so in an attempt to actually use positive thinking, anytime i fuck up and my brain reacts as if ive cause a minor apocalyptic event, i compare my fuck up to the 4 minute fuck up committed by the crew of the uss william d porter.
and only today, as i was having to explain what happened to my mom when i was explaining the whole comparison thing, did i realise that most people dont know about it and ive decided that needs to change because its objectively hilarious.
...which is a weird thing to say about an event that occured on a warship in 1943, specifically november 14th.
see the uss william d porter was a fletcher-class destroyer but you dont need to know what that means, just that she had guns that went bang bang and that she was escorting another ship, the uss iowa, to cairo.
while they were on their way there, they performed some gun trials like testing the anti-aircraft guns or the torpedos. and while they were running a torpedo drill, the crew of the porter managed to fire a live torpedo straight at the iowa which you know, in terms of a list of things to do while escorting a ship, shooting a torpedo at them is not on that list.
especially if the president of the united states is on board.
yeah so fdr was on board and the gun trials were actually his idea, and part of the trials was that they were conducted under radio silence.
and that means the crew of the porter couldnt just call the iowa to be like "move out the way, we accidentally shot a torpedo at you."
but they did have signal lamps and you know, the signalman on board was trained to signal this exact kind of message.
...and uh never mind, the signalman did manage to successfully tell the iowa that a torpedo was coming toward them but wasnt as successful when it came to the direction the torpedo was coming from.
not all hope is lost though because the signalman could still use the signal lamp to correct his previous mistake and-, never mind, he announced that the porter was reversing, which she wasnt.
yeah so at catastrophic mistake number 3, they broke radio silence to warn the iowa and she managed to turn out of the way just in time which meant no one got hurt. and even though the inquiry into the incident led to chief torpedoman (fantastic job title btw) lawton dawson being sentences to hard labour, fdr intervened and waved away his sentence, saying it was all an accident.
but yeah, so thats my new measure for "how much did i really fuck up?" and when i compared accidentally picking up a pencil case without a tag on it in wilko, turns out it was a very minor fuck-up. yes, the cashier had to ask another worker to grab a duplicate so they could scan the barcode, but i didnt nearly kill the president during wartime via accidental friendly fire
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Giving the black brothers the authentic sibling experience:
Sirius: WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
Regulus: having a drink...?
Sirius, taking the glass off him and guiding him to a seat: you've already had two, you're way too young to be drinking this much, your liver will up and leave your goddamn body
Regulus: you were doing this at fourteen, I am quite literally twenty
Sirius, convinced he's still thirteen: ......I don't think you are, Lulu
Regulus: firstly, that stupid name has been overused since we were ten, secondly, you're twenty-two, so do the maths.
Sirius: *calls narcissa* important question, how old is regs
Narcissa: twenty
Sirius: *staring at him in horror* ew
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Can someone please write a fic about that one scene where stiles grabs Derek’s face in magic bullet.
Where although he was out of it Derek could feel stiles fingers trail across his face. He could feel how softly and careful stiles was in that one moment. It had been the first touch from a human, from anyone, that did not cause Derek pain.
And when Derek wakes up he’s just obsessed with being touched by stiles again because he remembered how good it felt, how finally someone touched him and it didn’t hurt. Derek refused to wash his face for like three days after this because stiles had unknowingly scent marked him, and he couldn’t make himself get rid of the scent. How it made Derek feel like he wasn’t alone.
This action makes Derek’s wolf believe that stiles is pack, (stiles is the first pack Member!!) and he just keeps ending up in embarrassing situations trying to get stiles attention and his hands and him.
He probably just ends up blurting it out at stiles one day. Or maybe after killing Peter, he just get handle the weight of being alone, of killing the last member of his family, of being touched by Kate, of being hurt.
So he drags his body to stiles house and just gets on his knees and begs stiles to touch him, to make it stop hurting.
And stiles knows how hard it is to lose a family member so he does. He doesn’t think this will happen again, he just understands that Derek needs comfort. But Derek comes back over and over again and every time begs stiles to touch him. And stiles does, every time.
It becomes a comfort thing for the both of them, stiles running his fingers over the planes of Derek’s face. Derek gets to relax in the one place he’s safe, listening to stiles humming or muttering and the beat of his heart. It becomes a need, but soon stiles touching Derek isn’t enough, Derek wants to touch stiles. He wants to return the favour, he wants to scent mark stiles back. So everyone will know that stiles is claimed, that he is protected by an alpha who would kill for him. And he gets the chance to on the anniversary of stiles mother’s death.
Stiles is just so tired, his dad is working, will be all night. Scott is with Allison, and stiles doesn’t have the energy to beg him to pick him tonight. So he goes to Derek; Stiles isn’t really sure what this arrangement that he and Derek have but tonight he is the one who needs. He drives to the hale house and ends up sobbing by the time he gets there. He’s just sitting in the jeep in front of the hale house and he can’t move. And suddenly Derek is there.
Derek was already worried when he could hear the engine of the jeep pull up but when it turned off and all Derek could hear was stiles crying, he moved without thinking. He yanked the driver side door open and his heart broke. Stiles was sitting there trying to calm himself down, rubbing the tears from his face but nothing was working. So when stiles turned his head to him, eyes pleading and whining, Derek picked him up and carried him bridal style into the house. Derek just holds him for hours, memorizing the way stiles feels under his fingertips.
In the aftermath Stiles makes one joke about being a blushing bride (due to the blush on his face and being carried bridal style) and Derek is just hit with a vision of being married to stiles. Of being about to always be allowed to touch stiles and blue screens. Unfortunately Derek wolf takes this as expressed agreement that stiles is mated and married to them.
Derek buys rings the next day. Sure it takes him a few more years to propose but it’s the thought that counts. (Cocky Derek hale who flirts with stiles by calling him his pretty little wife, just to see stiles blush a pretty pink for him. But one day stiles responds that he doesn’t have a ring, so Derek just gives it to him.)
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It’s Eddie’s own fault, really, that things turned out this way (he says, as if he’s in any way displeased with the outcome).
It’s just that once they’d started dating, once Steve had realized that his touch was invited and welcomed, he’d become so open with his affection, whenever and wherever he could be.
He holds Eddie’s hand, he hugs him “hello,” he kisses him “goodbye” (and, frankly, any other time he thinks he can get away with it), he’s always pulling Eddie up close to him when they sit (or pulling Eddie right into his lap, or, once he’s been assured that he’s not that heavy, sitting himself on Eddie’s lap), he’s forever orbiting in Eddie’s space, and Eddie is living for it.
He’s never had anyone love him so openly before, so proudly. It’s fucking marvelous.
Naturally, Eddie starts looking for ways to return the favor; little ways to let Steve know that he’s just as loved.
And it starts with his car keys.
He asks Steve to grab them for him because they’re still on the counter and Eddie’s already halfway out the door. When Steve hands them over, Eddie makes sure to take a moment to lean in and peck him on the cheek with a quick, “Thanks, babe.”
And after catching the pleased, pink flush that spreads over Steve’s cheeks at that, there’s no way Eddie isn’t going to do it again.
After Steve brings him a beer the next time they’re watching a movie together, Eddie gives him a quick kiss on the cheek and tells him, “Thanks, angel.”
After Steve pays for dinner on date night (they take turns, no complaints, no skipping, no matter how much one or the other might argue I can get it this time), Eddie takes a furtive glance around the empty restaurant parking lot before pressing his lips to Steve’s cheek with a quiet, “Thank you, baby.”
After Steve brings him the towel he’d left inside the next time the kids are over to use the pool, he gets a big kiss on the cheek and a saccharine, “Thank you, sweetheart” (at which most of the kids groan and boo about PDA, which results in Eddie flipping them off while Steve kisses him full on the mouth, because they are mature adults).
If Eddie had stopped to think about it, he might have recognized it as a sort of (benign!) conditioning. He doesn’t actually stop to think about it, however, until one afternoon when Steve brings him lunch while he’s working on a campaign.
“Thanks, Steve,” Eddie mumbles, barely glancing up from his notebook.
It takes him almost a full minute to realize that Steve hasn’t moved – and only then because Steve pointedly clears his throat.
Pulled from his plotting stupor, Eddie blinks up at Steve, who is staring right back at him. “What?”
“Forgetting something?” Steve asks, glancing down at the sandwich and chips he’d brought in.
Eddie frowns, thinking back. “I said thank you.”
Steve raises his brows, clearly unimpressed that Eddie is still missing some kind of point, and then he tilts his head just slightly up and to the left, baring the side of his face.
Eddie stares, uncomprehending, for moment longer before– “Oh, shit, right!”
He pops up out of his chair and presses a kiss to Steve’s cheek, then another, and another, until Steve’s smiling at him and trying not to laugh.
“Sorry, darlin’,” Eddie murmurs against his skin. “Won’t happen again.”
“Better not,” Steve chides, but from the way his arms wind over Eddie’s shoulders, pulling him closer as he turns his head to catch him in a proper kiss, Eddie can tell that he’s far from displeased.
[Prompt: Cheek kisses]
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The thing abt john winchester is that he is too complex for the majority of the spn fandom and for a good portion of the writers on the show too.
Because at his core john is about love over everything else. When he looks up at his sons (yes, up, the fact that they’re both taller than him>>>>>), there is love seeping achingly from every single pore of his being even as he abuses them, as he destroys their souls beyond belief. He does it all entirely out of love. And he is so, so wrong for it. A part of him knows it. But he wants to keep dean alive, and he wants to keep Sam pure. And he loves them so much. And he damages them so horribly. John Winchester is the foundation upon which they are both built, they only become more of what he made them as the series goes on. Sam stops fighting it, Dean continues to mold into his image no matter how hard he tries to fight it.
Hell puts them both on steroids, but their individual trauma responses that influence this are the foundations that John built into them. No wonder azazel wanted sam to win so badly. John Winchester crafted his sons into alastair and Lucifer’s ideal victims, respectively, and dean was a better (worse) john than John ever was. John held out in hell. Dean acquiesced to his abuser despite all of his efforts to fight him, and he’s never been the same since.
Sam fought like hell, and he fought destiny, but at his core, he did what John always wanted him to by doing what dean wanted him to do, and then he stops fighting at all, loses the fire he showed john in adolescence that john immediately notices when he returns in s14.
And the sad thing is. They filled their roles so well that John is saddened by what they’ve become. He didn’t want dean to break. He didn’t want Sam to be dimmed. He’s sad to see what Sam is like in s14. In the process of recovering his wife, he ensured he would mold his sons into what he wanted them to be, and when he got what he wanted, he was devastated.
John Winchester is so driven by love and grief and he’s so filled to the brim with both that it’s painful to watch him on screen because he destroyed his family because of it. And he wanted this all along but he didn’t realize what he’d have to give up to get it.
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