Imagine the Avengers getting hit with some sort of spell that makes them revert to their first language
and everyone expects to be unable to understand Natasha’s Russian or Thor’s Norse (Allspeak is great but it isn’t his first language according to the spell)
but then Steve starts spouting Gaelic, because he grew up speaking English in public but his immigrant mother taught him her own language first
Tony speaks either Spanish or Italian, because that’s what his first nannies spoke
and the spell considers ASL a language just as much as any spoken language, so Clint is just signing and making faces at people
and Bruce is just very confused (“Why do you expect me to be speaking a different language? I’m from Ohio.”)
The Vision flying around screaming “ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ONE ONE ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ONE ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE”
A+ for the effort you put in
Sorry to be a bore but Clint was not deaf at birth so he would simply revert to English.
Also saying “Zero” or “One” is speaking English. If anything, Vision would sound like a modem connecting.
The incredible @rootbeergoddess wrote for me on commission From Business to Love, a great story about Finn and Rey as business rivals who fall for each other. It was only fitting that I commission some art to go along with the story for the Finnrey Fridays Work theme, and the result is this beautiful piece from the one and only @hippano. Thank you both! <3333
I read a lot of fics where these two have serious trouble finding new jobs, and that’s fine. But while I don’t know exactly how academia functions, I think they’d be in very high demand as guest lecturers at every single major university on the planet. They’re both at the cutting edge of fascinating new fields and they both made amazing new discoveries.
These lectures would extremely informative and extremely entertaining/disastrous. No matter how much they like each other, they’re still them.
Aki, care to weigh in?
OK, as someone in academia, they would have absolutely no problem finding academic jobs. It’s a rough market out there for people without celebrity and without status/cred (i.e., young academics) but academia was specifically built to accommodate people like them, the famous people who did something real-world significant and now need to lecture for a while. If post-post-apocalyptic academia works anything like it, they’ll have cushy tenured jobs before you can say bob’s your uncle.
THAT BEING SAID.
Usually it’s a rather big deal to get a joint hire—two tenure track jobs at one go—and it’s always for married academics. BUT I WOULD BET SERIOUS MONEY THAT THESE TWO JUST BULLIED THEIR WAY THROUGH. Like, probably a Dean was like, “—so we can talk funding packages in th—” and Newt (because I’m imagining NYU at the mo’, this process would work differently if Hermann was bullying them into an Oxbridge position) would interrupt and be like, “Yeaaaaaah, I’m gonna need two packages.“
And the Dean would be like, slow blink, “I didn’t realize you had a spouse.”
And Newt would shout something like, “YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH,“ and then there would be a lot of shouting and door-slamming and Hermann would call later and be like, “yes, let’s talk about the funding package in the spring. Also, we’re definitely not married.” And then he’d cough politely. “But we will only need one office.“ Another polite cough. “And we’ll be co-teaching all of our courses.”
Reblogging this back over here because I have to look at this commentary
This take is great.
I think what’s more interesting to me with the “they can’t find jobs” after is the possibility that they have dozens and dozens of offers – but they don’t necessarily have the motivation to take them.
Newt’s work would certainly be more supported in the private sector – more funding, no IRB process, no pressure to publish instead of working, fewer barriers to interdisciplinary studies. Hermann’s work is more suited to academia, sure, but few departments would be able to afford the sort of imaging software he’s been working with.
Andth of them have real reason to be leery of doing science in US academia, especially, because it’s often dependent on federal funding. The government hardly supported them when it came down to it.
And psychologically, they’re not necessarily in a good place to go into dealing with committees and teaching. Plus, I think they’d be offended by anything short of a tenure-track position, if not guaranteed tenure. The idea of them willingly entering a rat race after everything they’ve been through… doesn’t necessarily jive.
(I personally like a Newt interpretation that’s extremely protective of his work and paranoid about his potential exploitation.)
(I don’t know if I’m allowed to transcribe the tweets as alt text for people who use screen readers or if they’re copyrighted or how that works, but either way, if you follow the twitter link above, it’ll take you to the beginning of this amazing thread. And go follow her and read her books asap – especially the Mira Grant NEWSFLESH series, because OMG.)
Before she learns about his secret identity, Lois Lane
thinks Clark Kent is a goddamn mess
She goes to his place to work on a joint article and it
takes her like half an hour to find out that Clark lives in an absolutely
nonfunctional house
She has to change a lightbulb but there are no stools, no
sufficiently high chairs, no way of reaching the ceiling unless you find a way
to climb the walls. “How the hell do you change your bulbs?” she asks. Clark
mutters something about misplacing the footstool and helps her drag the table
from the kitchen to the living room.
Lois watches Clark make lasagna and has to physically
restrain him from pulling the tray out of the oven with his bare hands. “Are
you out of your goddamn MIND?” she yells, scrambling to pull him away on time. “What
are you DOING? WHERE ARE THE OVEN MITTS?” and Clark is just like “Right…..oven
mitts…….. I think I lost them with the uh. footstool” both he and Lois pause
for a moment to engage in a riveting game of Mentally Punch Clark
Lois runs into the bathroom to put on a disguise and yells
out, “Where do you keep your razor?” There’s a gust of wind and Clark comes
back with slightly windswept hair. “I got it!” he says with unwarranted
triumph. “It’s right here. The razor I use.” Lois looks at it and it is CLEARLY
recently purchased and never used and she’s just like. I don’t even care
anymore
For weeks she just assumes Clark is missing some crucial
element in his home and starts stacking her own things all over the place. Lois thinking Clark has no clue how to take care of himself while Clark is Eternally Tormented and has to find ways to keep his identity a secret while living in close quarters, and the slow burn mutual pining roommates AU of my dreams begins
@retroflaptrill to add to the list of things that really, really should be written.
Some headcanons because I don’t really have the TIME to write an entire series but I DO have the time to rhapsodize about my Love for this concept.
So the new girl’s name is Chihiro and she’s weird and charming and friendly and fearless. She always wears a lucky purple hairtie and she stops to bow to every shrine she comes across and she takes her time writing her name, every kanji clear and precise and unmistakable. She goes from new to popular in about a week and her teachers tell her parents that their daughter has a natural gift for making friends, open and cheerful with anyone who’s civil to her. She doesn’t have answers for anyone about those two months that her family was just kind of missing, but other than that she’s an open book.
Chihiro is known for being open, even.
So when a girl in a salmon uniform shows up at the school looking for her sister Sen, a year after Chihiro’s arrival, and Chihiro launches herself into the stranger’s arms with a whoop of delight, everyone is…a little lost.
Chihiro’s sister is scary. One of the older boys hit on her and she broke his wrist. Chihiro told her to behave and her sister waved a hand and said, “Relax, Sen, he had it coming.” She moves like a bulldozer–if you’re in her way, your choices are to get out of it or get flattened. Within the day, it’s been firmly established that Lin, whoever the hell she is, is some kind of thug. She comes by every few months and brings Chihiro brief letters from “Young Master Haku” and from “Granny” and “the boilerman” and everyone walks a little warier around Chihiro because her sister is clearly a yanki and not to be toyed with. Chihiro’s an easygoing person, but honestly Lin absolutely radiates “they’ll never find the body” and it handily resolves any issues that Chihiro might otherwise have.
When Chihiro is fifteen she leads an ecological initiative that is…absolutely absurdly successful, largely because she looked around at the other students in her class and said “This is something I really care about, who wants to help me” and every hand went up. Probably half of them actually care about the environment, and half of them are doing it to cover their community service requirement. Half of them are hoping to woo Absurdly Charming Local Student Ogino Chihiro over the next few months. There is some overlap between these groups.
Over one year, they raise an astonishing amount of money to contribute to a campaign to tear down some abandoned apartments in Chihiro’s old town and restore a river, and at the celebration they throw at the end of it all, she gets up and speaks and smiles and about three quarters of her class sighs in unison.
“I never expected to raise this much, thank you all so much for your help,” Absurdly Charming Local Student Ogino Chihiro says, beaming.
“Oh no,” her classmates say, dismayed. Turns out finishing the project means being done with weekly meetings led by Chihiro.
Lin needles Chihiro about Young Master Haku and Chihiro blushes furiously every time and changes the subject to how her grandfather is doing.
The things that are Known about Chihiro’s grandfather are as follows:
Generally known as “the Boilerman”
Has a great many pets, all called “Sootball”
Likes Chihiro very much
Does not like Lin nearly as much
Smuggled Chihiro out of her great aunt’s house once
Does not like blood on his walls
Once hid Young Master Haku for an entire night, possibly related to the blood situation
There are some serious concerns about what the Boilerman does and why he has such strict opinions about blood on his walls.
The next year, Chihiro’s parents are out of town on Parents’ Day, which is how everyone meets the Boilerman and also Granny, who do not seem to be married and bicker constantly about everything except Chihiro and Granny’s sister, who seems to be Lin’s boss and also the great aunt who necessitated the smuggling. Granny mutters about Chihiro’s river fundraiser and Chihiro scolds her for almost killing someone, apparently Young Master Haku, and Granny scoffs that “he was fine” while the Boilerman complains about blood on his walls. Chihiro asks after an old friend and Granny says “Well we almost had bandits but he took care of them and we won’t have to worry about that anymore” and goes on to praise this person’s spinning.
So, everyone concludes, they’re terrifying.
By the time Young Master Haku actually shows up, Chihiro is seventeen and she’s managed to convince the school to send her whole class to see the un-damming of the Kohaku River, and her class has pretty soundly hashed out what’s up. It goes like this:
Chihiro’s great aunt runs a yakuza clan and Young Master Haku is her heir and Lin is one of his direct underlings, and after a falling out Granny and Great-Aunt split the clan and now hate each other, and the Boilerman works for Great-Aunt and saved Young Master Haku’s life after Granny tried to bump him off to put Chihiro in his place.
Chihiro seems pretty well out of the family business, though, and went and fell in love with the guy she was supposed to be replacing, and although Great-Aunt doesn’t care for Chihiro as much as the rest, her son likes her and her heir likes her and so does everyone else, so the two clans play nicely for Chihiro’s sake.
Young Master Haku, once he shows up, is almost as terrifying as Lin in his coolly remote way, but he obviously dotes on Chihiro and she wears river pearl earrings that are probably worth more money than anything else she owns and grins, silly with glee, whenever she sees him.
No one tries to get Absurdly Charming Local Yakuza Daughter Ogino Chihiro to go out with them anymore because can you fucking imagine.
Fanfiction is just the best isn’t it? You can go read a 5k little dribble about your otp having a morning cuddle with a side of pancakes, and then go to a 100k full fucking space epic au that someone just wrote cause they wanted to. We have heartwretching fics, coffee shop au’s, westerns, modern fantasies, arranged marriages, medieval stories, I’m so grateful to fanfic writers for giving us stories (some better than published books) about our favorite characters to read on the daily for free.
I don’t ship Drarry but with that being said, I will accept no other Drarry prompt than them stubbornly competing to outdo the other for the sheer drama.
It starts off when they’re still enemies in the Goblet of Fire. Draco makes a taunt about who Harry’s going to ask to the Yule Ball and how they must be from the worst of the worst lot and Harry rolls his eyes and says, “Well, fitting you say that, Malfoy, because I was going to ask you.” A perfect zing, Harry. 10/10.
But now the ball’s in Draco’s court and obviously he’s not going to pass up on the chance to humiliate the scarhead so he takes the most logical route of humiliation and calls out his bluff: “Fine, Potter, I reckon we’re going.”
But do you think Harry James Potter is just going to back down? That stubborn teenager is going to stare Draco down and say, “Reckon we are.”
Ron’s confused and Hermione’s confused and literally the entire castle is confused but Harry’s satisfied because he called out a bluffer’s counterbluff with a bluff of his own. And they just keep it up.
“I suppose you don’t even know how to dance, Potter?”
The furious teenager who spent years having to watch soapbox dramas with Mrs. Figg just glares at him in his stupid dress robes. “I know some things.”
“Prove it.”
“Fine.”
It’s like that for days until Draco makes the ultimate power move by inviting Harry to the Malfoy’s Annual New Years Eve Ball, taking out a Daily Prophet ad no less, because oh, oh, he’s got Potter now. He’ll never accept and he’ll be humiliated in front of the entire wizarding world. And do you think Harry’s just going to go down without a fight? God, no, he’s going to win whatever the hell this is because he’s Harry Potter, Draco better be worried, oh boy.
They’re still going at it six months later.
“Err—Malfoy?” Crabbe says. “Potter just sent you a dozen roses?”
“That son of a bitch! Send a box of chocolates. That’ll show him.”
“Um, Draco—?”
“I WILL NOT BE OUTDONE, PARKINSON!”
i couldn’t resist 😛
@queerpeasantchic I no long accept any other kind of drarry headcanon
I think growing up on a steady diet of fanfiction made me hate traditional book genres. Like, I don’t care what the overall “theme” is. Gimme the tags. Is there character death? Sibling rivalry? Snarky best friend? That’ll do way more to get me into a book than slotting it into one of a dozen strictly defined boxes that tells me almost nothing.
Last time I was in a bookstore I was rifling through the paperbacks going “where the hell is the Content rating? is this ‘mature’ or are we in for actual funtimes here? And where are the Content Warnings? whatcha got here book? You gonna get weird on me?” So really, Ao3 has me spoiled.
This gave me a brilliant idea for book displays at the library. #angst #enemies to lovers #plot twist
You are a good librarian!
I only have flat shelves to work with but…. I did it.
ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL. YOU ARE A GOD AMONGST MORTALS.
I found a book in the library with content tags and suddenly I realised what I’d been missing all this time.
the way tagging and sorting fan fiction has developed is really interesting to me, because its based entirely on letting a potential reader know immediately what types of tropes and emotions they’re in for if they read
describing something as “drama” doesn’t actually tell me a whole lot about the story, because drama can mean a whole lot of things. but telling me that something is “hurt/comfort” immediately informs me the story is going to have some emotional/painful moments where a characters struggles, but there will ultimately be healing and support and likely a resolution. tagging with details like “found family” or “enemies to lovers” or “so-and-so is a horrible father” lets me know the kinds of scenarios I’m in for without revealing the plot and I can select a fic to read based on those details
it’s just fascinating that we’ve decided to write and spread stories without traditional publishing methods and have developed a way to market and describe our stories that is completely different than the way stories are traditionally published, marketed, and sorted
it’s ultimately a better system, because it gives you details without spoiling the actual story and sorts based on elements and EXPERIENCES of the story instead of broad categories. not all sci-fi is going to have the found family trope, for example, but I know I’d rather pick up the one that does
It’s “meat and three veg” vs
“For main, we have three long-meats, lightly spiced, resting on a bed of mash, coupled with green beans, honeyed carrot and a rich jus.”
Which would you prefer? Like, get me pumped about what I’m about to consume!!!
wupacing 