the fact that we only have “herculean task” and “sisyphean task” feels so limiting. so here’s a few more tasks for your repertoire
icarian task: when you have a task you know you’re going to fail at anyways, so why not have some fun with it before it all comes crashing down
cassandrean task: when you have to deal with people you KNOW won’t listen to you, despite having accurate information, and having to watch them fumble about when you told them the solution from the start (most often witnessed in customer service)
feel free to chime in i ran out of ideas much faster than i anticipated
Promethean task: opposite of a Cassandraean task. You have the right information, and SOMEONE has to share it. But it's all in the delivery and if you're the person to identify the problem you WILL be hated forever.
Oedipal Task: (1) Attempting to avoid an unspeakably awful outcome and in doing so creating the circumstances that will bring it about.
(2) Trying to solve an problem and discovering that you are in fact the problem you are trying to solve.
Medean Task: Doing this is going to destroy you and what you love just as much as the person you're trying to destroy. Everyone is telling you this, and you already know this. But your "fuck that guy and what he thinks he can do to me" instinct is just that strong. Also admittedly you get an extremely badass exit when all's said and done.
I tried something and it actually looks pretty good, better than i expected tbh. My only regret is i drew in a angle that Harry's scar is not showing 😮💨
Insp. by this post (click the link to see the picture!!) (edit 2023 - link has been fixed)
A sort of belated Day 1 of @twinyardsappreciationweek
So Tilda left the twins at the hospital basically as soon as she could, right?
then came back for Aaron
and we can assume she was well and determined to not have this come back to haunt her
-which.. backfired spectacularly
So I seriously doubt she took any pictures, especially not of them together
because plausible deniability is tricky when there’s literally two of your (supposedly) only child in the same picture
but there’s this nurse, we’ll call her Kendra, who’s fresh out of school
she works with the preemies in the NICU, and she loves her job.
So she’s assigned to these twins who have to spend a few weeks in the hospital: born at 33 weeks with low birth weight, which is a decently common effect of being twins, as well as substance use during pregnancy
and they’re the cutest, okay? They try to keep them together in the NICU, because multiples tend to do much better when they’re kept in the same cot, as well as the benefits of human contact on development
Also because they fuss.. a LOT when they get separated for diaper changes or feedings.
Their mother surrendered them to foster care, and they’d be put into the system once they could safely leave the NICU, which kills her
Except the mom comes back a bit before they’re alright to be released, and she’s changed her mind!
But only for one of them
And Kendra tries, she does, to intervene, to say how much better the twins respond to being kept together, how it’s just cruel to separate them. But in the end it’s not her decision, and Tilda Minyard (Kendra’s going to remember that name for a long time) won’t budge.
the day before they get split up leave the NICU, they’re looking much better– rosy skin, weight gain, sleeping as calmly as newborns can (but only when they’re together, as they learned the hard way)
Kendra’s heart is breaking for these babies who have no idea what’s about the happen
so she brings her polaroid to work and gets a picture of the two of them together
when Tilda shows up the next day to take Aaron, and only Aaron, Kendra offers her the picture.
Tilda scowls and refuses it in favor of the paperwork that she needs to sign to get out of there with her son s
son, singular
So she leaves with Aaron, and Andrew is surrendered to foster care at 3 weeks old.
She keeps the picture
Twenty-odd years later, she’s just gotten off shift and is trying to find the remote and switch off the exy game on the tv
her daughter left it playing in the living room when she went to practice
When she hears it.
“Minyard”
It’s not exactly a common name, and even after twenty years, she remembers the twins and their twitchy, scowling mother
and the picture buried in her desk somewhere
She sits down and pays attention
there’s a blue team facing a violently orange team, and she watches, and she sees it when one of the backliners (see she remembers some of the rules from her daughter’s games) turns, and she catches “Minyard, 03″ on the back of his jersey.
and she can’t believe it
but then it happens.
“An incredible save from Minyard!”
But the ball is nowhere near the boy she saw? it was just blocked by the-
…goalkeeper.
No way.
Before she has a chance to second-guess herself, there’s a stall in the gameplay, and a lineup flashes onto the screen. A lineup with two identical scowling faces with shocks of blonde hair
They both have “Minyard” next to them
Andrew and Aaron Minyard
Holy shit
She doesn’t know what the odds were for this to happen, but she reaches for her laptop and googles “Palmetto state foxes”
Maybe this Wymack character could help her out
Practice is due to start soon, but Wymack intercepts the twins before they can get to the locker room
“you’re not in trouble” Wymack responds to a raised eyebrow
he closes the door and rummages in the precarious mountains of papers on his desk. “Not this time anyway. You’ve got mail.”
“Mail?” Aaron asks incredulously.
“Mail. I got a call from a woman who said that she recognized you two, that she was a nurse at the hospital when you were born.”
They both stare in silence at their coach and the envelope in his outstretched hand.
“She thought you should have this, and I said I’d pass it along if she sent it.”
After a long pause, Wymack gives the envelope a shake
Aaron takes it.
“Alright, now go change out. Drills start in fifteen.”
Warm and fuzzy as always, coach
They leave his office, but stall by the couches instead of continuing into the locker room
Aaron can feel Andrew’s stare, and he lifts his gaze from the envelope to his brother’s eyes
He doesn’t know what he wants to say, but whatever’s building in his chest is interrupted by Nicky coming through the door to look for them, gear half-on
When he sees them still in their street clothes and not looking like they’re about to move anytime soon, he gets worried.
“What did coach want?”
then he sees the envelope. “What’s that?”
Aaron really doesn’t know how to answer that
He looked back at Andrew, who was already still watching him
“Should I…”
Andrew shrugs, but his practiced apathy is slipping just slightly, something hard to see to the unpracticed eye, but
Aaron’s getting better at reading Andrew’s tells after nearly a year of sessions with Bee. They aren’t perfect by any means, but…. they’re working through it
Aaron takes a breath and slides a finger under the envelope’s flap
The first thing he sees is a folded paper
He takes it out and tilts it so that Andrew can read it as well, without needing to move closer
Re-listening to MAG 34 after @dykekarkat mentioned Stranger!Neil and now I really need to write a fic where he shows up in Aaron’s anatomy class and spends the entire semester exhibiting increasingly unsettling behavior that no one else will acknowledge.
Aaron complains about the sound of bones cracking directly behind him, but neither of the students on either side of him will admit to having heard it. Aaron insists to Katelyn that Neil is shorter than he was at the start of the semester, and she asks gently if he’s been sleeping alright.
Finally, Aaron snaps and accuses Neil of only breathing when he thinks someone is paying attention. Of course, Neil’s response is to patronizingly suggests that Aaron only being aware of Neil’s breathing when he’s paying attention may be better attributed to basic psychology than anything supernatural.
The absolute worst comes towards the end of the semester, the first time he sees Neil outside of class. Aaron nearly misses him, tucked away in an alcove behind the science building with Andrew, of all people. Andrew, who has two fingers pressed to the side of Neil’s neck.
“Not like that,” he says, shaking his head. He takes Neil’s hand, guiding it to his own chest. Neil stands perfectly still for several seconds, head cocked to the side in consideration, zero expression on his face. Then he brightens. “Oh! That’s much faster than I was thinking.” Andrew’s ears flush red, and Aaron tries to convince himself that the entire semester has been some sort of fucked up hallucination.
Completely unrelated to TGR but I would like to kindly and politely request more buff Andrew <3 maybe Andrew bench pressing Neil or Neil gushing over Andrew being 💪💪 you know?
You knowwwwww I can’t resist a beefy Andrew. And neither can Neil
Pls someone help Neil order his thoughts. Head empty rn
You can literally make anything and anyone problematic if you try hard enough seriously give me people and things and I’ll make them all “problematic” right now.
