#A while ago I wrote a mini essay in a post's tags

[sisididis]

@electric-onion tagged me to post my top 4 Spotify tracks (I don’t use Spotify so I hope it’s ok if I share my 4 most-listened-to songs.)

Here they are : )

I’m tagging @friendlyneighbourhoodromanian @no-passaran and @bunny-banana 🥰

[katierosefun]

author interview tag game

thank you for the tag, @pandora15! <3

Name: caroline

Fandoms: mostly the clone wars, but i also have some marvel stuff, and waaay back in the day, i wrote some doctor who and merlin stuff!

Where you post: primarily on ao3! i mostly just write on tumblr when i’m accepting prompts from like...ask games or something.

Most Popular Oneshot: real

Most Popular Multichap: to these memories (this fic only recently hit 1k kudos, and my heart?? w h a t)

Favorite Story You’ve Written: def. to these memories because a) longest fic i’ve ever written, and b) oh, the hours i logged into writing this fic, and c) oh, the outlining that went into this fic...i’m very proud of myself for completing the fic, and of course, i credit this to everyone who showed their lovely support for the story. :’)

Fic You Were Nervous to Post: uhhh definitely too far just because it’s...rather personal. i sometimes say that there’ll be a scene or two or just straight up a line or two that’s plucked out of my real life, and i think it’s inevitable for writers of any kind, including fic writers, to isolate their real lives completely from whatever they’re writing, and?? this fic is probably the most personal for me because of that. i remember kinda hem-hawwing about posting it, because i was like whoa, maybe this is a little too personal? but then i steeled myself and was like, “okay, well, would this have lifted my spirits when i needed a story like this??” and then decided to post it.

How you choose your titles: i def. toss and turn between titles! there’s a few fics of mine that are straight-up song lyrics (no surprise there), but to my surprise (as i was looking through my catalogue of fics just now), i realize that a lot of my fics are usually just words or two about what i think might have been extremely important to the story. (or captures the overall tone/theme of the story, anyways.)

Do you outline? for multi-chapter fics and relatively long one-shots with lots of moving parts, i’ll outline. but for shorter one-shots and prompts, i’ll usually just stick with the image that compelled me to write the prompt/one-shot in the first place! (and then kinda write around that.)

Complete: uhhhhh, i’m gonna answer relatively for all my clone wars fics, because in total, i have 74 completed fics. (make that...75, hopefully in a few minutes or hours!) but out of clone wars fics, i have 46 completed fics! (and again, hopefully 47 in a little while.) a part of me is lowkey hoping that i’ll get up to 100 total fics by the end of this year. a part of me highly doubts it, but given how much i was able to write over summer break, i’m...intruiged if i wind up somehow writing another twenty or so fics by the end of this year. (asfsf my wip list is long enough to fill in for another twenty fics. caroline finish all your wips challenge.)

In Progress: okay, so officially, time, wondrous time is in progress and online. but in terms of the works in progress on my laptop...i have...*mutters, counting* fourteen official wips. (ten of them are one-shots, and the other four are longform fics. one of them, i’m hoping to release next week (!!!), and another, i’m hoping to release hopefully around mid-december. uhhh so fingers crossed??)

Coming Soon/Not Yet Started: oops, i guess i kinda already answered that question, but eh, might as well! the one coming out next week (hopefully!! caroline get your shit together challenge!!) is titled most ardently, and it’s an obitine au based off pride & prejudice because i cannot and will not shut up about obitine being the period drama ship out of star wars okay--

and then the other longform fic that is very overdue is called getting lost in a big galaxy, which is a fix-it of sorts taking place after season 5. anakin’s gone missing, and obi-wan winds up going on a galaxy-ride road trip with ahsoka (who, remember, has left the order) to find their idiot. this is honestly my excuse to just write more obi-wan and ahsoka content. hopefully, that’ll be posted in december!! (despite the fact i...originally meant to post it in august oOps.)

and then there’s this other longform fic which...might be coming in early 2021 called red, underlined, which is essentially...uh. everyone’s a stressed out law-school student, and anakin might have accidentally murdered professor palpatine, and now anakin, obi-wan, ahsoka, padme, and rex are all trying to find out what the hell to do with themselves because they’re all in on it. (def. influenced by how to get away with murder except without the criminal justice professor to lead them through the ropes. so more chaos. kind of a dark comedy vibe, if anything else? anakin no is major theme in this one. uh, i mean, maybe anakin was justified in murdering creep palpatine because our gang’s gonna find out what was going on in the background, but either way! lots of “holy shit are we good people are we bad people what are we doing”. lots of questions about morality! ethics! law school student study nights with anakin sprawled out on the floor and obi-wan wearing glasses (which he pushes up the bridge of his nose whenever he’s about to lecture anakin that no, that’s not how that statute works, dumbass) and ahsoka just bringing snacks and rex catching paper airplanes and padme being the one to supply everyone with very neat flashcards. this fic is gonna be an absolute beheamoth, and i’m estimating about 45 chapters? like...130K+ words? help? yeah idk either this really blew up in my head

and then...this stupid, wonderful, boring, amazing job, which is...office x tcw au. only not? it’s very, very loosely based off the office, but not really. obi-wan moves in as a new manager of a company, and we’ve got anakin being like “lol new guy i’m gonna mess with him”, and ahsoka being the one who’s both like “please don’t mess with our new boss” but also being like “actually, wait, lemme help”, rex being in hr and being like “i don’t get paid enough for this”. (also there’s some parts that are written like actual interviews like you would find in the office, so there’s this one bit where uhhh

Obi-Wan flicks his eyes to the cameras in silent question before turning back to Ahsoka. “Well, if you need to call maintenance, then I hardly think you need my permission—”

“Thanks!” Ahsoka says quickly, and she’s about to disappear from the doorway when Obi-Wan stands up.

“Wait, Ahsoka, what exactly—”

Ahsoka re-appears at the doorway. “Oh, right,” she says. “Um—maybe just stay away from the men’s bathroom for a little bit.” She pauses.

“Actually, just stay away from them for the rest of the day.” She hovers by the door for a minute longer, and then she adds quickly, “And maybe also avoid the breakroom. Everything’s fine!”

And with a perfectly not-fine smile, Ahsoka disappears from the doorway.

Obi-Wan stares at where Ahsoka was just a moment ago, and the he turns to the cameras in disbelief. “Did she just—” Unable to finish his own sentence, Obi-Wan starts out the door. “Ahsoka?”

The camera follows Obi-Wan out of the conference room and into the breakroom. There are only muffled shouts—Anakin’s shouts, and then Rex’s, and then Ahsoka’s frantic “no, sorry, everything’s fine!”, and then Obi-Wan’s loud, “What is going on in here?”

surprise y’all just got a snippet i’m sorry can you tell i’m weirdly into this au?? i need to rewrite some scenes but uh there you go

Prompts: for the most part, yes! i have some stuff in my faq about prompts that i’ll probably turn down (mostly anything that’s...above a certain rating/really, realy heavy themes that i just don’t think i can tackle with justice or with enough education on my end). i can be a little slow with prompts, but i’ll get to all of them in time!

Upcoming Work You’re Most Excited About: uhhhh i have too many that i’m excited about. literally i can write a mini essay on every single one of the fics i’m working on? but uhhh i guess since i already talked about all my major longform fics above (asdfasdfsd didn’t mean to do that, i’m so sorry for everyone who had to scroll past that word-vomit), i guess the one i’m most excited about releasing is the post season 7 obi-wan-and-ahsoka-finally-talk-about-how-they-miss-each-other-also-sorry-for-fighting-with-you-i-know-you-were-just-trying-your-best fic. (not a whole ton of spoilers for this one, but uh. i’m looking at some of these scenes and making frustrated sounds because there’s this one particular instance where i’m like, ahsoka. ahsoka just talk to him just ta lk to him but then lol no talking :)) also maybe some h/c? lowkey sickfic might be involved in this somehow? might have accidentally served as a precursor to to these memories? help? this fic just ballooned. caroline keep your ideas contained challenge!)

No Pressure Tags: @lightasthesun @soplantyourownflowers @ohhellokenobiand anyone else who wants to join!

[brutal-kittenxx]

I decided to post my English Essay from a while back here, cause why not

It was a typical ordinary day in The Cult Of The Neighborhood with the ordinary sacrifices and rituals, but this day was different and only came once or twice a month depending on how many sacrifices were made, it was time to decide who will be choosing the next sacrifices. This is a special event for some because you can get rid of those you hate, and the first sacrifice you make will be the most exciting for there are no limits to who your first sacrifice is. This time the privilege was to fall onto Mister Rogers. Mister Rogers was surprised as he never got the honor to choose the sacrifice, and it was perfect timing too as his good friend no more was to be the sacrifice that of which he chose.The man in question to be sacrificed is David Tarantino, a known rebellion to the cult. What he had done was perform a ritual not allowed by the cult, he succeeded in performing it and even escaped, however his two partners were caught and the room was not cleaned and left a mess. The two partners' names were Billy Mays, who had to clean the room, and Phil Swift, whose job was to dismember the bodies. They admitted that the mastermind behind the ritual was David Tarantino, and Phil Swift added in that he was the one who wrote on the walls with blood “That’s a lotta damage, now we’re gonna fix it with flex seal!”. After hearing this they decided to wait for punishment until Tarantino had been captured, so that all may be killed at once. Rogers didn’t want to wait because he was rebellious but too useful to abandon, so he decided to figure out what the ritual was himself and who he sacrificed. He eventually unsolved it, but was too horrified by who it was that he didn’t tell anyone what he had figured out. Rogers knew where and how to find Tarantino but couldn’t bring himself to do it to avenge the ones he had taken away that night, but when he was chosen to be able to choose the sacrifice, he had suddenly gotten the courage to find Tarantino and sacrifice him. Upon hearing that Rogers decided to choose Tarantino as a sacrifice, the leaders were reluctant at first but eventually decided that they might as well get it over with and the sacrifice will be their punishment. There was one problem though, no matter how much other cult members wanted to help, there was a rule for sacrifices that none were to help unless they personally knew him and even if they did, they aren’t allowed to help too much as most of the ritual must be performed by the mastermind of the operation. Mister Rogers knew this and had only one friend remaining since Tarantino, this was a man who he was good friends with even before either of them joined the cult. This friend was Dr. Emmet Brown, he was crazy but knew how to get all the supplies they need and clear out an area for the ritual. Rogers decided to tell Emmet Brown his plan and the only thing that Brown could respond with was “GREAT SCOTT, That’s a Great Idea, and I know just how and where to get the materials for it!”. The Doc then left after that to get the supplies and clear out the location so that no one other than the cult knows what happened. All that was left now was to get Tarantino to agree to meetup together. Mister Rogers left to go find Tarantino, and he knew a couple possible locations. First possible location was a bar, he wasn’t there. Second possible location was a pizza shop owned by mobsters whose slogan was “We Outpizza’d The Hut”. Now, the third and final possible location was a private gun store with a shooting range called Ammu-Nation. Luckily for Mister Rogers, he had access to Ammu-Nation but he had a problem, he hadn’t been there in years. To be inconspicuous, Rogers walked in and started browsing the small firearms that he can buy without making too much contact or interaction with the others in there. While blending in he managed to notice an order for more ammo for someone named “Kobe Bryant”. Rogers knew that meant Tarantino, it was their nickname they gave each other, Rogers’ was “David Blaine”. The time that it was scheduled for was 5 hours before the deadline of the sacrifice, Rogers was going to have to be the smoothest of talkers to get him to the location before it ends. He ordered a weapon and was to pick it up 10 minutes before the order of ammo for Tarantino. Later, he arrived to pick up his weapon and decided to test it in the shooting range while waiting for Tarantino to arrive. Soon after, Tarantino arrived in an armored truck ready to have the ammo loaded in the back, and with a couple of hired guns for protection. Rogers waited for Tarantino to have little people around them, then he approached him.

“David, is that you?” “Rogers, what are you doing back here?” “I decided to check on how the place has changed and also to get a new weapon, here look at this” “How did you get something this fancy?” “The looks aren’t all, check the chamber” “Why? This is a FMJ bullet, and it is also a .375 caliber. This isn’t your style. You go for weak and common rounds found in any store with an extended mag. Preferably the glock.” “Well, I thought I'd get something stronger for special occasions.” “What type of occasions?” “Don’t know yet, but when the time comes you will be the first to know that I used it and who I use it on.” This went on for a while of them discussing the guns they use, and what they have been doing since they last talked. “Oh, Rogers, you know I have been telling you that I was planning on creating my own gang to rule this city. Those hired guns over there protecting the truck are actually some gang members. Our gang may be small and not well known but it will be better than others soon, that’s why we’re stocking up on ammo.” Rogers’ suspicion was right, the ritual performed years ago was a ritual required in the city to become a gang leader. You must sacrifice someone really close to your best friend. Either family, their girlfriend/boyfriend, or pet. The more sacrificed makes you have more respect and strength when creating your gang. Tarantino sacrificed some of the most people while in the cult, so he is well respected, but no one really joins his gang because they know just how many people he sacrificed and how crazy he was. “David, how about we hang out a little. It’s been a long time since we hung out, and I think it would be better to hang out than just have a quick conversation.” “Right you are Rogers, it is better, but I need to deliver these supplies back to the gang.” “Don’t worry about that, here just put your gangs sign on the side and make it noticeable so no one will dare mess with you.” “Alright, I’ll take your word for it. JOSEPH, you know where to take the supplies, so take them there! Now, where do you want to go hang out.” “I cleared out an arcade all for ourselves, you know the one with the games, bowling, and laser tag, or if you want it has a mini restaurant. It’s The Peak.” “Bro, I haven’t been there in a while. I’ll totally go. I’ll just get the delorean and we’ll go there.” After that he went around the corner and drove back in his delorean, no not the one from back to the future, the one from 1982. They left and arrived at The Peak with the new cult members that Tarantino doesn’t know about in the staff uniform, and no other customers there. It was going according to plan. Rogers took him around to play the games and go bowling, trying to avoid the laser tag, saying it was “the spectacular end to this day.”. They played for a couple hours and then went to the gift shop and bought a bunch of big pixy stix. Rogers got a message from “Anonymous 174” saying that the laser tag is ready, he knew that this was Emmet Brown because he is the one who he gets messages from most and messages most. He waited for Tarantino to come out of the giftshop before saying “It is time for the end, let’s go shoot some lasers”. When they went in the room to suit up, there was a box there with a note saying “the other vests and guns were either low on battery or broken, use these until we get more available.”. “David, you should be the red team. I mean, it IS your favorite color.” “Are you sure? What about you? Don’t you like it more than me?” “Yes, but this is a special occasion, you should wear it.” “Oh, alright, but you better not complain you can’t fight because you aren’t used to wearing blue.”. They then picked up their weapons and Rogers found a hidden, almost impossible note to notice in the Doc’s handwriting that said “You will need to hold down the trigger for the blast to really work, otherwise it is a normal laser gun”. This worked perfect for Rogers getting Tarantino to believe this is all real, he can shoot a couple shots first then charge one and get a hit on him. Only one problem, Tarantino likes to hide behind barricade and never come out and move until he thinks it’s been compromised. The game went on for about 30 minutes until Rogers finally snuck up on Tarantino and charged a blast on him when a lot of electricity shot out, and Tarantino’s suit was destroyed while he was knocked unconscious to the point you’d think it was a coma. When Tarantino woke up an hour later, he was tied to his buddies Phil Swift and Billy Mays with a giant pentagram beneath them. “What is the meaning of this Rogers!” “You killed my family many years ago, and I still can’t sleep because of it.” “You know I had to do it to become a gang leader!” “I trusted you, but becoming a leader of your own gang was more important to you” “Couldn’t you have killed my family” “You wouldn’t care about your family, never have, but being betrayed by me will be similar since you betrayed my whole family. Now get ready, you will feel their pain from that night.” Rogers then took off a blanket and revealed knives, swords, and tasers. He then proceeded to chop them up starting with Billy Mays, then Phil Swift, and ending with Tarantino. Before Rogers chopped up Tarantino and begun the ritual, he asked “Did you feel anything during the murder” “No, I was blinded by the possibility of becoming a gang leader” “Good, cause I definitely won’t feel anything” Then he chopped him up and begun the ritual when out of the literal darkness of the room, cult members appeared and begun the chant. IT IS DONE.

[readonline]

https://nyti.ms/34FebC6 8, 2020 at 09:27PM

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Modern Love

If grief is the price of love, I am unable to pay.

Credit...Brian Rea

By Jared Misner

On the day I knew Alison would die, I called my two dogs into bed with me and wrapped all three of us in a quilt that’s hand stitched with my wedding vows.

This being such a custom item, it’s curious that three of them exist.

For my wedding two years ago, Alison had commissioned the hand stitching of this quilt — 1,420 words across 42 square feet. But the quilter kept messing it up with errant commas and misspelled words, so Alison made her start over, twice. She wasn’t about to be responsible for giving a less-than-perfect gift to me and my future husband, Nate. Still, the quilter had us keep the first two because there was no sense in returning them.

Before the doctors unplugged Alison in late April — one more body claimed by the coronavirus, lost amid the zeros and statistics to become a footnote in our sordid history — that’s who she was at her core: dedicated to perfection and superior gift-giving.

More than that, she was my best friend for 12 years, and even though I’m now married to a wonderful man, I’m not sure I’ll ever love someone like I loved Alison.

I suppose it’s fitting that this gift — the most perfect my husband and I received at our wedding, the gift we use more than any other, the gift I now find myself clinging to in Alison’s absence — came from the woman who was my first, and I suppose only, Facebook-official wife.

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Smitten with ourselves at the satirical shade we threw at others who lived for the drama and gossip of online relationship statuses at a time when Facebook had walls instead of feeds and when people still wrote on their friends’ walls, we made the digital declaration to one another and began our first marriage.

It was the most successful fictitious marriage I’ve had in my life, full of artisanal jams from roadside stands and dreams of one day living in a cabin in Vermont with a dozen dogs and a shed devoted to Halloween decorations.

Given that I’ve only been married to my husband for two years, I suppose you could say that my relationship with Alison was the most successful, long-lasting marriage I have had, period.

But now, at 29, she is dead, the ventilator no longer breathing for her, moved on to the next victim of Covid-19.

To die from this plague is a tragedy. To witness a loved one do so is a merciless, unrelenting kind of sadness — prolonged and filled with false hope. It is a faraway, forced mourning, her body a vector of contagion. It is a unique grief overridden by a forced education in a vocabulary I never wanted to learn: hydroxychloroquine, extubation, Remdesivir.

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And to die in the year of our lord 2020 is to die in so many places with deluging notifications, incessantly pinging you to remind you that your best friend is dead.

Texts from her father, Rich, an accountant from New York who now lives in West Palm Beach but still sounds like a New Yorker, and who once described my skinny jeans in college as “hot pants,” go off on my phone like bombs.

I think: Is this the one that tells me my best friend is dead?

Facebook posts from her mother, Robin (who once stole three mini cast-iron pans from a tapas restaurant in Gainesville, Fla., which still hang in my kitchen 12 years later), are an unpunctuated stream of terror, anger and fear. People “react” to her posts with digital tears. Instagram posts implore Alison to wake up, then shift to digital memorials, ephemeral stories that tag Alison, which she, despite the notifications, is unable to add to her own “story” because, again, she is dead.

To die amid this pandemic is to die over Zoom, your loved ones reduced to Hollywood Squares and requests to mute. Sharing stories about yesteryear with a video lag while your best friend is sedated. And while your friend dies in her hospital bed, hundreds of miles away, the process also involves rolling your eyes at the baby boomers on the call who insist on holding their phones below their chins rather than at eye level.

And then there are my own posts that I felt so obligated to birth into existence. To mourn your best friend in the 21st century is to do so publicly or risk others wondering why you haven’t already.

So I uploaded a 17-page letter Alison had written me in 2012, as we prepared to graduate from journalism school and begin our adult lives. It earned some 300 views, so I guess people liked it. How does one measure the support of digital grief anyway? Would I have loved her more if my “story” had received 400 views? Would our friendship mean more if a few more people had sent crying emojis in response?

On pages six and seven of the letter, Alison wrote, “I’m overwhelmed with clichés right now as I try to label our relationship. Best friends? Family? Soul mates? Soon-to-be newlyweds? Nothing feels right.”

“Nothing feels right” has a more macabre tinge to it these days because, well, nothing feels right.

In college at the University of Florida, and then continuing for the next eight years, Alison and I would say to each other, “Thank you for ruining me.” It was our way of telling the other: You’re so perfect, your understanding of me so nuanced and deep, that no man could ever match you.

By being all of these things, by accompanying me on another fruit-themed fall festival somewhere in north-central Florida, by sitting in a Czech restaurant in Ontario, and making me laugh even in the memo section of Venmo, “Thank you for ruining me” was to say “No one will ever know me or love me like you.”

Now that I’m actually married (the legal kind), I can say I love my husband very much. He is pragmatic, kind and handsome.

But he does not pull over for garage sales. He does not smuggle bags of dog costumes and treats out of press events to later give to my dogs and my parents’ dogs. He does not bring friendship bracelet crafts or design-your-own hats to our annual Labor Day trip and does not understand my references to the Beehive. He has no idea why Alison and I, eight years later, still laugh at the thought of when the chickens finally came to roost.

He does not speak in the Voice, a high-pitched apology-laced tone that came from who knows where but which we spoke in almost always.

He is, simply, not Alison. He could never be. It is (was?) a different kind of love. And nothing feels right now.

What happens to our inside jokes that litter the filing cabinets of my mind? Do they die along with her? Do I laugh to myself? What happens to her Facebook wall, the only record of our marriage, my first, her only?

One night while I wept in bed, my husband said to me, “Grief is the price of love.”

It was a typical thing for Nate to say: stoic New England pragmatism, the opposite of what I wanted to hear, the last thing Alison would have said. Yet it was everything I needed to hear.

He’s right, of course. He always is. One of the many reasons I married him.

But that love was expensive, a jumbo-size mortgage on my heart that I fear I won’t ever be able to repay.

Alison and I, both phone-call-averse millennials, would commonly talk on the phone for two hours at a time. Nate knew to go upstairs, don’t wait up when Alison called, the picture of her dressed as a cat for Halloween in 2012 appearing on my phone.

Do I keep her in my contact favorites now? Do I delete her? Do I unfriend her?

To die in 2020 is a messy amalgamation of digital business.

At my wedding, I asked Alison to read a passage from “The Velveteen Rabbit.” It’s a paragraph I have hanging in my home about what it means to be “real.”

The rabbit asks if becoming real hurts. The skin horse tells him yes, sometimes, it does. Sometimes your eyes will get rubbed off in the process and you’ll lose some of your shine. But that’s how you know you’re real. Nothing real can ever remain untouched.

The whole time they’re talking about love, of course.

I didn’t make the connection when I asked Alison to read that passage at my wedding, but it also describes us. Alison made me real. Alison ruined me. And I am better because of it.

Jared Misner is a writer in Charlotte, N.C.

Modern Love can be reached at modernlove@nytimes.com.

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