#--from where i first started out this year to whenever chaos theory comes out

[mangosaurus]

sketch request for @unnecessary-dinosaurs! she asked for brooklynn teaching darius how to skateboard 🛹 aftermath down below 👇

[sgcairo]

Babytorre and Dottore Headcanons!

Damn guys, 100+ followers??? Help??? I'm not sure how I got here, but thank you guys for being here and being awesome! Take this offering of Babytorre and Dottore being emotional, and whatever cute things I can cram into a thousand words.

-If these two settle down in the same vicinity, you can bet that they'll be asleep together in seconds. Usually with Babytorre snuggled up on Dottore's chest or against his side. Dottore snores a little, but Babytorre sleeps so deeply that he doesn't even notice it.

-Dottore sometimes notices a little head of familiar hair walking around the lab and organizing it. He's not exactly the most organized person ever, and Babytorre might make the chaos a little bit worse, but Dottore always thanks him with a little pat on the head for his good work.

-Babytorre always makes sure to hug Dottore's leg whenever he sees him, it's his own little greeting. Dottore eventually just starts picking him up and tossing him in the air a little. Babytorre loves it, even if it scares the living shit out of Pantalone upon witnessing it for the first time.

-Dottore reads to Babytorre more often than not, but it's usually fascinating facts about aranaras or Babytorre's favorite book, The Princess and the Pea. Either way, Babytorre ends up asleep by the end of it. Dottore will always bookmark where they left off and tucks him in before getting booted out by Pantalone.

-Sometimes Dottore will just talk about his theories with Babytorre, even if the kid has no clue what he's talking about. A lot of problems resolve themselves that way, but Babytorre's solution to everything (read: explosion) always makes him laugh. Though Pantalone keeps telling him that he shouldn't be encouraging arson as a way to solve any problem.

-Dottore sometimes sings an old Fontainian lullaby to Babytorre to help him sleep after a nightmare (when he doesn't want to wake Pantalone up, that is). Babytorre can never remember the words, but he often hums it without even realizing it. The first time Dottire hears him humming it, he's surprised- but also ever so slightly touched. Even into his older years, he remembers it almost perfectly, and it is one of the few tunes that withstands the test of time.

-Dottore always makes time to visit Anastasiy, no matter what. Even if he's swamped with deadlines or stressing about the success of a time-sensitive project- He'll somehow find a way to visit Babytorre at any cost, even if it's only for a short time. He doesn't know why he does it, but he feels guilty if he doesn't show, especially when Pantalone asks him what he's been doing or if he's alright. Babytorre shows his own sort of concern and even comes looking for Dottore if he doesn't hear from him for more than a few days. Having Anastasiy see him in such a compromising mood makes the Doctor somewhat nervous, he doesn't want to lose his temper and hurt the kid by accident. So he'll always visit, even if it's at an ungodly hour, even if it's only for a short time.

-Dottore stops truly seeing himself in Babytorre after a while. Anastasiy develops his own looks, even, not only going down a different path of interest but also physically. Perhaps the tampering was deeper than Dottore thought, but it also makes him consider Anastasiy more as his child, rather than a clone. While deep down, he knows that Babytorre is just a younger version of himself... Dottore also thinks of him as his son, perhaps if fate had been kinder or if he hadn't fallen off the clandestine path and caved to his own fascinations. Would he have something other than this twisted tangle of feelings with Pantalone and the child he quite literally stole? Maybe.

That's all for now, but perhaps a second part will appear! Thank you guys for all your lovely support, much love for all of you!

[aziraphales-library]

Hi! I was wondering if you know any fics where in the focus is Azi, Crow, Adam and Warlock? Like a sort of found family fic between the 4 of them. It can be angsty or not. I just wanna know cuz Warlock is like EXTREMELY underrated and I feel bad for the poor child. XD Anyway, thank you!

Hello! You’ll want to check out our #kid fic tag for loads of Adam and Warlock content. And we also have a #warlock dowling tag! I’ve pulled together some of the fics from our tags with the four characters and a found family theme...

A Journey Into The Unknown (Which Shall Lead Us Ever Closer To Home) by BlackUnicorn (NR)

Anthony J. ‘just call me Crowley’ Crowley is…content – his little queer café in the heart of Soho, his son, his best friend, his snake.

Aziraphale is…existing – day in, day out, in the same job, with the same people, and the same half-forgotten dreams. Going through the motions.

Never would their paths have crossed if not for a boy, a teenager, really, running away to the city in search of something better.

That’s how it starts, anyway…

My Dearest Warlock by Sassyandsarcastic15 (T)

Biological family doesn't always mean everything. Biological family can hurt you, break you, mock you, or leave you. Blood doesn't always mean everything. True family isn't defined by blood, but rather by true love that can never be taken or forsaken.

Warlock Dowling was more than happy to receive the news that Nanny Ashtoreth and Brother Francis are willing to take him and raise him as their own. Although, he did receive a rather large shock upon learning the identity of his former nanny and gardener. But that doesn't really matter, all that matters is that Warlock has the family he always wanted.

With adventures that only God could have though up and romances that have been boiling for centuries, the small little town of Tadfield is in for an awakening that no one expected. And sometimes, the unplanned things are the best.

Chaos Theory by the_moonmoth (T) (series)

If an Antichrist flaps its wings in Tadfield, what does that mean for Warlock Dowling?

Adam put the world back together during the Apocalypse like a great big jigsaw puzzle, but something about Warlock never fit right. Eight years later, Adam thinks he's finally figured out how to fix it, but he should've known that humans are far too complex for simple solutions.

Going Overboard by Fyre (T)

When you do a job, you expect to get paid. What you don't expect is for things to go overboard.

Ineffable Overboard AU

It never hurts to keep looking for sunshine by elf_on_the_shelf (E)

After Adam's parents die in a car crash, Aziraphale is forced to start taking care of him as more than just an uncle. Don't get him wrong, he loves the little devil, it's just that he is completely clueless and could rather use some help.

In comes Crowley, Adam's new nursery school teacher with his amazing skills in dealing with kids. Could he be the answer to all of Aziraphale's prayers - Adam-related and otherwise?

Well, it looks like he might be just that, judging by the weird things Aziraphale's heart seems to be doing whenever he sets eyes on the man. Now, if only the tall ginger returned his feelings...

It Was Always You by mltrefry (T)

A chance encounter during one of the worst times of Ezra Fell’s life reunites him with his once best friend and the one who got away. Though, that would imply he ever had him in the first place.

Anthony Crowley and his son, Warlock, relocate to the quieter city of Tadfield from that of London. In the process, manages to find again that one person who always made him feel less alone, the one person he was pretty sure he was never going to speak to again.

But the road to true love never did run smooth (something that’s been true from their very beginning). Despite the easy way they fall back into each other, their lives don't seem to follow suit, and if it's not one challenge its another. But despite everything they find themselves facing down, the ten years without each other taught them one thing: they’re better together than they are apart.

- Mod D

[yournightowl]

Your Nightowl#012

For some reason I had it in my head that credit scores have always been a thing.

Okay well we probably know why i’d think that (like because there's an entire century worth of Mark-Ops telling me and everyone that else that Corporations are, have been, and always will be in power because that’s where they belong) (-∧-；) but let’s take it slow.

For as long as there’s been money, there’s been people who are good to lend to and people who aren’t. But the fact is, you don’t really know which is which just by looking at someone. You can try and base it on reputation, but that's just a house of dominoes- the first person to miss a payment makes everyone else look like an asshole. 

Of course, if its your job to lend people money, you can’t go to your boss and say “it’s a crapshoot”. You have to say “we’re working on reducing risk” and “we’ve got a new assessment system,” and other bs that tries to put chaos in a box by saying “chaos is a number” and claiming that you can solve for it.

So, The Credit Score comes in (which wasn’t really such a big deal until Pre-Screening became so important, but it’s all been rolled into the same thing for a hundred years now).  And this all becomes needlessly complicated so that you can have people whose job it is to explain it to you, or do it for you, and in that way we get unemployment down another .0001%. 

Popular theory says that the Social Point part came in much much later, like a subtle corruption, but from what i’ve been reading back here on the oldnet (which again, also has misinformation, but misinfo’s easier to spot when no one’s bothered to update it in a couple decades), the social aspect was there from the beginning. 

Because the core idea behind the credit score is risk minimization, and risk minimization is just a slightly longer name for Control. Uncover the unknown, account for the variables, remove the uncertainty, and you have perfect Control.

(Starting to sound a little Anarch-y. But bear with me.) (＋_＋)

i think that’s why it snuck up on people. It’s easy to look across the border and point at other countries, and say that their Credit Scores are evil and dystopian. It’s a lot harder to go digging for the seeds of technofascism embedded around you. 

Maybe its impossible. We can criticize it in broad terms, and complain about it in hindsight, but if something could be done about it

Would we have gotten to this point?

i bring all this up because of this week’s news. It got buried over pretty fast with dummy results, but here’s the long and short of it as best i can summarize:

There’s no Single Credit Score, here or in any other country. Because it’s really about Control and not accuracy, the more individual credit scores out there the better; the more Numbers attached to you the easier you are to keep track of.

Credit Scores are never assigned by the state, and always by private organizations. They’re given tacit approval by the state whenever one or more state programs makes use of Credit Scores.

 If you’re in the business of generating Scores, getting a nod from the State is really all you care about. You’d sell your own grandma to get onto those forms.

LUCR was a Credit Score variant assessed by the Lucrex Accreditation Association, which was very visibly a Cell corp, so the trail ends there. But it was legit enough to be used by the State when assessing an individual’s immigration application.

It has to be legit, because otherwise the State wouldn’t use it, right?

Wrong. LUCR was bogus. The algorithm they used was less accurate in predicting how likely an individual was to make their monthly payments than flipping a coin (Which is almost impressive).

Judging by how fast LUCR got wiped from the first 10% of all search results, i’d say the state was not happy about this. So maybe heads will roll? Yay! (ノ><)ノ

Probably not, for reasons we’ve already discussed, which have to do with the general unfairness of the world we live in.

i’d put odds way above 50% that none of those affected immigrants are getting their applications re-submitted, though.

Maybe they’re better off. Believe it or not, I’m starting to think this country sucks.

And maybe all countries suck??? (￢_￢)

The blogger without a nation,

Your nightowl

[wildymoon]

WILBUR LORE SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

NOTE: THE BELOW IS TALKING ABOUT THE CHARACTERS FROM THE DREAM SMP, NOT THE CONTENT CREATORS OR ANY OF THEIR OTHER CHARACTERS.

I want Wilbur to apologize again, what we got at the start of the stream wasn't enough imo.

Before anyone yells at me about the whole threatening Dream thing being a grand old attempt at making amends, I feel like I need to explain why doing that cancelled out a fair bit of the good it does.

Because on one hand, great! Dream has no more power over him, in theory.* Tommy still has his discs, Dream is royally fucked (especially if people like Quackity didn't know where he's been hiding until now, cause that information's bound to leak out), and Wilbur has gotten what he wanted: a way to protect Tommy as much as he possibly can from the green bastard that nearly took his life so many times (and succeeded thrice), as well as a way to fully legitimize himself and the nation he created.

But on the other hand, there are so many problems and downsides to this plan. Don't get me wrong, I loved it and was on the edge of my seat the whole time, plus I doubt I (or most other people) could come up with a much better way to do it, but the only two things about the plan (not the execution of it) that Wilbur got flawlessly (or close enough to it) were Dream's weakness and Tommy's reaction needing to believe the discs were genuine.

Here's a list of the things I believe Wilbur should (but probably won't, partially because I don't think he would/should regret most of it, but also because this confrontation felt final enough that I don't think there'd be a continuation) apologize for:

In order to even come up with this plan, he had to push Tommy into taking him to Logstedshire, despite him being INCREDIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE WITH IT.

Outright lying to Tommy about the flint and steel wasn't a fun part of the plan, but I'll pass it cause it would've freaked him out more if he knew Wilbur had it and wasn't using it. Still putting it on the list cause I want to recognize it.

Mentioning he was tired of all the self-targeted damage/death, before immediately turning around and threatening to burn himself alive if Dream doesn't follow orders, which definitely wouldn't be good for the mental health of someone who was contemplating jumping off a cobble tower (and technically did so) and is already panicking over being in the same inescapable building as his abuser and three-time murderer.

Continuing off of that actually, threatening to do it when Tommy started freaking out about the discs. He does not want to see Wilbur (regardless of iteration) die in front of him for what is at least the 3rd time, if not the 5th.

Telling Tommy to shut up basically whenever he spoke. Things do get more complicated when there are multiple voices talking at once and you start getting anxious you're not being heard, but damn did you have to be such a dick about it? Especially when (iirc) Dream gave him that order as well, several times, in a similar tone.

Making the entire scenario about him, as Tommy mentioned on the way to the community house. It worked, but that's not as good when you realize it's only gonna stoke that kind of behavior. I don't really know how to talk about this for a couple of reasons though...

Getting the 'discs' burnt, which caused Tommy a great deal of distress. Again, already traumatized and you add this to the pile. Ouch.

TL;DR, I want Wilbur to apologize for putting Tommy through like 5 chained emotional wringers. He can be proud of his plan working (despite it being kinda D:), but just give us an apology for taking away another like 20 years from Tommy's revived lifespan through stress alone.

* I had to rewatch the video to make sure both discs were burnt, in my first go-through I only saw Mellohi and was certain Dream kept Cat. He didn't, but imagine the chaos IF Wilbur thought he burnt both and he didn't. Someone would get screwed over then.

[askcharaandfriends]

How far through the Chrystalia series are Chara and Asriel. (I assume most of the others either haven't started or have finished the series, considering that it concluded 25 years ago.)

Most people have only read to "City of Chaos" because "City of Hope" was unfinished and un-published.

Chara has finished the published works and has started on fanfiction. RPG wrote basically a whole book that takes place between "Chaos" and "Hope" called "Lament of Chrystalia: City of Tears" It really captures the feelings of grief and loss that the readers feel for the loss of the city, the loss of the story, and the loss of the author. [RPG didn't realize, but he needed that between book too. It really helped him work through the numbness and loss he felt after he first revived] Chara is part-way through the unofficial 5th book. They love to read. They've read some short oneshots too but don't want to get into other multi-chapter fics until they finish City of Tears.

Asriel is slightly less of a reader but still pretty interested in these books so he's read up to halfway through "City of Omens"

Sans and Papyrus have read all the official books of course. Papyrus has read City of Tears but even though he is very perceptive, he doesn't think his dad is secretly alive [that's silly, if he was alive he would come back and take care of us, right? Besides i saw him die!] So it's much easier to believe that someone just really knew how to write like WD Gaster. Either way it really helped Papyrus grieve.

It helped Hermann too but she didn't get to finish it before she disappeared. [It took RPG a while to write this one because he had no deadlines or pressure so he just wrote whenever]

Sans has read like... so much Chrystalia fanfic. So much. Angst. Fluff. Cringe. ...Other. He's probably the biggest fan. He knows all the fan theories and what is plausible vs just fun. He knows how to be chill to other fans but also where to stand his ground.

Papyrus mainly sticks to fics that are well written and in character. He has standards afterall! If something starts getting too weird for him he simply quits and moves on to something more his taste. He stays out of debates for the most part and away from more toxic fans.

Both Alphys and Undyne are deep into Chrystalia fanfic.[ but no one is as deep as Sans] Alphys surprisingly is into fluff [well, perhaps not that surprising] and Undyne's into angst. Both cross over into angst or fluff depending on the other's recommendations.

Napstaton really enjoys the series. Undyne got them into it when they were in human appreciation club with her and Hapsta. The book has a variety of characters who live in the city and Napstaton was partially inspired by a really cool robot character.

Hapsta has read it but enjoys random fanfics more. They can be in character or out of character. Good or bad. Weird or normal. but they must have Romance! Drama! Bloodshed! The author must be passionate about whatever they wrote.

Toriel has read them. She enjoyed it but some of the "trapped in a failed utopia" stuff makes her worried that that's how her citizens see her. It's not true. But it is something she wonders from time to time. She is inclined to read light less angsty AUs "what if everyone had a normal childhood and grew up to have normal jobs?" "What if they all actually knew how to communicate effectively?"

Asgore has read and enjoyed them. He didn't realize there was fanfic on the internet until the day everyone was freed. "Golly! Who knew you could read a whole fan made book on the internet! Technology is amazing!" He started off unsure how to navigate to the ones he wanted and ended up reading a bunch he didn't quite like because he wanted to be polite to the author. He always leaves a short comment complementing the work "a very nice fic" "good job writing so many words" eventually the others gave him recommendations and helped him find what he likes and things have gotten better. He likes a lot of the same fics as Toriel but sometimes more action.

[some-dr-writings]

Shuichi, Kokichi and Nagito’s crush likes napping on his lap during breaks

Shuichi Saihara:

·       Ah yes, the Super High School Level Astronomer, it was no wonder Kaito would be friends with such a person, and whoever Kaito was friends with, all his other friends would be friends with them as well, that was how Shuichi had met you. Often in those nightly training sessions, for a break Kaito, Shuichi, Maki and whoever else felt like joining them that evening would jog around till finding you, telescope by your side. You’d speak of the stars, of legends that surrounded them, of how travelers of old navigated the world through them, how stars were born, what there different colors meant, and so much more. Folklore, history, science, didn’t matter, you knew and continued to learn about each and any possible aspect you could about those specks of light. However, you were rather quiet outside of those moments, though you weren’t closed off. It was more so, if you weren’t speaking of stars you’d just so intently listen to others.

·       … Maybe that’s how or why it happened? More often than not, when at school you were rather drowsy. You were often out, camping in the mountains away from the harsh city lights so when you were at school it was nice. When you were around, Shuichi made sure to spend time with you. You were able to speak so much without words, it was fun trying to interpret your expressions. Truthfully Shuichi didn’t think much of it at first, it was just how you were, quiet, yet outgoing, bubbly even. Others however had a more difficult time understanding you, somehow they didn’t notice the many little nuances that made up you, your slightest shift of expression or tilt of the head, your body language, how you spoke more so with your eyes, engaging in the conversations in your own way. How others couldn’t Shuichi had no idea at first, you were captivating, how could they NOT notice!?

·       At first he had thought it was simply him being a detective, often having to interpret and read people through his work with his Uncle, but… that was not quite it, there was more to this. I didn’t come naturally, he WANTED to understand you. He found himself drawn to you, your gravity too powerful for him to even consider resisting. And it seemed the same could be said for you too. Whenever break rolled around, no matter how short it may be, you’d always seek him out. Due to more often than not being awake through the night you’d nap, but Shuichi didn’t mind, not even when you used his shoulder or lap as a pillow. He’d read his novels aloud to you, or if he was working through a case, walk through his logic aloud, he’d just speak even if you were asleep, something in him just knew you were still taking this all in.

·       Even if he was somehow one of the few people who understood you, he wondered how you had even seen him yet. You were like a supernova in his eyes, so bright, so stunning, so colorful, leaving only beauty and wonder in your wake, how did you notice him? By chance did your heart race too at the thought of spending more time together? Did you also find a soft, comforting, warmth in his presence as he did you? Did you adore hearing him speak just as he did you? Whatever the case may be for you, he sure hopped it was something similar because he simply wished to your beloved stars above that you felt even half as amazing as he did with you, he just wanted you to know of such a fantastic emotion, it, no… you were astonishing and he simply wished to share and indulge in it with you.

   Kokichi Oma:

·       “Y/N!” “Hu-AH” You groaned, shakily pushing yourself off the ground. Then you noticed all your items had slipped out of your bookbag. You sighed, seeing all your papers had fallen out of your folders as well. “Geez, Y/N, I didn’t know you were so clumsy!” “Ah, just tired today I guess.” You noticed how Kokichi kept taking glances to you as he helped gather your items. Not surprising considering you literally just tumbled down a flight of stairs. Before you knew it all your supplied had already been collected and placed back in your bag. That was really quick. You winced as you stood up. Your knees almost collapsed under you and Kokichi was in the position to catch you should you have fallen but thankfully you were able to do so yourself. “Hey, hey! Where are you going?” “Oh, uh… umm.” You thought and thought but couldn’t remember. It was so hard, you felt like your mind was swimming and swirling, all thoughts fuzzy and difficult to reach.

·       Then suddenly you were being dragged along by the hand. “What the-” “You are coming with me! This’ll be fun! Especially if you have nothing better to do!” You were completely confused but more so shocked from the whole situation so you couldn’t really bring yourself to try to stop or ask where you were even going.

·       Koichi just kept running around, getting you completely lost. Eventually though he let go, dashing a few paces forward before tumbling and falling. “O-Oma!?” He simply laughed, sitting up. He hummed as the wind rolled past swaying his hair as he looked up to the sky. “Oh, Y/N, Y/N! Look at that!” You were confused looking up to the sky where he was pointing. “Ugh, you can’t see it from there, sit down already!” Taking your arm, he playfully tugged on it, but even that was enough to send you falling. Even with you sprawled across his lap, he managed to scooch over enough so just your head was there. “Perfect! Now, that cloud looks like Gonta; giant, kinda dumb, soft. And that one-” You were… quite puzzled. Clouds? Of all things? That was what he wanted to show you? You heard Kokichi speaking, but it was all noise to you, it held no meaning. You just listened as he droned on and pointed, the shadow of his outstretched arm conveniently covering your eyes.

·       You never really noticed how nice and soft Kokichi’s voice could be. Then again, he was always so loud or quiet, constantly shifting tone you never got the chance to just hear it… It was… rather pleasant. You wanted to hear him longer, engage in whatever game he was playing but so quickly your eyes drooped and all our senses simply lulled to nothing.

·       Then it was evening. At first the sight of those orange and purple hues confused you, but then- “Y/N, you’re alive! It’s been twenty years and Miu’s army of robots have taken over! We need you to join the resistance!” He couldn’t help but laugh at your absolutely baffled expression. “But that’s a lie.” “… oh yeah… Wait…” You suddenly completely awakened, abruptly sitting up. “It’s evening already!? Did we skip class!?” “It’s whateves, Y/N. Hope’s Peak doesn’t care if we skip class.” “No, not that!” You sighed, burrowing your face into your hands and mumbled to yourself. “I didn’t take the new meds again. Of course, I didn’t.” Huh, new medicine was it. Kokichi smirked, dragging you up onto your feet. “C’mon! You’ll make us late for dinner!”

·       The next several weeks were like that. No matter what you did you’d always end up napping on Kokichi’s lap at some point. This was much needed. Your therapist had been fired so you had to start all over with someone new, who wanted to give you new medicine meaning new side affects that could only be worked around via time management. It was a process trying to work out what amount you needed and what not. Napping with Kokichi was just about the only solace you had gotten in the chaos. When you had found a good balance of medication no longer were you exhausted in the day or losing sleep at night. It was great though, admittedly you missed it.

·       It had been about a week or so since your medication seemed to stable out and all was well with you once more. The bells for break had tolled and you left class. Break wasn’t long, but you didn’t care. Hearing shrieks and screams of terror and that ‘Nishishi” you knew you were close. Seeing Kokichi make his escape you simply went to one of the benches outside. And there you waited.

·       You still waited even after the bells signaling the end of break had tolled. “Oh? Y/N actually skipping class!? What has this world come too!? Soon the sky will be falling!” Seeing he wasn’t lying per say and just exaggerating you decided to answer. “I haven’t taken my nap yet.” You took his hand, pulling him onto the bench and you placed your head atop his lap. Though you weren’t not tired, a mid-day nap in the sun just felt so nice.

·       Thankfully for Kokichi, you were asleep so you couldn’t see his giddy smile. Though with this seemingly becoming the new norm you’d likely catch him one of these days. For now he’d just indulge in this moment with you, his crush and worry about that when it happens.

   Nagito Komaeda:

·       Though you were an Ultimate, an amazing person who could take care of themself just fine, Nagito worried about you. You slept, a lot. No matter when or where you could find a place to nap should you want too. It wasn’t all the time though, Nagito still had many conversations with you and had gotten to see your talent firsthand, an extraordinary sight! When you were awake, you’d spend much of your time with him, often over analyzing him trying to see if there was a scientific cause for the outlandish phenomena that was his luck. Not surprising since you were a scientist. At times Nagito wondered if your mind worked so hard when you were awake, trying to solve every last mystery the world had to offer, that drove you to exhaustion so quickly. That would explain how you could be so excitedly chatting away about one theory of yours or another only for you to suddenly fall over, knocked out. Thankfully it seemed Nagito’s luck would kick in moments like that so he could catch you before your face smashed into the ground.

·       Always following you around, trying to keep your drowsy tendency from getting you into danger, from just always being beside he had become your assistant of sorts. Though he would never dare to insist on it, he always sneakily became the one to carry your stuff around in the end, even if you had started your journey with them. Taking you by your shoulders he’d steer you away from bumping into other people or objects. He would take your hand, but he felt unworthy of such an honor unless you decided he could and he knew if he did a bright scarlet would erupt on his cheeks and his heart would pick up in pace, things you surely would notice with your keen eye. When you were awake, nothing could get past you, so Nagito would have to be extra careful. He couldn’t let you figure out his feelings. He simply didn’t have it in him to confess and he was garbage, surely you wouldn’t reciprocate his feelings, but if you did somehow, it’s not like he would deny you, someone like him had no right to deny an Ultimate, or so he thought at least.

·       Although… Nagito couldn’t help his feelings seeping out, no matter how much he had tried to keep them inside. Often, he was just talking and suddenly he’d be complimenting you and about to say he loved you and he’d have to cut himself off by causing an ‘accident’ like tripping over chairs or abruptly changing his words to say something else. He was always left a flustered mess.

·       It was just another day when Nagito strolled into your lab, finding your workspace was filled with many documents, many taped to white boards with string attacked to each and every last one, some string simply linking two pages on the same board, others stretching across the room, forcing one to duck, and twist to avoid them all, one could compare it to avoiding the lights in the laser filled room in some generic spy flic. “Hmm, but how to go about testing this?” “Testing what?” “Oh, Komaeda! Perfect timing!” You strolled over to him, looking through some file, seemingly not paying attention to your surroundings yet still avoiding all that strings. “Today I’m studying human communication!” “Uh huh.” “And I wish to test something!” You looked to him with those stunningly bright eyes as you explained, completely captivating him. “The power of words. I wish to see if they are like water in a pipe. For comparison, imagine a person as the pipe and the words water. I wonder if say a person is upset, if speaking to another person was the only way to alleviate the pressure of those emotions, or if just speaking aloud, even to no one, if that’d alleviate the pressure as well, OR if something else would happen. Yes, each individual is different, but there could still be a majority! I’m thinking we’ll go about-” a yawn escaped you before you continued. “about this… by…” You took a small notebook from your pocket, quickly scribbling down notes as Nagito lead you to a couch in the corner of the room. Nagito already knew this was coming considering that ‘pipe’ comparison didn’t make much sense since pipes would still leak, even if with another pipe around.

·       He sat beside you on the couch and moments later you rested your head on his lap. You tried holding up the little book to him and when he took it your hand and arm went limp, you already fast asleep. Nagito couldn’t help but smile, seeing you already so restful. As usually he looked through your notebook, seeing what he needed to prepare in order to set up your tests. Curiously he also looked over your notes, wondering how your interest in astrology the day prior lead to this through your connective thinking. It was always fun seeing how you could draw connections between seemingly completely unrelated topics, then again that was likely how you were such a good scientist. As he continued to read, fascinated by your research he began to wonder something. Looking to you his heart melted. “I love you.” Immediately his heart raced, and he felt that heat raising to his cheeks. What if a person were to vent to another, even if they weren’t paying attention? Perhaps because he still had told you, he still would have gotten this off his chest and he’d stop almost confessing to you so often.

·       That was how Nagito had begun to whisper his affections to you as you slept. It was a thrill like no other, fearing you’d awake right as he confessed his feelings, yet also endlessly excited by the thought as well. There was more than a fair share of times where he was almost caught, but it seemed you were none the wiser to his words of love.

·       “Hmm? Komeada? What are you mumbling about?” For a moment he froze, love struck at your soft tender expression. “Ah-uh-Oh? I was speaking? I apologize if I woke you up.” You simply huffed in response… a-and you just kept looking at him? Oh boy. Did you know? Was he finally caught? What would your response be? What did you think of him? “Thank you.” “Huh?” You smiled, nuzzling into him. “having this… instantaneous version of narcolepsy… Even though I started studying, I could never figure out how to stop it, maybe that’s because I get distracted easily, I- wait, no. No tangents.” You took a deep breath trying to reorganize your thoughts. “It… can be scary, one moment being awake then suddenly asleep. Before you I’d often sleep on the train and go way past my stop and get lost. There have also been a number of near-death experiences like when I fell asleep when walking across the street. I… it’s nice, knowing you’re around. To keep me safe and keep an eye on me. And I guess waking up to hearing your voice, waking up knowing for a fact I was safe… I don’t know, it was just nice, and I want you to know, I truly do appreciate you putting up with me.”

·       How… how could you make him fall for you more and more so effortlessly? Well, if you liked hearing his voice when you woke up… maybe… maybe next time he wouldn’t stop speaking of his love for you, even as you awoke. After all, he could never deny you anything, especially not your own comfort and ease of mind.

[wh6res]

taeyong — part of the my bloody valentine collection.

prompt. when your soulmate gets a wound or cut, flowers bloom on the same spot in your body.

synopsis. you’re desperate to meet your soulmate. maybe you can put a stop to the flowers stubbornly blooming on your wrists.

warnings. tread cautiously. mentions of mental illness (depression, attempted suicide), swearing, manipulation, implied self-harm, dubious content, forced relationship, unconsensual touching near the end, ty pulling the sadboi agenda

disclaimer. a friendly reminder that i do not, under any circumstance, condone or support any acts like this. this is not love and this is not how a normal relationship should be like. the things i write are all fiction and should be treated as such and if you don’t like it, please do not read it and waste your time hating on it. the 9 members of nct 127 do not act like this in real life and shouldn’t act like this in real life.

by the time you’re graduating high school, you’re used to the sorry glances people sent your way. 

for someone so young, you have more flowers blooming on your skin than any adult. a few small pieces of it blooming in the corner of your cheek, near the jawline. a few of them on your thighs. 

but the most concerning piece is the one on your wrists that are fully covered by the flowers, your skin nowhere to be seen with all the lilies of the valley tainting your skin. 

yet the worse has got to be the summer before senior year. you had been halfway done with the college entrance examination for a local university. your parents said the pain you felt the first time will turn into a mild itch whenever the flowers form on your skin. 

it started small, absentmindedly scratching at something on your neck. initially, you thought it was the heat, your sweat, and the fabric of your clothes irritating the sensitive skin. but when you walked up to the proctor to turn in your exam, you knew that apologetic stare like nothing else—but his eyes had flickered down to your neck. 

when your friends blew up your phone, asking where you are to celebrate, you lied and headed straight back home, head ducked, collars upturned, hiding the lilies of the valley wrapped around your throat like some insignia. 

a year later, you end up studying soulmate theory in university. they say it’s a useless course as there can be no scientific explanation to soulmates. you like thinking you chose the course because of sheer interest but really, you’re just finding an explanation, some external reason that probably bore no results but you trudged forward anyway. 

you’re restless in the pursuit of finding him—or her, you couldn’t care less. the hurt you feel weighs heavy in your heart each time you feel them blooming on your wrist, mind plagued with worry. 

your roommate interrupts your deep thinking as she practically throws herself onto your bed. “i have an idea!” she cheers, determined. “why not part-time in the school clinic? that way if people come in, you can compare their cuts to your flowers.”

“now, you just might be onto something there.”

the hunt for your soulmate still wasn’t easy despite working in the university’s clinic and it only got worse each day. your schedule is killing you, you’re slightly getting behind in some subjects, and you practically live in the library. 

contrary to popular opinions, soulmate theory can be a fucking bitch to study about. what with learning psychology, astrology, and botany all together. it was interesting how all these things can be factors in how people are paired to become soulmates. interesting, but rather complicated in a sense, too. 

they say psychology and astrology dealt with two people’s compatibility. while botany, the meanings of the flowers themselves, was theorized to predict how the soulmate connection will affect their relationship—ultimately, roses were a really, really good sign. 

you have been busy messing up your hair, utterly frustrated and irate—astronomy’s messing with your head and you can’t go a minute without scratching your wrists as the flowers bloomed after the other. 

then something unexpected happened. 

a lanky guy dressed in an all-black ensemble walked into the clinic. well, it was more of a being carried between two guys by the arms rather than walked in. everything about his clothes looked way too big to fit his delicate frame and it hardly looked like it was for fashion style purposes. his skin hugged his body to the bone, eyes sunken, and he looked so frail that a tiny shove would’ve sent him sprawled on the floor. 

his name was taeyong and he lied on the bed unconscious, with handkerchiefs wrapped around his wrists like bandages—courtesy of his friends, who looked deathly worried for the fate of their poor friend. if he had lost any more blood, he would’ve died. you had never seen the clinic in such chaos, people running around, anxious. your leg muscles were sore from going back and forth from the nurse’s side to the cabinets storing all the medical supplies she needed. 

it had been a whirlwind, and after your superior had patched and properly bandaged his cuts, you were left to look after him in the meantime as nurse jung tried contacting his guardian. 

his friends—who you learned were named yuta and jaehyun, were snoozing outside on the bench across the hall, parallel with the clinic’s double-glass door, as they waited for their friend to wake up. 

depression. suicidal. taeyong has been like that for his whole life, jaehyun stated earlier. you can only shoot a sorry look at the unconscious boy lying on the hospital bed. 

it had already been dark outside when you came in to switch out his bandages for new ones—only to realize that his cut is exactly where you had been scratching earlier before he showed up. 

you retracted, unbelieving of what that possibly entails. along the way, you’ve pieced together that your soulmate is probably struggling through something heavy, something that weighed him down so much that it made him believe hurting himself is the only solution, what with all the flowers on your skin. 

“it’s him…” you mumble, wide eyed as you eyed the faded scars around his wrists, eerily aligned to the flowers blooming on your own. 

you didn’t want to overwhelm him, that much was sure. you didn’t want to chase him away if he gets uncomfortable. so for weeks you started leaving anonymous notes in his locker. not the sappy love letter types, just little words of encouragement that could make his day better. 

when their friend breaks out into the tiniest of smiles, yuta and jaehyun’s thankful eyes would scour around the halls. sneakily looking for you behind taeyong’s back. they understood where you’re coming from and hadn’t spoken a word of disagreement when you told them you didn’t plan to make yourself known as his soulmate yet. 

and as if the notes were not enough, you start giving him his favorite starbucks drink every now and then—on days the flowers didn’t bloom as much as it normally would. you turn up half an hour early before lectures so you can place it on the table where he usually sits with his two best friends. even if his class is on the other side of campus, you’d still go. 

but it only took three weeks of creeping around until you’re caught by your soulmate himself. 

“do you want something from me?”

you didn’t know what to say, cat got your tongue as you stood before him holding the drink. you couldn’t weasel your way out and say the drink’s yours, not when he caught you standing before his usual seat, not when you were already leaning forward to place it on his desk.

“uhm… i…” you stutter pathetically, not being able to meet the intensity of his eyes. 

“jaehyun and yuta aren’t exactly the most lowkey, especially with how much their eyes wander when i open my locker. so, do you want something from me? what are you playing at, stalker?”

the name he called you stung like a bitch but you can’t blame him for it. you knew him, he doesn’t know you. you’re giving him gifts anonymously. even if they were all from the goodness of your heart, from an outsider’s view, your actions still appeared sketchy.

“soulmate,” you correct him. 

you watch his features twist into confusion, only for it to morph into shock once he’s digested what you just said. eventually, he schools his expression back to indifference. his stoic face is so intimidating, you thought, biting your bottom lip and fidgeting on your toes. 

“what?”

“i’m your—i’m your soulmate.”

his eyes flicker downwards to peak a glance at the bouquet of flowers painted on your skin. colors as beautiful and vibrant as the day you got them, the stems of the bell-shaped flowers intricately woven into each other. for a split second, you even twist your arms a little, showing him the rock hard proof of your claim. 

ever since you found him, you’ve always contemplated for the better part of your limited free time about what his reaction will be when he finds out you two are soulmates. will he accept you? or worse case scenario, pretend you didn’t exist? the possibilities are unknown especially with someone who seems to be going through so much that the last thing they wanted is this person who thinks they’re entitled to be part of their lives because the universe made it be that way. 

not that you feel entitled… taeyong can reject you all he wants and you’ll give him the space he needs—

he’s crying. 

and not the simple, small tears slowly streaming down his face one by one type of crying, no, his tears were an onslaught. full-on sobbing as he threw himself onto you, wrapping his arms tight around your shoulders as he buried his face into your neck, words heavily muffled by your coat. 

“is it—” he hiccups. “true?”

you blink, from all the reactions you’ve gone through in your head, crying was the very last thing you expected from him—crying and hugging you like you’re the last person on earth and he’s been touch-starved until he found you. 

maybe that was the case. 

you wonder what jaehyun and yuta felt whenever taeyong ditched them to spend time with you—and that was pretty much all the time since he’s found you. he’s like a puppy, following you around wherever you go (unless he has classes) and had been neglecting his friends. whether it was intentional or not, whether his two friends were cool with it or not, you don’t know. 

you try your best to smile every time he runs up to you on the other end of the hall, spotting you coming out of your own respective classroom after lectures are done. 

he’s beaming like a child, inviting you to this cafe he wants to take you to—and pathetic ‘lil ‘ol you just can’t seem to say no to those huge expecting eyes.

but you’re not blind to the slight scowl on yuta’s face nor the razor sharp smile on jaehyun’s features. they want to hang out together, just boys, but now there’s this soulmate who’s suddenly more important than them—what happened to bros before hoes?

but they knew taeyong needed you. heck, he never once smiled like the way he did before he met you. it was like he’s become this whole new person with a child-like innocence reflecting his eyes. 

“so?” your soulmate prompts just as his two friends came over, flanking him. 

taeyong deflates the moment he sees the hesitance in your eyes. “uhm… i actually have a shift in the clinic, and nurse jung said the clinic isn’t some hang out place, so you can’t, uhh…” you trail, not wanting to finish the sentence. 

a little white lie can’t hurt anyone, right? 

taeyong shouldn’t depend on you all the time, not when he also has friends who care about his well-being and mental health just as much as you do. being soulmates didn’t mean he has to spend every waking moment with you and the faster he realizes, the better. 

when you dashed away before he could even mutter out a reply, you miss the frown on his face, his eyes never once leaving your frame until you turned the corner. 

people often favor the underdog. they have this gnawing urge in their gut to sympathize and unknowingly root for their own plot twist or happy ending. 

people look at you and your soulmate and think you have poor, suicidal and depressed and sad taeyong eating at the palm of your hand, following you around like a lonely duckling—the undeniable underdog in a coming-of-age movie, the person shoved around until some bigger, more capable person comes to their rescue (in this case you, unfortunately).

but appearances have always been deceiving. 

your little 3-week head start with getting to know your soulmate had only been on surface-level. you just wanted to help him but taeyong’s obvious attraction—can you even call it that? you’d like to think it’s more of infatuation—is off-putting for you. from standing way too close to putting an arm around you, from walking you to your lectures to walking you home, from the light headpats to having the guts to kiss your cheeks. 

it’s too much and it wasn’t as if you basked in the public display of affection. whenever you tried telling him off in the most gentlest of ways, taeyong would frown and curl in on himself, eyes glossy, darting around, and looking like a kicked puppy. 

you couldn’t leave him like that just because of some harmless skinship, right? he’s just excited and happy he’s found you. weren’t you also the first one to initiate? with all those notes and gifts you’ve given him? and now you’re backing away just because of a few touches?

“you know,” your roommate plops herself on the couch next to you, netflix movie playing as background. “you’re not obligated to fix him. you’re his soulmate, not his psychiatrist.”

you sigh, head diving into the couch pillows. “i’m not trying to fix him, i’m just…”

she raises a prodding eyebrow. 

“…i’m just trying to be there for him.”

taeyong likes to think that he wasn’t doing it on purpose. but the sense of rush and sick pleasure running up and down his spine whenever you force a smile and give in to his wishes proves otherwise. 

all his life he’s been pushed around. tasked to buy his old man beer and cigarettes and an assortment of drugs. if he turns up empty handed, guess who becomes a punching bag? and he has always been alienated throughout his school life. immature elementary kids aren’t exactly the kindest and would’ve picked on every single thing to appear cool to their friend groups. and poor little scrawny taeyong who didn’t speak and didn’t defend himself was just too easy of a target. 

“uhm… you don’t—don’t need to walk me home all the time.” do you think so low of him that you believe he doesn’t sense your fake little giggle?

“but i like walking you home,” he pouts, jutting his lips just a wee bit more for extra measure. he makes sure his eyes are as round and glossy as can be, he noticed those puppy eyes are what gets to you the most. 

he can tell by your tense shoulders, the clear hesitance in your face, that smile that looked too sweet to be real, and your averting eyes. you needn’t say anything for taeyong to figure you out. he isn’t blind to the lack of comfort you’ve developed by being with him. 

he has to think of something or else you’ll be slipping through the gaps of his fingers.

he asked you out on valentine’s day. it wasn’t the simple, forgettable act of popping out the “hey, do you want to go out on a date with me?” question while holding a bouquet of flowers. taeyong made sure you’ll never forget this certain day that he had laid his claim on you—not that it needed to be vocalized, it was his wounds that made flowers bloom on your skin. the soulmate connection should be enough.

but taeyong wanted to go the extra mile.

with the help of his friends (yuta’s popular and jaehyun can be very persuasive), he’s got people handing you lilies of the valley every ten feet until you reach the auditorium in the main building. despite it blooming on your skin you’ve never really seen them in the flesh. they’re like dew drops, bell-like flowers growing in an elegant dip from it’s main stem and appearing no bigger than your thumb.

you were awed, but skeptical.

you meet taeyong by the end of your little journey, standing on a decorated stage with a bouquet of the flowers nestled delicately in his hands. the natural sunlight bleeding through the open windows giving him such a beautiful glow that you couldn’t take your eyes off him. he had smiled and timidly gave you the flowers while asking.

“will you be my girlfriend?” 

if only you’d look close enough, that sugar coated smile contrasted greatly to the sly flickers in his eyes. he knows how your actions are dictated by the reputation you’ve built. taeyong knows you'll say yes, because if you didn't, how could you have rejected your own soulmate who has made you the light of his life? he’s been nothing but kind to you and you’ve only pushed him away! you’re a monster! you should’ve saved him!

if him alone can’t make you say yes, maybe the pressure-induced stare of the whole student body can.

and as you shivered amidst taeyong’s suffocating hug, feeling the triumphant smirk against your head and his prodding nose as he sniffed your hair, you now understood why your body bloomed this specific woodland flower. 

lilies of the valley are beautiful.

but lilies of the valley are poisonous, too.

the flowers remind you of taeyong. 

making things official has only made things worse. taeyong has promised you that after being together he won’t try hurting himself anymore and that he’s a big boy and he can attend his therapy sessions alone. but the itching in your skin is as constant as ever and you just got off the phone with the receptionist of the clinic he goes to. 

“are things alright? i haven’t seen taeyong since three weeks ago.”

if there’s one thing you absolutely hate doing with your soulmate, it’s confrontations. for the three months you’ve been together, taeyong has always, always spiraled out whenever you confront him about something. be it the mildest or the most superficial thing, what started out small will turn into a complete whirlwind and he’d be in a fit of tears by the end of it.

every single time. 

you prefer happy taeyong than sad taeyong—if you can avoid it for as long as you can, you will. but you’re at your breaking point. him lying to you about his therapy sessions is the pin that popped the little balloon of security you’ve been protecting. 

when you arrive home, he’s already there, crouched and sifting through your bookshelf. it wasn’t a surprise or anything out of the ordinary, he possesses the key to invite himself into your apartment any time. “hey, you’re home!” he immediately stands, barreling towards you. 

he encircles his arms around you protectively as he pulls you flush against his body. you feel the tip of his nose prodding against your neck, hearing him inhaling your scent like cannabis. 

you learned to ignore it, this habit of his—but just because you do doesn’t make you any less uncomfortable than the first time he did it.

you don’t bother hugging him back. 

you were too pissed off to keep up with pretenses. 

“the clinic called, said you weren’t attending your sessions. why were you lying to me?” 

when pushed into a corner, you were never one to beat around the bush.

“i don’t like going alone, i told you that, remember?” he quickly replied, shoving you away. “i wouldn’t have to lie to you if you would just come with me for my sessions, don’t you think? you’re blowing this out of proportion when it’s all your fault.”

you wanted to pull at your hair. scratch that, you wanted to pull at his hair—no, not in that kind of way. 

“how the fuck—” you stop. taeyong hates it when you curse. cursing will do you more harm than good. you inhale through your nostrils, willing yourself to calm down. “how is this my fault? i told you i have to run errands for professor kim!”

“then quit working there! they’re not even paying you, it’s just for extra credit! which you wouldn’t even fucking need if you weren’t flunking astronomy so bad.” taeyong must’ve seen your features twisting into that of betrayal. he was there when you were crying your eyes out because you failed the exam. he knew the subject was taking such a big toll on you. 

how could he…

“don’t fucking look at me like that, kitten. you know it’s the truth.”

what is the point of this, some form of payback he’s subjecting you to? just because you didn’t come with him to his sessions? six months in this relationship and you already feel so drained, how would the universe expect you to keep up for a whole fucking lifetime together with him?

“why…” you choke, the tears building up in your eyes as your voice breaks. “so what do you want me to do, then?” you ask, because you genuinely don’t know. 

does he want you to choose? is that it? you didn’t want to lose the credits, but you didn’t want to lose this relationship either, no matter how much you’re drowning in the toxicity of it all. 

because this is your soulmate. 

certainly, the universe wouldn’t destine you to each other if it would only bring forth chaos, right? taeyong has mentioned time and time again that this is his first relationship. of course, he’s depending on you to show him the ropes. 

but it seems he isn’t really a big fan of how you do things. 

“quit.”

you shake your head defeatedly. “you know i can’t. i’d have to take the whole subject again next semester and—”

“i said quit, dollface.” the finality in his tone renders you speechless. “then fucking take the subject again next semester! i don’t care. that’s your consequence for neglecting your major. why the fuck do i have to suffer, too, if my soulmate is such a failure?”

his words cut deep, deeper than flesh, cutting through bone as your knees the urge to buckle and collapse before him. “taeyong, please—”

“honestly, i don’t even know what you’re doing with that professor. you always brush it off whenever i ask you!” the glare he sends could kill. “is this… is this why you’re so adamant about not quitting? then again… what kind of professor is willing to pass his students just by interning for him? i can’t believe i’m only realizing this now!”

this is bad. this is very, very bad. 

“whatever you’re thinking about is not true! trust me—”

but as if he can’t hear you, he dawdles on, trying to connect the dots when there is absolutely nothing to connect. 

“you suck dick for grades? how could you do this to me? how can you do that to yourself?” 

you don’t understand exactly why he’s crying again so you don’t say anything. not because his fierce accusations were right but because even if you try hard to convince him that nothing is going on with your astronomy professor, he’d still cry and whine and paint you to be the bad guy. 

“what… what use do i have in this world if my soulmate thinks i’m not enough? and i lost you to some guy who smelled like prunes of all people!” you would have laughed if the situation had been different, but taeyong was dead serious. “i’m useless. i’ve been useless with my family, my friends, and now you. i can never do anything right, can i? i can never make anyone stay. i can’t even make you stay!”

and like a switch that has been flicked off, your conflicted emotions vanish in thin air. gone are every trickle of anger, confusion, and irritation you felt as he makes a beeline to the coffee table, smashing the little ornamental fish bowl and pointing a shard against his dainty wrists. 

“no!” you tackle him to the ground, groaning when you feel the shard dig into your side yet you made no effort to get off of him. blindly, you reach, twisting his wrist to drop the piece of glass. “you promised!” you wail, clutching the collars of his shirt as you pull him close to you. “stop, stop hurting yourself.”

you feel him shaking his head, his own onslaught of tears staining your shirt as the negativity he’s been bottling pours over like a tsunami, dragging you under the currents with him. “no, no, no…” you splutter, snot running disgustingly down your nostrils. “it’s not true, none of that is true. you’re my love, my moonlight, i’d never betray you for anyone or anything!”

“but—but your professor, the internship—”

“i’ll quit. i’ll take the subject again next semester, it’s not a big deal, okay? don’t worry, i’m here. i’m so sorry!”

it was all too easy.

the thing with noble people like you is the foolish sense of responsibility lying underneath your skin, it’s gravitational pull so strong that you don’t bother to think before you speak, to think before you act, to think before you make promises, because what’s important isn’t yourself, it’s the person lying meek and helpless before you. 

quit, you say? taeyong wants something more.

the evil lying inside pandora’s box can never remain dormant, not when meddlesome people like you who think with a one-track mind pull the lid off its hinges, preaching how every evil can have their own redemption.

a hand finds purchase around your waist as an eerie blissful smile stretches on his lips, eyes clouded over. “really? i’m your moonlight?”

“yes—”

“would you prove it to me?”

he doesn’t make room for your hesitance to settle, he lunges, hands wrapping around your face to pull you into a kiss. it wasn’t like all the other kisses you’ve shared with him, no, this one had a dark, underlying purpose. his hands digging into your open wound to make it bleed, tongue sliding into your mouth the moment you gasped in pain.

your hands press on his chest, trying to push him away but taeyong’s thoughts are running wild. you blush in sheer humiliation when he lets out an almost pornographic moan. with a sinking realization, you’ve become hyper aware of something poking at your abdomen.

no, not yet. you weren’t ready yet!

“taeyong, wait—i’m not—”

“you said you love me, didn’t you?”

[nctsjiho]

Relationship with: SM artists

For JiHo’s relationship with NCT check out the pinned post on my blog. By no means are these all SM artists or is this very detailed and my knowledge in some of these groups is also very limited so please bear with me. If I wrongly represent anyone now or in the future feel free to let me know, but keep in mind all of this is purely fictional.

Super Junior:

Oh dear Lord help poor JiHo

She’s the victim of endless teasing from Super Junior

Since JiHo is pretty sociable she got quite comfortable with SuJu

They might not hang out a lot but whenever they see the girl they’ll approach her to at least greet her (and vice versa, of course)

SuJu also love to bring JiHo up during variety shows to tell a funny episode they had with the girl and “expose” her

Eunhyuk is a bit like an older brother to her, during her trainee days she once walked up to him asking him if he could critique her dancing. He was surprised at how bold she was and could only agree with her because she was so intriguing. He thought JiHo was a great dancer and since that time they became really close, even having each other’s phone numbers and JiHo having Eunhyuk on speed dial. When she was still under-age Eunhyuk became her guardian (not legally) since she has no family in Korea

Red Velvet:

They aren’t really close with each other for a few reasons (nothing bad though)

JiHo joined SM just after Red Velvet debuted and since the group was very busy with promotions and practice JiHo rarely got to see them

Though JiHo was very talented she didn’t have that much training and she was still a little too young when SM thought of adding another member into the group, Yeri had joined Red Velvet in march of 2015 which was clearly an amazing choice

SM also thought, pretty early on, that JiHo wouldn’t be a great fit for the group’s concept and overall look so they quickly stopped considering JiHo to become a Red Velvet member

Even after years passed, JiHo didn’t really get much closer to most of the members, but she respects them a lot as artists

Out of the whole group she’s probably closest with Seulgi and Wendy, who kinda see her as a little sister they want to take care of

Wendy checks up on JiHo every once in a while through text or invites her out to have dinner and drags Seulgi along with her

They look out for her and tease her a lot when it comes to being the only female member of NCT

“You need to be surrounded by a bit more oestrogen every once in a while, JiHo.” ^^

They will give her advice or just try to cheer her up when they catch the younger girl looking a bit stressed

JiHo would love to do a dance cover with Seulgi sometime in the future

SHINee:

Honestly who doesn’t love SHINee?!??

I’m not saying JiHo is secretly a Shawol, but I am saying SHINee is one of the groups that introduced her to kpop

She always had (and still has) so much respect for the group and they are probably the reason she accepted the scout’s request to come to Korea to become a trainee at SM

A possibility to debut under the same company as SHINee?? YES MA’AM

She has a very friendly relationship with the boys

Saying hi in passing or making small talk whenever they end up in the same elevator

Maybe even went to get something to eat together in the company cafeteria, but besides that there isn’t very much interaction

Taemin has mentioned her a handful of times after SuperM formed since he’s in the same group of some of JiHo’s members now

It usually about how he thinks JiHo’s really cute definitely during her trainee days when she was a little shy towards SHINee or that she’s a really great dancer/performer

Fans have wanted Key & JiHo or Minho & JiHo interactions for a while now, thinking they would make iconic duos (because chaos-), but some other fans have mentioned how she and Onew would make for a great duo because the girl tends to gravitate to the calmer members in NCT more often as well

EXO:

Well Kai is her idol so...

A lot of teasing once again

Though funnily enough, some EXO members seem to be intimidated by JiHo or act awkward around her

JiHo has been pretty open about being an EXO-L and so many fans poke fun at EXO about them being awkward around the girl (they have adopted her into the fandom and she’s pretty well received there)

“She just has this aura around her~”

MTL to feel intimidated by/awkward around JiHo:

Most: Sehun, Suho & Kai

Least: Chen, Baekhyun, Xiumin (EXO-CBX ^^) & Lay (EXO-M <3, the former Chinese members were also not really awkward around her)

Not at all: Chanyeol & D.O.

JiHo’s fans are sad that her and Kai are so awkward around each other and blame EXO and NCT (mainly those in SuperM) for teasing Kai so much by mentioning JiHo looks up to him, that now he can barely look her in the eyes

People have also pointed out how funny it is that Kai and Sehun are especially intimidated by JiHo, comparing them to big dogs being scared of a little puppy (wait this is cute)

Chanyeol and D.O. get along very well with JiHo, Chanyeol mainly being kind of a big brother for JiHo, but a big brother who likes making fun of her and embarrass her

JiHo mentioned the group a lot in her first year of being an idol, after that she kind of stopped (theory: she got told of by SM for talking about EXO too much after getting a lot of mean comments from antis ＞﹏＜)

Interactions between her and the group have also been insanely spares since mid 2019

(another theory: fans think that JiHo isn’t allowed to talk/interact with EXO anymore)

She has only mentioned EXO members when talking about SuperM, but it was mainly to support the group’s promotions

#Bring_Back_JiHo_X_EXO_2021

SNSD/Girl’s Generation:

NCT has teased JiHo before saying that she’s scared of SNSD

She defended herself by telling everyone that it’s because they are her seniors and she really respects them so she tends to get nervous around them 

Some of the members of the girl group have mentioned JiHo before and said they hung out a little

Hyoyeon has been very expressive about her fondness for the girl

She even said that she wanted JiHo to join her when she participated in Hit The Stage

It didn’t end up happening because the kind of dances she did where either “too mature” or “unfortunately we didn’t get permission (from SM) to let Jiho join”

Hyoyeon has posted some pictures with JiHo on instagram, either cheering her on during NCT promotions or just because they were casually hanging out

JiHo also really likes Sunny and Taeyeon and has been invited by the girls to attended their concerts a few times now

On the outside it looks like they have a very strict senior-junior relationship, but every once in a while the group tells them how they are actually closer to JiHo than people think, they just don’t have very many opportunities to show it

They also do NOT tolerate any hate towards JiHo (definitely from those who comment on her not deserving to be in a boy group or her skill as an idol in general) and WILL defend her and shoot down any comments

Aespa:

She trained with a few of the girls for a little while

But when it got announced that JiHo would be joining NCT instead of a girl group, she started training with the boys (NCT and trainees who’d join NCT)

Some fans speculated that JiHo and Aespa weren’t on good terms, but there was no evidence to back up their theories

More so, it was even revealed that JiHo knew the choreography for “Black Mamba” during a V Live

JiHo has openly supported the group by talking about their debut song and stages, but there aren’t really any other interactions between them

BoA:

A collab between them would be LEGENDARY

When BoA visited NCT during their practise of Black on Black during the filming of Master in The House, she pointed JiHo out and complimented her for being able to be as powerful as the boys

JiHo looks up to BoA very much and during a variety show has revealed that she used to practise a lot of her songs/dances while she was a trainee

It happened a few times that the singer has expressed her faith in the younger girl’s potential and skill and hopes that JiHo will get to show of more of her talent because “Currently, I think she’s not able to show all her skills. She’s a junior I am able to trust to deliver (a great performance) if I asked her to work on a project with or for me.”

BoA’s comments about the younger girl only solidified the theories that SM is suppressing JiHo’s talent

JiHo has spoken out about it very subtly, saying that she’s happy where she is now as long as she gets to keep performing with the boys

In response to an international fan asking if JiHo ever thought about branching out to work on a solo project like a mixtape or even just solo dance videos to show of her choreographing skills:

“It makes me genuinely happy to perform with my friends right now. I think I still have a lot of learning to do. If ever my company reaches out to me to do something like that I will think about it, but I don’t really feel the need for anything like that right now. I’m happy (with the way things are) right now.”

[waitimcomingtoo]

The Cup

Pairing: Peter Parker x Reader

Synopsis: a monogrammed mug might be the thing that exposes your relationship with Peter to the Avengers when there’s a strict “no dating” rule being enforced

Warnings: I’m sorry if your first, middle, or last name begins with a “p”. Also this gif is a total spoiler with no context for this story

Masterlist

There was a rule in the Avengers tower: Avengers were absolutely not allowed to date each other. It was a stupid but reasonable rule, considering Nat and Bruce’s relationship had caused fights, tears, and chaos until dating among Avengers was inevitably banned, exactly three years before you and Peter joined the team.

Peter had been an Avenger for eight months before you came along. In that time, he'd become good friends with the other Avengers, or at least that’s what he told Ned. Peter was regarded as more of a son among the Avengers, never really seen as an equal. Before you, Peter was teased daily for his intelligence and bad habit of spewing out scientific facts no body asked for. Whenever he started going off on the theory of momentum or how a star was formed, a collective groan could be heard from Earths mightiest heroes. He would laugh it off and stop telling his fact, but it stung a little more each time it happened. But keep in mind, that was before you. 

You took a breath and entered the elevator. You smoothed your shirt with your hands and folded your lips into your mouth. You were surprisingly nervous, expecting the other Avengers to look down on you for being younger. Just as the elevator doors were about to close, you heard a voice call out.

"Hold the door please." The voice said. They sounded frantic so you quickly stuck your hand in the door so it wouldn't close. To your surprise, a dark haired boy around your age got onto the elevator with you. He was slightly out of breath from running and his curls were going in every direction. You could feel your face heat up and smiled shyly at him. He smiled back.

"Thanks for holding the door." He said once the elevator started going up.

"No problem." You answered. You already had butterflies in your tummy from your new job, and the adorable guy riding in the elevator with you didn't help.

"How come I've never seen you before?" He asked. You were pleasantly surprised that he had kept the conversation going.

"Today's my first day. I'm the newest Avenger.” You explained and he nodded.

"Well it's nice to meet you, newest Avenger." The boy said, extending his hand for you to shake. You prayed your palms weren't sweaty and firmly shook his hand.

"Thanks. And it's Y/n.” You told him. He smiled upon hearing your name as he realized it’s was his new favorite name.

“I’m Peter.” Peter told you. “I’m really glad to see you joining the Avengers. You have no idea how desperately we need more girls on the team. Last week, Nat wasn’t here and Bucky and Sam got tied in a knot. No one could pull them apart until she got back.” Peter blew out a breath as he remembered the incident. “Plus, it’s nice to have someone my age.” He added shyly.

From then on, you loved Peter.

“I’m actually really glad to see you too. I thought all the Avengers were gonna be older than me.” You said with relief. “I’m glad I got to talk to you, Peter. It's nice to have a friend on my first day." You said as you walked out of the elevator together.

"Yeah. Friends." Peter smiled widely.

You did not stay friends long.

The day you joined the team, the Avengers were getting ready to go on a mission involving a creature who liked to hop between earths and cause chaos. You sat quietly in the corner of the quintet and watched everyone interact. You didn’t add anything to the conversation, but laughed and smiled where necessary. You felt pretty invisible but you were okay with that for the time being. It was your first day and you didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes. You were perfectly content with staying silent until Peter started going on about a multiverse.

“I can’t believe there’s actually a multiverse. Ive always read about them, but I never imagined it being real. This means there’s a universe out there where I’m stronger than Captain America.” Peter said excitedly.

“Doubtful.” Steve cut in.

“I mean, can you guys believe this? This creature can just hop to different universes as it pleases.” Peter went on. “I thought that was just theoretical. I mean, that completely changes how we understand the initial singularity. We’re talking about an eternal inflation system. And how does that even work-“

“Peter, you’re doing it again.” Sam sighed.

“Sorry.” Peter shrunk down in his seat, a look of hurt appearing on his face when he noticed the annoyed look on the Avengers faces. You noticed the look too and frowned.

“He does this a lot. You’ll learn to tune it out.” Bucky said to you.

“It’s just really cool. We’re talking about an eternal inflation system. And how does that even work-“ Peter said sheepishly before Sam cut him off.

“Peter! I’m sorry, he’s-“ Sam began the explain.

“Wait.” You cut him off and looked at Peter. “Let him finish.”

“What?” Sam asked.

“What?” Peter asked in confusion, as no one had ever taken interest in him before.

“I want to hear the rest.” You said seriously. “What were you saying Peter?”

“I was just wondering how the multiverse worked with all the quantum realms. This has got to affect the space-time continuum in some way. That’s all.”

“That’s really cool, Peter. You’re really smart.” You said sincerely. You didn’t like the way his intelligence was treated as a nuisance with the other Avengers. You definitely isn’t like the sad look that crossed his face when they told him to stop. You just wanted to make him feel good.

“Thank you.” Peter said, in a little disbelief that you actually cared.

“No problem, Peter.” You smiled.

You ignored the shocked looks from the rest of the Avengers, or maybe you just didn’t see them. You and Peter looked at each other from across the jet and you winked at him.

You found Peter the next day sparing with a hologram. The hologram was much larger than Peter, but Peter was clearly winning the fight. You noticed Peters eyes darting around as he looked like he was figuring something out in his head. You didn’t want to interrupt, but you were too curious not to ask.

“What are you doing, Peter?” You asked him.

“I’m figuring out the momentum of his swings so I can match his force and overpower him even though he’s bigger than me. My mask usually does it but I’m practicing doing it myself incase my mask breaks during a battle.” Peter explained as he continued fighting.

“So you’re doing all that math in your head?” You asked in admiration.

“Yeah. It’s not that hard once you get the hang of it.” Peter shrugged, watching you carefully to see if you were actually interested or just teasing him. “But sometimes I forget to carry the one.”

“And all the Avengers just watch you do this and see it as normal? No one says “wow Peter, that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen” or anything?” You wondered.

“Uh, no. Not really.” Peter said.

“Well, Peter.” You laughed. “That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

From then on, Peter loved you.

Three weeks later, Peter kissed you in the training room when no one else was around. He tasted like Gatorade and mint and heaven.

Six months later, you were in love. You were spending every waking moment together, and by default, loving every waking moment together. There was never a time when he was more than 10 feet away, and that was how you liked it. From sparring to movie dates in Mr. Starks home theater to making burnt cookies for the rest of the Avengers, you were inseparable. The only problem was, you couldn't tell anyone that they were together.

The rule still stood and you worried if anyone found out, you’d be kicked off the team. This lead to secret hand holding under the table and quick kisses when no one was looking. It was an okay system, but it wasn’t great. Peter was dying to tell the other Avengers that he was dating you. All the men on the team had taken quite a liking to you. They were never disrespectful, but your beauty and abilities often came up when you weren’t around and the telling smiles that crossed their faces made Peter a little angry. He knew it wasn't their fault, but he couldn’t shake the jealousy. You were stunning and they had no idea you were taken. If the guys knew you were his girlfriend, they'd back off immediately. But, no one was allowed to know.

One hectic morning, your alarm didn't wake you up. You’d never actually set your alarm, because you’d fallen asleep in Peters bed while watching a movie together. You were still at his apartment at 7:13 when you had to be at the tower at 7:30 for a meeting. Peter was nowhere to be found, and you assumed he let you sleep because he thought your alarm was set. You rushed to get ready, grabbing whatever shirt you could find, which happened to be one of Peters button downs, and threw on some pants. Rushing into the kitchen, you found Peter with two cups of coffee already made and a small smile on his face. You sighed in relief that he was all ready to go and gave him a kiss, longer than you were accustomed too since no one was around. You grabbed your cup of coffee and headed out.

Once in the tower, you sat at the conference table and took a deep breath. You had gotten to the meeting on time, walking in a few minutes after each other so it wouldn't be suspicious. You took a big sip of your coffee when something caught your eye. Specifically, the giant red "P” on the front on the cup.

Luckily, Peter was sitting directly across from you. You snapped your fingers harshly to get his attention. Peter looked up at you and smiled, his smile quickly fading when he saw your angry expression.

"What's wrong?" He asked. You said nothing, instead, just held up your cup. Peter grimaced when he realized his mistake.

“Oops. Just trade cups with me. It's fine." He assured you. You quickly switched cups and you relaxed as the other Avengers walked in.

"Did you hear from Bruce? I think he said he was gonna be late.” Peter asked you to look like you were having a normal, platonic, conversation.

"I don’t think so. I’ll check if he texted- Oh God you freaking idiot." You deadpanned the last part as you stared at your cup.

"What? What's wrong now?" Peter asked, confused by your seemingly uncalled for insult. You again said nothing, but just held up your cup. This time, there was an even bigger, purple "P” on the front. Peter bit his lip.

"Oops." He repeated. “Nice shirt, by the way.” He smirked. You looked down and realized you were wearing his shirt in addition to drinking from his cup. Your day could not get any worse.

"Oops? Is that all you have to say?" You asked in a harsh whisper.

“Y/n, its fine. No ones gonna notice." Peter said calmly.

"You think they won't notice the giant purple "P” on my cup? My name is Y/n L/n. There's no "P” in that!" You exclaimed. You continuously checked to see if anyone was listening as you scolded Peter.

"You can say the “P” is for your middle name." Peter suggested as he took a sip of his coffee from your matching cups.

"My middle name is Y/m/n.” You whined, knowing his plan wouldn’t work.

"Really? That's so pretty." Peter said with delighted surprise.

"That's not the point, Peter.” You groaned. “The point is, if I'm caught drinking from a cup that has an initial other than my own, namely your initial, people are gonna get suspicious."

“Or, consider this. Close your eyes, manifest with me.” Peter said as he shut his eyes. “No one will care."

"I'm already wearing your shirt, which means I smell like your cologne. Now, I have a cup with your initial on it. Someone is gonna put two and two together." You panicked.

"Or, consider this, really manifest with me this time. I didn’t see you manifest before, no one will care." He said again with an innocent smile.

"Why couldn't you given me any other cup? And why do you own so many monogrammed cups?" You inquired.

"You're blowing this out of proportion. It's no big deal. No one will even notice." Peter repeated. You wondered how he was so calm when your jobs were at stake.

"Hey, Y/n. What's that “P” stand for on your cup?" Tony asked as soon as he entered the room. You shot Peter a look that made him shrink into his seat.

"Who cares? No one will notice! It’s just a cup! No need to get jazzed up about it.” You said sarcastically, catching the attention of the other Avengers.

"Oh, I'm the one who's jazzed? You're freaking out over a cup." Peter retorted, in full volume now.

"Speaking of the cup, why is there a “P” on it?" Sam asked, pointing the cup out so everyone could see it. You couldn’t help the loud groan that escaped your mouth.

"It stands for panda.” Peter blurted. “Y/n loves pandas.” You looked at Peter with a lethal glare.

"Why wouldn't you just buy a cup with a panda on it?” Bucky chimed in. You shrugged and looked at Peter.

"That's a great question, James. Peter, why don't you answer?" You said with a fake smile.

"Because Y/n likes to be unique." Peter explained meekly.

"Does the "P” on your cup also stand for panda?” Sam asked Peter. Peter looked down at his cup and sighed.

"It sure does". He said weakly.

"Interesting. I would've guessed the "P” stood for “Peter” or “Parker”, since you two are clearly dating. But I guess I was wrong." Sam shrugged casually as you and Peter froze.

"You know that we're dating?" You asked in shock.

"The whole team knows.” Steve cut in as if it were obvious. You looked around the room and everyone just shrugged as of to confirm Steve’s words.

"But what about the rule?" Peter asked, dumbfounded.

"That rule hasn't been effective for months. I stopped enforcing it last January.” Tony laughed as he took his seat at the head of the table.

"What? How come no one told us?" You asked.

"Because if you knew, there'd be non-stop PDA and none of us wanted that." Nat answered.

“So you let us think we were keeping it a secret for six months?” Peter demanded.

“Secret? Did you think none of us noticed that Peter became left handed six months ago so he could hold your hand with his right one under the table?” Tony pointed out.

“We all knew, we just didn’t care. We’re happy for you guys.” Steve smiled again you.

“Oh.” You said. “Thanks guys.”

“You’re welcome.” Tony answered. “Just keep the PDA to a minimum. I don’t want any spider babies around running here.”

Seven years later, you and Peter were married just a few miles from the Avengers tower.

After the ceremony, you sat in the kitchen while Peter finished bringing in the wedding gifts.

“I have one last gift for you, Mrs. Parker.” Peter came from behind you and kissed your cheek, setting a small gift box down on the table in front of you. You opened it up, finding a mug with a script “P” on the front. You laughed at the sight, remembering the incident in the conference room all those years ago.

“There. Now you do have a “P” initial. You can use this with no questions asked.” Peter said with pride.

“I love it.” You told him honestly. You smiled and made some coffee, just so you could use your new cup.

Tag List 🏷

@maybemona​ @foreverxholland​ @writing-for-hours-on-end​ @lavender-writer​ @captainmandeestudent17​ @whatareyouhidingpeter​ @takenbyheartstrings​ @ultrunning​ @imyourliquor-youremypoison​ @theolwebshooter​ @andreasworlsboring101​ @guksmyfav​ @waiting-to-be-myself​ @letsloveimagines​  @peterparkoure​ @a-villain-vying-for-attention​ @justcallmehitgirl​ @averyfosterthoughts​ @jackiehollanderr​ @tiny-friggin-human​ @celestial-skylines​ @loveat2am​ @mara-twins​ @iamaunicorn4704​ @delicately-important-trash​ @mjspxrker @spideygirl2003​ @the-crazy-fanfictionist​ @kii-mii​ @maryjanee23​ @spacebitch2​ @vgiselle​ @geeksareunique​

[maaruin]

The Institutional Problems of the Jedi Order

Preface

I think it is time to finally write this post. These ideas have been going through my head for some time after reading some Jedi discourse. But I should preface this with: even though the Jedi made mistakes, this does not mean Palpatine’s genocide of them was justified. It only means that he saw certain flaws in the Order that he could exploit. I suspect that without these flaws, he probably still would have managed to take over and persecute the Jedi, but much more of the Order would have survived.

For this post, I am mostly using the prequel movies with a bit of lore added from the old Expanded Universe. I’m not using The Clone Wars, because its depiction of Anakin’s fall to the dark side is different from the movies. And I’m not using the new Disney Canon, because I don’t know what has been retconned so far and what hasn’t.

Depending on how we count, I think there were either two or four major flaws. I’ll number them as four, but the first three could be grouped together.

1. The Jedi Order is a religion but isn’t organized like one

The Jedi are a religion. They are a group that believes certain things about the universe and practices a way of life that fits with these beliefs. But they are also entirely organized as “Jedi Knights” who are “guardians of peace and justice in the [old] republic”. This is… odd. The entire religion is basically made up of full-time professionals. Or rather, monastics.

If you want to study the Force and use it, you have to become a monk, basically. And more than that, to be accepted you need to already have a special talent in using the Force. Actually, you can’t even do that, they only take toddlers, so your parents have to decide if you should join this religion and become a monk. (Or maybe the Jedi Order just takes all Force sensitive children no matter what the parents think, it’s not entirely clear.)

A normal religion isn’t organized like that. Normally most members of a religion are normal people with normal jobs with varying levels of devotion. They participate in the practices of the religion in a way that fits into their daily life. Then there are religious professionals like priests who work to make it possible for the normal followers to practice this religion. And then, in some religions, there are monastics who dedicate their life to practicing the religion, generally apart from the normal believers. The Jedi only have the last group.

That alone would make them much easier to target and wipe out. But it is even more like that. The entire Jedi Order is integrated into the institutional framework of the Republic. All of the higher ranked Jedi (we will talk about the lower ranked later) basically work as special police and special diplomats for the Republic. “and” not “or”, all of them must fulfill both roles. And, when the Clone Wars start, they all become officers in the Republic military.

Now, in principle I don’t think religious institutions working closely with the state and fulfilling important roles for it is necessarily a problem. But if this is the only way this religion can be practiced, the practice of this religion will become poor in variety and closed off to most people who would be interested in participating.

2. Slavery in the Galaxy

There is slavery in the Galaxy Far Far Away. It is illegal in the Galactic Republic, but it is widely practiced in the planets of the Outer Rim, which might or might not be members of the Republic. The Jedi know that slavery is bad. What should they do?

Well, as much as a like the image of a hundred Jedi waltzing into the Hutt Cartel and killing/arresting them all, that probably wouldn’t be the best idea and cause much more chaos and harm than it solves, at least in the short run. But there are alternatives besides doing that and mostly ignoring it. For a start, here are two:

Establish underground railroads to smuggle slaves to freedom or assist on already established ones. Jedi mind-reading and precognition abilities will be very helpful in such endeavors.

Assist in organizing and fighting in slave revolts. One Jedi can turn the tide on the battlefield and if they are respected diplomats, the can help the slaves in finding supporters.

But this isn’t what the Jedi do because they are preoccupied with their role in the Republic. Qui-Gon says to Anakin that he didn’t come to Tatooine to free slaves. Which is true, he was sent to assist the government of Naboo against the Trade Federation, not the slaves on Tatooine against the Hutts. And why was he sent to Naboo and not Tatooine? Because Chancellor Valorum decided that resisting the Trade Federation was in the interest of the Republic, but freeing slaves wasn’t.

As mentioned in part 1 the number of members of the Jedi religion is smaller than it should be and integrated into the Republic in a way that leaves little room for it to act independently.

3. The Clone Army

Suddenly, an army for the Republic conveniently appears in time when the Republic is about to go to war after centuries of peace. This army is made up of, for all intents and purposes, slaves. Slaves that have been bred to be especially obedient. The Republic is expecting the Jedi to serve as officers in this army. What should the Jedi do?

Serve as officers, because the clones would suffer more without them?

Refuse to serve because that would mean supporting the introduction of slavery into the Republic?

Throw their political weight around and demand the clone troopers be freed and given Republic citizenship and in addition demand an end of the clone production in return for serving in the war?

Serve on both sides of the clone wars because the Republic obviously doesn’t have the moral high ground anymore and if their service in the Republic army leads to less suffering, their service in the Separatist army will do so as well?

There are probably more options. The Jedi decided to pick the one that reduced the suffering of the clones in the short term, but by doing that squandered the opportunity to take a stance against the creation of the clone army. And we don’t even see meaningful discussion within the order about this choice. This is, I suspect, because the Jedi are so used to their role as enforcers in the Galactic Republic that the alternatives weren’t really on the table.

(Palpatine’s plan was counting on the Jedi to behave this way when he planned Order 66.)

4. Dealing with emotions (the problem with Anakin)

While the Jedi Order may not demand it’s members to be emotionless, it does demand that they keep their emotions under very strict control. Nonetheless, almost all the Jedi we see do seem to be emotionally well adjusted. Obi-Wan, Yoda, Qui-Gon, Mace Windu, all of them seem to have little trouble with this demand.

Anakin, on the other hand, has a lot of trouble with it. He often has emotional outbursts through Episode II and III, then shortly afterwards walks back and apologizes. Curiously, this isn’t the case in Episode I. There he is actually quite good in dealing with his emotions. In other words, his time in the Jedi Order made his ability to handle his own emotions worse. Much worse, actually.

I think the reason for this is that whenever he feels something, other Jedi tell him that this is not right. It starts with Yoda in Episode I. “Afraid are you? […] Fear is the path to the dark side... fear leads to anger... anger leads to hate.. hate leads to suffering.” Criticisms like this no doubt continued all the way through his training until, by the time of Episode II, every time he feels an emotion he is angry at himself for feeling that emotion, which leads to more emotional instability, not less.

But why is this a problem Anakin has and not for the other Jedi we see. Maybe it is because he started his training later than is normal for a Jedi. But I suspect it is something slightly different: The Jedi who go through their training either find a way to handle their emotions in a way the order approves of, or they are sorted out. In the Expanded Universe there is a so called Jedi Service Corps where Jedi who fail their training go to work as farmers, explorers, educators or medical assistants. These jobs are, however, seen as lesser and going there is considered a failure. This is unfortunate, I think the Jedi could do much more good in the galaxy if the best of them were able to work in different fields instead of all being stuck with warrior-diplomat. Nonetheless, the Service Corps actually mitigates one of the flaws the Order has to some extend, if it works like I suspect. If the Jedi don’t have a way of dealing with emotions that works for everyone, the next best thing is to only pick the ones that can handle it and put the rest somewhere where they are useful and can’t do damage. Certainly not ideal, but an understandable adjustment.

But anyways, Anakin wasn’t sorted out. It is never confirmed in the movies, but I would suspect they made an exception for him. Yoda already made an exception for him when they decided to train him at all. And because he was the chosen one, I think they thought that his potential would be wasted if he only got to be in the Service Corps. If we ignore the Service Corps and only go off the movies, my criticism still stands: Yoda recognized that Anakin might not handle Jedi training well and he should have stuck to his guns and refuse Anakin to be trained within the Jedi Order.

Why are the Jedi like this?

Personally, I like to explain these flaws of the Jedi Order historically. Now, the EU doesn’t really fit with the theory I have. Because in games like KotOR and SWtOR the Order seems very similar to the Order in the Prequels. On the other hand, other sources say that this structure of the Jedi Order is a product of the Ruusan Reformation which happened after the end of the last Sith War a thousand years before Episode I.

To defeat the Sith at the end of that war, all Jedi were brought together as one army, no matter what they had done before. They didn’t really defeat the Sith (the Sith were deceived by Darth Bane to destroy themselves), but they thought they did. They thought they almost single-handedly saved the Republic from destruction.

Because of this, they rebuilt the Jedi Order in a way that was explicitly integrated into the institutions of the Republic. They built it in a way that made the fighting Jedi the core of the Order, other forms of being a Jedi were downgraded to the Service Corps. Because many Jedi had fallen to the dark side in that war, they taught a very strict form of emotional control and only trained force-sensitives from birth. And because they were so linked to their role as enforcers for the Republic, the neglected many other things Jedi should do, like helping slaves free themselves.

A better Jedi Order

No matter if this is how it happened, I do think the Jedi Order could be different (better). Here is how I would change it:

A Jedi Laity: Every living being is connected to the Force, so let them participate in practices that serve this connection like Jedi meditation. They may never be able to move things with their mind, but that’s not the point.

Jedi who serve the people should live among them: Jedi priests, Jedi healers, and yes, even Jedi knights should not form their own community but instead be in the same community as the Jedi laity.

Monasteries for the monks: Jedi who fully want to focus on their connection with the Force could still live in monastic communities.

Don’t completely integrate into the state: Working with the Galactic Republic could still be a thing, but the Republic should never depend on the Jedi and only a minority of Jedi should serve the Republic directly.

Help people everywhere: Because they are not completely bound to the Republic, many Jedi can decide how they will serve the people in the galaxy. Some might decide to help the slaves in the Outer Rim.

A Variety of Emotion: Not every Jedi will be as capable of controlling their emotions as the others. If there is a large variety of ways to be a Jedi, I suspect that most of them could still find their place to fit into the Order.

Allow adults to join: With adults it is much easier to determine if they would make a good Jedi and what way of being a Jedi would suit them. If there is a Jedi laity, they can be trained as children to some degree before they decide if they want to join.

Would this Jedi Order have fallen to Palpatine’s manipulation? I don’t know. But I think it would have been harder for him. If most Jedi didn’t serve in the Republic military and weren’t in a small number of Jedi temples, Order 66 would have claimed much less of the Order. (Probably 10%-20% instead of >90%.) Jedi would find it much more easy to hide in the population and the laity could help carry on the Jedi traditions in secret. Anakin might have been more emotionally well adjusted and not fall for Palpatine’s manipulations. (On the other hand, in a more open Jedi Order like this, there might be more people who could be turned, so who knows.)

Well, this is my contribution the Jedi discourse. The Jedi aren’t evil, and they certainly didn’t deserve genocide because of this. But as the Prequels depict them, they have certain tragic flaws in the way they are organized that Palpatine could exploit.

(Maybe I’ll make a shorter Part 2 about how Luke deals with this.)

[ignify-caligo]

hello!! i’m loving all ur hcs for marceau SO much, maybe ☼ or ♒️ for him if u want to? <3

I’m so sorry for the wait, wasn’t quite sure about what direction I should go about these ;3; But nonetheless, I’m literally living for Marceau right now and his adoptive papa Roche! There’s some mention of darker stuff in this, but it’s not explicitly described or anything, but just a heads up! For those reasons I took the liberty to switch on the hc, hoe you don’t mind that! :D

♒ - cooking/food headcanon

☼ - appearance headcanon

tw: most likely suggestive content (minor description of abuse aftermath, non healthy relationships between “employer” & “employee” etc. - not explicitly described)

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

♒ - cooking/food headcanon

He has quite a complicated relationship with food in general. Being a “late bloomer” with consuming any kind of blood in the “vampire way”, while being extremely picky with human food. Marceau’s food choices while being under de Kaspar's care was either eating the dinners scraps put together in a stew-like fashion or vegetarian food. The family thought that cutting out any animal products in his diet would stop his development as a vampire and keep him “normal”.

When it comes to his time in Temeria… You can describe it as “like adoptive father/mentor like son”. He has never touched any cooking associated with things in his life, having the de Kaspars servants do all the necessary things besides eating the food themselves. So, he’s being thrown into this whole “you’re on your own” lifestyle, where he must help in the cooking department whenever the stripes are out of the castle’s walls. His assigned food making with Shorty, who’s basically the whole group's main cook out there, and Marceau is picked to assist with preparing the ingredients for the stew. Shorty ends up going to the wagon with the food rations because he forgot something, and that’s when Marceau fails miserably. He ends up creating a grease fire in the middle of the camp, in woods, 10 minutes from a nearby water source. It hasn’t been even 5 seconds before he managed to show his low cooking skills. Shorty’s favourite limited Mahakam edition pan, which he called Panalope and it just stopped existing because it melted. Roche was having a glitch right in the chaos because he either could comfort the only person able to cook something edible for miles or take care of the apprentice/adopted child of his that basically was on the verge of tears. The problem got solved when Ves took care of Marceau while Roche was being there for Shorty who was “saying his last goodbyes” with his favourite cooking pan. After they return to Vizima, Marceau uses his saved coins to buy a new pan as an apology gift for Shorty. He ends up giving the present, saying he apologize and vacating the premises out of embarrassment.

While the squad is staying at the castle, Marceau gets too frequently invited to Foltet’s quarters for a late supper. They are alone, all night, without any witnesses. Whatever happens behind those doors makes Marceau look and act as if he has seen the Wild Hunt right before his eyes, while Foltest is being too smug for it to be a simple “colleague lunch”. The squad is concerned whenever they see Marceau leaving right after breakfast and then witnessing him forcing himself into throwing up. They don’t directly question him about it, but it’s still something that doesn’t sit with them, especially those who are extremely close to him. Many just think it is something that isn’t necessarily happy during the mornings, but Ves is not believing in the theory that it’s just a “Marceau/Young kids thing”. She’s relentless about what is happening to her new little brother while Roche has his suspicions… alas who can question the king’s habits? Especially when it doesn’t concern the whole group.

Something that originated from chatting with (toss a coin) One thing he's absolute, not good with handling is the sugars. Whatever it be candy, cake or even a good number of fruits, he absolute loses it. He ends up with so-called “Marceau Zoomies”, which can be shortly described as a cat running around the house at 3 am. But in his case, it’s a giant Katakan running around without any way of stopping, because of the energy. Roche is completely tired whenever he needs to keep an eye on the energized humanoid bat, and he has had enough of weird shit happening to him thank you. So, he bans sugar from Marceau’s diet altogether and it’s heart-breaking. Because there were people dependent on that energy whenever there was something to do, for example, Dettlaff.

☼ - appearance headcanon

People think that he's constantly sick with the cold, because of his skin tone. The truth is though, that his leucistic – the only pigmentation he has of any kind shows through his eyes being golden. Many react to that with some Witcherphobia because they usually heard of monster killers with gold eyes. Marceau at first is confused, because what is a Witcher? And why are the people of the north so against them? At the start he was fearing that the townsfolk were talking about his “true identity” but when he joined the stripes, they quickly sat the whole situation straight. Even though it’s not that often now, but sometimes people tend to still give him the suspicious glance or even crude comments. Those stepping over the line, happen to be more personally known with one of the blue stripes, behind the tavern, in private where no one can intervene. Marceau tends to end up easily bruised, sunburned, or acquire any typical skin injuries because of his skin tone and how that effect everything. Sadly, he can’t get a tan to save his life, whatever if he stands outside for the whole day, his skin either ends up burned up or he’s still white as snow. Which in turn makes it easier to see his bruising shaped like someone’s hands whenever he’s gone for the night.

You can easily describe him as being a lanky tree, quite like Regis’ build as well. His eating habits have a big impact on his overall weight and body, I imagine a vampire in his class (Katakan) being more dependent on regular “human feedings” to keep a good form. Compared to Dettlaff who’s more flexible when it comes to blood-drinking, both Regis and Marceau are on the more malnourished side. Which probably is connected to the amount of “vampiric like diet” both are willing to do. Eating “human food” doesn’t necessarily help with weight loss but still, it quells the hunger they feel.

He doesn’t have any noticeable scarring on his face or any area near it. But if he takes off his fingerless gloves… when you’re going to see the welts on his palms. Whenever he was deemed to act “too vampiric” it would end in punishment, whatever it be being locked in his room or like I mentioned, being hit with any object good enough to leave a mark. Of course, our young Marceau didn’t have any ideas about why he’s being treated like this until he filled 16 years. Before that, his adoptive parents tried to do anything to prevent him from becoming a beast in human flesh. Each time he moves his jaw too quickly or is chewing something, you can hear a distinctive pop sound. He acquired this injury when he was around 10 years old when he got angry at one of his so-called siblings and out of frustration bit them. His jaw locked up around the child’s arm and the blood flooded his mouth, which in turn made him bite harder with his vampire teeth pocking further than a simple human could. The commotion created because of this situation alerted the father, who firstly forced his jaws to unluck. When he dislocated his jaw by punching his face. Supposedly it was because the father was scared that Marceau would do it again, but after that, it turned into “I was making sure you would learn that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable”.

In the clothing department, Marceau prefers his everyday stripes uniform to any more casual clothing. It acts as a security blanket, where simply farmers won’t directly look at him because he's one of the “Temerian human scoia’tael” as many refer to them behind their back. As it is expected, he upholds himself to the official blue-white-silver main palette, with all leather parts of his armour being brown. Something that disunites him from the other stripes, is the number of pockets and small satchels he carries on himself. He loves collecting stuff, whatever it be shiny rocks from a riverbank, or a bunch of hazelnuts freshly picked from a tree. Keeping those satchels with him is practical because he can store some important for the mission objects or small trinkets he finds during boring patrols. He’s a literal magpie, with so strong senses that he can find anything, which in turn makes Roche’s life more complicated with “Marceau, you can’t honestly keep all these things!”.

For his first birthday together with the stripes, he ends up getting a bandana from Roche. It’s a beautiful and soft thing, with the iconic blue stripes on a black background, with small embroidery fleur de lis in silver right on the edges. He tried to make it into a chaperone because, if Roche looks good in it, so surely will I! His dream ended with Ves kindly telling him: “You look like an absolute imbecile in a chaperone”. So instead, he simply wears it around his neck to save himself the embarrassment.

Lastly, here’s a little about his other form! Besides being a walking snowball with his leucism, he also is quite fluffier compared to the other Katakans. He has a bigger per cent of his body covered in cloud-soft fur. He's quite like the Honduran White Bat, the only difference is the ears and other parts colouration. In the real bats, their ears are yellowish in colour, while Marceau keeps his pinkish hues in those areas. In comparison to his 177 cm in human form, Katakan! Marceau stands at 220cm and is still in the growth spurt for his kind. Whatever form he is, he always is taller than Roche who’s at the majestic height of 175cm while Iorveth is around 185cm.

This is “human form” of Marceau:

Headcanon Meme Here

[shirlleycoyle]

How 9/11 Became Fan Fiction Canon

Every fictional character you can think of has experienced 9/11 in fanfiction.

A Clone Wars veteran with two lightsabers is on United Airlines Flight 93 and prevents it from crashing. Ron and Hermione get caught up in the chaos as the towers fall. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her friends watch the attacks unfold on TV from Sunnydale. We have spent 20 years trying to process what happened on 9/11 and its fallout, and that messy process can be tracked through the countless, sad, disturbing, and sometimes very funny fanfiction left across the internet.

Many of the fanfics written in the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks seemed to directly respond to the news as it happened, processing the tragedy in real-time through the eyes of characters they loved. In the absence of a canon episode where Daria Morgendorffer paid respects to those lost, writing fanfic about these characters also experiencing trauma helped fans cope.

One YuGiOh fanfic published on fanfiction.net in May 2002 could have been ripped exactly from what this writer experienced that Tuesday morning. “It started as a normal day,” user Gijinka Renamon wrote. Yugi and his friends were in school, where their teacher informed them of the attacks and sent everyone home from school.

“After reading people’s 9/11 fics, I decided to write my own, and put a certain character in it. And Yugi and his pals were my first choice,” the author's note reads, explaining the connection they felt to United flight 93 and the World Trade Center attacks. Given that they lived in Pennsylvania, and “it’s close to New York, I felt really sad about it.”

Stitch, a fandom journalist for Teen Vogue, told Motherboard that this reaction to 9/11 is not at all uncommon in fandom.

"Fandom has always been a place that positions nothing as 'off limits,'" she said. "Historical tragedies like the Titanic sinking and atrocities like… all of World War 2 show up regularly across the past 30 years of people creating stories and art about the characters they love. So, on some level, it makes sense that 9/11 and the following 20-year military installation in the Middle East has joined the ranks of things people in different fandoms turn into settings for their fan fiction."

Reactions depicted in a handful of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfics published in the weeks after the attacks ring a little truer to the characters. “Tuesday, 11th September 2001,” written by Anna K, almost echoes the lyrics from “I’ve Got a Theory,” one of the songs in the musical episode that aired in November 2001. “We have seen the apocalypse. We have prevented it. Actually, we’ve prevented quite a few. So we know what they look like,” they write, before taking a darker turn. “They look a lot like…New York today.”

Killing demons and vampires doesn’t phase the Scooby Gang, but when preventable human death is brought into the picture, it’s gut wrenching.

“What am I supposed to do…When I can’t do anything to save the world?” Buffy cries  into Spike’s chest, watching the attacks unfold on TV in a fanfic the author described as being “about feeling numb and helpless.”

In “Blood Drive,” Kirayoshi writes about Buffy and her friends saving a van full of donated blood meant for victims of the attacks from a group of thirsty vampires. One Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic even takes a blindly patriotic turn, where noted lesbian witch Tara McClay helps Xander hang an American flag from the window of the magic shop to make Anya feel better.

Experiencing 9/11 as a young teenager was overwhelming not just because of the loss of life. Almost immediately after the event itself, it was as if the entirety of American culture re-oriented itself towards an overtly jingoistic stance. As we get distance from the attacks, seeing the tone of television and movies from the early 2000s is jarring, and some have gone viral on Twitter. In the world of pop music, mainstream musicians like the Chicks, formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, were blacklisted from the radio while Toby Keith sang about putting a boot up the ass of terrorists. On the Disney Channel, a young Shia Labeouf reading a poem he supposedly wrote about the events. The poem concludes with the line, "it's awesome to be an American citizen."

In a world so completely saturated with this messaging, it is not surprising that fanfic authors started including 9/11 in their work so soon after the event. Even The West Wing had a strange, out of continuity, fanfic-esque episode where the characters reacted to 9/11. In some cases, it made sense that the characters in the stories would be close to or a part of the events themselves.

"For characters like John Watson or Captain America, the idea works to an extent," Stitch told Motherboard. "In the original Sherlock Holmes works and the 2011 BBC series, Watson had just returned from Afghanistan. For Captain America and other Marvel heroes, 9/11 was something that was addressed in-universe in The Amazing Spider-Man volume 2 #36. Technically, 9/11 is 'canon' to the Marvel universe."

In “Early Warning: Terrorism,” a fanfiction for the TV show Early Edition in which a man who mysteriously receives tomorrow's newspaper, predicting the future, avoids jingoism, but tries to precent 9/11 from happening. This fanfic remains unfinished; it’s unclear if the characters successfully prevent 9/11 in this retelling.

Largely in fanfic from the era just after 9/11, when many young authors were trying to emotionally grapple with it, the characters don't re-write or undo the events themselves. It's this emphasis on the reaction to tragedy that colors the fanfiction that features 9/11 going forward.

Although fanfiction authors have been writing about 9/11 consistently since soon after the event, whenever that fanfiction reaches outside of its intended audience, it looks bizarre.

A screenshot of a Naruto 9/11 fanfic on the Tumblr subreddit comes without any context, or even more than two lines and an author's note. It’s impossible to suss out if this falls into the category of sincere fanfic without the rest of the piece or a publication date, but modern-day commenters on the Reddit thread see it as classic Tumblr trash.

Screenshot from r/Tumblr

“Bin Laden/Dick Cheney, enemies to lovers, 10k words, slow burn,” one user joked in the replies, underscoring the weirdness of Naruto being in the Twin Towers by comparing it to a What If story about Cheney and Bin Laden slowly falling deeply in love.

It’s hard to tell how much of the 9/11 fanfic and fanart starting a few years after the attacks is sincere, and how much of it is ironic, and trying to make fun of the very concept of writing fanfiction about 9/11.

A 2007 anime music video (in which various clips, usually from anime, are cut together to music) that combines scenes from The Lion King with Linkin Park’s “Crawling” and clips from George Bush’s speeches immediately after the attacks feels like the perfect example of this. Even the commenters can’t seem to suss out if this person is a troll or not.

There’s no way that My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic 9/11 fanart could be serious, right? Especially if the description pays tribute to “some of the nation's most memorable buildings,” and features five of the main characters as child versions of themselves. The comments again are split between users thanking the artist for a thoughtful remembrance post, and people making their own headcanon for why Twilight Sparkle is surreptitiously absent from the scene.

Screengrab via DeviantArt

There’s Phineas and Ferb fanfic that combines a 9/11 tribute concert with flashbacks to Ferb being rescued from the towers as a baby, written on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. It jumps from introspection to lines like, “‘Quiet Perry the Platypus. I’m trying to listen to these kids singing a 9/11 tribute.’”

The author's notes make it more likely that they meant for this to be a tribute piece, but it doesn’t quite make sense until watching a YouTube dramatic reading of it from 2020, fully embracing the absurdity of it all.

“For me, 9/11 is synonymous with war. It completely changed the course of my life," Dreadnought, the author of a Captain America fanfic Baghdad Waltz that sees Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes fall in love over the course of the war on terror, told Motherboard. "It’s the reason I joined the military, and I developed deep connections with people who would go on to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq. These very much felt like my generation’s wars, perhaps because people I graduated high school with were the youngest folks eligible to serve at the time.”

Dreadnought told Motherboard that although they didn't deploy, their career has kept 9/11 and the trauma from it in their mind. After seeing that people who fantasize about Steve and Bucky getting together seemed particularly interested in reading fanfiction that related to 9/11, they decided to try their hand at it.

"I had to do something with all of that emotionally, and I’m admittedly a bit emotionally avoidant. So I learned through fic that it’s easier for me to process those feelings and the knowledge of all the awful stuff that can happen in war if I can turn it into something creative," Dreadnought said. "Give the feelings to fake people and then have those fake people give the feelings to readers!"

To Dreadnought, who is a queer man, the experience of researching and writing this was more cathartic than they first expected, especially as a way to navigate feelings about masculinity, military culture, and queer identity. But they said the research they did, which included watching footage of first responders at ground zero, was what helped them finally process the event itself.

"It was like a delayed horror, and it was more powerful than I expected it would be." Dreadnought said. "When I was eighteen, I was pretty emotionally divorced from 9/11; I just knew I wanted to do something about it. So coming back to it in my 30s while writing this fic, it was a very different experience. Even the research for this story ended up being an extraordinarily valuable exercise in cognitively and emotionally processing 9/11 and all of its second and third order effects."

Fanfiction that features 9/11 provides an outlet for people who still grapple with the trauma from that day. But Stitch warns that the dynamics of fandom and how it relates to politics can also create fiction that's less respectful and more grotesque.

"With years of distance between the stories written and the original events of 9/11, there seems to be some sort of cushion for fans who choose to use those events as a catalyst for relationships—and Iraq and Afghanistan for settings," Stitch said. "The cushion allows them room to fictionalize real world events that changed the shape of the world as we know it, but it also insulates them from having to think about what they may be putting into the world."

The tendency of turning these events into settings or backgrounds for mostly white, male characters to fall in love has the unintended effect of displacing the effects that the war on terror has had on the world over. Steve and Bucky might fall in love during the war on terror, but they would also be acting as a part of the American military in a war that has been criticized since it started. Fanfic writers in other fandoms have come under fire for using real world tragedy as settings for fic before. In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake Supernatural fanfiction about the actors Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki going to the island to do aid became controversial within the fandom. There have also been fics where characters grapple with the death of George Floyd that is written in a way that displaces the event from the broader cultural context of race in America.

"A Captain America story where Steve Rogers is a 'regular' man who joins the US Army and 'fights for our freedom' post-9/11 is unlikely to deal with the war’s effect on locals who are subject to US military intervention," Stitch said. "It’s unlikely to sit with what Captain America has always meant and what a writer is doing by dropping Steve Rogers into a then-ongoing conflict in any capacity."

After enough time, “never forget” can even morph into “but what if it never happened?” A 19k+ word Star Wars alternate universe fanfic asks this question, wondering what would have unfolded if someone with two lightsabers was on United Flight 93. This fic, part of a larger fanfic series with its own Wikia, considers what would have happened if Earth was a military front in the Clone Wars.

In this version of events, a decorated general who served in the Clone Wars is able to take back control of Flight 93 before it crashes, landing safely and preventing even more tragedy from happening that day. In the end, all of the passengers who made harrowing last calls to their loved ones before perishing in a Pennsylvania field survive thanks to the power of the Force, and are awarded medals of honor by President Bush.

Twenty years after the attacks, it’s painful to think about what would have happened if people got to work 15 minutes later, or missed their trains that morning. There weren’t Jedi masters deployed to save people in real life, but for some of the fanfic writers working today, the world of Star Wars might feel just as removed as the world before September 11, 2001.

Fiction serves as a powerful playground for processing cultural events, especially generational trauma. The act isn't neutral though; a decade's worth of fanfiction that takes place on or around 9/11 shows how our own understanding of a traumatic event can shift with time.

How 9/11 Became Fan Fiction Canon syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[sword-of-summer]

okay so i did a breakdown and prediction for WandaVision before the show started and It's Turning Out To Be True, Guys, so I'm posting it below and just tell me if it's okayish or not-

Now, WandaVision marks the beginning of Phase 4 of the MCU, and it is in itself a pathmaking event because it shows normal life without the original Avengers. Now, the show explores Wanda's mental state after Vision's death in Infinity War, and how she uses her Chaos magic to create a 'pocket reality' where things are just what she wants them to be.

The entire series is set over 6 decades, and has a running theme of couples living in sit-coms throughout the years, the late 50s, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s and present. Now, my theory is that WandaVision is the beginning of a Multiverse Act that continues in Spiderman - 3 and culminates in Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness.

Now, as for the shots within the trailer, it seems that Wanda and Vision are changing their localities as time passes, and that is through the decades I mentioned above. Now, all the posters have this unique red-blue television static rip in the upper left corner, which is also the transition effect used by the editors whenever Wanda warps reality and tries to adapt to the passing, and this actually represents Wanda's warped reality fading away and opening up a multiverse. In the late 50s poster, there isn't much that suggests anything, just we know that this involves the b/w part of the show where Wanda and Vision are a newly married couple and Vision as a human, which is strange, because in all trailers/posters after that time, Vision is shown as the Android he is, from the 60s black and white where Wanda acts as Vision's assistant in the magic show, and now, the next transition is the most interesting for me because they shift into the era of coloured television and during this warp, Wanda becomes pregnant and slips into the stripes of the 70s - another fact is that the upper left rip is not normal, not it is a wood panel torn apart, like by a demon, which leads me to the obvious villainous entity for the show, Mephisto.

This marks Wanda's descent into confusion as to who is in control of this warped reality, because it may not be Wanda, it may be some evil entity who is using Wanda to get into MCU's Earth-199999 and is proved later when Jimmy Woo's voice is heard out of the radio saying "who is doing this to you?". Now, the 80s poster has a ton of references in the 2 paintings it has, one being a hybrid phoenix chicken, aka representing Vision, who here is both a hybrid between human and metal, and like a Phoenix brought to life by Wanda's magic from the ash he was left in by Thanos, and the second bird is a wren from Australia with varying plumage which is like Wanda, because her magic clashes with life in the same way. The next 90s poster is the most indicative too as this is the time where they have the twins, Wiccan and Speed, but interestingly, there's a picture on their wall with three, yes, three not two eggs, which is another reference to the fact that snarky Mephisto has snuck up into this reality using Wanda's magic, also the TV still here is of them in their original Avengers' goofy hallowe'en costumes, and the last shot is a trailer and poster mix where Wanda races out into their frontyard but there are 2 small bikes parked, meaning that is the 2000s where they live as a family of four, but what Wanda doesn't realise that Mephisto's using this fake family to claw his way into this reality and wreak havoc.

Some other shots that stood out to me were of Monica Rambeau constantly transitioning from friendly neighbour to outright "I don't know who (I am)", then the character of Agnes who I suspect is none other than Agatha Harkness from the West Coast Avengers comics where Mephisto, yet again, played with Wanda's chaotic magic and in a way it also merges with the House of X comic series where Wanda yet again creates a pocket reality (I mean, what is up with all the reality stuff) - another interesting thing is the beekeeper seen in the second trailer, which I propose is a reference to the way in which we make honey commercially, wherein the queen bee is kept incharge of a beehive with her subordinates, and she thinks that she is in charge, but the actual person benefiting from this is the beekeeper looking from above the hive, collecting the honey, just like it is here where Wanda thinks she is the queen but in reality it is Mephisto the Beekeeper looking from above the pocket reality using Wanda's brand of Chaos magic to enter into this reality.Â

I believe that the base of this entire series by which it will continue into the wider MCUÂ is The Mind Stone, because it was The Stone that gave Wanda her powers and also to the two men she loved the most - Vision and her brother Pietro. Now, there is an amazing amount of screen time given to shots of the Mind Stone in the trailer, the most intriguing of which is a tired Wanda with greyish hair looking up at the Stone with slivers of blue around it - this is the incident where Wanda received her Enhanced powers from Stucker is Sokovia and this indicates that there will be some flashbacks to earlier memories which may involve Quicksilver returning. Now, the Mind Stone is the smart one, so it has a certain intelligence which it imparts to those affected by it, as is evident in Wanda's Chaos magic and tele-abilities, Tony Stark's vision of the Earth ravaged and the Avengers dead, and maybe even Thanos's curse of Titan's fate. Now, for sure, the mind stone has been destroyed but this does not mean it hasn't already affected given the Universe changes.

Now, back in 2015, Marvel wasn't allowed to use the term "mutants" but now with the Disney-Fox merger, yes they can introduce the idea of mutants with Wanda and Quicksilver as the first in Sokovia, and then Wanda's Chaos-Mephisto born mutant kids Wiccan and Speed which of course may tie to the New Mutants storyline. Also, my theory is that mutants are made by a combination of both their mutant gene and exposure to cosmic radiation, just like Wanda was exposed to the Mind Stone. Also, the mutant gene may exist in specific closeted spaces of the earth like Sokovia, or just for the sake of an example, in Chernobyl cause well the incident. Now these mutant genes become activated on exposure to radiation, and well we have had Four Omega Level Cosmic Infinity Snaps by Thanos, Thanos, Hulk and IronMan, and there is plenty of reason to suggest that this may have triggered the mutant abilities. That is my first theory.

The second one involves Wanda unleashing her chaos magic in an exponential wave at the end just like she did in Age Of Ultron, maybe because she realises that in reality, Vision is dead and manipulation won't help, and in grief she lets out her power that rips upon the Marvel Earth 199999 to the Multiverse which will continue later for Doctor Strange and SpiderMan to put back to normal. This mega event was teased in the trailers where the S.W.O.R.D. helicopter escapes from a wall of red television like static energy, and yes, I expect S.W.O.R.D. to be fully involved in the last part of the show headed by Jimmy Woo and Darcy cause Darcy has had encounters with otherworldly beings and thus may be consulted here. The last act will culminate in Wanda and Vision rising back up to their original title of the Avengers and fighting Mephisto to stop him, but something turns and thus Wanda/Mephisto releases that wall of Magic to wreak havoc.

Also a side note - Vision will also play the act of a realist in the show where he makes Wanda realise that this is not the real earth and he realises that the Eastside/Westside area they live in as well as the people there are unusual, not real, but at the end comes to his usual humane proposition that they save them and the reality from the demon trying to wreak havoc.

TL;DR Wanda creates a pocket reality where she lives with Vision, maybe reincarnating him using her brand of magic in the grey android left after Infinity War, and as the decades pass by, their reality deteriorates due to the Satanic entity that is Mephisto, making his curses seem like blessings, but at the end Wanda and Vision try and stop this reality shredding with S.W.O.R.D and that leaves us with an indecisive future of the mutants, Vision's reincarnation(like said by Banner in Infinity War)/Vision's death and the coming of the Multiverse into focus.

That's it, I guess.

Sorry a bit long ik but i do this.

Enjoy?

Thanks for reading...

tagging @aredhel-of-gondolin cause it was in that chat i realized i have a blog ugggh why am i so stupid

[miskatonique]

HERBERT WEST CHEAT SHEET !

since my muses are not super well known in the contemporary rpc ( and i’m too lazy to do a full about page at this very moment ) i decided to put together little posts for them that give their general backgrounds, vibes, and plot possibilities !

this is a mix of canon and headcanon, and these are subject to change / adapt as i get more used to writing the characters

BACKGROUND:

Films: Re-Animator 1985, Bride of Re-Animator 1990, Beyond Re-Animator 2003

We don’t talk about Beyond Re-Animator......

Dr. Herbert West, 24 in the first movie, 27 in the second movie, idk like 40 in the third movie. Mad scientist to the MAX. In the novelization Herbert is an orphan who gets passed around in foster homes before eventually going to undergrad at NYU and pursuing his theory about the re-animation of dead tissue. Mostly people think he’s sort of crazy until one of his articles catches the eye of Dr. Hans Gruber at a university in Switzerland, and he invites Herbert to come work alongside him. Herbert eventually grows to respect Gruber as both a mentor and father-figure.

Herbert and Gruber develop a reagent that affects re-animation in dead animal tissue but they know that for their results to be taken seriously they need to do a human trial. Dr. Gruber volunteers but the dosage of the reagent is too large, and though it brings Gruber back to life it quickly overwhelms his system and he dies again. Herbert is taken into psychiatric custody in Switzerland but is eventually released.

Herbert returns to America and specifically sets his sights on Miskatonic Medical School in Arkham, Massachusetts because one of the staff, Dr. Carl Hill, used to work with Gruber years ago, and even went on to plagiarize some of Gruber’s work and publish it in America. Herbert makes it his secondary goal to absolutely terrorize Dr. Hill, and because he’s a chaotic gremlin in human form he’s very good at it.

Herbert continues working on perfecting the reagent, rooming with Dan Cain and eventually pulling Dan into the experiments as well when Dan’s cat dies and Herbert is able to prove his research by reanimating it. Herbert isn’t perturbed when Dan’s talk with Dean Halsey goes south, and just digs his heels in and insists that the only way to truly prove that the reagent works is to reanimate a human cadaver.

Results are just as bad as you’d expect. Sure, the cadaver reanimates but it also wrecks the morgue and kills Dean Halsey. RIP. Herbert insists that they reanimate him and the dean comes back less like himself and more animalistic, trying to kill both Herbert and Dan before his daughter Meg shows up and stops him. Despite it all, Herbert manages to wriggle his and Dan out of any suspicion from the police but Dr. Hill takes an interest in Herbert’s work once he does exploratory surgery of Dean Halsey and finds out he’s technically dead.

Dr. Hill confronts Herbert in his laboratory and threatens to steal Herbert’s work and take it for his own, offering Herbert the meager honour of being his assistant. Herbert promptly murders Hill via decapitation but decides not to let his fresh corpse go to waste and reanimates both Hill’s head and his body, which come back to life and knock Herbert out and steal all of his work.

Yada yada, Herbert gets Dan to help him go after Hill, the big climax happens. Herbert is able to prove his theory about overdose by shooting up Dr. Hill’s headless body with a bunch of reagent, which backfires and Herbert is left for dead all tangled up in Hill’s intestines, but not after he ensures that his research is safe with Dan.

They never explain how Herbert survives the first movie but he sure is alive in the second movie! It’s roughly 3ish years after the first film, so he’s got his doctorate now and he’s drug Dan all the way to Peru so they can be volunteer medics in a civil war. This obviously gives Herbert an unprecedented access to fresh bodies for his experiments.

Eventually he and Dan head back to Miskatonic Hospital, where they’re able to get jobs and a creepy cute little house that used to be a mortuary so they can continue the work. Herbert is now obsessed with the reanimation of separate parts and convinces Dan to help him build an entirely new life from parts. Dan’s not on board until Herbert shows him Megan Halsey’s heart and promises that they’ll build the body around it.

Dr. Hill’s head also somehow survived the first movie and it tries to terrorize Herbert, along with a cop who’s investigating Herbert for stealing corpses. Herbert eventually kills and reanimates the cop, and then gets into even more trouble when all of the other strange creatures he’s been reanimating start coming after him because they’re being mind controlled by Dr. Hill’s nasty head ( don’t ask me okay, this script was written in literally 6 weeks it makes no sense )

Anyway Herbert and Dan successfully bring their creation to life right before getting attacked by Dr. Hill and his army of weirdos, all while Dan is having a mental breakdown because he thinks the creation is his dead girlfriend Meg. In the chaos Dan and the creation escape separately while Herbert and Hill and co. get trapped under buried rubble and are left for dead ( AGAIN ).

But surprise! Herbert isn’t dead! We don’t know how he survived but we do know that at some point in time Dan turned over evidence to the authorities that led to Herbert’s arrest and imprisonment. The third movie picks up with Herbert who’s been in prison for 13 years and the dumbass new hospital doctor is a fanboy of Herbert and brings in some of his reagent. Herbert basically starts a prison riot, chaos ensues, this movie is Not Good, but the important thing is that Herbert escapes prison with his work and gets to walk off free and definitely alive into the night <3

VIBES / PERSONALITY:

His work is EVERYTHING to him -- there have been multiple times where Herbert has put his work above his own bodily safety or chance of survival, and I guarantee he would do it again, too. Herbert is mostly focused on being able to do the impossible simply because it’s “impossible.” He’s able to convince Dan to help him because he reasons the practical applications of his reagent, like saving lives by aiding in surgeries or helping with amputations, but at the end of the day Herbert is only concerned with discovery, acclaim, and giving classical science a big ‘ole middle finger.

He can be incredibly manipulative when looking for a specific action or behavior in the people close to him. This mostly is seen in how he treats Dan, often reeling him back in with promise of how much good their work will do in the world when Dan starts to get squeamish. Herbert is also really good at finding the sorest spots in someone and pressing on them, but usually only does this when he wants to prove a point or if he really hates someone.

He gains a lot of power by seeming like the more “level-headed” person in an altercation, but he can get extremely excitable or aggressive, especially when something goes well with his research or if it’s being threatened.

He’s genuinely a good doctor, doesn’t freak out under pressure, has neutral-good bedside manner, is very decisive and isn’t afraid to make difficult decisions when it comes to a patient’s life. However, Herbert considers himself a scientist first and a doctor second. The work on reanimation will always come before anything else.

He’s a HUGE fucking nerd, he loves making puns or little zingers whenever he can fit them into a conversation. He also likes playing practical jokes, though he doesn’t do it often. He’s got a great evil giggle.

Oh he’s terrible at taking care of himself. There’s a deleted scene from the first movie where Herbert is shown to be injecting himself with a weakened version of the reanimating reagent because it helps keep his brain sharp and makes it to where he doesn’t have to sleep. What a NUT. I think he probably weans off this habit, by force or choice. His sleeping and eating habits are still pretty bad, though. Definitely the kind of person who doesn’t eat/sleep/rest unless he’s genuinely about to collapse because of it.

Oh he’s also sooooooooooo gay. gay gay gay homo sexual.

There are very few people he outright respects or enjoys spending time around, and with everyone else he is absolutely so bitchy and rude. He doesn’t give a single shit about being polite. Also ACAB.

PLOT POSSIBILITIES:

Got any canonically dead muses? Want them to be alive again? Herbert can help with that! He’ll definitely want to make sure they stick around and observe them to see why the reagent worked so well, maybe do some extra tests, so he can also double as a really annoying, creepy roommate. Score!

Med student muses? I have a new classmate for you

Ever wondered what your muse would do if they saw someone graverobbing, or smuggling body parts into their house in the middle of the night? Do they stop him? Ask questions? Offer to help? Now’s the chance to find out!

He could always use a new assistant since Dan keeps abandoning him after every movie, jfc, loyalty is so hard to find these days

Meet-cute where one of his reanimated creations tries to murder you and he saves you from it <3