#Stanley adopting strays

[theshadow20]

"Adopting strays is a hobby" -Stanley, probably

[pix-writes]

Uhhhh Stan adopting a teenage runaway who came from an abusive home. (He sees a lot of his past self when he was homeless in them and vows to save them from the life he had)

This is kind of adjacent to an idea for a fic I've already had! But I couldn't resist doing a little bit about this scenario! <3

Stan has already basically adopted Wendy and Soos already, even without fully meaning to with Soos he sees that he needs a father figure in his life and sort-of does the best he can to be that. With Wendy, its different too because it's basically canon that he just lets her get away with stuff because he knows she needs somewhere away from home to relax (even tho he could definitely get another employee who doesn't bunk off so much). Will he admit that's what he's doing though? Of course not!

Despite his exterior/persona, though, Stanley Pines is a kind man who wants to help people who most need it - like you say, he's been in that position enough times himself. I'm sure there's been the occaisonal person who's helped him out in the past, even if they never stuck around. Well, now he's Mr Mystery, he can sort-of be that person for others, not just because he's more stable, but also because he desperatly wants connection, especially after losing his brother in the portal (though that's also a reason to keep everyone at arms length to an extent, so they can never find out about his double life).

Runaway teen & Stan pines (under cut):

I can imagine you ran away from home and come across Gravity Falls, perhaps you had even seen the ads for tourist stops in this area, or maybe you just found the most random small town on your travels and decided to stop there - your travels are erratic so that no one can follow you or suspect you of being a runaway. Not that you really expect your parents to be concerned, at least not for long. That's why you had to get away and stay gone, you had reached your breaking point for what you could handle.

It starts to rain, you go to the local diner but your travel money is fast becoming less and less... you only order coffee, nursing it there for as long as possible, but when business starts to pick up you realise just how small of a town it is, everyone seems to know nearly everybody around here! You've already gotten a few curious glances or greetings put your way and you decide to leave.

Wandering around, you end up on the outskirts of town, there's a fair few campsites around, now lying half empty since its off-season right now, maybe you coud stay on the edge of the forest somewhere? Pinch some tent equipment from somewhere or from someone who doesn't need it? You already had a sleeping bag, water bottle, a torch. You just needed something to keep more of the rain off of you!

That's when you wander into an opening within the forest, notice the wooden signs nailed to the trees. You see a small group of tourists being spoken to by some guy, his voice carrying across the place, gravelly and jovial, and in your surprise you just stare dumbfounded - this place isn't closed? The group is moving and you take in your surroundings and you're so cold and wet and hungry, you're not really thinking ahead when go in, pulling your hoodie down over your face and sneaking in beind the throng of people, unnoticed.

But it turns out that you had been noticed, after the bizarre tour of this overpriced tourist trap, you lurk behind, the rain hasn't let up outside and you're wondering when the place might close, now that the tourists had filtered out the place was pretty dead, which is when a large hand lands on your shoulder making you jump out of your skin and your eyes land on the proprietor.

"Hey! You gonna at least buy anything, kid?"

You apologise and stutter, feeling like you want to bolt but totally caught at the same time. Stan immediately picks up on the fact that you're so twitchy, even for a teen. He eases up on you, switching to a friendlier tone. Wendy asks you where you're staying, curiosity getting the better of her usually nonchalant demeanour. You tell them you just got lost from the campsite and Stan isn't buying it one bit but Wendy has given you the directions and you're out of the door. The interaction doesn't sit right with him. He knows exactly where you're hiding out by the time you've stayed there overnight. Having discovered the pop up tent you 'found' set up in the woods not far away.

He decides to keep an eye on you, he's worried being direct will make startle you, like a deer in headlights, at the diner he doesn't acknowledge you at first just pushes a plate of food subtly towards you, for you to swipe. After that he manages to make small talk, hes still wondering how he can help you, what excuse he can make so it seems like he's offering you something and it be believable instead of suspicious.

Maybe he complains there's no one around to do the stock take now that summer is well and truly over, you perk up, saying you'd like some extra pocket money. You come right on time and the owner of the Mystery Shack introduces himself properly, shows you what you need to do. You take your time, living rough has made you exhausted mentally/physically, and because... you've begun to like the place as kooky as it is. And wouldn't you know it, Mr Pines has made more food than he expected and wouldn't you like some? You come back the next day and its pretty much the same, though you are starting to pick up on where Stan is subtly gaining information on you. He both curses and admires how whip-smart you are, reminds him of himself a lot further into being homeless than you are (reminds him of someone else too...), he worries that night of whether you'll have run off, if you'd get into trouble somewhere else, but you return the following afternoon. This time, Stan levels with you -

"Look kid, I don't know what's going on at home and trust me when I say I get it - but whatever's going on, it's probably not worth staying out in the woods, epseically 'round here, it's dangerous!" He reassures you he's not going to call anyone, though, just asks you to reconsider, think about how much trouble you might get into, if you don't turn up to school how you're going to explain yourself, how are you going to get a job? You swipe frustrated tears from your eyes and thank him for being concerned, though its hollow. How can you return home now? All you're going to get is more abuse, you can only think of how angry they'll all be if you did!

You end up wandering to some other town, using the money Stan gave you to get a bus and find a place to stay, having seen a load of jobs you could apply for. Turns out though, that some of your family had been looking for you and tracked your phone, you end up in a fight with them, receiving a hard slap to the face before running away once more! You pack up your things and head straight to the first place you think of.

Once you get there, its dark, you hesitate before knocking but you've came all this way. When Stan opens the door all of the shock and adrenaline has seemed to have worn off and you see the mix of sadness, surprise and anger on his face at the clear mark on your face from the fight.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know where else to go." Is all you can get out before bursting into tears. He let's you stay, you've been out in the cold and so stressed over this time that when you come in you're shivering, you end up running a nasty fever. You're so exhausted there's nothing left but to accept your fate and Stan feels he must help you. He piles on the blankets and gives you hot drinks and plain food till the fever runs its course.

He still has a bit of trouble with authorities/some family members looking for you in the area, you traded your old phone in for another and Stan was eventually able to brush them off your trail. He couldn't help it, he liked the kid in the small amount of time he knew them and it was clear that you had danger waiting for you at home. You had told him a little after the first night you had stayed at the shack, words tumbling out of your mouth about your trauma, how you couldn't stand your family. His heart sank as he remembered his own life as a young man, a kid technically, homeless and making ends meet and was determined you wouldn't have the same fate. Yet he had to know you were sure.

"You really want to stay here - in this boring ol' town? At the shack?" You were determined you would, as long as he was okay with that, you vowed to work hard, sweep the floors, keep an eye on the gift shop when Wendy couldn't, anything to be useful. But, you didn't want him to get into trouble. Too little too late for that, he thought to himself.

"But, really do ya want to see this ugly mug every day?" He said gesturing to his face. That brought a slight smile to your face, in fact you ended up giggling and he knew he wouldn't be able to get rid of you now (like he ever would've entertained it).

He sighed. "So, do you trust me? Cause I need some kind of story if ya gonna stay here, kiddo."

He needed a lot more than that of course, he ended up getting you a fake ID and if anyone asked, you were family, here to stay for a while. When people asked anything more than that he got cagey, but he liked thinking of you being a Pines, another part of the family. Part of him felt guilty for doing it too, faking that you had the same last name, he still thought you might not want to stick around, you weren't blood family to him, you had no ties to him, but he wanted family so badly, was it so bad to pretend that you were?

He made sure you got to school, he even started to pack you lunches every day, he wasn't so bothered about homework, saying he didn't think much of school when he went anyway, you both had something more important than that (street smarts!), but when you were struggling with your math homework you were surprised that he semmed to know an awful lot, but then again you probably shouldn't be surprised, he did own a business after all. Whilst there wasn't a lot to do around the Mystery Shack all year round, you still found yourself picking up around the house part of the Shack, doing the laundry, washing the dishes, normal chore stuff - isn't that what teens were supposed to do? Stan was surprised to see a teen do chores unprompted and you were nervous that you'd done something wrong, because why else would he be questioning you? He recovered quickly though and just grumbled out something about 'finally, someone who knows how to pick up after themselves/work' but from the expression on his face, you are relieved to know that he is joking with you and he isn't mad. You're picking up on his quirks.

The months roll by and you started to feel safer, the shack became more familiar, you were less frightened and jumpy, people in town were more friendly, familiar faces and if people knew that you weren't actually related, that you were a runaway, they didn't say anything at all. You were starting to be referred to as 'Stan's kid'. No one had said so in front of Stan so far as you knew, it made you feel some residual guilt, even after all that you're family had done, were you really not a burden to Stan? Was it wrong to see him like a parent? What would you do if he no longer wanted you around? But as much as you were scared of being rejected, a situation came up at the Shack at the beginning of your first summer in the falls. A gathering was forming for a tour and some tourist had asked something or assumed he was your parent, something like that. Unbeknownst to you Stan had heard and he freezed, unconsciously waiting on your response.

"Oh, you'll wanna ask my dad, he's the one over there in the fez?" It just slipped out, you should've said Mr Mystery at work, but you couldn't help the feeling in your chest that it was right. Ever since then you had been tentatively saying it (you eventually start to notice how when you knew Stan had heard it he seemed a little emotional) and Stan now proudly referred to you as 'his kid'. You may or may not call him 'dad' to his face, maybe you'll still just call him 'Stan' but it seems like now you officially have a family!

[darlingdaisyfarm]

It’s so sad how mullet Stan lacks content of him 😭😭I wish there would be more fics of him so that’s why im gently asking you to give us more mullet Stan crumbs, it can be anything, headcanons or fic 😔 I will eat everything you’ll serve

⤿❝ Mullet!Stanley x reader headcanons (sfw & nsfw)⭑

a/n: agree i agree just yeah 10000% ! traumatised guys with mullet, bad habits and abandonment, daddy and mental issues are my weak spot

sfw

ᯓ★ he’s terrified of commitment but more terrified of being alone. he’ll push you away just to see if you’ll stay. he wants to trust you, but he doesn’t trust himself

ᯓ★ when he finally realizes you’re not leaving, he clings hard. like, once he’s in? he’s all in. but the idea of starting a family? he wants it so bad but so scared of it. he doesn’t want to turn into his father. he’s aware of his emotional instability and the last thing he wants is to pass that onto a kid. he doesn’t even trust himself to be a good partner, let alone a parent

ᯓ★ despite everything, still has a soft spot for kids but refuses to admit it. will grumble and complain but the second a little kid looks up at him with big, teary eyes, he’s sighing and handing over the last piece of his candy bar

ᯓ★ he is a literal stray, a stray dog that growls when you first bring him home but now follows you everywhere. you don’t date mullet!Stanley, you accidentally adopt him. this man has no home, no direction, no plan. he crashes on your couch “just for a few days, toots, promise” and then six months later he’s still there, wearing your robe, drinking straight from the juice carton

ᯓ★ acts like he doesn’t care but is secretly the most doting boyfriend. will fix your car, carry your groceries, give you his jacket when you're cold, all without asking. he just does it

ᯓ★ he doesn’t take care of himself. showers once every few days, drinks too much, smokes too much, eats like shit. if you ever cook for him it breaks him, he just stares at the plate because it’s the kindest thing anyone’s ever done to him, “you made this? for me?”

ᯓ★ road trip king. you wanna run away? hop in, sweetheart, we’ll figure it out on the way. the kind of guy who drives with one hand on the wheel and the other on your thigh. he’s got half a pack of smokes, a cassette of shitty rock ballads and a mouth full of sweet-talking bullshit

ᯓ★ as i said, he acts like he doesn’t give a fuck but actually gives too many fucks. will pretend he doesn’t care when you get mad at him, but the second you turn away, he’s overthinking. “fuck what did i say? shit, why am i such an asshole?”

ᯓ★ if you tell him you love him, he always hesitates before saying it back. not because he doesn’t feel it, but because he doesn’t think he deserves it

ᯓ★ literally stunned when you take care of him. like, someone is doing something NICE for him??? with no ulterior motive???

ᯓ★ absolutely a ‘leaning’ boyfriend. leans against walls, leans against doorframes, leans against you. big strong arms wrapping around your waist from behind, head dropping onto your shoulder with a sigh

ᯓ★ survives off diner food, gas station snacks, and whatever you make him

ᯓ★ gets nervous when you’re nice to him. he’s been kicked down so many times, he doesn’t know how to handle kindness. the first time you tell him he looks good, he scoffs, says something self-deprecating, but then stares at himself in the mirror later, touching his face trying to see what you even saw in him

ᯓ★ secretly loves being babied. if you push his messy hair back, clean his cuts when he gets into a fight or tuck yourself into his side when he's sitting down, he fucking melts. “psh, ya don’t gotta do all that,” but his ears are bright red

ᯓ★ will steal anything for you. “ya like that necklace, sweetheart? consider it yours.” he’s a walking, talking, petty thief boyfriend who just wants to see you smile

ᯓ★ lets you play with his mullet when he’s feeling lazy. sits between your thighs while you brush it and if you’re gentle enough, he’ll doze off right there, resting his head against your stomach

ᯓ★ loves his car more than he should. will drag you to the garage to show you how he’s fixing up some old junker, but he looks so proud, you can’t even complain. bonus: he makes you sit in it for a “test drive” (he drives too fast just to see you scream and laugh)

ᯓ★ hands always busy. even when you’re just sitting together, his hands are moving, tinkering with something, rubbing circles on your thigh, tapping on table. he's anxious stressed guy

ᯓ★ he falls asleep anywhere instantly. he’s had years of shitty, uncomfortable sleep, so at this point he can knock out in two seconds flat. the first time you see it happen, you’re stunned. “Stan, are you seriously asleep right now—?” he is. sometimes, he falls asleep sitting up, mouth slightly open, arms crossed. if you try to move him, he’ll grunt, shift slightly and keep sleeping

ᯓ★ he’s a sucker for physical affection but doesn’t know how to ask for it. please, just hold him. run your fingers through his hair, rub his back, let him rest his head on your chest or stomach. sometimes, he’ll just stand behind you and wait until you notice and pull him into a hug. he won’t ask, but he needs it

ᯓ★ this man does not know how to handle being desired

nsfw

ᯓ★ he’s big. everywhere. broad chest, thick arms, a cock that barely fits. “c’mon, baby, you can take it. just a little more, there we go.”

ᯓ★ he’s a messy kisser. tongue, teeth, biting, groaning, he devours you. Stanley makes out like he’s trying to fuck you with just his mouth. his hands are always gripping your face, your neck, your hair, he’s desperate

ᯓ★ he loves fucking in places he shouldn’t. against the car, in an alley, in the backseat, behind a bar, on some random motel dresser, doesn’t matter. the risk of getting caught gets him off. zero patience. too horny to wait, too desperate to care where you are

ᯓ★ if you ever scratch his back? he fucking loses it. he wants you clawing at him, gripping his arms, pulling his hair. especially loves it when you bite his shoulder

ᯓ★ fucks like a guy who doesn’t know if he’ll ever get the chance again. so overwhelmed by how good you feel

ᯓ★ he groans and grunts. loud, unashamed. you know exactly how much he’s enjoying it because he never shuts the fuck up. if you try to shut him up, he just moans louder out of spite

ᯓ★ this man talks during sex. a LOT. filthy, filthy, filthy mouth

ᯓ★ but if you try to stifle your moans, oh, he won’t have that. “uh-uh, lemme hear ya, baby. don’t go all shy on me now.”

ᯓ★ he has an oral fixation, always has something in his mouth. a cigarette, a toothpick, his own damn fingers. pussy? oh, he’ll eat for hours if you let him. he’s enjoying it more than you are. his nose is pressed right against your clit, his tongue is buried deep inside you, his big hands are holding your thighs open so you can’t squirm away

ᯓ★ but what he REALLY loves? your fingers. if you put your fingers in his mouth, he’ll groan and suck on them absentmindedly. don't try to pull away, you’re not going anywhere. he’ll grab your wrist, keep your fingers between his lips and just look at you with those dark, needy eyes

ᯓ★ loves when you pull his hair so make sure to always grab and yank his mullet while he’s between your legs and he’ll groan into your pussy like he’s getting off on it

ᯓ★ the kind of man who will fuck you dumb just to make sure you don’t even remember anyone else’s name

ᯓ★ absolute menace with that tongue + so so messy. will spread your legs, settle between them and go to fucking work. licking, sucking, slurping, spitting on your clit, growling against your folds. doesn’t stop until you’re begging. “c’mon, sweetie, one more for me”

ᯓ★ absolutely gets off on how loud you are. doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of the night or the middle of the day, he’ll fuck you so good you’re screaming his name, he prefers it “Stanley” tho, not just Stan

ᯓ★ smokes like a chimney, including during sex. he’s the type to take a long drag of his cigarette while you’re riding him, exhaling the smoke lazily as he watches you bounce on his cock. “fuck, baby, keep goin’. look so pretty takin’ me like that.” then puts it out against the nightstand right before flipping you over and fucking you senseless

ᯓ★ smoking during foreplay too, pulls cigarette out of his mouth and presses it into the ashtray, muttering, “gonna put this out and focus on you, sweetie.”

ᯓ★ if you complain about him smoking too much, he’ll smirk, tilt your chin up, and say something like, “well, maybe if you keep me busy enough, i won’t need to smoke, huh?” such a brat tbh

ᯓ★ grabs whatever’s closest to tie you up. belt? works just fine. an old rag? perfect. (also wants to be tied up too)

ᯓ★ a tipsy Stan gets handsy, real handsy. he’s already got no shame sober, but when he’s had a couple of drinks, he can’t keep his hands to himself, your thighs, your waist, your ass

ᯓ★ praise him in the most filthiest way possible, call him big, tell him he’s stretching you out, tell him you’ve never had anyone fuck you like this. tell him how much you love his cock, how deep he is. he thrives on that shit, loves being told how good he feels. “fuck, baby, keep talkin’ like that and i might not last.” but he also LOVES teasing you. “poor thing, already dumb from my cock?”, “look at you, makin’ a mess all over me. filthy little thing.”

ᯓ★ i 100% believe that mullet!Stanley is a bratty switch who acts tough but turns into a desperate, whiny mess the second you take control. i think it needs its own post but ok

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kinkslump Linkdump

This is my dozenth linkdump! The world comes at you fast, and even though I'm writing 4-5 essays a week for this newsletter, many's the week that ends with more stray links than will fit in that format. Here's the previous ones:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

I managed to turn out five posts last week, despite being on tour with my latest novel, The Lost Cause, a hopeful solarpunk novel endorsed by Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben and Kim Stanley Robinson. The tour went great – the book's now a national bestseller on the USA Today list! Here's an essay I wrote explaining the structure of the feeling that the book is meant to convey:

https://www.torforgeblog.com/2023/11/14/cory-doctorow-the-swerve/

This is a climate emergency novel full of rising seas, terrible storms, wildfires and zoonotic plagues, and yet – it is a hopeful novel. What makes it hopeful? It depicts a future in which we are treating these phenomena with the gravitas and urgency they warrant, with our whole society's focus shifting to moving coastal cities inland, weatherizing and solarizing our housing, and creating permanent housing for internal refugees.

While it would be infinitely preferable to live in a world where none of that is necessary, that's not the world we have. This is an sf novel, not a fantasy novel, so all the climate harms we've locked in through decades of expensively procured inaction are present. But the difference between disaster and catastrophe is how and whether we address those harms. Sure, this is a world where superstorms wipe away whole cities and Miami is a drowned mangrove swamp, but it's also a world in which oil executives do not chair UN climate summits or complain that oil companies are being "unjustly vilified":

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/27/opec-says-oil-industry-unjustly-vilified-ahead-of-climate-talks-.html

I write a lot, and it's not just this newsletter. Writing transports me from my anxieties and aches. That's how I came to write nine books during lockdown ("when life gives you SARS, make sarsaparilla"). Lost Cause was one of three books I published in 2023.

I'm going to greet 2024 with another novel, The Bezzle, a sequel to 2023's Red Team Blues, about the hard-charging, high-tech forensic accountant Marty Hench:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

The Bezzle is a story about the shitty technology adoption curve – the way that the worst technologies we have are first rolled out on the people least able to complain about them. After these bad technologies have their sharp edges sanded down on the bodies of prisoners, refugees and kids, they move up to blue collar workers and discount store shoppers, and so on, until we're all living under their thumb.

In The Bezzle, a dear friend of Marty finds himself serving a long sentence in a privatized California prison that flips from one private equity fund to the next, each with even worse, more extractive ways to use technology to bleed prisoners and their families dry. You can read the opening scenes in a just-published excerpt on Tor Books's site:

https://www.torforgeblog.com/2023/11/20/excerpt-reveal-the-bezzle-by-cory-doctorow/

The period immediately before a book's publication is always a tense one, as the first reviews trickle in. Library Journal's Marlene Harris is the first out of the gate, with a spectacular review:

https://www.libraryjournal.com/review/the-bezzle-1802415

Marty’s reminiscences range from obscure financial machinations to heaping helpings of social commentary but always move the underlying thriller story forward in a backwards heist tale that delivers a righteously satisfying ending to the surprise of both the reader and the villain. This novel, like his previous outing, rides on Marty’s voice. He has a jaundiced view of everything, but he tells it with such style and verve that readers are caught up and ride along on the surface until the shark beneath the water jumps out and bites the villain where it hurts.

I'm headed into Skyboat Media's studios on Monday with @wilwheaton to record the audiobook for this one, directed as ever by the amazing Gabrielle de Cuir. Keep your eyes peeled for a presale crowdfunder in January!

I am often asked how I decide when to present an idea through fiction and when to do so with nonfiction. The answer is a complicated one, and I got into it in some detail on Nature's Working Scientist podcast, in discussion with Paul Shrivastava:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03394-8

When it comes to politics, fiction and nonfiction are intensely complementary. Nonfiction can convey the data about a social phenomenon, but fiction can convey the meaning of the data. It's one thing to see a chart about inequality, and another to inhabit it through fiction. Marty Hench's narrative adventures are a way into the feeling of living in a corrupt oligarchy.

There are other ways into that feeling, of course. Take Barry Bowen's "Lifestyles of the Blessed & Famous: Preacher Homes Sold in 2023" for The Roys Report:

https://julieroys.com/lifestyles-blessed-famous-preacher-homes-sold-2023/?mc_cid=9678383b64

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then carefully staged realtor drone shots ganked from the Redfin listing for a "pastor"'s $3.5m mansion in Newport Beach is a full-on sermon about the corruption of the Hillsong megachurch:

https://www.redfin.com/CA/Newport-Beach/503-30th-St-92663/home/12363926

Narratives and photos are all well and good, but there's always room for some data. The USA's weird breed of federalism and devolved power makes for some very interesting data. Writing for The American Prospect, Paul Starr rounds up several studies evaluating the "natural experiments" created by enacting very different policies in otherwise similar states:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-12-08-life-death-cost-conservative-power/

The data is in: conservativism kills. Living in a red state shortens your life expectancy. The redder the state, the worse it is. The bluer the state, the longer you're likely to live:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-0009.12469

The exemplars here are Connecticut and Oklahoma, whose life expectancies were at par until they began to diverge in policies. Oklahoma got more conservative, Connecticut got more liberal. Today, the average Oklahoman will pop their clogs at 75.8, while a Connecticutensian can expect 80.7 years.

Different scholars have parsed out different policy outcomes. Giving Medicaid to children, for example, shows benefits for the next 50 years:

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20171671

The big one, of course, is gun control. Here's the topline: "restrictive state gun policies reduce overall gun deaths." Water also wet:

https://journals.lww.com/epidem/fulltext/2023/11000/the_era_of_progress_on_gun_mortality__state_gun.3.aspx

Fact-free spiritual beliefs like "an armed society is a polite society" are key to conservative policymaking. Pesky progressives who confuse the issue with relevant facts are playing dirty, pointing out reality's unfair leftist bias.

But after 40 years of neoliberal deference to corporate power, the worm is turning. Somehow, a world on fire, filled with megapastors in megamansions who brief for lethal policies, has finally inspired a global vibe-shift (and not a moment too soon!). One of the most tangible expressions of that shift is the revival of antitrust, which has been in a coma since the Reagan administration.

All over the world – the EU, the UK, Ireland, Australia, and the USA – there are new competition enforcers challenging corporate power in ways that were unthinkable just a few years ago. If I'd written an enforcer like FTC chair Lina Khan in 2010, critics would have slammed me for wish-fulfillment too unrealistic for science fiction.

But today, Khan is taking big swings at corporate power, fighting against a calcified edifice of decades of bad, pro-monopoly precedent. The pro-monopoly press hate her, which is why the WSJ keeps publishing sweaty op-eds insisting that she is wasting her time and that monopolies are good, actually:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

But she is still out there, fighting for all of us. After a pro-monopoly judge stymied the FTC's bid to block the rotten Microsoft/Activision merger, Khan re-filed, appealing the decision:

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/us-ftc-tries-again-stop-microsofts-already-closed-deal-activision-2023-12-06/

Critics insist that she's on a foolish errand, but Khan is tackling the most promising face of a sheer cliff, and the plainly anticompetitive merger between one of the world's largest console makers (a convicted monopolist!) with one of the world's largest games publishers is the right place to start. If she can get her piton into one of the hairline cracks in that face, her arduous climb gains a solid anchor for the next stage of her assent.

Of course, Khan's highest-profile action is her case against Amazon, the omnipresent, dystopian poster-child for enshittification, a platform we can't avoid, but which is so haphazardly policed that the bestselling bitter lemon energy drink you order might be bottled piss harvested from its immiserated drivers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

In a world of murderous, community-destroying monopolies, Amazon stands out for the sheer number of ways it makes the world worse. Amazon maims its warehouse workers and kills its drivers with impossible quotas. It poisons Black and brown neighborhoods with truck exhaust from its giant depots. It destroys small businesses that sell on its platform. It was part of the studio cabal scheming to destroy actors and writers' livelihoods with unfair contracts and AI. Its audiobook monopoly stole at least $100m from independent authors. It makes goods and services more expensive at every retailer (not just Amazon), and price-gouges on its own storefront:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

Keeping that scam going requires a lot of skullduggery. A new set of leaked internal Amazon documents shed some light on how that inedible sausage gets made:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxjbm9/amazon-brags-it-cultivated-california-mayor-with-donations-in-leaked-policy-document

Amazon's "Community Engagement Plan 2024" brags about buying off small-town mayors and astroturf groups in its bid to resist regulations that would limit warehouse delivery van emissions in communities of color (Amazon calls this "philanthropic work"). Coincidentally, that "philanthropy" targeted Perris, a town where residents voted for a warehouse tax to repair the roads that had been trashed by fleets of Amazon vans.

But the real focus of Amazon's "Community Engagement" is California's AB1000, a bill that will limit the construction of supersized, 100k+ sqft warehouses near daycare centers, schools or rec centers. Secondarily, Amazon is hoping to get California to make it easier to advertise alcohol around kids, to "unlock" California's liquor market.

This kind of shameless, mustache-twirling villainry can only go on so long before it meets resistance. One of the longest-running, hardest fought struggles against corporate malfeasance is the farmers' right ro repair fight against John Deere. Deere boobytraps its tractors so that after a farmer repairs a Deere tractor, they have to wait for days, and pay hundreds of dollars, for a Deere technician to come out to the farm and type an unlock code into the tractor's console:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

Despite multiple state right-to-repair initiatives and a pending rulemaking from the FTC, Deere is still fucking around. Now, they've found out. US District Court Judge Iain Johnson just handed Deere a scathing, 89-page memo rejecting the company's bid to kill a class action suit brought by its customers:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/deere-must-face-us-farmers-right-to-repair-lawsuits-judge-rules-2023-11-27/?ref=404media.co

The memo hearkens back to company founder John Deere, "an innovative farmer and blacksmith who—with his own hands—fundamentally changed the agricultural industry":

https://www.404media.co/a-massive-repair-lawsuit-against-john-deere-clears-a-major-hurdle/

Judge Johnson tells Deere's lawyers that the real John Deere "would be deeply disappointed in his namesake corporation," and calls out their lying. You love to see it.

This kind of thing is happening all over the world as policymakers, regulators and lawmakers take aim at corporate power. The Australian government just announced that it would force Apple to open up iOS to alternative browser engines:

https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/new-digital-competition-laws-for-australia/

This is obscure and technical, but that's why it's so exciting: rather than mumbling broad platitudes about competition and user choice, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's regulation targets a critical leverage point where a small change will deliver huge benefits:

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/consumers-and-small-businesses-to-benefit-from-proposed-new-regulation-of-digital-platforms

While there are many browsers in Apple's App Store, they're all just reskinned versions of Safari, all running on the same core engine, Webkit. Webkit is ancient, undermaintained and feature-poor. Crucially, Webkit does not implement the parts of the HTML5 standard needed for WebApps, which would allow app developers a safe channel to offer apps that don't go through Apple's App Store monopoly chokepoint:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

Now, there's a big jump between announcing this kind of regulation and enacting it. As Mark Nottingham points out, Australia's had an "in principle" commitment to enact a privacy regulation for two successive governments, with no actual regulation in sight:

https://techpolicy.social/@mnot/111546662237364754

So we can't take these announcements as a sign to declare victory and stand down. The policymakers who announce these proposals deserve our accolades for the announcement and they require our constant vigilance until they make good on their promises.

That's the case in Ireland, where the Coimisiún na Meán has just published a fantastic regulatory proposal for recommendation systems, requiring recommenders to be turned off by default and that recommendations based on "political views, sexuality, religion, ethnicity or health" have to be switched off by default:

https://www.cnam.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Draft_Online_Safety_Code_Consultation_Document_Final.pdf

It's especially significant that this is coming out of Ireland, a corporate crime haven that has successfully lured the world's tech giants into flying its flag of convenience, with the guarantee of tax evasion and lax regulation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

This rule won't enforce itself. It'll require constant vigilance and pressure. There's plenty of ways to do that on a part-time, voluntary basis, but if this kind of thing enflames you enough to make a career out of it, here's a tenure-track job for an infosec professor at Citizen Lab, fearless slayers of high-tech corporate ogres:

https://jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-Assistant-Professor-Information-Security-ON/576463017/

That's all for this week's linkdump. It's time for me to go hole up in my office and wrap presents. When I do, I'll be tuning into the latest Merry Mixmas MP3 of Christmas mashups from DJ Riko:

http://www.djriko.com/dls/DJ%20Riko%20-%20Merry%20Mixmas%202023.mp3

Riko's Christmas mashups have been part of my holidays for more than two decades now. He's been making them for 22 years! That's a lot of great holiday mashups:

https://www.djriko.com/mixmases.htm

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/09/gallimaufry/#marty-hench-rides-again

[stcries]

i've written a lot of headcanons regarding stanley, so i figured it was due time to make a sort of 'headcanon dump', just for the sake of simplicity's sake. these are sort of just slice of life/basic headcanons regarding my portrayal of the character.

i'll start with general headcanon and then have a whole different section regarding post canon, since that's an entirely different can of worms.

general/all verses.

-adhd and dyslexic. struggled academically due to these, but excelled in sports and other physical activities.

-has quite a few scars to his name, mainly for his time drifting from state to state. he's got stab wounds, bullet wounds, more than likely broken his jaw before, etc. his knuckles also have faint scarring on them due to overexertion.

-ptsd and depression. he gets particularly upset when people show signs of getting upset/angry with him, which in turn is due to how his father was when he was a child, also partially from when he had his confrontation with ford the day he fell into the portal.

-hella sweet tooth. this man basically lived on toffee peanuts during his high school years. he also likes sweet/savour combos as well.

-bisexual. though for the majority of his life, he had to keep it secret/secluded thanks to his father's homophobia.

post canon only.

-feels comfortable enough to grow his hair out again. felt the need to cut it off all those years ago in order to maintain his persona of ford, but when everything is resolved, he feels safe to grow it once more.

-adopts his dog, caryn, who's info can be found here. in short summary, she was once a stray that hung around the mystery shack even before the events of weirdmaggedon. it's only post canon that he officially adopts her. she also doubles as his therapy dog, helping with memory lapse episodes and more.

-he has a scar on his forehead thanks to the memory gun. yes, it was only used on him once, but erasing his ENTIRE mind instead of just bits and pieces of it? it's going to leave damage behind. the scar is covered via his hair most of the time. during intense memory lapse episodes or anxiety attacks, it will throb and burn, but other than that, it's completely painless.

-now identifies as genderfluid, but ONLY post canon. during his youth, he did a lot of experimentation, and likely found himself comfortable in trying out different clothing and labels. however, due to the internalized homophobia both in his family, as well as on the streets, he wasn't able to express himself the way he wanted. that and having to pose as ford for 30 years, who was strictly male, it meant he couldn't just use any labels he wanted. however, with weirdmaggedon officially over and his identity returned to him, as well as his bond with ford rekindled, it means he can finally express himself how he wishes. mabel likely had a hand in this.

[pezboisworld]

I have this vision of Stanley giving Hector a puppy. Don't know why I just find it cute.

That sounds like something Stanley would do.

STORY TIME

As Hector's best friend, everyone goes to Stanley for advise on what to gift Hector. And Stanley always takes it very seriously. Most of the time Hector wants money because he hates asking for things. He claims to not need much, but he always knows what he wants to spend his birthday money on.

As they get closer to Hector's birthday, Hector has been weird. Lingering around the dog parks while they bike around Austin. Sharing different dog memes. Then one day, Hector just starts rambling about an old mutt he'd spent afternoons with before camp. Whenever Hector was in a sharing mood, Stanley found it was best to just let Hector lay it all out. Hector and this dog would always meet on the same slow road. Usually, Hector would have a snack tucked away for him. He'd trained him to roll over and beg for it. It was so funny when this big dog would wave his front paws in the air as he begged. If ever Hector didn't have a treat, then belly rubs were happily exchanged instead. Eventually, he stopped showing up. With wet eyes and folded arms, Hector shrugged it off. Must of gotten picked up by animal control or something.

When Ms. Zeroni asked Stanley what Hector could want for his birthday he tells her a dog. Preferably a rescue. They worked out a whole plan to adopt a puppy, but Stanley can't help but wonder what could have happened to the stray Hector knew. Surely Hector couldn't have been the only one to notice him in the neighborhood. Stanley does some digging.

Turns out the mutt was a social butterfly. Most people knew him as Dusty, for his dusty coat greying from age, but he had many names. Eventually he did get picked up. Once the shelter heard Stanley's story they checked Dusty's file from years ago. Turns out he hadn’t been put down. He'd been adopted.

The shelter receptionist offered to call the owners to get an update about Dusty. This was beyond whatever Stanley could have asked for.

Days away from Hector's birthday Stanley gets a voicemail from Dusty's family to meet with him and Hector for lunch. They schedule for the weekend of Hector's birthday, the same weekend they were planning to meet some rescues at the shelter. Everything was coming together.

The birthday party is a success. Hector ends the day with a fat wad of cash. Throughout the night he politely ignored the bills taped inside his birthday cards until after he appreciated the message inside. Though the most memorable gift isn't until that weekend. Hector breaks down in tears meeting a Dusty who was almost entirely white now. The geezer rushed over to Hector. Rolling over on his back, paws paddling the air to beg for his belly rubs. Then at the shelter Hector met a puppy and old dog that were picked up together abandoned by a highway. It took a lot of convincing, but Hector got his mom to agree to adopt them both once a volunteer told her the older dog was house broken and could help the puppy learn. Hector and Stanley spoil them both for the rest of their days.

[thelemonzone42]

Bella Tabbypaw

Bella Tabbypaw

Jess and Lily were in tears of joy, because they are taking care of some abandoned and lost kittens. Jess and her father found them in their shed. A stray dog scared away their mother and they needed to find the kittens home as soon as possible. They had a feeling that it was somewhere in the girls’ hometown of Brightley.

Later, Goldie came and took them to Brightly Meadow, where The Friendship Tree is.

Friendship Forest.

Through the portal, they met up with Goldie’s adoptive parents, ‘Mr. And Mrs. Tabbypaw’. She explained that not only can she travel to the human world any time, but she’s also a human world cat. She was abandoned as a kitten and Mr. And Mrs. Tabbypaw adopted her as their eldest daughter. In Goldie’s home, she is going to have a slumber party. She’d even invited her adoptive sister, ‘Bella’ over.

Later, they arrived at Goldie’s Grotto. They had some pumpkin and pine nut soup with a side of garlic bread. After cuddling into some quilts, blankets and soft pillows, Jess and Lily started to tell Bella stories about the human world. Then Goldie told Bella about long lost tunnels that might be around Friendship Forest. One of them even had jewels that are as small as appleseeds and as big as cats. Just then, they heard a thump outside.

Rushing outside, they saw a Boggit shadow. Though they decided to rest for a while.

In the morning they saw that Bella had disappeared. Outside they met Ellie Featherbill, explaining that she and her siblings were playing in the mud when her brother Stanley saw footprints. After thanking her, they rushed to rescue her, only for Lily to get stuck. Immediately they helped Lily out of the mud. After following it to a dead end, they couldn’t help but notice that the boulder was glowing. Removing it all together, they saw a secret Tunnel. They held onto Goldie’s scarf so they wouldn't get lost.

Inside, they met siblings Ruby and Rusty Fuzzybrush, who were a bunch of fox cubs. After making them promise not to tell anyone about their secret hideout, they agreed to help them escape. They’ve also explained that they also have trespassers in their secret place, The Boggits. They decided to help their way with their glow worm lanterns. All they have to say is ‘Wakey wakey, rise and shine it’s glow time’ and the lanterns lit up. 

Going down the path, they found boggits stomping around, making it look like earthquakes.

The light casted off The Fuzzy Brushes shadows. It was so big it scared away The Boggits. Suddenly, something came from a rock. It was Bella, she was using bee night goggles to find her way. She explained that she snuck out while they were sleeping and the Boggits tricked her into finding the jewels in the caves. Everyone had a feeling that The Boggits must’ve heard rumors about the jewels and they decided to find them.

Further away, the Boggits were making noises and banging like crazy. They're trying to get jewels off the pillars. This gave Jess an idea. They tricked The Boggits into leaving my making a scary Boggit eating monster out of their shadows. The Boggits barged out of the cave and into the swamp. Feeling the filthy mess, the Boggits realized they’re a lot happier in the swamp than with Grizelda. Coming out of the cave, they observed the Boggits' newfound happiness. Goldie decided to get Hermia the messenger butterfly and tell her what happened

Later the patrons of The Friendship Forest were fixing up a new home for The Boggits to live in. However, they were Interrupted by Grizelda, who was disappointed by the Boggits disobeying her. After the Boggits refused to help her, Grizelda left, but swore revenge on the girls.

A trail of butterflies lead Jess and Lily back home. Before they left, they promised Goldie that they would return to stop Grizelda.

When they got back to the Helping Paws Wildlife Hospital, they saw a cat that looked a lot like Bella. Mr. Forester explained that he has found homes for the orphaned kittens, including one that he decided to adopt and name her, ‘Pixie’. Jess and Lily smiled as they cuddled their new kitten friend.

The End.

[gingerteaonthetardis]

jess & bella go to college: autumn term

[theshadow20]

Stanley with the stray he brought home (and Xeno insisted they keep)

Stanley really gives off the vibe of the parent that wanted the pet the least but ends up loving it the most. that's this. that is the stanxeno adopting gen dynamic.

[mattydemise]

The concept of masking is one that's fascinated me since childhood. The scene from The Mask where Jim Carrey's character, Stanley Ipkiss, goes to see a psychiatrist that's written a book called 'The Masks We Wear', and the Psychiatrist talks about wearing masks metaphorically. Ever since then it's been a mental touchstone for observing how people behave. That we wear masks at all isn't just a concept to me, but I believe it to be a fact. There is always the man and his masks, the masks he must adorn to navigate the modern world. Masking becoming more prevalent the further we've been forced to stray from our original path (bloodshed, violence, rampant sexual activity, etc.) The laws and rules imposed and pressed down upon us that keep us within the strict lines of convention. Man must then, through necessity, adopt the wearing of several faces, in order to survive. The Family Man, the Father, the Guardian, the Pious, the Worker, and so on. These are archetypes that I've developed and will discuss in length whenever I can be bothered to turn this into an actual psychological text.

Persona, 1966.

[byneddiedingo]

Track 29 (Nicolas Roeg, 1988) Cast: Theresa Russell, Gary Oldman, Christopher Lloyd, Colleen Camp, Sandra Bernhard, Seymour Cassel, Leon Rippy. Screenplay: Dennis Potter. Cinematography: Alex Thomson. Production design: David Brockhurst, Curtis A. Schnell. Film editing: Tony Lawson. Music: Stanley Myers. With directors like Luis Buñuel and David Lynch, whose films regularly stray along the boundaries between logic and the irrational, between the waking world and dreams, between sanity and madness, you can always sense a central consciousness, a coherent vision, holding the film together. This isn't the case with Nicolas Roeg's Track 29, which falls apart as it drifts into weirdness for weirdness's sake. It centers on Linda, a neglected housewife, whose physician husband, Henry, spends most of his free time in the attic playing with his model trains, and at work is having an affair with his nurse, who spanks him while wearing rubber gloves. The doctor and nurse are played by one of the odder couples ever to be seen in a movie, Christopher Lloyd and Sandra Bernhard. One day, when Linda (Theresa Russell) is having lunch with her friend Arlanda (Colleen Camp), they're joined by a young man named Martin (Gary Oldman), whom we see at the start of the film hitchhiking along a country road and later being picked up by a trucker (Leon Rippy). Martin creepily admires the trucker's "Mom" tattoo, which sets us up for the even creepier assertion that he will make to Linda that he's really the son she gave up for adoption at birth. That Oldman and Russell are almost the same age should clue you in to the fact that nothing is going to make conventional sense in Track 29. Martin arouses more than maternal passion in Linda, but he may not even exist: Although Arlanda sees him in the cafe where he makes his acquaintance with Linda, in a later restaurant scene in which Martin plays on Linda's erotic obsession, we cut from the table where they're sitting to behind the bar and share the point of view of a waiter and bartender who see her sitting alone. Oh, there's much more, including a scene in which Henry addresses the attendees at a model train collectors' convention and stirs them to a frenzy with his speech. But you get the point: Track 29 is mostly an elaborate psychosexual fantasy, but it lacks a central vision to hold it together or carry it to any kind of satisfactory conclusion. It's never daring enough to explore sexual frustration and obsession in the many imaginative ways Buñuel does in Belle de Jour (1967). It could pass as satire if there were any larger point to its fleeting moments of insight or surprise, the way Lynch's Blue Velvet, made two years earlier, uncovered the seamier side of Reagan-era complacency. As it is, it's just, well, weird. 

[thinking-outside-the-giftbox18]

[The Stanley Parable AU - Cat Soulmates + Narrator’s Kid]

This is based on a soulmates prompt where you find a pet with your soulmate's personality.

I don't know what to name the cats ^^; 

Stanley found the Persian wandering around the neighborhood and took it in to take care of it. It always meows loudly, which doesn't bother Stanley who is mute, so he likes to "chat" with Persian. Stanley believes the Persian was adopted then later abandoned

For the kitten, it was a foster that Stanley volunteered to take care of, planning to give it back so it goes to a good home. Only for the Persian to adopt the kitten as theirs. So, Stanley got two cats!

 As for Charles and Rec, their cat was a stray neighborhood cat. They don't make a single sound and it spooks Charles when the stray just "magically" pounces on his countertop.

Stray is a sweetheart who'd join Charles as he works on his stories as if listening to them, and Rec enjoys the stray being around as emotional support.

The Stray would at times be a bastard to Charles, like knocking over objects and sleeping right on top of Rec or Charles' work.

How they meet actually starts with the cats. The kitten got stuck in a fence, the persian and stray help the kitten out. Turns out, Stanley and Charles are neighbours. 

The persian keeps going to Charles' house to see the Stray. Stanley would wonder who that grey tabby belonged to.

One day, Rec gets stuck because he spotted the kitten going to Stanley's yard. And on repeat, Stanley and Charles help Rec get unstuck, while the 3 cats watched.

Rec is the only one to notice how oddly similar their cats are, but didn't say anything.

While Stanley and Charles visit each other often, with the excuse that their cats wanted a playdate.

The aftermath of this AU: The kitten goes missing and Rec goes to college, where he meets a sweet calico. The kitten grows into a handsome boi and meets Elaina, Rec's soulmate. They do meet and Rec was happy to see the big kitten again ^^

[m34gs]

WIP Meme + Tag game!

List the titles/filenames/descriptions of your WIPs and tell us a little bit about them/wail about them/beg for inspiration/whatever you want! Then tag some people for a no-obligation mutual wailing/cheering/complaining session!

Thank you for the tag, @kimium! I started a separate post because I was worried this would get a bit long, hope that is ok!

Let's start this off with the Big One:

Bar AU:

Akudama Drive - Brawler has a flowchart: this is the part of Bar AU pertaining to Akudama Drive specifically and, as it states, Brawler has a flowchart. Where? In his mind. For what? To determine What Would Swindler Do when faced with a morally or socially challenging new situation. There are other fun parts such as Big Brothers Hacker and Courier, Offerings to Swindler For Managing Cutthroat, Hoodlum and Brawler are Married, and more!

Bleach Crack-fic dating au - Poor Ichigo is being courted by the entirety of the soul society, a hollow, and a few humans. Also Grimmjow is the Best Painter of the Nails.

Blue Exorcist: Rin stop being shocked ghosts exist you are the literal son of satan - Rin is surprised by all the ghosts/supernatural beings in the other universes connected to the bar. Bon is Tired. Shura must never meet Gojo from JJK.

Bungou Stray Dogs: Lovecraft is Trying- Lovecraft just wants to be a good husband. Atsushi did NOT agree to be adopted by Chuuya and Dazai. Chuuya and Gojo from JJK must Never Meet.

Death Note: L and Light are married now - L and Light are a couple. Near, Mello, and Matt are together. Sayu wins L's compliance in embarassing Light by learning to make L the Best Strawberry Short Cake Ever. Watari is Immortal and Ryuk enjoy's Rin's apple pie.

Dr. Stone: Byakuya is Alive - Exactly as it sounds. Byakuya is alive. And he is married to Xeno and Stanley. Senku is oblivious and Gen is Tired.

Fire Force Found Family AU - company 8 keeps ending up with new members of their Found Family. Benimaru and Konro will go after anyone who mistreats the tea. Joker and Licht are married and they didn't have a huge ceremony which according to Maki is A Crisis.

JJK Gojo needs to stop drinking - Gojo winds up at the wrong Bar when he is too drunk. That is what started the Bar AU. Megumi has to sort out his crushes on Sukuna and Itadori. Kugasaki is badass af. Nanami and Geto need to be a bit better when it comes to comforting their husband.

The Adventures of the League of Dads - Dadzawa, Dad Mic, Dad Might, Dadgum, Vlad Dad, Best Dad, and more. Also, who is Dad Magnet?????

And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming... ACTUALLY let's talk about some ideas I have yet to really mention; things I have plans for but haven't fully started the writing process of. After all, I can only babble about the things I have already started posting so much before even I would need a break from hearing about them. So. Here we go:

Bokuaka Beauty and the Beast AU: It's pretty simple: Beauty and the Beast plotline with Bokuto as the Beast and Akaashi as the Beauty. Perfectly Simple. A young prince, cursed to live as a demonic entity after breaking the heart of a witch, and the young man, sent by his village to desperately try to explain to the Prince that their offerings to buy his protection were stolen when they were pillaged by bandits, end up stuck in the near-abandoned castle together due to Horrible Weather. Wonder what could possibly happen. 👀

Chaos and Purity: an original work. Two deities fall in love. One is the representation of all things Pure (not "soft" or "uwu", pure as in unmixed, as in absolute. Pure gold, pure silver, pure love, pure hatred, pure malice, etc.) and One is the representation of all things Chaotic. They have seven daughters. Their family is torn apart and set against each other by spiteful and jealous people.

I think I will end it there, at the risk of this post becoming incredibly long and boring, lol. I do have many more, but if I listed them all I feel everyone would run away ahahaha. If anyone wants to know more about any of the above or just wants to chat about them, feel free to ask about it! Inbox is always open :D

Tagging: @collisiondiscourse, @sailormew4, @sithfyremonarch, @kuroosden, and @backwardshirt

No pressure, but feel free to participate!

[ezrasarm]

Pedro Boys + Pets

Warnings: None

A/N: That’s right! More collaborative HCs between @chaotic-noceur, @din-damn-djarin and myself because apparently, we have many ideas and very little self-control. Enjoy!

Din Djarin

Accidentally grazed a loth cat with a blaster shot

Now Yodito is desperately trying to heal it

Yodito won’t let him leave until he adopts the damn thing

So now he is an accidental parent to two defenceless(ish) creatures

He refers to it as a ‘nuisance’ because that’s what it is to him

Eventually, this dumbass loth cat starts answering to ‘nuisance’, as its name

“This… is not what I intended… at all”

It also answers to Yodito’s very specific shriek

He found Yodito asleep on ‘nuisance’ once

No, his heart did not melt right then and there

After particularly difficult hunts, he cuddles up with Nuisance on his lap in the captain’s seat, scratching the sweet spot behind its ear

He refuses to admit that it soothes him

You see right through him

You know he would kill for that ball of fluff 

He comes back from a rough hunt to find Nuisance and Yodito both curled up in your lap once

That was the first time he’d felt at home in a long time

Home. With you. And yodito. And this stupid loth cat

Ezra

We don’t know how we don’t know when but somehow he has a mangy old arthritic cat that has seemed ancient since the day it was born.

Its name is Trash- originally short for Patricia but that name has long since been forgotten.

The cat’s almost as much of a grump as he is 

But he turns into such a giant softy around it no matter how many times it has literally bitten the hand that feeds it.

He has long rambling one-sided conversations with it when he’s alone and it has this raspy squawk-like meow that it responds to him with.

“You’re not one who’s much for words, are you? I can appreciate that.”

...

“Who was it that said ‘Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact’?”

...

“You don’t have a clue what I’m talking about do you?”

…

“Come here, you idiot.” *picks up cat*

He swears it’s psychic

When he’s having a bad day it curls up next to him and purrs like a motor until all of his problems go away

She’s a total one person cat though

Does not tolerate shit from anyone but Ezra 

Occasionally though, every once in awhile, she might just grace you with a gentle nudge of her head before she hunkers down in your lap and drifts off to sleep

Recently she’s taken to curling up on your face when you’ve fallen asleep cuddling Ezra

Ezra says it's cute but you swear she’s trying to suffocate you

Frankie Morales

A total dog person if you’ve ever seen one. 

Small dogs give him the heebie-jeebies 

“If it can fit in your purse that’s not a dog! It’s some kind of mutant cat.”

Grew up in the countryside where having a dog was practically a prerequisite 

Can’t get used to not having a dog running around the house

Accidentally adopts an old mutt because he can’t resist it 

Surprises the hell out of you when you get home from work

You can’t tell if you’re more convinced to keep it by its puppy dog eyes or his

A/N: We got halfway through HC-ing this before we realized you could just read the actual fic that kicked all of this off instead 😂

Javier Peña

Thinks a house cactus counts as a pet

“I feed it. I water it. I take care of it. It meets all the criteria for a pet”

“You didn’t even name it!”

*glances over at bookshelf* “Federico Garcia Lorca. There I named it.”

“...it looks like a Stanley”

*glaring* “I am not calling him that.”

You don’t even trust him so much as to “take care of it” as he says he does.

“You watered it once. A month ago.”

“It’s a cactus! What do you want me to do? Drown him?!”

“Javi, you cannot water a plant with WHISKEY”

God help you two if you ever have a child

His new method of watering is now to leave the ice cube left from his drink in the pot to melt whenever he remembers 

You can’t decide if you’re impressed by this stroke of genius or disappointed that you didn’t come up with it first

One time you even got home to find him reading over a particularly gruelling case file with the small house plant. 

“Were you just talking to Stanley?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I was talking to Federico Gar- no one.”

A/N: Naturally, us being us- more specifically, @chaotic-noceur being @chaotic-noceur, Stanley sparked his own drabble which you can read here

Marcus Pike

Says he’s a dog person but is actually a cat person.

Doesn’t plan on getting a pet

But these stray cats keep showing up at his door

He made the fatal error of feeding them once and now they won’t leave him alone

They sleep outside on the doormat

But when it rains or gets cold out he ends up feeling sorry for them and lets them come inside

Now he’s accidentally adopted 5 cats

Each of them named after famous artists

Finds a chicken literally trying to cross the road one day on his way home from work

Swore it was going to get hit by a car so he brought it home too

Its name is now Picasso

The cats love their new sibling already 

...That or they want to eat it. He can’t quite tell yet.

Michelangelo seems to have taken on the ‘mother hen’ role though so he’s not overly concerned

“You can’t keep that here!”

“Why not? People keep chickens all the time!”

“Marcus, this is getting out of hand!”

You wind up taking it to your uncle’s farm where you promise Marcus he can visit it whenever he wants.

You guys (and the 5 cats) take a road trip every other weekend now

Oberyn Martell

Got himself a red snake

Takes it everywhere with him

It's not uncommon to see him sitting in a meeting with this snake casually draped over his shoulders

It doesn't seem to mind at all

Let's his youngest name the snake and now all his daughters want to name the pets they don't have

He finally caves when they start naming furniture

They all get their own pets and the castle is starting to resemble an animal sanctuary

His second youngest wanted a tarantula so that's what she got

Oberyn doesn't mind, he finds the little creature quite fascinating

The castle staff though? Not so much

Agent Whiskey 

Low key high key wants a pet pig

Can’t have one because he lives in an apartment and the landlord said no

Settles for a giant bullmastiff to spite him because nothing in the guidelines says he can’t have a dog

It’s called Dolly Parton or just Dolly for short

The vet insists he needs to find a way to get her to exercise because she’s overweight 

But in truth when he’s off work he’s just as lazy as her so they both wind up sprawled across the couch watching movies all day instead

“You’re here for a good time, not a long time.” He insists

She thinks she’s a lap dog and winds up crushing him every time she sits down

He doesn’t have the heart to get her to move so he just suffocates for a while instead 

Probably ends up with a ranch once he’s retired from Statesmen

And he finally gets that pig

[neverendingparable]

In the standard verse, Stellan was the protagonist before Stanley. 

He didn’t want to play the Narrator’s story, so Jon decided to replace him with Stanley, an illusion, who would become the perfect protagonist. 

With the help of some supernatural entities, he put Stellan into a coma (that ended up lasting three years) and used his life essence to keep Stanley as realistic as possible. Jon also fell in love with Stanley and they dated for a while. 

However he was incredibly possessive, going so far as to hurt other employees and Narrators for the sake of ‘protecting’ him. 

Stanley’s friends let him know about it, though and after a series of events, Jonathan was overpowered and taught a lesson, while Stellan was freed from his prison. 

Standard Verse Stanley ended up becoming a real human and marrying a dorky architect

Standard Verse Stellan ended up falling in love with Neil, he got his own admin powers and inherited an Office 

Standard Verse Jon adopted a daughter, changed into a better person and now is known as Dad!Jon who looks after stray employees and a room full of cats. 

[chiseler]

Dope, Dogs & Greasers

Robert Downey, Jr., delivered his first spoken line in a feature-length motion picture at the age of five. He played a puppy in Pound, written and directed by Robert Downey, Sr.

Born Robert Elias in 1935, Downey Sr. was fifteen when he dropped out of the ninth grade and used his stepfather’s surname to enlist in the army. During his time in uniform he reputedly managed to get himself thrown in the brig three times. Once was when he was stationed in Alaska, when he and a buddy, drunk at their radar scopes, faked a Soviet missile attack. By 1960 Downey was in Greenwich Village writing Off-Off Broadway plays. When he read a Village Voice column in which Jonas Mekas declared that anybody could be a filmmaker, he rented a camera and started making low-budget underground films. He hung out with Mekas and other filmmakers at the Charles Theater on Avenue B, where one night a week anyone could screen their work.

From the start he combined avant-garde technique and do-it-yourself impudence with a wacky sense of humor. In the 1964 Babo 73 he cast Taylor Mead as an addled President of the United States, with scenes shot guerrilla-style during a tour of the White House. The 1966 Chafed Elbows combines film and still photos in a way loopily reminiscent of La Jetee to tell the ludicrous tale of Walter Dinsmore, a young man who wanders aimlessly from the New School to the Hotel Dixie, a Times Square flophouse, like a Candide adrift in the Pop Art world. In one scene, a man on the street paints him with the initials AW, declares him a work of art, and escorts him at gunpoint to the Washington Square Gallery, where “you’ll be sold right away, because you’re very pretentious.” In another he records a gibberish pop song, “Hey Hey Hey,” flip side to “Yeah Yeah Yeah.” Tom O'Horgan, soon to be famous (or infamous) for Hair, did the music.

Downey fired Putney Swope, his first sort-of-commercial release, straight into the seething cauldron of American race relations in 1969. It’s a sometimes scathing, often just wacky satire in which Swope, the token black man at a failing Madison Avenue ad agency, is suddenly elected chairman. He fires the honkies and renames the firm Truth and Soul, Inc. Charmed and cowed, white clients literally throw bags of money at his Panther-style staff, who crank out ridiculous commercials for Ethereal Cereal, Face Off zit cream (“My man is out of sight, and so are his pimples”), Lucky Air Lines (male passengers get lucky with the stewardesses), and the Borman Six car. There’s a subplot involving the President of the United States, played by the dwarf Pepi Hermine, who played a similar role in an even stranger film released about the same time, Werner Herzog’s Even Dwarfs Started Small. Arnold Johnson, who would later play Hutch on Sanford and Son, plays Swope, but Downey dubbed all his lines in post-production using a gravelly pseudo-black voice; he claimed that Johnson had flubbed too many of them during filming. Mel Brooks and Allan Arbus have tiny roles as Mr. Forget It and Mr. Bad News.

Downey followed Swope with Pound, adapted from a play of his that he later said was “done Off-off-off-off Broadway at a movie house at midnight.” It’s about a bunch of stray dogs waiting to be adopted or put down, played by great character actors like Stanley Gottlieb, Don Calfa, Antonio Fargas and Charles Dierkop. A reporter for the magazine Show who spent time on the set during the filming noted a lot of pot smoking; Downey Jr., who was born in 1965 and grew up in the Village, has said that his problems with drugs go back to his childhood, when his father gave him his first puff on a joint. Junior’s first recorded line of dialogue, addressed to Lawrence Wolf, the bald actor playing a Mexican Hairless, is the immortal, “Have any hair on your balls?”

Pound was rated X for its foul language, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops denounced its “gross crudities played simply for irreverent and tasteless humor in a style that is more asinine than canine.” It premiered in New York City on a double bill with Fellini’s Satyricon and then vanished.

Downey followed it with the film that may be his magnum opus, the psychedelically weird Greaser’s Palace (1972). Allan Arbus plays a zoot-suited Jesus figure who drops into a Surrealist Wild West. Other characters include the eponymous Seaweedhead Greaser, his son Lamey Homo, the bearded prairie drag queen Spitunia, and a villain with possibly the most preposterous name in the history of filmmaking, Bingo Gas Station Motel Cheeseburger With A Side Of Airplane Noise And You’ll Be Gary Indiana. Reviewing it in the New York Times, Vincent Canby, who’d been a fan of Swope, panned Greaser’s Palace as “a big-budget mistake” (it cost around a million dollars) and unfavorably compared it to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo, another psychedelic Western that had preceded it by a few years, which most critics also didn’t get or like.

Meanwhile Downey was directing plays for Joe Papp’s Public Theater; when he directed David Rabe’s antiwar play Sticks and Bones for a planned CBS broadcast, the sponsors backed out at the last minute. Since then Downey has gone on to a fitful, iconoclastic Hollywood career that has included goofball stoner comedies like Rented Lips and the more seriously offbeat Hugo Pool. In recent years Mekas’ Anthology Film Archives has worked with Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation to restore, screen and archive some of Downey’s earliest underground films, which hadn’t been seen for decades.

by John Strausbaugh