Grey? What is this – an indecisive white? A black that couldn’t commit? Non. Graves doesn’t do grey. When he’s going for strikingly monochromatic with just a splash of colour he goes in style – they say he spells his clothes to make them darker black and whiter white. I heard that he transfigured the edge of his coat lapels into folded steel to make the points sharper. And that’s nothing – the rumour went round the other day that his coat is actually dyed with lethifold blood, that’s why it projects such an aura of power and menace.
But, gossip aside, Graves likes his suits. He also likes his ridiculous blue scarf with its tassels, and his scorpion pins, mustn’t forget his scorpion pins. The scarf requires at least two spells permanently active to stop it flying around and getting in the way – or, god forbid, falling in the mud good grief perish the thought.
So in answer to question I think Graves is exactly extra enough to choose waistcoats that are not just pink but glaringly fuschia or what about this one it’s offensively salmon the sort of salmon that burns your eyeballs and this one! It’s neon purple and lime green did you ever see anything so beautiful in your life
And he spells them to look so black that people whisper that he wove them out of nachtkrapp feathers, and all these stuffy heads of states in all these stuffy meetings nod stuffily at him in approval and in his head Graves knows that he’s actually flamboyantly yellow today, yes he is.
And if the meetings are particularly boring he relaxes the camouflage spell but just for one person who then thinks they’re going mad, because what the actual fuck.
what the actual fuck
And they just kinda stumble mid sentence and Graves just blinks innocently because he didn’t quite catch that, what were they saying?
It’s time for another round of aus I would like to read but not necessarily write because my wip list is a nightmare that never ends: clone wars ds9 au.
And let’s be honest the main reason I want this is because the Jedi are obviously the Trill, and Hondo’s people are exceptionally long lived and he has known several of Kenobi’s previous hosts. He is, as he will loudly tell anyone within shouting distant, Kenobi’s best friend. He’s not exactly wrong.
(Obi-Wan had barely set foot onto the promenade before he was greeted with a booming “Kenobi!”
Hondo bustled out of his bar, grinning, arms held wide open.
“Hello, Hondo,” Obi-Wan said, resigned, as Hondo swept him into an embrace that lifted him off his feet.
“You’ve changed faces again, old friend,” Hondo set, setting Obi-Wan back onto his feet. “You’ve finally become a ginger. I like the beard. Very masculine. Oh, remembers Ilia’s lamentations over xir inability to grow one?”
“I’ve always liked a good beard,” Obi-Wan said.
He had long since given up on guessing how Hondo always knew it was him, even when he was in a new host. He half-suspected Hondo just shouted that greeting at every passing Trill in hopes of eventually getting it right.
“You wound me,” Hondo had said the one time Jrul Kenobi had voiced her theory, hand splayed over his heart. “I am wounded to my very core that you think our deep and abiding friendship means so little I would not recognize you.”
“You once mistook Jinn for me,” Kenobi pointed out dryly, although out of all of Kenobi’s hosts she was the one who found Hondo the most amusing.
Hondo waved one hand dismissively. “Bah. I was drunk and concussed. You cannot possibly blame me for that. And,” Hondo added as he topped up Kenobi’s glass with fine Vulcan whiskey, “you have a very particular way of carrying yourself. You cannot be mistaken for anyone but yourself.”
“Why, Hondo, that was very nearly poetic of you,” Kenobi said, and touched their glasses together.
“Tell me, my friend,” Hondo said, draping an arm around Obi-Wan’s shoulders, “now that you’ve finally grown the beard you’ve always wanted, have you put more thought towards my very lucrative business opportunity?”
“It’s piracy,” Obi-Wan said dryly, “and my answer is still no.”
Hondo shrugged, unbothered as always. “Perhaps your next host will have a better head for business.” He steered Obi-Wan towards his bar. “I hear you’ve got a little worm junior falling you around. You should bring him around sometime. It is a him, yes? There is so much I want to tell him.”
The Trill were not gifted with foresight, but Obi-Wan had a vivid vision of Anakin and Hondo meeting.
“That,” he said with feeling, “will never happen.”)
ooh ooh! what if the cardassians got it into their heads to clone an army of bioengineered bajoran soldiers for the sole purpose of using the clones to root out and kill bajoran resistance fighters. only it backfired spectacularly and a bunch of the cloned bajorans helped beat back the cardassians, only now the bajorans are arguing whether or not the clones count as people, and the cardassians are claiming the clones are property and should be returned to cardassia. Queue the arrival of the federation,
I love all of this. And given the Bajoran religion, you know there are arguments about if the clones even have souls or if they are basically the Bajoran equivalent of golems. During the Occupation, there was talk of the words the Prophets writ in the clones heads to bring them to them to life to fight and free the people. And now, well, if they fulfilled their purpose, what happens if you erase those words?
Krell is the worst so yeah he would be a good Dukat. Mace is obviously Sisko, and omg Katooni as his daughter who is just fascinated with Hondo, and every week Sisko is like “Hondo, please stop teaching my impressionable daughter how to hack into Starfleet encrypted files and also to cheat at every game known to man.”
“Cheat? Cheat?” Hondo cried, offended. “I would never, Captain. She is exceptionally gifted and has naturally quick hands.”
Katooni adores Hondo and Mace is resigned to the fact that he is definitely going to have to retrieve his daughter from the constable’s holding cell many, many times.
Also the Hondo and Katooni thing would be HILARIOUS. And what if Ponds is the Chief security officer on this station and every time Mace asks him about Katooni’s whereabouts 9/10 times she’s at Hondo’s. And he’d send a shiny to go fetch her because she’s a kid, right? one shiny can handle fetching a kid.
except an hour goes by and no sign of either the shiny or katooni. so, being the busy chief of security that he is, he sends someone else to go see what’s up.
another hour later. still no katooni and now he’s missing 2 officers.
well fine, he’ll go himself.
and finds katooni teaching the shinies how to cheat at play sabacc while hondo plies them with booze.
ponds is not impressed. neither is commander windu.
Tiny hustler Katooni! The day where Katooni tries to win Hondo’s bar in a sabacc game by being the absolute dirtiest, no good cheater he has ever seen is coming very quickly, and he is so proud of her.
Meanwhile Mace is just looking at his daughter sitting behind a stack of platinum, and is like, “You’re giving that back. Now.”
“But, dad,” Katooni protests and acts like she doesn’t have both sleeves stuffed full of cards, “they have really obvious tells.”
Mace makes the mistake of looking to Obi-Wan to sort his out. Obi-Wan shrugs and says, “They do have terrible tells.”
Mace sighs; his daughter is definitely going to get arrested one day.
Dhar, I regret to inform you that this is clearly not an AU that you will be reading, not writing.
Look just because it’s true doesn’t mean you have to say it. Let me have my sweet sweet denial.
I have no idea who is garak and who is bashir. I don’t do a straight 1:1 character swap for aus, but I mean Kix is probably bashir? But also Rex is totally Worf come on have you met me. (I still maintain vulcan Cody would be amazing)
Ahsoka would be a trill symbiote candidate who gets sent to Kenobi and Anakin because if you want to shove your baby bird off a cliff to see if it will fly these are the two to do it. Related, my original thought was to have Anakin take on like a new symbiote, be the first host, but you know what has the potential for feelings and shenanigans? If his symbiote is Jinn, and Qui-Gon was the previous host. Because on the one hand you get Obi-Wan and Anakin brother shenanigans, but also occasionally Anakin is like hey remember your weirdly fraught relationship with Qui-Gon and the time your sass mouth almost got us kill because I fucking do.
On another related note, god I love the Trill and Star Trek did not nearly do them justice.
I’m really digging @tora42‘s idea of the clones being done by Cardassia. But also think of them taking it a step further and creating bajoran/cardassian hydbrid clones. Come for the shenanigans stay for the personhood politics.
(also omg give me a voyager au. Let’s do a swap . I’ll do the ds9 au and you write the voyager one.)
oh hey what if… okay so immediately post-cardassian occupation, kix is the CMO of the station, but when the federation takes command they send a starfleet medical officer, either to take over the command of the med center or just to support kix and his staff idk which, and maybe starfleet isn’t even sure because the legal status of the clones on bajor is still a hot mess of ethical hijinks but anyway… Barriss is the starfleet officer on her first assignment fresh out of the academy, and really excited to be seeing a distant corner of the galaxy, using her skills to help heal people, but also anxious as all get out about how this relationship with kix is supposed to work. is he her boss? is she his boss? technically they’re both CMO, but he’s a bajoran clone and been there longer, but she’s starfleet with more advanced training so she’s kind of lost and desperately in need of a friend.
and then ahsoka comes to ds9 for her training with anakin and obi-wan, and hey look the replimat is totally packed and the only empty seat is next to the really REALLY cute Miralan* starfleet officer so ahsoka plops herself down and introduces herself. and then the cute starfleet officer looks up with the most gorgeous big blue eyes and skin such a soft shade of green and the marks across the bridge of her nose look like stars and “OH NO SHE’S HOT” and barriss is kind of startled by the sudden interaction because people mostly seem not to notice her, but oh hey it’s the trill candidate and barriss has a million questions she could never ask obi-wan or anakin cus it still feels like they outrank her even if technically she’s the CMO.
*so i adore the idea of the jedi being trill, cus it’s awesome, but i also really really loved the clone wars alien designs and want to just drop them into a star trek universe
It’s interesting to see the competition playing out between “it’s so important that you vote in all the elections because of how much is at stake!” and “voting clearly doesn’t work and we need to adopt other tactics” (where “other tactics” implicitly means revolution or sustained mass protest or breaking windows or whatever, usually aiming for the former and hitting the latter).
My take is that civic participation without popular protest is probably going to be more effective than popular protest without civic participation, because the left is not large or popular enough to pull off the latter tactic, but the two mostly aren’t drawing from the same “budget” so it’s not like you have to choose in the first place.
it’s not like you have to choose in the first place.
tora42's nonsensne 