#AND they’re starting to get disorganized I cannot have that

[care666bear]

& hide you in my treasure chest 🖤

[moonstruckme]

Hi!! Could you do a Bodyguard!James Potter x reader where he is guarding her during a high profile event and something happens? With a bit of angst to fluff? If you’re comfortable of course! I hope you have a wonderful day, i’m new to your page and ADORED your bodyguard james. <3

Thanks for requesting lovely <3

cw: guns, shooting

bodyguard!James x fem!reader ♡ 1k words

You shift your stance a bit and have to bite down on a whimper. 

“I’m going to have to throw these shoes out after this,” you mutter to James. “I’m pretty sure there’s blood pooling around my toes.” 

“You wanna take them off?” he murmurs back, lips barely moving as he keeps his face in a mask of businesslike impassivity. 

You sigh. “I wish.” 

“You could. Just step out of them, no one’s looking over here.” 

It’s true. Every camera in the chamber is pointed to where your mom stands on the podium, her right hand raised as she takes her oath. As much as you hate coming to these things, you can’t ignore the kernel of pride shining behind your sternum. She’s waited so long for this day, dealt with so much opposition, and now she’s finally going to be able to enact some real change. You can keep up appearances for her. 

“I’d better not risk it,” you tell James. “With my luck, the second I do—” 

You’re on the ground before you even register the sound of glass shattering. James’ grip on your shoulder is harsh, almost painful, but the noise that follows has enough adrenaline spiking your bloodstream to forget about that. The loud, rapid popping of gunfire fills the chamber. 

James’ hand moves to clasp around your elbow, but you tear away from him, headed in the opposite direction. The podium is empty. Where’s your mom? Did they get her already? Is she hurt? Did she—

You’re not fast enough to outpace James, definitely not limping around in your heels, and he gets an arm around your waist, hauling you away from the center aisle. You can’t tell where the gunfire is coming from—who has the guns?—but he pushes your head down before you can look. A low buzzing burrows into your ears. You try again to go to where you last saw your mom, but James yanks you back to his side, a cutting “Stop” hissing past his lips. Any other time, a tone like that would have you stilling like a frightened bunny, but you know he’s not the danger here. 

When you don’t listen, he lifts you off the ground. The crowd is swarming, frantic and disorganized, but James maneuvers through it expertly, running down the hall until he finds an unlocked door. The bathroom door swings open for you, and James sets you down quickly, locking it before you have a second to recover. 

You lunge for the door anyway, only for twin bands to wrap around your middle. They pin your arms to your sides and press you securely to James’ front. 

“Stop. Stop it.” His tone is as hard as his grip, dispassionate to your struggling. “You cannot fight me when you’re in danger, understand?” 

“They’re not here for me,” you plead. Your voice is scratchy with desperation. 

“No, but I am. I’m here for you.” His hold tightens, but now it’s less a restraint than a comfort. You can feel his heavy breaths tickling past your ear. “Your mom has her own detail, okay? She made it out before we did, they probably have her somewhere safe.” 

Now you can hear your breathing too. Short, stilted pants that wheeze in and out of you. You think you might be shaking. 

“That’s enough,” James says gently, starting to lower you both to the ground. Your knees give easily, relinquishing your weight to his hold until he settles you both on the tiled floor. “That’s enough, alright? Can I let you go now?” 

You’re not sure you want him to anymore, but you nod. He slips out from behind you, checking the lock on the bathroom door and then removing his gun from the holster at his hip. The sight of it makes your trembling worsen. He checks something with it while murmuring to the people on the other end of his earpiece, convoluted jargon you’ve long since ceased paying attention to. 

“She’s fine,” he says after a minute. “Your mom. They got her into an office, and now we’re all just waiting for security to clear the building before we can go.” 

You drop your head to your knees, relief like a tidal wave washing over you. You hear James’ footsteps move back toward you before his big hand lands on your head. It smooths down your hair as he squats next to you. When you glance at his gun balanced on his knee, he catches the look. 

“I have to keep this out for now,” he says, looking you in your eyes like he’s making a promise, “but the safety’s staying on unless someone tries to come in here. Okay?” 

“Yeah.” You nod, still trying to get your breathing under control. 

James strokes your head again, his touch weighty and reassuring. The noise outside of the bathroom seems to be lessening, but you’re not sure how much sound is blocked by the door. There could be shooting still happening just past it, people hurt or dying in the halls. 

“I’m sorry for fighting you so hard,” you say quietly. 

James blows out a breath. “I get it,” he admits. “In those situations, it’s natural to freak out and head toward the person you want to keep safe.” He flashes you a little smile. “I’m lucky it’s already my job to do that.” You grimace back, but his expression grows serious again when he says, “You just have to keep your head, though, you know? The whole reason you and your mom have protection is to make sure someone else is already looking out for you. You don’t need to worry about her, you just need to trust me.” 

You look at him. His body is still taut, ready for a fight if one comes to him, but his expression is gentle. It’s easy to forget it’s his job to take care of you when he seems to do it so naturally. Caring emanates from James like it’s the core component of his soul. 

“I do trust you,” you tell him. 

His mouth slants, expression unbearably fond. “I know, sweetheart. We’ll work on those instincts, okay? I get that it’s not an easy adjustment to make.” 

“Have you ever had to do that? Run away from the person you cared about the most?” 

He shakes his head. “Like I said, I’m lucky. I always get to run towards you.”

[taxevasiontactics]

The Godmother's Godchild [5] - ...Make for Such Great Falls

Synopsis: You just knew the good times wouldn't last, but you didn't think they would come this quickly. Getting hit with multiple problems in a row, you find yourself starting to thrive. It is, after all, your job to deal with major problems on incredibly short deadlines.

Warning: (Graphic?) Depiction of a major injury

For the better part of your month allowance, you work.

You don’t make any more visits out of the cottage save for necessities. Even when you need materials for some concoction, you go out, you get what you need, and you come back. The inspiration for “improvements” strikes as often as it had before, but you cannot bring yourself to care beyond “good enough”. You hate the idea of leaving behind the quick friendships and bonds you’ve made here. Still, the month wears on and your time runs thin.

You dread it. You fear it. You languish in it.

You wake up with a dry throat and a stuffy nose. The world outside is a dusky grey, even if your phone tells you it’s your habitual 6 AM. Beside you, your lazy, feline housemate continues to snooze away on the opposite pillow. Your tired eyes slide to the date, recognizing it as the end of summer. Your judgement day is drawing ever closer. Still, you have many projects to do; so, you drag yourself out, have your breakfast of quick cereal, dig out another can of tuna for the cat to have when he wakes up, and head out into the gloom. Time is of the essence, you tell yourself. Let people know that you’ll be leaving soon.

You decide that the pizzeria will be the easiest to knock out first (see: the bandaid that will probably hurt the most, thus pertinent to rip it off the fastest) and work on until the fog burns away from the warm noon sun’s rays. The phone is ringing off the hook when you come in, smelling like the forest and dirt between your fingers.

Nobody is manning the front where its shrill bell calls, not until you hear Gustavo shout from the back that he’s “COMING!” like the caller can hear him through an unanswered receiver. The place is a mess of soda boxes, napkin boxes, pizza box boxes, and a multitude of other little things you don’t have the brains to pick through mentally. A whisper of a smile runs across your mouth. You’re going to miss this place when you go, wall stains and all.

“Hey! Welcome back!” Gustavo shouts as he comes out of the kitchen. “Haven’t seen you in forever!”

He’s quick to pick up the phone, waving at you to sit down between writing down lines of the order. You look around at all the boxes and shift your bag against yourself. You feel bad, just standing around when there’s all of this work lying around. You hear Gustavo click his pen again, sigh, and stretch. He almost asks you if it’s “the usual, again?” before you interject.

“Do you want some help with putting all of this away?”

His eyebrows go up. “Are you sure? There’s a whole lot, and they’re heavy. But I don’t think Peppino or I will say no!”

“Hell, sure, better than sitting on my rear while you run around and make me sweat just watching.”

He gets a kick out of that. It doesn’t take very long for Gustavo to get through the delivery orders in the oven. You’re put to work, following him back through the kitchen door with a moderately heavy box. Peppino is there with his back to you both, still preparing toppings with a multitude of knives.

“Afternoon, Peppino!” You call across the kitchen.

“Mmhm,” he mumbles back. “Salve, salve.”

You frown. You were expecting some sort of ribbing on the way through. Gustavo leads you to a storage room half packed with disorganized junk. The other half is free for you to attempt stacking your boxes neatly. For the most part, it works, though you feel your Tetris skills protesting the rust. You finish up in no time, going for more boxes.

“What’s up with him?” You ask on the way back.

The shorter man shrugs. “Just tired, I guess. I told him to sit down for a bit, but… you know how he is by now, huh?”

“Yeah.”

You both continue to haul inventory, stack, and go back for more until the available storage space is all filled up. This, unfortunately, leaves no room for the soda fountain’s refill boxes. You and Gustavo pick them up anyways, taking them to the kitchen.

Your senses prickle from a new smell when you next pass through. It’s not the sauce. It’s not the toppings. It’s a warm, metallic scent that sets your mind on edge even when it’s masked by spices. Gustavo clicks his tongue to get the larger man’s attention.

“Hey, Peppino?” “Huh?”

He’s still chopping away, cleaver sharp and gleaming as he brings it down on the counter with a hard thump!

“Where do you want these?”

“What, where do I want what? What are they?”

“The soda refills.” “What? Oh. Over there, why not.”

Peppino turns, waving his stump of a left arm through the air towards another door. Blood splatters across the countertop from the meat around his radial-ulnar and it keeps running red rivulets down the limb. A steady stream drips onto the floor from where the rest of his wrist and hand lie in perfectly sliced sections on the cutting board, oozing a pool of the iron-rich sanguine. You drop your box on the nearest surface and rush between metal tables to get to Peppino.

“Oh.�� He finally catches on when he looks at what was once his hand, face blanched. “My arm. My arm-!?”

Gustavo shouts in alarm behind you. You grab what you hope is a clean rag, snatching Peppino’s limb and pressing the fabric tightly against it. You jerk your head towards the lobby.

“Gustavo. My bag is in the front, go grab it and bring it here.”

He’s out the door in a moment. Your mind is coasting on tight rails as you coax Peppino into dropping the cleaver to hold the rag for you. Stop the bleeding. Stabilize, then repair. Within moments, your bag gets tossed onto a nearby counter. You rip it open, racing in measured, confident digs to find what you need and get suitable substitutes for what you can’t. He’s a breath away from fully panicking, muttering faster and faster under his breath an incoherent spew of words. You spare a moment, leaning into his view.

“Hey, Peppino, look at me. Look at me?”

He’s still staring at his stump, watching the rag slowly becoming more and more soaked.

“I need you to look at me. Alright? Just for a sec.”

You get what you need and set to work. He listens to you now that you’re moving more, attention drawn from the source of stress. Ok, you can work with that – you keep talking, your mash slowly becoming the green paste you need.

“You’re doing great. You’re doing great, just keep holding that on your arm. Positive pressure, ok?”

“I really did it this time,” he rambles, “this time I-“

“No, no, you’re doing good! Keep holding it, you’re doing great.”

You finish in record time. You’re thankful that Peppino cut himself in such even sections; you hurriedly paste his hand back together on the cutting board, piece by piece, with thick, creamy salve and white wrapping. You keep talking. He’s doing great. Just a little longer.

You feel the skin starting to mend when you pick the severed palm up and line it up with Peppino’s raw limb. You wrap it back on as securely as you can, all while the meat and bone and flesh zip right back up like interlocking puzzle pieces coming into place. The contact you have with every cut as they mend is not unlike feeling a bubble bath’s bubbles pop and reform into plain water, or sectioned slime closing back around the divisions. You finish up and step back with a deep, rib creaking breath.

Peppino is left with a fully bandaged hand, while yours are as bloodied as can be. He stares blithely at the once-was stump currently in the process of reconstructing dermal layers, tendons, marrow, and muscle. You’ve never been on the receiving end, but you imagine the sensation is confusing.

“There!” You laugh, breathless. Your hands are still, even if you are rife with adrenaline. “You, uh, shouldn’t use that very much for the rest of the week. It’ll hurt like hell if you move everything around while it’s still doing its thing. Just so you know. Doctor’s recommendation.”

You go to wash the tacky, drying red from your palms as Gustavo steps in, presumably to chew the man out. It’s not the first time you’ve been put on the spot like that, but it is the first time you’ve done it for someone you know. Your mind tentatively steps back into normality as the atmosphere relaxes from shock to relieved frustration. You scrub out where it’s caked between your nails.

Gustavo finishes his rant behind you as the oven timer dings. You move out of the way as he pulls the delivery order out, boxes them up, and heads out to the vespa. He leaves you with Peppino, who has been silent ever since you finished. He mulls over something in the back of his mind, mouth working over itself until he chooses to drop a single, penny-quiet word.

“Thanks.” “You’re welcome.” You toss the paper towels. “It’s my job.”

You go back for the box you had thrown on the counter in your rush, putting it in the corner Peppino had pointed out beforehand. He cleans up the spilled blood and tosses out what he had been chopping beforehand. You don’t want to know how much product had been wasted during that fiasco, but you lost out on a couple key ingredients yourself.  You’ll have to go back into the forest later and hope that they’ve regrown since harvest. In the meantime, you grab the second box; the one Gustavo had abandoned.

“I wanted you guys to be the first to hear it.” You shove it in a proper looking place. “Work called. I’ll be leaving to go back home sometime in the future.”

Peppino scoffs, though it’s more to fill the air than disbelief. “Well, I didn’t know we mattered so much. When?” “Probably towards the end of the year, or the beginning of the next. I still have to call back and set a date.” “Well, when you leave, I wish you the best of luck, and good riddance.”

“Come on, don’t act like I’m already going!” You protest. “I’m not gone yet!”

You wished you spent more time here instead of hiding in the cottage this whole time. However, you see an opportunity present itself yet again. You turn, leaning so very casually against a wall. “And, you know, I better make good on the time I have left.”

“Oh, no no no.” Peppino wipes his hands on a towel, thumping it on a counter and rounding the worktables with a accusing finger. He comes into your space, doubt and suspicion written plain on his face. “I’ve seen that face too many times, you’re up to something. What? What crazy thing are you going to suggest this time?”

“What, I fix your hand and you still don’t trust me?”

“You fix my hand and I trust you less! I can never tell what you want out of something, so what do you want?”

“The same thing I’ve always wanted,” you answer, pushing back against his presence with your own. He takes a step back. You eat the distance up and fill the space with another. “A little bit of food in exchange for my help. You’re suffering from success, I have idle hands and want to enjoy this place a little longer. I think it works out, don’t you?”

Peppino’s mustache scrunches up into his nose as he thinks it over. He doesn’t have to pay you, but you would have unrestricted time to bother him as much as you please. He needs the help, but you’re you.

You waggle your eyebrows at him and break the argument in his mind, forcing a loud “bah!” straight from his gut as both of his arms are flung into the air from exasperation. He winces, cradling his injured hand after the whipcrack motion.

“Fine!” he shouts. “But only when we absolutely need you, then I will call you in.”

“Sure.”

“And only one meal every time you come in!”

“Fine by me.”

“Then I owe nothing to you afterwards, capeesh?”

“Unless I save your life.”

“Yes, unless you save my-“ Peppino scowls. “Enough of that. You didn’t just come here to tell us you were leaving, were you?”

You make vague hand gestures to the entire kitchen. He sighs, fixes his hat with the good hand, and opens the fridge doors.

“You tell me to rest my hand, you’re working here soon, so you learn how by making your own pizza. Start with the dough in that bowl and I’ll guide you from there.”

---

You would dub the next six days as “hell week” if you didn’t enjoy the people working by your side. Peppino, true to his word, only calls for you when he absolutely needs you; unfortunately, with his hand still out of commission during the healing process, he needs you every day. Every lesson you get from him is a trial by fire. Overcoming the obstacle of sucking at something new is a process you’re abundantly used to by now. You make plenty of mistakes. You learn plenty more.

You relish the rush of getting it right.

“’Stavo need a large-“

“Coming through, here’s your box!”

“You two, another order!”

In the kitchen, you quickly adapt to the controlled chaos. Dough flies back and forth. Sauce splatters with wild yet deadly accuracy. Toppings and cheese are portioned, scattered, and slammed into the oven all while you weave between, under, and sometimes over Gustavo and Peppino. Even the telephone’s constant ringing becomes a welcome sound, signaling a new challenge for you to undo.

Similarly, for the next six nights Peppino sees to it that your dinner is covered. Mostly by leftover pizzas that were defects, but on Saturday night Gustavo makes something from scratch. It’s a bit of a tradition, you figure as you watch the man walk to the back and start up a new pot of something without any further elaboration. Your temporary boss comes to you with his bandaged hand and shakes it in front of you.

“What do you think, eh?” He does it again, showing off his range of mobility. “I think it’s good enough now to go to work.”

You tilt your head and hum. “I’d have to take a look to be sure.”

“I can move it just fine!”

“Sure, but I still want to take a look.”

Peppino grumbles yet obliges you all the same. You guide him to the counter, gingerly unwrapping the work you’d done at the top of the week and have monitored closely since. With each layer unwrapped, you congratulate yourself on a job well done. The salve has done its job and fixed him up, leaving behind clean, faded lines of scars where it had knit together muscle and bone.

“Yeah, actually,” you mutter, “I’d call that pretty good. Flex your hand for me?”

He does so, twisting and turning it with a pleased smirk.

“Wiggle your fingers too?”

He does that too, thick phalanges rasping against each other. You note that the hair on the back of his knuckles hasn’t quite grown back where he’d chopped them up, but that’s a given.

“Looks good to me. Does it feel weird or uncomfortable anywhere?” You slip from the seat to grab a cup of something to drink. Peppino makes a noise in the back of his throat behind you. You can hear his meaty hand slapping against itself as he flexes the palm a few more times in quick succession, testing it.

“Numb,” he answers. “A little.”

“That’s to be expected, but if it stays numb for a few more days, you should tell me.”

“What, so you can poke and prod at me more?”

“So I can give your nerves an extra boost to heal,” you crack back, sarcasm deflected. “Drink?”

“Cola.”

Gustavo comes out with a nice one-pot of pasta in meat sauce seconds later, happily announcing his arrival before you can all dig in.

The busy times are not to last, however. Sunday is a day of rest and cottage work. Your phone doesn’t display the affectionately named “Hookup” contact you’d set for the pizzeria on Monday, nor do you find hell on earth when you visit on Tuesday. As quickly as interest came, it dries up and dies; this is good for Peppino’s rest, terrible for Peppino’s wallet, as he complains to you over the counter. You put your heads together while you eat, but neither of you can come up with anything.

“Guess we can wait until tomorrow,” you mumble.

“So we will.” He slumps on the counter, pulling out a book on woodworking, of all things. “A domani.”

---

You barely have to search to find the source of your sudden lack of work. The very next morning, you find posters plastered in town, pasted on with old fashioned glue-and-roller glee en masse. Walls upon walls of posted paper greet you at every turn in town. Everywhere they can legally be placed you see advertisements for an instant, fuss-free, cheaper pizza delivery service. Automated perfection. Whoever put these up even tagged the grocery store, something that Pamela shrugs at when you ask her.

“They paid Mrs. Bradbury some very good money,” she answers. The register’s bell rings and you see a flash of fresh printed paper in the till. “For advertising space! Out here!”

You can only assume that the other store owners were given the same treatment, money for advertising. Still, the posters can’t reach more than a hundred people a day – tops – and it won’t do better than your word of mouth. Not to mention, Peppino’s place is the only competitor. It doesn’t add up, in your head.

“Do you have any idea who it was?” You take your groceries off the counter, one bag over either arm. “Any name, face…?”

“Not a clue! Some guy in a trench coat and hat, which I thought was super suspicious, you know. But you know, when money comes along for something easy…”

You nod in understanding, bid her farewell, and get on with going home. Whoever put those up is either in for major disappointment or is just extremely petty when it comes to rival businesses.

You call your “Hookup” the moment you get into the truck, setting your phone on the dash and driving away. Your favorite Italian answers – just as you’d hoped.

“Peppino’s Pizza, how can I-“

“Peppino!” You hear him sputter on the other line, script interrupted. “I found out why we’re getting zero business! Some schmuck is undercutting us. And they have instant delivery! The most irresponsible use of teleportation I’ve ever seen-“

His voice takes on an incredulous, accusing tone. You can practically hear him wave his hand in the air, pacing behind the front counter.

“What? What?! How do you know this? Did you see them?”

“No, but there were posters plastered all over town, you just could not miss them. Pamela told me someone, didn’t see who, came in and paid Mrs. Bradbury for the wall space.”

“Maledizione, non riesco mai ad avere una pausa…”

“No idea what you said, but that’s what we’re dealing with. I don’t have any bright ideas yet, so…”

You squint at the front of the cottage, trailing off. There’s a strange structure just off the road in front of it.

“Actually, hang on a second.”

“What is it? Is there something wrong?”

“Just- just one moment. Hang on.”

The truck rolls to a stop, you throw it into park, and you marvel at the sight.Piled up outside of the fence is bushel upon bushel of tomatoes. So many tomatoes, you can barely see the red fruits peeking out of the top box. So, so many tomatoes, you can smell the summer ripeness captured in their slightly firm, juicy skins. So, so, so many tomatoes, you nearly miss the note tacked onto one of the boxes right at your eye level. It’s written in a child’s hand, jagged yet on the cusp of neatness.

Dear Doctor,

You still can’t tell if the kids in this town have forgotten your last name again or they’ve all mutually agreed to just call you by that.

Thank you for all your help with the fields. We are sorry that the tomatoes came late. We think that giving you the best tomatoes instead of just the first ones is a good thank you. We hope you like them lots and lots. They grew very well because you helped us.

Love,

The Anderson Family

And Marnie and Agatha

You sigh, folding the note up and sticking it in your pocket. You love those kids. You really do. What are you supposed to do with all of these tomatoes, though? You can’t use it. You couldn’t possibly cook down and can all of these tomatoes by yourself.

“Hello?” Peppino reminds you of his presence through your phone’s speaker. “What is it?”

“Well-“ You grunt as you attempt to move the precariously stacked boxes to the ground, tucking your phone between face and shoulder. “I don’t have an idea, but I have recently come into possession of many, many tomatoes. You wouldn’t know how to get rid of, say…” You pause, huffing. “Three hundred pounds, give or take?”

Peppino goes quiet on the other end for a moment, thinking. You hear him drumming his fingers on the countertop, murmuring in Italian, and moving some papers around. Whatever he finds, though, it has him sounding hopeful once he speaks up again.

“If you haul it all to the restaurant, I can do something about it.”

You grin. “Great, time to work some magic!”

“Don’t bring your crazy magic things in here! I have pots already! Plenty of pots! And regular stoves!”

“Too late!”

You cackle and hang up. Of course, you won’t actually bring anything but the usual bag and yourself. You gird your loins (and your back), preparing to lug everything into your truck.

---

Offloading everything was a cinch between the three of you. Getting to work was harder, though now you’ve all gathered in the back for an unofficial-official meeting over coring, cutting, and dumping a third of the tomatoes into a big pot to cook down for sauce. It’s the most immediate way to use up a big portion of them without waste. This was also the extent of the head chef’s creativity when it came to getting rid of the red fruits.

With so much time left to do menial tasks, brainstorming is a natural consequence of conversation.

“Ok, how about specials?” You take a gulp of water, fanning yourself in the hot kitchen. “We can run specials, every time I get a new batch of produce.”

Peppino frowns. “Specials, as in special dishes?”

“Right. The posters only extended to pizzas, very plain pizzas. Pepperoni. Cheese. One or two popular toppings. That’s it.” You dump another handful of tomatoes into the communal pot, bumping elbows with Gustavo. “Sorry.”

He shrugs. “That’s alright, keep telling your idea.”

“Anyways, if we stand out, we have a chance to get some customers back. I could put up posters-“

“We don’t have money for advertising space,” Peppino counters.

“Ok, then I’ll try and spread the word again! We do specials, we make the pizzeria stand out, and people come order them with a pizza or two to go. How’s that sound?”

He goes through another three tomatoes in lightning quick cuts before he stops and sighs. You reach out for another fruit and core it, as does he. “Whatever I come up with will not be so creative,” the man grumbles. “It won’t even be edible.”

Gustavo clicks his tongue and swats Peppino’s arm. “Don’t say that! You’re a great chef! People wouldn’t have been calling for a month if you weren’t, and we like your food!”

“Yup,” you agree. “It’s what kept me coming back, I will attest. You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

“Then why would they stop? It cannot all be just about the money, or the delivery time, or the- the- the-“

His hand waves through the air, searching for a word but finding none to pull. He sighs, goes for another tomato, and cuts it just as clean as the others.

“They stopped for one reason or another, and some special food will not bring them all back.”

“Doesn’t have to bring them all back,” you answer. “Just enough to keep things going.”

The next hour is dead air, filled only by kitchen fans humming, knives rasping against tomato skin, and the dull thump, thump, thump of quarters (or thirds, Gustavo and Peppino bickered about it in the beginning) falling into the pot. You help them lift the giant pot onto the stove and snag the lighter as Gustavo turns the gas on. He gets a step stool, you wash your hands, and Peppino scowls at the remaining bushels of tomatoes. With one large hand rubbing his chin, you practically hear the rusty gears turning in his head.

“Alright,” he mutters, “I’ll try.”

You don’t get any explanation of what’s going on as he experiments with a few of the thicker, fatter heirlooms. It’s not what you usually use in the restaurant, that honor is reserved for the humble roma, but the big fruits he picks from the bunch get sliced, tasted, and graded by some scale in his head. The phone rings for another order. Gustavo leaves to answer. You step in to stir the pot in his stead.

Out of the corner of your eye, you watch the chef go for one of the many blocks of mozzarella in the fridges - as well as flour, egg, and breadcrumbs - before he slips a shallow pan of oil onto an adjacent burner to yours. You have a faint memory of watching diner cooks work back in the city. Mozzarella sticks were one of your favorite treats after a shift. Cheap, filling, and plentiful when you were a regular. He starts to cut them into roughly equal slices to the tomatoes from earlier.

“What’s going on in that head, Pino?” you call over your shoulder. “Looks like mozz discs, to me.”

He scoffs. “Pino?”

“It gets tiring saying your full name all the time. Work with me, here.”

“You have to say the full name of the cheese, at least. Fried mozzarella is what it looks like, but this is not the only part of the dish.” He finishes, starting to bread them. “Have you heard of a Caprese salad?”

“Sure have.”

“If they want something special, they will get something special. I am doing it differently!”

Your brow shoot up. Wow. Frying the cheese, stack between refreshing tomatoes and basil leaves, serve drizzled in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Crunchy. Juicy. Snappy. It’s a hit combo. Gustavo comes back with an order ticket; just in time to leave the sauce to simmer. You abandon the pot to help and time passes in a blur. By the time you’ve sent him off with all boxes strapped to the vespa, Peppino is busy with the last touches to his creation.

Good gods and every other higher power listening, watching him plate it up with as much care as possible does something for you. It’s not just the careful way he arranges the slices of deep fried mozzarella and tomatoes, nor is it the way he tears apart the basil so delicately. It’s not even the loose, easy way he shakes out the dark and light dressings in generous swirls. It’s the small glimpse of a confident man doing exactly what he’s always wanted to.

A fond warmth blooms in you. He has a real passion for the art. When he’s focused like this, all the anxiety melts away into a pervasive desire to get the job done right. He presents the dish by sliding it your way, grabbing two forks as he follows it over. He hands one to you, and you both dig in with a delicious **crunch** of tearing a fried piece apart.

“Holy shit,” you mumble around a mouthful. “Holy shit.”

It’s good. It’s really good. It’s better than what you thought.

“Peppino, I’m not joking, this is genius.”

He frowns, rocking his hand back and forth. “Salt. I could have salted it after frying.”

“Yes! Ok, salt after frying-“ You go back for another bite. “-and box it up. We could put the dressing in little cups for delivery?”

“That’s easy, like the sliced peppers.”

“Yeah!”

He’s excited as you talk over the little details. The delivery method. The plating in the box. How to keep the fried things crispy and hot. The minutia are more or less accounted for and the tester plate emptied by the time Gustavo gets back. He laments at not getting to try any, so Peppino goes to make another round of it just for him.

The anxiety creeps back now that he is no longer occupied by the testing phase. You see him stiffen up and slouch back into his usual frown. You lean in on his space, lifting your brows. What's got him down this time? He sighs, flipping the breaded cheese over.

“I only hope that the customers like it.”

You huff. “They will. I’m sure of it. You’re a good chef.”

-----------------------

turns out switching to full time when you're used to part time makes you very, very tired. yayyyy more free labor. at least he seems to trust you, now.

[shootonsight]

censordoll has hebephrenic schizophrenia (headcanon) with explanation

(apologies for this, not only is psychology my special interest, but i LOVE censordoll… so it all works out)

to start, the hebephrenic category of schizophrenia is characterized by disorganized behavior/speech, shallow or inappropriate emotional responses (could also be called mood incongruence), hallucinations, and delusions.

the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia is to have at least two of these things:

delusions (strong, inexplicable beliefs that are irrational in nature)

hallucinations (when your body or mind perceives something that is not really there)

thought disorders (patterns of thought that cannot be explained with reasoning or senses)

she also has other schizophrenia characteristics, such as:

social avoidance

false belief of superiority

religious delusion

compulsive behavior

irrational/aggressive behavior

depression

being consumed/territorial over interests

now that i have that out of the way, let me explain why she fits into this category.

delusions: believing she is the matriarch, narcissism due to her self-imposed isolation, belief that she is better than others due to her lack of eggs, and being free from original sin. (false belief of superiority) she views herself on the same morality, power level, and deserving of the same respect as the lord, along with believing that she is more qualified to sermonize over moralton than reverend putty. she also displays hyperreligiosity. when she protests, she claims that picketing and protesting is doing “god’s work” (religious delusion) and even if the delusion is right, it becomes a delusion when they use illogical or unethical methods of explaining it.

thought disorders (illogical/irrational thinking): eggs = her removed ovaries. she is obsessed with something that irrationally remind her of something she lost traumatically. eggs are one of her “only pleasures”, but probably couldn’t explain why. this also ties into her delusions, but i decided to separate the bullets anyways.

obsessive, agressive, or territorial over interests: we see this when she slaps mr figurelli over a plate of eggs for no apparent reason. unlike regular autistic hyperfixations, schizophrenia related/induced interests last longer and can lead to someone feeling lost, angry, or depressed when they go away. (we see this in “offensiveness” when there’s a prohibition placed on eggs, she gets really sad because they’re one of the only things that bring her true joy; even though she was given cesarean-born eggs, they aren’t the same as naturally passed eggs in her mind.) her HEAVY obsession with eggs was likely started in childhood and persisted into adulthood.

social avoidance: she isolates herself because she sees herself as better than others. (false belief of superiority is also a schizophrenia characteristic) her lack of eggs caused her to deem herself “immaculate” and free from original sin (as seen in “alone”). she bans and protests things, not only to overcompensate for what she’s lost, but so she doesn’t make real connections with the townsfolk. she secures her place as a sovereign by refusing connection to society and sharing common interests with people. she stays away from commonly enjoyed things (like movies and books) so that she doesn’t fall into line with other people she deems inferior to her, ultimately disrupting her goals (as she believes). she also avoids connections with people who wouldn’t bring her closer to her goal of becoming mayor.

compulsive behavior: she only lets her mom call her at 9pm every night, she will avoid and ignore her persistent calls until the time comes. she will not answer the phone from her mother at ANY other time.

depression: her apartment is MINIMALLY decorated, some of her time is consumed by speaking with someone who ABUSED her (her mother), so that would be a valid factor to her being depressed.

[beauty-and-passion]

I think Thomas needs a dedicated community manager or something if he doesn't want to face criticism directly or is too busy to give updates on what he's working on every week. One thing I particularly don't like is how it feels like he schedules the livestreams almost last minute, especially for weekdays in the evening for him, but at incredibly awkward times for other zones, often falling in the middle of the workday or late at night. This is particularly egregious for the writer's rooms, which aren't archived for people who can't attend live and makes me wonder why I am paying him $25 a month for a "bonus" that I can't participate in or even see what I missed, and that occurs less than monthly. I understand that he's busy and things slip through the cracks, but this is a pattern now and it seems so haphazardly slapped together that it feels like the Patreon is no longer a priority for him. I definitely feel like he was much more consistent about doing monthly livestreams when he was doing them for the YouTube members for $5 a month with no bonuses, and at least those were archived for months until he switched to Patreon.

Sorry for the rant but these frustrations have been building up more and more. It's been two years since the Patreon started, Thomas and his crew should have had things better organized by now, or at least give the Patreon patrons some actual updates instead of spending all of his time on Twitter.

I understand your frustration and it makes sense that, after two years, you expect some more organization.

There could be a lot of reasons why Thomas' Patreon is still so disorganized: maybe Mr. Sanders doesn't have the actual time to work on it, he's too busy with other projects or he just doesn't feel like doing it.

And it's a real shame, because a lot of people use Patreon in great ways. I am not an expert, but as far as I know, some creators use it regularly and make it worth every cent people are paying. Some give updates about the progress of their works, including the most technical aspects (materials, softwares, editing, hiring process etc). Others show a lot of behind-the-scenes or post small previews of their projects before the full thing comes out. Others use it to talk with their followers and develop a stronger relationship.

There are a lot of possibilities and it’s very sad Mr. Sanders doesn't want to make the most of them. His Patreon doesn't give me the idea of a place regularly checked or fully exploited, but rather of a big room simply used as storage, in which sometimes Thomas puts a new box, then leaves again.

Don't get me wrong: if he doesn't want to spend too much time on it, he's free to do so. However, it would also look very unprofessional, because Patreon's purpose is exactly  to interact with people, give them something and make their money worth. Leaving something once in a while isn't exactly professional. And just like the other big problem of the series (the lack of a full outline), could be solved by hiring a professional who deals with it on Thomas’ behalf.

Speaking of leaving stuff, there is the mistery behind the livestreams. I tried so, so hard to understand why Thomas decided to keep the livestreams around for a very short time, then delete them. I am still searching for a reason and I still cannot find it. Why deleting them? What about the people who cannot watch them because of plans/personal problems/different timezones and want to watch them days later? What if they’re busy and cannot watch them days, but weeks later? They lose the chance, because the livestream disappeared.

Really, I have no explanation for this, so if someone knows something and can give me an explanation that makes sense, I would really appreciate it.

[maniculum]

The College of Grotesque Arts -- Introduction

So, I’m going to tackle this Dungeon23 idea. (This is Mac speaking, incidentally — I talked over the project with Zoe, but the analog element makes it a bit hard to collaborate from a distance, and she has other projects to focus on, so this one’s just me.) The idea, if you didn’t feel like clicking on that link, is to create a TTRPG “megadungeon” by doing one dungeon room per day, one level of the dungeon each month, so that you have a 12-level, 365-room dungeon at the end of the year.

I’m going to start off by saying that this is something I’m mostly doing for fun, so it’s going to be much less polished than something I might do as an Actual Project. (I say this because we do have some Actual Projects bubbling along in the background, and I don’t want anyone to assume they’ll be as slapdash as this is likely to be.) You’re looking at a first draft with minimal planning, which I think is appropriately in the spirit of things.

(If you're wondering about the title, that's what I'm calling the dungeon; to be explained in the next post.)

One of the things we really enjoy here at the Maniculum is medieval marginalia; of course, a podcast is an audio medium, and we’re not art historians so we can’t do a properly-informed discussion of it, so that doesn’t come up much on the show itself. So what I’m going to do is use the marginalia of the Luttrell Psalter for inspiration. Each day, I’ll look at a different page of the manuscript (in order, from the beginning), and try to base the contents of that day’s dungeon room around what I see. We’ll have to skip some pages, because they don’t always have anything besides geometric & floral decorations, but I just looked through it, and I’m pretty sure there’s enough pages left to get through the whole year.

(Text continues below image; I can't figure out how to make the image smaller.)

(You can find the digitized manuscript here, by the way)

I’ll also be using Appendix A of the AD&D Dungeon Masters[sic] Guide to get a starting point for each room, though I won’t consider myself strictly beholden to the results.

I considered doing a hexcrawl instead, since a lot of this marginalia doesn’t really fit with a subterranean dungeon, but it’s been years since I’ve done a proper dungeon, and I’m excited to give it another go. So we’ll just have to try and make it work.

Between now and the end of December, I’ll try and come up with a basic concept for the dungeon — I’ll post that when it’s ready. Come January, I’ll do a new blog post on the website once a week with my progress. (I may or may not post smaller amounts on our social media in between those weekly posts; we’ll see how I’m feeling.) It’s going to be once a week instead of daily because (1) I don’t want to clutter things up on the website and (2) I’m probably not going to stick to doing exactly one room each day. My work habits are disorganized, unpredictable, and possibly a function of undiagnosed ADHD — I expect, based on what I know of my own tendencies, that I’ll regularly pull ahead or fall behind on the project, and it’ll be easier to compensate for that if I’m doing weekly releases.

Now, the material-culture angle of this project: the notebook.

I could not justify buying a special notebook for this project, because I have too many blank notebooks sitting around already. My preferred brand is Field Notes, and I have a ton of those because I was a subscriber for a couple of years before I decided I couldn’t justify the expense, considering that the notebooks were coming in way more quickly than I was filling them. However, unfortunately, my box of empty Field Notes books cannot help me here: they’re pocket-sized and 48 pages long. There’s simply no way to fit this project into one of them. Even if I somehow managed to cram a week’s worth of rooms and descriptions on each page — not possible if I want it to be legible to anyone but me — it would still overflow. I’d spend the whole time stressing about space.

So, reluctantly, I turned to my other miscellaneous blank notebooks. I have a bunch — I’ve gotten a number as gifts over the years that I haven’t used, but unfortunately the reason I never used them also makes them ineligible for this project: inexplicably, most notebooks use ruled paper or blank paper. (Graph paper can be used for any purpose you can use ruled paper before, plus purposes you can’t use ruled paper for. Why would anyone ever use ruled paper when it’s obviously the less useful option?) And, of course, this project requires graph paper.

Turns out I have exactly one notebook that can be used for this project: a battered Moleskine Cahier that must have been in my Empty Notebooks Pile through at least four moves. No idea why I even have this one — I haven’t bought Moleskine in about a decade. Also I think these things come in packs of three and I have no memory of using the other two. Regardless, though, I have very professionally scrawled a title on it in Sharpie. It’s official now — I am doing this project.

[fatalled]

chris hemsworth. 43. cis man. he / him. ┊┊ cerberus corp has been watching ROMAN RASK.  some of the public has dubbed them ATLAS because of THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP gifted by A CAR ACCIDENT. having been an extra ordinary since 2019, they’re doing a good job at hiding NEEDING OTHERS TO SURVIVE  when they aren’t working their day job as a CONSTRUCTION WORKER, they are fond of SAILBOATING and are never seen without HIS WEDDING RING. at first glance they seem HARDWORKING & OBSERVANT, though their close friends know them to also be REACTIVE & GRIM.  they consider themself a ANTI-VILLAIN.

001. INFORMATION

name  roman rask nicknames  ro age  43 date of birth  07/02/1980 zodiac cancer place of birth  idk yet current residence  nyc gender  cis man pronouns  he / him sexuality  idk kiss him and find out occupation  construction. previously a defense lawyer.

faceclaim  chris hemsworth. height  6'5" tattoos  some let me get back to you. piercings  none. distinguishing features  his imposing size. positive traits  hardworking ; sensitive ; steadfast ; humble ; adaptable ; & friendly. negative traits  reactive ; pessimistic ; anxious ; suspicious ; paranoid ; & manipulative. likes  being alone ; the quiet of the wild ; winter ; hiking ; fishing ; being out on the open water ; tasks that require his hands ( fiber work / mending / wood carving / cooking / etc. ) ; the outdoors. dislikes  being alone ; waking up ; being made to feel helpless ; sweets / desserts ; disorganization ; being rushed ; summer ; heat ; being lost ; being cooped up. fears  being alone ; being abandoned ; being left behind. hobbies  sailboating ; hiking ; reading ; solitary hobbies habits  walking away from the conversation when he's done ; anxiety habits like rocking / tapping / bouncing his leg.

002.  EXTRA ORDINARY

[ NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE. ]

car accident tw. parental / sibling / spousal death tw.

give me like. a day to make this sound better. basically car accident on christmas that killed his family ( parents / brother / wife ) where he was driving. he was the only survivor because he basically used the bonds they had with him to save himself ( unintentionally ). he blames himself for their deaths and overwhelmed with his survivor's guilt. he did not realize he had the ability until he used it later on. pls i swear i can write it better just give me time sobbing emotion crying emotion snotting emoji

[ POWER. ]

The POWER OF FRIENDSHIP is similar to trust manipulation ( able to manipulate trust and loyalty of others ) but with every bond that he has, roman becomes a stronger hero. every person that views him as a friend, they form a "bond" with him that becomes a kind of "battery" which he can use to increase his power. the power increases the more people he has. the deeper relationship he has with his ‘friends’, the more power he can borrow from them.

POWERS INCLUDE: Enhanced Durability, Enhanced Resistance, Enhanced Strength, Enhanced Fighting Skills, Enhanced Survivability, Pain Suppression ( only for himself ) and Indomitable Will ( he cannot be hypnotized, commanded, or physically / psychically controlled ).

( for a visual ref, you know when the superhero powers up because of their friends believing in them and they start glowing? something similar happens with him. idk what it looks like yet but think of that when he goes sicko mode! i will update as it goes. but his color is blue. )

he can manipulate people into believing that he is a friend to them so long he has not manipulated them before. it is a one time thing. he cannot manipulate those who have changed their mind about him or have decided that they are no longer his friend. if the person still believes that he is their friend, he can use them as an anchor to his power and rely on them as a battery. and since his power is the power of friendship, if he has no friends then he has no power.

the more people he has trusting him within a 50 foot radius, the stronger he is. the closer they are, the more he can take from them. this has caused the endangerment of civilian life but no one has died as roman tries to keep them within range without hurting them. ( he does not know that he can use the bond to a point of killing them and this is actually how his family died but that was an accident as he did not realize he was an eo.)

[ WEAKNESS. ]

if the bond is deep and formed without manipulation, roman becomes even stronger but due to his anxiety, his trust and abandonment issues and his inability to form lasting and long relationships — tough luck!

once someone has been manipulated, they cannot be manipulated again. they would have to form a bond without manipulation in order for roman to use them to power his ability. however, many do not appreciated being used and often turn against roman.

afterwards, those who have been manipulated are aware of what happened to them. their trust towards roman has been 'broken' and he cannot manipulate someone into trusting him again after that happens. the bond ( if they chose to make one ) would have to be real and built on trust. they would actually have to become friends.

if they step outside of the 50 ft radius, he will lose their bond and they will become aware of the manipulation which will both cause his power to lessen and breaks the bond meaning he cannot use them again.

he can friend someone to death. :)

[ CERBERUS. ]

he is trying very hard to get into cerberus because he doesn't want people to use his power for evil as it has been but because of his past, his associations, and the fact that he has a rather 'unsavory' power, his chances are looking pretty slim.

[ CODENAME. ]

atlas, who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. it was given to him by a villain!

003.  HEADCANONS. 

nervous and anxious, he's pretty much on the run from villains atm.

used to be a defense lawyer ! his personality ( and entire life ) has honestly changed, however. he is no longer that lawyer and has absolutely no intention of ever returning back to court

the anxiety is a new development. he suffers with anxiety attacks, panic attacks and slight paranoia. it has gotten worse over time. he's not okay! even a little bit!

outdoorsman thought and through. he loves to be outside, loves to be out in nature, loves to exist outside. he hates being cramped, hates being stuck somewhere. a mild form of claustrophobia that has been made worse with his anxiety.

actively joined the villain who recruited him because in his grief, he didn't understand the full extent of his power and ability. he agreed with the villain for the unfairness of this world and used his ability without forethought of what he's doing. his point of view has then changed.

married to his high school sweetheart in 2016. widowed.

even though roman lives most of his life alone, he is very much afraid to be alone. he doesn't like to be alone — he simply has pushed everyone away out of the fear that they'll never believe him if he told them that he hasn't manipulated / has never done it to them before. so, he's very lonely.

he wants so much to be a good person. he wants to atone for the things he's done, the evil he did, the people he hurt. he wants to get away from the life of crime, he doesn't want to hurt anyone.

004. CONNECTIONS.

note that due to the nature of his power, we should discuss the extent of the manipulation / friendship!

BROTHER WHO "DIED" IN ACCIDENT — gender can change idc. but basically you survived the car accident and gained an nde of your own that saved you from being 'friended to death'. i imagine their relationship isn't great! at all!

AGENT RECRUITING HIM FOR CERB ( level ii preferred but i'll take a level i. ) — roman approached you! hoping you can help him turn his life around as he believes that cerberus is the best option for him / his power. he wants to be good. [ 1 / 1 ] REMI !

THE VILLAIN WHO FOUND HIM — you approached roman when you discovered his ability back in 2018! you knew that it was a form of compulsion / hypnotism and used it to your advantage. roman has since left you and your world view behind but he knows of your identity which could be very dangerous for someone like you. you need to find him before cerberus does. [ 0 / 1 ]

villains who have hired him as a henchman ! ( 2018 to 2023 ) he basically has the ability of one-time compulsion ! he can be very useful. ( please note that the villain's identity has the possibility of being leaked to cerberus. we'll discuss! live in fear! ) [ 1 / 3 ] DOHYUN !

villains, heroes, and civilians that have been manipulated by him. note that he cannot manipulate you again once he's already done it. [ unlimited. ]

friends!! ( with the known caveat that he would be able to use their "bond" if they are truly friends! do you want to risk it? do you trust him? ) [ unlimited ]

people he has defended in court ? [ unlimited. ]

enemies !! he used you !! get outta here !! [ unlimited. ]

someone 2 kiss him ):

[yourassimcomingforit]

A disorganized ramble about ofmd by me so that I don’t explode

Just gonna start off with FUCK THIS SHOW IS GOOD AND I CANNOT WAIT FOR SEASON 2 TO CONTINUE now with that out of the way we see throughout the show Ed threaten to off himself but he never goes through with it cause just like stede he’s to scared of death he’s scared of being the one to kill something whether it’s another person or himself which makes him a really interesting parallel to stede and the ways they react to having killed someone, ed tries to ignore it and makes up a story to place himself away from the murder while stede sees the one he killed at every turn and can’t forget it. Another super interesting parallel is the way they both think they’re unlovable with Ed it’s super obvious he’s constantly saying it but with stede he just never thinks to seek out love he grew up knowing he’ll never find someone to love and marry so he never really thought to look for love and when his marriage fails well obviously he couldn’t find love there so he can’t be lovable. Onto Izzy and stede they both love Ed in such different ways Izzy loving Ed only when he’s Blackbeard and suffering the most when Ed is cruel and mean and torturing people the moment Ed finds something better or tries to be better he drags him right back. Izzy and Ed bring out the worst in each other Izzy making Ed worse and Ed actively harming Izzy making him rage at the crew. In contrast with Ed and stede where they make each other happier Ed slowly sees that maybe he is lovable and stede finds that love is a possibility, they teach each other things and just make each other better.

Now back to Ed and his wanting to die he’s always threatening to do it whether it’s putting a gun to his head or telling someone else to kill him he’s always outsourcing his suicide and even in s2 e3 he outsources it throughout the episode we see him on a beach but at the end we see that it’s all just him hallucinating/dreaming it but we do see that he’s still not able to be the one to do it himself he dreams of his old captain whatever his fucking name who he hates being on the island with him who ultimately leads him to a cliff with a rock tied to his waist and shoves him off it’s another example of him outsourcing his death he can’t do it himself so he dreams of someone else doing it for him instead of realizing the true reality of it.

Now onto his little spiral into insanity when we first meet him he’s already pretty damn crazy and just tried of life but meeting stede brings back a meaning to his life and he’s happy and at the end of s1 e9 they’re getting ready to escape and have a happily ever after but stede ends up running away making Ed think he doesn’t want him anymore it’s a perceived rejection cause even though stede clearly loves him, him not showing up to escape with him brings back his preconceived notions of being completely unlovable and that sends him spiraling. The man he loves who made him happy suddenly rejects him and leaves him alone ripping away all his plans for happiness and love. He goes back to the crew and just wallows in his depressing and sadness before of course Izzy drags him right back into Blackbeard but this time it’s even more toxic because it’s fueled by the sadness and anger of stede leaving him behind nothing he does makes sense, throwing treasure overboard to steal more treasure cutting Izzy up for every single thing etc it’s all him projecting his hurt into everyone else instead of dealing with it properly. It all leads to him seemingly getting better talking with Izzy and getting closure getting of the drugs but it’s not it’s him gaining “clarity” the calm before the storm because he immediately drives the ship straight into a storm ripping the wheel off and preparing to set the masts on fire killing him and everyone on the ship. But of course he can’t kill anyone directly he can’t pull the trigger so he’s gonna have the fire and the storm kill them all when that fails. That leave him depressed suicidal and in the aftermath of a failed attempt that leads him to his little hallucination/dream that I talked about earlier.

An interesting thing we see throughout the season is new relationships forming from the ashes of old ones Mary and stedes failed marriage leading to Mary and Doug, olu and Jim leading to Jim and Archie and the short lived relationship of olu and Susan which ended because she ya know tried to kill all his friends. We even see this with Ed stede and Izzy, Izzy and stede keep fighting for a relationship with Ed by trying to burn the one he has with the other to have one with him.

I know I’m forgetting something else I wanted to say because I accidentally deleted an entire section of this but that’s all for now on my thoughts about ofmd. I blame this all on my friend who weaponized my autism to watch this show while I was still suffering from gomems. Gonna go explode have a wonderful morning evening afternoon and night

[perpetual-fool]

I have to solve this now.

I'm sure this is going to be a mess. I tried out 'mindfulness', trying to figure out what if anything I actually enjoy. Instead I found I was in pain all the time, and those worms aren't going back in the bag. The primary culprit is my need for belonging being violated and having no viable explanation for why it's happening. At times it seems like there can't possibly be a thinking, feeling person in there, and other times it seems like there must be.

Tying into this, I think, is how my learning things seems to require just trashing most of what people have to say about the thing. Most of the time what people share is just wrong, but it can also be incomplete, disorganized, or misleading. Exactly never have I been able to take someone's explanation and reverse engineer how the thing works. What has been working for me is starting from the fundamental concepts, tabula rasa. Like with music, what is a scale and why would it be any particular way? Or like, if I wanted to learn programming then I'd have to start with assembly. But further, it has to be this way. Like, you couldn't learn math by starting with calculus and then maybe eventually working your way back to arithmetic.

Other people, as far as I can tell, start 'learning' by memorizing a set of edicts; things they're supposed to do or think. You start by learning 'this is the way it is'. And when you have enough experience you'll see that that was technically wrong, but laid the foundation for understanding the real concepts. But you do not actually have any foundation, you skipped that part. Instead you took whatever you were initially programmed with as first principles and are forever trapped in whatever box you landed in. Unless you didn't, but I'll get to that.

But I never fit in that box, which leads me to what I think is the primary thing that makes me a freak: creativity. Which I am defining as the ability to make connections. This makes edicts far more restrictive for me, such as Christianity teaching me that anything that makes me feel good is evil. And it makes a lot of the edicts implausible on their face, like the idea that memorizing formulas will magically culminate in knowing what cosine means.

(I'm getting tired. I'm gonna skip ahead. Why am I even posting this? I dunno.)

So other people react according to how they're 'supposed to', generally. In many, many cases it's as if the person cannot follow even basic concepts or suddenly can't speak English anymore. It's like what I'm talking to isn't actually a person. And basically that's what happening. I'm not talking to them, I'm talking to a script some authority (or society? whatever) figure programmed into them.

Unless I'm not. There are also a lot of instances where the person seems to actually have feelings, or has ideas that didn't come from someone else. And yeah, there's a person in there, and they're just stuck 'in the box'. But more significant is why they fit at all. Which, (don't have energy for context) is not seeing possibilities. Like they'll see a thing happen and think 'that must be because X'. And then just fucking stop there when there's at least three more things it could be besides X. They are short-sighted in a way that is completely alien to me.

Does this explain things? Maybe?

And fundamentals would apply to social interaction as well. I would need to know how people work, generally and for whoever in particular. We'd have to actually communicate about things, including meta-conversation about what each of us thinks is happening to be sure we're on the same page. But people follow their script, ascribing meaning to things which they don't have, jumping to conclusions that don't follow, and not following ideas that don't fit what they already believe. And they are short sighted, taking things the wrong way and just being certain of their interpretation.

There's still nothing I can 'do' with this. People being unable to consider their core assumptions, and not being able to process questions, makes it intractable. I know there's people in there, and some of them seem pretty nice, but I just don't have a way in. But, the purpose of this is to have an explanation. I needed to resolve the cognitive dissonance. I think it's worked?

Aside, the more I make sense of things, the more it seems like the things I did actually made sense. Like, trying to explain myself to her hoping she'd finally understand, that I'd finally have someone to connect with; as poor of a grasp as I had on things, I was headed in the right direction. Maybe she'd hate me for not conforming to the box, and maybe she thinks the box is good and just. But I was actually reaching for the things I needed to heal.

I suppose it's meaningless to lament about the life I could've had. 'If my family had been different, and school had been different, and society had been different, well *then* I could've been something!'

[mostlysignssomeportents]

American healthcare did a fuckery

My fellow Americans, I regret to inform you that our beloved health insurance industry has done a major fuckery. I know this is hard to believe, given the probity and honor we associate with our fine insurance companies, but the evidence is incontrovertible.

Back in 2019, the Trump administration ordered insurers and hospitals to start disclosing their prices, despite tens of thousands of comments filed by employers, insurers and hospitals objecting to the proposal.

This is one of those pox-on-all-your-houses/you-can’t-get-there-from-here situations. The Trump admin wanted to continue the fiction that the blame for America’s worst-in-class health care was the result of bad market dynamics. Without transparency on pricing and service, employers can’t shop for plans, hospitals can’t know if they’re getting a bad deal from insurers, and sick people are denied information needed for effective bargaining.

That’s all true, as far as it goes. The stubborn, remarkable opacity of American health-care pricing is an enormous source of mischief. Two patients receiving the same procedure, medicine or service might see bills that are thousands of dollars apart, at the same hospital, delivered by the same personnel.

Without price transparency, patients can’t know if they’re getting ripped off. But if you know that the hospital charged the person in the next bed $3 for the Tylenol tablet that you got charged $300 for, you can go to the hospital billing department and say, basically, “Oh, come the fuck on — seriously?” and maybe get $297 knocked off your bill.

That’s why insurers and hospitals don’t want price transparency. Hospitals don’t want insurers to know that they’re getting gouged, and insurers don’t want their competitors to know that they’ve cut sweetheart deals that are being subsidized by eye-popping profits extracted from their rivals.

Ending those practices will make marginal improvements to US healthcare, but only marginal ones. The problem with health-care isn’t that it’s an imperfect market — it’s that we treat it as a market at all. Markets may help organize and allocate discretionary goods and services, but the core of healthcare is not discretionary.

Fundamentally, an unconscious person in cardiac arrest being loaded into the back of an ambulance cannot send a price-signal by shopping for a hospital emergency room and directing the driver to take them there. Even less extreme examples — cancer treatment, insulin, a sick child, a broken bone — do not lend themselves to market dynamics.

Health care always turns into a planned economy. The only question is: who plans it? Right now, we have a monopolized health-care supply-chain, with a handful of companies controlling insurance, hospitals, pharma, pharmacy benefit managers, hospital beds, powered wheelchairs, etc. Each of these sectors is locked in a death-battle with the others, fighting to shift profits from one balance-sheet to the other — but no matter which one wins, the rest of us lose.

There’s a reason that Americans pay more for worse health outcomes, and why American medical professionals get paid less for worse working conditions, than their counterparts abroad. A hospital chain and an insurance company might be well-matched for negotiating power and thus able to arrive at an equilibrium that lets both of them thrive — but workers and patients are disorganized and atomized, and we’re easy pickings for both insurers and hospitals.

Sure, hospitals and insurers fight over us, but the prize they’re seeking is the right to drain our wallets — not the right to win our business through excellence. They are not our champions, they are our tormentors, and whichever one wins, we lose.

Back to transparency. Despite the tsunami of bad-faith objections to publishing prices, the Trump admin enacted the rule, because the rule was key to the pretense that the market for health-care could be fixed — while the alternative was that it should be abolished and subsumed into a single-payer system, like the ones that every other rich country with successful healthcare use.

The insurers and hospitals switched tactics: they simply ignored the rule. Months went by. Deadlines passed. The prices remained a secret, or were publishing in incomplete form, or in obscure formats that couldn’t be readily understood or compared. The Biden admin threatened the sector with fines and public draggings, with increasing severity as the stalemate continued.

Then the insurers switched tactics. Over the summer, the nation’s mammoth insurance companies began dumping enormous amounts of price-data — and I do mean enormous. Humana dropped 400 billion prices in 500,000 CSV files totaling 600TB.

https://developers.humana.com/Resource/PCTFilesList?fileType=innetwork

That pales in comparison to the dumps from Unitedhealthcare — a private-equity backed behemoth that scooped up dozens of smaller companies — whose 250TB dump of 100,000,000,000 prices:

https://transparency-in-coverage.uhc.com/

[Image ID: Alec Stein’s chart showing the scale of the insurance pricing dump.]

All told, the industry has produced more than a trillion prices. Writing on Dolthub, Alec Stein contextualizes this unimaginably large dump: larger than English Wikipedia, the Library of Congress, Libgen, and all of Netflix — combined:

https://www.dolthub.com/blog/2022-09-02-a-trillion-prices/

Where did all this data come from? The insurers are breaking out prices by “who’s paying, who’s getting paid, what they’re getting paid for, plus some extra fluff to keep track of versioning,” combining all of these to produce generally meaningless distinctions that only serve to chaff the data so it can’t be readily parsed.

This is pure malicious compliance, a monopolist’s version of work-to-rule whereby they follow the letter of the law in a way that is clearly designed to frustrate the spirit of the law. Stein — who works for Dolthub, and wants to highlight the power of its database product — has thinks we can still wrangle all that data.

He proposes reducing the amount of data by 99% by eliminating extraneous metadata, as well as data on rare procedures at the margins of health care. Then, he wants to parse the remaining data through “data bounties” that pay data scientists to perform specific tasks — Dolthub already did this for a smaller set of hospital data, and it worked:

https://www.dolthub.com/blog/2022-07-01-hospitals-compliance/

Then, Stein says, we can further whittle the data down by zeroing in on the 70 codes required by Medicare, and break those out by hospitals by using Medicare’s “national provider identity” codes.

All of this will be useful work. Assigning precise dollar-figures to the dysfunction of a commercialized healthcare sector is a necessary-but-insufficient precursor to creating a sensible universal system. Likewise, this data will be useful for the the DoJ and FTC when they block future mergers and unwind existing ones.

You can help! Stein wrote custom scrapers for each insurer’s dumps and posted them to Github, and you can scrape the data yourself:

https://github.com/alecstein/dolt_datascience/tree/master/transparency_in_coverage_filesizes

As useful as all of this will be, don’t take your eyes off the prize. America has the worst-performing, most expensive healthcare in the rich world. Fixing it means more than tinkering in the margins with price transparency. Health is not a market — it’s a human right.

[Image ID: Ticker-tape parade for presidential candidate Richard Nixon in New York in 1960.]

[astrologyandlife]

29° and 0° in astrology

the 29th and 0 degrees are said to be "critical" degrees in astrology, meaning that anything sitting in these degrees have a special influence on its expression and impact on the rest of the chart. so, i thought it would be a good idea to explore these two degrees and what they could mean for you guys!

part i: the 29th degree

the 29th degree is the very last degree of any zodiac sign. it is said to be the anaretic degree. here, the most difficult challenges related to the placement in question are presented, as everything else has been mastered. there is also a sense of inevitability with this placement. this is often marked by a turning point in the individual’s life.

sun – the ego and identity are strong, but there could be external circumstances that don’t allow the individual to express themselves in a completely authentic or transparent way. they must reconcile who they are inside with how they act. at times, they feel like an imposter, or like they are selling out to others. they know who they are, but do other people? this feeling that something is physically blocking them from existing impacts every action they take. they must figure out what is holding them back from complete self-expression and give themselves permission to be themselves in spite of this.

moon – this is where the most complex, desolate emotions a person can feel lie—the kinds of emotions that make you think nobody could possibly understand your experience. as a result, there is a profound sense of isolation and a difficulty integrating their emotional experiences into their self-expression. this only increases the intensity of the emotions, creating many situations of turbulence. sometimes the individual ends up completely blocking their emotions off to cope. only by facing their emotions head-on can they assuage these feelings and achieve a balanced state.

mercury – there is a tendency to get stuck in vicious cycles involving self-doubt and overthinking here. as a result, they sabotage their own efforts to make good decisions and communicate clearly. even a genius can make a fool out of himself. there can be this issue where they overthink sometimes and don’t think enough other times. they have this nagging feeling that they are missing some piece of information that is undiscovered or concealed from them. the final lesson is to trust the knowledge and experience they have to make the right decision.

venus – a profound sense of loneliness is pervasive throughout their life, as though every relationship they could have now would be empty and devoid of true connection. it’s entirely possible for these individuals to have trust issues, fall into unhealthy patterns in their relationships, and avoid intimacy. perhaps there is a part of themselves who feels they are unlovable in some way, or there is this one thing wrong with them, which they must forgive completely, the same way they would forgive and love another person.

mars – a desperation to act conflicts with a lack of confidence in their capability to do so. often this leads to them being frozen in the headlights like a deer, thinking, I have to do something but what if it’s wrong? the balance between too much and too little is blurred, leading to inconsistency and turbulence in their lives. they often end up in situations where they are forced to make snap decisions. re-calibrating their approach to conflict and matching their energy to the situation will relieve this problem.

jupiter – without thinking, these individuals over-indulge and rely on their luck and natural talents in some way. they want more of something, and it’s almost as though there is no satisfaction through receiving it. there is both a sense of hollowness and complacency that permeates as a result, and they forget how to materialize success through their own efforts. to remedy this, they must seek out growth, exploration, and expansion in its purest sense, to open their minds to a higher being or knowledge.

saturn – restrictive patterns are almost always the issue here. these individuals deprive them of something in their lives, not allowing even a moment of pleasure or reprieve from the overwhelming sense of responsibility they feel. external circumstances, especially in early life, have placed an undue burden on them, in some cases leading them to do anything to escape any responsibility placed on them later in life. to fix this, they have to let go of the guilt and fear they feel to give themselves back their agency.

uranus – how can they move forward? where is there to go that hasn’t been gone to before? in the same way that the sun in this degree struggles to find true authenticity in this liminal space, so too do these individuals struggle to find progression. somewhere they got stuck and stopped embracing their own unique qualities, which has made it impossible for them to then accept anything else. the final turning point here is to open their mind completely, to embrace entirely the open possibilities of the world.

neptune — this is the deepest recesses of this planet, where material reality as we know it does not even exist. at its most extreme, these individuals find it hard to live in this world because reality is simply too harsh for them in some way. escapism exists in its most extreme form, and the subconscious is too influential. and so, they need to escape themselves. here, the power has been given to a force that is not the individual, but rather something external to them. the task is to give this power back to the conscious individual, to escape the dream they have created for themselves and return to reality.

pluto — here, the complete death has occurred for the person. they have experienced the transformation, the change, and the end of the cycle. perhaps they have experienced in many times in their life. but the last stage hasn’t occurred yet. they become stuck before the rebirth stage, unable to complete the process. thus, the same situation happens over and over, re-opening wounds. the final turning point is to accept the change and open themselves up completely to renewal, to move on for good. lay it to rest.

part ii: the 0 degree

in contrast, the 0 degree is the very first degree of any zodiac sign. this is where the traits of the sign are most clearly and cohesively expressed, and also where there is the most to learn. you express this placement in a very raw, almost untouched way.

aries – there is a childlike innocence and naivete here, as well as an exaggerated impatience and sense of urgency. they feel that there is no time to wait. strong desire to be first and be a leader, even if they don’t know how to be one. there’s almost like a reckless quality to them. extremely assertive to a point of being hostile when others tell them what to do.

taurus – they are stubborn and fixed to the point of being unable to budge. it’s essentially impossible to stop the momentum once they’ve started, and they’re in it for the long haul. they can get stuck in their thinking and behavior patterns, doing the same thing over and over. absolutely must have stability and security in situations or they won’t commit.

gemini – absolutely no tolerance for boredom or lack of activity. they have to be doing something at all times, and often more than one thing. they’re extremely scattered. their curiosity drives them and they’re always asking questions or trying to learn more. they are constantly taking in information and changing their mind, never able to “settle.”

cancer – sensitive and emotional to the point where they can’t hide their feelings. here, there is someone who is very shy, cautious, and puts a protective shell around themselves. they have an intuition that is spot-on. very needy and moody. plays the role of caregiver and can be seen as a motherly figure. empathy is turned up all the way.

leo – they are completely self-focused and wants to be the center of attention. they want people’s eyes on them at all times, and they know how to light up a room. natural actors and tend toward being extremely dramatic. there is a sense of complete confidence in their abilities and pride in themselves. they refuse to settle for less than what they believe they deserve.

virgo – devoted to the service of others, typically in the form of providing feedback, criticism, and a helping hand. very critical and vocal about imperfections. they have an eye for detail that is unmatched. any form of disorganization or chaos is distressing to them, and they have highly specific routines and rituals. mind is constantly running to analyze and process information.

libra – cannot be alone whatsoever, and they are constantly seeking out connections with others. they are a complete pushover and seek out compromise in every situation. there is a desire to always seem agreeable and likeable. they often find themselves mediating for others, and there is an extreme need for harmony and balance. indecisive to the point of being paralyzed/hurt.

scorpio – the most private you’ll ever meet, and it’s impossible to get information out of them. feels the need to keep everything to themselves. has tons of secrets. they are super obsessive and will latch on to things quickly. needs control or to feel powerful in any situation. constantly on the defensive and trying to psychoanalyze the situation.

sagittarius – have an attitude of “it will all work out, don’t worry” even when they should be worrying. it’s impossible to tie down or get them to settle, because they have an intense need for freedom at all times. blindly faithful and optimistic. have a tendency to do things completely spontaneously. can feel claustrophobic when unable to freely act.

capricorn – absolutely rooted in tradition, even to the point of being narrow-minded. they constantly have to be going after success or achievement. the sense of responsibility is always present, which can lead to feelings of guilt or failure. an old soul from the beginning. a sense of “I have to get this right and prove myself” in anything they do.

aquarius – always has to be moving forward and making progress. extreme quirks are very possible here. highly open-minded and non-judgmental, and almost nothing surprises/shocks them. a savant, genius, or revolutionary. always at odds with figures of authority or traditionalists. a humanitarian to the extreme. they are ahead of their time.

pisces – hyper-sensitive to subtle influences and can be very spiritual or superstitious as a result. there’s an ever-present need to escape in some way, and they usually and have vivid imagination/rich fantasies. there can be a sense of directionlessness or shapelessness. the ultimate chameleon.

sun - feels the need for validation of who they are from others, projects a ton of confidence that they may not really have, very performative and forthright in expression. moon - often blindsided by their emotions, has difficulty realizing their needs and wants, less polished about handling their feelings. mercury - always curious and wants to know more, may present as a know-it-all or assert authority over topics, venus - loves the newness of relationships, craves connection and romance, wants to be well-liked by others, rejection is hard for them. mars - always in "go" mode, lots of energy and motivation, can be quick to anger or rile up, ends up in dangerous situations a lot. saturn - inherently assumes responsibility, has to learn lessons multiple times, tries to be disciplined and fails often. jupiter - lots of faith and optimism, definitely naive at heart, open to new experiences and chances for growth. uranus - has a lot of small quirks, open-minded and progressive, has a mindset of wanting to keep moving forward. neptune - rich imagination and a love for fantasy, feels directionless or like the possibilities are endless. pluto - may struggle with changes or transformations, lots of growth ahead of them, a strong presence that is very raw.

finally, i'd like to link some resources for further reading:

· https://www.astro.com/astrology/aa_article190801_e.htm (my favorite--super in-depth and peer-reviewed/published!)

· https://advanced-astrology.com/anaretic-degree/

· https://www.astrologyweekly.com/blog/29-degrees-the-anaretic-degree/

[darthmaulification]

savage opress NSFW alphabet

A/N: finally! i got this finished!!

*pounds chest* me love big zabrak man!!! and i am in 100% support for soft!savage so y’all are gonna see a ton of that here. 💀 

also, i had to do so much mental math with this one because savage is so darn tootin’ tall (7ft 1in, from what i’ve read) that relating his you-know-what’s size relative to him was ✨challenging✨ but also 😳🥴🥵💦 if ya know what i mean.

and i mention the maul nsfw alphabet i wrote a couple of times in here, so go check that one out for more clarification on a few points if you feel so inclined. 😊💕

nfsw below the cut! 😘

A = aftercare (what are they like after sex?)

Savage is always a bit unsure of himself in how he cares for others, but his aftercare is immaculate. Every time, there’s this brief window of Post Coital Cuddles where he just holds you in his arms and purrs like there’s no tomorrow, and I mean like near full body vibrations, he’s purring so damn hard and loud. More often than not, this is usually the part where Savage passes out, usually he’s too darn sleepy to finish the rest of the aftercare. However, if he does manage to keep his eyes moment for a few minutes longer, Savage kisses you all over, asks you what you need, and will get the job done in the most tender and sweet way possible.

B = body part (what’s their favorite body part of their partner? what about themselves?)

Savage is a sap and would say that all of you is his favorite, and honestly mean it. He thinks that you and your body are nothing but perfect, all of it. He’ll compliment you with the utmost sincerity, telling you just how beautiful you are whenever and wherever. Savage loves to look at you, to feel you, to worship you. He enjoys all of the squishier parts of you especially, whether that be your thighs, tummy, ass, breasts, etc etc. He loves that you’re so soft compared to him.

However, for as much as he’s able to see the beauty in others, Savage has trouble seeing the beauty in himself. He feels like a monster most of the time, feels like he’s been deformed by his enhancements. It’s not easy for him to choose a favorite part of his body, because he honestly doesn’t like his body. So, you’ll have to coax him into learning to love himself, which isn’t and won’t be easy, but Savage needs to learn that he is allowed and has earned the right to treat himself with love. This will lead to whatever your favorite part of him to be his favorite, whatever that may be.

C = cum (basically anything to do with cum)

Savage cums buckets. Like... an ungodly amount of nut. It’s thick, white, and Maker, it is virile. His sperm count is off the fucking charts, and he knows it. Savage makes sure to cum inside you every time, unless you specifically ask him not to. He pushes balls deep, up to the hilt, and lets loose inside you, absolutely coating your walls in sticky, creamy white. It’s usually so much that the moment he pulls out, it literally spills out of you, and something about that sight has Savage genuinely horny all over again. If it’s okay with you, because he always asks before he does anything, Savage will push it back in with a couple fingers.

D = dirty secret (what’s their dirty secret?)

... Okay, so be nice to him... Savage has a Mommy kink. It’s nothing too crazy, but it’s definitely there. He wants to call you to Mommy, listen to everything you say and tell him to do, be your “Good boy”. Honestly, it’s enough if you just call him the name, if you’re not comfortable with the title, and if you’re his gentle femdom (he would literally worship you). 

Thing is, he might never tell you this because it embarrasses him beyond belief, like cripplingly embarrassing, and he doesn’t know how you’ll react if he told you.

E = experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

To be honest, Savage has had no experience. Mostly, it’s because he was raised in an environment where he was taught that his purpose in life was only fighting, so he was never given/had the opportunity of sex. He never had the chance to explore that avenue with another person, because there was no one to explore it with and he was being trained half to death most of the time. Of course, he’s picked up things throughout his life from others, so he’s not clueless and has a semi-idea of how to please someone. So when you and him do the do for the first time, Savage is unsure of himself, a bit clumsy, and kinda self-deprecating. You’ll need to talk to him, tell him that he’s welcome to your body and that you want him, and walk him through some of the actions. So while your first time with Savage may be a bit... disorganized to put it gently, it is also so full of mutual love and respect and care that it is perfect.

And, fortunately for you and him, Savage is a very quick learner.

F = favorite position (what’s their favorite position?)

Savage is a big guy and he knows this, so most of the positions you and him have to take is honestly a lot more for your safety than anything else. Especially at the beginning, Savage will want to be as safe as possible, so it’s most likely going to involve you on top of him, but as he gets more confident in his abilities, he’ll be more open to topping you. When it gets to that point of mutual trust, his favorite positions include:

Missionary. This position is just super personal and intimate for him. It allows Savage to see your every reaction, every gasp and moan you let out. He likes being face-to-face with you, being able to kiss you all over the whole time is especially important to him. Savage also likes missionary for being able to indulge on his size kink a bit, seeing you small and beneath him with his dick bulging inside you makes him so horny.

Cowgirl. Savage loves it when you ride him! He loves being able to watch you bounce on his dick, watching your breasts and anywhere else soft jiggle, being able to feel you up. Savage also likes when you top, being under you is just as nice as being above you (though he will admit the view from below is something real special).

G = goofy (are they the more serious type, or more humorous?)

Savage isn’t goofy, but he also isn’t serious. He doesn’t do a whole lot of teasing, preferring to give you exactly what you ask of him, but he isn’t so stoic as to be overly focused. He is in that warm middleground where he’s just an utter sap, just making sure he’s doing the best job he can just for you.

Sometimes though, if Savage is in a particularly playful mood, and especially if you both are, he’ll have you smiling and giggling from silly antics that he’ll do to please you. One of his go-to’s is flirtatiously flexing his muscles for you, which is a very nice sight.

H = hair (how well-groomed are they?)

Like I mentioned in my Maul NSFW alphabet, male Zabrak don’t have hair anywhere on their bodies. So Savage is completely smooth below the belt. He also doesn’t have a preference towards the hair you do or don’t have, Savage believes it isn’t his place to tell you what to do with your body.

I = intimacy ( how intimate are they during sex?)

Very. Savage has never been as close to someone as he is with you, so he wears his heart on his sleeve. Sex with Savage is overwhelming in its kindness, he indulges on the closeness that he’s never really had before with another person in this way. Savage practically melts into your arms, wanting so badly to show you how much he adores you, he opens his very soul to you. Intimacy, despite his cold upbringing, comes naturally to him, if not a bit surprising, but Savage wouldn’t have it any other way.

J = jack off (do they masturbate?)

Mm... not really, to be honest. He did “more” in his youth, when he could, but even then it was very secretive and few and far between. So yeah, Savage has indulged in the pleasures of the flesh, but he really doesn’t find the time nor motivation to yank it. Especially with you in his life, Savage is set.

K = kinks (any kinks?)

Savage does indeed have quite a few kinks, but he’s also a bit sheepish about them. He’ll tell you if you ask, but he’ll get all fidgety and awkward, so please be nice to him. Here’s his main ones:

Size kink. Savage is often self-conscious about his daunting height and bulk, but if there’s one area where he’s not, it’d be when he’s balls deep inside you, watching your pussy stretch to accommodate his length and the bulge that appears under your tummy. Something about it drives him near feral and makes him weak in the knees. He also loves how big his hands look as the travel your body, engulfing your skin with his palms and splayed fingers.

Breeding/pregnancy kink. He’s always liked kids, he would like kids with you, so Savage has a near crippling breeding kink. There isn’t a day where he doesn’t think about fucking you full of his seed and starting a family with you. He wants it so badly, to see you pregnant with his child, but he isn’t sure how to raise it to you. So, it’ll be a lot of very specific dirty talk and passing comments until he finally gathers the courage to tell you that he really really wants kids (and seeing you swollen with his baby and milk is just a bonus).

Praise kink. Savage loves to give praise and he loves to receive it! He’ll be complimenting and encouraging you the whole time, telling you how sexy your body is, how pretty you are to look at, how soft you are, how much he loves you, etc etc. His mouth gives only the most sincere, loving praise that’ll have you holding back tears with how kind it is. And if you say nice things back??? Savage is putty in your hands. Words cannot describe how much it means to him if you tell him how good he’s making you feel, how he’s doing so well, that he’s also sexy and that you love his body... or if you call him a “Good boy”.

Predator/prey. Despite his overall kind decorum, Savage really has a predator/prey kink, like more so than Maul, which is saying something. He really likes a good chase before doing the do, gets the blood pumping to all the right places. And while he never wants you scared of him, he does toy around and give you a good spook during the hunt to catch you off guard. Savage enjoys the startled shrieks that he’s able to smother with kisses until he has you panting and giggling.

Scent kink. Honestly, this is his Monkey Brain Zabrak mind rearing it’s head. Savage really just likes sniffing you all over, taking in your scent and committing it to memory. He especially loves smelling your hair and, more vulgarly, your pussy. To him, the aroma that is you is something he gets drunk on.

L = location (favorite place to “do the do”?)

Savage is most comfortable and secure in the bedroom, but that doesn’t mean it’s his favorite. He finds (after a while, of course, and gaining more experience) that he really really likes to fuck in the precarious spot that is the fucking throne room. It’s scandalous and dirty and bold, especially for Savage, but Maker, if he doesn’t love dragging you there in the dead of night and rawing you behind the throne.

M = motivation (what gets them turned on?)

There are two sure fire ways to get Savage hard in his pants that are completely opposite. One, Savage has a thing for you playing all cute with him. If you give him puppy dog eyes and act coy and helpless and needy, he’s on you as soon as he can be. Two, you act bold. Savage will get hot around the collar if you get get firm with him in public and whisper to him exactly what you want. He finds it very hard to say no to you if you give him such a compelling order.

N = NO (what’s their turn offs?)

Sadism. Savage just can’t do it. The last thing he wants to do is hurt you. He ties pain to the bouts of frustrated rage he’s prone to, pain that he inflicts on others that really hurt, or even kill them. Savage gets nightmares about laying his hands on you like that.

Also, Savage would not like being physically restrained in any way. That is a huge turn off for him, because it makes a lot of bad memories bubble to the surface.

O = oral (do they have a preference in giving/receiving?)

Savage wants nothing more than to eat you out. From the first time he ever tasted you, he was hooked. He’s addicted to your unique taste, sweet and perfect on his tongue, your warm, velvety pussy, that cute clit. Savage would spend hours with his head between your legs, mindful of his horns, if he could. He’ll lap at you like a dog, licking and kissing like he’s savoring a fine wine. Savage will have you cumming over and over again until your sobbing for him to stop.

His love for giving head honestly impedes his love for receiving head. He likes it when you do, mostly because it amuses and arouses him to see you struggle to take as much of him as you can, but it just doesn’t compare to eating you like a dessert. But if you do wish to go down on him, feel free to. Savage loves to see your tiny mouth work on his massive cock.

P = pace & PDA (are they soft, sensual, rough, or feral? are they open to displaying the relationship?)

SOFTIE ALERT SOFTIE ALERT!! Savage is so fucking sweet when he fucks because he puts so much thought and energy into it, he is the definition of making love. Savage fucks you hard and intensely, but it’s so careful and generous, because he doesn’t want to hurt you and just wants to treat you right. Savage literally could be blowing out your back, but it still feels like he’s worshipping your body like he’s at a temple.

Now PDA... Savage blushes if you hold his hand. He’s fairly alright with displaying the relationship, but if you do he’s a flustered, lovesick mess. He likes having a hand on you, especially holding yours, but if he has one on your lower back, he’s so awkward and sweet about it, but deep down it makes him feel really proud. Like, no one else gets to say that your his, and that has him so happy! PDA with Savage may be small, but it’s very cute.

Though if you kiss him in public, his brain shuts down and he swoons.

Q = quickies (what’s their opinion on quickies?)

Yes. Once you two have been at it for a while, Savage grows more and more fond of the appeal of quickies. He likes a good, quick release, though it doesn’t compare to having hours alone with you, but it’s fun nonetheless. Savage will most likely seek a quickie from you if there’s a lull in the day, when his and your schedules slow down enough to run back to your bedroom all giggly and flirty just to go a quick round or two.

R = risks (are they okay with experimenting? do they take risks?)

Savage is so-so on experimenting. He’s very nervous about trying stuff that’s a bit more... drastic, so it’ll really depend on what you’re asking him to try. Though, if you coax him just enough and assure him that your with him on this, Savage will be a bit more sure of the situation and more likely to try stuff out.

As for taking risks though, like genuine risks, the only one he kinda allows himself is that rare throne room fuck that happens once in a blue moon when the climate’s right for it. Other than that, Savage doesn’t like doing too much risky stuff in the bedroom.

S = stamina (how many rounds can they last?)

A damn long time. Maybe it’s because he’s Zabrak, or maybe it’s because of his enhancements, but Savage has stamina for days. He’s easily able to last 4-5 rounds before his cock starts to protest, but even then he’ll push himself if you ask him to (though you probably will be too far gone by that point). Savage makes you cockdumb nearly every time you have sex, simply because he can just keep fucking. Like his dick stays hard even through the refractory period, and he stays just horny from when it all started. Savage, though he is embarrassed to admit this, is insatiable.

T = toys (do they own/use any toys?)

Savage has literally never even seen a toy in person. He has no idea how they work, what they’re used for, why people use them, what’s the appeal... He is painfully clueless. So if you want to bring toys into the mix, you’ll have to thoroughly run them down to Savage or he might get put off. Depending on the toy, he might get a little iffy around it and unsure.

The only toy that’s blacklisted for sure is any type of restraint. He does not like those.

U = unfair (how much do they like to tease?)

Savage is... kinda bad at teasing. He’s just too darn sweet to tease!! He can’t find it in his heart to have you begging... for too long, that is. He may be a softie, but that doesn’t mean he’s a pushover. Savage with lightly tease throughout, toying with you a little bit before he gives in to both yours and his desires, and ravishes you.

V = volume (how loud or quiet are they during sex?)

Loud. Savage, when he isn’t very sweetly teasing you, he will be grunting and groaning and moaning your name like there’s no tomorrow. He sounds like a wild animal, all growls and snarls, rumbling deep in his throat like thunder on the horizon. It’s near constant too, and very very sexy. And, if it’s during his heat or your squeezing his cock just right, Savage won’t even be able to talk, and he’ll be reduced to a moaning, panting mess until he’s able to gather himself again.

W = wildcard (what’s a random headcanon?)

I follow the headcanon that Zabrak go through heat/rut cycles, but I expand more on it here in Maul’s NSFW alphabet. Basically, it’s about the same for Savage; he had an upbringing where his sexuality was suppressed, which severely jacked up his heat cycle’s circadian rhythm, that led to years of feelings of inadequacy and shame, which then eventually led to Savage having a mini sexual resurgence once he was free from his main oppressors and oppression.

That being said, Savage’s heat cycle doesn’t come often, as it and he is still healing, but when it does he gets a bit more riled up and snippy. He’s just generally more grumpy and gets hypersensitive to smells/sounds which will make him snap at people. But he’s still Savage, so he’s still a sweetheart in his soul, if not a gruff one.

But Savage still suffers a bit from the whole shame surrounding his biology, so at first he won’t want you around when he goes into heat. It is shame, he doesn’t want you to see him like that. But you’re smart enough to catch on eventually, and you’ll really have to wriggle yourself in and pull him out of his comfort zone at the same time. Savage needs to be let known that his physiology is normal and fine, and that he shouldn’t be ashamed of it. You’ll meet a bit of push back at first, because you are trying to undo years of abuse, but eventually Savage comes around.

He still gives you the option if you want to stay with him or not, because he’s thoughtful like that. If you decide to stay with him and “help him out” so to say... expect long, fun nights.

X = x-ray & x-tra (what’s underneath those clothes? any more random headcanons?”)

Savage is literally just 7 feet of pure muscle. He already towers over most others, but his burly figure also has the tendency to intimidate. Savage is positively stacked, with the physique of an Olympic bodybuilder. He’s got shoulders wide enough to sit a person on either side of his head, strong arms to match, and an absolutely exquisite pair of brawny chest muscles. Savage doesn’t have washboard abs like Maul, but he isn’t exactly dad bod either, he sits in the middleground of some definition of his muscles and a light brushing of pudge. His long, beefy legs are also particularly fun to enjoy, especially those thighs of his... and his nice ass.

And of course, Savage’s inky black tattoos paint him delectably everywhere else on his body, engraving sharp patterns all over his canary yellow skin. He also has scars scattered over his body, mostly on his hands and arms, but there are a few long ones on his back from, ones that have silvered in age, that bring about very bad memories. Savage doesn’t like talking about them.

Now his schlong... Maker you are in for it. Savage has a really, really big cock between his legs that you can thank to the enhancements his body received. Savage’s penis is 11 inches (27.94 cm) when fully erect and is just under 3.5 inches (8.89 cm) in diameter, so he is positively hung. Like all Zabrak penises, it’s ridged down the shaft and he is uncut. His balls are also fairly big, due to his size, and they sit lower from their weight.

Y = yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Before Savage met you, his sex drive was relatively low. He was focused entirely on other things, most of which he didn’t really have a say in the matter, that drew a lot of his time and energy. Often, he was so exhausted that sex, and even sexual urges, literally never crossed his mind. Now after he’s met you, and has caught feelings nearly instantly, Savage finds himself thinking about fucking you a lot. Before you officially started a relationship, he spent many nights indulging himself with the thought of you and his hand. And when you both started dating, Savage damn near gets horny every time he looks at you. He realizes that he really likes sex, specifically he really likes it with you.

Z = zzzz (how fast do they fall asleep after?)

Savage already has the tendency to sleep like a log after strenuous activities, so after you and him have done the Devil’s dance a couple times, he passes out almost instantly. Albeit, you’ll probably pass out just as fast too, so you both tend to fall asleep all sticky and messy and stupid happy. He does try though, to remain awake to give you solid aftercare, but listen, this mans is tired and he was wants to fall asleep with you in his arms. Though, he does sometimes stay aware enough to clean you up, just in case you don’t wanna go to bed sticky.

[the-chicken-or-the-banana]

ok because AP tests are upon us and this is my only way of releasing all my stress, here's a short list of andreil study time hcs for your viewing pleasure

our boy andrew doesn't really have to study

neil on the other hand... actually needs to work to keep up his GPA

he's never really cared enough to study but now he has the foxes and exy and a future to lose so he might as well put in the effort to keep them

neil needs caffeine like he needs oxygen. the man cannot focus for shit without it

he'll down like three mugs of black coffee in the morning and be set for the day

andrew hates it but doesn't complain much as long as neil makes him some actually decent coffee too

(once, neil accidentally gave him the wrong mug and andrew didn't talk to him for the rest of the day)

when andrew does study or does homework, he hates studying in the library

he told nicky that it was because he's "allergic to books"

really, he just knows he'd get distracted and start reading william faulkner or jane austen instead of his textbooks

neil, however, loves the library

he can't study at all in the dorms; he needs to keep moving to new environments so he doesn't get bored by his surroundings

so neil and andrew don't study together half the time

which works out well considering the few times that they do, they tend to get more than a little... distracted

but if the library is closed or neil just doesn't have the energy to leave the dorm, he bullies andrew into helping him study instead of playing video games or reading

(neil gets a kiss for every question he gets right. andrew gets to look at a pretty guy for a few hours. it's a win-win situation)

mr. Neil draws-fox-paws-instead-of-doing-his-work Josten struggles with focusing on literally anything but exy and andrew

so he always ropes in one of the foxes as a "study-buddy" to hold him accountable while he's working

andrew and neil both like having noise-cancelling headphones on while they work, but this also means that people hold full-on conversations with them without realizing that they can't be heard

(also, because they're assholes, even when they can hear the other person, they just... don't respond.)

andrew is a pastel highlights guy. also he's weirdly possessive about his pens

neil just grabs the first mechanical pencil he sees (99% of the stationary he has isn't even his, he just found them laying around campus)

neil is also super disorganized. loose papers everywhere, he can never find anything. no matter how clean a place starts, it turns into a mess within 5 minutes of neil studying there

he also has food wrappers and crumbs everywhere because he constantly snacks while studying

andrew is surprisingly clean - he organizes everything by class and then color-codes everything (granted his memory helps so he doesn't have too many notes in the first place)

anyways, they both have their own methods of studying and it works for them

(aka andrew just vibes and neil frantically finishes all his work 3 hours before it's due)

ok yeah that's all i got right now, my brain is fried and i actually have to study now, pray for me 😔

[sword-dad-fukuzawa]

inarticulate thoughts on archon quest pt iii

Major spoilers for archon quest pt iii ahead.

Okay. Okay. Holy shit. I'm still reeling. I really don't know how Genshin's writing and lore just continues to get better. I was honestly thinking that at some point, the writing quality would drop off--and I didn't think the writing was all that stellar to start with. But the writing for Inazuma is absolutely fucking immaculate.

Just to get this out of the way, I have a singular issue with Genshin's writing that is unavoidable: that it can get kind of trite sometimes. But I don't begrudge the game its cliches about friendship and loyalty and hope in the face of insurmountable odds because, even if the writing can get almost childish, it's spectacular for the vast majority of the game. And I don't mind that the game is inherently hopeful. The world is awful enough without needing to play games about just how awful other worlds are.

This is going to be disorganized. So I'm going to start with what made me go oh, clever, and that's the Raiden boss fight at the end.

Demanding a Rematch with Ei

I had an essay about how well Inazuma does game design and a section was on the boss fight in pt ii specifically, but I never got around to posting it. Here's what I wrote:

I want to talk specifically about the Baal boss fight in Archon Quest Part II Electric Boogaloo. If you haven't played it yet, it's a two-part boss fight. Until you've smacked Baal down to 75% HP, it's basically a normal domain battle--a 1v1 match between your team and Baal. But then at 75% HP, Baal decides you know what, no, you don't get to use your Vision, and every member of your team who isn't Traveler gets their E and Q locked for 1 minute.

Your job for that 1 minute?

Survive.

And Baal does not make it easy for you.

But if you make it for that 1 minute, does that mean you get your E and Q back? No, a cutscene plays instead where Baal uses the divine judgement smite and smacks Traveler in the face with it. Yes, you survive. Yes, you and Thoma get to run away to see another day. But there is no way for you to win that boss fight.

The Baal boss fight is the first time Mihoyo has used a "you can't win this fight" mechanic where you will lose and it does not matter what you do.

And it fits pretty damn well with the narrative and thematic components of Inazuma as a whole. You aren't a fairy tale hero who defeats all the bad guys. Hell, you aren't even a leader mounting a glorious resistance. You are not that guy, at least not for patch 2.0. You're just a scrappy traveler from out of town, out of their depth and needing to rely on people they can barely trust in order to survive.

This country is fucking hostile, and the Baal boss fight is one of the best ways that Genshin hammers that into players.

I stand by this. What makes the Baal boss fight even better in pt iii is that it mirrors that first and utterly disempowering fight. You cannot win that fight by yourself, and that remains consistent. She's simply too good at her job. What wins you the fight in part ii, however, is the fact that you are not by yourself.

And I'm not talking about Yae. You're backed by the hopes and dreams and ambitions of the people of Inazuma, crying out to their ruler in the hopes that she will hear them. It fits Inazuma's general theme--you're not the hero, Traveler. You're the messenger. Hell, you're the vessel. And I thought that was particularly powerful.

It's just good writing, that you still do not win that fight on your own.

The Kazuha Scene

I don't know how to convey the amount of sheer shock I had during The Kazuha Scene. Genshin does not pull its punches and this scene is no exception. Kazuha dual-wielding Visions to Electro swirl and clash blades with the Raiden Fucking Shogun was the single most badass thing I've ever seen in this game.

It's also left vague if Kazuha himself, bearing his friend's ambition, was the one who reactivated it--or if, reaching beyond the veil, it was his friend himself. But in that moment, Kazuha reawakened a dead Kami no Me and that, that says a lot. Visions are tied intrinsically to the person they belong to, and despite being from the gods, they're also somehow the most inherently human thing. Kazuha, carrying his friend's will, woke one back up. I can't articulate this in essay form--might have to save it for a fic--but this has me in my feelings in a way I simply am unable to describe.

As an addendum because this doesn't quite go anywhere else, I really do enjoy the way Sara was written and the way you can see the bodies of the guards she leaves in her wake--not dead, but clearly flattened. Very badass.

Yae Dropping Bombshells

Yae. Yae Miko. Yae Miko really went "Oh, Scaramouche is a protoype puppet built by Ei ages ago. The Fatui fiddled with him a bit, though," with a completely straight face.

Yae Miko please.

Listen, I don't think anyone expected that to be Scaramouche's backstory at all.

And Yae's explanation of the story of Ei and Makoto makes Baal's 2D cutscene make vastly more sense. I was like ?? Why is she holding herself?? Is this a metaphor?? The answer is yes, it's a metaphor, it's also just Ei holding her sister, and it's a dramatic parallel to Traveler, who also lost their sibling somewhat during the cataclysm.

Will forever also be in my feelings about Makoto being the gentler of the two, thanks.

MMMM SUMERU LOREEEE ABOUT THE ARCHON TOO AHHHH AND KNOWLEDGE AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SUMERU WHEN??

Speaking of "[insert teased thing here] when?"...

Signora

Alright, Signora's death, in and of itself, didn't make me feel all that bad.

That's a lie, sorry. It did make me feel pretty bad. Just the card Signora...is slain got me. Because Signora is the first casualty, and Signora's death is an escalation, and Signora...god, Signora is dead and Traveler killed her. Sure, it was Baal who made the finishing blow, but the moral consequences of that action lie on the Traveler's shoulders.

What does this mean for the future? Either Childe will kill us or send us a thank you card, I suppose. And it also means that Genshin's storyline may take a turn for the darker. Traveler killed someone. Traveler challenged Signora for a duel before the throne knowing damn well what that meant. The part afterward, as you walk out of the throne room, tells you everything you need to know about how Genshin is going to treat death.

It's fucking horrifying.

Traveler is getting unexplained headaches. They don't speak. The word is fuzzy, glitching out in reds and blues. They walk slowly, like they're in shock, like they can't walk any faster. Paimon begs you to say something because Traveler, you've gone quiet.

And sure, chalk this up to the fact that Baal was piggybacking off of Traveler to try and smite them as they left, but you don't know that as you walk down the stairs. You can only walk, and press space bar when Traveler feels woozy, and there's this feeling of confusion and panic you have to reckon with because Genshin's not a horror game, is it? But damn if it doesn't feel like one for a brief, terrifying stretch of time.

You killed a woman. And Genshin treats that action with the weight it deserves.

At least we all know the answer to "Signora playable when?" now.

[morgana-ren]

if you'd be so inclined my dear, what are your thoughts on how Tomura's character has developed over the series' timeline? -☼

So, I think Horikoshi did an excellent job at character development- especially considering that he's a villain (not the focal point of the series) and he really didn't have to do that. He easily could have kept Tomura an impudent little man-child, but he didn't, and I truly appreciate that.

So, in season one, we get his debut as USJ, and it became quickly apparent that he was... disorganized. Intelligent and dangerous, clearly, but not quite there yet. He essentially threw money at a pack of sell-sword villains, had a basic plan for how he wanted things to go, and relied on his Nomu to do the majority of his work for him. He didn't even consider variables and other things he couldn't have foreseen- he took Master at his word and just went for it.

He makes a multitude of mistakes during this attack, and it's part of why he fails so hard. Underestimates the kids simply because they're young, not factoring in that these are to be the nations top heroes. Even young, each one is sporting a power that puts them at the top of the class and above the rest of the nation. He basically goes "Fuck it, just scatter them and have these no-name villains kill them. No way that could go wrong." not considering that these children have been learning from the best of the best and are clearly already intelligent of their own accord.

He doesn't take into account that these heroes actually care for these kids and that feeling responsible for them works in their favor as opposed to being a detriment. They fight harder and take more abuse to keep them protected (Aizawa getting absolutely demolished but still persisting to defend the children even as he bleeds to death with a broken body.)

The intel wasn't wrong, per se, but he took it at face value, not even bothering to consider that All Might would push far past his limit to keep these kids safe. For someone as obsessed with felling All Might, he certainly didn't really know a thing about him. His genuine goodness and character would not allow him to fail when their lives were on the line. And then there's the matter of Midoriya, and while Tomura had no way of knowing that he's inherited All Might's power, he should have been able to account for wild cards like that from valiant children dedicated to heroism.

More under the cut because I’m just rambling.

I think this defeat humbles him. For most of his life, things have gone his way because of who is backing him and because he is extremely dangerous with a powerful quirk- this teaches him that raw strength and basic strategy won't be enough.

He watches Stain take the country by storm, and he can't understand it. Doesn't get what the big deal is- he believes he and Stain are mostly cut from the same cloth because of their penchant for violence and murdering heroes, totally blind to the convictions behind Stain's actions. He's incapable of thinking outside of his own view points, and it cripples him. These are his first few steps outside of his own comfort zone and where he begins to grow.

He's forced to consider not what he wants, but why. He resists this every step of the way, but ultimately realizes that paying off little bastard villains to work in his name isn't enough. He needs players under his command that will fight for more than money- and sell swords are loyal to nothing but that. He needs to find a conviction (even as he ends up stealing the mask of one and using it as a facade at first) that others can relate to and be passionate about.

So he does.

He steals Stain's ideology for his own and uses it to recruit some of his top members- even if he is a right little bastard about it at first. While he throws a tizzy fit because they aren't "perfect" (his standards are very high despite the fact that he's arguably not a very effective leader) but eventually ends up utilizing them regardless.

It's around here that he starts sharpening his instincts and learns what it is to be a true leader. He learns he cannot casually throw around his pawns because ultimately, he cannot win this war by himself. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' and while he isn't as enchanted with Stain's entire gimmick as his comrades are, he still wields it effectively.

He's still learning, however, as we learn when he takes Bakugo. Had he gone to the effort to get to know a single thing about him, he would have learned very quickly that trying to recruit him would come up completely pointless. He just saw untamed anger and unrestrained violence bordering on unhinged and thought "Ah yes, he's powerful and very much like me- he'll do nicely" and put together a whole plan to kidnap him. I think the vanguard's success in capturing him shows Tomura just how useful it is to have clever little birds under your command, and that sticks with him.

Losing his Master, like AFO says, forces him to become his own man. He loses the cushy abode he'd had for most of his life, loses many of the benefits afforded to him by being AFO's protege. He and his ragtag team of villains live in squalor, almost entirely destitute, and are forced to survive- but they stay loyal, and that means something to him. I think it’s around here where he actually begins to care about them. 

We see how he reacts to Magne’s death. I don’t think for one second he aided in destroying Overhaul simply because he was a threat. If that was the case, he would have stopped once he was arrested. He risks everything to get vengeance. Cuts his limbs off and renders him completely helpless as payment for what he did to Compress and to avenge Magne’s wrongful death. 

Over the course of everything, he’s become more patient, more cunning, more dangerous. He’s learning quickly from his mistakes, how to command his ranks in a respectful, effective way, and how to keep them safe. He learns their strengths and weaknesses, and while he’s still a bit thorny, it’s very apparent he does care for them. He’s on his own now, and knows he needs greater power, greater numbers to achieve his goals. He is ruthlessly ambitious, willing to endure ungodly amounts of pain to meet his ends. 

So now we have this season (which I haven’t actually watched, as I’m just waiting for disappointment because I fucking know Bones won’t do him justice) and he’s seeking out both Gigantomachia, a former ally, and the PLF. Both things that could be of great value to him. His leadership skills and ability to command will be put to the test, but so will his endurance, his willpower, and everything else. This is the beginning of him as a truly devastating threat. 

He’s growing into the villain I think he deserves to be. He’s facing down the very bones that comprise him and learning why he is the way he is. What his convictions really are and how far he’s willing to go to achieve his goals. HIs past, his life as he knows it, what needs to be done to put a pretty little ribbon on everything. He is, in a way, shedding like a snake- ridding himself of weaknesses, growing into his strengths, and evolving into a more capable predator. 

If you ask me, realistically, I think Shigaraki would actually win. When it’s all said and done, I think his arc is far more compelling than any of the heroes or their children. I think he has more drive, more wit, more raw power and more reasons to keep fighting. A lot of the kids, while cute and the main characters, are quite hollow. But over the course of all these seasons, we get to watch Tomura’s metamorphosis and his evolution into a purer, undiluted evil. He transforms into something truly sinister- a literal manifestation of all of the flaws and pitfalls of society and hero culture as it exists. He is undeniable proof of the toxicity and that the way things are cannot be allowed to stand, and the fact that so many people resonate with him and follow him loyally should be the ultimate clue-in. 

I think if the heroes weren’t blinded, they would look at Shigaraki and his league and consider it. Wonder if, just for a moment, there was something there that they should pay attention to. A cry that they should hear rather than be willing deaf to. But they don’t. 

Gran Torino is a prime example of this. So are all the other so called ‘heroes’. Calling him evil. Underestimating him. Considering him someone who just woke up one day and decided ‘I don’t like this so I’m going to kill a lot of people’. You’d think that they’d recognize that a drive like his does not come from nothing. If they sat down, shut the fuck up and listened for ten seconds, maybe they wouldn’t be dying by the dozens. 

I’m not saying that they should allow him to continue to trample the world and kill at will. But what I am saying is that part of how they’re fighting him and how they’re viewing this in terms of black and white and good versus evil is exactly the fucking problem, and it’s that kind of bullshit that birthed the villain we know as Tomura Shigaraki to begin with. 

[definitely-not-a-wasp]

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

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

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

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

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

First off. Logically.

How are they getting Cable?

How are they getting internet?

How are they getting money to eat and stuff?

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

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

Introducing Cottagecore.

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

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

Main Characters

Maximum “Max” Ride (Birthname: nonexistent)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fang (Birth name: Gabriel Xue)

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

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

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

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

Other additions to Fang’s character include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other additions:

Iggy is trans and says trans rights

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

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

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

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

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

Nudge (Birthname: Monique Robinson)

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

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

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

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

Other additions include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes:

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

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

He has a horrible sense of fashion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She’s responsible for Max shaving her hair off.

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

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

Honorable Mentions

Jeb

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

Ari

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

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

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

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

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

So. Notes!

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

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

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

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

Emergency and Gene

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

Dr. Valencia Martinez

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

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

Notes:

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

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

Anne Walker

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

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

Notes:

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

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

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

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

Michael “Grey” Rivers

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

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

So that’s how the flock meets him. 

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

My many disorganized notes on Michael Rivers:

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

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

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

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

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

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