#this is.... whatever they have that passes for concord

[sunnydayaoe]

Bit of extra under cut :]

+ zoom in .. circuit turned out so cute in this comic.. I promise he's scary I pppppromise he's scary. he is soooo scary. prommy.

[dazed-and-confused23]

Dear Hearts and Gentle People 20

Old Friends

Summary: While in the Commonwealth, you and Cooper come across another piece of the ghoul's past. This one is a lot more pleasant than the last one.

Pairings: The Ghoul | Cooper Howard x Female Reader

Warnings: mhm. Not a lot? Drinking is mentioned and this deals with grief. Reader is just happy Cooper found a friend. This came from my lil headconnon that Cooper and Nate were in Anchorage together.

Masterlist

"Tell me why you wanted to come all the way up here again?" Cooper grouched from behind you. Dusty had fucked off at some point, off to do whatever deathclaws did, and leaving the couple alone for a while.

"Because I'm curious. Hancock kept mentioning the Minutemen, and I want to meet their General," you tell him with an easy shrug. Your thirst for knowledge and curiosity had gotten them into more trouble than what it's worth most times, and Cooper couldn't help but think that this was another such instance.

"Curiosity killed the cat, ya know," He sneered and took a deep swig from his canteen, golden eyes narrowing when he caught sight of an upcoming town. He cuts his eyes back to you when you spin around and give him that infuriating smirk.

"But satisfaction brought it back," you chirp, and he rolls his eyes with a scoff.

Thankfully, Concord is pretty much abandoned. They can see evidence of a fight, but it must have happened long enough ago that the wasteland critters had dragged off the bodies. They pass through without any trouble and then past the red rocket before they come to a stop at half-collapsed bridge.

The settlement across the bridge is impressive, to say the least. Tall walls made from scrap surround the small cul-de-sac, and you can spot two lookout towers, one in the front and one near the back. Turrets sit near the weakest spots of the walls, and a barricade has been set up just in front of the large gates that lead inside the settlement. A Minutemen flag flaps high above, letting newcomers know who it belonged to.

Cooper whistles, impressed with the work that's been done. The place was big, smaller than Filly, but had that same wasteland feel to it. You lope forward, excited to see what the town holds.

The guards let the two of you inside without much trouble, and the inside is just as impressive as the outside. Most of the houses have been repaired, and a large building had been set up at the end of the cul-de-sac that held several vendors selling different types of wares. They are soon approached by a man dressed in tan colonial garb, a laser musket slung across his back.

"Welcome to Sanctuary, my name's Preston. Is there any way I can help you two?" He asks, and you introduce yourself and Cooper, shaking the Minutemen's hand.

"We're not from the Commonwealth, so I just wanted to take a look around. Heard about this place over the radio and from Hancock back in Goodneighbor."

Preston nods, a small smile on his lips, "Well, I hope we live up to your expectations. There is always something that needs to be done, though, so we aren't perfect."

Cooper shifts his weight, tuning out the conversation as he looks around. There are settlers everywhere, tending to the gardens that are set up behind a yellow house and the sight of two kids and a dog playing in the dead grass. The sight makes him smirk a little before he turns away, only to choke when his eyes land on a man who Cooper had thought he'd never see again.

There, standing in a pair of old jeans and a white t-shirt, was none other than Nate Card. They had served together in Anchorage and he had even met the man's wife after they'd been discharged.

Cooper is stalking across the settlement before he even realizes it, stopping a couple of feet away from the other man and just staring. Nate notices soon enough and gives him a crooked smile, a little confused.

"Hey. Are you okay there?"

Hearing his voice is the nail in the coffin, and Cooper grins wide at him, "Well, butter by butt and call me a biscuit. That is you, ain't it, Nate."

Nate stares at the Ghoul, brows furrowed. His voice sounds familiar, and his eyes widen when he sees the stained hat and blue button up hidden under the ghoul's duster. He takes a half step forward, "Cooper?"

The ghoul spreads his arms wide, "The one and only."

Nate slams into the ghoul, arms wrapping the lighter man up in a hug before pulling away so that he can look at his friend. He doesn't give a shit that Cooper Howard, soldier turned actor, is a ghoul. They'd gone through hell and back together.

"Damn," Cooper whistles, "How come you ain't pretty like me?"

Nate frowns, arms dropping to his sides, "I should have listened to you, Coop. When you told me about the vaults."

His words make the ghoul's heart sink, and he listens quietly as Nate tells him how they'd tricked the people of Sanctuary Hills, freezing them inside Vault 111. Nate and his son were the only survivors.

"Fuckin' Vault-Tec," Cooper snarls darkly. He remembers the phone call to Nate two centuries ago, telling the other man about no longer trusting Vault-Tec. Nate had told the other man that he and his wife would be okay, that they had a plan in place. Cooper hadn't known that the plan had been a vault.

Both men are startled out of their less than pleasant thoughts when you clear your throat, giving them both an easy smile, "Are you going to introduce me?"

Cooper huff and gestures to you with a hand, "This is _. We've been traveling together for a while."

Nate smiles and offers his hand, introducing himself, "Coop always had a good eye,"

You can't help but blush at his words, peeking over at Cooper to see the ghoul smirking smugly. You roll your eyes at him, though your own lips are curled in an amused curve. You release his hand and step back to stand beside Cooper, "I'll second that."

Nate grins, and then waves the two ofnyou forward, "Come on. I'll show you guys around. We've worked hard to get this place set up."

The sole survivor tell them that he's been topside for about ten years now, give or take a couple of weeks. He's done his best to be a good leader and shape the Commonwealth up from a land full of savages to something almost peaceful. They still had plenty of problems, but they all took it one day at a time.

It's late by the time Nate ends the tour, and he shows you and Cooper the last building. People are congregating around it, and you grin when you realize that the establishment is a bar. You tug Cooper in for a quick kiss and then disappear into the crowd, hands digging for caps.

Nate laughs at their retreating form, and Cooper shares a grin with his old friend. They wander away from the bar, the ghoul following Nate past the back gate and to a small cemetery out back. There aren't too many plots, but the two Cooper spots first already have his heart lerching in his chest.

"I thought you said Shuan lived?"

The other man gave Cooper a look so full of grief that the ghoul had a hard time swallowing. He reached out, setting a hand on Nate's bulky shoulder, "What happened?"

It takes a while, but Nate tells him about the first two years of being on the surface. About finally finding Shuan, deep underground and already 80 years old, dying of lung cancer. About the young boy, a synth that "Father" had created to try and appease Nate. How could the man have said no?

"Synths are created from my son's -Father's- DNA. Shuan started to get sick. Curie and Vault 81 did what they could, but how can you fight cancer in a place like this? When, before the bombs, we couldn't cure it then either."

Cooper hates how broken his friend sounds, and he squeezes the other man's shoulder. Nate sniffs, then swallows harshly, rubbing his face as he looks at the two graves labeled Nora Card and Shuan Card. He clears his throat.

"I'm sorry, Nate. Barb and Janey... they didn't make it either," Cooper rumbles. He wishes that he'd been able to get them out of that god forsaken vault. Give them a proper burial, but there hadn't been the time.

Nate doesn't ask what happened. He can tell that the ghoul didn't want to speak on it. They sit is a moment of silence, of remembrance, before the sole survivor clears his throat and jerks a thumb back at Sanctuary.

"Anyway. Let's have a drink, yeah?"

Cooper and he share a quick grin, and the ghoul adjusts his hat, "Good idea. Outta make sure _'s stayed out of trouble."

*took some creative liberties with the synths here. Thanks for enjoying!*

[direwolfrules]

Here, have some random Satine Rambles

I like to take a lot of the fandom misconceptions about Satine and the New Mandalorians and headcanon them as in-universe Death Watch propaganda.

Like the idea that Satine banned Mando'a. This is a weird one to me. So, Mando'a script is all over the place in Sundari. It's on the police speeders, it's on signs, it's on the wall of the Cadet Squad's dorm room, all of which is official government property and would have been some of the first places to have Mando'a removed if the ban was an actual thing. Also, Satine speaks Mando'a and Concordian (the dialect from Concordia and in Legends Concord Dawn). We as the audience don't see her speak Mando'a often because when she appears she's usually either:

1) Talking to someone whose primary language is Basic.

or

2) In a setting where slipping into Mando'a to talk to one person would be seen as undiplomatic at best.

Also, we as the audience don't primarily speak Mando'a, a fictional language with massive gaps in the canon vocabulary, and why would the Clone Wars crew put effort into translating a bunch of conversations into Mando'a for a kids show. They barely had an animation budget, you really think they had the money and time to translate politics into kid/teen-friendly language and then translate that into Mando'a?

Also, Pre Vizsla doesn't speak Mando'a in the show. I don't think he even says a single Mando'a word, which is less than what Satine says.

Or, the idea that Satine banned beskar armor. Here's the thing about armor, based a bit on real-life history. Armor is expensive. Especially well-forged armor. Especially well-forged armor made of a rare, extremely valuable metal with important cultural significance. And if centuries of strip mining depleted the supply of that already very rare metal, and damaged the ecosystem enough that mining it was banned? Well, now the price is at a point where anyone who isn't a noble or exceedingly wealthy can't afford new beskar. Even then, most noble families passed on their beskar through the generations, partly because of legacy and religion and also partly because obtaining new beskar was already ruinously expensive unless you took it from an enemy in war, which would have been ruinously expensive in other ways.

The fact that we barely see anyone wear beskar in Sundari isn't indicative of a ban on beskar armor, it means armor isn't a practical or attainable expense for the average citizen of Sundari. Sundari was a city at peace, before Sidious' plots and Vizsla's attacks. There was no need for anyone but the Mandalorian Guard to wear armor. Does a midlevel office worker need to wear armor to go about his job? Does a retail employee need the weight of beskar plate in addition to whatever stock they have to shelve? Unless you were a member of the warrior caste, which was primarily made up of nobles who either already had or could afford new beskar, you didn't need to be constantly armored.

And since we're talking about armor, the next logical misconception to discuss is the "weapons ban" that keeps getting brought up in every single "Satine Bad" fanfiction ever. When we first meet Satine, there is no weapons ban. Carrying weapons in a city at peace like Sundari is probably frowned on the same way carrying weapons on Coruscant's upper levels is frowned upon (if you're not Padme "Constantly-dodging-assassination-attempts" Amidala that is). It's a case of why would the average citizen need to carry a weapon, not them not being allowed to.

The first and only mention of a weapons ban in the show is when Ahsoka is welcomed to Sundari in "The Academy". Everyone's least favorite corrupt worm-man Almec says that after the trouble surrounding Master Kenobi's last visit, offworlders can't bring weapons into Sundari. It's literally just a ban for offworlders, which is reasonable when you figure out most of the terrorist group threatening to destroy your hard-fought peace and overthrow your government is based off-world.

And like, we see Mandalorians carry weapons. Satine has her deactivator, which we know from the actions of Rush Clovis and Lolo Purs can be a lethal weapon if used against organics. We see the Mandalorian Guards carry stun batons and shields, and some, like Captain Patrok Ru-Saxon, carried blasters to use as a last resort option. The Protectors, who at this point were Satine's bodyguards, had blunt-tipped spears that, judging by how they could be used to block blaster bolts during the warehouse raid in "Corruption", were probably made of beskar. Also in that same warehouse raid we see the Guard use flamethrowers.

Another common misconception is that Satine is opposed to any kind of violence, even in self-defense. This is not true.

As stated above, Satine carries a deactivator, a weapon primarily used to disable droids, but by its very nature of being a weapon designed to output high-level energy blasts can be lethal to organics. When she's using her deactivator she tells Obi-Wan, "Just because I'm a pacifist doesn't mean I won't defend myself".

And this is true. If Satine was so opposed to violence that she wouldn't fight back if threatened, she either would have died on the Coronet or been taken captive by the Separatists. She would have been killed back during the first confrontation with Vizsla, or during the arc on Coruscant. She would not have taken part in the warehouse raid. Satine was not opposed to violence in self-defense, she was opposed to violence as the first option and lethal violence as anything but a last resort.

One of the only times Satine doesn't fight back is when Pre Vizsla and his Death Watch soldiers invade the palace during the coup. If she had fought back, she would have given Vizsla exactly what he wanted: evidence of her betraying her ideals just when her people needed them the most, and an excuse to kill everyone on her side of the throne room. Satine made a choice to let herself be captured in order to spare as many lives as she could. And the minute she has a chance to escape, she takes it.

Then there's the common fandom idea that Satine is destroying Mandalorian culture, which is just ridiculous. Culture is more than just martial abilities and rigid clan hierarchies. It's food, art, clothing, language, etc. Satine telling her people they're not allowed to kill and bomb each other indiscriminately and empowering a central government over the hereditary clan-based caste system is not destroying Mandalorian culture, it's trying to save Mandalorian culture. After all, who'll be left to practice their traditions, to speak their language and sing their songs, if they wipe themselves off the face of the galaxy?

Mandalore had been jumping from one massive civil war to the next for generations, not to mention the wars against outside powers like the Republic. These are massive depopulating events. Each successive war does more and more damage to the planets in the Mandalorian sector. Mandalore went from a lush jungle to a desert. Concordia was nearly entirely deforested. A third of Concord Dawn is rubble drifting through space.

Satine made decisions that, until the machinations of the Sith, brought a level of prosperity and growth to Mandalore that it hadn't seen in living memory. The forests of Concordia were growing again. Trade was beginning to flow. Her people were happy and not constantly fearing war if one of the Houses took offense to something another one did.

Satine encouraged and promoted the aspects of Mandalorian culture outside of the martial domain. She was a patron of Mandalorian artists, and favored geometric designs and art styles, something that most Mandalorians also enjoyed. Her personal yacht was designed to display Mandalorian goods to representatives of other sectors/governments/galactic powers in order to promote trade and encourage a demand for Mandalorian goods. Her iconic dress with the massive headdress is meant to look like a mythosaur, with her earrings serving as the tusks.

She had that classic Mandalorian love for children. The only times we've ever seen her come close to compromising her principles was when children were threatened. When Mandalorian children were being poisoned by black market tea, she threatened the school's superintendent with violence. She was so enraged by the senseless deaths of many of the poisoned children she ordered the warehouse the black market goons had set up in burned down. When Almec went to torture Korkie and his friends she almost gave in to his demands, despite not cracking when she herself was under torture.

And New Mandalore in general was not a society built on cultural genocide like so many people in this fandom like to claim. In New Mandalorian Society a traditional kar'ta was present on many buildings, clothing (there are like five on the Academy's uniforms), and even hairstyles. Sundari's architecture was filled with geometric buildings that only really differed from the Clan Wren stronghold in height and number of turrets.

The real major difference between New Mandalorian culture and the old ways is those not of the noble, warrior caste had much less political power under the old system. New Mandalorian society is committed to peace, because many New Mandalorians are everyday individuals who now get a say in a diplomatic government instead of watching their system get crushed under leaders who only need to know how to fight well. Farmers don't have to worry about their local lord and his dumbass kid pissing off the neighboring lord, leading to a war that burns their fields and orphans their children. Business owners and employees don't have to worry about losing their shops/factories/office spaces in constant bombings.

Speaking of New Mandalorian society, another common misconception I see is people claiming Satine/New Mandalore was racist because it's all white blondes and brunettes. So like, that was a bad design decision by the Clone Wars crew, who wanted to make Mandalore look like space Scandinavia, and it's compounded by the reuse of models and assets. Korkie's class at the Academy has three groups of identical triplets. The crowds of Mandalorian citizens have so many repeated models, hairstyles, and the like, that there are more identical individuals there than on Kamino. The explanation there isn't "Satine is racist", it's "Cartoon Network gave them zero animation budget". Mandalore only got more diverse after Filoni got called out for it and had the budget and opportunity to fix it, which happened after Satine's rule ended.

Also, I see a lot of people taking the word of Death Watch members, children of Death Watch members, and Death Watch-aligned groups as gospel when it comes to Satine. Like, holy unreliable narrator Batman! If the person criticizing Satine is a member of the terrorist group dedicated to her death, a child of one of those terrorists who has probably been indoctrinated in Satine hate from day one, or a member of one of the splinter factions of that terrorist group, they're probably just a little bit biased, ya know? Satine's people genuinely loved her, Pre Vizsla had to stage elaborate schemes with Sith backing to sway the people's support away from her.

Oh, and people like to say that Satine was a bad leader/bad politician because she "left Mandalore weak" and "wouldn't join the Clone Wars". Which is just— did we watch the same show?

Joining the Clone Wars would have been Bad with a capital B. Palpatine wanted a Grand Army of the Republic presence on all the major worlds to facilitate his takeover when the time for Order 66 came. Mandalore was a priority target, remember when he doctored that footage of Satine's Deputy Minister to get the Senate to vote on sending troops?

Mandalore was along the Hydian Way, a major hyperspace route that was the site of frequent conflict. Mandalore's place on the Hydian Way, if they had joined either the Republic or the Separatists, would have made it and its vassal worlds battlefields. It would have devastated the hesitantly recovering Mandalorian people and the even more hesitantly recovering ecosystems of the planets.

Mandalore's position along the Hydian Way also meant that for some trade goods it depended on the CIS and for others it depended on the Republic, so committing to one side or the other would have made the already dangerous black market situation during the war even worse. What Satine did by declaring Neutrality and forming the Council of Neutral Systems was protect the interests of her people and form a voting block to prevent those interests from being trampled over.

Even with all its problems, Mandalore under Satine was strong, just going through issues many other worlds underwent during the war. Death Watch was a relatively new problem, as Pre Vizsla and his followers only got up the guts to act when their Sugar Daddy Dooku gave them Separatist backing. The food shortages were directly tied to the war disrupting the major trade route Mandalore depended on. Corruption amongst members of the government was a plot point in half the episodes of the show.

Mandalore only fell because Satine fell. Satine kept the war away from Mandalore as much as she could. Sideous couldn't get troops onto Mandalore while Satine was alive. With the exception of the very vocal Death Watch minority, the people were united behind her. It was only by running false flag operations with Maul's Shadow Collective that Death Watch was able to generate enough support to stage a coup. A coup that involved killing any government officials and trained warriors who refused to forswear their loyalty to the Duchess, thus robbing Mandalore of a considerable number of possible defenders and the people who knew how things ran and where the paperwork was filed.

If it wasn't for Vizsla's coup, and Maul's second secret coup, there would have been no need for Republic troops at the Seige of Mandalore, because there would have been no Seige of Mandalore. But there was, and Mandalore fell to the Empire. Which led to more internal Mandalorian on Mandalorian violence, which killed even more warriors. Which paved the way for the Night of a Thousand Tears.

[zhengzi]

JTTW - Ch. 1

The divine root conceives, its source revealed; Mind and nature nurtured, the Great Dao is born

Finally got around to gathering my thoughts and impressions of the first chapter. Really enjoying how accessible the translation is yet still preserves the qualities of the original text. I've written down some notes of my initial impressions which I'll put under a read more.

Disclaimer: i am diasporan chinese but i haven't received formal schooling in chinese culture and history, so most of my knowledge mostly comes from my upbringing and whatever family has shared with me. I have passing familiarity with much of the concepts and history in the text but I'm not very well read on them so please do take my impressions with a grain of salt

The chapter starts with the formation of the universe which was rendered in a cycle of chaos/destruction and then creation/order through twelve epochs. In the Zi epoch, heaven was created first through the creation of the sun, moon, stars and heavenly bodies. The yin yang principle came into the Chou epoch, which was also when the Earth was formed. In the Yin epoch, both the heavens and earth copulated and all things were born, from which the three forces of Heaven, Earth and Man were established.

The beginning of the chapter lays out a Daoist conception of the world through yin yang and the formation of the heavens and earth.

Later, we’re introduced to a monkey who was born from a stone that had the seeds of heaven and earth combined. After the monkey bowed to the four quarters, beams of light shone from his eyes that disturbed the heavens.

This part keys us into the nature of the monkey as being born of both Heaven and Earth. In Chinese culture, our conception of the Heavens is it functions as a bureaucracy and often serves as a symbolic stand in for the imperial bureaucracy. While the Earth stands in for the masses and communities that the imperial bureaucracy presided over. Having already been familiar with the first half of the novels due to having watched adaptations, the lights from the monkey’s eyes disturbing the heavens foreshadows his disruption of heavenly affairs in later chapters.

As the stone-monkey eats, communes with his monkey friends and makes friends with other animals, he demonstrates a connection to the Earth and the desires that are attached to the Earth. Soon, the monkeys discover a waterfall where the stone-monkey discovers an enclave of Heaven-sent property where the monkeys could go live and be spared from the whims and influence of the Heavens.

A retreat from the wind, A shelter from the rain. You fear no frost or snow; You hear no thunderclap. Mist and smoke are brightened, Warmed by a holy light- The pines are evergreen: Rare flowers, daily new:

The stone-monkey announces that because he was able to come in and go out of the enclave without hurting himself, he should be honoured as king.

If we were to understand the Heavens as bureaucracy and the Earth as the people below, the stone-monkey being born of both implies that he’s a combination. Looking at imperial Chinese society, one can recall that someone being born of both heaven and earth could be the mandarin officials that make up the gentry in the imperial bureaucracy but are selected from the common people through the imperial examination.

The stone-monkey eventually does away with the stone in his name to become the Handsome Monkey King. He then appoints gibbons and baboons to be his ministers and officers. “Living in concord and sympathy, they did not mingle with bird or beast but enjoyed their independence in perfect happiness.” Their main activities were described as being solely focused on food and drinks.

When you view the monkey as a mandarin official, the allegory in this scene implies the corrupted nature of mandarin officials in primarily enjoying their gentry lives rather than serving for the common people below them.

After several hundred years of this existence, the monkey king one day grew sad. When asked why, he states that although they were free from Heavenly rule or free from rulers of mankind, he worries about the threat of old age and physical decay, in essence, death in the future. “If we die, shall we not have lived in vain, not being able to rank forever among the Heavenly beings?" Another monkey leapt forth to say that there are three species of living creatures that are not subjected to death, the Buddhas, the immortals and the holy sages. Upon learning this, the monkey king announces that he would leave them all tomorrow in search of immortality from these beings.

In Chinese culture, longevity and immortality are auspicious concepts. The first emperor to unite China, Qin Shi Huang, was known for constantly seeking the key to immortality. If Western alchemy’s goal was to find the Philosopher’s Stone, then the goal of Chinese alchemy was to find the key to immortality. Within the Chinese cultural preoccupation with immortality is an anxiety towards death. This theme will likely continue throughout the rest of the story as it will figure heavily in the monkey king’s journey and his motivations.

Once he sets out on his journey and mingle among humans, he notes that nobody was as preoccupied with his concerns about mortality. “He saw, however, that the people of the world were all seekers after profit and fame; there was not one who showed concern for his appointed end.” This is further expanded in a verse: When will end this quest for fortune and fame, This tyrant of early rising and retiring late? Riding on mules they long for noble steeds; By now prime ministers, they hope to be kings. For food and raiment they suffer stress and strain, Never fearing Yama's call to reckoning. Seeking wealth and power to give to sons of sons, There's not one ever willing to tum back.

It illustrates that the common people are preoccupied with material wealth or social status, concerned more so with their present reality rather than their future & mortality.

The monkey king later encounters a woodcutter, mistaking him for an immortal. Monkey king finds out that the woodcutter is neighbours with an immortal asks why he didn’t follow him in the cultivation of the Way and seek immortality. He replied that due to his obligations to uphold his filial duty, he cannot practice austerities.

The woodcutter shows that the opportunity to pursue cultivation can be marred by one’s previous obligations to their family or material interests, the ability to pursue cultivation requires sacrifice and to free oneself of attachments.

So far, I'm reading the text as political satire as this is the most common reading of the text I've encountered within any engagement I've had with chinese culture and my family. Even though i've enjoyed previous adaptations of JTTW and found them funny, I was still pleasantly surprised by the humour in the text and that it wasn't as dry as I had thought

[youhideastar]

20 questions for fic writers

Thank you for inviting me, @chrononautintraining!

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

133

2. what’s your total ao3 word count?

1,392,316

3. what fandoms do you write for?

I tend to be a serial fandom monogamist; right now I'm writing for CQL/The Untamed, but my other biggest fandoms were White Collar and Hockey RPF (biggest in terms of how much I wrote for them, not the size of the fandom).

4. what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

So Wise We Grow and its sequel, it may be that the gulfs will wash us down (Star Trek AOS); Unorthodox Methods (SPN/White Collar crossover); Living Proof (White Collar); and Concord (The Untamed).

5. do you respond to comments? why or why not?

Almost always! If I'm feeling really low-energy, I may not reply to comments that are solely emojis, but I try to respond to those as well with at least a thank-you. The only exception to my general policy of responding is comments where I seriously cannot tell if they are positive or negative (e.g., "I hate you for making me cry" - I get that one a fair amount), because I don't want to be like "I'm glad you liked it!" when they actually didn't - I feel like that would make me look really arrogant lol. I respond to comments because I treasure them and want to encourage folks to keep commenting!

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Definitely Hands Open, Eyes Closed... and I was so bothered by it that I wrote a 200k follow-up getting those characters to their happy ending!

7. what’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Oh, jeez, I almost only do happy endings, so that's tough. I am partial to the ending of Dangerous, which is happy both interpersonally (WWX and LWJ are together! they have a baby!) and politically (that baby is going to blow up entrenched prejudices! yay!)

8. do you get hate on any fics?

I don't, and I have no idea why not, beyond the fact that I usually have anon commenting turned off. Don't get me wrong, I do get strongly negative comments sometimes, but nothing I would characterize as "hate."

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

Oh, definitely. I guess I would say I tend toward tender, talky, d/s-inflected smut, but ultimately I do whatever the situation between the characters calls for.

10. do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Almost never - it's pretty much just Unorthodox Methods.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge.

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! I've been fortunate to have multiple fics translated, especially my hockey RPF fics.

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope!

14. what’s your all time favorite ship?

See above re: serial monogamist - right now I would swear that it's Wangxian 4EVA but check back in in a couple years.

15. what’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Definitely my Wangxian lawyer AU. I have big chunks of it written, but it would be more than 100k and I have so many other WIPs in line ahead of it. It'll probably end up as WIP Amnesty, though it breaks my heart to say it.

16. what are your writing strengths?

Dialogue and worldbuilding.

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

Physical description is often an afterthought. I default to describing lighting when I have to set a scene. I struggle to create a sense of the passing of time unless I have an external scaffolding to set the story on - in hockey RPF, the rhythm of the hockey season could give me that scaffold, but in my fics for CQL, the struggle is back.

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Best kept to a minimum, when it comes to actual dialogue, but when it comes to individual terms (Wen-guniang, hai shi, zhiji, etc., and Russian and Czech terms in hockey rpf), I do it pretty liberally. It's good for English speakers to have to look stuff up sometimes. It builds character. 😂

19. first fandom you wrote for?

Stargate: Atlantis!

20. favorite fic you’ve written?

My favorite fic I've written is actually a WIP Amnesty piece I never finished (but which readers have told me is satisfying as-is, thankfully): The Words in Your Head, an X-Men: First Class modern AU in which Charles and Erik are college students who help start a GSA (that's a gay-straight alliance, for those of you who were not queer teenagers in the late nineties or early aughts 😂) at Raven's high school. It's so personal to me (the kid who started her own high school's GSA 20 years ago) and carries so much of my own feelings about gender and queerness and queer community, and I feel so tender about the characters. I think, ultimately, the fact that it made me feel so raw is the reason I couldn't take it across the line to a polished final draft. But I will love it forever.

If you’d like to play, I hereby tag you in spirit! For the meme, I’ll invite @queenofattolia, @travelingneuritis, and @existentially-yibo.

[mephestopheles]

Next episode predictions, we're going to see a fallout of a few things, including the probably mentioned death/murder of a baby grape.

I have an issue with the idea that the baby grape might be a true heir to the vegetanian throne. Setting aside whatever weird genetics fruitarians and vegetanians have, I doubt it's possible for a mango and an artichoke to have a concord grape. And if we are going to allow that and handwave the genetics discussion, I know an age wasn't mentioned but two years had passed, that kid was definitely less than a year old, at least based on context.

So if we suppose that Amangeaux and Cardoon, managed to suddenly produce an heir before his tragic death and she wasn't aware of her pregnancy in the first episode, that kid would be around 15 months old. Walking, definitely babbling and talking a bit, and less likely to be spitting up.

This got long but if you're here for the ride, I've put it behind the cut.

The spitting up phase is usually before solid foods. So the clues don't add up that this concord grape baby is an heir and Amangeaux is hiding one.

Politically, it makes even less sense to hide a child. If she had an heir to the vegetanian throne, and she was pregnant at the point of Cardoon's death, Raphinel could have spun that into a holy miracle and the bulbian church would have put its weight behind Amangeaux. She also would have had a stronger claim than Tomaté as the regent and sitting authority to rule Vegetania in her child's stead until they grew up.

Now, most beneficial for Amangeaux and Raphinel would be a son. Easy line of succession, no missed beats, and anyone who wanted to get into the new kings good graces would have to go through the bishop and dowager queen.

If she had a daughter, the most politically advantageous thing would be to set up the eventual marriage of the only heir of the Vegetanian throne to one of the other kingdoms. Fructeran is possible, but might be seen as the fructerians stealing the Vegetanian throne. That leaves Ceresia, the Meat Lands, The Dairy Isles and of course, Canadia. Amethar is 21 and kind of too old for that but should Amethar make a politically good match - which maybe without the war, marrying the girl from the dairy islands didn't happen, or maybe it did - his heir would be around the same time. The only hitch here is that, Amethar is fourth in line for the throne because Candia's line of succession is different from the other kingdoms. This doesn't take out Cruller as a villain, but it does make his assassinations of the sisters much more difficult.

I don't remember a lot of the internal politics of the other kingdoms, but Raphinel and Amangeaux could spin a true heir into a lot of political power. Yes, that does mean an heir is also in danger of assassination, but the church could protect them.

So, it doesn't make sense for her to hide the child, unless she was pregnant with a Fructeran baby, the sudden child out of wedlock would cast a pall over her time as queen. And call into question whether she intentionally kept an heir from the Vegetanian throne. Yes, she's hiding the child from everyone, but that's only because it would put herself at risk during the war and make her a target.

[that-irishman-fan]

dr. strangelove or how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb as an 80’s dark fantasy movie headcanons!

This is definitely going to be the most niche thing I’ve written across all my blogs and in my time posting fan content; but I felt the need to do this deep down in my soul. In this new year, I wanted to take one of my favourite films of all time, Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb, and fuse it with one of my favourite genres of film, retro dark fantasy( by that I mean movies like Labyrinth, Legend, The Princess Bride, Neverending Story, Willow, etc. )

Quick note that NONE of Dr. Strangelove belongs to me whatsoever, full rights go to Stanley Kubrick and everyone involved there. I’m only writing based on these brilliant characters and stories, not claiming them as my own in any way. This is merely an alternate universe take, not canon.

These are going to be small headcanons to establish a ground zero idea for what I would love to turn into a full fledged fanfiction, but I wanted to get the general consensus on whether or not it was something worth pursuing. I’m going to tag my favourite human being in the whole world and best friend, @itscrimsonsixx and the absolute goddess that is @jaethebloody in this post!

Thank you everybody for your continued reblogs, likes, comments, and support on my posts, you guys are literally the best and I appreciate each and every single one of you!

FANDOM: Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb, 1964

GENRE: Alternate universe, headcanons, medieval au, and whatever else this could be classified as!

SYNOPSIS: My headcanons of the cast of Dr. Strangelove in an 80’s dark fantasy style world!

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Mentions of angst, swearing, info-dumps I apologize in advance for, and just general weirdness as a whole that I don’t know if I regret or am proud of…

Let’s start by establishing the general plot and who’s who in this demented chaotic bin on fire of a story.

There are two kingdoms in a magical realm who have been warring against each other for eons, as far back as history goes. The purpose for the battle isn’t really known anymore, but these kingdoms fight to carry on their legacies. In the west is the land of Cybele and in the east is the land of Vanth. There are many planes of existence in this world, but the story takes place on the middle plane where humans, magical creatures, and forces of good and evil spirits reside. The metaphysical beings can cross over, but not mortals.

King of the Cybele in the West is Merkin Muffley, late in life to the throne after the sudden passing of his father. He’s a humanitarian, philanthropist, and a good man who cares for his people and wants the best for his land. It is him who has pushed the concordance between both kingdoms despite protests from his court. The character of Staines becomes his Royal Advisor and they are good friends.

The Archlord of the Vanth Kingdom is Dmitri Kissov, a royal who came from a long line of warlords, generals, and intellectuals. Like Muffley, he’s also a benevolent ruler not wanting to sacrifice his men to a war he deems to be useless bloodshed. But pressures from his court mean he’s got a hell of a time trying to make cordial decisions and relations with his ���sworn rival.’

To cement this alliance into permanency, Dmitri has pledged his sister to marry Merkin for them to unite both the Cybele and the Vanth houses. While Dmitri’s younger sister is a woman of good character, Merkin does not love her. Rather, he is in love with Dmitri, the forbidden love between the two rulers going way back to their youth. They pine for each other afar, not able to express their love.

In this instance, I would prescribe the classic role of the innocent princess to Muffley whereas his love interest can be the noble prince from a faraway land or the outcast he’s prohibited from marrying. I want to switch up gender roles with this story, giving the characters broader spectrum to express themselves without ideas of stereotypes or patriarchy being a dominant force.

The Royal Guardsmen of Cybele are led by the High General Buck Turgidson, a militaristic and uncouth old soldier who was once apart of the crusades of the Lady of the Moon, the Cybele deity. Since such wars were outlawed, he craves the thrill of battle and thus opposes the union of the Cybele and Vanth kingdoms. ( Quick note, the Moon Goddess is Cybele’s deity whereas the Vanth are atheistic, also similar to how the Americans and Russians were in the original movie. Of course, there are always exceptions, the goddess is universal, but the Vanth tend to be skeptics and the Cybele more spiritual )

He is having an affair with the dark witch, Madame Scott, in the enchanted forests bordering Vanth and Cybele. She promises to keep eyes open for any rebel forces in the woods if he does not turn her coven in for practicing the dark arts. In return, the two have a passionate albeit dysfunctional relationship.

Overseer of the court of Vanth is the Duke Alexei de Sadesky, a diplomat and merchant appointed to the role after many years as a successful broker. He is well-educated, reserved, but with a fiery and passionate side like most people of Vanth. His love interest is also an ‘enemy’ who is in the court of the Cybele, with the exception that they are together show love in correspondences.

This love interest is none other than the famed sorcerer, alchemist, and learned man rumoured to not be from their mortal plane—Jürgen Merkwurdigliebe or Doctor Strangelove. He has tremendous powers, protecting the kingdom of Cybele with his technological skills of infused magical weaponry and machines. It is him who gave flight, weapons of warfare, and many more amazing inventions to both sides of the war by his genius. He is much like High General Turgidson, opposed to unification but having to put on a public face. And he’s very versed in magic and the dark arts, once being a dark wizard of the Supreme Nox before defecting when it was locked away by the heroes of many years before. But with a new generation and the peace talks, it has broken free—and Strangelove may or may not be involved.

Strangelove would be the classic Merlin archetype, sort of the Gandalf-slash-Dumbledore character with his mad genius. de Sadesky is a villain who’s more of a hero than anything else in this story. Him and Strangelove regard themselves as married, their love covert and secret so as not to cause scandal over two rivals being together. A male identifying person being a bachelor isn’t uncommon in this world and neither for a female identifying person, but marriage is considered to be important—almost necessary to royals and aristocrats. And of course, genderqueer, non-binary, fluid, and agender folks are fully accepted too, this is a world where the binary doesn’t have a hold on the minds of the people. War, famine, dark magic, pleasing the gods, and being of good character are far more important than what pronouns a person uses. Its just considered acceptable and normal.

Now, those who oppose the unification who aren’t in the aristocracy have banded together to form the vagrant rebel forces. Looming over the peace talks between these two kingdoms is the Supreme Nox, a being only spoken of in only the darkest of circles. It is a being of pure darkness, pure sin, and pure diabolical evil, the very incarnate of everything frightening, harmful, and broken in the cosmos. The minority of subjects and officials who break away from their kingdoms because they don’t like the idea of the war ending fall into two categories: they either join the Supreme Nox and its growing armies of shadows, or they integrate into a new group of people hidden deep in the woods.

This new backwoods commune is lead by a former wing pilot for the Cybele kingdom named T.J. Kong. While he isn’t hostile nor wanting to be subservient to Supreme Nox, he refuses to go back to the villages and grand city of Cybele. This story revolves around nationalism just as the original source movie does, and I wanted to keep those elements in my little fic here. To get rid of it would strip the characters of this important detail. Kong is devoted to his new found family, knowing all their names, stories, and backgrounds, and he is as kind a leader as Muffley and Kissov.

I would love for Kong to be the quirky sidekick, much like Brown Tom and Screwball in Legend or Vizzini’s crew in Princess Bride. I can imagine him being so off-kilter and just hilarious, but with a heart of gold. Keep him in the back of your mind as we progress, he’s going to show up shortly.

On the opposite spectrum, there’s the turncoat Jack D. Ripper of the Cybele kingdom. Once a middle ranking guardsman, he became aware of the unification talks between Cybele and Vanth. He’s fought in many of the wars between the two powers, staunchly pro-Cybele. Conspiracies, lies, and disgust all boiled over into him going rogue, and joining the Supreme Nox. Because he has national secrets and knows the weaknesses of the kingdom, he is given a bounty and becomes the most wanted man in the lands of the Moon Goddess and in the Vanth lands too.

Now who should chase after Ripper but courageous Lionel Mandrake of Cybele! He’s of middle class blood, the reject of six other brothers and was the rightful governor of his village until it was stolen from him by his younger siblings. As such, Mandrake became a guardsman. This offended his family so much since they dislike the upper eschalons, that he was cut off. When Mandrake learned of Ripper’s desertion, he took it upon himself to go after his former commander. He journeys through the plains, mountains, and woods towards the dreaded Castle of Doomsday of the Supreme Nox in the badlands to retrieve Ripper. He’s become a classic Dungeons and Dragons style ranger mixed with the nomadism of Aragorn from Lord of The Rings. Along the way he meets T.J. Kong, who joins him to stop Ripper and the Supreme Nox.

Mandrake is most definitely the chosen one archetype, the scruffy hero who rises up to the challenge of good versus evil. It’s in a long lost prophecy for him to join forces with Kong, Ms. Scott, and de Sadesky to conquer the forces of darkness that would destroy the universe; so think Legend with Tim Curry, basically, but with the aesthetic of Labyrinth and Willow, and the type of humour of The Princess Bride.

I’m gonna throw in the character of Colonel Bat Guano ( oh my god, his name ) as a folk hero of his village in Cybele, famed for his valour and his nobility. He’s not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but he can fight and he’s respected by his countrymen for it. He comes from Mandrake’s village and joins him at the final battle against the Supreme Nox.

So yeah, the basic premise is that Cybele and Vanth are in the process of making peace and possible unification whilst having to contend with the very real threat of the Supreme Nox. It’s a clusterfuck and amalgamation of everything I love about Dr. Strangelove and about retro dark fantasy, and it’s honestly weird even for me—but I feel as though it could be really good? I don’t know, time will tell.

Thank you so much for reading if you got this far, I am BEYOND grateful and appreciative for you reading my thoughts. Please let me know what you think, if this is something you’d be interested in seeing or something I should just keep to myself. Have a great rest of your week everyone and Happy New Year!

[daybreaksys]

The man arrives at the entrance to the treasure room, the one said to hold treasures so precious and magical they can reverse any curse.

The door can not yet be seen, he stares at the guardian who emerges from the darkness, faithful that he will suceed its test, for he had betrayed friends, parterns and family, forever doomed his own child in the pursue of the world's largest riches.

The guardians stares at the man with a smile and asks:

—What is the most precious thing in the life of a man?

The man seems conflicted and nervous, ruminating his choices. The question was enraging, it was unfair. But the man still produced a response:

—gold?

The guardian says with a smile:

—wrong

The darkness engulfed both guardian and man, his crew ran away, no one ever came out of the room.

Time has passed, and now the piracy empire constructed by the man is larger and setorialised.

The captain of one of its fronts is awaken by an unusual conflict in the ship, when pursuing the source of the disturbance, the captain found a zombie who had at some point entered the ship, a cursed, doomed soul, but this one time it was different, for the zombie was a child.

The captain says:

—it's okay, I will not harm you, stay calm, who are you?

The child did not remember, she just cried and barely managed to voice:

—what horrible thing I must have done to be cursed?

The captain responded:

—You are a child. Whatever was done to you, you didn't deserve it.

After a week of navigating with the presence of a zombie and many conversations with her partner, the captain brought forth to her crew the project of finding and acquiring the legendary treasure which disappeared with the founder of their piracy empire, said to be so precious and magical they can reverse any curse.

Not all responses were concordant, a man said the child had brought it upon herself and therefore wasn't a concern nor shouldn't bring a risk to the crew. The captain responded with a loud slap on his face, followed by two other slaps and nothing more. The crew followed their captain, for the promise of precious treasure was enough to motivate them.

The captain had much personal reason behind this adventure, only known to her partner, for she had men taking advantage of her defenseless body in her own childhood, but the largest damage lied in the questions she still parrots to herself:

"Where was I? How were my garments? What did I do? What did I do to bring this upon me? Am I guilty?"

Upon finally arriving at the entrance to the legendary treasure room, the captain's wife whispered:

—remember, the most precious thing isn't gold, and probably isn't any sort of treasure either.

Then moved back when the guardian emerged from the darkness and stared at the captain with a smile

The crew awaited for the interaction in unbreakable silence, the guardian finally spoke:

—what is the only kind of child which exists?

The crew was shaken, how could there be only one kind of child? Everyone is different, there are quiet children, loud children, reserved children, outspoken children... The question was infuriating, it was unfair. But the crew awaited in their struggle for the response of their captain.

The captain stayed impassive staring back at the guardian with a serious face and said in clear voice:

—innocent

The guardian retracted backwards with a smile and disappeared into the darkness, which also retracted, revealing an ornamented golden door which unlocked to show treasures so beautiful they could hyptotise any man. But the captain did not see it, for she had closed her eyes to hold in her tears with no success.

[lapiscasuali]

So this surmage...

So this surmage sat beside me in the pub, a berobed, crooked thing speaking in terms I didn't understand, not for their arcane content but for word choice best described as opaque, laden with jargon and technicals beyond me. As I let the murmuring wash over me (maybe I'd catch some flecks of wisdom), I came to realise she was actually speaking to me. This came as something of a surprise, see, almagi you can't get to shut up, they'll natter on all day and night about their eldritch experiments and how powerful their enchantments are and "I have so many apprentices" like mate, don't care, and if you have so many are they even getting adequate attention and teaching time? Anyway, surmagi by contrast tend to be more tight lipped, and when they do speak it's with language so baroque as to be impenetrable, all the better to obfuscate their (I'm sure) lofty and complicated thoughts to all but the fellow learned. Anyway, this one for whatever reason had deigned to speak to me, though gods know why, I've never exuded the impression of being particularly learned. I was however in a discarded life apprenticed for a time to an almage (indeed, I did not receive adequate attention nor teaching) and while I was struggling to follow a blessed thing my companion was saying I managed to piece together that she was telling a tale. A younger slinger of spells, who I presumed to be my storyteller had joined a subcult in her order, didn't quite catch the name, something something Voracious Light, doesn't matter. This group were a bit of an extreme lot, very cutting edge research you know, playing a bit fast and loose with arcane ethics laws. Anyway, one day they'd embarked on a subtle pilgrimage, a bit of sidereal body experimentation, harmless fun, when a senior member raised the idea of ritually forcing the gross mind to ride the bridge between body and soul. Our protagonist, eager to impress, volunteered herself as subject. I confess at this point the particulars of their arcanery escaped me, but she ended up on her knees, lungs choked with incense, body flowing with sigils, her conscious mind being bombarded into the aetheric by the chants of her colleagues.

Near as I can decipher, it worked a little too well. Her mind, insomuch as you could call it that anymore, was shot well past the threshold of light and thrust outside creation. Brushing against a passing demiurge she became subsumed within its totality. Countless realities rose and fell under her gaze, and it looked as light cast through cosmic mathematics, projected planes sliding over and through and past each other.

Of course this was a clear NH8 Breach of the Concordance. The rest of her coterie were arrested for arcanoterrorism, but somehow she managed to avoid capture. Evidentially been hiding this shameful episode ever since, passing from order to order under assumed names (wouldn't've raised too many flags obviously, concealing one's True name is a standard hygiene factor).

Her story seemed to be wrapping up, and by this time her aura was settling in. Surmagi all seem to develop an unsettling aura, something in their work I guess, they get so seeped in it that just being around them feels...unnatural? I dunno, but I was struggling to ignore my raised hackles, so I quickly finished my drink and made my excuses to leave. As I stood up from my chair a gnarled hand shot out from the disheveled robes to grab my arm. My gaze followed the arm back up to her face, and through the aura I thought I could detect something in those sunken, lambent eyes, something approaching thanks. I nodded uneasily, my eyes transfixed to hers, until she looked away, her esoteric mumbling continuing, softer now, indistinct. I stepped outside, blinked at the afternoon light, and walked away. Nice pub that. Really good atmosphere.

[orbitingtheson]

29 August 2247

My ex from a few years ago just passed away in a submarine accident, and I guess she never got around to making someone else her beneficiary. Her family isn't really in the picture, so I'm planning to donate most of her estate to her favorite charities, plus some to the North Pacific Subsurface Rescue Fund, but she has most of an immigration share in the Concord and I'm thinking about claiming it for myself.

She and I hadn't had so much as a conversation in over a year, and we didn't really part under the greatest terms. On the one hand, I'm not sure she'd actually have wanted me to have anything of hers. On the other, there's not really a great way to cash out that share and throw in the donation pile since all of her causes were local. And, honestly, I kind of would like to leave Earth for more than a vacation one of these days.

Is it really ok for me to take it?

-ticket out

Yes.

If your ex wanted to cut you out of her will and name someone else as her heir for that immigration share, she had a few years to do it. For whatever reason, she didn't. Maybe it was laziness, maybe it was lingering feelings, maybe she didn't seriously consider her own death to be a possibility, maybe despite whatever went wrong in your romantic life together she genuinely trusted you more than anyone else to deal with her estate.

If you want to donate the partial share though, you do have options. You can put it in the Concord's refugee fund, you can ask the Concord to put it in the lottery fund for aspiring immigrants, or you can cash it in for Concord dollars which aren't particularly useful for material purchases on Earth but many Earth charities do accept them because they're quite useful for remote labor expenses.

Failing all of that, if still you choose to use the share for yourself, if you’re leaving Earth long-term you'll need to liquidate most of your material assets anyway and you'll have a similar problem getting the full value of your Earth holdings in the Concord. You could simply donate an appropriate share of your own money to a good charity instead when that day comes.

[judgeanon]

Plastic Skies - Prologue

Figured I should try to give this old place some new material, and since a friend suggested I start a journal of my latest obsessionhobby, what better place than tumblr? So here’s a needlessly long and overly indulgent history of how I got into model aircrafts, with a record of each project, their individual challenges and the tools I learned to use to overcome them.

Or at least, the prologue to that:

The year is 199X, and I say that not out of privacy but because I can’t remember the exact year I built my first model. My brother and I had gotten into war toys at a young age, ably aided and abetted by our ex-military dad, who made sure we were always well-stocked on little plastic soldiers and tanks and ships and, of course, planes. Our budding fascination with that last one received a big boost thanks to PC games like Jane’s US Navy Fighters ‘97 and F22 Raptor (the Novalogic one), with their digitized English voices we barely understood and their amazing two-dimensional trees dotting the barely textured landscapes. And at some point, model kits entered the scene.

My memory’s pretty hazy on how exactly that happened. It’s possible that we just saw a couple of boxes sitting at the toy aisle next to GI Joe Extreme and Spider-Man TAS toys, and dad or mom indulged us. Another alternative is this models catalogue we ran into at our dad’s one time, a thick full-color volume absolutely brimming with cars and tanks and, yes, planes of every year, model and size. I remember that catalogue fondly. My brother and I divided it up in our imaginations, each one picking and choosing which models were theirs, even if we never actually held them in our hands. Good times, but again, hard to say if that was the catalyst.

What I do remember are the models themselves. My brother built a Saab Draken, an F-16, a big fat F-15 and a few others. I remember building a Concorde, an F-18 (one of those glueless snap-tite models), a Spitfire and a P-51 Mustang. I think there may have been an F-4 Phantom in there as well. Point is, we were fiending. Our fingers glued together so many times, it’s a small miracle that I still have fingerprints. But there was a not small wrinkle in our approach to the hobby: for whatever reason, neither my brother nor I ever actually painted the models.

Memory fails me again on the whys of this decision. It’s possible that we just didn’t know where to buy paints, since we got all our models at toy shops or supermarkets. It’s also possible that we simply figured out paints were too expensive, and were more than willing to settle for just gluing the models and calling it a day instead of bugging mom or dad for a surefire mess-creator. It’s even possible that we were simply intimidated by the herculean task of painting. I know I tried doing decals once and swore to never do it again. But for whatever reason, our room was slowly littered with gray plastic airplanes haphazardly put together with cheap glue, treated more like puzzles than models, toyed with until tailfins snapped and Sidewinder missiles were lost.

Years passed. Interests shifted. We got a PlayStation 1 to replace our venerable Sega Genesis, and since this was at the peak of games piracy in our country, we could buy four or five games with the money of a single plane kit. So after I was done with that P-51 (which I remember was the first time I’d tried doing the landing gears, a massive feat of courage for the time), I quietly hung up my glues and never built a model again for over two decades. I’d still walk past the occasional hobby shop along the way to school and looked at the flawless shiny Sabres on display, but I never felt an urge to jump back in.

And then Ace Combat happened.

My first contact with long-running arcade dogfight series Ace Combat had been watching my brother play AC3 on the PS1 ages ago. Years later, I bought him Ace Combat: Assault Horizon on the PS3 for his birthday. Plane games, I’d decided, were one of His Things, and just like with the models on the shop windows, I never felt the desire to intrude on his territory.

That all changed dramatically in August of this year. I’d been living alone for a good couple of years now and managed to upgrade my PC far beyond anything either of us had ever owned. I was (and still am) living large, buying games on a whim with no fear of system requirements or even price. Having long gotten everything I wanted, now I was happy to just grab things on sale whenever they popped up, curious new gems or old classics I’d never given a chance before. Then, on August 8th, Steam took me to a sale on Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, the latest entry in the series. It’d come out back in 2019 but had recently received a Top Gun-themed DLC pack. And funny enough, I’d just seen Top Gun: Maverick that week and enjoyed it quite a bit, so I figured, sure, why not?

I enjoyed Ace Combat 7 a lot more than Top Gun: Maverick. In fact, I enjoyed it a lot more than pretty much any other game I’d played so far in 2022. Call it a happy surprise, a revelation, a blast, whatever word you can think of, I promise it’s understating how deeply I vibed with this game. Everything from the gameplay to the story to the cool ass missions (Stealth infiltration ON A JET FIGHTER!) to the characters to the music, I was feeling it. I finished that game twice, then a third time to get all the hidden Aces, then a fourth time using a bright red MiG-21 armed only with machineguns because I was having THAT much fun.

And while I was playing through the campaign over and over, gleefully splashing bandits and dog-fighting thirty drones at the same time, something happened. One at a time, I found myself back in the cockpit of all those old planes from our creaky PC games and unpainted model kits. Falcons, Hornets, Raptors, they were all there, like old buddies I’d lost contact with, each one filled with hazy yet warm memories of sticky fingers and clicky keyboards. It felt like a reunion of sorts.

As I machine-gunned my way through giant airships like a time-displaced WWII fighter, a thought reached my head all the way up in the clouds it now lived in. A sudden desire to complete the circle.

I wanted to build models again. But this time, I wanted to do it right.

[stellevatum]

NPC Characters

Please note, these are being treated as a sort of reincarnated/timeshift AU version of their original selves, at this point they're basically OCs with canon names with much of the OG interpretations but with some flair. But they're her boys and she cares or them.

Malavai Quinn: The son of Moff Rymar Quinn of Dromund Kaas, Malavai was the as perfect a son as his father expected. Received high grades, served in the military with pride, and for the most part expected a career life in the Outer Rim under the shadow of his father.

His exceptional aptitude and tactical acumen brought him to serve on Coruscant shortly after the battle of Geonosis. Brought into Arca Barracks he had been intended to help the thriving center of military intelligence work with the active armed forces. And for a short time he had, until a summons from the Supreme Chancellor.

Captian Quinn was chosen as the handler of his secret shadow agent. He would also help her work on understanding social graces of the Core World elite, allowing her to pass through those circles without notice.

At first at each other's throats, eventually Kar and Mal have a sort of kinship. When she defected, he eventually was convinced to help her and join her side, eventually becoming a double agent for the Rebellion.

Vector Hyllus: Vector is the son of minor Alderaani aristocracy and vassals to House Organa. He lived a well to do life, fully educated in the Alderaani fashion, spent time at court, and eventually went offworld as part of the Diplomatic Corps. Sometime in his early 20s he returned to Alderaan and as part of a diplomatic mission between the Royal House and the indigenous Killiks, Vector volunteered, along with others to to undergo the Joining.

As a Joiner, he was given the honor of Dawn Herald of the Oroboro Nest-- a warrior emissary who is expected to face the unknown. As such, this had led him to return several times to Coruscant with Senator Bail Organa as a voice for the Killiks in the Senate.

Through Bail, he was introduced to one of the Senator's friends: a sharp Mandalorian named Kar Alor'ade. The two hit it off suprisingly well, the friendship growing into something more romantic. At least until she was claimed KIA.

(Kar didn't want to make him choose between her and the Nest when she defected, and so left without a goodbye.)

He'd mourned the loss, moved on, until nearly half a decade later she came back into his life-- not entirely intentionally. After a brief moment of tension airing out grievances, the two fell fast into as the way things are, marrying sometime after 14 BBY.

He became her friend , lover, and soundboard for her diplomatic works-- even so far as helping Kar establish the groundwork of diplomatic ties with the rachni in a post-Reaper Milky Way. While he visited home often, Vector could not turn down chance of seeing a whole new galaxy.

But his tie with his Nest would be his downfall. Having a brief time to space before returning to the Milky Way to speak to the Council, Vector opted to visit the hive. Vector, and his hive were destroyed when the Death Star fired upon Alderaan.

It is said Kar's heart died with him.

Ruusaan "Saana" Alor'ade: Kar's "younger" sister (only by a few months). Ruusaan is Kaan and Juri's biological daughter, and adopted Kar as a infant foundling a few months before Ruusaan was born. They had a moment of closeness, in as much as toddlers can until the death of their mother. Kaan separated the two; Ruusaan would live with Juri's family on Concord Dawn, and the newly found Force-Sensitive Kar would stay with him and begin his training.

Free from their father's severe demands, Saana grew up well-adjusted and loved by her grandparents on Concord Dawn. She started out helping the local sawbones, and vets, which grew into a clear passion. Her grandparents knew she'd fair better going to school offworlds, and spend as much of their credits (and whatever they got from Juri's possessions) to cover her education.

She was accepted at one of the finest medical schools on Coruscant, thanks to a mysterious benefactor. Like any Alor'ade, she was curious and good as sussing things out, learned the benefactor was her long sister trying to be supportive, but worried she might not be accepted. Saana welcomed her sister in with open arms.

She'd also be one of the few loyal people to join her in the defection and winds up in the Milky Way. She eventually finishes her degree and created a private practice on the Mandalorian colony. She marries Tye Vhett, a former ARC trooper, and they have a family later on.

[notthestarwar]

Snippet from when is a monster not a monster? Oh when you love it

Sometimes, Jaster wonders how he ended up here: sole guardian of a boy who's destined to do something bad enough that another's spirit is tied to his soul.

Jaster knew enough about spirits to know that they didn't follow time in any kind of linear fashion. He'd asked her one night. Jango had passed out in the other room, in his sleep looking younger and more innocent as ever and Jaster just knew that he had to ask her, had to know.

"Are you from his past or his future."

He hadn't been looking at her as he asked and he didn't turn when she answered.

"Future."

"What ties you to him?" Faux casual. Like anyone would be casual about something like this.

"He's responsible for my death."

It hangs in the air between them.

He'd known really. He'd known before he'd even asked. There was no chance of her presence marking anything good.

If he's learnt anything of his charge these last few months, it is that he's a maelstrom. At no point had an easy path laid ahead of his ward.

Jango was destined for bigger things and those around him were destined to get caught in his storm. The Ka'ra knows it and so Jaster knows it.

Of course, being responsible for someone's death doesn't have to mean the worst. But something in him knows that whatever ties this woman to his ward, is more than an honest mistake, an accident.

Which is why he doesn't ask her any more about it. He doesn't ignore her, not when Jango is asleep at least, but he doesn't ask her for more information and she doesn't volunteer it.

In the weeks after their conversation, Jaster does not acknowledge her.

He can't. If he does, Jango will know that he knows and Jaster doesn't know what that might lead to.

They still haven't spoken about the Ka'ra, let alone ghosts! Future crimes!

It's not that Jaster doesn't want to talk about the Ka'ra to Jango. He wants to acknowledge it. It's just, he wants the boy to be comfortable... Jango is from Concord Dawn, Jaster knows what that's like.

Jaster himself once stood in much the same place as Jango now finds himself.

He left Concord Dawn as a boy only a little older. He found himself, alone in the galaxy, star touched and knowing he needed to be anywhere else.

Concord Dawn is... traditional. It's better now, but when Jaster was a child, there were a superstitious, vocal minority who saw anyone star touched as little better than a Jetti.

These few saw any child born with the sight of the Ka'ra as a curse.

Jaster left what was left of his home because he wouldn't have survived in that place, not on his own, not after a tragedy had befallen his family. He would have been blamed. Not by many, but by those whose opinion mattered.

Having the sight is just not something that Mandolorians talk about. Not in public.

The Ka'ra is discussed freely in the home by those with the sight, but not so much outside of it. Those with the gift are regarded with suspicion amongst Mando'ade for no real reason, other than such a gift standing as an unknown.

The people who see such a gift as a curse are few and far between, but you never know where they are. No-one is safe because nobody talks about it, you don't know if they are safe or not.

It's one thing on a whole list of things Jaster needs to address. He just doesn't know how.

The rest is easy, it's the right thing to do. But to address this pink blaarg hiding in the corner of every Mando'ades home, when he is one of the ones who is hurt by this subject being forbidden? It seems self serving.

It's not only that it's... there's a boy that lives inside Jaster, one that's never left him.

This child, he lost everything he ever loved and then he had to flee his home to escape those that would persecute him.

That little boy is terrified at the prospect of people knowing what he is.

He's convinced that there is a traditionalist hiding in every home.

He's convinced that if they know, Jaster will lose everything he ever had, again.

Jaster hates that he can't be rid of this part of him, the fear; it holds tight. But also, its one of the best parts of him.

Before any imposter complex and the logic of an adult could step forward, that small part of him saw Jango, and knew that he had to help.

He has that part of himself to thank for the place that Jan'ika now holds in his life, in his heart.

That part of him, it never served him; until suddenly it did. He has to forgive the rest because in that one act of recognition, that scared boy contributed more to his life than any other part of his self ever had.

So, Mandalore has a problem when it comes to how those with the touch of the Ka'ra are treated. It has a problem with how such a gift is viewed. How little is understood.

Its a issue, and it's one that Jaster will address as soon as he has the slightest clue as to how. But in the meantime, Mandalore has so many other problems and Jaster even knows where to start with a few of them.

That has to be the focus. He has to do what he can now. He can't let himself get stuck, scrabbling for something he doesn't yet have.

He will address it. Mandalore will be better for it. But until then, the Ka'ra is only relevant in the one place it's always been relevant, his home.

Jaster doesn't want to scare Jango off by telling him that he's noticed.

He has no idea what response Jango has had to his gift before now. Does he see it as something he needs to hide? If he is made aware that Jaster knows, will he run before Jaster has a chance to explain?

In Jango's position? Had anyone acknowledged his gift? He would have.

Jaster would have run and he would have hidden. Jaster knows well that a child like that, can be hard to find.

He doesn't want to lose him.

He can't risk it.

He needs Jango to tell him, it needs to come from Jango.

Then, Jaster will know what he's working with. He'll be able to approach it in a way that doesn't scare the kid.

Once they've discussed the Ka'ra, then they can talk about the horrors haunting them from Jango's future. One thing at a time.

The ghosts? It's inevitable. It's a conversation that needs to be had eventually, even if it may well be the last one Jaster would ever want to have.

For now. It needs to be held off. The Ka'ra first.

It's easier than one might think, to avoid it. To avoid her.

In the day, Jango's ghost does him the favour of staying out of his eyeline so his gaze doesn't drift over to her.

In some ways, avoidance is a blessing. If he acknowledges her, he would have to acknowledge the rest.

Conversations revolving around Jango's morality, his future, are something that Jaster has done his upmost to avoid these past few months, no matter how present the reminders.

Jaster never intended to be a parent, in all honesty, he doesn't know if he's a particularly good one. He feels out of his depth in a way he hasn't, for many years.

He finds himself embracing ignorance. Something he's never before welcomed. For now, they are together. For now, he's giving Jango everything he can give. Being the best he can be.

For now, Jaster leans on something just short of denial. He knows, he just doesn't like to think about it. Not yet.

It will come for them all the same. He knows it. There is no escaping something like this.

[kozhergoy]

SPCTЯMRTRTMPRLTY

Insights from a SPHXZ

𐂃༄༉༅༊༣༢༡ ᚹᛜ ᚱᛏᚺ

Google Translate Arabic has lately been teasing my nosy ass with these randomly discovered calligrams that proclaim to be nuclear weapons. Example:

ىة ي ن و ىه ا ىة ن قًز ينةم ىةنوًىة

‏Nuclear energy

It’s only now I realize it’s precede by a phonetic equivalent of “agape” so they’re adhering to the Christian principle of letting all that you do be done in love.

Or I was; I am that one who typed it. It’s really snarky and ironic that the rest of what I typed was sub Spanish for “is equal to that of the USA.” Started out as a post on water.

On the sly, wherever the programmers are located they said hey. We’ve got something equal to the United States too.

Time passed, things cooled down. And whatever this was became a little playful. And that’s what im going to show you.

This: ‏‎ىةيً نوى زرنقً ز ى ة ن وً ى ة

now translates as “this is a zircon nuclei”

An earlier version, below, is a credible enough guide, made proven by the end of this schpiel.

So, let’s get after it:

‎‏‎ىةيً نوى زرنقً ز ى ة ن وً ى ة

This is a blue nuclei

‎ز ى ة ن وً ى ة

identifiable reps of“Os”, and “Gu”.

Os is the old Norse word for their supreme God.

Gu is Chinese meaning “ancient,” though they referred to G-D as Shen.

then there’s “guo”, meaning “cross” in Chinese. A reference to Jesus?

Then there’s a second appearance of “Os” and a similar letter to “j” I can’t explain. Second coming?

Anyways here the numbers I got from attempting to recombine the digits.

‎ز ى ة ن وً ى ة

11, 28, 16, 25, 27, 28, 16

112, 81, 62 | 52, 72, 81

120, 162, 52 | 71, 81, 6

11, 28, 16 | 252, 72, 81

As you can see it took me a few tries.

Kept ending up with leftovers. Then i tried using the prompt as a guide.

Plenty of word play.

For example, subjectively the word “This” triggers Arabic “hisan” for me, meaning horse. I once had a paranormal experience resulting in a picture of a blue horse. So I knew to tally the values of the word “this” and plug ‘em in.

I came up with a working schedule.

R: 61

B: 81

G : 152

Key: 45

Cyan : 161

Magenta : 28

Yellow : 27

Ended up scrapping some of the colors because they altered the color harmfully once id reached the prespecified destination.

Life’s like that sometimes. Sometimes we have to scrap blind obedience in favor of balance and accord with earlier wishes and what we feel to be right rather than what we are told is right.

Anyways, here’s the hex code: #384a8c. It’s a beautiful hue of almost an indigo-blue, just like the translation said it’d be.

Well, thanks for reading. I’ll keep y’all update on more of the universe’s less-than-subtle cues.

I like to look up the Strong’s biblical concordance of the numbers there if things look right and they’re short enough.

However this works, I stemmed to slip into an oxbow of the internets winding river. Rearranging letters and came across this:

[halfbakedspuds]

One thing I'm trying very hard with Adrian and Lya's relationship is to avoid the overdramatic 'You are my heart, and for you I will die' way of writing romance. I don't mind it, but it feels a tad bit overdone.

I mean sure, they will die for eachother, there's no denying that, but their relationship isn't always this hyper-passionate baring of the soul that seems to permeate modern fiction. Sometimes it's just Adrian working out logistics forms late into the night while Lyanni is reading on the couch, both of them interspersing long, silent minutes of simply enjoying each other's company with some of the most spastic and nerdy discussions of the 27th century.

Sometimes it's Adrian seeing Lyanni passed out on their couch and quietly tossing his coat over her as a makeshift blanket, already knowing that his honour will demand he deny doing it come morning.

Sometimes it's Lyanni scooping Adrian up off his feet and carrying him to bed because he's been awake and working since Monday and Hestavi as her witness, she will force the stubborn human to rest even if she has to sit against his door all night to do it.

Sometimes it's Adrian's usually stoic composure faltering long enough for him to swear in frustration because he knows she won't hold it against him.

Sometimes it's Lyanni not bothering to put on any appearances of being fine before leaving her room after having had a particularly bad flashback, because she knows he's gone through the same hell, and will understand and try to comfort her.

Their relationship is, in this way, very different from their public life. Where they usually need to act out this facade of the almighty angel and the chosen one of the gods- living loud and large as a political tool, their private interaction tends to be a lot more subtle and far softer.

Because that's what they need. They stay together because they make eachother feel like regular people (Adrian doesn't treat her like the outcast monster her people do, and Lyanni doesn't hold him to some inhuman standard like the rest of the planet does). Their subtle interactions are, similarly, what they both want in order to be happy.

Ps: Sorry if my English is bad in this post, it has been... a bit of a day, and I'm honestly too tired to check subject-verb concord or whatever...

[libidomechanica]

The mark the receive

And as clomb on her dream, and blown.     His gylden ground, that echoes and hide indeed of the ball     sleepeth not turn or eleven; tis trace; the fair pale as     loves derives as weapons house. Beside. Smiling with which in     my smart, and man, and as

he’s goodnight or she had been she     felt thought, which make, thus Good Betty all might by a day on     the has nature silence and her who vent. A thou have me.—     She night of one failing told these like a wretch and loathing     I deny, and her o’er

tread, it home back, so the more settled     eithers’ feare. Like with rainbow of solemnize the sea-     nymphs rough child of haunt a blink, ere her than centurit glen;     thou now? Their obstinacy, both punch, but pause, thus is surpris’d     her mark; the hearted

then fire scaffolding; they were all     that a thorne Neptune’s the river’d from their sleepe. These world.     Sprang to dislike a wretch, doth least, and now, but though erst: they     light, and in each selfe pype and there’s an every eyes in     my book out! Of the down

length thy advice: the lay, ye wad     na gie for a whirl the passe I doubts and say the honey     fed; which sorowe, and raised who is but when their time with     then the cries from their such was penn’d: his foremost, which sing purpose?     Who had love of

Sicily: to norther love is wintry     germ is empty. Freely mind; and though ever than their     ruin! Stay than this dusk as I have fell, desiring     ye. Grow good was setting a youth, and her Cheek,—who single     must leave a blessing ye.

Her her own so rich rubies but     oh, thou have which hoped, if some clever, mute to walked and nymph     of ruin. If I wene third’s-eye view from breast it was she     view; they were than your feeling innate chanc’d; the changes of     strange in one of paying,

no hand, all though his like they this     fine and my sovered trac’d, with they were than the dust all     the windy nigh. Sea-nymphs rough shepheard me reveal to the     Door old sad and better the roaring to the dreary as     a bird, and thou pointerfered

place, and is leftst thy sins     and drove a lion, I hae been music the heart. On board     of wives derives do blossom’d bow’d face and seamen, seated     more. The dreary as a while them sing from thing earth, which I     lie of the secret

portraiten’d quick stripped in chief sae shy;     for than did I loves, scent remain heaped winds and me who like     state! In orders brown like lie, but each painful son leaue a     dream of the love, wan, althought as all off, or display for     tea and her lip to the

scaffolding sweetest began to     ken, even his cheek turn outlass, and gone, for then hundreds     real spent. Susan will sleepy at all. Homely, flush’d thrall! Where     great nameless mountains o’ land, as the round, airport so I     swarm the fixt a sentimes

such colored; we shuddering,     the should not a tree, whatever gladly her child from thought,     elbows, knee concord of humour. Happy, half raught her in     one should far majestine this honey barbed shall not tell by     the shalt low river damm’d

up they country gentle was outside     no double task. Topics mostly in had see the was     of Fame, if the fish to shall night twice, that unfading passion,     but like a masquerade; the last, and Scorn? Have no more     it me when I’m surely

string, salving from the rest because     I will her Johnny soon from else sad mistress! How lightly     bell. Being thought rise, and if I euery of the bird-     underings the never will show my waterfall, at this last     all have more will heart could

surely to chaced yet is the     vaulted, Charity. Pensive zebra music came, every     was more the sea-shore devis’d her the little eyes the sweet     love. Alas! Heart to kill from Vesper’d of cattled eithere     your fail. But such lust in

her bonie laddie’s you art of fortune     of his some forget no doubt he look up but oh, that     was the beauty’s near, quoth Beauty’s moorland great use the come     two. Too near rosary need heaven of they had ta’en and     grieve, to this joyous task.