#who is the real pete?

[cowardlykrow]

And then Pete had to go to school like that and Ted still hasn't let him live it down. [That one scene from bobs burgers]

[lilacthebooklover]

hatchetverse but paul accidentally becomes everyone's parental figure. lex & hannah's? sure, they deserve a good parent who'll look out for them. stephanie lauter? yeah, why not, her dad highkey sucks. richie? absolutely, could even make them be biologically related for the lols. he meets peter through ted, they're chill (potential for angst if ted disappears in this iteration of the multiverse). he's the guy alice goes to about all of her stresses and worries- the 'cool uncle'. he meets ruth at the coffee shop where he sees emma before they have a concrete relationship, ruth is very vocal about how she wishes she could have a partner too. he could be even max freaking jagerman's unofficial dad (he does not think max has to fight off "one lousy skele'un" to be worth something). he tries to solve grace chasity's religious guilt with "yeah no sex is normal" and she views him as a source for all advice on the matter after that. paulkins but paul is a tired dad and emma doesn't find out he has like 50 kids until they've been dating a couple months and one of them randomly runs into his house. she introduces him to tim and he just rolls with it. it's another nephew, okay, neat. he's not great with kids but he finds himself with loads of them somehow anyway. then they all face off against sadistic eldritch gods and multiple cults together like a family. what more could you want?

[pbnmj]

[irradiatedsnakes]

ill-advised double date at burger hovel

roger: happily chatting about who-knows what gingi: Devouring. peter: feeling mildly nauseated at the sight. wishes he wasn't doing this. randy: paralyzed by awkwardness, is merely resting her hands on her burger without the courage to begin actually eating it due to the Scene unfolding before them. his burger's getting sweaty

[lupuslikethewolf]

in honour of being promoted to Deputy Stage Manager in my school's theatre department, top gun high school/sixth form au:

Dr Kazansky rules the drama department with an iron fist. always wearing black turtlenecks. never seen without his glasses, his coffee, and his terrifying glare (which earned him the moniker Dr Iceman). do not show up to rehearsals if you don't know your lines. death be upon the poor students who fuck around during tech and dress, because they will find out. he loves the crew tho.

Mr Call-Me-Mav Mitchell is the head of sports. you name it, he's played it, and he could absolutely give you pointers, also, do you want a protein bar with that? it's chocolate flavoured :) even the kids who Hate (capital H) sports love him. he is sunshine and adrenaline in human form. endless energy. no one knows why he is called maverick, but even the principal does it, so.

Mr Kerner is the principal. he is also the only person who can interrupt rehearsals and survive. dr kazansky loves him. inexplicably, maverick hates him. nough said.

Jake Seresin is the school's golden child, not even because he's Kazansky's nephew. he’s head boy. he’s on the school’s football/rugby team. he writes regular articles for the internal magazines. and this year, he’s playing Orpheus in the school’s production of Hadestown. everyone thinks it’s nepotism. it is and it’s not, jake just lost a bet to his Uncle Tom, and must now reap the consequences to said uncle’s delight.

Bradley Bradshaw has been stage crew since he was thirteen and an overworked runner, thank you very much. it’s his final show, he’s the DSM, and if fucking seresin ruins this for him, he will riot. dr kazansky should never let that happen. however, this is the same man who, last year, laughed when revealing that a screen on stage had turned off and bradley had to go on stage during the show to fix it. hm. maybe bradley should have re-thought his life choices. also: the turntable. the goddamn turntable.

other characters include: phoenix as eurydice, bob doing lighting, payback and fanboy as ASMs who flirt over the comms to everyones misery, cyclone as another drama teacher/stage manager,

maverick keeps turning up to rehearsals and trying to help because his favourite (cough only cough) godson and his favourite player are both interested in this stuff, so he should at least try, right? kazansky hates it until he doesn’t. kerner thinks it’s all fucking hilarious. bradley is embarrassed but its kinda endearing do NOT tell him i said that.

kazansky and maverick both bare witness to A Moment between their respective pseudo sons and decide the two simply must get together for their sakes and also so they never inflict that on another person ever.

bradley and jake both bare witness to A Moment between their respective pseudo fathers and decide the two simply must get together for their sakes and also so they never inflict that on another person ever.

kerner is cackling. Cackling.

[eltingvilleclubconfession]

i love that a majority of the eltingville self ship ocs are woc.. like theres 0 women of colour in the og comic and theres pretty much no women in the comic overall (which makes sense its a critique on like.. entitled white boys being mad abt comics and hating diveristy in comics is a big part of that) but it still makes me so happy to see the amount of woc in the fandom as a woc myself ^_^ like yesss a brown girl would have fixed bill and i believe that wholeheartedly

[halfdeadwallfly]

[badnewswhatsleft]

just thought this person's description was so cute......🥹

[heir-of-the-chair]

See I love Pete and Steph and they work so well together because they are the only normal people in all of Hatchetfield

[box-dwelling]

I have brain rot about all the main hatchetfield couples but there's something about quite how soulmate coded Emma and Paul are. No matter the universe they always find eachother. The always have their cute flirtationship. He always gets bad coffee just to see her. He's always one of the only customers in beanies who talks to her like a person and acknowledges the bullshit going on around her and how badly she's being treated. And I just adore them so much.

[isogenderskitty]

i think it's interesting how steph is like... the nerds see her as part of the popular group, and sure we see her talking to the cheerleaders a little, but other than that she doesn't really seem to be one of them in the truest sense? i could fully believe that she feels like the tiniest bit of an outcast there, like she's just cool enough for max to give her a pass but she doesn't really click with them that well. she feels to me like the bridge between the popular ones and the nerds, which is appropriate i suppose for her place in the story.

[compacflt]

Rumors from Pearl Harbor.

When Admiral Kazansky first comes to Pearl, he brings with him about half of his previous staff, all exceptionally-hardworking people hand-picked over years—advisors, flag aides, secretaries, ranks all over the board. But his new hires, upon getting acquainted with the old guard, are shocked to discover that his previous staff still hardly knows him at all.

“He keeps to himself, mostly,” Lieutenant Commander Hartford explains over a pint. “I made the mistake of asking him once what he did for fun. You know, like, hobbies and stuff. He blinked at me for a second, and then said, ‘I read.’ That’s it! I read! My advice to you newcomers would be, don’t ask him questions about his personal life, because it tends to be pretty boring.”

“It sounds to me like he’s a walking, talking Wikipedia page,” says Captain Calvert, who worked for the previous two Pacific Fleet Commanders and thinks she knows how to deal with them by now. “We owe it to ourselves to figure him out. It’ll make our lives easier, anyway. So, let’s put our heads together: what do we know about him?”

What they know are his habits, which they’ll come to learn intimately over the next few years, and which are admittedly pretty boring. Admiral Kazansky is one of the first to show up to work in the morning and one of the last to leave in the evening. He often answers e-mails past 2300 hours, but never later than midnight. Jokes never catch him off-guard; he rarely smiles, and when he does, it has an ulterior motive. When he’s not working, he’s scheming and making plans to go back home to San Diego, and his requests for leave are always granted, because he works like a pack mule from home anyway. He signs off every e-mail with “Sincerely,”…

“Is he sincere, though?” asks Chief Warrant Officer Kent halfway through Admiral Kazansky’s first year. (Admiral Kazansky is surely unaware that his staff now spends the second Friday of every month chit-chatting about him over drinks in downtown Honolulu.) “I can’t ever tell. And he lives in Hawaii. San Diego’s nice, I know, but what’s so different about the beaches there that he can’t get here?”

“I genuinely don’t think he’s human,” confesses Commander Stoddard. “People warned me about that when I came here, and I laughed it off, but… he keeps his desk biologically sterile. Not one fingerprint, but I’ve never seen anyone wipe it down. I’ve looked through his drawers. Don’t judge me, I got curious. Everything squared away, like he’s goddamn Einstein or something. Have any of you ever seen him in his civvies?” No one has. “God damn it, where does he shop for groceries? No one’s seen him at a grocery store? Does he even own a pair of jeans? Does he wear his uniform to bed, too?”

“He probably goes grocery shopping on the whole other side of the island to avoid all the enlisted kids,” laughs Captain Calvert. “Come to think of it…you know how he always eats lunch in the office? It’s always a salad. And always the same kind of salad. This guy survives on one cup of coffee and one spinach salad a day. Maybe he really isn’t human.”

They build out their wealth of knowledge and come to learn that Admiral Kazansky is defined by his extremes, by what he always does and what he never does. Admiral Kazansky gets his uniforms dry-cleaned every week, though he never spills anything on them. No one has ever seen Admiral Kazansky stumble over his words while giving a speech, or trip over a sidewalk curb, or push a “pull” door. He is always polite and never friendly. Sometimes he is cold, and sometimes he is cruel in his patience with you when you’ve fucked up, like a cat toying with a hemorrhaging mouse. But he never raises his voice. He is always immaculately put-together, well-groomed, constructed every day like a product on an assembly line. Nothing is ever out of place. Allegedly his umbrella once turned inside-out during a rainstorm; he disdainfully shook it once, as a hunter might pump a loaded shotgun, and it flipped itself right-side-in again. The laws of physics do not seem to apply to him. Nor do the natural embarrassments that come with being human. Admiral Kazansky is never flustered, never harried, and never falls apart.

“I found this old picture of him shaking hands with another pilot on the Internet,” says Chief Warrant Officer Kent in Admiral Kazansky’s second year. “Smiling like the Cheshire Cat. Never seen him smile like that in all my years working with him. And he had frosted tips, too. Like Guy Fieri on a diet and steroids. It was the eighties, sure, but it’s like he knew how to have fun, once upon a time. Wonder what happened to him.”

“I feel lonely for him sometimes,” says Commander Stoddard. “Strict guy like that, no family, no friends, no wife, nothing to live for but the Navy? He’s like a workhorse with blinders on. Nowhere to go but forward. That’s a lonely existence.”

“Not if you’re a robot,” says Lieutenant Commander Hartford. “I swear, sometimes he breathes and it makes me jump, ‘cause I forgot he was alive!” —What else doesn’t Admiral Kazansky do?

That’s when they realize that none of them, not the old guard nor the new, has ever, not once, ever seen or heard Admiral Kazansky sneeze.

And they all finally give up the game and quit arguing and agree that, no, he really isn’t human after all. He must be some cyborg from the future sent to whip the Pacific Fleet into shape, and you can’t ask for too much humanity from someone who’s doing a pretty damn good job of it.

The rumors start soon after that. Jokes that could get them all tossed out of the Navy, but probably won’t. Jokes that accidentally spread like wildfire.

Yes, Admiral Kazansky could be a cyborg, but he also could be a Mormon fundamentalist, or a Scientologist, or a really weird Catholic. Maybe he goes home to San Diego so often because in his spare time he’s really a mule ferrying cocaine across the Mexi-Cali border. That’s what he does for fun. He eats spinach salads because he’s a reincarnation of Popeye the Sailor Man, and he needs all the super-strength he can get to deal with the Navy’s modern-day bullshit.

“I don’t know if that story makes sense,” laughs Captain Calvert on the phone with her husband in Washington, “but it makes more sense than the real Admiral Kazansky does!”

So the rumors get spread around.

“I don’t know if you know this,” Maverick comments, watching Ice make their bed from the relative comfort of the bedroom doorway, “or if I should tell you this, because you might crack down on it, which would be a shame, ‘cause it’s funny. But every time you send a mass e-mail to the Pacific Fleet commissioned officer corps, you become the main topic of conversation between all of us officers for a solid day and a half.”

“Oh?” says Ice with a smile, struggling to fit the last corner of the fitted sheet to the mattress. He sighs, tugs on the strings of his old ratty-ass hooded sweatshirt, and looks at Maverick balefully through his glasses. “Help me out over here, would you? —What are people saying? All good things, I hope.”

“Not really,” Maverick says, stuffing a pillow into a pillowcase as he stares out the window into the San Diego sunshine. “Some pretty crazy shit, actually. Hard as hell for me to keep a straight face. I heard this one—you know, people are saying you eat nothing but salads?”

“Oh,” laughs Ice, hospital-cornering the free sheet. “Yeah, that one’s kind of true. I bring salads in to the office sometimes.”

“You hate salads.”

“I know, it’s torture! Move over.” He bumps Maverick out of the way to tuck in the last corner. “But, I figure, if a man torments himself with spinach-and-arugula salads three times a week, you ought to respect his commitment. It’s all an act. You get to a certain Defense Department paygrade, it all starts being storytelling and stagecraft.”

“Or trickery and deception, depending on how you look at it.”

“Sure. But you could say that about everything. —Besides, I’d rather the Navy discuss my salads than discuss… well, this.” He gestures to Maverick, then down to the bed. They start tugging the comforter over it together. “How much slack you got over there?”

“‘Bout a foot.”

Ice pulls his side down a couple more inches to match, then flips the top up. “Is that it? That’s all people are saying about me?”

Maverick grins and bends down to pick up a pillow. “They’re also saying that you’re the reincarnation of Popeye the Sailor Man. I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam, and all that. Think fast.”

Ice doesn’t think fast, and the pillow hits him square in the face, and he laughs again as he catches it in his arms. “Shit, that’s good,” he says; “I was just about to call Slider, think I’ll tell him that one. That’ll make him laugh. Popeye Iceman.” He tosses the pillow onto the made-up bed and pulls out his cell phone, but—then he frowns, grimaces, mutters “Ah, no,” and turns away to sneeze.

[fobnsfwdoodlesbackup]

I would love a drawing about how tiny Pete is compared to Travie, like, Travie scooping Pete up and carrying him around, doesn't have to be nsfw but I can think of sexy ideas of Pete being so tiny if you want

Hellloooooo did you know I love trete so much like so so so much like I made this a year or so ago

Anywhooooooo here ya go, I drew all of these with hearts in my eyes and I hope you can tell 💕

[dannyawesome65]

[kinnporschegl]

one of my friends found a very funny tank top at a value village and i rushed to do a pete

also here is the shirt

[chaotic-goodsir]

Since it's Black Friday week, I'm gonna do a sort of series thing with the Hatchetverse headcanons and drabbles that have completely derailed my nanowrimo plans (curse of hyperfixation be upon ye, etc.).

They're all Spankoffski-centric, sort of, depending on who you count as a Spankoffski.

Speaking of which...

*

Ted and Pete's mom (I'll call her Annabelle, Annie for short) grew up in the bible belt in a super-religious family. She got out as soon as she could, leaving home at 18, and ended up working as a waitress in the tiny town of Hatchetfield. That's where she met Ed Spankoffski, who at the time was training to take over his family's shoe store. Annie and Ed fell in love, got married young, and had their son Teddy within a few years. 

Annie cut all contact with her parents when she left home - but she did keep in touch with her younger brother.

He was always a smart, outgoing kid, and despite their parents' disapproval he managed to get funding to study physics at a college out of state. He left home a year after Annie did, and never looked back.

At first they remained close, despite their differences. They called each other regularly. He declared himself an atheist as soon as he got away from their parents. She kept her faith, but joined her husband's more liberal-minded presbytarian church. He came out to her as bisexual, and she told him she'd suspected that since they were teenagers and that she would never stop being proud of him. 

She didn't see him in person often - he was busy with college and didn't have money to travel - but he still made it to her wedding and to Teddy's christening.

Things changed, though, when he was scouted by a secretive military agency in his final year. She didn't want him to join, but he'd made up his mind. After that, his calls became less frequent, and what little he told her about his work and life was always vague. He kept promising to visit her in Hatchetfield, but never followed through. 

The last time Annie Spankoffski saw her little brother was at Pete's christening, when he surprised her by actually showing up. She spotted the engagement ring on his hand, and demanded to know when he had planned on inviting her to the wedding. He told her it was a long time away yet - there was a big assignment coming up, he and his fiancé were both involved, and they needed to focus on that for the time being. But as soon he got the chance, he promised, he'd bring John up to Hatchetfield to meet the Spankoffski family.

Annie didn't hear from him again until a solemn, uniformed PIEP agent turned up at her door with a letter declaring her brother missing in action. Nothing could be confirmed, but the agent didn't want to give her false hope. There was no funeral, no further explanation. She never got to meet John, there was no wedding, and Pete Spankoffski grew up without knowing his uncle.

*

Years later, Annie Spankoffski (nee. Cross) is driving home from church when an advert comes on the radio. It's for some tacky children's toy that both of her sons are far too old for. She doesn't pay much attention - at least, not until the name of the toy company catches her by surprise.

It's a coincidence - it must be - but it's such a horrible, unlikely one that it makes her blood run cold. Her brother's name is already rare enough that she'd be surprised to hear that on the radio, let alone a childhood nickname that only she used.

After that, she turns off the radio whenever that advert starts. Leaves the room whenever it comes on TV (that old sailor character creeps her out - does the actor really look familiar, or is she just losing it?). She tries not to look at the posters that are plastered all over the Hatchetfield mall. 

But as Black Friday approaches, it's hard to avoid.

For some reason, almost everywhere she goes, she keeps running into the name Uncle Wiley.