Salutations, fellow oddballs and assorted folks of interest!
You can call me Vee, Veri or Effy (derived from "Very Freakin Effable" - no way in heaven, hell or the planes betwixt am I revealing my actual name on here)
My pronouns are they/he, and I finally got brave enough to do this!
This is, as you may guess, a snz/whump blog, so anyone who's not into that can respectfully fuck off. Don't make this any weirder than it is.
I'm on the aroace spectrum and genderqueer (somewhat masc leaning lately though, but idfk) so ✨deal with it babes✨
Ground rules/Shit To Know
I don't take requests for writing. Full stop. Sorr-eeee.
I don't write outright sex ever, sorry to disappoint but that's a Hell No for me.
If you don't have your age in your bio, your ass is getting blocked on sight.
I'm *really* into Go/od Om/ens, E/pic The Mu/sical, Hel/luva Bo/ss and Haz/bin Ho/tel at the moment but I may do things with original characters in the future if the inspiration strikes me.
Fic masterlist is here
Writing tag is #effablewritings
Fandom tags will be on this post to find them easier
Hey, Effy!! 💜💜💜 If you’d like, I was curious about your thoughts on Ry/land Gr/ace and/or Crow/ley for the 3x3 asks? :3
YEEEEEEEEEE
my GUYS
i'm kinda likely to get carried away with crow/ley because i have a lot more thoughts for him so i'm gonna do gr/ace first
answer under Le Clicky Clicky, sorta spoilers for Pro/ject H/ail Ma/ry ofc
3 things I like about him
He’s so silly. He CANONICALLY wears science pun t-shirts and his glasses are worn wrong for most of the movie. Also the SOUNDS he makes. Ryan Gosling did a brilliant job holy FUCK. At one point in the film (iirc it was his first moment in zero g?) Grace just does this high pitched scream, there’s another moment that's become a vocal stim where he goes like “WHOA- NooOOOooo!” Just!!! HE'S CUTE 😭
THE FACT THAT HE AND ROCKY IMMEDIATELY BECAME BEST FRIENDS LIKE WTF 🥺🥺🥺 First contact with alien life and it’s this dorky lil rock spider and the EQUALLY DORKY science teacher IMMEDIATELY tries learning Rocky’s language, sets up a translation software, AND LETS THE LITTLE GUY MOVE IN WITH HIM ON HIS SHIP!!!! I love them I’d die for them both
The fact that even as his memories came back from the retrograde-amnesia drugs he was given before being shot into space against his will, he didn’t freak out that badly, he didn’t try and sabotage the mission to spite his circumstances, he KEPT GOING DESPITE NOT BEING A BRAVE GUY BY ANY METRICS. HE’S THE BEST
3 snz/adjacent headcanons
Has kind of a higher pitched snz almost? Like not DRASTICALLY but a little higher than one would think from looking at him but somehow also exactly what you'd expect. And very rarely once at a time, I think he usually sneezes in doubles and if it’s any more than that something’s really getting to him. Sort of like: “Hh-? EHDT’schhih! Hghh! IHGK’xshHEWw! Sndff!” and then he’ll do some soggy little worn out sigh 🥺
DOESN’T swear after sneezing but WILL say one of the like. Swear replacements in his roster (presumably from being a teacher but I think he's just Like That). So smth along the lines of “Jiminy Cricket, that one hurt...” (dork. loser. i love him.)
Pretty solid immune system in that he doesn’t get sick from other people easily. He takes care of himself, eats well, sleeps 8 hours a night, all that. Then Eva Stratt showed up and said “I’m about to wreck this man”. Prior to getting yeeted into the cosmos, Grace spent a fair amount of time on an aircraft carrier trying to solve the problem of Hey Why Is The Sun Dimming and I figure between lost sleep, constant stress and being around a bunch of new people from all over the world, he spent at LEAST 15 percent of that time fighting off whatever bugs he managed to pick up from his fellow scientists.
I also feel like he’s the type to have some weirdly specific allergy. Like one particular scented body wash or perfume or smth sets him off pretty badly, or there’s some fur or fabric that gets him (it would be so funny if he was allergic to foxes specifically because he’s often associated with that animal in the movie, he has a cardigan with them on it and iirc they send him off with a little fox keychain)
3 snz/adjacent prompts/scenarios
When he’s on the aircraft carrier, he gets sick because of course he does. Cold sea air, stress and close quarters are kind of a lethal combination for all that as I mentioned. He feels miserable, constantly has to warn people he’s sick so as to try and avoid them catching it, but the one person he has NOT told is Stratt. She, of course, knows anyway, and when Grace is finally able to go to bed, he finds a box of canned soup, a flask of tea, and the strongest cold and flu meds she could get her hands on out there. There’s also a note that just says “Dr. Grace. Rest well and return soon. The world is counting on you. ~ Stratt” and he knows that’s her weird way of showing she cares.
Under normal circumstances, had the launch of the Hail Mary gone to plan, Stratt would have done extensive screening to make sure none of the crew members brought anything that would set off one another’s allergies. However, normal circumstances didn’t happen, Grace got roped in at the last minute. So now I’m thinking. He’s alone in space, his crewmates died in their comas, the drugs are wearing off, he’s going through Yáo and Ilyukhina’s personal things as well as his own, trying to piece together what happened and who he is, and he finds some cologne or perfume or something belonging to one of them. And that has predictable results. He writes it down on the whiteboard he’s been using to record what he remembers about himself, right next to “okay with cilantro” (seriously that’s on the board)
His first time sneezing in front of Rocky would have been. Interesting. Simply because Rocky worries a LOT about him. So Grace suddenly has to explain the complexities of the human respiratory system to him. I feel like Grace explains things as they come up, so if Grace were to ever get sick, he’d talk about that to try and ease Rocky’s anxiety (and his own, because going into Science Teacher Mode helps him calm down.)
I have to throw in a little something for the Bloodymary shippers, though I see them as a QPR if anything. (stay with me, this gets kinda weird if you haven’t seen Iron Lung) When, as a lot of people propose, Rocky and Grace rescue Simon (Markiplier’s character, for the uninitiated) from his tin-can submarine in the Blood Ocean, they find him in quite the awful state. Everything else he was dealing with aside, I’m imagining what would happen if it turned out Simon had also been battling a cold the whole time he’d been down there. Rocky and the other Eridian scientists tell Grace to avoid Simon because they’re not sure if this guy is dangerous (and i mean. his nickname is The Butcher. soooooo they aren’t wrong) but Grace has been so starved of human connection for SO long, and he just can’t resist talking to him, being up close... And of course that leads to Grace catching possibly the most brutal cold he’s had in years.
aaaaand WOW that was longer than i thought anyWAY
CROWLEY TIME
3 things I like about him
He’s so cool and also The DORKIEST EVER. His Bentley ONLY plays Queen. He has these silly turns of phrase that I just loveeeee ("awning of a new age" oh you ABSOLUTE LOSER CROWLEY ILY) And omg the fucking SAUNTER. THE WALK DAVID TENNANT DOES AS HIM. Also!! I have such gender envy for him in SO many of his looks through the ages.
God that one moment in season 2 when we see angel!Crowley.... HE WAS SO HAPPY 😭😭😭😭 HIS LITTLE SOUNDS I CAN'TTTTTTT 🥺 I just wanted him to be that joyous forever
The CHAOS GREMLIN VIBES HE HAS. Switching the paintball guns for actual ones in that one scene in season 1, the bit in season 2 where he’s high off his ass on laudanum and OUTRAGEOUSLY Scottish (that scene is probably also my favourite Crowley outfit ever), the BURNING BENTLEY THING!!! LIKE YESSSSSS GIMME THE CROWLEY THAT HAS FIRE IN HIS EYES AND IDEAS LIKE NEBULAE IN HIS HEAD
3 snz/adjacent headcanons
If there’s one thing I love about this corner of the fandom it’s the fact that we are CREATIVE when it comes to how demonic biology can be used to our advantage for these kinds of headcanons. I also love how so many things have been accepted as basically canon to most of us (the idea of the words "bless you" setting him off, the church incense thing, him hissing when he sneezes, etc)
However it does mean that for the purposes of this ask game I'm gonna try and come up with new things or at the very least ones I don’t see as often
How he sneezes will depend on the situation. I feel like he gets mocked in Hell for showing any kind of weakness (god forBID he caught a cold from a human, Hastur wouldn’t ever let him hear the end of it) so he tries his best to hold them back or at the very least make them quieter most of the time. He only feels truly safe when he’s with Aziraphale, so Aziraphale is the only one he’ll willingly sneeze openly in front of (though it took him several decades, if not centuries, to stop reflexively apologising around him)
I think it’d track for him to be photic - it’d give an excuse for the constant sunglasses that’d make sense to any unassuming humans, that’s for sure. Also there’s a kind of twisted irony about the angel who made the stard being cursed with the photic reflex after the Fall.
His Bentley knows when he isn’t feeling well. It turns down the volume on the stereo and tints the windows to ease Crowley’s headaches, heats the interior to alleviate his shivering, and, on more than one occasion, has driven itself to the local pharmacy despite Crowley’s insistence that he’s fine.
3 snz/adhacent prompts/scenarios
This one’s weirdly specific but Crowley would NOT do well in certain parts of Ireland, particularly places with prominent religious associations (e.g. Knock, Lough Derg, Croagh Patrick). That is to say, he’d be horrendously allergic to such places. But of course if Aziraphale wanted to go, Crowley’s simply too in love to say no...
There’s a moment in the book, at the bit where the M25 is on fire, where thermometers read the fire as both insanely hot AND insanely cold simultaneously (i can't remember the numbers in the book off the top of my head and i cannot be bothered to check at the moment). So consider Crowley catches some awful sickness from Hell, and it doesn’t function entirely like human illnesses do. Some of the symptoms are similar - but the fever shouldn’t be causing the thermometer to switch between 15°C and 47°C (neither of which are good temperatures for a person to be of course!) while Crowley sweats and shivers and Aziraphale panics over him.
When Crowley goes to Heaven disguised as an angel near the end of Season 2 he thinks it’ll be a walk in the park because the whole body-swap business went so swimmingly. However. That was him in Aziraphale’s body. Crowley’s body, on the other hand, is rather sensitive to Heaven, I think, and he had to desperately try to stifle his sneezes (but they echoed off the walls anyways because Heaven is an open-plan office building). Yes this DOES also mean that when he goes up there with Aziraphale in Season 3 the same thing happens, and he’d just be standing off to the side absolutely mortified.
uselessly fanning a hand in front of a nose mid-buildup is great. It’s so nonsensical and hopeless, like what are you trying to do? The idea that a sneeze is this physical fluttery thing that can be potentially shooed away.
Had a discussion in a server about Abel giving Peter a flower crown and him being unable to stop sneezing.
Also discussed possible snzfucker Abel?? Only he doesn’t exactly understand that that’s what it is and he just knows that he likes seeing Peter all sneezy and pathetic.
I might redraw this because I drew his hair wrong and he looks like Harvey Harvington 😭
Sorry for the pictures of art and not the actual art itself. I don’t have wifi at my apartment (yet) so it’s hard for me to export shit and transfer it to my phone lol
a preemptive "bless you!" when somebody hasn't outwardly indicated at all that they're going to sneeze is very hot. especially if they don't even know they're going to sneeze, but you do. (bonus points for being the reason why.)
Ya'll know damn well I hate doing this, but i'm in a bit of a shit situation in terms of my finances being taken. I'm just trying to make it through the month till my next disability check drops in.
$5 or even just a reblog is great ^-^
Poor doll...
Basically she was given the cough as an obstacle for an adventure where they're supposed to be quiet, but afterwards, Caine basically admits that he can't just snap her chest cold away, she has to cough up all of the gunk in her chest herself.
Which takes at least 2 weeks of feeling sheepish and self-conscious hacking in the background of every conversation and getting god awful sleep.
another magic tool i think could be cool is a small, pliable rod covered in little sigils that cause it to feel irritating and have a similar ‘seeking’ property to a magic compass
You’re probably aware of the old patent medicines- everything from harmless snake oils to very real, very dangerous concoctions of cocaine, morphine, belladonna, and alcohol that were sold without regulation by people who were more showmen than pharmacists.
And, likewise, you’re probably familiar with today’s over the counter (OTC) medications- the acetaminophen (paracetamol), ibuprofen, diphenhydramine, aspirin, loperamide, bismuth subsalysate- that you would find in the local pharmacy, drug or grocery store.
But you might not be aware that there was a period in between these. Where there was some government regulation, some knowledge that you probably didn’t need (and didn’t want) morphine for your cough, but where the pharmacy knowledge wasn’t quite where it is today as far as making medicine relatively safe for consumers to purchase without a prescription.
Well I recently went to an antique mall with a whole section devoted to early OTC drug packaging, and found it absolutely fascinating. I did some research on what I found for you guys- hope you find it as interesting as I did!
Painkillers/Analgesics:
The first two are both marketed as “Laxative Cold Tablets” and contain a drug called “Acetanilide.” Acetanilide was first created in 1886, and first marketed under the brand name “Antifebrin” in 1887. It was one of the first non-aspirin, non-opioid painkillers/fever reducers available to consumers. Acetanilide is a prodrug of acetaminophen (AKA paracetamol, brand name Tylenol), meaning that while the chemical itself was not particularly helpful, the body would break it down into acetaminophen, which was responsible for the painkilling and fever-reducing effects.
Though effective, acetanilide and other similar acetamenophen prodrugs did have a significant drawback. Sometimes it would metabolize to a chemical called aniline along with acetaminophen (or aniline would be present in the drug all along due to defects in the production process). Aniline can be extremely toxic, causing a condition called methylglobinemia where the blood fails to adequately circulate oxygen. Due to this, once it was discovered that the metabolite acetaminophen could be synthesized and used without this risk, acetanilide was taken off the market.
The doses present in each tablet are measured in grains- typically 1 grain equals about 65mg. Instructions for such medications were usually to take 2 grains initially (130mg) and then 1 grain (65mg) every 3 hours as needed after that.
The term “laxative” appears in many different early OTC cold/pain medications. Oddly, the best I can find was that other ingredients were added to cause the laxative effect, not that bowel motility was a natural side effect of acetanilide. So basically people just really liked laxatives to the point where you could market your cold meds better if you made them laxatives as a perk…
The main painkiller in C-2223 is sodium salicylate- a chemical similar to aspirin that is used today primarily to treat acne topically (if you’ve ever read the bottle of an acne product and seen “salicylic acid” this is a salt version of that acid). It has all the same issues that aspirin does, including risk for bleeding, and reye’s syndrome in children. As such, the warning “not for children” on the bottle is very accurate.
Expectorants:
Along with sodium salicylate, C-2223 also contained potassium iodide. While most people know potassium iodide as a preventative against certain aspects of radiation sickness, it is also an expectorant, or drug that loosens mucous to make it easier to cough up. Potassium iodide is still available as an expectorant, but usually this is by prescription for chronic bronchitis and other longer-term respiratory illnesses. Today potassium iodide has largely been replaced by the expectorant guafenesin due to severe allergy concerns for some patients (those allergic to shellfish, iodine, or contrast media may have a life-threatening reaction).
Another expectorant, usually used in combination with potassium iodide was ammonium chloride. Ammonium chloride works by irritating the respiratory tract, which encourages it to shed liquid, which loosens secretions. Ammonium chloride can still be found in some some cough medicines, but tends to also irritate the stomach and intestines, causing prohibitive side effects.
Antihistamines/Ye Olde NyQuil:
The concept of combining a painkiller, antihistamine, cough suppressant and expectorant into one convenient package for cold and flu is not new.
This tin of Tabcin was from sometime in the late 1930s. It contains the antihistamine thenylpyramine hydrochloride, the painkiller acetophenetidin, and caffeine.
Thenylpyramine hydrochloride is a very early first generation antihistamine. It has largely been replaced by doxylamine (the sedating/antihistamine part of NyQuil) and diphenhydramine (Benadryl).
Acetophenetidin is yet another acetaminophen prodrug- with a twist. Acetophenetidin has a major side effect of being a negative inotrope. Negative inotropes decrease the strength of the heart’s contractions, and so need to be packaged with a positive inotrope (something that strengthens heart muscle contractions), like the caffeine present in this preparation in order to be useful and not cause really serious problems. The caffeine may also have helped counter some of the sedating effect from the thenylpyramine.
Rahnous capsules, meanwhile, go all out. Pyrilamine as an antihistamine (this was taken off the market in the 1970s due to demonstrated risk of liver cancer in rats), acetophenetidin as a painkiller, belladonna as a positive inotrope, extract of lobelia as an expectorant (lobelia, fun fact, contains a drug extremely similar to nicotine), sodium salicylate as another painkiller, camphor (either as another expectorant or positive inotrope, possibly a stimulant to mitigate the sedation from the antihistamine), and magnesium oxide as, you guessed it, a laxative.
I just wanted to thank you for your 3x3 ask game, it’s been such a delight this past week to both answer and read other peoples’ answers and character love and creativity and all that so thank you for brightening up our dashes with it!! 🥰✨
Awwww wait omg this is so so sweet?? 😭😭🥺 Like, awwww, thank you so much for this extremely lovely ask!! 💖💖💖💖💖💖💖 I’m really glad to hear that it’s been brightening your week!
I’ve honestly been really surprised by how many people have been interested in doing the ask game or sending asks to others for it. 🥺 I’ve been having a lot of fun reading people talk about their blorbos and share ideas about them too! I’m excited to catch up on more of it when I get the chance, I’m a bit behind lol.
Tysm again, this is so so very sweet and I’m really glad you’ve been having fun with it!! 🥺🥰
Wait, okay, random fun fact: you guys managed to send asks for every TAD/C character in the main cast not only without a single repeat (even with some time in inbox before being answered), but as @very-freakin-effable pointed out when I mentioned it to them, in almost completely perfect order for the timeline of when the chars entered the circus lmaoo?
Literally aside from Ca/ine not being first (5th out of 7), I got asks for everyone in EXACT order of circus arrival, like starting with King/er, ending with P/om/ni, and everyone in the middle in the same order, which is just kind of a fun coincidence to me lol considering that’s entirely unintentional and from several people over a course of several days
