whynot | gratuitous drunk post

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gratuitous drunk post

Did everyone have a good Thanksgiving/Idul Adha? Everyone that's not a turkey, goat, or cow? GREAT. Wonderful! I just sent off a request for extension for Solstice. 'Cos, you know. Overambitiousness with overcompensation. You know how it goes.

What have I been up to? Trying to compile my notes for Ideologies/Mythologies, make a cheat sheet for my awesome assignments and also that final. Networking like a motherfucker! I woke up today and the first thing I did before showering and food was send shmoozy emails to contacts of contacts in DC, goddamn. You know. Just trying my best to not be homeless next semester. YOU KNOW HOW IT GOES. But then I got distracted by It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I only want fic for it in the way that I want fic for any thing I'm exposed to for more than 2 hours.

Oh, and I'm up to 4.02 of Friday Night Lights I'M GLAD IT'S BACK.

I didn't sign up for

xover_exchange, but here are some of the prompts that I thought of that need to be written by someone:

Narnia/X-Files. Susan moves in next to Mulder's apartment, and the two end up unexpectedly bonding over lost siblings and stories no one else believes.

X-Files/Harry Potter. Mulder and Scully investigate grisly murders, weird disasters, and people losing their memories. Little do they know that these crimes are being committed by Death Eaters. Some insight on what the Wizarding World is like in the US would be great, as would what Voldemort's influence outside of Britain actually is.

Harry Potter/Leverage. The team goes on a job in the wizarding world.

X-Files/Merlin. Uther invites Sir Fox Mulder and the Lady Dana Scully to come to Camelot and get to the bottom of strange happenings that Uther thinks is caused by evil sorcerers.

Leverage/Skins. Cassie is hired to be the Leverage receptionist.

Narnia/Merlin. Jadis and Nimueh are living together, occasionally irritating each other but also helping each other to get over the past. Or maybe instead of living together, they play chess together. Or play croquet together. I'm not picky.

Also Godric Gryffindor and Aslan should hang out.

I really wanna find out about the goats that get stared at by men and where the wild things hang out but there are no cineplexes in suburban Massachusetts where these are playing? THE SUBURBS ARE DUMB. DUMMMMMMMMMB.

OBSERVATION: After an It's Always Sunny marathon, everyone gets really argumentative in creative ways over really stupid shit. Except the show is called "The Weather Sucks in Boston".

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Everyone that's not a turkey, goat, or cow?

::snickers and does smug vegetarian face of virtue::

Those crossovers! Be still my beating heart!

"It is completely and utterly racist to assume that every black person you know will know every other black person you know, especially if the black people you know are limited to 'my black friend who told me it was cool for me to use the N-word, and Oprah."

Sophie looked bewildered, Nate made an aggrieved face of innocence, and Parker assumed the expression that meant she was listening very carefully because she knew it was important to make the right emotive response.
Elliot just blinked.

"It is also completely uncalled for to think that black folks have some kind of magic, spiritual connection with the earth like Native American people only with more more dead chickens and voodoo, and if I hear the word Magical Negro even once I will send you TV Tropes and don't think I don't have the power to make you never come out again."

This time everyone just offered five different flavours of silence.

"And I will have you all know, people, that this does not have anything to do with the geek thing. Y'all make fun of me as it is, s'alright, its cool, but I work as hard as you do to be good at my job, and there's no tricks about the stuff I make, or the things I can do, so anyone who wants to imply that I might be coasting off of some unearned, shiftless hocus-pocus can step the hell out right now. You understand, people?"

There was no movement or response from the four people facing Hardison, except for a simultanious shift of eyeballs, and he sighed and glanced over his shoulder.

"Man, you gotta come in the fancy fireplace way, don't you? Its always about the smooth, showing-off entrance, isn't it. Like you're James Bond or something. I mean green flames in summer. Seriously? Seriously?!"

Kingsley Shacklebolt flicked a non-existent speck of dust off of his tailored black robes and gave the ladies a dignified nod. "It's good to see you again, Cousin," he murmured suavely.

THIS IS THE GREATEST.

You think fighting off prejudice is difficult in the Muggle world, oh man. Try the wizarding world. Here are a people who don't have to make as many compromises in the world because they have the ability to change it to whatever they want. Skin color getting in your way? Charm it to something more suitable. Age getting you laughed at? Polyjuice those wrinkles and baby fat away. There's an easy answer to everything in the wizarding world, and Hardison has long suspected that this leads to some lazy attitudes about the status quo.

"That's why I'm here," Kingsley is saying. "The security around the grail protects against wizards and witches, but not against non-magical peoples."

"Which is where we come in," Nate finishes.

Kingsley says, "Alec has told me of your competence in these matters."

Nate frowns at Hardison. "Have you now?"

"Hey, we did some pretty badass shit, man," Hardison says. "It's easy to talk about, you know what I mean?"

Sophie leans forward and touches Kingsley's arm. "What sort of grail are we talking about here?"

"I stole a grail once," Parker pipes up. "They're not dishwasher-safe, just FYI."

It comes as a surprise to no one except Nate that Sophie dated and then conned, or perhaps it was the other way around, a Ravenclaw once.

Parker immediately plonks herself on the floor listening to the intent, complicated conversation between Sophie and Shacklebolt with the delighted air of a child who is finally being told a bed time story involving things blowing up instead of fuzzy bunnies.

Nate should be listening to the debriefing session as well, but instead he is hiding behind a large roll of blueprints, a sheaf of parchment, and a very large glass of whiskey. Shacklebolt generously assumes he is dealing with the shock of knowing magic exists. Everyone else more accurately realises that he is sulking about a factor he cannot control.

Hardison, meanwhile, has followed Elliot into the living room. Elliot is methodically dousing the fire that should not have been able to exist in the fake decor fireplace in the first place.

He is doing so with a wand.

Hardison says nothing.

"Did you know?" Elliot growls, without turning around.

"Hey, man," Hardison says with an odd sort of gentleness in his voice, the kind that might come from caution, or sadness. "At least you chose to leave."

When Elliot glances over his shoulder with eyes narrowed in sudden comprehension, Hardison shrugs and grins wryly, "At least they call us geeks instead of squibs, here."

In the North End, in an alley between a wine bar and a swanky seafood place, is a nondescript wall, cracked and stained in a generic sort of fashion. People never look twice at this alley and never hang around, and criminals, they always find some other alley to do their business in. It's not that they don't want to be near this alley, it's just that they always find themselves wanting to be somewhere else.

"This is where wizards hang out?" Nate says skeptically, looking around.

"No," says Kingsley. "It's right through here." He points his wand at a stain vaguely shaped like Azerbaijan and says, "Alohomora."

"Oh Kingsley, I haven't been in years," Sophie says, quietly but giddily. The wall disappears and reveals what appears to be a bustling downtown area of a world where everyone wears Snuggies. Sophie says, "I can't wait to have... What were they called? Those drinks that I liked?"

Kingsley smiles. "Butterbeer."

"Yes!"

"You might be a little disappointed," Kingsley says as they step through. "American butterbeer is terrible. It's quite watery."

"Man, I have not been here in far too long!" Hardison declares.

"Not long enough," Eliot mutters.

"The first order of business," Kingsley announces to the group, "is to find you some proper robes."

"What's wrong with my suit?" Nate protests.

"Well," says Kingsley, "I think you may want to... fit in in the wizarding world. Is it not the first rule of confidence schemesters to blend in with one's surroundings?"

"No," Nate says firmly. "It's 'always have an exit strategy'."

There is a silence in which many "oh no!" glances were exchanged between the rest of the team. Well, the rest of the team except Parker, who says, "I thought the first rule was 'travel light'."

"That's definitely it," Eliot cuts in. "Traveling light."

"Yeah, only the bare necessities," Hardison agrees. "Sometimes I don't even bring extra underwear, they just weigh me down."

Eliot makes a face at him as he steps away. "Dude."

"...My mistake," Kingsley concedes.

"Easy one to make," says Nate evenly.

"Let's go shopping!" Sophie exclaims, and everyone else for once enthusiastically agree.

Nate looks completely, irrevocably ridiculous in wizard robes. This is, as he explains snidely to a vastly amused (and impeccably witch-like) Sophie, a feature and not a bug.

"I meant to look silly. It's to our advantage to have them all underestimate me, and we need Shacklebolt to genuinely feel the same way for... verisimilitude."

Sophie eyes Kingsley's broad, capable back with what Nate finds to be an entirely too appreciative assessment. "Well, Nate, if Hardison is his cousin, I am sure he's much too smart to be taken in very easily. You'll probably have to try very hard to look like a fool to take him in."

Nate ignores this in favour of narrowing his eyes at Hardison, who is timing how fast Parker can shoplift the limited-edition Swoosh! sneakers in the display window's pride of place. "We don't know a lot about Hardison's relationship with this... this subculture."

Eliot had refused to enter the store with them, and had stalked off pugnaciously around the corner, ignoring Hardison's cheerful cry of "Pick up some extra boxers for me, will you?"

When he returns the agreed upon meeting place three hours later, Sophie and Kingsley are doing the sort of Formidable Opponent flirting that seems like royal intrigue, and Nate is trying to steal their firewhiskey. Parker is staring at the bar tender's hands as the woman mixes drinks using her wand as a third hand.

Hardison is sitting uncharacteristically small and silent, fidgeting with the fake wand that Kingsley handed out to all of them, with a bland, "... for verisimilitude" that had Sophie choking into her drink. When he sees Eliot walk in, dressed in a ribbon shirt, hair beaded and feathered in formal regalia, he gives a wide smile. "So you didn't go to one of those preppy East Coast magic schools after all," he says.

Eliot sits down and does not use a wand to get himself a drink. "I did."

Hardison frowns.

Eliot smiles the tight angry smile that is more dangerous than a glare. "I didn't let them make me one of them, though," he says, and doesn't scowl when Hardison bumps his shoulder in some obscure, over-emotional gesture of solidarity.

Who needs magic when you have the internet? Not Hardison. Magic never needed him, but now, apparently, it does. Hardison tries not to feel too smug about it.

When Hardison was a kid, he tended to end up with his ears charmed purple or his nose twice its size, or his legs locked, or his pants transfigured into tutus. Squib squib squib, the other kids would chant gleefully, and Hardison would demand to fight a fight without magic, see how gleeful they all are without their stupid wands, but nobody would listen to him. They didn't have to listen to him; he couldn't make them.

One day, he was told, "Alec, you're going to be living with this very nice lady now." Alec had been skeptical of course. Grown-ups like to say things like 'very nice lady' but then you find out she's a dentist or something. The lady didn't look like a dentist, but who can tell these days anyway? Sometimes dentists take off their medic robes and wear regular robes; it's hard to tell.

The introduction continued, a little awkwardly, "She's... she's like you."

The 'very nice lady' said, "She mean I don't got magic. It's okay, girl, ain't no harm in saying it. It's nice to meet you, Alec."

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"Well," she replied, "you can call me Nana."

"That's a silly name," said Alec.

But she was not a silly woman. When he walked out of there that day, with all his stuff in a bag that Nana carried for him, she said, "You and I gotta stick together, people like us. I heard about them other kids picking on you. Sometimes people try to game us squibs around, you know, but you remember that don't make them better than you."

"I know," said Alec, who didn't, but liked the sound of what she was saying, and the conviction she said it with.

"Games is games, but self-respect is self-respect."

"Where are we going?"

They had left the boundaries of the neighborhood Alec knew. Back a while ago, they had crossed through a tunnel and there was a weird feeling like something had changed in the air, some indefinable quality he wouldn't even know how to begin describing. It was weird, but not bad per se.

"We're going home, son," said Nana, "and we're taking the bus."

Jadis and Nimueh playing chess together would be too intense. I think they should lighten up - that is, they probably would lighten up, if they had to hang out in an apartment together. Jadis is not as young as she used to be, when she first made it to England. The lack of carriages to stand on and ride is disappointing to her. Instead they have these things they call cars but look nothing like the cars she knows about. Nimueh drives her around in one though once, because for some reason Nimueh's magic is better at that sort of thing, and she has fun ordering the other woman around and pretending that Nimueh is actually being ordered around. really they are just going the same place, anyway, so it works out fine between the two of them.

the goats that get stared at by men and where the wild things hang out
wait what?? what on earth is that first thing, I can figure out the second but what? also I heard where the wild things are is way too depressing and like incorporates adult issues into a kid's book. which I shouldn't be complaining about, I mean that's Narnia fanfic essentially and I take great joy in ruining childhood fantasy, but still :/ depressing is depressing is depressing.

I AM WITH YOU ON THE SUBURBS THOUGH
GODDAMN I AM NOT GOING BACK THIS SUMMER SO HELP ME GOD

omg so when do you need your solsfic thing back, aaaagh I'm sorry I've been so absent from the nets this week what with some stupid paper and thanksgiving funtiems. *guilty* I will give you feedback I swear even though I'm not v. good at editing.

Just two old-school ladies trying to make it in a modern world! When the spring thaw comes and turns the fields into fields of slush, Jadis wrinkles her nose and says she remembers when the world had PROPER winters.

lol the Men Who Stare At Goats. The George Clooney movie? And he is also in Fantastic Mr. Fox, which I also want to see, but NO ONE WANTS TO SEE IT WITH ME, WHAT. HOW CAN THEY TURN DOWN ROALD DAHL AND FOXY FOXES. And haha that is kind of why I want to see this new Wild Things movie. I've never been of the kind who are ALL ABOUT WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, and in fact I barely remembered it before I read the synopsis for the movie, but it seems pretty interesting, and might be relevant to my final anthro paper which might be about secret fantasy worlds in modern stories. I THINK.

I got an extension until Dec 5, so no sweat! You are quick like a bunny with this monster, and you hit on some of the stuff that had been bothering me, so I reckon we're more or less on the same page.

proper winters! her reindeer had to pull her uphill both ways in 100 years of snow!

okay I never actually heard of that movie, but IMDB's one-line summary intrigues me. it sounds freaking weird but it intrigues me. I don't know enough about Mr Fox but Roald Dahl = genius, so yay. An anthro paper sounds like a great reason to see the Wild Things :D it sounds like a really cool paper.

yaaay, glad I can sort of help!

Eventually they start celebrating holidays together. They celebrate every winter, because Jadis like the winter, sometime after it's gotten cold but before the shops start decorating for Christmas, because Nimueh never went into that sort of thing and Jadis has some sort of hangup about Christmas. Nimueh's never understood what--something about cats, or tables, or promises, or something. It's a pity. She's always wanted a cat to curl up with on the sofa and play with the knitting.

They don't play chess because any king who's less powerful than his courtiers is a king who deserves to be conquered, but they do enjoy a nice game of Risk now and then.

Nimueh and Jadis playing at taking over the world? How appropriate! And awwww kitties. Nimueh would like cats. She seems like the cat-stroking villain type, looking in her scry, stroking her kitty, biding her time.

CATS OR TABLES OR SOMETHING

any king who's less powerful than his courtiers is a king who deserves to be conquered
fjklsjfkdls <33

and and and maybe they celebrate holidays that they had back where they came from, the ones that aren't celebrated anymore or are now called by another name, claimed by a different god. Well, maybe 'celebrate' is not quite the right word. Usually it's just having a cup of good tea, or nice wine.

"We cast a great beast from the land," Jadis says. "We celebrated for that."

also during the summer they'd get into arguments about the electricity bill because Jadis insists on keeping the AC up at ridiculous temperatures.

Do they get drunk and talk about destiny? Nimueh knows you can't outrun it but Jadis thinks it's just another thing to be bent to her will.

And they disagree about the decor. Jadis thinks that white, all white, maybe some very pale ice blue is the best. And Nimueh is going for more of a cave motif. Some stalagmites and things.

Who DOESN'T get drunk and talk about destiny? Determinism, cause and effect, free will. "You don't need these things when you have magic," Jadis says, but Nimueh thinks that these things are why magic works in the first place.

"But stains show up on white."
"Then perhaps you should stop being so messy."

"Did Merlin defeat me because he was destined to do so, or was he destined to defeat me because he could?" Nimueh muses.
"If you'd killed him first, it wouldn't matter," Jadis says.

omg omg Susan and Mulder neighbors would be a-maze-ing/awkward to the max. Would it start like this? Even after years and years in a world where magic is half-forgotten and ill-remembered, Susan sometimes wakes up at night and the air seems so stagnant, so shut-in that she's afraid to breathe and disturb it. On nights like this, (and the walls are so thin), she can hear everything. She sees her neighbor in the hall sometimes, and almost wants to talk to him, - he has this air of perpetual lateness grown up into harried, last-minute punctuality, the kind that will get him where he's going ten minutes early but looking fifteen minutes late; she remembers that Edmund looked like that often, in the early days of his kingship - but thinks better of it; she's always been composed and diplomatic, but she thinks (it's been years and years) that the trick of diplomacy was knowing how to avoid situations where you might be tempted to say things like, "I have unusually good hearing, and I know what kind of porn you watch."

IDK, okay? It's been a really long time since I've read any Narnia and only slightly less long since I've watched any X-Files. Um but I really want to now. Both.

Oh god, Mulder and Scully in Camelot :D. (<3) It would be like, Scully would always be commenting on Gaius's scientific rigor (lack of) and like, "sociologically speaking, it's not unusual for tyrants to experience this kind of paranoia; in fact, most behavioral disorders have some genetic component and the likelihood of monarchies attempting to keep bloodlines pure only increases these risks." Mulder: "So what you're saying is you think he married his sister." "...yes, Mulder." and "It's only natural for people to attempt to explain the things that they don't understand with accusations of the supernatural, but there's very little evidence to suggest anything out of the ordinary is going on here. All of the occurrences in Camelot can be but down to a confluence of coincidence and hearsay." "Gryphons, Scully?" "...D:"

YES YES I THINK THAT IS EXACTLY HOW IT STARTS. lol she knows what kind of porn Mulder watches. Doesn't Mulder's apartment get fucked up a couple of times? This guy must have an interesting job, unless the enemies are picked up during his off-time. Either way, interesting life, but too interesting for Susan perhaps, who looks forward these days only to good tea and a good book. It's about the simple things, you know.

Still, she takes pity on the guy. On Fox. Fox Mulder - she knows his name because she sees it hastily scribbled on his mailbox - and what kind of a name is that? Fox? Like he's a character from a children's book, full of wily plans and questionable promises to stay away from the chicken coop. One time, Susan has a key lime pie that she got at the charity bakesale of the health center where she volunteers, and she hates key lime pie, so she thinks, in that manner not entirely uncommon to little old ladies, "Why don't I give it to that young man who lives across the way? He looks like he doesn't eat enough."

When Fox Mulder answers the door, bleary-eyed and mussed up (did he sleep in his clothes?), his apprehension slowly transforms into confusion. Susan smiles at him and asks, "Do you like key lime pie?"

He says, "...Is that a trick question?"

"Perhaps if you are expecting trick pie. But it's not."

Mulder rubs his face and tries to look more awake. "You live across the way, right? You're my neighbor."

"I am. So sorry, rude of me not to introduce myself. I'm Susan. Susan Pevensie."

She holds out her hand. He shakes it, automatic but distant.

"Fox Mulder," he says. "Did you say something about pie?"

omg dooooo start rewatching Narnia and X-Files, I think I'm the only person at the Narnia&XFiles party and sometimes it is lonely.

Gaius would totally expect Scully to back him up, what with *~SCIENCE~* and all, and he's a little miffed when she just outeyebrows him all the time basically. Merlin gets pretty uncomfortable at all the questions Mulder is asking, and thinks it's pretty gruesome how Scully insists on cutting up dead bodies.

"It's science, Merlin," Gaius insists. "How else will we know more about this investigation?"

Well, science is creepy, is what Merlin thinks. He'll stick to magic.

OMG A TRICK PIE. The trick pie is what Mulder remembers most about their meeting, afterwards, her ability to deflect jokes into something more serious and still have them exist, in a separate sphere, as jokes. So the next time he brings her an actual trick pie - he has his sources. In retrospect it was probably not the best idea, but he's always been charming and not actually good at any kind of social interaction; he's never had to be - most people he doesn't want to talk to at all, and they're put off by his eccentricity to begin with, and Scully is just. Well. Scully is Scully. He's still pretty embarrassed though, when she opens the foil on the pie plate and a paper snake jumps out, and all she does is look down and say, "Oh, a trick. How nice. Like a children's game." And then she takes him in and feeds him dinner, and asks him wherever in America can she find good tea, not this Lipton in bags that she's been drinking out of desperation. He's obligated to find out after that. He starts to learn about her, but never all about her, her smile courteous always but distant; he starts to discover, through years of being inappropriately intrusive, the softened edges of her belief, worn-away; and thinks of Scully, and the ache of knowing, the shapes and disappearances of things.

Oh man, at first Gaius would have professional admiration, but after a while he's get pretty tired of it; he tries to comport himself with as much dignity as he can, but one day he tells Merlin, in direct contradiction of everything he's said previously, that sometimes knowledge gained from books can never hope to outmatch intuition and experience. Of course Merlin says something to Arthur, and Arthur pretends not to trust Merlin's opinion ever but eventually suggests the same to the king; Merlin really doesn't have the sense that God gave a fly.

Mulder tries to bond with Morgana, who is of course really suspicious, and Scully's all *eyebrows*, like, "A little young, don't you think?" and Mulder has no idea what's going on; the thought hadn't even occurred to him.

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gratuitous drunk post

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Also? Tag - you're it!

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ZOMG THE GRAIL, IF YOU ARE TRYING TO SNEAK MERLIN IN HERE I WILL DIE, MISSY

I'm just saying it's a distinct possibility, is all.

LMAO at underwear banter. Also, since I know nothing of Merlin, I leave that to you

OVEREMOTIONAL GESTURES OF SOLIDARITY ARE SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE ON.

gratuitous drunk comment!

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SOME STALAGMITES AND THINGS

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long comment is long D:

(YOUR) LONG COMMENT IS AMAZING

(you are amazing)