#xsgii

[i-eat-men-like-air]

★★★★★★★★

★ Hands down, Lucy’s favorite song of all-time is Signore Ascolta from Turandot. In the opera, the song is sung by the character of Liu, a slave girl who is in love with the Prince trying to win the hand of the cold-hearted Turandot. Her love and loyalty push her to commit suicide in order to protect the Prince, and Lucy had always found her plight to be terribly sad and terribly romantic.

★ Alex proposed to Lucy a week before Thanksgiving during their sophomore year of college. He’d meant to wait until the holiday, so that they could share the celebration with their families, but his impatience got the better of him. The proposal itself was somewhat spontaneous - all it took was a smile from Lucy in the warm light of the setting sun as they walked back from dinner one not-so-special evening, and Alex was pulling out the little blue box he’d been carrying around in his pocket for the past two weeks and sinking to his knee right there on the sidewalk.

★ When Cooper and Robin were kids, they used to put on shadow puppet shows for Jillian. They’d pull the couch away from the wall to use as a stage, rearrange all of the lamps in the house for stage lighting, hang a bed sheet over the stair rail to act as a curtain, and force Jillian to sit through twenty minutes of improvised dialog (and occasionally song). It was all painfully terrible and Jillian is kicking herself for never buying a video camera to capture every single second of it. 

★ Rogue is extremely allergic to pecans, but sometimes (thanks to a few of her absorbed psyches) gets cravings for pecan pie around the holidays. It’s annoying.

★ For some reason, Jim has a deeply instinctual fear of bats. Realistically, he knows they don’t all carry rabies and only like 3 species actually drink blood, but something about their beady little eyes really unsettles him. (it may or may not be one of the reasons I liked the idea of Lucy’s daemon being a bat) 

★ Cooper saw an amazing S.H.I.E.L.D.-provided therapist when he got back from Pakistan to help him work through the trauma of being tortured. However, his PTSD occasionally gets triggered by things out of the blue– for example, anything mimicking the crackle of electricity can trigger memories of being beaten with a cattle prod. 

★ Jim’s character was initially supposed to fall a little more in the grey area of morality. I really love the kinds of villains that make you sympathize against your better judgement, the kind of villains who do terrible things but are kind to their mothers, you know? But honestly, his character fits so much better as someone too spoiled, greedy and narcissistic to be anything but suspicious of the rest of the world. I like him sharp, self-serving, and completely unrepentant. 

★ Rogue has never had a pet, unless you count the chickens her family kept growing up. She took a particular liking to a black star hen called Patsy, which would follow her around the Clayborne property like a puppy. Unfortunately, a fox culled the entire flock one night when Rogue was 12. 

[i-eat-men-like-air]

Lucy: 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 15, 19 (ehehe), 21, 24?? 8)

2. What would be your OCs favourite section in a bookstore? Why? 

Oh god don’t make her pick. Lucy will read just about everything… non-fiction, YA, fantasy, biographies, even graphic novels when her eyes are feeling up to it. It seems kind of a cop-out for me to say the audiobook section, due to her failing sight… so I’m going to say historical fiction. It combines everything her little nerd heart desires: drama, romance, and historicity. 

4. How would your OC like/prefer to die?

Quietly, painlessly, and though she’d never admit it, there’s a part of her that has always figured dying alone would be less of a burden on her loved ones. She doesn’t want anyone to have to watch her go if she can help it. 

6. What is guaranteed to piss your OC off?

Lucy is pretty much a door mat, the kind of person who can’t bring themselves to send back an undercooked steak or confront a barista who messed up their coffee order. However, one thing she absolutely cannot stand is someone treating her like an invalid because of her disability. She heavily values her independence, and has very little patience for the over-protective mother hen types. 

7. What is one thing your OC desperately wants, but can’t have?

Aside from a better ticket from the genetic lottery (another easy answer), I’d say Lucy’s one remaining yen would be a desire for what she considers “normal” familial relationships. She’d grown up with a lot of tension between her and her brothers, while her mutation drove a wedge between her and her parents, and there are times when she wonders if that poor relationship with her family created a void in her that made it difficult to maintain a solid relationship with her husband.

8. If your OC was allowed to visit one last place before they died, where would they go?

Switzerland. The cold doesn’t agree with her so much anymore, but some of her happiest memories were from her skii trips to the Swiss alps as a teenager, swooping down mountains and drinking hot cocoa by a cozy fire.

11. Which one of your OC’s memories makes them smile in private when they recall it? 

Pretty much any of her memories running amuck with Nina Farrow. Her brief friendship with Nina was the first time Lucy had ever felt accepted with her disability, and Nina’s “bad influence” had only served to spark her long-forgotten adventurous streak. She may have outgrown her desire to cause trouble, but those memories of sneaking out of fancy galas and climbing chain-link fences in ball gowns and heels always feel so satisfying to revisit. 

15. What does ‘home’ mean to your OC? 

Home, in it’s purest, simplest sense, means comfort to Lucy. It means soft beds and warm blankets and the smell of her favorite coffee in the morning and knowing where everything is and walking around without a bra and hanging her favorite paintings where they’ll get the best light even though she can’t see them anymore. It means recognizing the rhythm of familiar footsteps and memorizing the cadence of someone’s breathing and the safe feeling that goes with knowing that person loves you, even with your flaws and your ugly moments. That’s home.  

19. What clique would your OC belong to in a high school AU? 

Hahahahahah the nerdiest nerd clique. She’ll be the geek in the back doing all of the extra reading assignments just for fun. 

21. How does your OC handle relationships, platonic or otherwise? Do they forge bonds easily, or prefer to not get attached?

Hm, tough question. Lucy tends to be fairly trusting on a basic level, though she does find it difficult to create deep, personal bonds (platonic or otherwise). She’s the type of person who finds themselves with many friendly acquaintances but very few close friends. It’s not that she tries to keep a distance - she likes most people and has fairly decent instincts when it comes to new people, but perhaps she’s just not socially savvy enough to navigate pursuing friendships or relationships past that initial stage of baseline friendliness.   

24. If your OC could permanently remove any one thing from their world, what would it be? Why?

Jim Wolfram I mean… if we’re being totally honest… there are few things or people in this world that make her feel as terrible about herself as Jim. So.  

[i-eat-men-like-air]

Cooper, 2, 6, 13, 18, 25 :D (or any of the above if that's too many)

; u ; definitely not too many. I could talk about this nerd forever.

2. What would be your OC’s favourite section in a bookstore? Why?

Cooper has never been a big reader, given his short attention span, but he’ll skim through something from the YA fiction section every once in awhile. He likes the fantasy novels the best– they’re easy to digest, usually packed with fight scenes, and he tends to get way too emotionally invested in the love triangles. So far his favorite series are The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and Dragons of Pern (though he’ll never admit it, he’s also gotten through ¾ths of the Twilight saga, but has been too embarrassed to finish the last book ever since Rada caught him reading a battered paperback copy of Eclipse on a mission in Dubai. She teased him the entire plane ride home).  

6. What is guaranteed to piss your OC off?

Cooper is usually incredibly patient with other people and has an insanely high threshold for fielding rude, disrespectful, or outright malicious behavior. However, god help you if you say something untoward about a woman within his earshot. Being the only one in his immediate family with a Y chromosome has made him especially sensitive to feminist issues, and his over-protective big brother complex makes him quick to anger when faced with outright misogyny. 

Let’s just say that his years of service in the armed forces were exhausting for more than one reason. 

13. What would your OC choose to do in the Trolley Problem? The Transplant Problem?

Okay first off, this was my first introduction to these moral quandaries and holy shit those are some fucked up scenarios. Hell, I have a hard time deciding what my answers to those questions would be, let alone Cooper’s… but let’s give it a shot.

Re: The Trolly Problem: I think Cooper would probably choose to switch tracks, sacrificing one life to save five. It seems like the kind of call that they’d teach you to make in the special forces (and S.H.I.E.L.D. for that matter), though only if there was no other possible option. It’s definitely a call Cooper would hate himself for making, but I think if he had to, he’d be able to justify sacrificing the life of one to save many. 

Re: The Transplant Problem: Conversely, Cooper would absolutely not murder an innocent traveler to provide organs for five people. He’s the type of person to immediately acknowledge that there’s a strong difference between the intent to kill someone (aka murdering the traveler) and having someone’s death be an unfortunate side-effect of saving five other people (aka switching the tracks). 

18.  What is a skill your OC wishes they had but doesn’t?

Cooper has always wanted to play the guitar but never had the time or the discipline to sit down on his own and learn. Plus, he’s lost a bit of dexterity in his hands after having his fingers broken multiple times, and so the guitar is even less of a practical hobby to try and pick up. 

25. If your OC could make any one thing (style/object/fad/etc.) immediately and nigh-universally “mainstream,” what would it be? 

Um. 

DON’T JUDGE HIS MOM MADE HIM A PAIR OF CROCHET SHORTS FOR HIS BIRTHDAY AND THEY ARE THE MOST AMAZINGLY COMFY ARTICLE OF CLOTHING HE’S EVER HAD AND ALSO THEY’RE FUCKING BEAUTIFUL AND HIS MOM PUT A LOT OF TIME AND EFFORT INTO THEM EVERYONE SHOUDL HAVE A PAIR

[franq-writes]

[hammerzons]

“Hey. Knock it off.”

“Knock it-- I should knock you off. Your woman is testing me.”

“You know the rules, Meesh. You want on the ship, then no eating members of my crew... especially not Belén.”

“Like he’d get the chance.”

I was super stressed out, so I tried to distract myself by playing around with FireAlpaca, and ended up spending two entire nights making this thing. Out of the infinity+1 AUs I’ve been thinking about, Pirate/Mermaid (”Merman!”) Nischalén took precedence 8I

As per usual, I hate colouring, so it’s a real chop job. What is shading? What are fabric folds? What is sleep? Who knows? (spoiler: it’s not me)

Actual AU info:

Nicky used to captain a merchant ship, then decided to run off and become a pirate like an idiot. He now captains the Djinni, and his crew aren’t so much cut-throat murderers as they are people looking for freedom and adventure (and okay maybe a little murder). Turns out he’s actually pretty good at the whole outlaw thing, to the shock of pretty much everyone who knows him.

(The real reason is because Belén is there, and she’s the power behind the throne, lbh.)

Belén used to be a rich Spanish nobleman’s daughter, but when she was kidnapped and held for ransom by pirates, she easily outsmarted them and subsequently realized how easy (not to mention fun) it would be to become a pirate baller. She’s brilliant, conniving, and badass at the same time, and pretty much the reason the Djinni has been such a powerhouse on the high seas.

Mischa is a Mer shapeshifter (yay legs), and pretty much a pirate’s bogeyman, as he’s made a little legend of himself by raiding pirate ships for sport and shiny, shiny treasure. Certain events happened, and he met Nicky, and Nicky’s become more or less the only person on the planet who actually has any say in what Mischa does or does not kill. (No one gets it.) Also he has tiger shark markings because his original design of blacktip reef shark markings just would not work out in practice.

Also they’re all scarred to hell, because fuck you, that’s why.

As is their universal constant, Mischa and Belén are highly competitive and just total assholes to each other 24/7, with Nicky always finding himself stuck in the middle either praying for mercy or enjoying the show, depending on the time of day. But they’re after a huge prize that legend states is guarded by sea monsters with a taste for man, so they need an inside merman to help them out.

As always, Nicky is grootiepie‘s OC, and Belén is boostle-rabley‘s. The sulky grump monster is mine.

[untilhan-blog]

-whispers- lovebirds family sitcom

Okay but can you imagine Amelie lifting the couch with both twins sitting on it while they’re playing video games so she can vacuum under it without disturbing them

and then there’s a gag in one episode where Craig is making pancakes and somehow one of them ends up stuck to the ceiling of the kitchen and neither he nor the twins can unstick it and everyone has to keep Amelie from looking up so they don’t get in trouble

and somebody tries to be a good friend by getting Amelie a gym membership so they can be “gym buddies” and she’s too polite to decline and she keeps accidentally breaking all the equipment while she’s there while simultaneously trying to hide it from her happily oblivious exercise buddy

and then the episode where someone comes over to visit and hears Craig purring and is really distressed because they aren’t sure if they should say something about it because they don’t know if that’s some big secret and/or Amelie is aware that that’s something he does

it’s so perfect I’m gonna cry why isn’t this a thing that exists

[i-eat-men-like-air]

Cooper + Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving at the Cooper family home is off the hook, lbr. Even when Jillian struggled to put food on the table, she always did her best to make Thanksgiving dinner as much of a smorgasbord as possible (sacrifices were made, though Cooper and Robin had no idea just how big they were— one year Jillian woke up an hour early to ride the bus to work for a month because she spent the money that was supposed to go to fixing the leaking gas line on a giant turkey, a bag of vegetables, and the ingredients for two kinds of pie). Cooper has lots of fond memories of being home for the holiday, eating himself into a stupor and then lazing around with Robin and Jillian while watching the football game. 

However, these days it’s difficult to arrange enough time off to make trips back to Chicago feasible, so Cooper has spent many a Thanksgiving running a complicated and unpleasant op. However, he does his best to rope the SHIELD nerds into coming over for Friendsgiving on the first day in November that they’re all available.  

[i-eat-men-like-air]

I'm being very indulgent and bugging you a bit but the ot3 we've discussed + intimacy/sex ewe

OMG RIGA.

The three of them probably find a lot more comfort in small, gentle acts of physical contact, light touches and soft caresses while tangled together in bed. Sometimes it heats up to heavy petting, which inevitably turns into enthusiastic rounds of sex, but sometimes it’s just… touching each other in ways that make them all feel safe— stroking each other’s hair, running the backs of their fingers over arms and ribs. Rogue and Simon especially find this comforting, the two of them having somewhat unpleasant memories of being touched, and Peter feels fulfilled in knowing that he’s helping to provide them with some measure of peace.