imagine-lup

[imagine-lup]

pun aside, I do love this mental image. like, Mary Poppins but chaos, or Rainbow Quartz 2.0

lup using feather fall with the umbrastaff. call that falling under the trans umbrella

[imagine-lup]

Taako's convinced he's in a soul-mates AU of some kind when he finds that they all have the same mark but nobody pays him any mind until the century is revealed and so the first they they all do this time instead of threaten each other and criticise Lucretia's actions is pause and go "ohhh" in unison.

It would have been ridiculously funny if they’d realized the tres horny boys + Lucretia had the same shitty tattoo but none of them could remember why they got it

Once they land on Faerun they get commemorative tattoos that say “I saved the multiverse and all I got was this tattoo” but when they’re voidfished it just looks like garbled nonsense

[imagine-lup]

it’s science, taako

[imagine-lup]

The actual first chapter of my Balance fic, To You, 100 Years From Now, is live! Technically I posted the new update at basically 12 midnight last night, and the prologue's been up forever, but I figured I'd wait till morning to actually share it here! It's a Taakitz Kimi no Na Wa (Your Name) AU where canon mostly works out, but I add a few things here and there and they also swap bodies a bunch while Taako's in the Stolen Century and Kravitz is in the span of time after the IPRE make the grand relics but before,,, everything else.

Official Description:

One day, Kravtiz wakes knowing that everything is wrong. The world feels too solid, too alive.

He realizes very quickly that this is not his body, his life, his name. He learns of a group, the IPRE. Learns that whoever this is has a sister who loves him very much, and that they cheat death every year trying to save the worlds they live on.

One day, Taako wakes up like he's floating. He learns that he's not him, that some goddess wants him to help the dead pass on in some other world. He's used to other worlds. He's way too fine with this. He still thinks he's dreaming until the next day, when he sees words on his notebook in handwriting that is completely foreign to him: "Who are you?"

Anyway I've never actually written a fic and stuck to it this hard, but since it's following canon more than most of my other ideas, and since I know that angst is coming (and if you know both stories and know this follows TAZ canon pretty specifically you probably know where this is going).

Also writing Taako's speech patterns is hard and coming up with titles is hard, this is not the first one I had posted (first name was To Every World, Just Once or something dumb like that but I realized that sticking to them swapping once a cycle and only 100 times, so like once a year, would be,, inconvenient).

Anyway, have my first real attempt at fic writing!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23710924

[imagine-lup]

alright dipsticks, hear me out

taz balance au where everything is the same except that lucretia and barry have each others’ farspeech frequencies

it all starts about a year after lucretia voidfishes the plane. she’s poking around goldcliff, hoping to find some way to con some rich shit into paying for her gigantic moon base, when she runs — literally runs headfirst — into some bespectacled nerd in denim

barry, for his part, doesn’t know why this complete stranger is offering to buy him lunch as an apology for spilling his Fantasy Starbucks all over his oldass shirt, but he sure as shit isn’t complaining. especially when something, something about this kid feels so... familiar

in a spur of the moment decision, lucretia gives him her farspeech number. barry doesn’t think anything of it at the time

...anything, that is, until he’s rising, spectral and flickering, over his battered corpse, and he begins laughing hysterically, tears glimmering in long-gone eye sockets. he may not have lup back, but he’s got his little sister.

so they start texting. is barry furious at lucretia for what she’s done? sure, a bit. but he understands her logic, and his temper is soothed when she point-blank tells him that she’s going to help him find lup. they may be working against each other as far as the relics are concerned, but if lucretia can locate at least one more shred of her former family, then by god is she going to. barry understands, he thinks, and so they help keep each other a little less lonely over a long ten years

lucretia keeps barry updated on how the other birds are doing, as best she can. they rejoice together as magnus and julia take back raven’s roost, and when glamour springs is shadowed by a mass poisoning barry has to do everything up to physically restraining lucretia from beating the ass of whichever motherfucker did that to taako. wait, he tells her. physical pain is temporary. a lich, on the other hand, is in a prime position to make some douche’s life a living hell. lucretia grins and offers to fund his plots in any way she can.

barry, for his part, keeps lucretia up-to-date on the search for lup. they have matching little cork boards in their respective offices, each filled with maps and theories and half-baked what-ifs. they aren’t any closer to finding out what happened to her, but they will. they have to.

speaking of things happening, barry is the first one to find lucretia after wonderland. he hadn’t been able to reach her for a month, and so when he feels the enormous surge of pure magical despair explode outwards from the felicity wilds, he transports himself there as quickly as he can. he finds his baby sister at the centre of a mile-wide crater, twenty years older and countless sacrifices poorer, and he holds her as gently as he can without physical hands, and makes her promise to never deal with wonderland again. fuck, he’ll get the animus bell for her, he doesn’t care. he just can’t see lucretia in that state ever again. (never again, that’s what they told themselves, in a group huddle late one night the dawn of cycle 66. he’d failed her once. he couldn’t do it again.)

as she builds up the bureau, lucretia starts getting questions about her best friend on the stone. lucas asks her point blank who it is one day early in their acquaintance, and she answers “b- uh, b-j” “that tells me basically nothing. what does that even stand for?” lucas demands. “uh,” lucretia says, “🅱️amazing jrace”

thus begins a fine tradition of bureau employees trying to get any info they can on the mysterious “bj”, including his actual name. so far some of the top answers they’ve gotten from madame director include “bitchin jackass” “burger joint” “beetlejuice” and “banjo jimboree”. once, robbie asks her if he’s her secret lover, and lucretia has to summon a bucket before retching in disgust, which puts paid to that particular theory fairly succinctly

barry, for his part, adores these rumours. he keeps asking if lucretia will lift the lich barrier, just for a day, so he can come and stir up even more shit. lucretia, while admittedly very tempted, denies.

when he finds out that lucretia has been telling bureau employees that the red robes are evil, barry is understandably insulted. the next group of regulators that touch the ground are covered in fantasy cheez whiz for the duration of their mission.

lucretia gets him back by replacing all the denim in the jeans at his base with silly string. barry moves bases, and the prank war escalates

(no one has the courage to tell madame director that her hair has been turned rainbow at the last candlenights party. privately, lucretia thinks she looks bitchin)

every now and again, lucretia will text barry in a panic. these texts tend to look like this:

“barry.” “barold aid me” “barry I fucked shit up real good this time” “barry” “barry” “barry I was at the fantasy Olive Garden and the waiter said ‘enjoy your meal’ and I said ‘you too’ barry kill me n o w “

barry can and will mock lucretia mercilessly for this. he also insists for weekly video updates on fisher and junior.

he also has biweekly fantasy skype sessions with davenport

booyah: I saw a woman so beautiful I started crying???

bear-old: oh mood

booyah: and then I hired her and her son (who’s a little bitch) to work on my secret moon base and I think I’ve made a terrible mistake???????

bear-old: oh my fucking god this is why I don’t trust you to stop the apocalypse

when the thb start working as reclaimers, barry demands weekly updates on them, as well. it goes about as well as you’d expect

booyah: magnus ate the philosopher’s stone

bear-old: he fucking w h a t ?

booyah: he used the glutton’s fork, and he ATE the philosopher’s stone. taako and merle used stone skin and stone shape to get the damn thing out. happy fucking candlenights.

when barry finds out that taako’s DATING the fool who’s been chasing after him wile e coyote style for over a decade, he loses his s h i t. he and lucretia have a girls’ night where they bitch about taako and eat shitty chocolate to cope

bear-old: you HIRED a BABY???

booyah: he’s ten! that’s plenty old. and he’s certainly competent, seeing as he found my organization when even you couldn’t.

bear-old: creesh please. please do not Irreparably Fuck Up A Small Child

booyah: hey, at least I’m not the one who threw him off a moving train!

bear-old: I never threw anyone off a

bear-old: lucretia

bear-old: who

bear-old: who in your employ threw ANGUS MCDONALD, a LITERAL CHILD, off of a MOVING. VEHICLE?

booyah:

booyah: taako

bear-old: fucking fantasy CHRIST

(they have quite a few girls’ nights eating shitty chocolate and razzing on taako, actually)

team sweet flips goes to the director’s office one day to give a status report and find her red-eyed and coughing. she says she has allergies. the cute cat video barry just texted her on her stone, however, begs to differ

lucretia preps the boys for refuge, yes, but her mind is filled with texts and tomes and the letters “l u p” carved into a bureau wall. she passes countless sleepless nights with barry on the line, trying to decipher what it all means

but they emerge from the woven gulch unscathed, and that can only mean one thing: wonderland

she doesn’t tell barry where she’s sending them. she can’t let him interfere out of some misguided attempt to save her from the place. her texts grow few and far between

she doesn’t have to tell barry. he knows

the day they get sent out, as lucretia breaks down in her office, surrounded by a dizzying vastness that could envelop her very being if she would just let it, her stone buzzes.

four words: I’ll keep them safe

and then?

well, then it’s the end of the world

(but when lup emerges from her decade-long cage, phantasmal and resplendent, lucretia and barry share a look)

(and when the hunger is consuming the only home she knows and she’s flying out in one last attempt to face is, barry is on her stone)

(and when the dust settles and they’re finally, finally free, when the world hears a story and a song and former and current bureau employees alike learn just how important the mysterious “bj” really is, when lucretia looks at the wreckage of her life’s work and home and family — when all that happens, barry is the one to beckon to her with open arms.)

(they’ve been beside the other for a hundred and ten years, after all. that’s not gonna fucking change now.)

anyways yeah folks barry and lucretia texting au play with me in this space

@littlemisscritical @thatcoldfeeling and you know what? @herbgerblin what the hell

[imagine-lup]

Hello I'm very behind on Graduation, it's fine, but I am writing a fic!

I won't post it on here until I have another chapter up, but the 300 odd word prologue is on AO3 now and it's a Kimi no Na Wa AU about Kravitz waking up one day on a planet as the Seven Birds look for the Light of Creation. It will also have Taako doing Reaper work, Board Certified Angst (this is a Your Name AU, it's kind of part of the description) and a happy ending.

[imagine-lup]

The Holy Trinity

[imagine-lup]

I'm going back through the original TAZ while waiting for more episodes of Graduation and I just got to the last Episode of The Stolen Century.

That moment where Griffin is describing Lup pulling out the Umbra Staff for the first time. I missed it originally, but Justin says (to Griffin) this softer "Fuck you" as he has this moment of realization that Griffin made his character carry around this relic of his forgotten sister for the whole campaign and. That hit me real deep man

[imagine-lup]

I'm going back through the original TAZ while waiting for more episodes of Graduation and I just got to the last Episode of The Stolen Century.

That moment where Griffin is describing Lup pulling out the Umbra Staff for the first time. I missed it originally, but Justin says (to Griffin) this softer "Fuck you" as he has this moment of realization that Griffin made his character carry around this relic of his forgotten sister for the whole campaign and. That hit me real deep man

[imagine-lup]

You know how sometimes you don’t realize your experiences are fucked up until you tell someone casually and they look at you with horror? I imagine that happens a lot to Lup and Taako when they first join IPRE.

They don’t seem like kids with a tragic backstory. They’re confident and goofy and loud, they play a lot of pranks, and sure, maybe their clothes are a little tattered, but everyone else just assumes that’s a fashion. Until they get comfortable, over time, and things just start coming out.

Magnus moans about starving when the cafeteria shuts down for a day and Taako’s like “Nah, it takes at least two days to get to starving.” Lup starts debating the fact that Magnus is much bigger than they were as pre-teens and could probably go longer than that, meanwhile in the background the others are exchanging concerned glances as they realize that the twins are casually discussing their personal experiences with actual starvation.

Merle stops teasing super-chef Taako about stuffing his face with cheese puffs after Taako retorts that he’s eaten out of garbage cans before, this is hardly the worst thing he could be consuming. Lucretia holds back from asking further questions when Lup explains that she likes fire because it’s useful for self-defense and keeping you from freezing when you have to sleep outside. Barry visits their apartment to study with Lup and comes back to the others with the news that the twins don’t have beds, they just sleep on blankets on the floor, and they don’t think there’s anything wrong with that because according to both of them, it’s far cozier than other places they’ve slept.

And everyone just…they can’t not do something about it. Davenport, the communal dad, provides the funds, and writes it off as “team building.” Barry gets them a bed, and Magnus spends a lot of time choosing the perfect table and chairs for their near-empty kitchen. Lucretia provides a personal space heater for their bedroom. Merle buys them so many bags of junk food, they don’t have room on their shelves. They all pitch in, because Lup and Taako are part of the family now, they’ve been adopted, and by god they’re gonna start having normal things.

[imagine-lup]

dead before impact

[imagine-lup]

“Barry’s name was originally Sildar Hallwinter” taken very literally. Walk with me.

Sildar Jean Hallwinter. A stuffy name that belonged to great grandpa. “Jean” said all fancylike as in “Jean Valjean”.

Heck it. That’s a mouthful. Parents called him “Darry”. Darry Jean Hallwinter.

Misspelled as “Barry” on his introductory IPRE nametag. It stuck as a joke, then became the only thing people knew him by. Barry Jean Whatshisface.

Haha “Bluejean”. Cause he wears Bluejeans all the time. It’s hilarious.

Barry J. Bluejeans.

[imagine-lup]

The Holy Trinity

[imagine-lup]

One thing I love about Lucretia Adventurezone is that she gives off this air of gravitas, she looks super put together, and then you actually pay attention to her track record and it’s like:

All my friends told me this plan was dumb and wouldn’t work but I’m gonna try it anyway

Tries to take notes during a bar fight

This organization will only last until we’ve found all the Relics, which is why the bracers are impossible to remove

Gives one of said irremovable bracers to a growing child.  Also offers said child a job.

Tells everyone there are seven Grand Relics and they don’t have any of them yet, even though she’s literally carrying one of them and she could easily make people think there were only six

Running a secret moon organization, shares secret information with only a select few, some of those few are Garfield the Deals Warlock and whoever runs the Chug’n’Squeeze

Decides that the best way to hide her secret base is to disguise it as a fake moon.  Decides that the best method of transport is oversized cannon.

She’s a human disaster and I love her.

[imagine-lup]

fun fact: i’m banned from the biggest, most official The Adventure Zone discord server (the one Justin has been known to talk in) for the crime of “talking about how the fandom often portrays Lup in a transmisogynistic way” so if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about how ready the TAZ fandom is to throw trans women under the bus, i don’t know what will.

[imagine-lup]

the canon that Taako and Lup are (probably identical) twins and Lup is trans is very good but the headcanon that Taako and Lup are both trans and at a young age they just Swapped is also excellent

[imagine-lup]

Wait,, you made that before stolen century?? This wasn't canon when you did this?

My favorite character is… The Umbra Staff.

(These four scenes are connected in my mind, but I’m not 100% sure that’s true story-wise)