oh my god ok, you guys, so @blackdogrunning and i were talking about rpf and crackfic, and something amazing has occurred to us, which is this:
even before team leverage was team leverage, they were all (save nate) pretty well known, in certain parts of the population, for doing what they do. but you know what happens with any group of well-known people?
THAT IS CORRECT, FRIENDS, IT IS FANDOM. consider the way that mattingly says, ‘wait, the parker?’ and his face is like holy shit this is all my guilty spank bank fantasies come to life. somewhere in the leverage universe, in some weird corner of the internet (lbr prob on ao3) there lives rpf crime fandom. it pops up every yuletide and normal people who aren’t criminals are never sure if it’s, like, rpf, or if there was an unaired pilot for something that didn’t get picked up, or what, but there it is, every year!
so starting even before team leverage gets together, we’ve got, like:
infinite fic about sophie’s backstory, none of which is anywhere close to the truth, all of which she reads, some of which she uses to create new personas, none of which she will ever admit to
(it’s still kinda flattering tho)
there’s a part of fandom that’s convinced that she’s the descendant of the grand duchess anastasia and the government is after her, and that’s *very* flattering, even though it’s obviously ridiculous
there’s another theory going around that she’s actually twins, or triplets, because surely no single person could–
shippy fic about hardison and cha0s. and hardison KNEW THAT WOULD HAPPEN because he knows how the internet works, ok, and it makes him kinda crazy because that dude is the WORST and he would never do THAT, and certainly not in the weirdly domestic way that some of these fics suggest
criminals and civilians aren’t the only ones in fandom, and not even the only ones in the crime rpf fandom. there’s cops too
sometimes the fbi or someone will give an agent an ao3 account and task them with sorting out what’s based in reality, and what’s completely made up
(”sir there’s a sudden influx of fics wherein hardison owns a brewpub, but we’re fairly certain it’s only a variation of a coffeeshop au”)
and they keep trying to get past the gatekeepers because somehow they know more about these thieves than law enforcement does?????
but hardison personally vets every account that wants access to the source material before they’re approved, and he always flags accounts attached to law enforcement. the mods don’t care if it’s a personal account and they don’t care if they’re a bnf they’re not getting this info
they’re welcome to write all the fic they want, and they’re welcome to even submit new source material (to be rigorously and suspiciously investigated before being made available to the rest of the fandom) but they’re not getting in
hardison says he’s protecting himself, but really it’s because he doesn’t want his lovely little fandom to get arrested en masse for hacking and impeding criminal investigations and shit
OK BUT ALSO CONSIDER, IN THAT VEIN – sterling joins interpol
interpol 90000% has a task force like, assigned to watching this weird crime fandom bc it seems like SOME OF ITS TRUE and they know way more about these INTERNATIONAL CRIMINALS then law enforcement does and what if–
and so, think about the fateful day sterling joins interpol and is brought in and asked in all seriousness if he knows about this. think about jim sterling finding out nate ford and his band of stupid criminal disasters have people WRITING FICTION ABOUT THEM and sterling is considered the bad guy in a bunch of them.
think about all the times sterling’s on a case! or a job! and is called up by the department in charge of keeping track of this fandom to like, confirm or deny if thing x happened. and he’s just like are you fucking kidding me I’m in the mIDDLE OF AN OPERATION– and the person on the other end of the line is just we just need a yes or no, agent sterling. and sterling’s like OBVIOUSLY IT IS NOT except that bit ok that’s pretty accurate– and the next thing he knows, he’s pulled off this case and shipped back to read through all these fucking fics to confirm for accuracy.
He had to read some 300k a/b/o bullshit about him and spencer for gods sakes just because the author got one detail right about the time he was chasing spencer in Yugoslavia. he didn’t even know what a/b/o is and now he does and he blames spencer for it.
We just discovered that Nichelle Nichols, aka Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhura and one of the most awesome people around, now has her very own Barbie! The Uhura Star Trek doll was recently released as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Star Trek franchise.
Barbie Uhura is dressed in her original red Federation uniform and comes with a communicator, which she can hold her hand, and a tricorder with a shoulder strap.
Mermen are mythical male equivalents and counterparts of mermaids – legendary creatures who have the form of a male human from the waist up and are fish-like from the waist down, having scaly fish tails in place of legs. A “merboy” is a young merman.
I never thought about it, but, I mean…of course it’s the dwarves.
The elves would never think of it, fading out of Middle Earth with their perfect memories entirely intact, bearing the lore of ages in their own lifetimes. Elrond would never think to write down the story of his life, for all that it stretches back to the Silmarils’ crafting. When they do write things down, they believe in taking the time to inscribe the words with their own hand–no one knows the hard truths of permanence and impermanence like the Firstborn, and if you are going to take the time to make something ephemeral into something lasting, you do it right. And besides, Quenya and Sindarin and forgotten Noldorin, all are made with elaborate curling letters, intended more to be written with a brush tip or a calligrapher’s pen than printed for clarity. A printing press would never capture the fluidity quite right.
The race of men…well, they’re still trying to recover. The great kingdoms of the human race–hard Gondor and broken Arnor, wild Rohan and poor shattered Harad to the South–took the brunt of the Ring War hardest of all. Even the strongest of them is left in fragments. New rulers, damaged walls, burned cities. Not many have time, in those first years–and it does take years–to worry about the lore that might have been lost or muddled by water and fire and falling stone, not when there are still leaderless orcs roving and people starving as they try to stretch the harvests. By the time they do, they’re trying to piece together what they used to have. No one thinks twice about trying to piece it together the way it was, and the way it was, was handwritten. Someday the race of men will be great innovators, reaching toward the stars with sure hands and bright eyes. Now, though, the race of men is enduring, is rebuilding and making alliances, trying to prevent the losses of the war from reappearing ten, twenty, a hundred years down the line. They are doing well, at enduring–pragmatists, grim and tough and determined–but they hardly have the time for mechanical marvels that don’t aid building, speed farmwork, or otherwise smooth the path.
The hobbits persist in being stubbornly hobbitish. Oral history is what they do, and their memories for family ties and dramatic gossip could give the oldest Eldest a run for their money. Who’s going to bother to write down the story of the time Athella Proudfoot–no, not that one, the other one, Odo’s great-great-great aunt–drank half the tavern under the table, got up on the bar, did a jig in nothing but her bloomers, and then settled in to drink the place dry? (And still looked fresh as a daisy, if quite a bit less sober, the next morning.) No one, because anyone you ask knows the story of everyone who ever did anything worth knowing the story of. What do the hobbits care for legends and lore? They know who they are and where they come from, songs and stories and all, and there’s a certain level of strength in that. Strength enough to walk into Mordor, strength enough to reclaim the Shire.
The dwarves…the dwarves are a people who once had libraries, sweeping and beautifully full of knowledge. The libraries in Khazad-dum have rotted, by now, ransacked by orcs and goblins or burned entire by Durin’s Bane. Books and scrolls, illuminated with precious metals and expensive inks by the finest scholars, are worth nothing to a dragon, nothing but fuel for amusement, things to send sparking. The library where Dis learned to read, where Thorin and Thrain before him learned statecraft, are nothing but ash. The Iron Hills, Ered Luin, those places were filled by a people seeking refuge. Few dwarrows snatched tomes as they fled Erebor. Fewer still kept them at the ruin of Azanulbizar. The dwarves escaped their ancestral homes with the clothes on their backs and scraps of bread baked on stones, with the pyres of the burned dwarves still smoldering behind them.
It’s a survivor of that flight who scratches down the first idle plans. She remembers seeing Dain Ironfoot, barely more than a child–but then he seemed such a grown-up to her, at the time, when she was still a beardless babe only just walking–bloodied and limping on a crutch as he stood up to claim the leadership his father had left in his wake. Dain and Thorin, young dwarrows still, but already old with the weight of the world. She remembers that better than the dragon, better than the battle. Her mother died in Ered Luin, but not before writing a poem for the burned ones, a poem for the two dwarves who had surrendered their own youth for the sake of their people. She can’t stand the idea of her mother’s poem being lost, the way so many things were lost in flight after flight.
That dwarrowdam dies, an old dwarf in her bed with her loved ones around her, and it’s her best friend’s daughter who comes across the plans, many years later. Yes, she thinks, looking at the levers, at the vague notes about possible lettering methods, yes, that could work.
It doesn’t work, at first. It doesn’t work a lot, really, but the dwarves are a stoneheaded bunch and not in a rush to be put off by a few petty failings. Or by a total collapse of the base mechanics, the first time she tries to pull the lever. The dwarrowdam unearths herself from a pile of metal and gears and wood, with the help of a few other folks who heard the complicated crash and weary cursing, and starts again.
It takes most of two years and a lot of brainstorming–first with her friends, then with her guild, then with any poor fool careless enough to wander into her workshop–but the scribe-machine works. She shrieks and bursts into tears when the first page comes out crisp and clean and beautiful, and sprints into the great hall waving it triumphantly over her head.
The paper says, in kuzdh runes, plain and clear, We are Mahal’s children, and we are yet unbroken.
As marmorkrebs became more popular, owners grew increasingly puzzled. The crayfish seemed to be laying eggs without mating. The progeny were all female, and each one grew up ready to reproduce….
For nearly two decades, marbled crayfish have been multiplying like Tribbles on the legendary “Star Trek” episode. “People would start out with a single animal, and a year later they would have a couple hundred,” said Dr. Lyko.
Many owners apparently drove to nearby lakes and dumped their marmorkrebs. And it turned out that the marbled crayfish didn’t need to be pampered to thrive. Marmorkrebs established growing populations in the wild, sometimes walking hundreds of yards to reach new lakes and streams…
The scientists concluded that the new species got its start when two slough crayfish mated. One of them had a mutation in a sex cell — whether it was an egg or sperm, the scientists can’t tell.
Normal sex cells contain a single copy of each chromosome. But the mutant crayfish sex cell had two.
Somehow the two sex cells fused and produced a female crayfish embryo with three copies of each chromosome instead of the normal two….
It grew and thrived. But instead of reproducing sexually, the first marbled crayfish was able to induce her own eggs to start dividing into embryos. The offspring, all females, inherited identical copies of her three sets of chromosomes. They were clones.
Now that their chromosomes were mismatched with those of slough crayfish, they could no longer produce viable offspring. Male slough crayfish will readily mate with the marbled crayfish, but they never father any of the offspring.
Hearseeno 