#spice is one helluva drug

[lesser-mook]

DUNE PART TWO (Recommendation: Round 2) *light spoilers

Went in for another watch: I wasn’t tripping, this is definitely Jesus parallel/more so Anti-Christ propaganda. On the level of The Matrix, which is what this is, this generations Matrix. (also Jesus imagery/Anti-Christ/transhumanist propaganda)

Dune is worthy of that position too; Cause think about it, it’s accomplishing a level of epic the MCU took 10 years to build up to.

There’s no, and I mean NO REASON why the stakes, the action, and the characters of DUNE (movieverse) are this good when not only is Disney trying so hard to do the exact same thing AGAIN and failing —

But this is custom lore a lot of people aren’t even familiar with, this isn’t a superhero or a anime adaptation, this is coming from some book I’ve never even heard of and it’s this good? (Not a masterpiece, it’s just well made)

Both propaganda, (Matrix /Dune movies) don’t get it twisted but they’re good, except Matrix 4, that was ass.

Reverend Mother said it best:

“There are no sides”, none.

Just the order, in chaos. And if there is no chaos, well well well, better brace yourself because we’ll create a tragedy to course correct.

(Said the person part of an elite group manipulating events of the world and pulling strings, wiping out bloodlines, breeding their own followers with certain people in power to artificially bring forth a force from the “outer world”. They’re literally telling you what’s going on.)

Both propaganda, but one works & the other doesn’t (Sequel trilogy, Phase 4 MCU).

Why? because them being female isn’t their stake in the setting or their stake in your mind as you’re watching it, they’re just good characters first, people first & it registers to you as normal, not woke. Not exceptional because they’re women.

I didn’t really pay attention the first time but Florence did a good job as Irulan, channeling that mature wisdom of a leader in the making. She’s pretty smart (not in the way that modern society WANTS girls to be smart which is a Scientist or something, she’s intelligent politically and well read) and after she explained her case of the dangers of downplaying prophecy, religion & martyrdom and what that means to people wanting hope — To the Emperor. He said she’d make a fine Empress.

And he’s right. It’s easy to miss what she’s doing (actually) in the story, you see Florence ofc, but Irulan is easy to miss. That’s because the story doesn’t over-inflate her importance, when she’s more significant than she appears.

Point being, she’s a royal with a conscience (a good example of a decent person on the side of the “enemy”), she’s here & there throughout the story, being the voice of reason even to Reverend Mother, until she’s face to face, not with Paul but Muad’Dib.

Everything she said and did led up to her facing him, a force of nature of a man. Completely different animal. And both of them told the exact same thing (“Strategic alliance”)

The story begins with Irulan and it ends with Chani.

Why doesn’t the movie inflate the fact that they’re strong women? Because the movie doesn’t treat you like an idiot. That’s how it should be done.

It’s not putting them on a pedestal like many woke productions, or bending them over the couch for the sake of pandering like in Anime. Two different extremes.

Yes, Chani mentions that the Fremen way is that men and women are equal or (how any competent society should be functioning). If anyone reaches to say that’s woke? (I’m not even going to entertain that, or be smartass. Just relax. That line doesn’t mean what you think it means/ And this is coming from a mf who’s calling this Anti-Christ propaganda, so IF I’m saying the line wasn’t that deep, then it wasn’t that deep.)

Cause if you wanted to nitpick? That’s easy bait, when it’s really not.

Overall, this reminds me of Aaron Ehasz’ writing chops, how a Live Action Avatar The Last Airbender should be written.

Paul survived a genocide just like Aang but “Usul” is going in a very different direction:

Unlike Deku & Aang, Muad’Dib is not here to make friends, appeal to your inner child or some shit or hand out mercy for nothing in return.

But you’ll see what I mean. Paul is a little Gary Stu-ish (on purpose, hence the chosen one narrative. One of the signs is that he knows some of the Fremen way without being taught. Neo was a gary stu too.)

Yet the guy (Paul) still has to be taught, like Neo & Aang, he’s not perfect. He cries, he gets pissed, he doubts himself, he’s human still.)

Not a perfect little angel like Deku (who cried way too much, gets pissed only when convenient but when abused by the same guy his entire life) or unless it was time to make a CRaZy FacE during a fight. Please.

DUNE PT 1–2, Not as groundbreaking as The Matrix, not even close.

But given the fact that this has an almost 200 million lower budget than Endgame and is a better film than Endgame in story, (some) visuals, direction, writing and effects?

So yes, still a decent little movie, outside the realm of conspiracy.

Part One did it’s justice setting the groundwork, which is why it felt dry or boring for some people.

It got the work done, so the second could come out swinging, which is why the pacing felt so much better in this movie, it started right in the thick of the plot. The work was done already.

The level of foreshadowing in this movie, throughout? Is insane (PT 1 too). I counted it somewhat, the most throwaway line or an establishing shot you’d easily miss or overlook as random or an artistic decision, sets up something that will happen later, or in a couple of minutes; Or the next movie, and no I’m not even talking about Paul’s dreams.

Visual foreshadowing, visual storytelling. Vision. Not agenda shoved down your throat, not blatantly anyway. If you want to sell people propaganda without them rejecting it?

Make it good & wait for them call it a “masterpiece” or something. (People won’t question what they like, because bias lowers your defenses. That’s warfare for the mind, The Matrix mentioned something similar.)

But? When he goes Lisan-Al Gaib mode? And his speech scene in the southern temple? (my fav scene in the movie, how it began, the scene that led up to it, his stride, that shot, the MUSIC. Jfc, Hans Zimmer.)

Projecting his voice, like a godly apparition in human form. His aggression, body-language, he’s not asking, he’s telling you what’s going to happen.

The man can see timelines without an Infinity Stone, the LAST thing he wants to hear is someone informing him he has to kill one of his many mentors because of “tradition”, ALL just to speak his mind in a gathering.

Yeah, anyone would get pissed when all they’ve been hearing is “Prophecy, prophecy, prophecy” for the past imma say…(3 months toa year)

That entire scene was him embracing the role, while expressing his frustration that he had to do it at all.

He sells it 100%, reminds me a lot of Jesus roasting the priests in the temple. Same exact situation. Some other hang ups I have would be:

We never get to see exactly how Worm Riders dismount their Worms, we’re never shown how they get off. Especially how they manage to get a pregnant woman & crowd on and off one of those behemoths.

The Voice, as a concept is too broken. There should’ve been some kind of criteria like if you try to use it on someone who can also use it, it can be countered or something (Like “The Force”). Or you risk injuring your vocal chords if abused etc. It’s way too broken, you can win pretty much any fight by just commanding them to die. It’s basically Lelouch’s Geass

Paul is a sympathetic MC, he’s cool, he’s a bookworm, it’s good to see him learn something from others (to negate too much gary-stu energy), he’s like the quiet, nice kid in class. But he’s not all that interesting, that is until he transitions and he starts carrying himself a little differently. Pretentious? Sure, Messiah complex to the max, but again, consider his frustration with the whole thing. And he’s got the energy to make people follow, and I’m interested to see what he does next, that’s the point essentially. He’s not that engaging until he is.

PART TWO is worth the money because it’s 2 films in one, surprisingly well paced. But there in itself lies an issue, there’s a lot going on in just this one movie that could’ve been fleshed out. As you notice, there’s very subtle points where time-skips are implied, like Maud’Dib’s reputation, we didn’t really get to see how Usul got that reputation just that the name means something infamous to the Harkonnen’s at a point, so much so that that’s how they address him, like he’s Robin Hood or Captain America during the Civil War Arc (books). But it works because it keeps the movie from being 3 hours, but definitely skimmed over some things.

Some of the fight choreography has some chinks in the armor in the bigger scenes, like a character’s back it turned to someone who’s facing them and they don’t strike. The combat is overall solid, but that (in any movie) drives me nuts, and I saw it on my first viewing lol. But I won’t specify when or where, I don’t wanna ruin it. Because I can’t unsee it myself.

I find it very, VERY unlikely that the Harkonnen’s wouldn’t have a contingency for The Sand “Demons”/ Worms by now. Nukes exist, space ships, personal shields, hover jet packs, but not an Orbital Rail gun? Or a mounted Rail gun on a base wall? Fishy. Awfully convenient. (Harkonnen’s would have my ass in R&D because that’d be my first question to Chain of Command “What if we simply designed-”)

This is not a masterpiece, it’s a well made movie with an interesting parallel to The Matrix, very very well composed (Props to Hans Zimmer), well acted, the setting & story are interesting for what it is and how ambitious it is.

And very ominous overtones that caught my eye.

Might shill it again another time.

I recommend you watch it in theaters at least once before it goes.

If you have tinnitus or something, DO NOT brave IMAX.

That shit gets so loud it physically assaults you sometimes.

And if not, then enjoy it however you can get to it. It’s the same movie wherever you watch it.

TMI: I personally ignored the first movie when it dropped, “Paul’s Dream” OST somehow found it’s way to me via a playlist in 2022, finally watched PART ONE March 2024, then I was impressed with what PART ONE was setting up, and the sequel impressed me more —

So, If this is trying to be a Trilogy, I’m definitely going to have eyes on that 3rd installment.

Because Paul’s Dream in PART ONE regarding what Chani does to him, definitely makes more sense given not only — how uneasy she was the moment he broke off from the worm caravan suddenly to (do what he did), what he did in the temple, and how scorned she was later on (won’t specify) —

We can only imagine what else he's going to do that (might) lead to her making that call.

And that’s an “if” because Paul says to Jessica (after the attack, tent scene) he saw his death but claims that’s not what it means. 

And it also makes sense in context of the story. The knife was given to him by Chani, and to begin his journey to become Kwisatz: Paul had to die through killing another (Jamis). Killing another is killing himself. So the vision’s meaning was likely isolated to PART ONE’s plot, but it’s something to keep in mind for potential PART THREE.

It’s funny, cause My Hero spoils the ending in just the second episode, it doesn’t work because there’s no narrative point to it, doesn’t progress or fit the kind of story that it is.

Like Spider-man 2002 didn’t begin with Peter saying he’s Spider-Man, it began with a question:

"Who am I?"

It ENDED with him saying who he is, answering the question, because narratively, it makes more sense to hear it AFTER we see the goddamn story, and what he just sacrificed to be who he is. All to justify the answer to the question:

I bet you before now, you didn't really even think that hard on Peter's question making sense to that extent until now lol. That's how subtle it is.

Tangent: (Horikoshi copied other people’s homework without knowing why their shit worked in the first place, in context. The man at heart was a fanboy of A LOT of franchises, and you can see it in the entire story *He named a street after "Tatooine"* But his execution & ideas needed more time to mature. His mistake was getting involved with Shonen Jump before he had it figured out and or getting involved with them at all.)

Otherwise, main reason SM2002 narration works: Is because it isn’t a fantasy film with prophetic elements, it’s a superhero title and it didn't spoil anything.

For that MHA story, us knowing Deku becomes the greatest hero contributes to nothing, because for that story, that doesn’t make sense to know it that goddamn soon.

But in this story, with visions & prophecies, all these biblical parallels, knowing what happens in fragments, works because of how the film executes it, the setting is compatible with it — hooks you to keep watching, some visions are proven right. So for the audience that gives us a sense of progress and achievement even though all we’re doing is watching, we’re not doing anything, It’s very immersive. 

Like J.J Abrams “Mystery Box” technique but it’s not shit.

Hence why, DUNE: The movies, so far, are already a better Sequel Trilogy than the Sequel Trilogy of Star Wars. Because like EPISODE 7, PART ONE was just 100% Set up and foundation. And PART TWO was basically EP8-9, and now we might get another.

2 ways to technically spoil events here, but 2 out of 3 examples work. Because the storytelling methodology are completely different.

MHA was just copying an aesthetic without understand why the original worked (which is why the story began promising but ended up a narrative failure)

DUNE is compatible with it because the story itself already has mystic/biblical/prophetic elements, so it’s compatible with the trope

And for Spider-Man 2002 specifically, it didn’t jump the gun before the story was even finished in the writing room. There was a long-term point to the narration and the question.

It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.

[wishful-thinking64]

One Hell of an Unpopular Opinion #03

Characters like Barbie Wire, Chaz, Crimson, Octavia, and Stella only exist as plot devices to garner sympathy for other characters. _______ I knew fully well that Chaz and Crimson were going to merely be plot devices for Moxxie the more I watched Exes & Oohs. And sure enough, Chaz was killed at the end of that very episode and Crimson is yet another wacky cartoon villain that the narrative expects for you to take seriously. Both of these characters existed so that the audience could gain sympathy (or at least pity) for Moxxie being raised in a Mafia family and having been abused as a child along with being betrayed by his ex-boyfriend (who also happened to be Millie's ex-boyfriend for some reason.) Other than Moxxie's Mafia family upbringing making zero sense the more you think about it, Viv has basically done this exact backstory before in the form of Angel Dust (with the whole mobster backstory who was also abused by his father.) However, the Exes & Oohs episode and title actually stems from one of the HH mockup episodes that was originally about Charlie and Vaggie coming across Charlie's ex, Seviathan (yes, that's what Viv named him), and his sister, Helsa, while they were at a dinner party.

Now, do I think Chaz and Crimson could've had the potential to be good characters? In all honesty, no. Especially not Chaz. The guy is a harmful stereotype of pansexual people and how, "They'll sleep with anyone," which no, they won't. I'm not pansexual myself but that thought process is as gross as it is fucking stupid. The only person who I've seen even re-writing Chaz has been Loves Art23 (I mainly know her for YouTube videos being critical on Hazbin Hotel + Helluva Boss along with other shows like the disaster known as High Guardian Spice) and I think she's done a fairly good job so kudos to her for making him work. Personally, though I'm scrapping him as that gives me one less character to worry about when re-writing HB. Crimson would have to be heavily and I mean HEAVILY reworked/re-written in order for him to make any actual sense. That and I'm tired of every character having some variation of the same daddy issues in the Hellaverse. Which means he's also gonna get axed from me. Moving onto the ladies I mentioned, let's start off with Barbie Wire.

Having been foreshadowed since the pilot of I.M.P. (as seen when Tilla was still Barb's and Blitzo's older sister rather than their mother) Barbie Wire was an anticipated character by fans for years! And then her actual appearance finally happened in Unhappy Campers, an episode hated by practically everyone who saw it, and no one really cared about her showing up, other than the fact that the writers thought that having her seduce a BARELY legal adult would make for a good joke, when in reality, it only made everybody uncomfortable and several people dislike Barbie because of it. Sure, near the end of the episode she had that "emotional" scene with Blitzo that wants the viewers to feel bad for him and Barbie before she left but in the long run it didn't matter as fans barely even talk about it because of how uneventful it truly was. So, with that out of the way, would I keep Barbie Wire around for a rewrite of HB? To that I say, yes! There are several paths Barbie Wire's overall character could go in. If you're mainly sticking to canon, then what you have to work with is a former circus performer who lost her mother in a fire caused by her twin brother that left his own best friend to rot and be disabled for the rest of his life. It's very likely that this very fire, caused her to be out of a job and probably even homeless for a bit which could explain why she ended up becoming both a drug attic and a drug dealer. Homelessness is one of the few things that nobody wants to experience. It causes people to be filled with a sense of overwhelming loneliness and desperation as many of them either believe that there's nothing they can do or they do anything and everything that they can to get out of it even if that means resorting to crime. If you wanted to have her be loosely based on canon instead, you could make it to where she never learned about who started the fire and actually stuck with Blitzo well into adulthood. Have her become one of the members of I.M.P. and later down the line have her learn through someone like Fizz or maybe Cash (her and Blitzo's father) what actually went down that day. Have her be rightfully pissed off at Blitzo for screwing over multiple people along with being the one responsible for killing their mom. Anyway, let's proceed onto Stella and her daughter Octavia.

As much as the narrative wants me to hate Stella with a burning passion cause she hurts Stolas, I can't do it for multiple reasons but I'll list my top three. #01.) Stella's just as (if not even more so) stuck in this arranged loveless marriage as Stolas is. #02.) If the man I had no choice in marrying not only cheated on me with a man from one of the lowest classes in all of Hell but IN OUR OWN HOME & SHARED BEDROOM NO LESS? OH, FUCK NO!

#03.) This woman had to spend 9 months having to nourish and care for a baby inside her stomach that she had with a man that didn't even want to sleep with her. On top of that, she had to have become pregnant with Octavia when she was a young adult since current day Stolas and Stella are only in their mid 30s. I need you to let that information sink in.

In short, I can't hate Stella for loathing Viv's pathetic self insert bird twink with every fiber of her being.

Having said that, would I have Stella in my HB rewrite? Well, considering that I plan on keeping the war that happened in the bible that caused Lucifer and several angels to fall from grace, one of which being Stolas. Kind of. Allow me to elaborate, I would keep Stella as Octavia's mother but I wouldn't have her marry Stolas. I'd have her be a surrogate mother that way Stolas still gets an heir and Octavia could still exist. Speaking of Octavia...

We all know that she exists to make Stolas look like a better person as several stans of this show love to say how much of a good dad Stolas is when he isn't. He neglects Octavia frequently in favor of Blitzo and only pays attention to her when she's gone although EVEN THAT doesn't last long as shown in Seeing Stars where HE KNEW Octavia was missing on Earth but rather than ACTIVELY look for his daughter, what does he do? HE SITS THROUGH A STUPID LIVE COMEDY SHOW CAUSE BLITZO IS PERFORMING! HE COMPLETELY SIDELINES HIS OWN DAUGHTER IN FAVOR OF A LIVE COMEDY SHOW!

God, Octavia deserves so much better than to have a dad like him. I'm keeping Octavia for my HB rewrite so that this poor girl not only realizes how much of a bastard her dad is but eventually gets the found family she deserves. I don't plan for it to be through I.M.P. though. In closing, the characters of this show deserve to be better developed but especially the women in them.

_______

That was a long one to get through cause it's been on my mind for a while. Thank you all for reading through it and bye for now everybody!

[organizechaoss]

"We're Professionals" - a HuskderDust fic

Prewritten. Updates on Tuesday’s

Blurb

"Well you just gonna stand there? Open it." Cherri glared at him across the kitchen counter.

Gingerly, Anthony unfolded it reading over the first few paragraphs. He dropped the rest of the papers to the floor.

"I got the part."

A Hazbin Hotel Actor AU that gets into the dark nitty gritty world of publicity, fame, and love centered on HuskerDust. Husk is known to be Helliwood’s Sweetheart who’s tied up in a lot of contracts and people he has to please. Anthony is an up and coming actor from the theater world, who just got his first big break.

It’s a love story.

See more below ;) or just start reading here <3

CONTENT WARNINGS FOR WHOLE FIC, PLEASE READ: This fic contains elements of coercion, non-con drugging, sexual assault, and false assault allegations (not my proudest moment — false accusations are quite rare). If you have concerns, feel free to message me or comment any questions you may have.

Now onto a more polite introduction:

Hello and welcome! This is a self indulgent fic I started months ago that sort of possessed me and I haven’t been able to get rid of it since. It’s a HuskerDust Actor AU set in the Hellverse but not as dystopian (i.e. no extermination). Essentially, the actors Anthony and Husk are playing the characters Angel Dust and Harley in the show Hazbin (which is shockingly similar to Hazbin Hotel in our world, lol). Husk is already famous and known to be Helliwood’s Sweetheart. Anthony is from the theater world and at the start of his career. 

It’s a love story.

Some minor warnings before we get into stuff:

I started this when I was newer to the fandom and used a bunch of throwaway names from both Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel to try and limit OC’s as much as possible

I don’t know much about the acting industry or anything. Pls chalk up inaccuracies to this being a Hell thing.

I’m not really a smut writer (yet), so there’s no fun spice here. I’m an ace writer who’s used to writing ace love stories — which this ended up being one, sort of…

On the other hand, I am an angst writer so while this is going to start out like a classic actor au, this fic can get a bit dark starting around Chapter 10 — but has a happy ending <3

Here’s some world building stuff and how posting this fic will go:

I’ll be posting weekly on Tuesday’s

This fic is approximately 250,000+ words in total and is fully written

There are 3 main arcs and I added one more bonus arc pretty much full of healing to atone for the hurt I inflicted <3

Arc 1 (Filming): Chapters 1 - 17 (~100,000 words)

Arc 2 (Post Production): Chapters 18 - 24 (~50,000 words)

Arc 3 (Premiere and After): Chapters 25 - 37 (~60,000 words)

Bonus Arc (Healing): Chapters 38 - 46 (~30,000 words)

This is set in Hell where there’s no extermination. Heaven and angel’s aren’t mentioned and angelic weapons are not real

All characters are demons, not human sinners, they were born and raised in Hell and don’t have a past human life. Everything they deal with is here and now and in the context of show business

Demons can be killed like humans can

All characters maintain their name in ‘real life’ and I gave them new ones for the ‘show’ — this is with the exception of Angel Dust who is Anthony in ‘real life’ and Angel Dust on the ‘show’

Characters do not have the ‘powers’ you see in the show. They are just normal people that can heal a bit quicker than humans? Maybe?

Still interested? Start reading here ;)

[scaryscarecrows]

“You should sleep–”

“No.” Antoine doesn’t so much as look up from his laptop. “No. M’not–” There’s a shudder, almost imperceptible, an old mask sliding into place. “M’not gonna sleep anyway, after that.” He spares an easy grin Mark’s way, the one Mark knows has gotten him freebies before. “M’fine.”

“Put that away, it doesn’t work on me,” he says bluntly. “Fine. Just keep your ass outta my way or I’ll throw you out myself.”

“Mm-hm.” And just like that, the grin’s gone and he’s settled back into the chair he’s been in since this morning. “Patrol found some of Crane’s notes. Jimmy’s uploading them now, says he’ll be done in about an hour.”

Good. It’s been a hell of a night, nobody’s been sleeping much to begin with–always the pre-op excitement, last-minute preparations, you know–, and that last, frantic retreat to base…the boss’s notes on Scarecrow’s bullshit are pretty thorough, but Mark wants as much as he can anyway, to avoid…interactions. Or at least try to.

Honestly, he should force the issue of sleep. He really should. They all need the rest. But Antoine’s a stubborn little shit and Mark knows, even if he doesn’t know every last nitty-gritty bit, that this whole fiasco has triggered something bad. So he lets him be in favor of reaching over to adjust the oxygen mask and take the boss’s pulse (machines lie, his training doesn’t) and triple-check the IV. 

“I’m gonna grab a snack. Want something?”

“Nah, I’m good.” The easy grin comes back. “Don’t trust you not to drug me.”

Mark rolls his eyes.

“Don’t tempt me.”

* * *

Have you slept at all? Jimmy types out. For several minutes, there’s no answer and he thinks that maybe that’s done it, gotten Antoine to realize what time it is and go, ‘shit, bedtime’.

Have you?

Oh. Fuck him, then. He wasn’t supposed to flip this back around, that’s not how life works!

A little. I have the Green.

Don’t nag or I’ll tell Mark.

That motherfucker. He’ll do it, too, Jimmy knows he will. He doesn’t fight fair. Probably comes with being the Little Brother, but still.

I’ll sic Frank on you, he warns. 

Fuck off. I’m fine. There’s still an invasion to run, y’know.

Jimmy can’t help it. He does The Office stare. There is an invasion, true, and now they have a mad Bat to track, but really. Literally anybody else can manage this for a few hours. Antoine stubbornly refusing to budge from that crappy-ass IKEA chair is not going to make Batman materialize.

Whatever, he finally types. It’s your ass.

Get me the Dragon drone footage for Arkham, comes the quick reply. You redeploy a Cobra out there yet?

Oh my God. 

YES. It’s not there yet. 

Christ.

* * *

“Dude, have you moved at all?”

Antoine looks like hot death. Trent’s thinking he should maybe just pick him up and put him to bed like a toddler.

“Yes.”

“Lecturing the troops does not count.”

“Sure it does.” Taptaptaptap. “You asked if I moved. You didn’t say it had to be preapproved.”

Screw picking him up. He could bitchslap him into unconsciousness. It would work. It would be in his best interest, even. It wouldn’t even have to be a full bitchslap, probably; those dark circles say that a good, hard flick to the side of the head would put him down, but Mark’s such a nag about head trauma…

“Two hours of sleep is not gonna make or break it.”

“M’fine.” TAP. TAP. TAP. “S’what coffee’s for.”

Trent sighs. He’s not surprised. Honestly, the Knight had been equally annoying when Antoine went down from what turned out to be a helluva flu. Mark had banned him from medical because of contagion risk–none of them had been allowed in for the first two days, actually–but he hadn’t exactly taken it well, either.

Fucking dumpster fire.

“Whatever, dumbass. Want me to bring you anything?”

“The report from the last Miagani patrol and a bag of Zapp’s?” 

Well. At least it’s not a request for fucking Adderall.

“Fine.”

* * *

Riley doesn’t even bother nagging, asking, or suggesting. He just drops his old Souls flask into Antoine’s lap with a curt, May as well.

“What’s in it?”

Spiced rum. Not drugged.

It’s really not. Riley had considered it, honestly, but that trick will only work once and really, it’s not to that point yet. If he wants to be stiff in that stupid chair, that’s his problem.

“Thanks.” He doesn’t open it, but there. Riley’s done his bit.

The boss hasn’t woken up at all, but Mark did take him off of oxygen yesterday, so that’s something. The fear toxin’s out of his system, too, but he’s still, well, hella fucked up. Tends to happen when a whole-ass building comes down on you. The fact that he walked outta there is…well…it’s great and all, but Jesus Christ, how stubborn can you be?

It’ll help, he says, and taps the flask. Drink it.

“I will, I will,” comes the absent reply. Then, “I want access to GCPD’s interior cameras. Think you can help Jimmy get it for me?”

Riley would almost be offended at the question, if the circumstances were different.

One hour, he says. Maybe take a power nap or something.

“M’good. Have fun.”

Drugs are too nice. Riley votes for a chokehold. He’ll check with Mark when he gets back. A little tiny bit of damage isn’t that bad, surely. He’ll even apologize, if it helps.

* * *

Frank intends to lay down the law, really he does, but when he comes in, Antoine’s asleep. Like, out cold asleep; his laptop’s hanging on like grim death and he’s wadded into his flannel and definitely heading for a cricked neck, but he’s asleep.

Fucking finally.

He takes the laptop first, closes it up and sets it aside, before stepping out for a blanket.

“Any luck?” Mark asks. Frank shrugs.

“He’s out, I’m not gonna wake him.”

“Out?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll take it. Fucking family dumbasses, I swear to God–”

“Shh.” Frank flicks out the ratty old squishy blanket Mark keeps in his main office. “It’s your own fault if you wake him up now.”

He heads back in, tucks the blanket around Antoine as best he can without disturbing him, and sighs. This is not ideal. Not even a little bit. But it’s better than nothing.

“Mm–” Antoine shifts a bit, hand coming up to clutch at the blanket around his shoulders. “Da…”

“Shh,” he whispers. “Go back to sleep.”

“Hrm…”

He jogs back out before anything else can happen. Mark frowns.

“Fuckin’ idiot,” he grumbles. “Just go to bed.”

“He’s a grown-ass man,” Frank points out. Mark rolls his eyes.

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

[fizziepopangel]

Got any Octavia headcanons? Just in general 🦉🌠

Now, I don't have a ton since Octavia isn't one of my favorite characters and doesn't have a ton of screentime, but I did have a few, so ask and you shall receive!

“This place REEKS of corporate shame.”

(Octavia headcanons I think are pretty accurate)

Octavia is super active on Sinstagram, but unlike most girls her age, she mostly posts photography and sometimes she tries silly trends or makeup looks with her dad.

Despite her original anger at her father’s affair, Octavia grows to love Blitz as if he were a second dad.

Via practices magic often with tutors or in school, but she prefers learning with her dad because she enjoys the bonding time it gives them. When her parents split up, one of the hardest things for her was having her studies with her dad cut in half.

Her favorite snack is roasted marshmallows (sometimes smores). She often just gets a bag of marshmallows and sits in her room, using her pyrokinesis to roast them while she watches horror movies in bed.

While she is asexual, Octavia is biromantic. Stolas and Loona are the only two people who she's felt comfortable enough to come out to.

She loves to read, mostly thrillers and mystery novels. She plans to have enough books to rival her father's plant collection.

After her trip to the human world in “Seeing Stars”, Loona and Octavia made it a point to have coffee at least once a month. While the two usually have coffee and walk around Stylish Occult and other hell stores similar to it, they use the time to vent about their fathers, school/work, unbeknownst to their fathers, the girls sometimes sneak to earth to take in the sights there.

Loona is the first person she tried drugs or alcohol with. Via really wanted to try something rebellious so Loona supervised her while smoked a little weed and took a few shots.... then spent the rest of the night holding her hair while she puked and trying to bring down the paranoia levels. They both agreed Stolas and Blitz never needed to know that happened.

Stella is afraid of reptiles…. Unbeknownst to her, Stolas has let their daughter keep a pet snake that she found in his garden. Via has had this snake for almost 4 years without her mother's knowledge and it's name is Starlight.

Octavia still hasn’t mastered transforming into her full demon form, but she is more interested in learning to transform into her human form since she’s seen both of her parents and Loona do it before and she thinks they all look quite pretty in their human forms… Since she struggles with finding anything attractive about herself now, she wonders if she’ll be as pretty as them.

Octavia is extremely musically inclined and despite her mother hating it, Via taught herself to play the drums.

Via visits her father in the hospital every day. He makes her promise to take care of his plants and she actually ends up really enjoying tending to the garden, she even talks to the plants and plays music for them to try to cheer them up since, much like her, they're also feeling a bit lost without Stolas at home.

After taking up journaling, she took up writing poetry and she sometimes performs it at open mic nights. She’s never told anyone, but she really enjoys it and despite her demeanor, she’s found that her mental health has improved tremendously since she started writing.

Collects interesting/weird taxidermy and gives each one a unique and personality.

Up until her first appearance in Helluva Boss, Octavia actually did the most to earn her mother’s affection. She stopped in hopes that the drastic change in behavior would catch her mother’s attention… When it didn’t, she slowly started learning who she was apart from her parents and came up with her current personality and aesthetic.

Loves spice. Like could care less about cookies or cupcakes most of the time but wants to eat the hottest pepper she can find like a tic tac.

Very much the type who wants to advocate for those who are struggling. Since she can’t do much to make hell better, once she’s old enough and learns to shift into her human form, she totally comes to the human realm to help with protests for causes she believes in.

Speaks in nothing but song lyrics sometimes. No reason, just does it.

[foxilayde]

Sansana Part 1/2[Poe Dameron x Fem!Reader]

Warnings: 18+ ONLY. Drugs, illegal activity, slavery, non-explicit sex, cursing, denial of feelings.

THIS IS PART ONE, PART TWO WILL BE OUT NEXT WEEK!

Summary: You’re a spice runner with your partner in crime Poe Dameron. The Pkye Syndicate has entrusted you with a special mission and Poe is making things interesting...

Word Count: 5k

A/N: This is a gift to my dear friend Alex @blackberries45 it’s her birthday today, so show her some LOVE. The reader character is going to be called ‘Lex’ for obvious reasons.

Spice. Not ryll, not polstine, and certainly not fucking gliterstim. Sansana Spice to be more accurate. Highly prized, highly expensive, and highly illegal. A useful crime world currency. Crime. Ha! The word has no meaning to you in a galaxy where planets are being vaporized and the war doesn’t seem to have a single thing worth fighting for. The so called republic, who would gladly toss you in a cell for the rest of your life for finding a dusting of Sansana on your flight suit, doesn’t do shit about the slavery and sentient beings abuse that’s been taking place on Kessel for the past 500 standard years. Wonder why that could be. Couldn’t be because the planet-vaporizers and generals of the planet defenders alike are hooked on the stuff. Not hooked, like, medically. Well, sometimes that’s the case. But they’re hooked on the money. Every currency has gotta be backed by something, and credit where credits are due… you can find the Fort Knox of the galaxy on the northern hemisphere of Kessell; with the droids and the slaves with their vibropicks and short life expectancies. 

You’ve seen them. The slaves. Droids and mammalians nearly indistinguishable from each other- cloaked in the red dust of the deep mines. Children. Of every species. Probably born into the shit. You can’t care, you can’t afford to, so you turn a blind eye like everyone else in the galaxy, you get your shipment and get the hell out. You fucking hate Kessel and you’re glad to be on the ship leaving the ugly bubbling rock. You’ve heard the southern hemisphere is nicer. Plantations inhabited by the most intolerable people you could imagine. It does turn your stomach to think about it too much, hence the getting the fuck out of dodge, but even if you stopped, even if you quit, it wouldn’t matter. The boring and drilling won’t end on your account and there’d be a new runner to replace you. So it goes. It’s the lifeblood of the galaxy, Sansana. A tidal force. And some folks want to virtue signal and talk down to you just because you’re riding the wave instead of getting dashed on the rocks. Whatever. They can drown if they like, not your problem.

In short, it doesn’t matter what you do. Bakers, gunmen, artists, and thieves. If you’ve got credits in your pocket- then baby you’ve got blood on your hands. So what? You’ve cut out the middle-man. You’re closer to the root, to the seam; you’re a spice runner. Hell, spending most of your life in a tanker ship dodging the Reps is probably a helluva lot safer than building a life on a planet somewhere, waiting for the day Kylo fucking Ren has another tantrum and decides he wants to blow up a planet because his daddy left him or whatever the hell that little fucker’s problem is. 

You’re bitter, bitter about Alderaan and the bitterness has manifested itself in this hard exterior that works well as a shield in your line of work. Don’t get close, don’t get attached. Because one day, quick as light-speed, it could all disappear. So you do your thing, you band with whomever the Pyke Syndicate teams you up with, and you make your runs from Kessel to Correlia to Oba Diah to Nevaro. You send your bloody credits to your family, whatever you don’t spend yourself, and you keep your shell strong. 

That is until you met Poe. 

Poe is the best fucking pilot you’ve ever flown with. Maker, to watch him light-hop, to run and outgun the Reps, it’s like a dance. He’s smooth too, not just his attitude, but for a runner like yourself to see the way his hands have a mind of their own at the control panel, flicking the correct of the 52 switches outside his line of vision while not breaking a sweat despite the fact he’s got three Reps on his tail… maker, it’s something to witness. Familiar with the model of ship or not, he’s got a steady hand at the helm; his competence is like the executive function of the ship itself. He’s incredible.

He doesn’t stress you out like Zorii does, cursing up a storm, barking orders at you. Poe is encouraging, Poe gives high fives, Poe claps you on the shoulder and says shit like “nice work”. And being touched isn’t really your thing. Not in any fucking capacity. Crowds freak you out with the possibility of rubbing shoulders with someone, and not just because you’re wary of pickpockets. There’s a thing about proximity that you can’t handle, alright. So far Poe seems to be the only exception to the rule, his touches don’t make you cringe or flinch. They’re tolerable. You don’t like a lot of people. And that is to say, you don’t like people in great quantities and you don’t usually meet someone you can tolerate. It’s not rocket science to figure out why you find yourself in the middle of hyperspace with relative strangers, bouncing from planet to planet, often not stopping long enough to take a full deep breath of the native air. 

The sterile recycled oxygen on the ship is the smell of home. Crisp and dry like plastic, resiny like fuel, and of course; aromatic like spice. The shit is so pure and potent that no amount of packaging can contain the pungent fragrance of the drug. You don’t even bother to hide it in the gunnels on long trips because if a Rep boards the ship, there’s not going to be any mystery as to what you’re hauling. 

What is a mystery is what the hell Poe Dameron is doing running spice when he so clearly likes people and craves stability. He itches to get on-planet on your off-days, to go to markets and chat with strangers, to try new food, to see live music. He’s warm and kind in a way that no-one in this business is. And he is often convincing enough that you let him drag you by the hand to these frivolous excursions. And every time, every new treat he sticks in your mouth, every live song he twirls your clumsy teetering feet to, you can feel the way he presses on your barriers gently like thumbs on an eggshell, fracturing you beautifully and plucking off one fragment of your exterior at a time. As if there’s something worth seeing in the yolk of you. 

And, well. You fucked him. 

It was unexpected and hot and quick and in the dark, neither of you even fully undressed. 

You— the person who cringes about sitting next to a stranger at a bar, fucked Poe. 

You blame it on the chemicals, the adrenaline. You’d nearly been caught by a Rep, dirty orange-suited fuck had you on the ground, pinned, hands behind your back and you nearly blacked out from panic. Poe was wild, shouting at the Rep detaining you to “get the fuck off of her, don’t touch her!” and headbutting the Rep cuffing him, it was all such a blur, but when you came to, Poe was wild eyed, hands hovering over you, holding back from checking your injuries, frantically asking if you were okay. You couldn’t help it. The fucking cortisol or whatever, the fight or flight— it made you jump into his arms. He tentatively held you and rocked you while you cried into his shirt. Reassuring you that it was all okay. The reps were gone, you were safe and “no one’s gunna lay a finger on you on my watch.” So… you crawled into his bunk that night. Fucking chemicals. In total darkness, kissing him with unsure lips, rocking yourself on his willing hardness to your simultaneous release, and climbing shamefully out of his bunk before you gave into the chance to fall asleep in his wide warm arms. 

You were so fucking nervous the next day he would say something. And he’d be well within his rights too. You essentially used him. It took all your courage to sit next to him— in the co-pilot chair of the ship, hard to look at him, heart racing, guilty at how vulnerable you’d been the night before. Ashamed of how much of him you laid up bare against in the total darkness. You were sure that he wouldn’t ever take you seriously as a fellow runner after that. Not just the fucking, but the needing to be saved by him from the Reps, and the crying into his shirt. 

Poe cleared his throat and started with a tentative, “so about last night—“

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” You dismissed him with a curt response, busying yourself with the control panel, rechecking the calibrations. From the corner of your eye you could see him nod once and give a simple, “ok.” And he dropped it. He didn’t assume to get too friendly after that, didn’t intrude on your space beyond the usual tiny touches; fingers grazing over cups of caf, a light touch on your shoulder if he needed to get into the supply closet while you’re crouched over the boxes of spare parts, determining your shopping list for the next supply run. 

And it became a bit of a routine. On tough days… and on days that weren’t tough at all- climbing into his bunk in the swirling darkness of hyperspace, grabbing at each other quick and filthy, always leaving before sleep overtook you.

He always asks to taste you. He can’t shut up about it. You don’t even like kissing so much but you do it to keep his mouth busy, so he doesn’t get any ideas. Even kissing doesn’t stop his requests, He begs around your lips and into your mouth while you pump him with your hand, “Please, baby. Let me, let me taste you.” You shake your head even though you know he can’t see it in the perfect black of the hull.

You choose instead to line him up with you and sink down onto him in a now-practiced routine. His hands, so gentle and warm on your bare hips, not pressing you an inch further than you’d allow. 

Being with Poe like this is like the way he dances with you; to live music on Nevaro- so aware of your body, aware of your comfort level. Only ever asking for permission, and only bowing back easily without it.

And maker is he consistent. Fuck. You’ve never cum so hard with anyone else or even by yourself. Which is… pretty incredible because you’d been absolutely convinced, before Poe, that by yourself was the best you’d ever have… he proves you wrong every time. 

“Why do you leave right after? No pressure. Just curious.” He pants after your perfect release, kissing softly below your jaw, knowing that your mind is already out of the bunk. 

You didn’t tell him it’s because if you leave before you fall asleep, you can pretend it’s all a dream. You can wake up and be the person you know yourself to be. And, maker, they way he lets you keep up the ruse in the waking hours, never forcing you talk about it or making dirty jokes or wiggling his eyebrows at you; It’s enough to endear you to him enough to keep coming back, night after pitch dark night, crawling to him like a phantom, taking exactly what you need and leaving without a trace.  

It doesn’t feel real in hyperspace. Cutting through the fabric of space and time like that, leaping from one end of the galaxy to the other… if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If you make love to Poe in a place that neither exists in the fabric of space nor time, did it ever really happen?

You don’t tell him that, you pat his stubbly cheek and crawl back into your chilly bunk. Alone. 

He never comes to you, putting the burden of ‘when’ on you always. It’s not exactly a burden though, and every time he feels the dip of the mattress under your knee when you hoist yourself into his bunk he lets out a pleased little “mmmm, baby”. 

There’s no foreplay… sometimes you let him kiss your tits if he needs to get hard. But you’re mostly ready and raring and… it’s not passion, it’s not. Its just a release. It can’t be passion, it’s hardly even real.

He’s a good guy, he’s someone you can trust. And that shit is rare out here in the slug fields, the outer rim, and even rarer in your trade. It’s not typical for teams to last as long as yours has. But you can’t seem to shake him. The Pyke’s are pleased with your consistency- you figure that’s why they keep assigning you together and you’re so grateful Zorii isn’t on this run with you because she is… stressful. The only thing you miss about her is her willingness to be the emissary to Kessel when you land for the spice pickup. Because Poe refuses. You’ve never pressed him, never demanded that he should take his fucking turn to pick up the supply. And it’s not like he’s ever told you that he won’t do it. He is just always seemingly busy with internal repairs every time you land on the fucking torture rock. You don’t call him out on it. Because he doesn’t call you out on your proclivities, your needs. He accepts them and you accept his. If this is his line, if he cant step on Kessel, then you’ll do it for him. It’s a small price to pay for the safe feeling you get with him at the control panel… and the safe feeling you pull from him in hyperspace. 

The droids have finished loading the supply by the time you buckle in next to Poe. A rusted S1-D6 in a burlap cloth, tapping the side of the ship and giving you a broken and rusted thumbs up from the viewing port. Maker this place is fucking depressing. Your lips form a tight line and you nod at the droid.

Poe’s face is grim as he types in the coordinates for-

“Tattooine?”

Poe doesn’t look at you while he fires up the engines and destabilizes the compressor. 

“Yeah. We’re skipping the usual. This batch is going straight to the Daimyo.”

To the Daimyo? Not the Pykes. What the hell? 

“And are we the one’s expected to make the trade?” 

You’re not used to this, you’re used to dropping the shit to the syndicate’s establishments. You’re suppliers, not fucking drug dealers. Maker. You can’t even fucking speak Huttese! 

Poe flips the internal power mode controls to manual and tells you simply, “yes.”

“I’ve never done that before. Made the trade. It’s not my thing.”

Poe sequences the auto-lift and gives you a reassuring smile, “I know. No one’s expecting you to do it. The Pyke’s gave it to me. Just let me do the talking Lex.”

“You speak Huttese?”

“Are you surprised?” He gives you a cocky smile and a wink. Ugh. No. You’e not surprised. He’s good at everything. It’s mildly irritating. Whatever. He’s probably not fluent. 

You confirm the all systems command on your side of the pit and the ship rises easily. Leaving Kessel and all its fucking misery, maker you love to watch that planet get smaller and smaller until it’s a pinprick. Until Poe engages hyperspace and you’re in swirling blue. Neither here nor there. 

“Is this some kind of promotion for you?” You’re suddenly struck by the idea that Poe might be promoted to something more stable. Maybe running a branch of the syndicate of his own. He could do it. He’d be perfect at it. You can see him now, with a team in a Cantina. Regulars, subjects, a unit to protect him… somewhere warm and bright. With all the teeming life a planet has to offer. You’d heard they’ve been looking for a Head on Nevaroo. And you know how much Poe likes their five-blossom bread and the band that plays at Greef’s most nights. Whatever. People come and people go. You get a new partner every few runs. And that’s the way you like it. 

It’s honestly stupid he’s stayed a runner this long. Runner’s get paid flat shit for the most part. The Syndicate expects the runner’s to scrape a little spice off the top, you assume that’s why the pay is so bad. But a dealer… a dealer can set their own cuts. And the better they are at talking, the better cut they can get for themselves. 

“A promotion? Don’t know.” Poe shrugs and unbuckles himself, he heads over to the radio transceiver, sits down on the floor beside it, and begins untangling the mess of wires you can only assume was done by an Anzellan with how tiny and convoluted the knots are. “Would be nice though, wouldn’t it? Be a dealer?” Poe smiles up at you and you don’t know how he’s able to make being a dealer sound like the most optimistic thing in the galaxy. 

You unbuckle yourself and make your way over to the little stack of wires across from Poe, lowering yourself on crossed legs, you take a bundle of blue into your lap and begin to look for a place to begin. Maker, it’s impossible. 

“What’s so great about being a dealer?” You mutter, finding the end of a wire and tugging hard till the threads all bunch up and you sigh in frustration. 

“More money, for one. My dad could really use it.” Poe has mentioned Kes before. How badly the war affected everything in the Dameron household made you feel guilty for being so bitter. Poe lost his mother to the war, and his father has been trying to maintain their family aggregate business on Yavin with dwindling supplies and one bum leg. Poe had been there, helping him and then decided it would be more effective to send him money. Kes didn’t need labor, he needed parts. Parts for irrigation and tilling. And parts in this economy, when every scrap of metal is worth it’s weight in spice… well. There aren’t many entry level positions in the slug fields besides runner and miner. 

“You’d be a good dealer.” You choose another wire to tug and the bundle seems to get more bunched with every pull you make. 

“Careful, Lex. That sounded like a compliment.” He smiles at you and you note the way he untangles. He grabs the whole bundle in both hands and gently pulls from the center, stretching the cloud of string larger and larger, creating open pockets and widening the surface area of the previously balled clump. Loose wires fall out the edges of the mass and he rests it gently in his lap while he feeds the wire through the widened loops. You continue to tug and pull, getting into the tight knots with your fingernails and swearing every time you drop your bundle. 

“Well, where are we going after Tatooine, then?” You ask, still concentrating on the bundle. 

“Oba Diah.” 

You scrunch your eyes closed and shake your head. “How was I kept out of the loop on this?”

“Well, I know how much you love talking to Crodit.”

“Ew.”

“Exactly. Love of your life. I talked to him before we left for Kessel. Orders came from Lom himself.”

“No way.”

“Yeah. They’ve got faith in us, Lex.”

“Faith in you, you mean.”

“Us.” Poe says seriously. “You know how rare it is to find someone as devoted to Keeping It Business as you, Lex?” Poe insists. 

You don’t know how to take the compliment coming from him so you just look back to your bundle and pick at a particularly aggressive loop.

“I think it’s you they’re impressed with. Your— people skills.” 

“We make one hell of a duo. You have to admit.” He taps your shoe with his. Tiny touches. 

You can’t help the smile that burns your cheeks when you try to fight it. He’s right. He’s too generous with his compliments, but he’s right. Its why they team you up. You work well together.

“And neither one of us is scraping spice.”

Poe goes uncharacteristically silent.

“Right?” You question, letting your hands fall into your lap. The only sound is the buzzing of the fluorescents above you and the swirling hum of hyperspace.

Poe gives you a mischievous grin and shrugs his shoulders.

“Poe! You haven’t been scraping have you?” Fuck. That would be an unmitigated disater. God if the Pykes ever find out, you’re going to get more than canned.

“Not yet!”

“What do you mean, not yet?” 

“Little Lex, do you know why we are going straight to the Daimyo?”

“Yeah, you just said- because Crodit-“

“Did you not get a good whiff of the shipment? Get a look at the color?”

“No. Not really” You busy yourself with the wire, unwilling to say you’ve never inspected it AT Kessel before, always waiting for after you boarded. Because you’re a fucking runner. If there’s something dodgy with the product, or there’s not enough, that shit is between Kessel and Lom… but, well fuck, if you had known you’d be dealing you would have taken a closer look. 

“Fuck? Really?” Poe drops his half done bundle, (maker he’s so fast at that) and gets to his feet, slamming his hand to the port door and disappearing suddenly. You don’t have time to get anxious about the state of the product before he’s back and leaning on the far wall of the cockpit with a hand over his chest. 

“Dammit, Lex. You almost gave me a heart attack!”

“What do you mean?” 

“What do I-? Get up.” He snaps his fingers at you and holds out a hand for you to take. You toss your wire bundle to the side, barely a dent in progress, you take his warm hand and he hoists you up, still holding your hand- he leads you to the loading trunk. One of the cases is cracked open and you can smell the fucking thing from the other side of the hull. 

“Shit that is strong!” You remark, the odor overtaking you. It’s a good smell. A great smell. You’re used to the permeation of spice but this smells different. Stronger. Better. And when you get closer you note the redness is unlike any Spice you’d seen before.

“Gorgeous, right?” Poe smiles and nods his head at the cracked case, “Go on, take a look. I know you didn’t do it at Kessel.” 

You roll your eyes. If he’s going to give you shit for Kessel, he can pick up the next shipment himself. 

You kneel down over the trunk and rub your finger instinctively over the deep blood red of the dust. The spice. It looks like extrait or something. Unreal.

“You know what that is?”

You shake your head, mesmerized by the color, the smell, the texture of it as you glide your fingertips over the fine, powdery surface. Regular spice is more of a dull orange and has a note of dust in the scent. But not this. It’s pure, whatever it is.

“Sansana.”

Your eyes widen, “All of it?” You indicate to all of the cases and Poe nods his head with a huge smile.  

“All of it. And we,” he kneels down next to you and shakes your shoulder, “get to keep the dealer’s cut… if we talk it up with the Daimyo.”

Holy shit. A dealer’s cut on Sansana. Your family is going to be set for a while. Kes is going to be set too. Why you’re thinking about a man with a bum leg you’ve never met, who lives on a planet you’ve never been to, you’re not sure. … You might even be able to take a fucking vacation. To where, you don’t know, or really care. 

Finally, that magic mouth of Dameron’s is going to do you some good. If he can get you 60%, maker, you’ll be happy as a clam on Mon Cala. 

“I wanna try it though,” says Poe.

“What?! Try Sansana? Are you nuts?”

“What? When else am I going to get this opportunity? I gotta be able to assure the Daimyo he’s getting a quality product… plus Crodit kind of, well, it’s part of our deal. He said he couldn’t get me the dealer gig without dosing on Sansana. I gotta do it in front of the Daimyo too. As a cultural show of good faith.”

A cultural show of good faith?

“Crodit’s using you as a test-porg?!”

“Lex, it isn’t like that. I’m a big boy, I know what I signed up for.”

“So, let me get this straight… You’re going to the Daimyo, then you’re going to snort up Sansana, and then negotiate a deal? That sounds like a kriffing bad idea if you ask me.”

“No, Lex. WE are going to the Daimyo, I will negotiate, and THEN I will snort up Sansana…. In celebration of making a good deal.”

“I- Okay then. If that’s what Crodit says, if that’s what you say, I’m staying out of it. In fact, this is a much better idea than what I thought you were doing— scraping. Maker, that would have meant both of our heads.”

“I’ve got a proposition for you though, Lex.” 

“Oh really?”

“Yeah, I want you to do it with me.”

“Do what?”

“Sansana.”

“In front of the Daimyo?”

“No, not in front of anybody but me. Back on the ship. In Hyperdrive. Nice and safe on our way to Oba Diah.”

“I’m not just going to do Sansana because you asked me to, Dameron.”

Poe inhales as if he’s about to say something and then pauses and nods. “That’s fair.”

“I’d consider doing it for credits.”

“Straightforward. I like that about you, Lex.” 

You tip your forehead to him. 

“What if we make it interesting? A bet.” He offers.

“I’m listening.”

“If I can get us an 80% dealer cut with the Daimyo… then you have to do Sansana with me.”

80 percent? That’s a no-fucking brainer. You could take a month long break on a fucking deserted island, soaking up sun and surf without a care in the galaxy. All for one hit of the most coveted Spice in the fucking galaxy. Duh. “Deal!”

“Wait wait wait, not so fast, little Lex.” 

You prop your hands on your hips, “Of course there’s a catch.”

“You have to do Sansana with me, and… you have to let me eat you out.”

He’s never talked about it before, never brought it up. Only ever when you’re both naked in the dark with the only thing illuminating you being the swirling blue of space-travel. Never like this though: staring at each other face-on with the fluorescents overhead. He must see the way you gulp.

“We can do it in the dark if you want. I’ll even close the port-shade so there’s no light at all… I just want to taste you.”

You gulp again and stare at his mouth then. Would it really be so bad to… let him…. Lick you? I mean, maker he’s obviously hard up for it, including it on his end of the bargain. Everything about it is win-win-win all around as far as you’re concerned.

Maker, just looking at him is making your kriffing head spin. What are the terms of the bet exactly? If he gets more than 80 percent: you get money, a possible vacation, a dose of sansana, and Poe’s face between your legs; and thats all if HE wins the bet. 

If you win, and he doesn’t get over 80% you get… a regular dealer cut and life as usual, plus soberly babysitting a spiced-out Poe on your way to Oba Diah. God it seems like an easy yes, so why the fuck is it so hard to say it?

Poe, noting your continued silence puts a hand on your shoulder. 

“Lex, you don’t have to. I’m going to try to get us that 80% cut no matter what. I just thought I’d…”

“Spice things up?” You offer with a smile.

Poe laughs. “Yes. So, what’s the verdict?”

You purse your lips and nod. “I’m in.”

“Attagirl!” 

“But only one hit!”

“Hey, I won’t force you! You do as much— or as little as you want.”

Poe scoops a small palmful into a leather pouch and sets it on the shelf next to the cracked case. 

“You sure they won’t notice a scrape?”

“This much?” Poe holds up the pouch with laughter in his eyes. “Honey, a calibrator droid wouldn’t know this much was missing.”

“Just trying not to die, Dameron, that’s all.”

“I respect that, Lex. I really do.”

Poe closes and secures the cracked case and offers his hand to you, helping you up. Both of your palms are dusted in enough red to land you in Rep prison for life and when you rise up on your feet your face is nearly close enough to kiss him. He lets go of your hand, slowly dragging the red grit between your fingers and he turns to step back into the cockpit. His palm leaves a print on the white keypad and the earthy-red tone of the smudge doesn’t match the ship at all. It's glaringly natural among the sterility. You find a spare rag to wipe it clean. Maker what have you signed up for?

END

~~~

only tagging those who interacted with my asking post because Poe being a spice runner is a very sensitive topic.

@paper-n-ashes @ozarkthedog @samsspade @itsmypersonalagenda @lovers-liability @littlemousedroid @tasmdd @d1rtysna1l @takenbyheartstrings @ophelialoveshandsomemen @silkzomi @spider-starry @cottagebunny9 @rosie-jane @enichole445 @maskjunkie @pri00r @randomcuboidshape @mstgsmy @strxwberrymoonstar @mysweetandsaucy @obiwanshusband @lily-lilli @lemongingerart @3-14123 @stormkobra-5 @laters-gators

[alstroemeriadissonance]

Masterlist Part 2

Because I apparently hit this (little known) threshold of 100 links per post. Looks like I have posted 100 fics including separate chapters since late September 2021. Holy hell.

Masterlist Part 1 HERE <-- Please go here if this is your first time checking out my stuff!!!

Other links:

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlstroemeriaDSNC

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlstroemeriaDS

SFW Vynposting

A Normal Date - Finally having wrangled his tutor into admitting he is reciprocating his feelings, Marius is now bothering Vyn into doing certain things he probably missed out on, given his upbringing. Things like...having a totally normal, ordinary date.

Little Dr. Richter - Vyn discovers Rosa’s new little companion. But wait, why does it look a lot like him?

NXX: Three Men and a Little Lily - Vyn and Rosa are whisked off to the separate overseas business trips, leaving Marius, Artem, and Luke to watch over their darling little princess, five-year-old Lily.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

NXX Turns Into Cat - Each NXX duder turns into a cat. Everyone else—Rosa, mostly—deals with the mess.

Pt 01 - Meowrius | Pt 02 - Vynyaa | Pt 03 - Lukemeow | Pt 04 - Nyaartem

Vynposting (NSFW)

In the shadows, I play your song - PWP set after Electrifying Night. Slight spoilers if you're not aware of how Vyn looks in that event and card story.

Intoxicated - Heavily inspired by the Food for Thought card. Not a card rewrite nor a sequel, but takes place in the gap between Story parts 5 and 6.

Hosanna - You think you need to sin more to catch the attention of a certain demon who masquerades as a priest, but it actually takes more than that.

His beautiful flowers, blooming wildly - VynRosa x Ingrid threesome fic. Jealousy is a helluva thing.

Relief - Rosa is drugged, and her two attending doctors Richter and Yishmir are thrown in for a sexual loop

Marks - Marius is obsessed over his tutor’s beauty mark (VynMarius)

Dance in the Study - Stripper Rosa literally gives newcomer Vyn Richter a housewarming.

Lotus-eaters - Set in Secrets of the Tomb; The Scribe is beset with worries, and the High Priest lends his aid

The Lady and Her Maid - Rosa is stressed out, Vyn (with Kiki’s help) helps her deal with it the cutest/hottest way possible

Chiaroscuro: Pentimento - Sick of having to bear the brunt of their Vyn and Rosa’s mutual pining for each other, Marius takes one for the team and makes great sacrifices to bring his two favorite people together

Series (NSFW)

NXX on Valentine's Day - Situational fics where each NXX boy takes Rosa on a date on Valentine's Day. Spicy stuff happens, as usual. (COMPLETE)

Part 1 (Vyn) | Part 2 (Artem) | Part 3 (Luke) | Part 4 (Marius)

NXX and Emergency Toys - Situational fics where each NXX dude gets so worked up by Rosa that they have to grab something--anything--just to spice things up even more.

Part 1 (Artem) | Part 2 (Vyn)

Fantasies - Rosa and Vyn indulge themselves and each other with their own sexual fantasies. Originally a one-shot ask that just became a series.

Fantasies (Pt 1) | Fantasies ~ ver. Vyn | In the office | In the headquarters | Over the Phone

NXX as Incubi:  Where each LI deals with work stress and/or hang up towards Rosa enough to trigger sexual dreams, where they become incubi who haunt her dreams.

Vyn ( Look at Me, Seek Me, Desire Me, Love Only Me)

Killshot: Assassin hijinks AU where Vyn is ripped out from his life in Stellis early on, due to political turmoil back in his homeland. As Duke Vilhelm de Haspran, he has to deal with assassins sent after him, including a rather inept yet persistent one named Rosa 

Part 1  | Part 2 |

Pillow Talk - Short fiction accompanying the dakki art I commissioned (here)

Heart of the Cards | Neon Jealousy

Close Friends - Rosa is plagued with a strange compulsion to do a certain act, thoroughly distracting her from work. Kiki suggest she seek the help of her closest, most special friend, Dr. Vyn Richter.

Part 1 | Part 2

Special Delivery - Vyn is very, very disappointed when Rosa bailed on their plans for his birthday, only to get something more interesting. And he plans to thoroughly enjoy her birthday surprise...

Part 1 | 

NXX on Blind Tasting - A blind tasting activity where Rosa is the taster, guessing which NXX men she is kissing as she makes out with each of them.

Part 1 | Part 2

Entrapped - series of smutty NSFW fansequels for Vyn’s cards, with their own sort of continuity

Pt 01 Layers| Pt 02 House Call | Pt 03 Invitation | Pt 04 Hot Summer | Pt 05 Straddling, Mounting, Riding | Pt 04 By the Fireplace | Pt 05 The Third Option | Pt 06 Conversations in Winter

NXX for Rent! - Sex Work AU

Luke | Vyn |

[stormkobra-5]

The Heir of Djarin

Episode 1: Fledgling

Summary: Din Djarin has spent nearly a decade in retirement on the uncharted moon of Yëa in order to hide Grogu from the First Order, but he’s in his late fifties and is fearing the day when the little guy is left on his own. Never did he expect a girl to drop out of the sky at such a perfect moment.

A/N: Welcome to the eight-episode event that is the beginning of a re-imagining of the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy. This story I’ve been thinking up for awhile, after finishing the whole Star Wars series from start to finish recently (and developing an unhealthy infatuation with one Oscar Isaac...). Would Mando still be alive at the time of the Sequel Trilogy? It’s hard to say what he’d be up to if he were. This is written, of course, before season three of The Mandalorian, so... Inaccuracies are gonna suck after it comes out. This is also before reading the Poe Dameron comics by Charles Soule; I’ve only read up to vol. 2. In either case, this story is supposed to take place just before, maybe overlapping with vol 1? Although Poe already has Black Squadron formed...

Notes: I’m somewhat new to the technicalities of this fandom. Sure I can tell the difference between T-65 and T-70 X-wings, and I can remember almost every name and face, but a helluva lot of my knowledge for the Mandalorian culture comes from watching The Mandalorian and Googling my questions. You have been warned.

Warnings: This story is rated 14+ for canon-typical violence, action, and language. The OC main character is recovering from a traumatic backstory for the sake of the plot, so there is mention of distrust, social anxiety, self-doubt, and emotional damage. Later chapters may involve mature themes for drug usage (spice), excessive alcohol consumption, and clubs that imply adult entertainment (the main characters do not take part). Nothing explicit in any chapters.

_______________________________________________________________

STRENGTH is life, for the strong have the right to rule.

HONOR is life, for with no honor, one may as well be dead.

LOYALTY is life, for without one’s clan one has no purpose.

DEATH is life, one should die as they have lived.

This is the Way.

This is the Creed of the Mandalorian.

- - -

Resol’nare, The Six Actions:

Wear the traditional armor

Speak, read, and write Mando’a

Defend yourself and your family with the traditional arts

Raise your children to become Mandalorians

Contribute to your clan’s welfare

When called upon by the Mand’alore, rally to the cause

_______________________________________________________________

    It’s the cold water on my face that wakes me up.     Little droplets of freezing cold rainwater smack into my forehead, my eyelids, my cheeks, and I jump up, eyes snapping open and hands flying to wipe the water away. I’m overcome with dizziness-- the type that makes the world tilt dangerously, that makes you feel like you’ll just slide right off the Earth. I lay immediately back down to brave the cold rain with a pathetic groan, waiting for it to subside.     Where am I? The question doesn’t even to begin to explain the confusion I feel as my vision clears and I start taking in my surroundings. Tall, green grass. There are some pine trees nearby. The overcast sky rumbles faintly with thunder, but no lightning flashes. This doesn’t make any sense at all, because the last thing I remember is laying down for a nap on the couch at home.     My family... I’m annoying as hell, sure, but I very much doubt if they’d have drove me out into the middle of nowhere and dumped me. They wouldn’t do that to me. Besides, there are no pine trees anywhere near where I live. Not enough to make a forest solely of them. They’d had to have driven pretty damn far if that were the case.     So what? Somebody break into the house and I manage to sleep through it? They decide to dump me for some reason? Was I drugged by the intruder? Did I sleepwalk right out the front door and nobody noticed? Though I haven’t sleepwalked since I was about four years old, so.     Even after the dizziness subsides, I lay there in the growing puddle of mud trying to figure out what happened, why I’m here. I’m even considering alien abduction and a sudden ability to teleport when I hear footsteps.      Footsteps means I’m not alone. Means someone might have answers. Maybe the one who did this to me? I don’t dare to move. Whoever it is has a heavy step, and something jingles, like a cowboy’s spurs. The grass rustles, shifts, and I’m greeted by a very strange sight.     Leaning over me is a man wearing leathers underneath of a full set of mirror-shine silver armor, complete with a helmet akin to something a Spartan warrior might wear, without the mohawk of dyed horsehair. His cross-shaped visor is filled in with black glass, so I can’t see any details of his face. Or anything of him, really. Every ounce of skin is covered by leather, metal, or both. Hanging from his shoulders is a tattered old cape, and he wears a bandolier full of what looks like ammo. He has numerous pouches around his waist, holsters on his legs, and he holds a very long, sniper-looking rifle, though I’ve never seen anything like this gun before.     For several minutes, the only thing to be heard is birdsong and the rain plinking off his armor. Then, he talks. “...You okay, kid?” He has the calm, stern voice of a soldier. I spend a lot of time around them, so I know this and take solace in it. I always feel safer and more at ease around military personnel. Always have. Though because of his helmet, it sounds like he’s speaking through a walkie-talkie. I’m surprised at the clarity, though. After a moment, I manage to nod, and start to push myself up. He leans down and helps me into a sitting position, offers me a flask of what I hope is water. Reluctantly, I take it, because my throat is dry and my thirst wins over my distrust of strangers.     “Where am I?”     “Yëa,” He replies, “It’s an uncharted moon, so I won’t be surprised if nobody finds you here. The interference from Elika probably messed with your sensors.”     I have no idea what he’s talking about. I’m even more scared than I was before. “...Ship?” It’s all I can manage to say, all I can manage to pick out of the slew of confusing words he’s just spouted off to me as if I should understand him.     “Yeah,” He answers calmly, “It was nothing but a fireball. It’s a miracle you survived at all, though how you were flung and remained unscathed is almost more of one...” He must see the terror in my face, because he adds, “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”     I shake my head, but remain silent. Now that I know I’m in the presence of a whackjob, my social anxiety has taken over and I want to run, very very far away, as fast as possible. He looks up at the sky, remembering his phony fireball, and sits down beside me. “Where are you from?”      What am I supposed to do? Make something up? “Cincinnati.”      I expect him to say something. Cincinnati where? Cincinnati, Ohio? Cincinnati, the home of the Bengals? Cincinnati, that’s not too far from here. What I don’t expect is for him to stare at me blankly. As if he’s never heard of it. “...Cincinnati,” He repeats, rolling the word around on his tongue like some weird new food. “What quadrant is that in?”     “Quadrant?” Wonderful. I’m lost, have no idea why, and my only source of information is a crazy man.     “Yeah. Quadrant.” When I give no answer, he tries something else. “What territory are you from? Outer, Mid, Inner Rim? Maybe you don’t know. What’s the last thing you remember?”     “Laying down on my couch to take a nap,” I reply honestly, annoyed with how tiny and squeaky my voice is. What else am I supposed to do? I have no idea where I am or how I got here, and whether or not I’m lying or telling the truth, this crazy cosplayer is the only way for me to get home. Besides, he has a gun, even if it does look unusual, plus a lot of other guns and knives. He’s heavily armed. If I just keep my head down and play along, maybe he’ll point me in the direction of the shiny machines that carry people around. If I can find a road, I can find my way home.     This, however, surprises him. He balks. “...You... A nap?” He asks this like this is unfathomable. Meekly, I nod. He stares at me for a second, then, “...That explains why I can’t find any wreckage of your ship, then.” Of course you can’t. Because it doesn’t exist.     He points behind us, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “You came from that way. Fell right out of the sky and landed here, though it seems awfully gentle for somebody going that speed. I can tell you this makes no more sense to me than it does to you.”     I turn to glance where he’s pointing. I only meant to glance. But then I do a double take, stop short, and stare, stunned, at what I see looming over the treeline. The man sees what I’m doing and watches my reaction. Watches as my jaw hangs and tears spring to my eyes, as fear overwhelms me and I start shaking. Because this, whatever this is, can’t be real, can’t be, is impossible, and suddenly I’m hearing Dorothy’s voice from The Wizard of Oz, her words entirely too close to home: I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore. All of a sudden the concept of alien abduction doesn’t seem too far-fetched now, or I am in one very vivid dream that’s not at all lucid.     Because there, on the horizon, just visible as the gray overcast starts to pull away in the distance, is a great, looming mass of fire and black rock and lava in the place of where maybe the moon would be if you could see it in daytime. What’s worse is that I can’t even jump to my feet in alarm because when I try, I fall right back down after tripping on my own ankles.     It’s a planet, a giant fiery planet.     No, I am definitely not even on Earth anymore.

                                                      -   -   -

    I hear the man saying something to me, but it takes a second before I can hear him. “Are you okay?”    “Where am I?”    “I told you,” He says, and I realize he’s not crazy, “You’re on Yëa. The uncharted moon of Elika, that planet you see there.”    He’s standing now, looking down at me and clearly thinking, like I am. Except he’s calm where I’m panicking, trying to wake myself up my pinching my arm so hard it leaves a bruise, or even using my short nails until I bleed. Nothing happens, and the pain is all to real. “...You said you were from Cincinnati. Is that a city?”    I nod. It’s all I can do.    “What planet are you from?”    “Earth,” I reply.    He’s staring again, or maybe he’s closing his eyes. I can’t tell with his helmet on. “...Earth.” He crouches. He’s treating me like an injured, scared animal. I might as well be. “...Everybody learns about Earth in school. It’s where we all came from, eons ago...” I stare. I listen. And I try very hard not to scream. “...It’s a fairytale. A legend. But that would explain what I saw.” He looks back toward where he had seen me come in. “Everything went silent. The sky kind of... warped. There was a flash of light. A beam, a fireball... and then, I found you instead of a ship.”     He looked back to me. “...What were you doing before you decided to take a nap?”    “I was... I was...” I’d been doing what I did every day. I got up. I studied to prepare for my upcoming college classes. But I was so damn tired... Neither my brother or sister rejected the idea of me taking a nap to recharge. “I was at home,” I finally am able to say, “I was at home, with my brother and sister.”    He swings back on his heels, not losing his balance even in all that heavy steel. “...At least, I know you’re not lying.”    “How do you know that?!” I exclaim plaintively. “For all you know, I could be crazy!”    He regards me carefully for a second. “I have a little friend who told me you were coming. That you’re special. Now I see what he means. You’re just lucky you didn’t end up on a Star Destroyer, or right in the hands of a Sith. You’d be dead or brainwashed by now.”     Star Destroyer... Sith... Now he’s giving me words that I know I should remember but don’t. They sound familiar, but that’s it. He recovers his flask from where it landed in my staggering scramble away from the flaming planet in the sky. “Can you walk?”     “I-I think so...” But I’m wrong. He helps me to my feet, but my legs give out almost instantly. I feel weak, like I haven’t eaten in days. All I did was skip breakfast. Thankfully, he says nothing. He leans down and scoops me up, carrying me toward the woods.     “Do you have a name?”     “I’m Laylah,” I reply, glad to have something I’m sure of. “Laylah Evergreen.”     “I’m Din Djarin,” He says.     “Din Djarin?” I repeat. His name sounds familiar. Too familiar. Like something I should know. Something I should automatically relate to a specific person...     “Have you heard of me?” He sounds curious. Rightfully so. I would be.     “I don’t know,” I tell him honestly. Maybe if I keep being honest and nice, he won’t turn on me like all the others. It’s never worked before, though. Not in my life. I better appreciate how nice he’s being to me now, because I know how quickly people can shift. Minutes, hours, days, sometimes even weeks. Never in my life has anyone ever stayed nice. I’ve never known why. I’ve just come to expect it. I need to get all the information I can out of him before he turns away, too.     “...I bet that you’ve got memory implants,” Din Djarin says.     “Huh?”     He shakes his head. “Sometimes when a slave escapes or a First Order traitor slips out of their grasp, when they’re caught, they implant artificial memories and abandon them somewhere. Drives the person mad while they try to figure out who they are. It’s a sick form of torture.”     “Oh,” is my squeaky reply, because that thought is terrifying. The thought of my mother, my brothers and sisters, none of it being real... It’s something that I’m gonna pretend isn’t a possibility. So I try to bring the conversation elsewhere. “Why do you wear that armor?”     “This is the Way,” He tells me as he carries me into the treeline, following an old, beaten path. Under the shelter of the green pines, the rain subsides a bit. It’s a relief. “I’m a Mandalorian. What I wear is pure beskar, straight from the mines of Mandalore and very hard to find. I doubt any exists now, with the Empire having destroyed the mines and destroyed the planet... Its impenetrable. Not even lightsabers can get through it. It's a part of my sworn Creed to wear it with honor, and none can ever see my face.”     “Why?”     “This is the Way,” He says again, and I know that’s all I’m going to hear about the beskar.     “What’s a lightsaber?”     “The weapon of choice for Sith or Jedi. Laser swords. Very rarely, someone who is not either might have one.”     “Are they like you? Following Creeds?”     “In a way.” My stomach drops as he starts to walk a log suspended over a gorge. A waterfall barrels loudly and violently below, pounding into a river. One wrong move and we’re both dead. But Din’s strides are confident and unwavering, and before I have time to hold my breath we’re on solid ground again. “I know little of either of them. My people are the ancient enemies of the Jedi, but the few I’ve met have been alright. They’re more wizards than warriors, though.”     “So, what? Space Harry Potter?”     “I don’t know what that is.”     “They’re just a bunch of fictional wizards.” I want to ask more questions-- about the Mandalorians, the Jedi and the Sith, about where I am-- but I go silent. I know that if I talk too much, he’ll be less inclined to answer me kindly, if at all, and I’m relying on his kindness right now. I need to time my questions carefully.     Thankfully, the Mandalorian doesn’t point out the fact that I’ve gone silent. He seems just as eager to keep to himself as I am. Good. I don’t want to talk. With the adrenaline fading, my social anxiety and severely-introverted feelings are coming back. I’m suddenly aware of the fact that he’s carrying me, and I really don’t like it. It feels alien and is completely unwelcome, being this close to someone. I have to resist the urge to squeeze my eyes shut and wait until it’s over, or just fight my way out of his grasp and run screaming.     Fight past it, I tell myself, and force myself to remain calm, You need the assistance of Din Djarin. He’s your only source of survival.     Luckily for me, the journey is over quickly enough. It feels like an eternity of discomfort, but probably only twenty minutes have passed. Our destination is what looks like a cave at first glance, but upon closer inspection I can see that the branches and underbrush have been placed specifically to hide a little wooden door. It’s a hut hidden in the rocks, one most people would pass by unless you were being taken right to it.     Carefully, Din sets me down on a rock. The door is jammed into a crevice in the rock rather than locked, so it takes him a minute to open it. Inside, it’s very dim, lit by candles and one hole between two massive boulders that serves as a window. Smells of cinnamon and what might be mint tea waft out, comforting me. Cinnamon has always calmed me, and I’m thankful for the unexpected familiarity. Am I dreaming, or is what Din says true? Has my whole life been just a fabrication for a traitor or escaped slave?     If I’m dreaming, then all I have to do is wait to wake up, although I’ve never experienced a dream where I feel every second, every minute, as realistically as I am now. Where I can smell and feel so vividly. It’s so much like real life that I’m suddenly worried about Din’s theory being true.    If that is the case, though, and my whole life has been nothing but an implant for a fugitive... it would explain a lot. It would explain why my life has been a series of one bad thing after another, an essential prison for the seventeen years I’ve been alive. Although the thought of my family being nothing but a lie terrifies me. They were all I had, all I’ve ever had. My mother, Rochelle, my older siblings Thomas and Julia, my younger siblings Tristan and Jade. If they weren’t ever there, then does that mean I’ve always been as alone as I’ve felt?    They have to exist. Even memory implants have to have something to go off of, right? So maybe they do exist, in this place where a galaxy actually has territories. I just have to find them.     Once Din has the door propped up, he carries me inside. It’s small but comforting. There’s a single bed against the far wall, covered in pelts for blankets. Beside it is what looks oddly enough like a baby carriage. Hanging from the ceiling are herbs to dry, and what I think are rabbits and pheasants except they’re odd colors of green and have more limbs and eyes than I remember. I’m starting to feel a lot like I’m in Wonderland. Except I don’t remember chasing any white rabbits.    There’s a table with a stool, a very small kitchen, and an open lean-to which holds changes of clothes. He sets me down on the bed and retrieves a blanket, wrapping it around my shoulders. He starts a fire in a tiny fireplace that doubles as a stove. Movement out of the corner of my eye startles me, and then I see something that probably tops the flaming planet and the six-legged green rabbit with a ring of teeth instead of a face.      At least, it’s cute and non-threatening.      Sitting up out of the cradle is something that looks a lot like Gizmo from Gremlins, except he’s hairless and green. He’s dressed in a tiny burlap robe, and his long ears twitch curiously when he sees me. He blinks, slowly, with large dark eyes that seem to know more than an infant should. “Say hello, Grogu,” The Mandalorian tells him softly from across the hut.      “Badu,” Grogu says to me in the sweetest little voice, and waves a three-fingered hand in my direction.     For the first time since I got here, I smile. I’m overwhelmed with a sense of relief and safety that I didn’t feel before. It feels like something is connecting me to the little guy, and maybe it’s the fact that this might be the friend that the Mandalorian was talking about-- it’s a ridiculous prospect, that a baby told him about me, but I’ve got this odd, strong feeling that I’m right. “Hello, Grogu,” I reply with my own wave. “I’m Laylah.”     I want to ask Din what Grogu is, but that seems insensitive. Instead, I ask, “Is the the friend you told me about?”     “Yes,” Din answers, “He sensed you coming hours before you arrived. Those Jedi I was talking about? They use something called the Force. It’s some kind of celestial energy. I don’t understand it, but it gives them strange abilities-- glimpses of the future, communicating telepathically, moving things with their minds... Sometimes, very rarely, Grogu will make an effort to tell me something if its important, but it tires him. So when he told me that a special girl was going to fall out of the sky, I watched until you did.”     “Special?”     “Badu,” Says Grogu. I smile again, reaching over to take his little hand. He’s tiny, and fragile, being so young; but as soon as our hands meet, I feel something... odd. A surge of power, a static and palpable energy that bursts into my arm. I feel it like the cold liquid of an IV, being pulled up into my veins and dispersed through the rest of my body. I snatch my arm back with a gasp. Grogu doesn’t look surprised by my reaction. His big eyes narrow almost knowingly as we stare at each other.    “What is it?” Din asks. He’s stopped what he’s doing to see what’s going on, but only Grogu seems to know. “What did you do?”    “N-nothing!” I cry, terrified that now I’ve lost my only means of survival over a misunderstanding. He’s going to kick me out into the woods because he thinks I did something to his kid, and I’m not sure I could survive out there-- I’m not Katniss Everdeen.    “Not you,” He specifies, and my heart falls from my throat back to its proper location. “You, Grogu, what did you do?”    “Du.” Grogu only grunts and buries himself deep into the blankets in his cradle. I’m rubbing my hand up my arm under my sleeve, trying to get the feeling back into it. Pins and needles prick at the whole length of my arm and my body feels fuzzy.    “He always do that?”    “No,” Din answers, setting the stool across from me. He hands me a cup of what I’m going to believe is tea, and I hold it in both of my freezing hands, grateful for its warmth. “I’ve only seen him react like that to someone once.”    “Who?” I immediately reprimand myself internally for asking such a personal question-- but really, who would have been able to resist? Gizmo-baby from space injecting people with magic power isn’t exactly normal. “Sorry.”    He waves me off. “Her name was Ahsoka Tano. She said that he was communicating with her, through the Force.” He pauses for a second, maybe for dramatic effect. “She was a Jedi.”    I can’t help but scoff, though it’s also partly a laugh. “So you’re saying I’m a Jedi?”    “There’s a difference between being a Jedi and being Force-sensitive,” Din explains softly, absentmindedly leaning over to tuck little Grogu in. “Being a Jedi means that you’ve been trained to harness the Force, be one with it. Being Force-sensitive means that you are aware of it, more so than most. It can be useful to you, I’ve heard. Some people who are Force-sensitive do end up becoming Jedi, but with you, we’ll have to wait and see.”    “So Grogu...”    “He’s a Force-user,” Din tells me, “Once, he was being trained in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, and when it was attacked, he was the sole survivor. He would have been a very powerful Jedi. When I found him, I took him to Luke Skywalker, but Grogu decided that he would rather stay with me than swear himself to their training. Skywalker let him go, but Grogu can still utilize the Force. I’ve seen him lift creatures larger than speederbikes, stop explosions, heal fatal wounds, and even calm a rancor. Now, he’s sensed you... and at precisely the right time.”     “...Right time?” Here’s the catch. There’s always a catch.     The Mandalorian leans back, using the table to support his back. “I’m getting older. Any self-respecting bounty hunter in their late fifties is still out there, doing their job, but with the rise of the First Order, I took Grogu and went into hiding. He's powerful; if they found him...” He leaves the apparently horrible ending of his sentence for me to interpret, and I get the feeling this First Order isn’t very friendly. “The interference from Elika is the only thing that’s kept us safe. I can’t protect him like I used to. We haven’t left Yëa in a little under ten years.”     My silent question is obvious. My eyebrows shoot to my hairline as I point to Grogu meaningfully. Din shakes his head. “His race ages slowly. He’s only the equivalent of a two-year-old human. Maybe in another fifty years, he’ll be more able to fend for himself. But I am human. I don’t have fifty more years in me. I’ve outlived all of my trusted friends, or the First Order has made their worlds unsafe. You can imagine how hard it is to try and find someone to take your place when you can’t go out and look.”     I cock an eyebrow. What, you don’t have galactic internet? Though I guess if you’re trying to hide, posting a big Help Wanted: Need a Lifelong Babysitter for Space-Wizard Gizmo ad on your space-Facebook would probably be counterintuitive.     But I see what he’s getting at. Here he is, worrying about dying of old age and leaving his kid unattended, vulnerable. Then I literally fall out of the sky, ripped from my home and my world for no foreseeable reason.     “Not only that...” Din continues, blatantly ignoring any expression I might have as he watches Grogu sleep. He starts to rock the cradle. “But I’m one of the last Mandalorians. I don’t even know if there are other Mandalorians anymore. My legacy is over. I have no wife or children; my only family is Grogu. He’s a foundling, yes-- but it will be many years before he can continue the Creed.”     “The Mandalorian Creed?”     “Yes. He cannot do it on his own, not yet.”     “And... you want me to follow in your footsteps.”     He hesitates. “...Maybe. We’ll see. If you were to continue my legacy, I would have to take you as my daughter. You’ve only just arrived here, even if Grogu says you’re special. After all, how do I know you’re not crazy? Or a wanted fugitive with memory implants? In fact, there’s only one way for me to tell for certain.”     His words leave me shifting uneasily. He wants me to take his place... And the fact that he would have to make me his daughter because of a Creed sets me on edge. The only father I had ever known was negligent and abusive. I’d come to associate that term with fear, unease, and abandonment. Just the word makes me want to run very far, very fast. I’ve been having a lot of urges to run recently.    The Mandalorian seems to look me in the eye. “You were clearly sent here for a reason, Laylah Evergreen. We just have to figure out what it is. I know someone... if your arrival was that spectacular, she may have sensed you already.”    “Another Force-sensitive person?”    “In a sense. Her name is Maz Kanata. She always seems to know everything that’s happening everywhere. If anyone, she’s the safest person to go to, save for a Jedi, and nobody knows where Luke Skywalker is. She won’t speak a word to the First Order about us.”    I scoff. “Seems just about everybody but you and me know more about my coming here than we do.”    “So it would seem,” He agrees. “It’s going to take her a few days to get here after I send the message. Until then, you can stay here. Make yourself at home.”    Oh. Wonderful. I’m grateful. Really, I am. If not for Din’s hospitality, I’d still be laying in a mud puddle. But I also detest the thought of staying in the same little hut as a stranger. I’d much rather be on my own. But I can’t actually voice any of this. “Thank you, sir.”    Din nods, standing and moving over to the closet. He pulls out a couple of items-- a longsleeve shirt, pants, a belt made out of rope-- and sets them next to me on the bed. “You should get out of those wet clothes. These aren’t going to fit you very well, but maybe Maz can bring you some.” Before I can even finish saying thank you, he’s already back by the door. “I’m going to go send the message. I’ll knock before I enter.” After struggling with the door a bit, he exits the hut and closes it up. I hear him pull some of those branches over the door to conceal it. I wait until his footsteps and jingling belts fade before I so much as move.     I put the tea on the table and change as fast as possible. The clothes he’s given me are soft and comfortable, dark brown-- but he’s right, they don’t fit at all. I’m swimming in them. I have to roll up the pants several times at the ankles and the hips, looping the belt twice around my waist to hold them up. The shirt is better, since it’s more of a dress to me and I can easily cover myself with that blanket for now. What’s worse is I hardly eat; I’m so skinny the pants threaten to fall down at the slightest movement. I fold my own outfit neatly, taking in how strange the skinny jeans and green flannel look against the homespun outfit I’m now wearing.     Once I’m done, I set the clothes on the stool and sit back where he had originally placed me, blanket and tea and all. I try to sip it. It’s warm and sweet, like honey. I wonder if it’s drugged.      What are Tristan and Jade doing right now, I wonder? I always tell them never to let me sleep for more than an hour. At fifteen and ten, my little brother and baby sister are fully capable of handling themselves, but has the hour already passed? It sure as hell feels like it to me. Have they tried to wake me up and discovered that they can’t?     Din is knocking sooner than I expect. I jump, heart leaping into my throat. “I’m dressed,” I manage, voice cracking. He enters and wordlessly takes the clothes outside. I want to ask what he’s doing with them, but refrain from doing so. He turns in the doorway as if sensing it. “I wash all my clothes in a bucket at a nearby stream. I’ll put yours in with mine.”     I thank him and he departs, leaving the door open behind him. When he returns, he closes the door most of the way but leaves it cracked. Outside, the sun is shining and birds are singing. At least, I hope it’s the sun, and not that planet, and birds instead of freaky rabbit mutations. Din pours himself a cup of tea. “So... How old are you?”     The question catches me off-guard. It’s clearly an attempt at conversation, but I overthink and wonder why he’s asking. I clear my throat after a moment and answer him. “Just turned seventeen last December.”     He stares at me. Now it’s my turn to ask, “You have no idea what December is, do you?”    Din takes a deep breath and sits himself on the stool. “Well, Laylah Evergreen... It seems we have a lot to learn about each other.”

                                                     -  -  -

   The first few days I spend with Din Djarin are peaceful but hellish. In all my life, I’d never had one kind instance with a stranger that has stuck. Everyone has always treated my family and I like enemies, and so we had grown used to it. Grown to expect it.    Not to mention, social anxiety and being an introvert are making it very difficult to seem normal around a stranger.    I speak very quietly and only to ask a question, or in response to something he says. Otherwise, I comment on nothing and make no attempts at conversation despite awkward silences. I ask where I should sleep, and he makes a new bed in thirty minutes with a couple of sticks and a stretch of hide. He gives me a few hide blankets and a pillow made of burlap and bird down, and I’m grateful. I watch how he does it and make mental notes, learning. He notices and gives tips and shows me tricks, which knots hold best and such. I’m grateful, but I don’t sleep.     I can’t sleep because Din Djarin’s house is full of weapons. He’s very clearly trained and could overpower me in a second. My only option is sprinting as fast as I can out of the door he usually keeps open, using Din’s age and armor against him if he attacks. I can’t sleep because Din Djarin sleeps in his armor, leaving early in the morning to wash it and bathe before making his rounds, checking his snares and traps for food. But he sleeps in his armor, as if always prepared for battle. I don’t ask him about it because I’m scared of his reaction, and a part of me knows that his response will be “This is the Way.” Maybe he was a soldier once and old habits die hard. The only thing that puts me at ease is the fact that he sometimes shifts, half-asleep or maybe fully awake, to rock Grogu’s cradle.     During the day, in my own clothes, I ask him what I can do to help with the daily routine. I don’t want to feel useless and I need to keep moving. He has me collect firewood. He shows me where I can wash clothes and where his traps are, how to collect the animals without damaging the meat. He shows me his garden, where he collects herbs. We split the daily duties, half-and-half. I’m terrified of doing something wrong, like I always do, and then Din will return to doing it all himself, leaving me useless. But when I do get something wrong, Din only quietly shows me how to do it correctly once more, and then I get it. The worst he got was showing mild frustration when I brought home one of the demon-rabbits with a torn leg.     “Dank farrik, did you just pull on it?”     “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”     “Let me show you how to save what you can of the catch.”     He’s being nice, and I’m not used to it. I want to tell him to yell at me and tell me how I need to be doing it, why didn’t I do it that way in the first place, why can’t I get it? But he doesn’t. He remains calm and honestly it’s scaring me.     I cry a lot in those first few days. Privately, of course, because I vowed a long time ago that nobody would see me cry, especially strangers. It would take a lot for me to cry in front of somebody. My “safe place” was always the bathroom, curled up beside the tub, where nobody could reach me. But there’s no bathroom here, only an outhouse, so I cry all my tears when I’m in the woods by myself. I think maybe Din might be able to tell sometimes, when my face is still red and splotchy, but he never says anything to my relief. Because if he asks me what’s wrong, I know I’ll break down, and if I cry then I show weakness. Weakness isn’t something that I can afford. Already, I’m too quiet, but quiet means thoughtful and careful. Wary. Weakness, on the other hand, means vulnerability. And if I’m vulnerable... No, I won’t let Din or Grogu see me weak or vulnerable.     Sometimes I think maybe I am like Katniss. I feel like her a lot, trekking through the woods to collect game and forage. Although my braid, however, is much longer. Dark and thin and entwined with a russet ribbon, it goes all the way down to my mid-thighs. I keep it long in honor of my Cherokee heritage; I’m quarter Cherokee, and I’ve always been proud of it, even if my skin is pale instead of tanned. A very special thing to me I always carry on me, and still thankfully have, is a bear claw on a suede cord, the head of which has been carved into an eagle’s head. It was given to me by my grandfather, and since I’ve only ever taken it off to sleep and to shower. Now, I don’t take it off at all.      I won’t lie, I miss my family with everything in me. But whatever this is-- death, coma, a dream, even recovering from memory implants-- I’m starting to feel more and more like it’s home, even with the presence of Din and Grogu. Here, everything is easy. At least, for us it is. We eat, we work, we live. There’s no struggle for money. No struggle for jobs that won’t hire. No struggle for college or constantly hearing of one catastrophe after another.     Of course, there’s the war. Between the Resistance, a band of rebel fighters led by General Organa, the once-princess of Alderaan and an esteemed senator; and the First Order, a cruel organization bent on ruling through power and force. Merciless, without empathy, they steal children to brainwash into mindless soldiers designated by numbers rather than names, and are ruled by a mad Sith Lord named Kylo Ren-- although not everybody is convinced that they’re all bad yet, and they’re not exactly at war. Yet. The Republic remains unconvinced, so General Leia Organa has formed a Resistance to oppose the First Order.     This galaxy isn’t perfect, not by any means. There’s cruelty and loss and a constant battle between good and evil.     But it’s a hell of a lot better than having everything condensed onto one, suffocating planet.    Ten days have passed since my arrival here. Ten days since Din sent out the message to Maz Kanata. Sometimes now, I’ve fallen asleep, whether out in the woods or at the hut, and I’ll wake up to Din having found me and carried me back or placed a blanket over my shoulders. Exhaustion has won over my distrust, and I can sleep again, although the strange location still has me waking up long before I used to. Din and I are up just before dawn most days.    And just when I think Maz Kanata isn’t coming, Din gets a call on his comlink in the middle of breakfast, making all three of us jump. A whole two weeks for the Galactic Standard Calendar, Din has only just told me. A whole two weeks of days named strangely on a calendar with ten months instead of twelve and 368 days instead of 365.     Grogu nearly spills his gruel. Din-- who was eating outside because I can’t see his face since he strictly follows the Way-- does drop his food, and it clatters onto the rocks before the front door. He pulls his helmet down before kneeling down to pick up the bowl. “Dank farrik...”     He comes inside to grab the comlink off the counter and goes right back out. I hear him talking to somebody as he walks away, and I’m suddenly nervous. Butterflies do somersaults in my stomach. If Maz gives me the option to go home, will I really take it?     I’m comfortable with my family, but we suffer. I don’t want to leave them behind, but I don’t think I could bear to leave this paradise where I might be able to grow used to Din Djarin and Grogu the space-Gizmo-wizard. I might even be able to grow used to the disturbing wildlife. And honestly, the more Din has taught me, the more appealing becoming his apprentice sounds. I want to live here. I want to learn the Galactic Standard Calendar, their letter system of Aurebesh, their slang and even Mando’a. But saying all of this is very difficult for me, especially when I don’t trust Din. I’m still waiting for his kindness to fade.      Although, he’s making it very confusing for me. Seventeen years of mistreatment has left a lasting imprint that I hate, but can’t fight. My instincts are torn between thinking I might be able to trust him and warning me that I should not. The fact that I’m wearing one of two outfits he helped me cut and resize so that I have something more fitting to wear only adds to it. The fact that he’s simply accepted the girl that was suddenly flung onto his planet, disoriented and confused, makes it even worse.     I wonder what Mom would do. Or what any of my siblings would do. They’d stay, definitely, so long as we were all together. But this decision I need to make for me. They may love me, and I love them more than anything, but if this is my path... Strangely enough, I hear the voice of Din echoing in my head: “This is the Way.”     Din returns shortly. He peers around the corner, gesturing to someone behind him. Following is a very old woman-- but she’s not human. She’s a spry elderly female humanoid, but the resemblance to a human ends there. She’s completely hairless, her wrinkled skin the color of apricots. She squints at me from behind a pair of silver goggles strapped to her over-large head, her spindly body fidgeting as if anxious to move. “Hmmm...” She drawls out.     I stand, nervous. I hadn’t been prepared for her visit. My hair is still messy from bed and I haven’t changed out of the outfit that I designated for pajamas. It’s been splattered with gruel from Grogu’s spasm when the comlink flicked to life, and I’m nervously trying to smooth down the shirt-tunic and pat my bedhead down all at once.    Din clears his throat. “Maz Kanata, this is Laylah Evergreen. Laylah, this is Maz.”    “I know who she is,” Maz replies mysteriously, adjusting her goggles and coming closer. I may be short, but I still kneel to be at her eye level. “Everyone Force-sensitive in the galaxy knows who she is.”    “That’s dangerous,” Din says, and I know I’ve bought my ticket to getting shipped away just by existing.    Maz waves a hand, but doesn’t take her eyes off me. “I said they know who she is, not where she is. Most people only felt something off. I’ve been hearing about the disturbance for days now. Those of us whom are more in-tune with the Force...” She reaches forward and grabs my chin, moving my head from side to side. But here’s the problem: it takes every fiber in my body not to leap back from the sudden contact, especially there. Imprinted into my brain is my father trying to make me look at him, and fearing his wrath, I hadn’t been able to move. Every time someone touches my chin-- which, it’s rare for anyone to touch me at all besides my family-- I see his face. It brings tears to my eyes, but if Maz notices, she doesn’t say anything.     She steps back, and I take a few shuddering breaths, trying to push the thought of my father out of my head. Maz’s eyes bore into mine. “...We saw her. Leia sent for me immediately. Luke, I’m sure, wherever he is, saw her too. Horribly enough, this means that we know Kylo Ren saw her. Thankfully, they don’t know her location. They only know her as The Girl Misplaced. She’s not from here. She’s from another time and space entirely. The Force wouldn’t have reacted so otherwise.”     “Wh-what does this mean?” I mutter softly, now wondering how many other people saw me before their eyes.     “It means,” Maz says, “That your destiny is meant to play out here. Which is why you are here. I haven’t felt a ripple in the Force like that in a thousand years--” I balk at her age; she doesn’t look that old, “--and I doubt I’ll see it again for another thousand, by which point you’ll be long gone.”    “So... You mean...”    “Leia knows that I came to you; she told me to tell this to you gently, but I can’t think of any other way to say it,” Maz shakes her head, taking my hands in her tiny ones. “This is your home now, Laylah of Earth. I would make your peace with it now, and accept your fate sooner rather than later, else it will come upon you too quickly.”     I’m crying before I realize it. I’m screaming at myself internally for showing weakness in front of not one, but two strangers, but I can’t help it. I missed my family, but I didn’t realize that I should have been grieving this whole time. I can’t go home. I’m stuck here, for the rest of my life. But isn’t that what I’ve always wanted, to get away from Earth? Isn’t this a good thing?     My siblings would be upset-- Mom would be devastated. But I know that given the option to come back and I was happier here, she’d want me to stay. Our happiness has always come first for her. But knowing that I’ll never see the faces of my family again hits me hard. I don’t even have any pictures. All I have is the bear-claw pendant at my neck, all I have left of them. I squeeze it hard enough for the edge to cut into my palm, trying to sear their faces into my mind. Their voices, their smiles and laughter. All the good memories. Every time I look at it, I’ll think of you. Always and forever.     If I’d have known that nap would have been my last day on Earth, I would have told Tristan and Jade I loved them. I’d have called Mom at work. I’d have called Thomas and Julia. But they know I loved them, right?     Maz pulls away, turning to Din. “She’s in your charge now, Din. This child-- she needs your protection and care. It’s unlikely that the First Order will find her here, but you can never be too careful.”     “I know, Maz,” Din replies, and I realize that he’s already come to this decision. Taking me in, like he took in Grogu. He’s been teaching me since the day I got here, because he knew I would likely never be able to go back.     She hands him a bundle. “Clothes for the girl. When she’s ready... don’t question her path.”     “I won’t. And thank you.” Din bids her farewell, and I manage to thank her as well, and then she’s gone. As if she hadn’t just delivered life-altering news. For several minutes, Din stays in the doorway, unsure of what to do. Grogu has somehow managed to climb down from his chair and is resting his hands on my thigh, babbling soft noises of sympathy. I scoop him up and hug him, the first hug I’ve had since my arrival here. After a moment of hesitation, Din sets the bundle down and crosses the room, wrapping his arms around both of us. “I’m sorry, Laylah.”     “I already knew,” I managed, torn between hating the embrace and leaning into it for some semblance of comfort. Grogu uses his sleeve to dab at my face, and I can’t help but smile. Your destiny lies here.     I refuse to lay here and bawl my eyes out for days. I’m going to do what I was sent here to do, wherever my path takes me, for better or worse. I’m not going to let my sudden breach of time and space have been for nothing. Then I really will have always been useless. I refuse to repay Din’s kindness by becoming lethargic and wasting away. I’ll get strong, and I’ll... I’ll learn the Way. What else can I be meant to do? Din needs an apprentice, and I just happen to land here of all places? I’ll accept that as more than coincidence. For you guys, I think, envisioning my family. I’m still crying though, even as I smile. I know the grief will last for a long time before dulling, but I’ve been through loss before. Hasn’t everyone?     “Foundling sounds stupid for a girl my age,” I choke out, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, “Makes me sound like I’m four years old. How about fledgling? Sounds like I’m just about ready to sprout wings.”    Din chuckles and rubs my shoulder. Grogu chirps excitedly and squeals, hugging me tighter. “Fledgling it is.”

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Thanks for reading! New episodes are posted Wednesday nights. If anybody wants to be tagged, just let me know!

[lesser-mook]

Evolution is just change, change is just part of the design. They're not separate. (The Folly of Accidental Design)

Thats the riddle humans need to figure out and stop trying to make the two separate because tribalism is one helluva drug that man can't seem to quit.

If spontaneous combustion of all that is- is accidental, how does Evolution happen accidentally without design to aplly specific function when according to these same people, all of it is meaningless anyway BECAUSE its an accident.

So if its an accident, why is there specific functions applied to micro-animals we cant even see?? Why do microorganisms serve a purpose, why does anything serve a function if its all an accident anyway?

The lie itself isn't even sustainable. Red flag.

One of the biggest lies is religion using the truth as a weapon and the scientist enclave convincing people that universal specification and design from the solar system operating like an atom, to us designing computers, tv & smart phones like mini-universes in our hands just like God or Quantum Intelligence designed this simulation we live in.

Hell we modeled an actual game after our own simulation (The Sims) where we are god watching our creation.

The Earth being specified for our every need from herbs, spices, livestock, natural painkillers, water. Etc. Even using our corpses as fertilizer.

Some parasites are harmful to humans but help the ecosystem which includes humans.

From a microorganism animal living on your skin, the bacteria in your mouth. To a Seed with glider wings. To a SuperNova. Or Eclipse.

All of that parallel, ALL of that specific function is an accident, all a coincidence. 😂Bold faced lie told by smart people.

And the elites pushing that crap, so many more smart people writing all those folly books & narratives trying to convince you a macrocosm of articulate CONSISTENT effects & functionality NO DIFFERENT from a computer (a creation of man which is not an accident) is somehow a meaningless accident anyway on a macro-cosmic scale.

This isn't even about God, think of it as what it is a Transdimensional "Quantum Intelligence". Really think about how specific everything is from a blade of grass to our own white blood cells.

Think about how eerie it is that most of what we do & create emulates the universe.

Just as the orbiting motion of the solar system emulates the atom, a lot people overlook that.

Evolution Scientists/Theorists (Keyword:THEORY) explaining how things work aren't wrong. The folly is not their findings on how organisms develop the issue is some do not credit it to any design, when by design its too consistent and articulate to be an accident, its not wishful thinking, it's simple logic.

Cause and Effect. You dont get a chemical reaction without a catalyst, it just doesnt happen. Anything less is magic or a very elaborate cope to dance around the fact that some people refuse to admit that something primed this dimension that we perceive to be: Life

So at that point it boils down to hubris, ego. I have zero problem considering that this is all a very very epic nigh impossible happenstance-- I'm not above the possibility that it is an accident. That all of this is a result of matter, particles and gas compiling and colliding into cosmic crescendo.

I can consider that it is exactly that. Thats intellectual honesty.

But what most ppl need to consider is can you get out of your own way and see what is as it is, regardless if the realization intimidates your existential confidence in what you WANT to be true because what most of us want is a sense of control than the truth.

Anything less is Blue Pill baby. Blue pill.

Two lies of the same rusty coin. Misuse the truth or deny it.

One as a means of control.

The other is a desperate attempt to maintain an illusion of control.

Otherwise, a seed with wings, incredible. That's one spectacularly specified/ modified accident.

The code of the universe is what drives function: DNA

If there is functionality thus function was installed, if it's installed, that implies design. Design is not random.

Do what I did: merely consider it.