#disc fic

Rincewind was generally a great fan of faculty meetings. They were very long, very dull, and had very generous tea breaks. Of course, he had to put up with a certain amount of Archchancellor Ridcully’s shouting, but that was par for the course around the university anyway. Generally he could just keep quiet and fade into the background for an hour or two, content in the knowledge that he wouldn’t be faced with anything more exciting than a new variety of biscuit.

Generally the topic of the meeting didn’t strike so close to home.

It had started with the discreet little announcement in the Times that the editors and head iconographer were to be married the following Octeday. That would probably have been an end to it as well if the Senior Wrangler hadn’t been baffled by a wedding with more than one groom. Even then, it could still have been a five minute diversion.

But Ponder had to be helpful. Apparently one of his aunts had been Offlerian and her friend whatshername had married a Tsortean couple, and no one had thought anything of it. “And besides, you all act like an expanded old married couple anyway,” he’d finished brightly.

Rincewind tried to hide under his hat. It was difficult to make out any full sentences in the ensuing uproar, but loudly declaring their heterosexuality and/or general lack of interest in their fellows seemed to make up a decent chunk of it.

Ponder’s “I didn’t mean-” wasn’t quite lost, but it was ignored.

“Mustrum, we’ve known each other almost half a century, so I only think it’s right to let you know. I never liked you in the slightest and I hope the feeling is mutual.”

“It most certainly is, Two Chairs,” Ridcully bellowed. “You remember Esme. You’ve met Esme!”

“And you know Mrs Whitlow. Come to think of it, the way you and Ponder acted back on the island was very odd,” the Senior Wrangler said pointedly.

“Oh, so not fawning over a housekeeper is considered strange now?”

“Whatever happened to the days of women and wizardry not mixing?”

“Esk, I think.”

“I’ve got nothing against it, but it isn’t natural.”

Whatever Rincewind said at this point wasn’t going to make anything worse and probably wouldn’t even be heard. It certainly wasn’t going to be listened to. Might as well get it off his chest, then.

“I’m gay,” he said quietly.

And with the luck he was so known for, his statement coincided perfectly with a lull in the shouting.

All eyes turned to him. Rincewind could feel his cheeks going red. A familiar pit of dread welled up in his stomach.

“And?” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

Rincewind peeked out from under the brim of his hat. “And nothing. I’m gay, that’s all.”

“So?”

“Funny thing to bring up.” The Chair of Indefinite Studies snatched the penultimate chocolate biscuit from under the Dean’s hand. “It’s not as if anyone here is an Orthodox Omnian.”

“You have a point, Chair. How are the Times people supposed to marry in any religious building when one of them’s a vampire?”

“Maybe at Small Gods? Old Windle wasn’t stopped by a bit of hallowed ground.”

“He wanted to come back as a woman,” the Bursar said.

“Really? Good for him- uh, her. Well done, Bursar, a valuable contribution.” The Archchancellor pushed the final chocolate biscuit towards him.

Rincewind breathed out as the faculty’s attention turned away from him.

Ponder caught his eye. “Alright?” he mouthed.

Rincewind nodded.

“Drink?”

Rincewind started to nod again, then stopped. “Dinner?”

Granny Weatherwax finally gets some peace and quiet. There's plenty of work to be done to prepare the bees for winter, especially since the elves disgruntled the swarm at midsummer. Nobody's been by her cottage for days. That's a good thing, right? But where's everybody gone?

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Discworld - Terry Pratchett Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Rufus Drumknott/Havelock Vetinari Characters: William de Worde, Angua von Uberwald, Samuel Vimes, Rufus Drumknott, Igor (Discworld) Additional Tags: mild canon tailoring, Injury Recovery, set during The Truth, secret marriage (implied) Summary:

@mylifeisdubbed that is a good question and the answer is . . . It depends on the AU. I have multiple that include several different iterations and they all work differently so I’ll give you a rundown.

The AU for the post this comment was left on was the Discord AU. If you've ever read a fic where one version of the turtles gets dropped into a group chat with another version of them, like The Last Ronin Becomes A Discord Admin by MelonPalooza or Too Many Turtles by DysfunctionalRequest, then you have some idea about how this works. The universes don't all line up timeline-wise so every iteration is at a different point in their story. The 2012 turtles are about 20 and have finished their S5 adventures, the Rise turtles are somewhere between finding out about the dark armor and S2 finale, and the Bayverse and Mutant Mayhem movies haven't even happened yet. Through this group chat, after a few initial mishaps, they help each other manage the shenanigans their different universes put them through. I will say that through science and mystics, multiple iterations do physically meet later on in the story but saying anything more would be spoilers.

The disc fic includes Rise, 2012, 2003, 2007, Bayverse and MM/Tales. It's one of the simpler multiverses.

Another easy one to explain is Kappa Kafe. Kappa Kafe is a fan iteration where a band of spirits (this iteration's turtles) that live in a sort of limbo between worlds operate a rest stop for people from different universes. The initial idea was a coffee shop kind of a deal but it's since expanded to a small neighborhood where turtles of any universe can take a breather before getting back to their canon lives. There's no pressing story taking place here and it's open to interaction so it's perfect as a backdrop for crossovers and AU doodles. Any iteration can be thrown into this, including fan iterations.

While we're talking about crossovers, one of the multiverse AUs, Legend of Turtles, is a crossover with Legend of Zelda. Every Zelda game has a different TMNT iteration paired with it and the turtles act as companions for Link, Zelda, and depending on the iteration & game sometimes Ganon. Right now I'm focused on Rise with BotW and related games, and 2012 with OoT, MM & TP. In these ones, the turtles are split up and join Link and their brothers as Link travels across Hyrule, but in others they're together from the start. The brothers usually join the Zelda world as children and grow up alongside Link & Zelda, but they remember some things from their original world.

In BotW, Leo is paired with Link and is the one who originally brings him to the Master Sword. Donnie is Mipha's companion and the first to reunite with Leo but he doesn't join the party until Link recruits him after the 100 year nap. Raph was taken in by Daruk and after the 100 year nap mentors Yunobo. Mikey is found by Revali who comes to think of him as a brother and becomes jealous when Leo comes around with link and Mikey immediately gravitates to Leo. This stuff isn't relevant to the multiverse bit, I just wanted to include it.

I might do a Links Meet situation including all the different versions of the turtles, but I don't think it'd be a full-fledged thing because that's a lot of people to keep track of in one situation.

CRASHOUT is a multiverse fan iteration I briefly explained in this ask about Venus but I'll explain it in more depth here. While it is it's own iteration, the canon TMNT iterations tie into it via. Well. Ghosts. Kind of.

There are a few kinds of speculative multiverse theories, but the one I like to use is about soap bubbles. Imagine the multiverse as a massive bubble bath. Every individual bubble is it's own universe. When two of these bubbles rub together, it triggers connected events in both universes. The CRASHOUT universe is one big bubble, and canon iterations are smaller bubbles that cling to it, and where the bubbles join the universes start to bleed together. These bleeds manifest in the counterparts from these various universes (recuring characters from different iterations like the turtles, April & Casey, Splinter & Shredder) starting to blend into their counterparts from the CRASHOUT universe. The CRASHOUT characters can use this blending to access the physical and mystical abilities they have in canon iterations, but this comes with the downside of ghosts of these counterparts hanging over them.

Pros: Superpowers and ninja skills to help the average high schooler survive the apocalypse! Cons: There's like seven alternate yous haunting your ass and they're all shitheads.

CRASHOUT includes every iteration I have or will soon watch, including Rise, 2012, 2003, 2007, Bayverse, MM/Tales and the IDW comic run, plus the original cast of the fan iteration.

And then, most complicated of all to manage, we have the absolute unit of an AU that is Body Brothers. In Body Brothers, all of the turtles in every iteration I have just listed above (minus CRASHOUT) mind swaps into different universes at random to help each other. I have no plainer way to explain this. They switch bodies with their alternate selves at my every whim, not even because of magical mishaps, just, they just do for their entire lives because why not.

I love Body Brothers conceptually, I do, but it is a massive thing to coordinate and keep track of timelines for. They all need nicknames and identifiers depending on who's in who's body and there are seven iterations in this bad boy, that's twenty-eight turtles at the very least all switching around and adapting to seven different worlds and I promise, I promise I will make charts and spreadsheets and release them into the wild so everyone can understand who's who but it's gonna be a hot minute.

I suppose Scattered Songbirds might also count as a multiverse, but it's specifically a Rise multiverse. SS!Leo and SS!Mikey open portals to different Rise timelines to help the turtles in these timelines and sometimes bring them home with them. It's not dissimilar in concept to @dreamweave01's Woven Ties AU (which is AWESOME and I recommend checking it out if you haven't along with their other art) but is wildly different in execution as it's based entirely on a random dream I had.

"It's no use," Rincewind said. "I'm no good at being calm and happy. Running away and worrying are what I'm good at."

"Then maybe it's time to see what life is like when you're not worried."

"Over!" Rincewind snapped. "Panic keeps you alive; calm is dangerous."

Twoflower sighed inwardly and tried to mould the idea into a shape that would fit inside Rincewind's head. "Have you ever considered that if you didn't waste so much time worrying about what might happen, you'd have more energy to deal with the things that do happen?"

Rincewind frowned but didn't argue. "Interesting hypothetical. Do go on."

"Well, when I found you after the battle, you spent half the walk back to the palace coming up with various terrible things that might happen to you."

"And then Lord Hong jumped out and put a knife to my throat!"

"And did the worry help?"

"Eh?" Rincewind blinked.

"Did it help?" Twoflower repeated patiently. "Did worrying help you spot him in time? Or blunt his knife? Maybe it distracted him at just the right moment for Cohen to jump in and save the day?"

"Of course not, don't be ridiculous!"

"Then what good does it actually do?"

Rincewind opened and closed his mouth silently in the face of Twoflower's triumphant little smile until he retorted with, "I get a certain satisfaction knowing that I was right when everything invariably blows up in my face."

"Is that really worth it?"

"It doesn't matter. Something dreadful is still going to happen anyway."

"If that really is inevitable - and I don't at all believe that it is -" Twoflower held up a hand to forestall Rincewind's arguments. "Then why not try to enjoy the time between disasters?"

"Because that would make things worse!" Rincewind blurted out, far louder than intended.

"Can you tell me why you said that?" Twoflower said carefully.

A warm hand reached for his own. Rincewind took it as long buried memories bubbled up and spilled out.

"Because the happiest day of my life was when I was accepted to UU, and two months later my grandad was dead. Then I turned out to be so bad at magic I'd probably have been kicked out anyway. 'Course the Octavo business saw to that anyway. And years later I met the only person who'd ever really believed in me, and I nearly died every bloody week with you. We saved the world together," he said quietly. "And then you left."

Twoflower let out a long breath. He reached an arm around him slowly, as if going to pet a skittish cat. Rincewind didn't so much lean in as collapse against him.

"I understand if you want to go back to Ankh-Morpork. I wouldn't stop you. You deserve to be happy. But I was hoping that maybe you could be happy here? With me?"

Rincewind blinked hard. "Alright." He cleared his throat. "I don't plan on leaving any time soon - or at all, now. So if nothing awful happens I'll try this toothed-wheel-at-night, there's-a-bean, if it'll make you happy."

"Cognitive therapy," Twoflower corrected his pronunciation. "It's about teaching you to be kinder to yourself, to stop your thoughts getting all tied up over things. And if you could do that, you'd make me the happiest man on the disc."

He leaned in for a kiss. Rincewind's lips met his halfway without even his token grumble.

Just a quick little something because I never remember the 25th in time to make anything and how small things matter even if they’re not remembered and how @overelegantstranger made the connection between Rincewind’s attitude to revolution in Interesting Times and the events of Night Watch.

*

It was a little over nine months after the Agatean People’s Revolution that it hit him. The overpowering sweet scent that dragged Rincewind back over twenty years to when he’d still been young and foolish enough to believe in revolutions.

He stopped and stared at the lilac flowers until even Twoflower noticed that he’d been prattling on to himself and Rincewind was several metres behind.

Rincewind barely flinched when a warm hand touched his.

“Twoflower, what’s today’s date?”

“May twenty sixth. Are you alright?”

“Then I’ve missed it,” Rincewind said, still not looking at him. “Wouldn’t be the first time, nor the third either for that matter. Not much you can do when you’re shipwrecked or running for your life, but I tried. They all tried too bloody hard, the poor sods.”

He plucked a bloom and tucked it into his hatband. Only then did he seem to notice Twoflower was staring at him.

“It was… a long time ago. A symbol of our own revolution, in Ankh Morpork.”

Twoflower didn’t look away. The silence drew more words out.

“I was a student back then, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew what Winder was doing to the city. No, scratch that, I was bloody stupid for wanting to get involved. Not that I even did anything in the end; I don’t think bundling some drunk sod into the back of the university to avoid the hurry-up wagon counts.”

Twoflower squeezed his hand. “Dear chap, small things matter. You should know that. Think of that travelogue I wrote.”

“I’d rather not.” Rincewind played with the fraying hem of his sleeve and stared back into the past. “Ye gods, I couldn’t have been any older than Lotus Blossom is now.”

A breeze scattered lilac petals across the ground. Six thousand miles away, Rincewind knew, the same flowers were falling onto a marble headstone.

Some small, never quite quashed voice whispered, It could have worked. We could have won, the same as we did here. Another part of him, the part which was always counting exits, always looking for concealed weapons, growled back. And we could have, should have lost last year! Anyone with any sense could see we’d have died every bit as slowly as those poor bastards in Cable Street. And we didn’t. We’re here. We’re alive. And if I ever meet the Lady again, I can’t be grateful to her for it.

Rincewind pulled Twoflower close against his skinny chest. “Promise me something?”

“Anything you want.” He tucked his head under Rincewind’s chin.