#and then there’s all the books too—- damn it star wars why are you so massive

[nvirskies]

sand - c. la rue

idea taken from one of @star-girl69 's asks about married clarisse and immediately went to think about how the vast majority of greek demigods didn't get to live past their 20's or even teen years... and the survivor's guilt that would come with being one of the few lucky enough to live longer.

warnings: angst, hurt/comfort, traumatic nightmare flashbacks, descriptions of violence, descriptions of blood + war, spoilers for TLO, set after both reader and clarisse leave CHB about 6-8 years into the future, google translated Greek term of endearment, crying, survivor's guilt, platonic RueGard, ooc Clarisse, she's matured more over time and more articulate with her feelings and words

summary: clarisse wakes up from a particularly bad nightmare in the middle of the night, reader comforts her through a breakdown

wife!fem!demigod!reader x wife!clarisse la rue

word count: 2.2k

καρδιά μου (kardiá mou) - my heart

Η καρδιά μου είναι η καρδιά σου (I kardiá mou eínai i kardiá sou) - my heart is your heart

"but you have more pieces of me than than desert has sand, and I have less pieces of you than I can hold in my hand" sand, alchemical: vol. 1, dove cameron

taglist: @lvrue @star-girl69 @azrielsdiary @petitegavotte @b0ok-lover

men, nsfw, non-sapphic, 16-/19+ dni

Greek demigods fell in love hard and fast with an unmatched intensity. They normally didn’t live long enough to even envision themselves in their adult lives, and why would they? Every day was a struggle to stay alive with monsters coming in from all angles and quests most didn’t come back from.

And that was why, as soon as the two of you graduated high school, Clarisse got down on a knee and proposed with the knowledge that you were the one she would want to spend the rest of her life, however long or short, with.

When you two had graduated college, the next thing in the books was to make it official in the courthouse, and that was what you had done. No extravagant party or ceremony, just a quiet day in the courthouse and a night in to celebrate.

But no matter how far the two of you ran from Camp Half-Blood, the nightmares never went away, never got better. As the years passed, more of the people you had considered friends died. One after the other, falling like cursed dominos, helplessly standing by as they all tumbled down.

Soon, the nightmares became more about the people that were lost than the monsters themselves. Nightly plagues of searingly painful memories from watching the life drain from so many demigods’ eyes burned themselves in both of your psyches.

All you could do was hope Charon would be kind enough to ferry them across the Styx without his payment of a silver coin.

And tonight certainly hadn’t been anything out of the ordinary with the two of you and your limbs interlaced in a protective embrace while sleep claimed your minds, as if the both of you could protect each other from the monsters both in and outside.

Your head, nestled into her chest. Her deep, rhythmic breathing made your hair flutter ever so slightly as she exhaled. Her arms, wrapped loosely around your waist, hands not-so-sneakily under the baggy shirt of hers you had stolen to wear as pajamas for the night. It was all perfect. Too perfect.

You would be damned fools to think that peace would last for so long. Demigods didn’t get peace, they didn’t get tranquility, and they especially didn’t get uninterrupted domestic bliss.

Unbeknownst to you, Clarisse’s face contorted into one of distress. Her arms pulled you in closer subconsciously as the all too familiar face of Morpheus greeted her with a sly smirk on his face in her dreams.

In moments, she was transported back to the Battle of Manhattan.

She was seventeen again.

Blood was everywhere. Abandoned weapons lay on the floor, the hands that once gripped them tightly, now loose and limp. Shrill screams echoed throughout the air, all cut short by gut-wrenching sounds of fatal injury. Metal cut through flesh. Acid burnt through metal. Flames licked and greedily consumed anything and everything as fuel.

Her feet felt heavy, her hands numb. She could do nothing but stand and watch it all unfold before her own eyes, forced to relive the carnage and devastation that had ripped through Manhattan on that fateful day.

Morpheus’ voice whispered in her right ear, the sound of it sending an uneasy chill down her spine. “Daughter of Ares. A fitting dream, no? Your father must have been proud of you for the way you fought after… well, I’ll let you relive that, too.” Before she could blink, she was transported to the moment right after Silena had been sprayed by the Lydian Drakon.

Clarisse was too late. She had always been too late.

She was back on her knees, choking and weeping bitterly as Silena lay in her arms, watching as life slowly left her once-lively eyes.

What kind of a warrior even was she? So weak that she couldn’t even protect her friend? Too weak to protect the girl who had adorned her armor and led her siblings into battle?

Just as Clarisse reached out to touch Silena’s face to wipe away the one mark of smudged eyeliner that the Aphrodite girl normally would never have even allowed to happen in the past, she was jerked back to consciousness, eyes flying open and arms almost crushing your sleeping form momentarily as she came to.

No longer was she in Manhattan, instead sheltered in the familiarly adorned walls of your shared bedroom. Upon the walls hung framed pictures of joyous times past and her sword collection, among other things.

Familiar faces stared back at her, some faces that would never age again. Immortalized memories of times that would never happen again. Everyone was dead or scattered across the globe.

A particular picture caught Clarisse’s eye. It was a portrait of Silena that she had commissioned one of the Apollo kids to draw for the daughter of Aphrodite’s seventeenth birthday.

She never lived to see that day.

Her eyes locked with Silena’s in the drawing for a moment, and that moment was one too much as hot tears began to prick in the corners of her eyes.

She had inadvertently woken you up with the way her arms tightened around your waist in a near vice grip, slowly coming to your senses. No longer were her breaths slow and rhythmic, their steadfast pattern replaced by one that was erratic and shallow. The once-steady thumping cadence of her heart as it beat in her chest was now quickened, all of which you could hear with your head having been nestled into her chest.

Craning your head to look up at her, you were greeted with the sight of Clarisse desperately trying to silently blink back tears and control her own breathing.

Hurriedly, you pushed yourself up off her chest and tugged the blankets off the two of you before sitting down on her lap. You took note of the way her hands had never left your waist, holding onto you as if she were drowning and you were the last life ring thrown out.

It wasn’t anything you and Clarisse hadn’t dealt with before. The nightmares had been a part of your lives as far back as you could remember, it just came with the territory of being a demigod. But they never got any easier as time went on.

She watched silently with eyes brimming with unshed tears, pleading wordlessly with you to do something, anything to make it all go away.

“Let’s switch, yeah? You can lay on me and completely cover me if you want, love,” you offered up, a melancholy smile tugging at the corners of your mouth. Wordlessly, she nodded and you slipped off her lap, laying back where she had just been moments ago.

Gently patting your chest, you motioned for her to rest her head on it, knowing that the rest of her body would soon follow, completely engulfing your form with hers. After she had positioned herself, her arms snaked around your waist again as she simply held you for a few moments, her face pressed into your chest as tears slowly soaked into your shirt.

One hand reached out to gently run along the length of her back, the motion meant to soothe. A few beats passed in silence before you spoke in a hushed whisper, the bedroom devoid of sound beyond the two of you breathing in tandem with each other.

��You hear that, love? That’s my heart,” you murmured softly, craning your neck to press a gentle kiss to the top of her head. “It’s beating, beating for you. Η καρδιά μου είναι η καρδιά σου.”

She didn’t respond beyond releasing another shaky sob into your chest and tightening her grip around your body, but you didn’t mind. You didn’t need her to talk just yet.

“You’re also η καρδιά μου, you know that, right? My heart, my wife, my love, my everything. And I’m yours. Entirely yours, and I”m not going anywhere.” You craned your neck again to press another kiss against the crown of her head, hand never stopping its path of running gently along the length of her back.

“I would go down to the depths of Tartarus for you. I would challenge Hades himself to a fight if it meant I had even a glimmer of a chance in getting you back.”

Never once did you try to rush her into talking or shushing her tears. You knew her better than you knew yourself, and giving her time to let everything out was the best thing you could do for her at the moment.

You were her safe space, the one woman that she could let her walls down around. She wasn’t Ares’ star daughter in your arms, she was just Clarisse. No expectations dangling over her head, just open arms and understanding.

After another few quiet moments, she finally spoke up in between half-choked sobs, whispering so quietly that her voice was nearly inaudible, “Silena… Manhattan… should have been able to save her,” before letting her face fall back down onto your chest, releasing another pained cry.

“She’s gone- a-and everyone else too- why me?”

Her question left you speechless, mouth partly opened in an attempt to come up with a reassuring response, but nothing seemed to come to mind immediately. It was rare for this to happen, as you normally had just the right words at the top of your tongue, weaving them as Arachne once wove tapestries on her loom.

“They’re all gone and- and- ”

“Shh, love…” you cut her off, gently pulling her head up to look her in the eyes, your other hand leaving her back to wipe the tears that were still streaming down her cheeks with the pad of your thumb. “Please, don’t go back into that self-sacrificial spiral. Talk to me, tell me what the dream was about?”

She only shook her head in response, unwilling to divulge details of the memory that had shattered your night of otherwise perfect proportions.

Deflating back on top of you, she whispered, “They’re all gone, and we’re one of the only ones remaining. It was like every time another one of them died, that small part of myself that I gave to them died as well.”

Her arms that were wrapped around your waist tightened for a moment before going limp along with the rest of her body as she lay atop you, her head pressed against your chest.

“Love…” you began softly as one of your hands found its way to her head and carded gently through her curls. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened. None of it was your fault. We didn’t ask to be born, to be thrown into this mess of a world and tossed around like pawns in the gods’ game of chess with our lives.”

“We didn’t ask for this life, and we were so young at the time. For fuck’s sake, we were only seventeen- we hadn’t even made out yet. We hadn’t graduated high school yet, there were so many things we couldn’t control.

“None of it was your fault, I promise you. You were so brave, and you did everything you could.” She stayed silent as you spoke, the only sounds coming from her were the soft, shaky breaths as she sniffled and burrowed her face further into your shirt.

“I can’t explain to you why so many things had to happen, that’s up to the Fates. I can’t give you the pieces of yourself back that you lost when we kept losing everyone,” you murmured whilst your hands kept on with their idle motions.

It shattered your heart to give her such an incomplete answer when you knew it was tearing her apart inside to live with it all, but there was nothing you could do beyond offer solace and comfort. “And for that, I am so, so sorry. But the one thing I can do is keep the piece you’ve granted me to keep, safe and sound.”

She only nodded in response, not trusting herself to speak in fear of her own vulnerability. Her tears soaked into your shirt, but you didn’t care. All that was important was that Clarisse was here, in your arms, and slowly calming down.

Clarisse knew just as well as you did that everyone had done the best they could with the circumstances given, and that the loss affected you just as deeply. But she didn’t dig into that, it would be a can of worms to open for another time, another sleepless night where your own troubles caught up with you after running from them for so long.

And so, the rest of the night stretched on into early morning, the two of you half-awake, seeking silent solace in each other until sunlight crept into the bedroom through the cracks of the curtains the next day.

The two of you might have been running from your trauma like runners to a marathon, but at least you were running hand-in-hand with matching strides.

[silentghosttimez]

Since everyone's reading comprehension clearly just went out the window when the person in the Epstein documents asked about Michael Jackson. The girl literally said nothing happened. And to go into more detail, this was before anything about Epstein came to light and when Epstein was still fronting as one of those financial businessmen. MJ was LITERALLY THOROUGHLY investigated and HEAVILY survellienced by the government/FBI for over 2 decades BEFORE and AFTER meeting Epstein, the FBI REALLY wanted MJ gone from the public eye, they even tried to use his childhood photos and some playboy magazines to prove he was guilty. In the 2000s MJ was in conflict with Sony and was going broke, some people(we dont know who they were yet) recommended he go to Epstein to solve financial issues. MJ dipped out and Epstein never got his number, his name literally was not in that black book. Y'all keep bringing up those false accusations with the boys when if you actually look up anything on it, the boys came forward and said their parents lied, and the bed thing was false because MJ's room was huge and had two beds, he had the PARENTS AND THEIR KIDS sleeping in the beds in his room while HE slept in his own GUEST ROOM.

Stop making shit up when the people who wanted so badly for him to do something criminal literally couldn't find anything at all in all those years that he was looked at so closely to the point he was literally having mental breakdowns from being watched every where he went, during every call, and so on.

(edit: To add to this, people constantly lie about his skin and how he felt about himself and his body too. When for one, his autopsy was right there and literally says he suffered from lupus and Vitilogo and his hair was literally the way it was due to it being set on fire in that one Pepsi commercial, there are literally graphic images of just how badly his scalp had been damaged. He never hated himself or his blackness, infact he actively tried to hide his white splotches for as long as he could. He used makeup and skincare stuff that he was unaware had any bleaching affects in the ingredients. He was very open and loud about being proud of his African heritage, he even was crowned in an African village.

I made this post cause I started tweaking because the singular black breadtuber I was watching was reading the Epstein documents and when he got to Michael being mentioned he and everyone in chat suddenly became illiterate and he was talking some shit like "it would seem he really was that guy if those documentaries, court stuff and articles didn't already convince you" like WHAT??? And chat was agreeing and someone was like "the Twitter stans are still gonna find a way to defend him after this" mind you, if you weren't bread dead and believed all that slander, all the court stuff declared and pretty much proved his innocence and later one people including his own friends and family came forward saying they were forced and coerced into lying. Those documentaries that came out and so many of those articles were straight up slanderous because they were damn tabloids, I don't get why people are still trying to use tabloids as proof when they were known for spreading rumors that often were not true in the slightest. This shit actually has me genuinely heated. Like, the breadtuber didn't bother reading the rest and was just like "well that proves it" even though it was stated right below that Epstein did not have his contact. Then there's the dumbasses on Twitter too making this shit worse. You'd think that most people at some point would bother to actually use their brains and seek out as much info as possible instead of taking lies and running with it, especially if they have a platform where they literally should be doing such a thing but nope. The guy was iffy about the star wars guy and whether or not he was actually a contact in Epstein's list but that same grace was not afforded to MJ.

Another edit:Oh and also it's wild MJ's false accusations are always brought and people say Elvis and Prince are better than him meanwhile Elvis and Prince were known pedos and abusers. Like are you fucking kidding me!!!)

[riality-check]

steddie prompt! steve struggling with his dyslexia and feeling like he isnt smart enough compared to eddie and the kids?

In an effort to, in his words, "convert him to the light side," Dustin had given Steve an armful of what he deemed "essential reading" and sent him away to "learn the ways of the Force."

If Steve didn't like Star Wars so much, he would've made fun of that little nerd.

But, honestly, he's a little grateful. With no more monsters to slay and it being way too cold to venture outside of his house to go swim or play basketball, the books fill up a good chunk of time.

Too good a chunk.

It's taking him way too long to get through them.

He didn't try The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings because those looked way too intimidating. Dune's first twenty pages were boring as shit, and Ender's Game was a lot, to say the least.

So, he's been making his way through A Wrinkle in Time.

Slowly making his way through it. Too slowly.

Steve has been quickly reminded about why he hasn't voluntarily read a book since elementary school, and why he stopped reading the required books in high school.

It's hard. Reading sucks.

He doesn't know how other people get through it when the letters don't make sense and seem to switch, like how "b" and "d" or "f" and "t" look way too similar.

"Whatcha readin'?"

Steve looks up from the book - god, it's probably taken him at least an hour to get through chapter one, hasn't it - to find Eddie in the doorway of the living room.

Guess he's taking advantage of the spare key, Steve thinks to himself, but he's not mad about it, not even a little.

"A Wrinkle in Time," he says, holding up the book so Eddie can see the cover.

Eddie lights up. "Oh, I love that book! I think the last time I read it, I was in, shit, maybe fourth grade?"

Steve knows he didn't mean it, but damn. That hurt a little bit.

He can't even get through a book Eddie read when he was in elementary school?

"What part are you at?"

Steve tucks the book against his chest so Eddie doesn't see how the bookmark isn't very far in. "Not very. Just met Mrs. Which. It's kind of hard to get through-"

"Oh, yeah," Eddie nods. "It took me, like, three days."

"- because the letters keep switching."

Eddie frowns. "What?"

"The letters," Steve says. "Like, they're moving a lot for this book. I don't know why."

Eddie looks at him blankly.

Oh.

"Does that... not happen for you?"

Eddie shakes his head.

Steve huffs out a laugh because of course this would be a uniquely him problem. Of course people like Dustin and Eddie and the rest of the party would like reading, because of course they would be able to do it right.

"I guess I really am stupid."

"It took me three tries to get through my senior year," Eddie says seriously, putting his hand on Steve's shoulder. "Does that make me stupid?"

"No," Steve says instantly. It doesn't. Just because Eddie wasn't good at school doesn't mean he isn't smart. He's a brilliant storyteller and musician, and both of those take brains.

Steve doesn't have a hobby that takes brains because he just... doesn't have enough. Plain and simple. That's how it's always been.

"Ok, then you're not stupid for having trouble reading," Eddie says like it's the simplest thing in the world.

"But-"

"But what? We're all gonna struggle with something. For me, it was school. For you, it's reading. It's why we've got other people to fill in the gaps."

Other people don't fill in the gaps. Steve does. Steve stretches himself thin, makes sure he's everywhere at once to make sure the kids and Robin and Eddie are okay.

No one else can do that because. Well.

Steve has to be irreplaceable somehow. He's gotta be necessary somehow.

This is the only way they need him.

"Get out of your head, martyr," Eddie says, reading his mind. He's not as good at that as Robin is - Steve doesn't think anyone will ever be able to read him like Robin can - but he can still do it.

It's weird, just like Eddie is. Steve's learned to love weird over the past few years.

"Do you want me to stick around?" Eddie asks.

"You can stay, if you want," Steve says.

"I always want to stay with you," Eddie says, and damn if that sentence doesn't take Steve's breath away. "But I figured I'd ask."

So, Eddie lays his head in Steve's lap as Steve dives back into a world of tesseracts and space and time, and when Steve tilts the book down and points to a word that just isn't making sense, Eddie reads it for him.

He doesn't comment on how often he hears the pages flip.

[lemon-boy-stan]

THE BATTLE OF LIONS AND SNAKES - R.A.B

As the first wizarding war draws near, the rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin becomes even more visible. You'd thought that being James's sister and a Slytherin would change things, but it only made things worse. Pairing: Regulus Black x fem!Potter!reader. Genre: fluff, some angst. Warnings: pureblood supremacy, war talk, slightly dark themes? Swearing, Sirius being a dick. YN calls Sirius a cunt.

The Potters and Blacks were, perhaps, two of the most popular wizarding families at Hogwarts; along with the Malfoys, Prewetts and the Notts. Yes, being pureblood had it's privileges, but it was popularity that put James Potter and Sirius Black on the map.

James and Sirius were the kinds of people that no-one disliked. They were good at sports, funny, daring, and over-all good natured people. They might not have the best grades like Remus Lupin or Lily Evans, but they were damn good at making people laugh, and no-one seemed to mind if they lost any house points.

When the Sorting Hat was sorting you into your house, it had mentioned Gryffindor. Out of all the houses, Gryffindor was the house to be in. Gryffindor made stars, and was home to many famous witches and wizards.

James was a leader. He became Prefect in his fifth year and Head Boy in his sixth year, and was the youngest Quidditch player in a hundred years to be made Captain of the Gryffindor team. He was a good friend - always loyal, always listening to the side of everyone's conversations, always making sure everyone was involved. He was a gentleman - when he had his heart set on someone, he knew exactly what to do and how to treat her right (in the later years, of course). Your mother and father were extremely proud of him.

You yourself were somewhat similar, as his younger sister, but you always envied him for finding most things in life easy. James had every opportunity laid out for him. You, however, had to work hard if you wanted something, sometimes twice as hard as the average student; hence why the hat placed you in Slytherin.

Being in Slytherin and being a Potter caused quite an uproar your first year at Hogwarts. Everyone in Slytherin had a bone to pick with James, based on whatever prank he and his friends had done on the house. Because of this, everyone had some kind of opinion on you, except for the first years, who knew nothing better but to be your friend.

You had met your first ever friend on the Hogwarts Express. James had brought you to sit with his friends, the "Marauders", as they liked to call themselves. You'd spent two Christmases with them before coming to Hogwarts, and honestly, they were pretty stuck-up, especially Remus, who was some sort of care-home yob, and glared at you every time you spoke.

Eventually, you left the carriage, telling James you wanted to make some new friends. He didn't mind, and jokingly told you not to make friends with the "wrong sort", although you didn't really know what that meant.

All of the carriages were full of people who looked older than you and scarier. You walked further down the train, wondering why some students were staring at you. You ignored them, looking through all of the carriages. Finally, after quite some time, you came across a carriage that was almost empty.

A small boy was sitting on the left side of the carriage, reading a book about Ancient Runes. You smiled, he looked so peaceful compared to everyone else; and he was your age. You put your hand to the door and knocked. He looked up, frowning.

The small boy put his book down and got up. He opened the door, "what do you want?" His dark eyebrows furrowing in confusion. You smiled apologetically, "I was just looking for a place to sit. My brother and his friends are a bit annoying." The small boy looked you up and down and stepped aside. "You can sit with me."

"My brother and his friends are a bit stuck up, too. I met them on the platform. My name's Regulus, by the way. Regulus Black."

Your eyes widened. This was Regulus Black? The brother that Sirius Black despised so much? Well, he didn't seem quite so decietful and troll-like after all, but perhaps siblings just disagreed with each other. You wondered why he was all by himself.

"I enjoy my own company, normally, but mother said to make friends. You seem like a respectable enough witch... Would you mind telling me your name?" You tried not to giggle at how Regulus spoke. You'd never heard a ten-year-old speak so posh before. You smiled, "YN Potter, nice to meet you."

Regulus's eyes darkened but he shook his head. "You're not bad for a Potter. Let's be friends." Regulus Black held out his hand, and you shook it, sitting down next to him.

The train continued to move through Scotland. "I'm afraid I'll be put in Slytherin," you said after awhile, putting your head in your hands, "all of my family's been in Gryffindor for thousands of years, but the other day dad joked that I was more cunning than bold."

Regulus looked at you, "I think what you did earlier was pretty bold." You scoffed, "what, asking you if I could sit with you?" He grinned and nodded, "yeah. Do you know how many people avoided me just then before you got here? Even in the Slytherin carriage they think I'm some sort of a freak." You frowned, "I don't think you're a freak. You're just a regular kid to me."

Regulus pulled a face, "I'll have you know I'm the second heir to the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black, an extremely respectable and non-regular young wizard." You let out a snort of a laugh, "what kind of kid has to be respectable?!" Before covering your mouth. Regulus smiled at you, "the ones who don't snort like that." You giggled.

Regulus started to get more comfortable. "All of my family's been in Slytherin for thousands of years, just like how yours is with Gryffindor. When Sirius was put in Gryffindor two years ago mum went absolutely ballistic. Maybe I might be put in Gryffindor too, but I think I'll probably be in Slytherin... I wish I was brave enough to run away."

You snorted again, "I wish I was brave enough to be in Gryffindor." Regulus laughed loudly. You turned to him, "if I am put in Slytherin, it won't be so bad if I'm with you." And he smiled.

And you were right. With Regulus by your side, you found it easy making friends in first year. Everyone in Slytherin was a pureblood, and was either scared of him (which you thought was truly ridiculous) or they respected him.

As the years went by, it was clear to most people that the two of you were as close as two peas in a pod. You were often seen together so much that on the rare occasions where you weren't together, you were asked where the other one was.

It was in your third year where you realised your feelings for the youngest Black brother was not just those of friendship, but something much stronger. As your crush grew and your Slytherin friends teased you about it, you began to worry and think of what would happen if you were to date Regulus, and what would happen when your big brother and his best friend found out that you were dating the little brother that he despised so.

And in fourth year, as if nudging these events into reality even further, you and Regulus began to date. In fifth year, the two of you became prefects and Quidditch Captains, and it was clear that you were a powerful unstoppable couple. Despite this, however, some people still did not agree with the dynamic of your relationship.

It was during lunch in the middle of your fifth year did the rivalry between Slytherin and Gryffindor really take its poll.

The war was almost in full motion, and it was obvious to anyone with brains that Voldemort did not have good intentions. There had been whispers in the Slytherin Common Room of some older students who had joined Voldemort's side through some kind of ritual.

James and Sirius were convinced that Regulus was one of these people, and as usual, had convinced themselves that they were right.

"What exactly are you trying to say, James?" You snapped. Your older brother put his hands up in surrender. "Don't get mad at me, I'm just the messenger. Padfoot thinks you should reconsider your relationship with Regulus, that's all." Merlin, were you glad that Reg was out in the pitch training. Sometimes his mad Quidditch obsession was a good thing.

You turned to Sirius now, "you think that, do you?" And Sirius shrugged. James jumped in quickly, keen to stop an argument from happening.

"Well you know how Padfoot's family are all very... Traditional," James was picking his words carefully, watching your facial expressions, "and he told me the other day that his folks had been talking about some dark lord for a long time, like, ever since second year, and how they were all going to join him and support him, and Padfoot was just saying-"

"Regulus is bound to join up!" Sirius butted in. James turned to him and sighed. You looked at him. "He means well, but he's easily coeerced into things, and he's always trying to impress mother, and they always brainwash him, I mean, just look at Bella."

You scowled. Sirius's parents may have been horrible people, but that didn't mean everyone else in his family was. Okay, perhaps one or two of his cousins had done some nasty things in the past, and Bellatrix was one of them, but you would always remember her as the girl who cursed some older students for boxing your ears. She'd said any friend of Regulus was a friend of hers and that you could count on her.

"Bella is a perfectly kind and respectable witch. She's really nice, actually." Sirius rolled his eyes at this. "Well, whatever, but don't come crying to me when your boyfriend has suddenly run off to join Voldemort. I'm telling you, all of them are like that. You know, at least ninety percent of Slytherin house are evil!" Sirius threw his arms up and you began to fume.

"But you always forget the main thing, don't you, Black?!" Typical Sirius Black to hate something but to leave an exception. "I'm a Slytherin too! You think we're all just so evil, do you? You think all of us want to join Voldemort? Since Regulus apparently will, maybe I will to PROVE YOU WRONG, you righteous, narcissistic cunt!"

Lily and Marlene gasped but you didn't care. Sirius scoffed even louder. "Oh, that's rich, coming from YN "I don't want to be a Slytherin" Potter! But I suppose after snogging my dear brother everything's fine, is it? Suppose the death eaters will just have to snog you to convince you to join up-"

"CONFRINGO!" The Gryffindors shrieked loudly at the sudden spell. Sirius flew backwards, knocking down the students who were sitting next to him and you knew who it was immeadietly. Regulus was always rather powerful with his magic.

Sirius got up and glared at his younger brother, taking out his wand. Regulus held his chin high, "don't you say a word against my girlfriend." And Sirius scoffed. "Is she really your girlfriend, or is she just someone who you lock lips with in your bed? LEVICORPUS!"

You dove infront of Regulus just before you saw Sirius wave his wand, but forgot to take out your own, and now you were hovering in the air. James let out an enraged roar, getting up. "WHAT THE FUCK, PADFOOT! DID YOU JUST CURSE MY FUCKING SISTER?!" You didn't think you'd ever heard him be so mad before.

Sirius glared at him, "I was trying to get Regulus, but the little weasel doged it just like everything else in his life!" You tried to fight the enchantment, "GO FUCK YOURSELF, BLACK!" kicking at the air. The other students laughed.

"Expelliarmus!" Regulus flicked his wand and Sirius's wand flew out of his hand. "You're just as bad as mother," Regulus hissed, "cursing an innocent person." Sirius rolled his eyes, "oh, I'm as bad as mother? Who's the one still grovelling about her knees and begging for her admiration?! Who's the one who-"

"CAN THE TWO OF YOU JUST SHUT UP AND PUT MY SISTER BACK? FINITE INCANTATUM!" James wove his wand angrily, and you fell back down to the ground. The school had stopped laughing now, and were all just watching intently.

Regulus turned to you, "are you okay?" You dusted yourself off and nodded, "I'm good." You turned to Sirius. "Not that it's any of your business, but Regulus is my boyfriend and I love him. So if you can't deal with that you can just get lost."

James looked the two of you up and down before nodding solemnly. He turned to you, "YN, Regulus, I'm sorry. I didn't see it before, but I do now, and I can tell that you're in love. So, what I'm trying to say is, if you want to be together, I don't have a problem with it anymore." James nodded at Regulus, who still looked a bit taken aback that he was being addressed.

Sirius scowled, "I still do."

This time it was Regulus who rolled his eyes. He then turned to you and grinned, "since you've got such a problem with it, Sirius, watch this." You looked at Regulus in confusion before getting the memo and grinning. Regulus smiled too, grabbing your waist and leaning in, kissing you on the lips. Slytherin house cheered as the others stared in shock.

Sirius scoffed in disbelief, "whatever." And you smiled, kissing Regulus again. James made a sound, "you better remove Regulus from my sister, Padfoot, or you won't have a brother anymore." You giggled softly, threading your fingers through Regulus's dark curls before looking up into his green eyes and pulling away.

HARRY POTTER MASTERLIST

NAVIGATION

[wander-wren]

sometimes i wonder about what fandom is going to look like in 5 or 10 years. i think we might have already started to see a shift.

because, look, most of the oldest, biggest fandoms are from tv shows and movies, in particular ones that go on for years and scores of episodes. star trek, star wars, stargate (is everything star?), doctor who, supernatural…even sherlock really got its biggest popularity boosts in the modern day from tv adaptations. marvel and dc were comics first, too, but movies made them more accessible; their “cinematic universe” tags are the biggest on ao3 by far.

but what tv shows are we getting now? short, 8-episode things that get canceled two or three seasons in, that are usually less-than-faithful adaptations of other media anyway.

what movies are we getting? well, marvel turns more to slop every day, and everything else is remakes and sequels no one asked for. the general populace will still go see them and find some good movies that they like, but there’s not much really for fandom to grasp onto.

the best shows for fandom that we’ve had recently, that i can think of, are stranger things, game of thrones, and maybe our flag means death. stranger things is dying off, especially since they’re looking at a 3-4 YEAR gap between s4 and s5. game of thrones’s popularity plummeted after its final season, we all know that. our flag means death is still chugging fairly okay, but after that second season a lot of the fandom dropped it, and with it now being cancelled, i don’t see it sticking around.

yes, we can chalk part of this up to a new generation to of fans having this growing idea that fandom is super temporary, to be abandoned as soon as its not on trend. but media used to be on trend for a whole lot longer than it is now. seasons were longer, we had filler episodes, things were lower quality sometimes but at least they came out on a consistent schedule. i don’t mind if supernatural isn’t an artistic masterpiece, but if i was a stranger things fan waiting until 2026 for the final season, i would be annoyed if it wasn’t damn near perfect. that’s assuming i watched it at all—we’re all so used to not getting endings and moving on, so why would i bother?

i think there are two types of shows doing sort of okay about this. one is procedurals—9-1-1 is a popular one i’ve run into, and it started in 2018, around the beginning of the decline, but it’s managed 7 seasons in those six years, most of them with 18 episodes. the other is, honestly, anime—though we can and SHOULD talk about the terrible working conditions that make the fast turnarounds there possible. look at how big some anime fandoms are.

judging by the relative fandom popularity of other procedural dramas (grey’s anatomy, law & order, criminal minds), i think that’s going to remain sort of niche. fandom likes fantasy and scifi best, and they just don’t tend to have as strong of an overarching arc to dig into. at least, that’s why i wouldn’t watch them. i think there’s also a good chance these will start to die out in the coming years as well.

anime could also die out a little bit. better working conditions would necessitate less/slower content, and it’s true that most of the popular anime fandoms have been around for years, even decades.

so, what, no new, lasting tv show or movie fandoms anymore?

what will the biggest fandoms be in 5-10 years?

podcast fandoms have a shot. the magnus archives is still going strong, and i’ve been seeing a lot about dungeons and daddies. i think we’re kind of almost past the golden age for podcasts, but i am an outsider, so maybe that will change.

book fandoms seem like a kind of obvious choice, but they just don’t get as big without, you guessed it, a movie or show adaptation. and the downsizing has hit them, too—can you think of anything from the last 5 or 10 years that rivals harry potter, percy jackson, warriors, lord of the rings, hunger games, acotar…even game of thrones (asoiaf) again? i can’t. the collapse of the publishing industry is another post entirely.

2020 is really what cemented these changes, though they were starting in the late 2010s, at least. with actual industries shutting down, there was room for indie creators making things alone in their houses to pop up, and people had more time on their hands to try new things out and get into them.

the two things that have really been on the rise since 2020 is rpf and video game fic—often both combined. we’ve got genshin impact, call of duty, minecraft of course being huge, rpf of various youtubers, and k-pop rpf. now, i think rpf is contentious enough that it won’t really become the main fandom, but video game fic…might be it.

even video blogging rpf can often be a blurred enough line that people are more comfortable with it. and the thing is…youtube creators are actually more reliable than mainstream television these days. they need to be, to maintain their platforms. they need to not cancel series and to live up to their own hype as best they can and to not abandon the channel for 3 or 4 years at a time. and again, you can talk about burnout and unrealistic expectations and all of those things, but it’s still true.

maybe i’m completely wrong. maybe in 10 years the film and publishing industries will all sort themselves out and we’ll go back to the status quo. but i think this position fandom is finding itself in is interesting, and i wouldn’t necessarily be surprised if what’s most popular (both in the specific source material sense and the medium/genre sense) is different some time down the road.

[vodika-vibes]

Hey! I know he's a bit of a rare clone, but would you consider writing for maze? he's from the repcomm books and is endearingly (Imo) professional and surly 👉👈

Not That Hard

Summary: When one story ends, another one begins. Maze, formerly a Republic Soldier, is now a bounty hunter. He’s used to things being orderly, everything has a place, and everything should be in its place. So when he ends up locked in a small cell with the woman he’s been searching for, a woman who’s been missing for three weeks, he knows that everything is about to be turned on its head.

Pairing: Pre Maze (Alpha-26) x F!Reader

Word Count: 1722

Warnings: None

Tagging: @trixie2023 @n0vqni @imabeautifulbutterfly

A/N: So, I've never written Maze before, but I'm always happy to write any of the Alphas, or any star wars character. His page on Wookieepedia wasn't the best, but I did the best I could. I hope you like it! Also, I've been watching a lot of Numb3rs, so that's where the basic idea of this came from.

Maze leans back against the stone wall, his gaze drifting from the woman sleeping on the singular cot in the cell to the door, and then back again. He’s glad that she’s asleep. He wasn’t sure that she would fall asleep, honestly.

He leans over and tugs the thin blanket a little higher over her shoulders. The blanket won’t do much to keep the cold out, it’s too thin, but it’s enough that she can sleep.

Three weeks ago the University of Theeds reached out to him, telling him that one of their Teachers had gone missing. They said to him that someone had broken into her home, torn the place to pieces, and taken her.

The University hired him to find her since he was something of an expert on finding people.

The fact that she’s alive is a damned miracle, in his opinion. After three weeks, statistics indicate that he should have found her in a ditch somewhere.

He’s never been so glad to be wrong in his life.

Still, the fact that they haven’t killed her suggests that they want something from her. Maze shifts so that he’s sitting on the cot beside her, tired of sitting on the ground.

He needs to think.

Why would someone want a University Professor?

Absently, Maze brushes a strand of hair off her face as he thinks about what he knows about her.

She’s young, barely brushing 25 years old. She’s an only child. Her mom died from heart disease when she was a child, her dad recently retired to a lake house. There’s no other family.

She’s single, and her only friends are people who work at the University with her. Honestly, it sounds like a lonely life to him, but according to her colleagues and friends, she’s seemed lonely or unhappy.

He can respect that.

Maze’s eyes snap to her face as she releases a quiet noise and shifts on the cot, seemingly to curl into his warmth while also opening her eyes. “You should go back to sleep, Professor. It’s early.” He says quietly.

She sighs and shakes her head, “No point. They’re going to be coming soon.” Slowly, she sits up and shifts so she’s able to press her face against his shoulder. 

“What do they want?” Maze asks, mentally kicking himself for not asking her earlier. But then, her injuries were pretty severe. It makes sense that he would put that aside.

“I’m a Bio-Engineer.” She replies tiredly, “They want me to tell them how to break into BioGen.”

“Why?”

“BioGen’s biggest thing is weaponizing viruses.”

Maze stiffens and his gaze snaps to her face, “BioWeapons are illegal. Even in the Empire.”

“They weaponize them so that they can try and develop cures for them. It’s all legal and above board.” She reassures, “Even in the Empire.”

“Why’d you leave?”

“A Tenured Professorship at the University of Theeds is a great honor, not to mention it pays very well.” She replies, “It made sense, career-wise.”

“Only there’s a lot less security at the University compared to a Biomedical facility.”

She huffs out a laugh, “Yeah, there is that.” She shifts her head slightly, “But this has never happened before. Ever. People leave BioGen all of the time.”

“And you’re the first one kidnapped?”

“That I know of.”

There are heavy footsteps from the hall and Maze shifts so that his body is shielding hers. The door slams open and three men step into the room.

They’re not big men, if Maze were to stand, he’d tower over them. It burns him up that he allowed men like them to capture him so he would be able to find the professor. 

“Professor,” One of the men stalks towards Maze, and he feels her shrink down behind him, “Come on, girl. Are we really going to do this? All you gotta do is give us the information, and then you’ll both go free.”

“Don’t lie. We all know that the moment she tells you what you want to know, you’ll kill her.” Maze growls out.

The man laughs, “Well, it’ll be a quick death, rather than this slow, dragged-out death.”

Behind him, the Professor trembles. 

“Is this all of you? Just three men?”

“We still caught you, clone.” One of the other men sneers, “Grab the Professor—”

The first man reaches to grab the Professor, only for Maze to move, swiftly breaking the man’s arm, and slamming his head against the wall, causing him to crumple to the floor.

“Get low, Professor.” Maze orders as he stands and advances on the two remaining men. He doesn’t wait to see if she’s following his direction, as he suddenly has two furious men to contend with.

Unfortunately for them, he’s an Alpha Class clone, and they’re unarmed.

The fight can’t even be called a proper fight. The two remaining kidnappers go down with several well-placed hits, and Maze tosses them into the cell while motioning for the Professor to join him.

“We’re leaving,” Maze says to the woman as he holds his hand out for her.

Nervously she nods and takes his hand, “Where are we going?”

“Well, it was the University who hired me.” Maze replies as he peeks into the hall, and then leads her out of the cell as soon as he notes that it’s safe.

“Um—”

Maze stops and looks at her, “What’s wrong?”

“Just…did they seem smart enough to come up with this on their own?”

Maze stares at her for a long time, and then he sighs, “No. They didn’t.” He’s quiet for a moment, “Alright, there must be something here to indicate who hired them. Follow me.”

Maze leads abruptly turns down a side hallway and leads her into a much larger room. There are computers, though they seem largely untouched. It looks like the kidnappers were more concerned with the games that were playing on the four holos lined up next to each other than the computers.

There are three couches, each other them surrounded by empty bottles and empty pizza boxes. 

“Well,” Maze notes as he steps around a pile of trash, “Criminal Genuises they are not.”

The Professor peers at a holo-board next to the couches, “It looks like they have a gambling problem.”

“Lucky for us. It means they probably didn’t delete anything.” Maze walks over to the computers, “Stay close, Professor.”

“Ah…Sorry.” She hurries to his side and peeks around him at the monitors.

Maze flashes a small smile at her and then focuses on the computers. “Hey, Professor?”

“Yes?”

“How’d they grab you?”

“I was heading home from a day of classes, and they ran me off the road.” She replies.

“You were driving yourself.”

“Yeah.”

“Does anyone know your route home?”

“I mean, there’s only one road off of the main campus,” She replies, “But I generally don’t know what route I’m taking home until I get in the car. It depends on the traffic and if I need to go grocery shopping.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone your plans for the evening when you were taken?” Maze asks as he scans something on the screen.

“No. No one.”

“It looks like our violent friends were hired by Levi Kelley. At least, that’s who paid them.”

“Levi Kelley?”

“You know him?”

“Yeah, he’s the head of the Biology Department at the University. I thought you said the University hired you?”

“Yeah, the Dean hired me. This Levi person, is he your supervisor?”

“No. I mean, he thinks that he is, but we’re on the same level.”

“Are you friends?”

“I’ve always been a bit…ambivalent towards him. He’s a good teacher, but he’s kind of a terrible person. Racist, sexist, the whole shebang.” 

“And he works at a University?”

“He’s a very good teacher. But he lost his tenure last year.”

“For what?”

“Academic misconduct, according to the rumors.” She leans against his side, exhausted, “The only person who knows the truth would be the Dean.”

“So it’s revenge.” Maze murmurs, “Use you to get an incurable virus, and release it on the school. Did you tell them anything?”

“No, I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”

“They tortured you, Professor. No one would blame you if you did.”

“I’m telling you, I didn’t. I left Biogen two years ago, Maze. I don’t remember any passwords or door codes. And they removed my biometrics from their system on my last day. I swear it.”

“Okay.” Maze lightly pushes some of her hair out of her face, “So they need someone else, a current employee.”

“Yeah, it’s the only way to get inside.”

“Alright. Let’s get out of here and alert the authorities. And get you some medical attention.”

“Yes please.”

Maze lightly presses his hand against the small of her back, guiding her towards the door, “I have one more question, Professor.”

“Go ahead?”

“When my brothers and I were decanted, we were given enhanced aging.”

“Yes, it was the only way for the Kaminoans to get a viable army in 10 years.” She replies.

“Yeah, you think you can reverse it?”

“Reverse it?” She repeats, sounding more thoughtful than surprised. Maze watches as she absently scratches at a deep gash on her cheek, “I don’t know about reversing it,” She finally says, “but I might be able to cure it. With enough blood samples.”

“Really?”

“Well sure, it’s not that hard. It’s just gene manipulation.” She frowns at him thoughtfully, “Look, all the information I need is here,” she lightly taps his chest, “The more of your brothers I can get blood samples from, the easier it’ll be to make a cure.”

“Can you do it at the University while also teaching?”

“I mean, sure. But the University of Theeds is funded by the Emperor. I’m guessing you don’t want the Empire to know about it.”

“No, I don’t.” Maze replies.

She’s quiet for a moment, “Find me a place to work, off of Naboo, and I can help you.”

“If you can cure this, I might just kiss you,” Maze says with a sly smile.

Her face heats and she won’t look at him, “Well, that seems a bit excessive,” She mumbles.

She squeaks when he lightly drapes his arm over her shoulder and tugs her against his side, “No. It isn’t. Come on, Professor. Let’s get you safe.”

[perfectfangirl]

notes after rewatching fallout s1 ep1

so once again like a crazy person [i've done this with star wars sequels before] i've decided to take three and half pages of notes over the course of an hour. i've been a fan of the games for at least a decade and i'm actually always watching lore content between the installments though so while i do know some minute details, within the show, there was some things i was interested in and curious about that i just decided to jot down. some of this may be things discussed already and some of it might be something i wasn't sure if anyone brought up before but anyways! maybe i'll do the whole season, but here's my ramblings • them titling the episode "the end" was when i knew i'd love the show • ok but i really wonder if cooper can still do those party tricks? he was really good at them and lucy would probably love them too 🥺 • thinking back, the radio in the first scene mentions not knowing where the president is--- beginning to wonder if he was the guy sitting in on the vault tec meeting • just realized they introduced the mr. handy robot in some of the first scenes • ten years of nuclear threat according to anchor but the show is careful not to give away all the cards because why does the weather anchor make it seem like they know when the bomb will drop? idk but birthday boy mother turns off tv real "head in the sand" like • the nat king cole song that's playing though [wondering if the song is mirroring specifically cooper's feelings about barb despite everything hmm] • horse's name is sugarfoot 🥹 • him having to pay alimony... wonder what the prenup? was like... [still think he probably loves barb 😞]

• them calling him a pinko despite him being an architect of vault boy's persona, a quintessential presentation of a "man's man" acting as a cowboy, a real cowboy, a former marine--- wondering if there was a smear campaign after his situation with barb and vault tec, him working children's parties leads me to believe... • did the kid's say the birthday boy's name was boyd? [if so, there's another character in the games with this name and this is also the name of a character walton has played in another series, funny] • weather man show's up again distressed, wondering if we'll get more info about that day • everyone ignoring, cognitive dissonancing their own nuclear annihilation is so prescient if not disturbing and damning

• him teaching janey the thumb thing ☹️ • cooper's voice when he says "let me see if i can't rustle you up a piece" 😩 • janey being the only one to notice the first bomb • the fear in cooper's eyes • cooper being in denial one last time before realization sets in • people becoming animals the moment they realize what's happening--- one guy punches his friend not letting his family into the fallout shelter • people getting into their cars and cooper onto his horse to escape--- wonder how fast they could be since it doesn't seem you could outrun nuclear annihilation

• lucy being raised so well under the circumstances 😔 [hope she never becomes her father] • i haven't trusted steph since episode one • lucy being a teacher [amongst other things] and asking maximus about what happened after the bombs fell makes so much sense [and also much like another person suggested is an interesting juxtaposition to cooper's pre war knowledge] • lucy showing how skilled she is for being a marriage candidate when in reality we are seeing someone fit for the wasteland is crazy on second watch • is lucy not watching a cooper howard movie with her dad? hello??

• them reading "war and peace" in the family book club is rich • lucy [thinking] she's not good at guns, ironic • steph having to step in like a sisterly type because lucy's mom isn't there 😞 • the wedding dress on lucy being ill fitting, tight as symbolism for lucy not truly "fitting in there" and being constrained [foreshadowing] oof • the vault boy sign in the back saying "don't lose your head" lmao • didn't catch the "cousin stuff" until someone mentioned it on tumblr and twitter 💀

• the flashback we see of lucy ending up being almost a false memory, a misrepresentation of her actual memories, that she has been on the surface, in the sun • norm taunting lucy about her future husband being "anybody" and a "cannibal, crammed full of tumours" 😭 unfortunately for ghoulcy, this was some of the heaviest foreshadowing [the raider also could have been one too] • why didn't hank recognize moldaver? • so many things i still don't understand about vaults 31, 32, 33 • the growing realization they are raiders was pretty funny to me lmao

• moldaver having to sit through the disingenuous lies of hank ugh • norm going into vault 32 like they wanted them to know what was up? or is that just how vault doors work? they used lucy's mom's pip boy [that hank lied about burying] • lucy putting norm in a storage vault, she really is so strong • the handed down wedding dress getting messed up • i am curious if the raiders [shady sands survivors?] only mostly harmed vault tec aligners but maybe not • the way hank and steph retaliating a little too well • hank acting like he doesn't know moldaver when everyone really does know moldaver • moldaver telling lucy she looks like her mother is really such a tipoff

• realizing maximus is getting bullied 😭 • dane... might love maximus a little idk • from latrine duty to basically ruling over the brotherhood of steel • they really showed some dude jacking it lmao it's just normal i guess 💀 • maximus being defeated and having a rightful outburst of emotion, poor guy • the poster saying "the outside world can never harm you"--- funny • chet would've died up there 😭 • them not opening the vault back up for her, wondering if the vapourized bodies are from the initial bomb drop or the subsequent shady sands ones • dane almost gets maximus killed three times tbh • maximus joined the brotherhood of steel to get back at what vault tec did, essentially hank's doing, hank has many enemies • knowing the enclave, it makes sense why siggi is hunted • cooper the ghoul's introduction though • the bounty hunter saying his captors dig cooper up every once in a while to cut pieces of flesh off him 😞 no wonder cooper acts the way he does 😔 he's been taken advantage of, no wonder he doesn't trust anybody and is horrible to everyone • "why is this an amish production of "the count of monte cristo" or the weirdest circle jerk i've ever been invited to?" why would he say this 😭 • cooper's... been invited to circle jerks 👀 • does the bounty hunter know the ghoul is cooper howard?

• him not harming the chicken, him healing dogmeat, there's something there, folks • people only digging him up to use him again 😞 • what a coincidence he's dug up just as lucy leaves the vault • "i do this shit for the love of the game" he's a character, he's playing a character, real theatre kid • hence why cooper is introduced as "the ghoul", cooper is long gone • "us cowpokes, we take it as it comes" something about this lineee

[lavaflowe]

JTTW BOOK CLUB

CHPT 7-9

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

Chpt 7

•”All this was probably refined in his stomach by the Samadhi fire to form a single solid mass” I know other deities can use the fire but I’m wracking my brain for when it used before(this point) specifically- My understanding was the furnace refined the immortal elixirs and fruit- I’m going to assume Laozi is just theorizing and doesn’t know what actually happened

•Diamond body….👀

•Erlang gets absolutely DRIPPED out, he earned it FR

•eyes permanently irritated by the smoke churned up the the Xun trigram, someone get this man some eye drops

•he is extra pissed

•HE JUST BODIES LAOZI IM YELLING😂

•”this cosmic being fully fused with nature’s gifts passes with ease through 10,000 toils and tests”

•Big war form out to beat serious ass, he’s not jokin bitch

•” bright and luminous; ….illustrious pearl of mani he is indeed” MMMMM comparing him to a mani- a flaming (wish granting) jewel is hilarious 💀

•Tathagata bringing in the big guns (himself)

•”how tf do you know The Way and not know who I am?? And you’re so….violent” I can sense the side eye

•I wonder if Wukong has previous incarnations?? Buddha says he just reached human form this incarnation but if his rock was there at the beginning of creation, wouldn’t his soul be ‘baking’ (for lack of a better term) the whole time until he hatched?

•” and with a total lack of respect he left a bubbling pool of monkey urine” Iconic moment LMAOOOO

•smart for Wukong to leave a momento- too bad it didn’t matter lol

•ah so he was jumping to visit the pillars again, not run away(supposedly)- he’d rather prove he’s right than escape💀 that checks out

•monkey has been squished, it is now party o’clock

•are you allowed to give the Buddha drugs if it’s an offering? Like wine??🤔 “wtf is this allowed? Wtf”

•”Wukong is wiggling out”

“Dw, take this”

*slaps tag on the mountain like flex tape*

•enough room to breathe and move his hands- I would lose my mind

•Molten copper & iron pellets mimic punishments in hell (just learned this🙏), shedding the Karma like water -I feel like 500 years is pretty good tbh considering everything

Woe molten metal and iron upon ye

Chpt 8 + 9 under cut:

Chpt 8:

•lots of lovely poems in this chapter

•a paragraph recap of the past 7 chapters

•wonder what Feast of the Ullambana Bowl is? (the notes say it’s a mass for the dead and is also know as the Ghost festival, practiced by Taoists and Buddhists)

•”the Chan mind shines bright like a thousand rivers’ moon; true nature’s pure and great as an unclouded sky.”

Lovely poem, and I’m beginning to realize this book is very heavily focused on the Chan school, which I don’t know why I didn’t pick up on sooner? White-Robed Guan Yin is a Chan specific form, usually depicted in their bamboo grove

•Tathagata reveals his 3 baskets of scripture after everyone is done presenting their poems, feels almost like he suggested the celebration to announce these

•Each basket corresponds to scriptures of Heaven, Earth, and the Damned- a total of 15,144 FUCKING SCROLLS

•oooo Guanyin poem!! “ a golden body filled with wisdom, fringes of dangling pearls and jade, …dark hair piled smartly in a coiled-dragon bun. With brows of new moon shape and eyes like two bright stars, her jadelike face beams natural joy. …Her orchid heart delights in green bamboos; her chaste nature loves the wisteria. The living Guanyin from the Cave of Tidal Sound.”

•5 Talismans: Embroidered Cassock that will protect him from falling back into the Wheel of Transmigration, a 9 ring priestly staff that will protect him from poison or harm, 3 tightening fillets- the Golden, the Constructive, and the Prohibitive Spell.

•Guanyin thinks this will take about 2 to 3 years💀 hooooo boy….

•FLOWING SAND RIVER!!! MY 2ND FAV BOY!!!

•Green and Black complexion, Gleaming eyes like the lights beneath a stove, forked mouth with teeth like knives and swords, and disheveled red hair

•like that Wujing is using a priest staff he def took from one of the monks he ate lol

•Wujing fighting Moksa for his life only to drop everything to apologize and talk to Guanyin LMAO

•MOKSA PICKS HIM UP BY THE COLLAR AKFKAKDJDJ

•ah, so Wujing didn’t reincarnate, he was changed, STABBED OVER 100 TIMES EVERY 7 DAYS AND FORCED TO COMMIT CANNABILSM SO HE DOESNT STARVE AS PUNISHMENT- THATS JUST LOVELY😭

•I like the interpretation that he could have been trying to signal a coup by breaking the crystal cup

•Guanyin hearing about Wujing’s string of skulls: it’s a surprise tool that will help us later

•BAJIE TIME

•this idiot bro “HOW DARE YOU TRY TO GET FLOWER PETALS IN MY EYES!!” “IDIOT THAT WAS GUANYIN” “…Guanyin is here??” “LOOK UP”

•Wuneng is reincarnated, he got beat to death in Heaven for hitting on Chang’e LMAOOOOO GET REKT

•ah yes, casually mentions killing his pig family and then his life of eating humans. Lovely.

•AO LIE TIME

•I committed a little accidental arson, please bail me out

•Damn, he got a really short intro

•interesting that Guanyin id’s the Peach Banquet as Wukongs fall from grace. I would def agree with this- eating the peaches like he did was extremely reckless and the beginning of the end imo

•”who tf is talking shit up there”

•No one has ever visited Wukong, I’m guessing the Guards were horrible company

•I like how both Guanyin and Sanzang try to give Wukong a religious name- Guanyin is very happy to hear he has the Wu- prefix as well lol

•arrived in Chang’an, let the hunt begin

Chpt 9:

•Chang’an bb, all blooming flowers surrounded by 8 rivers (DAMN, that’s a lot of water)

•Guangrui got first place in the examination, good for him UwU

•SURPRISE WIFE

•”gave the girl to Guangrui as his bride” UM I THINK SHES THE ONE WHO GRABBED HIM LMAO

•Guangrui has some fated beef with these two random boatmen, Liu Hong and Li Biao- states that he was destined in a previous incarnation to be enemies with them, is this a result of bad karma?

•NOOOOOO MY GUY GUANGRUI

•Liu Hong reminds me of Liu’er Mi-*gunshot*

•since they’re at the bottom of the Hong river, which Dragon King is this?

•Golden Carp coming in clutch, nice

•LADY YIN IS SO METAL LETS GO “she hated the bandit so bitterly that she wished she could devour his flesh and sleep on his skin” DO IT GURL, KILL HIM

•damn, too bad she’s pregnant with Sanzang….dw Girl I know you would kick his ass otherwise…

•there goes his toe…

•get named River Float idiot

•damn bro chill, that wasn’t very monk-like of you

•homie got called an orphan and cried JAKDJSJFJ I FEEL BAD

•she didn’t even check the toe I THOUGHT SHE DID- WHAT WAS THE POINT LMAO

•nvmnd

•I guess licking the eyes is better than spitting on them…sigh…

•GODDAMN THEY RIPPED LIU HONG AND LI BAIO APART….good for them, deserved in fact

•Lady Yin committing suicide even after she was reunited with her husband makes sense, as there was a trend where wives whose husbands died or they were assaulted, killed themselves. This was show loyalty to their husbands and add weight to their claim of SA- Lady Yin’s husband coming back does not change the fact that everyone knows she was forcefully married :((

(I use the term ‘trend’ only as a way to describe the rise and fall in wife suicides tied to either a husbands death or as a response to SA)

[piglet26]

Reylo. Sorry, but it's not abusive

Star Wars is not selling abusive relationships to young girls nor conditioning them into aspiring to them. Reylo is not propaganda from disgruntled single middle aged woman. It wasn't promoting abusive relationships when Luke still found love for his father despite Darth Vader cutting off his hand. Luke fans, young and old, were not attacked as being dumb or needy for liking Luke or how he viewed his father. It damn sure wasn't considered abusive when Anakin choked Padme and she still held hope for him in her heart. Or, that Obi-Wan still held a love for Anakin despite everything Darth Vader had done. Then there was Reylo.

Being a Reylo is not something I feel I need to defend. Let me love what I love in peace. That's what I believe. I did not actually see any of the sequel trilogy until after it was concluded. I was not on any fandoms during the rollout and marketing for the films. Thank God. However, I have gathered enough to understand it was horrible how Reylos were being regarded. It was beyond patronizing. I'm not new to fandom, hell I've been on soap opera fandoms for quite some time and believe me that's a savage space, but wow.

I want to clarify some of the feedback against Reylo and reaffirm why it's such a compelling pairing. Further more, I regard it as an compelling attribute to the Star Wars universe that only added to the franchise.

Now I've seen the domination of woman twisted up and called romance (see Twilight and 50 Shades of Gray), but I don't think people understand WHY those relationship were as such. Rey, on her own, is one of the strongest and most badass female leads to ever appear on the big screen. Despite people thinking she doesn't have a personality she is a resourceful, tough, innocent, loyal, hopeful and strong. She has agency unlike Bella Swan. She is not sexualized by Kylo Ren unlike the 50 shades girl. Her gender is neither a hindrance nor an advantage. She has the agency to save herself, but she is also saved.

Which is really one of the main issues. There is the patronization of Rey as a character, the people who like her and the people who like the pairing. While those 50 shades of gray books didn't buy themselves rather than listening to why Reylos liked the pairing they were told why they did and then dismissed. Or, there's the men that wanted Rey to be with Finn because Finn was the "nice guy" who they identified with.

Rey doesn't need a love interest - not all heroines need love interests, but why does it imply she's weak if she does have a love interest? Heroes infamously have a female counterpart which helps make them viable. It doesn't make them any less interesting as an individual.

Kylo Ren and Rey are NOT a couple but instead representatives of opposing sides in a war. This is the most important part. From the get-go they have an intense dynamic. Both have had visions and dreams of the other and they recognize something in one another. Kylo Ren did kidnap Rey, however, if you consider fighting your enemies “abusive” or interrogating war prisoners as “domestic violence”.............well, that is odd.

As quotes about them

What if your soulmate in the Force was your enemy? Circumstance, pits them against each other, but the Force bonds them together. They understand each other almost from a point of view of fate. And yet, fate has made them enemies.

While Kylo Ren is fascinated by In the moments of the interrogation, gender and sexuality have nothing to do with Kylo’s actions. J.J. made the conscious choice to show us the same scene twice (Kylo Ren interrogating his enemies) so the audience can spot the differences between the two. Sorry J.J, you trusted people too much.

We're able to see very clear aggression and abuse come from Kylo Ren for Poe. He has zero interest in him personally. He needs information and he will get it. The force and his ability to read someone's mind is a tool within his disposal. Now why isn't Poe's interrogation considered sexual assault?

"You know I can take anything I want" HE CAN READ HER MIND! He's not talking about raping her for God's Sake! He asked her to freely provide information and she didn't want to. However, he has a tool to use against a girl adding his enemies - a tool he'll use if she doesn't want to snitch. She knows this he already read her mind - so why not give the information freely?!

Rey also invaded his mind, so did she mind-rape him too?

The line that fans almost never seem to talk about in The Force Awakens is when Kylo says to Rey “Don’t be afraid, I feel it too.” What did he feel? The best I'm able to understand is what they felt was their force dyad igniting or fulfilling.

Ren becomes personally invested in Rey. Not with her cause, or her affiliation with the Resistance, but with her and what he wants from her.

“Kylo chased Finn and Rey outside Starkiller Base to fight them! He threw Rey against a tree!” Well she was going to shoot him..... I would've thrown her against a tree to save myself. His issue in that moment was Finn. Finn was the "traitor" in questioned and his unfinished business. They fought, but really it was a dueling exercise. Kylo Ren wanted to test her skills and her powers. If he wanted her dead there was a convenient edge to push her over, hell he offered to teach her. Rey was the one to go ape and almost kill him.

Again, I'm not implying that they aren't messy - they are. For literary nerds this is why they are a compelling heroine/villain. Ultimately one will greatly affect the other. The tension in between them is why it's great.

Ben Solo, least we forget, is himself an abuse victim. This is canon. While Kylo Ren has learned abusive techniques, they are at war. Applying abusive characteristics to a fictional character in a war setting without any attempt to incorporate the story is bizarre. Why was he able for the first time to stand against his abuser? Rey. He couldn't stand up for himself but he stood up for her. Ultimately, Kylo Ren wanted to 'break the wheel" that's what he claimed. If he was honest, he'd admit he had no clue of how to do that.

Most abusers are charming and irresistible when you first meet them. Ben has NEVER dishonest with Rey about who he is. Rey is very aware of the horrible side of him and even refers to him as a monster. He affirms her accusation that he is a monster.

During their force bonds because of the nature of the bond Rey is in a position to hear him out and try to understand how he became the monster he is today. When she learns that he didn't become this on his own, that Luke, his parents and Snoke contributed to his downfall she had hope in him. It's also important to make the distinctions that when she has a vision of him, it's as Ben. It's like a bipolar personality. When Kylo Ren goes all Darcy marriage proposal - she reject him. She rightfully spurned him when he resorted to cruelty to sway her to his side. Rey turned down Kylo as long as he was the ’bad guy’, and only kissed him as Ben ’the good guy’.

“He only wants to use her for her power.” Oversimplification that Rey is actually guilty of. Kylo Ren is lonely and within Rey he finds not only an equal but the most intense emotional connection he's ever had. The most intense connection she's ever had. Let's not forget they are probably both virgins. Then they are in each other's head. That's intense. When Kylo makes his plea to Rey it's out of not only loneliness but truly wanting her for her.

Also, Kylo doesn’t say he wants them to rule together as “master and apprentice”. He wants Rey to be his empress, his queen which is what Rey means. He’s literally proposing by offering her the entire galaxy. Ultimately Reylos see them as two equally powerful archenemies dedicating themselves to defeating the other but also find themselves strangely drawn to each other in ways they might not want to admit. Then two soul mates on the other side of a conflict.

This is built on the idea that hate itself is a sort of twisted form of love. It is, or, rather hatred is born from things like fear, pain, betrayal and love. Their connection is complicated. One minutes they last out at one another and the next they lean into each other. People can regard this as toxic. Others, like myself, regard this as the gray side of love. Reylo represent the yin yang of the force. The light and the dark craving each other and finding themselves frustrated.

Notice how many hero/villains find themselves telling others that only they are allowed to kill/harm their nemesis, in a subconscious effort to protect their nemesis from others. And they may also get strangely jealous when their nemesis fights other people.

Other people give this argument because they believe the popularity of antiheroes in media is a sign of society’s moral decay. The First Order for all we know is not a fascist society. We have no idea the ideology of the First Order. We know their clothing was inspired by the Nazis.

Red String of Fate: the two connected by the red thread are destined lovers, regardless of place, time, or circumstances. This magical cord may stretch or tangle, but never break

Kylo Ren and Rey BOTH want to be together, believe in the other, but are held back by their individual idea of what means. How is that abusive?! Maybe it's back to thinking little girls won't be able to understand the complexity of Reylo. Huh, well little boys can understand the complexity of Batman and Joker. If little boys are smart enough to realize the difference between fiction and reality and are able to watch a love/hate relationship between a good guy and a bad guy, I’m pretty sure the girls can handle it too. Rey has hope and belief that Kylo Ren can be good, she won't stay by his side while he's doing bad.

What is Reylo? In a way. Iconic

[bazzybelle]

Good Omens 2 and Wayward Son - A Fan's Commentary on Fandom Reactions

I’m going to start off by saying apologies for any obvious grammatical errors. I am writing purely from the heart here. 

Also, apologies to my Sandman friends. If you haven’t read The Simon Snow Trilogy, this will go over your heads. However, I have been going back and forth on writing this meta since the release of Good Omens 2, and I just finished reading a spectacular meta on queer ships becoming canon by @avelera, which you can find here (read it, it’s brilliant). Anyway, I feel now’s a good time to let out all of my feelings when it comes to Good Omens 2 and how similar it was to reading Wayward Son. 

Simon Snow friends, you all know that Wayward Son is my favourite book out of the trilogy. You also know that this can be considered a controversial take within the fandom. And I don’t mean that in a toxic way, this fandom is one of the more wholesome fandoms I’ve seen; But in the way of like… Wayward Son is itself a polarizing book. 

I say this, knowing full well what went down when Wayward Son was released. Perhaps I had the advantage of not being completely embroiled within the Simon Snow  fandom until after I’d finished reading the book, but I lived on the periphery. I followed Rainbow on Twitter (fuck you, I am not calling it X), I had saved some artwork on Pinterest (before I found out those were stolen, wherein I immediately unpinned them and deleted my fandom folders), and I was excited to get Wayward Son as soon as it came out. So much so that I asked my husband to go to the Indigo near his office and buy it because I wanted to read it right away. 

Friends, I demolished that book within a DAY. 

Then I read it again. And again. And again. 

Then I wrote my first fanfiction in eight years. 

This book changed me. But you all know that. I’ve talked about it often, and that’s not what this meta (Editorial? Opinion piece? Shouting into the void?) is about. 

What I am going to talk about is the amount of pure vitriol this book got once it was released. There was SO MUCH complaining about the book. It was too short! There was no point to it! Why aren’t Simon and Baz having sexy vampire sex? Why aren’t they living together (never mind that this was briefly discussed at the end of Carry On, but go off I guess)? 

And you know what’s even funnier? Within a couple of weeks (it might have even been days, I’m a little fuzzy on timelines) Rainbow announced the third book. We knew, right away, that Wayward Son was meant to be an in-between book! Rainbow, being a fandom person herself, has said time and time again that she had always considered Wayward Son as an in-between book, structured like The Empire Strikes Back within the Star Wars original trilogy. Like think of the in-between books of any series, they are ALWAYS the darkest ones. In order to fully appreciate the win in the end, you need to go through the tough shit. 

What I loved about Wayward Son was it took that idea and spun it. It went all “ok, yeah we dealt with the win, now let’s deal with the aftermath. Only then can we have the makeouts and sexy times these guys deserved.”  (and damn, did Any Way The Wind Blows deliver on that promise).

But I am getting away from myself again. Point is, it was always meant to be an in-between book. There was always meant to be a resolution at the end of the trilogy. But that sure as hell didn’t stop people from outright demanding Rainbow give them the happy ending NOW. Pestering her on Twitter, (not so much on Tumblr) demanding she do this, or do that, or “you better not kill Baz” (even though she has ALWAYS SAID SHE NEVER WOULD) or “they better not break up” (even though, narratively, it was heading in that direction). The closer the book got to release date, the more people complained about how awful Wayward Son was. 

It was really disheartening to see. 

Which is why I got really upset when the SAME THING happened after the release of Good Omens 2. 

(For clarification purposes, because several of my friends have spoken to me about their own personal issues with Good Omens 2. And you are all super fucking valid. I am strictly referring to the amount of anger I saw online because although Aziraphale and Crowley kissed, they didn’t have an immediate happily ever after. I am also speaking of the anger expressed because the season wasn’t wrapped up in a neat little bow.)

Like with the release of Wayward Son, people seemed to have forgotten that season 2 of Good Omens was meant to be an inbetween season. Neil Gaiman has not been shy to talk about that. He has said over and over again that Season 2 was always meant to be a bridge between the Good Omens he and Terry Pratchett wrote together, and the sequel they had been planning. 

What… did you all just forget about that? Do you not know how narrative writing works? 

It’s like people refused to take a step back and breathe for a second and appreciate the season for what it was. A beautiful romantic story (because, IT WAS! Just like Neil said it would be), as well as a lead up into what will be the epic, dramatic conclusion. No, instead people started demanding the happy ending NOW, and getting angry when Neil wouldn’t budge and offer more information (even though he never has before) (funny how people just… forgot that).

It was Wayward Son all over again.

Yeah, I’m not going to lie, I was crushed with the way Good Omens 2 left off. Just like I was so confused when Wayward Son ended out of the blue. You know what I did about that? I wrote fic, I read the book again, and I happily anticipated the upcoming final part that would tie up all the loose ends.

Know what I’m doing to heal after Good Omens 2? I’m looking at gifs, rewatching episodes, laughing at memes and crack, and hoping to all the gods of story writing that Amazon approves of a third season, so that Neil Gaiman can be allowed to finish the story he and Terry Pratchett built together.

It’s become sad to watch this feral hunger from fans demanding immediate gratification, and getting upset when it isn’t the ending or gratification they were expecting. Wayward Son came out after years of Carry On fans having nothing else but the one book. Like I said, I wasn’t part of the fandom then, so I don’t know how fans from 2015 felt upon learning they’d get more Simon and Baz. Same with Good Omens. I only really got into the fandom a few months before season 2 came out. So I don’t know how OG fans felt waiting and waiting and waiting. So maybe I have that going for me as an advantage, that my hunger wasn’t growing more and more feral. 

Then again, I’m now a part of The Sandman fandom, and we’re essentially waiting on Season 2 to start development. And while I’m hoping a few things are tweaked (like Dream and Hob’s relationship), I’d be more than fine if it stays the same as in the comics. And if they decide to go about that in an entirely different way, I’d be fine with that too. You know why? Because I’ve learned to trust the writers of the stories I love not to lead me astray. 

And if I’m unhappy with something –because nothing is ever 100% perfect, and even my favourite stories end up coming short– there are always fanfictions to write, gifs to laugh at, and fandom friends to discuss plots and meta with. 

I may have lost the point of this meta. I tend to do that, following a train of thought that doesn’t always make sense in the end. 

Fandom friends, can we all just agree to take a breath and be thankful of the stories given to us? Can we learn to appreciate the entire picture, and not just a tiny section of it? And for the love of all that is holy, can we learn to be patient and to listen when our story tellers remind us to wait and see? To trust them when they assure us that our characters will have a happy ending, even if they need to traverse a little in the dark to get there?

I sure as hell am, and I hope you will too. 

Gonna tag @carryonsimoncarryonbaz because she was instrumental in encouraging me to write this.

[maul-of-shame]

J-3: The Acolytes Refuge

Okay so after a few days of thinking, there we go.

Got a soft spot for Osha/Jecki? Can't get enough of Yord/Osha? Or perhaps you're part of the Sol Patrol (and you're feeling absolutely devastated by this freaking finale)?

This could be your new terrain, where your ships can sail without hitting the iceberg of negativity.

Sorry to be that girl but here are rules before I send invites (request via dm) to make sure we're all in the same library, in the same book and on the same page:

Angst and NSFW: Look, we get it, angst and NSFW content are part of the package yadi yada. But let's be clear: there's a time and place for everything. Keep it tasteful, keep it respectful, and for the love of the Force and everything that is holy, keep it in the right channels. Violate this, and you'll find yourself in the trash compactor faster than you can say "Death Star". Not everyone likes to be reminded their beloved comfort character/ship died horrendously 24/7 or see mentions of gorey stuff everywhere, main included.

Respect: Abuse, harassment, and general nastiness will not be tolerated. This is a sanctuary, not a Sarlacc pit. If you think you can bring your bad attitude here, you'll be booted out faster than Jar Jar Binks from a Senate meeting.

All Are Welcome: Whether you're a veteran of the Star Wars universe or just stepped off the starship, you're welcome here. But remember, leave your drama at the door. This is a place for harmony, not the Sith Council.

Ship and Let Ship: Not a fan of someone's ship? Move along. There's no need to start a galactic war over preferences. We respect all ships here, as long as they're not sailing into the realm of toxicity. We'll have channels for the ships and more, so no need to throw a shipping tantrum, don't worry I got you.

Why Join The Acolytes' Refuge?

For Osha/Jecki Shippers: Finally, a place where your ship is celebrated, not sunk.

For Yord/Osha Shippers: Your OTP gets the love it deserves without the eye-rolls.

For the Sol Patrol: Unite with your fellow patrol members and geek out over your favorite Jedi Dad and give him the love he didn't get in the damn finale.

For Everyone Else: Don't see your ship here? No worries, we welcome all who come in peace and with a good sense of humor.

What We're Not:

A Drama Dumping Ground: Leave your beef at the door or cook it somewhere else.

A Free-for-All: We have rules, and they're enforced. Break them, and you’ll be out faster than the Millennium Falcon in hyperspace.

Oshimir Central: There are plenty of places for Oshimir shippers. This isn't one of them, so don’t expect that here. Sorry, but this would be a bit too awkward to see Oshimir peeps in an Oshecki, Sol Patrol & Yorsha shipping server considering how things ended in the series.😅🤣

[raccoonfallsharder]

˚₊‧✶ headcanon 20 ✶‧₊˚

comics-rocket raccoon has eclectic cinematic tastes.

you'd think a guy like that would be all about the action and heist movies, but they actually annoy him to the point of fury. imagine skottie young's rocket waving rageful fists while he screws up his furry face and bellows cursewords at the screen, crimson eyes gleaming and teeth flashing.

they're so flarkin' impractical, he tells you later, mournfully, cradling his second six-pack of acanti blubber ale against his chest. i'd do it so much better.

ewing's rocket is too serious and cynical to allow himself to be seen enjoying movies, but you're suspicious. He always seems to have something to work on in the common room when drax is watching his intergalactic soap operas and his very-earther k-dramas. you're pretty sure you once saw him dismantle and rebuild an ion blaster four times in one sitting just so he wouldn't miss the end of romance is a bonus book.

he never acknowledges the screen and if you'd asked him to tell you about what you'd missed in today's episode of drax's current favorite historical love story, the missing princess of zen-whoberi, rocket would probably just stare at you blankly and tell you he didn't have a frutackin' clue what you were talking about.

but he knows. you know he knows.

mcu rocket? well. like many of his space-faring contemporaries—

he just frickin' hates actors.

they're liars, he reasons. pretending to be something they're not. and worse. kevin bacon's not too bad, but rocket only has a soft spot for him because he met the guy personally, and kb had apologized for the raccoon-comment. you try to repackage the idea to rocket: actors aren't liars, you say to him. they're story-tellers.

but the idea of a fiction that isn't a lie is hard to sell. and games of pretend are dangerous.

you eventually get him to settle into your living room for some reality television, which you remind him is still cut and clipped and manipulated to represent something that is only perhaps marginally-true. he snickers and makes rude comments the whole time, but seems to enjoy it — falling asleep curled around the enormous bowl of popcorn you'd made to sustain him while he binged the latest season of love is blind.

eventually, he shows a willingness to try to watch some other things with you. he's distrustful at first, but after some time, you catch him sniffling during certain scenes, and on the edge of his seat in others. like his skottie young counterpart, he's not a big fan of action and heist movies, always rolling his eyes with annoyance. he finds space-comedy to be boring as hell, staring flat-eyed at the screen — but serious space-dramas are hysterical to him. he cackles through every star wars movie and is literally crying with laughter during jupiter ascending and rebel moon. perhaps unsurprisingly, it's the documentaries he loves: nature and culture and pyramid schemes, though he's always mumbling about how frickin' primitive terrans are. he's also weirdly into slow, pensive coming-of-age dramas, which had surprised you until you'd realized that rocket's transition into adulthood must have been something far more traumatic than you could ever dream.

one more thing you've noticed about his viewing habits — he's got no taste for horror. when you mention it, he tells you that there are too many monsters out there to watch more of them in here.

except for michael flanaghan's fall of the house of usher, which rocket has watched in-full at least three times — possibly more often, because you're pretty sure he's hacked your netflix account and is watching stuff from space when you're not around. and you're not sure why he keeps watching it, when it makes him so damn morose afterward.

wish there was justice like that in the universe, he only mutters when you ask.

it's a haunting little curl of sound, coming from his mouth. so you don't press it — just hand him tonight's bowl of popcorn, studded with m&ms, and wrap the blanket around the both of you together.

find more headcanons & imagines here

i had to take a break from pompt week i'm sorry! the bite prompt is killing me. i rewrote it fifty-seven times (well, five) so i'm just gonna give myself a day or two to come back at it with fresh eyes. in the meantime please have this kinda depressing headcanon as a peace offering

also now i just gave myself the idea for a oneshot of rocket as a - participant? player? - on love is blind sooooo that might happen. eventually. i currently have too many ideas and not enough time.

[ultraflavour]

Why there won't be a repeat of the 4E/Pathfinder Era

It's the year 2011. The sentiment on 4th Edition has badly soured with a large portion of the D&D-playing audience, and there's not much else going on in the fantasy sphere.

Dungeon World and Star Wars: Edge of the Empire aren't coming until 2012, and 13th Age won't be for another year after that. But there is one product line at the FLGS that's been getting a lot of buzz, and if you were around at this time, you know exactly what I'm talking about: Pathfinder.

But here's the problem. You, the hypothetical person in this situation, were still kind of having fun with 4th Edition. It didn't seem so bad that the world needed to abandon it outright, but apparently it did.

Now, don't get me wrong. 4th Edition had PROBLEMS. It's not that weird that it collapsed in the way that it did. I'm not going to get into a substantive rules breakdown here, but suffice to say, it needed a refresh. And whatever "D&D Essentials" was, it wasn't enough.

But keep in mind, this is 2011. The online tools required for randoms to play games with each other safely are on the horizon, but they are not here yet. We're still using MapTool. God damn, raise your hand if you remember fucking MapTool. Your options for who to play games with are the same people you'd always been playing games with. So if the group wants to switch games, you're switching games.

"It Feels Too Much Like a Video Game"

But now a new problem arises: Those people need to either make the case for Pathfinder, or make the case against 4th Edition. In 2011, most D&D players do not have anything close to the language they need to articulate what they actually like in TTRPGs, nor form any sort of coherent critical analysis of either system.

Furthermore, you can have a substantive rules discussion about 4th Edition all you want, but how does anyone know that Pathfinder is going to be any better? Until you've actually switched to it and you know what it's all about, you only know that it's "3.75 edition." So there's no real way to know if Pathfinder actually addresses the problems that 4th Edition created until you play it.

So, unable to make the conversation about the rules, Team Pathfinder has to resort to using a Razor. You need a statement that is so undeniable, so impervious to any attempt at refutation that it completely shuts down the argument entirely. And thus you arrive at "It feels too much like a video game."

I have a lot of feelings about this phrase. At the time I was going to school for Computing Science, with the intention of entering the games industry. Video games were not evil to me. So the idea that D&D feeling like a video game did not really register. Surely, that just meant that video games had started to mimic D&D. The Paladin class in World of Warcraft has "Lay on Hands" for god's sake.

Nevertheless, this line of reasoning worked, and part of the reason why it worked was because there was no real way to argue against it. 4th Edition had introduced mechanics from World of Warcraft such as "Tanks" that could "Taunt," and what basically amounted to "Cooldowns" that would refresh conveniently just in time for the next encounter. So that part could not be refuted.

But at the same time, so what? That was just D&D harvesting back ideas from a game that had pretty much used 3rd Edition as the basis for its entire class design. If 4th Edition felt like WoW, that's because WoW felt like D&D.

But it stuck, and Pathfinder enjoyed the most success it would see until probably 2023. 4th Edition fans the world over grumbled, put their Player's Handbook 3s away, and bookmarked the Archives of Nethys. (Yeah, I agreed to play Pathfinder, but I wasn't paying a single red cent for those books. Sorry Paizo, but I did get you back later with Starfinder.)

The OGL is a Flat Circle

Something we were not really "online" to at the time was also the GSL situation. You had to be deep in the forums at that time to understand what was going on, and hahahahahaha absolutely not.

Long story short, the GSL was WotC's first attempt at clamping down on the OGL in preparation for a digital toolset. Sound familiar? Well it happened pretty much the exact same way, except for one crucial difference: They didn't revoke the original OGL. I guess they just kind of assumed that everyone would move over to 4th Edition of their own volition, once 4th had conquered the world. Oops.

The sad part is that there was a Digital Toolset that was apparently the whole reason for doing the GSL in the first place, and it never materialized (For a pretty crazy reason, look it up if you want but it's not for the faint of heart). But this is another way in which history rhymes, because as soon as Wizards thought it had a hit on their hands, they tried to push it into the digital realm, where they could control how players interacted with their product.

So because of this situation, Pathfinder was able to basically reprint the 3rd Edition rules with some touchups and release it as their own product. They simply kept authoring the game under the (still valid) OGL 1.0, and nobody ever moved over to the GSL because thanks to Pathfinder, they didn't have to accept the much more restrictive terms of the new agreement.

This also meant that the "new hotness" was a game built on the bones of a game we had already been playing for nearly a decade. We opened the door of the sleek new sports car only to reveal that it was last year's model with a spruced up dashboard and a new suspension. It was still very much that game, and it brought with it that game's problems, many of which 4th Edition had at least gone some of the way toward solving.

It wouldn't be so galling, but when Pathfinder was pitched to me, I was assured that it had addressed the problems of 3.5e, and it very much had not. It had made meaningful improvements, don't get me wrong, but those improvements were not enough to make up for the system that I had walked away from to get to that point.

The Compromise Choice

5th Edition rode over the hill like Gandalf and the Riders of Rohan. I had a preorder copy waiting for me at the local Chapters in the Metrotown Mall. I remember it well, because I was very excited to pick it up.

People who think of 5E as this dominant, conquering force who weren't around before the Critical Role era might not realize that not everybody was on the 5E train right from the get-go. It had made a lot of controversial removals that some of the more devout Pathfinder believers balked at: Gone flanking, gone skill points, gone (most) feats. Gone stacking +2 bonuses, all replaced with some nebulous thing called "Advantage."

But what was left was a much leaner machine. Combats in 5E were downright breezy compared to Pathfinder and even 4th Edition. The narrative-forward features that many had criticized 4th Edition for removing were back.

But also notably absent were a lot of the features that people liked in 4th Edition, like the "Bloodied" condition, skill challenges and Minions. WotC could not have another 4E on their hands with this one, so it had to look at feel the way people remembered it when they actually liked the game.

So, we compromised in the interest of finally bringing everyone to the table again. Eventually the 1-2 punch of Critical Role and Stranger Things led to the game ballooning into the giant that nobody knew it could be. By the release of Xanathar's Guide to Everything in 2017, the 5E era was well and fully underway, and it had gained such a lead that it would be almost impossible for any independent company to catch up.

Vomiting in Stanzas

But as ol' George Lucas would say, history is like poetry, it rhymes. And so, eyeing the digital landscape once again, Wizards of the Coast blasted its own dick and balls off with a shotgun in January 2023 with the OGL crisis, shattering a long-held truce with its third party creators.

And so once again, with Wizards of the Coast dangling its 3rd party creators over the ledge like John Matrix in Commando, it was up to Pathfinder to save the day. Months worth of stock flew off the shelves in a matter of weeks, as once again the D&D community was left to answer the question of "What are we to do if D&D fails us?"

Except this time, things were different for my table. Because we had been proactive. About a year prior, I had already been getting a bit tired of interminable D&D 5E, and my group was ready for something new. We made a surprising discovery that changed a lot about how I thought about the TTRPG industry as a whole.

Lancer was like a bolt of lightning from the heavens. Up until we played Lancer, we had attempted a lot of different systems but none of them had stuck. Dungeon World, Blades in the Dark, Warhammer 40k: Wrath and Glory, Star Wars Edge of the Empire, all thrown on the heap. None of those could replace D&D for us, for various reasons.

Lancer, on the other hand, was clearly made by people who were fans of the same parts of D&D that I was. The part where it forced you to play on a grid, drawing templates, glorious keywords. And perhaps most importantly, every mech had something approaching the concept of "Powers" that had been lost in the move from 4th to 5th.

And it was just fun. It had rules that enforced a 3-4 fight per level pacing that actually made the concept of attrition much more predictable than the loosey-goosey "let's just take a long rest now so we have all our spell slots" approach of 5E. And it forced us to actually finish adventures using a mission-like structure, tempering our worst DM impulses to just let things drag on and on in the interest of an "epic" story.

But what really struck me was that Lancer was written and maintained by such a small team. The majority of the combat mechanics were written and designed by Tom Parkinson-Morgan, who previously had been mostly known as the author of Kill Six Billion Demons.

This was not a case of some tenured TTRPG company dropping their masterpiece and shocking the world. This was a scrappy upstart conquering the Itch.io charts because, and I quote, "People are horny for mechs." Not only were they able to offer a digital toolset that rivals (and in some ways exceeds) the one that the billion-dollar company could put together, they also were able to get their product onto bookstore shelves this year thanks to a strategic partnership with Dark Horse.

It meant that brands other than the big, established players could do exactly what they did, and in some cases, better. It changed the game, literally.

Our Cup Runneth Over

So now, with the OGL 1.1 unpleasantness sending the brand of D&D firmly into the "uncool zone" once more, the D20 Fantasy community returns to Pathfinder with hat in hand.

But this is the part where things have changed.

Because this time we actually have options beyond just "Pathfinder, again." Want more of a "retro" Dungeon Crawler? There's Shadowdark, and the rest of the OSR that's been humming along in the background! Want something a bit more on the storytelling side of things? There's Fabula Ultima, or any number of PbtAs or Forged in the Dark games.

And if you, like me, are still mourning the death of 4th Edition, now there's Draw Steel from MCDM, which is taking up that banner and waving it for the sad dorks like me to rally under. And a cry rings out: "4th Edition was not perfect but it was actually pretty fun and Pathfinder wasn't really a suitable substitute!" It doesn't fit too well on a t-shirt, we can workshop it.

In a way, the 4E/Pathfinder scenario has flipped: This time, the incumbent in the election is the game that's built on "the old ways," and the incoming contenders are the ones who are making the bigger swings. It changes the conversation considerably when "the consensus choice" is also the one based on the oldest ideas. Its proponents don't really have an argument to make beyond "It's what we've always done, don't rock the boat."

Golarion's Strongest Soldiers

But perhaps more importantly, the group doesn't need to all agree on a game any more. It's never been more viable to find a pickup game on the internet than it is right now.

I've been giving Pathfinder a lot of shit this article, but I'm actually playing in a PF2E game on Sundays right now. I wanted to give 2nd Edition a shot to see if they had actually changed the parts of the game that I was most unhappy about and... Well, frankly they haven't, but that's not really a problem at this point.

Now that OGL mania has subsided and the incoming wave of PF2e players has somewhat crested, the people who have remained are the ones who didn't crawl back to 5E once it was deemed "safe" to do so. Those who have remained are the people who actually want to be there, rather than the ones who compromised for the sake of group harmony. Otherwise they'd just be playing 5E, again.

No More Compromise

That's the future that we should be moving towards, a future where nobody has to compromise for the sake of the group. 30,000 people backed the MCDM game on Backerkit, and the video where the Critical Role team makes Daggerheart characters currently has over 900,000 views on Youtube. The OGL didn't just fracture the D&D community, it created whole new ones.

Plus, there's a whole industry of indie creators who are begging for recognition. Review channels like Quinns Quest, Dave Thaumavore, and Questing Beast are increasing awareness about smaller titles, to the point where it's becoming less and less of an excuse to say that you don't know what's out there.

All that's required now is for those people to find each other, and Discord makes that really easy to do. Every publisher has its own Discord at this point because why wouldn't you, so everyone knows where to go to get a game going. Plus there's still Subreddits, and now services like Startplaying.games. And VTTs are more sophisticated than they've ever been.

Like I said: things have changed since 2011.

5E is just going to get weirder

So even if 5E probably isn't going away, the people who remain behind will increasingly be rubbing shoulders with the real cranks, the true freaks who only think in terms of words like "Action economy." And you know what? God bless. You've clearly found something you love, and I love that for you.

If you are sticking with D&D because you genuinely love it, then great. But if you're sticking to it because you're afraid to know what else is going on out in the scene, just know that you are increasingly going to be sharing the 5E community with people who have to make up the same justifications as you are. The FOMO will drive you mad.

I know, because I'm a pro-wrestling fan who doesn't watch WWE. I watch every day as people tear their hair out every time they see people online bragging about how much fun they're having with other companies. The cognitive dissonance of having made a hard choice about which product to spend your time and money on, only to see other people enjoying different products, gnaws at your soul.

It leads to stupid bullshit like Console Wars. It drives you mad, until eventually you're so deep in the tank that you're subscribing to podcasts whose only job is to talk shit about "the alternative" just so you feel better about the choice you've made.

So if you are sticking with 5E, you have to really know that it is the right choice for you. Because the people leaving it for other games have made similarly strong choices. It absolutely would be easier to just stick with 5E, but at the same time, that's going to be less and less of a good idea as the game gets more stale (and more "digital-first"), and the people who stay behind get weirder and more reactionary.

At this stage in the game's lifecycle, there would have been a 6th Edition, but now that we've seen the new Core Rulebook refresh for 2024, we can definitively say that that's not happening any time soon. Unless something really surprising happens and Wizards gets their clocks cleaned by the combined forces of the OGL, Daggerheart, Draw Steel and Core20, or the looming shadow of Brandon Sanderson actually manages to consume the entire industry as the prophecy foretold.

Even then, it seems unlikely that they'll ever totally kill the Golden Goose. But don't worry, 5E is evolving, except the thing it's evolving into is a morass of hacks and kludges thanks to the Creative Commons license. Then you'll get a new movement of "5E purists" who remember "The good old days" when healing potions WEREN'T a bonus action, back when you still had to house rule that in, as god intended!

It's do or die time

At this point, I hate to say it, but if in some bizarre freak occurrence all of the new alternatives like Daggerheart and Draw Steel utterly collapsed, I would probably just quit the TTRPG hobby entirely. If D&D went back to being the all-encompassing monster that it became during the 00's and mid-10's, then it would simply prove that this industry will never be mature enough to justify the emotional investment.

There likely won't be a better chance than right now. A failure here would be held up as precedent, to say "See? The last time you peasants rebelled against D&D, this happened." Hell, someone on Twitter used the RPG "Quest" as a snarky rejoinder to someone asking about how they felt about new fantasy TTRPGs!

I don't think that nightmare scenario is going to happen, I'm just making a rhetorical point that nothing that D&D could do at this point could get me to agree to going back to spell slots, death saving throws, and the fucking action economy, even if it somehow did manage to go back to being "The only game in town." I hear that "We're not going back" is a pretty popular slogan lately, I have to assume they're talking about not going back to 5E, right?

Editor's note: The audience is going to be doubled over in pain at that great US Politics joke, might as well just end the article here.

[phoeebsbuffay]

Imagine Star Wars special edition: movies (III)

• The Lake House.

Imagine this is a modern world where you are a teacher trying to get some peace of spirit after a very long year, so you rent this house whose locations places you next to no other than…Anakin Skywalker. Part I.

Warnings: fluffy; drama, long post.

Recommendations: “Champagne Problems” by Taylor Swift.

***

“I think you should rest, my dear”, so advises you the recently incorporated to the docent body Obi-Wan Kenobi, a retired academic teacher whose past—if rumours ought to be taken with careful consideration—is linked with the rise of the Sith Mafia that rules the country nowadays. He’s been your advisor ever since he was admitted at school due to common tastes, which got you very good friends. “You’ve been working too hard.”

It’s one of these days where there is no one at school—every student is gone to enjoy the winter break—but you must be there because the principal said so. Few meetings already occurred, so you honestly don’t get why you and your fellow teachers are not released off your duties.

“I cannot, and you know why.”

“You can, missy. Don’t be so headstrong. I can talk to the principal and the secretary”, says Obi-Wan. “You are exhausted. You barely have any shine behind these y/c eyes of yours.”

It does occur you that you haven’t been out with your friends since final exams started. You sigh, ceding to his insistence.

“You know me too damn well”, you grumble with a smile painting your lips.

He smiles back at you.

“I’ve been there, done that too. Hence why I’m here after all.”

You feel tempted to ask that question and perhaps Obi-Wan waits for it, but you swallow your curiosity, dismissing it as being a business not yours to mind.

“I appreciate it, Ben. But where might I go? I have no idea where else I could rest.”

You watch as Obi-Wan strokes his ginger beard, thoughtful.

“Have you considered renting a lake house?”

***

Anakin tastes the bittersweet flavor of silver bubbles of his glass, dissociating again as another feast is offered by President Palpatine. Men dressed in their fancy robes surround the older man in search for further favours all the whilst many women tried to attract the attention of his closest—and certainly younger—advisors, Anakin included.

He refuses any attention, finding champagne a more suitable company for his unresolved issue concerning his broken heart.

Jokes here and there roll from men’s lips, flirtation coloring the illusion scene he’s now in. Music is too melancholic to dissipate the attempts of the group of the mafia to amuse themselves.

Another champagne glass is offered. Anakin promptly takes.

“Lord Vader”, Lord Maul comes at him. “Are you not finding this feast of your liking?”

“I would rather be somewhere else where I am not considered fucked in the head for people who do so constantly”, so is his bitter, nearly rude but crude response.

Maul smiles awkwardly.

“I suppose even you deserve a rest, my friend. We’ve worked too hard. If you feel like resting, I shall cover your shift. Pretty sure he won’t find out”, the Sith Lord says in reference to Palpatine.

Anakin knows alcohol is taking the reins of his reasonable and, using his ex’s own words, ambitious self, therefore he shrugs his shoulders and says:

“Yeah, I might do that. Thanks, my dude.”

Again, Maul smirks uncomfortably. Grabbing another champagne, Anakin leaves discreetly, rewinding in his mind the moment he would propose Padmé.

They were both aligned in thoughts and expectations, but the night he booked a train to meet Palpatine, a choice, albeit unconscious, was made. And when they were meant to dance in celebration for his promotion, she dropped his hand and left him in silence threat.

Another sip.

But memories came. When Anakin met Padmé’s family and shared their plans. But there was a skeptical reaction, and his speech died before reaching his bride.

One more sip.

The flavor would not dismiss from his mind her words, calling him names that, funny now, he could not remember.

And suddenly in the car, Anakin yells. The driver doesn’t look nor checks at him, aware he has his moments when drinking.

Of course, he left her standing. He dropped her hand one last time, taking with him his mother’s ring.

And now he drowns in endless champagne glasses, not willing to admit the path he took was one no sensible individual would take.

***

The region suggested by Obi-Wan is one very quiet with few houses. The lake is clean, with no wild animals to scare you. Luckily for you, unwilling to interact with neighbors, it appears most of the lake house’s owners are absent: winter is hardly the season for the usual gathering in such places.

As someone who is very fond of nature and the silence that comes with it, you instantly smile and promptly write a message to Obi-Wan.

“It’s perfect. Thanks- Y/Nickname.”

You cross a small entrance that leads the way to the house. Atypically, it’s made of glass—which might mislead to an idea of exposure, but you know this is easily fixed by the use of courtins—and has two floors. It’s simple and practical, and the view to the lake is just… perfect.

You are quickly getting your stuff inside when you hear a male voice nearby:

“Do you need any assistance there?”

The voice comes to your ears in a crawling, husky whisper that makes a shiver running over your spine. As you turn with a heavy box in your hands, you spot a handsome stranger standing not too far from you, respecting the limits that divide your house from his.

He is taller than you and his eyes are painted with such charming blue irises that you are speechless for a moment. You promptly clear your throat, hoping the man doesn’t notice his presence impacted you, but judging by his smirk it appears he did notice.

“I’m all right, thank you”, you think prudent to dismiss his good will in helping you, after all you two are strangers.

Anakin sees the distrust in your body language. After the whole thing with Padmé, he’d normally stay away and never again you’d see him, but these are other circumstances. He certainly is sober anyway and is eager to be around a new face after all those years with the same old ones.

Not to mention he thinks you are too beautiful to waste an opportunity in having a glimpse of your pretty features.

“I insist”, he says gently. “I’m Anakin, by the way. Anakin Skywalker.”

Somehow his name rings a bell, but you don’t know where. You carefully stand a hand for him to take and shake.

“Anakin, nice to meet you. I’m Y/N Y/LN.”

“Nice to meet you too, Y/N. What brings you here?”, he asks as he helps you with two heavy boxes that you brought to the house. “And my God, what did you put here?”

You chuckle, appreciating his help.

“Thanks, Anakin. I needed some time to rest, honestly. I came from Y/C. And these are only the things I judged necessary to bring here. I intend to spend just two weeks.”

“Hmm. Big city, of course I’ve heard about it.” He tilts his head, scanning your moves as if he’s studying you. “Running away from something, eh?”

Anakin chuckles in turn and you join him.

“Oh if you call enjoying a break running away, then it’s only momentarily, I’m afraid.”

Leaning against the wall that stands as a division between kitchen and living room, Anakin watches as you simply sit down.

“What do you work with, if I may ask?”

He observes as you make a bun with your messy y/c locks. By how you smile shyly he can tell how introverted you are.

A curious contrast to Padmé, he cannot help the comparison.

“I am a teacher. But enough about me”, you stand and head to the kitchen, aware his eyes follow you. “What about you, Anakin? What do you do for living? Do you live here, by the way? Or…”

And here, when you turn your gaze to meet his, the next words rolling out of your tongue would impact greatly in the next greetings between you two.

“…are you a fugitive like me?”

***

Each night, this stranger named Anakin Skywalker comes by. You and him share experiences and memories, all followed by a beer. A bond is starting to form, but you are somewhat bothered by this mystery aura that surrounds him.

“I sense your hunter’s eyes judging me”, Anakin smirks to himself.

You and him are sitting together before the firepit, chairs close, short distance from one to the other. His eyes are closed and yet he is very observing. You chuckle, relieved at last that he is not seeing you blushing.

“Not judging.”

“What then?”

You don’t know what to respond, so silence is your best defense. Anakin opens his eyes and stares at you, noticing you are hugging your knees, the very embodiment of innocence he’d not seen in years.

He senses what’s behind your thoughts. However, he opts to make it about you instead.

“Have you ever had your heart broken?”

You side eyes at him, with an expression he cannot read well, though there is something attractive in how the shadows of the flames dance in your face.

“I have”, you admit. “Not beautiful like the songs want to portray in melodramatic lyrics.”

“It is painful”, Anakin agrees. “Yet have you considered we may the reason why our hearts are broken in the first place?”

You ponder what he wants to mean but, not reaching to anything satisfactory, you shake your head. Not noticing how your fingers are subtly intertwined with his, your eyes are now glued in Anakin’s.

“We project what could have been in the objects of our affections. There’s so much expectation that leads us into this madhouse where we want to feel every inch of it. But shadows are, like certain philosopher pointed out, our worst doom.”

“That is deep”, you muse with no thinking. “What happened?”

“We were not ready to move forward, I suppose”, and just like that he drops your hand, much to your silent consternation.

You don’t say anything. Anakin waits for a response, but when looking again at you he knows what to read in your serene semblance. Two weeks and a little more, and an attachment has flown.

Fear leads to suffering. And hasn’t he been plagued by his own champagne problems? Yet, where has his champagne gone for the last couple of days?

“I don’t like your silence”, says Anakin, sounding more anxious than he cares to admit. “Have I disappointed you, Y/N?”

“I was merely wondering”, you flee from the question posed, “how hard can be picking up the pieces left by somebody else. But one must be ready to glue each by each.”

“You are the poet now”, he side smirks. “You sound convicted.”

“And you lack convictions, it appears”, the words come in a burst.

“Perhaps you are not entirely wrong.”

Something about his words annoy you. Quietly as usual, you make your leave and even before the fire, Anakin is left to the cold.

***

He knows where to find you. In mute steps, Anakin crosses the divisores from your house to his. You are sitting with your feet on the cold water with a cup of coffee in your hand and well dressed up.

Anakin hesitates at first. Never comfortable with crowds or awkward silences, never too friendly with his own pain, he finds in you something better that his wrecked conscience is unworthy for.

Every speech dies unspoken when you seem to stand.

I cannot let you go.

He knows you are about to return to your daily life. Your routine awaits.

“Y/N”, Anakin comes to you at long last.

You are startled by his presence, clearly not expecting his arrival.

“Ani”, you stand.

As the wind howls around you two, your remaining coffee instantly gets cold. But the warmth between you two only grows.

“I was a coward. I forgot my convictions for a moment, a wrong I intend to amend. Fear leads to anger and anger leads to suffering. We both, I dare say, have been in pain.”

He takes a moment to breathe. Your lips are already curling upon a gentle smile when he presses over them one finger.

“And before I amend, I must say I haven’t been entirely honest with you. My sweet Y/N, you don’t know my whole story. I am known as the Sith Lord, Darth Vader.”

(To be continue)

[amadwinter]

Making of Monday - How NOT to Write a Long Fic

Haven't posted one of these in a hot minute! Story time: sometime around 2021, I decided I was sick of having all these ideas for Star Wars fics and never actually writing them. So I decided to buckle down, and write a damn fic.

But of course that didn't happen. What I did instead was try to plot out a long, winding, action-adventure story, and to do that, I decided to study to study from the masters. Or master. I wrote down all the chapter titles for every Lord of the Rings book, and was planning on modeling my story based off a similar pacing.

But of course that didn't happen either. And I realized that I was getting nowhere fast. So, I took out a different piece of paper, and with no plan in place, just started jotting down thoughts.

Warning: terrible formatting and terribly inconsistent handwriting below the cut

And as you can see, I didn't get far with unconnected ideas before I started planning once more.

Inspired by short fic I had just read, I wanted to write a long fic where a whole and hale Anakin Skywalker shows up on Tatooine some amount of years into exile. Seeing as how this was before the Obi-Wan Kenobi show came out, there was a lot of room for interpretation in canon. I could take ideas from Legends, make theories about what they were going to do with canon (and be extremely right about some of them), and just make shit up whenever I wanted to.

But immediately, I came to a question that I wanted an interesting answer to: where did this new Anakin come from, and how did he get to Tatooine? Time travel is simple, and not where I wanted to go. Something something Sith magic, yeah, whatever. Also not what I wanted to do. But dimension travel? Now, there was an idea.

Of course, because I am a planner, it couldn't be simple, now could it? It couldn't be just hand-wave the Force that caused it. There had to be a real, concrete, series of events that caused Anakin to appear out of thin air.

And thus began the Yeetverse.

A chain of 4 separate universes (plus 1 bonus one for my own torture amusement. And actually now with one more added on later!). A to B to C to D. It's far too complex for baby's first fanfic in a fandom, and yet the ideas would not stop flowing.

Yes, that was all just written because I couldn't stop thinking about these ideas. It may not seem like a lot, but any brave soul who attempts to read my handwriting can see that there are many things going on at once. (And the only thing I blocked out is the ending to what was meant to be the first fic in this chain, the thrill of the fall)

But for all those ideas, all that planning...

I haven't even finished the first fic I truly tried to write.

I actually have so much of it outlined. I even wrote the outlines of the first 2 chapters of the original fic idea that started it all down on paper.

But I haven't written more.

Why?

Turns out, I'm not good at writing long fics. Planning them? Yes. Finishing them? Hell no.

It will be 3 years since I came up with these ideas. I haven't given up hope yet that I might actually get around to writing all those fics one day, but one-shots and event fics have drawn my attention away.

Who knows; maybe I'll finally take another shot once I've finished up more of my posted WIPs.

[roseaesynstylae]

Star Wars: Republic Commando: Triple Zero, Chapter 1, Part 1

"Kal Skirata had committed the biggest mistake of his life, and he'd made some pretty big ones in his time."

It's begun. Kal Skirata is here.

Also, considering Kal's track record throughout this series, "mistakes" might not be the right word to use.

"No, this wasn't happening.

Inside the transparent tubes there was fluid, and within it there was movement.

It took him several minutes of staring and refocusing on one of the tubes to realize there was a body in there, and it was alive. In fact, there was a body in every tube: row upon row of tiny bodies, children's bodies. Babies.

'Fierfek,' he said aloud.

He thought he'd come to this Force-forsaken hole to train commandos. Now he knew he'd stepped into a nightmare."

I will confess: When I first read this section, I thought I might actually like Kal Skirata, just a little bit. Then I read the rest of the book and I realized, no, this guy is an asshole. But he is at his most sympathetic at the very beginning of this novel. If any fanfic writers out there want to rewrite him to be more likable, this bit is what you should build off of.

"Skirata knew from day one that he wouldn't like Kaminoans.

Their cold yellow eyes troubled him, and he didn't care for their arrogance, either. They stared at his limping gait and asked if he minded being defective."

To be fair to Kal, Kaminoans are pretty damn hard to like. And I too would be upset if someone looked at an injury I got and went "Are you okay with being damaged?"

However, Kal using the word arrogance is almost funny. Pot calling the kettle black, anyone?

"Jango slowed down tactfully. 'So, Ilippi threw you out?'

'Yeah.' His wife wasn't Mandalorian. He'd hoped she'd embraced the culture, but she didn't: she always hated seeing her old man go off to someone else's war. The fights began when he wanted to take their two sons into battle with him. They were eight years old, old enough to start learning their trade; but she refused, and soon Ilippi and the boys and his daughter were no longer waiting when he returned from the latest war. Ilippi divorced him the Mando way, same as they'd married, on a brief, solemn, private vow. A contract was a contract, written or not."

Okay. Um, I'm just going to list a few things.

Did you discuss this with her at all before you got married? I kind of get the impression that you just assumed she'd go along with it.

Eight years old? If Kal actually has the gall to say anything about child soldiers going forward, I'm going to explode.

Why do you sound surprised that she first left your ass and then divorced you? From what I'm hearing, you royally fucked up your marriage.

It's a Man's World: 1 (for Kal's assumption that his wife would just go along with him)

Mando-Shilling: 1 (why yes, child soldiers are fine and peachy if they're Mandalorian child soldiers)

"'Don't your sons talk to you any longer?'

'Not often.' So I failed as a father. Don't rub it in."

Considering how much you fail as a father in this very book, I am, in fact, going to rub it in.

"'Ko Sai said something wasn't quite right with the first test batch of clones,' said Jango, ushering Skirata ahead of him into another room."

*Looks over at the "the Bad Batch are the other half of the Nulls" theory that has consumed my brain and led me to reading this series in the first place* *Looks over at the fact that the Bad Batch are defective or "not quite right"* Continue.

(All GIFs in this chapter will from now on be TBB GIFs.)

Is This The Bad Batch?: 1

"'I always believe in being honest about setbacks in a program. We value the Jedi Council as a customer.'

'I have nothing to do with the Jedi,' said Jango. 'I'm only a consultant on military matters.'

Oh, Skirata thought. Jedi. Great."

(All and any unhappy Echo expressions, regardless of the actual context, are perfect for this.)

The nicest thing that has ever come out of Kal Skirata's mouth regarding the Jedi Order.

Jedi-Bashing: 1

"'Chief Scientist Ko Sai apologizes, as do I,' said Orun Wa. 'Six units did not survive incubation, but these developed normally and appeared to meet specifications, so they have undergone some flash-instruction and trials. Unfortunately, psychological testing indicates that they are simply too unreliable and fail to meet the personality profile requited.'

'Which is?' said Jango.

'That they can carry out orders.'"

First, every time we learn more about the Nulls, I'm going to point out the parallels to the Bad Batch and shamelessly propel my theory (mostly to make myself feel better). Second, have a little serotonin boost!

Is This The Bad Batch?: 2

"'We could do with a few wild cards,' Jango said carefully, moving between Skirata and the Kaminoan. 'It's good to have some surprises up your sleeve for the enemy. What are these kids really like? And how old are they?'

'Nearly two years growth. Highly intelligent, deviant, disturbed -- and uncommandable.'"

Quoth the Tech, "We're more deviant that defective."

"Ordo was doing pretty well for a four-year-old soldier,

They could learn to be heroes tomorrow. Tonight they needed to be children, reassured that the storm was not a battlefield, and so nothing to fear.

[...]

'It's okay, Ord'ika,' he said softly. 'I'm here, son. I'm here."

This is the most likable Kal Skirata is going to be. It's all downhill from here, guys.

I'm splitting this into two parts, so the jump to present day will be in the next post.

Jedi-Bashing: 1

Mando-Shilling: 1

It's a Man's World: 1

Shut The Fuck Up, Kal: 0

Deltas, Move Out: 0

Mird, My Beloved: 0

Is This The Bad Batch?: 2

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