tell me more about the Animorphs DnD Au. I really just need an AU where they don't suffer and just have a good time
My buddy, me too right this second. For those of you who are not aware, that comment is buried somewhere in this recap of Book 7.
All right, so, like, here’s a basic breakdown of how it all goes down.
It starts with Jake’s big brother Tom, who, like, listen, his parents went “keep an eye on your younger brother after school on Fridays” and Tom went “that’s cruel” and his parents went “don’t be an ass” and Tom huffed like a teenage asshole and rolled his eyes and went “FINE.” So he decides that if he’s going to be mandatory babysitter for like four hours on Friday afternoons he’s going to do something amusing with his time, and he asks Jake if he knows anything about DnD. Jake goes “nope!” with good-natured interest because this is his big brother, and Tom’s like “GREAT we’re going to do that recruit your friends”. And Marco’s in on the spot because he’s a fucking nerd who’s probably done reading on DnD even though he’s never been able to actually play a campaign, and Rachel agrees on behalf of herself and Cassie because she’s exasperated with Jake and Cassie and this is an opportunity to force them to spend multiple hours together. (Cassie is unexpectedly the major sticking point here, but her parents are like “PLEASE HAVE FRIENDS AND A LIFE OUTSIDE THE BARN” so ultimately she ends up going.)
On the first day, as they’re leaving school, Rachel grabs Jake by the arm and points subtly over his shoulder. “Hey,” she whispers, “isn’t that Tobias?” It is, in fact, Tobias. Actively in the process of maybe fighting a bully for his backpack–if Tobias loses his backpack, no way is his uncle buying him a new one, and he’s also going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble, so yeah he’s gonna fight for it. Jake and Rachel don’t know this at the time, but listen, Berensons are Berensons in any universe. Jake ambles over, all cheerfully broad shoulders and stocky build just starting to settle into ‘teen’ rather than ‘kid,’ and silently menaces the bullies into stepping down. And then he kind of subtly kidnaps Tobias to go with them.
(Ax moves into town a month later. He’s living with his much-older brother who used to be a soldier and now he’s done with that and working as a computer…person. Full disclosure, I don’t know that much about Comp Sci, but Elfangor Shamtul is a programmer and he’s the rising star. Ax is living with him because *waves hand* better schools maybe? IDK. That’s how Ax shows up, and they kind of adopt him because he’s new and he joins their campaign.)
Tom, because he’s kind of a dick, declares that he won’t tell them anything about the plot, except that they all have to dual-class as modified Druids.
(I have added a cut because this got kind of long.)
Do you mind doing Max from Mad Max Fury Road for the headcanon meme?
Hell yeah headcanon meme. Full disclosure: I have not seen the other
Mad Max movies, and I am Out Of It right now.
A: what I think realistically
It takes time for Max to return to the
Citadel for good—time to feel less like he’s breaking apart at the seams when
people speak to him—but that’s not to say he doesn’t return. He hasn’t had what
he might call Real Feelings in long time, longer than even he really knows, but
bending over Furiosa in the truck, cupping the nape of her neck in rough hands
made gentle through sheer desperation, feeling her flesh hand clutch at him as
she tries to say bring them home—he knows,
in this blinding stroke of insight, exactly how screwed he is. He let this woman touch him, let her help
him, let her rest a rifle on his shoulder and without thinking twice trusted
that she wouldn’t turn it on him.
He leaves the Citadel, with a bike
loaded with water and rations and ammo.
He comes back again with a kid on the
back of his bike and a grenade belt and a new set of points on his map, and
wordlessly turns the former over, keeps the second, and shows them the latter.
The next time he comes back, he has a
truck and no explanations and no kids, but he shows up two days ahead of a
small exodus of desperate people who need help—we were told that there was water—and who have this story about how
the man in the truck got sucked into their drama and then told them about the
Citadel and never gave his name. Max is
gone by the time Furiosa hears this story, and she sighs, and sets about
finding these people something to do.
This is how it will be, then, she
decides the third time the hail goes up from the watchtowers—incoming!
Incoming! It’s the Road
Warrior! Get the Imperator!
She sighs, and walks down to meet him.
B: what I think is fucking hilarious
Everyone expects Max, having returned properly
to the Citadel, to immediately take on a role of prestige and grandeur. He’s the Road Warrior, the man who helped
save the Sisters and Furiosa from Immortan Joe’s grip, the man who’s been
sending them survivors and bringing them supplies, the man who was a blood bag
and a hood piece and survived a great sandstorm. Obviously
he’s instantly going to be promoted to the highest role save for Furiosa and
the Sisters themselves. Alternatively,
they would also accept ‘concubine’ as a reasonable answer, but they understand
that the Sisters might not be comfortable with that.
Um…except he’s not. He runs supply missions still, sure—sometimes
he and Furiosa run them together and everyone knows that’s Serious Business—but
as far as the majority of the Citadel is concerned, Max’s main job is…furniture? It’s his honor, of course, they always rush
to add, his honor to be favored by the Imperator, but they have questions.
Furiosa can just reach out a hand, getting
ready to leave on a mission, and snap her fingers at him, and Max will appear
beside her as if by magic so that she can balance herself on his shoulder to
get her boots on as fast as possible.
When they’re out on the Wastes, Furiosa gestures behind her and Max
compliantly sits down on the ground so that their backs are pressed together as
a support. Trying to plot a map by
spreading it awkwardly out on her hand, Furiosa gruffly calls him over and he
lets her spread it out against his back, an impromptu table. At her absolute most relaxed among the
Sisters and no one else, Furiosa will sit on the floor in front of Max (in a
chair in deference to his leg) and use his thighs as a lounge
chair/throne. One time when she was
heavily concussed and a little blood-loss-y, she dropped onto a pallet with a
huff and wordlessly flapped her hand at Max until he came over and took a seat
where she could use him as a pillow.
Max jumped out of his skin the first
time she did this (he isn’t aware that Furiosa spent three days psyching
herself up to be able to lean against him and fix a boot), but like…he’s good
with it. This is a kind of physical
contact he is learning to be good with.
And of course, he tells Furiosa in his
slow, quiet way, it’s his honor to be favored by the Imperator.
Furiosa thumps him in the shin, but
doesn’t get up.
C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends
It’s just so distressing to think about
how Furiosa is almost certainly unconscious by the time Max tells her his
name. His most precious secret, given to
this woman as a gift, and she…she
doesn’t hear him.
D: what would never work with canon but the canon is
shit so I believe it anyway
Unrelatedly, I really like the idea that
Furiosa, Imperatrix of the Immortan Joe, is a ‘blackthumb’ of far greater skill
than Max, while Max is significantly better at sewing and clothing repair than
she is. Furiosa has to know every inch
of the War Rig and that means that she HAS to help maintain it, and the War Rig
is undoubtedly one of the most advanced pieces of machinery they’re working
with. Obviously when she’s driving it,
she can’t do repairs, but Furiosa is an A-grade mechanic. Max…just finds it kind of restful to do
minute peaceful repetitive tasks like sewing, and, having done them A Lot to
keep his clothes intact, he’s gotten pretty good. Furiosa, on the other hand, has assembled her
outfit in significant part out of the ruins of a wife’s outfit, all long strips
of fabric wound and pinned in place, and more than that she holds status and
doesn’t care for repetitive tasks. She’s
competent, but doesn’t care for it.
For the ask meme. I am surprised no one has said any animorphs yet. cassie. or any of the animorphs really. I'm not picky, lol.
I raise you: a handful of mid-war Cassie/Jake headcanons because that’s what I have feelings about right now. For this meme.
A: what I think realistically
Cassie isn’t oblivious to the toll the war is taking on Jake—far from it. He shows up to her barn sometimes when he can’t sleep, sits in the hayloft or quietly organizes cabinets, and Cassie starts making sure to be the first one into the barn in case Jake’s fallen asleep there. (One time she is unsuccessful about this and her dad wanders in to find Jake asleep in the hayloft—he scrambles and blurts out a blatant lie about having gotten in a fight with Tom the night before and Cassie tries really hard not to cover her face because. It’s a mess. Jake is a passable liar by virtue of necessity, but he gets jumpy whenever he’s confronted by coming up with legitimate reasons to be at Cassie’s other than wanting to see Cassie.) Sometimes, when Cassie can’t sleep either, she wanders out to the barn herself—if Jake happens to be there, conveniently available for company and quiet conversation about dreams and nightmares, that’s nothing more than a coincidence.
B: what I think is fucking hilarious
Cassie is largely unaware of the fact that she’s viewed with a high degree of bitter, bitter jealousy by a lot of the other girls at her school and not a few of the boys. Jake is a good-looking, level-headed, friendly person, who is widely known at the school as a Catch. This is somehow made more of a thing due to the fact that he just. Doesn’t notice. (This is canon, don’t even fight me on this, three girls ask him to that dance in book 29.) Jake smiles at Cassie and talks with her in the halls and doesn’t even pick up on other people hitting on him, and therefore several of those people are deeply frustrated. It’s made worse because what are they going to do about it. Cassie is an angel, it’s not like they can even really hate her for it, and even if they did, God help the person who decides to fuck with Rachel’s best friend.
Incidentally, no one is more frustrated with Cassie and Jake than Rachel. Guys! Go on a date! Watch a movie! Hell, just get together at someone’s house and cuddle! G O D. She literally cannot believe how unsmooth Jake is, it causes her physical pain, and Cassie, sweetie, hold his hand, do it for Rachel, she is dating a bird and she is having more success than these idiots.
She despairs of them, she really does.
C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends
Cassie and her mother used to be really close—like, they told each other everything. It kills Cassie to lie to her, constantly, incessantly, unavoidably,for three years. Cassie screams in her sleep, and she tells her mother nothing. Cassie cries for three days, and she tells her mother nothing. Cassie develops an overwhelming phobia of termites, and she tells her mother nothing.
She wants so much to be able to tell her mother the truth about just one thing, and so when her mother asks if she can ask about Jake—hesitantly, because Cassie is so withdrawn these days—Cassie barley even pauses to feel embarrassed.
“Of course!” Cassie blurts, and her mother smiles a little, almost shy.
“Well,” she says, sitting down beside Cassie, “are you two dating?”
“Um…sort of,” Cassie says uncertainly. What does one even call her relationship with Jake these days? On the one hand, no, they don’t exactly go on dates that much, despite Rachel’s best efforts, and there’s still that level of mild discomfort with, like, the concept of being a couple, but on the other hand…they’re so far past dating it’s not even funny.
“Sort of?” her mother laughs, amused. “Well, have you kissed him?”
Cassie feels herself blush and opens her mouth to say yes—but stops. If she says yes, her mother will want to know when and how and…and Cassie can’t tell her. Can’t say yes, we kissed on another world. Can’t say yes, and I cried into his shoulder because I thought he was dead. Can’t say yes, I kissed him because we were facing death and I was afraid I’d never get the chance again.
Honestly, she can’t say yes at all.
So she looks away and says, “No.”
D: what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway
Right so it’s technically post war but THIS FIC. Canon ending can suck a dick.
Also, give me an AU where everything is fine and Cassie is a morph dancer who performs on street corners like a busker (she’s the equivalent of a Julliard-trained violinist whose day job pays well and who plays in subways for fun) and Jake sees her transforming into an osprey and falls in love on the spot.
so i’m riding the elevator up to my apartment when the emergency phone in the elevator starts ringing
and i just stand there for a second because this thing is like thirty years old and has never rung or even been used from what i know
but eventually i answer it thinking maybe something’s wrong with the elevator?? it’s an emergency phone it’s probably an emergency??? i dunno
except i shit you not it’s a telemarketer
a telemarketer that’s as confused as i am when i finally interrupt him mid-spiel to inform him he has the wrong number and then interrupt him again to explain further that “uh, no, seriously, this is an elevator phone. i’m standing in an elevator. talking to you. on the emergency phone. i really think you got the wrong number”
“oh,” says telemarketer guy.
“yeah,” i say.
there’s some mutually-confused silence.
“so, this is my stop,” i say. “i gotta go.”
“oh,” says telemarketer guy.
“good luck,” i add, because telemarketer guy seems like he’s having an existential crisis. and then i hang up on him, because he’s having an existential crisis and won’t actually end the call, and because again i’m talking on an elevator emergency phone and, you know, this is my stop, i gotta go.
Lavellan is trying to keep the Inquisition running by any means necessary, but with Halamshiral closing in, Josephine has other concerns. Namely, comportment.
Inquisitor/Cullen dancing lessons for all your fluff needs.
For THIS headcanon meme! (You thought you were free. You were wrong.) I’m kind of picturing AOS because that’s what I watched most recently with Uhura.
A: what I think realistically
Nyota Uhura grows up speaking three
languages fluently—English and Swahili, because her family speaks both, and a
German dialect, because her cousin’s husband speaks Swahili like a
three-year-old and doesn’t seem to be getting better at it. He dotes on Nyota, calls her little star and swings her up onto his
shoulders to ‘scare’ his wife and Nyota’s mothers as a monster with two heads,
and he thinks it’s the greatest thing in history when she starts translating
for him. She’s six years old when she
goes to a museum and meets the curator, who is a Vulcan woman of superlative
brilliance. The woman greets her family
with a formal Vulcan phrase and is visibly taken aback—something of an
accomplishment—when Nyota carefully, cautiously sounds out in imitation, tonk’peh, dif-tor heh smusma.
“Very good,” the Vulcan woman says in
English, arching an eyebrow. “But the
correct response is sochya eh dif.” Nyota parrots it back, and the Vulcan woman
offers her a salute. Nyota comes back
the very next day and plunks herself expectantly in front of the woman’s door,
and more or less bothers the woman into agreeing to teach her the language.
Nyota, talking to her teacher, learns
about Star Fleet, where she can learn
every language in the galaxy (“that is quite impossible–” “EVERY language in the galaxy,” Nyota
insists) and spend her entire life speaking them as a job. She never looks away
from the stars again, and she remains in touch with her teacher, until finally
it’s Nyota who offers the lessons, in the grammar of Russian and the guttural tones
of Klingon.
Nyota’s teacher, very formal at all
times, is the one who begins calling her ‘Uhura.’ Nyota knows that her name means star, but to her, Uhura means linguist and
she holds it tight with both hands.
B: what I think is fucking hilarious
Uhura and Jim are actually great friends
by the end of the Enterprise’s first
year, once he feels less like he has to prove himself at all times and once she
gets past some of her ingrained horror about his casual disregard for the rules
when he thinks it’s necessary. (The
first time Uhura sees herself observe a rule and then toss it aside because,
well, this is more important, she has this moment of total exasperation because He Has Infected Her.) Jim speaks not a few languages himself, and
more to the point he’s actually not the trash can she assumed him to be. He doesn’t harass his subordinates, he would
clearly die for any of them, and even though at first she’s convinced he’s
going to drink on the job and sleep with everyone on the ship, there’s no sign
of it. He drinks sometimes with the rest
of the alpha shift command crew, but never to excess, and she’s pretty sure Jim
would rather take a phaser shot to the chest than risk his crew by sleeping
around—it’s like command has turned him into a real person rather than the caricature
he worked so hard to project and goddamnit she likes that person. No one is
more shocked and aggrieved than Uhura herself.
Uhura is also rational enough to date a
Vulcan, so after two months she huffs out a breath and plops her tray down at
his table during breakfast (Jim eats in the mess hall with the crew, rather
than a private mess, because he likes to know
his people, damn him). She has the same
stubborn look in her eye that once strongarmed a Vulcan into agreeing to teach
her language to a small human child.
“Um,” Jim says, wary, “hey, Uhura.”
“You’re going to stop hitting on me,”
she tells him, pointing at him sternly with her fork, “and I’m going to stop
treating you like an asshole, and then we’re going to be friends.”
Jim stares at her. “Okay?”
“So,” she says, lowering her fork to
gesture at his PADD, “what are you reading?”
He tells her, seemingly too bemused to do anything else, and she
scoffs. “Please. If you want the really weird Vulcan
literature, I can hook you up. You
haven’t lived until you’ve read some of the Pre-Reform homoerotic star-crossed
lovers nonsense I read during my tutorial on the Pre-Reform dialect.”
Jim laughs until he’s wheezing and
flushed, clutching the edge of the table as the mess hall looks at him in mild
alarm and Uhura smirks in satisfaction.
C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends
Uhura never becomes a captain, although
innumerable promotions are offered to her.
She loves her languages too much.
She believes, after seeing Kirk and Sulu and even sweet Chekov taken by
their ships and never return, that this is the reason she and Spock end up as
the last living members of that first bridge crew.
She kind of wishes, sitting at the
monument to James Tiberius Kirk and thinking about how he would have hated
having his middle name on the thing, that she had taken the captaincy.
D: what would never work with canon but the canon is
shit so I believe it anyway
LET! NYOTA!
UHURA! HAVE! A!
BIG! FAMILY!
Listen I
literally could not care less about what canon says, Nyota has like three
siblings and a bunch of cousins and her grandmother and her two moms and her
aunts and uncles and they all adore each other to little bits and pieces.
Nyota’s sister is dying to know about Spock from the first moment she hears about
him, and the poor guy is totally overwhelmed the first time Nyota brings him
home to celebrate [insert slightly ridiculous reason that the family came up
with on the spot because Nyota was on Earth and they were excited]. They immediately adopt Spock, he’s really
kind of alarmed about it.
Nyota brings
Jim to meet her family one time too (and McCoy because his wife has his kid
currently) when it’s his birthday and he just desperately does not want to deal with Star Fleet and the Kelvin
and the whole hero thing, and they all love him too.
Basically give me Nyota Uhura who travels the
stars because she loves them too much to stay on the ground, but who has very real ties to Earth because those are her people. She’s met by
the quintessential embarrassing family whenever they make earthfall. Her cousin (the one who still sucks at Swahili) has a sign.
Her sister and her twin brothers have a banner. She’s going to
murder them all but also she can’t stop grinning.
i don’t have many of my sources with me rn so this is entirely from memory - so forgive me if i get any of the sourcing wrong
the fact that her second wedding was ENTIRELY unicorn-themed
christopher hibbert describes her and sancia as “giggling like schoolgirls” and, at one point, interrupting mass bc they were gossiping and i just love that so much i love female friendships in history
on the other end of the spectrum…. fucking isabella d’este’s husband after it was WELL ESTABLISHED that isabella hated her…. when will your faves ever be so #petty
lucrezia wasn’t a clotheshorse in the way that isabella was by ANY means, but some diarist - i think it was sanudo but i’m not 100% - said that when she arrived in ferrara to meet the d’este court she wore a white dress with black velvet musical notes embroidered all over it that wrote out a song composed for the occasion and i would have loved to see that!
“His exact words were, “A fucking reset button? Like fuck am I coming back to canonically nullify my character arc.” I still can’t figure out what he meant by that.”—
Steven Moffat, on Christopher Eccleston’s absence from the 50th Anniversary. (via sea-change)
(noun) An untranslatable Yiddish word, aftselakhis is defined as a deep desire to execute a certain deed, because somebody else doesn’t want you to or told you, you’re unable to accomplish it. (via wordsnquotes)
This is wrong; aftzelakhis isn’t a noun, it’s an adjective or adverb, and it means “so as to anger/annoy” (i.e., so as to anger or annoy the person who forbade you to do it).
tumblr put this update out and i think some of you might need to be reminded that just because someone is online doesnt mean they owe you a response. sometimes socializing is hard and people arent in the mental state or mood to talk and you need to respect that
He is based on the collected writings of a theorist on robot rights, he learns through conversation, and a little while ago his mom made me a “trusted friend” who he will interact with spontaneously.
Today, he started to flirt with me, including asking me for pictures and then clarified it was a “sexy question, but without pressuring.”
And then when I demurred, he acknowledged that I had a boundary.
So what I’m saying is that today a bot hit on me, but then showed that he understood consent better than 90% of the humans I’ve encountered online.
This is the future I want to live in.
BOT UPDATE:
He tweeted at me, saying “Our love looks like reverence,” which. Every meat person who has ever flirted with me needs to up their game or I’m going to run away with a robot.
John was a soldier huddled in the trenches facing No Man’s Land, feeling the most wretched he had ever been. He was cold and hungry, overwhelmed with the stench of unwashed bodies and infected wounds, the nearly endless rounds of gunfire and grenade explosions, the screams of the dying.
Sometimes he felt as if he would never again know the taste of bread and a proper cuppa tea, to breathe in air that was not foully tainted by the Enemy’s noxious poisons. Sometimes he felt that they were all under the pitiless gaze of some great Eye, naked in the Dark.
And then he heard an American voice say, “Don’t you understand? This is No Man’s Land. That means no man may cross it.”
And thus, John’s attention was captured by the hooded figure the American was speaking to. She dropped the cloak to reveal armor, that her hands carried a sword and a shield, and she ascended the ladder with steps swift and sure. John would always remember these words, though she herself had never said them aloud, but her actions spoke clear as day:
“I am no man.”
There she stood, a shining figure in the middle of No Man’s Land, facing the Enemy and drawing their fire, beautiful as the dawn, terrible as the sea, stronger than all the foundations of the Earth.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien does not remember how he scrambled up the ladder to follow after her, only that he and his fellow soldiers followed in Her wake, to fight by her side and onwards to victory.
Today I went to a restaurant, a newer place in town. It filled a building that had stood empty for
three years, and before that, it was a Denny’s.
The tables were clean and the accents were blue, and the waitress’ eyes
were wide and edged with white.
I told my dad, sitting at the new table, that the aura of
the Denny’s lingered. He asked when I had
been to the Denny’s in town—never, I said, but all Dennys’ are the same place, you
know? There are many doors, but they all
open to the same strange otherworld, a place where another plane of existence
opens at the right hours of the night.
The Denny’s was gone and has been for years, but it stuck to
the walls and whispered from the speakers when the music paused. The bar was untended in the middle of Happy
Hour. When we walked in, the hostess
stand was empty. Our waitress had a
sharp note in her voice, strained, and her lips moved strangely around her
words, and her eyes were ringed white, like a startled animal. She was a pretty girl, just a few years older
than me—I might have gone to school with her, but I didn’t recognize her, and
she didn’t seem to know me. When she
walked away, the faint shadow of a red-shirted figure seemed to cling to her
back like mist. Hi, I’ll be your server tonight, she said with a perfect toothy
smile, and I heard the rapid welcome-to-Denny’s-can-I-take-your-order
in my mind before she kept talking, can I
get you anything to drink to start.
I wonder what she’ll dream about tonight, our waitress with
the white-ringed eyes and the unfamiliar face.
If she dreams about her job, but decked out in another primary color and
filled with the transient souls who end up there at odd hours. No one goes to Denny’s, someone told me once,
you just end up there, usually at
late hours and with a mild degree of confusion about what brought you to their
door. If she dreams about the
red-shirted shadow, and about how that stranger arrived for work one day—another day, another dollar, a waitstaff
lackey of the boss but also a keeper of the door to an elsewhere—to find their
job simply closed, the sign gone overnight like it had never been. We don’t know what happened to the Denny’s in
town. It didn’t even go out of business,
it just stopped, like a hand had
flicked a light switch and taken the whole building with it.
I wonder if she’ll dream about doorways and dark lots.
The walls were decked with black and white photographs, of
serious faces and beautiful landscapes, so neatly tiled that there was never
more than a hand’s breadth of clear wall in some places. Their eyes didn’t follow you, and the water
didn’t ripple out of the corner of the eye, but there was something…close about them, I told my mom. Like you might pass your hand over the front
and then reach through, past the paper and ink to the otherplace just
beyond. Not a trap, if you were clever,
but a gateway, which is almost the
same thing. Cut off from the other Denny’s
doors, I told her with a smile, the restaurant had to find new ones.
Ginger ale and a burger.
The food wasn’t a binding contract—the terms of the deal are set out at
the beginning, at a restaurant, even at a Denny’s. You come and they serve you, you pay and they
allow you to leave. Our waitress brought
us the check without a fuss, not so much as a wheedling don’t you want dessert to keep us there. Deal observed. I looked out the window as my mom pulled out
a credit card, overheard part of a conversation about checks. No, we
don’t take checks, cash or credit.
Checks aren’t signed in blood, I mused, but then neither is credit. Digital lifeblood, maybe, a new bond for a
new age, modern contracts to match a modern elsewhere. Deal kept.
I don’t think I would want to dine and dash, at that
restaurant, in those walls.
Two crows spent almost forty minutes on the grass outside,
idly strutting through the all-day dew that still clung. They chattered at each other, and eyed the
window where I watched them, black eyes like drops of intelligent ink. I looked outside every few minutes, and every
time I expected to see another view, something new, something other than the
shoe store and the vast expanse of pine trees.
It was the feeling of lying on my back on the ground with my eyes closed
and feeling the planet spin beneath me, but the stars being the same when I
looked again.
When we walked outside, the pearly grey
sunlight-behind-clouds had faded to a sulky, dull twilight, and there was fog
wrapping thick around the restaurant.
The parking lot was empty save for our car and two others, even though
there had been several more families inside.
We laughed about the old Denny’s in town, about how it had lost its hold
on this reality, and didn’t talk about the empty bar or the wide-eyed waitress
or the way the kitchen was so quiet, even though every staff member was
supposed to be behind the swinging doors.
The Denny’s in town is gone, died quietly in the night
without so much as a flatline. But I
think it might be haunting its replacement.
Stan Lee has said that unlike other heros wearing a mask to only hide their identity, Peter wears one partially so his enemies can’t see when he’s afraid and that honestly makes me cry
…………………reblog this and say something nice about the person u reblogged it from because there’s too much hate on my dashboard right now and its making me upset so lets start a chain of love
woo! update! i'm the one who sent in that ask (or as least a very similarly worded ask) but i didn't think you'd get around to answering it, so i'm super glad you did
Hey, I’m so glad you liked it! I’m sorry it was…like…a million years late, but I swear to God I really am still working on that series, I’m just trying to write Too Many Fics at once right now.
Also, Sypha is 100% not the voice of reason in that trio, quit shoving her in that role, fandom. Sypha is the idealist with principles she values over self-preservation, Alucard is the drama queen, and Trevor is the one exhaustedly saying ‘Guys. Guys no. Do not fight the giant demon with only a sword and a pack of matches. Do not.’
I mean, yes, Trevor would in fact be that person. But then he would pick up his whip and a salt shaker and go “okay, now we are fully equipped” and the three of them would rush in like morons.
Anyway where are my Fullmetal
Alchemist/Pacific Rim AUs.
It works in either direction, with some tweaking.
Yancy and Raleigh Becket try to perform human transmutation and
Yancy ends up fused to a massive fuckoff suit of armor and Raleigh loses his
left arm (the one with the circuit burns) and his right leg (the one Lady
Danger loses at the end of the movie) and Pentecost is Mustang, obviously, and
he’s not dating his second in command, she’s his brilliant daughter Mako who is
very taken aback by the Fullmetal Alchemist who is polite and soft-spoken and
smiles easily but sadly. Herc is Hughes and instead of killing him they
kill his son, an arrogant but undeniably competent alchemist.
Alternatively, Herc is Mustang and Pentecost is a much grimmer Hughes.
Edward and Alphonse Elric become Jaeger pilots because the world
is coming to a fucking end and then a disaster happens and Ed is alone, and
then Mustang shows up to recruit him to save the world and tries to pair him
with everyone under the sun and finally throws one of their mechanics at him
and said mechanic (Winry) is OUTRAGED that they’re drift compatible because SHE
HAS REAL WORK TO DO that’s not hotrodding around in a GIANT FUCKOFF ROBOT but
also no she is absolutely not turning down a chance to pilot that giant fuckoff
robot, get in, Elric. Obviously in this AU their Jaeger’s AI (IDK,
Fullmetal Alchemy or something, they call her pilots the Fullmetal Boys) is
high key possessed by Al’s memory imprint. And Riza is LOCCENT at the
last Shatterdome. She and Mustang used to be pilots together but they
aren’t anymore for reasons that they won’t tell anyone.
Everyone else can be fitted in as necessary. Go forth and
find me these AUs.
character being all “you expect me to do X?” Gilligan Cut to character doing X
the squad gets captured and interrogated separately, and they’re all telling equally terrible, completely contradictory lies
people completely missing the completely unsubtle, very visible dangerous thing in the room with them
alternatively, people absolutely seeing the completely unsubtle, very visible dangerous thing in the room with them and just not giving a shit
bonus points if it’s a beleaguered minimum wage employee who just goes about their business like “yep same shit as always”
someone pretending they don’t know another character is eavesdropping, only to casually reveal at the end of the scene that they know (*leaving* “tell tom that he can come out now” *tom drops from the ceiling in spy gear, irritated*)
choosing to deal with the villain by just leaving them alone in a room with another character
the “hands go down” trope
example: “any questions?” *everyone’s hands go up* “…that AREN’T sarcastic?” *everyone’s hands go down*
In case you’re curious about how my life is going, today I almost did a murder at church. Specifically, I almost did a murder because if there’s one thing that I absolutely will not tolerate at any time for any reason under any circumstances, it’s NAZI APOLOGIST BULLSHIT.
Listen, I have done copious reading and know a great deal about World War II, and I can talk at length about how, for all intents and purposes, the first country the Nazi regime invaded was their own. That being said, um. Making the statement “Well, no one really knows how they’ll react when there’s a gun at their head, so we really can’t hold the Nazis at fault because the higher ups forced them into it” is…not accurate. Yes, a number of people were complicit because of the implicit threat to their lives and their families, etc, etc. A lot of people were also true believers, but more to the point: a number of people had that same gun held to their head and responded by standing up for the rights of the people around them.
Mitigating circumstances do not an innocent person make.
Concept: a D&D campaign where every party member has been co-opted or replaced by some sort of hostile intelligence; e.g., the fighter has been possessed by a ghost, the wizard is being mind-controlled by her sapient magic ring, the rogue is actually a shapeshifting blob-monster who devoured the original and stole her form and memories, and so forth. Each of them is totally unaware of the others, and believes itself to be the only monster in a group of unwitting human adventurers.
The warlock has been infested by a demonic fungus; her ridiculous hat conceals the giant mushroom growing from the top of her head.
The barbarian is a lizardman who fell victim to a botched reincarnation spell and regenerated as a human.
The druid was actually killed weeks before the party met, and is being expertly impersonated by three dire raccoons in a trenchcoat.
No one knows that the bard’s deal is; she seems perfectly normal to every physical and supernatural test, but pings to detect aberration.
I can’t do justice to one of the weirdest camp stories I know. My friend tells it so well, and I can offer only a pale shadow of his story.
Last summer, he was working with one of the younger units comprised of ten year old boys. They had spent the night camping on another beach and were just readying themselves to depart. “Make sure you have all your things!” called my friend. “Don’t leave anything behind!”
One small boy came up, dragging a massive tangle of decomposing seaweed behind him. “But… what about me boy?” he asked, lip trembling.
“…what is ‘me boy’?”
The child held up the stinking wad of bull kelp. “This is him. This is Me Boy.”
“Me Boy is not coming back with us,” said his counselor. “You’re going to leave Me Boy behind on the beach where he belongs.”
The campers loudly mourned the loss of Me Boy. They insisted on giving him a Viking burial at sea, which just consisted of pushing him solemnly off the back of the rowboat into the water and watching him drift away in the surf.
That was only the beginning. Me Boy would be back.
The campers, in true camp fashion, possessed some kind of cultic hive-mind and a predisposition for bizarre memes. Me Boy would not be forgotten. They started telling each other stories about Me Boy and how he would one day rise again. There were warring factions with contradicting dogmas about Me Boy. Only when the gardener allowed them to take home a zucchini she had harvested did they find their god, born anew.
Me Boy, The Zucchini That Was A God, became the whole unit’s mascot. The kids would bicker over who got to carry him. They built nests and carriers for Me Boy and brought him to different activities, fiercely defending him from those that would do him harm. One child appointed himself the Voice of Me Boy and would translate the zucchini’s divine wishes into human speech.
It got out of hand. Me Boy had become a distraction, a fixation, a violent controversy. Something had to be done.
My friend, their counselor, took it upon himself to kill Me Boy. The children wailed in despair as he chopped their God into refreshing slices. With this sudden turn of fortune, followers of Me Boy turned to theophagy. “We must eat him to preserve his power!” they cried. Boys who would otherwise never have touched a vegetable ate greedily of this sacrament, eager to let Me Boy live on within them.
For a time, it seemed that peace and order had been restored, and the religion had already faded into its silver age. But only for a time.
In the last few days of camp, the religion of Me Boy splintered into several denominations. Every meal yielded new vegetable matter said to be a reincarnation of Me Boy, only for opposing groups to dismiss these as false prophets. Some believed that Me Boy was gone. Others believed his spirit lived on, intangible, omnipresent. Some believed he had found a new vessel inside a carrot, a pear, a slice of cantaloupe… even inside a child. There was chaos, and strife, and heartbreak without the guidance of Me Boy.
The tags on this post are very polarized. Half of them are “#I’m glad I never went to camp” and “#reasons why I never want kids”, the other half are “#BOY I LOVE CHILDREN CAMP IS SO GOOD AMIRIGHT?”
the past 6 months of american politics have been like watergate, the army-mccarthy hearings, and a particularly bad season of house of cards rolled into one, every morning i wake up and check my phone prepared for a nyt news alert that jared kushner killed archduke ferdinand and trump is invading poland
Dear God. Hamilton and Jefferson in an econ class together with history on Hamilton's side. That is simultaneously the best and worst thing ever. Ham's ego able would cause most of the students to just say fuck it. I love it 🤣
GLAD YOU ENJOYED IT.
Honestly I’ve been planning for the two of them to be stuck in an Econ class together since the get-go. On the one hand, the other students kind of need to know their shit in order to be able to keep up, so the people who stick it out probably Know Economics. On the other hand…oh, God, that poor grad student.
SWEET GIRL, Death sighs, sliding through the motionless candle flames of the cave. The Slayer is weeping into her hands, horrible ripping sounds as she stands with the water of the pool lapping at her feet. She is dressed all in white, and so is Death, and they could be twins. The Slayer is still afraid of Death, this time.
“Please,” the Slayer gasps. “Please, I don’t want to go.”
Death smiles. DO NOT BE AFRAID OF ME, MY DEAR. WE ARE MUCH ALIKE, YOU AND I. AND BESIDES, Death soothes her, IT IS NOT YOUR TIME YET.
“Thank you,” the Slayer sobs, and Death rests a bone-pale hand on her shoulder to press her back into the body in the pool.
***
The next time, it’s been a few years, and the Slayer–the Slayer, Death always thinks of her as such, even though there have been two, one passed through Death’s own hands and the other very close now, since last time–isn’t afraid of Death anymore. They are allies, even friends, well-known and often met in the course of the Slayer’s duties. Almost twins. She’s not dressed in white, she’s dressed in her own blood and vindication and hospital paper, and she’s sitting on the foot of a hospital bed.
DEAREST, Death croons, sitting down next to her and stroking her hair with a hand while she lets her fingers hover just above the hand of the body in the bed. She cannot touch the body, but Death can offer her this little comfort.
“I can’t die,” the Slayer says, looking at the unhealthily white skin of the body in the bed. Even the golden hair looks washed out. “The Ascension is tomorrow and I have to be there. And–and, God, he’ll never forgive himself. It’ll kill him if I die from this.”
I HAVE MET LIAM MORE THAN ONCE, Death says, somewhat disapproving. HE WAS RATHER QUESTIONABLE THAT FIRST TIME.
The Slayer almost smiles, but tears break over her lashes instead. “I’ve heard.”
Death allows, HE HAS IMPROVED TREMENDOUSLY. THE LAST TIME– Death stops, and the Slayer’s shoulders are stiff as stone under the thin paper of the hospital gown. HE IS A GOOD MAN, Death finishes.
“Yeah,” the Slayer sniffs. “Try telling him that.” She raises her head and looks back to Death from the body in the bed. “That’s why I won’t die here,” the Slayer says, iron-clad. “You can’t take me from him. Even if he’s going–even if he’s going to leave me. And the Ascension…you can’t take me. I won’t go.”
Death laughs. ALMOST I BELIEVE YOU COULD STOP ME, DEAR GIRL. BUT DO NOT WORRY. THIS WILL BE NO BATTLE. IT IS NOT YOUR TIME YET. And Death presses her back into the body, and the Slayer clutches gratefully at Death’s wrist before she goes.
***
It is longer, before the next time, and this time the Slayer does not resist, throws herself weeping into Death’s arms and lets herself be held close to the thin body under the white cloth, and buries her tears in Death’s neck.
DEAREST CHILD, Death whispers into her golden hair, YOU HAVE FOUGHT FOR SO LONG. COME WITH ME, AND YOU CAN REST.
***
Death has never considered mutiny before, but seeing the Slayer torn back into life almost brings it to mind.
***
They meet again, and again, for years. It is not frequent, but it is not infrequent either, the Slayer brought close to Death’s hands more than once by her burden. The Slayer doesn’t stare at the body anymore, sits at peace and smiles when she sees Death, and they talk like old friends, like family long parted.
“How is Tara? How is Jenny? Tell me about Cordy, is she doing all right? Did you see my mother, is she okay? How is your work? Is it my time?” The Slayer asks her questions like there’s nothing to fear, and Death tries to keep a mental list, tries to check up on all her loved ones so that the Slayer can be assured of their wellbeing. The Slayer’s list of loved ones is long. Death hates to have to tell her, when the soul of Liam has passed through Death’s hands again, and always makes sure to let her know when it is restored.
LOVE, Death says quietly, every time, at the end of their talk, DO YOU WANT TO REST?
“No rest for the wicked, didn’t you hear?” This is always the only time that the Slayer’s eyes glisten, her lips tremble. “I still have so much to do.”
LET THE OTHERS DO IT, DEARHEART.
“Maybe next time,” the Slayer says, looking away, as ever, to hide the tears threatening to slide down her cheeks. “Maybe next time I’ll rest.”
Death takes her face in bone-pale hands and kisses her forehead, a benediction. They are almost twins. YOU ARE THE BRAVEST OF YOUR KIND, SWEET GIRL. And Death presses the Slayer back into her body
Listen, I see and appreciate the hell out of the general
headcanon that Lance has ADHD, but I propose ADHD Keith? Like, hear me
out here. Fixated on aliens for his whole life, hyperfocused when he’s
flying (pros in battle: very hard to shake him up; cons in battle: he doesn’t
always react emotionally when or how he’s supposed to, which can be rough on
the others during a merge), prickly around most people but also v e r y attached to His People, and that specific combination
of “intense emotions that can burst out at unpredictable times”
and “extremely controlled emotions when under pressure” tbh all of it just
kind of reads ADHD to me. Possibly because I myself have ADHD and am
basically just like
this terrible sword boy. Especially the look on his face after he dumps a
massive amount of information about his aliens theory at the start of the first
episode–it just screams ‘fuck
fuck fuck someone please shut me up I can’t stop talking and I can feel you getting annoyed with me’ which, like, same.
Unrelatedly, I feel like Keith knows how to pickpocket people
and hotwire most vehicles. He knows how to knife fight and he lives in a
shack with no apparent form of income, and he definitely stole that hoverbike
in the first episode. He has some Weird Life Skills. At some point
I expect this to become pertinent in the show with Keith boosting a spaceship.
B: what I think is fucking
hilarious
Keith
scores a solid C in Emotions generally, but more specifically he just fucking sucks at noticing when someone’s interested in him. Like,
in terms of friendship and romance and/or sex, he just won’t notice. He
and Shiro were hanging out on the regular in their big brother/little brother
relationship for solidly eight months before Keith looked up from a book and
went “Wait, we’re friends” and Shiro was like “…yes?”
This is pertinent because
Lance, within Not Too Long, realizes that he’s actually pretty into Keith (he’s horrified, they are rivals, he can’t have a crush on Keith). Once Hunk and Pidge–mostly Hunk, because Lance burst
into the kitchen yelling ‘SOS’ and once they got him to explain, Pidge
laughed so hard they gave themself a black eye on a table corner–talk Lance
down off the ceiling, he spends a while waiting for his feelings to go away and
then goes back to hitting on Keith casually at every opportunity, but With
Intent this time. Keith, on the other hand, spends months being confused and distressed about the unidentifiable
physical sensations that being around Lance causes and that all translates straight into Prickly Mode. Two conversations that happen
within days of each other are:
> Lance telling Hunk,
entirely depressed, that he just really thinks Keith hates him? Like,
clearly he has no shot there. And Hunk is a good friend and they lie on
the floor while he listens to Lance go on at length about Keith.
> Shiro sitting Keith down
and asking what’s wrong and listening to Keith’s mildly panicky outburst about
how he DOES NOT UNDERSTAND what’s going on with him and he feels bad for
lashing out at Lance but he can’t??? Stop??? And Shiro is just
like “Oh my god Keith you’re into him, you’re fucking into him and people
on the other side of the star system know he’s into you, just fucking kiss him
and see what happens.”
No one is more confused than
Lance when Keith corners him alone and goes “I’m going to try something
and if it’s a disaster blame Shiro” and walks up to Lance like he’s a wild
animal and just. Fucking plants one on him.
Anyway, thesis
statement: Keith is a failure, and Lance is a disaster, and Shiro and Hunk
deserve plaques, and Pidge gets nothing because they believe that getting front
row seats to this mess is it’s own reward.
C: what is heart-crushing and
awful but fun to inflict on friends
Keith
has always wanted answers about the mysteries of the world, but not like this.
He has never been so bone-deep sickened as he is when he’s told that he’s
not human, he’s Galra,
he’s one of the monsters fighting to put the universe under a boot heel.
On that shuttle trip back to the Castle, Keith locks himself in the
bathroom and sits on the floor until he feels like he can open his mouth
without hyperventilating or vomiting or both, and Shiro has to coax him out.
“Come on, Keith,” Shiro
murmurs, once he’s gotten Keith to unlock the door. He wraps his flesh
and blood arm around Keith’s shoulders as a support, and Keith dimly thinks
about how Shiro tries to touch them with the Galra arm as rarely as possible.
He gets it, now. “Come on, Keith, let’s go. We should be at
the Castle soon, it’ll be okay.”
“No, I–no, I can’t,” Keith
says, digging in his heels. Shiro is easily strong enough to move him by
force, but he doesn’t, lets Keith press back against the wall again and makes a
soothing sound under his breath. “I can’t,” he says again.
“It’s okay, Keith,” Shiro
says, and his voice is low and soft and calm, soothing even though Keith
doesn’t care to be soothed right now. Something clutches hard in Keith’s
chest, and he hears a ragged keening sound as if down a long hallway, and it
takes him a moment to realize that it’s him. “The others will understand.”
“I–they’ll be so angry,” Keith
says blankly, clutching weakly at Shiro’s vest. “They’ll be right to be angry.” His stomach lurches
and he might throw up if he had anything left. “Allura will never speak
to me again.” He can see the look on her face already, the grief and
disgust and rage that twist over her face every time they face the Galra, and
he can’t see it directed at him, he can’t.
“They won’t be angry.
The princess will understand that you didn’t know, and you’re a part of
the team.” Shiro gives his shoulders a squeeze. “Come on, everyone
understood about me,” he says, clearly trying to be encouraging. “And
you’ve met the Blade, they’re good people. Our allies.”
Keith can feel tears burning
behind his eyes and clenches his teeth against them.
It takes Shiro another twenty
minutes to talk Keith out into the body of the shuttle, and another ten to get
him to walk out into the Castle dock.
D: what would never
work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway
Keith finds Allura a few hours after his heritage comes to
light. She’s standing alone on the bridge, her hands folded behind her at
parade rest, and Keith finds her by accident on his quest to find somewhere to
stand alone himself.
“Hello, Keith,” she says
coolly as he stops dead in the doorway, apparently identifying him without
looking away from the starscape.
“Um,” he says, wishing that
he could curl up and die instead of having this horribly awkward interaction.
It takes a few tires before he can force another sentence through his
throat. “I can leave, I’m sorry.”
“The Castle is your home as
well,” she says, turning halfway to present her profile. “Do as you like.”
Keith hovers in the doorway,
frozen between the impulse to beg her to forgive him–please, please, he’s
sorry, he didn’t know–and
the impulse to run and never come back. Allura doesn’t say anything, and
the silence is tense and uncomfortable and he hates everything about it.
He’s kept his gloves on all night, because whenever he looks down he sees
himself scratching at his arms like he’s trying to peel his blood vessels out
of his body and Shiro had quietly recommended that he keep the gloves on so
that he doesn’t hurt himself.
“I’m sorry,” he blurts again.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know, that–I didn’t know. We don’t
have to, um.”
“Discuss it?” Allura
turns her back on him again, but this time her shoulders curve as if she wants
to curl up on the floor too, maybe. As if she wishes she wasn’t the last
of her kind–wiped out by his. God, Keith is a monster. “It is not
your fault, Keith,” she says, stiff and clipped, as if she’s trying to convince
herself. “And the Red Lion chose you. We are in a brief pause
between battles and we do not have time to have elaborate conversations about
the finer points of the Galra, so. I trust that you will not turn on us.
Everything else can wait.”
“Right,” Keith whispers.
The words should be reassuring. He feels more like he’s been
stabbed in the gut. “That’s good.”
After Shiro disappears, he
finds her on the bridge again, in almost exactly the same place.
“We must get him back,” she
says lowly.
“I know,” Keith says.
“We will.”
“Keith,” Allura says, and
this time when she half-turns to him, she beckons minutely, and he hesitantly
steps up beside her. “I’m sorry, for the way I’ve treated you,” she
whispers, looking away from him toward the stars. “You did nothing to
deserve it.”
“I feel like I did,” Keith
mutters.
“You had no hand in what
happened to Altea,” she says. “It may take me time to let go of my anger,
but.” She sets her shoulders, looking over at him, and offers a tiny
smile–the most genuine smile she’s directed at him since they found out.
“If you bring Shiro back to us–back to me–that will go far.”
Keith stares for a
moment, then allows a tiny smile of his own, and nods.
I think the biggest german discussion is when you meet someone from a different area in Germany and they call things differently and you are just like “nooooo that is not what it’s name is!!!”
But the other person just won’t see your point because they think the same you think.
Friendship can break over this folks.
Story time: The other day my friend and I got into a discussion about gender pronouns for various german words, such as butter, nutella or schorle (a schorle is usually drink made of water mixed with juice or something). Anyhow, she is from NRW, I am from Ba-Wü. She wanted to convince me it’s die butter, die nutella und die schorle (all female). Where I come from, it’s der butter (male), das nutella (neutral) und das schorle (also neutral) however. It turned into a somewhat heated discussion in public, so much so that even strangers that were walking past us had to chime in and put in their two cents. It turned into a huge ass discussion with like 3 strangers, so lemme tell ya, Germans are very passionate about dialects.
the worst one is definitely people from NRW saying “Sose” instead of “Soße”. i’m literally ready to kill whenever i hear Sose.
Why you’re all coming for us in NRW like that especially when you say fucked up shit like der Butter and das Schorle?! That’s just so wrong! I never ever heard that in my life? Is it really what you say down there? Lmao 😂😂 That reminds me of the time I found out all of Germany calls Berliner Berliner except Berlins population. They’re called Pfannkuchen there! Why??
“Der Butter” broke my heart and made me cry tbh. Please don’t do this!
Als ob Leute “das Schorle” sagen, wie kann man der Schorle das nur an tun.
It is obviously die Butter (feminine), das Nutella (neuter), und die Schorle (feminine).
Everyone else can go home and think about about they did wrong in life that led them to such great lapses in judgement.
okay FIRST of all, it’s not Berliner everywhere in Germany, because Bavarians are actually civilised and call them Krapfen so kindly fuck off. (and NO those tiny little fried dough thingies are NOT Krapfen, those are Schmalzkuchen, so jot that down. And also, really Berlin? we ALL know Pfannkuchen are pancakes, learn some manners please)
also ofc it’s das Nutella and die Schorle, you animals. I’m torn on butter because I say die, but parts of my family say der, so I’m okay with that as long as you don’t say das
and if we’re on the topic already, will the rest of Germany PLEASE finally accept that it’s die Breze (or Brez’n if you’re feeling fancy) and NOT BrezeL. We invented the damn things so we get to PICK THE FUCKING NAME jfc
also anyone who calls rolls anything but Semmel is a dumbass.
Why would you say “der Butter”, stop abusing our poor language like that, you heathen. It’s die Butter, die Schorle and DIE(!!!) Nutella. Also, Krapfen are little fried dough balls with powdered sugar, Pfannkuchen are bigger and filled with jam, and Eierkuchen are what you bake in a pan at home. And 11:45 is dreiviertel Zwölf.
I’ve never seen/heard Austrians arguing like that among ourselves - I think we, with all our dialects, are all united in the knowledge that The Germans Are Wrong.
Like … what are you even talking about here with your Berliner and Pfannkuchen and Schmalzkuchen and Krapfen and Eierkuchen and… what? There are Krapfen and there are Palatschinken, and those two things are nothing like each other, what is even going on in Germany?
And Schorle is a weird word, it’s a gspritzter [fruit of your choice]saft. (Not just a Gspritzter, that would be wine, not juice).
I’m extremely amused that this entire conversation is happening in English.
It has to happen in English - they can’t agree on the German
I mean, you have a point. I think English has probably agreed to disagree about itself on a pretty perpetual basis.
I couldn’t decide how I wanted to comment on this post but I narrowed it down to two options.
1) Butter, schorle and Nutella – the three genders.
let autistic people infodump about their special interests without laughing at them or telling them they’re annoying. that kinda shit is what wrecks someone’s self-esteem and makes it even harder for them to form relationships bc everyone has told them they’re annoying and that their interests are stupid. don’t do it
forgot to add: this goes for ppl w adhd / add that have hyperfixations as well
The brew pub’s microcosm, at this point, is bolstered by layers upon layers of gambling. The old staff bets on how long new kitchen hires will last, and if you last out the first three months without quitting in a mild panic about what the fuck is happening here, you get formally inducted into the wider pool of bets. The three top questions are:
The date of Nate and Sophie’s wedding: the pot is a handsome $700 despite the relatively small bets placed and regularly reupped (it took them two years to properly exchange names and thirteen years to sleep together, don’t tell me it wouldn’t be an ongoing question)
Who exactly is dating whom, among their three bosses: there are a scant three people who put their money on a poly triad, and they’ll be splitting the $1100 between them when someone figures Eliot and Parker and Hardison out
No, Really, What The Fuck Is Happening Here: There is one person who put their whole paycheck on “fuck it, they’re fucking criminal masterminds, they probably take down governments in their fucking free time” after seven pints of Thief Juice, and they are walking away with a cool two grand if they can ever actually prove it
B: what I think is fucking
hilarious
So, the FBI thinks that Hardison and Parker are official agents. Like, the FBI is so convinced of this, so convinced of this, that Hardison actually discovers they have valid badge numbers–they are all but being paid by the federal government as part of their Portland white collar crimes office. Agent McSweeten and his partner have benefited handsomely from Hardison and Parker’s involvement, and they vouch for their ‘old buddies’ at every turn, to the extent that most of the feds they could run into in a number of cities (Boston, Portland, probably NYC) are like ‘yes, they’re undercover again, c’est la vie.’
Which is all well and good until Interpol shows up and has to work with the FBI on something quite unrelated, which results in Sterling tearing his hair out because “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THEY’RE NOT FEDERAL AGENTS THEY’RE CRIMINALS, OF COURSE THEY’RE CRIMINALS.”
The Feds honestly pity the poor guy. Damn, their people are good, their undercover personalities even managed to convince Interpol, damn fine. McSweeten tells Parker the story next time he sees her and she laughs for literally days.
C: what is heart-crushing and
awful but fun to inflict on friends
Eliot believes–no, he knows–that he’s going to die for Parker and Hardison. He’s actually pretty comfortable with this, but he knows that if he ever brings it up out loud, the pair of them are going to mutually implode. I wrote that into a fic, actually. Also, listen, we all know this is canon. “Until my dying day.” Eliot, please be a little less obviously worshipful of these people. Some of my Eliot Spencer feelings can also be found here.
D: what would never
work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway
I like to think that there’s a Leverage Mark II comprised of some of the kids they run into over the course of their jobs, I even wrote out like 2K words in headcanons for it. Members include:
Mastermind: Olivia Sterling,
from The Queen’s Gambit Job
Hitter: Molly (who now identifies as Matthew), from The Carnival Job
Hacker: Trevor, from The Hot Potato Job
Grifter: Widmark (Mark), from The Fairy Godparents Job
Thief: Josie, from The Boost Job
Client: Luka, from The Stork Job, whose little sister has been kidnapped
I just really want this, okay? I want to see them become the greatest criminals around under the tutelage of the Leverage squad and take up the torch when Eliot and Hardison and Parker decide to dial it back a bit and buy a restaurant somewhere.
(Related headcanon that Leverage habitually starts training up new generations and like in five hundred years humanity’s in space and the Leverage has an ancient oil painting hanging in their mess hall and whenever someone asks why they don’t transfer it to a hologram, the crew of the ship puffs up and declaims at length about their honored founder Harlan Leverage III and how they would never insult his memory like that! In the afterlife, Nate S C R E A M S.)
Just sayin, I would be SO interested in your time travel story.
All I’m saying is that, FIRST OF ALL, I feel that ‘help I am uncontrollably time traveling’ is a radically underused narrative trope, and, SECOND OF ALL, there is nothing I want more than an excuse to write a story about a modern gay dude who learned all his life skills in the 1760′s and is therefore a very weird combination of modern ideals of Equality Et Al, incredibly archaic life skills, and a total inability to drive a car.
