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janiedean · 3 years

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Book!Theon is Azor!Ahai, not Jon. It makes no sense narratively for Jon to be AA, and it’s the most stereotypical thing ever, and he’s already stereotypical, he’s the red flag for the audience. Theon’s chapters are full of hints, he has the perfect salt/smoke/stars/dragons thing at the end of ACOK, when he “dies”. His story is about destroying death, his entire narrative, with things that come from mythology and ancient literature, points to that. The show is trash, but don’t you think that it’s a little weird that Theon is there at the end and then Arya comes out of nowhere and becomes AA? And what ending does she get? Exploring the unknown SEA with SHIPS? Being free and on her own? Maybe it doesn’t make sense for her because it’s not for her. D&D already took everything else from Theon, they took this too. And even if he’s not AA, he’s still clearly connected to magic and all of that, he didn’t go though so much for nothing, he didn’t take his name back for the first time in his life, his name that literally means “godly”, for nothing. He has something big to do, and it’s about himself, not Robb and the Starks. And he’s also so clearly connected to the politics of the north and of the iron islands, a villain was literally created for him, so I don’t understand how can you say he’s not really important and all he’s got left to do is retire in a house and be sad. Of course he has a lot of trauma and that’s important, but I don’t like how people reduce him to that and act like just because those things happened, he can’t do anything else

anon with no ill will and I swear I don't want to sound pedantic or anything but I, uh, never came to the conclusion you say I came from - that said let's go in order even if I think I already went through all the reasons why it makes literally no sense if it's anyone but jon, but let's start with one thing:

It makes no sense narratively for Jon to be AA, and it’s the most stereotypical thing ever, and he’s already stereotypical, he’s the red flag for the audience.

it's stereotypical.... to us maybe, but it is not to westeros. like, you're looking at it through audience-lens because it has been years and the show confirmed r+l=j and we all figured that shit out, but to westeros, the idea that the prince that was promised is a bastard guy serving on the wall aka a state-sponsored prison where people go to not die and is filled to non-desirables to society is... the least likely option in existence? no really, but again:

first thing that should quiet all doubts, when melisandre asks r'hollor to see azor ahai bc she wants to see stannis, r'hollor shows her jon snow and instead of going like 'uh wait why am I seeing another dude' she's like 'I want to see stannis but r'hollor shows me jon snow there must be some disturbance on the line', like she doesn't even consider for a second that it might be jon;

no one else has brought WITHIN THE NARRATIVE jon up as a likely candidate - they said stannis, they said dany, they said whoever but no one ever said hey jon snow might be AA, because again no one even suspects that it might be jon;

other matter that you're overlooking here: if theon is azor ahai.... it means that the rebellion basically was for nothing? because like the entire shtick with rhaegar targaryen's bad life choices™ is that he was apparently a swell dude, then he read a book where somehow it was exactly explained how the apocalypse was gonna happen, he deduced that he was the guy who had to father AA/the prince that was promised and in order - first he doesn't care about fighting but suddenly after that he starts getting learned; - he immediately worries over having THREE children from which we can deduce from the narrative that as far as he knows in order to fight when the wights come he has to have three kids for three dragons and one of them is azor ahai; - the moment his wife can't have more than two even if he's sure that he already had the right one (aegon) he still runs off with lyanna to make sure he has the third because it's that important that HE rhaegar targaryen fathers the three heads of the dragon... to the point of starting a civil war and most likely giving arthur orders to make sure that the kid lives at all costs even if he thinks lyanna's kid is NOT AA; - let's remember that the entire schtick is also that 'he is the ptwp and his is the song of ice and fire' which means that this kid of rhaegar's is the person these books are titled after.

now, let's look again at tyrion's infamous quote which I always bring up in these cases but let's refresh our memory here Prophecy is like a half-trained mule. It looks as though it might be useful, but the moment you trust in it, it kicks you in the head now: given this, we can absolutely assume that no single prophecy in this book goes the way the person at the end of it interprets it... which means that rhaegar was wrong on a lot of accounts, but guess what, the thing is that one out of three of his kids is dead (if we count aegon as trueborn, if he's not then two on three but I think he's trueborn) and the one who hatched the eggs/has the dragon is DANY so he already was wrong on head of the dragon #1, and he can absolutely be wrong on aegon being tptwp which would mean mistake #2 and we should know about the prophecy, but one of his children being AA and his being the song of ice and fire looks a bit too much of a stretch to be incorrect and have AA being someone else's son also would be.... but if AA is jon ie the one he had for last that he was sure was not AA and who doesn't even have the targ name (nor the stark one) and no one suspects having that kinda ancestry then yes it fits exactly all the parameters and it still allows for rhaegar to have partially misinterpreted the entire thing even in large chunks but not enough to make it look like he was completely making shit up, which... I mean the long night is coming I don't doubt he had very good reasons to want to stop it; also, anon not to beat the dead horse, but: - jon's death fits all the prophecy parameters already there's the bleeding star, the smoking wound and the salt of the tears which btw is not obvious nor something you'd immediately do 2+2 about... which fits perfectly with the above - jon died and came back to life in the godforsaken show like he's literally the only idiot who resurrected in it and we're supposed to handwave it the way dnd did? - jon has a valyrian steel sword that he can handle while theon atm really doesn't - we could argue that ygritte could be a possible nissa-nissa contender though I mean maybe it could also be that he and val get hot and bothered and it turns out it's her or someone else and that hasn't happened yet but surely there's more evidence for that with jon than with theon - theon has like... povs in two books for a total amount of less than fifteen chapters, jon has at least ten chapters per book or so on, which just mathematically makes jon a main fiver character while theon is not and like I understand deconstruction and all but you don't make your ace in the hole mystical prince hero character someone who has had fifteen chapters total at most unless I remember wrong the amount he had in acok in comparison to someone who was a main throughout the entire thing - like guys I say it as someone whose third-fave char is theon, theon is not a main fiver™ character and that's okay that's not the point, and with that I don't mean he's not important, I mean that he's not one of the five main ones that have most of the plot stuff on their shoulders and he's not THE main character, because if theon is AA then these books are named a song of theon greyjoy and considering that the main five are jon tyrion arya dany and bran I think it's highly not probable that at the end of it theon is the one character to rule them all

and that was for how jon fit the criteria, but theon doesn't fit them because again he doesn't have a number of chapters/povs that justifies such a plot twist, balon is certainly not rhaegar and I don't see how rhaegar reads a prophecy wrt balon and thinks it's about him, the heads of the dragon should be three and theon had three siblings two of which are dead and asha has no tie to the dragon storyline, this means that theon should be able to ride/command a dragon and we know that in theory just targs can and there's already three of them around - dany jon and aegon - and if anyone who's not a targ has a narrative reason to ride a dragon is tyrion not theon... and tyrion is a main fiver too, also there's the nissa-nissa/burning sword angle and as it is theon could absolutely use a bow again but a longsword with his hands maimed like that and no muscle mass would be a bit implausible, in order for the reborn prophecy to actually make sense it means his last adwd chapter should have smoke, salt and the bleeding star which it doesn't but jon's has so there's that

now, re what you said wrt theon:

Theon’s chapters are full of hints

not really? he doesn't have a tie to the magical storyline beyond his connection to bran. they have hints for a lot of things but that he's AA? idt so

he has the perfect salt/smoke/stars/dragons thing at the end of ACOK, when he “dies”

okay but then I could use the same argument for saying that AA could be davos when he survives blackwater because he says he woke up in wreckage of smoke in salty water, and then stannis has equally valid arguments bc he has the shiny sword and he's in dragonstone etc and we all know it's not stannis, also an AA death at the ending of acok when the topic has barely been introduced in dany's vision is entirely too early for me to drop that bomb

his story is about destroying death, his entire narrative, with things that come from mythology and ancient literature, points to that.

his story is about overcoming trauma and abuse and not dying in the process (which is why I think the show was trash) and okay but everyone in these books has something that comes from a mythology or ancient literature, like jaime brienne and c. all have arthuriana roots same as bran, doesn't make any of them a viable AA candidate

The show is trash, but don’t you think that it’s a little weird that Theon is there at the end and then Arya comes out of nowhere and becomes AA?And what ending does she get? Exploring the unknown SEA with SHIPS? Being free and on her own? Maybe it doesn’t make sense for her because it’s not for her.

considering that maisie williams was shocked that arya was AA and she also thought it made no sense and that dnd never thought theon had his own storyline while I can agree on the fact that it fits more for him as an ending than for arya, I don't think that means it makes him AA, same as I think that they gave sansa his storyline and possibly his confrontation with ramsay and I'm not 100% convinced on the last part anyway but that just means they didn't realize theon doesn't exist for the starks' storyline, also like.. in the show everyone but c. was in WF and theon was already dead when arya did her thing and honestly idt the battle of the long night will ever go like that anyway so idt even partially show truthing is bringing us anywhere

and even if he’s not AA, he’s still clearly connected to magic and all of that, he didn’t go though so much for nothing, he didn’t take his name back for the first time in his life, his name that literally means “godly”, for nothing

I never said it was for nothing which I'll elaborate in a second and ofc he's connected to the magic storyline... because he's connected with bran's storyline and his last round of atonement has to happen through bran in the sense that since he was the one basically forcing bran out of wf now he most likely has to facilitate bringing him back or smth (surely not dying for him), but like whatever magical stuff he has going on it has to do with bran dot, not with AA which I still think he doesn't have a stricter text connection to than davos has for that matter and idt davos is AA as I think I made clear

He has something big to do, and it’s about himself, not Robb and the Starks.

never said he didn't, and I also said that I wasn't going to speculate in detail about what theon has to do because I don't think there are enough text elements to say it now but there will be when wow comes out for sure, but like again I don't want to make predictions when I don't have the elements and wrt theon's themes/possible canon ending etc I always said that he most likely isn't going to inherit the islands but that he'll do something huge before the books are done which is gonna be tied to the northern storyline and possibly to bran because he has to go specular to acok - acok is his downfall, adwd is 'I'll find myself again', wow+ados have to be what would theon do if he decides his own thing while being his own person, or recycling my old THEON HAS HEGELIAN THEMES IN HIS STORYLINE acok = thesis, adwd = antithesis, wow+ados = synthesis so obviously he has something huge in the plans.... I just don't think it means he's AA

And he’s also so clearly connected to the politics of the north and of the iron islands, a villain was literally created for him, so I don’t understand how can you say he’s not really important and all he’s got left to do is retire in a house and be sad

aaand here we get to the point which is that... I never said that? I honestly never said that? I said he has to overcome his trauma and live and thrive and be happy after that. if he retires in a house at the end of ados after he does whatever he has to do in the main plot it's going to be because it's what he wants to do and most likely he and jeyne are going to be adorbs while doing it together or smth or if he goes back to the islands and advises asha then he's going to be happy doing that too, but like... the entire point of theon's sl is that he overcomes that horrendous abuse while not being a perfect good victim™ throughout and still be happy after and gain his redemption? that's what I always said. I never said that now he can just retire and be sad. trauma recovery is becoming happy after getting over your trauma. not being sad. and like.... sometimes not getting amazing mythological things but just being happy by yourself is actually a goal? again, grrm is a lapsed catholic. if I know that breed and I do, he doesn't think redemption and happiness are in shortage at the supermarket. and in order for theon to have narrative importance/weight/relevance he doesn't have to do magical mythological IMPORTANT™ things (even if I think he does have something cooked up as I said above), but like the entire point of his sl is the trauma recovery. he's there for that. that's literally his point in the plot and the fact that grrm created a villain for him means that he thinks it's an important thing to explore.

also I personally think that theon's arc is the best written thing in those books so like I don't want to undermine its importance, I just don't think that in order to be important™ then theon has to be dragged kicking and screaming into main fiver territory because there isn't the need.

. Of course he has a lot of trauma and that’s important, but I don’t like how people reduce him to that and act like just because those things happened, he can’t do anything else

I don't like that either esp. when coming from dnd who didn't even let him have it fully, but: and when did I ever do it? I never said that theon is only his trauma. my standing opinion wrt theon is that he's grrm's best written/constructed character (along with jaime) and his most innovative one (jaime following but theon wins it) because theon deconstructs the backstabber trope which I already went on about but:

again usually ppl who backstab the good protagonist™ get caught and punished and you never hear their pov

theon has all the povs

he's the main char in that storyline not robb

he has entirely understandable reasons that ppl decided aren't sympathetic just bc they don't want to admit that in his position they'd have done the same thing

the audience hates him for having contributed to robb's downfall but then he gets a comeuppance that's completely not what anyone would deserve for that and he gets the spotlight/the sympathy again

he gets narrative redemption saving jeyne so you can see he's not an asshole at all

has to get through horrific abuse for his entire life not just with ramsay, he's not a good victim™ but he's still written in a way that makes you want to root for him and at the end he actually comes through so you want him to keep on succeeding

which is smth that with the backstabber trope never happens

now the thing is that theon's there bc a) identity issues b) trauma recovery storylines that then get tied to bran's main one but like idg why just having the recovery storyline would make him lesser - saying he's not a main fiver doesn't mean he's not important, it means he's not a MAIN™ character... which in asoiaf doesn't matter bc even ppl without povs are important to the narration and are there to drive a point (see sandor and stannis), and I don't see why saying that the most important part of his sl/the one grrm wants to stick with the readers is the survivor part of it rather than whichever heavy magic related plot thing he has to play in the future means undermining his importance. and while I think he has that role, idt it's the most important one he has bc being a survivor is what sells his storyline/the entire arc of his character.

then if come wow I'm wrong I'll be like okay I fucked up, but: honestly, imvho there is no way that azor ahai is not jon snow, the fact that collectively as a fandom we think it's obvious doesn't mean people in westeros do, each single point of evidence is at jon and if occam's razor is a thing then it's jon and that's okay because as deconstructed chosen one as he is, jon is still the protagonist of these books and regarding the prophecy above, it makes a lot more sense that this series is titled a song of jon snow and not a song of theon greyjoy and I say this as someone who vastly prefers theon as a character. also, if smth is well-written, readers should see it coming, so the fact that jon is AA isn't predictable if it's true, it's grrm.... knowing how to write a book and plant his hints because if everyone guessed right then if he makes it suddenly someone else bc jon is too predictable then it's dnd making it arya bc SURPRISE WE NEEDED YOU TO GO LIKE WTF HAS JUST HAPPENED INSTEAD OF FOLLOWING THE NARRATION TO ITS NATURAL CONCLUSION, not 'it's too predictable' or the audience red herring the way jaime being the valonqar is an audience red herring. jon being AA should be absolutely obvious for the reader who paid attention and a total surprise for the other characters in the narration, the audience red herring is more dany than anyone else imvho and I'm dying on that hill for now, thanks for coming to my ted talk but like I don't see how it's anyone but jon personally X°D

#jon snow #theon greyjoy #janie writes meta #idk anon i've never said theon wasn't important #i said he wasn't a main char #and like.... my fave char is robb #who doesn't even have a pov #is EXTREMELY important to the narration bc the rw is the crux of 50% of the plot #and i wouldn't call robb a main either #and in asoiaf there are five mains™#and everyone else is on a level of importance #but like those five mains are MAINS more than the others #and jon is the main-est of them so X°DDD #like the fact that the protagonist of a series is the one that has to save the world isn't smth that i think grrm wants to deconstruct #he wants to deconstruct HOW he gets there #but that's mvho #peace

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shera-dnd · 3 years

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Face Turn - Breaking Kayfabe

In the time between the last raffle post and the current poll I had decided to work on something for my own enjoyment (novel concept I know), so I had the lovely idea of taking that one MMA/Wrestling AU thing I wrote for Freezer Burn Week last year and turning it into a whole ass fic

And I do mean a whole ass fic. It’s already finished and edited and everything, because I didn’t want to have any more 6 month long hiatuses and shit.

BUT I’m not posting this whole shit in one go. Instead I’m gonna be posting updates every monday and friday until this fic is over, because I like watching y’all SUFFER!

anyway here’s the AO3 link and let’s get this shit going

Penny Polendina had never been much of a wrestling fan, or much of a fan of any contact sports. It just had never been her thing. Ruby on the other hand, she loved that stuff, she had been invested in these kinds of sports since she was a little kid - easy to understand considering her dad and sister were both wrestlers.

So of course, when Ruby invited her to watch her sister’s big match with her she just couldn’t say no.

Oh curse her poor gay heart.

The venue was loud, very loud. It was also extremely cramped with just how many people have been crammed in this space, shouting their hearts out at a match that hadn’t even started yet.

It was nicer than she expected actually. Being surrounded by all this cheer and high emotions, watching people get so invested in the thing they loved. She could definitely see the appeal, and watching it all right next to her crush was certainly a plus.

Ruby always had a way of making any situation feel particularly magical.

It was pretty weird catching several storylines right at their grand conclusion, but Ruby did her best to explain all the feuds and narratives that led to these big confrontations. Penny did her best to follow, but it was a futile attempt, so she just nodded along and watched the flashy moves and over the top entrances.

“Okay so the next match is a Royal Rumble,” Ruby explained, “that means that thirty people are gonna come into the ring one at a time and they’re all gonna fight each other in a big match. If someone gets tossed over the top rope they’re out and whoever is the last one standing wins.”

Penny nodded, having somewhat grasped what was being said over the loud roaring of the crowd.

“And the best part,” she had been almost jumping in place as she talked to her, “this is my sister’s match! She’s gonna kick so much butt! I can’t wait for you to see her in action again!”

The match had gone for a few minutes and several different fighters had already joined and left the ring, though there was still no sign of Ruby’s big sister. Penny was about to ask her about it when the loudest and most over the top intro music yet played over the speakers, from the way Ruby clung to her arm at the sound, it seemed her question was already being answered.

“It’s the Golden Dragon herself!” Someone announced over the speakers, “Yang. Xiao. Long!”

The end of the word Long was nearly drowned out by Ruby screaming, “That’s my sister!”

Already properly infected both by the crowd’s cheer and Ruby’s own, Penny couldn’t help but shout along with them, “You can do it! Kick some butt!”

Ruby pulled her into a tight hug, laughing her heart out in excitement.

Penny would like to rescind the previous statement and just say that she really freaking loves Wrestling.

Over on the ring Yang was doing as requested and kicking as much ass as she could, all while keeping the easy cheer that seemed to run in her family.

With time the other wrestlers had decided that they were done letting this one woman go unchallenged and quickly ganged up on her, beating her with numbers when they couldn’t do so with strength and skill alone.

That’s when orchestral music began to play.

“Oh come on,” Ruby groaned, “That’s not fair.”

Penny looked utterly confused as the new fighter got announced. The Ice Queen, Weiss Schnee.

“Ugh, she’s been Yang’s rival for months now,” she groaned, “come on, just let her win this time.”

This Weiss woman carried herself with the confidence of someone who had already won the match and was considered walking into the ring just a formality. If the boos and jeers were any indication, that attitude didn’t really fly with the fans.

Or it did in just the way she wanted. People seemed to love to hate on her and, if her smirk was any indication, she loved to be hated just as much.

Penny had really been hoping to celebrate a big victory with Ruby and her sister, not watch her be completely defeated in front of everyone. So she clung to hope that somehow Yang would turn things around.

What neither of them seemed to expect, was for the Ice Queen to do the exact opposite of that.

Quickly and brutally she turned the tides in Yang’s favor, both of them easily dealing with what the other wrestlers had to offer. Their teamwork was a marvel to behold, apparently when you fight each other every other week for months you learn a lot about each other’s move and just how to set them up.

“Didn’t you say they were rivals?” She asked, but Ruby seemed just as confused as she was.

“Yeah, uh-” Ruby stopped to think for a moment, her worry from before now completely gone. Had she been acting this whole time too? “They just have this whole ‘only I get to defeat you’ thing going on.”

A few more minutes later and the two of them stood alone, beaten and exhausted after a long drawn out match. For a moment Penny assumed the match would end right then and there, having completely forgotten that the two women were not in fact working together.

The two of them braced for what was gonna be a rough fight. Except Weiss wasn’t happy with surprising the crowd just once, and as soon as their bodies met she pulled Yang down and kissed her.

The crowd wasn’t sure of how to react. Even Ruby had been completely caught unawares by this turn of events. Penny turned to her, several questions ready to leave her mouth, but before any of those had the chance, she heard the distinct sound of a woman hitting the floor.

Yang had been thrown over the top rope. Even in defeat the woman laughed and applauded as she watched her rival up in the ring.

Up there Weiss stood alone and victorious, she grinned with pure smug joy as she basked in the ever growing boos of the crowd. Only after goading Yang’s fans into a proper fury did she turn to see the state of her rival.

Penny had to admit, wrestling was a lot more interesting than she expected.

#RWBY #weiss schnee #yang xiao long #freezer burn #ruby rose #penny polendina #nuts and dolts #wrestling au #freezerburn

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mrsmess · 4 years

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Faves and fails of SPN (season 15, finally):

Favorite episodes (in chronological order):

15:4 Atomic Monsters - Demon!Sam flashbacks! Dean in a beard! Some old fashioned banter! Meatman! Beaverdale! Love how Sam starts arguing w the parents in the parking lot - Me too, Sam, me too. Loving the self-aware monster. I know Becky is problematique™, but I dig her, so, all kinds of fuck Chuck. He must die, and when he does this is the episode I’ll think about.

15:6 Golden Time - Badass protection spells. Dean in a robe and a hot dog pyjamas. Cas going by Clarence. Jogging Sam. Eileen! God I ship her and Sam, and I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that I don’t ship him w anyone. Liking this ep a lot, every little side plot. Nice. And Eileen is back and I know it won’t last but like, that was awesome.

15:10 The Heroes’ Journey - Pretty neat intro. Monster on monster violence to the sound of Clair the Lune. Oh, and excellent casting of Garth’s kids. Regular people trouble... Awesome! Brilliant! This is the kind of meta storylines this show should deal in, exclusively. Oh my Garth! Explosives! Why isn’t every episode like this?

15:11 The Gamblers - Oh, is this another lucky coin episode? In that case yes please! More inconsequential bullshit kindly! Loving Sam staying in touch w Eileen. Hey guys, remember when you did the gambling thing w your years? And the rabbit’s foot? Good times. Will this be an equally good time? I hope so. A god! Excellent. ”Lady, I’m Tolstoy.” Yeah ya are, and i’m dead. The guys and Fortuna bashing god. And I'm equally delighted and distraught over the lore that god created man, man imagined gods and god decided to create the other gods to play into man’s ideas, or as a distraction.

15:13 Destiny’s Child - Omg the intro! Savage garden! I’m dead. Jack w the sandwich, why is that so funny? Cas is a gem this episode! ”’Sexually intimate’?” Lol. That’s what you get for trying to speak plainly, Cas! Hunter Corp. I’m dead, again. Keep the different Deans and Sams coming! I’m digging this! Why would they send ‘em to Rio? They could be your buffy-bots!

15:14 Last Holiday - Weird people popping up in the hq is awesome. And Dean’s immediate instinct to yell for Sam reminds me of me calling mr mess for everything! ”Shouldnt you be in the woods? Nymfing?” Monster radar? Oh, oh this is excellent. So mrs Butters is capable of murder when home and family are threatened, good for her. They better not kill her. I can accept them returning her to the wild. Yes! Did I call it or did I call it? Good Supernatural, good boy! And Dean making a cake for Jack! My heart.

Fail episodes (in chronological order):

15:2 Raising Hell - Rowena! Instant win. Ketch. Instant lose. Ketch undressing Rowena with his eyes = rating plummeting. Jeez. A bit dangerous even joking about the GoT finale, don’t you think? Rowena and Ketch full on flirting... this is hell, I'm being punished.

15:3 The Rupture - Don’t call him god! His name is Sucky-Chucky. The shock of Cas! “You’ve been playing us the whole time!” This is how it works Cas, where have you been? They're always solving problems like Jason Mendoza. In-Dean-angry-voice: “Anytime I had a problem and I threw a Molotov cocktail, boom! Right away, I had a different problem.” Rowena! And Sam! No!

15:5 Proverbs 17:3 - Listen, spn, it’s your last season and if you like just wanna stop writing and casting women completely rn i won't stop you or hold it against you (also why are these ladies identical?). We’ve had a terrible run but lets just let bygones be bygones.

15:8 Our father, who aren’t in heaven - Gosh, having Eileen in the show is painful, I’m just constantly expecting a piano to fall on her head. *Ugh* Sucky-yucky-Chucky. But hey, at least everybody else looks better alongside him. Case and point: I never rly cared that much for Donatello, but it’s great to see him, and Michael’s back, sure is nice to see him too.

15:9 The trap - Ugh. Main plot shit and Sucky-yucky-fucking-Chucky. Fail. Although the flashforward to jan 6th 2021 was a hoot (but probably not meant like one, huh?) Dean’s monologue in purgatory though... gosh. This show would be nothing w/o Jensen Ackles. Omg the kiss! Nice. However, the show at this point has lost the ability to offer any sort of pleasure. Because like Sam, we know which way this will go. They used to have some hedonism working for the characters but now they don’t even have that.

15:20 Carry on - You know what? I’m not gonna make this post longer than it already is talking about the last episode of Supernatural, that has been done better by people w real grievances w the show. The kindest thing you can say about the finale is that it just as well could’ve been jammed into a few extra minutes added to the previous episode.

Mediocre mentions:

Drag me away (from you) - what is this ugly cell interface? The opposite of product placement. Yay! Retro episode! And they got the same actor to play Dean, neato! Dean admitting he had a hard time handling hunting, that always gets me. Woah! That scream effect without reverb was kinda startling. And the camera zooming in on the little porcelain clown even though Sam is nowhere n- oh shit. This was an interesting episode

Inherit the earth - Goooood I hate Chucky. Barefoot Sam is okay though. Digging this soundtrack too. Very un-Supernatural. Nice to meet ya Betty, but I wouldn’t pull up a chair if I were you. Always a fan of the shiteating grin. Jack, stripping god of his power, that’s so hot. And again: kudos to the soundtrack! The Youngbloods and then Jackson freakin’ Browne! And you know, it’s clichéd and kinda vacant, but also kinda nice. I’m cool with the story ending like this. Why did they have to do another one? Supernatural has never known when to quit, and this is the very real backside of this.

Honorable mentions:

I don’t know who this Ardat chick is but killing Ketch puts her instantly in my win column.

Winchester-dumb, new household term.

”Feels like were taking a big, probably stupid risk. Feels good.” That made me feel good too.

I’m vastly enjoying this dark-art hippie couple in Unity and Jack’s interaction w them.

Cas launching straight into his dramatic I-will-not-let-you-end-your-own-life-speech when Sam casually mentions he’d like to talk to death in Unity, that angel has seen some things, and he has learned.

Those are some pretty pretty death effects on Jack in Despair/The Truth.

Obviously Misha Collins

Things that makes you go hmm:

Which of the clowns is this supposed to be in Back and to the Future? Because the one from season 2 was a monster, right? So he would’ve gone to purgatory. You know what? I’m not an expert. I try to not pay too much attention ’cause it makes me funny in the head. But just, y’know, a general objection.

Here’s my deal w death as a looming threat in this show: it holds no weight. And even if it did it has been painted as the ultimate relief, unless you go to hell, these characters know for a fact that there’s a potentially blissful afterlife, so their attitude towards death should be, what? More pragmatic, I think. And it’s partly why Ackles is wasted on this show; That man can deliver a death monologue like it’s nobody’s business, too bad all those words have been rendered meaningless after 15 seasons of this shit!

Summing up:

So, I did not go into or leave this season happy, I knew how it would end and I was sad for everyone the show screwed over (more than it already had). Which really meant that I always had to force myself to watch another episode, knowing what was coming. But I had to see it through. I did, so I’ll give myself a pat on the back and get to work on my own personal selection of episodes that will henceforth represent spn to me. A selection I’ll enjoy all the way through. All in all I think the most frustrating thing about the show is how it insists on taking itself so freakin’ seriously. It has always done horror *and* humor best and this whole heaven and hell aspect has never sat right w me, and in any case they should’ve leaned more on “supernatural” narrative tropes (if you will) getting out of their plot problems, gambled some more and thought a bit more outside genre conventions *especially* in their main arcs, they opened up so many opportunities that they never even used. They could’ve been more like Buffy, or Doctor Who. That said, I’ll always get that spn-itch, and when I do, I’ll be happy to have seen all the episodes so I’ll know which ones to avoid.

#supernatural #spn meta #favorite episodes #no this is not a supernatural blog #random fandom #no longer a rewatch #done w season 15 #and finally free

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tlbodine · 5 years

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A Plea for Some Non-Cringe Native American Representation

There’s something that has bothered me for a real long time, and I haven’t said anything because it didn’t really feel like my place to say it. But if pasty white folks across the country will insist on continuing to make these books and comics and movies, then I guess this pasty white girl can make a plea to do it better.

So. Here’s the deal. Native American representation in fiction sucks.

We’re going to talk about why, and then talk about some ways you can do it better. And it’s going to take a while, so join me under the cut.

PROBLEM #1: Erasure

The first problem with First Nations people being represented in fiction is that it, uh...doesn’t happen very often. It’s pretty rare for a show or movie or book to have a Native character, and even rarer for that character to exist without being a vehicle/mouthpiece for some kind of hamfisted message.

And, of course, Native characters who do show up in movies are sometimes played by non-Native actors, which is just. Um.

somebody fucking kill me I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.

PROBLEM #2: The Same Stock Character Over and Over and Over

There’s this weird thing where TV shows have A Very Special Native American Episode(tm) where a Native American character shows up in a storyline designed to, idk, provide a tidy outlet for the viewer’s white guilt or something. I see this a lot in superhero stories for...some reason:

Batman and Chief Screaming Eagle (ok, it was the 1960s, surely things have gotten better right? oh...) who’s butting heads with a villain over a bad contract for, uh, the chief’s ancestral lands

There was the Buffy episode “Pangs” where a Chumash vengeance spirit is the villain-of-the day after being disturbed by some construction (and this is honestly one of the better treatments of the premise, at least the episode is well-written)

There was the Smallville episode with Kyla Willowbrook, the Kawatche Skinwalker (I know, I know) who for bonus points dies tragically in Clark’s arms (I KNOW) and who was deeply concerned with...with some construction...disturbing her sacred homesite...(this is starting to sound familiar)

And then there was The Flash episode where Barry is forced to fight with the complicated-yet-tragically-evil Native American activist woman whose crimes involve stealing cultural artifacts that belong to to the museum (yes I’m screaming) and also murdering people...y’know, for vengeance and stuff.

I could keep going but I really don’t think I have to. When your only representation of a culture is a character (frequently a smoking-hot member of the opposite sex to the hero) who is an ambiguous villain who is motivated by vengeance and/or justice over having their land/cultural artifacts disturbed, and who has a valid claim but is really going about it in the wrong way and whose tragic death and/or defeat really gives the white character something complex to think about for two seconds.... well. That’s more than a little racist.

PROBLEM #3: These Are Not Your Stories to Tell

You know what white people love doing?

They love appropriating Native culture! Seriously! They love it! And who can blame them, really? Native people have so much rich symbolism and mythology and cool clothes and neat aesthetics. Painted war ponies and buckskin dresses and shapeshifters and monsters, oh my! Indian burial grounds and vengeful spirits (oh for fuck sake enough with the vengeful Indian trope)

But here’s the deal:

The mythology you’re borrowing from belongs to a group of people who are still alive and sometimes practicing the religion you’re liberally reinterpreting

There is no such thing as a “Native American” myth. You’re talking about literally hundreds of different tribes who are culturally distinct from one another and have their own complex histories of interaction, diplomacy, war, friendship, etc. with one another for centuries before white folk got here. You erase all of that when you treat Native culture as a grab-bag of cool things you can mix and match to your liking.

Maybe, just a thought, stop it with the oppression narratives about activists and/or vengeful spirits who are real threatened by white people disturbing their homes? It’s not that there isn’t a lot to unpack in that -- I mean, white people really did conduct mass genocide against a race of people, for starters -- it’s just that this isn’t really your oppression narrative to tell.

It seems to me that folks writing about Native Americans don’t actually have any idea what Native people are like? They either think of them as anachronistic figures, an extinct and ancient group, or they think of them as people really hung up on their cultural past. Because maybe people can’t think of anything to do with a Native character other than use it as a vocal mouthpiece of one very specific part of their cultural oppression.

But please. Please stop. That is every bit as stupid and racist as making a Black character who only talks about slavery, or a Jewish character who only talks about the Holocaust, or giving all of your gay characters AIDS.

So what do you do instead?

Writing Native Characters in a Way That Does Not Suck - A Quick Primer

I can’t write a definitive guide on writing good Native representation, because there is no such guide, and if there were it would take a whole book probably, and I am not in any way even remotely an authority.

But I can give you some pointers that will help you.

(And to be honest, Native representation is so awful that the bar here is really super low, even just attempting a tiny bit is a really welcome breath of fresh air)

Choose a Tribe

Step one: Figure out what kind of Native people you’re writing about.

Because, as previously noted, Native People Are Not A Monoculture.

How do you pick a tribe? Well, start with geography. Where do you want the story to take place? Obviously people move around, so you can find folks outside of their ancestral lands, but they all started someplace, and a lot of people live where their parents and grandparents and cousins all live.

So where does your story take place? Pick a spot. Then find out what tribes live in that region. It’s not a secret. There are maps:

(Source: http://www.emersonkent.com/map_archive/native_american_tribes_map.htm)

Or maybe you want to go about this in a different way. Maybe you have a specific story idea in mind and you want to write it in a way that would be accurate and respectful. Cool! A good first step on that is to figure out what tribe actually does the thing you’re wanting to write about.

Skinwalkers, for example, originate in the Navajo Nation (Dine` people), although there are related myths from surrounding tribes in the area.

If you’re writing a story about Wendigo, then you should know those myths originate with the Algonquin people of Quebec and Ontario.

If you’re writing something with spiritually significant buffalo, you should probably choose a culture that actually interacted with buffalo -- ie, a Plains Indian tribe like the Lakota-Sioux people.

And so on and so forth.

(Note that this is only the first step. You still have to do a lot of research after this to be sure you’re doing everything properly and respectfully. And, y’know, maybe reconsider if you actually want to tell a story respecting that mythology, or if you just want to sound cool and exotic)

Also, personal preference: Please don’t make your characters Cherokee if you’re just going for “character with Native ancestry.” Please choose a different tribe. For a lot of complicated (and sometimes surprisingly racist) reasons, white people have been claiming Cherokee heritage for a long time, and even when it’s true, it feels cheap and cringey in fiction. If you want to tell a story about the Trail of Tears or something set in Tahlequa, Oklahoma, great! Write Cherokee characters! But if you just want a Native American character for other reasons...pick a different tribe.

Choose a Name

Fun fact: Modern Native people that you meet out on the street don’t have names like “Stands With Fists” or “Running Bear.”

If you have an impulse to name your character any kind of descriptive “adjective + animal” name...just don’t. Please. And don’t go to BehindTheName or some other random site to pick out something that “sounds” Native.

Names in other cultures are tricky. Some (but not all!) Native people may have a cultural tradition of having multiple names, including naming ceremonies (often as a rite of passage in adolescence). Some tribes have clan names. Everybody’s different. But these special names are culturally sensitive, often sacred, and are not a thing readily accessible to white people. White folks spent centuries trying to wipe out Indigenous people’s belief systems; they deserve to have some things kept private and sacred.

So what I’m getting at here is that white writers really, really should not touch on the “Indian naming ceremony” trope at all if they can help it, because it’s gonna be real hard to get the details right, and getting the details wrong is going to make you sound like an ignorant racist. And most of the time, it’s not really that important to a story.

Most contemporary Native people have regular English names. They may also have tribal names and clan names (that they may or may not share with outsiders). But lots of tribal members don’t, and that doesn’t make them any less Native.

My recommendation for naming your Native characters? Find real people from the time period, tribe, and region you’re writing in. Find a phone book or newspaper from a town on or near a reservation for your chosen tribe. Look at names of participants in powwows. Look at the sports rosters for Native schools. Look at historical records like census data from the year you’re writing about. Don’t just make things up.

** One Note: You know how “black” names are a thing? You encounter a similar sort of thing in some contemporary Native Americans. I grew up with a lot of kids who had “weird” names like Kirby, Sheriden, Baskerville, Sterling and Precious. (and by “weird” I mean “names middle-class white people don’t tend to use”). There’s also a lot of black-sounding names in Native populations. There’s some complex reasons behind this, and a lot of sociology of naming, and I won’t spend too much time on it right now but just...so you know. It’s a thing.

Write a Human Being

This really is the biggest thing, and it’s true of every writing you do, all the time, no matter what: Write a real person and not a caricature.

Native people are people first. Their cultural heritage affects them the way anyone else’s culture does. The things they eat, wear, do, believe, the stories they know, etc. are all affected. But Native people don’t have a responsibility to be walking representatives of their tribes. And they definitely shouldn’t be a vessel for white guilt.

(Fun fact: “Iron Eyes Cody,” maybe best known for the “Crying Indian” role in a commercial about pollution, was an Italian-American born Espera Oscar de Corti)

Here’s a really, really good article I found while working on this rant that might be of interest to you as wellas you set out on this quest: https://mashable.com/2015/03/24/american-indians-tv/

I still have so much to say on this topic, and maybe I’ll write more in the future, but this is already very long so I’ll stop. I hope this has been at least a little bit helpful for y’all. Go forth and write non-terrible characters, I beg of you.

*Disclaimer: I am not a Native person and do not claim any special knowledge or ownership of Native culture, and I beg you to please listen to Native voices when possible in your creative endeavors. I’m just a gal who happened to have spent most of my life living near reservations and growing up around Native people and having Native friends and being taught about historical cultures by my mother who has a degree in Southwest Studies and has done a lot of formal and informal research due to her own interests in the topic.

If you found this article helpful at all, please consider dropping a tip in my tip jar.

I also have a book coming out! You can pre-order it now! It features a main character of mixed heritage, New Mexico reservation border towns, and zombies trying to get by like everybody else.

Pre-Order now on B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/river-of-souls-t-l-bodine/1131956124

Or on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/River-Souls-T-L-Bodine/dp/1950305015

Or from the publisher: http://journalstone.com/bookstore/river-of-souls/?fbclid=IwAR14Qna5tMgWBV0We2uGSLreBkmyvZ5SoDAzPQpTKeFn4JR4PWSyKGl0VEo

Or add it to your Goodreads library: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46183381-river-of-souls

#how to write #writing advice #native americans #cultural appropriation #representation #long post #but please do read it #I worked on this all day

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2ofswords · 4 years

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001 pathologic

Even if it says “Pathologic” I’ll mostly be talking about Pathologic 2 and specify if it’s not the case. It’s just where most of my experience lies since I’m not done with Pathologic Classic HD yet. ^^

Also I’m putting this one under a cut because… man. That got long! Like way too long, I thought I could do this one very quick and now two hours have passed and I’m still writing it! Dear god, these are a lot of questions!

Favorite character: ... It’s Dankovsky. We all know it. I mean I went into the game being like “I’m pretty sure the tragic asshole character is gonna be my favorite...” Credit where credit is due, I persevered until the day 11 conversation. But we all would have known that Marble Nest would have gotten me anyways so.. Yeah. I especially love his dynamic relationship with Artemy in Patho 2 and he is just a fun and complex character, that I really love to think about and who has made some terrible decisions while still staying sympathetic for me. Also the mix of science and dreams is just something that I find interesting and also can kind of relate too. Love that stuff!

Least Favorite character: In Patho 2 it’s Oyun. The way he talks about the Kin makes me really uncomfortable. The animalistic portrayal is for me one of the biggest flaws in the game and he is the worst offender. And yeah since he is one of the Kin, I’m probably not the one who should judge... But I don’t know... from what I’ve heard that seems to be considered a problem by the fanbase in general... Outside of that I also think he’s just structurally very badly included in the game? He appears very late and is hostile in a way that doesn’t really make you engage with him. And I was way to stressed and didn’t get enough opportunities to actually talk with him to really make a connection (though one reason was, that I didn’t give him my house in the first run. Didn’t want to, so I had the pleasure to walk to Shekhen every time to meet him.) Even without the very questionable undertones his constant ranting about strength and leadership didn’t really appeal to me in a game, where leadership just far has only proven to fail everyone in a time of crisis. The way he is revealed as the murderer is kind of weak, since you either figured it out long ago or the game just randomly tells you... He just is very unappealing to me. Vlad the Elder also fucking sucks. But at least he as well as the game are so open about it, that it’s easier to ignore while the game seemed to make me want to like Oyun, while I really couldn’t so this one makes me a little more salty.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): 1. Artemy/Daniil: What a shocker! Narrative foils who have an actual rivals to friends ark in the game and a shitton of sexual tension within it! What’s not to love? 2. Lara/Rubin: I just think they deserve each other. Both of them are very hard working and prone to giving up themselves for the greater good but they are also harsh to others. I think they would apreciate each other but also reign the other person in and care about them. 3. Daniil/Rubin: I just want Rubin to be happy, okay? This one is more a Patho 1 thing, but they really appreciate each others work and I really like how they interact in the Bachelor route. They care about each other and they share a lot of struggles and actually a more similar view on the town and the world than Daniil does with Artemy. Also again we have two very hard working people here, who would have a lot of bonding over weird science projects. (Even if these one are worse at reigning each other in and fights would be pretty horrible to the point of needing a mediator because non of these two are talking to each other and maybe only stoop down to writing very passive aggressive letters...) 4. Notkin/Khan: Also more of a Patho2 thing, since they act way more brutal in P1 and also do not really reconcile. But in P2 they seem to care and immediately bury the hatchet when shit hits the fan. The whole house of the death quests shows them more as bickering friends. And I have a soft spot for bickering friends romances, okay? Also this one is obviously only two teenage boys having a crush, no shitheads allowed here! 5. Yulia/Eva: I cannot really chose between my favorite w/w pairing, there are so many good ones! Right now it’s Yulieva again. They are tragic, they are soft, they are so atmospheric and fun to write! Also I just love Eva and think she should get as many girlfriends as she wants.

Character I find most attractive: Uhhh... I don’t know I find their models beautiful but there are not a lot of them I find specifically attractive. I guess it’s between Daniil, Artemy, Lara and Yulia for me. Daniil get’s the most ridiculous style points ever but... too old for me specifically. I think Artemy is really attractive but I think his outfit is also really unflattering ... Lara is so much my type and so is Yulia! (Though why didn’t you keep the short hair, queen, it would have made this choice so easy!) I think I’ll have to go with Lara, because I first saw her and just went “I love you” immediately?

Character I would marry: If I assume that the other person would be as happy with our arrangement no matter who I chose: Victor. He is the perfect husband by definition and I want to learn more about time magic. Though this marriage would remain very much platonic and also very much sexless... he is way older than I am and that is disregarding that time is weird for the Kains. Also we have to consider Nina’s continuing existence... okay I don’t mind that one at all.

Character I would be best friends with: My first instinct is to say “man all of these people would despise me”, which is such a Pathologic mood. I think I would be best friends with Eva. I think we would get along well and we’d have much to talk about. Also, her house is cool and we could go stargazing!

A random thought: I love Dora! She is the worst and most iconic child caretaker of all time and I want to talk about her! The whole baby thing and the way it’s delivered to Artemy is already great but then she just silently takes the baby and gives the reward when you’re there the second time? The time she takes Grace away is genuinely such a good dialogue and a tough decision so that’s great but then, she manages to actually get Grace adopted by a dead person, if Peter is dead! And then she may think it’s Andrey WHO IS DEAD TOO! Seriously, who hired her! I know the entire town is falling apart but man! Dora sure as hell doesn’t help the case. But she tries her best! I think. I hope.

An unpopular opinion: Oh I have a lot of unpopular opinions, but I think most of them should get their own post, where I can explain in details and a bit more serious what I’m actually talking about. But here’s a small one: Okay ummm… please my fellow burakhovsky shippers, please don’t get mad but… uuuumm…

…

I like the first Bachelor conversation in Patho2 better than the one in Patho1. … Okay, look. I love the “left hand right hand” line as much as everyone else. Wouldn’t have missed it and loved it in Pathologic Classic! And I also think it’s a shame that Daniil’s homosexuality got dialed down. Totally agree with that. But! I really love them starting out on the wrong foot. Their whole dynamic of having to establish their relationship makes their journey and the scenes where they actually reconcile again so much more powerful to me and I love how dynamic it is. And having the two of them completely clash underlines for me how much they have to try and develop to be more comfortable and confine in each other. It’s a great starting point! Also the scene is hilarious in it’s own right. The whole buildup to it where Artemy is in such a desperate position to find out his own kind-of-brother wants to murder him… starting this whole thing with “you owe me” and the whole “Vorakh” thing. It’s really great how in retrospect it’s just a really fucking bad start and a trainwreck of the Bachelor trying to sound competent but from Artemy’s perspective it’s just utterly horrible because the whole town wants to kill him, his father is dead and this stranger is talking some bullshit! Yeah, nobody would have any patience and so the situation escalates immediately! It’s great storytelling and absurd and… I really do love this scene and it’s dynamic and I think it's a great first interaction! (Even if it is sad if people think that they now get the Bachelor. Which… dynamic storyarc… complex character. But I think most people will get that eventually, if they just engage with the whole storyline.) It also makes it a bit more genuine when they actually do act friendly, because you can see, how they act, if they’re not trying. In P1 the Bachelor’s dialogue can feel manipulative rather than friendly and while that has it’s own positives, I just prefer the more dynamic approach of their relationship. To be honest, I think both conversations fit in their own games nicely. I just prefer the overall approach to their relationship arc and I also think it’s just less clumsily written and a bit more memorable apart from the very first line. And while I love it in Patho 1 I couldn’t really see it and it’s sudden intensity in the writing-style of the second game, so I also do not really miss it specifically in their interaction. It’s great were it is but it wouldn’t enhance the situation here.

My canon OTP: Victor and Nina. This man just loves his powerful evil and passionate wife and I respect that. I think the way they are described and how Victor would fit in makes this combination so interesting to me. He is quiet and capable and you can really imagine the whirlwind Nina still appreciating him and... it’s so cute, okay? They are in love!

Non-canon OTP: (Oh my god, there are so many pairings where my brain goes “what do you mean, they aren’t canon???) I think Lara/Eva is a really cute pairing that sure as hell isn’t alluded to in the Canon at all. Lara deserves Eva’s positivity and her view on the potential of the soul could be really cute. And Eva deserve her practical care and consideration. Also they are both talking about how they do not know what to do with their live and since they both arrive at this rather depressing conclusion very differently, they might be able to help each other! Also they could play matchmaking with the local doctors together and I find that hilarious.

Most badass character: Aglaya. There isn’t really a competition. (Okay Clara is also really badass and one has to mention Aspity for just dying when she feels like she should make a point and for being alive whenever she has something really important to say... that’s also pretty badass and she also is in general.) Aglaya is so powerful and intimidating and armed with metaknowledge. She even knows about her plot armor (and how long that will last...) Do not cross this lady, you will definitely regret it! (Okay the true answer is obviously Teensy. But shhhh…)

Pairing I am not a fan of: I’m not really a fan of Aglaya/Artemy especially in Patho2. I just cannot get over her immediately opening the gallows and then breaking Grief down. Artemy in Patho2 doesn’t really feel like a person who would appreciate either and he gets like really upset about Grief without it getting really resolved. (And Aglaya is very unapologetic about it, which might be a part of the truth since we don’t know what happened but still doesn’t help the case.) Also they talk very businesslike and like Aglaya is just making plans which Artemy in mind which doesn’t feel like a good baseline even if she appreciates his insight. It’s still only one person making the decision in the end... But I also totally get the appeal and they are both stubborn, have an interesting way of seeing connections and their worldviews are very interesting together especially, if we think about P1, so I also get shipping them! I’m just not the biggest fan myself.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Uhhh... Hm... There is not really a character I find completely broken and I’ve complained about Oyun enough... So I have to go with Aglaya and only for the reason that I find the ending where they leave town pretty forced. (I’m sorry, I don’t hate her! All of the characters are so amazing, she only has some writing choices specifically that I didn’t like! But I still think she’s cool!) I actually kind of like that it exists and I think the way it plays out is very heart-wrenching and honestly amazingly made but the whole way to get to the decision feels a bit awkward to me just because both of their duties get weirdly lampshaded without making the meta entirely obvious. Either just shattering the fourth wall here or making the situation way more desperate for both of them would have done the trick, I guess. I in general would have loves, if her meta would have been used a bit more explicitly. It felt a bit gimmicky to make her cool at times and while Artemy might not be the route for that... there ideology talk in Patho1 sure as hell managed that. Their dialogue is still good but I had very high hopes while I approached it. I do know that there is more behind the meta and I wish we could have seen a bit more of that then her offhandedly mentioning it. She never really engaged with her struggle and never allowed Artemy to really engage with it, what also made the whole town fleeing scene a bit jarring, especially if you didn’t play the first game.

Favourite friendship: I mean the whole apple basket gang friendship, obviously! Is there really another friendship that competes in the game? I love their dynamic and I also love how torn apart the friendship is and how they are only beginning to reconcile even at the end of the game. Not all is good yet but they stay hopeful and I think that is a very strong message.

#crimsondaisy #ask

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venus-says · 5 years

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Kamen Rider OOO Episodes 17-32

I'm really holding myself to not make a joke with a Katy Perry song.

Yes, I'm late. Yesterday was my mom's birthday and I was taking care of that for the past three days so I didn't finish writing this post on time, I'M SORRY. But here I am now so let's get to the juice.

You know, looking from the point we left in the last post I expected things to go downhill and I was prepared to have another W's mid-season experience. Aaaaand I was wrong! And thank god for it.

The complaints I had from the first part are still present here, but they picked on the good points already present and expanded so much on them that when you put things on paper the positives more than compensate for the bad ones. As I mentioned before, arcs introducing a new "ranger" in the middle of the season are for the most part very hard to me, I usually don't like those, and the way they introduce Birth sure was rough in some edges. But despite the elements I dislike still being there, I've grown to like Akira/Birth and I think their inclusion to the cast played a big role in making this second part as solid as it was.

The come and go of the medals is still confusing and hard to keep up with, the antagonists are still kind of a mess, some of the MOTW plots are weak, but each one of these negatives come with a positive. Yes, is hard to keep track of the medals, but the new combo forms Os got in these episodes were amazing both in visuals and in powers. Yes, there are still many "factions" acting as antagonists, but each one of them had something added to them so they don't look just like a bunch of pawns trying to act like a king and just looking like a bunch of ants who broke formation coming back to their colony. While some MOTW didn't have a very engaging story, each one of them had at least one quirk that made them interesting.

If there are things I'd consider fatal flaws in this particular block of episodes I'd say they are: how they didn't know how to manage the GREED, Gotou's storyline, and those horrible episodes celebrating the 1000th episode.

Regarding the GREED, this is a problem I had in the first part as well, they're completely underused. First, they quickly ditched two generals (the ones with most personality) at once, so I thought we would see Uva and Kazari as two different forces going against each other, but no Uva was pushed to the side for the most of it and we only saw Kazari doing his things. Then there's the matter of Ankh's body who's sitting on a very thin line and sometimes it's pending more to the interesting side and in other times is just sitting in the "really, queen?" side of things. Now not everything is bad, adding a new GREED that wasn't one of the original 5 and having this GREED be merging with both Eiji and Dr, Maki is very interesting and I'm quite curious to see how it'll develop, I feel like they're building up for Maki be the final boss and I'm kinda thorned about it since I really like Kougami and I wish he was the final antagonist, but episodes 29 and 30 shed a new light on Dr. Maki and I started liking him a little more so I think I'm okay if that's the path they'll take.

Gotou is a mixed bag of feelings for me. I really started disliking him around episode 12, and I disliked him more when they started to hint him as being the next Rider to join, and I still think he's a very weak character and he's definitely not in my favorites' list. But I started to get more sympathetic towards him and a huge part of that is because of his interactions with Akira, I'm still not interested on seeing him becoming Birth but thanks to this period he spent with Akira I think when the change happens I'll be more open-minded for it. I also can't deny that he had a great part in on of my favorite stories of the season (Episodes 21 and 22) that made me soften my heart for him, seeing his internal conflict about his own sense of justice was very cool, the conclusion he came to wasn't what I wanted but it was still great nonetheless.

The 1000th episode arc was... just boring and embarrassing, I'm sorry. I know I don't have the knowledge of this franchise to catch all the easter eggs and such, but with easter eggs or no is a very weak plot and I wasn't interested in anything. Again, I'm sorry.

But now let's talk about the good stuff. First of all, I wanna take a moment to talk about the power-ups, Os got two new combos in these episodes and they're both great. Seeing that I'm a sucker for water powers I thought ShaUTa would be my favorite, and while it looks pretty good and the fight underwater we got as cool as heck my favorite form is TaJaDor, I love the design of the suit, I love the design of the wings, I love that attack with the peacock feathers, I love when he goes to the sky and start looking like a phoenix, that power-up is *chef's kiss* perfecto! I don't know if PuToTyranno is considered a power-up, but the form is also pretty darn good, I think the ptera wings are a bit weird and attacking with a tail is a bit too much for me (especially with that CGI), but I love the ax/gun weapon he got, and I can't wait to see more. (also PuToTyranno is a very fun name to me because "puto" is not a family-friendly word in Portuguese and I just can't help but crack every time I think of it XD)

Talking about characters, Eiji is as great as ever, his smartness continues being on point, he has great comedy moments, and the delivery on the emotional moments is very well done. What I liked the most about him in these episodes was seeing how he could gave some very strong speeches about justice and helping other people and said speeches didn't sound generic or fake like in the many other shows with a young male target audience. They were a bit idealistic while staying very grounded in reality which I loved. We also got to see the full scope of his backstory too, I don't necessarily love the part about he coming from a wealthy family, but I can see that this also adds a lot on his shoulders so I'm okay with it, is still a very strong character point. I thought it would take long to another Rider to dethrone Shotaro as my favorite, but Eiji is coming very close to it, let's see how the show will handle his character in this final third.

Ankh... is still Ankh. I thought they were building a narrative of him betraying Eiji, and I thought that could be a very nice point to make him grow as a character but that didn't come true so, I'm still kinda meh about him. Hina is still boring, but this time I'll blame all on the actress/direction they gave to her because there are good moments for her here but the delivery is very lackluster. Chiyoko is still a very nice side character, I really liked her participation in episodes 29 and 30 with her interactions with Maki, I hope we can see more of this in the future.

The things in Kougami foundation are still a high point for me, Kougami himself seems to be becoming more crazy and obsessive as time passes and I just love it. Erika is by far the best support character, and I love that badass action scene they gave her in episode 20! I wish the booty shots didn't have camera angles that weren't so IN YOUR FACE, but I guess is a fair trade considering the many closeups on Eiji while he's on his underwear so...

I already talked a bit about Akira but I feel like I need to highlight him again. I wasn't expecting to like him this much, especially seeing how he crashed this party without previous notice, but I really enjoy him. He's so upbeat and straightforward, yet he's not just an easygoing character, we can see his dept and whenever he goes serious it doesn't seem like a very drastic change. It's kinda impossible to dislike this guy. I'm a bit afraid for him, because the signs that he's going to die are all here, and I don't wanna see him go because I like him so much, I hope that if they do it it'll be on a nice way and it'll make him justice, BUT I'LL TRY TO STAY POSITIVE TILL THE LAST MINUTE AND I'LL BELIEVE THAT HE'S NOT GONNA DIE (pls OOO, don't crush my heart).

I believe this is all I had to say, I can't believe I'm already so close to the end of this wonderful series, I really hope they won't drop the ball in this final stretch. How yall feel about the middle portion of OOO, anything you agree or disagree with? Let me know in the comments. See you, folks. o/

#Kamen Rider OOO #kamen rider

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kitcat992 · 5 years

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Some honest responses from other MCU fans regarding Endgame

Because I know I’ve been one hell of a negative Nancy the past 24 hours, but wanted to show that my raw distaste for this film doesn’t go unshared.

particledamage: This entire thing sucks. I’m bitter.

SelenitaLunar: Worst ending ever. God can't believe this is the real deal. As a Tony fan they give us everything: Pepperony married and iron baby and Rescue only to kill him in the end and stab our hearts and tarnish all our memories of the MCU and this 11 years? Sure they are gonna subvert expectations, hope they enjoy it fully. As I'm not enjoying Marvel ever again. Shame on them. The Russos can go to hell, honestly.

greengirlrunning: They did Thor and Loki so dirty. The Loki thing is so obviously forced so that it ties in to his TV series, but it really undermines his entire arc in the MCU films. I'm pissed. Don't even get me started on Thor. It's perfectly believable that he would be depressed and feel hopeless, but to turn him into a joke and make him basically useless while Tony and Cap get epic (if problematic) endings? Bullshit.

_Mavericks: I’m sorry to say this, but the plot is pure shit. It’s not the case of getting disappointed because we wanted more. It is simply bad as it is. Sad ending.

sawinadream: Honestly Steve not preventing shit/suddenly acting selfishly AFTER being deemed worthy by Mjolnir/ignoring Bucky in Hydra captivity and SHIELD being infiltrated/the timeline somehow not registering these particular alterations IF he did change anything for the better.... OOC and lazy writing at its finest. Also wtf @ Sharon Carter now? Ew

priscillia28: It sounds like a bad fan theory

delta_charlie_2511: So the leaks we were sure were wrong turned out to be right. What they did to Cap is disappointing. It would have made more sense have him sacrifice himself and then wake up in a dream like sequence with Peggy where she is waiting for him to take her to the dance

valhallaorange: I'm upset with many of the main avengers stories, but I'm going to focus on Cap for this one.

It seems completely out of character for him to go back and marry Peggy, knowing in the future she HAD a husband and children, and a well-iived life of accomplishment. To me, it was a focal point of Cap's character to be unselfish and accepting of his new place in time. That included his love for Peggy and respecting that she lived her life fully.

It seems so wrong that he would go back in time to be with her and erase her family (children, possible grandchildren) in the process.

I'm so disappointed. I feel they've done his character so wrong and the only good movie of him was CA:WS. :(

Now that paired with the characterizations and situations of Tony, Thor, and Nat especially make me sad and unhappy.

ALSO, did the Russos just decide to say "Eh, screw it." With Sharon Carter? (Not a fan of her in the movies, but she also deserved way batter.)

valhallaorange: Agreed. A dance and then back to the future would've been acceptable and given more emotion to the pain and letting go Steve is known to experience. Also, Peggy deserves her own storyline and fully lived life without it being erased and her being reduced to only Cap's love interest.

captainamericasgf: This is literally my worst nightmare holy shit

RyuKenBlanka: Iron Man dying and Cap going back to the 1940's to be with Peggy is just lazy writing and closure for the characters and is the reality of Hollywood and not being able to have actors play roles forever. Both in reality should retire and take more advisory roles.

Suedeash: Also Cap's whole nightmare thing in Age of Ultron was dealing with the fact that he can't go back to Peggy, and yet here he just goes back? And knowing all of the horrible shit that happens in the future like 9/11, the Hydra infestation of SHIELD and all that he just sits back and does nothing? This sounds like a character assassination tbh, it would make far more sense for Tony to live with his family and Cap to have the heroic death as a way to bring his whole character arc to a fitting end.

Jedi_Mom: I think people began to think that it was impossible for marvel and Russos to let us down... we learned that they were capable of mistakes... the hard way.

DXGabriel: So.... when thor was becoming cool they just fuck his character? reaaly?

dracogladio1741: This is so convoluted. The ending is weird to say the least. Jeez.

inkwell84: Critics liked it. Audiences said what the eff.

itellteacherstories: This is what I get for overhyping myself: Disappointment.

lovestarkiller: Tony is gone like that?.... And Cap ending is just so...

FreeTanner17: One of the biggest disappointments is they kill off Natasha, don’t even give her a funeral and basically never mention her name again

Hawkguyism: Honestly, I'm severely disappointed

Cap's ending is a disservice to the character and his arc, Thor's ending makes no sense, he literally abandons all his people, Tony's ending is way too cruel, they could just say he went away and stuff like that, would be much better considering all the character's been through, Hulk and Nat are meeeehhhh, and seriously, how many fucking times is Hawkeye gonna retire? And like,we know he's gonna come back in the Disney+ show to train Kate and stuff

Overall, the plot seems too simple and the endings are pretty bad. Of course, in terms of action and entertainment, this movie will be a blast, but when it comes to story and narrative, it's a letdown. Especially considering we waited 11 years for this.

dumbwatercba: I feel like the writers went online and picked the worse theories out there and made a film out of it. Non of this seems right. The reviews were so positive. This seems like a steaming pile of shit. Thanus seems like the only thing missing from this.

msg53: I was hoping Endgame would be a good stopping point anyway. I would have preferred a satisfying ending, but a shitshow that turns me off of the entire genre works too, I guess.

IrishGrouch24: Man I am pissed the F off right now.

raven_rising:...Thanks Marvel, I kind of hate it.

scruk: I have no idea how they managed to fuck up this badly. No idea. It's like a bad fanfiction written by someone who's only watched Infinity War

CactusJackkkk: I feel like I just wasted 11 years of my life watching these movies with no payoff in the end.

eutears:This absolutely makes no sense. I cannot believe how the Russos thought this might be a good finale. Most of the plot crumbles if you put even a little bit of thought into it.

InlineSurfer: Keving Faige and MCU thinks, that fans will take whatever they give us, but i cant, this so lazy and stupid script.

Griever11422: Notmycap. Notmytony

#endgame spoilers #fuck endgame #fuck the russo brothers #anti mcu

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they-handed-me-the-moon · 5 years

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Okay I’m gonna do the thing and just get my complaints with the show out, if you’re not interested in reading criticisms (half of which are just being attached to the way things were in the book) please ignore this, I’m going to say all sorts of nice things in a minute. Also please don’t rb this one. If we’ve talked before feel free to comment or disagree, if we haven’t please don’t just this once—I’m usually happy to have people jump off things, but I just got back and I’m not in the mood to start any Discussions just now. Cool thanks!

1. I’m not saying that the show going in for more angst and making some of the central characters more insecure and making Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship more tenuous and uncertain was *objectively* the wrong choice. I mean I could argue that it was but ultimately it’s probably more just different than right or wrong. But it did make me realize how much I had appreciated having a fandom that was built around material that for all its angst potential (which I also enjoyed) was so fundamentally cozy.

2. Yes I am of course going to take issue with Anathema and Newt. For the record I found Newt notably more likable in the show than the book, even if watching Anathema have sex with a guy she had shown no interest in just because a book told her to was even more uncomfortable than reading it. And there was more of a sense of mutuality in the show—partly because of Adria Arjona playing Anathema as genuinely liking and being charmed by Newt at times, and partly because Newt actually does offer her emotional support and contributes to decision-making at several points instead of only with the “do you want to be a descendent for the rest of your life” line at the end. And that’s nice—mutuality in a relationship is important! The lack of it is one of my biggest issues with their relationship in the book! What really gets to me here is that they got to that mutuality not through strengthening Newt’s character but by weakening Anathema’s—by making her more uncertain and insecure so that Newt could sweep in to support her. And look—obviously there’s nothing wrong with female characters having insecurities and needing support, like everyone does. But we’ve got an awful shortage of weird-looking female characters who swagger around with breadknives and bucketloads of well-earned confidence and decide to try and stop the apocalypse without being told because it’s worth a shot, and the fact that they seem to have undercut her confidence and independence specifically so that she would have to lean on the sub-par dude she’s saddled with as a love-interest reeeally rubs me the wrong way. (Shoutout to my brother for pinpointing this before I was able figure out exactly what was bothering me).

3. Okay and while I’m on the topic of Anathema, the way they played up the whole ‘professional descendent’ thing? Hmmmm, not a fan. I think I kinda get why they did it, (it makes her fit more neatly into the ‘people breaking out of their prescribed roles’ theme), but they make it into a sort of ‘chosen one’ storyline where she was ‘fated’ to help stop the end of the world, which is fine, I guess? But to me one of the central appeals of the book is a motley crew motivated not by duty or predestination but instead by love of the earth and plain old selfish, stubborn attachment to the lives they had built there going ‘okay realistically there is no way we, of all people, can keep the world from ending, but I guess we’re just gonna try anyway!!!’ Making Anathema some sort of prophesied savior sort of removed her from that narrative, and reduced the strength of that narrative thread overall.

4. Oh and I think I’m in the minority here but I also did not enjoy the kids getting stabby with the horsepeople. There were some great elements to the scene for sure, but that just didn’t feel good to me. The children felt a little more ... protected from enacting that kind of violence in the book, and while there could be legitimate reason for changing it, on a thematic level it also took attention away from the whole ‘power of human belief’ thing, so it felt unnecessary and weaker as well as harsher.

5. I’m not ... actually particularly bothered by any of the changes to Aziraphale? I mean don’t get me wrong I do miss him being a much more overt bastard who is comfortable in his own skin, who collects blasphemous Bibles and is rude to customers and still walks around with his sanctimonious Holier Than Thou convictions because he is THE WORST. But tv Aziraphale is still a proper bastard, even if you’ve got to pay attention a bit more to see it, and I do rather like the way his softness is in itself framed as a rebellion against Heaven. So yeah, I think the changes they made worked and were compelling, and I don’t really have comprehensive complaints about his character. HOWEVER I did not like him indirectly killing the executioner. Having a scene where he indirectly but intentionally causes a death was a good idea in concept, but to my mind it was the wrong circumstances, wrong target, and wrong tone for the scene. Still, it doesn’t bother me that much because it just felt SO off that it feels kinda laughable and my mind just cheerily decided that the filmmakers were misinformed and that did not actually happen.

6. Crowley’s changes I’m having a bit of a harder time reconciling myself to, although I’m having a bit of a hard time pinpointing why? Some of the changes are of the ‘I don’t prefer the change but that’s more personal preference and attachment to my initial vision of the character than critique’ variety, like the ways in which his fear manifests less as anxiety and more as anger in the show. But if I had one central complaint (and this might sound weird at first) I think it would be the way that his world is reduced to Aziraphale. And okay, let me explain—I’m not complaining that their relationship was more emphasized in the show, which I actually loved, and also this is probably a bit hypocritical coming from me when 80% of my posts are about their relationship. The thing is, I find romances more interesting and compelling and moving when both parties have defined personalities and interests and attachments and character arcs outside of one another. And Aziraphale did have that—arguably he has a more defined and complete arc than in the book, in fact. And Crowley definitely has a defined personality. But besides the Bently, what does he love? What are his interests? How does he feel about humanity and the earth? Why does he prefer the earth to hell beyond ‘hell sucks’? How does he feel about his fellow demons? Why does he want to save the earth? Does he care about saving the earth, or is it really only about saving and being with Aziraphale? Idk, I’m exaggerating a bit here, and certain answers to these questions can definitely be inferred. But I miss the Crowley who loves humanity in all its mess, who finds in it an alternative to the restrictive roles demanded by heaven and hell alike, and who has his own arc of going from knowing that he is harming humanity but not doing anything about it, to facing Satan with a tire iron because Aziraphale convinces him to face up to the harm he has caused and do something about it, even if the odds are impossible.

7. I cannot BELIEVE they took out Tim.

8. And I’m running out of steam here so I’m not fully going into it, but it did feel like the show lost a bit of its sense of the earth in all its disastrous glory. I mean, there are plenty of stories that compare Heaven and Hell, but part of what set Good Omens apart for me was the particular way it triangulates Heaven vs Hell vs earth. I haven’t read enough similar fiction to know if it does this in an especially complex or unique way, but what comes of it is this gloriously defiant optimism. The show goes further into Heaven vs Hell (which I enjoyed) but it felt to me as if the earth was a little (although certainly not entirely) lost in the mix.

9. Also definitely not a fan on how hard Crowley pushes for child murder as long as he’s not the one doing it, but so far as I’ve seen the fandom has chosen to collectively forget those lines in favor of ‘you can’t kill kids,’ ‘I’m not personally up for killing kids,’ and THE LULLABY, so I’m the end those lines aren’t anything like the disaster they could have been. Good going, folks.

10. There are of course big-picture things like racism and sexism and homophobia that are. there in varying degrees. Not necessarily more than average, though that’s an even more depressing sentence. But for some of those things I’m not the best person to dissect them, and for the rest I’m tired and I don’t wanna.

11. In conclusion I have a pithy line that encapsulates what I’m having a hard time adjusting to in the show, but I’m pretty sure the first clause would annoy one half of the fandom, and the second clause would annoy the other half, so I’m gonna to cut my losses and shut up now.

#don't rb #if people start reblogging this i will just delete it #also this is very long i don't actually expect people to read this #i'm just exorcising my annoyances all at once #because talking about them day-to-day makes me anxious

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hydrospanners · 6 years

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tagged by @meonlyred. time to expose myself as a fake gamer girl. i am too tired to think of other people to tag but if you are reading this and you play video games i would like to know what your answers to these questions are. i am tagging @you.

favorite game from the last 5 years? pillars of eternity 2 & the sims 4. someone please resuscitate the singleplayer story-focused rpg where choices change the course of events and i don’t spend 90% of my game on fetch quests. not everything has to be “open world”. i am so tired.

most nostalgic game? goldeneye. i live for slappers only bighead mode.

game that deserves a sequel? mass effect andromeda. i enjoyed the game and it was a great concept that suffered for behind the scenes bungling and it really deserves a redemption arc in the form of a sequel with adequate time and resources and good direction.

game that deserves a remaster? kotor. but maybe i’m just saying that because that’s the game that hooked me on games (with a little help from @lwsupremacy) and every game i have played since has been a futile attempt to recapture the magic of being trapped on taris for 3 days because i couldn’t figure out that i needed to go to that sith party and steal a uniform and also finding out that i was the villain all along.

favorite game series? kotor & dragon age.

favorite genre? story-focused rpgs or anything with really detailed character customization.

least favorite genre? everything else. i don’t actually like video games i just like combining interactive fiction and dress up.

favorite song from a game? idk man. i really liked mass effect 3′s soundtrack i guess???

favorite character from a game? the player character. i’m a self-centered ho who is not too proud to admit to this.

favorite ship from a game? i’ll always be a slut for shakarian. also i am deep in doc x rea hell. i don’t necessarily ship him with every jedi knight in swtor (he is not for everyone) but i sure as shit do with mine. i’ll

favorite voice actor from a game? they are all magic. i have an especial weaknes for brandon keener as garrus vakarian and claudia black as morrigan, but they are all goddamn magic. also all the voicework in pillars of eternity 2 is especially magic and i’m not just saying that because i’m so weak for the cast of critical role.

favorite cutscene? all of the cutscenes in the citadel dlc for mass effect 3???

favorite boss? does it have to be a final boss? is this question about mechanics or story??? who cares this is my blog i do what i want. the answer is the broodmother from dragon age: origins. that is the creepiest shit that still elicits a visceral reaction from me even now. even just thinking about it.

first console? the first console i ever owned personally was an xbox gifted to me for christmas at age 16. i had asked for an n64 because i was feeling nostalgic and wanted to play goldeneye and chrono trigger and whatever the fuck else i used to play in the brief moments when my brother would allow me to touch his console, but my mom could not find an n64 since they were a decade old at that point so she bought me an xbox and a couple star wars and james bond games instead. i spent my entire christmas break consumed by kotor and that is how i started really playing video games at all. thanks mom!

current console or consoles? fuck consoles. sorry horizon: zero dawn but i am pc only.

console you want? i want my brother to give my n64 back so i can play goldeneye. YOU HAD YOUR OWN N64 SCOTT. WHY DID YOU TAKE MINE???? KEEP TRACK OF YOUR SHIT AND STOP TAKING MINE. IT’S BEEN 8 YEARS AND I’M STILL SALTY YOU LIL BITCH.

place from a game that you’d like to visit? all the places in video games are like mad violent and i am painfully aware that in video game world i would be a useless, expendable npc. much as i’d like to see nar shaddaa or the citadel or tevinter i would like to remain alive, out of prison, and out of slavery more.

place from a game that you’d like to live in? i just remembered stardew valley. i could live there i guess. i wouldn’t say i’d like to but if i have to pick a place from a game.... stardew valley.

ridiculous crossover that would never happen but would be super fun? i want to play a mass effect prequel that is garrus as a citadel cop teaming up with nancy drew in a very weird point and click adventure. what nancy drew is doing there is never explained. why c-sec is working with a 16 year old human girl is also not explained. nothing is explained there is no time for explanations there is a mystery to solve.

book that would make a good game? brandon sanderson’s mistborn series. honestly anything he writes has a fun system of magic with enough definition to translate in an interesting and playable way to a video game mechanic, but i think mistborn would be the most fun. although the color shit from warbreaker would be very visually striking i think.

show/movie that would make a good game? the good place. it could be the weirdest and most fun game. some kind of weird patchwork of minigames that somehow forms a cohesive narrative.

games you want to play? cyberpunk 2077 looks pretty good. i usually only get excited about bioware games or games my friends have already played and told me i would like. i am not that hyped for anthem because i hate multiplayer outside of my circle of three friends who i don’t mind holding back with how awful i am at video gaming. i’m still gonna buy it and play it and i am very open to being pleasantly surprised but i can’t bring myself to be hyped.

have you gotten 100% completion in a game? any game that can be completed that i have actually finished playing, i have completed 100%. no fetch quest too small or too annoying bitch.

have you cried over a game? i cried a whole lot on my third day trapped in the upper levels of taris, unable to figure out how to get down the elevator to the lower city. also other times because of emotional beats in the storyline or whatever. i am a human person with skin and feelings.

what power-up or ability would you want in real life? i really enjoy the direct correlation between effort and achievement and would like to adopt that in my real life. in the sims, when my sim spends 8 hours writing they have a completed novel at the end of it. they put it in the mailbox and then they get royalties for a while. that sounds nice!!!! a specific ability though... i ought to say healing or something actually useful that could help people but if i’m being perfectly honest i wanna force leap. i wanna zoom.

#memery for ts

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shadowsong26fic · 6 years

Text

The Handler AU

As requested by @tigerkat24.

(I do also have fulltext for one scene in here, which will be posted and linked here in the near future, probably tomorrow, after I clean it up some.)

Right. So. A couple of notes before I get started:

1) This AU prominently features Lavinia, and also super self-indulgent. Gonna say that straight-out. This is me and my OC and a bunch of tropes I adore. It is not the most self-indulgent piece I’ve ever put together, but it’s probably up there. I say this because, while I am pretty much past the point as a fan/content creator/whatever where I’m ashamed of my self-indulgent BS, I understand that it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, especially when it’s as obvious as this piece is. And I like people to know at least in general terms what they’re getting into when they open a piece of mine. So, you know, bear that in mind as you move forward.

2) Because of the way I work/develop AUs/OCs/etc., there are certain personality traits/satellite characters/plot points that are common to all/most of Lavinia’s storylines (...yeah, it’s a Thing I do, with OCs yeah but also with OC-free AUs and AUs of AUs and ‘hey what if I changed this plot point here, or put OC B in this situation instead of that one, or stuck Canon D in...look, y’all have seen my Distaff variants, you know the kind of thing I’m talking about; I don’t always stop at a single layer of canon-divergence, but then there has to be a thread connecting everything, or it becomes a totally different story/character, right? ...I’m not sure I’m explaining this very well. ...anyway, back on topic). As a result, despite being an AU of a completely different AU, this outline is therefore somewhat spoilery for a future Precipice arc. I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ve hinted at where I’m going with her in the fic proper and/or bonus content, or at least I’ve tried to, (plus, I know I’ve mentioned some things here on tumblr about particular narrative/character tropes I like), so it’s probably not too surprising? Or, at least, I hope it’s not. If it is, I need to get better at foreshadowing… Anyway, it is still technically a spoiler. To the point where I considered sitting on this (and a couple related AUs) at least until a particular event from Arc Seven that makes said future storyline about as clear as it can be until it actually happens. But…I decided ehhhhhh, why not (plus this was requested). But, you know, if that is something you want to avoid, might be best not to read this outline until after Arc…nine, I think? Just as a head’s up.

3) This is essentially a Kallus-centric Rebels fic (though, as mentioned above, also prominently featuring one of my OCs). And, other than that one bit in the Valdemar AU I wrote a month or so ago, this is the first time I’ve actually written Rebels content. (…granted, I’ve plotted more things--the closely-related Pellaeon AU features Rebels stuff pretty heavily, as does the middle arc of the Valdemar AU, which started as ‘Anakin would do really well as a Herald actually’ and has now turned into a massive three-part kudzu plot of a niche crossover and I should really redo that outline properly at some point, plus a few other things…) Anyway, the point is, I’m not necessarily super familiar with the conventions/etc. of this part of the fandom, and I apologize for any off-voice bits.

Okay! Now that I have warned for spoilers, inexperience, and self-indulgent BS…welcome to the Handler AU.

Oh, one more thing I want to mention—because this is, as stated above, super self-indulgent, Kanan is still alive because I said so. He got pretty crisped in that explosion and therefore missed the final battle, but didn’t actually die.

(Imperial records may have listed him as dead for a while, because No One Could Have Survived That, but he did survive.)

(How? IDK, maybe Ezra actually was able to do something from the between-place in this version.)

(Point is, we still have Kanan.)

(Ezra and Thrawn are still on a road trip with a bunch of space whales, though.)

ANYWAY. On to the good stuff.

It all kicks off like two months after Yavin.

Some timeline notes:

Because timelining anything in Star Wars is A Project, I am making some executive decisions here.

We’re approximately a year after the Rebels series finale.

(Meaning Jacen is like 3-4 months old, depending on exactly how pregnant Hera was at the time.)

This is also about how long Zeb and Kallus have been explicitly dating.

(There was SO MUCH PINING going on for a while there.)

(But it took that long for either of them to actually do anything about it.)

(Kallus figured out pretty early on that he was interested, but didn’t really think he deserved this/had earned it yet/that Zeb could possibly be interested in him, and therefore decided to bury his feelings Like A Goddamn Professional Okay.)

(Zeb took a while longer to clue in, and then couldn’t figure out if this was just him or what--see above re: burying things; worked a little bit too well--plus he has his own issues to work through.)

(And then there were some frantic Confessions and so-glad-we’re-alive sex and…)

(Yeah, this is a thing now.)

(Exactly zero people who have spent any time with these two dorks at all are surprised.)

(As is so often the case, the last people to clue in that this was A Mutual Thing are the two idiots involved.)

(There may or may not have been a pool or three going.)

(Hera won at least one of them.)

So. Kallus has made himself useful wherever he can since openly defecting, really, but generally works analyzing intelligence reports and training field agents for potential undercover missions. Even if his specific information is getting more and more out of date (few, if any, of the codes, etc. that he knows are still valid at this point), some things aren’t going to change that quickly, and his background is useful here.

Anyway. He gets called in--

“We’ve been approached by a would-be double agent deep in Imperial territory; received three transmissions in the past few weeks. So far, everything we’ve been sent checks out/has been useful, but.”

“But you’re wondering if this agent is an ISB plant.”

“Exactly. She calls herself Vector.”

“She?”

“Yeah. The scrambler she’s using is doing its job, which means we can’t actually use a voice print to ID her, but vocal pattern analysis got us that much. And that she’s likely Coruscanti, Human, and under thirty. That’s about all we know.”

He goes over the data and the recordings from the first three contacts and nothing jumps out as a red flag/any of the tricks he’s familiar with.

On the first call, there’s some dancing around; as if Vector’s trying to make sure of who she’s talking to. What he’d expect from either a plant or a genuine defector, really. Not particularly helpful.

The other two are fairly brief/straightforward, and start the same way each time--This is Vector. I have a data file for you. Do as you like with it. Also not particularly enlightening, given the question he’s been asked to answer.

The data itself, though, is--interesting. Not easy to access, for the most part, and not necessarily all from the same source. Parts of it are the kind of thing ISB would use as bait, but just as much of it is not. Some of it provides useful context for intel the Alliance has received from other sources (some covert, some not), which is not the kind of thing an ISB plant would send.

So, he goes back to his superiors and tentatively reports Vector as probably genuine. He wants to be on hand for her next transmission, though, to be sure.

(He wonders, idly, who they had evaluate his initial transmissions like this, or if using an established codename and protocol was enough…)

(He’s Concerned it might be the second.)

(There are some worrying gaps in Rebel Intelligence’s security that he can only do so much to patch.)

Of course, there’s a slight problem with that. Vector’s transmissions haven’t exactly been regular--the second one came four days after the first, and then it was nearly two weeks to the third.

And when they do come, they’re very brief, so if Kallus is, say, busy with a training exercise on the opposite side of the base…

(Or otherwise occupied in a supply closet.)

(He does have, y’know, a life when off-duty.)

(...which is something that still sends him into weird brainspirals of “how did this happen” and “i don’t deserve this” and “when is it going to blow up in my face” on occasion, but that is a separate problem. One that he buries. Like A Goddamn Professional.)

(no that’s not a habit of his why do you ask.)

IN ANY CASE, this means that it ends up being her sixth message, close to three weeks after Kallus is initially brought in, before he’s able to listen in live.

(Transmissions four and five, after he reviews them, don’t really change his analysis, but still.)

Transmission six comes in while Kallus happens to be in the tiny corner of the current base that Intelligence has claimed.

It starts like the others did--This is Vector. I have a data file for you. Do as you like with it.

Once the file transfer initiates, he responds.

“Vector, this is Fulcrum.”

(Okay, technically, he probably should be using a different handle now, since it’s really supposed to be for field agents only and he isn’t one anymore. And there are similar shared code names for Intelligence agents primarily on base duty, or he assumes there are, but even after over a year of not using it, it’s still the first one that comes to mind. Reflexive, almost. And now it’s going to stick.)

There’s a beat of silence from the other end, and Kallus is briefly concerned that he misjudged the situation, that she’d going to panic and cut the transmission.

But, “I can’t leave the link open long,” she says.

(Part of him thinks she sounds...almost relieved? Like she’s been waiting to be challenged like this, and the longer things went on without a test, the more nervous she got.)

(He can understand that worry. That sense of just waiting for the other shoe to drop.)

(And, yes, other Rebel Intelligence agents probably could have tested her like this, and if he hadn’t been around as a resource they almost certainly would have, but given that he knows exactly what to look for, the Powers That Be had decided to leave it in his hands.)

“Of course,” he says, and asks her a few questions, rapid-fire.

(He’s less interested in the specific details of her answers--and he’s not really asking her questions about her identity--then how she approaches answering him. Not necessarily something he can explain, which is part of why he didn’t coach any of the other officers and get this taken care of on transmission four or five, but just trying to get a sense of her.)

(One thing he does is privately revise the estimate of her age--he thinks she’s younger than the previous guess, probably twenty or so. Sabine’s age, maybe, at the oldest. Which makes her even less likely to be a plant in his opinion; ISB wouldn’t put this much effort into setting up an agent that inexperienced, not on a mission this sensitive, even if she was inconceivably talented and precocious. As an in-person infiltrator, yes, absolutely; but for this many layers of intrigue...no, they’d want someone Experienced.)

She ends the transmission somewhat abruptly, after about five minutes, but he was more or less expecting that and anyway he has what he needs.

“Well?”

“She’s genuine,” he says. “I’m as sure as I can be of that.”

“Good to hear.” A pause. “...you’ve run undercover agents before, correct?”

Kallus shuts down the knee-jerk paranoid response as fast and hard as he can.

(There are almost certainly people in the Alliance who still don’t trust me but none of them are in this room. I know that. Calm down.)

“Yes, once or twice,” he says, cautiously. “For short-term assignments.”

“Congratulations. You just volunteered to be Vector’s handler.”

(Hence the name of the AU. AKA the one where Kallus adopts a baby spy who JUST HAPPENS to be Palpatine’s daughter.)

(...yeah, he didn’t really see that one coming.)

(...at some point, I should probably go through and outline Lavinia’s politics and her reasons for defecting in detail, but in the interests of focusing on Kallus’s end of things, which is much more interesting, a (hopefully) brief digression on the subject:)

(Lavinia was created and trained to be a spy/manipulator, to perform the kind of tasks and access the kind of information that Palpatine could as the avuncular Chancellor but cannot as Emperor, now that he’s thrown that mask away.)

(...apart from very specific, carefully staged moments, like with Ezra.)

(So, part of manipulating people means understanding them, which means Lavinia does a lot of research to put her targets into context, and in so doing comes across a wide variety of cultures/forms of government, at least in an academic context.)

(And that means that, once she starts thinking beyond “how can I survive until tomorrow” and starts thinking about broader impact/more long-range plans, it doesn’t take her very long to realize that her father’s government is...well, let’s call it deeply flawed.)

(What she does when she comes to that conclusion varies, depending on other circumstances--but she doesn’t necessarily defect right away. Mostly for practical reasons; in Masks!Verse, which this AU is a variant of, she has no Rebel contacts that she’s absolutely sure of.)

(Meaning, in this case, both “absolutely sure is an actual Rebel and not just sympathetic to their aims/politics” and “absolutely sure would be willing to work with me despite my parentage.”)

(And if she approaches anyone she isn’t sure of, it’ll get her or her contact or both of them killed. Defecting from a distance, while she can better protect her identity, has a much bigger risk of interception, which, again, would get her and/or her contacts and possibly a lot of other people killed. Or worse.)

(Basically, she doesn’t think defection is a viable option for her--there are some other reasons for this, but those play a distant second to these concerns.)

(But then Alderaan happens.)

(And these concerns carry a lot less weight.)

(It takes her a couple months to figure out how to make contact with Rebel Intelligence, let alone how to do it safely, but she starts working on it at that point.)

(...I think that’s the salient points here. Like I said, I have a fair bit more about Lavinia’s politics/etc. and the ways/extent to which she’s willing to defy her father in various AUs, but that’s enough for this one, I think.)

So, Kallus can’t really argue with the assignment (even if part of him kind of wants to? Not because he thinks he can’t do it, but because he’s concerned that being another deep-cover informant’s handler is going to dig up a lot of stuff he’d really, really rather keep buried.)

(Look, he feels like he’s finally found his equilibrium. He’s even, somehow, approaching happy with his life for the first time in what feels like forever which, guilt-induced brainspirals aside, he doesn’t want to give up.)

(Besides, handling Vector wouldn’t be his only responsibility, and if he does start losing that equilibrium, he’s not sure how much his other work will be affected.)

(On the other hand...)

(On the other hand, there are very few people who have done what he did and survived long enough to make it back to Rebel lines.)

(Oh, there are other deep-cover informants, sure; but the majority of them are plants inserted by Rebel Intelligence.)

(And while, even leaving aside the technicalities involved with Senator Mothma and others among the leadership who had previously served in the Imperial Senate, there are plenty of defectors--up to and including General Madine and some other persons of very high rank--for the most part, once they make that decision, defectors grab what they can and run.)

(The ones that don’t usually don’t survive as long as he did.)

(Or, alternatively, they don’t identify themselves to the Alliance or even necessarily work directly with them; they perform internal sabotage rather than espionage.)

(Those embedded defectors tend to last longer, but not by much.)

(Which means that he’s probably the only person--certainly the only available person--who has been where Vector is. Who better to help her?)

(As for his own issues...well, he is a Professional, dammit. He can damn well compartmentalize. He’s very good at that.)

(...yeah, this is kind of a running theme for him. Sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes it’s...very much not.)

(It remains to be seen how much it’ll help or hurt when dealing with Vector.)

So, he accepts the assignment, and goes back to his quarters to tell Zeb and collect a few things--given the irregularity of Vector’s transmissions, until he can talk to her again and set up a better protocol, he’s going to basically have to camp out in Intelligence.

(Which he’s not looking forward to, but it is what it is.)

Zeb is already there when he gets back--their current shifts don’t entirely line up, which is fine; they have at least a few hours overlap most days which is better than some pairs can say.

After several minutes saying hello...

“Did I miss anything interesting?” Kallus asks.

“That Skywalker kid came by a bit ago,” Zeb tells him. “Looking for Kanan.”

Kallus blinks, halfway through fixing caf for the two of them. “...aren’t he and Hera off investigating a potential supply line?”

(Which is, of course, far below Hera’s current paygrade, but she volunteers for that kind of mission on occasion. An excuse to spend private time with her family, while still technically being useful and not taking actual time off.)

“Yep,” Zeb says. “Apparently, this is the third or fourth time something like that has happened. They keep missing each other.”

"Well, I’m sure they’ll link up sooner or later,” he says. “Especially if Skywalker’s actively looking for Kanan.”

(He hasn’t actually met Luke yet at this point, but he’s heard the rumors. He has no real doubt of this fact.)

“Yeah, probably,” Zeb says. “I think Kanan’s been trying to track him down, too. He’ll be sorry he missed him.”

(...yeah, we’re going with Anakin-and-Grievous levels of contrived coincidence to keep those two from actually meeting for a while.)

(Partly because it’s easier than figuring out all the timeline/plot implications that might have (and I’m lazy, and that is the focus of another story), but mostly because I think it’s funny.)

Kallus nods. “...did he and Hera take Jacen with them, or...?”

(He hadn’t seen any evidence the baby had been left with them, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.)

But Zeb shakes his head. “Nah, Sabine has him this time. Why? Something going on?”

“I have an assignment,” Kallus tells him.

“Huh. Extraction?”

(Logical assumption--the bulk of the fieldwork he does now, all-hands-on-deck situations like Lothal aside, is extractions. Occasionally helping sell an insertion, but generally the reverse.)

“No, not this time,” he says. “The agent who reached out, the one I told you about--I’ve been assigned as her handler.”

(He has long since gotten permission to discuss at least surface generalities of his work with Zeb, and they both know where the line is.)

Zeb’s ears flick a little, and Kallus can practically see him weighing the same pros and cons that he himself did earlier--and probably several others he hadn’t thought of.

“So, I guess that means you’re camping out in intelligence for a while?”

“Unfortunately,” he says. “Of course, there is a difference between being on-call and being on duty. And my schedule technically won’t change.”

Zeb perks up at that and grins before kissing him. “Well, I’m sure I an find an excuse to be in the area. Sometimes. Just in case. You know.”

“Mm.”

Fortunately, call number seven comes less than a week later.

This is Vector. I have a data file for you. Do as you like with it.

“Vector, this is Fulcrum.”

A brief pause. “Yes.”

“I’ve been assigned as your handler.”

(He figures the best way to deal with someone who’s probably twitchy and paranoid and otherwise on high alert is to be as scrupulously honest as he can. That doesn’t mean telling her everything, of course, but it does mean being straightforward, difficult as it is, and not outright lying.)

(If he can. So far, he can.)

Another pause. “I understand.”

(She’s hard to read on this one, whether or not she finds it suspicious. She might even be relieved again, that she’ll have a set contact point, rather than a whoever’s-available sort of situation.)

“There are some protocols I’d like to establish, for further contacts.”

“I can’t call at a set time,” she says immediately. “Or at set intervals.”

"I understand,” he said. “But I’m going to give you a more specific frequency to call.”

“Yes,” she says, and that definitely has a faint note of relief.

“Can you, if nothing else, send an all-clear transmission every two weeks?” he asks. “It doesn’t need to be at a set time, but so we can gauge--” whether or not you’re alive and uncompromised “--how concerned we need to be after a long silence.”

She pauses. “...I think so. Yes. I can do that.”

(Definitely young, he thinks, maybe even younger than Ezra--would be.)

“That’s all for now,” he says. There are others he wants to establish, of course, but those are the most important and her file transfer is nearly complete.

“I’ll be in touch,” she says; hesitates a second; “Vector out.”

(...well, she’s signing off officially now, rather than just abruptly terminating the connection. Progress. I think.)

He goes back to his quarters, and life settles into a new routine.

He keeps up his old duties--analyzing reports, training potential undercover agents, etc.--and also keeps track of Vector and her reports.

That last one proves...well, his early optimism wasn’t entirely misplaced?

Vector is very, very good at what she does. Her files are varied in their content, and sometimes not as useful as she might’ve hoped, due to timing or other resource concerns, but the quality of the work she does never comes into question.

But part of being a double agent’s handler is assessing how they’re holding up under the incredible stress of the position. And she is frustratingly vague when it comes to anything approaching anything personal about herself.

In addition, there are two additional protocols he wants to set up early on--first is a way for him to reach her.

“Just because I have access doesn’t mean I have influence,” she says. “I can’t seed disinformation for you. Not without getting caught.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

(Though, of course, he had considered the possibility--as well-positioned as Vector seems to be, how could he not?--but while he doesn’t completely rule out the idea, he files it away under “only as a last resort.” Better to leave her in place as long as possible.)

“But if there’s something specific we want you to keep an eye out for--or if we need to warn you about something...”

“Right,” she says. “That’s fine, then.”

The second, though...the second is where they run into real problems.

“I also want to establish an emergency signal. If you need extraction, or if you end up captured by Rebel agents.”

(He still wonders, sometimes, if staying behind when Ezra came to extract him was the right decision. It had seemed so at the time, but...)

(He’ll probably never know. And fretting about it doesn’t do any good.)

(knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to stop.)

“No,” she says.

“Vector--”

And she hangs up on him.

Exactly why she’s so reticent to establish something like that, he isn’t sure--he has some theories, but...

It’s frustrating, to be sure. Makes it harder for him to do his job.

(And it makes him worried about her--if she’s working without any kind of exit strategy, that likely means she doesn’t think such a thing will be possible. Which, on the one hand, shows her dedication to the cause, but on the other hand...on the other hand, if she thinks getting caught is inevitable, she might get sloppy with her own security and that might well turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

(The other alternative, that she doesn’t trust him, or the Alliance, with her safety if things do go wrong, is...well, probably more distressing, in all honesty.)

(Though not, perhaps, altogether surprising.)

He decides to seek Kanan’s advice on the problem.

(Kanan, after all, knows best what to do with unruly teenagers.)

(...well, so does Hera, but Hera’s advice would probably be less applicable/harder to apply to his specific situation. Also, she has better things to do than help him do his job.)

(Which is the other frustrating thing, that he can’t handle this by himself.)

Kanan’s advice is pretty straightforward--be patient, and don’t push her too hard. You can’t help her if she won’t let you.

(This is part of why I wanted him still around, incidentally.)

(Because there is something utterly hilarious about Kallus going to Kanan for parenting advice.)

(And that’s exactly what he’s doing.)

(Even if he hasn’t quite figured that out yet.)

So, taking this in mind, he backs off. A little bit. Decides to start from square one, and build a rapport, and go from there to get some of the other basics that he wants established.

Standard interrogation technique, technically. Not one favored by ISB, obviously, or really encouraged, but even they knew it had its uses.

Vector is still cagey about personal details, but she does start to soften a little as several weeks go by.

He brings up the idea of an emergency code phrase again, after about two months of this kind of sporadic contact.

This time, she says she’ll think about it.

Things hold in this pattern for about a year, and then Vector makes a call, as usual.

Or, it starts like a normal call, anyway.

“You probably won’t hear from me for a while,” she says, as the file transfer is wrapping up and they’re about to sign off.

“Are you in trouble?”

“No,” she says. “Nothing like that. And nothing related to the work we’ve been doing. But things are going to be...difficult. I’m not even sure I’ll be able to get an all-clear message out for a while.”

He doesn’t like this at all. “How long?”

“A month,” she says. “Probably. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. I’ll contact you as soon as I can safely.”

It is one of the longer months of his life.

But, as promised, the dedicated comm he has for her lights up eventually.

This is Vector. I have a data file for you.

“Vector, this is Fulcrum,” he says. “Good to hear from you again. Everything all right?”

“Yes,” she says. And she seems fine, and he breathes a quiet sigh of relief.

When he tells Zeb about it later, though, is where it gets...interesting.

“Glad to hear your kid’s okay,” he says.

“My--she’s not my child, Zeb,” Kallus says.

“Really.”

“....”

“Look, you talk about her the same way Kanan talks about Sabine, when she’s off blowing things up on Mandalore.”

“I...wait, really?”

“Yep,” Zeb says, and grins at him. “I mean, it’s not a problem. S’kind of what we do in this family, isn’t it? Take in strays. ‘Bout time you got in on it, really.”

Kallus just stares at him. “I...what.”

Zeb waves a hand in front of his face. “Alex. Babe. You all right in there?”

He shakes himself. “Yes, of course. Sorry."

“Ehh, don’t worry about it. I mean, it’d probably have been nice for the two of us to talk about kids in general before we started adopting our own strays, but--”

Really, sometimes Kallus thinks that Zeb likes the expression he makes when utterly poleaxed like that.

(He does. He thinks it’s adorable.)

(Also, Zeb figures this is a conversation they maybe should have, because they’re clearly both in this for the long haul and he saw this opening and...look, no one ever said Zeb was good at broaching delicate topics gently.)

“...do you?” Kallus asks, when he recovers. “Want children, someday?”

“I mean...yeah,” Zeb says. “If you do. I mean.”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” he confesses.

(Because long-range planning is hard; because they’re at war, because he’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop, because he doesn’t deserve any of this and planning for a future he doesn’t deserve is just--a little much for him sometimes.)

“But...yes,” Kallus says. “I think so, yes. I would like to raise children with you. Someday.”

Zeb’s response to that is positive and enthusiastic and leads to things they will definitely not be discussing with their hypothetical children ever.

It’s a month or two after that that Kallus finds out who Vector is.

(…well, for a given value of ‘finds out,’ anyway.)

He and Zeb are babysitting--Sabine is back on Mandalore; Hera is on duty; Kanan was supposed to be finally meeting Luke but there was an issue at the spaceport and he’s stranded for the next few hours.

(Like I said. Anakin-and-Grievous levels of contrived coincidence.)

Zeb has just put the kid to bed, and Kallus is watching the news.

“You’re still watching that?” he asks, nudging Kallus to make room for him on the couch and drawing him to lean on his shoulder.

“I’ve told you before, dear, knowing what the Empire is saying, no matter how different that is from what they’re doing, has its uses.”

“Especially if you know how their propaganda is constructed, I know,” Zeb says, and nuzzles his ear. “Just thought you were almost done.”

Kallus smiles faintly and leans into the caress. “I am, I promise. I’ll shut it off in a minute. I just want to--”

He pauses. Rewinds the feed. Pauses it--pre-recorded coverage of some public event the Emperor’s kid had been at, with the newscaster commenting on the progress of whatever “public works” project it was supposed to kick off.

“…what is it? Something she said?”

(...something to do with whatever this “project” is covering up?)

“Hush,” he says, fiddling with a few buttons and calling up a printed transcript and skims through it before sinking back against Zeb, letting out a breath.

“Babe?”

“I think I know who Vector is,” he says.

Zeb stares at him for a minute, then stares at the paused footage--frozen on the Princess’s face, icy and composed.

“…her?”

“Her,” he confirms.

“Why…?”

“Little things,” he says. “The way she talks, some unique turns of phrase. And she fits the profile--young, Human, Coruscanti, close to someone powerful but essentially a civilian herself…and…when Vector disappeared on me last month, that coincided with a period where the Princess was more visible than usual.”

“Karabast,” he mutters. “When you put it like that…”

“It’s all conjecture,” Kallus points out. “I can’t prove any it. Not without digging deeper--which, if I’m right, risks compromising her cover--or asking her straight-out.”

(Which, of course, would also be a bad idea. It would probably seriously damage the trust he’s spent the past year and more building, and it might not even get him an honest answer anyway.)

“Right,” Zeb says. “…any chance someone else could put this together?”

Kallus makes a face. “Unlikely,” he says, though he doesn’t sound totally sure. “The recordings of our conversations are kept as hard copies only, for security. Not uploaded onto any networked drives. And a very small set of people have access to those copies. I doubt anyone could put it together without that access. Still…”

(Someone dedicated enough, who managed to access one of those recordings, or intercept a transmission along the way, or compromise the lines of communication from the other side…)

“Kriff,” he says. “Anything you can do about it?”

“Not really,” he says. “Other than brief Draven and keep doing what I’ve been doing.”

“Yeah,” he says, and studies the picture again; glances over at the morose look on Kallus’s face; feels his ears twitching. “Huh. Never would’ve figured the Emperor’s kriffing daughter to defect.”

Kallus jumps a little, drawn out of his thoughts, then rolls his eyes and gives Zeb a fond, exasperated smile (which was really the point, honestly; to needle him into a better mood), and rather dryly points out, “There was a time you would’ve said the same about me.”

“True,” Zeb says, and grins at him. “Guess it just goes to show, people surprise you all the time.”

“Indeed,” Kallus says, then reaches over to shut off the feed and changes the subject.

Six weeks after that, Vector goes quiet again. This time without warning.

When her two-week check-in goes by with nothing, he’s immediately concerned. She’s never missed a check-in before, not without warning. He decides to give her a day, and then ping her himself.

(He generally avoids doing that--only when he absolutely needs to speak with her about something time-sensitive that can’t wait for her to reach out.)

There’s no response to his message, either.

He reports the missed check-in, of course. Tries again the next day. And a third.

Still nothing.

(He knows a rescue won’t be authorized--technically, they don’t actually know for sure who or even where Vector is, and if his theory is correct, they cannot make a run on Coruscant for one agent, especially not one as visible as Princess Lavinia.)

(He keeps telling himself that. Over and over again. As he tries a fourth and fifth time to reach her.)

“Zeb,” he says, after a third full week has gone by since the last time he heard from her. “I need you to talk me out of doing something stupid.”

“Uh, sure, babe. What’s going on?”

He explains the situation as briefly as he can. “And I am this close to staging a half-assed unauthorized raid on Coruscant to extract her.”

“...nah, if we’re doing an unauthorized raid on Coruscant, it should be a full-assed thing.”

That...that wasn’t really the answer Kallus was looking for.

(In hindsight, he thinks, as he tries to redraw building plans from memory and plan this stupid, stupid venture, he probably should have gone to Hera if he really wanted someone to talk him down. Or possibly Kanan. ...no, Hera.)

(...it could be worse, though.)

(he could’ve tried asking Sabine.)

Fortunately, before they can actually run off and get themselves killed--

(or court-martialed)

(or in trouble with Hera)

--Kallus’ dedicated comm chimes.

“All clear,” he breathes. “That’s the all-clear. She’s...she’s alive.”

It’s nearly another week before he hears anything else, but finally a real call comes.

This is Vector. I have a data file for you. Do as you like with it.

“Vector, this is Fulcrum. Are you all right?”

(she doesn’t sound all right; it’s hard to tell through her scrambler, but she seems strained.)

“Everything’s fine,” she says. “I apologize for the delay, but things are settled now. My cover is intact.”

Which is good to know, but not what he asked.

“And what about you?” he says.

She doesn’t answer right away.

“Vector?”

“I’m here,” she says. “And everything is under control. You don’t need to worry about me. Nothing that--it wasn’t anything to do with this, I was caught on the fringes of something unrelated. It won’t interfere with my work going forward.”

Which still isn’t an answer.

(He’s pretty sure the non-answer is his answer, though. Damn it.)

(He knows the risks. Better than most. And he knows she knows them, too. It doesn’t make it any easier to hear, especially knowing that there is kriff-all he can do to help her.)

Into the silence, she says, “I’m your asset, Fulcrum. Not your friend.”

“......”

“I’m just--” She sighs. “I’m your asset. Not your friend. It’s...we should both remember that. It’s probably better, in the long run.”

And part of him is hurt; part of him is annoyed that he is being lectured on professionalism by a damned child; part of him is worried again--he did finally talk her into an emergency code phrase, in case of capture or other disaster, but here she goes again, hinting that she doesn’t have an exit strategy.

(Not like I did, either, he reminds himself. Can’t plan that far ahead. Not when you’re doing this kind of work. And even when Ezra came for me--)

(He buries it. Because he is a goddamn professional, Vector’s reproof aside.)

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she says. “And I’ve had worse.”

“........”

All right, that he likes even less.

“Vector--”

“I have to go,” she says. “I’ll be in touch when I have something else. And I’ll do my best to warn you if I have to disappear again. Vector out.”

And, in the interests of “good Lord this thing is close to 6k already,” we’re going to skip ahead quite a bit, about a year and a half, to just after the evacuation of Echo Base.

For the first time in a while, the whole family (minus Ezra) is back on the Ghost together.

(Kanan, Hera, Chopper, Sabine, Zeb, Kallus, Rex, and Jacen.)

(They’ve all been in touch and met up fairly frequently, but they’re no longer a discrete cell and they all have their own, often separate, duties with the wider Rebellion. So, while the circumstances leading to it are awful, it’s nice to have an opportunity like this.)

Orders are to lay low, and make their way by a prearranged roundabout route to the fleet rendezvous five days later.

The first night, they mostly spend catching up and letting Sabine fleece them all at cards.

(Except Rex. Do Not Play Sabaac With Rex.)

(They had all forgotten that rule.)

Hera is sending occasional messages back and forth to Command, to confirm/make adjustments/etc., but otherwise things are fairly quiet after the frantic rush of the evacuation itself.

(Fortunately, none of them were injured in the escape. It’s happened before, when they’ve had to leave a base in a hurry. That was a week no one wanted to repeat.)

It’s their second night of drifting, and Kallus is just starting to fall asleep (Zeb is snoring beside him; the noise honestly probably should have been annoying but is genuinely comforting at this point, to the point where he has trouble sleeping without it) when his comm beeps.

It’s Vector.

More accurately, it’s her emergency signal.

He extracts himself from the bed and slips out into the hall to talk the call.

“Fulcrum.”

“It’s Vector,” she says, unnecessarily. She’s not using her usual scrambler this time, but a more standard vocoder, probably cannibalized from a stolen helmet. She sounds drained, and slightly breathless. “I’ve been burned. I got...I got away. I had more..." She stops, clears her throat. “I got away. I was able to remove my tracker and I’m as--I’m as sure as I reasonably can be that I’ve lost anyone following me by other means. I-I pulled as much raw data as I could onto a couple of portable drives on my way out, but I’m on a...I’m on a sliced public terminal right now, I don’t want to keep the line open long enough to send them in the usual way and I...I don’t know what the protocol is now. Please advise.”

“Where are you now?” he asks. There are so many other questions he wants to ask, needs to ask, both from a personal and a professional standpoint--is she all right; how did she get caught; how did she escape; how long has she been compromised--but they can wait until she’s been located and brought in safely. He sets them all aside, and focuses.

(Like A Goddamn Professional.)

“Ixaly,” she says. “I’m on...I’m on Ixaly.”

He closes his eyes, mentally traces their route through hyperspace. Ixaly is in this sector, it shouldn’t be far...yes. If he’s counted right--they’ll be doing a navigation stop shortly, and dropping out of hyperspace. From there--a few hours to Ixaly, unless he’s completely turned around.

“There’s a cantina,” he says, “in the Diira district in Central City. The White Shale. Can you be there in six hours?”

A brief pause; he can hear her breathing. “Yes,” she says, at last. “Yes, I’ll be there.”

“That’s the fastest I can arrange a pickup,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

(If he’s right about how close they are, it might not actually take him that long, but there’s a balance between getting to her as quickly as possible and budgeting in time for something to go wrong. He doesn’t want to risk being late and having her move on because she thinks he’s not coming. He may not be able to contact her if something goes wrong; not if she’s relying on sliced public terminals to reach out to him. And he has no idea when she’ll be able to make contact again, or how long whatever data’s on her drives will stay viable...so, six hours. He’ll have to trust her to stay alive that long.)

“I’ll be there,” she promises. “White Shale cantina, Diira district, Central City, six hours.”

“Exactly. You know how to reach me if there are any problems.”

“Yes,” she says.

“It’s almost over,” he says. “You’ve done well, getting yourself this far. Just hold on for a little while longer, all right?”

“I will,” she says; takes a breath. “I’ll see you in six hours. Vector out.”

The line goes dead.

Half a heartbeat later, he feels the familiar rumble of the hyperdrive cutting out, switching over to sublight engines.

He’s in his window now, he doesn’t have time--

As he heads for the Phantom, he runs into Kanan.

“...what’s wrong?”

“Vector,” he says, clipped. “She’s had to run. She’s not far--”

“Go,” he says. “I’ll let Hera know. ...take Zeb with you. In case you need backup.”

(Which he doesn’t really need, and it might well spook his contact if he brings a team--he has run extractions like this before, after all, and Vector is particularly cagey--but he nods.)

“I will. Thank you.”

“How long do we wait before sending our own rescue party?” Kanan asks.

Kallus does some quick mental math--six hours to the meet; going by Vector’s history, she may need some convincing to come along (like I did, until it was too late; but it’s already too late for her, isn’t it?); she might be wrong about having a tail; they might run into unrelated trouble...

“I’ll send word once we leave the system. If you haven’t heard from me in twelve hours, that’s when you worry.”

“Got it,” he says, and starts off towards the cockpit to update Hera, when Kallus realizes--

“Wait,” he says.

Kanan pauses, half-turns back to him.

“I don’t know who Vector is, not for certain,” he says, “but I have considerable circumstantial evidence that she’s Princess Lavinia.”

Kanan takes that in, then nods slowly. “Right. Thanks for the head’s up. I’ll pass that along.”

“Thank you,” Kallus says again, and the two of them separate--Kallus goes to wake Zeb and then get the Phantom prepped and underway; Kanan goes to tell Hera what’s going on.

(...and corral his son.)

(Jacen has developed this habit lately of hiding on the Phantom when he thinks it’s going somewhere Interesting.)

(Which is usually whenever someone other than Mamma is driving.)

(He likes going on Adventures with his various uncles and Auntie ‘Bine, okay.)

(They go on the best Adventures.)

(But retrieving one of Kallus’s deep-cover agents whose cover was blown like a week ago at most is maaaaaaybe not the best Adventure for a three-year-old.)

Fortunately, Zeb isn’t hard to wake and grasps the situation quickly. The two of them head for the Phantom--

And find Sabine sitting there waiting for them, spinning idly in the pilot’s chair.

“...Sabine--” Zeb starts.

“Whatever it is that’s got you two running around frantically when we’re supposed to be lying low,” she says, “I wanna help. You might need backup.”

On the one hand, Kallus is pretty sure they won’t. And his prior concerns about spooking Vector if he comes in with a team still apply.

On the other hand, Sabine is one of the best people to have beside them in a crisis, if things do go all to hell. She’s creative and generally carrying an array of weapons that defies the very laws of physics.

Besides, he doesn’t have time to argue with her.

“Fine,” he says. “But you follow my lead--both of you. Neither of you has been on an extraction like this before, and this is what I do. All right?”

“All right,” Sabine says. “Who is it we’re extracting, exactly?”

“A spy, working under the code name Vector,” he says. “She’s been feeding us intel for close to three years now. Her cover was compromised, and she had to run.”

Sabine nods. “Got it,” she says.

“And, if I’m right,” he says--because if he is, Sabine will have to know before they get there, “she’s the Emperor’s daughter.”

“...all right, then,” Sabine manages, after a moment of stunned silence. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

They detach, and the Ghost disappears behind them back into hyperspace as Kallus sets a course for Ixaly.

And now, since I’m sure y’all are wondering the same thing Kallus is--i.e., how did she get caught/how did she escape--let’s backtrack and leave Kallus’s POV for another brief digression--

It all comes down to a man named Vedric Greer.

Vedric Greer is a Royal Guard. He’s been in that elite unit for over fifteen years at this point, selected more or less straight out of the Academy.

He’s been the head of Lavinia’s detail since she was twelve.

(Before that, he had a variety of assignments; he never got stuck with Vader, for which he is profoundly grateful, but he guarded a few valuable objects/locations, and he was on Tarkin’s detail for a couple of years.)

See, here’s the thing about Royal Guards. They’re put through a lot of conditioning, both physically and mentally, to become living weapons who are absolutely loyal.

And he is. Vedric Greer is an absolutely loyal man.

The thing is, to be a Royal Guard assigned to any living being other than Palpatine himself--Vader, Tarkin, Mas Amedda, Lavinia, a few others--means to be equal parts bodyguard and prison guard. Such a Guard is at least partly there to protect his principal from external threats, of course, but if said principal steps out of line or he’s given certain orders, he becomes their jailer. Or executioner. Or worse.

When he’s assigned to someone like Tarkin, of course, that isn’t much of a problem.

But a lonely, precocious twelve-year-old kid like Lavinia? Who, whatever traits she may have inherited from her father, has them tempered by an actual conscience?

...yeah, it doesn’t take a whole lot for him to bond with her, just a little.

(Throw in the fact that he has a lover, an Imperial Archivist who survived Scarif by being transferred to Coruscant days before Tarkin blew it up...well. Maybe the cracks in his armor aren’t only to do with the little girl he’s been made responsible for.)

So. Vedric Greer is a Royal Guard, and that means he is a living weapon, and absolutely loyal.

But over the past seven years--and especially the last three--maybe, just maybe, that loyalty has started to shift.

(He doesn’t even realize it, at first; and when he does notice the traces of affection, of tangential loyalty in himself...well, he reasons that Lavinia is all but an extension of her father’s will, anyway. Right? And if he conveniently fails to see certain signs...)

(Reynard, his lover, knows way before Vedric does where this is going, of course.)

And then, one morning, his orders change, and all those little things come crashing down.

(It was such a simple thing that screwed her over; Palpatine seeds bait among his minions constantly, little nuggets of information so that, if there is a high-placed leak, he can track it back to its source right away. Standard counter-intelligence, really; and everyone, everyone, is under suspicion. Everyone is tested.)

(Lavinia is normally very good at spotting this sort of thing--she has a natural aptitude for espionage, she was trained by the best, and she puts just as much effort into surviving her father and completing her mission as he did into taking over the galaxy. How else would she have lasted nineteen years as her father’s daughter--let alone three as a deep-cover Rebel spy?)

(But this time--this time she missed it. And now he knows.)

And Vedric Greer has a choice to make.

It’s surprising, in the end, how simple it is.

“My lady,” he informs her, “you are undone.”

He helps her cut out the tracking device implanted inside her ribcage (which is also fitted with a killswitch, of course, in case she ever tried to slip her leash); she asks him to come with her; he refuses.

(He is not a Rebel. He is not disloyal.)

(What he is, is her protector. What he is, is--hers.)

“I’m so sorry,” she says.

“So am I,” he says, and, “Go. I’ll buy you as much time as I can.”

“Goodbye,” she says, and disappears.

He sends a brief message to Reynard--hoping he’ll know what it means (he will; he always knew this might happen), and prepares himself to meet his death.

(Or, at least, that’s what he believes is going to happen.)

(...look, as I said before, this is Self-Indulgent BS(tm). Like I’m really gonna let Greer die. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I have no earthly idea how he survives but he does. Because this is my self-indulgent BS, dammit.)

Okay. Back to Ixaly, and the actual rescue/extraction mission.

(…by which I also mean forward, since it’s like a week later.)

Our Heroes reach Central City about an hour ahead of schedule. After a brief discussion, Sabine disappears into the district to be on-hand for immediate help, if needed; Zeb, who doesn’t blend in as well, will stay with the Phantom; Kallus of course goes to the cantina to find his contact.

He heads there more or less directly, taking in as much detail of the city and the specific neighborhood as he can.

He’s been here before, but it’s been several years; there is a garrison in place, but the occupation seems comparatively light.

Which means there’s a not-unreasonable chance that this will go smoothly.

(Of course, as soon as he thinks that, he starts coming up with all the potential problems that could still happen. For one thing, he or Vector or Sabine might be recognized…)

Security on the cantina itself; mostly local talent, just as it was on his last visit. This is a fairly middle-of-the-road place; just dishonest enough that he and Vector should blend, not so dishonest that they’re likely to get caught in the middle of any…unpleasantness. Part of why he picked this place. That, the fact that it isn’t particularly difficult to find, and is fairly close to his ideal landing site.

(Not the official port, naturally; while Kallus doesn’t doubt that they could bluff their way through, he’d rather not try it on such short notice. They’d landed the Phantom on the city outskirts, about fifteen minutes away by foot.)

In other words, things are about as well-situated as they could be, under the circumstances. He has three separate exit routes at least tentatively mapped out, of varying efficiency and difficulty.

(And, if it came down to it, Sabine or Zeb could create one for him, of course, but he’d prefer to avoid that if at all possible.)

(In any case, best to have backup plans; he’ll pick the best route of the three once he has a better idea of what Vector’s capable of at the moment.)

(He’s almost certain she’s hurt, and he doesn’t know how badly, and she’ll never actually tell him, so that’s the best he can do.)

Inside, the cantina is fairly crowded--which is a mixed blessing; on the one hand, more cover for their activities/conversation, but on the other, more people to see them.

It’s a varied crowd; mostly local shift workers, a few semi-legitimate traders and mid-level bounty hunters. Most importantly, though, there are no troopers that he can identify, even off-duty. Excellent.

He gets a drink (to blend in, primarily) and finds a table in the corner where he can keep an eye on the other patrons and watch the door without being obvious about it.

He’s not kept waiting long.

She blends in pretty well--she’s managed to dress herself in a slightly-outdated local fashion, one that helpfully comes with a cowl that doesn’t quite hide her face, but does enough to keep her mostly anonymous from a distance and make dodging any security cameras easier.

(A few other women in the cantina are dressed similarly; not many, but enough that she doesn’t really stand out.)

She doesn’t head straight for him. She weaves through the crowd for a minute, hesitates by the bar as if she’s considering something, orders a drink. Her attention drifts over the crowd; she doesn’t linger on him, but her hand twitches a little.

(Ah. She spotted him, then. Good.)

(He isn’t really surprised that she figured out which Fulcrum she was working with. And it does make things simpler--there are a few signals he could have tried, but there wasn’t time, when she called, to pick one of them and be sure.)

(An advantage, if a counter-intuitive one, to using the legacy code name with her, he supposes.)

She starts moving again; doing everything right--wandering as if she’s looking for a seat, gradually making her way to a small empty table next to his.

(The whole thing takes probably less than two minutes. It feels longer. Then again, it always does--this isn’t the first time he’s met a contact like this, and that never changes. Doesn’t matter whether he’s the first or second to arrive.)

He taps out a quick signal on his commlink--contact made, everything’s on track so far--and waits.

“I have a data file for you,” she says softly. “Several, in fact.”

He smiles faintly into his drink. “Well done.”

The way the tables are laid out, they’re sitting next to one another, both with their backs against the wall. It’s a simple matter for her to slide the two drives over to him, and just as easy for him to make them disappear.

(Leaving together discreetly will be a little harder, but he’s been doing this for quite a while. They’ll manage.)

“I have transport off-planet,” he tells her. “We should wait a few minutes, not get up right away, but it’s best if we leave sooner rather than later.”

She shakes her head. “I'm not coming with you.”

(He wishes he could say he was surprised.)

He doesn’t turn to look at her, as much as he wants to. “If you’re concerned about reprisals…”

“I’m not,” she says. “Not really. It’s just…not a good idea.”

...and in the interests of “good Lord this thing is probably pushing 10k and it’s not even the full fic it’s an outline,” I’m going to skip the rest of this conversation. Suffice to say, he’s right and she’s wrong, though she takes some convincing, but they leave the cantina together like fifteen minutes later. Also, he confirms that his theory as to her identity was correct somewhere in here.

Anyway, like I said, he talks her down, and she agrees to leave with him.

Once out of the cantina, he can get a better look at her, assess how badly she’s hurt.

(He knows she is for certain now; she’s breathing carefully, shallowly, and a little too fast--but he could only see her hands and the vague shadow of her cowl before.)

“Are you all right?” he asks; even though the answer is obvious; she’s favoring her left side and very pale.

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she says.

A characteristic non-answer, but a step above denial. He supposes.

“All right,” he says. “Let me know if you need help.”

(There’s not much else he can do here and now, anyway; they have some supplies back on the Ghost, and she can get proper medical attention once they rendezvous with the fleet.)

“I will,” she says, which is something at least.

They make it two blocks before they run into a squad of stormtroopers.

It’s a routine patrol; and, even with a wounded asset to escort, it wouldn’t have been a problem under most circumstances. He could avoid the confrontation, or talk his way past.

But the squad sergeant stiffens in a particular way, staring at him.

“Karabast,” he mutters.

(You’d think, after all these years, this would stop happening so often. But, no, it’s still even odds that, out in the field, someone will recognize him.)

Lavinia takes half a step back. “I can--”

“They’re not here for you,” he tells her, then drags her behind cover a split second before the troopers start firing.

Then takes a minute to take stock.

This is...not an ideal position for a standoff. And while they might be able to fight their way through...

Best plan is to stay put, hold them off as long as they can, and call in Zeb and Sabine for backup.

Good thing I listened to Kanan, he thinks.

He takes out his sidearm, then pulls his holdout pistol from his boot and offers it to Lavinia.

But she shakes her head. “Father kept my focus narrow. I’d do more harm than good.”

“...right.”

Even less ideal. But it’s all right. He can handle this.

He takes his comm, switches it to the voice setting.

“Specter Four, this is Fulcrum. We’re going to need a slightly more dramatic exit than I planned for.”

“Copy that, Fulcrum,” Zeb says. “Could use an opening, Specter Five.”

“And to think you boys wanted to leave me behind,” Sabine says.

“Yes, yes, can we save the ‘I-told-you-sos’ until after we’re clear?” Kallus says, firing off a handful of shots to keep the squad at bay.

“She does have a point, babe.”

“Not on open comms, dear, how many times...”

(Honestly, the little bit of flirting is at this point half an inside joke, after the one time they legitimately forgot to switch channels, and half a way to quickly gauge how serious the situation actually is.)

(Plus, it’s fun. They like flirting.)

“Thirty seconds,” Sabine cuts in.

“Right,” Zeb says. “I’m headed to your position. ETA two minutes.”

“Copy. Fulcrum out.”

Two minutes, under these conditions, is a long, long time.

But, right on cue, thirty seconds later, there is a magnificent explosion, which gives them some breathing room, and then Sabine slides down the wall to land next to him.

“Not my best work,” she says critically, watching the cloud on the horizon, “but it’ll clear a path. Hi,” she adds, for Lavinia’s benefit.

“Hi,” she says, softly.

“...she doesn’t have a blaster,” Sabine says, turning almost accusingly to Kallus.

“Because I’ve never had one before,” Lavinia answers for him. “And this really doesn’t seem the time or place to learn.”

“Well, we’ll fix that later,” Sabine says.

“All right,” Lavinia says, then ducks down as Sabine positions herself better to start shooting back.

The next ninety seconds go much quicker, and then comes the welcome sound of the Phantom’s engines on approach.

It’ll have to be a quick exit, and for a split second, Kallus wonders about getting Lavinia up the ramp fast enough without Zeb actually landing--

But then he sees that Sabine has her jetpack.

(He has never been so pleased to see it in his life.)

“Take her,” he says, once the shuttle is in sight. “I’ll cover you.”

Sabine catches his drift right away, and nods. “Hold on,” she tells Lavinia, who blinks, but does.

And then they’re off.

Kallus just keeps firing at the troopers until, based on the noise it’s making, he judges that the Phantom is close enough that he can make the jump.

He’s--almost right.

He comes within half an inch of missing, then Lavinia’s hands shoot out and grab one of his wrists; Sabine grabs the other and the girls haul him on board.

“We’re good, Zeb, go!” Sabine shouts, while Lavinia drags Kallus the rest of the way in and slams the hatch shut.

We did it.

He takes a minute to catch his breath--he knows it isn’t really over; there’s still a great deal of work to do once they get back to the Ghost and then to the fleet proper.

But for now--they’re all alive, they’re all safe, they’re all at least as intact as they were when they got to Ixaly; the extraction was successful.

Kallus decides to let the rest of the problems wait, and take the win.

He picks himself up and heads to the cockpit, to give Zeb a quick hug and send word to Kanan and the others.

For all the drama and the worry when it started, today turned out to be a very good day.

And I think that’s a good stopping point, don’t you? There is definitely more, featuring (in no particular order) the worlds most #Awkward Road Trip; Kanan and Lavinia meeting; Kanan and Luke finally meeting; Zeb and Kallus adopting a kid or three; Lando; Jacen being precious; and so much more.

But, uh, see all my notes above about “how long is this thing now?!”

(And, again this isn’t even fulltext.)

(This is just the outline.)

...so, uh, yeah, if you made it this far, thank you and I hope you enjoyed my Self-Indulgent BS(tm). <333333333

#shadowsong26fic #shadowsong writes star wars #shadowsong writes self-indulgent bs #au outlines for the win #tigerkat24

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