zemkzone

[zemkzone]

Dumb midday musing about my Sparks in the Ice 'verse... I've mentioned Barry and Len eating pizza, Reubens, tacos, Indian food, burgers, pasta, diner food, one fancy multi-course dinner with tiny servings, a lot of Jewish Auntie-prepared foods... but am I missing any specific Midwestern staples in their diet? XD

I would welcome suggestions!

EDIT: okay, SOUTHERN suggestions too, please. This writer is a coast-hugger so @theroguesharlequin and @simpledontmeanpeachy had to remind me Missouri's location also classes it as a southern state by influence. XDDD

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I hate having to post political posts like this nut he we are again. Anybody from the UK wanna sign this. Folks from outside the UK maybe share it?

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Just had to register this somewhere. For very specific (non-fic) reasons, I inhaled 59 years' worth of Star Trek information and my head is ready to EXPLODE. Go kaboom and make a wormhole into another dimension of time traveling madness level of exploding. I feel like I need Data's memory banks to keep everything in. I had the vaguest idea that I'd have to refresh my recollection of all things Trek this year... but I did not expect it to be SUCH a RUSH. Or to suddenly feel my bones creak because we are only 38 years away from First Contact and a part of me WISHES it wasn't fictional.

I have zero time.... but I think at some point this year, I'm just gunna disappear into a re-watch of every single Star Trek movie and series (except the trilogy travesty that is the 2009 "reboot").

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Just saw a post asking how tall people are and now I want to make it a poll. Apologies to people in the fringe height categories, you do not get specifics.

I had to consult a chart for this

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crucially leonard snart is also a liar, which is great for disregarding literally anything he says that doesn’t fit with the rest of the timeline

[zemkzone]

LOL, I should been clearer on ages. So, I was assuming that at some point between when Len was.... what, 6 to 14 (big gap, but maybe there were repeats), THAT was when he'd have visited his dad the first time(s). Hell, we can assume Lisa was born between the first and second time Lewis was imprisoned, again because of the age gap. It was the premise of the Legends episode anyway, Lewis getting bad/worse AFTER the prison stint. Then Len was in juvie at 14, when Mick kept him from getting beaten up.

Whether or not we take the real-world fact that in Missouri, juvie offenders have to petition for their records to be expunged, Len did end up in jail at least once as an adult and was currently a wanted criminal by the time the CW show starts. Given his hair color (checking for the amount of gray between his first and last appearances) in the mug shots... he'd be late 30s to early 40s in there for that particular stint, which we assume is the most recent. And Joe did list a HEFTY rap sheet.

Hmmm, if Len meant, when he agreed about the last time he was in Iron Heights, it was to visit his dad, it was either of two scenarios:

A. Visiting in the normal sense, like Barry did with Henry... 1) sometime between when he got outta juvie (depending on the length of his sentence, he coulda been a mid- to late teen) OR (2) when he (and Mick?) FIRST got jailed in his.... I wanna say early 20s coz he is a fucking overachiever and wouldn't be that easy to catch even at the start. And we can all just imagine how tense-snarky those few visits were (coz I really can't imagine he'd go often unless he had NO choice [i.e. was forced]).

B. Considering "visiting" as last time he was incarcerated at the same time as Lewis... since Lisa was way too efficient at breaking him out for that to be the first jailbreak. So that's.... something like 20 years of Len then being in and outta jail (with or without Lewis, depending on how Lewis's own parols/escapes went coz we have no indication Lisa would willingly break HIM out). Explains why Mick at some point says they were in a supermax. Because they kept breaking OUT.

Okay, damn, this is the thought trail that keeps on giving today, I see.

you know what im thinking about today? the conversation barry and len have at iron heights where barry says "last time i was here i was visiting my dad" and len says "yeah, me too."

like given that len's been in and out of iron heights (is that canon? i swear he had been in prison before barry put him away the first time—aside from juvie i mean) im assuming he wasn't talking about visiting as a child. so that presumably means an adult leonard snart visited his abusive father in prison at least once and i would LOVE to know how that conversation went. why did he go. what did they talk about? did he want to look his abuser in the eye with the safety of a glass partition between them and finally speak his mind without fear, or was he, at that point, still struggling to free himself of the sense of obligation and loyalty so many people feel for their parents, enough to still come when lewis called? i just have so many questions

[zemkzone]

Len might have, as a kid/teen before he wound up in juvie and met Mick. Maybe at least once, and that cemented some of his views of his situation. (This has been on my mind a LOT lately, for reasons. Just reasons.)

Given the age gap between him and Lisa and how young he was when the whole Maximilian Emerald thing happened (pre-Legends!Len stealing it, or even after, since that did NOT change the end result of Lewis getting caught and jailed anyway) AND how we have no idea what actually happened to Len's (and Lisa's?) mom... he probably went there at least once to go "dad, what do I do?" since there was a BABY to deal with and Lisa has said Len practically raised her. We have no indication that the grandpa from the comic stepped up. Of course, Lewis woulda been a shit and said Len had to man up, be useful, etc, etc...

Heck, taking care of Lisa was probably HOW Len ended up in juvie. We don't know how long Lewis's stints in prison were, so I imagine Len went less and less, when he was NOT in juvie. But I don't think that fear would ever have gone away. Not the way that man had abused and conditioned his kids to react to the abuse over the years. If they acted against him WITHOUT KILLING HIM DEAD, he'd retaliate. Hard. And that was part of the background nightmare of their adult lives. After all, the show didn't say Lewis was in jail for a LONG time. I believe it said he was "in and out", so it's an implied fucked/damaged prison system, etc, etc... (I could rant about that forever but I won't here.)

And this was what bled into his behavior in "Family of Rogues". Yes, Lisa was basically a hostage with a bomb in her neck, but Len was so used to Lewis being the abusive boogeyman, it was still how he acted around him. Avoiding touch, etc. He was like that RIGHT up until Barry freed him. By trusting Team Flash to save Lisa, he trusted them, trusted Barry, to free HIM from Lewis. Finally, his father had no hold, was no longer the boogeyman he couldn't deal with without repercussions... and so he turned the cold gun on him and BAM.

I like to think Barry sat (mostly) quiet beside him as the Flash till the police came to take him into custody.

ADDENDUM: Of course, on the assumption Len and Lewis were ever in Iron Heights at the exact same time, there'd probably have been a careful balance between snark and avoidance on Len's part. He has his own reputation to protect, after all, but he can't be TOO disrespectful or Lewis will retaliate where it hurts---say, with getting MICK in trouble if he's on the inside too... or Lisa on the outside, coz he has to know SOME people who'd wanna do him favors out there.

you know what im thinking about today? the conversation barry and len have at iron heights where barry says "last time i was here i was visiting my dad" and len says "yeah, me too."

like given that len's been in and out of iron heights (is that canon? i swear he had been in prison before barry put him away the first time—aside from juvie i mean) im assuming he wasn't talking about visiting as a child. so that presumably means an adult leonard snart visited his abusive father in prison at least once and i would LOVE to know how that conversation went. why did he go. what did they talk about? did he want to look his abuser in the eye with the safety of a glass partition between them and finally speak his mind without fear, or was he, at that point, still struggling to free himself of the sense of obligation and loyalty so many people feel for their parents, enough to still come when lewis called? i just have so many questions

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I'm... almost a year into specific research for a future project and I went to Iceland for inspo for a current one, so.... I believe it. XD This is 100% true. And don't forget the testing! The "actually doing crazy things to see if they can be done" bit! That's another part of it all. xD

Love when writers do an insane amount of unnecessary research for their fics. I follow an author that did like 8 months of intense research into 14th century Scotland so they could write smut about it, and guess what. It was some fucking incredible porn AND I learned about old Scottish politics

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Applies to all bloody writing projects, I'm learning.

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The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.

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Oh my god, if only I had read like 10 more paragraphs before sending my last ask. OOPS. MY BAAAAD.

In my defense, I did say I have a shitty memory, it is super late at night, and probably incoherent.

The last part of my questions still work, though! Does Dibny still die after the particle accelerator explodes? If Flashpoint happens, will he still come back? If it doesn't happen, is he still dead? SHCLJABF I'M SO CURIOUS ABOUT THIS WHOLE SERRIEEESSS

im banishing myself now ok goodnight

- 🪐

So I'm talking to a planet now? Cool~ Thanks for the ask!

The thing to remember about 1:1 questions about what happens in the show vs. what happens in my series is that the show was the 2nd iteration of the timeline of Earth-1, which diverged from the original timeline because Eobard Thawne (1) killed Nora Allen and (2) built the particle accelerator seven years early. My SitI 'verse is me making yet a 3rd iteration.

Limiting myself to your Ralph Dibny question, we don't actually know where he was or what he was doing at the point the particle accelerator exploded in that 2nd iteration. Would he still be doing the exact same thing this time around after getting kicked off the police force? Remember, in the show, the particle accelerator went critical and then exploded right after it was turned on. In my verse, the particle accelerator was fine for two hours before it went boom (WLHI Chapter 6). "Small" changes like that affect everything. ;)

And to give you more food for thought, Chapter 23-24 of TRAT reveal more (minor) timeline twisting, so I guess that we're up to iteration 3.5 now? Hahaha!

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*spits out her cereal coz this is pretty much a (posted) section from TRAT*

Hope the OP doesn't mind me borriowing their post. Coz I'm in the mood.... *pastes here*

... [Iris] suddenly remembered a shelter dog she’d seen once when she’d been fifteen. She’d thought that a pet might help with Barry’s then-latest depressed slump and had wanted to look at options before even suggesting anything to her dad. There’d been a gray dog of indeterminate breed in a kennel far from all the others, and the volunteer showing her around had called it unadoptable. It had been abused in the past and was aggressive to almost everyone who came near it. Iris had still peered through the wire kennel door. Inside, the dog had bristled and growled even as it backed against the far wall. Its tail had wagged low and slow with warning the whole time. Len reminded her of that dog.

“He only lets Daniel bathe him,” the volunteer had said. “Kinda a problem because the kid only helps out here twice a week. He—well, he can’t come in more often than that.”

“Can’t anyone else try?” teen Iris had glanced back at the solitary cage, hugging her backpack to her chest. She hadn’t had time to volunteer herself, but she’d felt bad for the dog.

“We have. But Daniel’s the only one who really connects with the poor guy.”

Iris had never met the infamous Daniel on her visit, but she’d wondered if he’d had some shared experiences with the dog, something that bonded them together in a way none of the other volunteers could match. She could see the parallels between them and Len and Barry’s situation.

The rest's in Chapter 23 of the fic, if anyone cares to read there.

Promise you'll treat me like a dog with a bite history and you're the last white girl with a savior complex on earth

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Good lord, are you the main character of a sitcom or something?? How do you end up in so many Situations 😆

As I said in the tags of the post that gave you this impression, I don't believe in living vicariously (though some lovely people who care about my well-being would like me to TRY to). Also, I've been voted the most likely to get bitten by a radioactive spider/get hit by dark matter from a particle accelerator in my friend group.

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@softboydepot you opened a can of memory-worms here, but okay. Time to be... candid but vague. A couple sentences' worth.

I once walked across a college campus without being stopped by a single soul, then got to my destination only for a friend to screech "YOUR LEG IS BLEEDING!" I have narrowly avoided three bombings at three different locations, and in one of those situations, all I could think was "fucking hell, can I get home before my ice cream melts?" I spent 4 hours trapped in a dark elevator with no cell service and only a tray of osso bucco for company. Within one week, I sprained my wrist, rode a horse, nearly fell off a cliff into a waterfall, and swam in 2°C (34.6°F) water for 45 min---yes, in that order. I can tell you in excruciating detail what spending 5 hours in a hyperbaric chamber is like when you have decompression sickness. I apparently am not (yet?) fast enough to chase down a bike-riding robber to beat his fucking ass into a pulp. I know what it feels like, as a woman with a vagina, to be kicked in the groin twice in a row... and then roundhouse-kick the offender in the head in red-eyed retaliation. I accidentally ended up playing the main antagonist in a play that ran for 4 weeks.... and was thus murdered 8 times by barbed wire, a cross, and a red-painted dildo. I have caused 4 bike accidents that I am aware of, simply by walking on the sidewalk. I once saved one of my parents from accidentally getting high on a weed brownie.... by stuffing it in my mouth instead. I've gotten up close and personal with an alligator's mouth, been French-kissed by a basset hound, and scrambled away from a defensive mama crocodile. I have had an altercation with a camel and survived with a bruised hip. I once raced my big-ass SUV away from a motorbike-riding policeman to avoid getting ticketed---and completely lost him. I have walked halfway across a city center with my bloody hand wrapped in a white tea towel. When I was young enough not to know any better, I fired a rifle and simultaneously hit a bull's eye and nearly blew out my ear because I had no ear protection on. Oh, and I have been mistaken for my younger sibling's spouse because we share a surname.... and for the sister of a friend's fiancé because we look alike.

I could go on, my life being messy as it is, but that's all I recall off the top of my head. So I'm gunna tag...... @notquiteinsane @coldflasher @simpledontmeanpeachy @thefastestqueeralive @moriavis and @hardwiredweird . Only if you feel like it, m'loves. And anyone else who wants to is very welcome!

tag game!

tag your moots and tell them something random about yourself

I'll start

when i was in fourth grade i adopted my friends and now i have like 6 children (idek how many there were a lot)

@modern-inheritance @emmidemi @deadskincellsonyourpillow @pogues4lifeee @weirdponytail @danhengswifefrfr11 @midnight-blues07 @conditioningint3stin3s @purple-dinosaur17 + open tags (anyone who wants to join!)

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LOLOLOL, hoooobuddy. Two ways to look at this.

On one hand, valid, yep, gotta make time for the cute/sexy/disgustingly couple-y. But on the other hand... it could be a feature, not a bug. The relationship as part of what moves the plot, what throws twists into the plot, what gives tension breaks to the plot, what drives the author frothing mad coz there's hardly any canon references left and it's allllll conjecture from this point on and---//author devolves into frothing at the mouth

Yeap, I just realized TRAT, in it's unfinished state, is about two chapters away from blasting past the final word count on WLHI... and I know partly what's to blame.

The problem with writing established relationship fics is that the bastards insist on being cute together and won't let you get to the fucking plot.

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Don't we know it!

(And don't I have plans for that. Kukukuku~)