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vidavalor · 20 days

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Ok fine, I brought milk and chocolate chip cookies this time 🥛 🍪 and also some eggs from my lovely chickens! 🐓 🥚

I hope you accept this apology, and I’ll try my best to behave 😜

So, I wonder how you interpret 1.03 where, just before the flood, one of the unicorns makes a run for it and Crawley says ‘you still got one of them’? Some people seem to believe this means she didn’t understand the process of procreation (at the time). Do you have any thoughts on that?

Please don't behave. Why would you want to do that? Would make this all very boring lol. 😂 Thank you for the very fun ask. I love this question.💕

I think the scene you're talking about is more than a funny aside about whether or not Crowley had finished reading Demon's Guide to Reproduction of Beings on Earth yet... and that might not be the question the scene is really asking. I think it also has a ton to do with the Final Fifteen of 2.06, too, so *slices pie* let's get into the unicorns and the professional midwife/cobbler and what, imo, these two moments have to do with one another:

In S1, in the scene set just before the beginning of The Flood, we have two questions emerge from Crowley's dialogue, both of which are then picked up again in S2. One is what Crowley meant by "kids" when he said "you can't kill kids" after looking at a group containing both small goats and children. The second question is the one you're talking about, which is whether or not he understood at the time how human reproduction works. The question is born out of the fact that, on the surface, he might appear to not exactly be grasping the concept of Noah's Ark when he says that Shem's "still got one of them" after one of the pair of unicorns takes off and doesn't get on the boat. Both things show back up together again in S2 in the Job minisode and that sort of continuation of story, in a way, might suggest that there's going to be a third layer to this that emerges in S3 as well. I think, though, that we might have enough to look at some potential answers already.

While the "kids" bit is, essentially, answered and was always more of a language joke anyway-- Crowley wishes to kill no kids, be them goats or humans-- the fact that this question returned in S2 and was tied once again with a plot centered around sex and reproduction shows that the questions raised in The Flood scene in S1 are interrelated and pretty important overall. The entire Job plot ultimately comes down to who knows what about human reproduction. Saving the kids comes down to fooling Gabriel and fooling Gabriel can only be done because Gabriel, at least at the time, did not have the first clue how human reproduction normally works. He had only seen this one, initial, very atypical version of it that has basically never happened since and because he didn't spend time on Earth at that point in the story, he didn't know he had it all wrong. This whole story is built around what someone's understanding of reproduction of another species is and it isn't Crowley who doesn't know how it all works by 2500 B.C., it's Gabriel. But what does this have to do with The Flood and Crowley and the unicorns?

In the Job minisode, we are told that Gabriel was in The Garden at the start of it and witnessed Eve's birth from Adam's rib. We find this hilarious because we know that this isn't how sex works and this time, in this scene, Crowley is more than in on the joke with us. What makes the scene funny is actually Crowley's knowledge in it of how human sex and reproduction work. Unlike Gabriel, he wasn't there for Eve's super-weird birth and so he's visibly trying not to be like what the actual fuck? this is how Eve was made? at Aziraphale as Aziraphale's gestures lead Crowley to telling Sitis to pull out one of Job's ribs-- absolutely not a feature of any sex Crowley has ever had or seen. Aziraphale then is flirting with a Crowley who totally gets the joke when Sitis pulls the ox ribs "out" of Job. It's very evident between this scene and the prior night in the cellar that, circa 2500 B.C. at least, Crowley absolutely knew how human sex and reproduction worked.

The key bit here to understanding what Crowley was saying about the unicorns back during The Flood is actually in the reminder in the Job minisode about The Garden that the minisode gives us through making the plot equally about what Gabriel saw in The Garden-- Eve's weird conception and birth-- but also about what Gabriel didn't see-- Adam and Eve have more human-typical sex-- which is something that Crowley set into motion and then something that he and Aziraphale both witnessed.

By bringing up how Gabriel doesn't know what human sex and reproduction normally look like because of what he saw (and missed) in The Garden of Eden, the show is also reminding us that, after Gabriel left, Crowley was sent up into The Garden and tempted Eve into eating the apple. Eve then shared the apple with Adam. Adam and Eve figured out sex not long after that, during a period of time in which both Aziraphale and Crowley were also in The Garden and Eve's pregnancy was one of Aziraphale's motivations for giving them his flaming sword.

Mah point is that Crowley absolutely knew about sex and sexual reproduction during The Flood because Crowley and Aziraphale essentially watched the first humans have sex on Earth in The Garden of Eden.

The show also has about a half-dozen jokes about Anthony J. "Can I watchchch?" Crowley's voyeuristic tendencies and roots some of it to the fact that he's the Serpent of Eden and gets off on watching his temptation labors bear fruit. (It's been a long day. I have earned that joke😂). Ya know, such as:

This whole unicorn and sex thing is also part of the Job minisode by way of the ox ribs, further making it all kind of part of the same story. The inclusion of unicorns in ancient history in GO feels like a nod to the re'em, an animal mentioned a few times in The Bible (including in The Book of Job), which has been frequently translated as "unicorn" and is part of the origin for from where our idea of unicorns comes in the first place. The same word has been translated as meaning other animals-- among them? The wild ox.

Making things even more interesting is unicorn lore. The unicorn was said to be a wild, secretive creature who lived in the forest and who could only ever be captured and tamed by a virgin maiden. Aziraphale, in 2500 B.C., is shown to not eat or drink before the night in the cellar began so odds are also good on the food-and-alcohol = sex show that Aziraphale definitely qualified as a virgin maiden when he went to absolute town on those ox ribs. Anyway...

...what I'm saying here is that it feels extremely unlikely that, by the time of The Flood in 3,004 B.C., that Crowley didn't know how human sex and reproduction worked when he saw it play out in The Garden. Other than Eve's speedy stages of pregnancy meant to get the ball rolling on humanity, Adam and Eve's sex was typical of humans. So, Crowley knew about sex and sexual reproduction when he made the comment about the unicorns... but then how does that make sense, right?

In order to think that Crowley didn't know how reproduction works during The Flood scene we've seen, you would have to assume two things are true: 1) that unicorns reproduce via sexual reproduction and 2) that unicorns went extinct as a result of one of them making a run for it and not making it onto Noah's Ark, right?

The thing is... the show might be subtly trying to show that unicorns do still exist in GO. But before you say 'but, Vida, seriously?! We've never seen an unicorn after The Flood!', I'm going to argue that maybe we actually have one as a major supporting character and this S2 scene might be hinting in that direction:

The parallel to the "Oi, Shem!" scene is Nina-as-Crowley telling Aziraphale-as-Shem that that unicorn (The Bentley) is running of its own accord. Unicorns are magical beings. How magical beings present, as God pointed out in S1, is up to them. Human forms are just one option, right? I don't know exactly where this is going but this bit in S2 was a direct tie to The Flood's unicorn moment and it would explain a thing or two about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang if it were somehow tied to the unicorns. Can Crowley actually make them, the way Beez can make flies? Can Aziraphale? We really have no idea how the unicorn thing works in GO so we can't really use it as an example that Crowley didn't know about sex when it's more that we don't know about unicorns...

The unicorn that we saw during The Flood tracked with what we think of as the mythical being of an unicorn in our real world so we could make the assumption that some of the same aspects of them are/were true in GO. Unicorns are magical horse/donkey-like beings (which couldn't possibly be more Crowley and Aziraphale if it tried.) They are few and far between, are hard to spot and mostly keep to themselves. Human beings have no real actual proof that they ever existed in the first place and generally consider them mythical beings but Good Omens shows us that they at least did exist in GO ancient times-- and might still. In modern times, unicorns have become a LGBTQIA+ symbol and, for that reason and that reason alone, it seems unlikely that they actually went extinct in the world of *Good Omens*...

So, let's presume that Crowley said the existence of unicorns would continue even if Shem only had one of them on Noah's Ark because he knows that unicorns are not like other beings on Earth. Think about what else Crowley is then saying here with this line to Shem:

Noah's Ark, to us, is a story about continuing the existence of life for beings on Earth, right? It's about pairs, about mates, for the purpose of continuing species on earth via sexual reproduction. That's why we consider what Crowley's saying in this moment of this scene through the lens of it being entirely about sexual reproduction. When it comes to the unicorns, though, you could argue that Crowley is not actually talking about reproduction but about romance. We don't actually know how unicorns work-- but Crowley does.

What Crowley is actually telling us in this scene is that paired unicorns can survive the death of one of them because they're a part of each other. What Crowley is actually saying is that the pair of mated unicorns in the scene are two beings who share a single existence.

You couldn't permanently kill one of a pair of unicorns without killing both of them. So long as one of them still exists, they both do.

One unicorn could make a run for it for any reason and bolt away from his mate and die in the storm but Crowley knew the bolting unicorn was a part of the one that Shem got on the boat and so could be brought back.

In S2, we see something like this with other magical beings-- Ineffable Bureaucracy.

Oi, Shem, that purple-eyed unicorn's gonna make a run for it...

It's too late, too late...

Oh, well, you've still got one of them...

The Fly is Gabriel and Beez together; it's their shared existence. Without it, Gabriel would not have survived. The one of them still left-- Beez-- is the one who can put it together and bring Gabriel back into a full existence.

Ineffable Bureaucracy are unicorns who parallel our main two, though, and Oi, Shem...

...that bow-tied unicorn's gonna make a run for it...

Oh, well, you've still got one of them...

#ineffable husbands #good omens #good omens meta #crowley #aziraphale #aziracrow

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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 5 months

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Just curious - Have you played the new event, Stage in Playful Land, and what do you think about it? I think the concept is ridiculously hilarious: A suspicious fox man convinces half the cast (and even some of the smarter ones like Trey, Leona, and Vil) to skip school and go to an amusement park where they get kidnapped and sold off. And how is he not worried about the consequences??? I mean a lot of them are pretty famous/have high status, so I don't believe that Fellow can get away that easy.

In case you missed it, I gave my general thoughts on the event here. To summarize, interesting ideas but middle-of-the-road execution (especially in the middle part).

I did find it odd at first that Fellow doesn’t seem to recognize important and influential figures, but the more I read of the event story, the more it started to make sense. Right off the bat, the only one he knows is Vil. This is reasonable, as Vil’s face is plastered everywhere—TV, social media, etc.—and doesn’t require anything special to recognize.

Most of the others Fellow probably doesn’t know due to a lack of education or high status himself. How is he supposed to know Ortho’s the son of a secret blot research organization, that Lilia is a famous war general, or that the twins are from a (fan speculated) mob family? These require very specific insider knowledge. For Lilia, you’d need to crack open a magic history textbook—and even then, he may be wearing his general’s mask, which completely obscures his face.

Leona may be a prince and a lion beastman (which Fellow remarks are rare), but 1) Leona is not firstborn (and therefore isn’t the “face” of a country unlike his brother is) and 2) Leona isn’t highly involved in politics himself, so he may not be well-known outside of the the Sunset Savanna. This means it wouldn’t be all too far-fetched if Fellow didn’t clock him as a prince.

Kalim isn’t identified as being associated with the Asim family right away (which is fine; how many rich heirs’ faces do you know of off the top of your head??). However, Fellow does piece together through their interactions that Kalim’s family is extremely wealthy. He then tries to use that against Kalim and lure him into a false sense of security by offering an escape route at the cost of betraying his NRC friends.

Even if Fellow doesn’t automatically understand who he is dealing with, he still does assume they are significantly more privileged than he is just because they attend Night Raven College. He doesn’t have to know who they are specifically, because he already understands they have a foot up in life and are good marks regardless. There’s also a built-in reason for why he doesn’t fear whisking away such high-profile people: his sponsors.

Recall that Fellow is NOT working alone in this whole operation. He has stated that his boss and their associates are very wealthy, not to mention that Playful Land itself has terrifying magic that was constructed by high-level mages. Those connections will likely come in handy for covering up the disappearances, so Fellow, who does the grunt work of luring new “product” in will have their protection.

#twst #twisted wonderland #Fellow Honest #disney twisted wonderland #disney twst #spoilers #notes from the writing raven #question #Ferro Honest #Leona Kingscholar #Vil Schoenheit #Kalim Al-Asim #Ortho Shroud #Tweels #Jade Leech #Floyd Leech #Lilia Vanrouge

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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 20 days

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forever ago you mentioned in an ask post that you have a story in your head about college-aged Matt saving Frank’s kids and in return the Castle family forcibly enfolds him into their tribe. There is literal kidnapping involved, and every word in your little summary was fucking hilarious. I want you to know that that scenario has lived in my head rent free ever since—I am astounded by your brain and that concept makes me want to eat dirt (in the best way)(that is a compliment of the highest degree)

anyways! Please don’t think this is me asking “when will you write that” bc i get it, some plot bunnies are just bunnies, and time/real world is a bitch, BUT—if you ever have any little ramblings about it, I’d love to hear them :) the Castle family is Insane and I love them dearly and I am forever entranced by your characterizations of Matt and Frank

Have a good one!!

Christmas with the Castles my beloved. I love this one so much that I typed out an outline of the fic entirely. It is long. Please, take my ramblings if you want them:

It's Christmas at Columbia, hohoho, peace and goodwill to all mankind. The dorms are closed over winter break to replace the pipes and Matt's out on his ass for the holidays, so get fucked, blind little orphan with no surviving family, and God bless us everyone.

Normally the Nelson clan would have taken him in but Foggy's bitch of a Great Aunt Bertha insists on holding the entire family hostage for the holidays with the will as collateral, and she sucks in many respects but even more in the sense that she doesn't want any blind orphans schlepping around her holiday table. But the Nelson clan will risk it all for Matt, who they think is neat. They'll put the whole fucking will on the line, buddy.

Matt assures them that he's got it all under control and has a place to stay. Yes, with a person. Yes, a real one. An old friend of his dad's. No, he's not going to be homeless. Stop asking questions.

This is a lie.

His plan is to simply be homeless. Peace and goodwill to all mankind.

Except Foggy knows when Matt's on his bullshit and insists on speaking to the guy he's staying with, which means he needs to get Fogwell to lie for him. Except Fogwell knows when Matt's on his bullshit and won't let him off the fucking hook until he knows Matt won't be homeless for the holidays.

Matt unequivocally refuses to come home with him. Stop asking. He'll find someone else to do the phone call.

They compromise with Matt staying in the fucking boiler room of the gym. Peace and goodwill to all mankind.

Except Matt sort of makes Fogwell think that he only needs to crash for a few days, and Foggy's family is going to take him in for the rest. This is also a lie. He is fucking off to be homeless for the rest of the holiday season.

Peace and goodwill to all mankind.

He's swallowing his misgivings and putting up with staying in the boiler room of the gym for a few days so Fogwell won't freak out. Which he now regrets. Because it puts him right in the earshot of an active hostage situation. Are those kids? Those are fucking kids.

Anyway he tries to call the police anonymously like ten times but this just tips off the hostage takers, who apparently have a mole in the police, surprising no one. Now they're going to kill the fucking kids.

Matt can't listen to this.

Peace and fucking goodwill to all mankind.

Okay. Fuck. He's doing this now.

Fuck.

THE CASTLE'S HOLIDAY SEASON, THUS FAR:

The kids got kidnapped.

fuck.

that happened.

The thing is that some random NSA guy got into contact with Frank and in this AU he actually blew the whistle on the the CIA's bullshit. His family was in protective custody, until his best friend and pseudo brother stabbed him in the fucking back and sold them out. Now they have his kids.

He then kills a lot of people.

Like a lot.

But he can't find his kids. They have his kids.

They're going to kill his kids.

MATT'S NIGHT, THUS FAR:

He's an asshole in sweatpants with a t-shirt wrapped around the top part of his face and no fucking plan, and there are so many assholes with guns in there. Like. So many.

But fuck it. He's doing this now.

fuck.

He fights a lot of guys. He gets super shot. Some guy tries to shoot him with arrows. Like, what the fuck even is this, Robin Hood? Honestly, fuck this night.

Anyway, he saves the kids. Wheee.

It's sort of nice? They bond, when the crying stops. The kids like him a lot. He calls their parents. Sets up a place for them to get picked up. The boy gives him the sweatshirt he's wearing under his jacket, which is kind of him, because it's fuck-off cold and Matt's about ten minutes from going into shock. Anyway, he drops them off at the spot and fucks off into the night before their oddly bloodstained dad can stop him like the world's shittiest off-brand batman.

He then goes to exercise the right of any God-fearing American citizen, which is to bleed out in the basement of his childhood church.

Fogwell's never gonna be okay again if he finds Matt's blood-soaked body in the gym. Matt figures he can just break into that basement no one uses, steal a med kit, make a solid confession about breaking into and stealing from a church if he lives long enough, and hopefully no one will even notice he was there.

This does not pan out.

A really angry nun finds him and narcs him out to Father Lanthom and they bitch him out for "dying" and "not seeking life-saving medical attention" and drag his ass to to the hospital.

NOW THE CASTLE FAMILY, REUNITED AT LAST:

The kids' will be in therapy forever but the danger is gone, because frank killed them all very dead.

He then received a presidential pardon for All The Murder.

Peace and goodwill to all mankind.

Anyway he's testified about the CIA corruption, the government is occupying itself with the coverup to end all coverups, and his only remaining concerns is (1) taking care of his family and (2) making sure the bleeding dipshit who saved his kids lives doesn't die in the streets. He's gotta find that dumb asshole.

Then he gets a phone call from a very concerned nurse at Metro General about the bleeding dipshit that got brought in with his kid's sweatshirt. They're calling because he keeps trying to goddamn leave while very fucking shot and he had a jacket with Frankie's information written on it in magic marker. Do they know him? Can they please come pick him up? They think he's going to die in the streets if someone does not pick him up.

And Yeah. Yeah, Frank Can Do That.

Matt.

Yeah.

The magic marker, he didn't.

Didn't

Didn't see that part.

Fuck.

Anyway, Matt's On His Way Out To Be Homeless For The Holiday Season, Peace And Goodwill To All Mankind, As Soon As The Goddamn Nurses Stop Hiding The Leave Against Medical Advice Forms. He lied and said he got jumped by a lot of guys, no, he didn't see who did it, because, you know. Blind. Just a regular ol' blind guy here. Poor fucking blind orphan alone and shot for the holiday season. Just give him the goddamn form.

And then that fucking guy shows up in his hospital room. The suspiciously bloody father of the kids he just got shot over. He's here, he's insisting that Matt's one of his family's closest friends and they're paying all of Matt's medical bills, and he's not commenting on the blind bit, but Matt can literally smell his curiosity. Matt's insisting that some random guy gave him the jacket, no, he didn't see his face, because, you know. Blind. He's not the guy Frank thinks he is. Nope. Please fuck off now.

They do not fuck off. Maria Castle blows through the hospital room like a hurricane, hugs him very genuinely, cries a little, and tells him that the Castle family pays their debts, and they've never had a greater one. Then the kids show up, and they fucking recognize him. Fuck.

Matt: imindanger.exe

Matt keeps feigning ignorance. Then, he waits until they leave the room and he fucking books it.

Anyway the Castle family minivan catches up to him when he's legging it a block away. They keep pace with him, and ask to just take him where he's going, and they swear they're not going to hurt him. They just want to help him out. He saved their kids.

And he can hear that they're telling the truth.

And it's so goddamn cold.

And he can hear his own internal bleeding.

And he's so, so tired.

So he tells them that no one would ever believe them. And he gets in the car. and he gives them Fogwell's address. And he tells himself he'll crash there for a day or two and fuck off to be homeless in the streets, peace and good-fucking-will to all mankind.

WHAT THE CASTLE FAMILY DID NOT SCHEDULE FOR THE DAY:

A kidnapping.

WHAT THE CASTLE FAMILY DOES:

It's. It's a kidnapping. They do a kidnapping.

Look. Look. they pay their debts. They pay their fucking debts. It's what they do. And they get to Fogwell's boiler room and rapidly fucking realize that the guy who they owe their everything to is a terminally stupid 20-something and living in the rundown boiler room of an empty gym. And they simply cannot have that.

Frank? Frank, show Matthew back to the car, will he? Maria's going to pack up his things for him.

Matt: what.exe

WHAT MATT DID NOT SCHEDULE FOR THE DAY:

it's.

It's the kidnapping.

it's that.

This fic is fundamentally founded in my premise that the entire Castle family is simply fucking insane. They're just all like that. Frank is not an outlier.

For the Castles, they're being perfectly reasonable. It's obvious that no one's taking care of this lovely young man who saved their kids, so no one will mind if they do it instead. He definitely needs it. So they sit their kids down and explain that sometimes Stockholm Syndrome is for someone's own good, which sounds perfectly reasonable to them. They then proceed to treat this like when you somewhat impulsively get a sick puppy from a Home Depot parking lot, and, well, he's a bit poorly behaved, and he keeps trying to run away, but the kids had wanted it so badly and eventually he's going to settle into his new home and then maybe you can stick felt reindeer antlers on him for the Christmas card, so you keep shoving his meds in peanut butter and forcing them down his throat and keeping the door blocked so the puppy can't slip out into the freezing new york night.

Matt treats this for what it is, which is a fucking kidnapping.

He is now fucking handcuffed to these crazy assholes' guest bed in their suburban home. It's by definition a kidnapping. they're acting like he's the unreasonable one for pointing this out. Except every time he wriggles out of his handcuffs, Frank just lugs his ass back to bed and chains him back up while they scold him. As if he's the unreasonable one for trying to escape his own kidnapping. They make him take his meds and eat three meals a day and the kids watch fucking Christmas movies with him while narrating the screen, as if this wasn't a kidnapping. This is insane. They're all insane.

Which is what he eventually tells them, out loud and to their faces.

And then Maria cries.

Stop.

Stop that.

That thing she's doing with her face. Stop that thing.

And Maria's like. Maybe they were over enthusiastic. But, being a mother, she just wants to take care of the nice young man who saved her little angels. And if that makes her a criminal, then she guesses she's a criminal. Because she cares.

Matt: shoving me into a van and handcuffing me to a bed against my will makes you by definition a criminal

maria: *cries harder*

Matt: stop

And Matt's like. Fine. Fine. He'll give into their crazy fucking kidnapping. Saves him the trouble of being homeless. Just. It's only until Christmas, and then he's gone.

maria, tearfully: and new years too?

Matt: don't push your luck

So fuck it. He's doing this now. But he's not going to like it. And he gets to come and go when he wants.

Frank: no.

matt: seriously fuck you

Except Matt's got shit they didn't pack at Fogwells. Shit they didn't realize belonged to him. His dad's shit. And he's absolutely desperate to get his dad's shit before some well-meaning janitor tosses it. So he very reluctantly agrees to let Frank go in his stead. Just. Just don't talk to people. And don't tell anyone he kidnapped matt. matt does not want to deal with that fucking court case.

Fogwell, immediately catching Frank gathering Matt's stuff for him, when he finds out that Matt sent him: are you a Nelson?

Frank, not a Nelson: Guilty.

And Fogs is just. Thrilled. So fucking thrilled that Matt has the Nelsons. Matt needs people like that, you know? People that'll welcome him home.

He's a good kid. And he hasn't had a home in a good long time. And Fogs--he's so fucking sorry that he couldn't give Matt that. And he. He.

Just tell him Merry Christmas from him? He understands why Matt didn't want to spend it with him.

Just tell him ol' Fogs was thinking of him. Tell him he really, really cares and hopes his holidays are good.

Fuck. Tell him he loves him. Just. Just tell him that. Fogs should have done it a long time ago.

What follows from there is a lot of wholesome, family-friendly Christmas activities, like:

making gingerbread houses

ice-skating

having a total mental breakdown when you get the message passed along from your pseudo-grandfather that he wishes he could have given him a home.

drinking cocoa

getting shit-faced drunk out on the town with the somewhat insane mother of those kids you saved, only to both be lugged home by a very exasperated Frank Castle.

watching Christmas movies

Visiting the grave of your dead father whose loss you've never recovered from

drinking eggnog

Confessing about your superpowers to the crazy fuckers who may or may not have given you stockholm syndrome, as well as your lasting trauma around the fact that you were child-soldierified and your soul-crushing terror that it will happen again

Making paper snowflakes

(Matt may not have meant to do all those things.)

I really like having backstories in communication with each other across my fics taking place in the same fandom? And Fogs is a great example of that. He tends to show up in all of my Daredevil fics, and he usually does something that brings Matt in from the cold in his backstory.

But in this world, that Fogs didn't do it.

In this one, he had the chance, and he failed.

Matt came to him. He ran away from the foster care system when he was a teen, and he went to Fogs as a desperate, last ditch effort. He begged Fogs to still love him the way he did when he was a kid. He begged Fogs to take him in the way he once took in Jack Murdock. He'd help Fogs around the gym. He'd do anything Fogs asked. He just wants to go home.

All he's wanted for years was to just go home.

And Fogs hugged him. He held him. He let him sleep on the couch.

And he called the police.

He wanted to do it the right away around, this time. He didn't want Matt to be hiding from the system for the rest of his youth the way his daddy once did. He wanted him to still get to go to school. He wanted him to be a kid. He wanted to adopt him proper, and didn't think of the fact that no one was gonna let him do it.

And he didn't account for how Matt would never trust him again.

He didn't account for Matt ending up on the streets, and he didn't account for matt refusing to come for him for help again, and he didn't account for Matt refusing to have anything to do with him until he hit law school and barely tolerated hanging around the gym at night again, and he didn't account for Matt not being able to stand the idea of spending the holidays with him.

There's a lot Fogs won't ever forgive himself for.

Anyway, Matt's stockholm syndrome was a great success. They fucking did it. They now have a crazy motherfucker with superpowers who's occupying this space as a the kid's new pseudo uncle. Unmitigated success. God, what an addition to the family. He's just as crazy as them.

Except Matt gets a call. From a very upset Foggy Nelson. Who says that they decided to burn the defunct bridge that was their relationship with their torrid bitch of a great aunt after she said something homophobic to Foggy's sister, and they went to go surprise Matt for the holidays, only to find out that he was already supposed to be with them. Matthew.

The thing is, foggy knows who Matt is as a person. He knows who Matt is as a person. There is such a very real chance that his blind best friend has been living under an overpass in subzero weather for the past few weeks and not telling him. He's having a heart attack and needs to come pick him up immediately before Matt starts selling his body or something.

And like, good news is that Matt was kidnapped by a lovely suburban family who have been keeping him warm and fed and dry, and they're going to be baking gingerbread today. The bad news is that Matt will literally have a heart attack if he has to explain to foggy how he got here so he just. Panics.

And hangs up the phone.

And matts panicking about how he hung up the phone, because foggy will absolutely call the police and report him as a missing person, holy shit will he call the police on him, Matt was literally kidnapped but he likes his kidnappers now and doesn't want them to be arrested, they're making gingerbread you see and that would be inconvenient to the gingerbread making. So Maria and Frank and the kids are watching this weird feral law student they forcibly adopted go through every single stage of grief in a two minute span, wonder how he made it through life so far on his own, and Maria wrangles the phone from him and calls Foggy back and politely tells him that this is Maria Castle, matts basically a part of their family and has been staying with them through the holidays, they've heard so much about foggy, won't he come visit? How about tomorrow at two? They're making gingerbread today.

Matt: MARIA

Matt is panicking. Foggy knows he doesn't have a family. Foggy is his family. Foggy has unlocked his tragic backstory. Foggy is going to wonder how he acquired a family in like a two and a half week span.

Foggy is panicking. He knows Matt doesn't have a family. He has unlocked matts tragic backstory. Matt was in their fucking Christmas cards because he has no family's Christmas cards to be in.

Maria is not panicking. They're taking a step back and making gingerbread now. Take deep breaths, Matthew.

FOGGY NELSON'S THEORIES ABOUT WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH HIS BEST FRIEND (ABRIDGED):

Matt has started a polycule with a suburban couple and is raising their children with them now.

Matt was switched at birth and that's his newly discovered real family and he just never told Foggy.

Matt has been kidnapped by a family in the suburbs and they've enslaved him to make gingerbread with their children.

Which is true, weirdly enough.

Matt is having a spiraling panic attack because while he's like, not on deaths door anymore, he's still healing and clearly beat to shit and foggys going to think the castles did it and freak out and he doesn't have a lie for this prepped. And the castles are like "okay okay but, quick point, you've even prattling on about this kid for like, a minimum of four hours per day, you are more likely than not in love with him, have you considered the truth"

And Matt doesn't know what to do with that, is the thing.

Foggy comes by. He is four hours early. He arrived immediately after he got the address. Maria is lovely and kind and welcoming. Frank pumps his arm firmly and is built like a brickshit house and sort of intimidating.

Matt is absolutely beat to shit.

Foggy: AHAHAHA HEY BUDDY IMMA GIVE YOU A HUG BECAUSE I MISSED YOU AND LOVE YOU SO MUCH IN THIS THE SEASON OF GOODWILL AMONG MEN. did they do this to you cough twice for yes

Matt: oh for the love of god.

And the problem is. For a family that commits felonies. They're weirdly open about that fact.

Foggy: how did Matt end up staying with you

Lisa: oh we gave him Stockholm syndrome after kidnapping him

matt: ahahaha kids say the darndest things

Frankie: no really dad kept having to drag him off the windowsill when he tried to climb out and we had to be extra welcoming to him so he'd stop trying to escape

Matt: AHAHAHA KIDS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS

Foggy told his cop friend Brett to be on standby before he came here and now he's rapidly wondering if he needs to actualize that.

There's a good deal bit more after that, but this is getting long. There's emotional honesty. There's homosexuality. There's confessions about superpowers that Matt may or may not have. There's discussing trauma.

There's the fucking shadow government showing up to recruit Matt.

The thing is that Frank Castle is one of the best military operatives, like. Ever. And SHIELD was interested in recruiting that. And they thought, hey, saving his kids may do that. And they sent Hawkeye to infiltrate the mercenaries that had taken them.

Except they were fuck-off guns there and while he could take them all out if it was just him, he'd have to be 90% crazier of motherfucker than he actually is to try that shit with two kids in the line of fire.

And then an absolutely crazy motherfucker showed up and did exactly that. Caught his arrow mid-backflip. Kicked his ass too. It was sort of sick as hell. He hasn't met anyone so good at hand to hand since black widow.

They couldn't not recruit that guy.

And like. They found him. They found him really easily. The castle family kidnapped him. It was kind of obvious.

So Clint and Coulson roll up with the recruitment pitch and Clints like "hey, haha, I'm Clint, you stabbed me, wow you're like, completely insane, I mean that literally and in a figurative impressiveness sense, want to be best friends" and matts a fucking centimeter from launching himself out the window and starting a new life in Mexico.

And coulson's good at what he does. He can tell that matts not at all buying what he's selling, is more than a little freaked out at the idea of being identified as enhanced, and is almost definitely a former child soldier if their background was accurate about who took him from his orphanage for a few months. He also knows that Matt's abilities are too unique and too useful to just walk away from them. Nothing can be hidden from him. And if a fucking nuke is missing and they need someone to sniff it out, they need to be able to set Matt loose on a city for it. So he makes the pitch of "what if I keep you out of all databases, tell no one your name, and have you as a strictly as needed member of the roster," to which Matt replies with something along the line of "you can go and get fucked with you fascist shadow agency bullshit, you fucking totalitarian nightmare freaks, you try and drag me off to your freak show org to be a fucking dog on a leash for your illegal agency and I'll bite your goddamn face off, the world would have to end for me to come within a hundred godforsaken feet of you," which is… a coarse but technically affirmative answer that Coulson takes to mean as "Yes, if the world is ending, I will come to your agency." He honestly tells him that he'll keep matts secret and leaves. And Matt is still considering the Mexico plan but decides that he has a family to keep him here now in foggy and the castles and decides to risk staying. And that's that.

Which leads into my semi-crack fic of Matt being in the original Avengers, which I won't subject you to here. but some highlights:

Matt misses the first day of world-saving because he took off the second the SHIELD guy came by to pick him up. He managed to hide for 27 consecutive hours before they dragged his ass to the helicarrier.

He wasn't briefed at all because they ask him if he read the files they gave him and he just tosses them on the table and asks "does this look like fucking Braille to you." He repeatedly threatens to sue them for a lack of ada compliance.

He keeps getting stuck in rooms because this nightmare space ship only uses screens for everything, including door handles.

The hulk: *is the hulk*

Matt, has a stick: WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THAT

Tony: in a few minutes I'll know every secret SHIELD has ever had

Matt, has listened to at least eight top secret HYDRA meetings since being locked into this fucking hell ship: MHMM

They save the day, he's in a mask, the press asks them all whats next for the avengers and he's like "well I have a day job, I'm going home" and just. Walks away.

Three weeks later he starts fighting crime of his own volition and whenever anyone mentions hey is it maybe that avenger fellow he replies to the official inquiries with "oh no you see I have a day job" which should not work but does

Of course, Matt learning about HYDRA leads into my other semi-crack fic involving Matt simply immediately telling Captain America about the fucking Nazi's, and Cap rediscovering his life's passion, which is punching some fucking Nazi's. Except, he really needs Matt to spy on HYDRA for this to work, and Matt's identity is still almost entirely secret even within SHIELD and he doesn't want to endanger that. So they embark on introducing everyone to Matt Murdock, his totally normal, blind attorney boyfriend who is not at all a superpowered ultimate spy who happens to be secretly a very reluctant Avenger. It is now a fake dating AU.

#daredevil #christmas with the castles

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kremlin · 8 months

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How DOES the C preprocessor create two generations of completely asinine programmers??

oh man hahah oh maaan. ok, this won't be very approachable.

i don't recall what point i was trying to make with the whole "two generations" part but ill take this opportunity to justifiably hate on the preprocessor, holy fuck the amount of damage it has caused on software is immeasurable, if you ever thought computer programmers were smart people on principle...

the cpp:

there are like forty preprocessor directives, and they all inject a truly mind-boggling amount of vicious design problems and have done so for longer than ive been alive. there really only ever needed to be one: #include , if only to save you the trouble of manually having to copy header files in full & paste them at the top of your code. and christ almighty, we couldn't even get that right. C (c89) has way, waaaay fewer keywords than any other language. theres like 30, and half of those aren't ever used, have no meaning or impact in the 21st century (shit like "register" and "auto"). and C programmers still fail to understand all of them properly, specifically "static" (used in a global context) which marks some symbol as inelligible to be touched externally (e.g. you can't use "extern" to access it). the whole fucking point of static is to make #include'd headers rational, to have a clear seperation between external, intended-to-be-accessed API symbols, and internal, opaque shit. nobody bothers. it's all there, out in the open, if you #include something, you get all of it, and brother, this is only the beginning, you also get all of its preprocessor garbage.

this is where the hell begins:

#if #else

hey, do these look familiar? we already fucking have if/else. do you know what is hard to understand? perfectly minimally written if/else logic, in long functions. do you know what is nearly impossible to understand? poorly written if/else rats nests (which is what you find 99% of the time). do you know what is completely impossible to understand? that same poorly-written procedural if/else rat's nest code that itself is is subject to another higher-order if/else logic.

it's important to remember that the cpp is a glorified search/replace. in all it's terrifying glory it fucking looks to be turing complete, hell, im sure the C++ preprocessor is turing complete, the irony of this shouldn't be lost on you. if you have some long if/else logic you're trying to understand, that itself is is subject to cpp #if/#else, the logical step would be to run the cpp and get the output pure C and work from there, do you know how to do that? you open the gcc or llvm/clang man page, and your tty session's mem usage quadruples. great job idiot. trying figuring out how to do that in the following eight thousand pages. and even if you do, you're going to be running the #includes, and your output "pure C" file (bereft of cpp logic) is going to be like 40k lines. lol.

the worst is yet to come:

#define #ifdef #ifndef (<- WTF) #undef you can define shit. you can define "anything". you can pick a name, whatever, and you can "define it". full stop. "#define foo". or, you can give it a value: "#define foo 1". and of course, you can define it as a function: "#define foo(x) return x". wow. xzibit would be proud. you dog, we heard you wanted to kill yourself, so we put a programming language in your programming language.

the function-defines are pretty lol purely in concept. when you find them in the wild, they will always look something like this:

#define foo(x,y) \ (((x << y)) * (x))

i've seen up to seven parens in a row. why? because since cpp is, again, just a fucking find&replace, you never think about operator precedence and that leads to hilarious antipaterns like the classic

#define min(x,y) a < b ? a : b

which will just stick "a < b ? a: b" ternary statement wherever min(.. is used. just raw text replacement. it never works. you always get bitten by operator precedence.

the absolute worst is just the bare defines:

#define NO_ASN1 #define POSIX_SUPPORTED #define NO_POSIX

etc. etc. how could this be worse? first of all, what the fuck are any of these things. did they exist before? they do now. what are they defined as? probably just "1" internally, but that isn't the point, the philosophy here is the problem. back in reality, in C, you can't just do something like "x = 0;" out of nowhere, because you've never declared x. you've never given it a type. similar, you can't read its value, you'll get a similar compiler error. but cpp macros just suddenly exist, until they suddenly don't. ifdef? ifndef? (if not defined). no matter what, every permutation of these will have a "valid answer" and will run without problem. let me demonstrate how this fucks things up.

do you remember "heartbleed" ? the "big" openssl vulnerability ? probably about a decade ago now. i'm choosing this one specifically, since, for some reason, it was the first in an annoying trend for vulns to be given catchy nicknames, slick websites, logos, cable news coverage, etc. even though it was only a moderate vulnerability in the grand scheme of things...

(holy shit, libssl has had huge numbers of remote root vulns in the past, which is way fucking worse, heartbleed only gave you a random sampling of a tiny bit of internal memory, only after heavy ticking -- and nowadays, god, some of the chinese bluetooth shit would make your eyeballs explode if you saw it; a popular bt RF PHY chip can be hijacked and somehow made to rewrite some uefi ROMs and even, i think, the microcode on some intel chips)

anyways, heartbleed, yeah, so it's a great example since you could blame it two-fold on the cpp. it involved a generic bounds-checking failure, buf underflow, standard shit, but that wasn't due to carelessness (don't get me wrong, libssl is some of the worst code in existence) but because the flawed cpp logic resulted in code that:

A.) was de-facto worthless in definition B.) a combination of code supporting ancient crap. i'm older than most of you, and heartbleed happened early in my undergrad. the related legacy support code in question hadn't been relevant since clinton was in office.

to summarize, it had to do with DTLS heartbeats. DTLS involves handling TLS (or SSLv3, as it was then, in the 90s) only over UDP. that is how old we're talking. and this code was compiled into libssl in the early 2010s -- when TLS had been the standard for a while. TLS (unlike SSLv3 & predecessors) runs over TCP only. having "DTLS heartbeat support in TLS does not make sense by definition. it is like drawing a triangle on a piece of paper whose angles don't add up to 180.

how the fuck did that happen? the preprocessor.

why the fuck was code from last century ending up compiled in? who else but!! the fucking preprocessor. some shit like:

#ifndef TCP_SUPPORT <some crap related to UDP heartbeats> #endif ... #ifndef NO_UDP_ONLY <some TCP specific crap> #endif

the header responsible for defining these macros wasn't included, so the answer to BOTH of these "if not defined" blocks is true! because they were never defined!! do you see?

you don't have to trust my worldview on this. have you ever tried to compile some code that uses autoconf/automake as a build system? do you know what every single person i've spoken to refers to these as? autohell, for automatic hell. autohell lives and dies on cpp macros, and you can see firsthand how well that works. almost all my C code has the following compile process:

"$ make". done. Makefile length: 20 lines.

the worst i've ever deviated was having a configure script (probably 40 lines) that had to be rune before make. what about autohell? jesus, these days most autohell-cursed code does all their shit in a huge meta-wrapper bash script (autogen.sh), but short of that, if you decode the forty fucking page INSTALL doc, you end up with:

$ automake (fails, some shit like "AUTOMAKE_1.13 or higher is required) $ autoconf (fails, some shit like "AUTOMCONF_1.12 or lower is required) $ aclocal (fails, ???) $ libtoolize (doesn't fail, but screws up the tree in a way that not even a `make clean` fixes $ ???????? (pull hair out, google) $ autoreconf -i (the magic word) $ ./configure (takes eighty minutes and generates GBs of intermediaries) $ make (runs in 2 seconds)

in conclusion: roflcopter

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#frequently questioned answers

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sunsetcougar · 2 months

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For the hawk feather exorcist au, I looked up to see if hawks can see glass and apparently they cannot.

So if you have any reflective surface the exorcists will absolutely just smack into it, especially glass door or windows. Hawks see things 8x Better than a human that's what makes them so efficient in hunting. It allows them to spot smaller prey from miles away, the exorcists use this to find sinners on extermination day, and also to hunt mice,rats rabbits and fish when there bored.

This all changes when glass is involved. Lute absolutely smacked into a door while on the way to a meeting with Adam and Sera after they managed to calm her down a few months after her creation, and couldn't for the life of her figure out what was in her way, Adam found it hilarious and it was they only time Sera genuinely found something appealing about lute.

Vaggie did something similar in the hotel when following Lucifer and husk back inside after a flight. She just didn't see the window. Angel refuses to let her live it down and it doesn't help that the new hotel has glass doors.

Angel: can you not see the glass?!

Vaggie: I'm a bird

Angel : pfft!!

I have too many thoughts on them

Fuck. Yes.

They have such incredible eyesight, it’s one of the best things they came out of their origins, but they are also the only angels who can’t see glass. Thankfully most windows in their nest don’t even have panes and are just open.

Once Sera deemed Lute under control enough to be trusted around others she invited Adam and Lute to her office in the main city to talk about plans for the Exorcists training since they now had quite a few of them. Sera left one of her (glass) porch doors open for them. Adam went through no issue, but Lute rammed into the closed door full force and lay stunned on the porch for a minute.

Sera was very concerned at first but upon Lute popping up and demanding to know what was stopping her from going inside and the realization that she can’t see glass, Sera couldn’t help but find the whole situation a bit amusing as she explained the concept of glass. It was actually pretty endearing to watch Lute tilt her head like a bird as she tried to figure out this invisible force.

Adam was practically dying laughing the whole time because this scary ass lady can’t see glass. Later Sera has to give the Exorcists a crash course on the concept of glass.

Vaggie ran into windows several times when she got her wings back, and Angel 100% teases her about it constantly. Eventually Charlie installs foggy film on all of the windows and glass doors so Vaggie won’t break her nose or give herself a concussion again from running into them because she doesn’t realize they’re there.

Angel has a picture of Vaggie laying on the ground on her back like a stunned bird after she ran into the glass doors and he’s keeping it as blackmail.

I love all of your thoughts so much they’re great

#Hawk Feather Exorcists AU #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel vaggie #hazbin hotel au #hazbin hotel charlie #hazbin hotel sera #hazbin hotel lute #hazbin hotel exorcists #hazbin hotel adam #hazbin hotel angel dust

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00belle00lovely00 · 2 months

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Well, since poly ships are now an option, curious to see how you'd view DogDay x CatNap x CraftyCorn 🫢

(I don't personally ship those three together btw. Just curious 🧡💜🤍)

OH! OF COURSE! I've noticed as of late that this ship in particular is VERY popular.

And yes! Poly ships are very much welcome since I'm poly myself. And to be completely honest with you, the majority of the ships I mention don't specifically fall into my favourites, but boneless I still love these concepts you'll give me! Hey, even you could say it helps me improve my writing skills!

🧡💜🤍☀️🌙🎨🧡💜🤍☀️🌙🎨🧡💜🤍☀️🌙🎨🧡💜🤍☀️

PLEASE... BY ALL MEANS.... THIS SHIP GOTTA BE CALLED FLOWER BOUQUET. IT'S LITERALLY THREE TYPES OF FLOWER SCENTS IN A SINGLE SHIP. Wait is vanilla a flower?- no?- yes?- no?- eh. Same thing

shy x extrovert x introvert

Wouldn't it be downright hilarious to picture Catnap and Dogday being Craftycorn's muses for paintings? IT'S A CUTE CONCEPT, YOU ALL KNOW IT.

Could we all just agree that she carries and costume-made diary everywhere she goes?

Both Dogday and Catnap in my head would've probably intimidated yet striked Craftycorn's interest in every way. Catnap, even though somewhat too quiet or too lazy to go on with the day, is a very calming type of person who rarely gets angry at others or anything for that matter. And as for Dogday he's legitimately a sunrise and smiles kind of active guy, which in a way Craftcorn found them both endearing. And BECAUSE of that, she would've had a crush on them both at the same time and battled with her own feelings the whole time in who she liked the most, or in some way, even hoped she didn't since her nerves would be the end of her.

Craftycorn would too take her feelings out in drawing, just like in anything for that matter, and what would be her biggest fear? Catnap and Dogday seeing the things she has drawn at the end of the sketchbook.... don't ask what it is. We all know what it is.

Their date? Literally a cosy sleepover.

Their favorite activity? STARGAZING!

Wanna know what's ironic? While Craftycorn would be all insecure and overthinking about the whole situation, Dogday and Catnap would be noticing these patterns of nervousness and literally girl failure, and start to equally agree that they find that strangely attractive. And amusing. But that's Catnap talking.

They both also think she's pretty as hell.

And yes. they talk about it all the time because ✨communication and consent is the best romantic gesture✨

Even though Craftycorn is a very shy and soft-spoken girl, she's SURPRISINGLY VERY capable of defending herself and others she really cares about. And I'm talking both verbally and physically. She'd be able to pull out a punch on whoever complains about ANYTHING related to Catnap, Dogday or even her. You go, girl!

Okay... actually, changed my mind. She would do it but feel INCREDIBLY guilty later.

They watch My Little Pony and Carebears together on a date. Change my mind.

Could you all imagine how GOOD it would smell the air of their houses was every time they hung out? Like- you're telling me the air would be jasmine scented on one corner, vanilla to the other, and then lavender in every cushion? MY GOD.

I wonder if they do PDA. Craftycorn and Catnap would be most likely to do it but very lowly (like holding hands or wrapping an arm with each other), while for Dogday he would WANT TO... buuut he doesn't want to cross boundaries. So he'd keep it to himself. And probably crying inside not to pounce on top of the two of them into a tight hug.

They love it when Catnap helps them to sleep, especially lullabies.

OH IMAGINE THIS. What if Craftycorn knew Spanish and called Catnap "Lunita" (little moon) and Dogday "solsito" (little sun). NO- IM-... IM NOT SAYING THIS BECAUSE I'M HISPANIC AND I ADORE HEADCANON CHARACTERS THAT RELATE TO MY COUNTRY- THAT IS NOT-

Okay, that or "my sunshine" and "my twilight". IT'S CUTE OKAY- I KNOW IT'S CORNY BUT WE GOTTA LOVE CORNINESS FROM SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T SHOW IT MUCH

(for context to the next headcanons):

Catnap in my own interpretation is a selective mute. All due to the 'red smoke incident' that occurred a few nights ago. He was so terrified of how not only his lavender gas was transported into that horrendous gas that made his friends laugh ever so hysterically and dementedly, but his body acted in a way that made no sense whatsoever. His movements were strange, creepy, and terrifying. So much so that it scared Catnap beyond thought. Even though all argued that it was just a 'collective nightmare' they had due to the circumstances of the storm. It didn't change anything Catnap went through. Everything he saw...

And at the end of the day, he decided to make a silent vow. Where he wouldn't let that smoke ever come out of his mouth again, even if it cost never to open his mouth. Never to speak again.

Why all that lore dump? WELL. IMAGINE. CATNAP KNOWING ASL/SIGN LANGUAGE. IT IS THE COOLEST THING EVER.

DogDay and Craftycorn after hearing about Catnap's vow, they were EXTREMELY worried about him. On some occasions, they tried to speak some sense into him about the mere thought of never talking again, but at the end of the day, they had to respect Catnap's decision. SO IN EXCHANGE, THEY WANTED TO LEARN ASL TOO! AND IT IS SUPER CUTE AND- KAINFIYLIAHDFCHASKDCFHNAKSJDCFHALNKUH-

Craftycorn also thought of teaching Catnap how to draw, with of course Dogday coming in to learn well. Since it was an alternative and temporary idea on communication while everyone else was catching up on Bubba's lessons on ASL.

OH NO... CRAFTYCORN- I JUST REALIZED SHE DOESN'T HAVE FINGERS- SHE HAS HOOVES! THEREFORE SHE CAN'T THEORETICALLY DO ASL. OML SHE'D BE ASHAMED ASF.😭

For some reason, singing doesn't accidentally make the scents of any of the Smiling Critters out of their mouths. So whenever Catnap can, he tries to open up from his comfort zone (with the encouragement of the others) to sing them to sleep with a nice lullaby.

🧡💜🤍☀️🌙🎨🧡💜🤍☀️🌙🎨🧡💜🤍☀️🌙🎨🧡💜🤍☀️

I swear to god my AO3 fans are out for blood now. They probably gonna be mad asf if they find out I'm wasting so much time on this than the fanfic chapter I'm writing.

EVEN MORE NOW DUDE- THEY GONNA FIND OUT I WANNA WRITE ANOTHER FANFIC 😭

THIS IS GONNA END UP LIKE WHEN I HAD MY WATTPAD ACCOUNT... PLEASE... MERCY ON ME YALL... MERCY

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rhoorl · 9 months

Text

Delta Landscaping

Chapter 1: Welcome to Torrey Hills

It's here.

Series Summary: In this Triple Frontier AU, the boys start a landscaping business post-Colombia.

Series Masterlist

Rating: Explicit (18+). Not this chapter necessarily, but a blanket statement to this whole concept.

Chapter Summary: As much as we want to get to the thirst, there is some setup we need to do.

A/N: I first have to thank the amazing @goodwithcheese because, without The Layover, this idea would not have come to life. This entire concept was born from a scene in one of her chapters.

This AU stays true to cannon in some aspects (Tom is dead y'all) and not in others (the boys kept some of the money and Frankie does not have a kid). There is a main storyline, but also opportunities for extras/drabbles/asks … maybe a guest post or spin-off? I've included some Easter eggs and jokes throughout, some more obvious than others. From its conception this has been a group project, so let’s keep that energy going!

Finally, a big thank you to @gemmahale (our Technical Supervisor for all things plants and protective wear) and @trulybetty (the creator of our logo) for listening to my ramblings and for their advice and encouragement along the way! @patti7dc also contributed a hilarious idea for a commercial that had me cracking up.

Ok enough of my rambling, on with the show…(I hope you like it!)

_____________________

There's something kind of magical about when an idea finally comes together in your mind. Different thoughts, images, and words swim around in your head, some of them unconsciously, until they finally coalesce in the depths of your brain and bubble up. Going from abstract to clear and defined.

Benny had been grappling with forming an idea for months. It was right there, he could feel it. But it frustrated him because it never came together the right way.

_____________________

Nine months earlier

In the immediate aftermath of Colombia, the Delta Force boys tried to process what happened, each in their own way. Santiago took off for a few months traveling on his own, finding solace in discovering new places. Frankie came back with a renewed focus to get his life together, talking to a therapist Will recommended to him and going to weekly meetings. The more quiet and reserved one of the group, Will continued to find ways to help other veterans. He volunteered at the local VA and shuttled veterans to and from medical appointments. He found driving to be soothing for him – having a set path, a direction to go in, and accomplishing something. Sometimes his passengers wanted to talk, sometimes they didn’t. He was comfortable either way.

And then there was Benny. He needed to keep his body in motion to try and silence the whirl that went on in his head. Fighting helped. He continued training, getting booked for local fights in Tampa, sometimes making it over to Orlando or as far as Jacksonville. At first, it helped him numb some of the pain. He felt like dealing with physical injuries was easier than his mental or emotional ones.

When he wasn't fighting or training, he found himself returning to a love he had as a kid – drawing. At first, he didn't really draw anything in particular, just doodles. But eventually, his doodles started to form beautiful landscapes and vistas…pulling inspiration from places he had seen during his time in the service. The activity brought him a sense of calm, using his hands to concentrate and make something. It didn't have to be perfect or beautiful, it just was.

Months passed and the guys just sort of existed in this newfound reality. None of them really talked about Colombia to each other, leaving the hurt and pain largely unspoken. Benny, Will, and Frankie would see each other often throughout the week. Santiago would FaceTime occasionally depending on where he was in the world. Although the guys kept some of the money from their mission, none of them had really spent it. Benny never did end up buying that Ferrari.

One day while driving back home to the apartment he shared with his brother, Will decided to take a detour to drive through a few different neighborhoods. He and Benny tossed around the idea of buying a house together, even going so far as visiting some open houses together to check things out.

This neighborhood, Torrey Hills, was particularly beautiful, with a palm tree-lined entrance and expansive water fountain greeting you on the drive in. Will aimlessly drove around taking in the Mediterranean-style architecture. Lots of two-story homes, stucco and white brick, raw iron and metalwork. There were some ranch-style homes sprinkled throughout as well. He noticed one in particular that had a for sale sign – 319 Mulefall Court.

Parked on the street, he grabs his phone to do some quick research. He checks on the price of the house first, a lot lower than he was expecting just based on the looks of the neighborhood, which he confirms once he looked up some recently sold homes nearby.

"What's wrong with you?" He mumbled toward the house, wondering why it was valued so much lower than everything around it.

The housing market in Tampa was pretty competitive, something Will and Benny had already realized. Oftentimes by the time they found a house they both liked it was already under contract or had multiple offers. They conveniently kept the fact that they could pay cash for literally any house they wanted from their realtor; they wanted the house they chose to be special.

Will continued looking over the specs of the house. Four bedrooms, two and a half baths. Two-car garage. Pool. Pretty spacious backyard from the photos and from what he could see from the street. A beautiful, old oak tree in the front yard. He noticed there weren't too many photos of the interior of the house or much of a description.

Normally, he would text a listing to Benny to get his thoughts, but this time he went straight to calling the realtor’s number on the sign. The realtor, Ethan, picked up and was a bit surprised someone wanted to talk to him about that property. It had been sitting for a couple of months without an offer, so Ethan was eager to set up a showing for the next day.

When he arrived home, Will saw Benny sitting at their kitchen table, head down over his notebook with a pencil in hand.

“Hey man, what’re you doing?”

“Nothing just got an idea for something,” Benny said, not looking up.

Will heads to the refrigerator to pull out a beer, grabbing one for his brother as he goes to sit down in the chair across from him.

“D’you have a good day?” Benny asks, putting down his pencil and grabbing the beer from Will.

“Yea, Mr. Jacobs seems to be doing better.” Will pauses to take a swig of his beer. “So…I saw a house today.”

“What?”

“Well, from the outside. I have a showing tomorrow morning if you want to go.”

“Yea, where is it?”

“You know that Torrey Hills neighborhood? It’s in there.”

“Wooo, that neighborhood is nice! Are you sure you want to go all fancy?”

“It is a nice neighborhood for sure, it seems quiet. This place looks like it needs … some work.”

“How much work?” Benny is a bit skeptical of what his brother may be getting them into, but trusts that Will wouldn’t do anything too rash.

“It’s going to be a project.”

“A project?

“Yea. The house has been sitting for a couple of months,” he said as he fished out his phone from his back pocket, pulled up the listing, and handed it over to Benny. “Look, I figure we go in and take a look to see how bad it is. You know how much shit we built with Dad back in the day. We can even call Joel to see if he thinks it's doable for us to fix it up ourselves.”

Benny looks up from the phone and gives a little smile as he hands the phone back, “Sure, man. Sounds good.”

Will and Benny could buy any house. But rather than buy something brand new, they wanted to buy a house they knew needed a lot of love and care. They wanted little projects they could work on, either together or by themselves.

______________________________

As the guys walked through the threshold of the house with Ethan in tow, they realized they may be biting off more than they can chew with this place.

“Shit, how long has this place been empty?” Benny asks as he looks around.

“Well, the house was built in the ’90s and had the same owner for about 20 years before it became an Airbnb,” Ethan said as leaned on the kitchen counter. “Then, some guy bought it, trying to do some real HGTV-type shit in here. Bought it before the pandemic, but didn’t realize how much work goes into a complete flip, you know? It’s not like the TV shows. Anyway, he ended up getting in over his head with it and then the foreclosure happened. He left the place an absolute goddamn mess,” he gestured around. “The neighbors have been on my ass to get this place sold. The curb appeal is kind of bringing down the block.”

Will quietly walks around the living room, his mind working through logistics. He comes into the kitchen where Benny was checking out the cabinets and appliances.

“Ethan, can you give us a minute?”

“Yea sure, I’ll be out in the backyard, y’all take your time,” Ethan said as he attempted to open the glass door leading out to the back porch. Struggling, he decided to head back out to the front door and unlock the fence to the backyard.

“So, what do you think?” Will asked, arching his eyebrows.

“Psh, I don’t know man, this is kind of a shit hole, right?”

“Yea, but like … we could do this. Maybe get Fish to come over and we can demo the inside. Start from scratch?”

“We should call Joel.”

Their cousin was a contractor in Texas, so he would be able to give them his honest opinion of whether or not they could do this. They ended up calling him on FaceTime so he could see what they were dealing with.

“I mean, it’s not gonna be easy or quick, but I think y’all could do it,” his low Southern drawl reverberating in the empty living room. “Plus, when you’re all done I can come out and inspect it for you. Sarah has been bugging me about taking her to Disney,” he laughed.

“Oh hell yea, that would be awesome!” Benny lit up starting to see how it could all come together based on Joel’s suggestions.

Will hadn’t seen his brother get this excited about something in a while.

“Ok, Joel. We’ll talk to you soon … tell Tommy and Sarah we say hi.”

“Later guys.”

Hanging up and looking back at Benny, who still had a smile on his face, Will clears his throat.

“So, what do you think? Should we do it?”

“You already know what I’m going to say!”

“Alright, let’s go talk to Ethan,” Will says motioning to the front door.

Coming out of the front door, they head out around the right side of the house, picking their feet up high to walk through the overgrown grass and weeds.

“This fence looks a little rough,” Benny observed, jiggling one of the loose boards.

“Hey, stop that! Don’t fucking pull it out.”

“....that’s what she said?” Benny laughs.

Will rolls his eyes, slapping his brother on the chest. “You’re so fuckin’ stupid.”

As they head back, they notice the pool. Ethan was standing at the edge looking at his phone. He hears them traipsing through the overgrowth and turns around, “Hey guys, what do you think?”

“Well, it’s going to need a lot of work, that’s for sure, but, we want to make an offer.”

“Shit, really? I mean … cool. Yea ok, I’ll draw something up and send it over.”

Giving them both a handshake, the men start to walk back to the front. Benny pulls out his phone taking a few photos of the backyard and the front as they make their way back to Will’s Jeep.

Ethan gives them one final wave before pulling out of the driveway and heading out.

Will and Benny walk up to the driveway and give one final look at the house, Benny snapping a few more photos. They hear someone clear their throat behind them. Turning around they see a woman, around their age, walking a corgi.

“You guys going to buy that?” she nodded towards the house.

“Uh, yea we’re thinking about it,” Will said cautiously while Benny bounded past his brother to crouch down to pet the dog.

“Aw man, I love corgis!”

“Ha, thanks, he loves people so you’re making his day. My name is Megan, that's Bucky.” She extended her hand to shake Will’s first, looking down at Benny who got back up. Removing his backward baseball cap and putting it in his left hand to shake her hand.

“I live over there, the blue two-story with the basketball hoop,” she says pointing over to a house a few doors down and across the street.

“Do you play basketball?” Benny asks, reaching back down to give the dog some belly scratches.

“No, but my son does.” She reaches up to brush some hair out of her face and the boys both notice the huge diamond on her finger.

“What’s the neighborhood like?” Will could tell it was a nice neighborhood, but still wanted to do the proper reconnaissance.

“Oh, it’s pretty quiet. A few families, but some singles as well,” she eyes them both up and down. “You have some nice neighbors on both sides of you. We’ve been trying to have more events together, block parties, and stuff. Hopefully, you boys can fix up this piece of shit and we can all come over,” she smiles tilting her chin up at the house.

“Yea, well that’s the goal.” Benny looked up smiling, continuing to play with the dog.

“Well, I’ll be seeing you around hopefully.” She waves and continues her walk.

Later that night, Will was sitting in the living room playing some zombie video game when he noticed Benny head back over to his chair at the dining room table, notebook, and pencil in tow. Except this time Benny had some colored pencils with him too. Will saw his brother prop up his phone, using it as a reference for whatever he was drawing. A small smile on his face as he got to work.

______________________

The next month was busy getting everything together with the realtors. During that time, Santiago returned from his travels, wanting a bit more stability than the nomad life. He and Frankie had been helping the brothers pack.

Closing day comes and before they go in to sign the papers, Will pulls out his phone.

WILL: Headed in now to close on the house…should have the keys by 5. You guys want to come over and check it out?

FRANKIE: Yea, Pope and I can head over after I get out of work.

BENNY: Sweet, see you guys later. Bring beer!

“Goddamn, my fucking hand hurts,” Benny puts his pen down and massages his hand. “I didn’t realize we had to sign so much shit.”

“What did you think, we would sign one paper? We’re buying a house.” Will chuckles.

_________________________

The boys waited approximately one day before fully starting Operation Bachelor Pad, as Benny put it. Will continued to lean on Joel’s advice about what materials to buy and avoid and techniques to use. Joel even sent them a new set of power tools as a housewarming gift.

The sweltering weather made working outside on the yard a bit of a hassle, but one of Will’s first orders of business was to clean up the front so it wasn’t such an eyesore to the neighbors. Between the four of them, they were able to knock it out rather quickly. Will mowed the grass, while Frankie meticulously edged. Being the tallest of the group, Benny worked on pulling leaves out of the gutters with Santi’s help. They pulled weeds and removed a couple of dead shrubs. When they were all done, the boys sat in some folding chairs in the driveway drinking from their bottles of water.

“It’s so fucking hot out,” Frankie said as he took his hat off, wiped his forehead and combed his hair with his hand, before returning his hat to his head.

“How am I this sweaty?” Benny grunted as he peeled off his T-shirt, resting it on the back of his chair.

“What, you trying to give a show to all of the housewives?” Santiago teased him.

“Fuck off, it’s hot. If the pool wasn’t such a goddamn disaster I would jump in there,” Benny laughed.

Will looked up and saw Megan walking towards them holding a basket.

“Hey boys,” she smiled.

“Hey Megan,” Will got up, meeting her at the front of the driveway. “What’s this?”

“Where’s the corgi?” Benny yelled. Will turns around to glare at him. “Just kidding, hi Mrs. Megan!”

“Oh my god, Benjamin, please do not call me Mrs. It makes me feel old,” she chuckles. “Here, I wanted to bring something by, not sure how stocked your fridge is yet and I saw you had some friends over.” She nodded to the group behind Will.

Handing over the basket, Will sees she had arranged a few bottles of water and Gatorade, along with some homemade cookies and a gift card to a pizza place.

“Wow, thank you, this is so nice,” Will smiled. By this point, Benny had walked up to see what was in the basket too.

“Nice, this is awesome!” he said, pulling out one of the cookies and stuffing it in his mouth. He noticed Megan giving him a quick up and down, so he stood a little taller. “This is fucking amazing. Are you a cook or something?”

“Baker. And no, not professionally or anything. I just dabble.”

“Well, you can dabble with us anyti-” he chokes as Will hit him in the side of the stomach. “Shit. I, uh, I didn’t mean it like that. Sorry,” he looked down bashfully.

“I know what you meant, all good,” she laughs. “Well, I should be heading out.”

“See ya later!” Benny waved, grabbing one more cookie from the basket before bouncing back towards the chair.

“So, are all of your neighbors hot?” Santiago asked with an arched eyebrow. “May need to move in here myself.”

“Fuck off, Pope. She’s nice. She’s actually one of the first people that has come by to say anything.”

________________

It was so fucking hot outside. Florida summers were no joke. As a result, the boys used the next few months to completely renovate the inside of the house. They installed new countertops in the kitchen, laid down hardwood floors, upgraded nearly every appliance or fixture in the place, and fixed the glass sliding door to the back porch. As the months went on, the house became a source of their collective pride and joy; they reveled in their handiwork.

Megan would come by every so often to say hi. She introduced the guys to a few other neighbors and it felt like they were starting to develop a home base. Even though Frankie and Santiago didn’t officially live there, they may as well because they were over all the time, even when Will and Benny were gone.

As the weather got cooler, by Florida standards, the boys decided to focus on the outside of the house.

One day as they were sitting around watching a football game on a lazy Sunday, Benny got up and headed out of the living room with a purpose.

“Where the fuck is he going?” Santiago looked over the couch to where Benny ran off to.

“Who knows, the kid has been really focused on something and I don’t know what it is,” Will said.

“Ok! I got it!” Benny ran back into the room with his notebook and a pencil in tow.

The other three looked at him with confused looks.

“I’ve been thinking about what to do with the yard, but I think I finally figured it out. This was the missing piece.” He quickly scribbled some things down and turned his notebook around.

“What are we supposed to be looking at Ben?” Will asked, confused and trying to read what Benny’s chicken scratch said.

“Ok, look,” Benny sat in the middle of the couch, Will and Frankie on either side and Santiago came over to sit on the back of the couch, looking over his shoulder.

“Let’s start in front. We need to replace the fence on both sides and put in a swing gate, that’s easy. I’m thinking we do some flower beds here in the front. I haven’t decided what kind of flowers yet. But leading from the front porch over to the fence we’ll put some flagstone pavers down. Yea, I think that’ll look nice. Oh, and a couple of planted pots here in the front,” he motioned to circles he drew on either side of the door.”

He keeps rambling as the other three look at each other, Benny oblivious to them.

“Oh and then on the left side of the house, I’m thinking some permeable pavers so that the water can drain, will help us not have standing water to avoid excess mosquitos and algae and shit. That side of the fence is bigger so we can easily get the lawn mower into the backyard that way and not fuck up the grass as much.”

Moving the paper closer, he points to the left side of the paper. “Ok, so once we get into the backyard, I think we line it with some raised flower beds. Near the pool, we’ll have some more perennials. We’ll add some more planted pots on the porch. Maybe some string lights or something.”

“And then this is what finally came together!” he smiled pointing to the back right of his drawing. “I think … wait for it … we build a gazebo thing.”

“Isn’t that called a pergola?” Santiago asked.

“Same shit. They’ll be a structure back there. With some shrubs up to the fence line. We can put a palm tree out there, some more flagstone pavers, and then we include a little water fountain in one of the perennial beds here.”

When he finished, he leaned back on the couch and exhaled, pleased with himself and excited that his idea finally came together.

“So that’s what you’ve been working on, huh?” Will smirked.

“Yea man, I … I don’t know. Ever since we came here for the first time I had this … vision. Like, I could see it, but I couldn’t. So I’ve been working on different designs.” Benny paged through his notebook showing numerous mockups of their backyard.

“Holy shit, Ben, that’s awesome,” Frankie looked over at Benny. “But what if you put a grass bed over here by the utilities.”

“Yea … yea, that could work Fish!”

_______________________

Over the next few weeks, Benny and Frankie continued to tinker with the design, sending Will and Santiago out on Home Depot runs to get things off their list.

As they did working on the interior of the house, they found themselves opening up to each other as they worked, finding that keeping their hands and bodies busy gave their minds time to process.

And they worked hard, completely rejuvenating the look of the house both from the inside and outside, so much so that the neighbors took notice.

Megan was the first to come over to ask if the guys could look at her lawn. Benny made a few easy suggestions, offering to fix it up on weekends. Then another neighbor and another neighbor. Before they knew it, the boys had worked on nearly every house on their block, which helped them get to know everyone.

One night as the boys were hanging out in the backyard, Benny came up with another idea.

"Ok, hear me out," as he opened the cooler to grab beers for everyone.

Frankie was by the grill and turned around to peer over at Benny. "What Benjamin? What job did you sign us up for now?" chuckling as he took a swig of the beer Benny handed him.

"Landscaping."

Cocking his head to the side, Santiago repeats back matter-of-factly, "Landscaping."

"Like what, do it professionally or something?" Frankie laughs.

Benny looks over at Will who was observing, taking it all in.

"Oh come on! Look at what we did with this place," gesturing around to the backyard.

They all had to admit they did a beautiful job with the backyard. It has been almost therapeutic for them, working on this house together.

“We’ve already been doing it! Megan’s lawn. Fish, you had a great idea for Melissa and Derek’s backyard, they fucking loved what you and Pope did with the place. We … we could do this for other people. Figure out how to make shit better.” He pulled his cap off, brushing his hair.

Although the other three had always seen Benny as the little brother, bouncing off the walls with energy, they had to admit he had a newfound focus when it came to the projects around the house. His brain was crawling with ideas. Plus, they were having fun working on projects for their neighbors. They had gotten very close to some of them.

"This could be a legit business for us. I even have a name I came up with. Wait for it…Delta Landscaping!" He beamed, clearly proud of himself and waiting for the guy's reaction.

Next Chapter

A/N: I hope you enjoyed the first installment of this series! Seriously thank you to everyone who has sent me a message or a comment in the lead-up to this. I’ve had so much fun interacting with all of you and it has been a bright spot in my days for sure.

Let me know if you want to be on the tag list moving forward!!

#delta landscaping #triple frontier fic #triple frontier fanfiction #triple frontier au

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