askerian | Tyr ofic *ponderyponder*

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Tyr ofic ponderyponder

So I was reading the fics I was pimped in my last post. (oh my god i did like the 1xR ones. My 1x2 fanclub card is probably bursting in flames right now. Actually I liked all of them, thank you hon ♥ ♥ ♥ ) And then of course there was that 1x2xR one from Sol/

kaigou ... which also has sort of werebeasts in it...

So of course, between the were thing and the Heero & Duo & Relena thing I needed to find something to do that wasn't wailing that Sol hadn't finished it or else the gods would smite me for above and beyond hypocrisy.

So I started thinking about Territoriality. It makes sense because Tyr is still pretty much Heero. Well, more like my old Garou!Heero, who after several years living in the back of my head is another brand of Heero from the generic canon one. Problem being garou!Heero is also reaching the end of his potential story arc -- he's settled in with a good job and good relationships and a family that's weird by normal social standards but works for him, so now I have to regress Tyr back toward the start of that progression, but also try to do it in a path different from Heero.

... I hope that wasn't too confusing. Basically now that I know where it goes I have to figure out another lane to drive down in reverse for his history. Not only in terms of background swaps (old uncle instead of fortysomething hitman! living isolated with uncle instead of living with hitman! joining the army instead of being trained as a solo operative! ... oh hey I should think more about how well *that* went, I'm sure there's plenty of shinies in there.) but something genuinely different. I have a few ideas but I'm still exploring them in the back of my head right now, but suggestions are also welcome.

Anyway the issue with the last time I tried to tell this story was that (okay, apart from the fact that I had NO PLOT) Tyr came onscreen, and he had a past as a black ops soldier, but he had already made his peace with it, and he likely had a traumatic past that led him to black-ops-ness but that didn't seem to even ping his radar anymore, and his only hurdles left were the becoming a werewolf thing and the learning how to be a pack with his teammates thing. Otherwise he was at peace with himself as he was.

IT'S BORING.

Also something that should happen mid-character arc, or at the end of it! Not as a starting point! Or else I might as well just scrap the Black Ops thing, since it only impacts things enough to enable him to out-badass the local weres and doesn't give him any problems, personal or otherwise. Marty-stuuuu.

... Anyway.

Another issue I have is, the government is only pretending to dismantle their were-soldier section; they're doing that mostly by pushing out people who are less useful, or who want to leave badly enough that they'll be less useful anyway, and keeping those who can be shuffled into other units and kept discreet. (if the war hadn't ended, hey, you always need more meat shields, so some soldiers being substandards wouldn't have been a problem.)

Tyr is pushed out on medical grounds -- kidneys being all "fuck you, medication, I don't like you anymore." Neve Serrano, well, she's missing an eye. Xiang Lin is still in the program. Gabe Wright and Dian Keller I have no idea, since they're both very angry young men in their own ways and would still like nothing more than being allowed to stay just in case they need to quell a last uprising.

Actually for Dian I just figured it out. So there's both physical effects and mental ones in the treatment, since you have the were virusthing but your meds keep you from transforming. Some people become bugfuck crazy because they can't deal with the animal in the back of their head. (or the animal can't deal with being unable to get the hell out, tomahto, tomayto.)

I think Dian is pushed out because he's dealing too well. :DDDDDDDD As in, he's freaking out people by acting predatory, and they think he's close to a breakthrough, and/or a little old fashioned serial killing and snacks of human livers and fava beans.

... I still don't know what I'll do for Gabe. Gabe is a charming, friendly, apparently-gregarious liar who is covering up unhealthy amounts of redirected rage and hate (really, it's himself he hates, woohoo fucked up family history -- basically his father freaked out and abandoned their family when Gabe grew up to look a bit too much like the pseudoelves who raped gabedaddy's mom and produced gabedaddy) but he's such a good liar I don't know if the psych tests would have caught it.

-Maybe he slipped up on the lying front? It'd have to be a massive slip-up if he does, though.

-Maybe someone noticed how much he looks like a pseudoelf when his skin is less tanned and he's all woohoo blood loss? (oh, he's been telling me his mom was black for a century, I should have listened to him and figured it out sooner. I'll have to edit his pics now. He's not very dark-skinned, his sisters are both darker, but that only makes him hate himself more since pseudoelves, being mostly european, tend to come in the usual array of "white" hues, and he's too close as it is) But would they kick him out over that, when he's been such a good trooper about killing as much of them as he could?

-Maybe his (repressed) magic has been acting up (were injection would boost it) and they want him to get training because he's dangerous on the field?

-Maybe... idk.

Maybe his mom pulled strings, but they're estranged from each other so I don't know if she'd have bothered/knew how&when to. His big sister? Hrrrrm. I need to develop them a bit, maybe they'll want to be in the story. ... crap, if I introduce that plot thread I'll need to solve it, and noooo, it's not a story anymore, it's like a sausage stuffed almost to bursting. Too many things in it!

Which reminds me, another issue Sol's fic brought back to light is how sad I am I can't stuff a Relena-character in Territoriality. No! Bad Asuka! Forbidden! Too many copied characters and too many plot threads already! She'd be one of the pseudoelves anyway, and I'm not writing political messes for her to star in. Nooo, go away, politics! Also like I need another potential love interest in this story! Tyr's having vibes with all four of his teammates already, plus his commanding officer, that's seriously enough. D: I'm sure he'll also find some way to mack on the werewolf characters I haven't come up with yet, so hey, enough is enough.

... but anyway, back to Gabe. Things I know about Gabe: his first name is Cameron but he goes by Gabe from his middle name Gabriel because Cameron is someone he doesn't want to be anymore, friendly liar, two older sister, his oldest sister has a very young daughter he didn't get to meet from being off to war at the time, his father was born of a rape and had Issues and scampered off, his mother is a badass, cranky old lady with whom he doesn't get along (MASSIVE UNDERSTATEMENT), and his were animal is a brown bear. And that makes him secretly freak out because Wikipedia sez 50% of bear cubs die before they get to be adults, one of the main causes of death being adult male bears. Which, uh, yeah. Good thing he was never going home anyway, right? :D :D :D Man, he doesn't even want to. No problem there. haha. ha.

What was he doing on Wikipedia, srsly.

Okay, so now how to kick Gabe out of the military. Halp plz? .___.

notes on magic, because maybe it'll interest someone: this is a low-magic setting, at least on the humans' side; they have legends of great spells that did amazing things but since pseudoelves are better at it humanity turned toward technology instead.

Anyway, Dian is pretty good with basic cantrips (mostly proximity alarms and "get the hell out of here right now before the mountain falls on you" things), but has no schooling; Neve has zero natural ability in any of the magical fields; Tyr ... I don't know, because as a professor of history his great-uncle might have known some actual spells but he doesn't ping me as having any special ability, and he was pretty young when the man died anyway, so for all I know he wasn't taught anything either But even if he knows some spells usually he doesn't bother, since that expends more effort than going at the expected result in some other way. Xiang I think is too rational to truly believe (and belief is a core component of magic) but she'd be pretty okay if she tried seriously. (also I think she classifies physical effects as magic, and stuff like praying to her ancestors for guidance as normal stuff, even when it ends up actually affecting events.) Gabe, being one fourth pseudoelf, is better than good, but seeing as he hates this part of himself, oops.

And then it turns out werebeasts have their own special kinds of magics as well. XD Still pretty low-key, and nothing like elemental attacks or getting the darkness to devour someone or raising zombies, but... Mmh. The world might be less low-magic than humans think it is. Bwahaha.

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One thing I recall vaguely (could be wrong) from your previous drafts was that you'd set the story in the US, and had the various guys moving from military to (civilian) police. Just a note, b/c I'm not sure if I'd mentioned this before, and I realized the difference when watching a French movie (in which a military officer does exactly that). In the US, the two have no connection, and to be a cop you still have to go through the academy, basically starting over on your career. (It's because military doesn't get training in law, and cops are going to need to know state law, not federal law, anyway.)

But, as I understand it, it's a different notion if you were military (officer) and were to go into a federal agency -- like the CIA, or the DEA, or the FBI. You still must have a college degree, but you'd end up as a Special Agent, gun-carrying, law-enforcement, and all that. You wouldn't have to go back to school, plus your skills might be more useful in terms of ops and whatnot. Just FYI, since I recall having a serious moment of wtfery before I figured out that it's b/c French & USian have major differences in that respect.

As for the rest, I love the extra stuff you're putting in, and the changes/revisions you've made, thickening the story further. Never you mind about what I've finished or not -- did you really think I'd be fussy about that? -- you just go ahead and write it. That way, I don't have to!

Thing is that it's not really the US. History took a major swerve around the ... idk, 1500s, 1700s (I really have to go look at history books and figure some real dates. I suck. XD;), and most white people who got to that continent were refugees leaving in semi-haste at best, not conquerors and not well-prepared, well-supplied armies, plus the native people did have traditional magic that they hadn't abandoned for progress in technology, so they held their own better. The map isn't the same as a result (there's still an Incan empire, for example) and the social/political institutions are set differently, and as a result police and military are ultimately part of the same chain of command because when you're at war for X centuries and the enemy is fond of creating panics in your towns far from the front, you don't want two chains of command. (well, that's the reasoning they give, it might have worked pretty well in some other way but historically that's their explanation.) (also, for example, you're not eligible for important offices if you haven't served X years, and even then you'd better have gone to the front at least once or not many people will vote for you.)

I'll have to show that more in the revised version. I kinda figured it out as I went, so I managed to slip hints exactly nowhere but that one mention of the police thinger. >_>;

One of the easiest ways to get kicked out of the military once a war is over is to be *too* specialized in your MOS. You get an offer to re-enlist when our time is up, but that offer comes with the notice that you have to change your MOS, which means starting all the way back over in training school. Or going for Officer Candidacy School if you're enlisted.

If you don't want to change your MOS, and you're not going into OCS, you're SOL because the military now has budget cutbacks, and no place to promote you to because all their slots are full. War = more slots. Peace = no money = less slots.

If you have a generalized MOS, like say, Aviation Engineer, that's easier for them to work around, you can be shuttled from plane type to plane type or
post to post. If you have a highly specialized MOS like 'Lighthouse Electrical Technician' there are very few slots (most lighthouses being East coast and few of them being used) and very little demand.

The most common re-enlistment change once your MOS is obsolete is actually to become a recruiter. I bet Gabe would be a *wonderful* recruiter if he actually wanted to convince young dumb and full of cum to put their lives in the governments hands. If he didn't want to, there's be a very polite 'Fuck you' to the re-enlistment officer and his final paycheck in the mail.

As an aside, they won't call it being kicked out. It's 'Honorable Discharge'. It means the same thing, it just sounds a lot nicer. It also means 'retired', but if you're only in your twenties and you're discharged and you claim 'retired', the actual retired vets are going to give you this *look* like 'I want to run you over with an Abrams'. Just saying.

Info! Shiny info! Thank you so much. X333

I'm not sure they can discharge Gabe on your suggestion though, because he has the same training as the others... okay, I don't know jack about how to conduct a war so likely it's that I just haven't figured out specialities for them all. NEED MOAR RESEARCH. Any good sites with easy-to-search MOS listings?

Because seriously in my head it's like "what did they do? uh. they. sneak behind enemy lines and. cause trouble? idk." Which is really not good enough and also likely not sustenable anyway, suicide missions or not they'd have had to work as a unit at least from time to time, they can't work solo all the time or even half the time, and therefore they'd all have had different things to do in the unit. (and then there's the support stuff, but no one will bother to give someone the were treatment and then ask them to take care of logistics and supply lines.) Still, I don't think Gabe was ever extremely specialized in anything, apart from new ways to kill pseudoelves. And all the weres could be discharged over that one, now they're at peace, except it'd be stupid because they're what scared the pseudoelves into going for the ceasefire in the first place. >_>; So once again we fall back into why Gabe and not anyone else... Okay, maybe he'd have training in some things on top of that, but couldn't he just fall back on more basic stuff if they won't need him as a, idk, radio operator or something. It might mean a pay cut but if it's that or unemployment... argh difficult.

Also I need to figure out a more accurate name than "black ops" to explain what they did and everything anyway since i'm using it in a really fanficcy way where I'm not even sure enough of what it covers. >__> It was my first rough idea of the concept and it stuck. Hrrrm.

OKAY, MILITARY RESEARCH TIME. Thank you for the suggestions, hon.

For the Army: http://www.us-army-info.com/pages/branches.html

As a Marine Brat myself I'll tell you that re-enlistment is a hard time. A) If you change your MOS you're not with the same guys. Sometimes that's okay, sometimes it's really not. During a war, and right after, a lot of guys don't want to form new attachments, they want to stick with and look after their buddies.

B) Sometimes it's the pay cut, sometimes it's the retraining, sometimes it's the fact that you spent how many goddamned years becoming the best at this and now you have to become the best at some other thing you've never heard about or given a rats ass for.

C) Like I said, the most common thing they'll ask you to 'fall back' to with an MOS change, especially if they like you or like the image you present, is recruiter. And sometimes they won't give you a choice. The only thing you get to ask is are you recruiting the fresh faced idiots, or trying to keep in the idiots who have seen too much and been too far and and just want to go home to their families and a big heavy bottle. (Those are 'Reserve Recruiters' and they try and get people not to retire or discharge, but instead go on 'non-active duty' which means something *like* a normal life, but if the shit hits the fan they're the first guys re-called to the bases and flack jackets before we have to start a draft)

D) Is he out? Maybe he's a reservist. That specialty doesn't go away just because you don't need it anymore and it's always better to have an on-call guy.

Anything else you wanna know, I may not have the answers but I'll have some pithy advice.

You want a truly spectacular way to get Gabe kicked out, have someone be a prick and call him out on being part pseudoelf - and then have Gabe go all grizzly (or magicky) on him. Influential family and serious provocation might keep him out of the brig, but still discharged as a discipline problem, especially if no permanent damage was done to the offender.

Oho, that'd be shiny. Hmm. I'm not sure I want people to know about his ancestry until partway through the book, but at the same time he's a close-mouthed bastard about his personal life so it would be easy to have him hide it or dodge the if time someone asks.

At the same time in my head he has good control of himself and he's aware of his buttons, so I'm not sure how bad it would have to be before he explodes. He'd probably see losing control over that kind of insult as proving them right, and he couldn't take that. Grargg. I'm sure there's a way to tweak it... maybe he was drunk or something, or his partner died or... oh! he had to go undercover as a pseudoelf a short time before... (if he passed without any questions it might have done a number on his mental state. XD Mmm shiny noncliche trauma...)

Can't hide it if it's in his medical records, and the person has access to said records - if they're playing around with genes & virii, they need to know what they're playing with. It wouldn't surprise me, even, if there was a flag in his personnel record along the lines of "presence of pseudoelf gene markers, watch for possible development of magical abilities." It would be highly classified, of course, but give him a CO who's irrational about such things and too damnfool stupid to tell the difference between "friendly and gregarious" and "spineless" and I could see Gabe getting ridden constantly. One too many comments about how his family are elf-lovers, particularly if he were coming off an unsuccessful mission...

CO: "Maybe you wanted this mission to fail, Cameron. Maybe you're soft on the elves. You wouldn't be the first one in your family to..."
Gabe: ROAAARRRRRR!!!!!!
CO: *hauls ass / has said ass saved by Gabe's surviving teammates*

The medical records thing is a very good point! ^_______^ I like it.

Not sure I want to go that far down the CO route, I was talking with Jo on AIM and we got this idea that at first he was transfered to a normal unit because he was supposed to stay on (that way Tyr and the others wouldn't have heard the rumor; otherwise the cat is out of the bag way early), and (as he loses his tan from being outside nonstop XD) they started harrassing him for looking gwel. I think it'd be easy to have a bigoted CO slip up with the info and then oops everyone in his unit knows, but I'm not sure a normal CO would have access to his classified files in the first place. Well, not legally, but... if he has friends who are a bit loose with security procedures... hmm. *__*

So I don't want him to get a dishonorable discharge because Tyr & Co would ask about it, but basically he'd realize he's going to kill them all if they keep it up and it will NEVER stop and will likely escalate until he has a convenient accident down the stairs or something stupid like that, so he might as well negotiate a normal discharge instead of being kicked out on a dishonorable one because he beat them up. He'd be real pissed about it, mind, but he's smart enough to know when to stow his pride. (he'd also be plotting to get them back when they least expect it. He's a snaaaake. XDDD ♥)

Hm. You know, it wouldn't even have to be his CO. There's a whole lot in records that a CO never sees. A records clerk on the other hand... those guys have access to a ton of crap that civilians and even most soldiers know nothing about. They've also got security clearances up the yin-yang, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was some gossip spreading around the office when someone stumbled across something that juicy - especially if it was a normal unit, not a special ops team. I can see some clerk being curious about this guy from a spook squad being assigned to his unit, pokes his nose into that classified folder in his files... and the shit starts on its path straight into the rotating blades.

this is also a very valid point and I really like the way you think ohoho. *__* ♥

Thank you. I'm proud to be a charter member of the Evil Writers Guild. *buffs nails*

"Discharged without prejudice" is the fancy phrase meaning "Leave or be court-martialed" as I understand it.

YayTyrTyrTyrIlovetheTyrstory yaaaaaaaaay! *ahem*

If Gabe is from a notable family, and the military wants to have it publicly known that they're standing down the were-troops, he could be the big shiny example they're pointing to while saying "See? We're demilitarizing! Now how about you guys?"
As an added bonus, the related attention could give Gabe an even better reason to want to go hide in the woods with Tyr and company. Of course, I have no idea about military procedure or how public this official story is, so I don't know if that'd work for you.

♥

I don't think Gabe's family is notable. His sister might have made some friends here and there who might be a little useful, but they're not well-known outside of acquaintances. Also the black ops section is an open secret by now but they're still all politely pretending it doesn't exist, so he wouldn't make a good poster child... XD though okay both sides know better so it could be a sneaky thing... XDD idk. Nah, linking it to his ancestry seems a bit more fun right now. >________> *cackles*

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I'm kinda planning to start at the same point, with buying the house (i liked that scene dammit) but Tyr wouldn't be so calm about things. He does keep an open mind about his future, but the lack of other issues is just too boring. One-shot RPGs don't have to generate as much plot as a whole book, I don't think ;p and Tyr is pretty much carrying the whole book on his back so he'd better have enough material for it.

The Territoriality that might have been wouldn't have existed anyway, I was stalled like a motherfucker. .___.;;; Stupid boring plothookless "bad guys".

As far as Tyr goes, wouldn't having the person who raised you killed, then going off into the black ops cause massive trauma? And maybe he's just repressing like hell?
As for Gabe....I don't really know. Mostly because there's not a lot to work with. Oh! You said that he broke down in front of Serrano, right? Maybe someone found out about that (either through eavesdropping or other nefarious deeds) and was like "PTSD! He needs a vacation!" or something. (I don't know, I'm tired and just woke up. ;-;)
On a side note....wouldn't it be better to say "Territorial" instead of "Territoriality"? I mean, it sounds good, don't get me wrong, but I was reading this last night before I went to bed, and I couldn't pronounce it right. ^^;

Have an unhealthy pattern show up in Gabe's records? I mean, if they're dismantling some people, wouldn't it make sense for everyone's history to be picked over? And if they were in the middle of a war, it might not have been looked at too closely as a whole because people have better things to worry about. So, someone runs over Gabe's file (with a fine tooth comb for the first time) and notices something weird.

An absurd number of times with him being the only person in his unit hospitalized (misdirected rage, probably fucked up feeling of self worth, put himself in the line of fire over squad-mates too many times), or times where he managed to...hell, I don't know, avoid enemy patrols because pseudo-elves don't ping like humans? Some weird pattern that keeps cropping up that nobody thought to look up before. He gets pulled in, it gets thrown in front of him, and it's hard to lie your way passed hard data, especially if that data is trying REALLY hard to prove something you hate about yourself.

Huh. This is a pretty neat idea. I'll have to think on it some more. Shiny, though. Thank you.

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Tyr ofic ponderyponder

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