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

Anonymous asked: ♫ Enjolras/Grantaire

RIGHT, so I got Third Eye by Florence + the Machine (also I super love this meme and more people should do it.)  I ain’t even a little sorry.  Canon era, motherfuckers, because I can.

Grantaire was arguing with him again.  Most of Enjolras’ mind was occupied with ripping down the other man’s case, almost enjoying the familiar pattern, but that quiet part at the base of his skull, the part that had been getting louder of late, was distracted.  It was discomfiting and foreign, as if he no longer quite knew himself.  It did little to inhibit his argument—they were second nature by now, he could spare that scrap of attention—but he was bothered by its persistence.  Just when Enjolras believed he had shaken off the strange abstraction, Grantaire would tip his head back and laugh at something Joly had said, his wild curls falling back from the line of his throat, and it would return with a vengeance.

He’s brilliant, the quiet voice noted now.  It was true, something Enjolras had noticed before. For all that he dulled its edge with wine and other, stronger spirits, Grantaire’s mind was as keen as the edge of broken glass, quick and incisive, and he soaked up information as effortlessly as he did liquor.  Grantaire claimed to know nothing—nothing but love and liberty, he had said—but he could hold his ground against Enjolras, and quote Greek and Roman writings without so much as a pause to recall. He spoke rapidly, as if the thoughts piled up behind his tongue and pressed to be first through his lips, and was prone to winding, tangential thinking, but his points were good and clear and glittering.

Keep reading

Anonymous asked: I saw that you were open to fic requests. Do you have any Amis Mutant!AU headcanons?

I HAVE ALL THE MUTANT!AU HEADCANONS.  Listen, children, Auntie Moran has been an X-Men devotee since she was very wee, I have mutant AU headcanons for basically everything I’ve ever seen.  I think we’ll just do headcanons for this rather than a fic, though, you can hit me up later if you want actual plot.

Okay so I’m thinking that the Mutant Registration Act is going to have to be the big issue Les Amis are protesting–they’ve got to have something to be against, it’s Les Amis for God’s sake.  And I’m thinking that a number of them are in a peculiar position because a lot of them are from wealthy upper-class families and have invisible mutations, so they could have just gone on with their lives without ever telling a lie.  This is probably vaguely modern–hell, maybe the X-Men are kicking around somewhere.  Aaaaanyway, here, it got long.

• Enjolras can glow.  Actually it’s called electromagnetic manipulation, and he can do more than glow, but that’s the most common manifestation–when he’s impassioned or excited or angry, it’s as if particles of sunlight coalesce around his skin, a harsh and brilliant golden-white halo.  He can control it, but it takes some concentration.  With some practice, he learned to do other things with light, like setting off bursts of light to catch the attention of a crowd or throwing lightning-bright flashes from his hands to baffle the police and hide their escape.  It’s beautiful, watching him speak at the Musain or at a protest, his whole body outlined in not-quite-blinding light so that there isn’t a single shadow on him, like an angel or an ancient god.  It’s why Grantaire started calling him Apollo–god of the sun, of rapture and beauty, of eloquence and elegance.  It drives Enjolras up the wall, but Grantaire persists and Enjolras’ light is all the brighter in the heat of his anger.

• Combeferre has a small psychic ability, although not in the sense of reading minds.  He can share senses, specifically vision–look through the eyes of another animal.  He likes moths and butterflies for this, because as calm and logical as he usually is, Combeferre is creative and loves art and moths and butterflies have five color receptors rather than three, they can see a whole spectrum humans can only dream of.  When he’s drunk enough or exhausted enough, Combeferre will sit with his head on Courfeyrac’s shoulder and try to describe the other colors he can see through their eyes.  (He has absolutely never started crying about it, and anything Courfeyrac says to the contrary is nothing but lies and slander.)

• Courfeyrac is an empath.  I think I’ve used that one before, but I am VERY committed to Courfeyrac being an empath, y’all can fight me at dawn on that.  He’s not much good at projecting, he can only manage it in a moment of strong emotion, although once he does manage it, he can swamp everyone around him and send them reeling into hysterical sobs or blind rage or, on one memorable occasion involving Combeferre, pure blazing lust.  (They don’t talk about that one much, it’s a bit of a Noodle Incident, but suffice it to say Enjolras reacted…poorly, when they came out of it and he realized he’d kissed Grantaire.  It was a messy week until he apologized for his reaction.)  Courfeyrac is much better at receptive empathy, at reading the people around him, and he’s a master at balancing it all, knowing which emotions are his and which aren’t.  It does make being around Enjolras a little exhausting, with all that fiery passion roaring through him all the time–Combeferre, much steadier in nature, is a good balance, though.  That’s part of the reason Courfeyrac likes Gavroche so much.  He’s not a complex kid, he’s very direct and up front with his thoughts and emotions.  It’s restful to be around, unless you’re on his hit list.

• Bousset’s mutation is probability manipulation.  Nothing so large-scale as the Scarlet Witch–he’s not going to be rewriting reality any time soon, nor eradicating mutant-kind–and instead of being able to shoot bolts, he can sort of attach it to people like a curse.  It’s relatively shortlived, but he can grab someone, skin-to-skin, and attach his power to them for a while, giving them ‘good luck’ or ‘bad luck’ depending on his preference.  Problem is, entropy demands a balance, so he deals with the backlash–if he makes someone lucky, he deals with correspondingly strong bad luck until his power falls away from them, and vice versa.  He’s always having runs of really terrible luck because he’ll tag (he calls it ‘tagging’ someone) his friends with little drips and dabs of good luck whenever they’re having a bad day or a rough week or he’s feeling particularly affectionate, and little drips and dabs add up really quick when you’re doling them out to almost a dozen people.  (He did very quietly make an arrangement with pretty much everyone except Joly and Musichetta, tagged all of Les Amis with bad luck, waited for his luck to turn up, and then went and asked the pair of them if they wanted to date him.  They haven’t let him forget it yet.  They said yes.)

• Joly’s a healer, of course.  More specifically, he can alter physical functions on a molecular level through physical contact, which means that he can do anything from cure cancer to cause someone’s body to break down where they’re standing.  He’s a little wary about physical contact, consequently–it’s never happened, but he worries that if he’s touching someone when he’s angry or scared he might hurt them.  But he always kisses Bousset’s bumps and scrapes better–literally–and he aced the fuck out of his anatomy and physiology classes.  He loves medicine, really loves it, because yeah, he can make all this stuff happen at hyperspeed, but it’s so cool to learn how it works.  He can’t heal himself, though–he could, but there’s a mental block that he can’t get around, because when he first broke his leg and tried to heal it, it didn’t work, so he’s convinced himself it’s impossible.  The limp doesn’t bother him, most of the time, but every once in a while he sits there and chews on his lower lip and wonders what went wrong.

• Musichetta can draw the future.  She’s a talented artist, and she likes to work in paints when she has the money–some of her paintings were hung in a gallery and Bousset drenched her in good luck that first time, so she does pretty well for herself, and can work in oil paints more often now.  She and Grantaire have very different styles–he has a warm pre-Impressionistic style, real and living and firelit, where she paints with sharp contrasts and comic-book-esque figures and buildings–but they love to look at each others’ work, and they tease each other about the paint splotches left on their skin after a day in the studio.  She has a whole sketchbook full of pencil sketches of the future–waste of good paints, she says dryly–and it travels everywhere with her, always ready to be yanked out when she feels a flash of insight coming on.  She saves the lot of them from being arrested almost monthly, and there was one time where she saw a train wreck and called the company in a panic, and they found a loose bolt that would have come free and killed everyone on board.  It doesn’t always go that well, though–Joly lets her curl up in his lap when she can’t stop a vision, and she’ll put her head on his shoulder and cling to his shirt, Bousset’s hands gentle and soothing down her back, until she feels better.

• Feuilly is easily spotted as a mutant, because his skin is streaked in places with smooth, beautiful black scales.  They arch over one of his cheekbones, down the line of his spine and up the inside of one of his wrists.  It’s snakeskin, black mamba specifically, and he has a host of other tricks up his sleeve–he’s never felt the need to find out if he’s venomous, though.  Black mamba venom is one of the most lethal in the entire world, and he’s just as happy to never know.  But he can sense heat, taste/smell/something in between infinitesimally small particles and his skin is so sensitive that he can feel the print on a page or sense the change in vibration when an engine is low on oil.  He works as a mechanic, because he can turn on a car and put his hands on the hood and feel and smell and sense, and know what’s wrong in no time flat.  His coworkers are generally proud of his brilliance (he’s also working toward graduating summa cum laude with a Master’s in Engineering) but every so often they get a customer who’s an A-grade dick.

• Bahorel is a muscle-mimic–he can watch someone do something physical and replicate it perfectly.  He uses it for what he calls ‘cheap tricks’ more often than not, like the time he watched Feuilly fold a paper crane and settled down to folding a thousand of them.  (He gave them to Feuilly when the man came in with a bruise on his face, his scales raw as if someone had scraped them along the ground, and won a smile before Joly pounced on Feuilly to heal him.)  But it makes him unspeakably useful in a tight spot, because Bahorel’s spent so much time watching how the police fight in a riot that he can use it against them like it’s second nature.  He’d almost rather die than watch any of the others get banged up, and Joly spends almost as much time healing him as he does Bousset, just because Bahorel has no apparent self-preservation instincts to speak of.

• Jehan can talk to plants.  He’s like Layla from Sky High and I have no shame about that comparison.  He wears cuttings of flowers in his hair and they’ll grow through his braid and bloom happily and just kind of live off his energy until he puts them in dirt, and when he’s feeling particularly effusively affectionate tendrils of his plants will reach down his arms toward whoever’s closest to him.  Also, he’s normally very gentle and his plants are all pretty flowering vines and dandelions and things, but when shit gets serious during a protest or on the street, everyone is reminded very quickly that tree roots can crack open mountains.

• Grantaire can animate shadows.  He’s one of the unlucky ones–anyone can take a look at him and know he’s a mutant, his eyes glassy black and his curls shifting as if in a low wind as the shadows shift on his skin.  He’s been told all his life that it’s ugly, that the way the shadows curl lively along his jaw and under his curls and beneath his brows.  It’s useful sometimes, being able to summon a shadow army to get between the police and the fleeing Amis, or being able to animate a sparring partner out of his own shadow, but Grantaire is always the first one to call Enjolras out on being naive.  Easy to talk about how humans will trust you when you look like an angel–less so when you deal in darkness.  Enjolras is perpetually furious with Grantaire’s cynicism, but he’s more furious with the world that created him, that convinced him that his mutation is something ugly and irredeemable.  He thinks (but never says) that Grantaire’s shadows are beautiful, like ink spilled over his skin, and once they finally work their shit out (Gavroche is the one who makes it happen, probably, because he’s a sneaky little shit), he discovers that Grantaire can let his shadows spill on Enjolras’ skin, leaving dark pools against the golden radiance.

• Gavroche and Eponine (and Azelma, wherever she is) have a modification of the same mutation, which is, according to Thenardier, the only reason he knows they’re all his children.  They’re all pyrokinetics, although at different levels–Gavroche is a manipulator, able to shape heat and fire into any shape as long as he has something to work with, and Azelma is a firestarter, but Eponine is the only one of them who can do both, just like their father.  They’re all easy to spot as mutants, too, with eyes that flicker red with flames when they catch the lights and core body temperatures well north of 200 F.  She’s terrified that somehow her power’s going to corrupt her, turn her into Thenardier, and Marius is the first person who shows nothing but pure delight at the sparks that crackle out of her hair and the flames that lick her fingers.  She can’t help but love him a little for that.

• As long as we’re on the subject, Patron-Minette.  Montparnasse’s mutation is 100% out of his control, he can’t turn it off or strengthen it at all.  When asked, he tells everyone his mutation is being beautiful.  In reality, he doesn’t really understand it, but it’s something to do with pheromones–just about everyone who sees him, who draws close enough to talk, is clobbered with a metaphorical two by four of attraction.  It’s very useful in the killer-for-hire business, and he’d never admit how uncomfortable it makes him sometimes.  Eponine, her skin always just this side of burning, is one of the only people unaffected, and he’d kill to keep her around.  Claquesous is a teleporter, and Babet is a metamorph, able to look like anyone he wants, and Gueulemer has superstrength.

• Marius isn’t a mutant.  He did get booted out of his grandfather’s home and disinherited for starting a fight in polite society about mutant rights, though, so Bahorel and Courfeyrac take to him immediately.  But he also had the misfortune to walk into a conversation about the concept of a mutant ‘cure’ and open with “Well, some mutants might need it” and that went over a treat.  He managed to redeem himself, though, although Enjolras eyed him with suspicion for a while.

• Cosette!  My sweet girl!  Has wings!  They’re not the crisp white wings of an angel or a dove, either–they’re broad and angled and bronze fletched with dark red, the wings of a hawk.  She normally hides them by binding them down under her clothes–her mother had wings too, she remembers vaguely, wide and soft and wheat-pale as a songbird’s, and it was Mama who taught her to bind them down, hide them, before she went away.  Marius saw her for the first time with shed feathers braided into her hair until she looked like a spirit from another world, and she’s strong enough to take him flying (bridal style, of course).

• Valjean’s not a mutant, but Javert is.  He’s also neck-deep in denial.

Anonymous asked: *skids in wearing a fake mustache* hey moran! you and your writings are a blessing on this earth and i know that you are incredibly busy, but do you have time to talk about elliot spencer? or leverage in general? thank! *skids out again while refixing the mustache*

ELIOT SPENCER.  THE LOVE OF MY LIFE.

Okay, for those of you poor deprived souls who have NEVER HAD THE PLEASURE OF WATCHING LEVERAGE, here is my rapid-fire pitch: take a hitter, a hacker, a grifter, and a thief, add an ex-insurance agent who hunted them all at one point or another and has a guilt complex that is…well, very Catholic.  Mix with a helping-the-helpless motto, and point at the nearest righteous crusade.  It’s Robin Hood for the modern age.  It is the five-season-long, genuinely enjoyable, never grimdark but always sincere, emotionally wringing show you have looked for.  The characters are a delight, the writing is witty and soulful and real, the women are treated excellently, they have racial diversity, every episode is a whole different flavor of wonderfully wicked glee, and it’s obvious in every moment that everyone involved loved working on it.  The found family feelings spill off the screen.  Here is a pitch, here is a pitch, also here, here is MY pitch, there’s another here, here, here’s a spoilery but super detailed one, here, here, and I could find more BUT THIS IS A LOT ALREADY.  It’s on Netflix, go forth.

Eliot, my hitter darling, I love him so much.  

Okay, like, let’s talk about how devoted he is to the Leverage crew.  Eliot is one of the ones who, quite frankly, does A-OK solo.  He doesn’t need Sophie there to grift, he can do it, he can steal stuff even if he’s not as expert as Parker, having Hardison around is helpful but not mandatory, and, as we see when Nate’s taken out of play in the Zanzibar Marketplace Job, Eliot’s a good enough tactician to wing it successfully.  Like.  He’s fine on his own, maybe even more fine than Parker or Hardison, who are a little hit or miss on the others’ fields of expertise.  He’s there because these are his people and he is going to take care of them.  It’s all about taking care of his people.  And I think the thing about Eliot is that that’s always been a part of him, one he’s had to throttle into nothingness for years.  The mercenary life doesn’t lend itself to emotional connections, and for Eliot, who–even if he’s gruff and irritable about it–loves his people with his whole self, that must have been a very lonely life.  Trust no one, because they might be hired to kill you tomorrow.  Love no one, because they might sell you out to the highest bidder.  Be alone, be safe, keep everyone more than arm’s length away and watch for the glint of a knife or the press of a gun.  Touch nothing but the object of the mission, let nothing touch you.  

And then…and then he meets the Leverage crew–only, they’re not the Leverage crew yet, they’re four people hired for a job.  Four, Eliot has to admit, brilliant people, even if they’re all their own unique flavor of bonkers.  And then one of them’s holding him at gunpoint, and then a building is blowing up and he’s pushing them ahead of him out of a building, and let me ask you something.  Do you think he knew, then?  With the fire at his back and his hand in Hardison’s shirt as he dragged him to his feet?  Do you think he had a moment of clarity, running out of that building, or waking up in the hospital, where he knew that his carefully constructed walls–cold and hard and strong as diamond, be alone, be safe–were already down?  

I do.  I think he sat there, handcuffed to a chair with ink on his fingers and Nathan motherfucking Ford out cold in the bed beside him, and wondered when it happened.  Because he pushed Parker ahead of him–Parker, who had pointed a gun at him and lived anyway–and he dragged Hardison along and he made sure Nate was outside.  And it wasn’t a job, he can’t tell himself that, because he wasn’t getting paid.  He just…had a moment of weakness, he tells himself.  He never believed in collateral damage, it’s sloppy, it’s messy, so he avoided it.  He might still need them to get his paycheck from Dubenich.  It’s okay, he’s fine.

I think he might have convinced himself of that right up until they each get a check pressed into their hands by Hardison, a huge check, a go legit and buy an island check.  And then…and then they walk away and for the first time in a lot of years, Eliot thinks I don’t want to go.  And for the first time in a lot of years, he realizes that maybe he doesn’t have to go, and he comes back.  From the very beginning, he comes back, because he’s been a hitter and a hunter and a killer for so, so long, and maybe this is a chance to be a protector instead.  Maybe this is a chance to reach back in time a little and find some scrap of that kid with a flag on his shoulder, who believed in what he was doing.

Maybe this is a chance to have a family.

Anonymous asked: exr stardust au for "Let’s play the game where you give me an AU and I’ll expand on it."

Confession time: Stardust has been on my list to read/watch for a while now, because it sounds like something so far up my alley it’s ridiculous.  But, alas, I haven’t gotten around to it.  In the event that I do, I might come back to this, but for the time being, I’m sorry.

Anonymous asked: Ok i have read Sansukh but you have a better way with words and my campaign to get my friend to read it has stalled so PLEASE GIVE ME THE MOST IMPASSIONED FIC REC IN THE HISTORY OF FIC RECS I THROW MYSELF ON YOUR MERCY

O K A Y

SO

Let me take you back, my dear, to approximately one year ago, shortly after my ass finally sat down for a plane ride and read all three Lord of the RIngs books in twelve hours.  Naturally, having finished them and being in need of more, I went out to AO3 within days and started sifting through the Legolas/Gimli fic, because that ship sails itself to Valinor and I’m not a moron.  And the VERY FIRST FIC when you sort by kudos (one does not simply enter a new fandom sorting by Date Updated, after all, sorting by kudos is the wise soul’s path) is Sansukh, with some rather peculiar tags (’dead dwarf peanut gallery’ among them) and 400K words and the ships Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield and Gimli/Legolas Greenleaf in pride of place.

“Well,” I said to myself, “I’ve never even READ the Hobbit and from what I know, I don’t ship Thorin and Bilbo at all, doesn’t Thorin try to kill him?”  (Not that that’s ever stopped me before, but forgive me my naivete.)  

“I’m sure there are more Legolas/Gimli fics that include ships I ship,” I decided, and kept right on scrolling.

So I skipped it.  And methodically worked my way through the nine hundred odd Gimli/Legolas fics available on AO3.  The quality of these fics declined, both in terms of characterization and of grammar, as these things do, until I broke down and admitted to myself that I couldn’t stand to drag myself through an unbroken block of text, and went to glance over FF.Net because that’s my usual move.  Now, self-insert fics are some people’s cup of tea, and that’s great, but I was on a mission, I had a quest, and Girl-Of-The-Week/Legolas was getting in the way of my need for Gimli/Legolas, so I didn’t last long in the FF.Net archive, needless to say.

“Come on,” I groaned, “there’s got to be more good shit, where is the rest of it?  Where’s my novel-length mess of mutual pining and tragic adoration and banter, with Eternal Third-Wheel Aragorn and beautiful world-building and rampant use and abuse of Sindarin and Khuzdul?”

And then I recalled something that had almost slipped my mind.

There was that one fic.  The one I’d taken to skimming past because why do people ship Thorin/Bilbo, anyway?  It was long, it was popular, and hey, I could always just…stop, if I didn’t like it, right?  

I was desperate.  It was worth a try.

And, oh, darlings, was it ever worth a try.

I was a chapter in.  

I had been dropped headfirst into a pool of characters I didn’t know–Thorin?  He was a king of something, I thought.  Thorin’s nephews, Fili and Kili?  Never met them.  I was pretty sure one of them was blond.  Mahal?  Had to Google him.  Dead members of the Company?  Had to look up a list.  Thorin’s father and mother and brother and grandparents?  Spent a few VERY confused minutes doing research before I realized half of them had been created wholecloth by @determamfidd.  It didn’t matter.  By the end of the first full chapter I was ready to take a throwing axe to the chest for these dwarrows (and Mahal).  

Watching Thorin come to terms with his death was agonizingly wonderful.

By the time Thorin’s spirit visited a sixty-something red-haired dwarf with a temper and an axe, I was addicted.

By the time Thorin had a sudden and terrible revelation about Bilbo Baggins, I was beyond sold, I was in love.

The culture of the dwarves of Erebor, the return after the diaspora in the Iron Hills and their stony determination to survive, Dain Ironfoot’s abrupt promotion to king over the bodies of Thorin and Fili and Kili, Lady Dis’ grief, the anguish of the Moria colonists, the dwarves in the Halls of Mahal grieving their living and dead loved ones, Gimli’s reckless love for his family and his people–it was like falling, or flying, or drowning.  It was perfect, I thought to myself, feeling a great tremendous weight in my chest like the breathless moment after getting the wind knocked out of you, right before it hurts, when you just think oh, wow.  It couldn’t get better, never mind that this person had apparently written however many thousands of words of just…dwarves being dwarves.

And then.

Bilbo left.  The Ring was on the field of play.

“There is no way this woman is crazy enough to rewrite the entire trilogy,” I said to myself.  “And if she maintains this level of talent all the way through, I may have to scream.”

Well.

The fic is almost done.  Dets is that crazy.  I have had to scream.  

This is the epic-length Tolkien fic of your dreams.  It has women (and dwarrowdams, and lady elves) being badass.  It has nonbinary and trans characters.  It has world-building beyond the dreams of mortal man.  It has desperate pining and steady love and families torn apart and reunited and heroes to save Middle Earth.   It has songs that will break your heart and make you smile and wriggle their way into your mind (The Iron Hills For Me fucking BROKE ME, I read that section in bed and I had to put my phone down so I didn’t get tears on it, I love it so much).  It has moments of brilliant, shining joy where all you can do is laugh and heartwrenching world-weary tragedy where crying just doesn’t seem like enough, somehow.  It has Aragorn, the perpetual third wheel, who just wants his friends to be happy and would consider saving Middle Earth a definite bonus to that.  It has all the mid-battle and post-battle and just-because banter you could want, between dead dwarves and living dwarves and elves and Men and even the occasional Vala.  It has Legolas and Gimli cobbling together a friendship from shared experiences and shared grief and falling in love and miring themselves down in misunderstandings and pining and coming together in the most perfect ways.  It has Khuzdul and Sindarin and writing that honestly could put Tolkien to absolute shame in places.  

It’s beautiful.

It’s elegant.

It’s sprawling.

It’s everything I could have hoped for in a Tolkien fic, and so much more.

It’s fanfiction of Lord of the Rings, but only in the way that Dante’s Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost are fanfiction of the Bible.

It’s Sansukh.

And THAT is pretty much what I have to say about that.

Anonymous asked: I dont know how you feel about it but I am sooo excited for Suicide Squad like... I am dressing up as Harley and everything. I just needed a fangirl moment🤘🤘

Babe, I’ll admit that I’m more of a Marvel girl at heart (the X-Men were my FIRST LOVE okay, I was seven, I’m Committed), but I’m pretty excited too.  I was apathetic at best and then I watched a trailer with Harley Quinn in it and like.  Let me tell you a thing.  I’ve watched worse movies for the sake of one snarky badass female character.

And that scene in the trailer where everyone’s ordering drinks and the one guy just goes “Water” and Harley points at him and say “That’s a good idea, honey” just???  Makes me so happy for some reason????  

So YEAH the tl;dr of this is that I’m gonna watch the FUCK out of this movie for Deadshot being deadpan (*snicker* I’m hilarious) and Harley being Harley.

Anonymous asked: A week ago I sent you an ask really freaking out about college and your advice really helped me. I just want to say thank you so much. I still have 2 days until I leave but I am not as freaked out anymore. I do have another question though. Is there anything that I would need to bring that people don't normally think about? I don't want to get there and find out I have the wrong stuff.

Hey, babe, I’m so glad my advice was helpful!  Hm, stuff to bring to college that people don’t normally think of…let’s see…

• First aid kit.  It might seem obvious, but it’s not.  Even if it’s just a box or two of bandaids, some rubbing alcohol, a bottle of Advil/Tylenol, and some Neosporin.  It’ll make you popular, and it’ll come in handy.
  
• Small sewing kit.  Even if you can barely sew a button.  Thread and needle come in handy more often than you’d think, ditto safety pins and scissors.  You should be able to buy one at any reasonably large craft store.
• Your favorite kid’s show/movie and a way to watch it.  I’ve watched more Disney in the last few years than…ever, maybe.  And I got Liberty’s Kids this summer and I’m gonna watch the fuck out of it this year while I write my thesis.  Seriously.  Your serious, dark TV shows are great and I love them, too, but when you inevitably have a really awful day, a light, familiar, comforting kid’s show or movie is the way to go.  TRUST ME ON THIS.
• At least one book you really love.  I brought a whole crate of books, including the entire Harry Potter series, my first semester.  I didn’t read half of them, but I have no regrets.  It was soothing to be able to see them there, you know?  Something that was mine.
• I suggested this before, but some kind of comfort item?  I have a few stuffed animals that always come to college with me, a favorite blanket, that sort of thing.  Tell anyone who questions you to fuck right on off.
• Bring backups.  If you wear glasses, bring an extra pair (try Zenni.com if you don’t have the money to drop on an extra pair of store-bought glasses).  Bring an extra phone charger.  Bring extra headphones.  Bring extra everything.
• SNACKS BUY FRIENDS.  Bring some chocolate, bring some cookies, whatever you can get your hands on.  It’s easy to buy the love of a college student with junk food.
• On a related note, maybe have some foodstuffs in your room for when you decide that you just cannot with the dining hall anymore.  Everyone reaches that point eventually, even if it’s just because you’ve had a long-as-fuck day and people seem too intimidating.
• On ANOTHER related note, if you drink caffeine, find a source that works.  Coffee, energy drinks, tea, those little MIO things.  It helps to know where you’re getting that boost.  And remember, kiddo: caffeine OD’s are a thing, and I will be disappointed in you if you drink twelve espressos in a day and have a heart attack.
• Last but not least, something to cover the walls.  I said it before, I’ll say it again.  College dorms are basically prison cells before you put shit in them.  Posters, sticky notes with quotes you like, pictures, whatever.  I make signs with quotes and sketches and Organic Chemistry stuff.  Adler has a postcard collage.  ANYTHING.  Blank white cinderblock walls are depressing.

I hope it goes well, babe, you’ve got this!

Anonymous asked: Here's the anon from Pirate fic!! Oh my gosh thank you for writing your headcanons, and oh dear we live on opposite ends on the earth so it wasn't 1am for me!! You're a lovely person and your fics (here and AO3) are really great, have a good day and all the love!! <3

Oh, trust me, babe, don’t feel bad about the 1 AM thing, I have zero impulse control and a desperate craving for pirate AU’s of everything, ‘tis no one’s fault but my own.  Besides, it was a ton of fun.  And I’m so glad you liked it (and my other fics, oh my gosh, you’re so sweet, I’m dying)!  You have a lovely day too, honey!

Anonymous asked: Your PoC post just reignited my desire for Les Mis pirate fic; also Elizabeth Swann is my favorite character in the entire series

Okay, first of all, liking Elizabeth Baddest-Ass-Sailing-The-Seven-Seas Swann best is an indication of exceptional taste, I approve, you go.  Second of all, it’s way too one-in-the-morning for me to write actual fic, but I’m gonna cast the fuck out of a pirate AU, because motherfucking pirates.

• Enjolras: the captain, of course, of the buccaneer ship Abaisse.  It’s small, easily crewed by half a dozen in a real pinch, and as long as no one takes any injuries their little crew does pretty well.  Abaisse–or ABC, as they affectionately call her–is a whip-quick little boat, too, their attack method to strike like lightning and raid even the biggest merchant ship in minutes.  Enjolras was the son of a wealthy merchant–he bought Abaisse with the last of his own money, after he left in a rage upon discovering that his father’s lucrative new business venture was based on human cargo.  Abaisse’s first strike was on one of his father’s merchant ships, crossing the ocean to bring slaves to the New World–her crew took the ship like a hurricane and earned themselves the nickname Les Amis, after they turned the ship over to the captured men and women.
  

Keep reading

Anonymous asked: Ok so I have not been following you for long so maybe you have answered before but who is Adler?

Oh, yeah, sorry, babe.  Adler is my fond nickname for @twistedangelsays, my roommate and platonic soulmate.  She’s like 85% of my self control.