#Cold Take with Frost

[potatosteinsillustrations]

Frost never misses, B R A V O! !!!

[compacflt]

Rumors from Pearl Harbor.

When Admiral Kazansky first comes to Pearl, he brings with him about half of his previous staff, all exceptionally-hardworking people hand-picked over years—advisors, flag aides, secretaries, ranks all over the board. But his new hires, upon getting acquainted with the old guard, are shocked to discover that his previous staff still hardly knows him at all.

“He keeps to himself, mostly,” Lieutenant Commander Hartford explains over a pint. “I made the mistake of asking him once what he did for fun. You know, like, hobbies and stuff. He blinked at me for a second, and then said, ‘I read.’ That’s it! I read! My advice to you newcomers would be, don’t ask him questions about his personal life, because it tends to be pretty boring.”

“It sounds to me like he’s a walking, talking Wikipedia page,” says Captain Calvert, who worked for the previous two Pacific Fleet Commanders and thinks she knows how to deal with them by now. “We owe it to ourselves to figure him out. It’ll make our lives easier, anyway. So, let’s put our heads together: what do we know about him?”

What they know are his habits, which they’ll come to learn intimately over the next few years, and which are admittedly pretty boring. Admiral Kazansky is one of the first to show up to work in the morning and one of the last to leave in the evening. He often answers e-mails past 2300 hours, but never later than midnight. Jokes never catch him off-guard; he rarely smiles, and when he does, it has an ulterior motive. When he’s not working, he’s scheming and making plans to go back home to San Diego, and his requests for leave are always granted, because he works like a pack mule from home anyway. He signs off every e-mail with “Sincerely,”…

“Is he sincere, though?” asks Chief Warrant Officer Kent halfway through Admiral Kazansky’s first year. (Admiral Kazansky is surely unaware that his staff now spends the second Friday of every month chit-chatting about him over drinks in downtown Honolulu.) “I can’t ever tell. And he lives in Hawaii. San Diego’s nice, I know, but what’s so different about the beaches there that he can’t get here?”

“I genuinely don’t think he’s human,” confesses Commander Stoddard. “People warned me about that when I came here, and I laughed it off, but… he keeps his desk biologically sterile. Not one fingerprint, but I’ve never seen anyone wipe it down. I’ve looked through his drawers. Don’t judge me, I got curious. Everything squared away, like he’s goddamn Einstein or something. Have any of you ever seen him in his civvies?” No one has. “God damn it, where does he shop for groceries? No one’s seen him at a grocery store? Does he even own a pair of jeans? Does he wear his uniform to bed, too?”

“He probably goes grocery shopping on the whole other side of the island to avoid all the enlisted kids,” laughs Captain Calvert. “Come to think of it…you know how he always eats lunch in the office? It’s always a salad. And always the same kind of salad. This guy survives on one cup of coffee and one spinach salad a day. Maybe he really isn’t human.”

They build out their wealth of knowledge and come to learn that Admiral Kazansky is defined by his extremes, by what he always does and what he never does. Admiral Kazansky gets his uniforms dry-cleaned every week, though he never spills anything on them. No one has ever seen Admiral Kazansky stumble over his words while giving a speech, or trip over a sidewalk curb, or push a “pull” door. He is always polite and never friendly. Sometimes he is cold, and sometimes he is cruel in his patience with you when you’ve fucked up, like a cat toying with a hemorrhaging mouse. But he never raises his voice. He is always immaculately put-together, well-groomed, constructed every day like a product on an assembly line. Nothing is ever out of place. Allegedly his umbrella once turned inside-out during a rainstorm; he disdainfully shook it once, as a hunter might pump a loaded shotgun, and it flipped itself right-side-in again. The laws of physics do not seem to apply to him. Nor do the natural embarrassments that come with being human. Admiral Kazansky is never flustered, never harried, and never falls apart.

“I found this old picture of him shaking hands with another pilot on the Internet,” says Chief Warrant Officer Kent in Admiral Kazansky’s second year. “Smiling like the Cheshire Cat. Never seen him smile like that in all my years working with him. And he had frosted tips, too. Like Guy Fieri on a diet and steroids. It was the eighties, sure, but it’s like he knew how to have fun, once upon a time. Wonder what happened to him.”

“I feel lonely for him sometimes,” says Commander Stoddard. “Strict guy like that, no family, no friends, no wife, nothing to live for but the Navy? He’s like a workhorse with blinders on. Nowhere to go but forward. That’s a lonely existence.”

“Not if you’re a robot,” says Lieutenant Commander Hartford. “I swear, sometimes he breathes and it makes me jump, ‘cause I forgot he was alive!” —What else doesn’t Admiral Kazansky do?

That’s when they realize that none of them, not the old guard nor the new, has ever, not once, ever seen or heard Admiral Kazansky sneeze.

And they all finally give up the game and quit arguing and agree that, no, he really isn’t human after all. He must be some cyborg from the future sent to whip the Pacific Fleet into shape, and you can’t ask for too much humanity from someone who’s doing a pretty damn good job of it.

The rumors start soon after that. Jokes that could get them all tossed out of the Navy, but probably won’t. Jokes that accidentally spread like wildfire.

Yes, Admiral Kazansky could be a cyborg, but he also could be a Mormon fundamentalist, or a Scientologist, or a really weird Catholic. Maybe he goes home to San Diego so often because in his spare time he’s really a mule ferrying cocaine across the Mexi-Cali border. That’s what he does for fun. He eats spinach salads because he’s a reincarnation of Popeye the Sailor Man, and he needs all the super-strength he can get to deal with the Navy’s modern-day bullshit.

“I don’t know if that story makes sense,” laughs Captain Calvert on the phone with her husband in Washington, “but it makes more sense than the real Admiral Kazansky does!”

So the rumors get spread around.

“I don’t know if you know this,” Maverick comments, watching Ice make their bed from the relative comfort of the bedroom doorway, “or if I should tell you this, because you might crack down on it, which would be a shame, ‘cause it’s funny. But every time you send a mass e-mail to the Pacific Fleet commissioned officer corps, you become the main topic of conversation between all of us officers for a solid day and a half.”

“Oh?” says Ice with a smile, struggling to fit the last corner of the fitted sheet to the mattress. He sighs, tugs on the strings of his old ratty-ass hooded sweatshirt, and looks at Maverick balefully through his glasses. “Help me out over here, would you? —What are people saying? All good things, I hope.”

“Not really,” Maverick says, stuffing a pillow into a pillowcase as he stares out the window into the San Diego sunshine. “Some pretty crazy shit, actually. Hard as hell for me to keep a straight face. I heard this one—you know, people are saying you eat nothing but salads?”

“Oh,” laughs Ice, hospital-cornering the free sheet. “Yeah, that one’s kind of true. I bring salads in to the office sometimes.”

“You hate salads.”

“I know, it’s torture! Move over.” He bumps Maverick out of the way to tuck in the last corner. “But, I figure, if a man torments himself with spinach-and-arugula salads three times a week, you ought to respect his commitment. It’s all an act. You get to a certain Defense Department paygrade, it all starts being storytelling and stagecraft.”

“Or trickery and deception, depending on how you look at it.”

“Sure. But you could say that about everything. —Besides, I’d rather the Navy discuss my salads than discuss… well, this.” He gestures to Maverick, then down to the bed. They start tugging the comforter over it together. “How much slack you got over there?”

“‘Bout a foot.”

Ice pulls his side down a couple more inches to match, then flips the top up. “Is that it? That’s all people are saying about me?”

Maverick grins and bends down to pick up a pillow. “They’re also saying that you’re the reincarnation of Popeye the Sailor Man. I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam, and all that. Think fast.”

Ice doesn’t think fast, and the pillow hits him square in the face, and he laughs again as he catches it in his arms. “Shit, that’s good,” he says; “I was just about to call Slider, think I’ll tell him that one. That’ll make him laugh. Popeye Iceman.” He tosses the pillow onto the made-up bed and pulls out his cell phone, but—then he frowns, grimaces, mutters “Ah, no,” and turns away to sneeze.

[tiger-in-the-flightdeck]

Leonard 'Cold As Ice' Snart: Huh. It's been almost twenty minutes since I explained to a murderer just how much Flash and I like each other. I better do something about that.

[the-darkestminds]

Me ranking where I’d wanna live in Prythian based purely on weather and scenery:

1) Summer Court

2) Velaris

3) Dawn Court

4) Day Court

5) Spring Court

6) Autumn Court

7) Winter Court (I fuckin hate the cold)

Wbu????

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

oh waow maybe having friendly neighbors is a Good thing (said in the voice of a guy who just received free cookies)

[natduskfall]

Brainrot took over

[aroaceleovaldez]

i think about the fact that Nico’s powers randomly include temperature control way too much. he can make stuff cold! and is apparently immune to cold himself, at least to some degree! why? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯probably ghost reasons! even though it is not inherently tied to ghosts at all and he can just Do That!

[images4life]

[gardenstateofmind]

i don't own gloves so i had to just raw dog it earlier when i was excavating my car, but thankfully i didn't get frostbite <3

[shit-people-probably-didnt-say]

I had a lovely dream where they added a ‘gays, they’s and them’s’ line to a club to make sure theyr’e safe and welcome and it was just such nice vibes in the queer queue (but awake me now thinks segregation?)

The people were all friendly and singing songs, much different to some club lines

Then I had another dream that was creepy as hell and wasnt good vibes at all

[wingedknightrose]

The Dracula Daily tag today: Jonathan's hands are icy cold! He's not fully human, he's part vampire!!!!

Me, who just has Ice Cold Hands sometimes because of poor circulation: ...should I be concerned for myself, or...?

[safyresky]

It's December 13th, you know what that means!

The Twelve Years of Frostmas is now LIVE on ao3!

Haha, got you, didn't I! I bet you were all thinking "Ah yes, weekly CS update, ahh shit, here we go again!" And then I FOOLED YOU! HAHA! Check it out HERE on ao3 :)

And for those who don't know, take a summary!

The Twelve Years of Frostmas

Nobody but he and I knew the truth. Jack wasn't supposed to be Santa; I wasn't supposed to be Jack Frost. He thought being Santa would fix everything. He was horribly, horribly mistaken. [My take on Jack's reign as Santa during the Escape Clause. MAJOR OC involvement AND First Person POV from said OC. Finally cross posting THIS behemoth! Enjoy!]

IT'S FROSTMAS BAYBEE!

See, there were 2 (two) thoughts I had that led to the creation of Jacqueline:

If Jack thawed and pulled a Zuko, and couldn't use his powers and didn't know why, who would help him figure it out? And

Who was Jack Frost when Jack was Santa? Surely he couldn't do both, right?

And boom! In walks Jacqueline like:

And lo, Frostmas (as a concept) was born; and finally written when CS was originally near completion. Feels appropriate to start crossposting this one now that the climax of CS has resolved!

So here, take Jacqueline's humble Prologue to the Twelve Years of Frostmas.

Prologue

Jacqueline settles in to tell us the story of a fucked up little timeline she calls "Frostmas".

FINALLY on ao3 HERE :)

And of course, as always, it lives on ff.net all the way up to Year Ten. You can start it from the top on ff dot net HERE, but I'd wait a haute minute if you're checking it out there, as I will not be updating the prologue to match until I download a copy of Frostmas for posterity sake (which will be probably much later today) :)

And with that, enjoy! I'll be back closer to the end of the week (or early next week) with Chapter 28 of Crystal Springs :)

JKS JKS JKS I'M NOT DONE YET! TAKE A SNIPPET:

“Jacqueline, I’m—" Pressing my hands against my cheeks and calling up some frost, I turned back to Jack. “I know.” Cheeks sufficiently cool, I gave him my most reassuring smile. “It’s okay.” “It’s really not. Everything I did then, I—” “I know. It wasn’t okay. But you’re okay now. And I’m okay, too!” “You literally just came in here to say you weren’t okay.” “But I will be! Remember? I had a thing in mind?” “Yes! Of course!” Jack sat back up in his seat, almost but not quite as lively as usual. “Your thing that brought you into my humble adobe. What were you—what did you have in mind?” “I was thinking of writing it out.” “Writing it out?” “Yep.” “All of it?” “Yep!” “That’s a lot of paper.” “Or a really long role of parchment. I’ll have to see what we have floating around. But um, I was thinking that writing it all down would help get it out of my head, y’know? Like making a list? I’ve always found it therapeutic, writing stuff out. Easier to make sense of the more nonsensical things in life. I just…” I frowned, rubbing the back of my neck. “I didn’t wanna do it without checking in with you first.” “Whatever for?” I held my breath for a moment. “When I say all of it I mean all of it. Including your side of things. And I wanted to make sure it was okay with you first! I know it’s my story. But you played a huge part in it too. And I know you feel a lot of remorse for it all…and I know I haven’t been great about broaching it. I can only begin to imagine how you feel.” I paused for a moment, tilting my head and thinking of how to say what I wanted to say next. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay with writing it all down with me. I can’t do it on my own, Jack. I need help. Your help.” Jack straightened. His face went blank; he blinked, taken aback. He looked…touched. “Oh.”

It's been touched up so there's some good cold front comfort here, AYO! I was torn between this and a very funny section that involves grilled cheese but I'll let you experience that one for yourselves ;)

NOW, WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, ENJOY!

And I'll see you all in the next few days for Chapter 28 of Crystal Springs :)

[daydreamerdrew]

Iron Man (1968) #104

[villain-menagerie]

Just a few general headcanons about Frieza and his race, before I get to actual reader stuff.

They used to have a planet and a full-on society.

Their homeland got destroyed by Beerus when their numbers became a danger to the universe.

The reason being that due to how they reproduced: their (few, but very uh effective) females were similar to Xenomorph queens in their unique (5th?) form, as in they could lay hundreds and hundreds of eggs at once.

Usually this was balanced out by how very few eggs survived (or they required very specific environment to hatch), and low numbers of females (or at least those who could achieve this Queen form), as well as their naturally competitive nature that ensured that a lot of them would simply end up killing each other.

Scientific development started to overcome this issue, and their numbers would skyrocket. Their culture would also evolve, now valuing the blood lines, and therefore lowering the mortality.

Combined with aggressive behavior, high power, and extreme survivability, there was a risk they'd simply overwhelm and outnumber most if not all other species.

Therefore Beerus was driven to eliminate their homeplanet with all the females (and most males) on it. Only a small militaristic/trading branch survived, that was located far away.

These days they reproduce by technically cloning/tank breeding. They scientifically alternate the DNA to ensure diversity, but due to all donors being male, they cannot make more women. Thus, only 1 egg at a time can be made (and it's not always succesful). But those who are born are very highly valued.

Therefore Frieza and Cooler's rivalry is very natural and even healthy - and in older time they might've just fought until one died - but these days they have to bear each other's presence due for bloodline survival. They try to avoid each other.

Despite everything, most of them don't hold a grudge against Beerus and see it as a proof they survived cuz they were the strongest of their species.

[justbritishproblems]

It is 1:48 pm, why the FUCK am I having to scrap ice off every window of my car?

[random-movie-ideas]

Green Lantern Villain Movie Ideas, Part XXIII: Icicle

Joar Mahkent AKA Icicle (and Cameron Mahkent/Icicle Jr.) are major recurring villains that are way more important than I realized, originating as a villain that Alan Scott's Green Lantern initially faced, before becoming standard members of the Injustice Society of America, such prominent members in fact, that they seem to have become the go to villain for every appearance of the Justice Society in most of their adaptations. So . . . fourth most important DC ice baddie?

Origin Movie: He's also an option for an Alan Scott movie, after Solomon Grundy. I figure I'd go with Joar, probably recreate his initial story with the whole murder mystery aspect.

Sequel Movie: I'm kind of regretting my decision to have only one installment for each animated Justice Society characters, because Icicle and Solomon are both such iconic villains. Maybe two movies, with Solomon in one and Icicle in the other.

Finale Movie: Considering how many adaptations have featured the man, it's not unreasonable for him to be the main villain for a Justice Society movie.

Supporting Villain: If nothing else, he is for certain a go-to member of the Injustice Society.

Here are my rankings of them:

Supporting Villain: Honestly, they're all kinda tied, but if nothing else, I'd want him represented here.

Sequel Movie: I'm really tempted by two Alan Scott movies now. If nothing else, I plan to make him the villain of someone's movie.

Origin Movie: Same reasoning as the sequel.

Finale Movie: I'd probably have him part of the ISA, over being the main and only.

What do you think? Who should I cover next?