Companion Pieces to "In Which Tony Stark Builds Himself Some Friends (But His Family was Assigned by Nick Fury)" Sometimes I write foolish things (disclaimer: I always write foolish things) and sometimes there are lines, or actions, or interactions that only make sense to me. Because I have reasons for almost everything. And some part of me is waiting for someone to ask me about the bizarre little things I put in my stories. Occasionally, someone is dumb enough to do just that, and then I babble at them on my Tumblr (http://scifigrl47.tumblr.com). I BABBLE SO MUCH. This is a compilation of all the short stories of why characters react the way they do in my stories. Some are drabbles, some are character studies, some are short stories. Some are edited, some are stream of consciousness. All are foolishness. I like it that way. And I love answering questions. 8)

It is important to keep in mind that when a human says, "I hate you," it is most certainly not a come-on. The only thing more horrific than human apathy is human hatred. They do, after all, have two words for friendship. Or so we thought.

A musing on the social and legal construction of childhood in hidden villages. Downbeat and philosophical.

Team 8 in a quiet moment during the timeskip, with lots of speculation about the origin and nature of the Aburame clan's bond with their kikkai. Fluffy enough to rot your teeth.

A patronus, Harry tells Hermione, is acing a test and the warmth of a butterbeer between your hands. It is your friends holding you when you fall, and Ron’s sparkling eyes when you whisper hi. And there’s an otter, swimming, and Hermione is blushing.

Hyper Intuition isn't always a gift. Reborn contemplates what it might mean for someone to be born with it.

When the Leverage team runs into a mark with a very distinctive ring, Eliot has a phone call to make. On the other side of the country, Magnus’s night just got Interesting, the headache-inducing way.

All Might runs into a strange hero in his younger years. Or, maybe, this hero runs into him. At high velocity. In the face. Oops.

The clans have secrets. Fire that does not burn. Light held back by a cloth. Spirits bound. Dreams of what is to come. Water that heals.

I would like for you to consider that, of all the Yunmeng sibs, Jiang Yanli can curse both Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng under their table. It comes from frequenting the fish markets and the piers, and listening and observing carefully before proceeding to haggle her way through the week’s shopping. The first time bb!Wei Ying heard her switch into sailor speak he stared at her with huge huge eyes and said “can you teach me”

ANYWAY you cannot convince me that the air nomads didn’t have any sort of trade good based on the flying bison

It had always been something of a behind-closed-doors debate – a chicken-and-the-egg problem, what came first, what was the cause and what was the symptom. Was the Nie sect’s atypical cultivation method the reason behind the notorious Nie temper? Or were they born with the temper, and the cultivation method merely built upon that? Which one was the reason for their clan’s tendency towards early qi deviations? Nie Huaisang usually threw his money on the “blame the cultivation style”, almost entirely for the sake of pissing off his brother. He was starting to think, though, that he’d been wrong.

"I will live in thy heart sleeve, (never) die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes, and moreover, I will go with thee to the extremely boring cultivation conference." –The Yiling Laozu, probably. Wei Wuxian needs a new workshop. Lan Wangji has room in his qiankun sleeves.

There has always been a divide between the sect and the clan. The clan flows through the male line, heritage and paternity, but it is the wife who comes from outside that rules the sect - a measure, Lan Xichen thought, put in place to prevent war between the sects. Who would want to risk antagonizing someone who might end up running your sect some day? And then Nie Mingjue's father died.

modern au Lotus Pier is a company that Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan started together when they got married

“- and in one generation, they were all women, every single one of them!” “That seems remarkably unlikely,” Wen Ruohan remarked, and looked sidelong at Lan Qiren. “Don’t you think, Sect Leader Lan?” Lan Qiren had no idea the trouble his answer was about to cause.

During his time rebuilding the Jiang sect and the Lotus Pier from the ground up, Jiang Cheng meets a lot of people. Some of them he keeps. (5+1 Jiang Cheng adopting stray cultivators after the Sunshot Campaign)

Prompt: We keep hearing little bits about the Nie bros dad, but what about their moms?

Nicklas Backstrom knows that Alexander Ovechkin is his soulmate but they never talk about it.

"Being a star athlete changes you." And just when you think you're done, you become the face of an expansion team. Playing a winter sport in a desert. OR A (Dragon)Flower in the Desert

The Republic sends a combat photographer to be attached to the 212th until further notice, citing the need for a morale boost. The clones make up a fake clone, citing the absolute fact that it is very funny. Somehow, these two things save the galaxy.

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.

Seriously, there WOULD be trans clones. There’s definitely enough variation in the process of how they’re created and raised for there to be some range of gender identity & expression. I wanted to, briefly, tell that story because it makes perfect sense and it totally explains why female stormtroopers would not be an issue. There were women serving in the clone army all along.

Travelling endlessly through the untamed territories of the Outer Rim, renowned bounty hunter Din Djarin meets a lot of people. Some of them are more interesting than others. And some of them have a truly awe-inspiring number of ponchos. Cal Kestis is a remnant of a decimated Order, but there's plenty of hope for the future. It's time to rebuild, and perhaps make some new friends along the way.

Cody keeps a list of miraculous things he comes across amidst the mundane.

"Crap!" the food truck worker shrieks in alarm. "Don't hurt him, Superman, he's just a kid!" Clark . . . pauses, then looks up from the kid that he is currently pinning into the street as said kid struggles underneath him. "'Hurt him'?" he asks in reflexive confusion, and then realizes how batting a teenager around like a person-shaped cat toy and pinning him to the street hard enough to crack it probably actually looks to an outside observer. . . . um. Whoops. "Um," he starts awkwardly, and then the kid slips his pin while he's distracted and throws his arms around his neck with a gleeful laugh and a bright grin. "Dad!" he crows triumphantly, and hugs Clark harder than literally anyone has ever hugged him before.