Thread of Awesome: THIS! IS!! QUOTEFILE!!!

[Rajvik]

Lake Washington was on fire, and it was all my fault. Granted it was only a small part of Lake Washington, but it was enough to get the Star's attention, which quite frankly. with the condition me and the other survivors of my team, was quite welcome.

[drakensis]

"This is 'The Noble's Proper Etiquette Reference and Manual of Propriety and Action'," Maria began. "Seventh edition. It is penned and constantly updated by an unknown author–"

"It's mother," Katarina said blandly.

"–who is nevertheless recognized as an authority on proper decorum–"

"Like mother."

"– and has been the codified reference of choice for what a noble is expected to do in any particular situation," Maria said.

"Because of mother," Katarina said.

"I really don't see why you think the duchess has anything to do with this book, squire Claes," Maria said.

"There's a section on climbing trees, farming, fishing and taking baths with your younger brother," Katarina said. "So I'm pretty sure mother wrote it."

"The author of this text is a complete mystery," Maria said.

"We're only up to sixth edition," Katarina said. "The seventh hasn't been published yet. It's supposed to come out next week."


Maria Campbell of the Astral Clocktower

[Shepherd]

Shōta blinked as he entered the classroom. It didn't help. So he stepped out, closed the door and opened it again. Nope. For some reason there were still three copies of his problem child in the room. He even activated his quirk and nothing happened.

Sadly, making him doubt reality was very much in line with the concept of Nara's quirk. It may be horrifying bullshit but it was at least consistently horrifying bullshit.

"Nara, what are you doing?"

"Brainstorming ideas for the cultural festival, sensei. There aren't many things I can do with just three bodies. So far a fortune telling booth seems like the least troublesome."

Shōta considered the idea of entering an enclosed dark room with Nara to learn secrets from beyond and decided that anyone who made a conscious decision to do that deserved whatever mental trauma would ensue. "Just make sure the booth is clearly labelled as being class 1-A. Is three bodies your limit with that technique?"

"For now. I used to only be able to make one clone. I only got to two a few months ago."

"Wonderful." Good to know that alibis were now meaningless for her. Then again, with how casually she warped reality, he should have worked out that was true long before now.

An Unexpected Training Trip (My Hero Academia/Dreaming of Sunshine [Naruto SI fic], 6 chapters, complete).
https://archiveofourown.org/works/304819...s/75167934

[Aleh]

“Well, I can’t blame your mom for that,” the boy replied. She shrugged, shaking her head as they followed the rest of the students inside, the morning rush before the first bell carrying them along. “Everyone is kind of freaked out about that. The news is coming up with some really stupid ideas why it’s so late.”

“Not as stupid as PHO has managed,” Chris said from behind them, having overheard. “Or that weird site, the new one...”

Carlos looked back at him. “SpiceBottles?”

“That’s the one. Crazy people, they make PHO look normal,” Chris chuckled. “Half the time they’re trying to weaponize cinnamon or something, the other half they’re screaming about politics.”

Despite herself Vicky giggled. “I heard a rumor that site is run by the government who set it up so people would brainstorm new military ideas without realizing it,” she commented with a small grin.

“Yeah, that sounds… unlikely,” Chris replied, returning her look. “Where did you hear that?”

“That rumor site. Insufficient Veracity. They’re full of that sort of thing. PHO has an entire section dedicated to trashing their paranoid delusions.”

From the latest chapter of Distance Learning for Fun and Profit, a fic posted... on SpaceBattles and Sufficient Velocity.

[Norgarth]

Aleh beat me to it8)

[drakensis]

Dear Professor Dumbledore,

I write you as a concerned alumnus of our beloved school of witchcraft and wizardry. I know that we have had our differences in the past—primarily due to you being wrong, and a fool, as well as generally an inferior wizard—but I feel that a love and cherishment for Hogwarts is a topic that even one as shortsighted and dawning upon senility in his wasting mortality as yourself can understand is a common ground between us, something close to the hearts of all Witches and Wizards of Britain. I am thus troubled to hear of the quality of education offered at the beloved institution under your headmastery. To learn of such a brevity of tenure in your latest Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was disturbing and disheartening. I know better than anyone, including of course you, that the ever so recently appointed Delores Umbridge did not falter in her sacred duties as a teacher of magic for young students simply due to the curse still in effect entirely per your own fault for your prejudiced refusal; for her to be in need of replacement so quickly speaks poorly indeed of her, and by extension yourself.

I understand that going out of your way to stubbornly fill the position each and every year is trying, however rewarding you find it to be to spite me at the cost paid by the children holding the future, yet even so, I was surprised to find you able to live down below my expectations. I had thought you able to at least do better than this latest travesty and find someone, anyone able to teach the class, rather than default to appointment by the Ministry. If you were to look deep within yourself—assuming that you have not instead actually cast aside the relevant memories as is your incredibly imbecilic want, thus unable to consider the matter in the first place—you would find a little voice of niggling doubt telling you that even Voldemort would be better than Madam Umbridge, and that voice would be right. To that end, I feel obliged to remind you that my offer of request is still open.

You and I both know that I am eminently qualified to be Hogwarts's Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. You need not make any choice risking your precious Potions Master that you so arrogantly refuse to accept can prove you fallible, or acquiesce to whatever inevitably dismal and even more inept services might be foisted upon you by the baboons in London calling themselves bureaucrats, and a legitimate argument can be made that I am for multiple reasons a superior choice than some alternative pawn that I myself would otherwise have to employ to pick up your slack. There is wisdom to the saying of keeping enemies close. If I am indeed at Hogwarts, busy teaching, no less, you shall have a far easier time keeping watch over me than if you leave me entirely to my own devices, and the fact remains and bears repeating that I can justifiably claim to be an expert of extraordinary quality, categorically better than anyone whom I might send in my stead.


Planning to kill you,
Voldemort, DL, HoS

P.S.
Enclosed is my updated resumé for your perusal, minus the necessary redactions.

P.P.S.
I also took the liberty of including the expanded arithmantic verification proof for Question 19 of my 4th Year end of term exam that you unfairly marked as incorrect. I told you I was right.

Hogwarts: An Escalation omake

[Norgarth]

from "Dig Two Graves" chapter 15 by Lang Noi

It was cute. Shinobi-cute, of course, which meant it was probably off-putting to normal people.

Good thing no one in the house was normal.  They couldn't see mundane life from a watchtower on a clear day."

[LilFluff]

Two bits from a newish fic on Spacebattles, Playing Catch Up (nBSG/Battletech) by evilauthor

"Oh, this again," the One said, disgusted. "Fine, you don't want to come with us. You can stay. It'd be too much trouble to make you come with us anyway. BUT!" He raised a finger and wagged it at Sharon. "If you stay, you're not going to be able to rejoin us if you change your mind. Because we are taking EVERYTHING when we leave, including the local extension of the resurrection network. We're not leaving so much as a Raider behind to watch the border. You still want to stay?"

"Yes, I do," Sharon said firmly.

One threw up his hands in disgust and started muttering to himself. The other Six turned to Gina.

"And you, sister?" the Six asked. "Are you coming with us, or have you decided to stay as well?"

Gina furrowed her brow and thought hard. She wasn't a sleeper like Sharon, and the mystery of what the Cylons had found tugged at her curiosity. Yet, still she hesitated, and she wasn't sure why except that Helena's face - and her touch - kept looming large in her thoughts.

"Oh you've gotta be kidding me," One grumped, reading Gina's hesitancy correctly. "Am I the only model Cylon left who remembers that humans are our enemy?"

Present Day

"Am I the only one who remembers that humans are supposed to be our enemy?" One complained, a complaint the others had heard endlessly repeated over the past decades.

"But we are fighting humans," the representative Eight pointed out reasonably.

"We're fighting humans," One agreed acidly, "on behalf of other humans. We fought a whole bloody war so we wouldn't have to do that!"

"The difference here is that we chose to fight this conflict," Five argued back. "We chose to fight on behalf of these humans for our own reasons, not because they forced us to serve them."

"And that makes all the difference in the universe," the Centurion among them finished. "Deploying Raiders now."

So, one of the departures from the show (besides the cylons just up and leaving instead of attacking the Colonies) is that the Model Ones didn't have the Model Sevens destroyed. And one of the stay behind cylons was a Model Seven who took the name Ron and used his position in the entertainment industry to make a science fiction drama. A What-If that asked, "What if the cylons returned and attacked The Colonies on the day the Battlestar Galactica was retired and turned into a museum ship...

"Hey, Sharon, have you watched the latest seasons?" Simon, a Four, asked.

"No, I don't watch that show anymore," Sharon replied. "It makes everyone I know into unlikable assholes." She looked around at every Cylon present, and realization dawned on her. "What happened?"

"Seems your husband has been outed as a Cylon," Simon told her with laugh.

"What? That's ridiculous!" Sharon exclaimed. She turned back to Ron, still angry. "Galen's not a Cylon! You should know better!"

"I am so so sorry," Ron replied apologetically. "But I'm not the only one making the show. The suits just want more grim darkness piled on, the other writers do their own thing. And honestly? I kinda ran out of story ideas around the Pegasus arc and now my people are just putting in whatever random crap comes to mind. They actually have a dart board with the cast's faces on it titled, 'Who are we making a Cylon today?'" He sighed. "All I wanted to do was make a show about how humans and Cylons weren't so different from each other."

[Shepherd]

Bi De stroked his wattles. ‘The only other place I could think of with such records is the Palace Grand Archive, which the great Healing Sage says collected a great amount of scrolls when it was constructed. It is not even an hour's journey away… but we can hardly just waltz in the front door as we are.’

They looked down at their bodies, and their distinct lack of human looks.

‘...we could get a cloak and stand on top of each other?’ Yin asked, and Bi De chuckled at the amusing image.

Miantiao snorted, stretching out his body like an exceedingly long neck. ‘I shall be the head? Else we shall be very short.’

Beware of Chicken, V2C53 https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/39408/...of-chicken

[classicdrogn]

For context on that, Bi De is a rooster, Yin is a rabbit, and Miantiao is a (small) snake. Whose name means "noodle" They're all Cultivator martial artists, though Miantiao has a spine injury that restricts him to being Yin's "ancient master" type mentor/trainer.

[robkelk]

GM: Let’s call it a night. I’m going to need some time to plan the next session.
BB-8: What do you do to plan for upcoming sessions, anyway?
GM: Weep, mostly.

Darths & Droids, "Some of Them Want to Flee, Confused"

[classicdrogn]

It was either drink or taking up knitting with their organs and one of those required patience.

There Is No Epic Loot Here, Only Puns ch125

[Norgarth]

"Aw, lookit the cute widdle edgelord!" Yang managed to coo between belly laughs.

"I've seen edgelords. I've known edgelords. I dated an edgelord," Blake denied, barely keeping her own laughter in check. "This is an edge squire at best."

"Oh Arceus help me," Casey giggled, "He's the tryhardiest tryhard to ever try too hard!"

"Y'know, a Huntsman we know back home actually named his trident Tri-Hard," Yang said casually.

"What, really? Like, unironically?"

"That's right," Blake confirmed. "Sun told me he suggested it, and says it took years for Neptune to notice the insult…"

Casey cackled anew at that, wiping a mirthful tear from her eye. "Oh, that's beautiful…"

From 'Boldores and Boomsticks' (RWBY/Pokemon) chapter 40

[classicdrogn]

The time travel machine knows when it is at all times. It knows this because it knows when it isn't. By subtracting when it is from when it isn't, or when it isn't from when it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to direct the time travel machine from a time when it is to a time when it isn't, and arriving at a time when it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the time when it is, is now the time that it wasn't, and it follows that the time that it was, is now the time that it isn't.

In the event that the time that it is in is not the time that it wasn't, the system has acquired a variation, the variation being the difference between when the time travel machine is, and when it wasn't. If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA. However, the time travel machine must also know when it was.

source

[classicdrogn]

Canon Is A Poltergeist In The Attic And I Am About To Drop The Sickest Exorcism You Ever Did Hear

This is only found on a single Star Wars fic, part of a series that is itself an AU splitting off from just before the end of the second story in another series which takes the basic premise of the Galactic Holonet being fifty years (our time) more developed, complete with YouTube and Twitter equivalents, and that Luke 'Lars' started a livestream channel about doing redneck engineering to fix up whatever scrap he could get his hands on, leading to hijinks in the classic Forced-coincidence style of Star Wars. It's fun, but I don't know that I'd call it good as such, hence just the mention here as opposed to a Recs thread.

Also features uSpud Farmboy cussing out the TIE program and all its designers, Simp-cess Leia dumping her month's allowance for the right to name a mouse droid, and Palpatine triggering all of Luke's anti-creeper instincts.

[classicdrogn]

Okay, I've got to add another one here, because as preachy and dragging as the "How to design a prosthetic..." installment of that has been and as loosely as the characterization of individuals and the Empire itself are connected to canon, it also has some great little moments, like this one between former Outer Rim kids (Underground Railroad slave runner turned Head Engineer) Luke 'Lars' and (pirate hunter recently promoted to Admiral over the twitching wishes-he-was-a-corpse of a traitor) Firmus Piett, and lifelong Coreworlder (General) Max Veers:

‘You attempted to kill someone by giving them an infection?’ Veers asked flatly, something deadening in his eyes as he glanced between Lars and Piett.

Lars gave the General a strange look and shook his head slowly. ‘No, I attempted to kill someone by tearing out their throat with my teeth,’ Lars corrected slowly, and Piett watched in increasing amusement as those words visibly registered with Veers like a slap to the face. ‘I succeeded in killing them through an infection when they got away,’ Lars continued, giving the man a strange look. ‘Are you okay, General Veers? You don’t look too good.’

Because Luke is as much a precious cinnamon bun as ever, even if that cinnamon bun also has the bite of a desert rat. Literally.

[classicdrogn]

From the SB Beware of Chicken thread:

Jackie Chan wanders around helping people and punching idiots who are abruptly not made of solid fucktanium.

I require the material properties of fucktanium. First time I have ever heard of this material and I think I might be using it in the future.

See, you punch it, then you hold your hand and scream "FUCK THATS HARD!"

Fucktanium.

Shiv Ers' post collecting the above

[Shepherd]

But most importantly, why did Shikako have more than two dozen empty toilet paper tubes stashed away in her hammerspace seal? It definitely wasn’t something that you could pick up at the store. Shikako had to have been collecting those for a while to accumulate the quantities he saw right now. Did she just throw all kinds of garbage in her seal when she didn’t feel like taking it out? Was that how the Nara laziness manifested in her? As a tendency to collect garbage instead of going through the trouble of throwing it out? Was this the new Nara way of avoiding your chores?

Hoarders Anonymous - https://archiveofourown.org/collections/...s/34524283

[Shepherd]

“How do you keep them from exploding?” Karzarul thought to ask as Dee passed through the room.

“What?” Leonas asked, looking up from the shelf of books he’d been examining.

“The lanternmelons,” Karzarul said. “If they get too much sun they explode. Not enough and they don’t glow. It’s what makes them rare.”

Leonas narrowed his eyes. “Have I been drinking exploding wine?” he asked.

“The juice is processed to make it inert,” Dee said. “We have a system.”

The sun was setting when she showed it to them, taking them out onto a third-floor balcony on the side of the house facing the fields. From above, it looked like a vast field of green. The fading light made it easier to see the glow of the melons through the leaves of their vines, and only close examination revealed the trick. What looked like an ordinary field was a vast latticework of wooden frames, melons beneath sheltered by their own leaves.

“What happens if one of them explodes?” Leonas asked.

“They all explode,” Dee said. “The trick is not to let any of them explode.”

“Hm,” Leonas said. “Having all your fields of explosives in one place feels ill-advised.

“This isn’t all of them,” Dee said.

Leonas looked out at the sea of green. “Ah,” he said.

“They hardly ever explode since I gave up smoking,” she added.

“Great,” Leonas said. “What would happen to the house?”

“We’ve reinforced the walls since last time,” Dee said.

“Good to know,” Leonas said.

“Is this what adventuring is?” he asked. “You pick an arbitrary goal, use huge amounts of time and energy accomplishing it, and if you’re lucky you only regret it half the time?”

Karzarul considered it. “In my experience,” he said, “you’ve described life in general.”

Leonas tipped forward, resting his head on crossed arms on the table. “Great,” he sighed.

Astielle (warning: some chapters are very NSFW) - https://kittyunpretty.com/astielle-chapter-thirty-one/

[drakensis]

He believes it’s absolutely imperative that the Star League maintain massive, staggeringly expensive, technologically dominating, highly-trained, crack, elite, expensively-trained, technologically-crack, massively-elite armed forces ready—at the first whiff or hint, the teeniest, tiniest, most microscopic sign of tension or violence among the member states—to leap into action and IMMEDIATELY declare that it’s an internal affair and there’s nothing they can do.

Marik family squabbles? Well, the SLDF wished there was something they could have done, but really, their hands were tied. Phony bandit wars? The SLDF immediately ordered several million of the latest, most advanced, ultra-high-tech blindfolds and explained they couldn’t see anything wrong. The Davion civil war? The SLDF’s quick-reaction force was able to respond in a matter of hours and head off any signs that they might be about to do something. Capellans and Feds fighting? The SLDF was all over that like lightning—the mushroom cloud had barely touched the stratosphere over Demeter when they soothed tensions and calmed passions by reassuring everyone that in the face of such barbarity and wanton destruction there was no way, NO WAY IN HELL they were going to do anything about it.

Stefan Amaris, on Aleksander Kerensky (The Amaris Diaries)

[classicdrogn]

(Robert) would pester Cersei like an overly enthusiastic golden retriever, give her over the top compliments to placate her vanity, tickle her until she screeched, all on top of having a robust sex life. He had ideas, most nobility did, of what it meant to have a wife. And what it meant to have a mistress. Stannis, of all people, was the one to broach the groundbreaking idea that he was perfectly satisfied with Selyse as a wife whom he treated like how he imagined other men treated a mistress. What he meant was being more demonstrative with affection and enjoying each other’s company. What Robert took that to mean was that he ought to be kinkier with Cersei.

... and that, along with Jaime being kept busy training the reformed Goldcloaks and new Royal Marines and Robert getting more invested in those projects than just drinking and whoring as well, was how Cersei got reverse-NTR'ed.

From Down a Rabbit Hole to Westeros ch18 on AO3. Note that while the linked chapter doesn't have any naughty bits as I recall, it's NSFW in ways typical to the source material, and has some explicit sex on SI-Selyse's wedding night, a Robert/Cersei encounter while the above is being put into practice, Selyse and Stannis again in the immediately following chapter, and potentially more as I'm not even half way through yet.

[classicdrogn]

And here's chapter two, because I don't believe in cliffhangers. They are a sign of weakness and display a lack of honor.

- author's note from Not Your Average Henchwoman (Worm/Supergirl)

[Ebony]

“No escape,” I wheezed. “There is no getting away from it! Every time I think… But no. Here on Planet JRPG, under the Weeb Goddesses, there is just no escape from otaku bullshit!”
 
I raised my head to see that everybody looked disturbed now. That caused me some regret; I didn’t want to dishearten my people and I knew this wasn’t the image I should be projecting right now, but it was like I could feel my consciousness being unraveled from the inside by the revelation I had just experienced, and I had to vent somehow. It was this or kill myself.
 
“WITNESS ME!” I roared, surging upright and throwing my arms wide, causing everyone to shy a step back from me. “For I have beheld a glorious vision of our future—our wonderful, terrible, stupid future. And it is a future built upon the shoulders of monster girls!”

Only Villains Do That, Chapter3.3: In Which the Dark Lord Has an Idea. An Awful Idea. The Dark Lord Has a Wonderful, Awful Idea

(Edited by Bob to remove way too much markup that mostly didn't work here.)

[Bob Schroeck]

“Force help me, I’m going to have to do some Sithly research,” Luke groaned. “Do you have any idea what it’s like communing with the Dark Side? It’s like an an abusive, crazy girlfriend who keeps trying to strangle you whenever you sleep. She slaps you, you offer her chocolate, she throws them back in your face and one wild night later you find out she stole your speeder and rode off into the night while you dealt with a bar brawl. In the aftermath, you find a slip of flimsi with a list of people who want to assassinate you and it almost makes it all worth it.” There was a distant, far off, dreamy expression that didn’t seem Dark Side related to Ben.

“Uh, you speaking from experience there, uncle?” It sounded a little bit too specific for Ben’s tastes. Uncle Luke wasn’t always Ben’s guardian and Ben was starting to resent the fact that his parents hadn’t made more of an effort before the end of the Empire, because Ben was beginning to think he’d missed out on the best parts of the last two decades. Luke’s love life sounded a soap opera plot escaped from a holo and Ben had missed it because he wasn’t old enough to remember it. Unacceptable.

“No comment,” Luke sullenly muttered, crossing his arms.

From Sith Lord Swell

[Norgarth]

Then his smile became something a bit less friendly. “Though honestly, I think this Dread guy may have bitten off a bit more than he can chew, targeting Josh. Master planners like that think of the world as a chess game, but Josh? Josh is playing Calvinball.”

From Icebergs