#it's down to execution

[threewaysdivided]

G.R.R. Martin once planned to have a time skip in between each chapter of the books, but discarded it because it would require large amounts of flashbacks and expositions to get the audience up to speed. Boy, it sure is great that YJ only had one season so we didn't have to worry about each sequential season having to allocate precious episode time to explain what happen in the gaps while also developing new characters and plot lines /s

Sadly I cannot speak to or for Mister George Raymond Richard Martin's storytelling as I managed to miss the boat on both ASOIAF as a book series and Game of Thrones as a TV phenomenon. However, it certainly seems like he made the right decision there. Smart man.

As for the Young Justice Animated series... I can only agree. While I would have loved to see a continuation of the mystery, and think there was a lot of potential in the original cast of heroes and interesting things they could have done with The Light, I'm glad that DC made the call to cancel the show and move on to new projects when it became clear that the tone and themes didn't fit with their brand-pivot to New 52 edginess, rather than trying to forcibly crush the series into an incompatible mold for use as a marketing vessel.

Plus, the more complaints I've heard from other franchises about what happens when you leave Greg Weisman creatively unsupervised, the more likely it is that we would have just been in for a bad-fanfic barrage of random new characters, arbitrary time-skips, jumbled perspective-hopping, attempted twitter-retcons and general throwing-ideas-at-a-wall that he seems to use in place of actually learning basic narrative techniques like developing a story arc, maintaining character consistency or creating proper causal links between concepts, all seasoned with a heaping helping of Joss-Whedon-inspired performative virtue-signalling, creepy rape-y garbage and fetishistic sexism. Bullet dodged, methinks. Our city now.

There are fine things that are more brilliant when they are unfinished than when finished too much. - François de La Rochefoucauld

Here's to a rare and pleasant display of creative honesty.

[Goof-posting because there's really not a lot about YJ's problems that I haven't already dissected at length. If you want a serious technical look at the scope and structure problems the timeskips cause then I've gone into it here. You can also try here for a deeper dive into how the timeskips are actually just a symptom of a bigger problem of narratively directionless story-contradictions being hastily papered over by a largely-untalented privilege-poisoned embodiment of George Lucas Syndrome and a largely-inexperienced adaptation producer who didn't have the original-storytelling chops to compensate for his co-runner's bullshit once the actually talented original production/ directorial team left the picture. C'est la capitalisme, I guess.]

[jaredthebc2]

Do you ever think about how almost all of N’s Pokémon throughout the first games were one offs he released after he battled you, how he cared about them all deeply enough that he thought it would be selfish to have them battle more than necessary. And do you ever think about how this is the case with all his Pokémon EXCEPT his Klinklang in the final battle at the league, where the second to last battle he had a Klink and this Klinklang is very likely that same Pokémon? Do you think this was a visual representation of his mindset wavering from a fixed point? How that Klink refused to leave him right away and he couldn’t bring himself to force them to leave because his mind is in so many different directions? He can keep them around just a little longer until he becomes champion, it won’t be long, he can bend things some so long as he doesn’t fully stray from his path…right?

Or is that just me am I the only one willing to be insane about Klinklang of all Pokémon

[xxplastic-cubexx]

personal happiness or what the fuck ever

bonus:

[lazylittledragon]

something something more alt dads

[bananafire11]

Nother redraw of an early jax piece

[queenoffoliage]

Your honor, he was indeed spinning

[mourning-tides]

Cassie Sandsmark they could never make me hate you. Even if they’re trying. Really hard

Also idk if Greta and Cassie were technically roommates at Saint Elias’s but who else would it be. They’re buddies. Bonds forged in Yj are unbreakable unfortunately

[lucabyte]

I don't know how everyone isn't also always constantly thinking about how burial rites seem to be potentially one of the few things Siffrin instinctively remembers about their culture. But rest assured. I am in fact always thinking about it.

Textless version where they're just hanging out. It's fine!

[jessmalia]

Cassandra and But Daddy I Love Him being two sides of the same coin

[zorangezest]

sorry for the oc spam they have taken my brain and ran away with it…….sombody catch them!!,,

[hey-heigo]

au where everything is the same but kyoko is this thangg (design by @/babirousa)

[becasbelt]

[starleska]

i can't believe how few people are talking about extraordinarily sinister Rolando is!!! 👀💖💖 as an Infestor demon who thrives on psychological torment, every aspect of his body is designed to unsettle: the too-wide smile, the ability to reconstruct his physical form, and the disconnect between the smooth and jerky movements...!!!! gahhhh i just think he's so cool 🙈🙈🙈

[tennessoui]

14 for obikin pretty please?

here you go!

[from this list of prompts]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After all--

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

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

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

"You killed him."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anakin isn't sure of anything anymore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[surreal-duck]

get out get out get out of my head

[rook2ii]

Rlly quick Contrahero and Smithero doodles I did during class :]