#kicking the hornets nest - THREADS

[scorching-passion]

Starter for @ghostofnibelheim​

The rough terrain of Wutai; hard and unforgiving. A craggy mountainous region of Gaia, relentless and unkind --- many had died here already since the beginning of the war, and many more would become memories upon the hillsides with little to show for their bravery other than a name on a plaque… if they were lucky, an unmarked grave if they were not. This was not what Roche had expected when flying over the scenic geography of this exotic place. 

This was not the life he would have chosen for himself. 

The sound of the chopper coupled with the vast greenery down below, a finery of nature if he’d ever seen it first hand, exhilarating to say the very least. Compared to the squalor of the slums verses the industrial edge of Midgar heights this was certainly a paradise in of itself, the need to see it all was strong  – the story of war had been so heavily romanticised in the fifteen year old infantryman’s head; the opportunity to visit far out lands, to be the hero in his own story, and he was eager to get to the front lines and fight alongside his fellow man, alongside the hero’s the SOLDIER’s sent here to quell an Intolerable evil. 

But upon the ground, he was loaded up, pack after pack, after pack of supplies for a nearby trench on the western coast of the archipelago’s mainland. And flanked by four others, heavily armed to protect this precious cargo at the very centre, the group would make their way through the steep valleys carved through the mountains rising like titans of aged lore, reaching so far as to black out the sun. There was nothing but darkness down here, damp, muddy floors causing one to slip and slide underfoot and a miserable sense of impending dread. 

The enemy was all around them, so they had been told, and this route - too narrow, too uneven for a vehicle, it had to be done on foot - would lead them right through the very centre of the main battle field - a no man’s land unclaimed by either side - the echo of gunfire, the screams of the injured and dying bounced in overhead from the vast stony walls. But they trudged onward, each step becoming more arduous, the straps of Roche’s load weighing heavy on armoured shoulders, an armour which was beginning to dig into his flesh, rubbing it inexplicably raw. 

The heat trapped there with them in that space, insufferable, difficult to breathe. Roche would think he would surely develop gills for how thick and wet it was down here. There was no release from this level of hell, no light at the end of this tunnel for as far as his own eyes could see. And the journey was slow, the greenish experiences of new recruits here in the far western continent hindering any definitive progress. All were fearful, all were struggling to come to terms with the fact that they may never step foot on home turf again. 

That they would possibly die here.  This was not the life he would have chosen. This was not what war had been painted to be. A momentous pedestal for the strong and mighty, a prideful trial in the life of any man. Thus far Roche was yet to experience any of that. He came here to fight the good fight, not carry things over the country like some pack donkey. 

This wasn’t the picture of war painted for these men, and with every eruption of artillery beyond the cusp of the valley, they would flinch and cower, half expecting the battle waging there to crash through these very walls, but still they would press on. 

Because what else was there? Fight or die.      Fight or die.           Fight or die. 

Forever and a day did it feel like they had been travelling, whatever light could break through the opening of the valley beginning to dwindle, as the weight of the load upon the young infantryman's back would become almost unbearable, but they were closer than they were before, at least. That was until disaster struck. 

A gunshot, too close to be a mere echo, ricocheted across the valley floor, the infantryman to Roche’s left lurched forward, falling to the hard stone floor with a sickening thump eliciting only gasps of shock and horror from the others. And as the men stood around that body - a bullet wound to the throat as the man began to die, choking on his own blood and they too blindsided to even contemplate any basic first aid in the moment - desperately attempting to absorb what had just transpired… the time to truly react to enemy fire was long lost. 

The valley exploded around them, fissures cracking through the rock like bolts of lightning shooting skyward as the sheer force of the detonation sent Roche and his caretakers deeper into the trench. He lands, cargo and all, on his side, a sharp, piercing agony through the knee wrenching a cry from his throat. He cannot hear his own screams as instinct overrides all other senses and the basic training for this excursion finally begins to kick in while he starts to drag his heavy body forwards; reaching for the firearm he can barely see before him then. He hasn’t the time to consider his injury, not with men to protect, not with the cargo on his back, not with his eyes filled and stinging with dust, an insufferable ringing in his ears. 

The only sounds available to him right in that moment being the desperate drag of air into his own lungs and the thundering pulse throbbing in his head. 

Fight or die. 

                     ‘I can’t… I can’t die here… not here. Shiva I beg you, please no. NO!’ 

Fight or DIE.

Finally reaching the gun, still strapped to the body of one of his comrades laying dormant - dead or dying - in the debris, Roche, with whatever strength he had left, and sensing the rapid approach of Wutai soldiers to his rear, tore the rifle free, screaming his throat raw with this smallest of victories. 

Rolling onto his back, he would aim blindly into the fog, cocking the rifle and preparing to fire at anything which came too close; if this was how he would perish, barely fifteen years old and fresh out of basic training, hardly a life lived at all, then he would take at least one of the bastards down into the depths of hell with him!

But as he spied the shadows drawing near, the unmistakable whoosh of a blade could be heard, a new sound to accompany the remnants of the blast still assaulting his eardrums. 

Hands a quiver around the trigger of that gun, another strike in the settling dust, the distinctive sound of crunching bones and tearing flesh. Only the splatter of hot fresh blood on his face forced Roche to realise his helmet was missing, and instinctively he touches his cheek gingerly to spy the red fluid sticking to the leather of his gloves. Eyes wide, horrified until that shadow looms closer and the young blond’s focus returns to aiming his firearm at this newest threat. 

But he doesn’t offer a warning, only waiting for this thing to reveal itself from the dust. But with his hands shaking so terribly as they were right then… he would no doubt miss anyway.

[at-liberty-news]

Territory Status: Day 19

It goes without saying that Meridia is no longer a valid target for Terminid assault. If nothing else, this is one less location to spread the Helldiver's forces thin across.

As the war progresses, it becomes clear that our original method of describing a planet's inhabitants' resistance on a relative scale, such as when we described Meridia as ten times the strength of Erata Prime, is inconvenient! Instead, we will now simply describe them as percentages, with these percentages being an approximation of how much of the planet's surface the enemy retakes in any given hour. 

As the hornet's nest has been kicked, Terminid hives continue to spring up and fight harder than before. Fenrir III was assaulted, but the attack was quickly quelled. Resistance on Erata Prime has jumped from 1% to 2.5%, a rate that Acamar IV shares. All other Terminid planets except Turing lose 3% of SEAF progress every hour, while Turing itself is the most difficult, at 3.5%. As Meridia has been "secured," supply lines once again open up to Estanu and Crimsica in the Draco sector.

Unfortunately, a majority of Helldivers have elected to assault Turing first, which is brazen ignorance for the most recent orders from High Command to prioritize Automaton territory, where SEAF control is hanging on by a thread. As a robotic invasion marches on Vega Bay in the Ymir sector, less than 10% of Helldivers have moved to defend it. Many innocent citizens on the planet spend their final moments wondering where their saviors are before the Automatons murder and display them as gruesome ornaments in their hellish outposts. Most troopers on the bot front, in fact, have elected to retake Vernen Wells. Perhaps they have not yet been informed that control of the planet will not return the training grounds lost there when it was originally stolen by the bots. Either way, if nothing changes, we may very well see the Automatons invade Super Earth itself one day.

As the galactic war rages on, we have nothing but today's personal orders left to share with you, dear viewers. Stay tuned to hear them!

[catty-words]

(with the intention of fully kicking a hornets’ nest) -> my thoughts on tslocg s2 because it’s bad take after bad take in the tag:

- the pacing works. sure, the case can be made that the pacing would work better for a 22-episode season (i’m especially wounded by the fact that we couldn’t draw out the battle between the foxy and the catullan for two or three episodes At Least), but i don’t think that negates the fact that the writers are keeping a consistent rhythm. long-term story beats are balanced against one- or two-episode arc moments and, though it’s bracing at times, the show largely pulls off the breakneck energy thanks to its well-written humor.

- a lot of you are making your dissatisfaction weirdly personal with mindy kaling considering she only wrote one episode in the season and, in terms of the show’s co-creators, seems to be the more hands-off partner. i think we could all bring it down a couple notches, but if that’s not on the table, at least direct your ire in the appropriate direction damn

- i don’t think we’ve breezed past the s2e6 cliffhanger as everyone seems to fear we have, i absolutely think the other shoe will fall at some point. what makes me confident? mostly the choice to highlight jorja’s comment that bela hates herself when bela finds out about her ‘cancellation’ in conjunction with bela’s reaction to eric’s “you spend all your time trying to get people to like you, but then when someone like me actually does, i’m not enough. you immediately focus on winning over someone else”. the show seems to be delicately threading this needle of exploring the emotional ramifications of all the impulsive sex bela’s had without going too far and condemning the fact that she wanted those experiences in the first place. and that’s a long-term story i’m happy to be patient for to see it done right and done thoughtfully. because, i mean, in a lot of ways, it’s a storyline that embodies the thesis of the show. young women have a complex relationship with their own sexuality and get the best chance to define what it means to them under the newfound independence college life affords.

- kimberly/canaan compels me, the actors definitely have a sweet, off-beat chemistry. back to what i said, re: pacing, though, i don’t expect us to dwell on the storyline for more than three to five episodes into the next season. they might leave the possibility for a reprise like i suspect they’re doing with eric/bela but, if they get together at all, kimberly/canaan will be dissolved pretty quickly i think - particularly because i don’t see kimberly dealing with the way wanting canaan muddled her judgement and made her turn on a dear friend.

- speaking of whitney, i loved her journey with biochem it’s, like, a really cute look for her

- and speaking of her place in the love triangle, i definitely dig the wistfulness that comes with canaan being the collateral damage in whitney’s flailing sense of self this season, but her pivot back to her feelings for him at the end has such a whiff of ‘put in my self-discovery hours, that means i get to collect my canaan-shaped prize now’. which is not a judgement on whitney - i completely empathize with her wanting a do-over now that she’s a more evolved and self-assured person - but i do think canaan’s characterization is such that he’s not going to want to be involved with her romantically a second time. so whitney’s place in the triangle will likely be reckoning with and then accepting the boundaries he sets regardless of how things play out between her and kimberly.

- every scene in the common room of the dorm or the dining hall where the girlies take turns presenting their emotional conundrum to the group for a greek chorus of feedback in return made my heart swell and as long as this relationship is the one the show cares most about, i stay winning

- tatum being presented as leighton literally dating herself now that she’s authentically herself for the first time ending in leighton dumping her own ass then immediately embracing the self she’d started cultivating at the women’s center but couldn’t fully explore for being in the closet at the time even when it’s uncomfortable and she’d normally cow to her impulse to conform was galaxy-brained shit sorry if you’re mourning the loss of the carbon-copy white lesbian guess i’m built different

- anyway so so excited for the women’s center to once again be one of our regular on-campus hangs, so so excited to see leighton continue to blossom there

- lila was perfect literally every scene she was in but if i was going to complain about one thing it’d be that she ended up kissing whitney and not bela despite their insane chemistry. hello???

[revelisms]

(for the wip tag game thing)

Hi! It was a tough choice cause several of your titles did catch my eye but after thinking it through, I'd like to know more about fate is a sundress, ripped at the thigh. It's both so mysterious and evocative? Having no idea what to expect makes me really curious!

cw: major character death, grief, self-loathing

Aaa thank you! I'm excited to chat about this one, as it's one of my favorites :-)

As you probably gathered from the warnings—in summary, this is a grief fic that explores the ways Jinx is trying to process Silco's death (or, rather, is unable to let go of her ideas of him, even though she's trying).

The title comes from Haley Heynderickx's 'Show You a Body,' which just slapped me in the face on my first listen with a visual of Jinx in the aftermath of the last episode. It's a haunting, angry and beautiful track about backing away from a relationship that has wrecked one's perception of themself, or actively letting a dysfunctional relationship go—and throughout it, there's this thread of self-resentment that feels so Jinx?

Chasing the flood You opened the gate Swarmed by the hornets' nest To cover my eyes I showed you a body Like a cluttered garage I am humbled by breaking down

She's floating between memory and reality throughout the fic—and, mainly, just angry at the world and herself for ripping her own source of stability away from her. Because as much as Silco was an enabler—and, in many ways, a negative influence on her psyche—as a father, he was also her rock, and he understood her, and he made her feel safe. Made her feel like she belonged somewhere—to someone.

And without that? Without him, or Vi, now?

Well. She has Sevika, and Singed, and the remnants of Silco's "things"—the ghost of him she can keep in his office, his music, his clothes, his cigars. She has the river. She, begrudgingly, still has herself.

She comes to the Pilt so often, these days. There's no magic in the waters: nothing left of the color and the chaos of their city's oil-slick lifeblood beating her bloodied fists on and on (the world's dead and gone and he's dead dead dead again, dead and gone with it—) It's only her, her tattered fists battered open and raging: kicking rocks from the shores and pitching fits and wailing with their city's eerie, misplaced mourning: standing like a wraith at the edge of the water, where he'd been rebirthed, and rebirthed her, and where she'd let him go. She hadn't wanted to let him go.

On top of all that conflict with her own grief, she just has a lot of regrets. He saw her as good enough—but even after it all, how could she be? She only has the proof of her failures to cling to.

Don't cry, he'd told her, smoke and iron on his breath—but she'd cried and cried like a wretch, cried like she had into the puddles of the cannery yard, hard enough to crumple her in two.  She'd called him a betrayer, a deserter, and he'd called her his daughter. She'd punched three bullets through his heart, and he'd told her she was perfect.

More than likely, the main thing this is going to unpack is the nuances of Jinx's relationship with Sevika (who isn't quite the mentor she wants, but may, in some ways, be the mentor she needs) and with Singed (who she wants to be Silco, so badly; wants to hear his intellect and charm and dry grumblings come out of, but who just isn't enough—but almost is).

So. Yeah. All up in my emotions for this fic, and it's very unfinished.

(TTvTT)b

[no-rest-for-the-doomed]

#53: Forsaken Compound (2024)

Download ^^

So this came out this week and I've been on a Doom 1 kick (I swear I'm playing other stuff behind the scenes, this just caught my eye) and oh boy what a pleasant surprise. ivymagnapinna is a rookie mapper AFAIK and you would not be able to tell it by the way this is constructed, ESPECIALLY for a Doom 1 mapset.

It's an E1 replacement, but it essentially runs the gamut of the base game's 3 episodes in its own take on the Doom 1 formula. Not meant to be taken too seriously story-wise, leaving the interpretations of what any given map means up to the player. Each map feels like a new exercise in any given "mapping muscle" and it follows a fair difficulty curve. Prevalent themes throughout *most* maps include; interesting geometric sector placement, slaughter, and platforming.

Slaughter in Doom 1 is hard to pull off well, and I feel like Ivy (is it ok if I call you that?) has a good grasp on it. The first 2 maps are relatively straightforward - if a little unique, and secrets are vexing. To get the secret exit in E1M3, I had to clip through a wall as I could find no way to open it. Blame my poor short-term memory on that one.

In the secret map however, the real meat of the mapset shows itself. You're trapped with hardly any weapons, the only path through being provided by Mr. Cybie himself in some Doom 1 INFIGHTING SLAUGHTER (which is just crazy to say) and things only get better from there.

E1M4's Dead Man's Station is a great run-n-gunner, followed by a strange "UDINO"-esque map in the form of Excavating Evil. Lots of Doomcute here and interesting atmospheric aesthetics.

My favorite of the set though by far has to be M6's G.R.I.N.D.E.R . It reminds me of some newschool slaughter that gradually unfolds, giving you access to the Doom 1 roster of weapons and more and more monsters to kill until it all culminates in 1 bloody BFG hornet's nest. This was really fun to play though.

From there, things kinda peter out a bit but it's fine, I'd had my fun with the set by then and from what I can gauge out of the Doomworld thread, the WAD author wanted the set to be over with too. E1M7 is pretty standard stuff - if a bit atmospheric - and E1M8 has you facing "More barons than usual", as per the flavor text.

All said, this is a great rookie release and I'm excited for what Ivy can cook up next.

[volsungar-the-mighty]

Not my fave, but I wanna know what you think about Stiles lol

Honestly...where do i begin? This is gonna kick up a hornets nest, lets be real.

Stiles is the worst character i've ever come across. You know that tumblr thread where people ask why fantasy readers cant stand annoying characters, or why they love the villains? That is Stiles. An annoying, whiny gasbag of a human who couldnt give two shits about his friends. The fact that he became so important to the fanbase will forever be a complete mystery to me. One of the main reasons i dont want to, nor will i ever, rewatch the show is because i have to go back and deal with 5.5 seasons of Stiles before he's ever even removed from the story.

(On that note, i havent yet seen the movie, but i'm glad he wasnt in it either).

Honestly, i absolutely loved the fact that Stiles was all but forgotten about in S6B. They should have gotten rid of much sooner (would have loved to have Theo kill him off in S5, for example). But i'll take what they can give.

If you hadnt noticed, Stiles is always absent, or very rarely mentioned in my fics. I dislike the character so much that writing him into my stories is agonising. The only reason he would be a major character in a fic is if he were in a relationship and getting cheated on.

Though it would be much more fun to kill him off at the start of the fic. Now that I think about it...that would make a great "murder husbands" fic, with Derek finally snapping after dealing with Stiles' bullshit for too long.

Honestly, I could probably go on, but i'll stop here. Dont wanna give the Stiles stans more fuel for their witch hunts.

[dustedmagazine]

Remi Kabaka — Son of Africa (BBE)

Son of Africa by Remi Kabaka

“Kachunga!” This ebullient cry—a word that means creative, happy and sociable in a West African dialect— kicks up a hornet’s nest of trebly funk guitar, burbling keyboards and a knife-edge sharp horn section. It’s the lead-off track to Remi Kabaka’s Son of Africa, originally released in 1976 and long out-of-print, and a fitting introduction to this smoking amalgam of funk, afro-beat, jazz, pop and rock.

Kabaka was born in Ghana to Nigerian parents and spent his earliest years immersed in West Africa’s communal multi-drumming traditions. He moved to London as a teenager, however, and came into his own in that city’s rock scene. He played various kinds of percussion with Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones (including a live version of “Sympathy for the Devil”), Jimi Hendrix, Ginger Baker’s Air Force and Traffic (whose Steve Winwood plays guitar on the eponymous first track). Chris Blackwell of Island Records was enough of a fan to sign Kabaka for this album, but while Blackwell did a lot to make reggae ubiquitous in 1970s rock, he couldn’t do the same with Afrobeat. The record sold poorly and disappeared from circulation.

It's hard to see why. This was, of course, pre-Nigeria 1970 and the Fela revival, and western ears were simply not as accustomed to the polyrhythmic grooves coming out of Lagos. But even so, Son of Africa leans heavily on American funk and soul sounds. Anyone who had spent time with James Brown or Motown or classic Stax discs would find much that felt familiar. “New Reggae Funk,” even anticipates disco by a couple of years with its insinuating slink and airy falsetto. “Sure Thing” struts its consciousness funk like a lost Funkadelic cut, the blurt of brass bursting from slap-and-pop bass. The only cut that comes across as mildly exotic is the thunderous, “Aqueba Masaaba,” and it’s so irresistibly body-moving that you can’t imagine an objection.

You could spend a lot of time picking apart the threads of funk, Afrobeat, jazz and rock, trying to decide where Kabaka’s African heritage leaves off and his youth in swinging London kicks in, but in the end, it’s probably pointless. This album bangs all the way through, and if you missed it the first time, now’s your chance.

Jennifer Kelly

[dash-n-step]

"hate to kick the hornet's nest"

not me

if you're going to make a homestuck reference on someone else's post just say it, you're already posting a random thing to someone else's thread just own it

[41fr3d]

i value the low stakes of calling someone a dumbshit on reddit. you can beef with anyone on any post, and even if it gets heated it stays contained in that thread. MAYBE a few DMs. MAYBE your reply gets deleted by a mod.

but twitter/tumblr? you look crazy for replying to someone you aren't mutuals with. gotta cryptically vaguepost about it unless the original blows up. showing up to argue on a post w/ 4 likes feels like walking over to another table at a restaurant to slap a stranger. feels too personal. you've made permanent enemies of them and their friends. really kicking around the hornets nest. reddit tho? you wont remember that person's username the second you close the thread. its freeing.

[venturethighs]

They were kind enough to free both your legs and offer to sew you up after everything that happened to you. The only problem was having to take off your shorts and underwear in order to sew you back together correctly– they promised that they wouldn't judge, it was something they were used to– but touching your body gave them sensations that they hadn't felt in millennia. To say they were stiff in more ways than one would be an understatement.

Regardless, they brace themself and begin to thread the surgical steel needle with medical grade twine. Your single arm shyly hides your exposed front as their hands grasp at your cold flesh to sew it lovingly back together. Although the sensations were not what they used to be back when you were alive, you could still feel their fingers working carefully to ensure a tight hold.

Once they make their way towards your inner thigh you could feel all the violet blood in your body rush back to your core, illuminating your face with a lavender blush. You bite your lip and swallow the whine that bubbles up in your stitched up throat.

"Why were you here in the first place? You didn't tell me you were coming over..." They ask, trying to break the tension to no avail.

"I needed a replacement." You look over at your missing arm.

"I would've made the place look nicer if I knew you were coming..." They reply. "Dusted. Changed my wraps– I'm sorry you have to see me like this."

You didn't understand because every part of them still looked gorgeous. Their unkempt bedhead, their glowing eyes, peeking at their skin underneath the messy bandaging showing intricate tattoos and scars from centuries ago. They were lucky to still have their figure in tact so that every curve of their muscles were still preserved for all to see. It took every ounce of your electric current not to just unravel them right here and now.

"I'm the one who should be apologizing. I'm sorry about looking for a spare arm in your pyramid. I could've just gone to the morgue." You explain.

"So, why didn't you?" They're intrigued now.

"I–" You weren't ready to admit your feelings yet. "I don't know..."

They tug harshly on the string and reconnect your leg where it belongs. Their hands reach for the other one and start repeating the process. Your words stir inside their 'mind' for a few minutes before they let out a sinister sounding laugh.

"Do you really think I'm that naive?" A dark undertone taints their voice– the cursed spirits voice mixing together with their own.

It sends shivers down your undead body and stokes the growing 'heat' within your hips. They lean in and look directly into your empty eyes. You could smell heavenly spices on their breath.

"I see everything that goes on in this place." They continue weaving your detached leg without looking.

Your lavender blush flushes through your entire body.

Their voice lowers to a whisper, refusing to break eye contact with you. "I saw what you were doing. Back in my day, I'd have you put to death for that."

Another tight pull yanks your second severed leg back into its proper socket, but you barely even notice. They sever the twine and place everything back into your sewing kit before setting it aside. All the while your heart is pounding inside your rib cage, and if you could sweat then surely you would be covered in it.

"You know what I'm going to do about it now?" Their rough hands squeeze the skin of your outer thighs as a grin forms on their face.

Every last nerve you had was screaming to be ravaged. Your breaths mingle for a moment before you open your mouth to reply.

"... do you promise?" You whisper back.

They throw their head back in laughter.

You truly had no idea how deep you were in now– there was kicking the hornets nest, and then there was punting it against a wall. What did you just do? You just picked it up and crushed it with your bare hands.

They close themself in on you before violently pulling you against their own hips to make it known just how stiff they truly were. Wetness starts to gush as you arch your back off of the pyramid floor, wrapping your newly attached legs around their waist to pull them even closer. Without warning they tug your shirt off and leave you completely exposed– stitches, scars, discoloration– all for them to see. Their tongue glides over their lips in pure, carnal hunger.

"Beautiful– Hathor still blesses me, I see." They mumble to themself.

They waste no time discarding their own silks before pressing their length against your entrance. A whimper leaves the back of your throat as they teasingly press the tip of their cock into you before promptly pulling out and leaving you empty once again. Watching you squirm draws another dark laugh from them– so delicious, they could devour you whole.

"Do you want it?" Their voices are practically dripping with venom. Now you knew the reason for the asp engraved on their tomb. "Tell me how bad you need it!" They demand.

You groan as you feel yourself widen around their tip once again.

"I don't need it." You reply. For a moment they were confused, until– "I need you."

Clearly they weren't expecting that response. "... me?"

"I need you–" You repeat, panting as your impatience begins to grow. "I need you– inside me– to make us both feel nice and warm– like when we were alive."

"Alive..." They repeat underneath their breath.

You feel them fully insert themself inside of you as another moan escapes. "Just– don't rip my stitches, please!" You beg.

You feel the grip on your legs lighten immediately. The look on their face suggests they're still coming to terms with what you said earlier. You squeeze your legs around their hips once again and buck your hips to help them reach further into you, causing a growl to resonate inside their throat. Without thinking, their name falls from your lips and fully pulls them back into reality.

"I'll teach you what happens to grave robbers around here." They spat, feeling a playful sensation building up in their chest.

They know you're no grave robber– but they can still have a little fun... right? They give you no chance to reply before viciously (yet carefully) pounding into you just as you had asked. You reach up for them with your singular arm and they lower themself enough so you can wrap it around their neck affectionately. You press kisses to their lips before letting them slip their tongue inside– only to have your eyes widen in surprise.

They pull away long enough to let you see it completely– unexpectedly forked like a snake, it had snuck its way down your throat from the sheer length, and just as quickly as it had left your mouth it reenters and you begin to feel it slithering within once more. Every noise that resonates from your throat is swallowed up as their ruthless pace continues driving you further into the cold, brick floor.

One hand moves from your thigh and up to your chest, softly squeezing what they could grab on to before playfully rubbing your erect nipple with one of their fingers. Electricity courses through your body with each repeated stroke. Memories run through the back of your mind, just like the day you were reanimated, convulsing on the table as thousands upon thousands of volts coursed through your undead being... except this was much more pleasant.

You pull away from their mouth long enough to whimper into their ear. "Don't stop– don't stop– my body is on fire–"

You certainly weren't lying. The electricity running wild in your system was creating a heat you had only felt once or twice before, but never to this degree. The only coldness you felt was the floor below you and Sloan atop of you– and they couldn't get enough of it. All they ever felt was cold. Ice cold. Not even the sun at it's peak could have provided such a heavenly warmth to indulge in.

It was truly like being alive again.

"I'm close–" You murmur, grasping at their hair as you stare at the ceiling. "It– feels so good– don't stop– never stop–"

You cry out and jolt forwards and their hand moves to hold the back of your head protectively. They whisper soft encouragement in ancient Egyptian as they feel you gripping hard on their length.

"My sweet queen/king/monarch– let beloved Hathor send you over the edge." Their breath hitches as you continue uncontrollably spasming around their length buried several inches inside of you. "Let me spill my seed inside you. Every last drop. I know you're close. Let go. For me. Let go– let go– and be good for me."

Electricity shoots through your nerves before exploding inside your hips and you come harder than you ever had in your entire after life. Stars and patterns flicker in and out of your vision as Sloan proceeds to cover your insides with thick ropes of come. They spend a few more minutes holding you, panting, reveling in the bliss you provided for them.

You're not sure how long the two of you were lying there for afterwards. They only fully pull out when they're physically unable to stay inside anymore, and the emptiness has you pouting just a little. It's only when you feel tiny legs scurrying about on your arm that you glance to see a beautiful iridescent scarab using its front legs to tighten all the stitches that had come loose during your lovemaking.

"Seems like Rosetta likes you." Their voice returned to normal, the curse subsiding for now.

She finds her way into your palm and rests with ease.

"If I had my other arm I would give her some pets..." You attempt to lightly thumb her back and she flaps her wings affectionately.

"Oh. I forgot about that. Maybe you should go ahead and get to the morgue, then." They suggest.

Sloan helps you to your feet and wraps their arm around your waist for stability. Rosetta nestles inside the tangles of your hair, resting as the two of you make your way down the twists and turns of the corridors.

"I'll show you the way out. Next time you're over I promise it'll be clean..."

You can't help but giggle.

"Or maybe you just like seeing me get trapped, hm?" You tease.

A soft blush paints their face. "Okay. Maybe a little bit..."

[scorching-passion]

@warofthebeasts​ liked this for a one-liner.

“I can’t say that I appreciate the advice to ‘grow up’, sir... I spent a good deal of time on that pillow fort, what kind of child could possibly attest to such skill...?”

[neomachine]

This entire thread is just making fun of his proportions in that second image. So because I feel like kicking the hornet's nest this morning: Linehan's appearance doesn't really have anything to do with his politics. If you try and make this to be about "well he sits all day typing evil things on his keyboard thats why he looks like that", you're right at home on a faux inspirational 00s body transformation show! Here's your Blair era 'evil people are lazy and sit around all day badge, look at how gross they look' badge.

Honestly he's so hateful and so dangerous I get the impulse (I'm from terf island! I'm on the recieving end of his shit!), but this just winds up an example of people deciding morality based on beauty. I despise that odious Roald Dahl image because it is inevitably used to make fun of people for physical 'imperfections' so long as their transgressions are enough. There was a post that got thousands of notes a couple weeks ago stating that you shouldn't do this because, what'd ya know- trans men might share this body type! Good not-brainrotted cis men might share it! Hell, anyone of any gender can. Good people can equally sit all day online, or have 'non-normative' body types or whatever. I bet half the people on that thread count as that. It's petty and short sighted to go down this route to me I don't know why it's not recognised and called out more. It's useless, and so many good people catch strays from it; it's a deeply isolating politics and has nothing to do with my kind of solidarity.

I know I fall into this by virtue of this post, but, what would be useful is, much like with JK, to stop giving these hateful buffoons your attention, notes, stats, views and fundamentally, notoriety.

[pazodetrasalba]

A hornet's nest

Dear Caroline:

Yesterday afternoon our (very inefficient) state-owned mail service finally confirmed that the letter I had sent during the holidays had arrived at your lawyer's offices on January 9th. As I ignore how disconnected you might be from the Internet, that gives me a sliver of hope that some words of mine might have arrived to you, and some epsilon greater than zero chance that you have read them and found some comfort therein.

Back to today's post, this is one of those 'kicking the hornet's nest' moments of yours which have been exploited and lionized by sensationalist journalism in the absurd quest to peddle you as 'the darling of the alt-right' (?!), which really says a lot about the state of the profession nowadays. Genetics is, of course, a very thin ice-sheet domain of which to tread on, where massive past and present abuse and misuse and current strongly held beliefs make it unwise to say anything lightly. The word 'infohazard' comes to mind, and all the more appropriate that it was coined by Nick Bostrom, whose late "Apology for an Old Email" has rocked the EA community to a degree no lesser than the whole FTX affair itself.

Not that you say anything I would consider controversial in the lines above. The presence of pre-Beringian inhabitants in the Americas is, indeed, something 'crazy and not widely known enough', and the result, it appears, of great advances in genome sequencing. In the early 2000s I took a course at university on the 'Prehistory of the New World' where there was much talk of Folsom arrow points and Clovis stone tools, and of the conventional settlement narrative of the western continent. As this is an area I haven't been following much, I was quite surprised by this article you link to and its information.

It seems there are some issues not with its data, but rather with Razib Khan's liaisons dangereuses with the Alt-Right and some more controversial statements of his elsewhere about race and intelligence correlations. One would be inclined to dismiss preoccupations about this where it not for the fact that Bostrom's letter seems to update priors about how the obsession with intelligence and with following unusual paths and threads of thought in the EA and rationalist communities can very easily derail. Besides, Bostrom's position and notoriety immediately brings to mind the old adage “They must consider that great responsibility follows inseparably from great power”.

I am myself a little bit at odds regarding this. My natural inclination as a zealot of Truth however unpalatable would lead me to reject any and all sorts of attempts to police intellectual scrutiny and exploration, and to focus the light of reason even on (or especially on) commonly and strongly held beliefs. On the other hand, because of reasons already mentioned, I would consider it silly to comment and explore this intellectual minefield unless you are actually a cutting-edge researcher with unimpeachable and abundant evidence to back up your claims. A case could be made, though, if one is thinking about Kuhnian paradigms in a field, that strong inertia for deeply held positions makes it impracticable to articulate alternative discourses and generates a closed feedback loop that is very difficult to break. And isn't a key part of the EA ethos to rationally explore the unconventional 'roads less taken'?

Quote:

And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.

John, 8:32

[artbyblastweave]

Whats your thoughts on

Tony stark (mcu)

He might be a billionaire weapons manufacturer with a god complex but at least he looks cool when suited up.

Okay, so, more seriously, I’ve wanted to kick the Iron Man hornet’s nest for years.

My potentially unpopular opinion on Tony Stark is that general MCU assembly line-ishness aside, the writers were pretty clearly aware that the guy was kind of a scumbag, albeit a well-intentioned one, and they kept a hold of that thread through all the films I saw. 

The movies were very up-front about the fact that the Tony is constantly fucking up in ways that create problems for everyone, often in ways that he isn’t even aware of until it generates a supervillain. The fuckups are interspersed with big, romantic gestures that sometimes fix the problem at hand, like the portal nuke or the climax of Endgame, but they don’t solve the underlying dynamic of a billionaire throwing his money around in ways that really, really predictably lead to disaster, if the person making the prediction is anyone not named Tony Stark. With the exception of Endgame, I’ve never watched an MCU movie where it felt like the takeaway was that we were supposed to nod along with Tony Stark, embrace him uncritically, or treat him as a straightforward role model.

(If anything, one of my complaints about MCU Spider-Man is that it takes time away from Spider-Man to keep hammering home Iron-Man’s fuckups. For me, the takeaway from Far From Home wasn’t, “oh, look at Tony Stark’s EDITH system, drones are so cool, let’s give the army drones,” it was, “Oh, so this was a completely unaccountable system at every step of ownership, from Tony to Peter to Mysterio, this was an utterly insane thing to build, an insaner thing to will to a teenager, and yet another example of how Iron Man keeps fucking everything up with his money and power even post mortem.” I thought it was weird that people thought it was a pro-drone warfare film.)

BUT!

Iron Man as the tortured, self-destructive, hypocritical, self-absorbed, interesting superhero is fundamentally at odds with his own real world marketing. 

The Movies, taken on their own, only occasionally tell you straight up that Iron Man is uncomplicatedly awesome and that you should want to be Iron Man, but the Marketing surrounding the character is never going to be able to dig into the sleaziness that makes him actually neat. The marketing machine (and associated fandom machine) actually do treat him as a do-no-wrong aspirational figure in a way the source material doesn’t, because you can’t put a war profiteer on T-Shirts. You can’t put class analysis in a coloring book. You can’t put a frank discussion of panopticon politics and corporate-backed imperialism on the back of a cereal box. And this is where you get the more insufferable depictions of Iron Man, where is flaw is that he’s... sarcastic, or snarky, or only charmingly self-confident instead of a black hole of bad decisions made extremely confidently. All of the most irritating “I don’t care do u” style of memes, the air fryer thing, the grayscale one where he’s putting his hand over his breast in mock surprise, that’s where all of those are coming from. From this tension where the outward face of the character is this really obviously hollow self-aware snark, because everything of substance to the character is completely unmarketable at the scale Disney wants to market it at.

[rabidpotato]

I have Castlevania brain rot send help

Ho boy. I have FEELINGS.

Season 4 spoilers and (longwinded) Discourse(TM) below the cut

A happy ending? In MY Castlevanias? It’s more likely than you think. With as grimdark as the series has been I fully expected to have my heart torn out and shat on, so to get an actual satisfying happy ending was a whole lungful of fresh air. Gimme that sweet sweet rush of Everybody Lives Nobody Dies, I need that shit pumped straight into my poor serotonin-starved brain.

What a hell of a season. There was enough material there for at least two seasons (and I would have LOVED to have two seasons, but that’s just because I’m greedy and want more…) and I was skeptical that they could even try to wrap up all those threads..and then they DID IT. Hot damn.

Hot Takes:

In this house we stan Greta and will tolerate no disrespect against our sword-and-hammer wielding queen. I love her, and I love her and Alucard’s dynamic with the deliberate parallels to Dracula and Lisa. I think she’s good for him.

TREVOR AND SYPHA UGH I JUST LOVE THEM SO MUCH I’m out here crying ugly tears at how much this stinky himbo and tiny nuke love each other ;______; Battle Couple OTP.

I would watch the shit out of an entire season of everybody building the new village and Trevor and Sypha learning how to be parents and Alucard and Greta getting closer and everybody just being HAPPY. This is because I am trash, not because there would actually be any storytelling value in such a thing. Same thing with onscreen kisses between Trevor and Sypha. Is it necessary? No. Doesn’t mean I don’t want it. But hey, that’s what fandom is for, right? I’ll just be over here drawing beetus-inducing fluff and being vaguely disgusted with myself.

Papa Trevor would be so soft. I think my ovaries just exploded.

I 100% expected Trevor to die and leave Sypha grieving and pregnant with the way they teased it in the trailer and the way it would have thematically fit with the rest of the series, and I am SO GLAD he didn’t. I’m tired of sad endings. I really love that he gets to be part of this world of people who know how to build things.

“I love you.” “I know.”

That single flash of Sypha’s face as he’s fading out knowing he’s going to die and being at peace with it, augh my fucking heart. T_T

Horse is secret MVP. That horse knows things.

Isaac confirmed for a) stand user and b) monster fucker. King out here living his best life, you love to see it.

But for reals tho, Isaac’s arc was one of my favorites. Nice fakeout with the conquest line in the trailer. The philosophical discussions on the nature of humans and night creatures, the way he comes to realize that he (and Hector, and by extension his own night creatures) is/are more than a tool to be used in the hands of others, the way he reclaims his own agency and decides he’s going to live...I fucking loved it. (Also paves the way for post-series forgehusbands…)

SO FUCKING HAPPY FOR STRIGA AND MORANA. I was holding my breath expecting them to get horribly killed the entire time and then they just...weren’t. The hot vampire wives got to literally ride off into the sunset (sunrise?) together, in a way that made sense. The General and the Organizer looked at the data on the ground, discussed, and made the calculated decision to stick with what really matters to them, not just Carmilla’s ambitions. More of this, please! Would have loved to see Striga fight more than once, though. Also I would shank a man for Morana’s cape.

Respect for Carmilla for going out on her own terms, even if it did feel a little heavy-handed. The cinematography of her and Isaac’s fight sure as hell made up for it though- that was one of the prettiest fights of the series.

Reunited trio’s fight was the other prettiest fight of the series. Holy fuck, what gorgeous animation.

I actually liked that St Germain’s lady friend never spoke- it reinforced the way that he has mythologized her to the point where she’s not even a person, just an ideal. It was also exactly what he deserved that she turned her back on him in the end. She’s just not that into you, bro.

Varney is a hoot. A greasy, flea-infested slimy hoot. Nice twist, too. Death’s design is *chef kiss*

Loved the themes of moving on and rebuilding and change and how there’s a pretty clear split between the people who are able to adapt and change (and live), and those “relics of the old world” who can’t or won’t. Ratko was criminally underused in this respect. I think there just wasn’t enough time.

Quibbles:

Pacing. I know Castlevania is notorious for uneven pacing, but in this case I think this is on Netflix- they should have been given a full two seasons to wrap this up, just to give things a chance to breathe. As it was, though, I think the writers did the best possible job given the constraints they were under.

Zamfir should have lived to learn the lesson about caring for the people who are still alive, and been the one to take charge of rebuilding Targoviste for the living. Having her die was straight-up pointless in a predictable way.

Did Trevor just straight-up forget he has TWO weapons with range when fighting Ratko? You have like a 30 foot reach what are you doing bro

Lenore is Problematic, and I wish there had been more tension between her and Hector. Like, I know Stockholm Syndrome is a thing, but he’s weirdly chill with her in a way that glosses over just what she did to him. Also I would have liked to see more self-awareness of “Oh, being a pet in a cage really is shitty, no matter how nice the cage. Now I know why what I did to you was wrong” before she dips. Her ending sure was poetic, though.

Wasn’t Trevor’s left arm broken in that last fight? How the heck is he even able to use it at the end? Also damn dude it’s been two weeks you should probably at least have washed those gaping wounds by now. Do you want sepsis? Because that’s how you get sepsis.

Unpopular Opinions:

Look I love Dracula/Lisa as much as the next shipper but “Hey we’re alive again for some reason!!” was totally out of left field. It felt like something out of a fix-it fic and it was just kinda baffling and jarring. Also go see your fucking kid, jfc you two are terrible parents.

Is Lisa just...kinda fine with the fact that Dracula tried to commit genocide in her name and almost killed their son? That must have been an awkward conversation.

I’m actually cool with Alucard spilling his life story to Greta on the march. He’s starving for human interaction, who’s to say he wouldn’t just want to TALK about what he’s been through? It’s treated in a way that’s a bit flippant for my taste, but we’ve seen enough of his trauma onscreen. I want to focus on his healing.

I’m hesitant to kick this particular hornet’s nest, but I really don’t think the ot3 has to be sexual? If it is, it damn well be an ot4 polycule with Greta. I see them more as two couples that are close friends and found family. But that’s the great thing about fandom! Rock on, shippers of all flavors, there’s room enough for everybody.

In Conclusion (jesus fuck how much did I write)

Castlevania pretty

Have you seen my braincell I think I misplaced it

Moar plz

[alderaani]

Family

Summary: Rex wakes up after leaving Saleucami to find Cody at his bedside, and has to grapple with meeting Cut Lawquane and what it means to be a clone. Gen fic, 2.4k of brother feels.

Part of my series 100 clone centric prompts, or readable on AO3 here.

A/N: Look nothing breaks my heart more than when Cut questions Rex about duty and he is SO quick to start talking about protecting his hypothetical children. I’ve been staring at this fic for three days and getting fed up of writing it, u know when you’ve just been staring at words so long they stop being words? So here it is, and i hope you like it!

The medbay lights were low when Rex woke. He knew where he was even before he opened his eyes, lulled by the ever-present rumble of the engines and the sharp smell of antiseptic. And sure enough, the Resolute took gentle shape around him, turning from smear to ship once he’d blinked the sleep away. His eyes always felt dry and sensitive after sedatives, painfully tight around the edges. For a moment he lay perfectly still, letting the galaxy trickle back in, sense by sense.

The bleep of a monitor, the stiff, starched edges of the sheet tucked up round his body. A warm, solid weight wrapped around his hand, the rumbling sound of someone snoring, the unnatural dryness of his mouth and the lingering taste of bacta on his tongue.

He looked down, then smothered a laugh. Cody was crumpled like discarded flimsi in a chair next to his bed, hunched so that his head and upper shoulders were wedged close to Rex’s thigh over the blankets. His nose was scrunched with sleep, the force of his soft snores dislodging the curls on his forehead with each puff of air. He still smelt like blaster residue and dust, and his cheek had left dark smudges on the sheet. There was a discarded datapad next to his head, glowing with soft blue light as it announced the arrival of several new messages. His hand was the heavy weight that Rex could feel, wound tight around his own. Cody had split his knuckles again, the skin around the thin cuts raised and puffy and glistening with freshly applied bacta.

Rex wasn’t sure when he’d gotten here, but it couldn’t have been too long, or someone would have bullied his brother into at least hitting the freshers.

He couldn’t remember making it to the rendezvous, the memories buried somewhere under the jarring bolts of pain from his chest and the way his arm stung like a nest of hornets as the nerves healed. Telling General Kenobi that he’d been on the mend hadn’t been a lie, per se, but even Rex could admit that he’d perhaps been stretching things. It was at least reassuring to know that he’d not fallen off his eopie and collapsed in some unremarkable patch of Saleucami’s farmland.

Rex stared around the familiar bay, struggling with the rush of relief and discomfiture that spread through his body. Nothing was out of place here; he could look around and know exactly what to expect, from the barracks to the bridge. He wanted to let it settle him the way it usually did, to let relief seep into his bones at another mission fought and – well, not won, but survived. This time it wouldn’t quite come.

It wasn’t because he’d been injured. That had happened more times than he had fingers. Maybe it was because The Resolute was the closest thing to a home that he had…and for the first time in his short life, he couldn’t help but find it a little lacking. He’d come back. That much was true, and he was glad of it. But there was some part of him that was still stranded on that farm on Saleucami, rooted there in the sound of children’s laughter and the humming of insects in the fields. He could still feel the pale sun beating down on his face, taste the sharp wind on his tongue, and was surprised to find it bound up in a small ache in his chest.

The blaster bolt would scar. So would this feeling. But neither would ever fully go away.

When Rex had told Cut that he’d never really thought about the names they gave each other, the individuality it bestowed upon each clone, he’d been telling the truth. It had simply never been a priority beyond a fleeting thought. There were always more important things to think about; they all knew that each brother was different, beyond name, station, hair colour or designation. To clones, those distinctions they chose for themselves were sacred. And that had always been enough, until now. The sight of one of their own framed in a farm-house door, children round his feet and a whole world under them…the possibility of it sat irreversibly inside him, a Pandora’s Box he’d never known could be opened.

Maybe he’d never thought about it before – but on some level now he always would.

That terrified him.

“Rex’ika?”

The fingers around his palm flexed, dragging him back to the present.

He glanced down to see Cody’s eyes fixed on his face, puffy but alert, his cheek creased where the sheets had pressed into them. His ori’vod jerked frantically into motion, pushing upright with a groan. Rex didn’t even have time to speak before Cody’s fist was colliding lightly with his shoulder.

“The kriff d’you let yourself get shot for?”

“Good to see you too, vod,” Rex grumbled, rotating his shoulder for show then actively wincing when the motion sent streaks of pain skittering from the crater in his chest.

He knew that Cody had seen it, because instantly his hand pushed him back firmly into the pillows, like if he didn’t hold him still Rex was going to try and escape somewhere.

“I’m alright,” he said after a moment, patting Cody’s hand a couple of times before his brother deemed fit to let go of him.

“Oh yeah? Because five hours ago you said that and then fell flat on your face.”

Rex grimaced. He couldn’t refute the claim because he didn’t know any better, and sadly from the bits of the journey he could recall, collapsing at the end of it was a distinct possibility. There was a familiar pinch between Cody’s eyebrows as he hovered, ready to manhandle Rex again if he felt it necessary. It was an expression that Rex knew intimately, because it only appeared when he’d worried him.

He’d been a scrappy cadet; never allowed anonymity because of his hair, defiance and recklessness had been a kind of defence mechanism. If he was going to be singled out, he could at least control the way it happened. The fourth time he’d been made to run so many laps that he vomited, he’d looked up, panting, to see Cody’s pinched face staring back. The commanding batches were only meant to supervise the punishments of the younger levels, but Cody had reached out a hand anyway and hauled Rex to his feet. He’d been the one to teach him that there were better ways to make himself untouchable.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Rex said, swiping his tongue over his dry bottom lip. “Tastes like Kix gave me the good stuff.”

Cody rolled his eyes, the corners of his mouth twitching into something fond. “He’s gonna kick your shebs, and I’m gonna let him. You should’ve seen his face when the General said you were on your way. The hells were you thinking, di’kut? We could’ve sent an escort.”

Rex felt his answering grin slide off his face at the thought, uncertainty settling back into his belly like lead. An escort would have had to come to the farm, and in turn would have seen the deserter. Some not insignificant part of him felt almost affronted at what Cut had done, even as he didn’t regret keeping his secret. It ground against what they’d been taught about themselves, against what had been built into their DNA. It didn’t matter whether they liked war the same way it didn’t matter whether they liked the colour of their eyes. It was what it was.

But Rex could comprehend turning his back on that, even if he didn’t understand. What was harder to fathom, with Cody’s hand anchoring his own, palm sweaty with relief that his ori’vod wouldn’t voice, was being alone. The idea of saying ‘family’ and not meaning a face just like his own. The thought of being cut off from the vode, from the invisible threads of brotherhood that transcended them all…it was an alien thing, sharp and unpleasant.

“It was for the best,” he said to Cody, a beat too slowly. “The farmer who put me up…he wasn’t the friendliest sort.”

Cody’s gaze sharpened. “Anti-clone?”

Rex very nearly laughed. “No, just the over-cautious type. He didn’t want the war on his doorstep.”

Cody paused for one very long moment, surveying Rex with eyes that always unearthed everything he wanted to hide. He would have been more worried, had he not been quite confident that Cut Lawquane was unpredictable.

“Then why are there hand-print bruises on your neck, Rex?”

Reflexively, Rex reached for his throat, running his fingers gingerly over the puffy skin. He hadn’t realised that they were there, but immediately the sensation of dangling by his throat came back to him.

“I got throttled by a commando droid, that’s why. Turns out the farmer didn’t get a whole lotta say about some landin’ in his field. We handled it.”

Cody swore, his hand tightening around Rex’s again. “Just couldn’t miss out on the action, could you vod’ika? Gettin’ shot wasn’t enough?”

Rex grinned, shrugging a little. “How else am I gonna give you grey hairs? Me ‘n Wolffe have still got that bet going about which marshal commander it’ll be first, you or Fox. And I’ve gotta make up for the whole Senate somehow.”

“Unbelievable,” Cody growled, shoving Rex’s hand away and running a hand over his head. “Throwing the odds is illegal, Chakaar. What did he wager? Corellian whiskey? Koon always sneaks him the best shit.”

Rex snorted, wrinkling his nose. “Hardly. As if I’d risk my shebs for a drink, Kote, it’s for the glory.”

Cody leaned back in his chair, face still a picture of outrage. Rex knew that in any other scenario he’d have already been in a headlock, and grinned smugly at the fact he was currently untouchable.

“Yeah, well, next time you don’t hafta try so hard,” Cody muttered. “Or you’ll bypass grey hairs and push me straight to heart attack.”

“That still counts as a win.”

Rex knew he fully deserved the punch that Cody landed on his leg, covering his mouth to muffle the laugh that wanted to burst out of him. The rest of the bay was surprisingly quiet, the lighting low and soft. The vast majority of the beds were empty, the few other occupants sound in either natural or induced sleep. Cody probably should have gone to alert the on-duty medic that he’d woken up, but instead the silence lapsed on between them, Cody’s eyes crinkling soft at the corners again in that unguarded way that Rex missed from their youth.

After a moment Cody’s pad chirped from between the disturbed sheets, a gratingly cheerful sound that never heralded anything good. Rex watched his brother sigh and pick up the offending item, scrolling and clicking through notices as the tension crept back into his face. Cody had always been like that – ruthlessly efficient, wickedly shrewd, a ship against which the rest of them could weather all storms. Any clone who’d ever met him knew what class he was destined to go into, and when he’d been promoted, the only person who’d been surprised was Cody himself.

There was a pride in that, Rex reflected; to excel so thoroughly at the purpose for which you’d been made. But there was no choice in it either, and it was an odd thing, to look at Cody for the first time and find it a little jarring that he couldn’t picture him as anything else.

“What? Have I got something on my face?” Cody had looked up from his datapad with one eyebrow raised. Then he sighed again, jabbing at the screen grumpily. “I swear Bly waits until it’s my night cycle to send me forms on purpose.”

Rex watched him type for a few more seconds, then looked down at his hands.

“Have you ever thought about the end of the war?”

There was a long pause, hanging stunned in the air between them. Rex twisted his fingers together then looked up, feeling oddly vulnerable. Cody’s brow was lifted in a rare moment of unguarded surprise, before his eyes narrowed, searching Rex’s face.

“…no, I suppose I haven’t,” he said eventually. “General Kenobi theorises that it’ll hinge on –“

“No, I meant – have you ever thought about what we’ll do after.” Rex said softly.

Cody blinked a few times then leant back in his chair.

“After?” The word curled uncertainly off his tongue, an awkward shape in his mouth. “Don’t you think we’ve gotta win the damn thing first, Rex’ika?”

Rex shrugged, feeling his shoulders creep up round his ears the way they always did when he was nervous. The words almost stuck in his throat, scraping raw as he pushed them out, unformed and fledgeling.

“Yeah, of course. But…all the same. For some of us there will be an after. Commander Tano talks about it sometimes – getting back to all the things she did before.”

That did make Cody smile, a little fleeting thing. “General Kenobi does too. He had to put all his plants in the Temple gardens, says he misses them.”

“Have you ever thought about going with them?”

Cody’s eyebrows jumped again, a rare, blank look on his face that made Rex feel better and worse all at the same time. “Can’t think why the Jedi would need clones around in their Temple. What’s this really about, Rex?”

Rex let out a breath, a long gusting sigh that peeled out of his ribcage, and fixed his eyes back on the ceiling. “Staying with that farmer…eating at his table, sharing his food. Talking to his kids…it just made me wonder, you know? What that might be like.”

Cody snorted, but his eyes were impossibly warm as he scrubbed a knuckle over Rex’s short blond hair. “You? A farmer? Didn’t you kill the plant Kenobi got Skywalker for his lifeday?”

Rex batted him away. “That thing was already dead when he brought it to me. And to be honest, the eopie they lent me stank. But…his kids were cute. Real big eyes, you know?”

The corner of Cody’s mouth had ticked up again as he settled himself back down with his datapad. “Tano and Skywalker not kids enough for you?”

He ducked the fist Rex shoved his way, chuckling, and they settled back into a docile quiet, Cody confused, and Rex unsure how else to put his feelings into words. How it wasn’t just the farmer, or the kids, or the land. Just the new, frightening possibility that one day they might be his to take. Rex felt the drowsiness creep back in on him, cresting and falling in a wave. He didn’t fight it, twisting down into the sheets and letting the soft tapping of Cody’s fingers on glass lull him on. When he reached the precipice of sleep, hovering somewhere above a dream, he felt his brother’s hand squeeze his one more time, then heard him speak.

“I guess I never have thought about it, vod. But you’re right. Maybe it does sound nice.”

taglist // @nelba @iscream4clones @bad-batch-of-fics @leias-left-hair-bun @majorshiraharu @simping-for-fives // join here