes him back like nothing happened (or pretends to WONK)

-the reds sick of church’s bullshit and constant ability to come back, only to think vaguely of donut and be like ‘okay’ OR the reds scared of another meta and wanting to erase the dang AI once and for all

-carolina? well, that’s even worse. her sort of dad/fragmented AI friend epsilon was a close pal who helped her, and the reds and blues, to achieve all kinds of development and growth on top of saving a planet. to see the original copy of who started all the shit she went through... she might have leftover feelings and misdirect that anger on him a bit, or she’d feel empathetic and want to try to help him piece back together OR she helps each piece reach possible metastability

-Wash, after what happened with epsilon and all the freelancers the EMP bomb meta recovery and shit might be TERRIFIED! maybe his memory afflictions from his torture would get jolted and he’d relive the nightmares without warning in random inopportune moments like on the set with jax’s washington actor being shot repeatedly in the neck. he doesn’t want ANYTHING to do with the AI and refuses to go near them. his trauma with AI and refusal to have one in his head again could possibly be upset if omega or sigma tried to purposefully hijack him.

AND two more possible bigger what-if’s I like to humor based on the idea they somehow find the huragok that fixed alpha’s fragments during freelancer days and use it to repair them again to metastability, resulting in either:

A) them re-fusing together into just alpha, but he has memory issues like wash due to missing epsilon and they bond and recover together or bond and stay afflicted with memory loss

B) each red and blue getting an AI partner like the freelancers, but being able to handle them because of their unconventional ways; perhaps the AI are paired to best assist their partner, like delta’s logic helping caboose make sense of things etc.

anyways thanks for taking time to read my little ideas if you did, feel free to use them if you want! (and if you do PLEASE SHOW ME! thanks!)

[correctrvbquotes]

Washington: Roger that. I don't trust her anyway. One of you two take him.

Church: Um... I don't think that I can-

Caboose: I'll do it! I like meeting new people.

Caboose walks over and kneels next to her, allowing the A.I. to jump into him.

Washington: Delta, what happened?

Delta: I agree with the simulation trooper. The Meta has most likely acquired both a temporal distortion unit, and an A.I. capable of running it. In this case, Gamma.

Washington: Well, why didn't it kill us, then?

Delta: I am sorry, but I do not have enough data to formulate an answer. I think we should simply be happy it is gone.

Church: That makes sense to me.

Caboose: I also agree with the glowing person. Everyone else sees the glowing person, right?

Delta: It is possible the Meta has been injured in some way, and is retreating to repair itself.

Washington: So, if we can find it before it does, we may actually stand a chance of beating it.

Church: Either way, I don't think we should be hanging around here.

Washington: Then let's get moving.

[relationshipcrimes]

extremely specific zelda/rvb crossover because ive been playing a lot of botw at 2AM

caboose: works at highland stable and has MANY horse friends!!!! he is also friends with malanya the horse god, who revives any of his horses that may have died, so he is never without his horse friends. caboose does not find it odd that his friend malanya is 200 feet tall and also has no arms. sometimes if you talk to him on rainy days, he’ll give you a fairy. 

tucker: obviously a traveller desperately trying to reach the heart-shaped lake (lovers pond in faron region), but he can never find it. constantly roams as an npc talking about this stupid pond. usually found at highland stable. 

church: grumpy minor deity along the lines of the horned statue in hateno, except he’s been relegated to various gossip stones that are placed throughout hyrule and are accordingly interconnected as a means of communication (same deity, but split through different gossip stones). different regions of hyrule have different versions of church (alpha, epsilon, theta, delta, etc) and corresponding different personalities. he gives you a power-up (along the lines of potions or food with effects) once every blood moon cycle if you can answer trivia about other blood gulch npcs. 

wash: ex-yiga who got out of that whole cult nonsense but didn’t return to kakariko village for fear of the yiga bringing retaliation to the people there. he dyed his white hair blond, dressed in hylian clothes, and went underground as a stablehand at highland stable. he spends time hanging out with caboose. he offers a sidequest to retrieve a old ceremonial spear from the yiga hideout—not only is it too dangerous to leave in yiga hands, but also caboose’s birthday is coming up. caboose immediately breaks it. wash knew that would happen. caboose loves the broken bits anyway. all is well.

carolina: the baddest bitch gerudo lady you ever saw. she’s been travelling as a solo agent for a while to eliminate the yiga, and at one point infiltrated them by putting on one of their dumb full-body red tights. she and wash know each other and are friends. there’s a sidequest to deliver letters from carolina to wash. it turns out all those letters are from tucker, and carolina just forwards them to wash for wash’s entertainment because she isn’t interested. wash, on the other hand, is vaguely amused and fond of the letter-writer now. 

sarge: sheikah inventor who made lopez out of guardian scraps like a fucking weirdo. owns a laboratory like purah and robbie. he’s old as fuck and remembers the calamity (and a bunch of other things besides) and is vaguely nostalgic for fashion trends and war tactics that are like 200 years old. also, sheikah have white hair and red eyes, and sarge LOVES having red eyes. he offers a sidequest to find grif and simmons and tell them to go back to his laboratory, because he has a message for them. 

grif and simmons: two chucklefucks traveling together. grif the npc constantly complains about wanting to go back home (lurelin; he’s dressed like them). simmons the npc (from hateno, dressed as a hateno farmer) has a prosthetic made of old sheikah bits, made by sarge, so they spend a lot of time scavenging for guardian parts. are HUGE WEENIES who HATE going up to old guardians because how do you know if they’re alive or not???? can be found talking to sarge about his weird sheikah experiments and will pay you 4x more for guardian bits than anyone else, but only after you’ve completed sarge’s sidequest. 

donut: merchant who allows you to dye individual clothing pieces instead of dunking link in an entire vat of dye. unfortunately he’s also a traveling merchant and hard to find. once you build tarrey town, he sets up shop there permanently. his horse is lightish-red. he’s dressed as a lightish-red tingle.