#yes this is inspired by me dipping into [Propagation]

[transingthoseformers]

Thinking so many thoughts about Soundwave, and other host + symbiote mecha like him

[unnamedelement]

even the WORDS studio ghibli steampunk inspired 4th age au is intriguing to me - I’d love to hear more about it!

I am so pleased you asked and I will talk about it forever. Basically, the idea is just something I write on--a paragraph or two here or there--when I'm feeling down and need a pick-me-up, though I haven't done so since May now as I've been so busy! It's set in a 4th Age Middle-earth in which all the basic things are the same, except that the technology advanced slightly differently, as if every major cultural and intellectual hub in history hadn't been wiped out in the first two ages. I mean, they have been, but the ideas were revisited and propagated instead. Which puts us in a bit of a steam era, a bit more modern warfare, I suppose (I imagine it as, like, Legend of Korra equivalent technology, but subtracting the radio broadcasting). I call it Studio Ghibli inspired because, in my head, thats the way its "animated," with similar color palettes to, say, Howls' Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro, and Spirited Away. The same sort of observational attention to detail, but not overwrought, and an air of the magical in the every day... It's really just a domestic sort of thing, with an added twist of the Straight Road being shut for purposes that aren't entirely clear to me yet but, somehow, tie into the technological aspect. It, at least, explains to me why the elves are so goddamn committed to technology and Middle-earth in the 4th age, in this universe, in a way that aren't in non-AUs because, well, Tolkien. The lore of this ridiculous sandbox is only very slowly evolving, but giving elves unresolvable sealonging is a certain type of hurt/comfort that is highly attractive to me. Whoops. And it is Legolas- and OC-focused, of course, because that's just who I am as a person. There is also a university in Minas Tirith because I say so, and because I need to project my woes about academia somewhere, but I try to justify this to myself by tying it into that preservation and propogation of knowledge aspect. Anyway, that was way more than you asked for! Ah well. Here is the first scene I ever wrote in this AU, because I've never actually shared it publicly, I don't think. I believe @roselightfairy has been the only one privy to my nonsensical AU drafts thus far! I usually just ramble about it in tags, but you caught me this time, ha. Thanks again for asking!

Legolas twisted the ring on his index finger distractedly as he waited for the train. It had been a long day in Minas Tirith and he was ready to return to Ithilien, to take in the rolling plains that edged the river as they flew past, for it was always only then that he could reflect, in uninterrupted silence, without hobbit tourists at his heels or the accidental shove of an impatient lady in the shops.

There were too many people in Minas Tirith for Legolas. Accordingly, and much to Aragorn and Gimli’s chagrin, it was not his favorite place.

But they understood, and that was all he could ask. He tried to schedule all of the city errands on the same day or two, because longer than thirty-six continuous hours in Minas Tirith and he became an absolute nightmare with which to coexist. For the most part, his friends and family had accepted this and he was trying, after all, but that did not make it any less obnoxious for the rest of them.

It did not help that the only place in Gondor with Sealonging-certified healers was on the fourth level of the city. A wildly insensitive choice, in his opinion, though he kept that perspective well enough to himself after Ithildim and Gimli had tried to advocate, a few years before, for the relocation of the clinic to the Healing Houses on the Sixth, in a string of rejected proposals at City Council.

Gimli would not look at Aragorn for a month after that, and so Legolas had quit his whingeing and suffered in silence the abrupt buffeting that occurred in the busy streets after his appointments. He made it his own prerogative to schedule at the end of the day so he could spend the morning with enough wherewithal to do his errands and take care of whatever sundry things he had managed to commit himself to. It kept him relatively sane and it kept his friends on speaking terms and, so, that is what he did. (And it was not as if any of them had control over the West-way being shut, so there was no point in any of them falling out over it.)

Legolas heard the heavy-huffing of the train approaching long before its lights rounded the bend of the river. He preferred to walk to the stop at the Docks than get on at the Gates because it gave his mind time to settle. Waiting that close to the river after therapy was, perhaps, not his brightest idea, but the pros outweighed the cons and what Ithildim didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

Besides, it was Summer, and the cattails were up again all around the station, and a family of osprey had made the light pole by the river their nest, and it did lift his spirits to watch these things alone as the world moved on about him...

A few more people rushed the small platform as the rumbling of the train on its little steel bridge above the banks increased. Legolas only readjusted his ring, unbuckled the satchel in his lap and rummaged around for the hardtack he had bartered for Ewessel. (She would have no idea how many pieces were there originally—what she didn’t know also wouldn’t hurt her). He was just tugging on the pair of oversized leather earmuffs Gimli had given him a few years prior when he started taking the train routinely when two pairs of very familiar shoes suddenly appeared in his line of sight, and he froze—

There was no point in hurrying—he had been found out so he adjusted his earmuffs and tucked the hardtack into his cheek, noticing vaguely that the sturdier pair of boots were well-shined and dirtless, while the more slender, elvish ones were caked in mud along the edges and splashed up the shins.

He had thought Ithildim was in the Emyn Arnen buildings today. He had seen him head off that way through the trees and he had obviously been there for that was forest mud and yet here he stood with Gimli, clearly just come from their Minas Tirith office so...

He had apparently been wrong. It would not be the first time he had lost track of other people’s schedules.

The train rolled up slowly, then, and Legolas finally looked up from his seat on the bench to find Gimli at eye level—glaring at him with arms crossed—and then, looking further up, was Ithildim—hair neatly pinned back despite his other uncharacteristic untidiness—and he looked down on him with a bemused and mildly irritated expression.

Legolas did his best to offer a guileless smile.

It did not work, and Ithildim pulled him to his feet. “I thought your appointment was at 4(?), auren.”

“It was,” he said, and he shrugged. He was tired and did not want to talk yet. “I prefer walking the plains for an hour or so after, to calm my mind. I did not know you would be here.”

“You do this every time?” Ithildim asked with eyebrows raised, and then Gimli was chivvying them forward as the train doors opened and the inward-bound commuters poured out and the outward-bound ones moved forward.

“I did not know you would be here,” Legolas only said, shrugging, as they found a small table in the back of the car and piled around it.

Ithildim opened his mouth to ask again but Gimli interrupted—

“That is answer enough, Ithildim,” he said softly. “Leave him be, hm?”

“But—”

“He is always back to himself by the time he gets home, is he not? Let him do what he needs to do. He is his own keeper, Ithildim.”

Legolas was no longer watching them, and he instead stared out the window as the train moved forward and he was rocked slightly as it picked up speed. He did not notice the sound of a crinkling bag or the half sandwich Gimli slid in front of him. He did not notice Ithildim watching him wearily but intermittently as he arranged his notes on the small table, comparing a neat chart to x’s drawn on a map spread across its surface.

Outside, the sun was dipping dark but his mind was far away, and his mouth felt dry as he finally blinked and turned away from the flashing landscape.

Gimli had placed a reassuring hand by his thigh as he leaned over Ithildim’s map, and Ithildim was watching him unashamedly, silver eyes narrowed as Legolas glanced at him.

He pulled a travel mug from his backpack and handed it across the table to him.

“I take medicine for this now, you know,” Legolas said quietly, and he considered the coffee and tilted his head, waiting for Ithildim’s reply.

“I know,” he said immediately. “But you have that look in your eye that you get when…”

“Ithildim, he is his own keeper,” Gimli interrupted firmly, and Ithildim looked away. “That being said, Master Elf, it is summer again—“

“I know that—“

“—and the weather folks are predicting a mighty storm this week, which is probably why you are like this.”

Legolas picked up the coffee without a word and reluctantly drank it, and he twisted his ring again as Gimli continued:

“I’ve told Aragorn again and again that he would be much better served employing you lot for storm prediction than the fellows he has but…” he trailed off, and Legolas smiled.

“But he thinks it is unethical to use a bunch of Sea-longing elves for the protection of king and country, yes,” Legolas finished. “Honestly, those of us who are afflicted are going to suffer whether or not he consults us, so I’ve never understood his reticence.”

Ithildim looked up again and was finally smiling. “You are a bit like a barometer, in that,” he admitted. “Gimli has a point here.”

Legolas laughed. “So, what? We wait until I become uncommunicative and morose and a general pain to be around, and then we send Aragorn a warning letter? What, set smoke signals?”

“This is our stop,” Gimli was saying as he folded up Ithildim’s map and notes and shoved them into his hands. He stood up and gestured at the elves to join him. “Normal people would use the message systems, Legolas, but since you refuse to—”

“Really, Gimli?” Ithildim had pulled Legolas to his feet and was dragging him by the hand out the door. The wind was heavy beneath the eaves of the trees that overhung their stop. “We are lucky he only uses birds. Otherwise it would be constant updates about the exchange rate of rye, or flash-pictures of bread, or flowery descriptions of some lady he met in the gardens!”

As they started down the side path to the houses they shared with Saida and the children Legolas laughed again. “It is mushrooms I am fascinated with right now, Ithildim. It is painfully obvious sometimes that you do not listen when I speak.”

“Mushrooms?” he asked, turning to Gimli.

“That is his current passion project, yes. Have you not been in the downstairs bathroom recently?”

“Thank you, elvellon. I am so relieved someone listens to me.”

“Eru, Legolas, you know the downstairs bathroom is supposed to be for Ewessel so she doesn’t slow anyone else down in the mornings.”

Legolas had walked past them now and was several feet ahead as the main house came into sight. He shrugged and turned, walking backward. “It was her idea, Ithildim. You can take it up with her. I am in her good graces now, and I am not playing with the fire of adolescence to tell her no on your behalf.”

Gimli was laughing now and then Legolas had turned and took off toward the house. By the time they arrived a few minutes later, the lights had all been turned on or lit and Legolas was at the kitchen table with Ewessel herself, helping her with her schoolwork.

He barely looked up as they entered. “Stew on the stove,” he said quietly, and Ithildim sighed to hear the distance in his voice.

The door swung in again as Saida came in with Alfirinion at her heels—

“Smells like rain,” she announced as she slipped off her shoes and dropped her bag to the ground.

Alfirinion was just unloading his bag and armful of books onto the table inside the door when the house shook with a loud crash of thunder, and the building sound of rain—gentle to pounding and persistent—began to beat at the house.

Ewessel looked at Legolas, who had gone still beside her, and turned to her family. “I have known for days it would rain tonight. He is better than any weather report, if you are paying attention.”

“Ewessel,” Saida said with quiet admonishment, and she walked up and pressed a kiss to her niece’s forehead before settling down beside Legolas. “How about an early night?” she said to him quietly. “We can talk about our project tomorrow evening.”

Legolas cleared his throat and looked at his hands. “Yes, I think that would be good. The table isn’t…”

“Ewessel will set the table, won’t she?” Saida said lightly, and Ewessel closed her ledger and sprang to her feet. The dining room and kitchen were suddenly in motion and Legolas sat silent in his seat, until he dropped his head, defeated, into his hands, waiting for the sound of the rain to stop sounding like the crashing of waves at the shore.

“Tell us next time you notice, child,” he could hear Saida saying from the stove, and there was muttering under breath before Ewessel and Alfirinion were back in the room, placing a bowl at each seat.

There was the scraping of chairs around him, and then the feel of a cool glass pressed against his hand.

“It is just water, Legolas,” Ithildim was saying at his shoulder. “Drink, auren. The wide world is still here.”

And so he drank and ate and listened to his friends talk.

Alfirinion had had an argument with a peer at Rangers (though he had won, because debate team and shadowing Arwen over the summer had apparently paid off), and Ewessel was displeased no one wanted to see her forestry project (which, to be fair, was a log covered in mushrooms she had taken from Legolas’ project in the bathroom, so no one was particularly empathetic). Saida had made progress on curriculum redesign in her department at the main university, and Gimli and Ithildim had gotten clearance to start a project they were partnering on, to bring heated, running water to a new town outside Osgiliath.

Legolas, however, had only made stew. Had run errands for the family and for his business. Had gone to his appointment. Had lost himself to the wind and left his family fumbling.

But the stew was, at least, enjoyed, and that was better than nothing...

After dinner, everyone gathered in the sitting room to listen to Alfirinion practice his closing arguments for his competition and, eventually, Legolas fell asleep between Ithildim and Gimli on the couch. The last thing he was aware of was someone slipping headphones over his ears and dropping the needle on the phonograph so his senses were flooded with crackling birdsong, and then there was a blanket about his shoulders, and he was gone.

[alienor-woods]

i am what i am (i’m not ashamed)

for @vixleonard​. Fluffy Jon x Sansa in a Hogwarts AU, particularly inspired by her recent dips into Draco x Hermione.

pt 2/3. pt 1 is here. 

[age note: Jon & Robb are a year older than Sansa. They are still first cousins because, well. Comes with the Jon x Sansa territory.]

Sansa excels at Hogwarts.

Not like Robb and Jon do, rambunctious but accomplished Wizarding Club duelers who favor Care of Magical Creatures and Transfiguration over Divination and Arithmancy. No, Sansa favors the library and the lake, where she buries her nose in History of Hogwarts textbooks and her hands in greenhouse dirt for Herbology projects.

Her knack with the cauldron doesn’t go unnoticed by Professor Zabini, who takes her under his wing not only as his Potions protege, but also as Head of Slytherin House looking out for bright young stars in the Wizarding world.

That’s nothing, though, compared to her social influence. By her third year, she’s one of the most popular girls in school. Robb near loses his mind when boys start asking her on dates to Hogsmeade every weekend. It falls to Robb and Theon to keep him occupied at Weasleys or the Shrieking Shack, if just to let Sansa have her own fun for just a few hours a week.

“What d’you think’s gonna happen? Y’think Rosemerta’s gonna give a fifteen year old a key to an upstairs room?” Theon bursts out one day when Robb is listing all of Dickon Tarly’s faults, from priggishness to his bollocks quidditch skills. “It’s nothing more than you ‘nd I’ve done, mate. Buy a cute girl a butterbeer or two, compliment her hair, fiddle with her hands, hope she won’t mind a quick snog behind the Zonko’s displays.”

Robb stares at Theon, agape, without any rejoinder. Jon takes the opening to clap his cousin on the shoulder and chime in, “It’s Hogsmeade, not Knockturn Alley.”

But Sansa’s Slytherin loyalty can’t be understated, either. She wasn’t ever interested in Quidditch until Hogwarts, when the games turned into key social events. She takes to the stands every game, cheering on the Slytherin team in head-to-toe green and silver.

“It’s disgusting, is what it is,” Robb grumbles one day in fifth year, while Gryffindor House took to its brooms to face off against its sworn nemesis.

“Hm?” Jon glances away from game play--Edd and Tormund passing the quaffle swiftly between them, trying their best to shake the Tyrell siblings’ double threat at their heels--and is surprised to see Robb’s omnioculars aimed not skyward, but straight across the pitch. “What are you talking about?”

“Sansa!” his cousin huffs, gesturing wildly at the opposite stands with his free hand. He pulls his omnioculars and passes them to Jon. “Just when I think she’s gone as far Slyth as one can go…”

Jon runs the glasses across the far bank of stands, catches a flash of auburn, traces it back to Sansa. She’s front and center, pink-cheeked in the cold and from screaming encouragement up at her playing housemates. Her hair is plaited with green and silver, she’s waving Slytherin banners, and she’s got a snake crown jammed down over her forehead.

He’s seen all this before, even thought that the color looked nice in her red hair (a thought he promptly shoved into an already-cluttered box of “NO” at the back of his mind). The paint is new, though. A stripe of something shiny on her cheekbones, right under her eyes. Something green shimmers over them. Jon adjusts the omnioculars and sees enchanted snakes twisting back and forth over each other.

Jon doesn’t see the goal, but he hears it. The stands around him groan and jeer. Across the pitch, Sansa’s serious, focused expression breaks into a victorious grin. The new paint sets off the blue of her eyes; he can see how they crinkle at the corners when the Tyrells perform twin barrel rolls and revel in their housemates’ applause.

“Yeah.” He passes the omnioculars back to Robb. “Totally barbaric.”

*****

By her fifth year, her prefectship is a given. Jon and Robb missed out on this particular honor for Gryffindor, something Ned and Cat had grimly accepted and never again mentioned. But when Zabini’s sleek black owl alights on Winterfell Cottage’s windowsill with the notice of her official position, their approval is lukewarm. The green seal next to Zabini’s signature seems to physically repel them.

Luckily, Sansa doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest, and darts upstairs with a gleeful shriek. “Mya is going to scream,” she shouts from the top of the stairs.

Jon’s pretty sure he’s the only one to follow up with her later on. He crosses his arms and leans against her doorjamb, watches her silently for a moment as she finishes out a short missive to a friend.

He waits until she drops her quill in its inkwell and starts to blow on the parchment before he clears his throat. “Congratulations,” he says, when she glances his way. “On making prefect.”

She smiles, openly, and the midday sunlight makes her auburn hair glow like a halo. Something squeezes in his chest.

“Thank you, Jon.” She waves the parchment through the air a few times, then folds it into a triangular note with a few quick strokes. The next glance she shoots him is conspiratorial. Another squeeze. “Make sure to tell Robb that I won’t be lenient if I catch you two skulking around poor Barnabas and his trolls.”

“We’ll make sure to do our skulking when we know you’re in class,” Jon replies, keeping his face straight for as long as possible. He can’t hold back his full grin, though, when Sansa rolls her eyes and turns back to her desk, all cluttered with succulents and half-eaten pastries. “But seriously, Slytherin has to have prefects, and you’re a far better choice than...Merlin, Viserys Targaryen.”

Housemate or not, even Sansa has to pull a face at the mention of Hogwarts’ biggest bully. The look she gives her circle of newly propagated succulent leaves is so withering that he’s surprised they spontaneously combust. 

“I can’t believe I have to share a common room with that prick,” she mutters. She rakes her fingers through her hair, shaking a few waves loose to flutter around her face. She’s been spending lots of time in the garden and orchard this summer, and it’s brought out a pretty sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks. “But yes, I’m sure you’re happy to have a semi-sane person wandering the halls.”

Jon snickers. “I’d certainly rather be cornered by you in a corridor after midnight, that’s for sure.”

Whatever reply Sansa was near giving dies on her lips when a door downstairs slams. Ned calls out for Cat, and Cat calls back, and Sansa and Jon are left looking at each other across the space of her bedroom, small smiles tucked into the corners of their mouths.

Jon tears his eyes away to the far corner of the room, where her narrow bed sits primly made under the dormer window, then to the floor in front of him. He scuffs the toe of his shoe and pushes off of the doorjamb.

“Congratulations, again,” he says, and immediately wonders why his voice has gone so low.

“Thanks,” she repeats. Her own voice is warm, quiet. “Don’t make me corner you in a corridor.”

[stupendousstrawberrycowboy]

d9 29th of april

Last poems of the lot

On Going to College

 A tuft of feathers dips its

Neck in farther skies;

I step on the triptych bus

This is a throwaway - it is important to be capable of them. The character looks up, sees the clouds then steps on the bus. A haiku!

Cigarette

 Cigarettes! - Filled with earthy nicotine

That hooks the mind from the tempest scene

And deflates it like a plastic bag

 /

Like a fish in the air, like thoughts outside

Its casting net brings us to our bodies cistern

 /

The phoenix is a frozen past time

Birth is a pain that ends in labour

But breathe these burning phoenix feathers

From off-license stores, inhale its death

And find that it and you coalesce

You are kept in the body’s lethargic embrace

With blackened lungs like a phoenix claw

 /

I dare not bloom! I dare not bloom!

The cookie-will-terminate of society is sharp

It bends the self like a wall of God

Into crawling across the ground like a centipede

And grows like a flowering bee

The soul cannot be reborn when cast in stone

But it in me - Our minds anadyomene!

Like a feather frozen at the centre of a golden jelly

This poem is rather simple, it was inspired by the idea that we ought to defend our actions on the basis that we have defended our actions in acting, so this poem mythologizes the cigarette till similitude is found with the phoenix - as dead as the dodo next to this unanimous prop! And claims that it can serve the same function if adequately invested.

Producers Wit

 I like to lay like Chatterton

In foppish shirts and little loafers

And shout like Lazarus ‘A ton

Of ‘tegrity in interlopers

Is worth the gram of wit a dun

Obscured smoggy leper tongue

In acrimony does expatiate

For by nine fold he fornicates

 /

Forsooth desire in pangs asserts

In monotone my melancholy

Though I want more in jest desserts

Which I spy in stomachs folly

Than my mind that traps me so in severity

Ha Ha I lie for they and their charity!

 This poem is very light hearted and wonderfully ironic, the dun is the writer as the poem is expatiated in leper tongue acrimony, but later in the poem he says that it is a lie and he is not so silk-tongued and sharply dressed, this is the charm in the earlier irony which I think proves, if it does charm at all that this gram of wit is worth it for by nine fold he fornicates, which is uncouth for charms.

Elegy to Lubricants

 A fly in your tea sipped

-          Yes

Congealment coagulating

In ecstasies of dymonal bliss

But most, - most certain decay

 /

Mirror against mirror hallowed

– substantiate subordinates sieve

From supine selves in cells stanchioned

Snow-ways ski and swerve

 /

Oh, pedlars progeny propagates

Prodigiously pelting off the petrified

And pulses slush slaps between their shoes

 /

Oh come dear – quick – periscope

See that one – moment ago thrashed

Against your toddler – discombobulated tattles

Semiotical swarms in this thin water dripping

– there sparagmos fractidial in sinews

 /

Bunk the submarine Sally!

– they assume eachother – dead

– inference by mirrors sublimation

Substantiates – carom – divination

Of – eyes – walls – jump there

Spays with spleen

Percolate beyond the instance of

Renumeration – dykes smaller –

Distance avails not – splinters, shatters

Unshackles sterns – pop!

I have spoken of this poem earlier in the blog, though I did not show any thing of it. It is now finished and reading it, I think it shares most with Repudiation of the Stone, but this is more Joycean if I could claim that.