#is that adhd is motivated mostly by stuff that can be broke down into four categories:

[ziracona]

What sort of detective Shenanigans does meg get up to?

All kinds. Some of it ends up more like investigative journalism, some more traditional, some downright wild. Tapp tries to start her off small and get her to do safer jobs, because she’s just been through one life-threatening extended period, but Meg is...incorrigible, to say the least. Most of their first cases completed were smaller ones—missing pets, stolen property, anonymous threats. Meg really wanted to work missing persons, and kind of expected mostly to be doing that, and hunted some down specifically and got some, but those are pretty overwhelming and distressing. Still, there’s a lot of good and incredibly basic and not hard to do work law enforcement simply doesn’t get done that one or two very determined individuals with minimal equipment absolutely can do, so they get a lot done. First missing persons case completed they got a kid who had been missing for two years back from a parent who kidnapped her from the parent who had custody when she was four. They actually only thought they had a lead to the dad’s last known address and had been lead to believe he’d moved out two months ago, so they were completely unprepared when he opened the door, panicked, and attacked them. They got shot at, and Meg bounced back real hard becuase they were both fine, got a dangerous man off the streets, she got to see Tapp tackle someone, and she got to carry a kid out of a horrible environment and drive them to a restaurant to get food while comforting them and calling their mom, and then reunite a family. Tapp on the other hand, was horrified, becuase Meg got shot at.

After that, he tried really hard to get her to swing towards more safe cases, or to at least go about things differently, but it had the opposite effect on Meg, who decided she wanted to accept a request to look into a murder being thoroughly ignored by law enforcement in the area even though it was overwhelmingly clear who did it. Tapp didn’t take well to the request, because it was exponentially more dangerous, and they had their first real work fight over it, but Meg woke up at like 3am to get a snack and saw him up investigating back research on it on his own because he’d been super lying about being willing to ignore it and just hadn’t wanted her involved, and after that she figured out pretty easily if she wanted to do a more precarious case, Tapp would also want to do it, but not want her to, because he was scared for her, relented a little, and absolutely kept investigating more serious cases, but extremely carefully and always with complete discussion with Tapp beforehand. Tapp was still wary, but Meg doing dangerous stuff super carefully with him and under his guidance was better than Tapp says no so Meg goes off and does something stupid alone, and gave that a try. It has worked out well. It also has been unexpectedly helpful that Meg loves to document. She started doing video diaries/documenting cases and uploading them (although while sometimes live streaming even, if it’s something someone could see and use to know they’re being investigated, always at an intelligently later date instead haha) as a for fun thing and to keep her pals informed, but it got a decent amount of attention. The plus side of this is that no one can just murder either of them and cover it up, the downside (or upside, depending on who you ask) is that this also means that sometimes people know who they are when it is inconvenient & a situation where a disguise (which Meg enjoys wearing so ridiculously much) will not cut it, and they have to call in Susie or Michael or any one of their 50 friends to come lend an assist. (Everyone but Tapp considers this a plus. Tapp considers it a nightmare. Living with Meg easily adds 10 hours to his life span per day, but living with Meg also definitely /subtracts/ six hours off his lifespan most days, which is still a really substantial net gain, but he’s for sure feeling the effects of both as they happen (I realize by this math Tapp will live forever, or at least until/if Meg dies. Idk what to tell you. I guess he will.)

Anyway, the full answer is they do a little everything. They try to go one case at a time, but that doesn’t /always/ work out. And while sometimes they work murders or assaults or track down stalkers or people running animal fighting, sometimes they spend four days looking for a missing pet or a lost hiker, or proving a school expelled a student unfairly, or that someone in corporate management broke a law and the Target employe was ordered against disability law to work without their documented and by law required accommodation, etc—they’ve actually weirdly gotten the most actual financial profit from that kind of thing/assisting in lawsuits, and in stopping scam artists. They have like, tracked down a lot of scam artists. Specifically the kinds who do things like the Grandparent scam (were you call a grandma in the middle of the night sobbing pretending to be a grandkid you know they have from Facebook, say you’ve been arrested, and patch in just enough believability from public details, and sobbing to make it hard to recognize a voice or not for sure, especially on someone ahead of hearing, and two people playing a cop and lawyer to back you up, that you manipulate them to empty out their accounts and send cash overnight to “pay bail”)—which is the kind of crime law enforcement pretty much will never do anything to rectify at all and you’re just f’d, won’t usually even intercede if the grandparent realizes post-sending the money and before it is for sure picked up.

Meg’s heart will always be most in Missing Persons cases, as probably will Tapp’s (although I think he’s about as motivated to work murders. Homicide was his former department, and he cares deeply about people getting closure and justice for the loss of their loved ones. I’d say he prefers working Missing Persons cases though, even if he doesn’t care more, because sometimes those have a happy ending). They get along well and make quite a team (them and their doggo, who has greatly enjoyed it and been useful trying to find missing animals and people lost in the woods by scent). Tapp makes Meg take a steady supply of less terrifying cases for the sake of literally everyone, and looks out for her. Meg works hard to actually not get killed and do the job right, and is extremely happy in the line of work she chose. She kind of wanted to be a superhero as a kid, and even if that wasn’t very practical, it stuck with her. This isn’t totally the same—still no Spider-Man powers—but she is kinda doing only just barely technically not vigilante justice, and she’s helping people. She feels fulfilled. The only thing Tapp does not do well leading this operation is making them take breaks, because Tapp doesn’t know how to take care of himself and shut off crime fight mode. Thankfully, Meg is pretty good at that because she does shots of loving her friends juice every morning and needs to see them constantly. When she hits that ADHD focus real hard and forgets too, Susie Taylor, Michael Tapp, and Rachel Thomas reel them in just fine. They spend a lot of time hanging with the whole party, and have found a pretty good balance so far between work and life. Haha, I think with as many people watching out for them as they have, they could hardly do anything but.

Side note: I know this was specifically about Meg, but for the record, Kara and Tapp are on friendly/casual terms again by about two years out as well. Things are still a little awkward, but they’re at the stage of beyond past hurt and plus gained familiarity again where they can remember why they got married as well as why she broke it off. He gets to see her sometimes, and it’s nice. They’re kind of taking it slow, and I don’t think romance would ever ever be in their future again, but I think it’s safe to say they will stay some kind of friends.

#ask #anonymous #in living memory #in living memory (fic) #meg thomas #david tapp #detective tapp #ilm spoilers #dead by daylight #im gonna get to all these asks i swear sorry its been some kinda day haha. THIS WAS SO FUN TO ANSWER THOUGH #writing