Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

Anonymous asked: P for the fandom meme? :)

From this ask meme!

P: Invent a random AU for any fandom

Here are several arbitrary universe mash-up AUs I’ve been thinking about lately.

Mediator AU of Jessica Jones/Luke Cage

Jessica is basically Susannah Simon (from the Mediator series, which I read as a kid and am rereading) all grown up with an alcohol problem, so this is the universe in which Jessica can see, talk to, and punch ghosts.  This can either be a straight up nothing-is-the-same AU where the entire plot is Jessica moving into a new apartment haunted by a beautiful guy from (help) maybe the 20′s who just never left for reasons that are unclear, or it can basically be canon, except that Jessica could always talk to ghosts and then acquired superstrength and *gasp* TRISH KNOWS EVERYTHING.  Clearly that is the superior AU.  But so then Jessica moves into her new office/apartment at the start of her show and it’s already haunted by a kinda grumpy recently dead guy who…possibly she murdered his wife still, that would be debatable.  Regardless, Luke (after about an hour of arguing about this is my goddamn apartment–  excuse you, you can’t just kick me out, I was here first, she finally does get a name out of him) has the strongest telekinetic powers she’s ever seen, and Jess can still lift cars.  Stuff proceeds apace, but with more Luke and maybe Kilgrave is an evil mediator or an extra-solid and terrible ghost or maybe he’s just Kilgrave, and I have no idea what the plot would look like or how Luke’s show would happen.  But it would have Luke appearing in Trish’s apartment to push something heavy over and yell “JESS IS GETTING HERSELF KILLED” until Trish woke up and went to help Luke deal with the situation.

Rogue One AU of Animorphs

Obviously.  I’ve seen a couple casual comments about a Star Wars AU of Animorphs where people are Jedi or whatever, but listen.  No.  The Animorphs are Rogue One.  Jake is Cassian, obviously, and Rachel is Jyn but less intensely disillusioned and more Ready To Go To War (both for the cause and for the war).  The major difference here is that it’s Jake who delivers the stirring speech, while Rachel is the one who recruits a small force of mutineers to back them up.  And no sexual tension.  I feel like Ax is Chirrut but like a baby, like he was really REALLY young when the war went down, and Tobias is Baze (ditto) and Rachel is like “…nice shoulder cannon” the first time they meet.  Instead of being gay married space warrior priests, Ax and Tobias are best friend space warrior priests.  Elfangor was definitely the older priest initiate who survived the massacre on Jedha and raised the two of them in the old ways and then dies tragically during Rogue One’s attempt to reach…Naomi?  I’m not sure who Saw would be in this argument.  CHAPMAN MAYBE.  Because Naomi has to be an engineer rather than a lawyer so that the plot can progress.

Wait, actually, no, Eva is the engineer, they don’t have to go on a hunt to find Rachel for the contact information because Marco already has it and MARCO IS K2 except he’s not a robot, he’s still a human and Jake’s best friend.  They go pull Rachel off an undercover op on Jedha because they need reinforcements, and Ax and Tobias basically just invite themselves along, and CASSIE IS THE PERSON WHO IS DRIVEN TO RISK HER LIFE BY REBELLING AGAINST THE EMPIRE WITH WORLD-SAVING INFORMATION.

This story would be like 95% Cousin Feelings with an additional 5% Ship Feelings, but the point of it all would be that Jake and Rachel die sitting on the beach shoulder-to-shoulder like they did when they were little kids, and Rachel says that Jake’s brother would have been proud of him and Jake smiles and it’s all terrible.

Mrs. and Mrs. Smith AU of Atomic Blonde

No, that’s it.  That’s literally it.  AU where Delphine and Lorraine have been married for five years and spend a few days trying to murder each other as couple’s counseling/the complications of the job and have wall sex in their destroyed kitchen.  Alternatively, Good Omens AU of Atomic Blonde, where Delphine is a sweet-natured demon who loves music and dancing and photography and Lorraine is a rather embittered angel.

Anonymous asked: Great now I'm having emotions about the Hork-Bajir

OH BUDDY JUST YOU WAIT, THERE ARE ALWAYS MORE EMOTIONS TO HAVE ABOUT THE HORK-BAJIR

Ha, your tag “way past Romeo and Juliet” I get it now. *sighs* God do I love ships with angst

You have not known angst until you’ve sailed the good ship Rachel/Tobias.  Honestly this was super formative in terms of what ships I do and don’t like, and also what kind of ships I write, but even so: I’ve never come close.

Oh geez… I really like Marco and Rachel friendship….

Marco and Rachel have that excellent A-grade “Yeah we hate each other but also I’ll shank you if you so much as look at them crosseyed” banter dynamic and I love it.  Also they’re…kind of similar, in terms of terribleness, and I love the kind of unconscious alliance that springs up because they both have that ruthless cold-eyed clarity about What We Have To Do.

the-dot asked: hi!! i absolutely adore your Blue Sword headcanons (why doesn't it have a bigger fandom. why.) and i cried a little when i read the last ones. if i may ask, do you have any headcanons about the children?

(i sent that before i meant to weeps, sorry, feel free to ignore this one if you want) also, luthe is probably their weird uncle who loves them all and tells wild stories that no one quite believes. (i hope you’re having a good day!)

Ummm, let’s see, headcanons about the kidlets.  I’m not going to do the headcanon meme because I’m mostly making these up, but I hope these are good!

Tor Mathin

• Tor is a lot of things–first sola, horseman, a good tactician, a promising young king–but a swordsman is not among them.  He’s passable, technically very good, but he lacks joy.  Tor is the first person in his family in the gods only know how long to prefer spears, and dredges up an old design for a Damarian saddle that allows him to strap the poles to his horse’s side for easy access.
• Tor takes after his namesakes–both of them, actually, although naturally Tor’s dry humor and stoic sufferance of small children didn’t make history nearly as much as his Just-ness.  But what I’m saying here is that, basically, Tor has a very droll sense of humor and is an incredibly excellent big brother who claims dibsies on his youngest sister on the spot and routinely allows himself to be dragged into trouble with her.  Mathin is delighted.

Aerin Amelia

• Obviously, Aerin Amelia is the next carrier of Gonturan.  One of them, at least.  She is a talented stateswoman and the beloved first sol of her people, and her mother teaches her swordplay, and Aerin associates it with laughing and joy and the beat of sunlight on her cheeks.  She beats the crap out of her brother frequently and Tor puts up with it because he’s a good sport.  
• She likes to dress up like her godmother–Amelia dotes on her, and for Aerin’s sixteenth birthday the girl shows up in crimson and blue, a dress Amelia sewed for her over the winter, somewhere between a Hill robe and a layered Homeland dress, with pearls woven into her bright red hair.
• Aerin and Senay’s baby sister Rilly fall in love and get married and Senay and Harry are both pleased beyond belief.  Aerin, much like her namesake, is Tall, and Rilly is kind of Tiny all her life, they’re adorable.

Jack

• Jack is a fucking kelar powerhouse.  All his siblings are, they take after the old kings, but Jack in particular is juiced.  His talents run toward rock and stone, and when his kelar wakes he almost shakes down a wing of the citadel.  He and Harry ride out into the Hills and she sets up a camp in a little valley where she once learned how to fight, and they just sort of wait out the worst of it.  She kisses his hair and rubs his back and it’s a terrible few weeks, as he tries to get control, but it’s an oddly warm memory, later.
• To that effect, Luthe likes Jack very much, he reminds Luthe of the Aerin easily as much as his sister, and although Jack is far from being a full mage, Luthe teaches him a few tricks.  One that Jack particularly loves, because of the way it makes his sisters yell at him in mock aggravation, includes turning little posy rings of pimchie flowers into golden birds that sing before flying away into nothingness.  Luthe observes Jack’s talent for this particular parlor trick and very scrupulously does not burst out laughing.

Hari

• The youngest child of Harry and Corlath is two things above all else: an incredibly skilled rider and the fucking family prankster.  Tor adores her from the minute she’s born, a wrathful little thing with jet black hair and tiny clenched fists, and he makes a fantastic babysitter, and she gets on her first horse at two years old because she talked Tor into letting her ride his stallion.  It was a terrifying experience for Tor as well as all the sofor who witnessed their teeny baby sol shrieking with delight as she clung to the horse’s mane like a burr.  It was also the moment that Tor realized his baby sister could probably ask him to hand over the kingship and he might actually do it.
• Hari and Aerin trade custody of Gonturan, sometimes, more just for variety than anything else.  Aerin usually carries it because Aerin actually likes swords, whereas Hari likes to fight with a pair of knives.  This is considered something of a sneak-thief’s weapon, in Damar, but Hari is very stubborn and Harry isn’t exactly a strong candidate for telling any of her children “No, you can’t, Because Tradition” and Corlath is too thrilled with his life to take a hard line on something so unimportant.  So it’s mostly Hari’s tutors kind of moaning through their teeth as she learns to throw knives and Hari young woman is that your brother’s best tunic you’re using for target practice.  
• Yes, it absolutely is Jack’s best tunic, because Hari, in the fashion of younger siblings everywhere, is, after all, something of a sneak-thief, and she stole it to see how long it would take him to notice.  
• It has been three weeks and while Aerin and Tor have both noticed, Jack shows no sign of picking up on it.

Anonymous asked: Yes to your Jake headcanon. 'Big Jake' to me always meant that he was broad shouldered and tall and just solid (which means Tom was probably even taller if he called him midget but that could have also been a big brother teasing thing). No offense to anyone if they want to headcanon Jake as being chubby, but that's not how I interepreted his nickname at all.

I have read some EXCELLENT chubby Jake headcanons and I’m here for it, tbqh, but yeah, IDK I knew a lot of just…really big dudes when I was younger, the gentle giant types who seem kind of bemused by being the size of a fridge.  And Jake always struck me as the type of guy who seems kind of bemused about being so tall.  Also, who else is with me that Tom used to call Jake midget because Jake was shorter than him as a kid and then Tom got infested with a Yeerk and the Yeerk never changed the nickname even though by the end of the war Jake is three inches taller than his big brother.  Obviously in an AU where Everything Is Okay this means that Tom calls Jake midget as like an ongoing family inside joke that makes people very confused because Jake is Tall.

Moran Rereads the Animorphs Part 9

Book 9: The Secret

AKA “The PTSD squad does termites, and Visser Three learns about the true ruler of the forest”

The rest of the reread

Keep reading

Anonymous asked: JESUS CHRIST. *Frantically googling if Tobias ever gets turned back into a human* I should've known better than to take books recommendation from strangers on the internet. Now I've got to read all of... this *gestures to 54 (?!) books* I hope you're proud of yourself.

HONESTLY?  PRETTY FUCKING DELIGHTED, YEAH.

WELCOME TO THE TRAGEDY CLUB.

Honestly the Animorphs fandom on Tumblr is like 50% schadenfreude and 50% mutual weeping so please, my friend, my buddy, keep me posted on your progress.

I feel like I’ve achieved something great here my dude, never be afraid to talk to me about Animorphs, and any time you want to hear someone weep AT LENGTH about The Best Sad Bird Boy HIT ME UP BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT I’M ON THE INTERNET FOR.

stplatinum:

i’m cursed. cursed for a year until the new season of castlevania comes out. and i guarantee you there aren’t enough fan fics or fan art in the internet to satiate my hunger

As of three days ago there were 48 fics on AO3 and I know because I read all of them.

(via floating-vampire-jesus)

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?

Here are five headcanons about Death and Sephie the gay barista!  (…are they headcanons if it’s my own stuff?)

ONE

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: You mentioned Parker and Sophie in your John Wick tags so can I request some Leverage for the headcanon ask?

Let’s go steal a headcanon meme.  (shut up, I’m hilarious)

A: what I think realistically

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.)

That feeling where you start reading a book with the expectation that it will be fun YA garbage with cool weird magic and bastardized Greek mythology, and halfway through you hit a twenty page chunk of UNRELENTING racist bullshit about “gypsies”.

I must cleanse my soul.