#i would commit crimes for him...

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Trapped in a vicious cycle of pining? Try gay sex! (More things to learn over at Tiger Tiger!)

[mahoganyrust]

“Dreams of the Empire”

My boyyyyyyy. My sonnnnnnnn.

(Comms open btw <3)

[tennessoui]

14 for obikin pretty please?

here you go!

[from this list of prompts]

[5. 'are you jealous' - 27. 'i'm pregnant' - 32. 'i think i'm in love with you and i'm terrified' (LATEST) 44. 'if you die, i'm gonna kill you' - 41. 'you did all of this for me?' - 46. 'hey, have you seen...? oh']

14. 'hey, i'm with you, okay? always.'

The first time Anakin visits, he's so angry that he cannot speak for the first two hours. Obi-Wan sits against the wall of his cell, on the floor even though the Jedi have provided him a perfectly comfortable bed and chair. The Force collar around his neck looks wrong. His master sitting on the floor, dressed in the dull orange of a prisoner's jumpsuit looks wrong.

Anakin is so angry that he can't speak. He can only look and tremble until he is told he must leave.

Obi-Wan does not speak either. He does not even look at him.

Maybe that's what makes his anger harder to bear. Anakin knows that Obi-Wan has met with countless other Jedi. Visitors, friends, allies, people who are working with him on his defense case. He knows that the other man talks to them, has sliced into security holo footage to see it for himself, though no one will tell him what is said. Everyone always leaves looking frustrated, but at least Obi-Wan talks to them.

But not Anakin. Even though it is Anakin that Obi-Wan has hurt the most. Anakin, who deserves to know why from Obi-Wan's mouth.

After all--

"He was like a father to me," Anakin spits at him on his second visit, only a few days later. Going to see Obi-Wan in the Coruscanti prison cell where he is awaiting trial is like an itch. Scratched once, Anakin finds he cannot help himself from digging his claws in.

Obi-Wan is still against the wall. His beard has grown slightly longer. His head is tilted back against the wall, though when Anakin speaks, his eyes slide down from the ceiling to rest on him.

"I'm starting to think you say that to all the boys," his former master who is a murderer says in that lilting familiar drawl.

"You killed him."

"Yes," Obi-Wan agrees, because apparently part of his defense case is not to plead not guilty to the murder of the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic. Anakin would say that may be problematic, but then--there are security holos, soundless and slightly blurred, of the event. Of Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi taking tea with Chancellor Palpatine. Talking in civil gestures for thirty minutes. Requesting, as far as anyone can tell, for the Chancellor to fetch him a pot of sugar. Lighting his saber and beheading him the moment the old man's back was turned. "Yes, I did."

"Why?" Anakin yells, voice cracking on the word. He doesn't understand. He thinks the not-knowing will drive him to madness. He thinks maybe it already has. It has been two weeks since the Chancellor's murder. Half the Senate is seeking Obi-Wan's execution.

The war, theoretically, has paused, like even the Separatists are holding their breath. Waiting. Wondering.

Obi-Wan looks at him quietly for a moment. For five. His face is stoic, resolved. Beloved, even after this.

Then--for a singular second--the mask cracks, and his master stares at him as if he needs to see him in order to survive. He looks hungry and exhausted and relieved, down to the bones.

"How have your nightmares been lately, padawan?" he asks him, and Anakin is so disgusted by the word--by the title that Obi-Wan doesn't get to say after killing the Chancellor, killing Anakin's friend--that he turns and leaves without another thought.

He is back a day later. He has never known how to keep his distance from things that can hurt him, that's what his mother always said. Too curious by half. Too sure of his own invincibility. That's what his master always said.

Anakin isn't sure of anything anymore.

"Why did you kill him?" Anakin asks. Obi-Wan's beard is longer. He is still on the floor. It rankles, the sight of him brought so low. "Did someone tell you to?"

Obi-Wan lets his head fall forward, a puppet with its strings cut. "Do you think me so biddable, Anakin?"

Anakin today. Not padawan. As if Obi-Wan has learned his lesson. As if he is as desperate for Anakin to linger in his presence as Anakin is hopelessly addicted to returning.

Padmé had tried to stop him this morning. Had tried to tell him it would do no good to see him, that the justice system would do its work, that Anakin was only hurting himself by returning over and over again. She pointed out that he had nightmares last night, for the first time since the news of the Chancellor's death reached them.

He hadn't had the heart to tell her that his nightmares were not about the Chancellor dying, but about Obi-Wan facing down an execution squad. About Anakin, standing on the deck of the Invisible Hand, Palpatine's voice in his ear, telling him to do it, do it. Cut off the traitor's head, only to look down and find that the two sabers he is holding are familiar to him, and person on his knees before him is his master.

Anakin had woken with a yell around one in the morning, sweat soaked and shaking. He hadn't been able to sleep again.

Maybe that's why he feels so alive now, slightly manic and still trembling as he paces in front of the Force barrier of Obi-Wan's cell. Did someone tell Obi-Wan to cut him down? he'd had the thought somewhere around five in the morning. Had it been someone Obi-Wan trusted? Someone he loved?

Who stood to gain from the death of the Chancellor? Who had the Chancellor ever hurt or threatened?

Anakin walks as close as he dares to get to the cell. "Master," he says, coaxes really, pushing forward until he can hear the hum of the force field.

Obi-Wan's head thumps back against the wall and he watches him from under his eyelashes.

"Master, I'm with you, alright? Hey, I'm with you, always, alright, always, so if someone told you, manipulated you, just tell me please. I'll find them. I'll get them to turn themselves in, master. Just tell me. Why did you kill him?"

Obi-Wan closes his eyes. He looks for all the world as if he is meditating, save for that collar around his neck. The prison garb. He doesn't look like a murderer, but he is. He is. He killed the Chancellor. He is going to face execution. Anakin is going to have to watch him die too and all he can think is that he knows that Obi-Wan doesn't even kriffing like sugar in his karking tea.

"Answer me!" Anakin yells, lifting his fist and forgetting himself for just long enough that he slams it against the barrier. He pulls it back with a curse as the force field short-circuits his mech arm and the prison alarm blares out a warning siren.

This time, he is led away from the cell by a Coruscanti guard. He is advised to not return for a standard week. The entire time he is exiled from the prison, the only thing he can think about is the expression on Obi-Wan's face as he watches him leave: eyes wide open and forehead wrinkled with concern, as if worried that Anakin had hurt himself.

The day after he is allowed to return, he does. He does not want to seem too eager or desperate, so he waits until it's early in the evening before pointing his speeder towards the prison unit.

"It had to have been someone you loved," Anakin announces as he stops in front of Obi-Wan's cell. He's in his bed this time, lying on his back and looking at the ceiling. He does not twitch at Anakin's voice, though Anakin can tell that he's not asleep, though his eyes are closed. He can tell just from the minute lines of tension he's holding in his shoulders, his neck.

How can Anakin know him so well and not know that he is capable of this? Of murder on this scale?

"Hm?" Obi-Wan finally says, when the silence drags on and it becomes clear that Anakin will not say more until he has engaged. Anakin watches this war play out in the subtle movements of Obi-Wan's facial muscles as well. He knows him so well. He knows him better than he knows anyone else in the galaxy.

"The person you killed him for. You had to have loved him more than anything else in the entire galaxy to kill a man the way you did. Defenseless. Over sugar. You don't--you don't even take sugar in your tea! It was a coward's way of killing--and it doesn't--you would never. Not unless it was for someone you loved."

Obi-Wan's eyes blink open, but he doesn't look away from the ceiling. He doesn't look at Anakin.

"I don't--I don't know what harm you think Sheev Palpatine could cause to anyone, but that has to be it. Nothing else makes sense. You loved someone enough to kill for them, and you killed the Chancellor."

The words come out easily. Anakin has practiced them for a week now; it is the only thing that makes sense. Nothing else makes sense. Nothing else but love could make a man like Obi-Wan do what he did. He must have loved someone a lot. He must love them more than the Republic. More than his own freedom.

The first time Anakin had told Padmé his theory, she'd looked at him for ages, until he'd grown angry and defensive. She'd touched his arm, as if that could hold back this hurricane brewing inside his chest, and said, "I don't know if you're right, Ani. I don't know if I think you're wrong either. It's just...you sound so...jealous."

At least Obi-Wan doesn't say the same thing. But what he does say may be even worse. Because he doesn't deny it. He doesn't protest. All he says is, "And who is it that you think I love more than anything else in the galaxy, padawan?"

Anakin has thought about this, too. "Bail Organa," he makes himself say, even though the name curls his lips up into a sneer. Bail Organa, the man who has been voted the interim Supreme Chancellor of the Republic. The man who has gotten everything from this assassination, while Anakin has had his everything taken away.

On his cot, Obi-Wan's eyes slide closed. His mouth quirks up. "Ah," he says, as if he has had something he has long expected to confirmed to him. He says nothing else.

It makes Anakin want to hit the barrier again. It makes him want to scream. It makes him want to be petty, hurt Obi-Wan back in the same way that Anakin feels hurt even though it doesn't make sense, none of this makes sense. But it feels as if Obi-Wan has kept half of himself secret from Anakin, a whole love, his entire capacity to love, and Anakin wants to prove that he has as well.

So he says, voice mean and sharp, "Padmé is pregnant. The med-droid says it is twins."

Everything else remains unspoken, but surely audible. That they are his. That he never stopped seeing Padmé. Perhaps even that she is his wife.

On the cot, behind the Force barrier, in his chains, Obi-Wan opens his eyes and blinks at the ceiling. His lips form a small smile, as he says, still not looking at Anakin, still not looking at Anakin, "I know, dear one. Why do you think the Chancellor had to die?"

[professional-rat-eater]

I need people in the IWTV fanbase to realise that you can appreciate a character in all their complexities and enjoy their precense in a story and still wish they had a slow, painful death scene. For non-book readers, I hope to be able to clarify a few things about why a certain character is so hated.

Keep reading for more nuanced Marius de Romanus slander:

I feel like I post at least once a day something about hitting Marius with a car or something and I do it mainly because it’s funny but it’s also because there is a very valid reason he is where a lot of people draw the line, despite the scale of morality in gothic literature being utterly different from that of pretty much any other literature, and drastically different from real life.

I love him for what he brings to the story. He is fascinating and I am excited to see him in season 3. He’s a brilliant character and I want to put him under a microscope and study him like a bug. He is still absolutely vile even for Anne Rice, something she even hints at here and there in her work.

I could go on and on for days about him, but to keep it short (edit: I lied), he met Pandora when she was ten years old and he was twenty five. What makes him particularly sick is nothing to do with vampiric morality, which we’ve seen is completely different, within the world of the books and show, from human morality. We get onboard with Lestat because we get to know him as a human and then watch how he changes as he gets used to being a vampire. Lestat was not a monster when he was human. Marius was.

If you disagree with that, you can think so if you wish as I do not currently possess the ability to control other people’s thoughts (but as soon as I do, I’m coming for you!) but please do not try and make excuses for him on that topic. Most people will not be open to that sort of debate. I know I’m not. Pandora was a baby. He should not have felt anything towards her other than a desire to protect her as a parent might. Yes, yes, gothic morality. But you need to understand that that is just too much for most people.

And you know who else was a baby, especially in comparison to Marius? Armand. Armand, who grew up to do awful things because of how he was treated. He was already being taken advantage of (to put it lightly) before he met Marius. If Marius had cared selflessly for Armand, he would have taken him from that brothel and tried to help him heal from the trauma. That is what real love would have been. You should not look at broken children and think to make them your lovers. All he was was yet another grown adult taking advantage of a boy whose spirit had been utterly shattered by what he’d endured.

(I’m not suggesting that should have happened or it would have been better, but I dislike the insinuation that Marius’s love for Armand was anything other than exploitative. It can be sincere, and still exploitative. I believe he meant it. I also believe he fucked Armand up more than he already had been.)

Murder in a fictional setting can be justified and overlooked, but as soon as anything involves children, you have to accept that you will lose a lot of people, even in gothic literature. That sort of relationship may have been more normalised thousands of years ago, but there were always people who objected to the concept. Even within the narrative of Anne Rice’s books, Marius’s actions are called out here and there (usually subtly) so even there, they are questioned. Compare him to someone like Lestat (I only mention him because for whatever reason, people like to group them together as irredeemable characters???).

Lestat’s actions are deeply toxic but people still like him because we understand why his behaviour is the way it is. As dreadful as what he does is, we are endeared to him because of his suffering and follow his journey as a vampire. He is twisted, but he is behaving according to what his trauma has turned him into. Armand is another example of this. Vile behaviour that is a believable response to trauma. There comes in the gothic morality again. We love them and know they are awful at the same time.

It is not that you cannot like Marius or characters like him. I do like him very much as a character, but you have to get on board with the idea that most people never will. The lines he crosses are unlike many of the others crossed by different characters. No one looks at Madeleine and Claudia and thinks it’s weird because Claudia is not actually a child. Armand was. Pandora was.

I could honestly make a separate post about book!Louis too and why I think the changes from the book were necessary to make people actually care about him, but it is similar. Harming/exploiting children and anything to do with slavery is a hard line a lot of people draw. Marius is still a multifaceted, interesting, complex, humanised character, as all Anne Rice vampires are, but he is deeply disliked for a very good reason. People cannot switch off how they feel about what he did, even if they are invested in the story.

(But also let’s be thoughtful about this type of discourse. Do not look at anyone whose favourite character is Marius and assume they are a bad person. He is a great character, he is just not to many people’s tastes. They likely just find him deeply interesting which he is.)

Anyway, after he gets his screen time and we reach the end of the show and he has gotten his chance to chance screen time, I vote we tie him up and treat him like a piñata.

[duplicitywrites]

shoujo filter on 💖🌸✨

insp:

[mistressemmedi]

I hope Yuki puts his whole Tsunodussy into that second RBR seat and smokes the competition

[catcze]

My babyyyyy 🥹😭

[sparklingdemon]

i know sorrow's quote was in referral to blue but i feel like it could also be applied to leaf/green herself and abandon lonliness: i am's new ending from a meta standpoint if you think abt it hard enough……….

i mean. did we not see OP try to rewrite history in order to prevent the tragedy of lonliness and leaf rotting in hell? do we dare to forget - to erase what she did to lonliness? can she be forgiven now that it never happened in the first place...?

[lobotomize-d]

Butter roll cookie if... if he was.... uh. . . Student at the Parfedia Academy ...

[noah-slasher]

LET'S GET THIS PLACE BACK IN BUSINESS!

[minzbins-moved]

CHANGBIN 2024 SEASON'S GREETINGS

[emdashbitch]

"'Rescuing' Wanda from a place she doesn't even want to leave, a safe place" was such a batshit insane line they had Tony say with Peter Parker sitting right there, like I don't know how more people don't see how detached from logic Tony became believing he was right.

He had the audacity to lecture Steve about bringing Wanda, a 27 year old woman under house arrest because someone else's bomb went off who participated in her own rescue because she did in fact want to leave, being there when he'd just committed a war crime by kidnapping Peter, a 14 year old boy who said no, from his safe home in Queens to be a child soldier, and grooming him (which btw does not exclusively mean sexual, it also means "the action of attempting to form a relationship with a child or young person [...] or inducing them to commit an illegal act"...like illegal entry into a foreign country or vigilantism that had literally just been outlawed via the Accords).

To be absolutely clear, I think we're supposed to acknowledge this glaring flaw in Tony's logic here, the point is supposed to be that for as well intentioned as Tony is, the statement "you're wrong, you think you're right, that makes you dangerous" applies to him. And it's honestly sad how many people in the last decade missed that entirely

[inkandarsenic]

it's being sad about Robb hours once more but then again when is it not

[starzknight]

Black butler fanart?! On this blog? Hehe

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[strawlessandbraless]

Dean just delivered his ‘this is our last night on earth’ line

[deadn30n]

going through the dan heng tag on twitter and i will still never understand why anyone hates him or thinks he's boring??? he's literally so baby i'm putting him in my pocket and taking him away from the haters actually