Author: Harper Kingsley

Octavia remembered the way they’d looked at her pile of blankets. Half a dozen scraps of cloth in various fabric types. “Those synthetic fabrics don’t breathe” they would cry, as though she was committing some great sin.

They didn’t understand that that was the point. They didn’t breathe.

Blankets, towels, heaps of fabric–they may have been something to keep her warm and dry back during the old days, but they developed hundreds of uses after the end of the world.

She could wave a white towel to show she gave up. She could clog a drain with a microbial, moisture wicking blanket lining.

She could hold onto the soft comfort of the velour blanket someone had gifted to her. She couldn’t even remember his name, just the fact that he’d been a truly nice guy and not a predator in drag (Kang-soo*, that dirtbag). Blanket-guy had bought her the camel colored blanket while they were at some outside venue. He’d gotten her a coffee too, and the way he’d looked at her had made her start thinking that he was falling in love with her.

She couldn’t remember his name and his face was a blur, but his kindness had remained with her for all the years after the end of the world. He’d become one of her sweetest memories of her life before.

She wondered what he would be like now if he had survived. The thought had entered her mind with a Terminator fanfic, one where Clair Dane’s character from the original timeline never ended up locked in a bunker with John Connor.

She ended up falling in love with him because she didn’t meet him again until after the end of her world. She’d met him at the lowest point of her life and he’d … Read the rest “Don’t forget to bring a towel to the end of the world”

“Shower buddies” –The showers are side-by-side, so two men that have never seen each other end up singing together every morning.

*

A. “Did you know that every morning he gets up to take a shower at seven in the morning and sing with his neighbor? Shower buddies, he called it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It blew my mind for some reason. I’m okay with it now, but at first it seemed so weird.”

*

B. It freaked him out at first. One minute singing alone, the next in chorus with the guy from the neighboring apartment.

And then it was kind of cool.

In the mornings as he lathered up, he’d sing along with his neighbor, songs he never would have shared with anyone else.

B1. It was romantic, but in a nonsexual way. This was his singing buddy. This was his beautiful friend whose face he never wanted to see.

How horrible was that?

But he’d been hurt before. He’d fallen out of love with plenty of people when he *got* to see how they truly lived.

His step-sister had delighted in taking all of the magic out of his world when he’d been twelve years old. It was the one stark memory of his childhood that he maintained: that monstrous figure looming over him. He’d thought she’d been demonically possessed.

Always so quiet and still, she’d leaped out of her chair and begun screaming out answers to every question he’d interrupted her with all night. Bulging eyes and raging mouth; he’d been completely terrified. And ever since then, his every bogeyman-moment was tied to that fear. (He wished he hadn’t posted his worst fear in his profile. It would have been better if he’d made something up.)

He couldn’t handle it if his singing buddy was horrible to look … Read the rest “PROMPT: Shower Buddies”

Francine Smith from “American Dad” would probably survive the apocalypse.

She has all sorts of skills that would see her through situations that would kill other people.

She can out fight, out drink, out party tons of people. Definitely a woman with a history behind her.

* * * * *

To all those people that sleep in their clothes: Cut it out!

I might sleep in my same undershirt, but I change into sleep pants before sleeping. It gives my jeans a chance to air out, whether I use Febreze or a dry wash[1] to refresh them or not. With a new shirt and a change of socks and underwear in the morning, those jeans are fine to wear.

Deodorant does tend to ruin my shirts for rewearing — I use a solid, and I *may* put too much on. (I have OCD and I’ve got a grooming habit.) This means that I can very seldom re-wear a shirt after I’ve slept in it.[A]

Still, no matter the situation, if you’re stuck away from home and a washing machine, you can still keep yourself fairly fresh and un-whiffy. Baby wipes are a godsend, and you can always manage a hobo shower if you’ve got to, but it doesn’t help if your clothes hold their smell.

*

1. I like using baking soda. You can stick your jeans in a bucket with some baking soda and shake it. All the smell and dirt will be coated, then all you have to do is take your jeans out, brush them off, and hang them up to air out. Or for the hot dry method, you could stick your clothes in a pillow case after a baking soda treatment and run them through the dryer. I think I’ve heard of some people … Read the rest “FANMETA: Francine Smith [American Dad] would survive the apocalypse”

PROMPTS:

Pacific Rim/IASIP -> I can totally see Charlie Kelly as the FATHER of Newton Geiszler.

Though there’s a plotline where Charlie is Newt.

*

“Smartpills” – story where Charlie received smartpills from Scientist and set out to learn stuff. He begins by studying the rats he mashes, which leads to him receiving a biology degree. From there he widens his research into many other fields and begins collecting PhDs.

1. He’s brilliant and he helps defeat the Kaiju. And then the pills begin to wear off. (It’s small things at first. Forgetting a phone number here or there. Looking at the pages of a book and seeing only a jumble of puzzle pieces. And usully he’s tired, and that’s the excuse he gives for all the little mistakes.

I’m not stupid. I can read. Stop making fun of me.

But things happen, as they’re wont to do, and he finally has to recognize that it’s not because he’s tired. It’s not because he’s sloppy or distracted.

The pills are wearing off.

He’s losing that borrowed brilliance. He’s going back to being the dummy. The mocked. The Charlie.)

It made him feel sick to his stomach.

There’s no way he can let Herms or anyone else see what he’s becoming. He doesn’t want to be remembered like that. He wants to be the rockstar scientist god.

Newt gathers up Algernon and packs up the things he can’t do without. He hires movers to clear out the rest of his apartment on his way out of town and hopes they don’t steal too much of his stuff.

He’s always hated being stolen from. It was the thing that had finally had him kick Frank out of his life.

When Frank stole the Waitress from him.

And … Read the rest “FANMETA: Charlie Kelly [IASIP]; Prompts; Pacific Rim”

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