Chaos-kenos - Shiny!

crack AU idea:

The war is over. Sheevy is dead. Everything is perfect.

...except for the little bitty problem of how the clones don't have citizenship and aren't even recognized as sentient beings.

Jedi are scrambling to find a way to get the clones legal rights and finally realize that the easiest way is to just accept them into the Jedi order, which would grant automatic citizenship.

But you gotta be force-sensitive. Since they're all clones of Jango Fett, who was as force-sensitive as a rock, they don't qualify. (I love the idea of FS-clones but just not in this AU lol.)

Jocasta does some digging in the archives and discovers something interesting: an old old old law, SUPER old, that states that the spouse of any Jedi, and that spouse's immediate relatives, are automatically granted a place in the Jedi order, regardless of midichlorian levels. (Back when getting married was something Jedi did, they knew that that meant if the spouse & spouse's family was non-Jedi, they could be in danger/used as leverage against the Jedi, and this was a way to protect them.)

And clones definitely count as immediate relatives.

Chaos ensues.

I'm picturing a council meeting where half the Jedi just left to go find some Space Asprin because the whole fiasco is a headache and the rest of the people there are:

Depa, chatting with Shaak: I considered myself and Grey, but we've always been more like platonic partners. I know he sees Caleb as a son, but my feelings for him are familial and I know it's the same for him.

Shaak: I agree, some of the clones overheard me saying I would do it if it meant they'd be safe and their response was unanimously no no no you're like our mom

Plo, to no one in particular: Does it have to be a marriage? Could it be an adoption? asking for a friend.

Anakin, newly appointed to the council: wait so NOW we can get married??????

Obi-Wan: no Anakin, this is an extenuating circumstance, not a new rule

Anakin: we could make it a new rule

Plo, turning to Shaak: what if we got married, and then adopted all the clones?

Aayla, kicking the door open: I VOLUNTEER

...I have many more thoughts about this AU and will elaborate later.

you know what would be great? a trans woman ed who, as a kid, successfully performs human transmutation on herself in order to get a biological woman’s body. like, trisha and hohenheim are still alive and like ????????????? ed you are SO GROUNDED and AL SO ARE YOU FOR HELPING HER. but they were still taught by izumi for many years because hohenheim left for like, idk five years to track down father and kill him and they still wanted to learn alchemy. so trisha agreed to let them go with izumi, and on mother’s day ed and al give both trisha and izumi presents and izumi completely and totally cries and ed and al have a panic attack because she must be dying if there are tears but jk she’s just really really happy. and hohenheim tries but he and ed never really click and he tries not to be jealous of the way ed and sig get along so well but mostly fails.

but anyway. so ed is a trans girl and then performs human transmutation on herself in order to have the traditional woman’s body (with al’s help!) and all four of her parental figures are pissed, although hohenheim and izumi are reluctantly impressed. and ed grows up wanting nothing more than to be a housewife, and at 18 she moves to central to study at the university with al and winry in tow. and of course she runs into roy, OF COURSE. and roy is like, all reluctantly into her because she’s sweet and smart and funny and gorgeous but also 12 years younger than him, so. and ed hates the military but she like roy, and she’s like ‘my parents, all four of them, will hate him this is awful.’ and roy and ed can’t help themselves, start dating, and sure she’s a little young, but maes gleefully points out that a pretty housewife from the country is just what his political career needs.

and things are going really, really well when someone gets the bright idea to kidnap ed and hold her for ransom / kill her as punishment for mustang. and mustang mobilizes his team and sets them up to go get her, all the while wallowing in his guilt and anger that he ever let this happen, ever let this innocent girl who just wanted to settle down get caught up in all this.

except. ed’s idea of a housewife is, you know, less trisha elric and more izumi curtis. so she cheerfully and almost effortlessly beats her kidnappers bloody, steals their car, and dumps them all at roy’s feet in the middle of central command like a cat presenting a dead bird. and  everyone is like ???? tf, while havoc just goes ‘holy shit chief, she’s perfect for you. she’s even scarier than hawkeye.’

and roy’s like …. how good of an alchemist / fighter are you, exactly. and then roy and ed have a spar and ed doesn’t cream him but she comes awfully close and considering roy is a brigadier general and a war hero and ed’s this pretty civilian lady it’s what no one expected and maes is basically jumping up and down shouting ‘you like it, put a ring on it!!!’ with accompanying pelvic thrusts.

and roy does, and meets the rest of frankly terrifying family, and whoo boy, he used to think she was an innocent country mouse. he’s an idiot.

and roy climbs the ranks and changes the world (a much easier task with father and the homonculus gone) and ed studies alchemy and becomes and esteemed scientist and tbh his best advisor, all while being what she always wanted - a housewife. an incredibly scary, tremendously powerful housewife.

snow leopard sketches ❄️ reference images can be found here

Always thought a fun horror piece would be a twilight-zone style narrated horror series where the Rod Serling figure is both diegetic and also very clearly trying to help out the protagonists without getting caught; raising his voice at an opportune moment to distract the characters from something dangerous to look at, taking plot critical documents out of a desk and putting them in plain view in the background of shots, moving around an office during the opening Serling Speil unlocking all the doors and windows, and in the climax the protagonists are able to crawl out a previously locked window. In the final episode the freak of the week notices he’s there, goes, “oh, this asshole again,” and abandons their pursuit of the nominal protagonist in order to kill the narrator who (and this is crucial) spends the whole chase sequence moving at the exact same measured pace, speaking in the exact same measured, overprepared monologue, as the antagonist blunders into carefully-prepared environmental hazard after environmental hazard. This is the narrator’s house. You’re visiting, but he lives here, and now he’s decided that he’s the story he’s narrating is Home Alone.

In Leverage Redemption when Parker pretends to be FBI she doesn't use the agent Hagen alias anymore. Now this could have a simple explanation like the alias being blown and no longer useful. However there is an infinitely funnier option.

Agent Hagen is a legitimate FBI agent now, and therefore cannot be part of any illegal business.

I mean, look, it's been eight years and over the course of the original show agent Hagen was pretty good at her job! At some point McSweeten either found out agent Hagen wasn't really an agent and made some corrections or someone working administration found out agent Hagen wasn't getting a paycheck and fixed that problem.

I'm particularly fond of the idea that McSweeten knows that Parker, legendary thief, is agent Hagen but also figures she's helped out so much that he might as well give her a job. Maybe some sort of special investigator position where no one will question that agent Hagen never shows up at the office. Sometimes he finds out about fake FBI agents from the other leverage crews and just... adds them to Hagen's team.

(And of course, all of this applies to Hardison's FBI alias too.)