THANK YOU for acknowledging 2Bmos because they have been on my mind forever but no one seems to even look at them..? HRURJ,,,, as characters they're different in all the right ways and I think it brings great potential to the table.
it's so neglected like. I think it's possibly the least popular ship out of the main four?? content is scarce regardless but I have So Many Thoughts about these two it's wild
like I could see them starting out as a more fwb situation because a relationship just isn't something either thinks they have time to pursue and maintain. and at the beginning it's a comfortable dynamic. Doc isn't made responsible for someone else's emotional well-being and Deimos doesn't feel obligated to open up to anyone or give consistent attention on days when he's feeling cagey. and of course, there's the benefit of having a casual makeout buddy that can hold a conversation
over time both of them end up catching feelings but neither acts on it or says anything because they don't wanna ruin what they already have going on and cripplingly low self-esteem has them convinced the other wouldn't reciprocate
doesn't stop them from getting closer regardless, more affectionate, more attached. before they know it, they're full on dating but haven't addressed the elephant in the room, certain that this is normal fwb behavior and that it shouldn't be taken seriously. it doesn't mean anything. and if they aren't saying anything, then everyone else sure as hell isn't
they're incredibly domestic when they have the time, even if that time is long conversations over coffee together outside on the balcony at 2am on a tuesday. conversations range from adhd-fueled deep dives into complex topics, to quiet side-by-side time where neither really speaks, just enjoying being in the other's presence
Doc makes an effort to curb Deimos's smoking habits but not in the lecture-y "you shouldn't do that it's bad for you sorta way." he always offers caffeine when Deimos stops by his office and leaves a convenient selection of pens, a rubik's cube, and other things to fidget with if it so pleases him
you would think shacking up with the boss would earn him a negative rep with the rest of the SQ, but on more than one occasion Deimos has come back from a single day in the field painted red with blood, manic grin still in place. so even if there are opinions floating around about their situation, people know to keep it to themselves and not risk it getting back to Deimos
does the L-word ever leave either's lips? possibly not. they are possibly that stupid combined. doesn't matter though. it's an arrangement that makes them both happy and that's all they care about
15 notes
·
View notes
What if chapeau taught Adam to play violin?
OMG I actually had a headcanon that Adam was just bad at playing the violin, explored a little in this fic. This'll be really cute.
-------------------------------------------
Shifting
"Non--non, your highness, please, you hold it with your chin."
"I can't." Adam struggles to keep his frustration at bay. "I can hold it with my hands just fine."
"Oui, that is how we teach children," the tutor sighs. "They have no strength to hold something with anything but their hands. You, however, are no mere child--you have the strength to prove it."
But what difference does it make? he thinks mutinously. I held it that way during my last performance, and no one could tell the difference! It hurts when I try anyway.
Out loud, he only asks "But why is that important? I still don't understand."
The tutor's nearing his limit, Adam can tell. But he only shakes his head, the curls on his wig sagging over his forehead. "If you were to shift positions, or something shakes your concentration--"
Now Adam wants to throw the thing at the tutor's face. What sort of game is he playing, throwing out vague answers like that? Shifting positions sounds like something an idiot would do--who'd adjust his stance in the middle of a performance? Not Adam, he wouldn't. Unless something did shake his concentration, he supposes, but that wouldn't be his fault, it would be some ignoramus in the audience--
"Deep breaths, my dear, deep breaths."
His mother's voice drifts across Adam's mind like smoke, extinguishing his initial vitriol. It was true that he got riled up over certain things, especially things he didn't understand. They scared him.
But he never wanted to learn the violin! He can play fortepiano just fine, but his father insisted that an extra instrument would show how intelligent Adam was. He sent Cogsworth off to discuss it with his mother, and she eventually agreed. It still isn't fair; he is much more comfortable with the fortepiano. It's so much easier to see where the notes will spring. He overheard other nobles talking at a ball once about a marvel in Italy: a man who can place his hands on a harpsichord and play something off the top of his head. That's something Adam can understand--no way is he skilled enough, but it's easier to draw music from both hands in unison. And here, Adam wants his hands to do the same thing still. But that isn't how it works.
Deep breaths.
Just this lesson. He mustn't make a fuss, he must get through this lesson. His mother is waiting in the next room, and his father would hear of it sooner rather than later if he complained.
Not that Adam minds, but his father is not one for testing. Though it has been a while, Adam could recall his father's deep voice around him, something so strict that it leeched color from the sun.
Deep breaths.
It works, and Adam nods solemnly at his tutor, who looks less than the sum of his parts at this point. But he gestures again, and the prince raises his violin to his shoulder, resting his chin against the edge.
I won't hold it there, he rebels silently. Shifting my feet. Of all the stupid excuses.
The time slows to a crawl, with the tutor correcting Adam every other row: your fingers are too sticky, your vibrato isn't clean enough, the chin, my prince, hold it fast--
Then the clock strikes four, Adam's shoulders sag in relief, and the tutor is barely able to assign work to practice before he heads for the door, footsteps echoing across the stone.
No faith in me, Adam sulks. That much is obvious.
The door swings closed, but not before Adam hears the tutor's sharp "Non merci!" and a clatter of china.
What was that?
The young prince approaches the door to see one of the footmen at the door, clad in black, holding a tea set that is definitely the source of the clatter. Some sugar had spilled, but everything else looked intact. The tutor bumped into him, it seemed, and did not apologize.
Rude, his mother would say. She'd seek to make things right.
"I would like some tea," Adam says shortly. "Thank you for offering."
The footman nods and hands Adam a cup on a saucer, which he takes with a nod in return.
"I'm sorry he did that. I'm kind of hopeless at this." The words slip out before he can reel them in. His father never liked him admitting weakness, even in front of their staff.
But the footman only offers him what sugar is left in the bowl, and Adam accepts a heaping spoonful.
"Thank you," Adam murmurs, and the footman merely smiles, bows, and turns to leave.
But it's in those few seconds that the prince realizes he's seen this particular servant before. Black waistcoat, usually seen attending to Cogsworth, or sending messages to Mrs. Potts. Helping Lumiere with dinner service if they were short-handed, providing fresh sheets to the maids. Never spoke. Chapeau--that was his name. Adam didn't see him as much as the others--newer, most likely.
He's quick, too; gone in seconds. Adam sips his tea and heads towards the dining room.
◦🝰◦🝰◦🝰◦
A violin wakes Adam that night.
He blinks away the dream of a midnight ball, surprised when the music doesn't fade with the images. Moonlight streams through his open window, and his empty room shines with it, silver and gold designs gleaming white with the moon's eerie, ethereal light.
But the violin doesn't stop. It's a slow, melancholy tune that climbs and descends like a stream over stones. Adam almost wonders if he's woken to glimpse a faerie dance of sorts, so taken is he by the magic of the moonlight. Slowly, he rises from his bed to fetch his robe and slippers.
Chapeau stands, illuminated by a window in the hallway, and Adam nearly mistakes him for a ghost; he blends in so with the blues and greys of the night-lit castle.
Under his chin is the source of the music: a rich, brown-colored violin several sizes larger than his own, and a bow that moves along the strings with such care that Adam barely notices when he pulls it up and down.
Adam opens his mouth to say a number of things, from "why are you here" to "you scared me half to death" but whatever it is dies the moment Chapeau meets eyes with him. Instead, the footman dips his head and turns to walk away. Adam follows.
Chapeau leads him through various hallways, portraits shadowed and faceless in the night, and when the castle opens up, the violin fills the space. Several times Adam wants to ask where they're going, but he can't move his mouth; so transfixed is he.
As a prince, he was never instructed to watch after his staff--in fact, it was the other way around--but Adam watches as a moth does to flame. Chapeau's fingers climb up and down the neck of the instrument effortlessly, and there are moments when his hand shakes without troubling the instrument at all.
The violin doesn't shake, but the note does. How is that possible?
Chapeau plays one final note before gently lifting his bow from the string, and though the sound fades away to nothing, Adam can swear he still hears it ringing.
And it's as if a spell has been broken; Adam blinks and takes a few breaths before realizing they've traveled to the music room.
"H...how did you...?" There is nothing to interrupt, but Adam can still only manage a breathy whisper.
Chapeau says nothing, only waits for Adam to finish, letting both hands fall to his sides.
"The way you...the way you climbed up the strings like that," he stutters. "What is that?"
The footman smiles. "Shifting."
Something inside Adam deflates; his shoulders slump as he lets out the breath he doesn't realize he was holding. "Oh..."
Following that comes the overwhelming urge to bury his head in his hands, but Chapeau's gesturing to the prince's own little case with his bow. Adam's eyes widen.
"No--no, I can't, I--"
But something in Chapeau's stance makes Adam unclasp the case anyway, and it takes him a few moments to figure out what it is: the violin hasn't fallen from his shoulder.
"How are you doing that?"
The footman laughs and removes the instrument, before putting it back. Adam notices it this time: with a slight head tilt, Chapeau's using his jaw to hold the violin there. Adam hastens to mimic him, bringing his own violin to his shoulder.
Oh, thank God, it's much more comfortable. Adam still has to tense his shoulder a little, but once he hesitantly lets his hand fall, the violin stays where it is.
Chapeau moves to him, taking his hand and placing it on the violin's neck. He guides the prince's hands forward, and then back, and Adam practices the action a few times before he nods.
Bow in hand, Chapeau plays a quick scale, shifting to complete it on only two strings instead of three. Adam tries to mimic him.
They converse like that for a while, letting the music breathe, until Adam realizes he's gotten the hang of shifting. Then Chapeau adds that shaking into each note--"Vibrato," he defines it--and encourages him to use his forearm, not just his wrist. This clicks immediately, and they can both tell.
They incorporate it into the scales, and when Adam struggles with the bow movements, Chapeau sits him in front of his fortepiano and encourages him to play with his left hand only. Soon after, the prince can mime the bow movements by himself.
Back to the violin, and it works. Adam moves the bow in time with his fingers, following the sheet music, and the piece that the tutor bade he practice starts to sound like something.
Adam's just working around the chords near the end before Chapeau pulls out a pocket-watch to check the time, and from his expression, Adam knows he's been awake too long. Chapeau ushers him to put his violin away, and Adam obliges, but...
"But could you play the piece for me?" he asks. "Just so I know how it's supposed to sound."
Chapeau looks the sheet music over once before adjusting the stand to fit his height.
Though the sheet music says to start loud, Chapeau plays the first few notes in a hushed quiet, building slowly to the appropriate dynamic with light, flighty bow movements.
Adam closes his eyes this time, trying to remember different finger placements for the chords, the one time he'd shift placements, the switch in key. But it's hard, so hard not to drift back to that strange, ethereal world, only accessible though a violin in the small hours after midnight.
He must notice, because the music slows into silence against the written instructions, and he guides Adam back to his bedroom, tucks him in, and disappears. The moon's moved past the windows now, nestling behind wisps of leftover cloud. Nothing else in the sky.
The spell's broken now, Adam thinks. His final conscious thought before dawn.
-------------------------------------------
Tagging people who I think might appreciate this (it's also been a while and I don't know if any of you guys are still active but still):
@lumiereswig @im-too-obssesed @forr-everrmorre @naturepointstheway @tinydooms @ginnyweatherby @sweetfayetanner @fadedelegance @trenzaloures @prince-adams-japris @morgaine2005 @greensearcher @emeraldcitynative
17 notes
·
View notes
SGU Week Day 2 (I promise I can count; I'm just behind!!): Favorite Character
Leave it to me to get fixated on a character who only shows up in 4 episodes of a show that got cancelled 12 years ago. 😫 I thoroughly enjoyed SGU from its inception, but Amanda Perry is what took the show from something I really enjoyed to my current hyperfixation (yes, it's her fault I'm here, this fictional lady). She lives rent-free in my head. 💖
(Also fair warning this is gonna be long as hell)
I'm aware that her primary function is that of "love interest," but her character resonated with me on a much deeper level. Maybe I didn't travel a billion light-years to be with the person I love, but I did move 1,000 miles away from everything I knew to make a life with the man who became my husband. I know what it's like to feel rejected because the person you love shows their love differently (though I've been married for almost 6 years now after 3.5 years of long-distance, and then a lengthy engagement, so I know from experience that loving differently doesn't mean loving less). I know what it's like to feel like I'm not valued as a person, though in my case, I was mistreated because I'm autistic as opposed to being paralyzed, and I was regularly used and taken advantage of for my musical abilities, with little respect for my health or needs. I wasn't a person, I was a thing. I've been targeted by people I couldn't fight back against, even for things I didn't do. I know what it's like to be left behind for a lot of social milestones (driving, dating, etc.) I know what it's like to finally find that one safe person who sees you for you.
Amanda is relatable as hell to me. I do want to focus on her specifically in this post, though obviously her romantic endeavors are a factor. Tbh one of the main reasons I like her so much is, in addition to all the other stuff I just mentioned, is that she was the one to initiate things with Rush. I have little dating experience, myself, but I was the instigator in most of my relationships, especially with my husband. Gotta love those ladies who are active instead of waiting around for a guy to make up his mind!
Anyway, I make a lot of SGU memes and dumb lil comics that I share on Facebook, and a decent chunk of them are about Amanda (she even has her own multi-episode arc!!), so I'll share some of them here. I guess if people like them, I can put them on tumblr. I'll add that the vast majority of my content takes place post-stasis, so this Amanda inhabits her own meat body, cloned from DNA the SGC had on file, and is not a computer ghost or a body-swapper with questionable ethics. 😂
I have generated A LOT of memes lmao
Well that didn't turn out to be a metaphor for anything... 😏 I didn't catch this the first time, but I ugly-laughed on my second watch-through.
When the lockdowns were first imposed in my town, I had no idea what that meant, and I was literally about to get in my car and commit a crime because I thought my husband was going to be trapped at work for 2 weeks. Obviously, that wasn't the case, but I felt this scene.
Since my brain has chosen to attach itself to a character with minimal backstory, I'm obligated to fill in the blanks. One thing I find disappointing in media is that even the nerdy women tend not to have nerdy interests, which absolutely is not what I've experienced in real life. My thought is that Amanda was already something of a prodigy ("Little Miss Brilliant" probably isn't a nickname you get for being a regular genius lmao) before her accident, probably skipped a grade or two in school, private tutors in math and science, that kind of thing, and was later homeschooled before starting college as a teen. She was probably pretty lonely because of that. I'm not quite a "genius" (I have a Master's in music and an Etsy shop, and I uhhhhh make memes about an old TV show for fun), but I am a former gifted kid. Even though I took gifted classes from 4th-12th grade (academics, not that pull-out enrichment crap), I felt very lonely even among my gifted classmates, and I struggled with making friends throughout school because I was just too different. I was weird. I liked weird stuff. The girls were mean. The boys that were my friends didn't like the girly stuff I enjoyed, so I had to lock that part of myself away to fit in. The kids a grade ahead of me obviously left, and the kids a grade below me didn't want to keep in touch when I moved on to high school or college. It was lonely. I see similar things in Amanda's brief appearances. She's on the Destiny for 3 weeks, and she pretty much just sticks to Rush because he's "safe." She tries to be friendly with Eli, but he ends up making fun of her, and he's not very nice to her later on, either (sometimes for good reason; she's my fave but she's no saint). TJ isn't exactly in a position to be socializing during a complicated surgery, so she gets a pass. 😉
This was rambly, but my point is that a lot of lonely nerds are drawn to sci-fi, even the girls. I know for a fact that I'm projecting, but come on, she designs hyperdrives. You really gonna sit there and tell me she never watched Star Trek? 😂
As a side note (oh boy even more rambling), in my fan content, she and Eli have a very sweet friendship based on their shared nerd interests. I really don't think they'd get along in canon as things were left.
Speaking of sci-fi, I like to think that, after getting recruited for the Stargate program, Amanda watched all of Wormhole X-treme to prepare herself. I also like to think that no one else on Destiny's crew has seen it except Eli, who saw a handful of episodes randomly. I just really need him to see a stargate for the first time and be all like WOW JUST LIKE WORMHOLE X-TREME 😂 These are two separate excerpts, one mentioning the show and tying it back to actual events in SG-1, and the other showing a snippet of an episode. Replicators are kinda like Legos, so of course the humanoid Wormhole X-treme versions would be Lego people (I'm not creative, I'm just silly).
Going back to feeling lonely, I do think Amanda would be pretty imaginative, even if she's kinda one-note. In a fic I'm working on, she confesses that all of her fantasies involve Rush and having working legs (disclaimer that there's obviously nothing wrong with using a wheelchair and that disabled people can and do have fulfilling romantic relationships and sex lives, but it seems clear in the show that she would like to be able to walk again, so I have stuck to that for this particular story), and the narrative quality of her fantasies is very much on par with dollar store romance novels. She reminds me a little of Tina from Bob's Burgers and her "erotic friendfiction," so I made a few crossover memes. That's Tina's copy of "Buttloose" in the 4th panel. Panel 3 is also a borrowed quote from Tina. I do think Amanda might struggle with tidiness since she spent a good 25 years not being able to pick up after herself at all. I also struggle with this due to executive dysfunction and growing up in a borderline hoarder environment, so I guess I'm projecting again RIP 😅
No, really, Camile, what do you mean????
I guess in Amanda's defense, she doesn't find Rush off-putting in any way since he's not unnecessarily mean to her. 😂
I'm not sure if I'll ever complete my fic, but one thing I'm exploring, both there and, to a less complicated degree, in my memes, is Amanda's use of the neural link while she's a computer ghost. In Seizure, she seemed to use it with ease (apart from that one colossal fuckup lmaooooo), and I'd really like to see what she could do with it after her file is no longer quarantined. I've done a lot of cringe rambling and infodumping (congrats to anyone who's actually made it this far), so I won't go into detail, but she does work on expanding use of the link so she and Ginn can use it at the same time and connect to multiple people so they can socialize and function more as crew members instead of something like a guardian angel or familiar spirit. I'd also like, as mentioned in a previous post for this event, if she could help Lisa "see" again via the neural link. Another possibility, as alluded to in the above photo, is making "holograms," which aren't really holograms, but are more like skins for the ship's AI. What's cooler, accessing a medical database in the infirmary, or asking the EMH from Voyager to give you the info you need? If you're a loser like me, it's absolutely the second one.
More backstory!! My hc is that Amanda's parents were killed in the accident that paralyzed her (on the way to some math tournament with the high school mathletes or something idk I'm a musician I don't know what STEM people do for fun), and she was raised by her grandparents. We all love to make our faves suffer, and I'm no exception. This is just a silly little comic, but there is a certain sadness of being intellectually advanced but emotionally immature, something common among gifted kids and neurodivergent people (and I'm both, wheeeee). Things are thankfully getting better now. I love seeing more acceptance. But it was difficult in the early 00s when I was a teen, and I'm sure it would have been harder for Amanda in the '80s and '90s. It's also difficult when you have to rely on someone else for transportation, but they are unwilling to take you places (I went nowhere in college except school and church and my parents were still always mad at me, which is weird of them because they actively discouraged me from driving and would not teach me or help me get over my fears, so uhhhh yeah).
Last one~
So yes, I'm definitely salty that my top 2 SGU ladies got fridged twice (Ginn's my second fave because of course she is). I do think it opened up a lot of interesting possibilities for both characters, but as the show was tragically cut short, we have to rely on fan content. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here is that Amanda and Ginn would have been fine had Amanda simply studied Bobby Hill's Guide to Self-Defense. Yes, it's bad, but I am a bad person and I generate irreverent things.
If you made it this far, then congratulations, you're an obsessed weirdo like me!! I know Amanda isn't exactly popular, nor is SGU, especially not so long after the fact, so I don't really expect anyone to read all this. If you do, I hope I was able to convey why she is so special to me. If nothing else, I hope you enjoyed the memes.
Also this took me like 5 hours to write, Jesus Christ I need to sleep
3 notes
·
View notes