#the anime is so iconic god bless 'er

[flightybuttlass]

when I was a kid I bought volumes of Sailor Moon at random based on cover art, not knowing anything about linear story, and now that I'm finally reading my completed collection, I can say concretely that I was right to do that bc the Sailor Moon manga is ass. Somehow as a kid, I'd randomly selected the volumes with the best content, aka the side stories about the Sailor Scouts, aka the only ways you get to connect with them at all bc they might as well not be part of the main story for how little they affect anything. Thank god for the anime bc this shit is so shallow. I love and honor it still, but it is so shallow.

[ratandphilgames]

Our Lives Don’t Collide

{chapter 4: in too deep} 

summary: Shit hits the fan when famous actor!Phil is caught smooching a boy in an alleyway. Only problem? He’s not out and what’s worse? The boy he was smooching was a journalist who set it all up to get a quick picture and now Phil is royally screwed. The only answer Phils management can come up with is a fake relationship to try and do damage control and famous actor!Dan is the perfect candidate.

chapter word count: 2478

total word count: 9936

rating: t

note: super thanks to everyone who likes/ reblogs/ sends me a message! the support has been amazing! also huge thanks to all the babes in the writing gc for motivating me to write! ily!

updates on thursdays!

{read on ao3}

{read from the beginning}

{next chapter} 

—–

The 2 boys ended up playing video games for an hour after they decided they’d become friends, which went surprisingly well. They were really just big nerds too tall for their own good, and it showed when they played video games.

Conversation flowed easily, bants were abundant, and afterwhile they both forgot they were there because of their fake relationship, it just felt like hanging out. It’d been a long time since Dan had just hung out with someone who was genuine and didn’t want something from him. At least with Phil he was upfront with what he wanted from Dan, it was all in contract form to keep it clear.

“Wotch your back Daniel, I’m creeping up on you.” Phil yelled as he gripped his controller more intensely.

In any other setting Dan would’ve been frightened by this sentence, but seeing as it was because Dan was currently in first place in an intense game of mario kart 8, it was rather acceptable. They were on the first lap of the animal crossing track, season: autumn, and Dan had already pulled ahead as he spent far too much time playing mario kart in his free time. When you don’t know who you can trust, mario kart will always be there for you.

“Oh are you? ARE YOU?” Dan had a bad habit of getting way too loud when it came to competitions. He was howling in a way that could be deemed offensive had he been playing with a different person, Phil however, just laughed at him as he attempted to catch up.

“Yes! You’re going down!” Phil shrieked, and before Dan even knew what was happening he was hit with a blue shell, effectively knocking him out of his first place position and letting Phil take the lead.

“YOU LITTLE SON OF A PFFT PSH PFT.” Dan was trying not to swear too much, as to leave a good first impression on his fake boyfriend, but goddamn it was hard. He ended up just making random exhales of air as he tried to earn back his spot in first place.

Phil found so much joy in that little blue shell moment, his eyes were lit up and he was laughing like a maniac and just a little part of Dan felt that it was worth letting him win if he got to see him being so happy. The rest of Dan wanted to crush all his hopes and dreams as he destroyed him at mario kart.

They kept up the back and forth game of going between 1rst and 2nd until the third lap when Dan had pretty much established himself as winner in his own eyes. That was until the biggest upset in the history or time when Phil got the bullet on the last corner and won by a very small margin. Needless to say Dan threw his controller and Phil laughed so hard he was snorting.

“I won! Take that, Danny boi!” Phil had stood up on his couch and stared down at Dan in victory.

“Danny boi? Oh god this is embarrassing. Losing mario kart in my own home, to a noob.” Phil was hardly a noob, but Dan liked to tease. He glossed over the fact that he’d earned himself a new nickname, one he’d surprisingly never heard before. After his high school experience with gems such as ‘dick loving dan’ and ‘homo howell’ he’d have thought he’d heard every variation of his name possible, but Phil was constantly coming up with new ways to surprise him.

Mid gloat Phil’s phone started buzzing nonstop and he put a pause on his victory chant to reach down and grab the vibrating device. Phil plopped himself back down onto a seated position as he checked his phone to see who his caller was, as Dan started deciding on the next track they should play.

“Oh, uh, I’ve got to take this, it’s my manager.”

Dan barely looked up as he waved him off to allow him to go answer his phone. As Phil exited the room he could hear a greeting being exchanged and then some whispering. If he tried he could make out the words, but that was wrong, right? Eavesdropping was bad and he shouldn’t do it. Dan maintained that idea until he heard his name spoken and then curiosity got the better of him. He crept quietly, almost spy like towards the entryway of his living room, just far enough that he could better hear, but not too far that it would be unnatural if Phil were to walk back in and see him. Dan was just hanging out on the edge of the couch, nothing weird about that.

“It’s going okay, Liam. He seems cool, everything will be fine.” Phil was pacing back and forth through the hallway, making parts of his sentence quieter than the rest, but the message Dan received was loud and clear in his ears. Phil Lester thought he was cool.

Suddenly all those fanboy feelings Dan had been repressing through the time they spent together were resurfacing as he played those words over and over and over again in his head. All that mumbo jumbo about Phil being just a regular guy flew out the window as Dan heard himself being complimented by one of the most iconic actors of the recent era (and not to mention overall attractive man).

Phil Lester thinks you’re cool.

That was one hell of a confidence booster.

Dan zoned out and missed  the rest of the convo because goddamnit he was cool. Shans advice really worked, he played it cool and it payed off in the end.

As Dan’s brain was still processing the idea that he was cool, he heard Phil’s footsteps and realized he must’ve hung up the phone and was headed back towards the lounge, back to Dan. As this truly hit Dan, he scrambled to seem casual, natural, and cool.

“Hey, I think I’m going to head off soon, manager called my car already.” Phil said as he made his reappearance, seemingly not noticing Dan’s less than usual behavior.

“Okay, cool.”

Fucking hell don’t say cool, that makes it seem like you were eavesdropping.

Dan had been eavesdropping but he didn’t want Phil to know he’d been listening in. Already feeling the effects of guilt for being a sneaky little shit, Dan made sure to avoid meeting Phil’s gaze, although that probably just made him seem even more sketchy.

“Yeah, so, thanks for having me over, and for the whole- ya know, fake boyfriend stuff. Really saved me there.” Phil was fidgeting with his fingers as he stood awkwardly by the lounge entrance, having yet to step back into the room as he knew he’d be leaving soon.

“Oh yeah, sure. No problem, should be fun. Speaking of which, what’s the next thing we need to do?” Dan asked, unsure how to about this thing. They needed to be spotted together a lot to be seen a realistic couple, and with paparazzi swarming the both of them at the moment, it wouldn’t be hard to strike up buzz.

“Uhhh probably just more social media stuff, get people hooked. We’re ‘like a drug’ to the fans according to my agent.” Phil shifted uncomfortably as he quoted his agent, clearly as uneasy about the way it sounded as Dan was. A drug? What did that even mean?

“Sooooooooooooo should we hang out like this again sometime? Soon?” Maybe Dan was just hoping he could spend more time with Phil, but he could paint it as part of the deal and nobody would ever have to know the difference.

“Yeah, I’ll text you.” Dan simply stared at Phil because how in the hell did he have his number? Did his publicist give it to him? This whole goddamn time they could’ve been texting each other? And they weren’t?

“That was a hint for you to give me your phone so I can put my number in it.” Phil said with a chuckle.

Oh.

Dan grabbed his cell off the little coffee table, the place he’d set it down when they first started playing mario kart, and stood to hand it to Phil, trying to keep his head down so his blush wasn’t too apparent.

Of course he wants your number, you have to communicate somehow. Don’t read too much into this, don’t read too much into this, don’t read too much-

“We still need to take that picture, ya know, to make us instagram official.” Phil said, startling Dan out of his thoughts and handing him back his phone. Phil really typed fast.

“Yeah, Shannon- er my manager- will kill me if we forget. Like actually behead me, like hide the guillotine.”

Phil just laughed at his weird attempt at humor, bless his little heart.

“Alright well let’s do this thing, I’d rather like you to keep your head attached to your body.”  

Dan tapped around on his phone a little bit and pulled up the camera and both boys positioned themselves so that the lighting was okay and they could both be seen effectively.

They took a few of them together, smiles bright with Phil peeking over Dans shoulder.

And then Phil did something unexpected.

He reached his long neck over and planted a soft lil kiss onto Dan’s cheek, right over his dimple and Dan, unsure of how to react, just kept snapping pictures. And once Phil felt they had a sufficient amount to pick from with the cheek kisses, he snuggled his face into Dan’s neck and Dan just kept taking those pics, his body wanting him to have a completely different reaction.

Holy fuck.

Just as fast as Phil had attached to himself Dan he was backed away, the smile not leaving his face though.

“Sorry, hope that wasn’t awkward.”

“Oh, no, you’re fine, we’re both actors right? Totally fine. I’ll go through and find the good ones and post them later. Gotta call my mum first or she’ll be livid, ya know how it is.”

Dan was rambling, trying to make the situation seem casual when really his insides were ready to explode out of his ass.

“I haven’t even told my mom about the whole gay thing. I’m not quite sure how she’ll take it, so I just kind of… put it off.”

All Dan wanted to do was hug the guy, all the dumb crush feelings forgotten as he remembered how rough things actually were for Phil right now. Publicly outed, not even getting a chance to tell his family. It sounded like hell, yet he was handling it like a champ. Almost too well.

“That’s no good. You’ve gotta talk to your mum, call her up. Throw down the facts. If she doesn’t like it then I’ll be your mum from now on, simple as that.”

Phil laughed a little at that last part, but overall seemed uncomfortable with the idea. Dan could definitely see why, it was terrifying to think that the one person that’s supposed to love you unconditionally could turn you away simply for being true to yourself, but he also knew that finding out your son was gay from the internet was 100 times worse than hearing it from him.

“We’ll see.”

“Call me up if you need emotional support, I know a thing or two about this whole ‘coming out’ bullshit.” It had been a daunting process for Dan, no one in his family understood what being bisexual even meant, he was constantly being asked if he was sure he wasn’t just gay or just straight but in time they learned and now’s in a pretty good place with his family.

“Thanks, I might take you up on that offer. Maybe.”

“You can’t run away from your problems.”

“I can try.” Phil said with a shrug.

“You’re a mess Lester.”

“Well when you get your shit together and post on instagram, I’ll officially be your mess.”

That stopped Dan in his tracks, unable to think of a witty remark to keep up their little game because surely that was flirting. This wasn’t just Dan making up little things in his head, anyone would interpret that as flirting, right? If this was just for the public Phil wouldn’t have said that inside the confidence of Dan’s home, where nobody was around to hear them.

Lucky for Dan, the buzzer went off moments later, covering his ass.

Dan quickly moved from the lounge, where they were standing, to his little foyer, and over to the intercom.

“Hello.” Dan said into the little microphone, realizing Phil had followed him into the room only after he felt a little tickle of breath on his neck.

“I’m here to pick up Phil Lester, and no sir, this isn’t a prank.”

Dan felt just a little embarrassed as he typed in the password to open the gate. He had only been asking if he was being pranked because he’d been told the wrong day, it was a valid question at the time, now it just felt a little silly.

“Alright, well, I’ll see you later I guess.” Dan said.

“Yeah, I’ll be looking out for your instagram post.”

“You better turn on notifications.”

“Oh, I will.”

Again, Dan had a blush on his face because of Phil.

The doorbell began ringing and before he opened the door, Dan looked over at Phil and said “don’t forget about your mum, Phil,”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Dan smiled at him and Phil smiled back and then Dan opened up the door and stepped out of the way so that Phil could get through. Standing there, outside, was the same muscular man that had been with him when Phil was left at Dan’s home less than 2 hours ago.

It didn’t feel like that little of time had passed, yet it truly had been less than 2 hours. Dan waved as Phil got into his car, making it seem like a bigger thing than it was for all the people with cameras lined up behind his iron gate which he was certain were taking pictures like mad.

After Phil’s car had pulled away, Dan went back inside and immediately flopped down onto the couch and clicked the tv off from when they were playing mario kart earlier.

Dan was in deep. So incredibly deep.

This little rendezvous only furthered Dan’s suspicion that he liked Phil, like a lot. He was just as fantastic in real life as Dan had imagined which was really just a big problem.

What’s one to do when they like their fake boyfriend? That’s just a whole new level of complicated that Dan didn’t want to delve into just yet. So he just put it off, the exact thing he’d advised Phil against doing.

God, he was in so so deep. 

[gurguliare]

notes on the valar’s debate re: finwë and miriel because whatever i guess i’m a tolkien blog again suddenly

valar present: all the aratar minus oromë and varda, but plus vairë. apparent difficulty of getting all the valar in a room is very touchingly + frighteningly provisional government. i’m not surprised oromë skipped, mildly interested in varda’s absence since varda hallows the silmarils and that’s like, the most we see her interact with an elf ever, but apparently she wasn’t as concerned with fëanor’s parents. someone write me fëanor + varda fic that isn’t primarily or exclusively about how hallowing another person’s family jewels is Illegal, thank you.

Things I Am Interested In About The Debate Itself:

aulë argues that miriel’s death (or as he wants to frame it, fëanor’s birth) was direct action on eru’s part, and that it’s therefore a mistake to talk about it as connected to the marring of arda. i love aulë’s shitty partisan tunnel vision. characterization-wise my goal for him is always to invent a melkor parallel, so, uh, belief in absolute creative control, i guess? god can always tweak his machine.

ulmo shoots back that miriel’s death CAN’T be a [thing apart from the marring] because miriel’s death has had shitty, ruinous consequences of its own, namely, it made people sad, and eru “doth not of his prime motion impose grief upon them.” ulmo acknowledges that eru is the ultimate source of all crap, grief included, but basically rejects aulë’s concept of eru acting without intermediary in a way that causes deep harm. as always, ulmo + numenor depresses me, albeit i guess not many people were left alive to grieve. between ulmo’s stance here and his speech to tuor in “of the coming of tuor to gondolin,” i think we can go past “ulmo is a rogue agent” and say that ulmo is invested in an ideal eru who may not be the same as the eru who presently exists (or, atemporally, may not be the same as... every eru who exists?); ulmo in a pinch will guilt trip god, or to take sides when god contradicts itself---not, “the contradiction must also be eru’s will and it’s our limited perspective that makes it seem evil,” but “the things i know to be right in eru are the substance of eru that i accept; the rest is a wall to be broken down, not a burden we rationalize or reconcile ourselves to.” HEAL GOD HEAL GOD HEAL GOD ulmo is, of course, jewish.*

*caveat: i have no idea what i’m talking about

yavanna backs up ulmo, which is neat---yavanna compared to ulmo is less touchy-feely, less involved with humanoids in general, so it’s not an instant association for me, but yavanna ofc also makes one of the iconic appeals-on-behalf-of-creation, which reveals a possible flaw in the design and gets a special accommodation granted: ents! here her focus is more technical (aman isn’t beyond the reach of the marring generally, and who would know better than her; everything made of matter is affected by melkor), but in a way that reveals the solid grounding for her brand of protective ardor; she’s also an engineer, though one long since resigned to the messy randomness of creation and its collaborative basis.

nienna similarly goes pretty in-depth with a consideration of psychological as well as physical frailty; despite my jokes about nienna the neural network, she lays out a lot of theory here. ulmo gets shirty about, uh, weighting temporal creatures’ in-the-moment understanding of their own abilities above their real potential to endure; in passing he touches on the fact that the valar’s interference deffos made things worse (because miriel, given an ultimatum, of course doubled down on her decision). vairë says, no, miriel is just pigheaded. in my memory of the debate i had attributed some of nienna’s stuff to vairë---i actually don’t quite know what to make of vairë’s position, or rather, of what it adds, except that she takes nienna’s relatively external + patronizing take on fallible minds and argues instead for a kind of terrible accuracy of perception between elf souls that the valar can have no frame of reference for. (vairë and mandos in different ways both strike me as bizarrely prone to, idk, taking elves seriously---see also “If thraldom it be, thou canst not escape it,” which is brutal! but which accepts feanor’s skewed model in order to enter a dialogue with him, rather than talking over his head about how his perspective is delusional.)

i haven’t touched on manwë’s and mandos’s comments in the debate because both are interesting but fairly self-explanatory. “everything else you wrote here was self-explanatory” shh. AND NOW, onto my favorite parts of this stupid essay:

1) nienna gets the bright idea to just, stuff miriel back into her corpse, and takes it to mandos privately as though no one else needs to be consulted about this and as though all the prior objections to miriel’s reincarnation just Stopped Existing because LOOK, the body’s FINE, and i HAD THIS IDEA

2) after the rebellion they do exactly that. they just pop her back in.

Then the fëa of Míriel was released and came before Manwë and received his blessing; and she went then to Lorien and re-entered her body, and awoke again, as one that cometh out of a deep sleep; and she arose and her body was refreshed. But after she had stood in the twilight of Lorien a long while in thought, remembering her former life, and all the tidings that she had learned, her heart was still sad, and she had no desire to return to her own people. Therefore she went to the doors of the House of Vairë and prayed to be admitted; and this prayer was granted, although in that House none of the Living dwelt nor have others ever entered it in the body.

i love it. i love it so much. i love miriel standing and thinking, i love that having already had a kind of ecstatic ghost turnaround after talking to finwe, where she’s like, i will! i will come back to life!---coming back to life is still hard. she sobers up and her understanding changes again once she’s returned to the world; she gets so many pivots in two pages and it doesn’t feel silly or trivial, it feels amazing, because this is the woman who vairë thought would stay dead until the end of the world---i guess that’s the other big function of vairë’s bit, is it lets us take seriously the idea that miriel COULD have. she was feanor’s mother. and yet by some chance she relented, and it wasn’t like, break the old resolve, form a new one, follow that just as doggedly, it’s that she breaks the old resolve and ends up in this totally new, thoughtful, responsive mindset, In The Twilight Of Lorien, she has the freedom to find out and follow her own impulses at last, and if the impulse runs out she abandons it

and she gets what she wants!! although in that house none of the living dwelt nor have others ever entered it in body!

also, from when she’s still talking stuff over with finwë:

And when she learned of Finwë all that had befallen since her departure (for she had given no heed to, nor asked tidings, until then) she was greatly moved; and she said to Finwë in thought: ‘I erred in leaving thee and our son, or at least in not soon returning after brief repose; for had I done so he might have grown wiser. But the children of Indis shall redress his errors and therefore I am glad that they should have being, and Indis hath my love. How should I bear grudge against one who received what I rejected and cherished what I abandoned?’

so, 1) i suspect that ghosts’ mental processing is not exactly like living people’s, because regardless of how seriously depressed míriel was when she died, ‘had given no heed to, nor asked tidings’ is real hardcore, also i just want ghosts to not be very much like living people 2) GOD the thing about indis’s kids... i love....... the fucked up blowup of an ideal sibling relationship of mutual correction and help into this continent-wide, fairly miserable chase sequence. cleaning up after the dead. and yet miriel with the wide-angle view can’t help but see in it the seeds of what should have been and also something to be grateful for

living handmaiden miriel/ghost finwë who hovers over her shoulder while she’s weaving and asks “is that anime”/embittered single mom indis is the BEST THREESOME, qed*

*i proved nothing

[prophetkristy]

slayer of stars

Twenty years ago today, I came down the hill from my History 101 course with my brain a-whirring, made my way to the computer lab in the dungeon basement of my dorm, logged onto Usenet [1], and posted the following to alt.fan.wedge:

Subject: SW and animism From: Kristy <…@uidaho.edu> Date: 1997/08/28 Message-ID: <872787391.28561@dejanews.com> Newsgroups: alt.fan.wedge

Okay, I just got back from my History of Western Civilization class, and I have to vent. It’s no secret that GL got his ideas from other cultures and traditions. So it wasn’t too surprising when my teacher(who’s pretty awesome, IMO) was explaining animism today, he used SW as an example. (it sure made taking notes a lot easier. ::g::) Animists believe that the universe is alive, i.e., the Force is there. And they have shamans who are basically Jedi knights. I identified with evrything he was saying until he got to explaining their general classes of gods. Here’s what they have: the old father god, the young warrior god, the young goddess of war/love, and the trickster. There were parallels here to SW: trickster=Han Solo, wise father=Obi-Wan, goddess=Leia. But my teacher went on and on about how the young warrior was the coolest of all, he went off and fought battles and monsters and all the cool stories were about him. So who else would he choose for the SW parallel but Farm Boy. Bleah! I _almost_ went up to him after class and protested. Farm Boy isn’t the coolest warrior! _Wedge_ is, of course!

Yet another example of the oppression Wedge fans suffer at the hands of Farm Boy…. ::sigh:: Well, he’s guaranteed I’ll remember _that_ part of the lecture.

How about: Vote Wedge. He’s the true animist warrior god.

Thank you for listening, you’re the only people who would ever understand. :-)

–Kristy [2], off to an astronomy lab

Palpatine’s dead. Vote Wedge. –Antilles/Celchu ‘00–

From such humble [?!] beginnings was the True Animist Warrior God movement born. (Some time later I printed out a post signed with the TAWG [3] campaign slogan and taped said slogan onto my history notebook.)

This was not to bag on the history course. It was only the second day, as far as I can tell from my notes [4]. I had wanted to take the honors section of the course, but it wouldn’t fit in the schedule of other classes I was taking [5]. It turns out that I don’t regret this, as I very much enjoyed the class. It was actually taught by a graduate student, IIRC, and he was very good; he described many events in a human context with the emotions and motivations of the players. [6] Really, the worst thing about the course was that it was at 7 am—a less than ideal way, shall we say, to start college [7]. (Oh my TAWG, I’m going absolutely berserk with the footnotes! My brain keeps going off on tangents, but I don’t want to interrupt myself all the time. wheeee!)

(Interestingly, the next semester I continued on with Hist 102, which this time was taught by a professor. Who wasn’t nearly as interesting as the grad student!)

According to my heading for the Animism post in the Classic Threads section of the AFW website [8], I previously linked Star Wars to the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh–where Farmboy was Gilgamesh, taking all the credit, and Wedge was Enkidu, doing all the work. I think now this might be a little revisionist history. I can’t remember in which course I read Gilgamesh, but it’s likely that it was Lit of Western Civ that same semester (high school Senior AP English was British lit, where we watched every Jane Austen movie Ever Made *gag*). The earliest post of mine I can find referencing the two was actually the *next* week or so, in the midst of the Epic, Historical “Fantasy Toys” Thread, in response to Quiara:

> We understand you, dear. Where else could I admit to writing a Hero > essay about him in the same year that I did a book report on Rogue > Squadron?

I really want to write my Lit of Western Civ essay on the parallels between Gilgamesh/Enkidu and Luke/Wedge, but I could never get four pages out of that and have my teacher actually like it. ::pout:: [9]

Both of these posts were commenting on what I felt (still do feel, to some extent) was a sad state of affairs in being a WedgeFan. Namely, that Wedge was a lot cooler than most people give him credit for. (And, underlying that feeling, a WedgeFan’s natural disdain for Luke “Farmboy” [10] Skywalker.) This would reach its fannish culmination in the Book of Wedge, but had real-world significance in the woeful lack of a separate carded Wedge Antilles action figure. As well as the lack of Wedge awareness among those who weren’t huge pilotfans.

Despite that, 1997 was a fantastic year to be a WedgeFan. Maybe if you weren’t Quiara, Brett, or myself, it was different—we three were quite chatty—but I never heard anyone complain. ;-) [11] It wasn’t actually our most active year, but it was the beginning of what I think of as the “golden years” of AFW. The first four X-Wing books (by Historian of Wedge Michael A. Stackpole) had been released by January 1997, and Mike actually lurked and occasionally even posted. I joined in the spring of 1997 as a senior in high school (with a very embarassing post which will not be reproduced here). Quiara was in high school. Brett wasn’t being challenged too much by work or life, because he also apparently had a lot of time on his hands. Somehow the three of us had some mojo (and also probably high blood sugar content) that just led to wacky hijinks. Quiara declared Wedge’s candidacy for President in April, a story which would last well *past* the 2004 election. I declared him TAWG in August. The Fantasy Toys thread was started earlier in August, thus cementing me into the AFW madness and keeping me frequently posting even when I probably should have been paying attention to college. (eh. I gradutated.) The “the world is falling down…” thread was that year, too.

Of all the Internet friends I have, interestingly it’s Quiara and Brett whom I’ve never met in real life. I actually haven’t heard from Quiara in years; she dropped off the radar at about the time she started college, I think, thus proving her work (study) ethic. ;-) I can’t say I really knew her all that well—AFW was almost exclusively the limit of our interaction—but I still consider her to have been an early partner in crime. I still hear from Brett occasionally, and I actually can’t believe I haven’t found myself visiting his city before now. Brett holds a special place in my memory not only for being such an integral part of that first crazy year on AFW, but also for scoring me the Wedge action figure I like to call “biceps Wedge”–the one from the Milennium Falcon carrying case, which his comics store was selling loose for some reason.

Resorting again to Google Groups (we never know, when we’re making history, that we are doing so, and as such fail to keep track of these things), it looks like I first styled myself Prophet Kristy on October 8, 1997, in a short thread titled “Random Thoughts.” [12] Quiara, bless her heart, actually accused me of being humble:

> –Kristy, Prophet of the Great One

Just a prophet? you could make Cardinal at least, if you wanted.

(Yeah, maybe I could have—I am Catholic, after all—but, y'know, “Prophetess” works better on the back of a kickball shirt that “Cardinal”. “-ess.” Er, see what I mean?)

One month later (AFAICT) I first signed a post as “Prophet Kristy”–and the rest, as they say, is history.

I could go on and on with the AFW nostalgia——but I should probably get to work on actual, you know, work. And this is getting LONG. However, I do want to mention one other thing in relation to the TAWG / Prophetess thing.

The Book of Wedge was my default icon on LiveJournal—a little cartoon made by terrathree, originally for Terra Group, that she kindly made 100x100 when I started LJing. I didn’t actually come up with the idea for the Book of Wedge—the document I wrote was largely an adaptation from “The Adventures of Wedge Antilles” written by Mike Scorsch and posted on his late web page Corellian Bloodstripes. I’d always been greatly amused by the idea of revisionist SW history with Wedge being the person behind *everything*–especially having Wedge actually blow the first DS as well as the second. Having declared myself a Prophet, I also felt it was only fair that I write a Holy Book. Thus was born the Book of Wedge, wherein Wedge not only blows up both Death Stars, but also shoots Greedo, fights off the Slave I with a blaster, and generally saves the day. In it, I declared Quiara and Brett to be Apostles of Wedge along with Jim and Marji, two others who were in the thick of AFW in late 1997. And generally had a blast being silly and fangirly.

Quiara followed this up with the Book of Quiara, a short history of the campaign and other silliness. And much later, terrathree expanded on an observation I’d made about the constellation Orion looking like an X-wing and wrote the tale of the Hunter of the Sky.

These are only a few of the many, many tales of Wedge spawned by AFW, but they are the Holiest. So sayeth the Prophetess of the Great One, Wedge Antilles, the True Animist Warrior God. *makes the Sign of the Exploding Death Star*

I imagine our old IRC chat server probably doesn’t even exist anymore (is IRC even still a thing??)–Feast Days used to always be Chat Days–but have a good Feast Day of Wedge, won’t you all? Do the Ewok Dance, drink some Ewok Juice, bag on Farmboy, and revel in the glory of the Rebellion’s Greatest Starpilot.

[1]=Yeahhhhhh, Usenet. Back in the day. [2]=As you see, I didn’t self-identify then as Prophetess; that was to come later. Wow, I’d forgotten I used to use my fanfic Knave Leader and the ASCII parked X-wing in my .sig. Nifty. [3]=I’m almost positive that Morwen was the one to coin that acronym. Once again showing us all up with her mad language skillz, especially considering this isn’t her native tongue. [4]=yes, I’m enough of a nerd that I’ve kept my freshman history notes. [5]=probably this was a good thing, since I was taking the honors sections of Chemistry 111 AND English <memfault—Literature of Western Civilization>. [6]=I haven’t been able to turn him up by Googling, but I hope he found himself a faculty position somewhere; he deserves it. [7]=I cordially loathe all those students who boast of arranging their schedules to never start before 10 or 12. I was never able to do that—there was always a class I needed that was a 7:30 or 8 or 8:30. Pout. [8]=Yeah, I know it’s gone. It needs a new server space. And its webmistress needs to pay attention to it. I’ll just have to link to Google posts here. [9]=It looks like I had dropped the Knave Leader by this time, but was still not calling myself Prophet Kristy. [10]=How much do I love that Mara always calls him Farmboy? [11]=Oh, no, that came much later, spurring the Project Boussh Polite Flame War of '01(?). [12]=this was also apparently the thread that spawned the phrase “rakish rebel scum”, which Brett quickly hailed as a great band name. And it was only a 7 post thread! aaah, for the time to just read and relive the posts of those years.