I’ve never had a reheading go this horribly before. I’d say I’m pretty good at beheading- I may have broken a neck once or twice, but never any parts I actually liked or intended on keeping, and usually a reheading is the easiest thing, right? Just a little squish and a pop and done, a complete person. But this time it just- it just won’t go back on the body?? Which is incredibly frustrating but also, like, why??
And the funniest thing is, I’m not even swapping a head!! This is a curvy dancer head going onto a curvy dancer body!! They match!! This should have been so simple!! But no, this head’s just flopping around like a limp flaccid idiot and my hands are all red and sore now but the head just isn’t attaching all the way!!
Today I did six beheadings and two other reheadings, and I wanted to get this one attached so I could take a picture, but somehow it just isn’t working!! The head is just getting squished around but isn’t stretching over the neck right!! And I’m way too lazy to go and boil the head just to make the slip easier!! And I don’t wanna keep forcing it cuz I might break something but this is!! So frustrating!!
Like, what could I possibly be doing wrong!! Fuck!!
I boiled the head and it popped right onto the neck in like two seconds.
I’m an idiot. Always do things the proper way from the get-go. Saves a lot of wasted time and struggle and ouchy hands.
BARBIES. I’M TALKING ABOUT BARBIES. I AM CUSTOMIZING TOYS RIGHT NOW I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER AND I HAVE NEVER BEHEADED AN ACTUAL REAL LIFE HUMAN BEING OR TRIED TO REATTACH A PERSON’S HEAD BY BOILING IT
As someone who is very low spoons but getting into customization (my Luna Lovegood is so close to being done!) buy a heating pad. Plug it in near your workspace. Just wrap the fuckers up on high heat for a few minutes and bam, no need to go get a pan, get water, turn on a stove, boil water, and stuff a doll into something that might melt their hair if you’re not careful. Heating pads. Also useful if you’re at your work station and suddenly pain happens that needs heat.
I see so many fics about Garak and Bashir that are sweet or sexy, and they’re tons of fun, but what I don’t see enough of is the most compelling aspect of their relationship: the fact that Garak is a deeply damaged individual. He is much older than Julian, a different species, and from a totally different background. Where Bashir’s parents risked everything to enhance him and give him a fighting chance in the world, Garak’s father denied their relationship and turned Garak into an efficient wreck. He’s a liar, a murderer, a spy and a torturer, and even his good guy progression can’t change some of that. His charm and good-naturedness is a mask, and if he ever only showed Julian his beaming sarcasm and witty banter in the bedroom (as most fanfics would have us believe), then their relationship was never real. Even the TV episodes show more than that! In The Wire alone, we see Garak scream at and attack Bashir, lie to him repeatedly, and communicate his need for help through strategically placed clues. It’s the closest he can come to revealing himself, because that IS him. It’s all true, “especially the lies,” because that is what Garak consists of. His groanings about sartorial choices and human rituals are characteristic, but they don’t compose his character. I want to see more of the REAL Garak; and, if he can’t give that, more of Bashir’s real frustration at not receiving it.
AU where the hat knows that there’s a storm brewing on the horizon Harry’s first year, and is determined to be ready.
When “Granger, Hermione,” is called, Hermione’s logic catches up to her excitement and she realises that the sorting hat has been a part of this world for centuries and she’s only been in it for weeks, and that she wants to listen to what it has to say before asking to be placed in Gryffindor. And the hat looks, and the hat sees someone who’s always been on the outside, who has such thirst, such ambition, and who knows that she is capable of more. And thinks Slytherin immediately.
“Very well,” Hermione thinks. “Put me in Slytherin.
And the hat warns her that she is not choosing an easy path, that there is a reason that no muggleborn has gone to Slytherin since the time of Voldemort. It tells her that it is dangerous, and that he can put her in another house as he has done for those before her. But he looks into her mind and sees the force of her conviction.
“I’ve been facing racism my entire life,” she tells it. “Here I have the power to do something about it. Put me in Slytherin.”
“Very well,” the hat thinks, and announces her placement. And jaws drop and eyes widen in shock as this little black girl with eyes like a bronze warship and the bearing of a queen walks over to her table.
When “Potter, Harry,” is called, and the hat sees a child who has suffered, but is so powerful, more powerful than almost any child he has ever seen, if he could only believe what he is capable of. Powerful enough to do what is needed, even though it shouldn’t be his responsibility. And Harry is so nervous he tells the hat to put him anywhere. Put him anywhere, just let him stay.
“Very well,” the hat thinks, better be…
“SLYTHERIN” is the only sound before the hall is silent and shocked her again, as a shy little boy with black hair and tan skin who looks far too skinny and far too small stumbles over to the Slytherin table, trying his best to be as invisible as possible. And his big green eyes have a haunted look that says he’s seen too much for someone his age, and that looking back is not an option.
When McGonagall reads “Weasley, Ronald,” Ron is confused. An hour ago, he was sure he would go to Gryffindor, thought he knew the order of the world. But his new friend is in Slytherin and he’s too nice to be evil, and Ron questions what he thought were hard truths.
And the hat sees. Sees a boy who’s been overshadowed, who has so much ambition and so much longing to prove that he can be something. And he is something, something more. The hat can feel it in its very fibres. “You were made for Slytherin,” it tells him. “You have the mind of a general and the ability to face your worst fears and stand strong in the heat of battle.” And Ron thinks that sounds far too ominous, but all he knows is that his new friend is in Slytherin, the only friend he’s ever had that respected him like an equal and looked at him like he was Ron and not Just Another Weasley. And he makes up his mind.
“Okay,” he tells the hat. Aware that he is breaking away from centuries of Weasley tradition. But isn’t that what he wanted- to be noticed?
“SLYTHERIN,” the hat calls, just as the students think that they cannot possibly be more surprised.
And the gangly redhead that slinks awkwardly to the table in green, away from all his brothers, doesn’t look like much, seems to the casual eye entirely unimpressive. But there is a look in his eyes that says he is strong, he is capable, he is loyal without fault if only he can find someone who is worthy to stand by him. Thereis power there, there is more.
And nobody knows quite what happened, but everybody can sense things will never quite be the same.
YES
I need an epic length fic of the following years of shenanigans
Can we have a Harry Potter AU where Regulus Black is the Death Eater spy turned potions master instead of Snape?
I can’t believe I only JUST realized all the comedy potential that is Sirius showing up to kill Peter 3rd year and finding his supposedly evil brother working at Hogwarts and having civil conversations with Remus about Harry’s grades
Please let this be after a full year of awkwardness of Regulus working with his evil brother’s ex
Sirius and Regulus are both convinced they’re the good brother
Okay, so my friend Chloe just pointed this out, and it’s amazingly accurate:
“Because of the scarcity of Dwarf-women, their secrecy and similarity in
appearance to males, and their lack of mention, many Men failed to
recognize their existence.”
Okay, so?
Well, Tolkien was a philologist, and a Norsist, and that means he knew Völuspá well enough to pull the names of every dwarf from Dvergatal and he had a pretty firm grasp Old Norse grammar.
In fact, he grasped it well enough that he knew if you dropped an n from a name ending in –inn, it changes from the masculine
definite enclitic
to the feminine.
Well, what the hell does any of this mean?
Well, I give you the names of the Dwarves from the Hobbit, as they appear in Dvergatal (stanzas 14-16) and in the order they appear:
Now, you notice something with the way those names got changed? That’s right, he changed the masculine -inn definite suffix to -in, which is feminine.**
That means that, at least grammatically, Dwalin, Dáin, Thorin, Thráin, and Glóin are female Dwarves.
Since we know Tolkien was meticulous about his grammar, this was done most likely as an in-joke (lol we’re so learnèd about Norse grammar that my comment on Dwarf women being indistinguishable from men is hilarious because of this grammatical funniness)
But there’s a not-inconceivable chance that the Dwarves were using the masculine pronouns in Westron because that’s what the Men who met them used, despite the fact that a third of the company was female, and
hey, it’s kinda neat to think he wrote a bunch of Dwarf-ladies going on an adventure.
given Tolkien’s general approach to women he’s unlikely to have intended this but I don’t care I’m going to accept it as canon anyway
isn’t there stuff in the appendixes about the Hobbit language having ’-a’ as a masculine name ending and ’-o’ as feminine but then he changed all the Hobbit names anyway?
Bilb-O
‘O’ and ‘e’ are feminine suffixes in hobbit-dialect Westron, which is not English.
Tolkien translated/Anglicized the names of all the hobbits into names that both sounded appropriate for their gender and reflected the aesthetic impression a native Westron speaker would get when meeting hobbits and hearing their language. It’s not about how The Hobbits Are Actually Girls (though that would be cool) it’s about how “Bilbo Baggins” gives a certain feeling when you as an English speaker encounter it – you get an idea of a character, perhaps, and it sounds just a little ridiculous – but you wouldn’t get that feeling from “Bilba Labingi”, the original hobbit-dialect Westron name.
(As to “Tolkien’s general approach to women”, yes, the man was sexist, I’m not going to deny that, but he was also meticulous and perfectionist when it came to language and there is no way this was accidental. No way at all. Not when he wrote an entire fake-academic-journal fanfic essay about why the Sindarin word ros had two translations, justifying it with in-universe linguistic drift.)
That being said, yeah, quite a lot of those dwarves were ladies. Headcanon accepted.
you know what i need??? more myth and superstition in scifi.
give me starship captains like the sailors of old, weathered and wary of the vast beast that is deep space, who religiously keep their own personal traditions and rituals to appease her and guide their ships safely through her vast depths.
give me wide-eyed ensigns eagerly drinking in tales of great creatures of the void, space whales and other more malevolent leviathans, dismissed as tall tales by more cynical cadets who only trust the sense of their own eyes.
give me whispered accounts of ghost vessels, lost long ago in great battles across the universe, populated by a literal skeleton crew.
give me a space bermuda triangle.
give me a universe as cold and unfathomable as the ocean, and no less mysterious and forboding.
So, go down to feed and medicate my dog, and there is someone other than my parents to bounce the crazy plot bunny off of.
This plot bunny has fangs and several years worth of where it wants to go.
Because the whole bloody thing is going to end up spanning from the time frame of Arrow’s Fall through to at least Storm Breaking. Possibly a bit later. And all this because I was contemplating an OT3 because I can.
Also, adding to the head canons:
Ivan (Vanko) is a Karsite Sun Priest with mage-talent, who once Karse and Valdemar are no longer enemies, ends up meeting Tony, and they fall into a rivalry over whether magic or technology are better. Sometimes good-natured, sometimes vicious and painful.
Coulson is a hertasi, Fury has mage-talent and some mind-speaking, and they’re both coming up with the people with the gryphon from the far south (I know who, I just cannot for the life of me remember their name and how to spell it, and I’d rather describe who they are then mess up spelling).
Still haven’t figured out any headcanons about Loki, nor have I figured out headcanons about any other villains from the movies.
And while I’m thinking about it, Sam is coming from the far south too, because I can, and because that gives me a way to have him doing things in the air readily without making him a gryphon. Because I don’t want to do that to him. Species-swapping Coulson, yes. Doing that to Sam, no.
Also, Hydra can go rot, Ancar and company are quite nasty enough without giving them any extra oomph.
*wanders off to go read more*
Ended up talking to mom about this plot bunny because she’s in the midst of a reread of the Arrows trilogy.
Thor and Loki as Companion and Herald (this time), who have been functionally trading off who gets to be Herald and who gets to be Companion over many many many lifetimes ‘cause it’s fun. They remember this when they’re dead, and have a vague idea of it while Companions, but not a clue while Heralds.
Loki tends to be a all the damned Gifts except Healing, and Thor tends to be all the damned Gifts except Bardic, and the first time they did this Thor was one of the early Heralds and Loki walked out of the Grove, and they have been a hot mess of a relationship ever since. Bickering, swapping roles, driving various other Heralds to distraction, making everyone around them nervous.
(Also, when Thor is Companion, at a gallop, people tend to wonder where the fucking thunderstorm is, the sky is clear, what the fuck?, and while Loki is Companion, people get nervous around him and cobblestones because his hooves fucking spark.)
Natasha as instead of a Karsite ex-extremist, as a former spy for the Eastern Empire who found herself going “what the fuck?” when she found herself with a Companion (because she tries very hard to be a good person, and also she’s not really sure she ever wants to go back, and just Reasons), and is functionally working with Alberich and later Kerowyn.
Clint as one of Skif’s friends, who just kinda tagged along with Skif because hey, he’s bored, and maybe there’s something better where his friend who is going to be a Herald, of all things, is going. He’s going to end up one of Natasha’s students, ‘cause reasons, and also, because spies that aren’t Heralds can be useful in places where it’s not safe to send a Herald to spy.
(ok, so I may not keep all of these, and instead keep the ex-extremist Karsite bit for Natasha, and she can still pick up Clint, but he keeps this backstory, and he’s mostly with her because he’s traveling and collecting information and reporting back to Alberich and later Kerowyn)
Steve and Bucky grow up in villages on either side of the Valdemar-Ruthwellan (sp?) border – Bucky in Valdemar – and Steve gets Chosen (because it can happen to people not born of/in Valdemar), and Bucky goes with him to Haven and joins the Guard, because there’s no way he’s letting Steve – skinny little scrap who will fight anyone who is being an ass – go off to be a Herald in a “shoot me now” uniform without him. Even if he can’t be a Herald himself.
Bruce. Bruce is someone who lived in the lands of the Hawkbrothers (mostly using that name for them because I forgot how to spell the proper name, damnit), who got into an area where the magic hasn’t been tamed/healed/fixed yet, and got changed. He’s very tall and very broad and very annoyed by this change, but he’s still otherwise the constantly curious person who wants to learn everything he can that he was before. And generally gentle and kind, even if most people are at least mildly terrified of him.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 