Anonymous asked: Ooooh! I'd love to reas that fic when you write it. And the phrase is from a Conrad Aiken poem, jsyk.
THANK YOU SO MUCH, I’m totally going to write it someday. Probably next year when I’m not in school full time. (And also thank you for the source because??? Fuck me, that’s a gorgeous quote.)
Anonymous asked: Hello I just found ur blog and ur writing is beautiful af!!! Pls have these sunflowers!!🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻
I??? Thank you so much??? I love my new sunflowers??? You are the sweetest, have a wonderful day!
Anonymous asked: Twisted By Simple Light
Maniacal cackling. This would be/might actually someday be the title of the Fic We Shall Not Speak Of, previously discussed here. I’m literally going to copy-paste because I’m so pleased with that summary.
Padme Naberrie-not-yet-Amidala is three when the Force comes to her, as strong as one of the great storms that close down all of Naboo, four when the Jedi turn her away for being too old, five when she begins teaching the Force to herself.
Surely emotion is not wicked at its core, young Padme says, surely not, and she reaches out, learns to shape the Force with her passions and her loves and her rages and her laughs, and it is warm and rich and wild and vicious and everything (and surely this cannot be the Dark Side).
When she stands on the Tatooine sand and meets a boy who shines like a sun, some part of her mind (the part that’s seen people die because their vaunted politicians took too long to see them suffering, the part that’s seen wars start over petty arguments and diplomatic differences, the part that looks around Tattooine and thinks look at all these suffering people, if only I had the power to save them) says yesssss. And she reaches out and she takes his hand and she stays in touch and she assures him that no, emotion is not wrong, love is not wrong, Attachment is not wrong, he is not wrong.
One day…oh, one day he comes to her, wild-eyed, with the words of another person on his tongue and talk about Sith, and she does her research and she thinks look at all these suffering people, if only I had the power, and…
Well. Padme only wants to help. Surely the ends justify the means. Surely this cannot be Dark, if it’s to save starving children and wounded soldiers and slaves.
And the Empire rises under the command of its Empress and her iron fist, Darth Vader.
sroloc--elbisivni asked: For the fic titles prompt: the word that breathed the world (Librarians? Maybe?)
For the record, I have no idea if this is legitimate and/or refuted by an episode I haven’t seen (desperately, desperately behind), but S T I L L. This fic would be the story of the Library’s favorites through the millennia (she is a library, after all–her favorites are wordsmiths and silver-tongued diplomats, world-changers and storytellers).
The Library is sentient. This is not a commonly known fact–sometimes Librarians go their whole career without even realizing it. She does not particularly mind this.
(Sometimes, in the netherspace where she has a shape that is more woman than building, she meets with others like herself. A waif of a boy, the thirteenth of his kind, whose eyes crackle with purple lightning, tells wild stories of heroics and villany and…goo? A slender willow-wand fae dressed in ragged white and trailing glittering dust in her wake complains of her lovesick king and the mortal girl who defeated him. The boy is young, only centuries old. The willow-wand is ancient, even older than the Library. There are others, but these are the eldest and the youngest, the bookends of their kind.)
The vital thing about a sentient being is that sentient beings have favorites–it’s unavoidable. The Library being rather fickle, not all of her favorites are Librarians.
Galahad is sheltered in her Annex on the merits of his old friends, more so than on his own. Merlin asked, and she loved him, so she did as requested. Merlin isn’t quite like her, but he’s not quite human either, and sometimes, very occasionally, she will sense the touch of a hand on one of her many doors as Merlin passes by.
Greek and Rome were riddled with poets and philosophers–the others like her had varying opinions on them. She was fond of Catullus with his filthy sense of humor, and of Plato with his unusually good grasp of the netherworld, but, oh, Sappho she loved.
Sun Tzu was too warlike to be a Librarian, too much a tactician and not enough of a dreamer, but she would slip him secrets of long-dead armies in his dreams to bolster his writing.
Poe and Shelley and Byron and Keats–she did love the Romantics. They were her favored for years, brilliant comets that burned out so fast. The willow-wand shook her head at the Library for it, remarking on the merits of immortal citizenry.
But William–William was her best beloved, her most cherished mortal favorite. She would be hard-pressed to find someone to stand beside him and his golden words and dirty jokes and impossible wisdom. Not even the willow-wand could hold that against her, her immortal faerie residents drawn to his starlight words like moths to a flame.
(When Prospero first stepped into her walls, she had a moment of blind hope that maybe, somehow, her dear Shakespeare had returned to her.)
Anonymous asked: Hey Moran! Have you ever pulled a double all nighter? Like stayed up for 2 full consecutive nights?
Okay, so on the one hand: if you mean no sleep for two full nights, no. To date, I’m pretty sure the longest I’ve been awake at a stretch was around 40 hours. I’m weird enough all day, every day, there’s no need to add truly crippling sleep deprivation to that. I generally try to sleep at least two hours a night because it keeps me just this side of functionality.
On the other hand, fun story. If you were around in April, you may recall me making this post about Organic Chemistry pickup lines. Now, other than the fact that I’m still delighted with that last one on there, the reason I bring this up is because (ha) I made that post on a Monday night. I’d already been running on little-to-no sleep by then. By the following Saturday night, I had gone eight days on twenty-four hours of sleep total. I wrote two papers, did a problem set, and took an Organic Chemistry exam, among other things. I got all my work done on time (although the last day or so is kind of a blur) and this is why, in case you’re curious, @twistedangelsays calls me Hamilton.
Incidentally, I got like a 97% on the Orgo test.
Anonymous asked: for the random fic titles: "spring will be here soon"
Since you didn’t specify a fandom….this is the story of the girl Jaylah.
Her people are from a high tundra part of their world–even after she forgets the name of her planet, the name of her people, the name of her family, she will remember this. The shimmer of the sun at midnight, the dance of stars at pitch-black noon, and the song of the wind over the snow-layered ground will stay in her dreams all her life, a tiny scrap of peace. Winter on the high tundra is dangerous, even in the cities-and-starships age, and Jaylah’s people never quite managed to forget their heritage of cold nights and terror. The promise of new life, of melted snow and living things, is the hope their people holds up to get through the days of unbroken night, the vow they make in the darkest moments of their life to fight on.
As a little girl wondering if the sun will ever come back, Jaylah’s mother strokes her hair back from her face and whisper that spring would come soon, so soon that Jaylah wouldn’t even believe it.
In Krall’s dungeons, as Jaylah sobs silently, hands pressed to her mouth so hard that her teeth draw blue bruises on the white skin, her father hugs her to his side. “Spring will be here soon, you’ll see, precious girl,” he whispers–a lie, but the familiar words soothe her tears and make her mother, bleeding out slowly from a gash to the leg, and her mama, pressing her hands to her wife’s skin, smile faintly.
When her mama is taken, still smudged blue with her mother’s blood, she kisses Jaylah forehead and her cheeks and promises, “Spring will be here soon, little snowflake, little darling.” A lie, but a warm and gentle one, bittersweet.
When her father dies, and she runs until she can’t breathe for tears, she curls up in a mountain cave, far too close to the search parties scouring for her, and she lies to herself, “Spring will be here soon, Jaylah. You just have to stand up.” And she scrubs her face with her palms and pulls herself upright.
She tells the lie a thousand times, a hundred thousand times, every time a new circuit breaks or she hasn’t eaten in twelve days or she is run off from a precious salvage or she can’t stand the loneliness any longer. Spring will be here soon, Jaylah. Get up and meet it on your feet.
Years from now, she’ll be an ensign sitting cross-legged on a chair in the Enterprise mess hall, surrounded by the bridge crew and Montgomery Scotty and Doctor Bones, her red Operations uniform a bright contrast to her white hair and a glass of scotch from Montgomery Scotty’s illicit still in her hand. (She will know, by then, what a nickname is, but she will insist on her old names for them, at times like this, when they are together and laughing.) Captain James T will smile at her, and Montgomery Scotty will clap her on the back as he tells them about how she repaired the replicators and stopped them from turning all the food purple, and she will think that perhaps she was not lying to herself all along after all.
skymurdock asked: pssssst talk to me about Schuyler sisters in reincarnation AU. or more Alex/John whatever. rolls away.
The Schuyler sisters! My queens! The rest of the AU is here!
Alicia Laramie is seven years old when she remembers. Her parents bring home a little girl, and she looks different from the olive-wood skin and tumbling black curls of Alicia and her parents and her little sister Maggie—this girl all gold-tinged ivory skin and silky dark hair framing solemn black eyes. She’s a year younger than Alicia and her parents haven’t even gotten out “This is Lisa Tian” before she’s rushing forward to enfold the girl in her arms.
“Eliza,” Angelica whispers into the girl’s long dark hair. Bemused, the girl hugs her back, and Angelica says, “I’ll take care of you, Eliza. You’re the best thing in my life, I’ll choose your happiness every time.” The girl is confused when Angelica stands back, but she gives a smile, the same sweet smile Angelica remembers, and it’s good.
***
When the fifth grade class goes to the Grange for a field trip, Lisa spends three hours in semi-hysterical sobs, refusing to go through the front door, and the terrified tour guide calls the first emergency number on her phone. Twenty minutes later, a sixth-grader spills out of a cab and swoops down on her like a hurricane in rose and gold, and Eliza clings to Angelica like the last lifeboat on a sinking ship.
“It’s okay, Lizzie,” Angelica soothes.
“Angelica, I—I–”
“I know,” Angelica sighs, stroking her hair. “Take a couple deep breaths, ‘Liza, it’ll pass.”
“I miss him,” Eliza whispers into Angelica’s hip, and the stroking doesn’t pause.
“I know,” Angelica says. She gives a small, rueful smile. “That part won’t pass.”
Eliza laughs a little at that, muffled by Angelica’s jacket, and her grip tightens.
***
So…when Maggie Laramie is fourteen their house gets robbed. She gets caught and held at gunpoint, and she barely manages to not say “My father has gone to raise the Minutemen.” Instead she steadily states that he’s called the police, and when the three guys in black scramble like their lives depend on it, she smiles at her sisters.
“Maggie, that was amazing,” Mrs. Laramie says breathlessly.
“Peggy,” she corrects, and Angelica and Eliza glow.
Anonymous asked: Psst John and Alexander meeting in your Hamilton Reincarnation fic series?
WOO, I am literal Laurens/Hamilton garbage, tell your friends.
All In One Spot AU
John has been at Columbia for a year and, honestly, he’s starting to think that he was wrong, that no one else is here. He walks past the law center every chance he gets, and he doubles the time of the walk from his dorm to the natural sciences building every single day to pass Hamilton Hall. The statue is…reassuring, somehow, Alexander’s fine-drawn face cast in bronze and a quill in his clever fingers. When John’s tired, or he’s had a bad night, full of nightmares with bayonets jumbled in with cars, the cinch of a noose tangled with the static of a television, he’ll stop and look at the statue until he can breathe again.
It’s not all bad. John is in New York City, and he finally gets where Alexander was coming from all those years ago, this might legitimately be the greatest city in the world. It sure beats South Carolina, hell and gone. He’s introduced himself to everyone as John, here, and even admitted to a handful of people that he was a soldier in the Revolution. He doesn’t have any close friends, but he doesn’t have any enemies, either, and the handful of familiar faces who see him when he quietly attends a Pride parade don’t say a word. He’s taken a handful of prerequisites for a biochem degree, in the pre-med track—he always wanted to be a physician last time, and his father is too distant to fight him this time.
He spends a little money on a sketchbook or two, on a set of pencils, and draws old faces, tries to imagine them in the modern world. Lafayette, eyes bright and smiling, dressed in a suit. General Washington, hands folded behind his back—no matter how many times John tries to give him a modern military uniform, his long heavy coat takes shape. Aides and friends and soldiers whose faces he half-recalls, in t-shirts and jeans and flannels. And Alexander, a thousand times Alexander, Alexander in modern clothes, in his Continental Army uniform, in shirtsleeves, in the coat he wears in the statue. A few times, in the safety of his locked single room, John carefully sketches Alexander stretched out in their cabin at Valley Forge, lit in candle-flame and all smooth planes of muscle and skin, smiling at John, soft and sated. An entire sketchbook fills itself with Alexander, over John’s first year at Columbia.
A request from @littlestartopaz: Polaris AU set in the American Revolution?
AHAHAHAHA YES. This turned into kind of an ode to Ade North, the woman in command of Polaris, and I have no regrets.
So Polaris is a covert part of the colonial army, stealing patriots out from under the noses of the redcoats. Ade North—North for the star, North for the sky, North for freedom—is a grim-eyed escaped slave, and she knows the risks of what she’s about to do, but she storms straight into the base outside New York City. The General—slave-owner, she diagnoses immediately, at a glance—isn’t the first one she finds, but rather a hot-tempered red-haired captain who grins at her when she tells him that I just walked through gunfire to get here, boy, do you think I’m about to run because someone might try and hang me? He vouches for her, and some strings are pulled, and…well. Her old master is a Tory. She’s not afraid of taking advantage of double-standards when they’re held out to her in both hands. And Ade North has never in her life backed down.
Anonymous asked: 30, 49, 56, 71
More questions from this ask meme, yay!
30: Does anyone hate you?
HA, oh, baby, I’m an asshole. I’m confident that more people hate me than like me. My high school teachers were trying to get me expelled, I used to get into fistfights, I shout people down when they start talking about how well, black people are an evolutionary step down or well, homosexuality is illegal because Leviticus or well, Muslims are dangerous. If I had a dollar for everyone who called me a bitch or told me they hated me, I’d not be on a scholarship, I’ll tell you that much.
49: Is your life anything like it was two years ago?
Two years ago? Yeah, not unlike. College, Adler, the occasional medical catastrophe, writing novels. Same old, same old. Four years ago, on the other hand, not even slightly.
56: Do you think you like someone?
I dunno, I’m one of those people where I need to have someone sit me down and go “you’re aware that you’re into that person” before I realize. I had a terrible crush on this STUNNING girl from Kenya at my summer program, and I just saw a guy tonight who was…goddamn. Just. One hell of a jawline, with the whole rumpled slightly-smudged-with-grease mechanic’s vibe. But I also go to a VERY small school when I’m not on break, so not a lot of…variety, you know?
71: Do you have someone you can be your complete self around?
My dear @twistedangelsays, and my parents.
Vodka Tia Moran