Washington State (not DC) is the only state in the union where you can legally have a fistfight with somebody (with police as referees) to settle your differences
This is tied to an archaic law that isn’t enforced anymore.
So if you beat the shit out of someone they won’t do anything?
Oh no this is still enforced, and in fact we actually Have a few vigilante superheroes
Like Phoenix Jones who actually patrol the streets and challenge criminals, the police usually get called, and they watch as Phoenix Jones pummels them because Phoenix Jones is actually an MMA fighter.
I gasped and my eyes got so wide after reading this
That man is AWESOME
Apparently for about three years he had an actual superhero team of people with military, medical and martial artist backgrounds he personally trained and equipped, but eventually disbanded. He didn’t give specifics, but said that some of them were “the wrong kind of people” and were too dangerous. There are really for real things that happened.
Also someone tried to be an “arch nemesis” to him named Rex Velvet, some nerd wearing an eyepatch and a fake mustache who didn’t hurt anybody but made surprisingly polished, melodramatic and goofy callout videos from an abandoned warehouse and presumably pulled some annoying pranks.
Did some research about Phoenix Jones: guy is legit. Ex-MMA fighter like the post says, but what the post FAILED to mention is this guy has legit superhero-grade equipment. His suit’s actually made of armor-plated and bulletproof materials, and it has a functional utility belt with lined with stuff like handcuffs, a stun gun, pepper spray, and the like for performing citizens arrests and non-lethally detaining actually armed and violent criminals.
Anonymous asked: please, tell me more about death and the gay barista. where does death get her hair done? why does death like iced chocolate? has death ever considered a netflix subscription?
oh, and one more: has death read the princess bride? does death like the princess bride?
Sephie has never seen someone with hair like Death’s. It’s as thick as sheep’s wool, but perfectly obedient, sleek curls that pile up around her shoulders like snowfall. Hours of styling, even in a salon, could never reproduce it. They’re sitting in one of Death’s gardens–phosphorestent blossoms cast an eerie blue-white light over the sleek black walls and the cataract of precious gems pouring into a false river of opal and lapis lazuli and sapphire–and Death’s head is in Sephie’s lap as she plays with the curls. Sephie stretches one white lock out and it springs back, and Death opens an eye, smiling when she sees Sephie grinning.
“Is it so amusing?”
“Yes,” Sephie says, delighted. She pulls out another curl and cocks her head as Death opens her other eye. “Why don’t you dye it anymore?”
“Dye it?” Death repeats, blinking. Sephie nods, and it takes a moment before her question seems to click in Death’s mind. “Oh!” Death laughs a little. “No, I didn’t dye it. What color did you like best?”
“The red was nice,” Sephie says, bemused. Death smiles at her and closes her eyes, and Sephie watches as each hair begins to change, deep venous scarlet seeping through each strand from the scalp until her lap is full of riotous red. Death opens her eyes again as Sephie huffs out a breath of surprise and rakes her fingers through the newly colored mass.
“Do you like it better like this? I can appear however I choose, this is simply,” Death gestures down at herself, “my preference.”
“I love it,” Sephie says, bending down to kiss Death’s hairline and reveling in the electrical shock of the contact. “However you want to wear it. Surprise me.”
TWO
“Where does the food come from?” Sephie asks, evaluating an apple. It’s crisp and red and perfect, and she knows that when she bites into it, it will be sweet and delicious. “Why do you even keep food here?”
“The fruit comes from my orchard,” Death says from her throne. A bowl of pomegranate seeds like drops of blood frozen in crystal rests in her lap, and her fingertips are stained with their juice as she pops one at a time into her mouth. “And I keep food here because I like it. And because you like it.”
“You mean those trees actually grow fruit?” Sephie asks, startled.
“Of course. The rest of the food, I do what I can. My sister brings me gifts sometimes. She knows I love Earth food.”
“You mean she knows you have a terrible sweet tooth,” Sephie says, pointing at Death with her apple, and Death smiles, holding out the shallow bowl of pomegranate seeds toward her. Sephie returns the apple to a dish that she suspects might be solid diamond and walks forward, until Death can neatly pull her into her lap in place of the bowl. “You can’t fool me,” Sephie says, reeling in the pomegranate seeds to pop a few into her mouth. They burst cool and sparkling over her tongue. “I served you iced chocolate every day for years.”
“I do love chocolate,” Death confirms, and stretches up to peck a kiss on Sephie’s lips. It tastes like pomegranates.
THREE
Sephie doesn’t actually know how many rooms are in Death’s citadel, but then again, Sephie is dead, and has thus reached a state of Zen acceptance about all things. So when she opens a door one morning and finds a library with shelves twenty feet high, she doesn’t ask a lot of questions.
Death finds her quite some time later, comfortably stretched on a reclining couch upholstered in emerald green with a small tower of books climbing beside her. Slinking onto the couch beside her, Death coils catlike into the empty spaces left on the surface and insinuates her head onto Sephie’s belly, curls–amber gold today–spilling over them both. Sephie giggles and laces one hand into Death’s curls, lowering her book.
“What are you reading?”
“I have no idea. It’s called Resenting the Hero, it’s great.” Sephie gestures around her at the library. “What is this place?”
“My library,” Death says. “I’ve only just added it.”
“Only just?”
Death shrugs against Sephie’s side. “I never thought to add something purely for the sake of leisure before. Sometimes spirits spend time in my gardens, or my orchards, but this…” She looks up at Sephie through her lashes, almost shy. “This is my own space. And yours, of course.”
Sephie spends a few moments working very hard not to melt through the couch at that, then clears her throat and says, “Have you ever considered a theater room?”
“A…theater room?” Death says musingly. “Would you like one?”
Sephie laughs. “Well, it might be nice to watch a movie together. You would like The Princess Bride–it’s a classic.”
“I shall look into it at once.”
FOUR
Sephie’s favorite room in the citadel is a cave–or rather, it seems like a cave. The walls drip with rubies and topaz, garnet and carnelian and amber, the ceiling laden with stalactites, and the floor stacked with pillows in a deep bowl shape. Bringing a light inside turns the jewels into leaping, frozen fire, and casts fractured glints and glitters across the pillows.
Death doesn’t begrudge her a thing, is more than willing to give Sephie anything she asks for, and when she learns of Sephie’s affection for the place, it begins to mysteriously fill itself with gifts. Bouquets of glowing flowers from the gardens, blankets and cushions of a fineness that Sephie never saw in life, sweets and books and bowls of pomegranate seeds and apples and cherries. Death is always shy, when she comes to the fire-crystal room, and insists firmly that it is vital that Sephie have her own space.
Death shouldn’t be so endearing.
But stretched on the floor of Sephie’s fire-crystal room, turning her hair different colors as Sephie feeds her pomegranate seeds, it’s quite undeniable.
FIVE
Death doesn’t sleep. Sephie doesn’t need sleep, anymore, but Death doesn’t seem to be capable of it. So Sephie is a little startled to find that Death keeps a bed chamber, well, if palely, lit and ornamented with the same pristine jewels as the rest of the citadel. The bed is soft and comfortable, a canopied thing with blue and green jewels inlaid in the black stone corner posts, and piled deep with pillows, and the bedside table is stacked with books and one of the shallow bowls of fruit. Sephie doesn’t need sleep anymore, but more than once she has taken a nap in Death’s bed, purely because it’s so pleasant, and she often wakes up to find Death curled up beside her, eyes open but breath steady and calm.
This is not one of those times. Death, after a long series of hearings and judgments in her audience chamber, comes to find Sephie in a garden with her usual unerring efficiency.
“Come with me,” Death says, and Sephie–oh, of course Sephie does.
Curled up with her head on Death’s chest, Sephie feels the low crackle of lightning through her nerves, the unmistakable feeling of power from being close to Death. Death’s hand is tracing Sephie’s jaw as she sorts through the books on the table with the other, and Sephie hums, a pleasant sound vibrating deep through her chest.
“Read to me,” Sephie commands, and Death laughs, the sound even more inhuman at close range, before pulling her hand back with a book. It’s a plain paperback, with a black and red cover embossed with gold lettering.
“Have you read Sunshine yet?” Death asks, amused, and Sephie smiles. “I did recommend it to you.”
“You did,” Sephie agrees, and nestles deeper into the pile of cushions as she tucks an arm around Death’s waist. Even skin-to-skin, Death has no heartbeat, and her chest only rises and falls so that she can speak, but Sephie has gotten past finding it strange–it is calm, soothing, a level of peace that Earth never offered.
Death kisses Sephie’s hair and opens the book. “Part One,” she begins. “It was a dumb thing to do, but it wasn’t that dumb. There hadn’t been any trouble out at the lake in years…”
Anonymous asked: 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.)
Anonymous asked: 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.
readera asked: 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.
