#Young Wizards #fanfic #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #embarrassment squick #(so I’ve been organising my bookmarks today and found this buried in a to-be-read) #(turns out it’s actually very short) #(also hilarious)
It’s fucking Tom Jones? Millennials are you too stupid to realize that Tom Jones is the reason some of you exist? (Think about it for a second, you’ll get it)
Two weeks ago, my sister and I went out for breakfast at a popular cafe near her place. Enya’s ‘Only Time’ started playing halfway through our homefries, and was still droning right along as I ate my last bite of potato. Squinting, I looked up at the ceiling, looked at my sister, and said:
“Either someone’s playing ‘Only Time’ back-to-back, or ‘Only Time’ is a lot longer than I remember.”
Her eyes went huge. We lingered over our tea (a thing we normally wouldn’t do in a crowded eatery, but we had a mystery to solve) and soon confirmed that, yes, somebody was looping Enya. No one else in the cafe seemed to have caught on, but we were some of the younger people present anyway. The staff were all going about their business. Nobody was looking around with fearful millennial knowingness but us. By the sixth-ish repetition, we were in silent hysterics, biting our fists, whispering “GODDAMMIT” to each other, drawing weird glances from adjacent tables.
My sister got up to use the bathroom. Left alone with the seventh repetition of ‘Only Time’, I left my stuff at our table, got back in line, and ordered a pastry to go. As the barista rang me up, I said:
“Hey, sorry, weird question, but I have to know. Are you guys pulling a Salt and Pepper Diner right now?”
Her face transitioned from ‘polite customer service mask’ to ‘sly but delighted’ in .2 seconds. “We’ve been waiting to see if anybody would notice. Nobody’s been reacting at all!”
“Is there a prize for being the first?” I promise I was joking, but she lit up and said,
“Yes, oh my god! Do you want a cookie??”
And that’s the story of how John Mulaney won me a giant ginger-molasses cookie.
Tags:
#embarrassment squick #food #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #music #storytime
i wish i was capable of writing narratively because there is absolutely a fanfiction wanting to exist where the crew of ds9 collectively comes to the agreement that “wormhole aliens” is a really shitty and disrespectful way to refer to your coworker’s sincerely held religious beliefs re: her gods so the bulk of the episode has all non-bajorans randomly trying on different ways to refer to them without saying they are gods because starfleet has a stick up its ass about admitting any given religion can be provably correct. episode ends with an exasperated kira telling everybody that wormhole aliens is way better than anything theyve come up with so please just drop it
the comedy b-plot is odo futilely trying to recycle the euphemisms into explaining to weyoun that he’s not divine and the Founders are not infallible, but it’s small versus far away and weyoun just cant grasp it
Tags:
#oh look an update #story ideas I will never write #Star Trek #DS9 #language #embarrassment squick
I’m cleaning out my notepad program in preparation for a move to a new† laptop††, and I found this Tumblr draft dated March 10th, 2016.
—
One of the worst non-obvious things about prosopagnosia is that it *reduces the amount of serendipity in your life*.
All else equal, I have far fewer chance meetings with old friends and colleagues than a non-faceblind person would. I have witnessed my mother having chance meetings that I would not have had in her place. I abandoned Orphan Black partway through the first episode because it disturbed me too much, knowing that if they’d based the clones’ on *my* genetic structure instead of hers, the entire show would never have happened. Sarah and Beth would have walked right by each other and never known. How many plot hooks (let alone easter eggs) have I missed out on in my own personal narrative?
(I went bowling on my 22nd birthday. In the group playing on the lane next to my family, there was a girl who looked just like I would if I didn’t wear glasses. I assume it was a coincidence. I assume she was not a secret clone or long-lost twin. If I am wrong in that assumption, I will never find out. If one day I passed someone I assumed to be a stranger, and they were actually a former acquaintance who would have given me some life-changing piece of information had I struck up a conversation with them like old times, I will never find out. Almost certainly, I have at the very least passed by acquaintances who would have given me non-life-*changing* but life-*enhancing* pieces of information, had I only known it was them.)
(This post inspired by CORDYCEPS [link], another story whose plot is dependant on one person recognising another’s face. I like the mystery and I like Benedict’s writing, so I’ve been reading it anyway for now.)
—
†And by “new”, I mean “seven years old, but significantly higher-spec than my current seven-year-old laptop”. Dad’s laptop broke, so we agreed that I would buy a “new” one for me and hand my old one down to him. Back in the day, *I* used to get *his* hand-me-down computers, but my computer requirements have now outpaced his (fortunately not to the point where my usual laptop budget of ~USD$300 is an insufficient amount of money), so.
††My backups are generally pretty thorough, and it wouldn’t have been a disaster data-wise if I’d woken up this morning to find my laptop permanently unable to boot (which did happen to me one morning in my mid-teens! no warning, no particular reason AFAIK why that motherboard chose that night to fail, it just did!), but I’ve found a couple overlooked spots.
Yeah, I find that plots that depend on recognizing people’s faces under extreme conditions are so weird to me. Like… humans can do that? Really? You saw this guy one time on the news and now you run into him in real life and you know who he is? Just because his face was shown on the news once? How is that even possible? I often question the legitimacy of such plot points even though I know my personal experience is not normal for human beings, because it just seems so completely implausible. Meanwhile, here I am not recognizing my own daughter when I drive past her on the street. (Or worse, walking up to her guests at her birthday party and addressing them as if they’re her.)
Honestly, I’ve never wondered how people could not realize Clark Kent was Superman. Take your glasses off and wear tights and a cape, and I wouldn’t recognize you either. Also I’d be too busy staring at the cape because WHEE CAPE! :P
One thing I find unrealistic about stories is when someone is telling someone else about a conversation they had and they remember everything WORD FOR WORD, in the exact order that it happened. If it was me, I’d be like “and then we talked about penguins for a while, and then he told me this story about…oh wait, before that, he told me someone broke into his office and moved a bunch of stuff around!” I’d make a horrible detective.
Do you ever think about Aziraphale going out of his way to learn internet lingo just to make Crowley cringe in his own skin? Cause I do. (I’m still not entirely unconvinced that wasn’t why he learned to do sleight of hand magic. “You’r an angel, Angel! You can just summon the right card!” “But wouldn’t that rather be like cheating!” “IT’S HUMAN MAGIC, IT’S ALL CHEATING”)
Like the first time he says “LOL” out loud. “Ell-oh-ell, as the kids say” he says cheerfully and Crowley nearly slams the Bentley into a duck pond cause his brain just tried to escape what his ears just heard and subsequently goes off on a ten minute rant about how no one says it out loud, you’re not supposed to say it out loud, Angel. All the while Aziraphale is feigning politely confused ignorance, and thoroughly enjoying the tangent Crowley has now sneeringly diverted onto, snipping and snarling his way through his syllables, eventually admitting that while he claimed responsibility for the addition of YouTube comments on videos, that was just another thing humans came up with all on their own.
“Fascinating,” is all the angel has to say for himself, and the incident is quite forgotten until he does it again, this time responding to something Crowley says simply with “meirl” and for a split second Crowley thinks it’s some sort of German word he’s actually forgot exists until he realizes Aziraphale just said “me in real life” and whatever last few dregs of his soul that exist shrivel and die.
And it just keeps happening until one day Crowley catches the flutter of amusement behind Aziraphale’s benign and guileless expression and realizes the smug git has been trolling him this whole time, and he’s simultaneously torn between being hopping mad about it (because that’s his job dammit) but also weirdly proud.
“You bastard,” he says, unable to keep the serpentine smile from spreading over his face, “how long were you going to keep that up?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, my dear,” the angel replies placidly, taking a sip from his teacup and pulling a face, “this tea however is absolutely scorching. I do hope I don’t spill any. That would be quite the mood.”
SCREAMING
Tags:
#Good Omens #language #fanfic #embarrassment squick #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(I have not seen the show‚ and have not read the book in a long time) #(but some of the stuff coming out of the fandom right now is hilarious even at my current level of context) #(so you will be seeing some Good Omens reblogs)
Necromancer that doesn’t know they’re a necromancer and thinks they’re just a really good emt
That is the funniest thing i have ever read
the thing was, she wasn’t going to be able to pass the recertification exam, and she couldn’t figure out why. annabelle studied. she practiced. she pulled out every trick and shortcut she’d learned during her two years as an EMT and none of it worked. she just – she didn’t get it. it made no sense.
“wake up,” she urged the dummy, pressing her hands to the pulse points on its wrists. “come on. what the fuck.”
“yeah, i don’t think that asking nicely is going to do the trick,” hank said, his eyebrows raised. his helmet, the special one they’d decorated for him with craft supplies from michael’s when he’d gotten promoted to firestation chief, sat askew on his head. “i can see now why they didn’t pass you.”
annabelle rolled her eyes. “it’s a psychological thing,” she said. “it’s like, you give the brain an instruction and it follows naturally. and the pulse-point thing always works. i don’t know why it’s not, like, in any of the books, but i swear to god it’s worked for me every time.”
it was true that annabelle had the best record on low body counts, which was good because she was the smallest person on the team not counting Georgie, who was a corgi. jake and lillian were always making fun of her for having been the shortest of their whole rookie class. but it hadn’t ever been a problem before; annabelle rarely had to carry anybody out, because she was good enough at getting them on their feet.
but none of that would matter if she couldn’t pass her stupid recertification exam, because they’d take her badge and she’d have to go be, like, a doctor or something.
hank blew out a long breath and sunk down to where she was kneeling on the station floor in full fire gear, giving CPR to the practice dummy, whom they called dierdre. there was a little light that went on when you’d saved its life. it had been a dull gray for an hour now.
“look, AB. i know you’re a good firefighter, and i know you know how to deliver CPR. just do it like you do it during an emergency. you’re overthinking it.”
“but this is what i do during an emergency!” annabelle cried, throwing her hands up. “i put my hands on their pulse points and i use psychological mumbo-jumbo and they just get up and walk!”
hank blinked. “…really,” he said, voice flat. “people who’ve been inhaling smoke for half an hour just … get up and walk.”
“the brain is an incredibly powerful organ,” said annabelle, shrugging. “look man, i don’t know, okay? but it works. i haven’t had to actually do CPR in like a year and a half.”
he gave her a long, quiet loo and said, “well….huh,” before pushing himself back up onto his feet and frowning off into the distance. “keep practicing,” he said after a minute, and left her there.
–
hank switched her team.
“what the fuck, man,” she said, sliding into the truck next to him as the sirens went on. “i can’t get CPR on one fucking dummy and suddenly you don’t trust me to do my job without supervision?”
carl and bethany very carefully did not meet her eyes in the rearview from the backseat. bethany pulled a magazine from beneath the seat and said loudly, “look, carl, jennifer aniston and brad pitt are getting back together.”
“thank christ,” said carl. “i’ve been really worried about jen.”
hank gave annabelle the flat look that had gotten him promoted to firestation chief in the first place, the one that said i’m your dad and you don’t want to disappoint me. as always, annabelle wilted underneath it, sliding down in her seat and crossing her arms over her chest. it was a difficult feat in full gear but she wanted him to know she was feeling sullen.
“i trust you completely,” hank told her, his voice a light scold. “i want to see you in action so i can help you figure out what’s going wrong with the dummies. sometimes it’s hard for the brain to accurately remember everything that happens during a crisis.”
annabelle rolled her eyes. “i told you,” she said. “it’s just – it’s the same thing every time, I’m not like, blacking out.”
“great, then i’m about to learn a cool new trick,” hank said serenely, and pulled the truck out of the lot. annabelle kept her gaze focused out of the window, watching the city pass as carl and bethany talked loudly about which celebrities were dating which other celebrities and who wore what better. she tried to swallow down the nerves that tightened her throat. maybe the dummy was right. maybe she was doing something else and didn’t remember it. maybe the last two years had been a fluke and she had no business being a firefighter. maybe she was about to get fired.
there wasn’t a fire, though the alarm was going off. instead they found a bag of smoking popcorn and the collapsed heap of a forty-five year old bachelor type, down to just his boxers and a pair of slippers with llamas on them. he had no pulse.
hank held carl and bethany back, directing them to deal with the smoke from the popcorn; annabelle he pointed toward the resident with a jerk of his chin.
she sighed, kneeling by his side. she pressed her hands flat to his heart and then dragged them across his chest and down each arm, to his wrists. with her thumbs on his pulse point, she hissed, “let’s go, man. up and at ’em. you’re not meant to die in your underwear while cooking popcorn, come on.”
she held her breath for a few moments, conscious of hank’s eyes on her, and let out a long sigh of relief when she felt his pulse jump beneath her, watched his eyes flicker. “what the fuck?” he asked, voice a croak. “what happened?”
“you gotta eat more vegetables, bud,” annabelle told him, and looped his arm over her shoulders to help him get to his feet. she was so relieved she could have wept, but instead met hank’s eyes with a challenging glare. see? she thought. i told you. “let’s get you to the ambulance.”
–
“the bad news is that you have a lot of practicing to do if you want to pass your recert,” hank said without preamble, showing up at her apartment. she didn’t think she’d ever seen him in jeans before. it was weird. “the good news is i understand your problem now.”
annabelle stepped aside, beckoning him in. “what problem?” she demanded. “it worked! you saw it work. that’s the opposite of a problem.”
hank shrugged. he handed her a trifold that he’d clearly printed off at home. it said so you think you’re a necromancer. annabelle blinked down at it, and then up at hank, and then down at the trifold again. “i … don’t understand what’s happening here,” she told him honestly.
“i’m not in the community and they’re kind of cagey, so i can’t really tell you a lot,” hank told her, stilted and visibly uncomfortable. “but i have a cousin who is, and um, i just want you to know that this doesn’t change anything. you’re still who you’ve always been and you have my complete support. we’ll figure out how to get around the recert. maybe i’ll – i can put you on admin duty to give you time to study. we’ll say it’s because of an injury.”
“hank,” annabelle said, with some urgency. “hank, this flier says the word necromancer.”
“yes,” agreed hank, looking relieved. “oh, good, you’ve heard of it already. i thought i was going to have to have the whole your body is changing talk.”
annabelle shook her head. “no, i – hank. you know that … um, you know that necromancy isn’t real, right? people can’t bring other people back from the dead. that’s crazy.”
“annabelle, not four hours ago you instructed a dead man to stand up and he did.”
“okay, he wasn’t dead, obviously. he was almost dead, at best.”
“no. he was dead.”
“i felt his pulse! it was very faint!”
“you called his pulse. no one else would have felt it, because it wasn’t there except in response to you.”
“hank, what the fuck.”
he shrugged. “read the flier,” he instructed. “and bring dierdre home with you. you’re going to have to practice a lot if you want to get recertified, considering you haven’t one time had to use any of the skills you learned the first go around.”
he bussed her temple as he went by, letting himself out of her apartment with a friendly wave. annabelle looked down at the flier in her hand with a frown. when she unfolded it, the first page said, everyone’s necromancy journey is different, but most people discover their gift by accident. have you ever brought a pet back to life? touched an elderly relatives hand and seen some of the color flood back into their face? or perhaps, more subtly, been able to keep cut flowers alive long past their purchase date?
annabelle looked at her kitchen table. she’d had the same vase of tulips on it since she moved in, three years ago. it was true they periodically started to wilt, but she usually just changed their water and they were fine, popping back up one after the other as she slid them into the fresh vase.
“well shit,” annabelle said, letting the flier fall from her hands.
Like, what if his name just happens to be Montgomery Scott, so all of his friends started calling him “Scotty,” and then every time he was introduced to a new person, they would be like “Oh, are you Scottish? My uncle was Scottish!”
And finally, he just gets sick of explaining the situation, so he starts replying with “aye, laddie!” But then it turns out that the person he said that to was Captain Kirk, and he doesn’t want to admit that he lied to his new commanding officer, so he has to keep speaking in a ridiculously over-the-top brogue and commenting constantly on how much he loves drinking Scotch, and by the time that he realises that Kirk would have found humour in the situation, he’s in too deep and can’t stop pretending, and it gradually just becomes his normal speech pattern.
Then, years later, the Enterprise is being inspected by a Starfleet engineer who’s actually Scottish, and Scotty takes him on a walking tour of his warp engines and is all like “Auch! Here be me wee bairns!” and the other engineer is just like “what the fuck is wrong with you?”
I take the fact that James Doohan is Canadian as evidence of this theory.
Scotty hacking into his Starfleet personnel file to alter his place of birth.
Scotty soundproofing his quarters on the Enterprise so that no one can hear him teach himself to play the bagpipes from instructional videos.
Scotty making a great show of taking a shuttle down to Aberdeen to “visit his family” every time the Enterprise is in Earth orbit and then, once on the ground, discreetly site-to-site transporting himself to Vancouver or whatever.
None of these things are out of character or beyond his technical ability.
Yeah, but also in character: Jim Kirk has known since Day 1 that Scotty is not, in fact, Scottish, but is just sitting there waiting to see how far Scotty is willing to go to keep the story going. It started out as an “enough rope” situation but now it’s one of Jim’s greatest ongoing sources of entertainment and he wouldn’t admit at gunpoint that he knows.
Frankly, as someone who’s paternal side is all Scottish, I simply can’t see any Scottish person not seeing this situation and running with it.
Next thing Scotty knows, half of Scottish Starfleet is claiming to be his brother’s sister-in-law’s half cousin twice removed and the Loch Ness Monster has been painted on the door to his quarters.
Kirk is busy dying of laughter.
Tags:
#Star Trek #TOS #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #embarrassment squick? #headcanons #may or may not have reblogged this before #(but the thread was shorter last time I saw it)
People keep leaving “Isn’t Bill’s first name Bilius?” comments on one of my HP posts and the answer is no. I checked before I posted. Bill Weasley’s first name is actually William.
“Do you, William Arthur, take Fleur Isabelle….?”
– Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 8. The Wedding
People are getting the name Bilius from a Weasley uncle, the one who saw a Grim and died twenty-four hours later. Ron’s middle name is also Bilius. Ron presumably was named for this uncle.
“Talking about Muriel?” inquired George, re-emerging from the marquee with Fred. “Yeah, she’s just told me my ears are lopsided. Old bat. I wish old Uncle Bilius was still with us, though; he was a right laugh at weddings.”
– Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 8. The Wedding
It’s kind of funny to imagine, though, that Bill could have grown up thinking that his name was Bilius. Kids often don’t know the “correct” names for things because the adults in their life refer to these things incorrectly as an in-joke or by nicknames. If everyone called him Bill and Bill grew up knowing his Uncle Bilius, then he could have very plausibly been under the impression for many years that his name was also Bilius.
Until, of course, September of 1982 rolls around.
Professor Minerva McGonagall opens a scroll and begins reading off the names of the first-years who are to be Sorted. She gets to the very last name on the list (entirely possible with a W name) and calls out: “WEASLEY, WILLIAM!”
11-year-old “Bill” Weasley, who has just this second found out that his first name is actually William: “…Who?!”
You can probably bet that Bill’s siblings sometimes called him Bilius as a joke too. Like, “BILIUS ARTHUR WEASLEY, HOW DARE YOU!”
Bill, unperturbed: “Yes, how dare I, Bilius Weasley, do this.”
Or maybe:
Charlie, speaking for all the Weasley siblings at the wedding: “YOUR NAME IS WILLIAM? SINCE WHEN???”
Bill: “Since always, apparently.”
Molly & Arthur: “What did you think his name was?”
Charlie: “I THOUGHT IT WAS BILIUS. LIKE UNCLE BILIUS.”
Arthur: “…No.”
Molly: “Why would you think that?”
Charlie: “WE’VE ONLY EVER CALLED HIM BILL?!?”
Charlie: “OH SHIT, WHAT’S MY NAME? DO I HAVE A SECRET NAME TOO?!”
Molly: “…You don’t… you don’t have secret names.”
Ron: “I want a better secret name than Ronald.”
Fred: “DIBS ON MANFREDO.”
Ginny: “I will now only answer to Ginwumpkinwinsalot.”
Tags:
#Harry Potter #fanfic #headcanons #embarrassment squick #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #names
Brinens and Things 