#look up syphilis face stickers

[fiery-emblems]

I really wish people would stop saying Fire Emblem takes place in "medieval times". The medieval period was a very specific period in history but fans always just use it as shorthand for "fantasy times".

FE references the Renaissance (and after ) more often than the medieval (not the same thing).

[fbfh]

thankful for my (found) family - demisquad + reader thanksgiving special

2.4k

platonic everyone + reader, implied future/potential leo x reader if you look real close, thalia has a girlfriend that I had to make up bc they never mention hunters of artemis but go off rick, calypso is not included bc she acts more like an antagonist imo, gif doesn’t have anything to do with it besides nostalgia lmao

happy thanksgiving <33

You and Leo are cooking in the kitchen 

You have been all day

The doorbell rings, and Annabeth goes to answer, binder full of travel plans in hand

“That should be-”

Clarisse enters with a loud greeting and a hug to everyone in arms reach

Percy’s loud cheers echo from the living room as he calls out the new score of the football game he’s keeping everyone updated on

She drops her bag, hopping over the back of the couch to watch with Percy

“Woah woah, catch me up Jackson! What'd I miss?”

Hazel is helping Rachel make cute diy table settings and party favors 

Rachel, as with most art projects she takes on, is very focused on making it Martha Stewart levels of cute and amazing 

Frank and Piper are keeping everyone updated on the parade 

Frank pops down the stairs, calling out, “The last performance just ended, the dog show starts in 5!”

Hazel drops what she's doing and exclaims, “THERE’S A DOG SHOW?!” 

She runs upstairs to watch with Frank, her yellow dress swishing behind her

You chuckle, calling over to Annabeth as you mix batter in a bowl, " Hey Annabeth, how are the travel plans looking?"

She shuffles through some papers in her binder

"Magnus and Alex had another layover, but they should still be able to make it in time. Thalia and her hunter friend will be here in 10, and Travis's flight got delayed because of a sudden snow storm."

"Really?" You reply, "This time of year? That's pretty ironic for a son of Hermes..."

"I know, I'm looking at some shuttle services to see if that would be faster…" Annabeth replies

Nico enters, stealing a couple appetizers, "This is so stupid, I could just go get him."

Will, right behind him, eats the appetizer Nico hands him and replies, "No you can't. Doctors orders."

Nico starts to protest 

Will shoots him a look 

"Boyfriend's orders."

Nico tries in vain to stare him down,  "… Va’ a farti fottere." he says, cracking a smile

"Love you too," Will counters 

You and Leo shoo them out of the kitchen before they steal more of your recipes

Jason and Grover walk by with a bunch of pillows and blankets, setting up guest rooms. 

Grover calls through the pile of fluff he's carrying, "Hey, we're gonna need a few more pillows-"

Jason, over his pile of bedding, corrects, "A lot more!" And Annabeth runs over to help carry some of the blankets he's about to drop

"-A lot more pillows…"

You grab your keys

"okay uh… Grover, do you want to head to the store to get some more pillows-"

Leo, vigorously sautéing something adds over his shoulder, "And basil! And, uh… red wine vinegar, olive oil, and potatoes."

You rip a piece of paper off the notepad on the fridge and scribble a quick list 

You're probably going to need some more ice, too 

Tyson, very distressed, holds up an empty container of mellowcream pumpkins, declaring, "THERE'S NO MORE BABY PUMPKINS!" :(

you loudly add candy pumpkins to the list

Rachel approaches. 

"Are you going to the store?"

"Yeah," you reply, "how's crafting going? You need anything? "

"We're almost out of glitter and mod podge. It's not looking good. We could use some more fake leaves, warm toned glitter, and rhinestones - the nice ones."

Grover looks slightly lost 

You narrate as you add to the list, "Fancy rhinestones, mod podge, fake leaves, red, yellow, orange, and brown glitter…"

Tyson, still distressed, yells, "AND BABY PUMPKINS!"

:(

You hold up the paper, "Already on the list, bud, Grover's gonna get them!"

"What if he gets the wrong kind?" Tyson asks 

You, turn to Grover quietly, "Grover, can you take Tyson?"

Grover nods

"Hey Tyson, Grover has a lot of stuff to get, could you go be his shopping buddy? That way you can pick out the right baby pumpkins."

He doesn't look convinced

He wants to keep working on a secret project he’s been doing out by the garage

"And…" you add, sweetening the deal, "you can get two candies for the way home."

He agrees

You turn to Grover; "I'll call you guys an uber-"

"I'll drive."

You all turn around, shocked to see Reyna awake. 

You thought she was still passed out 

She showed up at 9am and immediately fell asleep from traveling all night 

"Reyna, hi! Are you sure-"

"We'll be fine, I need to stretch my legs a little." She proves by rolling her shoulders

"Okay, as long as you're sure," you hand her the paper, re-entering the kitchen

She takes the paper from your hand as you shut off the beeping timer and grab a pair of oven mitts from the drawer

Reyna examines the paper, "...This is a weird list. Where are we supposed to get all this?"

Leo moves to the side as you pull out the rolls from the oven, using tongs to set them on a wire cooling rack, "Maybe target?"

Leo, still very focused on cooking, announces, "If you get me generic brand spices I will burn this place to the ground."

"O-kay," you turn back to Reyna, laughing, "there's a Wegmans and a Joanne's right next to the TJ Maxx, you can probably find everything there."

"We'll be back within the hour." She states, taking your keys. 

Rachel meets her at the door. "Here, use my card. Also, make sure you get the flat backed swarovski crystals. And please pick some glitter with a nice color shift!"

You remind them to call or text with any questions and be safe

Heading back into the kitchen, you fill up a big bowl with carrots, celery, cucumbers, and mushrooms

You grab two cutting boards, knives, peelers, and a plastic bag for the peels, tips, and tails

You set it all down on the coffee table in front Percy and Clarisse

“Can you guys get the relish tray started?” 

They agree, and immediately return to yelling at the referee

You shake your head laughing, and head back to the kitchen

“How we looking, Sparky?”

“Stuffing cups just went up in the oven, pie crust dough is chilling, and the green beans are almost done sauteeing. Rolls are cooling - could you stir the cranberry sauce? - and… the turkey is going up as soon as the stuffing is out.”

You stir the sauce as you continue talking

“Great! We’re making good time so far. Oh, I found a recipe for brown sugar pie, which Frank requested - apparently it’s a Canadian Thanksgiving thing - so I figured if you’re doing turkey I can handle the pies.” 

He pours some cooking wine into the pan, and shakes it as the alcohol burns off

“Sounds like a plan, babycakes.” 

You laugh at the nickname, and grab butter, salt, some herbs, and a stick blender to finish the potatoes

A few minutes later, you hear the door open 

Reyna and the boys are back already? That was quick

You wonder if they need help bringing groceries in

“Eeeey get over here you knucklehead!” 

Bags drop, and you hear Jason laughing in protest

You poke your head out of the kitchen, and see Thalia with Jason in a headlock

In spite of the fact that he’s about half a foot taller than her, she’s still noogie-ing him, pretending she can’t hear him objecting through his laughs

She finally lets him go, greeting everyone as he adjusts his glasses

She bear hugs Annabeth, punches Percy in the arm, and high fives and hugs pretty much everyone else

You run up the stairs to the guest room Grover was setting up before he left

You finish making the bed head back down, meeting Frank and Hazel on the way 

"Oh, Hazel, what did you think of the dog show?"

"It blew my wig!" She says giddily 

A confused smile settles on your face

"It was awesome and she loved it," Frank translates smoothly

He and Will are understandably best at deciphering 40s slang

Thalia is introducing everyone to Amber, a girl she’d met on the hunt and become really close with

You greet her, and turn to Thalia

“Your room is all set up if you wanna get settled in,” you turn to Amber, “and yours will be ready soon,” 

They share a look

“Oh,” Thalia starts grabbing their bags, “that’s fine, we can share a room. We share a tent on the hunt all the time, right Ambie?”

"Oh,”

And then it clicks

“yeah, however you’re comfortable.”

You grab one of the bags, and help them upstairs

“Why don’t you guys take a while to settle in, I’ll tell the others you’re resting.”

They thank you, and you start to leave

“By the way,” you poke your head back in, “you two seem really cute together. Welcome to the family, Amber.” 

She blushes and Thalia gives you an appreciative look

You nod and head back down

You let the others know they’re going to nap for a little while, and not to wake them up

“Hey, any travel updates?” You ask Annabeth, on your way back into the kitchen

“Alex just texted, she and Magnus are finally on their way, should be here in the next few hours. As for Travis…” 

She holds out her phone, showing you Travis’s tiktok

He’s filming the mirror in the airport bathroom

“So uh, my flight’s delayed, I’m bored, I’m gonna fuck with some people,” he holds out a hand full of stickers that look like outlets

He records himself putting them around the airport, then gets people’s reactions when they try to use them

He ends the video asking for more prank ideas

You look back up at Annabeth, holding back a laugh, “Seems like he’s doing okay,” 

“Oh,” she replies, “that’s not all.”

She scrolls up, showing the next prank video where Travis goes around the airport having fake phone conversations to get people’s reactions

Conversation topics including ‘I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but slept with your grandma’, ‘hey bro I can’t come to the party, also turns out I’m going to be your stepdad’, ‘hey dude remember that old lady we used to cat sit for? Well, I found out I got chlamydia from her, so…’, and ‘yeah man, I’m so excited for the poetry slam. Also, it turns out my jazz fever is actually syphilis.’. 

Your hand flies over your mouth, trying not to laugh loudly enough to wake Thalia and Amber

“Yeah,” Annabeth says, fighting her own laughter, “he’s doing okay.”

You start putting together ingredients for pie filling

“That is the most in character thing I could have imagined,” you laugh, and Annabeth shows Leo the videos

“There’s a bunch more, too,” she adds, “Around making tiktoks, he found a bus heading this way. He’ll be here in a few hours.” 

“Cutting it close,” you muse, filling pies, “I’m glad he’s not stuck at the airport though. How about Connor?” 

“Haven’t heard much from him, but he said he'll be here in time for dinner."

A little while later, Thalia and Amber re enter, joining Percy and Clarisse in the living room 

The door opens shortly after, and Tyson enters, arms full of containers of candy pumpkins 

Reyna and Grover are right behind him

You take Grover's bags, announcing that Thalia got here a little while ago

He bleats excitedly and runs to hug her, Reyna right on his heels

Piper and Tyson bring in the rest of the groceries

Tyson sets down the last bags in the kitchen, looks out the window, yells, "IT'S ALMOST SUNSET!", and runs back out into the back yard, presumably to finish his mystery project 

Everyone eventually makes their way to the living room, nibbling on appetizers and watching classic Thanksgiving specials 

The food is almost done, all that's left is decorating the pies and a little tidying up 

You walk over to Leo, placing your hand on his shoulder 

He looks up at you

"Why don't you go take a quick shower and change before dinner," you muse, knowing the hoodie and jeans he's been cooking in all day isn't the outfit he'd picked out, "I'll wrap things up in here,"

He thanks you, dramatically presses a kiss to your forehead, and exits the kitchen 

You decorate the pies distractedly, catching the doorbell right before the second ring 

You smile at the people about to enter

"Annabeth," you call, "Magnus and Alex are here!" 

She drops what she's doing, and runs over to greet them 

Leo is back down stairs a short while later 

His brick red hoodie replaced with a burgundy one - his fancy hoodie as he calls it - a heavy flannel layered on top, and a beanie pulled over his almost dry hair

His pyrokinesis makes you forget how cold he gets sometimes 

You're about to go upstairs to change out of your cooking clothes when Tyson enters dramatically 

"The surprise is done!"

Everyone files outside to see what Tyson made as he leads you all out to the garage 

Perfectly attached to the side, is a very small horse stable 

"Wow!" Percy starts, "Great job, dude!"

Tyson is beaming as he's showered with confused praise 

"So uh," Percy ventures, "what did you build it for?"

"Maybe something like this?!" Descending voices declare in unicen 

Travis and Connor land in front of you on no other than Blackjack

Everyone erupts into cheers

“I thought you were stuck at the airport! What about those tiktoks?”

“Saved in my drafts, baby!” Travis laughs

Percy greets Blackjack and everyone else heads back inside with Travis and Connor 

You run upstairs to shower quickly and change, and are back downstairs just in time for appetizers and drinks 

You're about to take a sip of coffee when the door opens 

An irregular set of footsteps echoes into the room, along with a familiar voice 

"Ah, children, I hope there's room for one more," 

Everyone turns in surprise as Chiron enters the room 

After lots of warm excited greetings and making sure he has a warm cup of tea, he settles in to chat for a while

"I was on my way to meet with my more, ah, rambunctious cousins, but I couldn't let a day like today pass without stopping by."

After two cups of tea and lovely conversations, Chiron heads out to meet up with the other party ponies 

Thalia, Percy, and Will get all the food on the dining room table while Rachel makes the finishing touches to the centerpieces 

Everyone finds their seat, and you make the first toast

"I think I can speak for everyone when I say I'm thankful for you guys - my found family."

Every glass is raised

You can all drink to that. 

[thepanicoffice]

The Life & Exhaustive Works of Richard O. Jones

[...]

As promised/threatened, in order to mark THIRTY (30) vainglorious years of the life of Richard Owen Jones, I am providing a preview of the biography that I have written in my own blood (figuratively) and bile (literally). It is due to be published shortly with the University of Tungsten Press, and with Limpet, Fecund & Sproles in North America as part of their ‘Lives of the Utterly Vacuous’ series. As this whole week is dedicated to his manifest failings and sparse achievements, this represents only the first of two installments. Consider that your first and final warning.

The Exhaustive Life And Works of  Richard Owen Jones: A Compilation of Calumny A Testament of Tyranny A Litany of Larceny A Chronicle of Crimes Most Odious

____________________________

Author’s note:

I am unfortunate enough to have, at various times in my beleaguered life, held the acquaintance of Rich Jones, noted raconteur, wit, and five-time winner of the WBBO welterweight boxing championship. His acquaintance has also held me. Forcefully.

As a consequence, much of the material contained in this biography is culled from personal reminiscences, decaying memories, and the vivid fantasies that dance among them in my syphilis-riddled mind. Syphilis, I would hasten to add, that Jones himself gave me ‘as a joke’ for my 22nd birthday. He said that for my 23rd he would cure me. We laughed. He still has not made good that promise.

As such, the more lucid passages in this book may be interspersed with fevered ramblings and paranoid delusions. But I’ve never been one for self-editing (it seems like writing twice what you’ve only been paid to do once) so I’ve not bothered to look back through it to weed out the madder stuff.

References to Jones’ numerous works, his poems, plays, articles, photographs, and correspondence, have all been harvested from the Richard Jones Archive, held at the University of Tungsten.[1]

This scholarly work is intended, above all, to serve as a warning to posterity that to turn a blind eye to a tyrant is to leave your back exposed. And then the knife plunges in.

Take heed, O complacent world!

R.M. May 2019 ---------

[1] The contents of the archive were donated by myself, made up of the scraps I had managed to steal on previous visits to Jones’ house. The archive collection also contains a fine selection of nose rings, nail clippings and one used pair of boxers. Rumour has it that this latter item will soon be auctioned and the proceeds used to pay for a new Geography faculty building.

_________________________________________________

Introduction

Where, I ask, can one begin to describe a life such as that of Richard Owen Jones? How do we delineate something as prosaic and limited as the ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ of a life?

How does one describe the life cycle of a star? Does it begin with the collection of carbon that gathers around a mote of dust as it waxes across the face of the infinite void? Or does it begin with its collapse, its supernova, as it scatters the hot, bright matter with which it succours a universe yet to come?

The answer is obvious: we’ll start with his birth. The star talk was a rhetorical red herring. Let us begin.

_________________________________________________

Chapter I: The Birth of a Titan

The weather report contained in the Evening Standard for X May 1989 noted with mild horror that the River Thames had turned to a tide of roiling blood, surging as through a dilated artery, and that its banks were choked with the bodies of the dead. An inauspicious, if not entirely coincidental, sign that the man who would come to be known – by me, at least[1] – as the Black Messiah had arrived to Earth.

Richard Owen Jones was delivered of a jackal, on a comfortable private healthcare plan, at an hour in which God had averted his gaze: three thirty-seven AM. This much can be certainly ascertained by the fact that the clocks in the hospital (West Festering DGH, near Bermondsey) had stopped, presumably in their unwillingness to acknowledge any subsequent seconds in which the Beast still breathed.

His father, Tony Jones, declared in a letter to an associate that he remembered being “wholly unnerved” by the appearance of his singular progeny but acknowledged that he soon overcame his “overwhelming desire to dispatch the creature with a rock hammer”. Their relationship went from strength to strength, with Tony choosing to secrete the infant in his beard, like a sort of coarse, bristly papoose. This, in many ways, is likely to have been the crucial psychosexual event that caused Jones’ lifelong adoration and erotic longing for facial hair. If there is a moment of space-time around which all future achievements (including the Brighton ‘Beard of the Year’ award 2011) were pinioned, it would be this one.

I have done some cursory research to provide some colour and context for the first year of Jones’ life. Geopolitically, the world was a crucible of change. Khomeini had declared fatwah upon Salman Rushdie; tanks struggled to find the reverse gear in Tiananmen Square; the Berlin Wall was fitted with several viewing holes; the Notre Dame Fightin’ Irish beat the West Virginia Mountaineers for the college football championship. These were dark days. An appropriately stark and eerily lit stage on which our anti-hero could take his first tentative steps, and deliver unto the world his first squalling monologue.

_________________________________________________ Chapter II: The Blighted Childhood

This is, first and foremost, intended as an artistic biography; one which seeks to analyse (and, where possible, brutally criticise) Jones’ creative output. So here were must review his ‘juvenilia’, such as it is. After haunting the corridors of his former primary school (not like a paedophile – more like a ghost) and forcing the door of a barely locked store cupboard, I have located some of his archival papers. These we might describe as his earliest ‘works’.

To begin with, we find a story written in year 3, which, with hindsight, provides a chilling commentary on his mental state and a grim foreboding of his life yet to come. The story is entitled “Ode to Summers Green” and is written in a childish scrawl, like the death-flailings of a drunken spider, on scraps of yellow sugar paper. Despite its pastoral title, the work is remarkably dark, seeming at times to be an inversion of the classic tale of Faust. In it, the principle character, Benwort Kleinson (clearly a feebly veiled figuration of the author himself), seeks to trick various classmates out of their possessions, culminating in a set-piece in which he tricks the naïve James Garner to part with his immortal soul. The piece is fairly rudimentary and simplistic, with casual allusions to only one or two key pieces of Continental philosophy. It is therefore unsurprising that his teacher, Miss Fallopia, gave the piece a ‘Well done!’ and smiley-face sticker, rather than the 2:1 he would have hoped for as a bare minimum.

But what of the boy beyond these infantile scribblings? Reports from those who knew him, including the parents of his school chums, described him as “possessing a penetrating gaze, that appeared to touch upon the very tissues of the soul” and “a bit weird”. It can scarcely be a shock, then, to discover that he transferred schools a total of seventeen times in his young life, leaving behind him a trail of mysterious disappearances and swelling psychiatric reports. _________________________________________________

Chapter III: Adolescence

Puberty hit Jones with much the same force that a cannonball might hit, say, a hummingbird (i.e. with devastating force). One moment he was minding his own business, constructing a thesis on the Greek scholar Rectilineus, the next he became a seething mass of lustful membranes, engorging and subsiding at random intervals. One can scarcely imagine the terror that this struck into the ill-educated, superstitious, and slightly backward inhabitants of Stoke-on-Trent.

It was at this time that he began his love-affair with the theatre. He called her Gertrude. He was banned from visiting after he was found behind the stage curtain making love to a rostra block. Despite the injunction placed upon him by the courts, he knew that his place was on the stage. He joined a group of travelling players, putting on performances of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson and some of Jones’ self-penned pieces. The annotated playscript of one such work – ‘The Passage of Love’, a grotesque and innuendo-laden piece, designed purely to infuriate censors – still survives. From the jottings which adorn the margins like some aggressive yeast infection, it becomes clear that Jones gradually fired all the other actors, one by one, until the play became a single-hander. Given that that the script calls for twenty-three separate speaking roles, we can only imagine that the performance was a unique spectacle. The Pembrokeshire Gazette has a two-star review, describing it as “exhausting and frenetic” and “a herculean feat that was as unrewarding as it was mentally taxing” before kindly requesting that Jones “never darken the boards again”. Jones took this review to heart and burned down the office of the Pembrokeshire Gazette. Then he gave up acting. Then he burned down the home of the Editor, Deputy Editor, Arts Editor, and Theatre Correspondent of the Pembrokeshire Gazette. The Pembrokeshire Herald dubbed it ‘The Night of the Thousand Fires’.

_________________________________________________ Chapter IV: The University Years

After turning his back on the theatre for the next ten years, Jones turned his hand to poetry; a skill he would come to hone in the brutal killing fields of the University of Sussex Poetical Society. The members of this surprisingly esoteric society would meet in a circle drawn in purified salt and, in the form of a duel, recite each other into submission. Jones’ fighting record concluded in 2013 at 37 wins, 2 draws and no losses, highlighted by one evening when, propelled by a stimulating decoction of cocaine and soy sauce[2], he took on any and all comers in a remorseless poetry maelstrom. By the end of the evening, seven men lay dead.

It was at these events that I first met Jones, watching in breathless wonderment as he dispatched his rival, the upstart Argentine poet Cedric Espadrille, with an audacious piece which would come to be recognised as one of his early poetical masterpieces, Chorus of the Bowels.

O garrulous gastrointestinal tract Bespeak your bizarre Faustian pact With my humble meal of cheese and bread You confabulate and leave nought unsaid O moaning, grizzled, groaning bowels Through which long-winded warning prowls. My meals dictate its daily speech An egg, hard-boiled, extends its reach To friends, Romans and countrymen Visceral rhetoric much the better when A spicy plate’s for me prepared It utters truths no others dared. Without this fuel its words are failure - Wet suck of human penetralia - But with stew and sausage laced with sage Turns guts to greatest speaker of this age When a shard of fart is lodged in me And culminates in flatulent oratory.

Indeed, as would become a theme with his more mature works, this poem takes the form of an ode or exhortation to his increasingly unruly bowels. This remarkable poem, delivered with his trademark aggression and an unusual poise for a man so thoroughly stupefied by the Chairman’s Indulgence, caused Espadrille to take early retirement, at the age of 19, and move to a tree-worshipping commune in Dundee. Jones passed out, and awoke as a legend in the world of poetry.

During his time at the University of Sussex he also turned his hand to the study a sociology. Here he was hopelessly influenced by a sordid cabal of cultural Marxists, allowing their mild, tweedy dissidence to stir his blood with filthy socialist ideals. This political reorientation was, thankfully, short-lived and he soon returned to his usual habits of subjecting the University’s poorer students to blackmail, extortion and bullying them into indentured servitude.

-------

[1] And indeed at most.

[2] A mixture he developed himself, called ‘The Chairman’s Indulgence’ in honour of Mao’s revolution. [END OF PART ONE]