cafephilewrites

[cafephilewrites]

Proposal for new fandom etiquette:

If you read a fic because it was linked/recced somewhere, you leave a comment saying "came from XXX" and that comment doesn't need to include anything else.

Because when all of a sudden there's a lot of activity on one particular fic I WANNA KNOW WHY!!!!!

[cafephilewrites]

if you don't do anything else today,

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.

white people CAN interact with this post. share it, spread it.

[cafephilewrites]

scaffolding

Parker was gone.

This wouldn't do for Hardison, who was very proud of having learned to cook omelettes all by his lonesome so as to stymie Eliot's attempts to sneak into the kitchen and strain his sprained (not broken) wrist making sure everyone ate something other than cereal. This pride demanded that everyone be there to witness his slightly dry and mildly overspiced creations.

Parker had, thirty minutes ago, pursed her lips when the smell of powdered garlic (baby steps, they were still getting to knife skills) drifted in from the kitchen. Twelve and a half seconds later she'd been out the window.

Which is why Eliot is here, wandering around the port like a goddamn idiot, seriously considering making 'here kitty' noises as a tactic to find Parker. It's about as low on his list of options as possible, just under screwing up his hand more by climbing to get a better vantage point and right above giving up. He doesn't think it'd actually work, but she might show up just to ask him why he was being weird.

"Eliot," a familiar voice calls, from the top of a shipping container, and he thanks the god he probably still believes in for saving him from unnecessary injury and/or humiliation before scanning his surroundings. A familiar pale face looks down at him from about two stories up, which isn't so bad, considering that the ladders on the side line up.

It takes a bit of undignified scrambling and the handkerchief from his pocket tucked between his teeth so he doesn't get tetanus from the rungs–he'd use the dental dam he keeps in there with it but that would demand an explanatory conversation he doesn't really want to have with Parker right now, so he settles for the worn fabric.

There's a kind of appreciation in her eyes when he gets to the top–not awe, like some of the civilians he shows off for, but acknowledgement borne of understanding, and it's a little intoxicating sometimes. It makes him want to peacock a little for her, which is a dangerous impulse.

"This thing smells like fish," he tells her, instead of asking what's wrong or saying he was worried. He's long learned to give her the space to reach out even though she's a little less skittish these days–more likely to nip than bite. He's always liked that about her–the violent instincts–though they've landed them all in trouble more than once. It means he worries about her a little less.

"Needed something bad," she says, frowning a little. "The smell of the spices wouldn't go away."

"Powdered garlic that bad?" he asks, hoisting himself a little farther up the corrugated metal. It digs uncomfortably into his hip, and feels upsettingly slimy, but he pays that less attention than the stiff way Parker's holding herself–not like she's in a no touching mood, but rather like she's holding herself back from climbing all over him.

He considers the bruises where an unexpected piece of scaffolding that had caught him across the thighs and the shoulder he'd nearly dislocated in the process of spraining his wrist and decides that won't do.

He holds out his arms and relaxes his face. No one but Parker has ever liked it when he does that–it makes his eyes go blank and his jaw loose, like he's sleeping or out of it or a robot, or whatever else people have said. He'd trained himself out of it as a kid, figured out how to look confident or smug or bored all the time.

Then, for a long time, he was just angry, and that made it easy.

Parker likes to lean across the table and poke at the creases of his brow and chin and eyes until they go flat. She told him, once, when she had a hundred and four fever and was potentially hallucinating, that it made her feel less alone to be around someone else who wasn't pretending.

He holds for a minute, then two, and just when his arms are starting to burn she growls and clambers over to cram herself against his ribcage and tuck her sharp little chin into the divot of his collarbone.

"This is worse," she informs him, muffled against his undershirt.

"Than the fish smell?" he asks, and gets a sharp pinch to the side for playing stupid. "Ow!"

"The feeling," she says, only whining a little. "Feelings. I dunno. I'm not good at telling them apart."

"I know," he says, and she grumbles and tries to fit a hand under his shirt which is not happening on the top of a shipping container, so he grabs her hand in his own and tips his head to redirect it up to his hair. "Stop trying to distract me, Parker."

"I don't wanna talk about it," she complains, doing her best to make his head look like a rats' nest with her hand at the center.

"I can't make you," he reminds her, shifting to adjust her weight and then settling back in. "But you know it'll just last longer if you doing."

"Ugh," she says, with every one of her little bird bones. "I don't want to need that. I don't want to need you, or Hardison, or anyone else."

"...okay," he says, confused. "But you. Don't?"

"That's the problem! I can't tell!" She twists, pressing her back into his sternum and looking out across the dock. "And if I don't, then I'm doing it wrong."

"Doing what wrong?"

"Loving you," she says, and it's been months now, but it still takes his breath away to hear her say the words so easily. It isn't like they haven't been saying it in different ways to each other for years, now, but the frank way she puts it makes Eliot's throat close. Hardison isn't the same, he knows, but Hardison first told Eliot he loved him eight days after they met when he'd picked up a box of Cheerios and milk for the whole team at a corner store.

"You can't do loving someone wrong," he tells her, because he's maybe bad at saying it but he's loved lots of people lots of different ways, and he's done some pretty bad things as a result, but he doesn't regret any of the feelings.

"Yeah, well, I'm special," she says, which is her new favorite way to react to any kind of reasonable advice.

"I don't want you to love me like you can't live without me," he says, and by the way her breath catches in her chest, heart kicking up a gear until it feels like a hummingbird trapped under the palm he's laid across her ribs, he's hit the heart of the issue.

"But that's how you're supposed to do it," she says, small and plaintive and tired.

"Supposed to is stupid," he tells her, and himself, a little bit. "I can't imagine my life without you and Hardison. But I could do it, probably. I wouldn't want to. I would hate it, more than anything else. I need you to be happy. I need you to be comfortable, and because my life would be so much worse without you. But I don't need you to live, and I'm not sorry about that."

She goes silent for a long moment and then squirms out of his grip, turning and bracing her knees on the roof so she can tuck her chin over the crown if his head.

"You're smart," she informs him, sounding contemplative."

"Well. I'm not doing anything else with all the brain space you and Hardison use on movies," Eliot says, a little muffled by the base of her throat.

"You could wear your special glasses," she suggests, and he growls, low in his chest, at the idea.

It makes her giggle so he keeps it up until she falls, boneless, back into his lap, and starts batting at his hair like a cat.

"C'mon," he says, nudging her. "If the eggs get cold I think Hardison will cry and we're out of the soft tissues."

"Don't be mean," she says, but bounces to her feet and helps him down the ladder.

They set off down the dock and there's a weight missing from Parker's steps he hadn't even noticed until it was gone.

That'll do.

[cafephilewrites]

hey! we thought this might be coming and here it is. and it sucks! mass vaccination is one of our best tools at preventing the spread of COVID. public comment is open until 11:59 PM EDT on the 23rd of May.

you can leave a comment here:

you can leave an anonymous comment, but usually non-anonymous ones do carry more weight.

[cafephilewrites]

One of my favorite approaches to painting is to select a 'domestic' scene, many times hinted at within a narrative but not directly described by an author. This is one such example with Bilbo writing his will for Frodo and contemplating keeping the One Ring. Frodo's Inheritance 11" x 14" Oil on panel private collection

[cafephilewrites]

Finally watched the Addams Family Values recently! and honestly. my main takeaway is

Debbie slays. And Joan Cusack is a QUEEN

[cafephilewrites]

scientists wont tell you this! (because it's not true)

experts don't want you to know this! (because it's made up)

doctors HATE this one trick! (because it's dangerous and unhealthy)

[cafephilewrites]

on a related note, who up for a new nile week? about mid august, i think that would give people enough time to digest the movie

[cafephilewrites]

crayfish galore!

[cafephilewrites]

"I don't want to read this" is totally valid.

"This is disgusting to me" is totally valid.

"I don't want to read this because it is disgusting to me" is totally valid.

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

[cafephilewrites]

crayfish galore!

[cafephilewrites]

Your next favourite might involve some foul play.

Start your 7 day free trial of Poob today, and watch cult classic Mališa: A Bird's Eye View of The Assassination That Triggered The Great War

[cafephilewrites]

Not to start discourse but I will be forever mad that every time I go into the Goncharov tag I see people complaining that they watched the movie expecting a soft queer romcom about pure cinnamon rolls and instead they got a complex and violent film about deeply flawed people where everyone dies.

By all means, engage in fandom however you choose. But don’t blame the source material for not being consistent with some random fanon on tumblr. Kinda wild to get mad that the movie about violent, morally dark grey criminals has violence, crime and moral greyness in it. You know? Also, imho given the time this movie was made, the queer coding was daring; this is NOT an example of queerbaiting.

[cafephilewrites]

Leverage Con Names

This a list of all the cons/scams/grifts that the Leverage team names during the show. Included is everything from a small one-on-one interaction between a grifter and a mark (eg. Little Orphan Annie) to full blown multilevel integrated cons (eg. The White Rabbit). If it had a name, it’s here.

If it has a black star beside it, it has a canon explanation or demonstration (eg. The Moonwalking Bear). If it has a white star, there were hints or comparisons made about it (eg. The Apple Pie is “like the Cherry Pie, but with lifeguards”). If it’s hyperlinked, it’s a real life scam and the link is to Wikipedia. If it’s totally unmarked, then the name was mentioned but never elaborated upon and is a part of the team’s beautiful argot. :)

The Lost Heir ★

S1E3, S2E9 

A Rip Deal ★

S1E5

The Spanish Prisoner Scam ☆

[in reference to Irina’s adoption con]: “It’s just like the Spanish Prisoner Scam.”

S1E6

The London Spank 

The Geneva Paso Doble

The Apple Pie ☆

“It’s like the Cherry Pie, but with lifeguards.”

S1E9

The Cherry Pie 

Glengarry, Glen Death ★

S1E9

The Turnabout ★

S2E1

Ponzi Scheme

The Mona Lisa Variant ★

S2E7

The Wire Game ★

S2E11

The Swedish Rail Con

The Cairo Flyer ☆

Sophie: “No way, I’m not wearing that dress again.”

S3E5

The Double-Blind ★

S3E5

A Fiddle Game ★

S3E6, S3E10

The Pill Scare ★

S3E9

The Berlin Shuffle

Little Orphan Annie ★

S3E9

The Skagway Shuffle ★

S3E10

The Mummy’s Tiara ★

S3E12

The Vegas Wake-Up Call ☆

Like the Cuban Sandwich except “the boyfriend shows up.”

S3E13

The Cuban Sandwich ★

S3E13

An Edward Albee ★

S3E14

The Spanish Turnabout ☆

Sophie: “I’m thinking the Spanish Turnabout.”

Parker: “Hmm, no, he’s not going to leave the country. The [Spanish] Turnabout pays off in an airport.”

S3E16

The Peking Watch

The Moscow Circus ☆

Sophie, to Nate: “I’m running the Moscow Circus con, you’re the ‘Ivan’. Go.”

S4E1

The Romanian Circus ☆

Nate: “What [Sophie]’s doing is she’s running a variant. It’s called a Snipe Hunt. It’s the [Romanian] Circus, but it’s leaner and faster.”

S4E5

The Snipe Hunt ★

S4E5

The Roman Wedding ★

S4E6

The Peruvian Slide

The Boca Backlash

The Oklahoma Little Chucky

The Chilean Custard

The Moonwalking Bear ★

S4E8

The Big Store ★

S4E8

The MassDOT Special ★

S4E9 (also in S3E7, but unnamed)

The Wicked Stepsister

The High Minne Scam Variant ★

S4E15

The Lazy Dachshund

The Pizarro Pressure Point

The Double-Pronged Monkey Con ★

S4E16

A Radio Play ★

S4E17

The Oligschlager Shuffle ★

S5E2

The Arkham Ascent ★

S5E3

The White Van Speakers ★

S5E4

The White Rabbit ★

S5E12

A Swap-and-Whisper Campaign ★

S5E13

The Trojan Horse ★

S5E15

[cafephilewrites]

[cafephilewrites]

Twenty-One Things You Don’t Say to a Transsexual by Riki Anne Wilchins.

The fact that I am the only transsexual you know only emphasizes that…we are secretly plotting to take over the planet Earth, and infiltrating your prevailing nontranssexual culture is just our first step

In TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism, issue 3, volume 1. 1994.