helarctos
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She is twenty-four years old and she feels like a little kid on Discovery Day, getting ready for the nursery school parade. Everyone tugging on their entroponaut suits, wrangling their cardboard and tinfoil helmets, their crayoned gadgetry and wires. Anticipating the mounds of pale meringue that await at the end of their little march, in little paper dishes, with little wooden spoons, once the cry has gone up: *l'Insulinde!*
It's maybe sort of pathetic but fuck it, Rada decides, she doesn't care. She is unreasonably excited for a night out with her fake boyfriend, and there is nothing wrong with that.
(or: '39 - '51: Jean-Héron Vicquemare goes on various dates.)
[Once upon a time I wrote a bunch of loosely connected vignettes for fun. That became unwieldy. This series every wave is tidal is the needed rework with adjustments and stretchy new connective tissue.
Updates
weekly(soon, i keep wibbling over like 2 paragraphs). When the present AO3 "work" reaches its end, the next in the series will go up.]Series
- Part 3 of every wave is tidal
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infelicity of titles by helarctos for transversely
Fandoms: Engineer Series - K. J. Parker
25 Dec 2025
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They named the baby Lucao because the Duchess wouldn't let Miel name him Orsea.
"He's my son," said the Duchess. "He's got the odds against him already, I won't saddle him with a bad-luck name like that."
"I can't argue with that," said the Ducas, who looked like he wanted to argue it anyway.
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It's a matter of internal record that Eremian nobility, those of Duke Miel's generation especially, do take as a deeply serious affront the mishandling of intimate personal correspondence. The mutual peace our nations enjoy shouldn't be left up to the chance that someone on my end digs up this old thing for an excuse to pick fights. It belongs in Eremia Montis; whether in a library or in your fireplace, I leave to your judgement.
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When Dora believed in him, Harry could do anything; he was wide awake, profoundly alive; effortlessly, with verve, he cut his way through Elysium. A knife through butter. A shark through water.With Dora out of reach, the knife has dulled, the butter frozen. The shark has lost every tooth out of its rows of spares, believed by science to be inexhaustible; and the shark has always known, when it stops moving, it will die.
But, soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It's some guy on a horse! It makes Harry feel some kind of way! The guy, not the horse.
Do *you* like horses?
Where do you see yourself in five years?
[Once upon a time I wrote a bunch of loosely connected vignettes for fun, and sporadically posted them in great unthemed wodges of one big unfinished work. That became unwieldy. This series is the needed rework with adjustments and stretchy new connective tissue.]Updates weekly. When the present four-chapter work reaches its end, the next in the series will go up.
Series
- Part 2 of every wave is tidal
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*Did* she know what she was doing? Does she know now? Keeping a damp vigil over not much. A disintegrating jetty, a finger of the bay. She stares into the distance and pretends she can remember where the pleasure wheel used to stand.
"You're here," says George, "'cause something bit you."
Recent series
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Summary
the judge is on vinyl, decisions are final
and nobody gets a reprieve
and every wave is tidal
if you hang around you're going to get wet
I can't prepare for death any more than I already have-- Elliott Smith, "King's Crossing"
We jump back and forth in time.
- Words:
- 13,422
- Works:
- 3
- Bookmarks:
- 4
Recent bookmarks
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Mental Health & Addictions workup for Elim Garak by tinsnip
Fandoms: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
17 Mar 2026
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So a friend asked me how I would actually treat Mister Elim Garak, who apparently, per Doctor Bashir, needs his head examined. I'm a pharmacist - my tools are medications. My practice focus is mental health and addictions. I spent a few hours working up Garak just as I would with a pharmacy student who's rotating through mental health, explaining my decisions. This is what I do for fun~~~
NB: This may be triggering for anyone dealing with any of the conditions mentioned in the tags. This may be triggering for those who have been under psychiatric care. You may disagree with me - that's fine! But don't flame me. Write me a nice note and we can chat like colleagues. And *NONE OF THIS IS MEDICAL ADVICE.*
Bookmarked by helarctos
06 Jun 2026
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Eight years after the Dominion War, Dr. Bashir—rather afflicted, unfortunately—is en route to Cardassia Prime. Meanwhile, Garak has re-established himself as a politician of note, and his methods may be the source of more than a little friction. Furthermore, Garak's comrade-in-arms from the Cardassian Rebellion, Kira Nerys, is seeking to define a correct path for the tumultuous planet of Bajor. Ezri Dax, conversely, is struggling with her role in the Federation. The O'Briens are the two people suffering the least, and let me be the first to say, good for them.
Features an absolutely staggering amount of politicking, as well as periodic descriptions of alien ecology. Definitely a ensemble fic. You liked Martok, I hope?
CURRENTLY: Quark is done with his interview. Interview with a Quark.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 276,705
- Chapters:
- 127/?
- Comments:
- 2,386
- Kudos:
- 778
- Bookmarks:
- 166
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- 32,436
Bookmarked by helarctos
26 Dec 2020
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all the futures we've never asked for by Houseofchaos for helarctos
Fandoms: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
24 Nov 2025
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“But isn’t it terrifying?”
“What? Getting old?”
“Being so heartbroken it kills you before you die.”
Bookmarked by helarctos
01 Dec 2025
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Serial-killer RCM officer John McCoy and police-critical radio reporter Guillaume Bevy never really saw eye-to-eye. Neither of them ever imagined that they'd be put into a position where they have to work together, but after Precinct 41 is met with tragedy, Guillaume finds himself at the right place at the right time to offer aid to John by giving him a place to hide out.
Here is the situation: What happened to Precinct 41 was obviously not an accident. They both want the same thing - to find whoever was responsible and find answers. John McCoy is living in Guillaume's apartment: Nobody would expect for Guillaume, of all people, to be the one sheltering him. John McCoy is legally dead. Guillaume could use a guard dog to keep him safe. Unrest is brewing in Revachol, and with no 41st to smother it, the people are prone to turning their attention to the military aerostatics oppressively skulking the sky.
Danger is brewing on the horizon. It's as the old revolutionaries said: Sunrise, Parabellum. Prepare for war.
Bookmarked by helarctos
23 Nov 2025
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Years later, when Kim Kitsuragi watches Harry rubbing his temples and stumble down the stairs, he suddenly sees that vivid summer afternoon again — the one that, through a tattered, spinning doorway of the Whirling-in-Rags, flooded into the cold winter of Martinaise.
This story seeks to reconstruct Kim Kitsuragi’s early years: the loss of family, the death of friends, the betrayal of the system, and the echo of a city slowly falling apart.
In the shadows, Revachol’s wounds continue to spread. Ideological slogans repeat themselves like broken records. The Pale draws closer, nothingness swells into fashion, and violence, inevitably, fills the void.
Bookmarked by helarctos
23 Nov 2025