This prompt was courtesy of one of my fandom (and non-fandom) faves, @justwritins, when I opened up prompts for like an hour back in October. Sorry it’s taken so long, but I promise I’ll get through all of them eventually!
The prompt:
Oh right! Snowy/Tater! Tater is a superhero. Snowy just wants to finish his fucking grocery shopping in piece. Insert a Villain.
I didn’t go into the villain, but there is some backstory here I may end up writing in a continuation. It’s just 130am and this story’s already 2.8k describing essentially one hour in the life. So yeah, superhero Snowtots below the cut!
Okay so hockey is like, rife with superstitions and
ritual.
Each player has their own pre-game rituals, which are
honestly on par with religious sacraments.
You do not fuck with a man’s
pre-game ritual. Also, the inability to
practice one’s pre-game ritual is deeply emotionally destabilizing. Like, we’re talking serious repercussions
here. If a player is unable to complete their
sacred ritual, there will be hell to pay.
Just as famous as Crosby’s famous pre-game plate of spaghetti,
or Jack Zimmerman’s pre-game PB&J, is Snowy’s pre-game application of eyeliner. It is not only essential to his game play; it
is essential to the current alignment of our space-time continuum.
Which brings us to Snowy, currently in the throes of an
emotional breakdown, in seat 15C on the Falc’s bus, clutching desperately to
his last remaining tube of La Nuit, Nior
de Nior eyeliner as though it were the cooling body of his only son.
a semi-automatic weapon is just any gun you don’t have to cock between shots. so basically every handgun except old-fashioned revolvers are semi-automatic. when describing weapons capable of firing bursts or continuously, you want ‘machine pistol’ for something like an uzi, ‘assault rifle’ for your ak-47′s and such, and ‘machine gun’ for a weapon large enough to be mounted on a tripod or vehicle.
for your reference when writing soldiers and other characters who are familiar with firearms, may i present…
single action revolver:
semi-automatic or semiauto:
machine pistol:
assault rifle or tactical rifle:
shotgun:
machine gun:
happy writing!
(also please can screenwriters stop having everyone cock their weapons to make a menacing noise, it’s tremendously silly. if you don’t have the safety off and a round chambered when you’re aiming it at the bad guy, it might as well have ‘replica’ written on it. joe random civilian might make that mistake, but james bond or bucky barnes or emma peal won’t.)
Tater’s parents divorced when he was very young, he doesn’t even remember a time they were together (although they had an amicable relationship post-divorce). His father was a hockey player, his mother was a figure skating champion.
He grew up in Russia with his father, but would spend a couple months every year visiting his mother in the USA. She retired from competition, but continued on to be a formidable youth figure skating coach. Her students were always successful.
When Tater visits his mom, he usually tags along to her early morning practices. Truthfully, he catches a bit more sleep in the stands most days, but he does really enjoy watching the progress her students have made on days mornings when he’s well-rested.
When he’s 11 or so, his mom takes on a tiny blond boy as her newest student, and Tater absolutely LOVES watching him practice. The kid is fast learner, and young Tater has been around the best and brightest of figure skating enough to know that this boy is going to be great.
Even when Tater returns home to Russia after his visit, he still asks his mom about how the little blond boy is doing with his lessons. The next time he visits, the improvement is already staggering. Now he eagerly attend his mom’s early morning lessons to see what this talented tiny boy can do.
Tater meets him once, but the funny little American boy talks very fast and Tater has no idea what he’s saying. He manages to say “Hi” and “good skate” and then stares, completely overwhelmed by this ball of blond energy shaking his hand and talking a mile a minute. Tater knows he’s saying something nice about his mom, because the boy is smiling a lot and looks over at her a couple times, but he knows very little English, so it mostly goes over his head. Still, it makes him smile, and he’s happy his mom has found such an enthusiastic student.
The years go by, and although Tater is sad to hear that his mom’s star pupil no longer figure skates, he gets busy with his hockey career. His mother has other talented students now, and she’s back in Russia. Life goes on. It’s been years since he’s thought of the tiny blond boy…
But one day, his teammate Jack starts (does he ever stop?) bragging about how wonderful his boyfriend is, and brings him along for a fun shinny game with the Falcs to show off Bitty’s skills and speed.
“Remember last time we did this, Bits?” Jack teases his boyfriend while the other guys set up the nets.
“The boys made me do a jump in my hockey skates for the school paper,” Bitty replies with a laugh.
Tater insists on seeing Jack’s little blond boyfriend do a jump, because he does miss watching figure skating like in his childhood. Bitty obliges, and the moment he lifts off the ice, Tater is filled with nostalgia. He knew something was familiar about this energetic young man.
“Hey, little B!” Tater skates over to Bitty immediately. “You’re so good. Always jumping so high, even in hockey skates.”
“Well, it would be better if I were in figure skates, and had a bit more practice…”
“Is okay. Long time since you started hockey, yes? When you were 15?”
Bitty doesn’t think too much of it, aside from being a bit of embarrassment that Jack has told his friends THAT much about him. “Yeah, I figure skated for years before that.”
“So many championships. Good skate.”
Bitty chuckles, remembering the time he met Katya’s quiet son who didn’t speak much English. That poor shy boy had only managed to tell him “good skate” too. He was hit with a wave of déja vu. This giant of a man was about 10,000 times more talkative than that boy, but now that Bitty thought about it, he did look a little familiar. “Um… Tater? This may sound strange, but…”
“So B, you know my mom Katya, yes?”
“OH. MY. GOD.”
“We should send her selfie now.”
It is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place.
everyone is embarrassed of their fourteen year old self trust me if you’re fourteen right now you will regret whatever it is that you are doing at this moment
What, being a SuperWhoLockian, Tumblrian, and just being generally pretty good? I don’t think so.
screenshot this and look at it in 3 years
Wow holy shit guys, it’s been approximately 5 years and I’m drunk enough to not regret finally acknowledging this Surprise surprise, I was that kid I know the above is the most cringy 14 year old thing to say, but hot damn y’all I was a child and I had just found an online community of people where being a fucking nerd was “hella cool” and oh my god I was having a blast, and with my new fragile self confidence I decided to say “no I don’t regret what I’m doing/what I like right now at this moment because I don’t hate myself and that’s pretty neat!” And y’all remember 2012-2013 tumblr that shit was absolutely cringy, I was just repeating phrases I’d heard. But then, it got turned into a “laugh at the child” and then I got dozens upon dozens of hate messages and my confidence about literally everything got shattered I had messages telling me to kill myself and messages calling me a snowflake and an idiot and a c*nt and all those other words that are meant to hurt you. Even years after I changed my URL, I’d get a sinking pit in my stomach whenever I’d see this post go around again because I knew I’d get those three or four snide anons asking “so do you regret it?” And yes I absolutely do, fuck off So yeah, I was a stupid tumblr kid and probably shouldn’t have commented But I didn’t deserve the onslaught of hateful messages So now y’all know, it’s me Surprise, or whatever
hello! I’m sorry for dragging you through the mud in the first place. seventeen-year-old me was not as evolved as she thought, which I’m sure is a surprise to no one. there were absolutely tons of comments exactly like yours, but it got singled out just because I was going through a sarcastically-responds-to-comments phase and I happened to see it. I’ve heard people use this post as an example of how young teens are stupid & don’t know anything, and I’m sorry that you became the poster child of that patronizing and invalidating idea.
sidenote, who the FUCK calls a 14 yr old a c*nt & tells them to kill themselves??
Thank you for commenting, op ❤ I really don’t blame you at all for what you said, I want to call out my 14 year old self just as badly lmao But I really appreciate the overwhelming positive response to this I’d hope we can sort of grow as a community from this, but I won’t get my hopes up lol
This was beautiful to read
This is a really good example of why being mean to kids for being kids is stupid, but also kids, please understand that really, you probably will look back on young you later and cringe. Baby Seebs was probably pretty cringey too.
i was absolutely a cringefest at 14, and so were all my friends, and THAT’S OKAY.
that’s an awkward age because you’re just starting to grow into yourself and find out who you are, and part of that is trying on identities and opinions. and you’re full of energy and hormones and angry, so whatever you do, you do it loud and hard!!! and fuck anyone who tries to stop you!!! rawr!!!!! which is a defensive measure to protect your tender peppermint heart, because your identity is soft and unformed. you are a baby snail pretending to be a king crab. you’re picking fights and starting drama as practice for later life when you’re the only one who can resolve your conflicts. you alternate between viciously chewing people’s ankles, and groveling for acceptance, because you don’t know yet how to enforce your boundaries and personhood without being a danger to yourself and others.
this does not make you bad or unworthy.
just as young birds go through a stage of looking like something fished out of a drain, and young dogs go through a stage of being all feet and ears and running into screen doors, young humans go through a stage of being a social tear gas grenade. and just like birds and dogs, it’s cute as hell, but it’s cuter when you’re not the one cleaning up after them.
my advice, then, is: don’t cringe. instead, be proud of yourself for having figured shit out and grown into your feet.
wait is 5! = 120 an actual math thing i just reblogged it bc i sincerely believe that yelling a number makes it bigger
An exclamation point after a number means factorial. Five factorial is 5 times 4 times 3 times 2 times 1. Three factorial is 3 times 2 times 1, etc.
But the more exclamation points after a number, the less big it is, a double factorial is every other number, so 6!! is 6 times 4 times 2, which is less than 6!, So yelling a number makes it bigger, but yelling louder makes it smaller again
it’s because you scared it
I genuinely love this post
someone: idk ransom bitty chowder and tango aren’t my faves
me: don’t talk to me or my son or my son’s son or my son’s son’s son or my son’s son’s son’s son ever again
just moving along like everyone else 