five things, part 1
The first seven:
Five things John Sheppard would have learned at Hogwarts if his mother hadn't married a Muggle (and emigrated) for ravurian
1. Every broomstick flying trick known to man.
2. The passwords to the common rooms of all the other Houses.
3. How to cast the Unforgivable Curses (but no one else would realize he knew, because he would go into the Forbidden Forest and practice on blades of grass, which scream by curling up and going yellow at the edges).
4 & 5. Because I am writing this list, in John's seventh year, a wizard prodigy from Canada would come over for advanced study, and John would learn both how to give blowjobs and do advanced Transfiguration.
Coldfire: Five things that keep Damien up at night (other than Gerald Tarrant). for makesmewannadie
1. Hesseth. They were so very close, and they'd come so very far.
2. Jenseny. He hopes she is at peace and believes it, most of the time, but in the darker hours of the night he imagines the filth of the Undying Prince touching her soul, and fears that she died in horror, with no comfort waiting for her beyond.
3. The nightmare of being stripped of his priesthood. It came true, and he survived it; he can't even regret the loss, because of what the sacrifice of his purity won for humanity in the end. But sometimes he still wakes up with the Patriarch's condemning voice ringing in his ears, and lies shaking for a long time afterwards with the taste of ashes in his mouth.
4. The stars. He likes to sit and look at them now, think of all the worlds out there to be reached, their human brothers and sisters who have been learning and growing out there, all these long millenia of their imprisonment on Erna.
5. Not Gerald Tarrant, because that isn't his name. His face is different, but he is fully as pretty, takes three baths a day when he can get them so he is almost as clean, and is a damn sight more pleasant to curl up in bed with, even if Damien occasionally misses the sensation of flesh that burns with coldfire.
Five Things Bud White Never Let Exley Say for droneish
1. I'm sorry.
2. I love you. (Because what the fuck, seriously.)
3. Huh?
4. Don't you get it?
5. Harder.
Five Two and a half secrets you wish had been revealed in the Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy for gryphonrhi
1. A better sense of how the realm is situated within the larger world. This is the one thing I really miss -- just a little bit of this would make me happier.
2. Who and what the Earth-Masters were and what they wanted, perhaps.
3. Maybe seeing a little more in flashback in book 2 of how Morgon and Raederle met and fell in love -- not really a secret, so it is cheating a bit.
4. And stopping there because that's pretty much it. McKillip's work intentionally obscures a lot of technical details in favor of achieving a sense of wonder and more luminous fantasy. I am not generally a fan of that, and many of her books cross the line for me into not explaining enough and leaving me frustrated and asking too many questions to submerge into her world, but the Riddle-Master trilogy and Forgotten Beasts of Eld are close to perfect as-is, for me!
Five Families Lex or Clark Never Had for mecurtin
1. After Zod was ripped out of him by the roots, Lex still remembered that Lana had come to him, and Lana still remembered that he'd trusted her. They got married when he got out of the hospital, in a small civil ceremony. They didn't know she was already pregnant.
2. A year and a day after Jonathan died, Martha accepted Lionel's proposal of marriage. Clark was afraid she'd done it to protect his secret, even more afraid that wasn't the reason, and because he didn't want to find out, he agreed to come to Thanksgiving dinner at Lionel's townhouse in Metropolis. Lex was already there when he arrived, drinking preemptively. Clark discovered that he could, in fact, get drunk, if he tried really hard. Fucking on the library floor eventually became their own annual brotherly tradition.
3. Clark told Lana the truth about himself after he saved her life in the tornado. They got married and adopted two kids and stayed quietly in Smallville all their lives. He never learned how to fly.
4. During Lex's term as President, Brainiac used Warworld to attack humanity. The war lasted three years, and after it was done, the earth was littered with bones and ash. It rained blood for a month. The survivors retreated to underground bunkers in isolated parts of the world, but everyone had been exposed to some radiation, and no viable children were being born. Lex had his scientists develop a technique for hybridizing human and Kryptonian DNA in test tubes. All of their children were Clark's.
5. One day, Lex and Clark sat down and had a long honest conversation where they put all their cards on the table and made up from all their fighting, and then they moved to Canada and got married and lived happily and uncomplicatedly ever after. (yeah, that one REALLY never happened.)
Five ways Ray Kowalski could be shipped/slashed crossover-style, for sandrainthesun
Okay, I might have to punt some of this one over to cesperanza. *g* I have a hard time placing Ray K in any of my other fandoms, really -- he doesn't seem to fit into speculative or historical universes for me, which is where I'm at 95% of the time.
1. Frank from Wiseguy. Ray let Stella talk him into a more upmarket job and joined the Organized Crime Bureau instead of the police. She left him anyway, and he volunteered for undercover work because his own life sucked bad enough he figured it couldn't get a lot worse. He was wrong, but at least his director had his back.
2. Shirley Schmidt from Boston Legal (played by Candace Bergen). She met Ray at some lawyer thing somewhere after Stella left him sitting at the table nursing a drink while she schmoozed. Shirley watched Stella walk away, smiled a narrow smile that glittered like polished chrome rims, and asked him to dance. She was at least ten years older than him, and it didn't matter a fuck.
3. Johnny from Dead Zone. It was a lot like dealing with Fraser, except instead of seeing ghosts and talking to wolves and licking sidewalks, Johnny just saw visions of the future. Also he was a lot less likely to go jumping off buildings and taking Ray along, so all in all it was kind of restful. Then Johnny told him about that Armageddon thing. Goddammit.
4. ???? ETA from ravurian below in the comments: "when he tried to investigate the strange death of his cousin Charlie (who was apparently assigned to a frickin Deep Space Telemetry study at NORAD, which was, y'know, a shitty cover story to hand anyone who ever actually met Charlie)? Ray had some serious vibes about that place, especially when they sent Captain Doctor Samantha Carter, knock-out blonde, to distract him with boobs and science..."
5. ????????
Five ways John and Jane Smith ended up killing (each other, a hit, an ex, someone, ect.) for tainted_phial
Y'all are going to have to forgive me if I contradict any canon details here, I haven't seen the movie in a while and don't have it on DVD. Also, I tossed in a little Spy Game for kicks.
1. Jane's beloved parents -- father a three-time Nationals champion in karate, mother Olympic bronze in shooting -- died in a car crash when she was twelve. When she was thirteen, her foster father drunkenly raped her. It took her three months to work out a way to kill him without anyone finding out it was her. After she watched him die slowly, screaming as the acid ate away at his internal organs, she had her first good night's sleep in a year.
2. As a kid, John got taken out hunting with an air rifle by an uncle. He killed a small rabbit mostly by accident, threw up all over the carcass, and had to be carried back home sobbing hysterically. His cousins still snicker about it at family gatherings. John smiles and thinks about killing them a lot.
3. Jane passionately hated her freshman college roommate, Carly, a perky airheaded cheerleader who was always smiling idiotically and kept trying to get Jane to come to football games. Jane came in early one Friday night and found her trying to slit her wrists -- the wrong way -- because she was pregnant, and her boyfriend the quarterback had just laughed and dumped her when she asked him about marriage. Jane rolled her eyes and took Carly to the Planned Parenthood clinic downtown. A couple of weeks later, the quarterback was decapitated in a tragic weightlifting accident. Afterwards, Carly quit cheerleading, and also men; Jane, who got some spectacular oral sex out of it, approved.
4. John snarked about the stupid bureaucracy, but the truth was he'd loved being in the Agency. He still missed the high of having to keep his voice steady for the tape recorder while Muir fucked him during his reports. Muir was shot a year after getting John out of that prison in China. John hunted down and killed the director and the three operatives who'd been behind it: point blank gunshot to the face, didn't leave enough to be recognizable. After that, he went into business for himself.
5. Now that they've got their own agency, John and Jane have settled into taking turns as point. Even hits, Jane is in charge. Odd hits, John is in charge, which means Jane listens to his plan, tilts her head, and then takes over. It's okay, though, because every so often the plan kind of falls apart in the middle, and John gets to ride the roller coast just the way he likes it. Besides, Jane gets off on being in command, and that means John gets to get off.
Five things John Sheppard would have learned at Hogwarts if his mother hadn't married a Muggle (and emigrated) for ravurian
1. Every broomstick flying trick known to man.
2. The passwords to the common rooms of all the other Houses.
3. How to cast the Unforgivable Curses (but no one else would realize he knew, because he would go into the Forbidden Forest and practice on blades of grass, which scream by curling up and going yellow at the edges).
4 & 5. Because I am writing this list, in John's seventh year, a wizard prodigy from Canada would come over for advanced study, and John would learn both how to give blowjobs and do advanced Transfiguration.
Coldfire: Five things that keep Damien up at night (other than Gerald Tarrant). for makesmewannadie
1. Hesseth. They were so very close, and they'd come so very far.
2. Jenseny. He hopes she is at peace and believes it, most of the time, but in the darker hours of the night he imagines the filth of the Undying Prince touching her soul, and fears that she died in horror, with no comfort waiting for her beyond.
3. The nightmare of being stripped of his priesthood. It came true, and he survived it; he can't even regret the loss, because of what the sacrifice of his purity won for humanity in the end. But sometimes he still wakes up with the Patriarch's condemning voice ringing in his ears, and lies shaking for a long time afterwards with the taste of ashes in his mouth.
4. The stars. He likes to sit and look at them now, think of all the worlds out there to be reached, their human brothers and sisters who have been learning and growing out there, all these long millenia of their imprisonment on Erna.
5. Not Gerald Tarrant, because that isn't his name. His face is different, but he is fully as pretty, takes three baths a day when he can get them so he is almost as clean, and is a damn sight more pleasant to curl up in bed with, even if Damien occasionally misses the sensation of flesh that burns with coldfire.
Five Things Bud White Never Let Exley Say for droneish
1. I'm sorry.
2. I love you. (Because what the fuck, seriously.)
3. Huh?
4. Don't you get it?
5. Harder.
Five Two and a half secrets you wish had been revealed in the Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy for gryphonrhi
1. A better sense of how the realm is situated within the larger world. This is the one thing I really miss -- just a little bit of this would make me happier.
2. Who and what the Earth-Masters were and what they wanted, perhaps.
3. Maybe seeing a little more in flashback in book 2 of how Morgon and Raederle met and fell in love -- not really a secret, so it is cheating a bit.
4. And stopping there because that's pretty much it. McKillip's work intentionally obscures a lot of technical details in favor of achieving a sense of wonder and more luminous fantasy. I am not generally a fan of that, and many of her books cross the line for me into not explaining enough and leaving me frustrated and asking too many questions to submerge into her world, but the Riddle-Master trilogy and Forgotten Beasts of Eld are close to perfect as-is, for me!
Five Families Lex or Clark Never Had for mecurtin
1. After Zod was ripped out of him by the roots, Lex still remembered that Lana had come to him, and Lana still remembered that he'd trusted her. They got married when he got out of the hospital, in a small civil ceremony. They didn't know she was already pregnant.
2. A year and a day after Jonathan died, Martha accepted Lionel's proposal of marriage. Clark was afraid she'd done it to protect his secret, even more afraid that wasn't the reason, and because he didn't want to find out, he agreed to come to Thanksgiving dinner at Lionel's townhouse in Metropolis. Lex was already there when he arrived, drinking preemptively. Clark discovered that he could, in fact, get drunk, if he tried really hard. Fucking on the library floor eventually became their own annual brotherly tradition.
3. Clark told Lana the truth about himself after he saved her life in the tornado. They got married and adopted two kids and stayed quietly in Smallville all their lives. He never learned how to fly.
4. During Lex's term as President, Brainiac used Warworld to attack humanity. The war lasted three years, and after it was done, the earth was littered with bones and ash. It rained blood for a month. The survivors retreated to underground bunkers in isolated parts of the world, but everyone had been exposed to some radiation, and no viable children were being born. Lex had his scientists develop a technique for hybridizing human and Kryptonian DNA in test tubes. All of their children were Clark's.
5. One day, Lex and Clark sat down and had a long honest conversation where they put all their cards on the table and made up from all their fighting, and then they moved to Canada and got married and lived happily and uncomplicatedly ever after. (yeah, that one REALLY never happened.)
Five ways Ray Kowalski could be shipped/slashed crossover-style, for sandrainthesun
Okay, I might have to punt some of this one over to cesperanza. *g* I have a hard time placing Ray K in any of my other fandoms, really -- he doesn't seem to fit into speculative or historical universes for me, which is where I'm at 95% of the time.
1. Frank from Wiseguy. Ray let Stella talk him into a more upmarket job and joined the Organized Crime Bureau instead of the police. She left him anyway, and he volunteered for undercover work because his own life sucked bad enough he figured it couldn't get a lot worse. He was wrong, but at least his director had his back.
2. Shirley Schmidt from Boston Legal (played by Candace Bergen). She met Ray at some lawyer thing somewhere after Stella left him sitting at the table nursing a drink while she schmoozed. Shirley watched Stella walk away, smiled a narrow smile that glittered like polished chrome rims, and asked him to dance. She was at least ten years older than him, and it didn't matter a fuck.
3. Johnny from Dead Zone. It was a lot like dealing with Fraser, except instead of seeing ghosts and talking to wolves and licking sidewalks, Johnny just saw visions of the future. Also he was a lot less likely to go jumping off buildings and taking Ray along, so all in all it was kind of restful. Then Johnny told him about that Armageddon thing. Goddammit.
4. ???? ETA from ravurian below in the comments: "when he tried to investigate the strange death of his cousin Charlie (who was apparently assigned to a frickin Deep Space Telemetry study at NORAD, which was, y'know, a shitty cover story to hand anyone who ever actually met Charlie)? Ray had some serious vibes about that place, especially when they sent Captain Doctor Samantha Carter, knock-out blonde, to distract him with boobs and science..."
5. ????????
Five ways John and Jane Smith ended up killing (each other, a hit, an ex, someone, ect.) for tainted_phial
Y'all are going to have to forgive me if I contradict any canon details here, I haven't seen the movie in a while and don't have it on DVD. Also, I tossed in a little Spy Game for kicks.
1. Jane's beloved parents -- father a three-time Nationals champion in karate, mother Olympic bronze in shooting -- died in a car crash when she was twelve. When she was thirteen, her foster father drunkenly raped her. It took her three months to work out a way to kill him without anyone finding out it was her. After she watched him die slowly, screaming as the acid ate away at his internal organs, she had her first good night's sleep in a year.
2. As a kid, John got taken out hunting with an air rifle by an uncle. He killed a small rabbit mostly by accident, threw up all over the carcass, and had to be carried back home sobbing hysterically. His cousins still snicker about it at family gatherings. John smiles and thinks about killing them a lot.
3. Jane passionately hated her freshman college roommate, Carly, a perky airheaded cheerleader who was always smiling idiotically and kept trying to get Jane to come to football games. Jane came in early one Friday night and found her trying to slit her wrists -- the wrong way -- because she was pregnant, and her boyfriend the quarterback had just laughed and dumped her when she asked him about marriage. Jane rolled her eyes and took Carly to the Planned Parenthood clinic downtown. A couple of weeks later, the quarterback was decapitated in a tragic weightlifting accident. Afterwards, Carly quit cheerleading, and also men; Jane, who got some spectacular oral sex out of it, approved.
4. John snarked about the stupid bureaucracy, but the truth was he'd loved being in the Agency. He still missed the high of having to keep his voice steady for the tape recorder while Muir fucked him during his reports. Muir was shot a year after getting John out of that prison in China. John hunted down and killed the director and the three operatives who'd been behind it: point blank gunshot to the face, didn't leave enough to be recognizable. After that, he went into business for himself.
5. Now that they've got their own agency, John and Jane have settled into taking turns as point. Even hits, Jane is in charge. Odd hits, John is in charge, which means Jane listens to his plan, tilts her head, and then takes over. It's okay, though, because every so often the plan kind of falls apart in the middle, and John gets to ride the roller coast just the way he likes it. Besides, Jane gets off on being in command, and that means John gets to get off.