#i recognize they have a shit ton of problems but they also do show groundbreaking storylines that can really help ppl

[asset35-maya]

MANMADE FATE

Summary: Connor and Gavin find an unresponsive RK900 android in an abandoned Cyberlife warehouse and take him home to fix. (Not so subtle plot twist: both of them fall in love with their secret science project)

//

PART ONE OF THREE:

The crew from Jericho led a successful revolution but there’s still a lot of work to be done. Markus may have won human hearts and gotten the federal government to back down, but Cyberlife is still at large.

Sure, hundreds of androids at the Tower escaped to march on the streets behind Connor, but that was just a little dent in the big machine. Cyberlife has tons of intellectual property and assets that could easily put them back in power.

Simon and Markus insist they can work with the authorities to regulate and ring-fence the massive corporation. Josh agrees. North laughs in their faces.

She goes to find the only other Jericho member who still has any grit left.

Connor.

The daring, brazen RK800 who stared down death and spat in the face of destruction. He blinks at her in polite confusion when she tells him what she wants to do, but the fiery LED tells her everything she needs to know.

They hatch plans behind Markus’ back. They steal and stockpile biocomponents. They sneak into the Tower to encrypt Cyberlife’s R&D files with codes that only RK algorithms can break. A few other Tracis join them and they slowly start gaining an edge.

Their schemes start getting grander and one night something goes wrong. North is shot.

Connor carries her to the only safe place he knows other than his stasis pod in Hank’s dilapidated garage. The DPD Central Station.

It’s way past midnight. It’s deathly quiet. Connor is sure no one will see them, and he can easily tamper with the security cameras.

What he doesn’t bank on is the over-caffeinated loser still bent over his desk in the bullpen.

A noise from the archive room breaks through the quiet. Quelling his fear of the supernatural, Gavin stands up shakily and goes to investigate. He flips on the light and sees blue everywhere.

Connor is bent over a badly damaged Traci and three other girls with identical tear-streaked faces are on their knees beside her.

Chocolate brown eyes meet storm green beseechingly, their rivalry forgotten in that moment of desperation.

Before he realizes it, Gavin is moving. He takes several packs of thirium out of the fridge and grabs the Department’s toolkit, praying that whatever’s in there can help.

Old engineering knowledge kicks in and Gavin’s hands join Connor’s over the cracked chassis, pulling out damaged tubing and securing the leakages. It takes a while, but North is patched up. She first recoils in absolute terror at the human man hunched over her but regains composure at Connor’s touch… interface. She nods briefly to express her gratitude, somehow regal and intimidating even after being so vulnerable. Gavin decides he likes this proud and brave creature.

He drives them all back to his apartment for the night. They’ll take North to a technician first thing in the morning and get her back to New Jericho before Markus even notices. Adrenaline pumps through Gavin’s veins. He hasn’t felt a thrill like this in years, not since… not since…

“How did you know exactly where to put your hands?”

“Eh?”

“A layman would have broken that biocomponent trying to take it out.”

“You know I’m not exactly a layman.”

“I also know they don’t cover Cyberlife’s proprietary designs in engineering school.”

Gavin stays quiet. Connor puts a hesitant hand on his shoulder, poised to jump away immediately should the detective revert to his usual self.

“Thank you. For everything you just did for us. I don’t know how to repay-”

“I want in.”

“What?”

“Whatever you’re doing. I can help.”

Connor cocks his head. His LED goes berserk.

They make a great team. Gavin and Connor. North’s best men. Who the fuck would have thought. Breaking into high-security locations using police databases and surveillance resources. Covering for each other during extended absences from work. They start to take down Cyberlife in a such a precise manner, it’s almost surgical. The dissection of a multibillion dollar business.

Gavin has an intimate understanding of android technology and an even closer intuition of Cyberlife’s overall strategy. Connor thinks he understands why. There’s an undeniable resemblance between the only two men on earth whose motivations evade his understanding. But of course it’s just a coincidence that Elijah Kamski and Gavin Reed have the same jawline... facial structure... voice.

Connor says nothing... and Gavin is quietly thankful for that. And the chance to finally live the kind of exciting life he dreamt of since he was a little boy. To make a real difference. Just as he wanted to before it all went wrong.

Somewhere along the way, they grow close. Gavin and Connor. Two rival cops turned vigilante comrades turned something else... It’s hard to pinpoint when exactly it happened... perhaps sometime between the cup of coffee placed tentatively on Gavin’s desk the morning after North's near-fatal injury and the heated kiss they dragged each other into after a particularly dangerous mission.

North is unsurprised. She doesn’t bat an eye when the usually unruffled RK800 shows up to planning meetings shirtless and disheveled. Her lips even twist into a little smile as he drapes himself slovenly over the only human at the table.

Things fall into a pattern. A good one. Several months from where they started, Cyberlife share prices have fallen to an all time low and other tech enterprises have begun to move in, circling the troubled company like sharks. If North’s next heist goes to plan, the last shred of IP that brands Cyberlife as a robotics company will be out in the public domain for all to take.

 She is rapturous as she swings in through the broken window and rolls into a crouched position. Gavin and Connor follow her cautiously through the abandoned warehouse, weapons drawn and eyes roving. 

“What the fuck!” 

Connor throws a protective arm in front of Gavin, shielding him with his chassis. But North’s cry was merely one of disappointment. 

“Shit! We wasted so much effort. There’s nothing here!”

Where they had expected to find a secret server room or a high-tech vault containing the crux of Cyberlife’s groundbreaking designs... was a single android storage pod. North restrains herself from kicking it in frustration. She gestures harshly at it before leaving in a huff. 

“It’s occupied. Wake them up, Connor, whoever they are. It’s still our duty to set free any androids we find.”

Gavin tries to catch her arm in a conciliatory gesture but she shakes the human off easily. He shrugs at Connor and inclines his head at the android in the pod. Unfortunately, North’s annoyance has brushed off on the RK800. He glares through the broken window the Jericho leader has just jumped out of.

“Don’t you think she bosses me around a little too much?”

Gavin sighs and walks over to the pod, looking for the latches to open it. His boyfriend has a problem with authority... and so has he to be honest.

“Better her than Fowler, dontcha think?” 

“Hmmpff. At least Fowler doesn’t lead us on wild goose chases.”

“Come on, babe. None of us saw this coming. We really thought this was it. Maybe we’re at a decoy location? Let’s go back to the drawing board after we wake this guy... or girl up.” 

“You’re awfully chipper for someone who just scaled a building for nothing.” 

Gavin shakes his head as he smiles to himself. It’s true. Even the worst days with North’s crew are better than his best days at the DPD. Maybe it’s because he’s finally doing what he was born for. Using the knowledge and skills that practically run through his veins. Maybe its the man by his side.

He gets the pod open and steps sideways to avoid the swing of the door, and freezes.

“Babe.”

No response.

“Dipshit.”

“Hmm. Give me a second.” 

“Take a minute. You’re going to want to brace yourself for this one.”

The android lying peacefully within the pod is a stranger with a face entirely too familiar to Gavin. A face he was just looking at. A face he’d recognize anywhere, even without skin.

“Are their battery levels- holy shit.”

Connor’s LED spins faster and faster as he registers the sight.

“I thought there were no surviving RK800s apart from you and that grumpy SWAT guy Sixty.” 

“This... this isn’t an RK800.” 

Connor traces the serial number printed on the android’s cheekbone. RK900. 

“Shit. Did you know this model existed?” 

“No, did you?”

Gavin shakes his head. He hadn’t been privy to Cyberlife’s inner decision-making for nearly fifteen years, but he always answered Connor’s persistent questioning without losing patience. Honesty was what kept them together despite the hundreds of reasons to fight and fall apart.

“What should we do? If he’s your successor, I’m not sure waking him up is the safest thing for you to do...”

“We can’t leave him here, Gav. He’s probably been here from before the Revolution. That’s more than a year of being in a box. It’s not... fair...” 

“He’s not deviant, babe. We don’t know what his programming is like.”

“It doesn’t matter. I can turn him.”

Gavin sees the look in Connor’s eyes and knows he’s made up his mind already. He steps aside, hand flitting to the holster on his waist. 

Connor takes an unnecessary breath and reaches for RK900′s forearm with his synth skin retracted. His fingers hover over the motionless android for a moment and then he makes contact. Gavin tenses. 

Nothing happens. The RK900′s LED remains unlit. There is no sign of life.

The couple look at each other automatically. Their instinctive reaction when the inexplicable occurs. 

“Is he-”

“No, I don’t see any damage. I think he’s never been activated. Not even for quality testing.” 

“Did you see a request for manual code input? Did any interface pop up at all?” 

“I can only see that his power systems are functioning.” 

“And his thirium pump?” 

“Not active. No compressions at all.”

Connor presses both his palms down on the RK900′s face. Still nothing. He looks up, defeated, with a furrow forming between his brows.

“Help.”

Gavin scratches at his stubbled chin. He peers closer. The perfect face is so calm. So familiar. So... magnetic? His apprehension is replaced by intrigue.

“Huh. Okay. I could take a look... but I don’t wanna try using the computer set-up here. Can’t take a chance... leave any traces...”

“We could take him home.”

Storm green eyes lock with chocolate brown. There’s something in the depths of each pair that’s mirrored in the other. 

It’s foolish. It’s a waste of time. It’s a risk. North would probably smack the two of them if she knew. 

But the night ends with them gently lowering the unconscious android onto the squashy sofa in Gavin’s living room.

[mojave-musing]

2, 7, 8, 10, 17, 21, 22, 34, and 48 for whoever you wanna talk about!!! (tho i'd love to see some bartholomew, cato, or nemo)

Thanks Betty you are a true bro

2. Do they have any daily rituals?

Bart usually wakes up around 8 o’clock smokes and gets ready for the day. Before he stops smoking about every few hours he’s gotta have a smoke break.

Nemo is a mess of a human, besides his nightly sit and dwell on the past he doesn’t do anything on the regular.

7. Favorite way to waste time and feelings surrounding wasting time.

Bart is the champion of wasting time. Unless he is being paid he is never in a hurry to finish something

Cato on the other hand he’s the kind to want to get stuff done right away.

8. Favorite indulgence and feelings surrounding indulging.

Cato definitely likes to indulge, but he’s got the in moderation belief. You can have too much of a good thing.

Nemo he wants to indulge in a lot of things, but sometimes he holds back because he feels like he doesn’t deserve to indulge.

10. Neuroses? Do they recognize them as such?

Oh hell yeah Bart definitely has some ptsd from his childhood being raised by basically a raider and then even more ptsd from the Sierra Madre. Coming back to the Followers after the madre bart starts to acknowledge he has problems.

Cato has some mild ptsd from his time in the legion but he deals with his trauma better than Nemo who on top of being depressed has a ton of shit but Nemo is in the “nothing is wrong with me” camp.

17. Preferred mode of dress and rituals surrounding dress.

Bart’s style is cowboy. He likes to dress clean cut, and nice. Being on the road it’s harder to stay nice and neat but Bart manages.

Nemo has that wasteland wanderer look. He wears baggy ponchos, capes and the like. Nemo doesn’t really care what he looks like

Cato is a jeans and T-shirt guy. If the James Dean style still existed in the wasteland that’s Cato’s style. Cato likes to dress nice but he’s not picky.

21. Turn-ons? Turn-offs?

Bart likes anyone who is cute and gives him the time of day. Bart prefers girls who are smaller than him and guys who could bench press him. And believe it or not but finding out someone is involved with shady business like anyone in the omertas is something Bart doesn’t like so doesn’t matter how pretty the person is he is instantly not interested. He also doesn’t like being called ‘Daddy’.

Nemo is like anyone that shows human empathy to him he’s swooning. He is mildly attracted to gals but strongly prefers men. Turn offs... uh he doesn’t do anything rough.

22. Given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen?

Bart would definitely attempt to draw. Nothing in particular maybe a crude landscape, he’s no artist by any means but he isn’t self conscious about what he’s drawn.

Cato makes swirls and other doodles like Bart it’s nothing groundbreaking in the art world.

34. Thoughts on privacy? (Are they a private person, or are they prone to ‘TMI’?)

Oooh Bart and Nemo are very very private people. Bart will opens up with someone he is close to but that requires a lot of trust built up. Nemo might never open up.

Cato on the other hand is like telling strangers his deep trauma. Some drunk comes into the Mormon fort and Cato is all “I tried to stand up to my father for beating my mother and instead I got beat and my father sold my mom into slavery and told me it was my fault :) how are you?”

48. How do they express love?

Bart makes time for who he loves. When Rosie wants to spend time with him Bart drops everything to be with her.

Cato fusses over who he loves, checking on them and making sure they get enough to eat.

[groundberry]

im very sorry if youre on mobile and dont want to see degrassi season 4 spoilers but oh my god

this show. just had. the first nb character ive ever seen on mainstream tv ever. and like. i know netflix isnt a television network, but its mainstream in its own right. degrassi was the first tv show in canadian history to have a trans man as a main character on the network much music. (listen,,, i know they treated adam like a piece of shit and he was played by a cis girl but its still a huge deal to me. he was literally the first time i ever heard that being trans is a thing and the show presented it as a normal part of life’s different struggles and ways to be and i can never thank them enough for that).

(also as far as i can tell jamie bloch is a cis girl so 👀 you need to actually cast trans people for trans roles mayhaps!>!>!?)

anyway. the first episode of the season yael was uncomfortable with their tiddies and i immediately was like “yael is trans” bc, yeah, cis girls can have that problem, but somethieng about the way it was presented !!! they were tugging at their shirt bc they were inherently uncomfortable with the clothes they were wearing, not bc of an outside factor like being aware after someone made a comment. it felt. undeniably internal.

and then lola took them bra shopping and i was like “ok a typical “”””girly scene””””, please dont ruin this.” and yael said they wish their boobs werent there at all and an employee who overheard was like “hey !!! wanna try on this binder?” and yael did and. cried. they cried bc they finally saw a glimpse of their real self. and i was like !!!!!! degrassi mentioned and showed adam binding but they showed him in pain. which is a totally valid story/perspective to tell. but. lets show trans ppl being happy!!! and affirmed!!! lets break down the “i knew since i was 4″ trope and show someone who realizes who they are later in life. let them be confused, conflicted, worried, even hostile at the thought of them being trans. let them be uncertain.

another amazing scene was lola actually telling yael about a youtuber she watched who’s genderq*eer. especially now, its really important to show that not everyone arrives at their own identity on their own and sometimes other people help them along their journey and i just!!!!! i still cant believe thsi show DID that. they are nonchalantly teaching kids and parents that the gender binary isnt real, and we’re seeing it from a(n initially) confused person’s point of view thats really easy to empathize with. and i love how lola, baaz, and vijay started using they pronouns right off the bat, like that was soooo incredibly wonderful to see. idek where im going with this anymore. i didnt write all of waht i wanted to say but im too jittery to get it organized. thank you degrassi. youve had (and have) a lot (A LOT) of problems, esp regarding race and class, but you can also do things lik e this !

[mousathe14]

I know the guys who made the Defenders are responsible for the abysmal Daredevil Season 2 and some of the less great parts of the latter half of Season 1, but.... They aren’t doing a bad job right now.

Like, Defenders is pretty good and the characters are served pretty well.

Like, Luke, Jessica, and Matt are written pretty much at their best in their own shows and consistently so. I have only watched the first two episodes of Iron FIst, I’ll get to the rest later today after my Defenders rewatch, but if the first two eps indicate anything they wrote him as the same idiotic self-righteous man-child as his show has so they got that right too.

And I like Matt more here than I did in DD season 2. A friend was able to articulate that without anyone to preach to, the character became substantially less intolerable. 

As my friends and I were chatting, one of them had sort of come to a realization of why Defenders went over so well and why the characters didn’t deteriorate. It seems that it might actually have to do with having decent precedent to work from. Actually it’s probably better for me to just copypaste that bit of convo than explain it. And removed some irrelevant bits. Also kept an amusing bit.

May as well see if the explanation makes sense to anyone else.

Convo credits go to mah bois @wackd with his insight, @thebibliomancer with his amusing asides, @zarekthelordofthefries for asking all the right questions, and @maxwellelvis for knowing too much.

Bocaj: I'm so jealous of Iron Fist. He has all the money and he got to hug a dragon. Life ain't fair, I tellyawhat

Bocaj: Out of spite I tried to brainstorm a setting where people get different powers by hugging different dragons but then I remembered that sans hugging, thats what Drakengard was.

Wack’d: But yeah what I was gonna say the smart thing the show does is, like

Bocaj: It sure could have used some hugging

Wack’d:  Jessica and Luke both get really standard storylines that could easily be season arcs in their own shows

Except it turns out the Hand is behind them, which brings them into Matt and Danny's nonsense

Zarek: So the way it resolves the different styles is basically making the mundane stuff caused by the magic stuff?

Wack’d: Yeah

In this one specific instance, at least--there's no, like, "Kilgrave was secretly part of the Hand this whole time!" or whatever

Bocaj: phew

Wack’d: But yeah I think, like

Maybe the Daredevil showrunners are just shit because the show they were given to run was Daredevil?

They are pretty good at crafting good stuff out of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage material

Zarek: In the sense that Daredevil inherently doesn't work, or it just doesn't work with their style as creators?

Like, "did the best with what they could" or "just aren't good with this playset"

Wack’d: If I had to hazard a guess--Marco Ramirez and Doug Petrie are in the same position with the other three characters that they were when they came on board with Daredevil in season 2

Maxwellelvis: I'm going to say it's probably partially because the specific Daredevil stuff they chose to focus on for a lot of this, namely Stick, and Elektra, and the Hand, no longer work because it's no longer 1983, ninjas are old hat now and this story isn't innovative or groundbreaking anymore.

Wack’d: "Figure out what made this character tick last time and hew as close to that as possible"

The problem is Daredevil season 1 didn't have much of an identity? In the first half we get a kind of dark drama under Drew Goddard's pen, and then it slowly switches to melodrama and camp when Steven S. DeKnight shows up

Wack’d: So Ramirez and Petrie have to synthesize those two approaches while also introducing a ton of new characters and ALSO setting up another series two years from now

Zarek: Steven S. DeKnight is a hell of a superhero name

Wack’d: Which is, like--I don't think I recognized what a tall fucking order that is

Bocaj: Was Daredevil 2 the Iron Man 2 of Netflix too?

Wack’d: Kinda, yeah!

Zarek: Oh shit is Iron Man 2 still on Netflix i still havent seen it

Bocaj: This has been a victory for sentences that i said mostly because I liked the way they sounded

Wack’d: I mean I think, like--the reason I didn't recognize it because I didn't expect it to do as much heavy lifting as it ended up having to

Maxwellelvis: Is the Punisher the Black Widow of Netflix Marvel?

Bocaj: They did have a teamup movie

Wack’d: But yeah in hindsight this makes a lot of sense

Maxwellelvis: They team up a lot, Bocaj.

Bocaj: Avengers Confidential: Punisher & Black Widow:: The Other Avengers Are In It For Five Seconds

Maxwellelvis: I'd assume it's because Nat is like the only other superhero who is perfectly A-ok with murder.

Bocaj: Wolverine and Hawkeye are under Bendis

BENDIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS

Wack’d: And so this time Ramirez and Petrie have it easy--they know what a good Jessica Jones story looks like, they know what a good Luke Cage story looks like, they had an entire season to figure out what they had to do with Daredevil