#implied rhys/jack

[sambadeamigosgato]

Oh yea new oc means new nonsense

[krotiation]

since dumpy is jack and rhys' child it only makes sense that gortys is rhys and fiona's

[eucacici]

Also thank u to @snailmp3 for the idea and helping me out with some of the lines

[comma-tose]

Something I noticed that I REALLY don't like is just how much current borderlands seems to be trying to diminish Rhys and Fiona's personalities and achievements.

It started out with Rhys in Borderlands 3, where Vaughn implied he was fake and that they haven't spoken in years for some reason??? Then it happened again in New Tales, where Rhys was written as incompetent, and an awful boss that fires his employees for having ONE bad idea.

It also essentially calls him a warmonger that's focused entirely on profits, and has no moral compass beyond "the almighty dollar". Going as far as to explicitly state that that is literally Atlas's motto.

Aside from all that it also says that Atlas is essentially failing and that Rhys has absolutely no idea what he's doing, which is especially weird considering how in Borderlands 3 it's stated that Promethea is finally starting to do well for itself again, and through Echo logs you hear that even Marcus is impressed with how well Rhys is doing.

So for Rhys we have him losing connection with his best friend and being called an idiot, fake, being mischaracterised as a terrible person that apparently learnt nothing and has regressed as a person to a borderline unrecognisable state.

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

And now we get to Fiona. Since borderlands 3 treats the female protagonist of Tales as if she just doesn't exist, Fiona's story continues in Debt or Alive so...

SPOILER WARNING FOR DEBT OR ALIVE.

Not only is Fiona characterised VERY strangely in the book but they also just give Sasha credit for some of what Fiona does, and Fiona alone tends to be the target of blame in the book. Oh and she gets compared to Handsome Jack for good measure.

To start off with, Fiona doesn't even get her wish from the Vault of the Traveller. She gives it to Sasha, and Sasha wishes for a rare Vaultlander figurine of Typhon DeLeon which is destroyed a couple of chapters later. So not only does Fiona not even get to use her wish but the product of the wish gets destroyed anyway so it's entirely pointless.

Fiona also just decides to not be a vault hunter. That conversation she can have with Rhys SECONDS before this happens, about how it suits her, about how she's sad the adventure is over? It's just ignored. She immediately gives it up because she doesn't want Sasha vault hunting and getting put in danger again. Sure she still likes vault hunting but it is immediately given up. (I could write a whole other post about why this bugs me and I probably will).

Fiona has flaws that are addressed in the books, as they should be, all characters have to have flaws, but she is the only one out of the sisters to have flaws addressed. Sasha's are treated as if they don't exist, even when they're very apparent. Fiona learns to not be overprotective, and that she can't stop Sasha from doing things she wants to BUT Sasha doesn't learn anything. She does impulsive things that endanger both her and Fiona, and her risking their safety for fun or on a whim is just never mentioned. (Again something else I'll definitely talk about in another post).

Fiona is also consistently the one who comes up with the plans in the book, while Sasha is either not doing anything or suggesting they take the easy way out. Fiona is the one to start removing the debt cuffs from people while Sasha stands there bewildered, asking what she's doing. Fiona is the one to come up with the plan to scam the billionaires so that they can use the money to free everyone from debt while Sasha suggests just funding Gaige's revenge scheme (and assumedly just abandoning the people in debt??). And Fiona is the one to figure out how to get into Holloway's panic room and save everyone.

Fiona having her moments to shine would be great if they consistently didn't end with her being called an idiot, getting badly hurt, failing, or at one point being compared to Handsome Jack of all people. (Additional point: Sasha doesn't even defend her when she's compared to Jack, which is weird and very out of character.)

This might be petty but the book also gives credit to Sasha for Fiona surviving Bossanova's murder rally in Tales. Which is really weird considering Sasha and Fiona were separated during the entirety of that event. So instead of mentioning a time where Sasha actually helped save Fiona, like in the bio-dome when she was caught by Finch and Kroger, I guess they're actively retconning an event to give Sasha the credit. For some reason.

Fiona also has to confront Sasha about how she's treating Rhys, but then like a chapter later she literally apologises for all that, despite having every right to call Sasha out for that. So again Sasha's flaws are not being recognised as actual flaws and instead it's Fiona who's somehow in the wrong and Sasha learns nothing. Sure by the end of the book she considers Rhys her boyfriend but she is never the one to tell him. Fiona is, because Sasha just doesn't bother to, because it never treats her as someone who has to grow as a person. Sasha is usually either just used as a plot device to progress things or just doing almost nothing while being given credit, instead of being developed like a proper character. I'd call her a shell of what Tales Sasha was but even that feels too generous.

I used to really want to see the Tales characters in other borderlands media, but at this point I just dread it. Because why would I want to see my favourite characters being wildly mischaracterised and mistreated by the franchise?

[lunarbard]

I legitimately think that the first three borderlands (as in 1, 2, & TPS) are good dystopian satire, despite their questionable writing at times. A game/series that took itself more seriously could highlight this better, but Borderlands would lose a lot of its edge if it did.

Handsome Jack isn't just some charismatic villain that garnered a lot of affection from players by some fluke, but rather an excellent personification of the dystopian elements of Borderlands' background setting that make it engaging.

If you look at Borderlands 1, for all its effective lack of plot, the game is about these megacorporation's disregard for the human lives they ruin and their self-defeating obsession with attaining power and control (as seen with Commandant Steele's death). Borderlands 2 took that premise and swapped out the corporate antagonist, but it's not just a new coat of paint/roster of enemies: the motivations change while following similar themes as implied in BL1, now personified in Jack.

In BL1, the Atlas Corporation believes it owns Pandora, and everything (and everyone that primarily DAHL brought), on it is unrealized property they have free claim over. They believe the vault and its contents are owed to them, and it falls on the vault hunters showing up in the nick of time to remedy the potential resulting calamity.

Handsome Jack, meanwhile, has that similar belief that Pandora is "his," just that it's his to "save." He's Hyperion's current CEO because he is willing to do whatever it takes to get what he believes he is owed, one of which is respect as a hero of the people. The people he hates the most are those who deny or deprive him of those things: see his treatment of his daughter, after "what she did to her mother." His ego and disregard for the humanity of basically anyone else, treating them as a character in his story to be stepped on and/or discarded reflects an attitude of the megacorporations that makes the backgrounds of Borderlands so dystopian. I 100% believe that the system that makes a person like Handsome Jack could have produced nearly anyone in a similar mold.

Meanwhile, the Borderlands 1 vault hunters in 2 stand in stark contrast to not just Handsome Jack/Hyperion but also DAHL. Unlike Jack, they don't care about the aesthetics of heroism; they're just trying to protect as many people as they reasonably can from the horrors of Pandora. Unlike DAHL, they didn't abandon the planet and the survivors still there when the thing that brought them in the first place didn't pan out.

I think there's also something to the crude city of Sanctuary supporting plenty of residents versus the pristine city of Opportunity that's almost completely vacant of anything except instruments of war.

Of course, Jack's fall is thematically different from Atlas. Atlas gets defeated when it's claimed "property" slaughters the military sent to claim it; Jack gets defeated by watching his notions of heroism fall apart as the vault hunters cut down the calamity he summoned to "save" Pandora.

Then you get to Borderlands 3, which understood nothing but the aesthetic of the preceding series.

The only difference between the corporations you ally with and those you fight is the former have some friendly franchise blorbos (Rhys, Zer0, and Hammerlock). The corporations aren't fundamentally flawed factions that drive the terrible conditions of the setting for their lust for profit, they're just sometimes headed by someone evil and/or incompetent who maybe wants a merger (The "merger war" between Atlas and Maliwan is a good idea in theory, but it's ruined by going "this one is good" rather than focusing on helping those caught in the crossfire).

Meanwhile, the twins don't present a coherent threat as an element of Borderlands' underlying dystopia. They're just bad guys with lore things (derogatory) and their streamer gimmick. What I think is most insulting about them, though, is that they're just an excuse to use bandits everywhere with no though for an underlying point. The bandits of Pandora are the people DAHL left behind on that desolate rock of a planet, many of whom never wanted to be there in the first place. The twins could have shed some light on how receptive the bandits are to promises of salvation by whatever means because they have no hope otherwise.

I feel like a game that was trying to be more thematically coherent with previous entries would have flipped the villain script: the twins should have been misguided/tragic figures actively striving for a new, redeemed life for Pandora, while their corporate allies use them up and discard them.

[lovemyromance]

"Oh well the mating bond between tamlin's parents and Rhys's parents didn't work out because the men were bad people 🙄"

Yeah so im pretty sure we know jack shit about Tamlin's parents. Definitely not enough to just conclude that his dad was a "bad man".

Not to mention - does nobody think about the implications of this world if that were true?

Mating bonds are apparently the highest form of love/soulmate in this world -> but sometimes they don't work out

Sometimes they don't work out -> but only because half the pairing was a "bad person"

Ok. So what about the other half?

If mating bonds ONLY didn't work out because half the pairing was bad - that implies that

1. Rhysand's mom deserved someone cold and abusive like his dad?

2. Rhysand's mother didn't deserve someone who actually loved her, she didn't deserve someone as good and as caring as she was?

3. You're telling me that some people - as perfect and as good as they are - deserve to be miserable?

That's fucked. That has implications beyond a petty ship war - so I'd like people to actually THINK before they make unfounded claims like that.

SJM included that tidbit about how not all mating bonds work out in the context of a conversation about the Elucien mating bond.

Why tf else would it even be mentioned?? It's directly contradicting the world building she has created about a mating bond being the end all be all greatest form of love. Why would she do that - unless she's literally priming us for a rejected mating bond trope???

USE YOUR BRAINS PEOPLE 🥴🥴

[5-pp-man]

Moonrise was definitely a show that had potential. And it did a lot of things successfully, imo. But i feel like ultimately, the thing that made it unique in the first place (its nonlinear storytelling) is what ended up hampering its story in the 2nd half.

Not only that, but they keep introducing more and more shit and never properly explain it to you... well, ever! I feel like they rarely explain the missions they're on or what their goals are. For example; You eventually get a line about Sapientia wanting to use the jelly for terraforming and the implication of now using it for genocide, but then you get this completely blink and you'll miss it line AFTER the fact from Jack, implying that the rebels wanted to use the jellything to terraform the moon and make it more habitable. But like. You only get to hear that after they've already failed.

You also never get to see Sapientia's influence or guidance directly. Which makes it very hard to believe that Rhys and Georg would keep going to such lengths to go with its advice over what their own goddamn friends are doing. Not saying, because, well... they never try to explain why they're fighting or what Sapientia is doing. They just sorta all keep doing their own shit independently. It's honestly pretty frustrating! I found the rest of the team's turnaround to be pretty believable, because they saw warcrimes being committed firsthand, and they were doubting stuff for a while already. But why were Rhys and Georg so extremely dedicated to this damn AI thing?

It just feels like we're missing whole chunks of story that should've been there. The focus is clunky, the nonlinear storytelling ultimately starts working against it and makes everything needlessly confusing to follow. And I'm a big fan of show dont tell, but we rarely get to hear what the plan or goal is, which can be a good surprise in some cases, but here it just leaves you wondering what you're supposed to be rooting for.

And it's truly a shame, because the overal premise is pretty good! But it just ends up missing the mark.

[teslapunk3327]

The problem with hating on Johnto shippers is the fact you are proving that you missed the subtext of EU TW material.

Many stories involving Ianto deal with the theme of consent, in various contexts.

With John Hart, it's obvious SA. And I despise how it's treated as a joke even if I find that their relationship is interesting and could be explored further.

But simultaneously, you should notice how none of Ianto's other relationships are consensual either. Not fully.

1) Yvonne. Firstly, you have Yvonne. Who drugs him repeatedly. Wipes his memory. And hires him into Torchwood, with the tragedy being that he never wanted to join Torchwood. He was brainwashed into it. (But people will still call them best friends- they're not best friends, but Yvonne wishes they were). She put a "trigger" in his head to make him loyal and obedient to Torchwood leaders. In a different universe, he got to work in a museum as an archivist and lived happily ever after. Consensually.

2) Lisa. His relationship with Lisa seems consensual on the surface, and it is. Probably Ianto's healthiest relationship before her conversion. But factoring in Yvonne's comments in The Rockery, Retirement Plan, and Dinner for Yvonne, it seems Yvonne *liked* Ianto. He was her closest advisor, knew her routine "intimately", and her mother saw something between them. And her mother's partner is a direct parallel to Ianto. But Yvonne manipulated him and lied to him every day. Acting on her (heavily implied) feelings towards him would be non-consensual, so she pushes him towards Lisa. She pays for his date with Lisa, she urges him to ask her out. It seems manufactured. And Ianto at that point is manufactured. Yvonne has molded him completely, and she also molds his love-life. I'd argue Ianto is so close with Tommy partially because Tommy is the only Torchwood One operative who doesn't try to mold him in some way. He just wants Ianto to survive "in case anything bad happens".

3) Rachel. Self-explanatory lmao. She used him to get closer to the heart of Torchwood to then destroy it.

4) Jack. It's all consensual until Shrouded. At this point all consent is thrown out the window. Ianto couldn't run away for his family's sake, and unwillingly continued to have a relationship with Jack. Even if this was subconscious. Then you have House of the Dead with Ianto's resurrection, also non-consensual, no matter Jack's good intentions. Ironically House of The Dead demonstrates one of the only times Ianto makes a life-changing decision completely willingly. You could also say that Yvonne's "trigger" is still active as well with Jack. Which would make this relationship non-consensual too.

5) Mairwyn. With Mairwyn, it's toxic af and dubiously consensual. He is practically cornered and trapped. Either go with her, or khs. Ironically, despite her being morally black, she's in the same league as Lisa in terms of how healthy the relationship is. Yet, she also has no problem with physically abusing him, or punching him if he refuses to agree with her. But imo GDL framed this as Ianto's "happy ending".

John Hart tortured him, abused him physically, and had no regard for him as a human. Yet they spend 14 years together, and Ianto seems at least okay by the time of Rhys' death. At least with John Hart, Ianto knew it was abuse. And so do fans. But when it comes to Ianto's other relationships? They're arguably equally as toxic. And the abuse is less obvious but very much present

So if you're gonna hate on Johnto shippers, hate on every other shipper too while you're at it.

[meta-squash]

I have a hypothetical/thought experiment about Torchwood potential episode reordering. I think it would have made so much more sense and been so interesting to place Fragments in between Meat and Adam.

Meat is a fairly innocuous monster-of-the-week episode with no throughline consequences/story arc for the most part. Except at the end of the episode Rhys is allowed to leave Torchwood, memories intact. This serves to establish a "new" precedent for Torchwood and emphasizes Gwen's sort of special treatment.

Now, we place Fragments next.

The intro/outro conflict would have to change of course (the building exploding/John Hart's message), because that has to come at the end of the series. So maybe instead the team (minus Gwen) get trapped in some other way. Maybe something like the Isolus in the DW episode Fear Her, something causes them all to "disappear" and get stuck somewhere. Or maybe there's some alien item/creature that traps them half inside walls and furniture, as if they phased through a wall and got stuck. You know, something that traps all the characters in one place so that the important plots playing out are their backstories, which we watch as each person gets free (like in the actual episode).

Maybe whatever traps them either sends them into the Void or into something void adjacent/void contaminated. They don't know this when they get free, and they destroy whatever it was that causes them to get trapped, or deactivate it and take it back to the hub.

Gwen does not arrive at the end of the episode like in the original. Instead, the new version of Fragments takes place a long enough time after Meat that Rhys is healed, which means she's on vacation with him in Paris (which is what seems to be implied in Adam). This allows the memory-based alien from the void the time to infiltrate the team, so that when Gwen returns from vacation the next day, the episode plays out the same.

The rest of the series also plays out the same, either replacing Adrift with something that reintroduces John Hart and ups the ante some other way, or having a little scene at the very end of Adrift maybe of Jack watching Gwen take down all her missing posters, and then he gets a threatening message from Hart. Or the reintroduction of Hart just gets shifted into the start of Exit Wounds.

But now that Fragments has come first, the rest of the series playing out the way it does normally allows for a whole lot of interesting character development.

In Adam, we get to see the drastic difference between everyone's backstories and who they became as we know them, and whatever Adam has done to manipulate them. It also means that we can see, for example, the difference between terrified and uncertain pre-Torchwood Tosh and the Tosh we know, and this confident fake-Tosh. We can see the difference between Owen before Katie's death, and Owen the loveable shithead, and this fake-Owen who's so awkward and nervous and sad in a completely different way. (And, as Tosh and Owen's personalities are essentially flipped in this ep, we have a better perspective on both.) We get to see the start of Jack and Ianto's relationship, how it's literally built on lies and manipulation from the start, and therefore how compelling it is that Jack is 100% certain that Ianto has been manipulated by some creature.

Seeing Owen's backstory makes his 3-episode death/resurrection arc more compelling, because we can see how much Katie's death broke him, we understand his self-destructive tendencies and their source better (especially with the little addition of his childhood lore at the end of Adam), and we can see why both death and undeath are upsetting for him. We get to see his interactions with Martha as two people who respect each other but also the way in which his flirting is less serious and more almost territorial. Then we'd also get to see his reaction to Maggie, whose tragedy is so similar to his, meaning that his support and encouragement toward her is really for both of them. In the original script for ADITD, when Owen is cleaning out his flat he also throws away photos; one photo could have been of him and Katie. It makes it more compelling: suddenly the audience (and Owen) has a moment of realizing that there's no afterlife and he'll never see her again.

Again in Something Borrowed everyone's backstories just make their actions in the episode a bit more compelling. Owen going to a wedding while dead means the audience keeps in mind that he was going to marry Katie but she died, and even if he could now he'd be dead, which emphasizes both the uniqueness of Gwen's wedding and the threat of it too (this could all be destroyed etc etc). Toshiko's loneliness is emphasized more, and again the audience is reminded that Tosh hasn't seen her mother in 4 years at least. And yet again, like Owen, we're reminded of Ianto's relationship with Lisa, but also his relationship with Jack.

From Out Of The Rain and Adrift don't have many moments that would be too affected by knowing everyone's backstories, except that I think seeing the effort Ianto went through to get into Torchwood to help Lisa makes the effort he goes through to save everyone and the way losing so many souls affects him seem to be a sort of linear line, in that From Out Of The Rain is an episode that mostly focuses on Ianto's feelings and vague backstory re: the Electro. Adrift happens, which everyone else is barely in, but we now understand the cruelty of past Torchwood and perhaps can be a little more sympathetic to Jack about it. Which makes it maybe a little bit clearer why Ianto did what he did pointing Gwen to Flat Holm.

We get from Adrift to Exit Wounds through whatever way (replacing Adrift, just a little scene at the end of Adrift, idk) and then Exit Wounds occurs the way Exit Wounds plays out in the actual series.

This arrangement just allows a lot more interesting character development and way more play (either for the actual writers or just viewer brains) with character motivations. Watching for the first time, I'd have felt Owen and Maggie's conversation was a lot more compelling if I already knew Owen's backstory. I'd have found Tosh's new confidence in Adam simultaneously unnerving and uplifting if I'd just seen her shaking and traumatized in Fragments. Jack's behavior throughout a lot of the series (both his ruthlessness and his mercy) would make more sense seeing the things he'd gone through in all his years at Torchwood, and the way in which he became leader. It also puts emphasis on how Jack never wanted to be a the leader of Torchwood, and despite his knowledge he's kind of bumbling and thrashing his way through it, which then explains his treatment of Owen in ADITD, or his decisions re: Flat Holm in Adrift.

So that's my theory on a hypothetical rearranging of episodes. Of course, at this point it doesn't matter at all because we've all watched the series a million times so we're aware of the backstories no matter what. But I just think it would have been more compelling storytelling for first-time viewing.

[caffeinatedowlbear]

Hello,

I have a really stupid, almost embarrassing question about your Rhack texts headcanon (specifically 'Lost and Found', but not only). Somehow I have only now noticed that a couple of fics have a trans-Rhys tag. Does that imply Rhys is a T-male in the whole 'Lost and Found' series?

I mean, I checked throughout the texts once again, and it kinda fits in place if I'm not misreading it. I mean, it's totally fine if I am misreading it. But if the answer is 'yes', if I'm really not misreading it, then OMG IT'S BRILLIANT. I don't know how to grant you a truckload of kudos, because that would be the most exquisite, the most top-notch accurate T-inclusive smut in the world I've ever read!!!

Sorry for emotions, it's a bit personal for me, and I'm just head over heels for this little detail.

Sincerely,

A huge, huge fan of yours :)

Hi, I hope it's okay to answer this in public; if not, lmk and I'll take it down.

I can confirm that you're correct! In my Lost and Found AU (including spin-offs), Rhys is a trans man. I noted it specifically in the tags for the smut fics because I felt that was the one time when anatomy was relevant, lol

Throughout the main text of L&F, I didn't draw attention to Rhys's gender identity because it isn't a plot point, but just a part of who he is. However, the clues are there if you know where to look - and it sounds like you've been picking up what I've been putting down. 😏

Some extra headcanon / L&F canon:

- AI Jack has always known Rhys is trans; it's the kind of thing you pick up when sharing a body.

- In his earlier forays into the VR (including during the time period where the smutty spin-offs take place), Rhys would use an avatar with cis-male anatomy (because why not), but later adjusted his digital form to match his body out in the world.

Thank you for your kind words, and I'm very happy to hear the trans rep in my Rhack fics brought you joy! 💛

[heavybreathingcatt]

rereading WAW for the nth time (i swear i can never get sick of it) and rereading that chilling becoming jack chapter where he nearly kills Lawrence and the trance sounds like AI jack… iirc the story caught up to every other future trance scene except for this one, which leaves me dying to know if it’s coming back in part 2. i mean, rhys’ canon sure has to do with AI Jack, which makes me very concerned for Lawrence, seeing as that trance implied the AI was finally implanted into him. Very very nervous to see what circumstances we find my beloved old awful man in. I await patiently but with much excitement <3

MASSIVE WOLF AMONG WOLVES SPOILERS… but yeah…. 😅

I’ve been waiting for someone to comment on this for ages! (Thank you!) Yes, Timothy has had this long held gut feeling that the AI jack will return because of what happened in the trance. This also adds context for why he was so convinced Felicity betrayed him (by selling his body to AI jack for the knowledge to save Angels life). I however have added enough clues to suggest she did betray him or that she did not and it was all in Lawrence’s head and his own paranoia. You as the reader get to interpret what truely happened. I won’t say otherwise. But I secretly know the truth :p

Buckle up for part two cause Jack ain’t dead. Not really.

[vole-mon-amour]

here's an idea: Jack and Rhys walking side by side, Jack's hand is in the back pocket of Rhys' trousers. Just casually gripping Rhys' ass cheek while Rhys is absolutely unbothers, which implies Jack does that all the time and Rhys doesn't mind. 😁

[sosorryjack]

I think people who hates Rhack has an interaction problem and i can’t take it anymore!!!

Before i say this i want to stress that i do not wish for sympathy or comfort. I simply wish to talk about this as i feel like i’ve been holding this problem long enough.

I’ve been into Borderlands for almost a year, and while i do love every single member of this community, and even though it’s been only a year, the issue i face made my time feel like for an eternity. And not in a good way.

Now, for starters. I ship Rhack it was my first ship in this fandom, and while i do ship Rhys with different characters, Handsome Jack has always been my go-to. Obviously, Rhack is usually the two being toxic with one another, and that’s what made me like them!1!!1!! They’ve been my source of comfort and they mean a lot to me. They really got me through some dark times. However, the people who don’t like it are extremely vocal and can be pretty hard to ignore. Of course, to me, I thought if i simply ignore it and do my own thing, I’ll be fine. However, it wasn’t long until they got to me on my insta.

Rhys is implied to be in his late 20s and Jack in his late 40s. Both are adults.

This is a poor yet humerous attempt at threatening me with violence but it shows that they’re willing to spend their time yelling at a wall

And this.

This simply scraping the surface and it caused me to limit interactions with other people such as comments, replies, etc. I do not know why people are willing to spend their time draining themselves over a ship they do not like and let out their anger on other people, If you hate the pairing that’s fine that’s entirely on you but the derogatory comments i recieved over Rhack made me want to leave the internet multiple times. If you hate the pair, that’s great i do not care, but please don’t do this. I am tired.

[a-luran]

Oh my gosh I want to know more about all of them but in particular the Kirkland revivals band sounds very intriguing and is giving me visions of the bros in a band and I am losing my mind 👀 and PLEASE I need to know more about the werewolf au

phi-phil! hello! it is in fact a band fic like the title implies. I may posted a bit about it before but in essence:

Sean, Alasdair, Rhys and Arthur all grow up on the road and on top of each other, all of them the children of legacy folk musicians from across the UK. Sean and Alasdair are part of the older lot of children kicking about, doing odd jobs until Sean graduates into performing backing vocals and instrumentals when he vaults over seventeen. Alasdair could be doing the same if he wanted to, he certainly has the voice and the composition skill, but he is finds his niche in their mismatched community as a technician; a jack of all trades with a technical degree. Arthur spends his early teenage years watching Alasdair fix and carry equipment like it weighs nothing and learns something that tastes a lot like craving. Something more visceral than longing. Rhys is an easy child, stubborn and well loved although comes up chaffing against the constant travel. They grow up around each other, on top of each other, camper vans and sleeping bags under nylon, under the stars. They are a good draw together, talented and brought up like kin. They have never known anything except this; the road, the music, and each other.

(And what Arthur treasures most: the mornings when he slips into Alasdair's camper to share his warmth. The evenings when Alasdair will tune his violin for him and strum along on his guitar to whatever Arthur composes, slowly coming into his own as a musician. This fic is not scoteng-centric exactly, but it does take a shine on his relationship with Alasdair especially. And his journey as a trans man and a singer.)

A lot of things come to head and inevitably the band falls apart. Rhys applies to university and gets in, and although he only tells Arthur it puts a strain on his relationship with everyone. Sean is constantly fighting the people who manage them, for valid reasons but also partly because he is on a warpath after his biological father contacts him. Alasdair is getting more and more responsibilities piled on him under the guise of 'we are all family here; surely this is not labour exploitation'; they barely see his hide around. What deals the final blow is when Arthur comes into rehearsals one morning, a few months shy of eighteen, with his hair shorn off. He'd spent some three years at that point negotiating how he presented when it was just 'their family' and being pressured to keep up appearances when performing. Rhys having the courage to apply for uni is what tips him off, that and the realisation that he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life pretending he isn't a man just to save face. And now, Arthur has always been headstrong but the way he shouts back that day when their 'manager' confronts him is the end of it. Alasdair misses the shouting match and only realises that Arthur finally cut his hair when Arthur comes to find him after his nights shift. He cards his fingers through the choppy nape of his neck and doesn't know what to say. His silence is plenty though, and Arthur makes up his mind.

He prepares, sees his eighteenth quietly, and three weeks later he is gone. Slips away early in the morning and takes only what he can carry with him. Clothes that belonged to each of them; Sean's fiddle. What little cash he has to his name.

The rest of the fic follows him as he busks his was from the UK to Nashville. Francis takes him on as a manager and helps set him up and support his gender transition with gigs. The others don't hear from him until Rhys does a mad dash to the radio when he recognises Arthur's voice crooning form an ocean away. I honestly love thinking about this fic and I spend a lot of time just adding songs to a playlist for it.

The werewolf AU was born from an extremely self indulgent idea. It is 60% smut, 25% fighting 15% more smut. Alasdair and Arthur grow in a group home but become estranged by well over a decade after Arthur runs away. The both end up resenting and missing each other by equal parts. Alasdair is attacked by a werewolf while he's out in the woods one night and with his body spiralling out of control the only person he can think of (and that he instinctively seeks out) is Arthur who has been carving out a life for himself. Francis is a necromancer living across the street from him in this one and again 10/10 just pure self-indulgence on my part.

Thank you for asking about these! I'm so happy to talk about them.

[allysr00m]

I left twitter cos, I noticed how horrible the ofmd was to Taika, always turning on him if he made the slightest mistake, mocking his appearence and bodyshaming him if he had his hair in a way people didnt like or was wearing clothes people didn't like (he always looks beautiful ffs, even if he looked amazing theyd find something to roast, even just finding out how much his clothes cost and shaming him for that, even if they were probably given to him and he didn't pay, they acted like they were punching up cos hes rich but these were often white people and everyone acts like he grew up rich he didnt he grew up poorer than most of them probably), shaming him for his marriage, being kind of grossed out by him calling him old and implying he was cringy and not being able to compliment Joel or Samba without shitting on Taika (Samba would not take kindly to that he and Taika are mates), while being so protective of Rhys and especially Con, Taika is soooo much prettier than both in my personal opinion but Rhys and Con looked perfect the way they were to them but Taika was never good enough (also ignoring when Rhys wore Versace but shaming Taika for designer clothes, but it was a damned if you do damned if you dont with Taika, cos he dressed up he was shsmed for wearing expensive clothes, he dressed down he was shamed for 'losing his style'), while people also didn't like Rosie, Rhys was seen more as a victim of her whereas Taika was seen as more culpable abd has 'bad taste', also Con could be closest to the two youngest cast members (Vico and Nathan) and do effing tiktok dances with Vico (and unlike Taika, he actually looks his age whereas Taika looks younger) and no one woould call him cringe like they did when Taika was in Rita's tiktoks, and ofc Con would make mistakes and he would be defended and forgiven and even treated like a victim whereas Taika was suddenly the devil when he messed up.

I would talk about this (as it's obvious racial bias) and people would accuse me of hating Con and bullying him! (And even haying Rhys lol), and someone screenshotted one if my tweets and a bunch of people were shitting all over me calling me a creepy stalker obsessed with Taika and a hater towards Rhys and Con and pretty much implying I was racist towards white people (I am white), so like, it's there, but you talk about it and youre bullied offline.

Overall, the blue bird app just seems like a toxic cesspool of hate, and ofc there's El0n and the creepy racist criminal Jack o lantern too many people voted for is still on there.

[wainwrightjakobshammerlock]

Frameworlds: a Triptych of Alternate Histories (1002 words) by hallowlock Chapters: 1/3 Fandom: Borderlands (Video Games) Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s) Characters: Rhys (Borderlands), Handsome Jack (Borderlands) Additional Tags: Trope Subversion/Inversion, Deconstruction, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chapter 1 Tags:, Rhys is Handsome Jack's Personal Assistant, Implied/Referenced Drug Use Summary:

Three unique takes on common Borderlands fanfic tropes, one per chapter.

1 - PERSONAL ASSISTANT 2 - A SUITABLE REPLACEMENT 3 - LOCKED FROM THE AFTERLIFE

(I chose not to use archive warnings to avoid spoilers, and also because unfortunately this fic sort of is meant to shock you. Avoid this if you don't want to be surprised.)