talk me down
@queen-scribbles HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAIT!!! 💗💗💗💗 I thought you could use some more Tragen/Marii in your life 😉 well, this is way back on Yavin during all that Revan business, so it’s pre-ship, but I’m at least 95% sure this is Marii’s “oh no” moment. She’s definitely crushing on him by this point (and who could blame her, really?) XD I hope you enjoy, and you have the BEST day!
title from the song “talk me down” by People I Like, which just evokes the perfect mood for this story 💗
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Twilight on Yavin 4 was long and slow, the sky lingering in gold and then gray for what felt like hours before night finally fell. The Coalition went their separate ways to make camp, as always; the Republic and Empire may have been willing to work together--for now--but they were still a long way from trusting each other while they slept.
With a few notable exceptions.
Marii sat on the edge of a cargo loader a few meters off the ground, letting her legs dangle over the open air beneath her and resting her elbows on the railing. Below her, her own little coalition was in the middle of making dinner. Kira and Vette spoke animatedly about something she was too far away to hear, Doc occasionally chiming in with something that made both women roll their eyes. Only Jaesa seemed to be actually working on cooking, but she smiled to herself as she listened to the conversations around her. Lord Scourge loomed near the edge of the camp, watching but keeping his distance as he always did, and Tragen was--
“Good evening, Aramarii.”
--Was right behind her. Curse his uncanny ability to sneak up on her. Even with the Force she could only sense him if he wanted her to.
“Hey.” She tilted her head up as he came to stand next to her. “Did they kick you outta the kitchen too?”
There was still enough light for her to see his wry smile. “Something like that. Mind if I join you?”
“Be my guest.”
Tragen sat down next to her, looking impossibly graceful as he did so. Marii wasn’t sure if she envied him for it or just admired him.
They sat in silence for a while, letting the descending night settle comfortably around them. It was… nice. Peaceful, even. She let her eyes slip closed and basked in it for a moment, the buzz of night insects and conversation from below, the cooling air and the warmth radiating from the man--the friend? She liked to think they could call each other friend by now--beside her.
When Tragen finally spoke, he kept his voice quiet enough to not break the serenity around them. “Jaesa told me you spoke with her this afternoon.”
There was no accusation in his voice, but Marii flinched anyway. “A little, yeah. I hope that’s alright.”
“Of course it is. I suspect you have quite a bit in common.” She could feel him watching her and knew he could see her clearly even as it grew darker. He saw everything, it felt like. “May I ask what you talked about?”
“All sorts of things. The Jedi. The Sith. You.” She finally opened her eyes and looked his way. “She told me about how the two of you met. About what you did.”
“And what did I do?” he asked carefully. All the warmth in his voice and expression were gone, turned cool and guarded.
On instinct, Marii reached out and covered his hand with hers where it rested on the railing. “You saved her, Tragen.”
That coldness was gone as quickly as it’d arrived, replaced first by surprise and then by a smile bright enough to push away the encroaching darkness. It made her face grow warm and something in her chest feel strangely weightless.
She pushed the feeling away quickly. This was not the right time to examine that reaction or what it could mean.
Marii managed to maintain eye contact, at least, though she had to clear her throat before she could continue. “She said her master had big plans for her. So did yours. You chose a different path.”
Tragen scratched at the back of his neck and looked away for the first time since he sat down. “She chose the path herself. I just showed her it was there.”
She studied his profile, the line of his nose and sharp edge of his jaw perfectly silhouetted against the lights of the camps below. “I wish I’d had someone like you,” she whispered, the confession escaping while she was distracted, “to do the same for me.”
“Do you want to be Sith, Aramarii?” He was whispering too, like somehow Satele or Marr would be able to hear them from the other side of the clearing. Like they were kids telling secrets after curfew. Like the biggest rule they were breaking by sitting there together was just staying up too late.
“No.” That much, at least, she was sure of. “But… well, you may have noticed that the Jedi encampment is over there.” She pointed to the farthest side of the clearing where a meditation circle had been set up, separate even from the rest of the Republic camp. “And I’m way over here.”
He hummed, an acknowledgement that he was listening while choosing not to interrupt.
Marii chose to blame her responding shiver on the chill settling in as full night fell at last.
Even as dark as it was, she could still make out the green of his eyes as she made her second confession of the night. “I’m not very good at being a Jedi, Tragen. I get attached.”
He chuckled, low and a little playful. “Is that such a bad thing?”
“So I’m told.” She spoke with the drone of a lecture, repeating words she’d heard many times before. “Attachment can make you selfish. Make you put the life of one person over the lives of others.” She sighed, scrubbed a hand roughly through her hair as if it was to blame for her crisis of faith. “The Order’s strict about it. No family, no lovers, no children, not even any close friendships. That’s why Theron and Satele are… the way they are.”
“Sounds lonely.”
“I wouldn’t know. As I said, I’m not a good Jedi.”
Tragen let out a sigh of his own, leaning forward to rest his chin on the rail, looking out over the jungle. “I wish I could say the Sith were better at it. Passion may be encouraged, but… it is hard to build a relationship without trust, and there is no trust among Sith.” There was an ache in his normally warm voice, sad and bitter and resigned all at once. “The closer one gets, the easier it is for them to stab you in the back.”
Marii squeezed his hand, wanting to comfort him but not knowing how. After a moment, he squeezed back.
“Sounds lonely,” she echoed, unsure what else to say.
“It is. It used to be.” He looked down at their camp and the mismatched group of lost and wayward souls they’d both collected. “They make things better.”
“Yes. They do.” And so do you, she almost said, but the words never made it past her lips. Probably for the best.
Tragen looked back at her with another of those smiles, bright and warm and devastatingly beautiful, and Marii got the sense he heard it anyway. Strangely, she was okay with that.
“Thank you for sharing this with me, Aramarii.”
That drew out a smile of her own, not quite as bright, but soft and sweet in a way she rarely let herself be. She was too distracted by her own thoughts to notice how captivated he was by it, and the dark hid the faint blush that bloomed across his cheeks.
She leaned closer until their shoulders touched, heedless and unaware. “If anything, I should be thanking you. You may not have shown me a new path, but… well, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one walking this one.”
He shifted, pressing their shoulders together more firmly. “Whatever happens, after this mission is complete, know that you have a friend in me. And I suspect in Jaesa and Vette, as well, though I can’t speak for them.”
“Same goes for me. And Kira.” She wouldn’t answer for Doc or Scourge, but she at least knew her former padawan’s feelings on the matter. ‘I hate that I like them so much’ had been her exact words. “You ever need anything, call and I’m there. Anytime.”
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“So,” Vette propped her elbows on the edge of the crate they were using as a table, leaning her chin on her hands so she could better see the cargo loader and the Jedi and Sith on top of it, “how long d’you think it’ll take them to realize they’re still holding hands?”
Kira snorted a laugh, glancing up to follow Vette’s gaze for a moment before turning back to the camp stove. “If they haven’t noticed by now, my money’s on ‘sudden realization three years from now just before falling asleep.’”
Jaesa responded with a chuckle and a shake of her head. “Oh, leave them alone, you two. Let them have a little privacy. They’ve earned it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Kira drawled, completely genuine despite the sarcasm in her voice. “I guess if we’re gonna fraternize with the ‘enemy,’ I’m glad it’s him. And you. We could’ve done a whole lot worse.”
“Aww, shucks.” Vette leaned against Kira’s shoulder, batting her eyes dramatically. “Are we gonna hold hands now, too?”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.” She exchanged a conspiratorial look with the twi'lek. “So which of us gets to go tell them dinner’s ready?”
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I've watched Jack's (Jacksepticeye's) playthrough of MyHouse.Wad, and at first, because I only heard of Doom and never played it, I let it play in the background. Until Jack's voice starts reading the attached letter to the game.
My thought immediately went, "This is something, and I feel like I'll like this something." I rewind it and watched it from the very start to the end. But I felt it wasn't all that it was, I bounced from his to the comments, explaining the game and all being recommended to play it for yourself. I don't have the resources to do so, so when I saw a comment about a video explaining it, I looked it up. The video lays out the house and the different ways you can go from point a to point b. I've seen Power Pak's after watching Jack's playthrough. And just now, I've watched Pyrocynical's video and theory on it.
There's two that stood out to me, near the end; he lays out the theories and practically dismisses the queer interpretations of it. Until now, I've always been in the camp of "Thomas and Steve were a couple, but due to the time period, or their families, they kept it hidden." When watching Pyro's video, I started realising, why were there pills on the bathroom floor, why the crib, the ring? And I felt like Pyro was nearly there, he was so close to putting it together.
But he dismisses Thomas perhaps being trans or that Steve and Thomas are gay--calls a "fat stretch" and "Level difficulty: Medium" respectively.
I've prefaced all this, because as someone who's transmasc, it felt invalidating. For months I've seen this game--although I never played it and only watched it--as a queer story of grief and loss, of processing that loss, of going through stages of denial, of reliving memories, of just wanting to reach an end where you feel at peace, of looking back on that journey and thinking to yourself that you've made it--past the hardships to a place where you can feel at peace again.
MyHouse.wad being as ambiguous as it is but leaving all these little tidbits is as when it comes to art, hard to piece together. But hearing about how there's also a trans interpretation of made me perk up, thinking, "oh, it's going to be talked about in detail," only to be disappointed.
So, despite being that MyHouse.wad has probably had this interpretation ("tHeOrY") put up already, I still felt compelled to write my own view on it using the pieces that I know of--but, there might be details that I describe vaguely because I don't remember them all that much.
We get tiny little small glimpses of Thomas through Steve's entries, of introduction we get along with the link to download it. And even just from the descriptions of the items in the game like the ring, the die, and whatnot. And the first thought is, "oh, they're gay, but they're not out," which is a sad thought, yes. But I held that interpretation close to me. It's a journey of Steve trying to get through his grief, of plunging in to his thoughts, dismantled and breaking apart as they are. The rawness of everything, of how for him, it probably felt so fresh still and this game, of going through their mod map is his way of processing--never mind how it consumed him, as he said.
And what I consider to be the best ending; the real beach, with a heart on the sand, initials--"S and A, forever". Who's 'A'? Isn't it supposed to be 'T' for Thomas?
I've seen how 'A' could be for "Allord", Thomas' last name, and at the time, yeah, maybe it is A for Allord. But what if it isn't? What if 'A' is the deadname--using that initial, despite it being a deadname, was probably used to protect them, protect him-Thomas. To be seen a heteronormative couple to get away from the hate, the stares, the animosity.
What about the excerpt of their death? Thomas' photo clearly being of a man? Well, that's just it. It's an indication of how the family has accepted Thomas for who he is and to honor him properly, used what a photo of what he looks like now, of who he really is. Proudly too, showing him as Thomas Allord, age 35, in the newspapers. This is their son, brother, and husband.
This is certainly something that will be labeled as a "fat stretch". The crib, then? The pills? And the bloodied bathroom? Perhaps, Thomas had gotten pregnant, experienced a miscarriage in the airport bathroom and had to be rushed to the hospital. As Steve puts in the description of the baby bottle; "It wasn't meant to be." And as he writes in his journal entry, he had a dream, a baby crying in the attic, in the crib, a still born baby.
Perhaps, Thomas was ready to carry the baby--their baby and due to complications, what happened, happened. They'd already bought the crib, but put it away, and we see, maybe both of them had hope that they still had a chance, clinging on.
"If Steve and Thomas are together as you say, then why does Steve refer to Thomas as "my friend" or "my childhood friend"?" Living through life closeted brings habits, unfortunately.
I've grown up without realising that I'm trans, and it was only the past few years where I've realised that the gender I was given and raised to be, isn't who I am. Despite my family knowing, they still call me with feminine pronouns, I get referred to as "sister", or "she/her" a lot of the times. And it's become the biggest norm for me that they just fly by my head without even noticing it, without getting the chance to say "that's not my pronouns".
Is this a "weak" point of the "theory"? No, because I see it as valid. People who aren't out or don't have the chance to express who they are live day to day with being misgendered, seen as someone they're not. I don't want to say, "everybody experiences this" or that there are people who don't go through intense dysphoria that it becomes crippling; I'm just saying, that for me, this is how my day to day is today, what it's like--a sort of cynical indifference to it that boils beneath the surface of my skin.
Or, this is Steve's way to be ambiguous; Thomas was Steve's friend first before they reunited, gotten married, lived together, after all.
Maybe, he wanted to detach himself in his grief and longing. A way to protect himself from the immense loss he's going through and this is his way of doing that. By saying that Thomas was just a childhood friend, it probably eased the pain just a bit.
Or, Power Pak states in his video, isn't it strange how explicit names are never--if ever, rarely-- given. Thomas' name doesn't show up until February of 2023. Steve's name is never used. Maybe, Steve wasn't the one who wrote the journal; a third party who saw the effects of loss on Steve, instead?
In the newspaper clipping of Thomas' life, it's stated how he reconnected with his high school crush, got married and moved in with his partner. The ambiguity could mean that the family simply didn't want bigots to be bigots toward their loved one.
In Steve's clipping detailing his life, he also reconnected with his high school crush. "Soulmate", this person is described as. And like with Thomas', "partner" is used, rather something explicit like, "husband" or "wife."
Although, "wife" can't be correct either since Steve doesn't have a partner listed who outlived him, simply his family.
With MyHouse.wad being as up for interpretation as it is, there's ways of reading into things, one can take it however way they want to, where they want to.
And I, personally, like to think that Steve and Thomas are happy together, with their cat, cuddled up together in their home.
You picked up Die. "Roll for intercourse?"
I feel so helpless, like I can't do anything to bring him back.
I feel so sad and it feels like my heart is heavy. I can't help but think about all of the fun times we had together growing up. All of our adventures, our secrets, and even our arguments. I miss him so much and I can't believe he's gone.
You picked up Ring. "I do."
I attended the funeral of my childhood friend, and I was overwhelmed with grief. As I looked around at everyone else in the room, I could feel the sadness in the air... I never imagined that I would be saying goodbye to my friend so soon.
You picked up Wine Bottle. "Drunk Buddy."
You picked up a Bauble. "Christmas makes me happy."
Happy Valentines day to the only person I ever loved. For a short time, you brought a little happiness to this painful existence called life. I hope we can be together again one day.
You picked up Baby Bottle. "It wasn't meant to be."
You picked up Pill Bottle. "Refill needed."
You picked up Full Pill Bottle. "Feelin' fine."
You picked up Game Controller. "It's my turn."
Somewhere, in another dream, the version of myself that winked back is sitting on the real beach, happy and content, knowing life is finite, there is no afterlife, and happiness is found in the small things around us that we can control. Happiness has to be fought for.
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i know this probably won’t do much, let alone anything at all, but i’m sorry for the stress this site has caused you and so many other creators here. i’m not asking for you to stick around on here, but i hope you know just how meaningful you and your art have been on here. you’re amazing. /pos
Hey, this ask has done a lot more than you would think. Thank you, you are very sweet. <3
I've kind of made up my mind about what I'm gonna do for a while now, but I've simply been... too busy and overwhelmed to take the time to let you guys know. I'm not going to delete my tumblr, there's just. Too much here that I don't want to lose.
So far the game plan is: keep my tumblr. But do not upload anymore art or writing on it - not because it's gonna get scraped, because it was already getting scraped anyway, AI company deal or not. It's pretty much unavoidable at this point, unfortunately. I simply do not trust Tumblr with my data, if they're going to sell EVERYTHING, including private messages and such, so I'm not going to give it anything worthwhile to profit off of. Instead, I'm going to start uploading my art exclusively on Ao3, for now. I'll answer any asks I receive here on there too, as well. I'll figure some kind of system out. 🤔
The cool thing about uploading to Ao3 is that anyone subscribed to my profile or to the containment series I will make will get a notification anytime I upload something new. Having my art and writing in one place is likely going to be more convenient for you guys too, since you won't have to move across platforms to get the full experience. 😄It'll be different... but a platform getting too greedy for its own good won't stop me from finding ways to share my stories with y'all. I'll just find another solution.
(I've also been entertaining the idea of joining or making my own Discord server but. That one is a little more delicate. The idea of joining a server that has hundreds of members like a lot of this fandom's servers have, just. Makes me break into hives, lmao. (I am in the Ghost in the Machine fic server. I muted it an hour into joining, it was way too intense for me. |'D) That is way too many people, I simply cannot handle it. I'd be way more comfortable in a smaller group with a less rapid-fire rate of posting and conversation. I am also. Very picky about which servers I join, which makes asking for recommendations doubly awkward when I shoot them all down, haha... And making my own... Err, I can hardly keep up with a server I helped create for another fandom and mod for, I don't think I could handle two of them - I would need other people to handle the moderation for me, and I wouldn't trust just anyone to be a mod. I'd need to know them well enough to know I could trust them, and I... do not really know anyone in this fandom well enough to do that, sadly. I take server moderation very seriously, as someone who has had experience modding for forums back before social media was a thing. I do not know if that would make for a fun experience for everyone, and anyone who hasn't known that kind of supervised experience. It is comforting to me. It may be intimidating for others. So that's still a very hand-wavy, 'eehhhh' kind of thing still.)
All of this to say, that this isn't the last you'll see from me, far from it. I'll restrict my creative output to Ao3 for the foreseeable future, and I'll let you guys on here know when I make a new upload, so those of you who do not have an Ao3 account know when something new has happened.
So there you have it. 😊
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