#indarkstars

[queermil]

indarkstars replied to your post “Omfg and when they say “they screamed as they came” i always imagine a...”

Now there needs to be “not aliens, banshee” fic

asdlkajdsa i missed this gem!! who’s gonna write the pod squad as irish mythos

[queermil]

So in honor of one fandom hitting the terf wall I'm going to ask about rnm : any good trans fic?

i can’t think of any off the top of my head, nor find any with a cursory search, so i’m putting out the call to the wider fandom!! anyone?

[queermil]

boarding school au

i. alex gets sent to boarding school because he kisses his best friend, kyle valenti, in their tree house. his father finds out and after a severe beating, he tells alex that he’s being sent to a private school with a reputation for being heavy-handed. alex wants to laugh because literally anywhere is better than his father's house.

ii. michael’s been living at the school since he was twelve years old and the system decided that four homes in two years was too many and a troubled boy like him needed a steady home base. it helps that he's a kid genius and someone wants to give him a scholarship. he’s smarter than everyone in his class and the teachers eventually run out of advanced work to give him, so he starts building shit in his dorm room and selling it to other students.

iii. max and isobel get sent to the school because their parents are rich and because isobel asks. she has a feeling that they're meant to find something on the campus and her instincts are proven correct the second that their twin gazes land on michael guerin. from that moment on, they're practically inseparable. isobel "convinces" the administration to put max and michael in the same dorm, and she's there with them more often than not. they end up being that weird trio that's always together and no one can figure out which twin michael is dating or whether they've got some kind of weird triangle going on. no one knows that they're long-lost alien siblings.

iv. alex and michael meet the first time, properly, when alex gets sent to michael's dorm room to pick up a phone. he wants to be able to call maria and liz outside the allotted phone call time that the school allows, and without being monitored. he turns on the phone that michael gives him, takes a quick look, then scowls and says something snarky about how the coding could be way better. michael challenges him to improve it, which alex does while he's standing there. michael's so stunned that he offers alex 20% profit if he'll do the code for all the mechanics.

v. you know what happens next. snarky, flirty conversations every time alex has to pick up/drop off a new piece of tech. meeting behind the sports shed to discuss new orders. michael says something flirty. alex pushes him up against the back of the shed. they rule the boarding school black market together as a power couple.

[queermil]

stranger things AU

i. rosa ortecho goes missing on a warm summer's evening. there's no trace of her, no evidence to even suggest a chain of events. the town of roswell assumes that she's run off; she's always been a troubled girl and while the sheriff's office puts on all the bells and whistles of an investigation, everyone knows that she's run away and her father just isn't able to accept that. liz ortecho knows something terrible happened to her sister. she knows that rosa was two months sober, knows that she was saving money to move out and get her own apartment. liz is determined to find out what really happened to her sister and nothing is going to distract her from that, not even her new boyfriend kyle valenti, jock and all around dumbass.

ii. in a bunker in the middle of the desert, three otherwordly siblings are being trained to use their unique powers by scientists and military men. five and six are a pair of twins, which delighted the scientists because of the testing possibilities, and seven is a curly haired boy of the same age. the three latched onto each other from a young age and have been allowed to stay close as they grew into their teens. their powers are stronger together and it's during one of their trips into the darkness that they awaken something. it terrifies them. it fascinates the men in charge. when pushed too far, the three siblings lash out and finally execute the escape they've been planning for so long. only now, they're stuck in the middle of the desert with nowhere to go.

iii. the psychic abilities of the delucas have always been treated as a little bit of a joke, even if people still go to mimi's bar to get a reading, but when maria starts having visions of rifts in the desert, alex believes her unquestioningly. they take mimi's old, beaten up truck into the desert to investigate and instead of finding any rifts, they find three scared teenagers who seem to be able to communicate silently with one another. they take them back to town and hide them in alex's toolshed.

iv. alex hacks some databases to see if he can find them (they don't exist), or their parents (they don't have any), and to see if he can put a name to whoever was holding them (they also don't exist). maria keeps them calm, brings them small comforts like clothes and foods that they've never had the chance to try, and eventually gets them talking. they help them pick names, instead of numbers. the twins like maxwell and isobel because the sounds feel similar in their mouths. the third boy picks michael, though he shakes his head furiously when maria suggests 'mikey' as a nickname. they call in liz because she's the most science-inclined of them all. that's when they find out that their three new friends are aliens.

v. the more time they all spend together, the more those teenage teenage hormones start to run rampant. max starts to look at liz like she hangs the stars and moon in the sky at night, and he starts to help her with her effort to find rosa. this pisses off kyle, who had to be brought into the fold after walking in on them all hanging out in the shed. the boys come to blows but liz tells them very firmly that they will sort this out when we find rosa, she's the most important thing to me right now. alex teaches michael how to play guitar, which seems to be the only thing that calms the boy down outside of his siblings and the way that alex murmurs quieltly to him. maria lets isobel borrow her clothes, and isobel teachers her how to tap into her psychic abilities. they're all so entwined with one another that when mimi and sheriff valenti find them one day, it's instinct that makes the mod squad stand in front of their otherwordly friends and refuse to move until the adults assure them their friends will be safe.

+ i. somewhere in the upside down, rosa ortecho continues to do what she does best; she survives.

[queermil]

1920s au, still aliens

i. the antarian ship crashes in roswell at the turn of the century and the pod squad hatch eight years later. all three are adopted by the evanses, who can't bare to leave any one of the trio in the dusty orphanage. max becomes a writer (he would have hatched around the time that tolstoy died; can you fuckin imagine); he's deeply invested in the scandal surrounding lady chatterley's lover at the end of the decade and blushes everytime someone mentions it. isobel evans is the epitome of a flapper. she's financially independent (thanks to her parents), young, beautiful, fashionable, and smart enough to use all of these things to her social advantage. there isn't a social circle she can't dominate or destroy, so it's puzzling to both her brothers that she spends a great deal of her time at the local speakeasy. michael, with the support of a loving family, becomes a local engineering legend. his genius level intellect helps him contribute to the technology boom that makes cars more affordable to the middle class in the 1920s. he's also got a few side projects in the basement of his parent's house (and hidden around his apartment) but no one needs to know about that.

ii. it's prohibition times, so you know maria deluca is running a fucking speakeasy in the basement of the wild pony, in which she occasionally gets high with her best friend and partner in crime, rosa ortecho. sheriff valenti turns a blind eye to the illegal activity because they all know that prohibition is bullshit and drinking is one of two things to do in roswell. maria and rosa throw a large celebration after the passing of the 19th ammendment, even though they know it's not the end of the battle.

iii. alex still goes off to war, except it's world war i, and at the start of the decade he finally returns to roswell to stay. he retires from service and gets back into music, which involves him playing in a jazz band that regularly performs at maria's bar. homosexuality is getting more visible but it's not there yet. that doesn't matter in the dark corners of the wild pony though, where michael evans slips calloused, engineer's hands underneath alex's vest and shirt and presses wet kisses to his throat. he eventually stops kidding himself and moves into michael's apartment, lets michael soothe him when he wakes up sweating and trembling with memories of the battlefield, wakes up to the smell of breakfast and, sometimes, engine grease. this is also when he finds out that his boyfriend is an alien boyfriend.

iv. liz would be killing it in biology, working her ass off to get into a good school and kick anyone in the face who says that women can't succeed in science. margaret reed lewis would have been observing mitochondria in living cells when liz was a teenager, so i can see her being inspired by lewis and other women in science at the time. maybe she'd specialise in cell physiology and eventually go into cancer research (after all her study). in the same vein, i see kyle as still going on to become a doctor. though, he would have played baseball in highschool, not football. so i leave you to imagine that beautiful reality.

v. technology isn't as advanced (obviously) as it is in 2018, so there's almost no possibility of someone revealing the pod squad's secret, unless being told directly. there's no surveillance on them and their origin story is lost in a world of paperwork, most of which disappears when the roswell orphanage is shut down. max's resurrection of liz proves to be a problem for about as long as it takes for him to tell her the truth, which leads to kyle and maria and rosa finding out the truth, which leads to them finding out that alex already knew the truth. things go back to normal pretty quickly and for the most part, their problems are purely human. that doesn't mean they don't use their abilities to get things done sometimes.

[queermil]

steampunk au

i. alex manes is the captain of a cargo airship, which regularly makes trips from the crowded, lit-up, clockwork city of santa-fe to the smaller towns scattered across new mexico (and further, if required). jenna cameron is his first mate; they've both served in the us military and while alex is the one that lost something physical (his leg, replaced by a marvel of machinery, all silver and clockwork), he knows that they both wake from nightmares some nights.

ii. kyle valenti is the ship's surgeon, because it's necessary to have a doctor on board when you're miles away from the nearest town and also flying high in the sky, not to mention the occasional run in with pirates. it takes jenna a few days to convince alex to hire him, after they run into his childhood friend in albuquerque, and even longer for alex to really accept kyle's presence on his hip. once he does though, the easy companionship they held as children is quick to return.

iii. liz ends up on the ship because she's looking for adventure, desperate to get away and so something, so she ends up building a makeshift lab on alex's ship. she keeps the ship running to the best of her ability, though she tells alex that he needs a proper mechanic, and does her science the rest of the time. rosa, having been on her own adventure, finds them during one of their stop-overs in santa-fe and offers her services as a deckhand. alex only has to take one look at liz's face before he's shaking rosa's hand and welcoming her onboard. it's barely three weeks later that he walks in on rosa pressing his firstmate against a desk. he just sighs and closes the door.

iv. they take periodical trips to the tiny town of roswell. with the ship docked out at sander's shipyard, the entire crew descends on the wild pony, owned and run by maria deluca, despite the "locals only" rule. it helps that she's alex and liz's best friend, the third piece in their friendship puzzle, and alex always makes sure to bring her a few barrels of something expensive.

v. during one of their roswell visits, the ship breaks in a way that liz can't fix. alex seeks out the best mechanic in town, who also happens to work out on one of the ranches. cue captain manes getting hot and heavy while he watches michael "engineering genius" guerin ride a horse while he rounds up some cows. then he agrees to work on alex's ship and alex gets treated to the sight of him sweaty and greasy, surrounded by gadgets and getting elbow-deep in alex's ship. (then he gets sweaty with the captain of said ship).

+ i. max is still a deputy (maybe sheriff) in roswell, which would introduce the use of fancy steampunk guns and also maybe some sheriff's office clockwork robots. liz is fascinated by them because they're older tech than the city robots but work just as well, so she hangs around the sheriff's office in order to study them, and max proceeds to make heart eyes at her. isobel is a recently-divorced Proper Lady who's looking to get into some trouble and ends up running a smuggling business through the wild pony. cue isobel/maria snark and shenanigans, which eventually ends in them falling in love.

[queermil]

33) What’s the biggest compliment you’ve gotten?34) What’s the harshest criticism you’ve gotten?35) Do you share your story ideas with anyone else or do you keep them close to your chest?36) Can you give us a spoiler for one of your WIP’s?

33) What’s the biggest compliment you’ve gotten?

every time someone comments on you can fight the hurricane to say that they’ve never seen pacific rim but that they love the fic or can follow along perfectly, it’s honestly the best. it’s the same with any au based on existing media, honestly. makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

34) What’s the harshest criticism you’ve gotten?

it was for original fiction, actually. my supervisor took me to task (as kindly as possible) over a short story that had no plot and little character. she was absolutely right and i should have rewritten it :/

35) Do you share your story ideas with anyone else or do you keep them close to your chest?

i share vague stuff, sometimes? but mostly i keep it on the down low. not because i don’t want to tell people but because i know things are likely to change drastically between then and when i share the actual writing. i don’t tend to tell people that i’m taking on a prompt until i’m 99% sure i’m going to finish it/be able to see it to an end.

36) Can you give us a spoiler for one of your WIP’s?

uhh michael and alex delve into AI ethics way more than i intended for this fic that was just supposed to be sexy

[tathrin]

tagged by @indarkstars

Rules: Simply answer the following 21 questions and tag 21 people (or more!) you’d like to get to know more!

Name / Nickname: Nicky

Sign: saggitarius (I have arrows!)

Height: 5'7″ish...it varies? I guess?

Hogwarts House: Ravenclaw

Last thing I Googled: I was trying to use the word “sartorial“ in a story but I was spelling it too badly for spellcheck to help, so various misspellings of that until I got to the right answer. (I like how this is basically the same answer as yours with different details.)

Favourite musician/s: Uhhhh....let’s go with “folks I’ve been listening to lately,” shall we? Aurora, Svrcina, Rachel Rose Mitchell, Seanan McGuire (yes, that Seanan McGuire! No really, music too!), Pink, Ruelle, Nightwish, Tatu, Loreena McKennit, Blackpink, Hayley Kiyoko, Dessa, Within Temptation...

Last song I listened to: Here We Stand by Hidden Citizen featuring Svrcina is currently playing on my shuffle, so...that.

Song stuck in my head: See above. Although it was almost Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen because that lingered for a while after a Good Omens fan vid I just watched.

Followers: Um, 247??? I assume most of those are old, defunct blogs... O_o.

Following: 133 (but it’s mostly the same ten or fifteen people on my dash tbh, and that is not a complaint; I really like those ten or fifteen people!)

do you get asks: Nope. Well, except on rare occassion when I piss someone off...but even then, not nearly as much as I probably deserve! XD

Amount of Sleep: ughhhh let’s not talk about this right now; I stayed up ‘til 4am yesterday because I hit a Writing Groove and I do not have regrets, but I am sorry. Not as sorry as I was when my alarm went off this morning, but sorry.

Lucky Number: Nope. But I always used to pick 2 for things in school, because for some reason that was considered a “boring” number and no one else ever wanted it, but it was almost number one which meant it tended to be handy...

What I’m Wearing: maroon trousers, striped green and purple socks, and a navy blue shirt with a stylized blood drop on the front over which is printed the Mandalorian saying “aliit ori’shya tal’din”...in the Mando’a alphabet, of course! (Translation: family is more than blood.)

Dream Trip: Dream trip? Back to France--Provence and Paris and Angoulême--and, because it’s a dream, I actually speak French. More realistic trip I am longing to take sometime soon? I want to take my mom to Wizarding World of Harry Potter, as she has never been...and I want to go to Star Wars Galaxies. And possibly live there. (Oh but if it’s a Dream Trip, can it be a Star Wars Galaxies that exists in Legends Continuity? Please, yes?)

Favourite Food: There are too many foods I love to pick, so I will say durian.

Instruments: Celtic Harp. Yeah, really. But don’t let that fool you into thinking I am actually musically talented, because I am not. In fact I have both forms of cognitive amusia (beat deafness and tone deafness) mildly so yeah, no musical talent. Can’t read music either (long story). But I do know the basics of playing a Celtic Folk Harp and hey, good news about a harp? It is practically impossible to make them sound bad. So that’s convenient!

Languages: American English with fragments of Mando’a, French, and Sindarin.

Favourite Song/s: Oh man uhhh....hey, let’s go with “my theme song” instead because that actually has an answer that doesn’t just involve me scrolling through my latest shuffle playlist and writing down random titles lol: Weird Friendless Kid by Emilíana Torrini. (No I am serious to the degree that my gradeschool lunchbox was actually even purple).

Random Fact: I hold my pencil really really really fucking weirdly, to the degree that I have never met anyone who does even remotely similar, and complete strangers often stop mid-sentence to gawk when they notice me writing (not so much drawing; apparently it’s fine to draw like that but when they find out I write that way too that’s when shit gets weird) and I’ve never had a writing cramp.

Aesthetic: ...I’m only supposed to have one? Okay, how about Lazy Geek?

Uhhh okay @derinthemadscientist @hsavinien @superdragonoftheeast @overzelos @voldemorrissey @quasarsniffer @alanfromrochester @vonboomslang if you want to and anyone else who is interested!