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luvst4rc0r3 · 4 months ago

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Loser!Jinx x Reader Headcanons

Jinx wasn’t just a loser—she was the loser. The kind who sat in the back of the class doodling in her notebook instead of taking notes, who always had a random bruise from doing something stupid, and who somehow had a negative GPA but could explain the entire plot of an obscure 90s anime no one had ever heard of.

She wasn’t exactly hated at school, but she was weird, loud, and unpredictable, which made people avoid her. Except for Vi, who was always yelling at her to “Get your shit together, Powder,” and Sevika, who only tolerated her because Vi forced her to.

Then there was you.

The first time Jinx saw you, she short-circuited. She was just trying to make it through another miserable day of Algebra when you walked into the classroom, and suddenly, math didn’t exist anymore. All she could think was:

“Oh no.”

You were effortlessly cool—new to school, good at everything Jinx wasn’t, and way out of her league. But you were nice. Too nice. The kind of nice that made Jinx go home and kick her feet while screaming into her pillow because why would you ever talk to her unless you were planning to ruin her life?

- The first time you talk to her, it’s because you sit next to her in Algebra.

You: “Hey, do you have a pencil?”

Jinx, panicking: “Wh—uh—I—yeah—no—I mean—” (frantically digs through her backpack, pulls out a crayon).

You: “…Thanks?”

Jinx: “Yeah! Totally! I only use crayons, actually. Pencils are a government conspiracy.”

You: “Oh? Tell me more.”

She thinks you’re messing with her. But you don’t laugh. You actually listen. And when she rants about whatever nonsense is currently living rent-free in her head, you just nod along like she’s making sense.

She falls in love immediately.

- Jinx is the type of loser who spends all her time online, plays obscure indie games, and has a concerning amount of conspiracy theories about random things (like why the school vending machine is always out of strawberry soda).

- She is hopelessly, painfully, pathetically in love with you. Like, full-blown kicking her feet and giggling into her pillow kind of crush. She doesn’t even try to be normal about it.

- If you so much as glance in her direction, her brain short-circuits. Immediate blue screen of death. Malfunctioning Jinx noises.

- She swears she’s being subtle, but the entire school knows she’s down horrendously bad for you. Like, it’s embarrassing. Vi has tried to stage an intervention. Sevika has bet money on how long it’ll take before she faints in front of you.

- If you actually talk to her? Oh, she’s done for. Stammering, tripping over her words, probably dropping whatever she’s holding. You could ask her the simplest question, and she’d be like:

You: “Hey, do you have a pencil?”

Jinx, sweating bullets: “Uh—uh—uh—uh—I—pen—yes—no—I mean—I do? Maybe? What’s a pencil?”

- She definitely stalks your social media. She has your entire posting schedule memorized, knows all your interests, and tries to bring them up in conversation to impress you—but it just makes her sound insane.

Jinx: “Soooo… I heard you like frogs.”

You: “What?”

Jinx: “Uh. Frogs. Y’know. Ribbit.”

- If you compliment her, even as a joke, she will take it to her grave. Like, you could say, “Hey, cool jacket,” and she’ll wear that same jacket every day for a month straight.

- One time you called her cute. She has not recovered.

- She tries to act cool around you, but she’s the type of loser who fumbles everything. Drops her phone. Walks into doors. Trips over air. It’s a miracle she hasn’t spontaneously combusted yet.

- If you so much as smile at her, she’s writing about it in her diary like it’s the most life-changing event to ever happen.

“FEBRUARY 8TH, 2025. 3:47 PM. Y/N SMILED AT ME. I CAN DIE HAPPY NOW.”

“February 8th, 2025. 3:47 PM. Y/N TOUCHED MY ARM. I CAN NEVER WASH IT AGAIN.”

- Jinx, in her head, planning out all the ways she could confess to you: Writing you a love letter? Making a mixtape? A grand, romantic gesture?

- Jinx, in reality: “I like your face.”

- If you start liking her back? Oh, she’s doomed. Malfunctioning. Exploding. Game over.

People still don’t understand how you two work, but at this point, it doesn’t even matter. You and Jinx are in your own little world, and honestly? It’s kind of perfect.

- You keep hanging out with her. At first, just in class, but then at lunch, after school, texting late at night. She stops feeling like a loser when she’s with you. She starts hoping.

- The first time you realize you like her back, it’s because of something dumb.

You’re at lunch, sitting with her, Vi, and Sevika. Jinx, being a disaster, spills her drink all over herself. Instead of being embarrassed, she just goes, “Guess I’m drinking it the hard way.”

And something about the way she owns her weirdness makes your heart do a stupid little flip.

- The first time you flirt with her, she malfunctions.

- The first time she realizes you like her back, it breaks her brain.

It happens after school. You’re both walking home together when you grab her hand, lacing your fingers through hers like it’s nothing.

She nearly trips over her own feet. You just laugh and squeeze her hand tighter.

Oh no, she thinks. Oh no, oh no, oh no.

She’s never going to recover from this.

(She doesn’t want to.)

Random Cute Couple Things:

- Jinx is the kind of girlfriend who will 100% steal your clothes.

Not just hoodies—everything. She once showed up wearing your jacket, your socks, and your backpack, and when you pointed it out, she just went, “Yeah, and?”

The worst part? She looks stupidly cute in your clothes, so you can’t even be mad.

(You started “accidentally” leaving extra hoodies at her place just so she’d always have one of yours to wear.)

- She gets insanely clingy when she’s sleepy.

Jinx isn’t really a cuddler during the day—she’s always bouncing off the walls, getting into trouble, dragging you into her weird ideas. But the second she gets tired?

Good luck getting up.

She’ll wrap herself around you like a human koala, mumbling something about how “you’re warm and smell good” and refusing to let go.

(You’ve accepted your fate. You live here now.)

- She makes the dumbest bets just to get kisses.

• “Bet you can’t solve this riddle. If you lose, I get a kiss.

• “If I make this paper ball into the trash can, you have to kiss me.”

• “Okay, rock-paper-scissors, best out of three—winner gets a kiss.”

You caught on pretty quickly and just started kissing her before she could suggest a bet. It completely breaks her brain every time.

(She still tries, though.)

- She doodles all over your stuff.

If you lend Jinx a pen, it’s over—your notebooks, your arms, even your homework will be covered in little scribbles.

Sometimes they’re just random sketches. Other times, you’ll find little hearts with your name inside them.

(She denies drawing them. But the blush on her face says otherwise.)

- She absolutely loves when you play with her hair.

She pretends she doesn’t care at first—shrugs it off, acts like it’s whatever. But the second you start running your fingers through her hair, she literally melts.

(If you braid it, she’ll leave it in all day, even if it looks ridiculous.)

- She’s always touching you.

• Holding your hand? Obviously.

• Leaning against you when you’re sitting together? Yup.

• Linking pinkies just because she can? Of course.

It’s like she needs to be physically connected to you at all times.

(If you ever pull away too soon, she’ll dramatically gasp and go, “What, you don’t love me anymore?!”)

- She makes up the dumbest excuses just to hang out with you.

“Babe, I need your help with something.”

“What is it?”

“I dunno, I just wanted to see you.”

And honestly? You wouldn’t have it any other way.

I love Jinx

I want sleep

#arcane x reader #arcane x y/n #x reader #arcane x you #jinx lol #jinx league of legends #jinx arcane #x you #x y/n #jinx #jinx x reader #jinx fluff #jinx angst #jinx smut #jinx season 2 #jinx supremacy

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bucketbueckers · 6 hours ago

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RECKLESS DRIVING

CHAPTER ONE

content: language, light alcohol use, the line between a slow burn and a fast burn is incredibly thin and cam and paige brought a ruler to measure it, unbelievably messy

wc: 6.3k

notes: super excited to start writing this for y'all 🫶 this has been in my drafts since february and im so happy that everything is finally falling into place for it. i will probably go back to eventually add a playlist but i was feeling very uninspired on that front sooo 😕 just know reckless driving by lizzy mcalpine and vibes by chase atlantic are the two main songs for this fic. i don't have as much of this prewritten like i did irp and i go back to class on the 30th so i have no idea what updates r gonna look like 💔 pls be patient w me but i love chatting w y'all so don't hesitate to send an anon 🫶 if i missed anyone on the taglist lmk, i still dont know how it works LMAO but i hope you guys love camille as much as i do (and as much as y'all loved tess) and as always lmk what y'all think and enjoyyy 🙂‍↔️

tags: @cowboybueckers @indigo491 @wnba-scotland @volleyballgirlsblog

Camille has always loved draft night.

There’s something so bittersweet, yet so impossibly exciting about it. She attended her first one in 2019 to support her Stanford teammate, Alanna Smith, who was drafted 8th overall to the Mercury. Cam was a rising junior when she heard Alanna’s name be called, when she watched her walk to the stage and pose with the jersey, when she realized just how monumental it is.

Draft night is one of those things that creep up on you. It’s easy to think about how long it takes, to sit there while the teams “make” their selection, as if they didn’t already know whose name they would be calling. In fairness, it’s a lot of sitting and waiting and watching highlight tape and analysts discussing the same things in different fonts.

She has great size, a true beast in the paint, they’d say. Or variations of, Her shot is clinical. The ball is through the net before you can get a hand up to defend. She’s dangerous in transition. A menace on defense.

Camille, honestly, doesn’t pay attention to that part. She pays attention to the people. That’s always been her thing. When she watched Alanna get drafted, she noticed the way her shoulders sunk in barely concealed relief. She noted the order in which she hugged the people at her table, the way she closed her eyes and held onto them a little tighter.

It’s bittersweet to know that the draft may take you far away from these people – your friends, your family, the teammates and coaches that held you up when everything had seemed so impossible. But it’s exciting, to watch these girls wipe away their tears, to hold their chin up and march across the stage like it was something they were destined to do as soon as they picked up the ball for the first time.

Cam likes that part where it sinks in. When they realize they’d truly been drafted to one of the most competitive leagues in the country, when the smiles come quicker than the tears. It’s that strong feeling of pride that keeps her coming back to watch these girls lift their jerseys.

Cam might not know a lot of them. She didn’t know Jackie well, or Phee, or Tearia, or Arike – but she stood and cheered as if they were her own teammates. Whether it was a conscious realization or not, they’d all had the same dreams of playing professional basketball. Draft night was something that just took them one step closer to that goal.

The 2020 draft was streamed online, and there wasn’t anyone from Stanford that had been selected for it that year, but Cam hosted a small, intimate watch party with her teammates.

And the 2021 draft? That one was hers. Her table consisted of her parents, Antoine and Valerie, her older sister Colette, and Coach VanDerveer. Her teammates filled the seats in the back and when Cam was selected first overall to the Dallas Wings, the room had exploded into an applause so raucous that you’d think Cam just scored a game winner.

She doesn’t think she’s an explosive player by any means. She’s calm. Confident. Dangerously consistent, known more for the leadership and poise that she brings to the court. At 6’2, she’s most comfortable in a versatile point-forward role, and while her offense is amazing, her defense is even better. Cam was the unanimous pick for the 2021 Rookie of the Year, so she thinks she might be doing something right.

Cam still went to the drafts. She greeted the new rookies, congratulating them and welcoming them into the league in a far kinder way than the other vets would (she likes to think she was preparing them for all of the Griner screens they’d get hit by). She made a conscious effort to prioritize the Wings rookies, knowing first hand how daunting it can be to go from the college season to suddenly being thrown in with the big dogs. It was less about networking and more about genuinely trying to make the rookies feel like they belonged.

It might be the younger sister in her. She’d spent so much of her life looking up to Coley – literally and figuratively since Coley was both three inches taller than her and somehow the coolest person she knew. She’s always a little bit in awe of everyone she meets.

To Cam, to go from being the one who used to look up to others to now have people looking up to her – that means a lot. It’s a role she takes seriously, even though Arike teases her about becoming the frontman of the unofficial Dallas Wings welcome squad.

Her rookie contract expired at the end of the 2024 season, although the front office had her in discussions for an extension. Cam wasn’t completely sold on returning. With a vacancy in the GM position, the head coach position, as well as the fact that Cam did not know what direction they were going in during the free agency period – okay, Cam might be hating a little too much. Dallas was her home, but things weren’t looking great, and she had offers from Atlanta, Connecticut, Phoenix, and Las Vegas.

Then Dallas won the draft lottery, which meant they’d get the first pick. Which unofficially translated to getting Paige Bueckers, which meant under the right GM, the right coach, and some good free agency moves, the Wings – hypothetically – wouldn’t suck as much. Insert new GM Curt Miller, then head coach Chris Koclanes – Camille honestly could not wrap her head around the fact that Curt passed on Lisa fucking Leslie for a USC assistant coach, but she was willing to give him a shot.

They would draft Paige Bueckers. The new staff promised as much. Through trades, they were getting Ty Harris, NaLyssa Smith, and DiJonai Carrington, and they signed Myisha Hines-Allen out of free agency. Despite a promising offseason period, Cam was sure she had her decision as soon as the lottery results were official. She signs the contract extension – just a one year deal given the new league negotiations – and that’s how she finds herself repping the Wings at the 2025 WNBA Draft.

“Camille Roman, as I live and breathe,” Rickea coos dramatically, and Cam grins as she allows herself to get swept into the interview. “If I had a dollar for every tall, Stanford baddie named Cam I knew, I’d have two dollars, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened twice, right?”

Cam nods solemnly as Rickea holds the microphone out for her. “Nai would kill me if I didn’t mention it, but for the record, I would like to point out that we are bad and educated,” she says into the mic, making direct eye contact with the camera.

“I know that’s right,” Rickea hums approvingly, before a slick grin appears on her glossed lips. “Emphasis on bad. Tell me about your fit.”

“Well, I just saw Kiki Iriafen walk by, so I’m feeling a little underdressed,” she starts, which makes Rickea laugh. Cam peers down at her outfit, pinching the fabric of her black bomber jacket modestly, pulling the lapels to reveal a simple white crop top. She’s wearing a pair of baggy black cargos that hang low on her hips, revealing toned muscle from hours in the gym. “This fit is a Cam Roman original. Uh, jacket’s from…my closet. Crop top also from my closet.”

“Are the pants also from Cam’s closet?” Rickea asks sarcastically.

Cam grins proudly. “These are actually from Coley’s closet. I stole them when I watched her play the Rise on Thursday – shout out to the Orlando Valkyries, by the way.” Then, with mock sadness, she adds, “In another life I’m a libero.”

“Still no luck convincing your sister to pick up a basketball?”

“Coley is unfortunately married to volleyball,” Cam replies, much to Rickea’s amusement. “I’m working on it, though! I keep trying to tell her that a Roman frontcourt would be nasty but she’s just not seeing the vision.”

“Dozens of WNBA players across the country just breathed a sigh of relief,” Rickea narrates. “Centers, your jobs are safe.”

“For now,” Cam interrupts.

Rickea nods in agreement, an unserious frown on her lips. “For now.” The two of them share a brief laugh before Rickea straightens up, eyeing her next interviewee from her periphery. “Alright, Cam, one last question and I’ll let you get out of here. It’s hard to beat the 2024 draft class–” Cam narrows her eyes at Rickea, who flutters her eyelashes innocently, although the both of them grin, “–but what are your first impressions of the 2025 class? What do you see from them?”

“Oh, energy,” Cam answers immediately, not having to think too hard about it. Rickea nods, listening. “I think this is a class that will surprise many people and will form the core of a lot of teams. Everyone jokes about their first ‘welcome to the league’ moment from a vet but I wouldn’t be surprised to see any of these rookies getting scrappy and giving that energy right back.”

Rickea’s grin is a little mischievous as she asks, “Any rookie in particular who might give you a run for your money?”

Camille smiles innocently, knowing exactly what Rickea means by this question, but she plays coy. “If I do my job right, then the league should be very scared of my rookies.”

Rickea thanks her, giving her a quick hug before she greets Georgia Amoore. Cam wanders around the orange carpet for a brief minute to say hello to some of the other rookies – Saniya Rivers, Hailey van Lith, and even Kiki again, who makes a joke about Stanford baddies that Cam can’t help but laugh at.

Cam doesn’t see the one rookie she’d spent the better part of the night looking for, which doesn’t shock her. She’s sure that Paige is somewhere outside getting hounded by photographers and reporters. Making her way through the room in which the draft is being held, glancing minutely at the crowd assembled and the families located at the center, Cam finds the backstage area set up for rookies to do media in.

Camille greets the workers warmly, accepting a Dallas Wings hat from one of them, and fits it snugly over her head. She gets dragged into a few media segments, answering more or less different variations of the same questions – What are you most excited for this upcoming season? Can you comment on the offseason trades? She even gets asked a less than subtle, Paige Bueckers is projected to be the number one pick tonight. What elements of her game set her apart from the rest of her peers? Cam answers that one with a response she’s sure she hand-selected from the Communication 101: Mastering the Art of Dodging the Question textbook, but everyone moves on when the draft officially starts.

Cam watches from a television set up in the back. The camera pans across a few of the draftees – Paige Bueckers herself, then Dominique Malonga, then further back to the audience where the entirety of the UConn women’s basketball team sits with their phones raised and wide grins on their faces. The sight makes Cam crack a smile, too, reminding her of her own draft where her Stanford teammates filled the audience to support her.

The commissioner, Cathy Engelbert, leaves the stage to await the Wings’ first pick, which amuses Cam because she knew they knew who they were drafting as soon as the draft lottery results were announced. While she waits, her phone buzzes, distracting her from the analysts’ commentary, and she glances down to find the team group chat alive with commotion.

Rike: Thank you God!!! 🙏🙏🙏

Maddy: Arike 😭

Nai: where’s the rookie welcome party

Already knowing that DiJonai is referring to her, Cam rolls her eyes, but angles her body towards the television to snap a quick selfie of her, Wings hat pulled low over her brow and the analysts discussing Paige’s game mechanics in great detail. She sends the selfie in chat, fingers flying across the keyboard.

Cam: I can’t wait for us to draft 2025 Rookie of the Year Sonia Citron

Lyss: girl

Lyss: be so fucking for real

Nai: oh i am so sick of ur ass

Cam grins to herself, not having the time to respond back. She slides her phone into her pocket and refocuses on the television screen as the commissioner returns to the podium. A hush falls over the crowd. Cam knows who they’re drafting. Cam knows that she knows she’s being drafted. Despite that, she can’t help but feel a flicker of nerves coiling low in her belly.

Draft night is always a monumental moment. One rookie can change the future of a franchise forever. Just a few syllables spoken into a microphone and a jersey held up for the entire world to see can change a rookie’s life in seconds.

Cam is anxious – it’s a simmering, bubbling excitement that makes her want to hit the gym as soon as the last pick is called. The idea of playing with such an elite player — the idea of playing with Paige — makes her almost giddy, and Cam knows that she isn’t the only one on the Wings who thinks that.

They’d never had much of an opportunity to meet outside of the rare occasion in which Paige showed up to a WNBA game, or the summer she showed up to All-Star weekend. Cam was drafted the spring before Paige’s sophomore year so they’d just barely missed each other collegiately.

But now, Paige is about to be drafted by Cam’s team. Cam isn’t stupid. She knows Paige is a once in a lifetime generational player. She’d go as far to say that she’s their missing piece. Between Paige, Arike, Cam, NaLyssa or DiJonai or Maddy, and Myisha or Teaira or Luisa, they compose a roster that, under the right leadership, could genuinely go so far. And as much as Cam wants to win, she would love to do it with these girls right here.

Cam isn’t anxious just because she can taste the beginning of something new. Something promising – something that might turn this franchise around for the better. The anxiety reminds her of how she’d felt when she was moments away from being called number one, too; when the Wings had thought she was their franchise piece. And, sure, they had some success under her, but there was always just something missing.

Cam was a leader. She was the glue, but as good as she was at keeping things together, she could only stretch so far. She was consistent – maybe devastatingly so.

The thing about entropy is that chaos has to increase or remain consistent. The thing about Camille is that she’s not chaos. The thing about Paige Bueckers is that Cam knows she’s probably the perfect amount of chaos that will simultaneously set the league ablaze, stabilize it all at once, and make things just dangerous enough to fill their mouths with the addicting taste of adrenaline.

That is terrifying because the one emotion that burns a little brighter than the anxiousness is a fierce protectiveness. Paige is made for this, for the league, for the noise, for everything. She’s grounded in her faith and her mentality. She’s probably the most league-ready rookie in the entire draft class and that’s what makes Cam so fearful – because Cam was once hailed as the most-league ready rookie, too, and trying to pretend that she was almost killed her. Cam has lived it. Learned it. Grew from it. And as much as she knows that Paige is capable and can handle herself, Cam also knows that the stakes are so much higher now.

She’s not a stranger to it – the feeling of everyone constantly wanting more from you. Praising you when you have amazing games, downplaying your talent when you have decent games (yet uplifting other players and calling them generational for putting up the same numbers), wondering if your team had scouted wrong or made a mistake when you have an off-game.

In the league, it’s difficult to discern what is real – or who is real – when everyone wants something a little different from you, if you’re truly trusting the right people, if you’re truly trusting yourself.

Cam doesn’t want Paige to get lost in that. Not in the way she had when she was a rookie. She doesn’t fully believe that she’s ready for this narrative because no one ever is. There’s no amount of prayer, or media training, or support that ever truly makes you ready for it.

Being on top of the world is complicated because it’s so easy to forget who you used to be before you clawed your way to the peak. Before your fingers bled and scabbed over from the calloused rocks. Before every bone in your body ached, not because of the constant exertion it takes to stay up here, but because of a sort of exhaustion that calcifies in between your tendons and ligaments and buries itself in the soft tissue between your joints.

Being great is hard. Being great and being true is even harder, and all Cam ever wanted was for someone to tell her that she didn’t have to dive into the deep end just to prove that she could swim.

So when Cathy finally says the words, “With the first pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft, the Dallas Wings select…Paige Bueckers, University of Connecticut,” there is only one thing that Cam knows for sure:

This season is going to change her life. That thought doesn’t scare her as much as it should.

In retrospect, maybe that thought should have scared her.

Cam likes to think of herself as sensible. Level-headed. She’s always the voice of reason on the court when one of her teammates gets a little too heated trying to argue a foul call with a ref. Cam enjoys a good time, but she’s not reckless. She knows better. Her parents were both Olympians – she had eyes on her long before she picked up a basketball and the attention only grew when both she and Coley started getting recognized for their proficiency at their respective sports.

That’s all to say she was responsible. She knew how to play the game, how to divert the media, and what she reasonably should not be doing so she didn’t draw any unnecessary attention to her or her family.

Now, she’s realizing there might be some flaw in her otherwise immaculate decision making, because everything just goes downhill after the draft.

Paige Bueckers, the rookie of the hour, makes her way backstage, Wings hat tucked pristinely over her head. Cam can’t help but soften at the sight, unmistakable pride swelling in her chest – Paige’s smile is tender, a little loose, but her eyes are wide and excited. She almost looks like a kid on a sugar rush and it’s an expression that Cam knows well. It’s that expression that makes flying out to the draft every year so worth it.

Cam takes in Paige’s draft fit with a raised brow. She’s wearing an all black suit that sparkles in the light, and she bites back a smile at the exposed skin at her chest. “Number one pick in the draft and you can’t afford a shirt?” she asks teasingly.

Paige huffs, sounding more like a breathless laugh, and her eyes sparkle. “NIL ain’t what it used to be,” she jokes.

Cam laughs, too, holding her arms out, and Paige wraps her up in a hug. “Welcome to the Wings, rook,” she says softly, meaning every word, and she feels Paige’s entire body relax. When they break apart, Cam stuffs her hands in her pockets, bouncing on her heels, and Paige stares at her with something that might be an overwhelmed wonder. “Just so you know, I’ve been working on my rookie hazing rituals. Maddy said the tar and feathers were a hard no, but we all agreed that the first round of drinks are on you.”

“Oh, so I was just drafted for my Amex, huh?” Paige says unseriously.

“Sorry you had to find out this way,” Cam responds, feigning sadness and trying not to grin. “I don’t know if we’ll have room for you on the roster, but maybe you could put those TikTok dances to good use and figure something out for halftime.” Paige stares at her unbelievingly before eventually, the corner of Cam’s lips twitch from the effort of keeping her face neutral.

The blonde’s expression melts, her shoulders relaxing with something like relief – like the Wings aren’t so unfamiliar after all. They’re already bantering like they’ve been friends for years. Paige is one of those basketball players that has a good working relationship with everyone, but the fact that friendship can come so quickly undoubtedly makes this transition easier for her.

“You’re not gonna take it easy on me, are you?” Paige asks, amused.

Cam gives her a gentle nudge with her elbow, her smile softening. “C’mon,” she says knowingly. “You’re a Husky. Something tells me you wouldn’t like easy, anyways.”

Something in Paige’s expression flickers, almost as though she hadn’t been expecting that response, almost as though she’s seeing Cam in a different light now. “I wouldn’t,” she agrees. Her tone is a little quieter, but her eyes still sparkle with that post-draft high, an excitement that doesn’t quite go away.

It’s at that moment that one of the media coordinators waves Paige over, wanting to run a couple segments and get some shots and interviews for the league page. Before the blonde can go, Cam rests a tentative hand over her wrist, stopping her, and when they meet eyes again, it’s like she loses all of her confidence.

She clears her throat, trying to find the words. She has a million statements at the tip of her tongue, but the one that comes out is, “I’m happy you’re here.”

Fuck. Even though Paige’s cheeks flush and her smile turns tender, Cam winces and sighs, because that was not supposed to be her opening line. “We all are,” she’s quick to correct. “You’re not gonna find a better group of girls anywhere else in the league. We’ve got your back, always. And…I know that you’re capable. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. But trust me when I say this transition can be difficult.” Cam bounces on her heels again, a nervous smile lighting up her face, her voice softening. “Just…don’t hesitate to reach out. Or ask for help. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone, least of all me.”

The both of them are silent for a moment. Paige studies her carefully, as if searching her features for something. Cam isn’t sure what she’s looking for, but she hopes her rookie can see the earnestness, the assurance that no matter what, she’s ten toes down behind her.

Then, Paige’s smile grows, unrestrained if not a little bashful. “Thanks, Camille,” she says, the use of her full name causing a matching smile of Cam’s own to appear on her face. “I really appreciate that.”

Simply, she nods, extending her arms again, and she and Paige fall into one last hug. The media coordinators are getting impatient now. They break away quickly and Paige starts to follow one of them further backstage, but she spins on her heel, a palm reaching up to stabilize the lapels of her blazer as she calls out to Cam. “Nike’s throwing an after party for me later,” she says. “You should come by. First round’s on me, right?”

Huffing in amusement, Cam stuffs her hands in her pockets again if only to give them something to do. She cocks her head a little, thinking it over – she has an early flight back to Dallas in the morning to speak at UTA, then she has an afternoon workout with a trainer. She knew she would be a problem if she stayed up too late partying, but when she takes in Paige’s expression, the slight confidence mixed with a strong look of hope, she finds that she’d never truly had a backbone to begin with.

“I’ll see you there, rook,” she confirms, trying not to feel too proud of herself when Paige’s grin brightens. Finally, she disappears around the corner, and Cam exhales sharply as she redirects her attention back to the TV.

Cathy’s just now returning with the selection from Seattle, stepping up to the microphone again, but all Cam can think about is her rookie. Paige had said that Cam wasn’t going to make it easy for her. Part of Cam wonders if Paige was aware of the fact that Paige wasn’t going to make it easy for Cam, either. All it took was one look, one hopefully asked question for Cam to change her plans entirely.

The scary part? Cam wasn’t even sure if she minded all too much.

The subsequent afterparty smells like spilled liquor, the heady undertone of weed, and the musk of sweat. Cam has to dodge a few dancing bodies when she finally walks in, tucking her jacket closer to herself so as to not soak in any of the sloshing alcohol, and she presses herself up to the tips of her toes to try to look for the woman of the hour. The lighting is dim, strobe lights flashing, and the music courses through every inch of her veins. She’s confident that she’ll wake up tomorrow morning with the sound of the bass still reverberating through her ears.

People in various stages of inebriation are packed tightly together, which makes it difficult for Cam to squeeze her way to the front, but she manages to make it through the most contested sections. When she reaches the front of the room, she finds Paige at the center of a large circle, holding a huge tray of shots in her hand, and she has a grin on her lips as she passes them out.

Her wings cap is tucked over her head – some things never change, Cam thinks – although she’s redressed in an oversized, white button down and sparkling gray dress pants. Cam looks her up and down, figuring out pretty quickly that the ensemble is a full Nike get up, which makes sense considering the sponsor of her afterparty.

Paige catches sight of her, her grin widening, and the circle of people surrounding her join in on cheering for Cam as she’s gently pulled to the middle, towards Paige. Cam flushes under the attention and rolls her eyes – although she’s secretly pleased by the reception. “You made it!” Paige calls over the bass, offering her a shot glass. Her expression is soft, not wanting to make an assumption about whether or not Cam drinks, but she accepts the shot glass anyways, clinking it against Paige’s with a teasing smile.

“Not sure if it beats staying in and binging whatever’s on the hotel TV, but I figured I should make sure my rookie doesn’t get too plastered,” Cam jokes.

“Your rookie, huh?” Paige hums, eyes wide and mischievous. “Didn’t know I was already claimed like that.”

“You need someone responsible,” Cam retorts. “Rike and Lyss are bad influences. Nai would dress you up like a Labubu.”

Paige laughs, and she and Cam throw back their first shot of the night – well, Cam can’t be too sure if it’s Paige’s first, but that’s neither here nor there. Paige takes her empty glass, sets it on the tray, then wraps an arm around her shoulder, pulling her flush against her body. Yeah, Cam thinks, definitely not Paige’s first shot, but she’s smiling in amusement as Paige calls for the attention of their little circle.

“Everyone, this is Camille,” she states. Then, glancing once at Cam, the hint of a smirk tugs at her lips. “My vet. Her drinks are on me, aight? No funny shit.”

“I think the drinks are on Nike–” someone attempts to say, but Paige raises her hand, cutting them off, and everyone around them laughs.

“Drinks on me,” Paige says again, just so there’s no confusion. She squeezes Cam’s shoulder as everyone dissipates. Her hand drops to the small of her back, guiding her through the room to the bar. “What you drinkin’?”

“Surprise me,” Cam responds. “I trust you. No whiskey or I’m gonna make your ass run suicides at camp.”

Paige grins, something like you think so little of me. She calls the bartender over and orders two Dirty Shirleys. Cam huffs under her breath, amused, and Paige nudges her with her elbow. “What happened to allat trust?”

Cam raises her hands in surrender. “No judgement here. I just respect the fact that you can stare a bartender in the eye and ask for juice.”

“Wow,” Paige drawls. “I see how it is. You buy a girl a drink and this is how she repays you.”

“You bought me a Capri Sun.”

Paige sniffs dramatically. “I always imagined I’d get my welcome to the league moment by running face first into an Alyssa Thomas screen. Never thought it’d come from being bullied by my own teammate.”

Cam laughs as the bartender slides their drinks over. “Are you always this much of a drama queen?” she asks playfully, tapping the sides of their glasses together.

Paige takes a long sip before she responds, her eyes slipping shut like this is the best thing she’s ever tasted. A smirk appears on her face as she says, with a shrug of her shoulder, “If the crown fits.”

Cam rolls her eyes, taking a tentative sip of her drink, too. And – okay. Maybe Paige was onto something, because it’s not that bad. Cam’s never been one for strong drinks, more of a lightweight than anything else. But these? They’re dangerous. Cam could easily see herself downing five of them without thinking about the alcohol content.

“Good, right?” Paige asks, not even bothering to hide her knowing grin.

“I don’t think you should worry about getting hit by an AT screen,” Cam states, which causes Paige’s brows to raise, unsure of where she’s going with that. “That big ass head of yours would just cushion the fall.”

Paige gasps dramatically, clutching her chest like Cam’s words have genuinely wounded her. “I’mma let that slide, Cam, just ‘cause I know you like me. I’m growing on you–”

“–like a fungus–”

“– and I’m your rookie,” she finishes. Cam can’t help but smile at that. “Aren’t you supposed to be nice to me?”

Cam tilts her hat backwards, and Paige swats her hand away as it messes up her hair. “I’m toughening you up for the real world,” she teases. “Veteran duty.”

Paige raises a lazy brow, something reminiscent of a challenge in her eyes. “So this is business?”

“Isn’t it always?” Cam retorts.

A slow smile spreads across Paige’s lips. “Aight.” Paige has a determined look in her eyes, one that Cam’s not quite sure she’s familiar with. But she doesn’t have the time to question it before Paige’s hand finds the small of her back again, leading her through a crowd that parts easily for the both of them. “First song of the night’s all yours. Figure it out, then we’re dancing.”

“Bossy,” Cam mutters under her breath, not expecting Paige to catch it, but she does.

“I know what I want.”

Cam huffs, biting back a laugh. She leans in closer to the DJ, yelling over the music already playing, and he flashes her a sharp grin as he works on transitioning into the next song. She lets Paige guide her back towards the dance floor, but when the opening lines of “pushing P” reverberate throughout the room, the blonde turns to her with an amused look on her face.

“You think you’re funny?” Paige asks, but her smile is loose, welcoming Cam into her space. Her eyes are dark under the lighting in the room and the low brim of her hat. “Or you tryna tell me somethin’?”

“Can’t tell you anything if you keep running your mouth, right?” Cam says.

Paige only nods, taking another sip from her drink, and the look in her eye makes Cam think that she’s just started something that she’s not sure how to finish. Between the atmosphere in the room, the taste of the drink on her lips, and the way Paige is embracing the party, Cam doesn’t think that she does want to finish it.

It’s easy to get lost in the music, in the heady scent of adrenaline, liquor, and victory in the air, in the way Paige leaves just enough space in between their bodies to make it look like she doesn’t want this. But Cam knows. It should be enough to make her back away, to make her remember that she’s the veteran and Paige just got drafted to her team less than three hours ago.

Cam has spent so long restraining herself, trying to be perfect in so many senses of the word. The perfect daughter, the perfect teammate, someone who maintains order instead of welcoming chaos. That lifestyle was safe. Comfortable. Secure. Stale. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a party. Nothing wrong with celebrating a rookie who’s worked so hard to even be here in the first place.

For the first night in a long, long time, Camille isn’t really thinking, certainly not about things like the consequences of her own actions. She’s thinking about how much fun she’s having, even if it means accidentally monopolizing Paige’s attention. She’s thinking about how good her drink tastes, and when she goes back for her fourth of the night, she orders a second one, too, bringing it back to Paige, who’s sporting a pretty flush under the dim lighting in the room. She’s thinking about how promising this next season is, about the fact that they could genuinely go so far.

One dance turns into multiple. The drinks are flowing, the vibes are high, and she can feel the music in her veins. She can feel Paige’s eyes on her when she gets overheated, shrugging out of her bomber jacket.

Cam is loose, the liquor flowing pleasantly through her body, and when the night begins to wind down and Paige’s hand is settling over her back again, murmuring something about heading back to her room, Cam agrees – because why wouldn’t she? She’s warm all over, not from the alcohol, and she’s drunk and giggly when she slips her hand into Paige’s, their thighs pressed tightly together in the Uber.

It feels good – that’s really all she’s thinking about right now. And when Paige leads her into her room, her palm burning hot over her waist, Cam lets her pull her in, her lips dragging across her skin.

Things like consequences or repercussions are a tomorrow morning thing. Right now – all Cam is concerned about is whether or not her rookie is as good with her mouth as she is at running it.

Cam wakes to her alarm. She doesn’t need to see the time to know it’s freakishly early in the morning. She can feel it in her bones, in the way the exhaustion sticks to her like glue, the way she feels as though she’s only had her eyes closed for twenty minutes rather than the full eight hours of sleep she’s accustomed to. Her hand reaches out to where she’s sure her nightstand is, but she meets air. She fumbles through the sheets, sure that her phone is simply lost somewhere, but she comes up empty, there, too.

It’s not until she registers the warmth of a body against hers that she realizes how badly she’s just fucked up.

Paige Bueckers, eyes shut peacefully, flush on her neck, arm slung lazily across Cam’s bare waist – bare waist! – groans into her shoulder. “Turn it off,” she grumbles, breath fanning across skin. Cam freezes, feeling her heart begin to race and her mind spin.

She’s so overstimulated that she could probably scream. Paige’s legs are tangled with hers, the warmth of body lulling her into a sense of peace, but anxiety swirls in her gut and her alarm is still fucking ringing.

“Fuck,” she whimpers out loud, pushing both of her palms to her eyes.

This was not how the draft was supposed to go. She was supposed to be there to say hello to Paige and Aziaha and Madison and JJ. She was going to do some media segments, solidify her title as the Rookie Welcome Officer, and then she was going to take her ass back to her hotel room, take a hot shower and unwind.

Camille was not supposed to get herself invited to Paige’s afterparty, let alone go to it in the first place. She wasn’t supposed to take shots with her, drink with her, dance with her (although as the previous night’s memories come back to her, she’s certain there was some dancing on her – okay, yeah, not the time or the place to get caught up in that).

Most importantly, Camille wasn’t supposed to fall into bed with her either. That’s kind of the reason why alarm bells are ringing in her brain, and it has nothing to do with the 5am alarm she’d actually set on her phone so she can catch a flight.

She just slept with Paige Bueckers. Number one overall draft pick, twenty-three year old rookie to Cam’s twenty-six year old senior, Paige Bueckers. The Wings’ newest starting point guard. Her rookie, who she’d claimed the moment Cathy Engelbert spoke her name into the microphone. Cam was supposed to mentor her, guide her, help her adjust to professional life so soon after the end of her college season. Camille was not supposed to let her stick her hand down her pants.

She’s so unbelievably fucked. Sure, she resigned, but she could still get waived. This could have detrimental effects on the locker room. Detrimental effects on whatever beginnings of a friendship that she and Paige were supposed to be forming in the middle of sticking their tongues down each other’s throat. Cam was so excited for the beginning of the season, but now, all she can think about is the fact that she’s probably ruined it before Paige even put her jersey on for the first time.

Paige murmurs something under her breath again. Cam, already in full panic mode, pushes the blonde off of her, sending her sprawling onto the other side of the bed as she rises to her feet. “The fuck?” Paige mutters, undoubtedly bothered as she fights for consciousness.

Cam has to fight a wave of vertigo as she scans the floor for her pants, where her alarm is still ringing. Finally locating them, she rips her phone out of her pocket and silences her phone. Slowly, she turns back to the bed, where Paige is staring at her with wide eyes, the blanket pulled up to her chest. “Oh,” she whispers, some sort of clarity returning to her expression.

Oh is right. Because both she and Paige just did something that Cam isn’t entirely sure they can come back from, and they have no one to blame but themselves.

#paige bueckers #paige bueckers x oc #paige bueckers fic #dallas wings #wnba #paige bueckers x reader

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astroa3h · 1 year ago

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where you'll meet your soulmate

I know this is fairly vague when it comes to astrology and how intricate of an art it can be, especially when it comes to the placement of Juno. But I find this to be pretty spot on when it comes to the dreamy meet cute you have with your destined one.

Juno in the 1st House: Picture this - you're shining bright, maybe you're on stage, or it's your birthday bash. There’s laughter, music, and bam! Your eyes lock with theirs across the room. It's electric, like a scene from a movie. Love at first sight? Heck yeah. This isn't a slow burn; it's fireworks from the get-go. Imagine meeting the one person who sees you, the real you, in a crowd of faces. That’s your moment.

Juno in the 2nd House: Imagine casually browsing through a bookstore or maybe hustling at a side gig, and there they are. Maybe they're helping you pick out the perfect gift, or you’re laughing over a bizarre find at a flea market. This connection is built on the simple things in life, like sharing a passion or working on something that matters to both of you. It’s the shared smiles and the teamwork that makes the dream work.

Juno in the 3rd House: Ever met someone and felt like you’ve known them forever? That’s Juno in the 3rd for you. It could be a friend of a friend, someone from the neighborhood, or that person you keep bumping into online because you laugh at the same memes. This could also be a childhood friend. It's the comfort of familiarity, the ease of a conversation that never ends. It’s like finding a missing piece you weren’t even aware you were looking for.

Juno in the 4th House: This is all about home, heart, and heritage. Imagine finding your soulmate at a family gathering or through a connection so deeply rooted in your past, it feels fated. It could be a cozy dinner, a traditional celebration, or through the meddling of your mom playing cupid. This soulmate brings a sense of belonging, a feeling of coming home, no matter where you are.

Juno in the 5th House: Think laughter, creativity, and a dash of spontaneity. Meeting your soulmate while you’re living your best life, maybe at a concert, an art exhibit, or while coaching little league. It’s those moments of pure joy and abandon, where you meet someone who makes your heart race faster than a rollercoaster ride. It’s about finding love in the midst of living passionately.

Juno in the 6th House: Here, love finds you in the midst of your daily grind. It could be that new colleague, someone you meet at a fitness class, or even a fellow volunteer. This is about finding someone who fits into your life like the perfect puzzle piece, making every day brighter and every routine special. It’s the beauty in the ordinary, the love that grows in shared routines and little acts of care.

Juno in the 7th House: Picture meeting your soulmate at a wedding, It's where you least expect it, in the midst of celebrating love, you find your own. It could be a plus-one that was meant to be your plus-one forever. This is about partnerships, the undeniable pull towards someone who complements you perfectly, in ways you hadn’t even dared to dream of. I sometimes find you may even find your soulmate through an ex partner with this placement.

Juno in the 8th House: This is deep, the kind of connection that happens in the quiet, unexpected moments. Maybe it’s someone you meet in a place where you both show your vulnerabilities, or perhaps during a time of transformation. You could be intoxicated or under the influence when you meet. It’s a soul-stirring, intense connection that feels predestined, a love that’s as profound as the ocean and just as mysterious.

Juno in the 9th House: Imagine crossing paths with your soulmate in a setting that screams adventure and growth. It could be a study abroad program, a spiritual journey, or just a random seminar that you both decided to attend on a whim. This is about finding someone who shares your thirst for knowledge, adventure, and the quest for meaning in life. It’s about expanding your horizons, together.

Juno in the 10th House: Here’s where your ambitions and your heart align. Meeting your soulmate in a context that’s all about achieving your life’s purpose, maybe at a conference, through a mentor, or while making your mark on the world. It’s about finding someone who not only shares your dreams but is ready to build an empire with you. This love story is about legacy, ambition, and a shared vision for the future.

Juno in the 11th House: This is the meet-cute you didn’t see coming. A friend’s party, a community event, or that random encounter at a party. It’s about connection, friendship, and shared ideals. Finding your soul mate here means finding someone who gets you on a level that's almost telepathic. It’s about shared laughs, mutual friends becoming mutual admirers, and feeling like you’ve found your tribe with this person by your side.

Juno in the 12th House: This is where souls connect on a celestial level. Imagine a tranquil setting, a spiritual retreat, or a place where you're seeking peace, and there they are. This connection is ethereal, almost like recognizing a soul from a past life. It’s a love that transcends time and space, wrapping you in a sense of calm and belonging that’s hard to put into words.

xox astro ash ✨ Get your own Juno Soulmate Reading @ astroash.net TikTok - astroa3h

#astrology #astrology readings #astrology aspects #natal chart #astrologer #astro observations #astro notes #astro community #astrology blog #daily astrology #astrology houses #horoscopes #zodiac #astro placements #birth chart #juno #soulmate

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shielddefence · 10 months ago

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Which is the best NDA institute in Lucknow?

When it comes to finding the best NDA institute in Lucknow, Shield Defence College stands out as a top contender. Aspiring candidates seeking rigorous preparation for the National Defence Academy entrance exam will find comprehensive training and support at this esteemed institution. Defence College has earned its reputation as one of the best NDA institutes in Lucknow.

#best nda coaching in lucknow #nda coaching in lucknow #nda school after 10th lucknow #Top NDA Coaching in Lucknow #nda Institute in lucknow #nda college in lucknow #online NDA coaching in lucknow #nda coaching after 8th class

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cellarspider · 2 months ago

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Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the Return of the Weirdest Guy

I've done a couple of tounge-in-cheek analyses of SWTOR backstory recently, and frankly, it was mostly an exercise in nostalgia: finding old drawers in my brain full of dusty old factoids, and dumping them out into essay-shaped monstrosities. Bioware released SWTOR on the 20th of December, 2011. There are kids who were born that day who'll be entering 8th grade this year. There was only one version of Skyrim when it came out, and it was only just over a month old!

SWTOR's development team has since been rehomed at Broadsword Online Games, which has meant a reduced budget while allowing the lights to stay on, and story updates to slowly continue. I've been content to keep splashing around in the base game, vaguely planning on getting a character or two through to the current storylines, but never actually getting there.

And then Star Wars: Celebration happened last week, and I am now forced to consider the unthinkable: getting my ass in gear and playing the new stuff, because I saw this.

This appears to be Darth Jadus. It's been thirteen real, actual years since he was last seen. Follow me below the fold, and find out why I'm obsessed with this man who once faked his death to get out of attending work meetings, and because his coworkers weren't reading his manifesto.

Content warnings before we begin: much as I love Jadus as a villain, he is a villain. He's a cult leader and he's in the running for Worst Dad of SWTOR, which is saying something when his competition includes a guy who had 1,300 years of practice to perfect being a really terrible dad.

Note that there will be additional jokes and analyses in the image alt text, which is where wild tangents build their nests.

Spoilers for the entirely of the Agent plotline, Act 3 of the Jedi Knight plotline, and various moments throughout the expansions. Assume Wookieepedia links contain unmarked spoilers for literally everything. I'll be covering the context of Jadus among the Sith, his plotline, some of my own speculations as to his motivation, and how things may go, now that this SWTOR cryptid is crawling out of the ductwork to be spooky in person once again.

Just to give you the flavor of this guy, I'll sum up his plot as succinctly as I can, right at the top: Jadus anonymously funds and arms a terrorist group and sends them to attack himself, seemingly dying in an extremely extra fashion. He's also outfitted them with undetectable biomechanical death satellites, and while those are finishing up their unholy maturation, he's taking a vacation to drive two hundred of his followers face-meltingly insane. His daughter will keep anyone from noticing this by being such a galaxy-class disaster that Jadus can just hang out for a few months.

He plans to return from the dead on the day the superweapon satellites are unleashed, taking control of then to wipe out the terrorists and simultaneously destroy his rivals' power bases, forcing them to acknowledge him and his horrible invisible space-laser children. He will then lead the Empire in whatever weird direction he feels like, while making sure not to piss off the immortal, eldritch Sith Emperor too much.

If he's allowed to win, he'll give the Sith Empire a light dusting of eldritch cult vibes before he realizes the game has entered Act 3: as an ambitious secondary villain, he's a prime target for the role of "gets killed by the end boss to show how serious the situation is". He evades this fate by simply leaving the game entirely. He then proceeds to lurk for thirteen real life years, and twenty-three Star Wars ones, before showing up to jumpscare the galaxy again. If that's actually him, we don't have it totally 100% confirmed yet. It could just be someone with a similar taste for being gigantic and wearing that one mask.

I intend to describe the hows, whys, and WHY?!?s of Jadus in a tasteful yet unhinged essay below.

So.

Let's take a moment and step back, to look at what made the Sith into compelling villains in the first place: Darth Vader. Growing up with the original movies, there was barely any detail about him, just electrifying little glimpses of a deeply scarred body and mind beneath the mask.

Really, when you set aside everything else that's come after, what do the originals tell you? I mean, in the original movie, "Darth" was clearly intended to be Vader's first name, and by the end of the trilogy nobody actually knew what a Sith was, or why Vader was Dark Lord of them. There was almost a timeline where the Sith ended up as little lizard assassin commando guys that thought Vader was a really cool dude.

What made Vader special was the experience of witnessing him on screen, brought to life by the physical performance of David Prowse, and the vocals of James Earl Jones.

The two of them combined created a performance with a gravitas that has yet to be matched by anyone else who's put on the suit or done the voice. There's a subtlety to the body language of Prowse and the restraint Jones employs in creating the image of Vader.

And let's be clear, Vader is still the untouchable standard, and attempts to recreate him are doomed to fail. But what about making something new and transfixing in other ways? Well, SWTOR has been quite good at that.

The core of SWTOR, anyway.

The voices and designwork do, anyway.

SWTOR is a Bioware game, and back in this era, that meant one thing: characters moving and gesturing in ways no human would ever attempt, unless they were imitating a malfunctioning animatronic.

These are stock animations that they'd used for years, and they're a cost-saving measure. Each game, storyline, and scene has an animation budget. That's because building a moving piece of art is hard, and doing so inside a computer means you either have to build literally everything from scratch, or you reuse assets that are already available. SWTOR is a game with literal thousands of voiced characters, in a new setting they couldn't reuse art assets for. Writing for the game began in 2006, while the first Mass Effect and Dragon Age games were also in development. There was no way you were getting custom animations outside of key scenes.

And so that leaves you with a good old Bioware tradition: what's your favorite stock animation? The ones I'm most fond of are "person exits a conversation by calmly taking two steps backwards before turning around, like they're a car pulling out of a parking spot", or "person kind of spins both their hands around in front of them, like they're at a loss for words on how to describe watching their buddy walk like an automobile".

So, those are the ground rules for experiencing a Bioware game of this era: everybody looks like a dork in the in-game cutscenes, but the voices and writing carry the day, so eventually you tune out the wiggles. If a character's really lucky, they'd get actual cinematics. If they're Darth Malgus, this is so he can get repeatedly kicked in the face and still look cool doing it.

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[Video Description: The Disorder cinematic trailer, in which Malgus forces a Jedi padawan to confront how her master made the choice to abandon her brother, leaving him to an unknown fate. I've shown this before in other essays, and damn it, I'll show it again. This shit is fantastic. Malgus is in fine form, in terms of combat, manipulative villain behavior, and getting smacked into walls. You have no idea how often that happens to him. It appears to be one of his hobbies at this point.]

Malgus is the closest SWTOR strays to Vader, and the main point of comparison for all other Sith in the game. Voiced by Jamie Glover, he's a seething menace who's maintained a strong presence throughout much of the game's thirteen year run. He rebels against the Sith orthodoxy, making a play to rule them, and eventually rejects them entirely. He's even taken on more of the Vader cybernetics over time, as his life of conflict has broken more and more of his body, while leaving his mind intact. His vocal performance is very distinct, but in tone is probably closest to Vader's early portrayal in A New Hope: more open malice and contempt.

And if you're lured into the supplementary material like tie-in novels and such, you get his whole backstory, and it really doesn't improve things. You don't need to know who he was, or hear his inner monologue. His outer monologue gives you what you want without ruining the mystique.

Then there's the Sith Emperor himself, whose transcendent evil is brought to life by the voice of Doug Bradley, an actor best known for his lead antagonist role in the Hellraiser series. I'll admit I've only ever personally heard the Emperor in full form once, due to my meandering path through the game. But when I did? Every ridiculous thing about the game fell away, because his restrained performance carried the moment so well.

And when expansions and books start explaining more of what his deal is, it's often subtractive to his menace. Thanks in no small part to how much of that is tied up in Revan, a figure beloved by fans in Ye Olden Times, whose SWTOR-era canon is more of a "we don't talk about him" kind of affair. If you want the blow-by-blow, just check out the fifty-thousand word Wookieepedia page for Revan and feel your soul slowly shrivel up over the course of an hour or so.

But when you meet the Emperor again after Revan's dead, now manifesting in another body and with a different voice, you might hear him refer to Darth Jadus as "the finest Sith my empire ever produced."

And when you encounter Jadus, should you make the very good decision to try the Imperial Agent plotline, you might see why the Emperor thought that.

Darth Jadus is voiced by Stephen Rashbrook, who's mostly done narration and voiceover for documentaries. I'd guess that the most popular things he's been in have been this game, and the Black Mirror episode Bandersnatch, where he also does narration for something. The only credit that made me sit up and say "Oh shit! He was in that?" was the PBS/Channel 4 documentary series Secrets of the Dead, which careens between sensational goofiness and actually some of the best damn portrayals of archaeology on TV.

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[Video Description: Season 2, Episode 2 of Secrets of the Dead, featuring Stephen Rashbrook's narration about a skeleton found near Stonehenge. For those who haven't heard his voice before, this is your baseline that will make things even weirder in a minute. If you do know Jadus already, this itself feels weird as hell. I keep waiting for him to wander off into a sermon on the spiritual benefits of existential terror. It's quite good at digging into the details and techniques used in archaeology, circa 2000. There's a few bits eyebrow-raising bits in the narration, But this particular skeleton has not been reexamined since this same analysis, fitting with theories still accepted today. Also, fun bonus fact in these papers: the previous carbon dating they mention in the documentary was paid for by a dentist who thought the skeleton was King Arthur's. /Description]

I've no idea if Rashbrook will be returning to the role for this surprise return, but he contributes a lot to making Jadus a transfixingly strange figure among the Sith. As with Doug Bradley, restraint is the key element, which wanders between menace and ardent, trance-like conviction.

And sometimes he says just the strangest, most unhinged things you've ever heard.

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[Video Description: From YT user Armored Productions. The second time you encounter Jadus, wherein he basically opens with a Dark Side tone poem, reveals the outline of his entire secret plan in such a cheeky way that it just sounds like the worst salvia trip in the universe, mentions his flagship is named the Dominator, and then cranks up the BDSM vibes to maximum by ordering you to kneel for some sort of ritual purposes. And no, that last bit is never explained. We don't know why he wants you to kneel, or if it was supposed to change something in you. What I do know is that if you refuse to kneel, he gives you a chance to change your mind. If you remain defiant, he hits you with so much Force lightning that the game kicks you out to the menu that asks "you got your ass kicked, do you want to revive here or slink back to the nearest med center?". As far as I can recall, this is the only cutscene that can do this. Jadus hits you so hard you stop being cinematics and start being game mechanics. /Description]

And here's where I let up on the (slightly) serious tone. Because I love this performance dearly, but wow. Wow. He really just says all those things, doesn't he.

"I believe in the democratization of fear," the giant space-gimp tells you, and you believe he believes that, whatever the ass that means.

Because at that point, you really don't know. He's not slowing down to explain this to you, because you are, as far as he's concerned, unimportant. He's not yet aware that you're the main character of the plot line. No, really, I'm only barely joking. He figures it out eventually, but at the moment he's got something else on his mind: screwing over his coworkers.

As I previously described, the Sith Empire largely runs under the control of twelve unhinged cybergoths known as the Dark Council: turnover is often quick and violent, as rival lords vie for Council seats. Those that survive longer than a few years are uniformly the most powerful and canny among the Sith. They are the most competent at foiling their rivals, maintaining their influence, and administering their respective spheres of influence that underpin an interstellar Empire.

And most of them hate at least one part of that job description, and are constantly scheming on how to undermine the others so they can be left alone to do the parts they actually want to do. How dare everyone else make this difficult for them. How dare Darth Vowrawn be having a good time doing all of this.

Darth Jadus, when the story begins, is one of these Dark Councilors, and he doesn't hate it as much as the rest. He hates it more. He hates it weirder. And despite never engaging in the weekly backstabbery of the Council, the rest all know he's got something long-term cooking. It's just that nobody's been able to figure out what it is. They are correct, but nobody seemed to realize how seriously he was committed to sparkle motion.

I already previewed his invisible biomechanical laser satellites at the top, but withheld any of his reasons for doing that. So... why is he doing that?

Jadus has gotten fed up with the Dark Council, and with Sith in general. For years, he's been something of an outcast among them for radical ideas like "aliens and slaves are also people" and "Sith aren't the specialest little critters in the universe" and "we should stop fighting each other all the time", and the actual radical ideas like "everyone regardless of circumstance or ability should experience the benefits of the Dark Side, such as its limitless abyss of hatred and terror".

Yes, this man is a socialist, but specifically for the redistribution of bad vibes.

So far, his attempts to convince other Sith have been a failure, but he's done surprisingly well among certain parts of the general public. He runs Imperial Intelligence, which is the only part of the government where aliens can find employment, and Force-blind people can rise to the top ranks.

In fact, all of Jadus' personal advisors are Force-blind. He's completely purged both Intelligence and his retinue of Sith. He's known to select slaves and aliens for special roles, specifically because everyone else has overlooked their potential for their entire lives—their loyalty will be uncompromised. He's deeply involved in the affairs of Imperial Intelligence, on a level that other Sith don't usually engage.

And so nobody really notices when he has the Imperial Science Bureau try and implement a funky new technoorganic design, especially when it was quietly shut down because they wouldn't be efficient for the war effort. Did Jadus make any copies of their data? Don't worry about it! Worry about what else Jadus might be doing.

Because over the years, his philosophy and absolutely awful personal vibes have created a literal cult following for him. While that's not unheard of for Sith, Jadus takes it to a higher level. He probably has several manifestos published by this point.

And so nobody really thinks twice when Jadus declares he's going to take a thousand of his followers away on his flagship, spreading his philosophy across the Empire. That's normal Jadus stuff.

If you're me, you'll be sitting there hung up on the fact that his flagship is named the Dominator, because the BDSM vibes are hilariously unsubtle.

What none of them know at this point is that Jadus has packed the Dominator full of explosives, which the player character's starter missions actually were responsible for securing. But we're talking about destroying a massive ship here, surely someone suspected help from the inside?

Well, with how utterly awful Jadus was to be around, nobody who knew him really found it odd that a well-connected, traditionalist, isolationist terrorist group would try to blow him up. Jadus himself says they have aid from within the government. Hilariously, I'm not sure if anyone asked him who, because the answer is him.

But in their defense, everyone in Intelligence was kept distracted because Jadus made the utterly unhinged demand that placed the defense of the capital city's power grid in the hands of the player character, a newbie who hasn't even gotten a cool codename yet.

So when the Dominator blows up with Jadus on board, that's surprising, it means the terrorists are an imminent threat to the Empire, but really, what's so bad about getting rid of Jadus?

Enter Darth Zhorrid, his daughter, sole apprentice and heir, and oh boy she's already electrocuting people

We don't know who's to blame for Zhorrid's zhorrible name—it could be Jadus, it could be one she chose for herself. But we know Jadus is the one responsible for why she's Like This. Or rather, we learn, during what's frankly one of the most distressing scenes in the Agent plotline, which is saying something.

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[Video Description: A video I took of Zhorrid's last scene before you enter Act 1's endgame, and content warning. Content warning. She's not in a good way, mostly because of a lifetime of mental health problems brought on by Jadus. Skip it if you need to, it's summarized below. /Description]

Jadus used some literally operatic cruelty to break Zhorrid's mind, but the results evidently weren't what he wanted—when she became irrationally destructive and impulsive as a result, he essentially abandoned her. She mentions that he was always ruthless with himself, identifying and attempting to eliminate his own faults whenever he failed at something. That included Zhorrid herself.

When she takes over her father's Dark Council seat, she's an unprepared mess, and she knows it. She can't keep a hold of Jadus' resources, which the rest of the Council are quick to start stealing from her. To Imperial Intelligence, her top priority is to find out who killed her father, because she wanted to do it first.

Jadus, meanwhile, used his own monstrous strength in the Force to not be incinerated in the destruction of the Dominator. In fact, he held together a large enough portion of the ship that two hundred people were saved with him, covertly transported to another capital ship running silent in deep space.

And because breaking people isn't just something you do with family, Jadus spends the next couple of months driving them all insane.

It's no wonder that years later, when an ancient, eldritch Sith collective encounters the Agent player character, they attempt to recruit the agent on the sole basis of "you were once in the vicinity of Darth Jadus, and we like his vibes."

With Zhorrid's flameout keeping the Council and Intelligence distracted, Jadus's terrorist underlings—who are still pretty sure they actually did kill him—can continue production of these cool technoorganic death satellites he gave them the plans for ages ago. Pay no attention to the fact that this sort of merging of machine and unnatural flesh is usually an ancient Dark Side thing! Everything seems to be going great, and hey what's that player character-shaped person doing over there

The agent, now sporting the very cool codename Cipher Nine, manages to take out a big chunk of the terrorist group's organizational structure, and steal half of the control codes for the death satellites. Jadus didn't see this coming, but he has a solution: bring them to his horrorfest vacation spot and offer them a promotion.

And here's where he starts to start getting uncomfortably close to the fourth wall: Jadus basically states that he didn't realize Cipher Nine was important before, but he won't make that mistake again. Come be his herald. The Hand of Jadus, which is a very cool title for Star Wars folks of a particular age, because it makes you feel like Mara Jade. Give him the command codes, and he'll functionally take over the Empire, and overturn the old Blood Purity laws that kept aliens and slaves from becoming citizens, and also he'll improve their spiritual lives by beginning an 'Epoch of Terror'—

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[Video Description: A Cthulhu Mythos parody Christmas carol, "Joy To The World" replaced with "Death To The World, Cthulhu's come. Let Earth! Abhor! This thiiiing!". I don't get to pull these out very often, so here's my excuse. Let me tell you, there are carols that I cannot get through without accidentally falling into singing these instead. "God rest ye merry gentlemen, let everything dismay, remember Great Cthulhu shall rise up from R'lyeh—" /Description]

One of the most delightfully maddening things about Jadus as a character is that he mixes perfectly reasonable and even laudable ideas with pure eldritch nonsense. If Cthulhu were about to rise from the depths of R'lyeh, to awaken the Great Old Ones and drive the world mad under the crushing weight of their very existence, Jadus would be messing with labor laws so everyone could take time off work for the holiday.

At this point, the player has a choice. One of the most impactful in the entire game, actually: Do you let him win? Because you can actually take this deal. Maybe your character believes the Empire is so moribund that it needs to be pushed into collapse. May they've been pushed to madness themself by what they've experienced to get there. Maybe they earnestly believe Jadus's mix of structural reform and transcendental religion is good and necessary. You can give him the control codes, and allow him to ascend to even greater power, upon a tide of destruction that shall henceforth be known as Eradication Day.

Or you could not do that. I'll get back around to the above option in a second, but, y'know, most people who aren't me probably don't say "I like your vibe, let's see where this goes." This is a madman. Even if your character believes the Empire needs change, does it need him? Probably not! You've seen what he did to his daughter, and to the survivors of the two hundred he brought with him for his Deluxe Event Horizon Experience. They're not doing so great.

But how to deal with him? Jadus is generally acknowledged as the second most powerful Sith in the Empire, after the Emperor himself. The Emperor is, essentially, a god. Your character is a covert operative with a cool spaceship and some James Bond gadgets.

And because the game's power balance has been altered so completely over its long life, allowing players to just focus on the story if they so choose, you can pretty easily win his boss fight. Welp.

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[Video Description: From YT user FemaleKay IsBest, beginning at the decision point and skips over the boss fight because really it's perfunctory anyway. I always find it somewhere between funny and unnerving, how quickly Jadus goes from audibly pissed off to calmly biding his time while he waits for his chance to escape. He's still angry enough to bite someone if he had the mask off, but he's devastatingly practical for a mandman. /Description]

In story though, you don't kill him. A fleet's on the way to back you up, you just distract him long enough to trap him in a place where he can't escape their bombardment. If it actually happened. Because at that point, Jadus surrenders.

Huh. So he's still alive. Headed for execution at the hands of the other Sith, but that's the last you hear. They never actually confirm if they killed him or not.

Or, alternatively, you can give him the command codes to distract him, then sabotage the ship, rigging it to explode. Jadus escapes, but without the command codes—he can't maintain control of his superweapon deterrent against his foes. Again, that's the last you hear of him.

Or or, extra-alternatively, you can simply convince Jadus that he's lost. No really! You can give him a full tactical assessment of his situation, how you've got all the angles covered, and shoot down his counter-arguments. He'll push you hard. He'll actually start to sound angry, the first and last strong emotion he'll ever show you.

And then he just calms down and declares that you've won, and he's leaving now. He hates you, but respects you.

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[Video description: From YT user Invisible Shadow, talking Jadus into giving up. You can skip a few bossfights in the game by talking your way around them, but this ends an entire third of the game. I've never done this route, but I won't deny, it is extremely satisfying to watch. /Description]

Everyone is left wondering what in the fine flying fuck just happened.

No matter what you do, Jadus survives, something that many players actually missed—if they chose the most bog-standard, videogame-y path, they assumed he died off-screen. I've seen some of them actually misremember killing him personally. Nope! His survival was implied from day one, it was teased a bit in the expansions, but now it's been (pretty much) confirmed: Jadus is alive, like the biggest, most unkillable cockroach in the galaxy. Good for him! And gooder for him, if you let him win.

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[Video Description: From YT user xLetalis, featuring their Agent joining Darth Jadus. Content warning again, because you do get a boss fight in this version: it's Zhorrid. Other decisions end with her dead offscreen, but in this one, Jadus orders you to go kill her. Again, worst dad of the game. /Description]

Because this isn't an empty choice. SWTOR is limited in how much it can show differences visually, because unlike later titles such as Elder Scrolls Online, it can't do visual alterations to game maps shared with other characters. What it can do is alter dialog, and quite a lot of characters have something to say about the new regime, and your place in it.

And off in special little instanced corners of the game, you can actually get special scenes that nobody else does. This is where Jadus lurks. What's he doing? Stuff.

No really, we don't actually hear much about his overarching plans. There's cult rituals going on in the streets, he's successfully traumatized an entire Empire, but he's not derailing the overarching plot of the game, because he's made a strategic decision: he can't fight the Emperor. That would be suicide. And the Emperor wants a war with the Republic and the Jedi for some reason, so Jadus won't stop that. If it was up to him? Doesn't seem like it would happen! Jadus never actually mentions the Jedi. He only makes passing mention of the Republic.

Let's note that at this point in Star Wars as a piece of fiction, the one thing the Sith had always been so down for was destroying the Jedi and toppling the Republic. The fact that Jadus manifestly did not give a shit about either is part of what made him so strange.

What he does care about is why the Emperor is doing this. While most of the Agent plot proceeds as normal through its second act, you do receive an order partway through: steal encrypted data from the Emperor's guards. Help Jadus determine the Emperor's plans.

And at the start of Act Three, Jadus declares that he's discovered what the Emperor's doing. He also declares that he's leaving the game.

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[Video Description: from YT user The Youtube Acolyte, playing as an Agent named Thrauw'n because everyone who plays Chiss, including myself, has a crush on Thrawn. Anyway--Man just fuckin! Leaves! Absolute skeleton meme behavior. Also, Jadus can mention here "I see the shape of the galaxy as only five others can", which is a line that is NEVER explained. His closest philosophical match is found in the Dread Masters, but there's six of them. Candidates I've seen include the Emperor, Lord Scourge, Revan, Kreia, the Exile, the Jedi Knight and Consular player characters, Darth Malgus, Darth Acina, the Shroud, the First Son, and the list goes on because nobody is even sure what Jadus MEANS here about 'the shape of the galaxy'. Do I think this line will be followed up on? Absolutely not! I firmly believe it will continue to stand as a goddamn mystery. Tune back in after his storyline updates to find out if Jadus decided to mess with me specifically. /Description]

No, really. Jadus just abandons the Empire and leaves. Sure, he leaves you with enhanced authority, though he cautions you that it does paint a massive target on your back, and gives you his blessing to continue trying to unravel a massive conspiracy—possibly because he's realized the conspirators could accidentally help trigger the end of all life in the galaxy. Whoops.

Because what Jadus doesn't actually tell you is what the Emperor is up to. The Emperor is working on a ritual that makes use of death on a massive scale to trigger a chain reaction that will kill everything and feed its life force into himself, becoming a truly transcendent and eternal being. In fact, if you're playing the Agent plot, you never get explicitly told about this. You just show up to work one day and the rest of the Sith have collectively declared Fuck That and no longer acknowledge the Emperor's authority.

Why didn't Jadus reveal this? Well, he's not exactly popular among the Sith, given how he's a weird nerd who has orbital death lasers pointed at their house. They probably wouldn't believe him. His dialog also gives off the hilarious vibe that he knows this is the start of Act Three and that he's a second-tier villain, this is the point at which the plot would traditionally kill him off to show how serious the situation is. He's not a fan of that, so he elects to go find somewhere sufficiently off-screen that the plot can't touch him. This maniac is somehow the most genre-savvy villain in the game.

Also, he does make the very concerning comment that "whether [the Emperor] succeeds or fails, I grow stronger." I have no idea if he's lying or not, but most of his dialog is at least his truth to some extent or another. Does he believe he could hijack the ritual as a last resort? Maybe! Who knows! No matter what you as the player have done up until this point, Jadus has reacted in whatever way he thinks will ensure maximum success and his own survival. He obviously wasn't planning on just dying in the Emperor's ritual, so he had something he was working on to avoid that.

We never find out what that might be. Frankly, I'm not sure the writers truly knew what that was, because they didn't need to. His arc was done, and he could leave just as strangely as he'd done everything in the first place.

And that was the end of Jadus for a very long time. In the first few expansions, you could continue to invoke your title as the Hand of Jadus, if that was the path you chose. After that, the plot folded together in a way that smoothed out the differences between player characters in many ways. Oh, sure, people with history with you will react differently. If you're playing an Agent, you alone can continue to hang out with one of your former companions: a nice young man who's packed full of ants, who's possibly your lover and is good friends with a secret agent doctor were-zombie.

I really will have to ramble about the Agent companions at some point.

But one thing that was consistent for everybody: when an extremely weird crisis strikes the galaxy, one of the people considered as a culprit is Darth Jadus.

For those who haven't played the Agent plot, this is a "Who?" moment. He never appears in any other plotline. He is only the sleep paralysis demon of folks at Imperial Intelligence, in part because his potential plot ramifications are too large to account for. Canon probably defaults to him failing in his takeover, but most Dark Side-aligned player plots make all the Dark Side choices canon, and it's hard to get Dark Side-ier than allowing tens of thousands to die so that "all people will revel in fear and degradation. These prizes will no longer be hoarded by Sith."

I cannot stress enough how unhinged this man's goals are.

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[Video Description: The new trailer, which gives us the one glimpse we have of New and Improved Jadus so far. Fun fact, Malgus is 77 and Jadus is 65 here, because the Sith are just inherently incapable of retiring from their shenanigans, ever. Vowrawn is 93 at this point and entirely powered by shenanigans alone. I was mixed on Jadus's new look, until a friend pointed out he looks like some sort of emerging plant, and I realized the collar reminded me a bit of a Rafflesia. Parasitic, grows to titanic proportions, and smells like rotting meat. So I've come around on it, obviously. Malgus' voiceover is cut to be vaguing about "corrupt doctrines" in regards to Jadus, which I find hilarious. He did technically embezzle Imperial funds to research his superweapons, but the rest of that was all outsourced. Unless we're talking about "corruption" in terms of "messing with people's brains", in which case, yes. He do be out there, corrupting the minds of the youth. And everybody who isn't youth. Possibly even some rocks, if they're smart enough. /Description]

So, that's where we are at this point. I have no idea how things will go from here. My hope is that Jadus will return as the highly strategic, transcendental weirdo he always was before. It's actually been fun having him just out there somewhere, because it's meant the mystique couldn't be messed with. I'd actually accept it if they brought him back to kill him, but ideally if it happened in such a baffling fashion that you're left uncertain if he intended for that to happen.

But before the game potentially expands on him and his motivations, I want to get out a couple of my own interpretation of what we've seen: Jadus is unique among the Sith. Among the Empire. And he is not yet perfect. And he wants both to change.

Something happened in his past that pushed him deep into the Dark Side, something that broke his world apart and reformed it into something new. Since then, he's tried and failed to explain it to others. He doesn't have a perfect understanding of what happened to him, how to lead others to the same state, or how to push himself further. As a result, he tried to raise his daughter in such a way to induce the same revelations he experienced, and failed. That failure took years, and he couldn't afford such a costly loss again.

So instead of the personal, controlled approach, he would mass-produce the shattering of minds. The whole point of the drama and wanton destruction of his plan was to traumatize billions, trading precision for sheer quantity. The vast majority would fail, becoming fuel for his continued growth in power. But surely, someone would react as he had.

This obviously isn't a selfless enterprise on his part. He is a ruthlessly practical lunatic, and when he reaches the limits of his capability, he abandons the project. We don't know if he succeeded in what he wanted from his takeover. We don't actually know if he took anyone with him when he left. He made it clear that his Hand would not follow him where he was going, though we know some in Intelligence kept sending him reports that received no reply, and we have some potential indication that he was still actively monitoring his Hand's activities. Which at that point mostly involved getting the stuffing knocked out of them by the entire galaxy all at once, which Jadus probably considered character-building.

Do I have any idea whether these are intended reads on the character? No. I'm not privy to the authorial decisions made during the writing of Mr. Darth "Under my rule, all people will revel in fear and degradation" Jadus. I don't know if the original intent will be preserved either, thirteen years down the road.

But man. Man. What a transfixingly weird guy they've created here. Jadus is memorable because he twists so much of what we've come to expect from Sith into something different, with enough left unexplained to keep you wondering. Or at least, keep me wondering. Let's be real, Jadus as a villain probably appeals most to a very specific subset of people with goth tendencies and spicy brains, who look at HP Lovecraft and think "what if these cosmic horrors were more inclusive in the worst way possible?"

I'm glad to see him back. I'm afraid of what might happen with him. He's poised to drive me insane, no matter what happens. And that's precisely how he'd prefer it.

#star wars #star wars: the old republic #swtor #swtor meta #legacy of the sith #darth jadus #everybody's got at least one Weird Critter they get attached to in star wars and Jadus is one of mine #he's not as PHYSICALLY weird a critter as some of the Weird Critters out there but he makes up for it in spirit #absolute cryptid mindset from this man #Youtube

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