#leo’s ridiculous headcanons strike again

[im-a-leo]

broke: Jake English would have that alarm clock that when the alarm goes off, a target board will come up and you have a little laser gun. if you shoot the target, the alarm would go off.

woke: Jake has that same alarm, but he uses an actual pistol to shoot it. Jade created it and they’ve installed extra target boards, so it will automatically reset for the next morning.

bespoke: Jade and Jake have installed a system where every morning, a target board will descend from a randomly chosen point in their respective rooms/outside the window. the target board will sound out a blaring alarm until they’ve hit the bullseye. they’ve both gotten very good at shooting the targets with their eyes closed and promptly falling back asleep. it only works about 50% of the time, so they keep setting more alarms. they keep forgetting to tell visitors about this.

[riddlerosehearts]

🐍 Thank you so much again for the thorough response! I love how much thought you put into Nico, it’s so easy to tell how much you love him hehe. And yes the snake is because Jamil’s my favourite character! They also have very boopable snouts in real life. Ignihyde is full of introverts who like to stay in their own rooms, but also full of nerds who are super into whatever they’re interested in. I bet there’d be at least one or two people who like Mythomagic there if it were canon in twst (1/4?)

🐍, nobody in PJO canon seemed to share his interest so I’d love for if Nico could discover friendship through his favourite card game and be happy there… but him feeling right at home in Ramshackle with a small number of residents is also just so him. Will also strikes me as someone who’d be in RSA instead, so Nico having some people he’d be willing to stay for in NRC would be so important for him to not feel lonely. Yuu and Grim to the rescue, I hope he likes cats. (2/?) 🐍 I’d give so much to see him feel accepted and brighten up a bit more.I’ll be honest I am super, super bad at making headcanons and writing so I really enjoy reading other people’s stuff far more, I always feel embarrassed about my own ideas or just can’t come up with much. BUT Leo in Ignihyde - I think he’d have a blast with all the technology lying around that he could play with and use for inventions, even if he’s weirded out by getting sorted into somewhere so gloomy-looking at first (3/?) 🐍He might not really get what other students are nerding out about like the latest anime though, he doesn’t strike me as the type to be super into shows and media (chronically offline). He’d have a lot of projects going on in his room all the time lying around that he keeps working on, but he starts more before he finishes them because he just has so many ideas. (4/?) 🐍 not sure how he’d interact with other Ignihyde students but I suuure hope Azul never notices all the cool stuff Leo’s making because he’d want to market them, stat. Leo’s not going to be good at reading those contracts down to the fine print. Also I know the curse is a Shroud family only thing but Leo + canon flame powers makes me so want to see him with fire hair as well haha. PLEASE do share if you have your own ideas about Leo in NRC, I’d love to hear them!! (5/5) 🐍Sorry about the multiple asks, I didn't know I'd write so much either 😭 I'm actually very okay if you want to chat abt it privately like over chat or Discord (so there's no word limit) but I'm ok sticking to asks as well if you prefer!

so before i reply to all of this i will say that there's actually a way to get around the silly 500-character limit in asks! it was removed ages ago in the app, but for some reason it's still in place on the website… unless you go to the dashboard view of someone's blog (so that'd be this link for my blog) and send an ask from there. that lets you send an ask with up to 4,096 characters. don't ask how i discovered that limit LMAO. but that should work so you can stay anonymous if you want!

i love nico a ridiculous amount lol, he was my favorite PJO character ever since i first read the original books. and even though i do have some issues with the sun and the star, i still love his development. it actually reminds me a lot of how idia, even though his anxiety definitely hasn't gone away, has been shown since the end of book 6 to be making more of an effort to put himself out there and try to be friendly with his classmates because he does want to have friends, he's just traumatized and scared.

you have excellent taste for jamil being your fave. i should post some of my thoughts about scarabia on here at some point because i like both jamil and kalim a lot and could talk for ages about how fascinated i am by their dynamic, but some people have the most shockingly bad takes about jamil 😭 do you have any thoughts on what PJO cabin he'd be in?

that's true, i did think about how ignihyde probably has some students who'd be into mythomagic or a twst equivalent of it! but then i thought that since nico is still kind of closed off and most people in ignihyde are so unsociable that even cater has claimed to not have a single friend from there, he might not manage to connect with those people before transferring out. although it also occurred to me that maybe if he and leo were there in ignihyde at the same time, things could be a bit different?

see, i've always thought there were a surprising amount of similarities between leo and nico but the books never called attention to them since the two basically never got to interact. and i wish they had, because i think they could have an interesting friendship if they got to know each other better! so maybe in this AU they could be friends, and leo could be there encouraging nico to stay and helping him understand the tech. i've also gotten myself kind of attached to the idea of him moving into ramshackle though! i guess either idea could work, as long as nico gets to be happy.

i haven't had a chance to ask my friend (who i've referred to as a will solace expert because she has so many headcanons and thoughts about him) where she thinks will would end up yet! i do think that if he somehow ended up at NRC, he'd be one of the few light magic users there.

"i hope he likes cats" reminds me that i always thought it would be funny if nico DID like cats but was allergic to them. and still just insisted on having one anyway. well, hey, grim is constantly telling us that he's NOT a cat, so maybe he gets around this problem lol.

omg i totally get the feeling of being embarassed about your ideas, anon!! for the longest time i used to not really post any of my own thoughts because i feel like i'm not very creative and it made me nervous. i'm also not always the best at just thinking up general headcanons and ideas unless i've got some sort of prompt or theme to go by. even now sometimes i post headcanons about my favorite twst ships and such while thinking, what if everyone who reads this hates it. what if someone thinks my interpretation of riddle is so bad that i don't deserve my url ASKFJGFD.

i like your ideas about leo, though!! i did think a bit about how he might be as an NRC student, and i also thought he'd definitely adjust better than nico would (makes a lot of sense that he'd be weirded out by the gloomy atmosphere initially, though) and would be fascinated and excited by all the magical technology and gadgets. i also figure that since he is someone who's always seeking out quiet and personal space to be alone and work on his projects, he wouldn't mind too much that the students tend to keep to themselves. and canonically he tries to be a lot more of a loud outgoing jokester than he really is in order to cover up his insecurities and try to make people like him, so maybe he could make some friends there without feeling like he has to do that.

i think leo made a few pop culture references in the books (one i remember for sure is star trek, though he says he doesn't like it) so maybe he wouldn't quite be chronically offline but he also wouldn't be obsessive about it, because his engineering projects are his top priority. he's definitely not a gamer, but i could see him liking to have background noise while he works sometimes and putting on whatever anime everyone is talking about! …which makes me imagine one of his dorm mates getting annoyed at him because he wasn't paying enough attention to remember their favorite background character from episode 679 of one piece, lol.

oh him meeting azul would be a disaster for SURE lol, let's hope idia warns him and that he doesn't have any unfortunate encounters with floyd and jade. and i'm not sure what a fitting explanation for leo having fire hair would be but i do agree that it would be extremely cool. and for that matter, i guess we'd also need an explanation for idia and ortho's hair if they were in the PJO universe… my first thought is they could either just have normal hair (boring, but it works) or maybe it's an extremely rare hades kid thing.

[etraytin]

inspired by your josh and dr. bartlet fic. pls do headcanons on their relationship.

Well, I started to do this one but then it got all rambly and out of control, possibly due to the lateness of the hour when I started it, so instead you get pre-and-early seasons headcanons only. Whoops! 

Josh and Abbey got off to a somewhat rocky start in their relationship, mostly due to Zoey's enormous and rather awkward crush on Josh from the moment she laid eyes on him. Now Zoey was only sixteen at the time, so it was understandable that her head was easily turned by the dimples and the adorably curly hair and the excitable political genius of the guy, but he was still 34 years old and Abbey was more than willing to kill him if he tried anything. Luckily for all of them, Josh didn't even seem to notice Zoey's feelings until they petered out on their own (mostly after realizing how truly ridiculous he was most of the time) and they settled into a sort of big brother-little sister relationship. Abbey could accept that; the more people keeping an eye on Zoey on the campaign trail, the better!

The other reason for their rocky start was that when Josh came on board, Abbey started to worry that they might actually win. Before the Josh Lyman era of the campaign, it was mostly a lark with Jed and Leo and a dozen volunteers and that dour bald speechwriter all playing at running for President in a converted storefront in downtown Manchester. But when Josh came in, he came in from the frontrunner campaign, and that brought attention, and questions. What did Bartlet have that Hoynes didn't? What did Josh Lyman know that nobody else did? And Josh brought along Sam Seaborne as well, and then Toby coaxed his friend CJ to join up, and suddenly there was a team of seasoned campaign operatives and a bus and paid campaign workers, and it was all becoming a Real Thing, which Abbey was not comfortable with at all. It wasn't Josh's fault, she understood, but it was hard not to toss him a little of the leftover blame she wasn't busy heaping onto Jed.

Josh, in turn, was rather intimidated by Abbey during the campaign. He was hardly unused to strong women, but Abbey Bartlet was tough as nails, an entirely different breed than her affable-yet-truculent husband. She had a stronger grasp, many times, of political reality, but she seemed every bit as unwilling to put up with it. He was very glad it hadn't been his job to convince her to start going by "Mrs. Bartlet," since half the time he was kind of sure she wanted to kick him in the shins (or worse) already. He was surprised, therefore, when he came down with some kind of hell-virus just after Super Tuesday and she showed up in his room with her doctor bag and Donna in tow with a carafe of hot tea. Dr. Bartlet (and she was definitely all doctor right then) had matter of factly taken his temperature, looked in his ears and down his throat, and prescribed two full days of rest with lots of fluids and no talking. Then she'd patted him on the head, tucked him in, and left. Josh was still entirely intimidated and just a little bit smitten.

Once in the actual White House, the two didn't see each other as often. Abbey didn't like to come to the West Wing much after the first few weeks in office. She'd go to the oval, but she'd take the route that led through the portico and past the Outer Office rather than going through the warren of staff and being announced. It was her way of reminding herself, Jed and everyone around them that this was her house and she ought to enjoy a certain amount of autonomy here despite being constantly watched and babysat. The only times she would actually venture into the West Wing proper would be for occasional visits with CJ, who she'd made friends with on the campaign, or Josh, who was the most fun to heckle and who never took it personally. When there was actual work to do, like consulting the press secretary about the First Lady's media image or speaking with the Deputy Chief of Staff about her agenda of interests, she made them come to the East Wing. It was simpler that way.

On the night Jed got shot, Abbey's first, second and third thoughts were all for her family. Jed was hit and Zoey was afraid, Zoey's adorable motherless boyfriend Charlie was traumatized, and their old family friend Leo had been inches from the line of fire. She had plenty to worry about without trying to take a census of where all the senior staffers had gotten off to, really. That didn't stop the guilt from hitting her like a punch to the gut when she heard about Josh being brought in on a crash cart and realized she'd never even wondered if any of them were all right. Once Jed was out of the woods and sleeping, Abbey took it upon herself to be the medical liaison between the surgeons and the White House staff, translating the often-arcane terminology and answering what questions she could. She also took it upon herself to look after Donna once Mrs. Landingham headed back to the White House. The girl, and she really was just a girl, barely as old as her own Ellie, was holding herself together but only through sheer grit and more than a little desperation. Abbey was the one who arranged for Donna to watch a little of the surgery from outside, hoping it would give her some measure of peace or closure if Josh did not beat the 70-30 odds stacked against him. She watched too, from a few feet away, and wondered if it was worse or better to see it all and know exactly what each instrument did and what every twitch of a finger meant.

Josh had known he was in for a long recovery from the moment he was conscious enough to absorb thee words his doctor said about "bilateral anterior thoracotomy" and "resectioned pulmonary artery," but he hadn't expected it to be quite so long, or nearly so annoying as it turned out to be. It was almost all right for awhile, having people fussing over him while he was drowsy, bringing him things to do and listening as he rambled away on whatever topic had caught his drugged-up interest. Eventually, though, they started throttling back on the pain medication and once that stopped completely sucking, he started getting bored and impatient. It was midterms season and there was so much work to do if they wanted to remake the House in their own image! He needed to be out there shaking trees and striking fear into the hearts of men! The biggest obstacle to that plan was obviously Donna, who literally threw herself in front of the door on more than one occasion to keep him in his apartment, but she wasn't the worst of it. He was a master politician and also Donna's boss, he could've worked around her. No, the worst of it was that Donna had learned everything she knew about political maneuvering from Josh himself, and therefore he had no choice but to be reluctantly proud when the First Lady appeared at his door the night before he was absolutely determined to go back to work. She gave him a swift examination of eyes, gums and posture, then sent him reeling backwards onto his bed with one well-placed gentle poke to the sternum. Object lesson complete, she prescribed two more weeks of home rest, followed by half days. Josh was beaten once again, but Abbey was gracious in her defeat and left him a little bag of maple syrup candies. Even Donna couldn't say no to candy straight from the First Lady.

Eventually Josh did get to go back to work, much later than he would've liked, and for many fewer hours at first. Maybe it was true that he got tired out pretty quickly, but he'd already missed twelve weeks, weeks where other people'd had to cover for him when by all rights they should've put somebody new in the job. He owed it to the President, to Leo, to all his colleagues to start picking up the slack no matter his nagging bodily weakness. He'd rather hoped that Donna would stop nagging once they were back at work and she wasn't ordering him to do physical therapy in his baggy pajamas anymore, but that had been a vain and foolish dream. The intolerable woman had an actual stopwatch on her desk to measure the exact allowable minutes before he needed a break and until he needed to go home. He ignored her, of course, the first time she'd tried to make him take a break and also the first time she'd tried to stop him for lunch. By the  afternoon break, Mrs. Bartlet was standing in his doorway, her arms folded, looking extremely unimpressed with him. Josh went to take his break. At the end of the day, Josh was ready to keep going until he really truly needed to quit, but then the President walked by his office and waved goodnight to him. Josh didn't know if it was Abbey or Donna who'd arranged that, but he knew when he was beat.