schmerica. This universe makes me and etben wriggle like happy puppies

etben and I are entertaining ourselves with an AU of MUCH JOY AND LONGING IN OUR HEARTS, which is to say the most obvious possible thing to make the band boys into, which means just what you would think.

Gerard and Ray are the farthest along; they've all been at the university for practically forever, finished with their coursework and just teaching and writing at this point. Gerard's focus is in discourse analysis and pragmatics, Ray's a phonologist. They share a tiny office in the top floor of the building; the door sticks and it's freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer.

Gerard loves teaching. He doesn't make a great first impression on his kids, though -- he always comes off as kind of weird and flaky and a tiny bit creepy at first. (There's always a vicious rumor going around that Gerard's a vampire. It's encouraged by most of the department.) The thing is, though, that any student who stays after to ask questions, or who actually comes to his office hours, quickly realizes that Gerard is kind of the best guy in the world, and he's just ridiculously earnest and helpful. Gerard's whole thing is about wanting to help the students! HE WANTS TO SAVE THEIR LIVES (OR AT LEAST THEIR MIDTERM GRADES.)

So, yeah, the students who have been to his office hours are all DUDE GERARD'S OUR TA? HE'S THE AWESOMEST OMG. And everybody else is all "..."

Also, Gerard always has these early morning classes, and he's always late, and comes in with his huge sunglasses and uncombed hair and a big scarf around him, holding the world's biggest cup of coffee.

The other rumor going around about Gerard all the time is, of course, that he is gay. The baby undergrads are always convinced of this without anybody actually having to tell them, right up to the point where they catch sight of Lyn-Z and Gerard canoodling and realize he has a crazy hot wife.

Lyn-Z's a grad student, too, but in a different university nearby. They live together in their tiny crappy graduate family housing and sit at the table across from each other drinking coffee and grading problemsets.

Ray, on the other hand, is not so big on office hours. Actually, Ray's kind of sucky at teaching -- not because he can't do it, but it's totally not a priority for him. Ray is really really into the pure research and studying part of it, so he has all these articles and conference talks but can't remember his students' names.

Frank is a sociolinguistics guy, himself. Frank is the very high energy kind of guy when it comes to teaching, moving and gesturing and getting really excited about everything. He brings candy to discussion sections, those big bags of Halloween stuff, and throws mini-Snickers bars to people whenever they speak up or answer a question.

Frank lives off campus, in, like, an actual house with his girlfriend Jamia. Jamia has an actual job. Like a grown-up. It's weird. Their house is tiny but really cute, with a big wooded backyard and their dogs, and it's where they hold all the potlucks, because it has enough room for everyone.

Mikey's a phonetician. He does all these recordings and measurements and he has all these charts and graphs and stuff that no one else really understands at all. He's really quiet and intense and he's always in the middle of research that sounds really boring to everyone else (especially the ones who are like "I got into a soft science for a reason") but totally lights him up.

Mikey and Pete, who does translation theory, had this thing last summer. They were both research assistants for the same professor, and they hit it off totally and were inseparable for ten weeks. It weirded everyone out. Because, for one thing, everyone knew it was a bad idea. There are always all sorts of DIRE PREDICTIONS about dating someone in the wrong subfield/dating someone in the SAME subfield/dating someone outside the department -- but the fact of the matter is that linguists just shouldn't date. They're kind of weird.

But, yeah, they totally broke up when classes started again in the fall, which could have drawn this horrible line down the entire department, but ended up okay. Mikey started going out with Alicia, who's a grad student over in the Romance Languages department. (She also had a thing with Pete once, but considering the size of their campus, that's true of a pretty large percentage of people.)

Pete's going out with one of the undergrads now, a senior named Patrick. They do kind of a lot of PDA, but they seem pretty happy? It's the happiest and steadiest anyone's ever seen Pete, that's for sure. No one's quite sure what's in it for Patrick, but he seems more than pleased with the arrangement, too.

Pete also flirts with the babies, which is kind of gross. He's one of the TAs for the intro class, which is mostly sophomores, and ... well. It might not exactly be flirting, but he's definitely very friendly. In the kind of way that skeeves the rest of the TAs out, a bit. But they've all met Patrick, so! They're all pretty sure Pete isn't actually doing anything with the babies.

The other thing about that is that Pete actually seems to be a pretty good recruiter for majors for the department. Because, like, Ryan Ross? Got waaaaay into it from him. Ryan and Spencer and Jon and Brendon are all little baby undergrads, actually, just taking their first few classes, but they have promise.

Pete's roommate Joe is in the department, too, with an interest in computational linguistics. If you get high with Joe and play video games with him he will tell you all about his plan to build a robot army. Not just any robot army ... a robot army who can talk.

Actually, Joe will tell you all about this plan even if you ask him while he's sober.

Gabe is not actually even in the linguistics department. This does not seem to matter to Gabe. Gave is actually in the psych department. He does take the classes that overlap between the departments, though. He wants to use linguistics to CONTROL PEOPLE'S MINDS and they have to keep explaining it doesn't work like that, Gabe. Still, he believes.

Gabe, everyone is pretty sure, actually does do stuff with the babies. There's a running bet he has going. It's gross yet compelling. Of course, Gabe also leers at all the grad students, so it's not like he's prejudiced.

Andy is into linguistics anthropology. He spent some time in Central America helping with a grammar for an undocumented language. He still has tattoos, piercing, is vegan and straight edge. He bicycles everywhere in the world, no matter what the weather or distance.

The other grad student in the department is Bob, who's mostly into L1 acquisition (how children learn their first language). Bob started out studying at a different university, but transferred over here after a year or two. The consensus on Bob is pretty much that he's the awesomest guy ever; everybody loves him. Frank especially likes to climb all over him. They worked on a big project together last year and no one is sure exactly what happened, but Bob looked really tired all the time and apparently Frank almost died. They both claim it was the best collaboration ever. Or at least, Frank claims it was, and Bob doesn't disagree.

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Posted by

etben.livejournal.com

PEARL THEY ARE LINGUISTS AND IT MAKES ME HAPPY LIKE PUPPIES.

...which is odd, since linguists are not really very much like puppies. BUT STILL. *dies of glee*

Posted by

pearl-o.livejournal.com

LINGUISTS AND PUPPIES ARE ALIKE BECAUSE THEY ARE BOTH ADORABLE, DUH.

Posted by

ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com

I have no idea who these people are, and yet I feel like I know them *g*.

Posted by

pearl-o.livejournal.com

*giggles* Funny how that works!

Posted by

thelionforreal.livejournal.com

this makes me so happy omg. university AUs are always always ftw, and i was a linguistics double major for like three seconds before sticking solely with film/video, and like. awesome.

dsudis was a linguistics major. she will love this, i think.

Posted by

pearl-o.livejournal.com

Oh, man, you know, I used to know Dira had a linguistics background, but I totally forgot? I love how fandom is always surprisingly full of people who are geeky in the same random way as you.

Posted by

speshope.livejournal.com

....awwww. Bob with BABIES LEARNING TO TALK. ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME? (and/or convert me to bandom?)

Posted by

pearl-o.livejournal.com

Not you specifically! Um.

This universe makes me and etben wriggle like happy puppies

This universe makes me and etben wriggle like happy puppies

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