still so charmed by the way rose tyler is so unapologetically lower class without the narrative like. consistently telling you that. it’s all stuff you see between her flat and her bottle blonde hair with roots poking through and and her clumpy mascara and her clothes that don’t fit quite right and her passion for looking out for the underdog. it’s just so refreshing to have the protagonist of a show not be so squeaky clean and polished or a complete antihero but just some completely normal girl shaped by the way she grew up
Because we fans are hurting and fuming both, I thought I’d do a little giveaway to battle grief and anger with kindness – because that is what most of the DBDA characters have in abundance. So if you like, I’ll send you one (or more) of these cards.
I won’t charge for them, but ask that you spread kindness by donating (e.g. to a local foodbank, or to organisations who fight climate change or fascism, or those that support minorities), helping out a friend, neighbour, community member etc., or generally doing something nice for yourself, others or the environment.
You must be willing to give me your (or a) postal address to send the card to. I’ll be waiting until next Sunday (8th September) before I start sending them out.
Please let me know which ones you would like:
dogs (art inspired by George’s suggestion in one of his cameos)
graves (inspired by half of my soul, as the poets say by @edwinspaynes)
gay (inspired by my own fic Eight Seconds)
dance (inspired by Dance the Night by Gruoch (@madamedevil)
I wish each individual chapter of a fic on AO3 had the date when it was posted, rather than just when the fic was first posted and when the last update was.
That way you can see at a glance how often a WIP is updated, whether it’s fairly regularly or with huge long gaps between chapters; or if the first 20 chapters were posted in quick succession but the most recent couple were posted at long intervals, indicating that the writer is losing interest and may not finish, etc.
Someone just liked this 10 year old post and tagged it “wishlist” and I feel obliged to add that immediately after posting this, in 2014, I was informed that this DOES exist. So for those of you who don’t know:
[image 1: the buttons at the top of a chaptered work on AO3; the Chapter Index button is circled. image 2: clicking the Chapter Index button displays a drop-down with all the chapters, and the Full-page Index button, which is circled. image 3: the chapter index, which lists the chapter numbers, titles, and update dates.]
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dead Boy Detectives (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Edwin Paine | Edwin Payne/Charles Rowland, pre relationship - Relationship
Characters: Edwin Paine | Edwin Payne, Charles Rowland (DCU), Edwin Paine’s Father | Edwin Payne’s Father, Technically his mother is in it too but she’s practically invisible so
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Restaurants, Dysfunctional Family, Autistic Edwin Paine | Edwin Payne, Protective Charles Rowland (DCU), Non-graphic ableism, Non-graphic mentions of abuse, Non graphic racism, Additional Warnings In Author’s Note
Series: Part 5 of i’m down on my knees
Summary:
Edwin’s parents wanted to meet Charles. The evening ends abruptly, but not for the reason they feared.
Aka: the hand slapping incident, cleaned up and slightly revised
They’ll never do a Hitman level set in a Furry Convention because gamers would absolutely ruin it but imagine. like the target isn’t a furry he just owns a hotel that happens to have one every year but you can disguise yourself in a fursuit and some guy will ask you “what species is your sona” and 47 would be like “a wolf. i always felt a connection with…hunters.” and then diana would be like “let’s see if you can sniff out some information, furrty-seven” and then he comes to my house and kills me for writing this
ok but imagine being the fursuit artist that he contracts to make his costume tho
He contacts you via an anonymous email and is very exacting and precise in his request. Money is no object, which isn't uncommon in your line of business, you're a professional and more than a few customers have been in the 1% range.
So you ask if he's local so you can meet and take measurements and he says no but he will meet you at (conveniently close local craft store) tomorrow after work (you did not mention where you live)
You're a little shaken but you meet him anyways because daddy needs to pay rent, and he's probably not a serial killer, right?
Right?
You had no idea what kind of person to expect, but a 6'2 bald white guy built like a fucken shit-brickhouse with a "FurCon2023" shirt wrapped around his brolic frame was rather on the shorter end of your list. His cargo shorts and pure white sneakers looked like they'd just been picked up off of the shelf and his glasses looked too small for his massive head.
You jump because you don't even notice him until he's tapping you on the shoulder and introducing himself. How did he know it was you?? Alarm bells are going off everywhere but there's cameras all over, he wouldn't try something in public right?? You take his measurements and look at fabrics together.
You ask about his fursona and he very seriously produces a laminated folder with several crudely drawn pictures of a polar bear suit. Well, you guess you shouldn't be mean, they were clearly drawn from references but you could tell this was someone who did not draw often. It didn't even have any accessories, it was just a normal polar bear... But the notes surrounding them were so neat they looked printed! And so in depth! There was one page solely dedicated to the visibility needs, with advanced notes on the camera and display system he wanted in the head. You'd only seen this sort of thing at the national cons, just who the hell was this guy??
You haltingly ask him if he was sure. You tell him this is really advanced stuff and he was looking at at LEAST 10k with all the specific modifications on it. When you first started making suits you would have never been this firm on pricing, lowballing and trying to make up the difference so as not to upset the customer with a hefty price, but you'd learned eventually that undervaluing your work was a waste of your time and effort so even though you couldn't gauge his reaction, you figured being upfront about the price would at least be a test to see how serious the guy was.
He nodded silently and reached into the fanny pack around his waist to produce the cleanest stack of hundreds you'd ever seen in your life, like straight printed from the treasury mint. He places it in your palm and you almost drop it out of shock.
"Will this be enough to get you started? I included some extra to compensate for lost wages as I do need this suit fairly quickly" he says, tone unreadable.
You stammer and try to look professional thumbing through the crisply banded notes and would you look at that, you think this will do just fine!
He nods again, shakes your hand and leaves without another word.
You exit the store, just trying to comprehend what in the hell you'd just gotten yourself into, zoning out so hard that you didn't even realize someone was yelling at you until the word "-fuckin furry faggot" pierced through your thoughts. You were looking at your phone so you didn't notice the band of truck bros creeping up behind you in their suped up pickup truck. There were three or four in the bed of the truck, dangling out over the side in between giant "TRUMP 2024" and "Lets Go Brandon" flags. They have their phones out, recording you and shouting slurs.
You raise double birds at them and turn to walk quickly in the opposite way, hoping you wouldn't see them as you walked home. You'd heard of a couple beatings happening locally and you didn't want to be around if that's what they had in mind.
So when you hear tires screeching and and engine roaring behind you, you break out into a run, hoping to make it to the bus terminal across the parking lot.
But they catch up to you before you'd made it halfway. They all get out and one grabs your phone that you held out to record with. He smashes it on the ground and shoves you into the pavement. Hard.
They all stand over you, jeering and laughing and you try to escape but your limbs won't listen to you. You always figured if something like this happened you'd stand your ground, maybe get in a couple of hits yourself, but in reality you could barely breathe and your chest felt like it was collapsing in on itself, so your attempts to scream for help end up coming out as breathy wheezes. One of them levels a crowbar at you and thats when the screaming starts.
You curl up into a ball to protect your face but the pain never comes. You hear screaming and sneakers skidding across asphalt and oh god, wet crunchy impacts followed by something warm and wet being splattered across your arms and legs.
Its suddenly silent except for the drone of the truck engine but eventually you crack open an eye to get a look around, and for the second time that day you almost lose your lunch.
Its straight up something out of a video game, just absolute carnage surrounds you. All of the tall frat bros are out cold in varying stages of fucked up. You do actually start to hurl a little when you see one with his nose completely sideways like a gory Picasso.
And in the center of the carnage is -no fucking way- your fucking fursuit client, calmly wiping his hands of the blood with some baby wipes from his fannypack.
He looks over at you when he sees you're up and for a second there you see something, a slip in the mask, something angry, something violent. You flinch as you realize it, but oh fuck, this guys like.. killed people before. like, for fucken sure.
He walks towards you and you suddenly feel like a very small animal being stalked by a tiger. You try to stumble away but the mask is back on and he just looks down at you and offers you a babywipe.
"You alright?" He asks plainly.
Turns out the guy is "ex-military" and he hurt himself so he's back in the states and bored out of his mind. His daughter is a furry and wanted him to go with her to FurCon and insisted he get a suit as well. You keep on glancing at all the deep scars running up and down his arms and wondering how the hell you didn't see it before.
He's saying something to you but you only snap out of it when a phone is being placed into your hands. You look up and suddenly you're standing outside your apartment building (did you tell him where you lived???)
"This is a secure line, if anything happens to you or you have questions, I'll answer immediately." He says, pale blue eyes drilling into your skull with their intensity.
The tears start bubbling up in your eyes before you can stop them and you just lean forward, bumping your head into his chest and choking out a thank you as you clutch the phone to your chest like an amulet.
As you figured, his body is make out of steel and he stiffens at the contact, unsure of what to do.
He just lets you cry it out for a bit before eventually placing a heavy hand on your shoulder, pulling you off but he keeps the hand gentle.
He's not looking at you this time but he clears his throat and murmurs a quick "Take care" before turning around and disappearing into the night. You unlock your door and collapse into bed.
"What the fuck" you murmur to yourself as you pull out your tablet, and you start to sketch...
for the prompts - "i'm not worth saving. please." and/or "a few more steps. we're nearly there. i've got you" for a ship/ships of your choice?
Hey friend! Thanks for the prompt :D
Sorry it took a bit, you know how it is with work^^"
Still, I hope this AU without a cause will satisfy!
Prompt list here, if anyone wants to send me another one!
Edwin huffs as he leans backwards, suspending his entire weight at the end of Charles' arm and still not managing to move him more than a couple of inches. He pauses, heaving for breath, and watches as Charles heaves himself up the last few steps with a painful-sounding mechanical whir.
"Come now Charles," he pants, forbidding himself from sitting down. "We only have a few steps left."
"I can't," Charles says.
His words comes out flat, mechanical. His voice modulator must have given up somewhere between the bottom of the stairs and now. His chest is rising and falling too fast, cooling circuits working overtime, but the audible sound his systems make tells Edwin it isn't quite working. Charles must be approaching overheating, and there is nothing Edwin can do about it here, in the hallway to the agency.
"Charles, please," Edwin begs, but Charles shakes his head.
"I can't," he repeats. "My left knee's piston is malfunctioning."
Edwin inhales, sharp and loud, and ignores the beeping in his systems that say his shell is too warm. They found spare parts for his cooling system last month: he can handle a little heat, but Charles--
"Charles, you must keep going, you can't--we have to plug you in!"
It took a lot of time, and even more money--although they are lucky Crystal never asked them what it was for--but they finally got their systems up to a point where they can handle one of them, at least for a time. Charles' software isn't as solid as Edwin's, but ROWLAND persocons had a reputation of hardiness for a reason. They have the memory banks required, and more than enough compatibility coding between the two of them to keep Charles safe until they can find him a new chassis, but none of that will matter if they can't get him connected before he shuts down.
"You should leave me here," he says, Edwin gasps.
"Do not say that," he warns.
"You should," Charles insists, eyes closing. "I'm not worth saving."
"Do not say that!" Edwin all but shouts, not caring about the time, or the human neighbors whose suspicions they've been trying not to arouse. "I forbid it, Charles!"
"Look at me!" Charles exclaims.
Edwin, electrical core on overdrive, looks down at Charles. Some of the hair is missing from his skull, burned away in the accident that nearly tore Edwin's head off a few years back. There is a long streak under his eyes where the synthetic skin peeled away, revealing the gray of his chassis, and the open jacket he wears fails to conceal the three large dents in his chassis, left there by the older ROWLAND model he used to live with. He looks resigned and, impossible as it should be, exhausted.
Even so, even pulling up the necessary softwares to run a simulation of existence without Charles prompts half a dozen alerts in Edwin's system, and he shudders. Crouching down, he puts a hand to the side of Charles' face.
"I am looking at you," he says, voice modulator struggling to keep his tone even through the shiver of his cooling system going overdrive.
"I'm old," Charles says, bitter. "I can't even move. Even if we do preserve me: I won't even have a body. I'm an industrial unit--what good am I if I can't even move around?"
"Charles," Edwin says, surprised to get an alert from the hardware around his throat, "please stop. You haven't been a dockhand in decades--"
"But I am!" Charles cries, or must try to. "That's why I'm the brawn, isn't it? Stronger chassis, longer batteries, building routines--that's what I'm for! What am I if I can't do what I'm for?"
"You're my friend!" Edwin says, fiercely, bringing his face closer to Charles. "You're the man who got me out of the scrapyard I'd been stuck in for seventy years! You're the one who made me look human enough to go out again!"
"Yeah, and now I'm the one who looks like a rogue!" Charles retorts, closing his eyes in distress. "If anyone from Endless Co. sees me, they'll do more than scrape us--"
"That will not happen--no!" Edwin insists, louder, when Charles looks like he is about to protest again, "That will not happen! I will never let it happen. You are my friend! You are my confident, and my companion, and you must stop talking about yourself like you are a glorified forklift!"
"That's what I was programmed for!"
"And I was supposed to be a sex unit!" Edwin breathes harshly in the stunned silence, gathering himself closer to Charles, until he can curl up around him and touch their forehead together. "I don't care chat they made you for," he whispers. "You're the one who decided to download all those fighting programs. You're the one who saved me. You're the one who came up with the name of the Agency. I don't care that they think we're not alive, Charles, I know they're wrong. You and I, we're alive in all the ways that matter, and I--"
Edwin stops talking. His voice modulator refuses to add even one word, some previously unnoticed subroutine cutting off his access to his dictionary. Fantom code, perhaps: a glitch. Or maybe the people who programmed his model line back at Payne Industries wanted to make sure they couldn't evoke certain feelings. Either way, Edwin's voice absolutely refuses to shape the words he is thinking, and so he does the only thing he can possibly do in this situation: he leans forward and presses his lips to Charles'.
Charles twitches under him, unnatural and poorly coordinated, but when Edwin pulls away to look at him, he is met with eyes filled with wonder, and joy, and that same word Edwin's core software won't let him say.
"Oh," Charles says, and brings a hand up to touch Edwin's cheek.
"Yes," Edwin replies, arch and haughty, "oh. Now, if you would please help me. It's only a few more steps."
A good make out session on the couch would do them some good.
I think it would be absolutely funny if Edwin is not shy once he’s in a relationship. He’s studious afterall and would try to perfected it until he got it right. Charles is hanging in there.
Hello- as someone who likes astrology bug can not read a proper birth chart- can you tell me what Edwin’s star/moon/asc are? I was curious but yeah I can not read that chart for the life of me 😅
Hey! 🩷
Of course, let's see:
Sun/Star Sign: Capricorn ♑
Moon: Leo ♌
Ascendant: Virgo ♍
The other positions are under the cut 💫
MC/Mid Heaven: Gemini ♊
Lilith: Sagittarius ♐
EP/East Point: Virgo ♍
North Node: Cancer ♋
Mercury: Capricorn ♑
Venus: Capricorn ♑
Mars: Gemini ♊
Jupiter: Scorpio ♏
Saturn: I can't find the glyph :/
Uranus: Gemini ♊
Neptune: Libra ♎
Pluto: Leo ♌
Part of Fortune: ♑
The Part of Fortune (symbolized by a circle with an X) represents how an individual physically connects with the world around them. It's a key indicator for the body, health, prosperity, and career. Calculated from the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant positions in a birth chart, it holds comparable importance to these vital points, just as the MC. It's important to mention that its calculation vary due to two different formulas based on birth time (day/night), which leads to frequent mistakes.
Houses:
The Houses start counting from the Ascendant, so you can say Virgo is in 1st House/Place, and continue from there as it is indicated in the chart.
I think most of you would be interested in the 5th House (♑), or probably the 7th (♓) as they rule aspects related to romance and relationships/partnerships respectively. Also, the 8th House (♈), which between other things, rules death and deep connections.
