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boldlyvoid · 3 years

Text

Wheels Up

Characters: Spencer Reid, Reader (Y/N), Aaron Hotchner, David Rossi, Derek Morgan, Savannah Hayes, Emily Prentiss, Elle Greenaway, Tara Lewis, Jennifer Jareau, Matt Simmons, Luke Alvez

Summary: JJ goes on maternity leave, Spencer falls in love with her replacement that he's supposed to be mentoring, Emily Prentiss and Elle Greenaway work a case together that brings Simmons and Alvez in for help...

Warnings: Genius!Reader, mutual pining, idiots in love, drinking, star gazing, lots of fluff, mentions of past assault, grooming, drug addiction, spencer's trauma, Abductions, Rape, Murder (typical canon violence)

word count: 9.4K

a/n: this is for @starry-eyed-spence and @simmonsmilf CM fanfiction week, Day One: Favorite Character... only I couldn't pick just one.

To say Spencer fell in love at the least opportune time was a bit of an understatement. Everyone he’s ever come close to admitting his love to has either left him or died. Now he’s stuck with loving someone in secret, keeping it to himself and hoping that one day she’ll love him back.

He fell in love with a co-worker once again… which wasn’t the worst thing, office romances happen and it’s quite frankly all Rossi’s fault that they even had to worry about fraternization policies. The part that makes liking Y/N so difficult is that he’s supposed to be her mentor, he’s 5 years older than her, and if he was to ever make a move she would feel inclined to reciprocate in order to keep her job because that’s the unfortunate truth behind office relationships with significant differences in positions.

And worst of all… she doesn’t like him that way at all. She’s called him the brother she always needed, a best friend, the best mentor ever. She wasn’t interested in him in the slightest.

“And why would she be?” He’s said this to everyone who knew about his crush on her. “I’m old and boring and she’s so cool?”

But he didn’t get it. He didn’t understand that every time she asked him to hang back to help her file something, or when they would buddy up in hotel rooms to discuss cases all night and end up down some star trek rabbit hole instead, every time he talked to her she was falling in love with him right back.

It once again all circles back to Rossi, if it wasn’t for him, Spencer wouldn’t even know her. She wouldn’t have ever been introduced to the unit, he wouldn’t be attached to her at the hip and he probably wouldn’t be as happy as he is with her in his life. Even if she wasn’t his girlfriend.

He’ll never forget the day Rossi asked him to meet her, to help her settle in…

“Spencer, can I talk to you for a minute?” Rossi called him into his office.

He sighed, putting his book down and walking up the stairs to his office. He closed the door behind himself and smiled awkwardly, “what’s up?”

“Sit,” he gestures to the chairs in front of his desk, where Spencer pulls one out and proceeds to sit down, anxiously. “As you know, both Kate and JJ will be out of the field in the next few months to have their babies and we need to bring someone in to fill the void until they return, so I reached out to the academy to see if they have any up and coming Dr. Reid like agents that they could loan us.”

“Why?” Spencer laughs at the choice of words.

“Well, honestly, why get new 2 agents when we could have two Reid’s? JJ will be back after a month or 2, it’s better to have more brains than brawn.”

“So they found someone and you want me to be their chaperone?” Spencer clues in. “Who are they?”

“Y/N Y/L/N, she’s a wonderful agent, but she’s pretty quiet, I don’t know much about her personally.” Rossi prefaces. “She’s a genius, high IQ like yours and just a plethora of knowledge inside that mind of hers. You’ll like her.”

“Alright,” he nods. “When do they start?”

“When JJ’s water breaks, but I’d like you to meet them and maybe even have them shadow you for a day?” Rossi asks, “I’ve actually arranged for you both to get dinner at a friend's restaurant?”

“Is this an arranged date or purely business? Don’t send me in there blind,” he worries. “I need at least a week's prep before I go on a date again.”

“It’s not a date, kid,” Rossi laughs. “She's just a lot like you were when I met you, and I know from watching you all these years that it’s not easy to do it alone, so can you just walk them through it?”

“Of course.”

That first dinner Rossi set up for them was more exquisite than either of them prepared for.

They spent the whole night discussing dissertations and their independent journeys through becoming a genius. He understood perfectly why Rossi and the Academy would think she was a lot like him, she was a genius, but she was awkward. It took a while for her to break out of her shell and open up, but by the end of the night, he already knew they were going to be friends.

“So,” she smirks, “would you mind telling me honestly how hard this job is?”

“Why?”

She sighs, “I’ve heard a lot about Thee Doctor Reid and how you were the youngest hired to the BAU and all the shit you’ve been through.”

“What are the rumours these days?” He awkwardly smiles back, rolling his eyes slightly.

“That you were brain dead in a cemetery from an overdose and yet you’re so smart you came back from the dead to kill the unsub and escape…” she looks more and more disappointed in the rumour as she tells it.

His tongue hits the roof of his mouth as he opens it to speak, making a tsk noise as he shakes his head. “Well, I did OD but it was the unsubs main personality that resuscitated me.”

“Holy shit,” she whispers.

He nods, “what about you? I’m sure you have a reputation based on a rumour?”

She presses her lips together the way he always did, just as awkward. She sighs, huffing the air out of her nose and looking fed up. “I was groomed and assaulted by an older boy who then told kids I had a stalkerish crush on him so if I was to ever tell anyone what happened, then no one would believe me.”

“I’m so sorry,” Spencer knows the words don’t make up for what happened. “I’m guessing that’s why you wanted to get into profiling?”

She nods, “I got away with some PTSD and trust issues, most girls go through much worse… they deserve someone who gets it to look into their cases.”

Spencer nods. “That’s how I felt after my kidnapping too. It took a while for me to look at crime scene photos and not think about how they felt, and wonder why I lived when so many die?”

“I’ve never been a religious person,” she prefaces. “But I do believe we are here for a reason. Whether you choseto be here after your last life or this is some learning opportunity, or God is actually real? And you’re supposed to do good.”

“In narcotics anonymous, they reference god a lot, it’s helpful for the addicts, but I never get into it,” he opens up with her more than he’s ever opened up with any friend. “If my Devine purpose is to suffer in order to relate to those I’m supposed to help that’s a load of bullshit… honestly, I can get pretty angry thinking about why I’ve gone through what I’ve gone through doing this job, but it’s not as bad as what happened to me growing up, and it leads me to believe that I probably wouldn’t have had an easy time no matter how I live.”

She nods, “I know, I get that.”

“Sorry,” he snaps out of it. “I didn’t mean to trauma dump on you.”

“It’s exactly what I asked for actually,” she reminds him with a soft smile. “If you can still come to work every day, after all that, you must be incredibly strong— and if I’m anything like you the way people say I am, I guess I can do it too.”

He had no idea she would end up being his best friend.

She shadowed him just once in the office, picked up everything right off the bat and immediately made a name for herself in the unit. Derek tried multiple names on her before one stuck, and they knew it stuck when even Hotch called her Baby Genius.

She brought a different knowledge base to the team, similar to Spencers but visibly younger. She fit in with the crowds of kids they had to interview, she understood why kids reacted the way they did to trauma and abuse, and she was still a kid at heart. It was the reason Spencer fell for her.

She allowed him to feel free again. They went out together outside of work, going to events he always wanted to go to with a partner but never had a chance. She loved all the same things as him, and she takes him to places he’d never imagine enjoying before her.

Like laser tag… that was an afternoon he’ll never forget with her.

When JJ went into labour, that’s when Y/N started full time and Hotch hired Tara Lewis in the same week. The team barely had time to adjust to being undermanned before they were restocked.

Joining Spencer every morning for every case, she waited out front of her apartment for him to pick her up most mornings, sticking to his side throughout the long days and nights until he drove her home again. Even at work, they were partnered up for everything: heading to the M.E. together, bouncing facts back and forth at the precinct, playing good cop bad cop with perverts, and her personal favourite… Making the geoprofile.

And Spencer liked doing that part with her as well. Because it typically meant they were completely alone in a room, spreading out a map and leaning in close to each other as they placed every sticker and marker. Brushing hands, bumping shoulders, longing glances as they made connections… he also just liked to watch her hands move.

She was delicate and careful and precise… and he was falling in love with everything about her as the days went by.

Everyone on the team had noticed. It was really hard not to when they’ve all known Spencer for almost 11 years now. He was so different with her in his life, he was happy and giddy and dressing even better than before. His hair was perfect and he was glued to Y/N’s side. Or she was glued to his.

Even though they were mentally similar, physically they were polar opposites. Y/N wore all black and was a lot more outgoing than they expected. Rossi thought she’d be quiet… But she was constantly talking. To Spencer, to other officers, to witnesses, she never stopped talking and starting conversations, and thank god she did because she’s cracked 4 cases that way.

The biggest surprise the team learned about her happened on a case in Florida, a shooting in a local park in broad daylight with lots of witnesses meant the whole team was on the boardwalk asking questions. She went out to do her thing, talking to the local skaters, asking them if they knew anything but they didn’t want to cooperate.

They were too cool for the feds.

“Can I see your board?” She asks, “if I do some tricks will you answer some questions for me and Doctor Reid?”

“Knock yourself out,” one of the boys laughs as he hands her his board.

She hands Spencer her gun and shoots him a wink before taking off to do a few tricks. The whole team watches in awe then as Y/N showed off. Cruising along the halfpipe effortlessly like she was a professional.

“Okay Tony Hawk,” Morgan teases her, “where did that come from?”

“Skateboarding is easy, it’s just physics,” she shrugs. “I can figure skate too…”

“What do you want to know?” The boy takes his board back. “We always see some sketchy guys around here.”

Morgan pats Y/N on the back with a smile, applauding her ability to get anyone to open up before leaving her to take the statement.

“Agent?” One of the girls pulls her aside just before they are about to leave, “how did you do that kickflip? I’ve been trying to learn and the boys won't help me.”

“Sure thing,” she takes the girl's board and demonstrates a kickflip first.

“So, you see as I start the kickflip I bend my knees?” She shows her another kickflip all while explaining it. “Much like the with an ollie, I’m building pressure so I can apply it to the tail, making the board pop. The one thing that makes this trick different from the ollie is that instead of sliding my foot up, I just flick my toe out to the right of the board, by doing this, the board flips in a 360-degree motion.

She demonstrates again and it’s another flawless kickflip, and a huge smile on her face as Spencer watches her.

“How fast the board spins depends on how much force I put into it when I flick it out. As soon as the board flips in a full 360, your feet should connect and drive the board back to the ground.”

She hands the board back to the girl, “your turn.”

She takes a deep breath and shakes her nerves out before taking off on her board, looping around and carefully bending her knees, she follows every step and it’s a flawless kickflip.

“Flawless!!” Y/N claps. “Those boys better watch out, you’re a natural.”

“Thank you,” she wraps her arms around Y/N and gives her a hug, “it’s taken me so long to be able to do that, you’re so cool.”

“You’re welcome,” she smiles. “Good luck out there.”

She waves as she takes off on her board, leaving Y/N with a smile as she turns to Spencer. “I miss being that age and thinking everything is so cool.”

“You are really cool,” he agrees. Smiling softly as a blush fills his cheeks. “You’re always surprising me. Is there anything you can’t do?”

She laughs, “yeah the one thing I want to do the most.”

“Which is?”

She sighs, “maybe I’ll tell you someday.”

—

He’s sitting beside Penelope and Savannah, watching Derek and Y/N get drinks for what’s left of the group as the night drags on.

“When are you going to tell her?” Savannah asks.

“What?” Spencer pretends he doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

“You have a crush on the new girl…” she pokes his cheek as he blushes and gives it away. “Tell her, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“She could feel forced to say yes because I’m a supervisory special agent and she isn’t and she wants to keep her job so she feels like she needs to,” Spencer worries. “I want her to like me back because she fell for me and I want her to initiate it because then I’ll know it’s not just a power dynamic issue.”

“Have you tried asking her, genius?” Penelope teases. “Because if you asked her then you’d know she has a crush on you and she’s afraid you’ll turn her down because you’re an SSA and she isn’t.”

“When did you hear that?”

Penelope pretends to lock up her lips and throw away the key, making Savannah laugh loud enough to get Derek's attention at the bar. When he and Y/N return, that’s when the questions start.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Spencer gets up and leaves the booth, walking out towards the smokers' exit at the back of the bar, getting a moment of semi-fresh air to think about what Penelope said.

“Spence?” She calls to him from the door, “are you okay? Can I come out here?”

“Yeah,” he nods. “Sorry, I needed some air, it’s nothing.”

“Do you need a hug? I read it helps the most when people are stressed out,” she plays it off with a shrug.

“So you do have a crush on me?”

“She told you?” Her face lights with fury, “what the fuck, Penelope?”

“She didn’t mean to,” he tries to cover it up. “It was only brought up because I have feelings for you as well.”

Her eyes widen, her brows raise and her mouth slowly opens as she freezes.

“Y/N?”

She blinks a few times and shakes her head, “impossible. There’s no way.”

He laughs, “I’ll take that hug now?”

She lunges for him and wraps her arms around him so tight. Breathing him in, her hands wander his back as she takes in every second if it and he does the same. He can’t believe she’s that close to him, her hair smells nice and she’s so soft in his arms.

It’s quiet outside, they can hear the music behind the door, the people in the ally talking and the crickets in the night. It’s just them outside, holding each other in the smoking section with smiles on their faces, amazed that it’s finally happening.

“Can we keep this between us?” She whispers into his ear. “Just for a bit? I don’t want to go through all the paperwork and have to separate in the field if it doesn’t work out?”

“Wait,” Spencer pulls back. “Are you asking me to be your boyfriend?”

She nods, “well yeah isn’t that what happens when two people have a mutual crush? They date?”

“Okay,” he smiles, staring at her lips and then flicking his gaze back to hers with a blush. “I have more than a crush on you, I really, really like you.”

“Prove it,” she teases, “let's go on a real date soon?”

“You know what, let’s get out of here. I have something I want to show you,” he takes her hand and waits for her to nod.

“Take my lead okay? You don’t feel good and you’re going to wait outside while I say goodbye,” she has a plan right away

“After you,” he holds the door open for her and lets her inside first.

—

“I’m taking Spencer home, he’s not doing well,” she’s a much better actress than Spencer expected, patting his back and watching him leave the bar before her like she asked him to do. “He’s really anxious?”

Penelope looks worried, “oh no, I fucked up. I told him you like him.”

She just shrugs, “if he didn’t know that already then I guess he’s not as smart as he pretends to be.”

“See,” Derek looks at Savannah. “I told you everyone else also thinks he’s faking being that smart.”

“Shut up,” she shoves him and turns her attention back to Y/N. “Go make him feel better, he’ll like your company.”

“I’ll see you guys at work on Monday,” she waves them goodbye, surprised they bought it as she rushes her way back outside to Spencer.

He’s already in his car, engine running and waiting for her with a smile. “Come on,” he hurries her inside and is taking off down the road before she even has her seatbelt on yet.

“What’s the rush, Spence? It’s only 1 in the morning I’m sure tones of places are open still?” She teases.

“You’re going to like this, I used to go here all the time when I started with the bureau,” he explains, leaving the main road to take a back root, and eventually they’re driving on gravel.

“If you’re taking me here to murder me this is a dumb way to do it because they all know I left with you,” she teases. “At least when you go to get rid of me, do yourself a favour and dig 6 one-foot holes instead of one 6 foot hole…”

He laughs, “would you really give your murderer tips?”

She nods, “my goal would be to piss him off so much he either lets me go or murders me quickly. I don’t want to go through all the pain.”

“It’s not fun, that’s for sure,” he shrugs it off but she knows it hits too hard.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, reaching her hand out for his to hold by the gear shift. “I think you’re like the strongest guy in the world, you know that, right?”

“Why?” He asks as if that's a preposterous thing to say.

“I think if I got kidnapped and tortured at 24 I wouldn’t still be working in the FBI,” she admits. “I barely made it through the academy, I know this job is intense but I don’t think I could handle being in that situation.”

“If it’s up to me,” Spencer squeezes her hand tighter and brings it to his lips for a kiss. “You’ll never experience anything like that.”

He’s so good at making her feel safe that she almost believes he has the power to do that. He would do anything and everything to move fate for her safety.

He turns down another back road then, around the edge of a lake and towards a clearing. He follows old tire tracks and parks by the dock. “I found this spot one night on a random drive to clear my head.”

“I thought you hated driving?” She quizzes him.

He shrugs, “I like to drive at night when no one else is on the road because then I don’t really have to worry about anyone else. I hate driving because I can’t always anticipate other drivers' movements. If I could read minds, then I’d drive more.”

“Valid,” she nods, “now why is this such a special spot that you needed to show me right away?”

“Well, I have a telescope and it’s been in my trunk for the last 13 years so that every time I come here, I can look up at the moon…”

“You brought me here to look at the moon with you?” She swoons, “that’s so cute.”

“You think?” He looks like his heart is doing the same swelling as hers.

She gets out of the car before she can lean over and kiss him the way she wants to. In his trunk, he does have a telescope, and a blanket, which they set out on the dock and sit upon.

The sound of the lake, the loons in the distance, frogs and crickets and music travelling from somewhere down the lake. The moon was big, the stars were amazing, and this was the closest she has ever seen them. It's amazing, and of course, it was Spencer showing her everything.

He was everything to her.

And it didn’t take long for him to become everything to her either.

Joining the BAU was a dream to many at the academy, but Y/N never thought that she would get the job, overjoyed that she did. They were a family unit; they got the job done, they protected each other, and it was a wonderful environment to be a part of. She obviously liked Spencer the most out of everyone. He took her in, he made her feel comfortable and safe and she opened up more with him than she has with anyone she’s labelled a “best friend” in the past.

She liked everything about him. The way he talked with his hands, how his sweater, vest, shirt and tie always match, his gun looks a little out of place on his belt, like it’s too big for him, but it’s cute. His hair’s been getting longer too, sometimes he wears glasses and sometimes if she’s lucky, he doesn’t shave every day.

She can’t take her eyes off him when he’s busy and won't notice, just to then move her focus away when he stared at her. She only wishes she could see the way he stares at her in awe, because if it’s anything like how she looks at him, he must love her.

She keeps her hand in his, trading the telescope back and forth in turns, her face was close to his every time they switched and she kept getting bolder with each exchange. Letting Spencer look, she kept her face close to his, kissing his cheek softly as soon as he was busy peering up at the moon.

He turned to her with a gasp, “what was that for?”

“You’re cute,” she shrugs. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for a while.”

“How long?” He teases, leaning in closer and kissing her nose to make her laugh.

“Since you dropped me off at my house after that first dinner…”

“So this is me,” she nods out the window, “thank you for the ride, I appreciate not having to be in an Uber all by myself.”

“Anytime you need a ride, you can give me a call?” He asks. “Seeing as we’ll be going to the same place anyway.”

She nods with a smile, “I’d love that, do you live close to here?”

“Just up the street,” he nods. “So we could carpool?”

“I can drive some days if you want?” She asks, “I know you mostly take the subway, and I know that because I’ve seen you reading on there before.”

He can’t help but smile, “so you never thought to say hello?”

“No,” she shakes her head, “you looked peaceful, and I’m sure you don’t get many moments like that in your line of work.”

He sighed, knowing she was right. “If it ever gets to be too much for you, please never feel like you have to pretend to be okay? None of us expect you to be stone cold, none of us are either. The job gets to us, just tell me if it gets to be too much?”

She looks from his lips back to his eyes and over again, “thanks, Spencer.”

He does the same to her, “anytime. Should I walk you to your door?”

She shakes her head, “that’s okay you’ve done enough for me tonight.”

“Fair enough,” he laughs. “Have a good night Y/N.”

“You too, Spencer,” she smiles before she exits his car, smiling at him from her porch before he drives away.

“So it’s been mutual this whole time?” He shakes his head at the absurdity. “I’ve been so lonely for so long and then I found you and you make me feel like I don’t need to be alone anymore.”

“You complete me too,” she makes one more comment before connecting their lips.

It’s like the world stops then. It’s silent and serene and everything she thought kissing Spencer Reid would be.

She pulls back with a smirk, “oh no.”

“What?” He worries.

“I’m going to want to kiss you all the time now…”

“Good,” he mumbles the words against her lips before reconnecting them.

—

At work on Monday, it’s very hard for them to look at each other without remembering that they’ve kissed. Spencer’s practically glowing with admiration for her that he gives it all away. He’s overly happy, offering to do things for others, standing way too close to her and bringing her coffee all morning.

“Okay, pretty boy,” Derek takes him by the scruff of the neck and redirects him into his office. “What’s going on with you today, I know you’re not this happy for JJ’s return?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you get laid or something?”

Spencer laughs, “no, you know I don’t get laid. You actually remind me of that fact quite often.”

“You’re so happy I’m worried you’ve moved to crack,” he says it. “Okay, you were acting weird on Friday, you missed brunch on Sunday and now you’re waaay too happy.”

“I’m not on drugs again,” Spencer assures him. “I’m just letting myself enjoy my time with Y/N, if she falls in love with me in the meantime that would also be nice.”

“Oh, so you’re doing this to get laid,” Derek teases him again. “That’s good, I’m sorry if I triggered you by asking, but I had to make sure you’re okay.”

“No, no,” he places his hands on Derek's shoulders, “thank you for caring.”

“Always—“

“Guys!” They hear Hotch yelling from the bullpen, cutting the tender moment short, saving Spencer from spilling the truth.

Rushing back, he sits beside Y/N at the briefing room table. “We have a bad one,” Emily Prentiss of all people walks in the door, followed by Elle Greenaway.

“We’ll have time to mingle in a minute, right now there is a woman who needs our help,” he announces.

Spencer quickly reads over the case files, recognizing Elles handwritten notes, she was a private investigator now. “With Penelope’s help, I’ve been able to set up alerts in College chatrooms in the area so that I can help to missing and assaulted women right away.”

“She’s alerted when someone reports a missing woman and she has advertisements for people to reach out to her for help,” Penelope explained.

“I’ve been working on these cases for the last 9 years,” Elle announces. “This morning Aasia Desai called me saying her sister Bahni never showed up for lunch and it’s not like her, we know she went clubbing last night and so far Penelope’s tracked her down an ally and then she’s gone.”

“Her parents are British diplomats so Interpol has asked me to join, luckily I was just in Ontario so it was a short trip over,” Emily adds. “JJ will be here in half an hour for her first day back, and we will celebrate when we can, but I see we have some new faces here?”

“Special Agent Y/N Y/L/N,” she waves, still glued to Spencer’s side. “I’ve heard a lot about you both from Doctor Reid.”

“Doctor Tara Lewis,” she stands and shakes Emily’s hand, and then Elles.

“So it says here that the first missing case was in 2006 just after you left the BAU?” Spencer changes the subject before anyone can pry into why he would be telling her about the women who worked there before her.

“I did,” Elle nods. “I was too late for her, by the time her parents realized she was missing and called me in the case was cold. I started this as a way to get ahead of it.”

“How long has she been missing?” Tara asks.

“She was last seen at 1:07 this morning,” Elle confirms. “We have 25 hours, maybe, to beat the odds.”

“Reid,” Hotch cuts in, “I would like you and Elle to go check out the street she was last seen on, find any private cameras or anyone who might have seen something.”

He turns to Y/N who just shrugs in silence; “it’s fine.”

“Tara and Derek, I’d like you to interview Aasia when she and JJ get here, Garcia can you do a deep dive into Bahni’s spending and academic records?”

“Sure thing,” she starts clicking away on her computer immediately.

“And Y/N,” Elle looks at her. “I need you to go over the footage of the man who followed her to the alley and get familiar with his face. We’re using you as the face of the investigation to hopefully draw the unsub out.”

“How would she be able to do that alone?” Spencer gets defensive, a way he used to with JJ when she was the media liaison.

“If she goes on the news and makes Bahni seem like a person while describing the unsub as someone who can help solve the case, it will draw him out,” Emily explains for Hotch, who is glaring at Spencer for second-guessing the plan already.

“And she’s college-age,” Elle adds. “If that’s who he’s been going after all this time he will want to come in and talk IF he can talk to her.”

She places her hand on his leg under the table, “it’s a good plan.”

“It is,” Hotch agrees.

“What do you not have a saying to replace wheels up when they stay in town?” Elle teases him.

“Wheels away?” Emily joins her, “that works?”

“just get to work,” Hotch tries not to smirk at them.

Spencer stands up to leave with Elle, “can I just talk to Spencer before he leaves?” She carefully asks Hotch.

“Make it quick,” he agrees reluctantly and lets her follow him down to his desk.

Spencer rests his hands on the back of his desk chair, holding it tightly in an attempt to calm himself down.

“I’m going to be fine,” she assures him. “I don’t think the guy on the tape took her, we’d see him leave if he did.”

“Unless he lives in the alley,” Spencer combats. “Can you ask Penelope to do a background check on all the cars coming in and out of the campus and that street between midnight at 2 am?”

She nods, placing her hand on his gently. “Good luck out there, okay?”

He nods, “it’s been 2 days they’re going to know by the end of the week.”

She laughs, “so be it.”

He says fuck it right then and there, wrapping her up in a hug and kissing the top of her head as the team watches in the briefing room. “I’ll see you later.”

“Yes you will,” she smacks his side as he lets her go. “If you’re going to make a scene at least give me a real kiss.”

“Hmm,” he teases. “No cause then I’d have to sign some paperwork and I’ve got to go…” he starts to back away.

“Coward,” she teases.

He just shrugs, meeting Elle by the door and heading towards the elevators in silence.

She doesn’t ask, not even when they get to the garage or inside the SUV. They’re driving down the road for maybe 2 minutes when Elle finally brings it up. “So—”

“What do you want to know?”

“It's that easy now? What happened to you?” She teases. “You’re so different from the baby Spence I left.”

“Well you missed my drug problem, my dad being a possible child molester, getting shot in the knee, getting shot in the neck, my girlfriend dying, and now my mom might have Alzheimer's so you know… I had to grow up a bit,” he lays it all out for her to ask any question she wants.

“Why don’t you ever call me? I would have been there for you through anything,” she reminds him.

“I know that,” he reaches over for her hand, “thank you. But I was a big fan of suffering in silence… and now I have Y/N and she makes me feel normal?”

“That’s good, you deserve some fraction of normal in your life and she’s really cute,” Elle smiles back at him before returning her focus to the road. “How old is she?”

“27,” he smiles. “She’s the best.”

“You love her,” Elle notices it.

He presses his lips together to fend off a smile as he nods, “I think I do.”

“Tell her, you deserve to hear that someone loves you back.”

—

She’s anxiously tapping her foot as she waits for the elevator to arrive with the suspect, Rossi standing just behind her. Only 15 minutes after being on the news, the man that was in the security footage contacted them. Making his way over for a voluntary interview.

He looks Y/N up and down with a smile, “I heard you were looking for me.”

“I sure was,” she plays along with it, smiling and making him think she’s interested as well. “I knew you’d get the message, we just need all the help we can get right now.”

“Of course,” he has his ego stroked so well that they can roll with it.

“Would you mind coming with me and Agent Rossi to talk about everything you saw?” She batts her lashes at him, really selling it.

“Sure,” he follows them down the hall.

Rossi opens the door and lets them in first, letting her get him settled and a glass of water. “So you can tell me everything from that night?”

“Sure,” he nods, explaining his taxi job, his run for the night and his alibi.

“So why did you step back into the doorway?” She asks as she sits in front of him. Straight-faced as she catches him off guard.

“Excuse me?”

“You stepped out of the way to let her pass and then followed her, she made no motion to say she wanted your services, so I’m just wondering why you would follow her before she disappeared?”

“Huh,” he suddenly feels played and his personality switches. “I thought this was just a chat?”

“I’m simply asking you questions? If you don’t have answers that makes you suspicious. An innocent person would have given me an answer,” she fights back.

“She’s right, you got very defensive very fast,” Rossi finally speaks up.

He shakes his head with a huff. “I was going to ask if she needed a ride, she looked pretty messed up. And then some guy came over and wrapped his arm around her and they walked off. They seemed to know one another. I thought she was safe in his hands.”

Only his tone doesn’t match the words. He sounds jealous— It’s not like she would have been a large tab, he wasn’t jealous because he lost a customer. No, he’s jealous like someone stepped in and prevented him from snatching an easy victim.

“Fair enough,” she pretends to believe him. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

“I can go now?” He changes right back to confused.

She nods, “I’ll escort you down if you’d like?”

“Thanks,” he stands and follows her to the door where Rossi stops her.

“Are you sure?”

She nods, “I’ll be back up shortly.”

She catches up with him by the elevators, “did you have to drive far to get here?” She makes small talk.

“Not really,” he shakes it off. “I like your necklace.”

She touches her necklace and her face drops, “thanks.”

“Necklaces are my favourite.”

“You don’t wear any?” She notices in the form of a question.

He shakes his head as the elevator opens at the ground level. “I think they’re nice gifts.”

She nods along, pretending that didn’t set off every ret alert and alarm in her mind, “well here you are. Thanks again for all the help.”

“No problem,” he goes to leave, turning to stop and block the doors from closing. “If you want, later tonight I can show you everything I saw at the alley?”

“Yeah, sure,” she agrees with no plan to go.

“8 pm? At Cafe Linda?”

“See you then,” she agrees and he steps back letting the door close and then she loses her cool.

Feverishly smashing the floor 6 button, and begging to make it back up to Hotch to tell him everything. But she also just wants to cry but she holds it in as she makes it to their floor matching past Rossi and right into the briefing room.

“He may not be our unsub but that man is a creep,” she announces. “He not only complimented my necklace but he asked me to come to the alley tonight so he can walk me through what he saw.”

“You’re not going,” Hotch announces.

“I didn’t plan to,” she snaps. “I think we need to look into him because he’s either giving little girls necklaces to keep them quiet or he’s taking necklaces after he kills women.”

“Kathy’s parents said she was in a necklace when she went missing,” Emily adds. “His connection to this case and being at NYU right before she went missing gives us enough probable cause for a search warrant.”

Hotch sighs, “fine. I’ll call a judge, you and Y/N can go and search his place.”

“So shouldn’t we arrest him before he leaves the building?” Morgan asks.

“He’s still in the garage, I’ve let the security know to stop him and arrest him at the gate,” Garcia adds, listening in and planning in advance.

“Thank you,” Hotch smiles at her, “you’re always reading my mind.”

Garcia smiles back at him, “always, sir.”

“Okay, let’s go,” she looks at Emily and waiting for her to turn to leave the room.

“Let’s,” she motions for Y/N to take the lead and follows.

The drive to his house is so weird… she doesn’t quite know how to talk to Emily, knowing only slightly about her and her knowing nothing about Y/N.

“So how long have you and Spencer been dating?” Her first question just gets right to the point.

She laughs awkwardly, “3 days…”

“Oh…”

She hums as she nods along, looking out the window and avoiding Emily’s eye contact. “It’s new, we’re both pretty infatuated with each other but we’re taking it slower than most people because I’m afraid to let my feelings change how I do the job.”

“Makes sense,” Emily replies. Her voice is so sweet, she has an aura of calm that follows her and lets Y/N feel safe. She gets why Spencer said she was his best friend on the team before her.

“The necklace comment… why did it make you so wary of this guy?”

“When I was in middle school a guy gave me a necklace while he was grooming me,” she whispers. Looking out the window and pretending it doesn’t bother her now. “It’s fine, I don’t have it anymore, but I knew this guy had that same vibe.”

Emily put her hand out, letting Y/N interlock their fingers and hold it. “I know I just met you, but you’re family now. I’m here if you’re ever suddenly not fine with it anymore…”

“Thanks,” she smiles. “Let’s get this fucker.”

—

By the time the warrant went through, Spencer and Elle had joined them to search the first suspect's house while Emily left to help the rest of the team with suspect two. Tracking all the license plates in the area like Spencer suggested lead them to a Chinese food delivery driver in the area.

That didn’t stop Y/N from destroying her suspect's house. They tore the house apart, searching every nook and cranny for any answer that would make sense. She was tempted to lift the floorboards up, call in SCSI to run ground-penetrating radar and search the fucking walls if they had to.

But then she found it.

A small metal box in the laundry room contained some tools and when she lifted up the fake bottom, she found 5 necklaces.

“Elle!!” She yelled through the house.

They both came running down the hall to her, “is this Kathy’s necklace?”

“Oh my god,” she whispered with a nod.

“I want to kill this guy,” she mumbles under her breath as she places the necklaces back in the box and closes it up.

“Spencer doesn’t need another girl he has a crush on to murder someone and get kicked out of the bureau,” Elle teases.

“What?” Y/N asks.

“Way to go,” Spencer nudges her.

Y/N stands up with the box and slides it into a large evidence bag before taping it up. “I guess he has a type then.”

“I don’t,” Spencer tries to cover up. “I mean, if I do then it’s people who are nice to me…”

She smiles at him, unable to even pretend to be jealous or mad. “It’s hard to be mean to you when you’re so cute.”

“Ew,” Elle announces her disgust as she leaves the room.

“Let’s get out of here before I end up kissing you in a murderer's laundry room,” Spencer teases, taking her hand and leading her out of the house as the rest of the forensics team takes over the bagging of evidence.

“Guys,” Elle rushes back to them with her phone pressed to her ear. “We have a bigger problem than we thought with Bahni.”

They rush into the SUV, putting the team on the speaker to hear the most unthinkable. “So I did what Y/N suggested and searched every single driver coming in and off-campus and the last street she was seen on,” Penelope explains back. “And I came across a man who was delivering Chinese food under the name Tom Larson… and it’s ironic his name is tom because he has a plethora of peeping offences and general creepiness alongside a metric shit-ton of abuse from his dad and dead mother.”

“Okay?” Elle follows.

“Tom Larson lives near Bahni,” Emily explains, “I was just at his house where I found him and his father had been murdered.”

“So we have not 1 but 3 creeps in this case, and none of them are who took Bahni?” Spencer rubs his eyes. “Please tell me we know who was in Tom’s car last night.”

“That’s where it gets tricky,” Penelope says with the doles tones of keys clicking behind her words. “We were just contacted by the fugitive Taskforce because they believe one of the murderers they’ve been tracking took Bahni… but he has ties to a much larger scale global sex trafficking ring.”

Elle flies through the streets with their lights on, pulling back into headquarters and right up to the security check. “So who is this guy?”

“Once you get back up here, Agent Simmons and Alvez will explain everything,” Hotch confirms. “I’m taking Derek to see Cruze, we need to tell him what’s going on.”

“Sounds good,” Elle hangs up and throws the SUV in park.

Y/N hesitates, staying put and taking a few breaths as Spencer watches. Elle’s left the car and is already on her way to the elevator. “What’s wrong?”

“Can I just have a hug real quick?”

“Yeah,” he wraps his arms around her and holds her close. “Are you okay?”

She nods against him, “yeah it’s just good to have at least 8 hugs a day.”

“Hug me whenever you need to,” he whispers against her hair, kissing the side of her head before she pulls back.

“Kisses are helpful too?”

He smiles, leaning in and pressing his lips to hers, mumbling against them, “how many?”

She hums, “10?”

He pecks her lips 10 times and counts each one, making her giggle, it takes so much effort to hold her smile back to keep kissing him but she feels much better.

“Thank you,” she beams and she can swear Spencer's eyes sparkle as he smiles back.

She pulls him into another hug, “I hate that we have to go catch a killer right now.”

“Come on then, as soon as we get him we can go on another date somewhere?”

She shakes her head, “after this case I think we should take a nap together… I’m exhausted and I don’t want to let you go.”

Spencer shakes his head in amazement, “you really like me?”

“Yeah, maybe I do,” she teases him. “You should get used to it because it’s only going to get more intense and I will smother you with love.”

He just shrugs, “it’s about time—“

They’re startled with a knock on the window, “we get it you’re in love, can we go now?”

“Sorry!” Y/N calls back with a giggle, pulling him in for one last kiss before getting out. Spencer follows with a deep blush that everyone will see when they get back upstairs, but it looks cute on him.

Luke Alvez has been trying to catch one criminal for the last 2 years. Simon Garrett has been a pain in the ass for the FBI, the CIA and DEA. He first showed up on their radar when his DNA was found on 14 women’s remains, all of who had been missing for at least 5 years.

His DNA was then traced to his son in the foster system, who’s been off the radar for the last 10 years. Everette Garrett.

“Now he’s interesting because I’ve been investigating his sex trafficking ring between Canada and the United States,” Matt adds. “All 14 women his father's DNA was found on were thought to be in his ring, which means when they get too old he hands them to his father to take care of.”

Y/N shakes her head as she listens, “so if you’ve been looking for them for this long what makes you think we can find them in time to save Bahni?”

“We’ve been tracking him for a while, we knew that he had a new girl on his radar and when we heard it was Bahni Desai we knew it was time to get you guys,” Matt explains.

“So far we know that she has to be taken to this warehouse in Alexandria before she goes any further, we’re going to intercept them before they make it to the warehouse and then use their car to gain access to take the whole thing down,” Luke rolls out a map of the facility then.

“We need to have the place surrounded for any runners, SWAT is getting prepped, we’re going tonight at 3 am,” Matt adds. “Morgan, Hotch, Prentiss, Alvez and Myself will be running a team at each of the 5 exits. Once inside, each team's swat unit will deploy gas to carefully knock everyone out, from there we need someone to cuff everyone at least until we know who is a victim and who is working there.”

“We’re taking everyone alive?” Spencer makes sure he hears them right.

“We need to know what the step after this warehouse is if we want to rescue more victims,” Luke’s voice is gentle yet stern as he explains. “I’ve seen this man take too many women from good homes and ruin their lives, I’m not letting him slip out of my fingers.”

“We’ve had this planned for months, we just needed to wait for the next confirmed drop-off.”

“Who’s driving?” Y/N asks, having a feeling it was her and Spencer.

“He’s Reids age,” Hotch announces from the door as he walks in with Cruze, “so we’ll replace Everette with Reid and Bahni with Y/L/N.”

“Rossi and Elle will be there to apprehend Everette, we’re setting up a fake traffic spot to irritate him and inhibit him from running. You two will be in a duplicate car arriving at the warehouse at the arranged time,” Emily confirms. “We just have to prep SWAT and then we can leave.”

“Alright, let’s get ready.”

—

Pretending to be kidnapped in the back of a car driven by her boyfriend was possibly the weirdest way to spend a Tuesday morning. Driving the exact make and model as their unsub, her heartbeat was loud enough to cover the sound of the engine and distract her from the long drive. She was overly anxious, and rightly so, it was her first sting.

And she was doing it all without coffee. Tired but full of adrenaline, she wanted to close her eyes and drift off but she knew she needed to be ready to apprehend the men at the gate with Spencer.

She feels the large bump, indicating they just went over a speed bump and she knows what that means. The car slows and she can hear the muffled talking before swat steps in, soon enough Spencer is cracking the trunk open and reaching in for her.

“Are you okay?” He helps her to her feet and makes sure her bulletproof vest is on right before handing her, her gun and watching her clip it on.

“Yeah, what happened?”

“The guards are down, Swat moved in as soon as we arrived, now we have to stand here and wait for them to clear the building,” Spencer explains as they walk to the front of her car.

She draws her gun and keeps it pointed low, guarded as they watch the front entrance for anyone to escape. “Do you know if Bahni is okay?” She whispers towards him.

He nods, “they radioed in that they got her, she’s being airlifted to the hospital with JJ right now.”

She nods with a deep breath, “okay good.”

“It’s going to be fine, we have enough SWAT here to take the government,” he tries to joke, getting a laugh from one of the officers… very strange to see someone laugh while holding an assault rifle.

One of the swat side steps towards Spencer, “I’m hearing on the line that they’ve cleared every room. They’re cuffing everyone, you’re free to enter.”

“Thanks,” Spencer replies.

The high-pitched screech rubber gripping asphalt in an attempt to stop draws their attention backwards. Elle and Rossi jumping out with their guns drawn, ready to join even though the exciting part is long over.

“No runners?” Elle asks, holstering her weapon. “Aw man, I was excited.”

“Not a one,” Y/N adds, watching the front entrance for the rest of the team to start funnelling out with the unsubs.

Luke exits first with a big smile on his face, Simon Garrett cuffed and barely stumbling out the door in front of him. He finally got him.

“well done,” Elle congratulates him. “Let me help you get him in SWAT van.”

“I think she has a thing for Luke,” Rossi leans into Y/N to gossip. “she wouldn’t stop asking about him on the drive…”

“Ooo,” Y/N teases, getting more and more tired as her adrenaline drops. Her eyes are heavy and Rossi can tell.

“Why don’t I bring you and the good doctor home, I don’t think they need all of us for the wrap-up,” Rossi pats her back. “You’ve had a long night, kid.”

“Thank you,” she smiles, holstering her gun and turning with him towards the SUV. “I’m so exhausted.”

“Well you’ve been on the job for almost 24 hours now, you’ve officially made it through your first overnight sting op,” Rossi congratulates her like he’s her grandpa.

She turns back when she doesn’t hear Spencer following her, “Spence? Are you coming?”

“Um,” he has something to ask as he follows then but he doesn’t say it. “Yeah, sorry.”

“It’s okay, come sit with me in the back?” She asks, sliding in beside him and resting her head on his shoulder as soon as their seatbelts are on.

“Did you still want to have a nap together?” He whispers, feeling her nod against his shoulder before she pulls back.

“Come here,” she tugs him in against her chest, snuggling in as best as she could in their sitting position. Holding him close and feeling him drift off in her arms. She has no problem following suit.

When she wakes, Rossi is parked outside of her apartment, “here you go, Y/N.”

She hums as she comes to, shaking Spencer awake too, “Spence, come on, let’s get to bed.”

“He’s going with you?”

She nods, “don’t tell Penelope. She’ll have a field day, I just want a nap.”

“You better get more than a nap,” Rossi orders. “You guys need to actually rest before you come back to work on Wednesday.”

“Thanks, Dad,” she teases him. “We will.”

“Bye Dave,” Spencer whispers as he gets out of the car. “Thank you for the ride.”

“Anytime kid,” Rossi waves them off, waiting for them to enter the building before driving away.

“Finally,” she sighs, dragging Spencer down the hall and towards her apartment. “I’m so fucking tired.”

“me too,” he barely says.

He follows her inside like a lost puppy, taking off his vest and shirt, slipping out of his pants until he’s in an undershirt, boxers and his mismatched socks. She’s amazed by how comfortable he is with her, but she has known him for 3 months, it’s enough time to fall in love with someone… right?

She’s loved him since she started working with him. When she realized he valued her opinions, he looked at her as a person and he genuinely loved her company. She felt a real connection with him, not just childish infatuation. He was everything to her.

She slides into bed beside him and snuggles in, wrapping an arm around his middle and resting her head on his chest.

“I guess I really can do everything,” she smirks.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

She pokes his chest and giggles away the awkwardness, “the thing I wanted to do most, the thing that I couldn’t do… that was to fall in love with you, but I did it anyway.”

“Well, then I guess I can do everything too.”

She pulls away to look at him, “I love you, Spencer. I don’t know if it’s too soon, but I’ve loved you for a while.”

He pulls her in for a kiss, shocking her as he breathes her in and holds her there. “I love you, more Y/N.”

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myenterpriseisparked · 3 years

Text

The Voyager Bunch

Or, Rascals: Voyager Edition

-----

Based on this post

This is dedicated to @jellybeansarecool @bizships @emilie786 @joyful-voyager and @subtle-spock for providing ideas, encouragement, and for generally being really awesome people. Also they are the nicest folks ever. Go follow them.

This ain’t my first fanfiction rodeo, but it is my first Star Trek fanfiction rodeo so I beg for your patience. Also, I am perfectly aware that there are some plot holes in here. This is because I am an animal scientist, not a Starfleet physicist/biologist/whateverist. Swiss cheese also has holes and swiss cheese is good so please consider that.

Click here to read on AO3, if you prefer. Thanks for reading!

-----

Despite having only been a captain for a few years, Kathryn Janeway had seen more unusual occurrences, courtesy of the Delta Quadrant, than most Starfleet captains combined. Some days, she felt a little overwhelmed by the summary of the last three years of experiences. Other days, she was grateful for the callouses such challenges had built over her nerves, preparing her to face even the strangest incidents without panicking.

Today was a day to be grateful, because without having seen everything she had seen, the prospect of her Chief Engineer, Chief of Security, Head Helmsman, and most brilliant Ensign being reverted into child-like versions of themselves would have launched her straight into a spiral of panic.

“How-” Janeway paused for a moment to pinch the bridge of her nose, “how exactly did this happen?”

“Well, ya see, ‘Lanna and Harry and I were in that shuttle and then this big black thing showed up and we flew into it and there was a big flash and-”

Janeway held a hand up, cutting off the shockingly fast string of prattle. “I think I understand that part, Tom, thank you.” She spoke as gently and patiently as possible. “What I don’t understand is how Tuvok got into this.... predicament.”

She turned toward the tallest of the four children, who stood with his hands behind his back in a way that would have been exactly like Tuvok, if the pre-teen boy weren’t fidgeting with the hem of his shirt and looking around the bridge, open mouthed and starry-eyed. “Tuvok?”

The Vulcan turned toward her. “The shuttle was stuck in the anomaly and the tractor beam wasn’t working, so I rammed my ship into theirs to dislodge it.” Tuvok nearly smiled, which was jarring to see on his features, no matter how much younger he looked. “It worked, but I got sucked into the anomaly too. When we came out the other side, we looked like this.”

He motioned to Tom and B’Elanna, who were standing next to him, both of which appeared to be around the age of 5 or 6. Harry, who looked to be about a year old, was currently tucked into Chakotay’s arms, playing contentedly with the rank bar at the large man’s throat.

Janeway looked the group over, ignoring the humored smiled playing at her first officer’s lips. With a sigh, she turned to the members of her senior officer team that were not currently under the age of 13. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“I would like to run some experiments first, but I am wondering if I can age their DNA back to the correct age in a process similar to the one I used to turn you and Mr. Paris back into humans after the, ah, Warp 10 incident,” The Doctor said.

“That might put their bodies back at the right age,” Kes said, brow furrowing, “but their minds appear to have reverted to their new biological age as well. Will the DNA reversal process fix that?”

The Doctor tilted his head. “I’m unsure. I need more time to research and run simulations.”

Janeway nodded. “Get started on that right away. In the meantime,” she turned back to the children and her commander, “let’s get you four something to eat.”

Neelix jumped to his feet, practically lighting up the room with his enthusiasm. “I’ll fix you kiddos up something real nice!” He dashed over to the door with a wild grin. “Give me ten minutes, and I’ll have the best grilled cheese sandwich you’ve ever smelt!” He saluted the whole room and practically bounced out the door.

Janeway glanced over at Chakotay who, for the first time since he had picked up baby Harry, looked nervous. His worried glance met her own and he tilted his head.

“Well,” Chakotay sighed, “hopefully these guys aren’t as picky of eaters as I was.”

-----

As unappealing as Janeway found Neelix’s cooking to be, it was, apparently, perfect for kids, as evidenced by the unrestrained glee with which Tom, B’Elanna, and Tuvok devoured their sandwiches.

The captain couldn’t help but smile as Tom downed the second half of his sandwich in a few bites and think how the older version of Tom would have been appalled to see himself eating Neelix’s cooking with such enjoyment.

As the older children ate, Janeway found herself spooning some kind of mashed vegetable mix into Harry’s waiting mouth. At first, she was a little uncomfortable with the idea of feeding one of her best officers, but, once she was able to get past the strangeness of the entire situation, she found herself enjoying the funny expressions and eager attitude of the baby in front of her.

“Gosh, he’s such a cute baby.” She said with a grin for the fourth time.

Chakotay leaned over, his shoulder brushing hers as he smiled at Harry. “I’d like to agree with you, Captain, but you keep hogging him so I can’t get a good look.” He turned to look her in the eye, raising his eyebrow teasingly.

She shoved him playfully with her elbow. “You got to hold him earlier in the conference room. It’s my turn.”

“I think your turn ended about ten minutes ago,” he grinned.

“I think I can find something else for you to do if you’re going to take Harry away from me, Commander.” She returned his grin.

“Fine,” Chakotay shook his head with a chuckle, “but I get him later.”

-----

Several hours had passed since lunch and, much to Chakotay’s disappointment, baby Harry was still firmly in Janeway’s possession, perched on her hip and looking for all the world like he belonged there.

Chakotay tried not to think too much about how naturally Kathryn had taken to caring for Harry as he watched her pace the bridge, checking on various scanner readings and flight paths, from his position on the floor by their command chairs. Beside him, Tom and B’Elanna rolled a ball back and forth between them, excitedly chattering about... well... everything.

“Do you think the whales were really THAT big?” Tom spread his arms out to the side.

“Yeah they were!” B’Elanna exclaimed loudly enough that the entire ship could probably hear it. Despite Chakotay’s best efforts to get her to lower her voice, the young girl seemed to only have one volume. “I saw a big fake one in a museum once and it was HUGE!”

“Whoa!” Tom’s eyes widened. “Bigger than this ship?”

B’Elanna tilted her head. “I don’t know, but it was definitely bigger than me!”

The two kids laughed, rolling the ball back and forth faster.

“Hey Tom?”

“What?”

“You’re my best friend!” B’Elanna suddenly reached forward and gave Tom a hug.

Chakotay glanced up at Kathryn to exchange a look of awe before he turned back to the kids on the floor. “But B’E, I thought you just said a few minutes ago that I’m your best friend.” He raised an eyebrow, hiding his smile.

The young girl gave him a look that he had seen far too many times on her older counterpart’s face whenever he said something particularly dumb. “I can have two best friends, duh.”

He laughed. “Fair enough.”

Suddenly, he saw Kathryn’s purposeful walk stop out of the corner of his eye.

“Chakotay,” her voice was even and tense, “where’s Tuvok?”

Eyes widening, Chakotay glanced around the bridge. Tuvok was no where to be seen.

“Chakotay to Tuvok.” He stood as he tapped his commbadge. “Tuvok, please acknowledge.” They waited a moment and, upon receiving no response, moved simultaneously toward the turbolift.

“It’s possible he hasn’t figured out how to use his comm.” Janeway tucked Harry closer to her side as they stepped into the lift. “Computer: locate Tuvok.”

“Unable to comply.”

Janeway gave the ceiling a glare. “Why?”

The computer did not respond.

“Maybe the de-aging effect has made it difficult for the computer to locate him.” Chakotay rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure he’s alright; he’s probably just exploring the ship; you saw how amazed he was by everything in the conference room earlier.”

She nodded tightly. “Let’s hope so. Where do you think he’s gone?”

“Maybe to the holodeck?”

“Or his quarters.”

“What about the mess hall?”

“He just ate.”

They both paused, mulling it over.

“Alright.” Kathryn straightened. “I’ll check holodeck one and his quarters, you check holodeck two and the mess hall.” She turned back to the lift door. “Holodeck one.”

Chakotay swallowed around the lump in his throat, trying not to think of all the ways a small child could get hurt on a spaceship like Voyager. As the turbolift began to move, Janeway’s badge chirped.

“Kes to the captain.”

Her brow raised as she tapped the emblem. “Go ahead.”

“I think I’ve found something you’re missing.” Kes’s usually lighthearted tone was even lighter, clear amusement seeping through.

Kathryn turned to look Chakotay in the eye, a hopeful smile brightening her face. “I’m on my way.”

-----

Honestly, Janeway was a little ashamed of the fact that she didn’t think to go looking for her best friend among the orchids and other plants in the aeroponics bay, considering his horticulturally-related hobbies. As she and Chakotay stepped into the room, smiles crept onto both of their faces as they watched Tuvok carefully transfer one of Kes’s sprouts to a bigger pot. After patting the soil around the plant firmly, he wiped a hand across his forehead, smearing dirt on his face to match the dirt on his uniform.

Kes smiled up at the command team. “He came down and asked about a hundred questions about our system and then offered to help me with my work while we talked because its ‘more efficient to talk and work than simply talk.’”

Janeway chuckled at Kes’s approximation of Tuvok’s speech pattern. “Thanks for letting us know, Kes.” She reluctantly handed Harry to Chakotay, who flashed his dimples, and crouched next to Tuvok. “Hello there.”

Tuvok glanced up quickly before resuming his work. “Hello, Captain. Did you know that these Talaxian green beans take only a week and a half to reach maturity?”

“I did not.” Janeway raised a brow and tilted her head. “That’s very impressive.”

“I thought so too when Kes told me.” He patted the soil around another plant and set it aside, retrieving another sprout.

“Tuvok,” the captain reached forward and rested a hand on his shoulder, “I’m glad you’ve found something to do, but you have to tell someone where you’re going before you wander off. We didn’t know what happened to you and Chakotay and I were really worried.”

Behind her, Chakotay’s heart flipped. There was something rather... intimate about the way she had referred to both of them being worried about a child.

“I’m sorry, Captain.” Tuvok nodded his head. “It won’t happen again.”

“Good.” Janeway smiled and stood. “Why don’t you help Kes down here for a while and then come back up to the bridge when you are ready?” She looked at Kes. “That is, if Kes is alright with that.”

The young woman smiled. “Of course, I’d love some help.”

Janeway nodded and turned back to Tuvok. “Be sure to let us know when you’re on your way back up.”

“Of course, Captain.”

She patted him one last time on the shoulder and turned back to Chakotay. They fell into step beside one another and entered the elevator.

As the doors whooshed closed, Janeway turned to Chakotay with the intention of reclaiming Harry, but stopped. A smile grew across her lips as she watched Chakotay bounce Harry gently, allowing the little boy to palm his tattoo in curiosity. Even as one of Harry’s chubby fingers poked him in the eye, Chakotay simply chuckled and took the tiny hand in his own.

He finally turned to look at her. “What?”

Kathryn just shook her head, grinning wider. “I was going to take Harry from you, but I can’t bear to break up this cute little arrangement.” She motioned to the two of them with a long finger.

The corner of Chakotay’s mouth kicked up a little higher. “Captain, did you just imply that I’m cute?”

Her brow arched, but her smile didn’t diminish. “It would be hard for anyone to look unappealing with a cute baby in their arms.”

Her heart stopped suddenly as she realized what she had just said. From the look of Chakotay’s face, he had caught it too. Implying that he and the baby were cute was one thing; calling him “appealing” was another. Before she could say anything else she might regret, Kathryn turned back to the lift door, schooling her features back into the face of the Captain.

If she had turned but a half-second later, she would have seen a wide smile break across Chakotay’s face.

-----

“I’m sorry, Captain, but I need more time. I won’t deactivate myself until I have a solution, but this situation is very delicate and I can’t risk rushing my tests. You’ll need to find somewhere for the children to sleep. Hopefully I’ll have a solution tomorrow.”

Kathryn nodded. “Of course. Thank you, Doctor.”

With a grim smile, the feed from sickbay switched off, leaving her to look at her dark reflection in the black screen. Something like relief swept over help alongside a touch of regret. On one hand, she could really use her senior officers back in functioning shape. On the other hand....

Her eyes drifted back down to Harry, who had pulled a bit of her hair out of it’s ponytail and was curling it around his tiny fist in unbreakable fascination. A smile tugged at her lips as she cuddled him a bit closer.

She could get used to this.

The thought struck her before she even knew what she was feeling and, as soon as she admitted it to herself, she took that feeling and shoved it as deep into the recesses of her mind as she could. She was the captain of a ship that was constantly in danger and she shouldn’t dwell on things she couldn’t have.

Kathryn sighed, rubbing the back of her neck. “Well, Harry, looks like we need to find you a place to sleep.”

Turning back to the computer, she moved to set him down so she could use both hands to search the crew quarters layouts for a suitable place to keep the children overnight. As soon as Harry’s feet touched the ground, a wail rose from the back of his throat and his face scrunched.

Kathryn quickly scooped him back up. “Harry? What’s wrong?”

The boy’s cry of protest faded into whimpers and he buried his head in her shoulder, clinging to her tightly.

A warm feeling washed over her. “Ah,” she smiled, “I see.”

She pulled him closer and turned back to the computer, tapping buttons with one hand. “You can stay up here with me, then.”

The door to her quarters chimed.

“Come in.”

Before she could turn to greet her guest, mischievous giggles rose from the door. Eyebrow raised, she whirled around to find Chakotay standing in the doorway, a stack of PADDs in his hand, a tiny engineer on his left leg, and a tiny helmsman on his right.

He stepped forward with far less difficultly than she would have expected, given the extra weight on his legs. He crossed the room quickly and passed the PADDs to her. “The crew reports you requested.”

“Thank you.” She smiled, glancing down at the still giggling forms. “Not to alarm you, Commander, but it would seem that you have a couple of lifeforms attached to you.”

Chakotay’s eyes grew wide in mock surprise. “Really?” He turned his head and shuffled around, as if to look at his back. “Where?”

Tom and B’Elanna’s laughter grew. Suddenly, Chakotay leaned over and scooped the two of them off his legs, lifting them both up over his shoulders as their shrieked in delight.

He turned back to Kathryn with a wide smile. “Not to worry, Captain, I’ve apprehended the life forms.”

She smiled back with a soft chuckle. “We need to find a place for the life forms to stay tonight.”

Chakotay’s smile faded into a more serious, but not displeased look. “The Doctor doesn’t have a solution yet, then?” He lowered Tom and B’Elanna to the ground. They scampered off to the viewport, excitedly chattering about the stars.

“No, he needs a bit more time.”

Chakotay nodded. “Maybe I could take them for the night, that way someone is there to keep an eye on them.”

Kathryn shook her head. “I have no doubt in your babysitting abilities, Commander, but four children is a lot for one person to watch alone and your quarters are not big enough for Trouble 1 and Trouble 2 to run around in.” She gestured to the kids at the window.

“Fair point. Maybe I should take Harry and Tuvok then, and you could take Tom and B’Elanna?”

She turned Harry away from Chakotay. “Trying to take my boy again, are you Chakotay?”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Do you have another idea, then, Mom?”

Her breath caught in her throat, but she managed to smirk at him and continue speaking without any indication that his previous sentence had impacted her. “My quarters are the largest on the ship. If we set up cots here in my living room we could easily both keep an eye on the children overnight.”

“Sounds good to me.” He glanced up at the clock on the wall. “How about I go collect Tuvok from aeroponics and some food from the mess hall while you get the cots set up?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

He gave her one last lingering smile, which she returned, before heading out the door and down the hall.

-----

Apparently the lunch they had shared earlier that day had been misleadingly easy. Supper was, to put it lightly, a challenge.

“B’Elanna, eat your own food and stop taking from Tom’s plate,” Kathryn said firmly.

“But Tom isn’t eating it!”

“I was going to eat it! I’m just a slower eater than you are!”

“Well eat faster then!”

“B’Elanna!” Chakotay set down the spoon he had been using to feed Harry and fixed her with a stern look. “That food isn’t yours, and Kathryn already asked you to stop taking Tom’s food. You won’t be asked again.”

B’Elanna mumbled out an apology and stuffed another bite of her own meal into her mouth.

Kathryn shot Chakotay a grateful smile and turned to Tuvok, who was holding up one of his vegetables to the light. “Tuvok? What are you doing?”

“I’m looking at the xylem and phloem of this plant.”

She bit back a smile. “I appreciate your curiosity, Tuvok, but I need you to stop studying your food and start eating it.”

The young Vulcan turned to her and nodded. “Of course.” He politely chewed and swallowed his food and turned back to the captain. “Did you know that this particular plant is a distant cousin of Terran broccoli? You can tell by the-”

Chakotay smiled as he watched Kathryn listen to Tuvok’s fourth lecture of the evening on plant biology. Neither of them were certain of what he was talking about most of the time, but his enthusiasm for the subject was nearly infectious and neither of them minded listening.

“Chakotay?”

He turned away from the scene across the table and looked at Tom next to him. “Yes?”

“After dinner, will you read to us?”

“Of course.” Chakotay smiled and ruffled Tom’s hair. “Anything particular you want to hear?”

“I want to hear about your missions with the Maquis!” B’Elanna bounced in her seat, all of that barely-contained Klingon energy starting to spill over.

“Or perhaps you could read to us from a classic story,” Tuvok raised a brow. “I’m fond of the works of Tolkien, maybe Tom and B’Elanna would like ‘The Hobbit’ too?”

“What’s a hobbit?” Tom’s face scrunched in confusion.

“Maybe,” Kathryn interjected before Tuvok could give a detailed recounting of the beloved childhood book, “Chakotay could tell us a story from his tribe.” Her eyes met his across the table. “He is pretty good at recounting ancient legends.”

Heat crept up the sides of Chakotay’s face as he held her stare. “Maybe.”

“Nah,” Tom’s voice broke through the pleasant tension between them. “I wanna know what a hobbit is!”

Chakotay chuckled. “Alright, ‘The Hobbit’ it is.”

-----

It took some time to get the older three to settle into bed, but finally, they began to yawn and snuggle deeper under their blankets. As their heads grew heavier, Chakotay wrapped up his story telling and the command team began to tuck their young companions in for the night.

As Chakotay wished Tom and Tuvok a good night’s rest, Kathryn carefully extracted B’Elanna from where she was snuggled into her side and took her over to her cot. As she got the small girl settled, she suddenly reached up and captured Kathryn in a tight hug. Surprised, Kathryn’s eyes widened, but she returned the gesture in earnest.

“Kathryn?”

“Yes, B’Elanna?”

“You’re my best friend.”

Kathryn blinked and pulled back to look B’Elanna in the eyes with a small smile. “I thought Chakotay and Tom were your best friends.”

“I can have more than one best friend.” B’Elanna’s voice was filled with deep confidence, despite how sleep-laced it was.

“Fair enough,” Kathryn chuckled, pulling the blankets tightly around the girl. “Goodnight.”

She met Chakotay in her bedroom, Harry still in his arms.

“Any time I try to set him down he starts crying.” Chakotay grinned sheepishly.

She grinned back. “I had a similar experience earlier today.” She reached up and brushed hand over the boy’s soft, black hair. “Its a good thing he weighs next to nothing.”

At Kathryn’s gentle touch, Harry stirred. His dark eyes found Kathryn’s and he reached out for her. With a look of mock hurt, Chakotay transferred the boy to his desired location.

“I’m trying not to be offended right now, Harry.”

Kathryn simply grinned and bounced the baby in her arms gently. “It’s alright, Chakotay. He has excellent taste.”

Chakotay shook his head, dimples flashing. “I suppose I can’t argue with that.”

She turned toward the bed and settled herself on one side, her back resting against the pillows and Harry resting against her chest. “Let’s see if we can get this one sleepy enough to not notice if we set him down.” She looked back at Chakotay, who was still standing, rather awkwardly. She patted the bed next to her with a smirk. “Come on, Commander. Get some rest. We’ve has a big day, wrangling the kiddos.”

He smiled and crossed the room to the other side of the bed, gently sitting next to her, his legs stretched out. “It has been a long day,” he said with a sigh. “But, I can’t say I haven’t enjoyed it.” He tilted his head to look at Kathryn, who was already looking up at him.

“Nor I.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

Suddenly, Chakotay was very aware of how close their faces were. He watched as Kathryn’s eyes slid down to his lips. Before he could do something he couldn’t take back, he took a deep breath and turned away.

“Well,” Kathryn cleared her throat, sounding more like the Captain now, “it’s been fun but we should get some sleep. I’ll keep an eye on Harry here and take him to his cot in a few minutes. You should go ahead and rest, Commander.”

“Of course.” He tilted his head and gave her a small smile. “Goodnight, Kathryn.”

She grinned back. “Goodnight, Chakotay.”

-----

Apparently, Kathryn didn’t stay awake long enough to take Harry back to his cot, as evidenced by the weight on her chest as she stirred awake the next morning. She slowly became aware of her surroundings and the previous day’s events came flooding back to her.

She also became distinctly aware of the warm, comfortable presence beside her. As she opened her eyes, she realized that her first officer’s arm was settled around her shoulders and that his shoulder was currently her pillow. His head rested atop hers and the hand that was not draped around her shoulders was resting on top of Harry’s back next to her own.

The situation was all rather snuggly and, were it not a violation of every professional barrier Kathryn had erected between her and the commander, she would have had no issue in savoring the moment.

Then again.... maybe she could allow herself just a few moments to pretend that the baby in her arms wasn’t her star technical officer and that the man holding her close wasn’t her XO and that this was a perfectly normal situation.

Before she could get too far into her fantasy, however, Chakotay stirred next to her, his dark eyes fluttering open to find her own.

“Good morning,” he said, his voice huskier than her own as sleep clung to it.

“Good morning.”

They looked at each other for a moment before Chakotay carefully extracted himself from her side, helping her up so she could carefully place Harry in his cot in the living room without waking the boy or the other children who were still sleeping. Without a word, they quietly prepared breakfast and coffee, steeling themselves for another day of handling the kids.

-----

“I’m afraid I’m a bit.... stuck,” The Doctor ground out with obvious difficulty.

The captain raised an eyebrow. The EMH admitting that he was struggling to solve a problem was a rare instance indeed. “How so?”

With a huff, The Doctor turned back to his desk, flipping through experimental results from a stack of PADDs. “Kes was right; the DNA reversal process I initially thought might work will not account for the de-aging of the officers’ brains, so I decided to look at the type of radiation that might have caused this and, to be completely honest, Captain,” he turned back to look her in the eye, “I have absolutely no idea how this even happened. There’s no evidence of radiation, the temporal energy around them is unidentifiable, and I can’t figure out how their cells and their minds were reversed.” He lowered his head. “I’m unsure of how to even proceed from here.”

Kathryn nodded, taking the emotions that were beginning to tumble in her chest and stuffing them as far down as she could. “Very well, Doctor. Take a rest and we can all come back to the issue later once we’ve had time to think.” She rested a hand on his shoulder, causing him to look up. “Don’t despair yet; there’s a lot of other brilliant minds on this ship besides your own. We’ll figure it out together.” She smiled and gave his shoulder a squeeze before heading into the turbolift.

As the doors slid open, she found Tuvok waiting in the lift for her. She smiled down at him and stepped inside, calling for the bridge.

“Chakotay to the captain.”

She tapped her badge. “Go ahead.”

“We need you on the bridge, there’s a bit of a situation.”

She raised a brow, glancing down at Tuvok, who was gazing at her intently. “On my way.”

-----

“So they want to.... interview us?”

“They want to interview you specifically.”

“To see if we are worthy of going through their space.”

“Something like that.”

“And going around their space isn’t an option?”

“It would add another 7 months to our journey, so this interview is our ideal option.”

“No pressure, eh, Commander?” Janeway shifted Harry from one hip to the other with a long sigh. “Alright. Hail them.”

After a moment, a blue and red humanoid alien appeared on the screen.

“Greetings, Ambassador.” The Captain flashed a polite smile. “I’m Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager.”

The alien woman inclined her head. “Hello, Captain Janeway, I’m Ambassador Tel Parah of the Doonian Delegation.” Her eyes swept the bridge. “You’re ship is heavily armed, which, according to the laws of our people, requires that we do a personal interview of the commanding officer to ensure that violence or other manners of chaos will not be instigated as you pass through our space.”

“Of course, I understand.” Janeway smiled again. “What questions may I answer for you?”

Over the course of the next 30 minutes, Janeway was grilled on their purpose in passing through Doonian space, the types and numbers of weapons they carried, and the journey they had made so far. Just as Janeway thought there wasn’t possibly anything more she could tell them, Ambassador Parah paused and looked up from the computer device in her hand to study Janeway. After a moment, she spoke again.

“Just one more thing, Captain Janeway,” a slow smile slipped onto her face, “What’s your son’s name? He’s absolutely precious.”

Janeway raised her eyebrows in surprise and glanced down at Harry, who she had nearly forgotten was still in her arms. At some point, he had removed her combadge and was currently turning it over and over again in his tiny hands, taking a moment here and there to bite parts of the object he must have found particularly interesting. Kathryn exchanged an amused glace with Chakotay, who shrugged off screen, before turning back to the ambassador.

“This is Harry.” Janeway smiled, turning the boy so the ambassador could see him better.

The other woman smiled widely. “How adorable. He has the brightest eyes.”

“He does.” Kathryn smiled back down at him.

“You know,” Parah leaned back in her chair, “I usually don’t allow anyone through our space that isn’t from a system or planet we are already know and trust and so I wasn’t planning on letting Voyager pass. However, when I saw your baby and how well-cared for and happy he seems, I felt that I could trust you somehow.” She smiled again. “We value children highly in the Doonien Delegation. Children are often a reflection of a parent’s character. I can tell by Harry’s disposition and curiosity that you are of a fine character, Captain.”

Janeway cuddled Harry a little closer, heart warming. “Thank you, Ambassador, I take that as a high compliment.”

“As you should.” Parah leaned forward again. “You may pass through our space. We will have you stop at three checkpoints on your way though which I will send you the coordinated for in a moment. Have a safe journey.”

The screen went blank and Kathryn turned to Chakotay.

“Should I feel bad that I let her believe Harry is my son?”

Chakotay chuckled, stepping close enough and lowering his voice enough that the rest of the bridge could pretend not to hear him. “Are you saying he’s not?”

Her gaze grew softer. “I guess he’s sort of been like a son to me since we got on board.” She looked back down at him. “I feel very protective of him.”

Chakotay rested a hand on her shoulder. “I know.”

They smiled at each other again. Chakotay opened his mouth to say something more but, suddenly, there was a tug at Kathryn’s elbow.

“Captain? Now that the negotiations are over, I think I have an idea about how to fix Tom, B’Elanna, Harry, and me.” Tuvok’s eyes were bright and eager.

“Alright,” Captain Janeway smiled down at him. “Let’s get The Doctor up here and we’ll hear your idea together.”

-----

Chakotay exchanged glances with The Doctor and the Captain over the table as he bounced both Tom and B’Elanna on his knees. “Could that really work? It seems almost too easy.”

“Well, if this is a phenomena that’s inexplicable and is tied only to the anomaly the shuttles passed through, I feel like sending the children back through isn’t our worst idea.” The captain rubbed the back of her neck. “Doctor?”

The holographic man continued typing into his PADD for a moment before stopping and reading. “I- I honestly think this could work.” He slid the PADD over to Janeway. “It’s hard to predict, since we have no idea what exactly caused this, but if we send the shuttles through the anomaly opposite of the way they first went through, I think it just might turn them back to their usual ages.”

“How do we know it won’t just make them even younger?” Chakotay watched as B’Elanna slipped off of his knee, pulling Tom along with her to go play in the corner.

“We’d have to run some tests to be sure that they don’t. Perhaps we could send a plant through first, or some other organic life form.” The Doctor took the PADD back and made a note.

“We would also have to make sure that, if the tests show some promise, Tuvok can take the shuttle back through the anomaly.” Janeway turned to the boy sitting at her right. “Well, Tuvok? Do you think you could pilot the shuttle?”

He shook his head. “Since I don’t have my older self’s memories I don’t think I could.”

“We could use the tractor beam to send the shuttle through,” Chakotay said. “If we give them enough of a push to go through the anomaly, they should be able to pilot themselves back to Voyager once they get out the other side and have returned to their normal ages.”

Janeway raised her eyebrows. “Well, it’s worth a shot and I don’t have any better ideas. Commander, set a course for the anomaly. Doctor, prepare the experiments.”

-----

Tom and B’Elanna seemed to sense that something was up as they suddenly became even more clingy. The whole trip back to the anomaly, B’Elanna shared the captain’s chair with Kathryn, insisting with all of her Klingon passion that the older woman tell her more stories from earlier in their journey through the Delta Quadrant. At the helm, Tom hung on to Chakotay’s arm, watching the stars go by and asking Chakotay a hundred questions about piloting starships. Tuvok sat in Chakotay’s usual seat, interjecting with questions of his own here and there, and Harry sat on Kathryn’s knee, chewing on her jacket sleeve, her combadge still clutched tightly in his left hand.

After they reached the anomaly, it took a couple of hours for The Doctor to complete his experiments and, once he had declared that plants that had gone through the anomaly twice were returned to the same age the started as, they began preparing the children to enter the anomaly themselves.

“Will it hurt?” B’Elanna asked in the smallest voice she had ever used in her life as Kathryn tucked the small Starfleet uniform that she had come through the anomaly with around her shoulders.

“It won’t,” Tuvok said. “It didn’t hurt when we came through the first time, did it?”

She shook her head, but didn’t look very reassured.

“It’s okay, ‘Lanna!” Tom grabbed her hand. “I’ll be right beside you.”

Kathryn stood and took a step back, feeling almost as if someone had filled her chest with some of Neelix’s heavy stew. She had to let them go, of course, this wasn’t the way they were supposed to be, but she was certainly going to miss seeing the level of innocence her officers had now. B’Elanna was unburdened by trust issues, Tuvok was passionate and bright, and Tom - well, she supposed he hadn’t changed all that much, but at least he seemed to be genuinely happy, not just putting up a front of humor to protect himself.

It would be hard to see them go back, but maybe, now that she understood how the world and time had changed her friends, she could help them.

She was shaken from her thoughts by a tug at her collar. She looked down to see Harry pulling at her pips, completely enamored by the gold metal.

“Oh, Harry.” She nearly choked on his name. Since he was so young now, she didn’t have any insight into his personality after having seen him as a baby, but she was going to miss his innocent curiosity and familiar weight on her hip.

Before she could think too much about it, she handed Harry over to Tuvok. The younger boy scrunched his face up and whimpered at the change of hands, but Tuvok bounced him gently and he settled down, reaching for the pointed tip of Tuvok’s ear.

Kathryn took a step back, feeling Chakotay step up behind her so that they were nearly touching. “Best of luck, you four.” She gave them her most reassuring smile. “See you on the other side.”

She and Chakotay hurried up the bridge and gave the go ahead for the ensign who had taken over Harry’s post to begin using the tractor beam to move the shuttle out into the anomaly. They stood side-by-side on the bridge and watched the shuttle go through. At come point, they grabbed each other’s hands and squeezed each other tightly.

There was a flash as the shuttle passed through the anomaly. After a few terrifyingly quiet moments, the shuttle came bursting out of the other side and a voice crackled over the comm.

“Cochran to Voyager,” confusion leaked through Tom’s voice. “What the hell just happened?”

Kathryn and Chakotay smiled at each other in relief. “What’s the last thing you remember, Tom?” Chakotay asked.

“B’Elanna, Harry, and I were coming back to Voyager when we- wait a second, how did you get here, Tuvok?”

Janeway laughed. “Why don’t we get you four back on board and then we’ll explain everything.”

“Copy that. See you in a few.” Tom’s voice grew quieter, like he was leaning away from the comm. “I have a feeling this is going to be one heck of a story.”

-----

After everyone had been debriefed and left to process the last two days of strangeness, Chakotay found Kathryn in her favorite spot; on her couch and staring wistfully out at the stars as they drifted past. She had shucked her jacket and taken her hair out of it’s clip, leaving her in her grey turtleneck with her hair falling around her shoulders and face.

“Got a lot on your mind?”

She turned to smile at him, a note of sadness in her eyes. “It’s been an interesting couple of days.”

He settled on the couch a ways down, turning to face her. “It sure has.” He was quiet for a moment. “I’m going to miss our kids.”

“Me too. It was fun having little ones around, playing at being a parent.” She fidgeted with the seam on the couch. “It was different and they sure did give us some challenges,” she chuckled, “but I loved it.”

“Have you ever thought about having kids of ou-” he coughed, “your own?”

Her crystal blue gaze caught his. “Yes.” She smiled and looked out the window again. “I always thought someday I would be a mother.” With a snort and a smirk, she continued; “Of course, I never thought I’d be mothering my helmsman, security officer, engineer, and technical officer.”

Chakotay laughed softly. “I think you were mothering them before they were turned into actual children.”

“Perhaps.” A pause. “What about you? Did you ever think about being a father? Outside of the whole instance with Seska, of course.”

He nodded. “When I was in the Maquis, no. My life was too fast-paced to be a proper father. If I was going to be a dad, I wanted to do it right and I couldn’t have done that from a Maquis ship.” He took a deep breath. “After joining this crew, though.... I’m in a better place now, and I think I’d be thrilled to be a father.” He looked over at Kathryn to find that she was already looking at him with something like wonder in her eyes. He held her gaze for a moment and, finally finding a bit of courage, he said: “I’m more at peace.”

A smiled played at the corners of her lips, and her eyes looked a little like they were silver-lined, though Chakotay couldn’t quite tell for sure in the low light of her quarters.

“You were really good with the kids. You would make an excellent father, I have no doubt.”

He smiled. “You would make an excellent mother. You’re a natural.”

“Thank you, but I barely felt like I knew what I was doing.” She chuckled.

“You could have fooled me.” He grinned for a moment, before his countenance grew more serious. “I hope you get your wish someday, Kathryn. I hope you get to be a mother.”

She was quiet for a moment, and Chakotay suddenly felt his chest tighten. Had he said too much.

Before he could fall too far into his panic, her hand slid over to his, giving it a squeeze. He looked up into her eyes, which definitely had tears in them now.

“I hope you get to be a father too Chakotay. Someday.”

He squeezed her hand back and they both fell into a comfortable silence, enjoying the view of the stars outside Kathryn’s window.

#whew okay that got emotional there at the end #lets all take a breather and remember cute little Harry #Okay that's better #anyway #thanks for reading!#hopefully this wasn't too plot-hole-ridden #star trek voyager #kathryn janeway #captain janeway #janeway #chakotay #harry kim #b'elanna torres #tom paris #tuvok #neelix #kes #the EMH #the doctor

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variousqueerthings · 3 years

Text

some thoughts on queerness in narrative (using cobra kai as a main point)

1. intro

It’s interesting getting to engage with pop culture right now versus even five years ago, where there was something kinda sordid and undercover about queer reads of text and even just talking about being into stuff very passionately while being queer in spaces that included creators was considered somehow icky (supernatural is always a good example, but definitely was just the most visible of these types of interactions between fans and cast/creators). Obviously that’s where a lot of modern definitions about queerbaiting and bury your gays comes from.

A lot of this kind of drama centred on queer ships rather than queer characters in their own right (dean/castiel, merlin/arthur, derek/styles and maaaan just a lot of white brunette/blond pairings, which is another post and I acknowledge that Lawrusso is also literally that... the irony)

But also this isn’t so much about “shipping.”

There’s a danger of flattening out the ways in which we create a dialogue with text when it becomes just about whether or not our ships become canon (in general the way fandom discourse revolves around ships can be incredibly unhelpful for engaging critically with text) – for context I am queer and I’m queer through my transness and aromanticness and asexuality, and I also write a fair bit of shippy fanfiction and analysis, but personally am not (always) thaaat bothered about how the connections with queer-coded people are realised in text, as long as those connections are acknowledged in a queer way. How that works varies from text to text. There is no one-size fits all proper queer representation.

An example: SE Hinton (because I just read The Outsiders/watched the movie) being really dismissive of people reading her characters as gay on twitter (why do we ever try to do this sort of deep textual analysis on twitter, why do creators – like Hinton – think that they ought to espouse opinions on twitter, why twitter folx?)

I wrote – kinda for the void, because I write a lot and I like posting some of that on tumblr, but I don’t expect people to engage necessarily – about how The Outsiders is absolutely a queer text, whether or not the creator intended for it to be. Long story short, queerness has been – and often still is – illegal and/or frowned upon in canon text, so a semiotics was created to make something queer if you knew how to read it. The fact that cis-straight creators play with and use those semiotics without knowing doesn’t negate the fact that that language is there and was deliberately created for that purpose.

That also doesn’t make it queerbaiting. Maybe cis-straight dumbassery, idk (wouldn’t be if you just went “huh, didn’t think about that, cool read”)

Intentionally playing with and acknowledging those semiotics also isn’t necessarily queerbaiting.

Definitely queercoding though.

Anyway this is all a bit murky territory, so let’s talk about Cobra Kai, my current little obsession, and about Star Trek, my always-obsession. Time-was you could get sued for your Star Trek fanfiction. Nowadays that fanfiction can get turned into a for-fun zoom play and read out loud by the two actors who played the original characters (Alexander Siddig and Andy Robinson). This is very fun, new territory for a lot of us.

Meanwhile Hayden Schlossberg and the other writers of Cobra Kai are openly aware of the fact that lots of people read their lead characters – Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence - as probably bisexual (and probably as in love) and are on good terms with several active members of fandom and fic-writing. This is… so fucking fun. And it doesn’t have that weird overtone of shit like Teen Wolf (“We’re on a ship” winky-face, followed by that about heel-turn “just think it’s weird and strange” or however tf it was described later on - that shit: definitely queerbaiting).

In Star Trek there’s a slim-to-none chance that these characters will ever become canonically queer in the main text, but the acknowledgement and the light-hearted open engagement with it makes such a massive difference (not that Siddig and Robinson weren’t talking openly about it as far back as the 90s).

In Cobra Kai there is no obligation to make Johnny or Daniel canonically bi because there’s been no promise to do so – there is, in my opinion, an obligation to create a world in which queerness exists and not just on the sidelines. In the same way as there’s an obligation to generally create a world that accurately depicts what LA looks like in multiple other ways (cough, not mainly white, cough). If a part of that were through exploring how 80s era toxic heteronormative masculinity could throw people deep into the closet for most of their lives, hey, that’d be a neat storyline (such a neat fucking storyline), but it’s not the only way to do it.

While I do like canonically queer couples in stories, I also think it’d really limit what queerness can do for a text if that were the only way it was represented - sure I ship Lawrusso, but I find the above-mentioned analysis of toxic masculinity’s effects on the characters-as-queer-coded to go much deeper than whether or not they get together.

I also would love trans and/or other-gender characters - we all know Johnny needs his “gender-what?” ignorance challenged and the potential for characters like that to fit into a narrative around trauma, loneliness, and misfit-families is kinda perfect (and when I say characters, I mean that plural, we’re not a one-size fits all).

Lastly I think there is also an obligation to do exactly what the showrunners are doing - what didn’t happen with Hinton or SPN or Teen Wolf or Star Trek of yore or so much other popular fiction: say, oh yeah, that language is absolutely there, we recognise it, we can read it and it’s not weird or sordid or something to be judged. So that’s already a massive thumbs up/promising start.

4. some final thoughts:

Idk where all this’ll go. I’m still missing a lot of canonically queer representation - and when I say representation I mean more than just shoving in a queer character into a scene and not thinking about how that affects the world that’s been established. But I’m feeling a lot better about queerness and story than I used to.

I’m hoping that whatever comes moving forwards in culture in general it’ll have some thought put into it. I’m hoping that queerness and queer allegory and coding will be recognised more and more as important reads of text and will go into informing how something is made (Hannibal, Black Sails, Sense8, Pose). I’m just hoping this’ll mean some interesting, intelligent, wildly varied narratives.

Just very excited.

#cobra kai #lawrusso #johnny lawrence #daniel larusso #my writing #garashir #ds9 #st: ds9 #julian bashir #elim garak #alexander siddig #andy robinson #i made an on purpose choice here to talk about m/m ships in my examples #to be very Precise in my comparisons #funnily enough all four shows i mention at the very end have more (and all canon) queer rep than that #i also had a tangent about the current weird discourse on what-you're-morally-allowed-to-ship but that isn't quite the point here #although in general i will reiterate that i find the focus on shipping to be very unhelpful and limiting and y'all need history lessons

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annetteblog · 3 years

Text

I got a very long ask and wrote even longer reply, and now Tumblr for some reason doesn't want to publish it through asks. So I'm making a separate post, because what else can I do? 😀 I hope Anon wouldn't mind

Hi!

Thank you for such a long ask! I really enjoy replying those, although it may take some time to actually write whatever I have on my mind 🙂 However, I feel like for every question that you posed, it's possible to write its own big reply or even an essay, so this piece of mine probably won’t give them justice (but I’ll try my best.)

As usual, one big IMO.

1) Ethics, “gueer coding” and discussions

I believe I’ve already partly touched this subject here. Shortly, I think that everything the boys did (and still do) had its own purpose. They decided to put these "undertones" (or whatever one may call them) in their art. They made some statements with a very small room for interpretation. And it didn't happen once or twice. More like, it's been a consistent behaviour throughout years.

I don't buy this excuse some fans write - "oh, he just didn't know about this/didn't understand how it looked like/didn't..." So apparently, JK wasn't able to figure out shit about Troye, didn't give a damn about his GCF, didn't think how his tattoo looked like; JM didn't realize to what conclusions could lead his quite bold words about 4am or waking up and seeing JK; both of them didn't have second thoughts about the Black Swan dance; Bang PD is just a CEO who pays zero attention to BTS in general and KM actions in particular (which sometimes actually backlash, e.g. that stop gay fanservice thing after the Seoul concerts), because he clearly just doesn't care AT ALL; whatever PR service they have in BH is just asleep all the time... Etc etc etc, you got the idea

Well, if one wants to perceive JM, JK and BigHit as a group of complete morons with no brains, this "oh, they just didn't know" explanation may work. But if all of them were idiots, how would BTS become the biggest group on a planet? They are smart enough, deal with this.

And YET. KM still do what they do. It's their choice, so apparently they have their motives. You wrote it yourself too - "Jikook and BH put out all that stuff for a reason."

Keeping this in mind, I truly think it's fair to discuss queer undertones or KM's bond. It's meant to be discussed and speculated. They made it public, and they continue to make it public (and quite obvious, to be honest). Why? Well, I guess they want us to speculate.

From here comes the second point

2) Art and its interpretations

In general, I believe that any good art should allow various interpretations. That's what a good piece of art is supposed to do - provoke a thought. As well as it's quite customary to analyze and (sometimes) overanalyze art. Thousands of universities worldwide have programs which are focused on fine art, literature, theater, music, film, etc.

And why is it okay to write about Avengers or Madonna or whatever weird art you're able to find in the closest Contemporary museum (like a banana taped to a wall), but not okay to interpret BTS' songs and/or performances? Again, I strongly believe that art is meant to be discussed. Especially as cool as theirs 🙂

Actually, some popular fandom theories turned out to be true here. Since Spring Day release on Feb 2017, fans speculated about its connection to the Sewol ferry tragedy based on the song's lyrics, MV and choreo. We got this confirmation like when, December 2020? But before it was also just an interpretation.

Coming back to KM. Combining these with the idea that JM/JK/BH clearly know what they're doing and how it may look like, I don't see a problem in having various interpretation of their art. Including queer ones.

3) Escapism

Isn't all art targeted to escaping in a sense? We want to take a break from reality and/or mundane life or just gain some new experience. In this sense what's the radical difference between staring at pictures or sculptures in a museum, watching a movie, reading a book or scrolling through Tumblr reading BTS/KM centric posts? All of these are means to escape and entertain ourselves.

As for this "if they are a queer couple, is it okay to derive pleasure and 'what a beautiful love story' feelings from two members of systematically oppressed minority?" - and you would prefer doing what - ignoring them? pretending that they don't exist? 🙃 In case if they are a queer couple, I guess showing support and benevolence is even more important. Exactly because, as you mentioned, they are a part of the oppressed minority. And the hatred is/would be definitely in place.

4) Fanfiction

Oh my, what a controversial theme these days.

Firstly, some forget it was not invented in the 21st century. Even slash fanfiction (cough Star cough Trek). As for incorporating real people, it's been a part of literature for like what.. always? There are millions of different writings about emperors, nobles, military figures, lives of saints, etc. And it's not like personal opinion of people in question bothered those, who write or wrote about them. I clearly remember a scene in Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, where Alexander I [Russian emperor 1801-25] after losing a battle against Napoleon, hits a birch tree with his sword while crying hard and just being kinda hysterical. Would real Alexander be satisfied with such image if he read the book? Idk 😄

About having "the right to comment on such [different from your own] experience". I suppose, if authors wrote only about what they had experienced, our literature would be 95% poorer than it is. How can one write books in historic settings if they didn't live there? How do books about future and space travel exist, if we live in 2021? Is it needed to be a part of mafia to write about mafia? What about other cultures? Should an American author write only about American people and American lifestyle or it's fine to have characters from other countries?

Writing is not about experiencing something and then making a fanfic or a book, it's more about research and compassion. If you have reliable info on your theme and are able to look at the world using different lenses, why not?

I don't perceive fanfiction as a worldwide evil. Sure, there are creepy examples as well as authors, who write fetishizing weird shit. But it doesn't mean that all fanfiction=bad and all slash fanfiction=objectification of male homosexuality. Fanfiction is just one form of fiction, it can be good or bad based on how it's written. But the label itself doesn't define anything, as well as reading it should not be a reason to accusations.

5) Jikook, shipping and politics

I'm among those, who perceive pretty much everything as a part of politics. We all exist within some political conventions and have certain political laws over our heads. And yes, it includes art. Even if an artist says something like "oh, I decided to stay away from politics, my work is beyond it". The decision to stay away from politics is also political, because apparently there was something within the political structure what made this artist say that and forced them to make this distinction between them and some institutional conventions.

And that makes me believe that shipping/supporting KM is also political. But I don't think it's necessarily bad? Basically, you decided to support potentially queer people from a country, which doesn't really approve LGBTQ+. It puts you in the opposition towards a particular government. You made a choice. You could google some SK stuff, read all that you mentioned in the beginning of your ask, and say something like "oh, that's not okay there? well, fair enough, I guess their government knows better"🤠 and forget that this KM thing even exists. But apparently you didn't

Imo, is it politics? Yes

Is it bad that it's politics? Well, no? 🙃

P.S. I hope I was clear enough with my ideas. Thank you again for the thought provoking ask, and I hope I'll hear from you again 🙂

And honestly, I don't think that you're problematic in any way :)

#annetteasks #jikook #kookmin #long post #jeon jungkook #park jimin #jimin #jungkook

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rhinozilla · 3 years

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Hi Rhinozilla! I wanted to say hello! I love your work (you were my gateway drug into fanfiction with the Detroit 07 series) and I'm sorry that you're stressed! So I wanted to get you thinking about more fun things!

Would you be willing to share what your favorite movies are? I love asking writers because movies that resonate with writers are either(!) amazing and I just watch them, or(!) They are like, these weird 'has a ton of potential but didn't quite get there and now it lives rent free in my brain so I can imagine it better' sort of deal. If this is more stress to answer then don't, I want you to be relaxed! Or answer in any degree of response that's your want! Need to rant? Write me a thesis! Want to answer but no words? Gifs! But if thinking about your favorite movies/tv and the story elements that you love can make you happier than I have done my job!

Bonus points for adding in a few 'comfort' movies (or tv (!) I'm very certain you like Brooklyn 99 as well based on I Want it That Way).

Also here's some fun memes that's I had saved to my phone (not mine): I hope they make you smile!

Thanks so much for this! I love talking about my favorite movies, so let's go!

Star Trek: First Contact. I adore, adore, ADORE this movie. It gives me all the nostalgia tears and happy feelings. In case it isn't clear, I goddamn fucking LOVE Star Trek, and First Contact is my favorite of the Star Trek movies. I grew up on TNG, and just...inject this movie directly into my veins. Literally just hearing the score of this movie will make my eyes water, because (and I'm being dramatic here) Star Trek just feels like HOME to me. It's familiar and it's pure and it's goofy and epic and belligerently hopeful for the future in the face of all evidence to the contrary and ahh!!! Star Trek!!!

Hot Fuzz. This is my clutch movie. If I've had a bad day, I pop this baby in, and it will ALWAYS make me laugh. If you are curious about my brand of humor: this movie is my brand of humor to a T, and yet, I cannot explain why, but the scene where Chief Inspector Butterman flees the bar, with the chandelier falling and the lion roar sound effect...It KILLS me every. Single. Time.

The Mummy/The Mummy Returns. Because they're just a delight.

Mad Max Fury Road. Because car chases and explosions go brrr! Plus it's just gorgeous and the world of it is great.

Most Mel Brooks movies, with special mentions to Blazing Saddles and To Be Or Not To Be. Blazing Saddles is well known, but not as many people know To Be Or Not To Be. It's about a Jewish theater company in Poland in WWII as they outwit and make a mockery of the Gestapo. It's glorious, and it also has a lot of heart.

Pacific Rim is just a fun movie that knows exactly what it is and does it well. I'm always game to watch it.

Megamind is also one that I'm always ready to pop in when my mood needs a boost. Same with Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

I don't watch a lot of TV, but B99 is one of the shows that I do watch (and get a lot of writing inspiration from). I enjoy the Mandalorian, though I don't follow it super closely. I used to watch the Walking Dead (wrote quite a bit of Caryl fic for it too), but my investment in the show took a sharp nosedive at a certain point, so I parted ways with it.

Oh this was fun! Now I wanna watch some of these again <3

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come-on-shitty-boys · 4 years

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//the fugitive. kuroo tetsurou//

Request: Not really?? But spawned from @janellion and I obsessing over royal kuroo like three weeks ago, so uhhh requested by me?? Peep the new TRT series ig ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Warnings: None

Word Count: 1.7K

Notes: i have come to the awful realization that i have ruined any and all of my dating expectations by writing so much fanfiction.

Everything about his current situation was far from ideal. The heavy downpour as the sky let loose all of its unshed tears flattened his hair against his forehead, his jacket with all of the intricate embroidery jacket and the silver crown that had adorned his raven hair had long since been cast away to better disguise the fleeing prince. It had been long expected, but a storm had unleashed itself upon the castle, bringing the day of impending doom upon them sooner rather than later. The people of the kingdom have finally had enough of the tyranny, of the constant feuds, the never ending debts and taxes and now, filled with rage, they had made their way to the castle, hungry for blood and refusing to yield until the king’s head was on a stake.

His feet sloshed through the puddles, soaking his socks as the rain continued to pour down all around him. The young prince only stopped long enough to catch his breath under the shelter of a tree before he was once again running through the night in the darkness of the woods. The last few moments he had with his family kept echoing in his head, eyes pricking with tears to match those of the clouds above him.

“My son, leave before they kill you too. Get out of the kingdom, please.”

“But, father-”

“Tetsurou, please. This is my final request. Head south until you reach Effingfil River. Once you get to the otherside, you’ll be safe. Quick! Make haste and don’t ever look back.”

Who was he to deny his father’s final wish before his end? He had set out into the night, a dark cloak adorning his figure to shield his identity. Although he knew better, Kuroo carried his silver circlet in his hands, a final memento of his royal life. If worse came to worst, it would fetch a good price at the market, enough to make ends meet until he could find some sort of safe haven in the neighboring kingdom.

But, the cloak, the crown, and every other royal thing about him had been tossed into a stream that had carried the articles away. There was no time to be sentimental when you were running for your life. Even so, now he secretly wished he had kept the woolen cloak. The icy rain had soaked through his clothes, chilling him to the bone as a steady wind picked up, pelting the droplets harder against him. His entire body shook in a mixture of cold and fear. Never in his life did he expect to wander through the woods all alone; hungry, freezing, tears mixing with the rain as the water ran down his cheeks.

Kuroo had no idea how close he was to the border. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure that he was going the right way anymore. He couldn’t see the stars through the thick branches above him and in the off chance that there was a break, the dark storm clouds hid his only compass from view. He did know one thing, though.

He knew the flicker of candlelight in a window in the dead of night. People. Someone. A broken sob of relief fell from his lips as he picked up his pace all over again. If they turned him in, so be it. He just wanted to be away from this nightmare, even if only for a moment.

Your life has always been relatively quiet. A small cabin on the edge of the woods didn’t boast many visitors, so the sudden pounding on your door that pulled you from your embroidery had made your entire body jolt in shock. Setting your needle and thread to the side, you took up your candle, only for the steady knock on your door to come again. “I’m coming. Hold on!”

You had been expecting a lot of things, really. Royal tax collectors coming to steal more money from you, the merchant from the other kingdom who smuggled the better quality threads from the other side of the border in the dead of night, maybe even a witch who had come to cast a vicious spell on you. A dashing young man barely older than yourself, eyes tinged red with sorrow, clothes muddied from trekking through the rain, a hand clutching his chest as if to hold onto his aching heart, however, was nowhere on your list of expectations. Before you could even stop yourself, you were ushering him inside without a word being passed between the two of you. A second and a third log were added to the fire, the temperature in your small home quickly rising as you tended to the flames. The strange boy at your door stood stiffly in the middle of your living room, the orange blaze casting dancing shadows across his features, amber eyes seemingly glowing in the low light.

“Sit, please. Let me see if I have anything for you to put on, so you don’t have to sit there in soaked clothes,” you say, pulling up a chair for him to be able to rest his weary feet, but when he took a seat, rather than sinking, taking pleasure in the opportunity to finally relax, even if it was only for the night, he sat with his back straight, slender hands folded elegantly in his lap. Every so often he would reach towards the fire to warm his chilled fingers, but they were quickly returned to his lap as if he had done something incredibly inappropriate. The soft rustle of your nightgown as you padded across the wooden floors shifted his attention away from the fire and over to you and the set of clothes that you held in your hands.

“I hope these fit you. They belonged to my brother before he passed in the war, so feel free to keep them. I have no use for them,” you say.

Kuroo gingerly takes the clothes from you, trying to hide the look of distaste on his face at the feeling of the material. It was cheap and stiff, nothing like he was used to, but they were dry and that’s what was more important. “May I ask for your name?” He asks, peeling his shirt from his body to replace it with the one you had given him.

“Y/N, sir. And who might you be and what in God’s name are you doing out in the woods at this hour? There’s all sorts of animals out there that don’t take kindly to people in their territory. You should consider yourself lucky.”

His eyes shifted to the window, peering through the night as if to check that there was no one who had seen him during his escape. “I- I really don’t think I should tell you that. At least, not yet. My apologies if that seems rude, but, you see, I’m in a bit of trouble, and well, I don’t exactly know who to trust right now.”

You nod simply and give a short chortle. “What’d you do? Commit tax evasion? Lord knows the king would have your head if that ever happened. The man is greedier than anyone I’ve ever met. You would think that he has enough money coming in, honestly. With the amount of citizens that he hounds for his outrageous taxes, you’d think he wouldn’t need to raise them again, but he has to pay for his wars somehow, I suppose. Sending innocent men off to die isn’t cheap, that’s for sure.”

You were so busy carrying on with your train of thought that you hadn’t noticed the way Kuroo’s body suddenly stilled as you continued to discuss his father so freely. Annoyance and bitterness dripped from every syllable as you spoke. The Kuroo family hadn’t been popular in the eyes of the people for many generations. They thrived off of starting unnecessary conflicts that would drag on for years. Even now, there were troops sitting off the shore of a small kingdom, blocking their trade routes, suffocating them slowly as they had been for the past seven years.

“I’m afraid that the monarchy has likely died today,” he says shortly, rolling up his pant legs. They had obviously been made for someone much shorter than himself as the ends rested just below the middle of his calves.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m from the capital city. Some of the citizens staged a coup. Before I left, I heard them say that they wished the king and his whole family dead. I don’t know what will be left of them by tomorrow.”

“Well, then let’s hope that this will finally turn things around in this country. It’s difficult to make a living and pay a ridiculous amount of taxes when you’re out here by yourself. My customers have been sparse since the recent increase. They can’t afford to mend their clothes, but I can’t afford to live without their business. Thankfully, with the border as close as it is, I get some business from the other kingdom, but it can also be a pain. The hassle of trying to make the trip across the river isn’t worth it for most.”

Kuroo’s ears perked up slightly at the mention of a river. “Which river is it?”

“Effingfil. Why?”

“How close am I to the border?”

“Only a few miles, sir. Is everything alright? You seem a bit frantic.”

“I need to get out of the country. Please, will you help me?”

“Sir, right now you need to rest. You’re lucky that you didn’t get hypothermia or something like that out in the rain.”

“Then tomorrow? First thing in the morning. Will you take me to the border?”

“Why are you so keen on leaving, may I ask?”

“Because if I don’t, they’ll kill me too. Please, I’m not ready to die,” he whispered, desperation creeping into his voice. And in another odd twist of things you weren’t expecting, the stranger who had stumbled across your house in the darkness clutched onto your clothes as he hid his face against your shoulder. You could feel his body shaking against your form as you took him into your arms, soothing circles being rubbed against his lower back, the silence only being broken by his choked sobs and the gentle crackling of the fire.

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu x reader #kuroo #kuroo tetsurou #kurootetsurou #tetsurou #kuroo imagine #kuroo x reader #trt #throne room thursdays #imagines #x reader #royalty au #damn kuroo pleading not to die kinda makes my heart ache no cap

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juliabohemian · 4 years

Text

backhanded compliments & the art of commenting on other people’s creative content without being a complete twat waffle

WARNING: This is a long post.

I'm a word person. That's probably why, when I do find myself becoming irritated by someone else's unsolicited critique, it is almost always due to their choice of words. Words are important and very powerful. Words have different meaning to different people. Which is why we need to take care when choosing them.

Now, whenever possible, I will click on the profile of the person who left the unsolicited critique and try to get a feel for what type of person they are. Just so I can better understand why they might have left the comment in question. If it is clear they are not a native English speaker, I stop right there. Learning a foreign language is hard. English is one of the most ridiculous languages on the planet. So, mastering its nuances is a challenge for someone who may not have grown up using it. I’m sure I have offended at least one person with my Spanish, at some point. I’m working on it.

BACKHANDED COMPLIMENTS

When I say choice of words, I am implying almost exclusively to something known as a backhanded compliment. A backhanded compliment is a statement that seems, on the surface, to be positive, but is actually an insult. If you are not familiar with the backhanded compliment, I direct you to the mom from American Beauty who says to her teenage daughter "Honey, I'm so proud of you. I watched you very closely, and you didn't screw up once!"

There are a lot of reasons why people make such comments. It would be reductive to suggest they are all suffering from some form of insecurity, although many of them probably are. Some may genuinely believe that they are being helpful. Others may be jealous of the attention another person is receiving and want to either sabotage them or find a way to get in on the action.

However, it is most likely that the type of person to give a backhanded compliment is either very young, very sheltered or very privileged. And thus, they may not realize that their opinion about something may not carry the same weight on the internet as it does in other venues. Or they may not realize that the world is filled with people who are more informed and more experienced than they are. They mistake their opinion for objective analysis and therefore, offer it freely and without hesitation.

Now, I would like to state that if you see something and you REALLY think it is problematic, you should absolutely offer your critique. Note: if you dislike or disagree with something, that does not make it problematic. Anything that promotes the maltreatment or marginalization of any living thing is problematic. Even so, you should stop and ask yourself whether your critique will accomplish anything or if it would be more worthwhile to simply report the post in question and move on.

That being said, here is MY analysis of some of the backhanded compliments I have received over the years (amalgamated for brevity), and a guide to leaving more constructive/supportive comments for the content creators in your life.

ARTWORK (including photography)

“Definitely not my style, but beautiful.” Do we need to know that it's not your style? If you think it's beautiful, just say that.

“This is so great, but it would have been better if you had used yellow instead of red!” Color choice is a creative choice and its value cannot be objectively measured. Just say it’s great and move on.

“Wow, this is way better than your old stuff.” Do I need to explain why this is bad? I hope not.

“Wow, you're really improving.” Slightly better than the previous one, but still bad. This is a really good example of something that might even feel like a compliment, but actually isn't. Saying that someone is improving is basically saying that it needed to improve.

Unless you are speaking to your own student or a child, or a really close friend or family member who has openly shared with you their desire to improve as an artist, this is completely unnecessary.

It's important to remember that not everyone is doing things with the same objectives as you. Not every artist or photographer is aiming for technical mastery. If an artist creates something that is very personal and feels pleased with it, the last thing they want is for someone else to come along and tell them what’s “wrong” with it.

Really ANY comment that suggests that the piece of artwork in question would be improved if it were altered in some way is a no no. Unless you are an art teacher or someone has specifically asked for you to give them this information, or you are paying someone to make something especially for you.

FANFICTION (or really writing in general)

“Oh man...I was so excited when I saw your story summary, until I saw the pairing.” Do not comment on a story just to tell the author that you don't like their pairing. Ever. If you accidentally click on a story without seeing the pairing and you are disappointed, your feelings are valid. But there’s no need to let the author know.

"This was good but I don't think (character) would say (quoted dialogue)." Then, you should go and write a story with that character, but where they say different things.

"I noticed you used a semi-colon in the third paragraph. Semicolons are actually supposed to...." Critique grammar, punctuation, spelling and writing mechanics ONLY if you are the author's editor, the author's teacher, or if the author requested it. Period.

If you are commenting to point out what you believe to be a factual error, stop and ask yourself...is this really an error? Is the error intentional? Does the error represent the views of the author or the views of a specific character in a fictional work? Does this story have a reliable narrator? If not, might that narrator be misinformed or biased? And the most important question to ask yourself before correcting an author...do I actually know what the fuck I'm talking about?

Once, in a story, I referenced Copernicus and mentioned that he was imprisoned by the Catholic church. Which we know that he was. Someone commented to leave a long, bullet pointed explanation for how this is a common misconception and that the Catholic Church never mistreated Copernicus, along with many links to articles and videos as evidence. Guess who made all the articles and videos? The Catholic Church. SKIP!

When commenting on a fictional work, consider letting the author know how the story is making you feel. Speculate about what you think might happen next. Express excitement and anticipation. Ask a question for clarification about what you just read. And you can never go wrong by simply thanking the author for taking the time to provide you with free entertainment.

MEMES & JOKES

I love to make people laugh. I have been making people laugh since I learned to talk. This was actually bourne out of an inability to interpret facial expressions. I couldn't tell when people were angry or annoyed. But when they were laughing, I knew exactly how they felt.

That being said, people on the internet LOVE to tell me when something isn't funny. The only problem with this is that humor is very subjective and often very esoteric. I have made memes that I knew were esoteric and knew that not everyone would understand them. I have memes just for birdwatchers. Hell, I have made memes just for a dozen people who participated in a specific academic discussion. But it amazes me how people who don't get a joke are often most compelled to comment and let me know that it isn't funny. How can you know if you don't understand it? Is it so hard to imagine that things exist for which you are not the intended audience?

It's perfectly okay to comment and say you don't understand, and ask for an explanation. But if you look at something and think "I don't understand this, therefore it lacks value" you may have some growing up to do.

Before reblogging someone else's joke to add to the joke, stop and ask yourself whether your intention is to correct or improve upon the joke, or if you are attempting to laugh along WITH the OP.

We've all done this, I'm sure. I know I have. But it really inconsiderate to hijack someone's meme, meta or artwork with a completely unrelated discussion. I can't tell you how annoying it is to post something and check my inbox days later, only to find pages of notifications of people reblogging my shit over and over as part of some completely unrelated discussion.

Once again, if you're commenting to point out a factual error, ask yourself whether the error was intentional. I recently made a meme about the Star Trek films in which Data uses contractions. All of his dialogue is ridiculously out of character, in fact. Which is kind of part of the joke. But someone felt the need to reblog AND comment to let me know that Data wouldn't say that because he doesn't use contractions. Which I already know. Because, well, I’ve been a ST:TNG fan since the day it first aired on TV. I don't even know what to do with a comment that, to be honest. I kind of feel sorry for the other person for not grasping the joke.

So, how DO you compliment someone whose work you enjoy? Imagine yourself speaking to them in person. Imagine that they are emotionally invested in whatever they have created. Consider your objective. Are you expressing appreciation? Or is there something else going on.

And avoid qualifiers.

When a compliment includes words like "if" or "but" then it's probably not a compliment. You would be so pretty IF you lost some weight is not a compliment.

Choose words that are unlikely to be misinterpreted.

If someone's art or writing IS improving and you really want them to know, a good way to do that is to use the word evolving. Wow, I really like the way your art is evolving. This works because it implies that the art is changing over time, as the individual grows as a person.

I know what some of you might be thinking...ugh...it's like you can't say ANYTHING anymore! Aww...boo hoo, fam. As a person on the spectrum, I’ve spent my entire life dancing around other people’s feelings, navigating neurotypical subtext and struggling to say things without offending anyone. This is a cake walk compared to that. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if actually thinking about how other people feel BEFORE you share your opinion would require a great deal of effort on your part, it's possible that you're just an asshole.

TL;DR

Creators of original content are actual human beings with feelings. Don’t offer them unsolicited advice or criticism. Think before you comment.

#I know this is long and no one is putting a gun to your head and making you read it #these are just my views #backhanded compliments #unsolicited opinions #unsolicited advice #how to comment without being an asshole #theory of mind #unwanted critique #critiquing #commenting on fanfic #fanfic comments #I have autism if I can be tactful then so can you

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a-lilacsong · 4 years

Text

Elena of Avalor Live text reaction: Giant Steps

I enjoy reading other people's posts where they watch episodes of shows and write reactions to things in the episode while they're still watching it. So I decided to make one for this new episode: Giant Steps.

Reaction starts under the cut (Spoilers for the episode since this is a reaction)

She needs a crew

Wait has she gone to Australia

Also I love that fish on the wall

To bad it wouldn't be able to sing most likely

Is that a wanted poster for the bat on the wall?

And it looks like she's selling Esteban’s hat as well

oooooh I think I feel a song coming on

also the letter text is so clear I could probably translate this

if I felt like it

Man, Elena is a fast writer

I really like the accordion in this song but so far it's been pretty casual

I don't know, I guess I was just expecting a big old villain song

What a cute parrot! Naomi should get a parrot

Oh that's a sword for a second I thought it could be a chainsaw

Don't mind him that's just casual Joe, casually showing off his casual sword to his casual friends Casually

Wow there's a lot of lens flares in this song, was it directed by JJ Abrams?

Maybe it's not even a big threat Naomi's coming to warn them about, maybe she's just going to come back to say hi at this point, she seems like she's really missing Elena

This is why she needs a crew, then she wouldn't be lonely

Having a good cry together?! All of the hurt comfort and angst fanfiction possibilities!

Oh look there's the not-Ash little girl

yes the Elena and Naomi feels are strong with this one

Ship does not rhyme with fate! this is the second time a line hasn't rhymed and it bugs me

And she's broke

Maybe she should have asked for some money along with a ship eh?

The Bat Wanted poster Is hilarious

And so starts her career as a bounty hunter

“So how much gold are you giving for his capture?” “heaps of it.” “But how much gold exactly?” “HEAPS. OF. IT.”

Yeah when you just draw bags of money on the poster it's probably a scam

Naomi unrolls the wanted poster, Me: *Gasps out loud* They all look so good!

I wonder if you captured those three along with the bat if they give you an extra gold for that or if they just only give you a reward for the bat

You probably wouldn't get any gold though cuz it's probably a scam

Sudden zoom in on the poster while there's a bell in the background like what

reminds me how they always always seem to do that during dramatic moments in Star Trek

What's in the bag a knife, a phaser, or is she just giving her the bag

Maybe a special knockout powder?

Oh cool it's one of those endless Space Bags

also what a cute red bird

This episodes giving lots of birds

But the Winged being I want to see most is Chatana

Oh look she sells harpoons! What does the store not have?

The necklace, of course she wants the necklace, I was thinking about was oddly noticeable with Naomi wearing two necklaces so of course she's going to have to give one away

Will she give it to her, Probably

Yep now she has the Magic Bag

And she got the take the wanted poster as well?! Wow !

It's not illegal to take down wanted posters?

Boy there is probably some kid out there who has fifty wanted posters just up decorating their room because they are very well drawn

I mean if I lived in that world and knew I couldn't get punished for it I would totally have a few of them up

Ash and Chatana just look so snug in their pictures, when why was Esteban just looks so innocent compared to them

Wait so ash gave Chatana the diadem off screen? okay...

I've been waiting months for this, yes, YES team Ash team Ash team Ash YES!

Now I finally get to see more of Chatana

I will finally get to see what her personality is really like yes

~~ but now I have to eat supper so intermission

Sarah give me spoilers Darn it ~~

Anyway

the bat can shape-shift!? wow I always thought that Esteban’s teleportation powers would take them to Vestrella but I was wrong

Of course they're seen immediately, probably because of Ash’s yelling

Wait if you Caught the Jaquin babies, what would you do with them Esteban?

He seems better at this villain stuff than I thought

Also both Ash and Chatana seem way too confident about this

I'm predicting it will be their Achilles heel

Bold of Mateo to assume that she would be looking for her friend instead of the villains

Probably spied on Naomi before

It seems Mateo's more Curious boy Then I thought he's willing to spy on someone if they're a friend

And she's right there, she probably ran past Armando and everyone else that's why they didn't get it notified of her arrival

Like she always does

Yay clumsy Mateo

And he didn't drop it!

No one expected you back this soon Naomi not even the audience

Lesbians lesbians lesbians

It's great other than the crippling loneliness

Mateo asks the kind of questions that I asked on tumblr ask blogs anonymously

“Ancient at least I thought she was ancient '' if she said that to Chatana’s face which you take it as a compliment or an insult I wonder?

Also continuity!

And of course she's only going to bring Gabe because he is the only guard She Knows by name

Sarcasm aside though I'm glad that these four will get to have another adventure together

They are the Ultimate Adventure team

Well Isabel is always welcome on it

But it is illegal for her to try to fight Esteban

Or Witness Elena seriously killing him

Wait is she going because she wants to be with Elena

Or to get the prize money

Probably both

I sure hope Elena doesn't feel betrayed if Naomi tries to get that prize money I mean she has to make a living somehow

Yes Elena, the team

It is the only team strong enough to defeat the evil team

Oh boy every time Chatana walks she looks like she's on a Runway! She is so poised and confident looking

Also it seems that they have gotten past that cloaking spell

And Esteban gets smacked in the face

They just love you using him for slapstick don't they?

I just love it how bat says casually that they're being watched

And Ash and Chatana flip out like they're about to be caught by the thought police

Okay, Esteban is hilarious

*Ash Eyeroll*

I wonder who has done more eye rolls in the series Ash or Esteban?

And she blocked it again, I guess it wears off over time?

SOME kind of cloaking spell!? it looks like the same one they were using before!

I sure hope Philly wasn't conscious with Chatana all those years

She CAN fly!

And we finally get to see her make a monster and it's so cool!!!

Spiders spiders everywhere!

Flying spider tornado!

Ash and Esteban’s reactions are valid

BABY spider Eagles! that changes everything

Now that means that they're really cute

I would still be distracted by them though

Esteban sass

Ash threats

If they weren't so evil they make a great sitcom team

~~~break to watch final episode of Pride and Prejudice with my family~~

Gabe makes yet another strategy which will be most likely ignored or never brought up again

Points for trying, Captain

Oh good, that’s just webs, thought it was something else for a moment

Down they go, too bad she can't use levaloop with that sceptre and they're going to have a hard Landing

Woo he didn't use levaloop he's learning new spells

Yay team Ash back views! I've been needing these for artistic purposes

Did Phili just spit fire Let me back that up

Wow I think he did

Awww, “Little one”

They must train together a lot, Ash just needs to give Esteban a look and he does what they need

That's the same unlocking spell as before

do the Maruveians only have one kind of lock spell

Also wait did Chatana teach that to Ash at some point?

Because she certainly didn't use that on the gate before to unlock Chatana...

Oh nice unlocking effects

some...BODY ONCE TOLD ME

MAMA <--May I also mention that my theory was right

Wait all of Chatana's creatures are locked up here?

I guess there are the Sunbird jars

True she was captured, (much better excuse than Pink Diamond’s)

And here is Esteban, the king of sucking up

In a way, Kizin Reminds me of Sarah

He Likes the tall funny man

Good recovery Esteban, you didn't make any snide comment that time

And now everyone else sucks up

Except Phili

Chatana smile

Kizin has other friends? AWW, he Just wants to help his friends!

Ash has done nothing other than that spell so far except yell and complain to others

And there goes a bat

We will probably get him later... or maybe we will just leave him

Oh look will team Avalor attack him immediately or will they try and reason with him first

If you needed more guards why didn't you just grab them in the first place

I know Migs and Skyler are Guardians but couldn't you have gotten another Guardian to go and get reinforcements?

Elena never planned ahead for things

Gabe the running LOL

So you're going to just attack him instead of reasoning with him? okay

I think that trip wire might be a little high Naomi

Wait Shouldn't Elena and Mateo wait on the other side of the tripwire so that they can surround Kizim just in case

Naomi tie the tripwire you won't be strong enough to hold it up yourself

Or maybe you will you are pretty strong

Hey look there's the bat

No Naomi, no Naomi no tie the rope Naomi, and then go after him

Tell Elena of your financial troubles don't risk it all

(to quote Ash:) foolish child....

Looks like the bats in the bag

Also why was he attacking ships in the first place, for the LOLs?

More Gabe running

*Sigh* should have tied it...

She hurt him he hurt her

Very good, Gabe protect

See Don't Use Magic on Kizim, use Magic on yourself

Oh yeah use the wizard to unlock the pots

And then an extra

You know it seems like every episode where Elena could do a lot more she gets injured and then another character has to save the day

It happened in the episode with the merman Prince

Naomi just sort of stands there and watches

Okay that scene is funnier in context than it is in the trailer

First aid! Someone actually knows how to do first aid!

Mateo disobeyed a plan and now Naomi disobeyed the plan

When will they learn that disobeying plans always leads to bad things

Sorry Princess I'm broke

And Too Proud to Beg

Okay, this is a complicated situation, on one hand Naomi is a big help in defeating villains on the other, why don't they just get a royal guard who is good with a lasso?

I mean there are definitely some personal emotions running here

But also it might have been better to wait to become a Captain until after the villains had been caught

I just think this might be both their faults

Although running out to the bat and not tying the Rope yeah

Little scared Mateo noise

I thought it was just going to run head-on into a wall

LOL if one man can't do it get the other guy to do it

Gabe with magic well that would be interesting…

Well yeah, he's normally there

Wait he's not going to attack Keatamos is he?

Gabe and Matteo wouldn't allow that

“Hello friends” awww

Uh-oh is right, that many shaking pots is never good

And now they're here to save the day

When you forget you have an injury

Although she Naomi should have felt the arm first to see how the sling should be set

He likes one cousin and dislikes the other

Wait magic wands are handed?

Don't worry that Blaze probably didn't hit the wood that's everywhere around here

How would releasing the bat help, I feel like he'd be on Kizim's side

Couldn't you have just caught him in the bag with the bat still inside

Actually no, the bat would get squished

Well Gabe, you are bringing the burn today

Esteban reacts to waiting for things the same way I do

Esteban knows he's the universe is punching bag

Ash facepalm

Chatana does care

And Phili never will

OOOOh Other allies!??!

It just seems like the Delgados inexplicably know about every different darkforce and possible magic thing there is

She is angsting, Naomi, Which she always does alone

Wow her arm is in a cast

Couldn't they just fix it with magic?

Does no one in this world know a healing spell?

Actually that wouldn't surprise me.

Get a room you two! Oh, you do have a room

now kiss

They love each other

You know you can hire your own ship crew at some point right?

I mean Captains classically command other crew members.

Wait is she coming back to the council

No Naomi don't ruin your life with politics!

Get out while you still can!

Wait, Naomi doesn't know she was replaced

Well it would be easier on Julio if he didn't have two jobs…

Which is the responsible thing to do

She lives to serve

Hugs

Every episode with Chatana so far has had Elena Naomi angst

That's the end of my reaction.

~~~~~

So here's my Mini review. Overall I liked the episode, sure the big conflicts could have been avoided if people actually talked with each other about their feelings first before the disasters, but that happens so often in TV shows I'm almost used to it. I loved seeing the villain force again (especially Chatana). Hopefully we will see them again soon. I wonder what job Naomi will get now, (Maybe being the minister of ships)?

#my post #my reaction #my live reaction #Elena of Avalor #Giant Steps #EOA #eoa spoilers

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sigynpenniman · 5 years

Text

The Protective Energy of Dr. Julian Bashir: An Analysis of Exactly Why I Love This Space Doctor So Much

Note: I said I was gonna fuck around and write an essay and then I kinda did. I tend to end up writing essays when I get into stuff. I actually have a longform writing blog but all the Bashir fans are following me here so this seemed like the better place to post this. This was completely inevitable. 3,500 words. Enjoy, y’all.

I have very severe fear of doctors. It’s what the medical field calls White Coat Hypertension, on a slightly higher scale. It’s not debilitating – I’m able to receive medical care when necessary. But it is quite intense, and it’s been a bear to live with. Every interaction with medicine – every physical, every dental cleaning, every trip to the ER (and yes, there has been one in there) has been accompanied by overwhelming, nauseating anxiety. It’s severe enough to affect me even when I am not the patient – even walking into doctor’s offices in support of other people lights a certain fire of anxiety in my stomach. While I have never been walked across the gallows to face my own execution, I can’t help but imagine the way I feel walking into a doctor’s office has to be a similar emotion. I explain this because while this is a semi-analytical piece, it’s also a personal one; I’m writing this to not only talk about the technical features of this character that make me love him so much but to also talk about exactly what he means to me, and in order to really understand the weight of that, you need to understand the context. I do not like Doctors. Never in my life have Doctors been a source of comfort, of safety, of any positive feeling other than vague gratitude when they prescribe me the antibiotics I so often badly need. I understand that there’s a big difference between fiction and reality, but trust me when I say, the distance of fiction is not enough to take the edge off this particular phobia – as much as I want to get into watching House (it’s exactly the kind of show I tend to get into), the medical scenes always make me feel a little woozy. So just know – when I stand up and say that I really, really love this Doctor – that is something of note.

Out of the 6 (so far) series of Star Trek, the most unique, and almost definitely the least well known, is Deep Space Nine. The Original Series and The Next Generation are legendary, most devoted Trekkies have a soft spot in their hearts for Voyager, people are aware of Enterprise (even if it is just to hate it), and Discovery is a current pop culture phenomenon. But while Deep Space Nine shares the genre and aesthetic of other Trek shows in its time period, it’s a creature all its own. DS9 can sometimes be “the forgotten trek” – it never aired alone (TNG started before DS9 and Voyager ended after it – there was never a time when DS9 was the only Trek show on) and it’s more known to devoted and establish Trek and sci-fi fans than to casual viewers. Among Trekkies, however, DS9 is one of the most beloved series: many would call it their favorite. Certain elements of the show – the multi episode arcs, discussions of grey morality, overall heavier subject matter, and the way the crew treat each other like a family (to a greater extent even than other Trek crews) endear the show to Trek fans and other sci-fi fans alike. Another unique feature of DS9 is the broad diversity of its cast – while most Star Trek series’ casts tend to consist of mostly humans with one or two aliens, the DS9 cast is mostly aliens with only a few humans. There is not one character in DS9 who makes you groan when they appear, and to be completely honest, I could write essays about just about every single one of these characters. But we are here for one of these characters in particular: Doctor Julian Bashir.

Julian Bashir is Deep Space Nine’s Chief Medical Officer, fresh out of Starfleet academy when the show begins. He’s book smart but young and naïve, and could probably stand to work on his social skills – he’s got that endearing (or wildly annoying, depending on who you ask) tendency to talk far too much for far too long, he thinks he knows absolutely everything, and he’s all smiles and idealism. Many people find him annoying in these early seasons. Personally, I have to disagree – I find him absolutely adorable. He’s got a bit of the character of a puppy in human form, but whether season 1 Bashir is annoying or adorable is certainly a matter of opinion. As the show progresses, he matures quite a bit; he learns when to shut up and certainly some other hard lessons about the nature of life. But these are characteristics which anyone who has watched the entire series would comment on, these are the general character high points anyone analyzing DS9 would hit. I’m less concerned about those. I’m much more concerned with the other features of the character, the things he does that are easily missed because the show generally doesn’t linger on them. And more primarily, I’m concerned with understanding exactly why I love him so much. I’m here to take a dive into my own mind.

The first thing to know about Bashir is that he’s portrayed with an incredible softness. He’s reassuring and gentle, and tends to spend as much time comforting his patients as actually working on them. He exits so many scenes by reassuring people that “If they need him, he’ll be right outside” that an entire supercut could be made of just him saying that line. Towards the beginning of the series, his caring nature is about the only thing we know about him. He’s clearly a doctor who became a doctor because he really, truly cares about saving people, and has devoted his life to that cause. This is common among Star Trek doctors – every Trek series has a doctor, and being genuinely caring and good is a definitive character element for the role. But Dr. Bashir has got the best bedside manner of any them, not just in his words but his whole bearing. He’s just got a kind of comforting aura about him. This is a major part of what makes the character so loveable – now let’s talk about the rest.

Let’s start with episode 1x13, “Battle Lines”.

“Battle Lines” is one of the first major dangerous situations the main cast gets themselves into. Plenty has gone wrong in the series so far, yes, but this is the first time we’ve seen the main cast up a creek without a paddle on a distant planet (or moon, as the case may be). Sisko, Kira and Bashir are shipwrecked on an unexplored moon in the gamma quadrant without any easy way to get home or contact the station. Unbeknownst to them, they’re stumbled into a many-hundred-year war between the “Ennis” and the “Nol-Ennis”. It’s pretty much the Sneeches on the Beaches here, but a little more deadly. Kira is shot in the shoulder almost as soon as they arrive, and deals with the injury for most of the episode. This exchange is what follows (scripts from TrekCore):

KIRA I'm all right

BASHIR The hell you are.

Bashir approaches Shel-la. Nima's gun is instantly on him. Despite Nima's threat, Bashir points to the medical kit next to Shel-la's throne. He is well aware of the danger he's courting.

BASHIR She needs treatment. I’d like my medical case (beat )If you don’t mind.

After a beat... Shel-la nods to Nima who picks up the kit, looks through it briefly, then tosses it to Bashir. Bashir hurries over to Kira. He scans her with his tricorder and administers a hypospray.

Here’s a relevant note: the scripts differ slightly from what actually occurs in the show. Nima doesn’t toss the kit to Bashir – he grabs it from her, losing patience with the way the Ennis are treating them. The thing that sticks out in this exchange is the extent to which Bashir prioritizes the safety of his patients and colleagues above his own. This is the first time we really get to see him in action or in real danger – and he’s got a gun to his throat, and he doesn’t care. His single minded concern is taking care of Kira. The fact that there’s a person holding a gun on him is completely irrelevant.

Let’s talk about another phenomenal Bashir episode (and one which stars our favorite Lizard, Garak): 2x22, “The Wire”. Everyone jokes about this episode being a fanfiction come to life but to be honest that’s exactly what it is. More importantly for my purposes, it contains another fantastic “Bashir doesn’t care about anything except his patients” moment:

ODO Doctor, I was hoping to ask Garak some questions.

Bashir intercepts Odo by the door.

BASHIR (glances at Garak) He's asleep. He has been ever since I turned off his implant. (a beat) Come on. We can talk outside.

ODO Doctor, I need to talk to him as soon as possible. I have four homicide cases left in my files that I'm almost certain were committed by the Obsidian Order. If Garak was a member... he may be able to shed some light on them.

BASHIR I'm afraid your questions will have to wait.

ODO (not happy) How long?

BASHIR I don't know yet.

Bashir sees that Odo is about to object and beats him to the punch.

BASHIR Constable, Garak's body has undergone a severe shock. I don't know when he'll recover. I'm not even sure if he'll recover.

ODO In that case, I want to talk to him now. Wake him up.

BASHIR I'll do no such thing.

ODO Doctor, these are murder cases. And he could be a suspect.

BASHIR Maybe so, but he's also my patient. And I won't have him disturbed. So until further notice, his quarters are off limits to everyone but emergency medical personnel. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a patient to attend to.

Odo nods, not really happy, but right now Bashir could care less. He returns to Garak's room, leaving Odo outside in the corridor.

Odo’s interested in solving his murder cases. Bashir is…unbothered. His sole and only concern is the health and safety of his patient. And this carries on...

BASHIR What happened?

WEBB He got beaten up by some ghosts.

Bashir kneels down next to the boy. Danny's shirt is cut up and bloody.

WEBB (continuing) My wife went to get help, but there's only one doctor on duty at the Processing Center.

BASHIR Why don't you let me take a look? I know a bit about medicine.

SISKO Julian...

Bashir takes Sisko aside so they can talk in private.

BASHIR It can't hurt just to look.

A beat, then Sisko nods his consent.

Bashir returns to Danny's side. He carefully unbuttons and pulls aside the boy's blood-soaked shirt, then examines the wounds.

BASHIR Looks like you were lucky. No broken ribs and these cuts are mostly superficial. You're going to be okay. (to Webb) You're going to need some clean rags and something to disinfect the wounds. Alcohol should do.

What’s at stake here? The timeline. This episode takes place a couple hundred years in the past (transporter accident, of course), and everything Sisko and Bashir do risks messing up the future. That’s what Sisko’s concerned about here, but Bashir is, still, unbothered by anything other than worry for this injured person.

And on…

(6x02, Rocks and Shoals)

KEEVAN Captain Sisko, my name is Keevan. We have a lot to talk about.

BASHIR Not for a while, you don't. (to Sisko) He needs immediate surgery.

SISKO Now?

BASHIR I don't think I have any choice.

The Jem'Hadar suddenly start gathering around Keevan. Bashir looks up in concern.

BASHIR I'm a doctor. I won't harm him.

KEEVAN (cynical smile) They're not here to protect me. They've just never seen what the inside of a Vorta looks like.

The Jem'Hadar crowd around for a better look as Bashir takes out his surgical instruments. Sisko decides he doesn't want a better look and grabs a seat on the floor as Bashir prepares to operate in front of an audience.

(later in the same episode)

KEEVAN (groggy) I... am... alive.

BASHIR No self-diagnoses, please. I'm the doctor here.

Bashir checks him out with the tricorder and his own observations as Sisko and Remata'Klan come over.

BASHIR (off tricorder) Internal hemorrhaging has stopped...your free collagen levels are dropping... tissue growth factors have stabilized... and there's a fifty percent rise in cell oxygenation. (beat) You're alive.

Keevan shifts a little, tries to get more comfortable, but an unwary move sends a jolt of pain throughout his body.

BASHIR Careful. Most of your insides are being held together with cellular micro-sutures and a lot of hope.

Another note the script doesn’t show: The banter between the Vorta Keevan and Bashir in these scenes is kind, comedic, almost affectionate. Bashir’s choice to operate on the injured Vorta was something he pretty much had to do, to save everyone’s lives – but he certainly doesn’t have to be nice to him on the way. But he is – just because.

And on, and on, at length. These are the first type of “Bashir Moral” episodes – the repeated scenes where Bashir prioritizes his patients over criminal investigations, over war alliances, over his own safety, over everything. There’s a second type of “Bashir Moral” episode– the ones where he gets very, very angry. He doesn’t get angry much. He’s not an angry character or a character with a temper. But every now and then, we see him truly furious. The most notable examples being

(4x04, “Hippocratic Oath)

O'BRIEN You can bring me up on charges, you know.

BASHIR That's not really my style.

O'Brien nods.

O'BRIEN I... wish things could've been different, Julian.

BASHIR So do I.

O'BRIEN And I'm sorry I had to destroy your work

BASHIR (quiet) You didn't have to, Chief. You had a choice. And you chose to disobey orders, override my judgment, and condemn those men to death.

O'BRIEN Yes, I did. (beat) Because I thought it was the only way to save your life. Whatever else you make think of me and what I did -- at least understand why I did it.

Bashir has been attempted to synthesize a cure for the Jem’Hadar’s Ketracel White addiction, but O’Brien is forced to destroy this almost-cure in what O’Brien believed was the only right choice. This episode is morally fascinating – the episode ends making a clear point that there’s two sides to be on here, either siding with Bashir or O’Brien, and most people who watch WILL fall on one side or the other of the episode’s moral conflict. While it’s hard to represent with script alone, another fantastic episode in the series of “Bashir being angry about injustice” is 4x24 “The Quickening”, in which he does everything he can to rescue a planet affected by an apparently incurable, artificially created illness. He does everything he can, but is unable to find a true cure. But what he is is angry – quietly, yes, but angry just the same. And then there is, of course, possibly my favorite episode: 7x23, “Extreme Measures”. Bashir and O’Brien capture Luther Sloan, leader of arguably evil Starfleet Underground division Section 31, in hopes of securing a cure for a disease that’s killing Odo and which they have reason to believe Section 31 was involved in. They get their cure – and they kill Luther Sloan in the process (technically Sloan commits suicide, but it would be hard to argue Bashir and O’Brien’s innocence in a court of law). I adore this episode. It’s the clearest we ever get to see Bashir’s character and moral choices – risking his life and safety in search of a cure for Odo, furious about Section 31’s very existence. And…somewhat unbothered about Sloan’s death. Certainly not remorseful.

And that’s the thing. That’s what differentiates Dr. Julian Bashir as a character; what makes him so incredibly special. His softness is not endless. His kindness bears an edge. Julian Bashir is man with puppy-saving kindness and spy-murdering ruthlessness in the same body. Combined with his genetically engineered superintelligence, he’s almost got a superhero bent about him, a sort of “with great power comes great responsibility”. He’s kind, he’s soft, he’s capable, he’s ruthless, and he’s ready to fight for his patients and his friends if the situation calls for it. And the situation does – several times. The whole energy of the character is best summed up in a single word: protective.

It’s that protective energy that makes him so completely endearing, at least to me. But it’s not just in the lines – it’s in the way he’s played. It’s impossible to discuss Bashir with giving due credit to Alexander Siddig. Bashir could have been really any kind of character off the back of the scripts alone. It’s the subtler choices the actor makes, the way he speaks, the tones and emphasis he chooses, his body language and the way he carries himself that turn Julian Bashir into something truly great. As played by Siddig, Bashir is a doctor you almost can’t help but trust. If you watch DS9 for any length of time, it’s almost impossible not to think at some point that you’d probably be perfectly happy leaving your life in Dr. Julian Bashir’s capable hands. He’d go to ends of human knowledge to save your life, and be more than happy to defend you against untold alien hoards on the way.

I cannot express how much I love this character. I find him endearing and adorable and protective and comforting and loveable. I started watching DS9 to begin with because I was introduced the character of Bashir and had to know more about him. I loved him from episode 1, and continued to love him for every minute of the following 175 episodes. This is certainly a matter of personal opinion – lots of people don’t feel this way at all, and it’s down to my personality that this particular character happens to fit in exactly with what I love in a character. But that’s how it always is with fictional characters we adore. Sometimes, we get lucky, and stumble upon characters that feel as if they were created just for us. This is just the kind of lucky I happened to get, and I’m so grateful for it.

I’ve established at the opening of this essay that I have a few issues with doctors, as a concept. I find them inherently terrifying. I have the exact opposite response to Dr. Bashir. Fictional, yes, but this is a doctor I want to run towards, not away from. I always joke that if I was in this universe, on DS9, you’d find me in the infirmary pretending to be injured or ill. I can’t express how significant this is. I have an ambient audio track from the wonderful Ambient Mixer that I assembled for myself (and also shared on tumblr) which consists of the background noises of Dr. Bashir’s infirmary – the low rumble of space station power, the distant beeping so ever present in Star Trek scenes, a few footsteps in the background. This audio mix is something I get a lot of use and listening out of. It’s a tool of calming and I often fall asleep to it. If you had walked up to me six months ago and told me that I would find comforting escapism in pretending to be in what’s effectively a hospital, I would have laughed in your face. Julian Bashir is the first positive association for doctors I’ve ever had. It’s kind of a weird thing to say as an adult, but so be it. I love this character so much, and it’s had real, positive effects on my real life. I’ve been sick for the last several days, which eventually involved me having to drag myself to the doctor. And I’ll be damned if I wasn’t…okay with that? Sure, it’s not somewhere I was thrilled about being, but I didn’t feel like throwing up, and I was able to get my heart rate down low enough that the doctor didn’t feel the need to comment on it. And the credit for this, funny as it may be, as much as some people would laugh at this, lies with one Dr. Julian Bashir. This character means so incredibly much to me, not just because he’s a fictional character I adore, but because he’s helped me to take a step towards overcoming something that affects my real life.

What more incredible can fictional characters do for us than that?

#Julian Bashir #star trek #ds9 #deep space nine #deep space 9 #i wrote an essay whoops #this tends to be what I do #sigyn's longform writing #please enjoy

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toaarcan · 5 years

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Scourge the Hedgehog: The Bad Fanfic Apotheosis

Y’all are gonna hate me for this one.

This is something of a followup to my previous post, Fiona Fox: Depth vs. Prominence, and inspired directly by the discussion I had with a friend in the comments section of the DA upload of it.

Part 1: Fanfic vs. Canon- Genesis of the Recolour Elements of the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comic have long been compared to a bad fanfiction, particularly the parts of the story written by Ken Penders, though other writers like Bollers, Chacon, and Flynn have drawn that label too. I'm one of the people that's done it, and that's largely because I hold fanfic and official material to very different standards. There are certain things you can do in fanfic that you can't do in official material, especially with franchises like Sonic, and especially with more niche parts of said franchise, like a comic series. Of course, there are also certain things you can do in both, but you probably shouldn't. And Scourge is one of them. What exactly the process behind Scourge's creation was is something that's been debated. For a lot of people, he's considered to be a parody of the then-rampant "Sonic Recolour" fad, wherein fans would take screenshots of Sonic X, and other official artwork, and then edit it in Microsoft Paint, or another similar program, to create their own characters and stories. Now, this was long decried by other fans, myself included, as incredibly lacking in creativity and originality. It also had an "Ew, cringe" reaction, due to the often-shoddy editing, text-to-speech voices, and usually some top-tier mid-2000s Nu Metal for the music. These days, it's much easier to look back and say "These were mostly made by kids who were just having fun, and it's completely harmless", and it becomes apparent that a lot of the people that were making fun of them and criticising them were grown men, at which point you kinda realise that this "internet fad" was basically just bullying a bunch of children for not being up to the creative standards of some adults. Everybody was looking for the next Chris-Chan, but Chris-Chan is a near-unique entity, as only one other person alive has ever managed to combine that sheer void of talent with a monumentally repulsive personality, and that person is Ken Penders. But Sonichu is the least interesting thing about Chris, and Chris became the laughingstock that he is because of his inability to avoid posting his entire life on the Internet, which was something of a rarity in those halcyon days before the rise of modern social media. Sonichu was a gateway to the actually interesting content also on his channels, whereas these recolour-creators didn't have anything like that, just endless Windows Movie Maker slideshows. And, like, Chris was in his 20s when he became the Internet's punching bag for the first time, and while he's a horrible person, so were the people that dedicated their time and effort to trolling him- His story is fascinating, but it has no heroes. And into this collective cocktail of grown men shitting on preteens, so Ian Flynn introduced Scourge the Hedgehog. Is Scourge a parody of Sonic recolours? I sincerely hope not. The reason for that is twofold, and I'll discuss how his portrayal generally doesn't seem to be mocking those tropes further down the page, but the second issue with the idea that he is a parody is best explained by Sir Terry.

Parody can never punch down, and as a then-24 year old man writing official canon for a franchise, mocking a bunch of 10 year olds on the Internet for making bad stories would definitely be punching down. And, as I said, nothing about the way Scourge is written is in any way poking fun at the tropes of these fancharacters and stories. It's pretty much all played completely straight. So not only do I hope Ian wasn't trying to mock these fancharacters, but there's also little reason to believe that he actually was. He's not a parody, he is a send-up. And on the one hand, it's kinda nice to throw a bone to those kids. But on the other hand... is Scourge really the character you want to represent your part of the fandom in official material? A cruel, violent, abusive, vicious monster that spends his time palling around with a girlfriend that the writer reforged to be the most unlikable character in the entire comic? Yeah, can't say that's what I'd want if I were one of those people, but he seems to be popular enough, so maybe I'm in the minority there. But now we get to the meat of the problem. You see, the way Scourge is written is one of those things that you can do in fanfic, but you shouldn't do in canon. Part 2: What is a Mary-Sue? The term "Mary-Sue" gets thrown around a lot these days. It's gradually lost all meaning, and has slowly become a term for "Female character that I don't like," mainly used by whiny, easily-offended Broflake Youtubers, who get all pissy that Star Wars films aren't specifically catering to them, to the point that you only have to make a girl be good at something in a movie and these pissbabies lose their shit. I liked Episode VII and VIII more than I, II, or VI, get fucked. But what, then, is a Mary-Sue? And why is it relevant to Scourge? The answer to that first question is a lot more complicated than it might seem. Not just because there are now several different varieties of the trope, but also because the trope itself evolved as it began to be applied to non-fanworks, and additionally because the name itself is somewhat non-indicative. A male Mary-Sue can exist, though these are normally referred to as "Marty-Stue" or "Gary-Stue", or more cynically "The Protagonist". Check out the average Batman comic these days and you'll see what I mean. Originally, the term applied only to a self-insert character in a fanfic, that was an overly-idealised version of the author, dramatically overpowered, hugely popular, normally dating whichever member of the cast the author wanted to bone, or sometimes multiple partners at the same time, along with a few other traits. It's actually pre-Internet term, originating in a Star Trek fanzine when "Mary-Sue" was created as a parody of other fans' similar characters. Over time, the trope evolved to the point that, while the "author avatar" feature is still a pretty big indicator, it's not really necessary. So while there are probably plenty of people out there who want to be Batman, not every character that is a Mary-Sue is someone for the author to project themselves onto, and not every author avatar is a Mary-Sue. Generally, the important features of a Mary-Sue are now: 1) Receives a great deal of favouritism from the author 2) More powerful than the rest of the cast, often to the point of absurdity 3) Faces zero consequences for their actions. 4) Liked by characters that have no reason to do so 5) In a relationship with a character that has no reason to date them, previous relationships be damned. 6) Most importantly, the story will bend over backwards to give them easy wins, even in situations where they logically should struggle. You're probably starting to get where I'm going with this, and if you're not... Part 3: Creator's Pet Scourge is a Creator's Pet. He gets shown a fair bit of favouritism from Ian Flynn, primarily the guise of how much focus he gets. Scourge is the most prolific villain in Ian's run, aside from Eggman himself. While other, better villains like Mogul and Naugus were being imprisoned repeatedly until one retired and the other became a dog, and a huge chunk of the comic's remaining antagonists were being subsumed into the Eggman Empire, Scourge was only moving up, not only being the villain of Ian's first two issues on the book, but continuing to make sporadic appearances for the next twenty issues, before appearing as the new leader of the Destructix under Finitevus in the Enerjak Reborn arc, followed swiftly by a stint as the Big Bad in Bold New Moebius. Does he actually deserve this level of importance? You be the judge, but personally, I don't think so. Even within those stories, Scourge gets special treatment, the biggest and most obvious being Metal Scourge. Now, personally, I think Metal Scourge was a better character than Scourge himself, but the fact that, of all people, Scourge got a Metal counterpart before anyone else, including Knuckles, who had such a counterpart in the games for over a decade by that point. Especially since, well... Metal and Mettle is a fun story, but it doesn't really do anything for Bold New Moebius as a whole, does it? It's basically pure filler, only really serving to add another dead Metal Sonic to Ian's list and stall the plot out for a bit longer. And, of course, the most clear indicator of Scourge's favouritism is that he was he first Archie character to receive his own Sonic Universe arc, and the only one to do so without needing two or three SEGA characters also making up the rest of the lead cast. "Lockdown" isn't a particularly good story, but its existence speaks to not just the insane popularity that such an unworthy character received, but also Archie's willingness to indulge that. Sonic Universe was largely intended to tell stories revolving around the members of the SEGA cast that, for whatever reason, weren't able to regularly appear in the main book. This... frequently got broken, with Sonic, Tails, Sally, Bunnie, Antoine, and Amy all taking centre-stage in the book before obvious candidates like the Chaotix got a look in, some of them twice over, but Scourge was the only time they were willing to try a story based entirely around one of their characters, and they gave it to the already extremely prominent Scourge. It's pretty clear that Ian loved using this character, and did so as much as possible. YMMV on whether that's good or not. Part 4: Scourge OP plz nerf Let's be real, he's overpowered as fuck. Now, overpowered characters aren't necessarily bad, but it's significantly harder to write an OP character than an on-average one, and Scourge didn't work out so well. From the moment he turns green, he's basically unstoppable. The one time he actually seems to remotely struggle is actually in 161, where he looks ever-so-slightly winded after curbstomping Sonic and Shadow at the same time. From then on, while he does start to slowly even out with Sonic, he also continues to utterly demolish basically everyone else, especially his easy conquest of Moebius. It's been suggested that conquering Moebius should be easy, because the big threats are all good, kind people there, but that somewhat ignores that there are anti-versions of the heroes kicking about too. All the (Mostly) benevolent rulers of the Primeverse should be tyrannical despots there, and there are excessively powerful entities like the Anti-versions of Merlin and the Guardians, not to mention whatever horrors Anti-Gerald would've unleashed on the world, and that's without the Suppression Squad themselves. While the comic has generally treated Sonic as being able to stomp the entire rest of the FF, well, who says it has to be a fight? Why the fuck doesn't Patch just poison him? I mean, the obvious answer is "Because then Bold New Moebius won't have a main villain", and sometimes contractual villain immortality has to be a thing, but a good writer should be able to avoid putting the characters in that position. Following on from that, Scourge gets to fight basically the entire FF and Suppression Squad at the same time, (Sonic and Amy are absent and Fiona is on his side), and he's winning until Sonic shows up. Then directly after that is the hedgehog brawl, and despite Sonic managing to get everyone against Scourge, he easily manages to escape and break out his Super form. Even after spending his time in the No-Zone completely powerless, Scourge manages to break out the moment he gets his powers back, despite the prison being full of characters who should be equally or more powerful than him, and the police force that caught them all, basically unchallenged. Scourge never faces an actual challenge in the comic. He never struggles, and the one time he actually loses? Ian makes up some new lore on the spot, which is contradictory to SEGA lore from the same year, and then uses that to have Sonic trick Scourge into depowering himself. Not only does Scourge never struggle with anything, but he also never actually loses a fight. Part 5: When will you learn, that your actions have consequences?! Probably never, because Scourge's actions never have consequences. Throughout his entire run, Scourge gets to go wherever he wants, do what he wants, with or to whomever he wants, and he never has to deal with the fallout of the decisions he makes. Absorbs the energy of a matter world into his antimatter body? He's better than fine, it only made him stronger. Turns up in Knothole with his secret girlfriend's hated arch rival by his side? Never mentioned again. Blows Fiona's connection to him, costing Finitevus' operation a potential spy in Knothole, where Knuckles is? Not even considered a factor. Ditches Finitevus to go and make Moebius into an egopolis? Finitevus isn't bothered, and supports Fiona's efforts to rescue him later down the line after than plan backfired on him. Blinds Patch in one eye out of jealousy/spite? The guy that poisoned Armand and Max, took a torch to Antoine's personal life, took advantage of Sally's frayed mental state, emotionally damaged Bunnie, and tried to assassinate Elias to get what he wanted lets him get away with it. Openly announces that he's going to destroy both worlds? Conveniently does it when he's alone with Sonic so nobody can tell Fiona what she's letting herself in for. He eventually does get sent to jail, but he breaks out with ease the next time he turns up. Because, y'know, that's just what we want to see. Villains never having to deal with karma. Part 6: What does anyone see in him? Scourge doesn't quite get the "everyone loves him" treatment, but he still gets a whole lot more respect than he's ever earned. Both Sonic and Zobotnik are portrayed arbitrarily deciding that maybe there's a shred of good in this monster, and this is the part where I stress that he's abusive again. Maybe if I repeat that enough it'll sink in. Despite knowing full-well the sort of person Scourge is, Sonic's response to Scourge's crappy cribbing of the "One Bad Day" speech is to try and turn it around and claim that Scourge only needs a tiny bit of decency to be a good person, and this is outright untrue, and given what we see of Scourge later, I'm frankly disgusted that Ian tried to pull this with a character he'll pretty much unambiguously portray as an abuser. Zobotnik's case is even more baffling. We're introduced to the guy in the Lockdown arc, and it's implied that he's effectively a tyrannical warden, ruling over the No-Zone with an iron fist, taking an almost sadistic delight in punishing the inmates. But yet, for whatever reason, he decides that it's a good idea to try and rehabilitate Scourge, for no adequately established reason. Even on the other side of the morality line, we have Finitevus, who apparently respects Scourge enough to not just make him leader of the Destructix during the Enerjak Reborn arc, despite him very clearly not being a leader, and not being liked by any of his comrades except Fiona, but then when he promptly ditches the whole plan toward the end, Finitevus apparently decides that he not only wants to get him back, but is willing to go to great lengths and risk losing the only team of mercenaries dumb enough to work for a guy who is quite open about his intentions to "purify the world with Chaos fire" in order to do it. And speaking of, the most egregious case of this comes again in Lockdown, where the Destructix all end up siding with Scourge. Across the second half of the arc, Scourge learns his new team's backstories, and despite them clearly showing traits and beliefs that should make them respect him less, this somehow works in his favour, and he manages to wrest leadership of the team from Fiona. Especially galling is that it appears that Fiona loses their respect early on because of her faith in Scourge, who to them, looks pathetic, but then they end up supporting him anyway, despite doing nothing to earn it. But wait, one's missing... Looks like it's that time again. Part 7: Oh right, he's an abuser. It's time to talk about Fiona. Fiona's heel turn is really, really effective at selling you on the idea that Fiona is a vile, cruel, and selfish person. It's a dramatic, "big bang" moment that, in basically a single panel, got an entire fandom to hate a character. Now for some it was more of a "Love to hate" thing, but there are plenty of people out there who just really hate Fiona for this single moment. And when you're introducing a new major villain, maybe that's what you want to accomplish. What it doesn't do, however, is sell you on her motives for taking that course of action. Fiona, for the rest of her existence, mainly antagonises Sally, whom she has no worthwhile connection to on either side of her turn, other than being the evil Sally to Scourge's Evil Sonic, and stands around or clings to Scourge's arm, looking smug about her abusive relationship. And yes, it is abusive, verbal abuse is still abuse, and the implications that he's physically abusive are present too. I know this is something that Scourge's fans don't really want to accept, but it's true, and we're going to get into that later. For now, what matters is that this character's run as a villain mainly consists of: Fiona: "Hey Sugar-Queen, look at how much my boyfriend yells at me and insults me, and probably beats me when he's angry. I make smart decisions and you suck." We never come to understand why this character, who is so motivated by her belief that everyone will eventually double-cross her that she has decided to start lashing out at people before they can turn on her, is willing to put her faith 100% in someone so repeatedly deceptive that he first approached her by pretending to be someone else. Like, in terms of bad first impressions, that's up there with arriving at a job interview in full clown regalia. The comic makes no effort to show why these characters like each other. Scourge allegedly likes her because she chooses to turn evil and join him, rather than being born evil, but this clashes with not only the fact that Fiona is a genuinely good person before this, who makes a solid effort to stay loyal to her friends first, and is lured into villainy by him, but also the fact that she blames everyone but herself for her current situation, but especially with the fact that all of the foreshadowing for Fiona turning evil consists of people not trusting her because she has a shady history. Scourge claims to appreciate that Fiona is a good person that chooses to be evil, but the narrative has a clear message of "If you started evil, it doesn't matter if you try to become good, you will always revert to type." Which isn't exactly a good message, Ian. In return, all we get from Fiona's side is that Scourge "has no expectations of her and just wants to have fun", which clashes entirely with how we see them interact in subsequent arcs, where Fiona frequently looks disturbed or apprehensive, or just bored, while Scourge yells at her and threatens her for not meeting his standards. Seriously, why do people ship this? But okay, okay. Scourge is a good liar, and Fiona's established paranoia and history do make her vulnerable to manipulators like him, so maybe she falls for his lies and gets taken for a ride. That could happen, sure. Doesn't really explain why she becomes a horrendous person all of a sudden, but whatever. Maybe he convinced her to do it as a sort of hazing, and a means of ensuring she couldn't go back. That fits with his abusive nature (You might also notice that this the explanation I used in Revival). But why does she stay? And why does she refuse every out she's given? Why, after everything that pulled her to his side has turned out to be bullshit, does she remain devoted to him? Now, you can argue that due to the abuse and the manipulation she's suffered, she believes she has to stay with him, and that's a fair shout, but her appearance in Journey to the East is kind of a stumbling block for that theory, because we're shown a Fiona who is fully capable of functioning without him, and even after making efforts to establish herself... the next time we see her she's gone back for him. And now... well, it's time to talk about that "A" word I've been bringing up a lot in this section. Scourge is abusive. I've frequently referenced that he verbally abuses Fiona every time she displeases him across the book, but the most telling scene is this one from Issue 190.

"You do not want to be sent back with me." Translation: "If I get sent back, and you're sent back too, I'm going to beat the shit out of you." Fiona (With her invisible left arm) isn't excluded from this threat. Fiona isn't surprised by this threat either. Nor does she not take the threat seriously. She looks like she's expecting to be struck. He beats her. And please, nobody say that "he's just angry", that's apologism. Now, I dunno if this was in the script, or if Fiona's face was something Yardley did on his own, but given that this arc ends with Super Scourge announcing his intention to destroy both Mobius and Moebius, simply because he can, regardless of the collateral, I'm willing to bet that this relationship wasn't a happy, stable one. But, unfortunately, this element was never made clear enough. Now, your mileage may vary on whether you think Sonic the Hedgehog comics are the appropriate place to discuss abusive relationships or not, but we've got one now, and Ian dropped the ball. This wasn't a Joker/Harley, where the pairing was clearly abusive but also sold DC/Warner millions of dollars worth of merch, this wasn't a RWBY, where Adam took three years to show up and had already won a huge number of fans from his admittedly cool design and powers, so people already liked him before they even knew what his personality was like. Ian had full control over this, no merch to worry about, and Scourge's prolific appearances gave him plenty of opportunity to make it clear that this was an ugly, repulsive thing that Fiona needed to get out of ASAP. And he didn't. Because panels like this, and all the yelling, clearly weren't enough for the fandom. No, you point this detail out to them and they'll make excuses, try to pretend it didn't happen, or just get offended, or worst of all, outright say they don't care and still ship it. We have fanartists who became real official artists creating stories where this garbage-fire pairing is used for sad feels, not because Fiona got stuck in a relationship with a controlling, violent monster, but because oh no they really loved each other and now Fiona's dead isn't it tragic don't you feel sorry for Scourge? No. No I don't. I feel sorry for the thousands of teenagers who support an abusive relationship because Ian was too cowardly to make it clear that the relationship in question was just that. Now, do I think that Ian is an intentional abuse apologist? No. Do I think he wimped out of taking the necessary steps to make it clear that this was bad because he didn't want people to dislike his shitty pet villain? Oh yeah, I do. Scourge's reputation was more important to Flynn than appropriately and sensitively portraying a destructive, damaging relationship between a woman and her monstrous partner. Well, I say "Woman", let's not forget that Fiona was meant to be sixteen, and realistically if you take her timeline into account she's more likely to be about fourteen. Real fucking classy. Part 8: Effort? What effort? So, now we get to our final criteria. And frankly, it's the easiest one to cover. From the moment, Scourge turns green, his life becomes a cakewalk. Everything he ever wants is handed to him with zero actual struggle on his part. Wants to be stronger than Sonic? He is. Zero side-effects to using a Chaos energy form from a mirror universe, or having a Super transformation interrupted, he just seemingly gets to be half-Super forever. Wants another leg-up on Sonic? Here's Fiona, sans personality. Sonic says he's just a lame ripoff of himself? He conquered a planet in a week, look at how cool he is. Also his team all roll over and make him their leader even though they hate him and they could easily kill him. He gets to walk through the entire FF/Squad teamup, and the Hedgehog teamup, and then when he gets to the No-Zone, Zobotnik, who has kept far smarter and more dangerous characters locked up for decades arbitrarily decides to reform him and gets completely suckered by him. The Destructix fully throw in with him, despite him never actually earning their respect. He never loses a fight where he wasn't depowered first. You know what the irony of this is? Ian has a character whom he is contractually obligated to never have lose for longer than an issue or two. And honestly, he wasn't awful at disguising that. Sonic gets a few wins that feel too easy, but for the most part, the issues with this rule mainly manifest in Sonic's limp responses to the tragedies happening around him, and a sprinkling of minor failures and pyrrhic victories ensure that the rule looks more like shoddy writing in a few places unless you're explicitly told about it. And even then, he still manages to make it look like Sonic struggles to attain those victories, that he has to actually put his back into it every time. He is challenged. Scourge isn't allowed to be challenged. That's the irony. Ian has a protagonist who he is not allowed to have lose, and Sonic still manages to be avoid looking like a boring invincible hero, while Scourge just never faces anything that can actually pose a threat to him. Powerful opponents crumple before him. Characters' personalities and development shift to suit his needs. The plot warps to benefit him. Because heaven forbid Scourge actually have to work for his wins. Who needs stakes when you can have the writer on your side! Part 9: In summation... I think you should've all twigged where this is going by now, so let's wrap up. 1) Does Scourge receive a great deal of favouritism from the author? Yes. 2) Is Scourge more powerful than the rest of the cast, often to the point of absurdity? Yes. 3) Does Scourge face zero consequences for his actions? Yes. 4) Is Scourge liked or respected by characters that have no reason to do so? Yes. 5) Is Scourge in a relationship with a character that has no reason to date him? Yes. 6) Most importantly, does the story will bend over backwards to give Scourge easy wins, even in situations where he logically should struggle? Yes. According to these criteria, Scourge the Hedgehog is almost a textbook example of a Mary-Sue. Which is probably why something as disgusting as him got away with so much. I guess, then, that his role in Revival, and a lot of the stuff before that, is the unfortunate reality of a Mary-Sue who suddenly has to deal with the fact that they're no longer getting that special treatment from the writer. That now their actions have consequences, that now the universe doesn't shape itself to their desires.

#Sonic the Hedgehog #Archie Sonic #Ian Flynn #Scourge the Hedgehog #Fiona Fox #Evil Sonic #Critical #CW: Abuse #TW: Abuse

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ecoamerica · 2 months

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youtube

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

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bemused-writer · 5 years

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Fanfiction questions: 6, 22, 28, 38!

Thanks for sending this in!

6. List your OTP from each fandom you’ve been involved in.

Oh, so many fandoms.... This won’t include everything by default of there probably being too much but I will list what I can think of! I’ll start with my more current fandoms:

Wei Wuxian/Lan Wanji (The Untamed) - There’s so much I like about these two in the live action. Their loyalty to one another, their growth over the course of the series, and they way they learn to understand one another so well. Other things I really liked was how pleasantly romantic things were between them. The music, the longing, and how they can work together in unison.

Noé/Vanitas (Vanitas no Carte) - I... almost don’t need to say why I like this ship. It’s taken over all my writing. 8D Still, they are such a great balancing act and Mochizuki is writing their adventures so well.... I’m just very impressed. I also really like Jeanne/Dominique but they haven’t gotten much attention in the series yet. :0

Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens) - I just love how they’re nontraditional entities, uniquely eccentric, and that while their friendship has spanned centuries they still have new things to learn about one another.

Oz/Echo (Pandora Hearts) - They didn’t get much time together but they were both in a unique position to understand each other’s suffering in a unique way. I really like these two. The one “date” they went on left quite an impression on me; I think if they’d been given the chance they could have really improved one another and brought a special light to each other’s lives.

Sherlock/Wato (Miss Sherlock) - It’s hard not to ship every version of Holmes and Watson and these two were no exception! I really hope we get a second season but I loved seeing the progression of their relationship in this show and loved how unusual the cases were. Thought they handled things very well.

Eleanor/Tahani (The Good Place) - Honestly, I like all the ships on this show but these two and their kind of background flirting is just great. Love them.

And now some fandoms I’m a little less active in (at least at the moment):

Dean/Cas (Supernatural) - I don’t know if I’m really holding out for this to happen in canon in any overt kind of way. It’s been long enough since I’ve watched the show that I’ve created a little distance there. Probably for the best. XD Even so, I always thought these two had something special!

Korra/Asami (Legend of Korra) - I remember watching season 1 and thinking “These two would be cute together but that’s unlikely to happen.” I’m very glad I was proven wrong. They’re just as epic together as I’d hoped!

Ned/Chuck (Pushing Daisies) - Such an ideal couple. They talk things out, they love each other dearly, and they’re both pretty unusual in all kinds of ways.

Yuuko/Watanuki (xxxHolic) - Pretty sure I’m one of the only people shipping this. XD But it is my opinion that Watanuki had feelings for Yuuko that surpassed his feelings for everyone else. Were they reciprocated? I don’t think they were returned romantically, but I ship it all the same.

Kamui/Subaru (X/1999) - I remember, at some point, this ship had a lot of people disliking it. More recent people will use their familial relationship in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle as a reason but back in the day it was just because it got in the way of all the Subaru/Seishirou and Kamui/Fuuma shippers. At any rate, in X/1999 Kamui and Subaru are not related and they are pointedly portrayed as a healthier version of the Seishirou/Subaru relationship. Anyway, I think they would have been really nice with each other and I still need the ending of this series in case CLAMP ever wants to, you know, do that....

Willow/Tara (BTVS) - Before certain events, they were just adorable and also a power couple.

Cain/Riff (Cain Saga/Godchild) - Tragic, loyal, and bizarre. This sums up their relationship and the series pretty well. I’m always moved by these two.

Data/Deanna (Star Trek: TNG) - Probably also the only person shipping this, but you know? It would have been cool. Also, I think I’m probably only supposed to pick one ship per show but Q/Picard is just also incredibly good.

Miharu/Yoite (Nabari no Ou) - Just everything about these two is great and tragic and awesome.

Cosima/Delphine (Orphan Black) - They had a lot of troubled points in their relationships but they pulled through and that was nice to see.

Louis/Armand (The Vampire Chronicles) - It’s been quite some time since I’ve read this (I’m due for a reread) but I distinctly recall rooting for these two because I was (and am) convinced Lestat isn’t good enough for Louis. I’m not exactly caught up on the series, so maybe I would change my mind but... I don’t know...

I’m forgetting so many....

22. Is there anything you regret writing?

At the moment, no! I had a phase when I was a teen where I regretted writing all of my fanfiction, though. It was a difficult time in general and I just felt like none of it was that good and I shouldn’t have spent so much time on it--it seemed like I should be doing other things and there was just a sense of shame. It’s weird thinking back to that time because I’ve definitely moved past it. Unfortunately, I deleted my fanfic from that era. Now I’m trying to recover it so I can see the progress I’ve made, but there’s been so-so luck in that regard. Anyway, this is why I encourage people to at least keep a copy of whatever it is they do. You might want it in the future even if you don’t at this point in time!

28. If someone were to draw a piece of fanart for your story, which story would it be and what would the picture be of?

Hmmm, I’ve actually been fortunate enough that someone did draw some fanfic for one of my stories! But, this is talking about something that hasn’t been created yet. Honestly, I would love to see art of Jeanne taking down VotBM in The Descent. I feel like that is the best action scene I’ve done to date and there was something just... really awesome about her throwing a sword across a room with pin point accuracy. 8D I’d also like to see art of the characters in The Dark Wanderer (the sequel to that), especially Dominique dressed as the necromancer.

38. Do you use established canon characters or do you create OCs?

Generally speaking, I try to keep with pre-established characters since I figure we’re all reading fanfic to see more of them! However, most stories can’t make it on their own with just those characters. Many plots will be too big to only have that limited number, so I create OCs as well to better serve the story. For example, there are a lot of OCs in my interpretation of Vanitas’s background (Dealing with Monsters) because we haven’t yet seen his backstory. If I didn’t create any OCs, there wouldn’t have been much of a story. XD

#Bemused's post #vanitas no carte #good omens #the untamed #pandora hearts #miss sherlock #the good place #just tagging for which ships were most recent #therealghoulfieri

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offdensen · 5 years

Text

so, if you’re someone who started reading confectionery (that one ice cream!au subscorp fic) nearly four years ago and have been wondering what the hell is going on with it since, this post is for you.

(also, if you haven’t heard, there’s a new chapter! read it here ♡)

i should begin by apologizing. i wish i was more forward about my feelings on the work and why i stopped working on it, and i regret not doing so. i also feel like i should explain myself a bit.

i began writing confectionery after being inspired by a parody video (I WANTED ICE CREAM) and trading ideas with my best friend during the summer of 2015.

that summer, i was in a weird spot mentally; i had just finished my first year at a university i hated, where i spent most of my time between classes crying my eyes out due to the stress of being unable to afford the tuition, as well as just not being ready for that transition in my life yet. i decided to transfer to a school in my hometown that was much cheaper and allowed me to stay home for that following fall.

however, i still struggled to find work, so i had two and a half months of seemingly endless free time, which allowed me to write plenty during that break. i had managed to finish and publish chapter six right before the next semester began, and i knew after my first day of class that i wouldn’t be able to continue writing, but i pretended that i could force myself to. i started chapter seven and then promptly gave up when i couldn’t write more than three sentences before wanting to give up and try again tomorrow.

the thing with fanart and fanfiction is that it’s purely meant for pleasure; fanartists can make a (legal) profit from their work, but fanfic writers cannot, and so the only thing driving me was the creative need to make something. but starting school again and having to figure out what the hell transfer students were supposed to do (my university did little to help me or other transfers with this kind of transition) drained me significantly.

my interest in mk waned around the same time, and i knew that forcing myself to write something i wasn’t feeling passionate about would hurt the quality of the work, which i simply could not allow myself to do; i take way too much pride in my writing ability and skills to post something i’m not satisfied with. i also felt that it would be unfair to the piece itself and to everyone who was actively reading it.

i didn’t want to orphan it, though, and instead put it on hiatus because i knew i definitely wanted to start working on it again at some point, but also realized that i likely wouldn’t want to return to it until the next mk title rolled around (which is exactly what’s happened lmao).

however, i also received some very frustrating and entitled comments in 2016 that lead me to resent confectionery and as such, made me want nothing to do with it; i ended up publishing four unrelated fics during that year (after marathoning simon pegg films and becoming INCREDIBLY hyperfixated on star trek because of it), which is where all my creative energy went.

anyone who’s looked at my work history will find that i haven’t published anything since then, though. my depression is a constant thing i’m dealing with, and it hit me hard at the time. i also found a job (fucking finally) in may 2017, which shortened my free time between work and school. i tried to write, but never finished anything. i think i have three or four projects i’ve started since then, but couldn’t force myself to complete. i poured most of my personal time into playing overwatch instead.

so, writing’s been hard for me lately. i put a lot of creative time into sfm and not much else, but eventually burnt myself out on that, too. i’ve also barely made any gifs or edits in the past few years. capitalism has a way of draining you of any and all creativity lmao.

but, now that i’ve graduated with my bachelor’s and found a new job where i’m actually utilizing my knowledge instead of making pizzas under a manager who couldn’t give less a shit about me or my efforts, i’m feeling much more satisfied with the direction my life is going and also have a lot more time to do things for myself.

i recently replayed the story to mkx to give myself a refresher of the plot so far (i referenced this in a recent comment on confectionery, for you eagle-eyed readers) and also got to do a few towers during the mk11 beta a couple weeks ago. since then, i’ve been fleshing out the plot line to confectionery and finally wrote the next chapter (one that i was super excited to write before my interest wilted and died rip).

so, if you’re reading this, that means i also finally published it!! we did it kids!!! we’re back on the mortal kombat ice cream train!!!!

if you’ve made it down here, thank you so much for reading this whole thing. my intent isn’t to make excuses but to simply explain myself for the very long hiatus. your patience and support means the absolute world to me. i hope you enjoyed the recent update, and that you’ll stick around for the next one! ♡

#subscorp #putting it in the subscorp tag so people who read confectionery but aren't subbed can find out #this is an essay on it's own but i felt it was necessary :x #xine text #fic:confectionery

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ausllygo1direction · 5 years

Text

Instrument of Darkness

So I’ve decided that I’m going to use my tumblr to kind of promote some of my fanfiction. For those who aren’t aware, I’m Austin And Ally Go 1 Direction on fanfiction.net, and AAG1D on AO3.

The following bits are some excerpts from my latest fanfiction which was set in the Star Wars universe but with the Sherlock characters. It was originally meant to be a short 8,000 word Sherlolly fluff one-shot, but the Sherlolly fluff dies pretty quick (It still ends with Sherlolly, but the story was kidnapped by a plot-line so the fluff got thrown out the window), and in the end it turned into an 80,000 word three-shot monstrosity of epic proportions. I don’t know if anyone would be interested in checking it out, but if you like the following excerpts I’ll place the link to the story at the end so that you can go read the whole thing :)

Without further ado, I give you some bits of Instrument of Darkness.

///

The wind whipped harshly across the planes of the desert, sand scrapping unforgivingly against the weather-worn figure that stood amongst the nothingness. The lean body was wrapped in scraps of beige fabric and nearly blended perfectly in with the environment. It was only the shock of dark hair and the crudely made staff that contrasted the figure with the dunes of Jakku.

It didn’t matter though. Sherlock Holmes was always out of place in the desert.

Why he had been abandoned as a child on such a wretched planet was beyond him. The desert had hardened any soft edges he had once had, and the physical demands of survival were more than evident in the leanness of his form and the callouses on his hands.

Sometimes he wondered what he had done in a previous life in order to have been dealt such a cruel fate. A life as a scrapper was barely a life at all, and the endless sand had washed Sherlock’s mind of any good memory he might’ve had as a child.

The only thing he could remember was Molly.

The name was his only constant companion in his solitary, and the image of a face that time seemed unable to erase. The edges were blurred almost as though something had tried to rid him of the memory-

A sharp pain caused Sherlock to grit his teeth and close his eyes against the harshness of the sun, seeking a reprieve to the headache that flared up when he reflected too much on the emptiness of his mind. There was something missing, but he didn’t know why.

His only hope seemed to lie in this Molly woman.

For as long as he could remember, his only goal in his meager existence was to get off the back-water planet he had the misfortune of calling home, and search for the woman he was sure held the answers to his questions. The name itself brought a wave of incredible longing to the forefront of Sherlock’s mind, and he was certain that he loved-

Another burst of pain. This one caused a grunt to break the stillness of the desert.

Putting his musings aside, Sherlock carefully unclasped his water skin, before allowing himself to enjoy a few refreshing drops of the too-little supply of water. They did little but coat the grittiness of his tongue, but Sherlock knew better than to indulge in any more. Refreshed as he was ever going to be, he resumed his trek across the barren wasteland.

There were too many holes in his memory to truly understand his past. Thus, it only made sense to try and move forward. He had a plan. Get off Jakku. Find this Molly. And then hopefully the rest would come with time.

But for now, to focus on the present.

Besides, the smoking wreck up ahead looked promising.

///

JN-1871 was not having a good day.

On top of breaking some rebel pilot out of prison, commandeering a ship to escape the only hellhole he had ever known, and then having said escape plan go marvellously to hell, he also had somehow managed to crash land on Jakku.

To top it all off, he wasn’t used to being in harsh environments without the protection of his Stormtrooper armour, and he could just feel his skin beginning to burn.

Life was just peachy.

At first, his plan seemed foolproof. Break the pilot out of prison, steal a ship, use said pilot to fly said ship, and finally be free from the hell known as the First Order. It was a stellar plan.

Except for the variables he hadn’t factored in.

Variable one: The pilot was a cheeky tosser. Mary Morstan, as she introduced herself as, did not take orders and apparently had a sense of sass that outweighed her sense of self-preservation. By the time that they had finally gotten to the ship, JN-1871 was already wishing that he had left her in Kylo Ren’s interrogation chamber if only to have saved himself a headache.

Then there was variable two: The First Order wasn’t exactly, well… you know, pleased with his escape attempt with their Resistance prisoner. Hence resulting in a red alert being signalled before they had even reached the bloody ship.

He really, really hated shooting.

Especially when he was on the active end of the barrel.

By the time that the (ex)Stormtrooper and (ex)prisoner had made it to the TIE fighter all hell had broken loose, and Mary had jabbed several buttons on the control panel before shoving something into JN-1871’s hand and shouting “I’ll distract them. If I don’t make it you need to go to Jakku and get my droid. It has the map that Lady Smallwood needs.”

“What- wait! I don’t have a bloody clue how to fly this thing! That’s why I broke you out in the first place!” JN-1871 protested from where he had been all but shoved into the pilot’s seat.

Mary rolled her eyes as she continued punching buttons and yanking on wires. “I’ve enabled autopilot and set the coordinates for Jakku. I’ll keep anyone off your tail.” With that the lights for the ship flicked on and the hum jolted JN-1871’s bones. The pilot flashed the (ex)Stormtrooper a cheeky smirk. “See you on the other side.”

“No- wait!” It was too late – before JN-1871 could so much as move the top of the fighter closed and Mary was running towards the next TIE fighter, JN-1871’s gun going off in her hands (When did she get that?). The (ex)Stormtrooper barely had time to click his seatbelt on before the ship was whooshing out of the corridor, blasters going off behind him.

The rest had been a blur (And admittedly his eyes had been shut for, like, ninety-five percent of it). There were explosions. He was vaguely aware of another TIE fighter following his that seemed to keep the enemy fire at bay, until something went wrong, there was a blast of fire, the looming yellowness of Jakku, and enough tumbling to make JN-1871 puke more than enough for an entire lifetime.

At some point his seat must’ve ejected, and then, pain, and death, and oh my goodness he had just wanted a quiet retirement.

He had woken up to a mouthful of sand, an unforgiving sun burn, and the scattered remains of the fighter littered around him.

His mind was in a numb state of shock as he watched the bulk of the wreck begin to disappear beneath the sand.

He was stranded.

On Jakku.

JN-1871 wanted to cry. Not only did every single part of his body ache, but he was now also a fugitive of the First Order and was stuck on a planet that was uncomfortably close to the Finalizer.

His eyes travelled down to the odd thing still clutched in his hand.

It was a scarf. Specifically, the Resistance pilot’s scarf that she had shoved into his possession before running off. He wasn’t sure why she had given it to him – perhaps it was a way to find the droid she had mentioned? His head hurt, and it wasn’t just from thinking about his predicament.

Perhaps the droid was his way off the planet. Yes. The pilot had thought he was with the Resistance anyways, and perhaps if he got the droid to this Lady Smallwood they’d offer him amnesty. Besides, the pilot made this map thing sound important, right? So it was almost guaranteed that they’d bargain for it.

New plan in mind, JN-1871 turned his back to the wreckage.

Time to find a droid and a way off this back-water planet.

///

On the whole, Mary Morstan was a fairly adaptable person. She had to be – as a pilot for the Resistance it might as well have been a job requirement. In all her years of service, she had been in her fair share of sticky situations and had seen more than enough trouble for a lifetime.

There was a reason she was so cocky.

And yet out of everything that she had seen and done, getting captured by the First Order and being personally interrogated by Kylo Ren certainly took the cake – and the wind out of her sails.

That said, if anything was able to raise her spirits it was the sight of a specific YT-1300. Even if it wasn’t being manned by its original owner, the ship and its cargo were the best thing that the pilot had seen all week.

“What- Mary?!”

Offering a slightly sarcastic salute with her good arm, Mary took that as an invitation to waltz further towards the duo. “Hello boys.”

Although the ‘Trooper she had escaped with had lowered his pistol (Mary had to hold back a snort – he hadn’t been fooling anybody with his whole Resistance impersonation), the tall stranger only tightened his grip on his staff, eyes narrowed.

“Who are you?”

Mary eyed his fighting posture warily. Despite all her bravado she was in no condition for a fight, and the other man knew it. Thankfully, the ‘Trooper responded for her.

“It’s alright, Sherlock. She’s Redbeard’s pilot.”

Mary’s eyebrows hitched at the name. “Did you name my droid while I was gone?”

The other man – Sherlock – finally lowered his weapon, though he managed a somewhat haughty sniff. “I wasn’t going to call him a sequence of letters.”

She rolled her eyes. Mary had a feeling that she would be doing that a lot around these two. “Where is he?”

The ‘Trooper took over once again, turning to head back down the hall. Mary stayed close to his heels, overtly aware of how Sherlock’s eyes followed her every move – and not in the good sort of way.

“He’s up in the droid port piloting the ship. We ran into a snare, hence why we’re currently out of motion. Sherlock was fixing the wiring when you showed up.”

Mary made a humming noise of acknowledgement in the back of her throat. “I take it that means you haven’t had the map delivered to Lady Smallwood yet.”

The ‘Trooper shrugged awkwardly. “The coordinates are set for D’Qar, we just need to recalibrate the-”

“Nevermind D’Qar,” Mary asserted, slipping into the vacant pilot’s chair and ignoring Sherlock noise of protest as her fingers began flying over the wires. “We have a new destination. The map can wait; There’s some more pressing issues at hand.”

It was only the weight of something very solid suddenly upon her collarbone that caused Mary’s fingers to freeze their musings. The ‘Trooper’s sudden protests were lost to her as her senses directed solely at their current danger.

Sherlock stood menacingly beside them, his staff held dangerously against her chest. Any sudden weight, and Mary was certain that he could snap several of her bones without even batting an eye. There was something in his eyes, a kind of… madness that made Mary’s flesh crawl. The ‘Trooper was still going off the rails.

“…Sithspit Sherlock, she’s on our side!”

Sherlock didn’t pay him any heed, his eyes still trained dangerously on Mary. Finally, his baritone cut off the ‘Trooper’s ramblings.

“I was told we were going to D’Qar where I would be given transport to go my own way. I am not interested in taking a detour.”

Mary raised her hands, and turned slowly so she could face him better, though her own eyes were narrowed. “Well, if we don’t get to Sector 7G pronto, there may not be much of a galaxy left for you to fly through.”

The staff didn’t move.

“What are you talking about?”

“A weapon,” Mary was irked at sharing the information with someone with an obviously different agenda from the Resistance, but the weight on her collarbone hadn’t left her with many options. “The First Order has designed a weapon that they call Starkiller Base, and it doesn’t just take out a single planet, it can take out an entire system. If we don’t get over there and sabotage it now, we might not get another chance before half of the galaxy’s gone.”

A moment of stillness as her words sunk in. Then:

“Sherlock if that’s true then searching for this Molly person would be pointless. She could be dead before we’re even to D’Qar.”

Mary’s ears perked at the information, but she was more intrigued by how Sherlock responded to it, his eyes hardening in resignation while his mouth twisted in dislike. After a moment’s more of silence, the metal was finally removed.

Sherlock didn’t look any less defensive.

“Fine. We go to this Starkiller Base” He said the name derisively, and Mary couldn’t blame him, “And destroy it before it can inadvertently kill Molly. And then I expect to be transported somewhere and given a ship and the supplies needed for my search as thanks for saving the galaxy.”

Sherlock’s eyes darted between the other two people dangerously, as though daring them to contest his statement.

Neither did.

Giving a sharp nod of his head, the strange man spun on his heel and disappeared down the corridor. The ‘Trooper gave her a half-muttered apology, before dashing after the errant man who had threatened her life just a moment before.

Within a breath Mary Morstan was left alone with the circuit board, still trying to process what was happening. She blinked, before a scowl marred her pretty features.

“So I’ll just fix the ship myself then, shall I?” She shouted into the empty space.

Unsurprisingly, nothing shouted back.

///

Destiny could be a funny thing.

Some people felt that it was set in stone, that once a future was determined it couldn’t be changed. Others felt that while the future wasn’t exact, the fundamental attributes of a person would always result in them making the same choices, leading to an inevitable destiny.

Sherlock thought that destiny was garbage.

And that the Force was too.

He remembered waking up to ash. Pain had coursed through his brittle flesh that had been all the wrong colours in all the wrong places, and his lungs had seized at the filthy air around him. He had tried calling for help, for his parents, for Myc, but his body couldn’t take the sudden movement, and instead he found himself curling up in the ash and soot, sobbing silently as the world passed on in silence.

That was how Lestrade had found him. Broken, and helpless, and covered head to toe in fiercely angry burns and black, black ash.

If he had believed in destiny, he might’ve even said that the state in which Lestrade had found him in had foreshadowed that which he would become.

Destiny was bantha fodder though, so Sherlock dismissed the thought.

For a while, though, it was near impossible to believe otherwise. The darkness had simply been so all encompassing that Sherlock struggled to keep afloat. The other Masters and students had been rightly terrified of him, and more than once Sherlock had overheard stray thoughts throughout the Force, wondering when he would be lost to the darkness for good.

For a while, Sherlock had felt that he had no other option other than to forever be entrenched in the darkness. He was a monster, an abomination, a sithspawn, and he had lost any hope he might’ve once harboured.

After all, when everyone else fears the darkness within you, it hardly seems polite to disagree.

Then, he had met Molly and everything changed.

For the first time in his life, he had felt like he could be good. That perhaps he wasn’t destined for a future drowning in darkness.

His mistake, however, was in thinking that he could learn to swim.

For although he tried, the darkness never left. And although he went through the motions, he never truly could be a Jedi.

After all, he had all but thrown himself at the darkness in order to save Molly.

Now, as he traversed the uneven ground with the bitter breeze threatening to blow his hood off, Sherlock still didn’t give destiny any credit. After all, what had it done for him? But he did have to admit that if it did exist it clearly had an ironic sense of humour.

Why else would Sherlock be on his way to find the one person who had betrayed him when it was most important? The one person who could hopefully save the galaxy and answer some very pressing questions. The one person who had found him over twenty years prior.

Yes, Sherlock Holmes didn’t believe in destiny.

But destiny believed in him.

And that was why he was always meant for the darkness.

Because destiny knew that he could also be more.

///

In the throne room, Sherlock was doing very, very badly.

With his attention split between the fight and his Force Bond with Molly, he didn’t stand a fighting chance on his own. Molly had momentarily stepped back in her attacks as the two Praetorian Guards kept him busy, but if he didn’t figure out how to get through to her soon, his momentary relief would not last long.

In the end, it was his own stubbornness that did him in.

Mentally chanting that he was strong enough to keep up with the attacks despite the fact that he most certainly was not, Sherlock didn’t have the energy to pay attention to his form. As a result, his right elbow clumsily was left out of position at the tail end of one of his blocks, causing a solid hit to the arm from one of the guards to loosen his hold on his saber.

In the next moment, the blue was extinguished and Sherlock’s lightsaber went clattering to the ground, stopping next to the ugly throne where the Supreme Leader was watching the events unfold with an unsettling grin.

Weaponless, Sherlock barely managed to duck in time, the vibro-voulge of one of the guards skimming too close to his head for comfort.

Panicking, his body went on Jakku survival mode as his foot swung out to catch the guard closest to him, sending him to the ground.

Somewhere in his head, the Jedi part of him was shouting to use the Force to reach for his weapon.

But a much larger part that had witnessed first hand dirty fights in old wrecks of starships was muddling any useful thoughts. He grabbed the vibro-voulge of the fallen guard, the shape familiar enough to his staff that the Scavenger part of him was able to relax slightly in ease.

It lasted about a half a heartbeat before he was bringing the voulge up to block the oncoming attack of the other guard.

Which was, of course, when Molly had to join the onslaught as well.

In his haste to stop the lightsaber from separating the top half of his body from the bottom, he forgot about the body of the fallen guard, and his foot went out from under him. His eyes widened and his breath got caught in his throat, but it was like he was a child again and unable to control the Force.

He hit the ground hard, vision slightly blurry.

It was mere reflex that had him bringing the voulge up to block the lunge of the guard. He blocked each attempted swing desperately, his grip on his temporary weapon weakened due to the awkward position and constant assaults.

His head lolled to the side slightly, and his eyes caught on the handle of his saber.

Trying to fight down the panic, trying to regain some semblance of control, Sherlock reached his hand out.

He was a dead man if he couldn’t rely on the Force.

Please.

The handle twitched and the blade went flying.

…Right past Sherlock’s hand, and into Lestrade’s waiting one.

///

John and Mary were panicking.

Read: Mostly John was panicking.

It had been over five minutes and they were still as stumped as they had been before. Mary had taken to reading every single label for the switches (Luckily for them, Stormtroopers were bad at nearly everything, meaning that the labels for each switch was incredibly precise). Unfortunately, however, there was simply such a multitude of switches that she was still nowhere near finishing.

John was in a corner muttering to himself. Up until a minute before he had been reading the labels too, but then he suddenly stopped without explanation and took up an almost trance-like murmuring about the plan.

Mary was getting fed up with the useless play-by-play.

“This would go a lot quicker if you helped, you know.”

John blinked owlishly at her. Her vocal intrusion seemed to finally break him of whatever spell he was under, but then he opened his mouth and hollowly said something that Mary never expected to hear.

“I think Sherlock’s dead.”

Mary froze, the words on her label suddenly spinning. Then her head snapped towards John with horrified precision. “What?”

John gulped, a shaking hand coming up to card through his hair. “The, uh, Force, thing. It- it-” He shook his head in an attempt to gain control of his actions. “Someone powerful and important just died. It was as though the Force cried out for a moment before settling. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

Mary fought to keep control of her own panic. “But we don’t necessarily know that it was Sherlock. Couldn’t it have been the Supreme Leader?” She reasoned. “He’s also powerful.”

But John merely shook his head. “They were good in life. Otherwise the Force wouldn’t have acted as it did. I don’t know how I know that, but I just do.”

The weight of his words was crushing, and Mary felt as though the room they were in had just shrunk several feet. “If he’s dead… then we’ve failed. The Supreme Leader lives.”

But John was already spiralling into grief, his having said his fears aloud allowing them to solidify into as good as reality in his mind.

“He was my best friend,” His eyes were distant, ears unhearing. “I didn’t know him that long, but he was my best friend. And now he’s gone.”

Mary was having none of it though, her grief doing the opposite and surging through her with new-found determination. She stepped forward and grabbed John’s shoulders, giving his loose frame a good shake to snap him out of it.

“Listen to me,” Her voice was steady, for which she was grateful. “Perhaps he is dead, okay? But that doesn’t mean that we are. Not yet, at least. And I can bet every last unit I have that he wouldn’t want us to give up now, you hear me? I believed in Sherlock Holmes,” Here her voice did crack, ever so slightly, “And now, we must live for Sherlock Holmes. You understand?”

Despite the haze that settled behind his eyes, John nodded ever so slowly.

“Good,” Her bravado was slowly slipping away, so she turned around so that John wouldn’t see. “Now let’s get back to work.”

///

A/N: Okay, so a lot of that doesn’t make sense because I had to cut a lot to avoid spoilers, haha. But if you want to read more (With a much more cohesive plot, I promise) please check out the full story. It’s set post-original trilogy, and basically follows Sherlock from age 7 till age 27. The first chapter is completely set at the Academy, with the second and third being set within two weeks of TFA and TLJ timelines. Hope you guys enjoy!

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16282052/chapters/38077163

ff.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13078770/1/Instrument-of-Darkness

-AAG1D

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ginnyzero · 5 years

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Being a Fanfic Writer is Okay

AKA I love Fanfiction

Fan Fiction, a bit controversial and a bit time worn topic in writing and fandom circles. But let’s face it, fan fiction is older than dirt (Shakespeare anyone?) and isn’t about to go away any time soon. So, we might as well face the pink elephant in the room and address the issue. Besides, fan fiction is really personal to me. Of course, before I get all maudlin about my experiences with fan fiction, maybe we better discuss what fan fiction is, a bit of history and where to find it.

Fan fiction is at its core, a story written by someone who isn’t the original owner of a story. They are simply a fan writing in someone else’s world using someone else’s characters. After that, the possibilities are pretty much limitless and maybe we can discuss some of the more interesting aspects of fan fiction later. Some of our favorite classic stories might be considered fan fiction, Homer’s take on the Trojan War for example. Shakespeare wrote wild interpretations of the lives of British Kings. And modern day published fan fiction would be the books based on favorite television shows or popular games, video, role playing or even board games. A type of visual fan fiction would be the movie Clue! Based on the popular Clue board game. (Sadly not really an action movie, drat.) Star Wars Expanded Universe is a type of authorized published fan fiction. And who can forget the hundreds and hundreds of Star Trek novels based upon the episodes and later expounding upon the universe.

Speaking of Star Trek, the modern take on fan fiction really took off with the introduction of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. Before the internet (what a phrase,) ambitious Trekkies created magazines that writers could submit their own stories about the Starship Enterprise and her crew and receive subscriptions of them in the mail. Many of these stories revolved around Kirk and Spock in a romantic relationship, which is still a huge pairing today. Other fandom groups copied this magazine model and later as the internet took off, they created online email groups, forums, journaling sites, chat rooms and individual sites, until someone got ambitious enough to create the first fan fiction archive. And suddenly, there was a place where any writer of any talent could post their work to one place and read everyone else’s work no matter the quality or fandom. And with the introduction of Japanese anime to America, the concept of fan fiction exploded.

And Sturgeon’s Law reared its ugly head. 90% of it is crap.

But that’s okay.

A lot of archives came and went. There are only a few that stayed the course; fanfiction.net, mediaminer.org, adult-fanfiction.org and the baby of the family, archiveofourown.org (AO3). Each of these rather interesting archives have a tumultuous history and interesting backstories, which I really don’t want to get into right now. Just saying, if you have a bunch of free time, want to read some free stories and have some fandoms you really love, then these are the places to go. It might take some time to wade through the truly awful stories to find the gems, but the side effect of fan fiction archives, are fan fiction recommendation lists! These handy lists have the best fan fiction from certain fandoms in the compliers subjective viewpoint! Always a good starting place.

As I said, fan fiction is really personal to me. As it says in my bio, I have no formal education about writing outside some interesting English classes in college. I got a C in research papers and grammar; a B in creating a pitch and an A in narrative storytelling. This probably should have told me something. What I do have, is a very long history and experience in fan fiction. I’m not comfortable with putting my pen name out there, let’s just say I’ve been writing fan fiction for over fifteen years in a variety of fandoms under a couple of different names. And in the beginning, I was one of those probably writing crap. And I didn’t care. I was writing and I was having fun. Writing fan fiction helped me through my bad high school experience (a lot of people have them) and it helped others too. And that was important to me. Is still important to me. I grew. I improved. I got to focus on things in fan fiction that I would never have focused on if I had been trying to write original works. And it helped me churn out idea after idea and see how I could string these ideas together to create good concepts and make better stories.

The greatest thing about fan fiction in my opinion, is that it gets people of every age (I have met as many forty year olds as I have twelve year olds) writing. And when people write, they also tend to read. Okay, so maybe they are reading in this vacuum bubble of fan fiction where 90% of it is crap and they may or may not improve, yet, they are reading and you know, that is okay. Because, let’s face it, 90% of the published world of books is crap too. And let us not get started on this idea of self-publishing. Seriously, anything that introduces a little bit of literacy to the world I’m all for. I’m not going to discourage anyone from taking up a pen or sitting down at a computer or type writer and taking these ideas they have in their head and getting them out there. Because, there is a certain magic to it. Let’s not stifle any form of creativity of the arts here.

Now writing and posting fan fiction are two completely different things. And if someone wants to write a story based on 10 Things I Hate About You (which in itself was an authorized fan fiction of the Taming of the Shrew, which is based on classic literature tropes) and keep on their computer for only themselves to read. That is fine! However, if they want to take that fantastical leap of courage and post it the internet in one fashion or another for the public to see, then that, is inspirational. Posting, which in this case is essentially publishing, something you have created from your heart for others to see and consume is perhaps one of the scariest things you can do. And I applaud them for their courage because the public is not a safe place and you never know what will happen. Now, I will say that a lot of fandom communities can be nice and welcoming. And then there are the communities that are insular and full of drama. And sometimes, publishing in the fan fiction world is like shouting into a canyon and hearing the echo and you might have to shout several times (meaning publish more than one story or more than one chapter of a story) to get any sort of response. Hey, being popular in one fandom, doesn’t automatically guarantee being popular in another fandom!

And that is where the sense of community steps in. Sure, you will probably get a lot of ‘squee, I love it, write more!’ responses, which are good for the ego and the soul. But there will be rare times, where you will meet people who love the same things you do and want to squee and discuss writing. About characterization, and plot bunnies hopping out of control and multiplying and isn’t so and so just hot as this character. And suddenly, one isn’t so alone anymore. You don’t feel exactly strange or like a hermit who sits alone in their bedroom typing for hours at a time. Out there, in the world, there are people just like you, doing the same things. And it is okay. People, as a community who like a certain thing, are being creative and sharing ideas. And that is wonderful. So, the execution of said ideas might not be wonderful, but now, the idea is out there in the universal consciousness waiting to be picked up by someone else, tinkered with and fine-tuned and maybe a better version of it, or maybe one just as bad, will be published to be seen and shared by more people so more interesting and diverse stories can be born. (Or, as it is so easy to see in fan fiction if you pay attention, a new fad of fiction tropes and mish mash of nonsensical ideas put together to create something absolutely crazy but mind numbingly fun that you have to go ‘what the fuck, who came up with this bullshit and how did it become so popular and why wasn’t it me? [Superwholock, Omegaverse, Soulbonding])

Now we could discuss the legality of fan fiction, or some of the crazy views that published authors have about fan fiction (Anne McCaffery, George RR Martin), or some of the awesome things that have happened to people because of their fan fiction and the original creators being okay with it (Avatar: The Last Air Bender, Joss Whedon). Or the crazy things that some fan fiction writers do to take their fan fiction and make it into original fiction (Cassandra Claire, 50 Shades of Grey.) But those could take a couple thousand more words and some of it sincerely bewilders me.

Fan fiction is great. I enjoy writing it. And I also enjoy reading it when I have time. There is nothing wrong with people, in their spare time, writing fluffy and sometimes not so fluffy stories about their favorite characters in their favorite universes. There are a lot more horrible things they could be doing than writing stories about fictional people and posting it on the internet.

Now, when I get published (and I say when, not if because I must believe in the when), as a matter of course and a, for your information, I won’t be reading any fan fiction of my own works. (Though, I’d love to keep track of statistics for it, that would be amusing.) It comes down to the universal consciousness once again. If one of those stories someone writes about my work has an amazing idea and I read it, later forget about it, and then think I come up with it on my own and use that idea, then, well, I could be sued. (It has happened.) It is unlikely that the fan fiction writer will win (there is precedent about this), but I would still feel awful. So it is just better all around if I don’t read fan fiction of my own work. Which for me is kind of sadness, but hey, it is a fact of life.

That being said. I hope that I do inspire people to write their own crazy times using my characters or creating their own characters and putting them in my world, or crossing my world into their other favorite worlds. Because, if I wasn’t so busy writing the original world, I’d probably be doing the same thing. There is nothing wrong with people having a good time and enjoying themselves. In fact, if it helps get them through a bad place in their life, then good for them.

Not that the die hard fan fiction writers need permission from me. But those who aren’t so certain, and maybe worry a bit too much or have been told that writing original is superior to writing fan fiction and believed it. Writing fan fiction is okay. Don’t beat yourself up over it and go out there and have fun. Go on, get your fanfic on!

#fan fiction #fan fic #fan fic history #writing #writblr #writeblr

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