#nerv-s

who’s the cuddler: Both.  Each loves physical affection and isn’t afraid to hug the other.  Ruby, for the record, went through a phase where she tried many, many times to topple Penny over by running, jumping, and then hugging Penny like Penny does to her, but Ruby never successfully made Penny fall (tho Penny did pretend once to cheer her up).

When they cuddle, they alternate who gets to be the big spoon and the small spoon.  Mostly their positions are determined by what’s most comfortable at the time while also being the least likely to lead to an accident where Penny crushes Ruby in her sleep.  (On the one hand, a mechanical girlfriend makes a great heater to curl up next to.  On the other, a body made of metal weighs a ton).

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who makes the bed: Penny.  Prior to meeting Ruby, most of her formative experiences happened under the control of the Atlesian Military (also, though Pietro may not be the most tidy person when it comes to his living space, he keeps his lab workspace where he developed his daughter immaculately clean).  Things like the rules and making a bed to a high military standard were some of the first lessons Penny learned.

Ruby would be fine with just leaving their blankets in a heap on their bed, but Penny still likes to maintain the habit.

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who wakes up first: Penny.  One of her favorite things is getting up early, sneaking into Team RWBY’s dorm room, and quietly waking Ruby up (Penny loves seeing Ruby’s eyes tiredly open and then the grin that will spread across Ruby’s face when she sees Penny).  The two will sneak out together.  They attempt not to wake Weiss, Blake, or Yang, but each of the three have been awake at least once when this happens.

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who has the weird taste in music: Before she was allowed out of her father’s lab, Penny would entertain herself with using machinery to create ‘songs’, so her tastes in music ended up being very technical (lots of beeps and boops).  Ruby doesn’t quite understand it, but she gets used to it after a while.

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who is more protective: Ruby.  Especially after Penny becomes the Winter Maiden.  Before that, Ruby had persisting anxieties because of what happened at the Fall of Beacon, but they’ve amplified now that Penny pretty much has a giant target on her back at all times and extremely powerful people want to either kill Penny or manipulate her.

(Ruby is scared of seeing Cinder kill someone she cares about right before her again.  Yes, Ruby has a massive advantage over Cinder with her silver eyes, but she’s also had nightmares where she hasn’t been able to activate them in time and Penny dies for the second time).

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who sings in the shower: Ruby sings along with the radio when she’s in the shower.  Penny can’t shower due to being machinery (it just occurred to me that she may share Neptune’s fear of water, or at least they’d have a lot to talk about there maybe).

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who cries during movies: Ruby gets teary-eyed and rather dramatic in her emotional responses to movies at first, but then she learns that Penny is literally incapable of producing tears, so she tries to hold her responses back (she doesn’t want Penny to feel left out).  Penny figures out what Ruby’s doing and starts to feel bad that she’s holding Ruby back from expressing her emotions.  Somehow this turns into their first argument, where each is trying to be considerate of the other (they spend two hours trying to outdo each other in who is more considerate).

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who spends the most while out shopping: Penny.  Ruby grew up on an allowance and learned how to budget, so she spends what she needs and then maybe a little on a small, cute gift.  

For most of her existence, the Atlas Military has footed the bill for anything Penny needs, so she has significantly less experience handling financials.  Penny has to learn she can’t just buy whatever she wants and someone else will pay for it, which she finds extremely embarrassing (there’s a lot she still doesn’t know about the world).

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who kisses more roughly: Penny.  She gets excited and forgets her own strength.

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who is more dominate: Ruby has more confidence about dating, and it shows.  Oftentimes, their outings turn into her showing Penny something Penny’s never gotten the chance to experience before.  Ruby loves the way Penny will get excited when she learns something new.

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Polyships are the besttttt!!

Mike/Jesse/Walt: A+++++ the bickering! the jealousy! the two-father-figures-fighting-over-Jesse!! Basically the only reason for me to watch BrBa season 5 tbh

Vargatrauting: A+++++ whenever I think about Vargatrauting, I think about that one galaxy brained anon I got once and it murders me immediately. 

Nacho/Gus/Lalo: A+++++ more Nacho being caught between horrible older men, but this time, they also want each other dead!! Fun for the whole family!

How I feel about this character: My feelings on him are a bit complicated by now cuz I’m really annoyed with how he’s being handled in the show and that’s dampened my enthusiasm a lot. But he remains one of, if not my favorite Better Call Saul character.

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: ........Okay you asked for it. Lalo, Mike, Gus, Leonel, Marco, Domingo, Amber and Jo, Tyrus, Tuco, Hector, and let’s throw Jimmy in there too for good measure.

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: As in, friendship or familial relationship? Nacho and Manuel, big time!

My unpopular opinion about this character: I know everyone wants him to skip town and live happily ever after, with Manuel in tow if possible but. I’m sorry. That would be the worst for me. You gotta understand, I come to this from a perspective of... if Skyler got the ending she got. If Hank got the ending he got. If Mike got the ending he got. If Domingo got the ending he got. I don’t think it’s fair for Nacho to play Karma Houdini just cuz he’s cute. Nacho’s not a psychopath like a lot of the guys he hangs out with. But he’s not a good person either. Karma is a bitch in the Gilliverse, and everyone has to pay for their actions, one way or the other. Even Jesse had to spend a year basically being a slave before his slate was wiped clean and he could walk free.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I want him to get more focus, more story, more agency. I want him to make choices, and I want him to stop being absolutely nothing but the pawn in the game of men way more powerful than him. If I could chose an ending for him, I would want for it to be a kind of monkey’s paw situation. Something like, he’s allowed to go, but at a cost that’s not worth it. I’m sorry, but I’m a sucker for tragedy.

Favorite friendship for this character: Domingo ofc!!

Favorite character:

Penny Polendina.  She’s roughly 60% responsible for me getting into the show so deeply.  Just, if there was a move to sway me in RWBY’s favor, it was definitely returning a character I regretted always being spoiled narratively for and giving her more story.

Just, one of the first spoilers I knew about the show as a whole was Penny’s fate at the end of V3.  For the first volume that came out after I was introduced to the show (V7) to return her had a massive impact.

(she’s currently the only character I would come close to saying I stan, even if I don’t like the concept of stanning characters as a whole).

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Least Favorite character:

Adam Taurus.  Conceptually, he’s kinda interesting, but I’m not too invested in him.  Also fandom opinions on him are too polarized for me to consider interacting or creating for his character.

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5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon):

Nuts and Dolts (Penny Polendina/Ruby Rose)

Pyrruby (Ruby Rose/Pyrrha Nikos)

Bumbleby (Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long)

Seamonkeys (Sun Wukong/Neptune Vasilias)

Rosegarden (Ruby Rose/Oscar Pine)

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Character I find most attractive:

Pyrrha Nikos is beautiful and no one can convince me otherwise.

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Character I would marry:

I don’t self-ship.  I like having more distance between myself and the characters I like.

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Character I would be best friends with:

Ruby.  I too am awkward, determined, and can get very, very interested in a specific topic.

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a random thought:

I really want Nora to have a connection to one of Pietro’s scientist colleagues, so she and Penny can kinda be like sisters.

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An unpopular opinion:

I love General Ironwood entirely because he thinks he’s a hero, when he’s really not.  It’s vastly more entertaining to me to watch a character who does want to do Good Things, but can’t get over his own character flaws to actually be doing good things, than to watch another standard, cutout ‘military general character’.

(also this is partially due to me writing a fic where he is almost entirely responsible for a fucked up situation.  I’m going to make him realize it and want to rectify things, but by then it’s too late and the damage is already done.  Then he’s going to simmer for a bit in a nice steamy pot of ‘his kingdom, which he cares so deeply about, is in jeopardy because of him’.)

(otherwise that time I lowkey decided to try and bring James to his knees before putting him on a redemption arc, where he struggles.  A lot.)

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My Canon OTP:

It’s not quite canon, but bumbleby (I’d be surprised if it didn’t end up being canon)

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My Non-canon OTP:

Nuts and Dolts.  It’s the only ship I’ve wished to become canon this strongly.

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Most Badass Character:

Maria Calavera.  Man, do I want a scene where she whips out her scythes because she still has the skills, even as an old lady.

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Most Epic Villain:

Salem is everything Morgana from Tales of Arcadia wishes she could be and so much more.

Look, I’m just saying, only one of them dramatically showed up to the fight riding on the back of a giant, evil whale with an entourage of equally evil flying monkeys.

(I mean Morgana had to outsource her Evil Army to Gunmar, so she loses points there).

I’m just very down for the villain who is effectively a fairytale that went really, really wrong.

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Pairing I am not a fan of:

Tauradonna.  It just makes me squirm and is definitely squicky to me.

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Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another):

I’m pretty content with how the writers handle the characters.  I don’t really have any complaints.

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Favourite Friendship:

Ruby and Weiss.

. Character I most identify with:

Ruby.

Character I wish I could be:

HMMMMMMMMMM

for this fic i would say that sr, pericles, and ricky are looking for the disk pieces (as per usual for them in any given au), and are tenuously working together for the time being; on one of the planets they visit to chase a lead, it becomes clear that the only way to get into the area they’re investigating is to be married in the eyes of the local law. 

since none of them trust each other (rightly), they all choose to be in on it despite the baggage between the three of them. talk about testing their dedication to their search lmao

they proceed to get engaged, trick their way into finding the piece--which is in a crystal box they’re not sure how to open--and get the local authorities on their tail in the process of trying to escape with it. whoops!

then they manage to get away from them, only to crashland on a desert island on a planet they’re not even sure is inhabited. double whoops!

then it turns out that the process of being bonded by that planet’s marriage ceremony involves being actually bonded during the engagement, so that the engaged are better able to evaluate whether they really want to be married by the end of it. they have to stay within short range of each other, share injuries, and may or may not have a psychic link of some sort or another.

guess which planet, the only known source of the rites to undo the bonding, they're now on the run from?

W h o o p s

Hilarity Ensues, Most of It Very Dark, as they try to open the box, outmaneuver the others to end up with the piece, and not to kill each other in the meantime (which none of them would have issues with if not for the bond, don’t get me wrong).

“Come here, let me fix it.”  It’s an order, not a request, that comes out of Angor Rot’s mouth.

Strickler looks up long enough for a large drop of his blood to gather and fall from his arm onto the floor.  He blinks, and goes back to unsuccessfully bandaging his arm.  He grimaces, but says, “I require no assistance from you,” anyway.

Angor sighs.  He glances forlornly at his laptop and his studies.  His online veterinary class has a test coming up in a couple days.  He’s still adjusting to all the new terminology they use.  Ensuring he has the right knowledge for his wards is important.  However, he can’t just let Stricklander bleed out all over the floor.  Who would tend to their monetary needs then?  Angor has enough to learn without adding ‘modern human financial customs’ to the mix.

He stands, strides over to Strickler, forcibly takes the gauze roll from the changeling’s good hand, sits down in the chair next to him, and takes over the bandaging process.

“I said I don’t need—”