#Anyway after almost dying I believe I have absorbed all known knowledge about them and their bites

[stardustedknuckles]

My bite was way less fun but yeah. That just happens. all of my calluses also fell off when the top layer of the rest of my skin did. The bite went straight for my kidneys and tried to take them out, and as a result for months I couldn't hydrate correctly. It doesn't matter how much water/fluid you drink if your body can't hold on to it, but whatever fuckery was going on clearly allowed me to absorb some as it healed or I just wouldn't have made it after coming off the saline drip. It looked like sunburn peel but it was a different texture. I spent probably a solid week with a pumice stone in the shower just trying to get the layers of skin to stop coming off my feet and when it was over, I had baby soft heels. It was absolutely fucking bonkers.

👍👍👍 So fresh

A guy in an entomology group I'm in got a confirmed brown recluse bite because he felt something tickle his neck and brushed it off, accidentally mashing the spider against his skin. This is how almost all recluse bites happen since they're very very unaggressive. Anyway the bite was just a small nasty spot that cleared up on its own, but his hands and feet swelled up really bad. Then when the swelling went back down, all his calluses were loose and just fell right off leaving his hands and feet like brand new???????????

[oneweekoneband]

her Nebraska (1982)

In July I flew to Massachusetts with a plague on, and I felt that it was wrong, but my mother had begged and I’d been out of work for months. Mornings there I ran in long, uneven ovals on the same roads I’d memorized in high school. There’s no sidewalks, but the few feet of dirt between the craggy pavement and the open mouths of the fields serve all right for a single body in motion. When a truck comes up close from behind, the ground shakes, and I step away bouncingly from the street toward thigh-high yellow weeds and grass, and keep going. I was slowly picking my way back in that dirt, sweat-slick from only a plodding couple of miles in peak summer heat, and sucking the wet cotton of my mask in between my teeth on every inhale, when Taylor Swift announced she was releasing a surprise album produced by the guy from The National. Not the guy from The National, like, the voice, but the guy from The National whose photo was circulated on Twitter earlier this year as some kind of antifa super soldier, which isn’t the case, but would’ve been rad. First, I stopped dead to send some outraged, misspelled text messages, and then I ran home faster than I’d moved in years.

Tall, blonde, patrician pop star Taylor Swift is to me something like a cross-between a wife and a boogeyman. Bound we’ve been since we were really children. Time and its changes haven’t rid me of her, and what’s worse is I have never quite been able to wish they would, though I claim as much all the time. Countless hours of my one wild and precious life have been spent on endlessly analyzing the minutiae of Taylor Swift’s music, the mind that made it, the real world events which influenced it. And though all the while I have known she is only a person, and that people, while each strange and lovely in their own ways, are, in the end, mostly dull, needful in just the regular manner, the fantasy is better, the sick dream of a megalomaniac songstress, curious, thrilling, probably evil, and I choose that. I don’t know Taylor Alison Swift, born to this world in, I presume, the usual way. But my Taylor Swift? I’m a renowned expert. I’ve always eaten up stories—movies, music, celebrity news, the one my grandfather tells about falling off his bike once in Ireland as a boy and his face “cracking open like an egg”—like a starved dog. I’m obsessive about my interests, but not inclined to intense fandom, and certainly not fandom in the mode of the stan. For one, I’m too self-absorbed. But caring intensely for a famous person is falling in love with a ghost, and that’s all right—I mean, what the hell? We’re here together just dying... Let’s enjoy—but is an affair best undertaken with the knowledge that everyone alive has their own complex interiority, as unruly as your own, and that you, a stranger, are not in any real way connected to the lawless, blurry middle of that celebrity, and will never be. It’s freeing and fun to know this. I mean, these people are basically in your employ. Glamorous dollhouse dwellers. Acknowledging that uncrossable distance allows for a different, healthier closeness of pure imagination. My feelings, then, can comfortably be at once both fiercely intense and entirely silly. I am a foremost scholar in the art of the Taylor Swift who exists in my head. The real person raised in Pennsylvania I don’t know at all. I have some conjectures on the matter, and, as with all my conjectures, every hackneyed theory, each picky little opinion, I’m sure they’re perfect, brilliant, just absolutely right, but that’s still all they are. Taylor Swift, figure of the cultural imagination, is the Jodie Comer to my Sandra Oh in Killing Eve, annoying and pretty in frills, taunting me endlessly and holding us trapped together in a dance of most enchanting death. But the real Taylor Swift has favorite bed sheets and a social security number and a British boyfriend, none of which I have any desire to know about, and if I saw her at a restaurant I’d politely avert my eyes before, yes, dive-bombing the group text. There’s nobody on Earth I’d stand in line to speak to, but then I’ve been speaking to a certain figment of Taylor Swift for nearly half my life.

I went to a Taylor Swift concert the night before I moved into college in 2009. My father’s work friend, firefighter by day, near professional gambler by night, got comped tickets to the Fearless Tour stop taking place at the nearby casino, and he let me have them as a reward, mainly, for happening to be seventeen. Live in-person and performed acoustically, “Fifteen” made me cry. A few years after that, in the thick, sticky part of my first post-college summer, I wrote approximately twenty-three million words about her in these very pages.  (”Pages”) At that point, Taylor’s most recent release was 2012’s Red, and the work I produced that long ago July about Taylor and her career, writing I was fairly pleased with at the time, feels now, besides just being extremely clearly written by a twenty-one year old, strange to me for the way it favors the sweet over the sour almost uniformly. There is a wholesome kind of ardor in that writing which maybe I’ve outgrown the ability to hold. Or maybe Taylor just proceeded to spend the next half a decade plus releasing one bad single after another, and it was taste—and trespasses against taste—and not some shift in my nature which altered the tenor of our bond. I have real love for my particular image, gleaned from public statements and published art, of smart, bizarre famous woman Taylor Swift, and I admire the bulk of her output very much. I’m just no longer so inclined to fawn. This is not to say I am here to offer a Taylor Swift hate screed. I couldn’t swing it, and, anyway, I’m not a pop feminist-for-hire circa 2010. But we’re older now. Things are different. At twenty-eight, twenty-nine this month—Taylor will, also this December, turn thirty-one—I regard Taylor Swift warily, like an ex with whom you have a tentative friendship, perpetually on the brink of falling one way or the other into hatred or delight, only to wobble back the opposite direction again at the slightest provocation, but still, despite best efforts, even, I regard her all the time. 

folklore was released at midnight on July 24th 2020, but I was at a cabin in rural Vermont without Internet or cell service. I drank Bud Light seltzers with my mother while watching the eerie pandemic return of Major League Baseball, and when I got into a strange bed there I stewed, knowing there were people out in the world all over who were hearing Taylor Swift songs I never had, and that this was a fundamental wrong, a disruption in the balance of the universe. I listened to it the next morning in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. 

And folklore is great. That’s the terrible thing. Slightly less great, maybe, than some people have insisted, tricked, I think, by just the pronounced shift in sound. But it’s great. A little gift I asked for a thousand times and was still surprised to get, like a wife who didn’t expect her henpecked husband to ever follow through and buy the paraffin wax hand bath as-see-on-TV. For years, I’ve been halfheartedly insisting that Taylor had a great album in her. I’d say it even, perhaps especially, while she stubbornly fed me gruel. Or worse, gruel with the occasional whiff of something better. With a ripe, little raspberry dropped into the slop. The bright, villainous thrill of “Getaway Car” made me believe Taylor, my Taylor, was in there somewhere under the lacquer of sequins and synth, which, while not objectionable by default, seemed a costume, and an ill-fitting one. The lived-in world of “Cornelia Street” made those old scars sting. That gay “Delicate” video. When she did “Call It What You Want” on SNL and played guitar while wearing an ugly sweater. If the abominable “ME!”, lead single off Lover, was the stick, 1989’s “Clean” was the carrot. I was Charlie Brown, and Taylor my Lucy, yanking the football back again and again. Over drinks I still yelled that Taylor Swift’s next album would be, “her Nebraska”, referring to my favorite Bruce Springsteen record, and learned to live with that egg on my face for good. I suppose I even came to like it. There was something inherently funny in taking up, like, “blind faith in the as of yet untapped greater artistic potential of massively wealthy and popular singer Taylor Swift” as my totally inane personal cause du jour, and eventually it was a bit, a gag I performed to be obstinate and didactic, but way down somewhere awful near my kidneys I meant it the whole while. And then she did it. A pandemic befell the world and amid a sea of human suffering Taylor Swift remembered she can write. She wrote, and with a massive, crucial assist from Aaron Dessner, whose music on this record is sometimes so beautiful it actually angers me, as the last thing I needed in already perilous times was to be made to try and marry my uniquely perverse emotional responses to beloved divorced dad band The National and fucking Taylor Swift,  she made an album which, if not her Nebraska, per se (I’ve come to realize that a major part of believing Taylor Swift will one day make an album I find as quietly devastating and gorgeous as Nebraska is knowing that no album will ever actually be Her Nebraska... That each will, rather, to me, be more and more evidence that it’s coming still, more proof that the limit is untouched, on and on ad infinitum, or at least until the seas take us into a place of salty peace.) is a shocking credit to all my hard-fought and deluded confidence. folklore is great. This fact has made me feel almost equally as disoriented from my understanding of the world as the time-melting COVID-19 lockdowns have, and it turned my Spotify year in review annual collective AI humiliation kink thing into a glaring indictment of my mental state, but still, I mean... It’s great.

In talking about folklore a bit this week, there are a number of specific topics I intend to cover—what a thrill it is to hear Taylor say “fuck”; Taylor’s terrifying birth chart; the astoundingly perfect bridge of “the last great american dynasty”; “because my ass is located at the back of my body”; the bit in last year’s “Lover” where deranged WASP Taylor Swift implies that to “leave the Christmas lights up til January” is some signifier of being a love-struck bohemian, when actually everyone who doesn’t employ domestic staff to take their lights down does this; how reputation is the best of the Taylor Swift records released in the latter half of the 2010s, actually, and the people who can’t see that are cowards—but intend mostly to let the muse move me where she will. Against the advice of my better angels, she—that tie-in marketing eldritch terror—always does.

[your-worst-knightmare]

Broken Speech

Memory was a fleeting thing, nowadays. Whatever rose in that murky abyss drifted away just as quickly. It may have been a small mercy. Jay didn’t know. All he knew was now. And now was being shut up in the same elaborate room when the Mistress had no use for him. 

The Mistress talked to him, sometimes. Sometimes it was idle conversation. Other times it was commands. Most times it was “Talk.”

He could, he knew that. But every time he tried, his mouth would be dry and his mind blank and the words never came. 

The Mistress tried to help him. She really did. She gave him teachers. They died too easily. So the Mistress gave him books. They were left unread. Not because of lack of want, but he simply couldn’t. He knew how, but his body refused to listen to him once again. 

As so he was stuck with the fleeting library of his own memory. Not that there was much he could recall, anyway. 

Today, the Mistress came to visit him. “You will watch my son, Jay.” A command. She was in no rush to speak, and the words flowed like sweet honey. Jay envied her words. He so wanted them, but they refused to let him hold onto them. “He will be your brother. Treat him as such.”

From the corner of his eye, Jay watched a small child stride into the room sourly. 

“Be good, Damian,” the Mistress called as she left. 

The boy tutted. “I do not require a caretaker,” he scoffed, mostly to himself. He turned to Jay. “And you are not my brother.”

Jay kept staring ahead blankly. He didn’t respond. He couldn’t. Why had the Mistress left her son with him? He kept staring. 

“Well say something, you incompetent fool!” The boy leapt at him, all intentions turned towards attack. He was slammed to the floor the next moment. It was all reflex to Jay. He hadn’t meant to flip the boy, but his mind and body seemed to be twain nowadays. 

The boy growled, but didn’t attack again. Instead, he flopped down onto a cushion near Jay. Close enough to observe him if necessary. He grabbed a book that he had brought with him and began to read. 

Jay watched, not having moved a muscle since putting the boy in his place. The stared at the cover of the book, in some vain effort to absorb its knowledge. He yearned for it, but like many things, it didn’t seem to enter his mind. 

An hour passed. The boy continued reading. Jay remained frozen. The boy looked up suddenly. “Mother mentioned you were from America. I am currently studying American literature. It may be a clumsy language, but there’s hope yet. Would you like to hear a poem?” Despite the boy’s friendly words, his tone was frosty. The Mistress likely told the child to speak to him. He would have remained silent otherwise. 

But– at the chance to hear something that would feed his mind, Jay fought to speak. Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. Please. No words came. His face remained blank. The boy looked at him, huffed, and began reading anyway. 

“Do not go gentle into that good night.” The words were music to Jay’s mind. He savoured each syllable slowly, picking it apart and inspecting it. “Old age should burn and rage at close of day.” Jay found himself reading along in his mind. He knew them! The words! From the before– before memory. “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.” 

Jay’s vision became blurry. Those weren’t tears, were they? But he was grateful so grateful that the boy had read. That he had reminded Jay of the before. Of the warmth in a vast library. Of kind voices speaking to him as his fingers brushed aging paper. And that was something he would have a hard time repaying. 

___________

Damian al-Ghul did not require a caregiver. He was six years old. He could take care of himself. He had thought that Mother would understand that by now. But it seemed she didn’t, even after his previous caretakers had vanished under mysterious circumstances. 

It wasn’t just this new caretaker that irked him. Mother and insisted that he was his brother. Ridiculous! If Damian had a brother, he would have known. When he first met Jay, he almost laughed. Jay couldn’t even be considered qualified to watch a chicken. The boy’s expression remained blank he entire time he was spoken to. Damian expected some sort of reaction, at least, but Jay gave none.

That is, until Damian attacked him. Jay was proficient in combat, Damian gave him that. Not that the boy could do much else. Perhaps that was why Mother had chosen him. 

Damian resigned himself to reading under Jay’s watch. At remembering Mother’s request to talk to Jay, he figured he should read aloud. That technically counted as speech. Then Damian would not have to be distracted from his studies by idle, one-sided conversations. 

Jay seemed... happier after Damian read. Which was odd, because he had not previously shown any hint of emotion. Damian decided to disregard it. 

Much to his annoyance, he was required to stay with Jay the next day as well. And the next week. By the time the end of the month rolled around, Damian had consistently spent most afternoons in Jay’s lonely chamber. 

It was a late Friday afternoon when Damian returned to Jay’s room, carrying two steaming cups of tea. They smelled sweet and floral, reminding Damian of Mother’s perfume. He set one cup in front of Jay, knowing the boy would drink when he wanted to. 

“I shall resume our reading of Hamlet,” Damian informed him. “I suggest you drink your tea whilst I read, lest it go cold again, Jay.” 

Had Damian not spent the past month with him, he would have missed the slight smile that tugged on the boy’s lips. Satisfied that Jay was listening, Damian began reading. His words were clear and each character seemed to speak through him when he read. “To die, to sleep –/ To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub,/ For in this sleep of death what dreams may come…”

Jay, who had been nursing his cup of tea, stopped suddenly at the line. Damian had learned to take his subtle clues at communication rather seriously, so he closed the book. 

“What is it Jay?”

The boy’s eyes snapped around the room wildly, as if he did not recognize the place. It was vastly different from his usual blank, placid expression. He opened his mouth to speak. “Br’ce?” His words were garbled and his voice was raspy from disuse, but it was speech all the same. 

Damian sucked in a breath. Jay was talking. Talking. Mother would be ecstatic. “No Jay, I am–”

“Day’m’n.” Jay’s answer has surprised him. But Jay knew his name. He knew Damian! Mother would be ecstatic. 

“Yes, J- akhi,” Damian beamed. Jay, Damian supposed, was his brother. Mother had been right. he wouldn’t have been particularly concerned about Jay otherwise. 

He ceased his reading for the day and in favour of encouraging Jay to speak again. Another word, for Mother, he pleaded. 

By the time the last of the sun’s rays were starting to  disappear from the horizon did Mother arrive, as she always did. Damian did not need to be coddled, but he appreciated when she came to see him. Damian had made no progress with Jay, but he was still excited to share the news. 

“Mother, i have most excellent–” he stopped upon seeing Mother’s grave expression. “What is it Mother?” 

Mother opened a bag, filled with servant’s garments. “Help me dress Jay, child. You shall remain  here, until I come to collect you afterward.” 

Damian obeyed quickly. He was never one to question his Mother’s orders. However, something felt off. “ Jay spoke to me today,” he finally said. 

Mother raised an eyebrow. “Did he now, dearest?”

“Yes. It was not much, but I believe he said both mine and Father’s names.” 

She smiled sadly. “I am glad Jay was able to talk to you.But your brother has been able to say your Father’s name ever since he came to stay with us. However, you name is progress, i am sure.” She bent down to kiss Damian’s forehead before leading Jay out the door. “Sleep well, my pride.” With that, Mother left Damian alone with a sneaking suspicion that something wasn’t quite right.

Damian slipped out of his room and followed Jay’s lumbering figure in the poorly-lit hall. He lagged several feet behind Mother, which worked to Damian’s advantage. 

The sinking feeling in Damian’s stomach worsened as Mother led Jay farther and farther down into the compound. There was only one place they could be going. The Lazarus Pit.

Grandfather had acquainted Damian with its waters when Damian was three. Needless to say, it was not his most pleasant memory. And Damian suspected for someone in Jay’s condition, the experience would be even worse.

Damian did not want to watch his brother go stumbling into that green crater, but he found himself unable to tear his eyes away. Mother had not even led Jay down half of the final staircase when she pushed him.  Jay always fought back at a menacing touch, but never when it was Mother. The boy teetered at the edge of the platform before sinking into that ancient lake. 

Damian’s breath caught in his chest. He couldn’t breathe. How could he? How could he when his brother had been thrown into a pit that was the very mother of insanity? 

Time seemed to pass sluggishly. It was forever that Jay rested at the bottom of the pit. Then, hands started to claw their way to the surface. Their body and voice soon followed. Damian thought he was prepared. He wasn’t. 

It was almost absurd. The silence that embroidered Jay’s fall could have been broken by a mere pin-drop. Upon his emergence, however– Damian pressed his hands to his ears. It was all he could do to block out Jay’s heart-wrenching cries. 

It was worlds away from the raspy, stuttering voice those same lips had uttered hours before. Even from a distance, Damian could see the toxic green eyes the pit had cursed Jay with. He knew the rage the pit brought all too well. 

Dusk had fully disappeared when Damian returned to Jay’s empty quarters. There was nothing Damian could do for him at the moment but the moment but wait. 

He thought back to their first meeting. What was the poem he had read to Jay? Its words taunted him, but he could not seem to get the nagging thought out of his mind. Damian found the book and opened it, his eyes flitting to the final line. The irony was not lost on him. It could be all that was left of Jay now, if they weren’t lucky. 

Yet Damian had a strange urge to read the line aloud. His fingers brushed over the words, reminiscing all those afternoons he spent with Jay. Afternoons he may not get again. “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.” 

The poem in this story is “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas

[ultraglittercat]

Drabble 58

Icebreaker

It was the day before Varian's 10th birthday, although he wasn't enjoying it much. He'd been confined to his bed after his latest experiment on “How long will the ice last” had lead to him falling through (twice) and getting soaked to the bone.

Quirin didn't understand that there were always calculated risks in field study, and it wasn't something to be overly concerned about. The doctor didn't seem to understand it either, dismissing Varian as a 'reckless, impulsive child with no regard for safety and lacking in all common sense'. Varian wouldn't have minded the criticism if his father hadn't agreed. That really stung. At least, Varian mused, the humidifier he'd invented when his Dad was last sick seemed to be working well.

His father came into the room, carrying a large book. “I have a present for you, Varian. I'm not sure you really deserve it, after that stunt you pulled! But since it's almost your birthday, and you seem to be learning your lesson, I'll allow it.” Quirin said.

“Ooh, what's it about?” Varian rasped. The only book he'd had to read for 2 days was the Bible, which Quirin had thoughtfully marked to the Parable of the Lost Sheep. Varian supposed he was meant to be the sheep that had gone astray, and Quirin the kind shepherd who had gone looking for it anyway even though all the rest of his flock was safe. As far as reminders went, it was pretty gentle, and probably a kinder rebuke than Varian deserved. Still, it was boring to read the same story over and over.

This was a scientific book on the study of Epistemology. The note attached to it read: “I didn't understand any of this book, so I thought you would! Happy Birthday and Feel Better! Love, Katie.”

Varian smiled. At least there were some people in town who had faith in his abilities.

“What kind of book did your friend get you?” Quirin asked.

“It's a book on knowledge and how it differs from opinion and belief.” Varian explained.

“Oh, like how you believed you had a good idea and were under the opinion the ice would hold, but knowledge has taught you that you were very wrong and very lucky not to be hurt worse in your pursuit?” Quirin said pointedly.

Varian blushed. “Something like that...” he mumbled, coughing sharply.

Quirin's face softened and he rubbed Varian's back until the coughing fit passed. “You'll be alright. You're too stubborn not to be.” Quirin sighed. It wasn't always easy raising an inquisitive boy like Varian, but he loved him anyway.

Varian sneezed. “Did you get me anything, Dad? Maybe for my lab?” Varian asked hopefully.

“You'll have to wait until tomorrow.” Quirin answered. He had in fact purchased a brass alcohol lamp and some denatured alcohol dyed a bright pink. The salesman had warned him that it could be poisonous if mixed with pyridine or methanol. Quirin wasn't sure what those substances were, but he reasoned that even if Varian could get his hands on them, he had sense enough not to drink from any flasks. It was a generous gift, especially since Quirin didn't fully approve of alchemy, but as this past week had proved, Varian could get in trouble even without chemicals. At least if Varian was tinkering in a lab, Quirin would know where his son was.

Varian was absorbed in his new book, sniffling occasionally as he read. “Don't read that book all in one day! If you get tired, rest.” Quirin said.

“That's all I've been doing!” Varian complained.

“Good. Maybe next time, you'll think of the consequences first, and not do something so foolish.” Quirin chided. He loved his boy, but evidently he wasn't through scolding him yet.

Varian sighed. He should've known he wouldn't get off easy, even when it was practically his birthday. Still, he was grateful to have his Dad around, even if Dad was a little angry with him.

Varian set his book down. “Can we play a game of chess?” he asked, hoping to have a little fun.

Quirin smiled. “I think we can do that.” he said, ruffling Varian's hair.

The End

There's a reason Quirin has all those wrinkles and that reason is raising Varian! It must be hard to be the single parent of someone so smart yet so careless.

[bb8sworld]

what can’t be spoken

pairing: obi-wan kenobi x jedi!reader

summary: it is said that we will fall in love three times in our lives, with the third one being our greatest love. but how can we be certain?

word count: 2.5k

a/n: this is my first proper obi fic, so i hope you enjoy! the title is inspired by this song from les mis. this isn’t exactly a song fic, but some themes were written when listening to it (if that intrigues you). there’s a rollercoaster of feelings here, so be prepared for that. also, it’s a weird hodge-podge of fluffy plot at the start and angsty introspection towards the end, but i hope you give it a chance anyway!

-- ☆ -- ☆ -- ☆ -- ☆ --

You had snuck into Obi-Wan’s quarters as you usually do when quiet sets over the Jedi Temple and the sun takes reprieve in the sky. The two of you greeted each other with a sweet kiss as you used the Force to close the door behind you. (“How frivolous,” he told you with a playful smirk before you shut him up with your lips on his once more. There were no critiques about your use of the Force after that.)

Excitement coursed through his veins at finally being able to hold you close to him after being separated for what seemed like an eternity (though it was only a couple weeks). With both of you being Jedi, it was common throughout your relationship to be separated for weeks at a time as you were sent on different missions. It was never easy to be so far apart for extended periods of time, but this, this coming home reunion, this well of love between you two, this devotion and understanding of what you just faced, was enough to keep you both going through the distance. It became your drive to make it out of each battle alive. To live to see another day. To come home. And finally, you had gotten back from your mission earlier that day and you were in his arms once more where he could keep you safe and protected (though you hardly needed his protection in the first place).

There was a usual routine any time either of you came back from a mission: you would meet in one of your rooms, catch up over a cup of tea, and fall asleep in each other’s arms. Though, if the tea happened to get cold before either of you finished in favor of reacquainting yourselves with the taste of the other and tenderly mapping the lines and curves of your bodies through gentle caresses, then that was neither here nor there.

You were sitting on the couch in Obi-Wan’s quarters, staring over the back of the couch at some spot in the kitchen as your lover dug through the cabinets. As he muddled around finding the kettle, two cups, and the tea each of you preferred, Obi-Wan noticed that, instead of your usual chatter of how your mission went or your familiar questioning over what he did when you were gone, you were silent. It looked like you were pondering over something and that whatever it was had deeply consumed your thoughts. Through the Force, he nudged at your mind gently, quietly reassuring you that you could talk to him if you wanted.

Your eyes flicked away from the space you were staring at in the kitchen to meet with his eyes. A moment of silence had passed before you smiled softly at him.

“You know I love you, right?” you asked.

At your question, he nearly laughed at how out of the blue it was. But he held his laughter in and traded it for a fond smile that he sent your way.

“Of course I know, my dear. I am as sure of your love as I am sure that there are two suns on Tatooine or that Anakin hates sand or that you adore when I wear my cloak,” he replied earnestly, the very laughter he held back underlying some of his words. By now he had filled the kettle with water and had left it to start boiling.

You gave a laugh at his comment. “I do love you in your cloak,” you remark quietly before you sigh. “But I’m serious, Obi-Wan. If something were to happen to me, I don’t want you to have the slightest doubt that I love you.”

The familiar drop in his stomach occurred at the thought of something happening to you—at you getting injured, being in pain, or dying. Maker above, he doesn’t know what he would do if something were to happen to you. Of all the things in his life, you are what matters most to him, and if you were to suddenly not be there anymore, well…he doesn’t like dwelling on that possibility. But still, he pushes away that unbridled fear of you dying and responds with as steady of a voice as he can muster.

“And I don’t have any doubts. I know that you love me and I hope that you know that I love you,” Obi-Wan walks away from the not-yet-piping kettle and empty tea cups to make his way over to the couch. He sits by your side, grabbing onto your hand tightly with one of his own, the other going up to caress your cheek. “You’re the only one who has ever made me feel deeply like this and I don’t regret being with you, loving you, or being loved by you.”

He watches as your entire demeanor softens and tears fill your eyes, but they dare not spill. You pull him to you and softly press your lips against him in a kiss that has him reeling. There’s so much you’re trying to convey in the soft act, so much he picks up on, and he’s almost overwhelmed at your feelings. There’s so much to sort through, but not enough time to investigate before you two separate. He can just barely hear the trembling in your breathing as you exhale. Clearly there’s something more to this that you’re not mentioning, and while he hates forcing you into conversations when you’re feeling uneasy, he thinks it may be worth a shot to try and prod.

“Why are you bringing this up, my love?”

He’s answered by silence, at first. Your free hand grabs his which is still caressing your cheek and you hold on tightly, as if for support. You kiss the back of his hand before pulling it on your lap so you can hold both of his hands in yours. You swallow thickly before you respond, “My recent mission. During one of the battles, I had a brief moment where my life was at a crossroads,” you trail off. Your grip tightens on his hands as the next words come out, “Obi-Wan...love, I almost died.”

Suddenly the hands you were holding onto cling to yours. You both are holding on with a white-knuckled grip as you process what's been said. Obi-Wan swears his heart stops at this knowledge. You had nearly died on this mission, and he would’ve been none the wiser until the report came through or someone contacted the Temple. Despite the clear despair written in his eyes, you mush onward, “Before the fighting outbreak happened, I was approached by some locals and they started talking to me about their lives on their home planet. One thing they kept bringing up was their ‘great loves’ who had fought in battles prior and died,” you pause, choosing your words carefully before continuing, “They explained that their people believe everyone falls in love three times and that the last of these is our greatest love.”

Despite not knowing where you’re going with this, he responds with a quiet “Oh?” to let you know that he’s still listening. 

“And they told me that each love is special. They have different purposes or meanings, I guess. The first is infatuation and idealism. The second, hard and hurting. The third, everlasting…all-consuming…,” again, you pause, “It got me thinking.”

“About?” Obi-Wan asks.

“You,” you state plainly, simply, as if the answer was right there the whole time. You can’t help but smile at him as you continue, “You may be the only man I’ve ever truly loved, but I know that you are my greatest love. And if I were to ever die, I don’t want you to doubt for a second how much I love you or how you mean everything to me.”

It’s as if you’ve punched all the air out of his lungs, and he can’t help but stare at you in disbelief. Sometimes he is jarred by the mere presence of you and how effortlessly you can use your words. He never fails to be in awe over how even the everyday words which fall from your lips seem to turn into pure poetry to his ears. And every time you tell him you love him it’s without hesitation. It’s bold but heartfelt, as if you’re simply stating a fact known by all and not dropping a bombshell that could get both of you kicked out of the Order without a second thought.

That’s one of the many things he loves about you: the way you are so attuned with your feelings and how you use them to your benefit, instead of your demise. You grow from your love, and you’ve taught him how to grow alongside you. How to appreciate the little things. How to be unafraid of this tender, precious thing between you two. Privately, he thinks loving you even makes him a better Jedi, but he has yet to say this aloud. You have completely turned his life upside down and while he was afraid at first, he is no longer scared and relishes in every gentle touch, whispered word, and longing glance sent his way by you.

Though he may be the Negotiator, Obi-Wan always finds himself tongue-tied at your sweet and loving gestures, but he’s come to learn that the best way to express his feelings to you when words aren’t enough is through action. And so, as he stares deeply into your eyes, he can feel tears welling up in his own as overwhelming emotion courses through him. He releases his grip on your hands to pull you close and kiss you, his own hands shaking as he caresses your face.

When the two of you finally do part, he swipes quickly at his cheeks before catching your eye again.

“And you are my greatest love,” Obi-Wan whispers, as if scared to break this moment between the two of you with anything louder. “You have… stolen my heart. Words cannot describe all that I feel for you, my darling.” A deep breath. “But I know with absolute certainty that I love you more than anything else.”

A couple tears escape your eyes and you lean forward, leaning your forehead against his as you both breathe together, absorbing this moment for as long as you can. A few beats later, the kettle finally goes off and the two of you pull back and turn your heads in sync to stare at it before sharing a laugh. Obi-Wan gets up from your side and places a soft kiss on your forehead before going to retrieve the screaming kettle.

As he pours the water into your tea cups, he can’t help but spare a quick glance at you on the couch. You’re looking at him this time. He feels his heart stutter in his chest and his cheeks turn a light pink at the look of absolute love and fondness that you send him. It’s an image he wants nothing more than to have ingrained in his head, a treasured memory to turn to when it looks like the chips are down and he stares at death in the face. Something happy and cherished and beloved to think of before he passes, should that time ever come like he fears it will during the Clone Wars.

And stay with him it does, but instead of it being something he thinks of fondly, it haunts him as he stews in his regret and heartache.

It’s all he can think about tonight as the wind blows in the cold night as he sits alone in the dunes of Tatooine, darkness clouding his vision and an inky blackness covering all feelings within him aside from the residual numbness. He has only been here on Tatooine for a brief period of time—a couple weeks, maybe a month, he can’t remember anymore—but he finds that the days bleed together on this godforsaken planet.

He’s haunted by the faces of those he once held close. A young Anakin hopping aboard the ship alongside Qui-Gon, bright eyed and eager to go to Coruscant and become a Jedi. Padme standing in her office discussing with him the senatorial address she was preparing, the bright sun illuminating her silhouette, giving her an ethereal glow. The voices of his men, the very clones who betrayed the Republic and the Jedi, teasing at his ears when he first wakes up as if he’s back on his ship surrounded by them.

But it’s you who haunts him the most. Unlike Anakin, Padme, his men, and those who he found at the Temple before he went into hiding here, he has no idea if you survived Order 66. He’s tried reaching out in the Force several times, hoping against all hope that you’d be reaching out for him as well, but he’s only met with emptiness. Silence. His own fear.

Although you’re no longer by his side, he swears visions of you follow him, haunting him like a ghost. He’ll be going about his day only to have his eye play tricks on him when he looks off into the distance, telling him that you’re there, you’re alive, you’re going to stay with him, but once he rubs his eyes you disappear. Or similarly, he dreams at night that none of this happened and he’s still on Coruscant, you tucked in his arms, only to wake up to a bed that was cold from the very moment he laid in it.

It’s the small memories of you that echo at him the loudest. Your smile, big and gorgeous when laughing at some awful joke he made in the early hours of the morning as you cuddled in bed before one of you took off for the day. Your eyes, twinkling in the night, impossibly brighter than any of the stars in the galaxy, as you excitedly tell him about something new you learned or witnessed that utterly fascinated you. Your tender hands playing at the edge of his mind as he recalls the absolute adoration and love that you two shared when thrown in the pits of passion.

You may be alive for all he knows, but he grieves you nonetheless. He’s not sure if this pain will ever go away—if it can ever go away—but he can’t help but ask for forgiveness from you every time he thinks of you. Forgiveness that he lives and you most likely are gone. His apologies are coated by sorrow that you were killed and utter regret that he couldn’t protect you better.

He thinks your words from that night haunt him the most: You may be the only man I’ve ever truly loved, but I know that you are my greatest love. You were undoubtedly his greatest love...he only wishes he could’ve conveyed that better. Oh the irony of you being worried that he didn’t fully understand your love for him when now it’s him who worries if you truly understood the depth of his feelings towards you. That very worry seizes at his chest and causes tears to well up in his eyes more often than he’d like.

But here in the dark night on Tatooine, he allows the tears to fall freely. He stares up at the stars that always paled in comparison to you and whispers out into the silent night, hoping that maybe somehow through the Force you’re listening.

“How incredibly lucky I was to love and be loved by you.”

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

we’re partners in this.

so titans 2.12 was mostly about (awkwardly) moving pieces around to get them in place for a grand finale. it was great! but also awkward. but great! let’s talk about it, if you don’t mind:

SPOILERS ahead.

1. i apologise for going off on a tangent right off the bat, but i just had this weird bit of insight about this show’s universe and it’s kind of hilarious. so you know those clickbaity articles about titans fucking up its worldbuilding by having its characters be so blase about protecting their superhero identities? (screenrant and cbr have inundated my newsfeed. oh good lord the pain. the agony.) maybe that’s just how It’s Meant To Be. batman and robin have been around for at least a decade and a half; the big bat’s likely been around for longer. the justice league is a sophisticated organisation with connections, representation and influence on worldly affairs. no doubt there has been countless battles and alien invasions--to the point where superheroes have become so ingrained in public life that their identities are semi-public knowledge but Nobody Gives A Shit. it’s like asking folks about their local legislators--people are aware that they exist and perform a Function in society and that a minimal amount of research would reveal who they are, but most aren’t keen on/interested in doing that. as a result, keeping up a secret identity isn’t the priority it used to be. and That’s Fine! the titans universe is its own beast with its own internal mechanics and as long as it’s internally consistent, let it deviate from its comic origins as much as it wants to.

oh typical emmram, i can hear you say. scrambling for explanations to excuse careless writing and plot holes. well, dear Strawman I Just Made Up, you may be partially right--there was a time when i would’ve waved my ‘the author is dead’ flag, but (i like to think) i’ve matured since then. but also: have you considered that plot holes aren’t really plot holes if you can successfully use what’s been established about a story’s universe to explain them away and that it’s significantly more fun? 

with this background in mind, i can appreciate more than ever that titans plays out more like an intense, soapy family drama (with perhaps higher stakes than your average soap). this was never a show about a bunch of disparate heroes coming together and finding purpose in order to defeat a common enemy. this was always about a bunch of kids who grew up in a world where vigilantism and superheroing and magic and alien invasions are just an accepted part of life, and the deeply dysfunctional ways they keep coming together and pinballing away, over and over again. there’s no point where each of the characters have definitely Gotten Over Their Issues so they can all gather together to defeat the big bad; it’s why this late in the game we can have rachel looking for people to connect to and relate with that aren’t a series of adults who claim to protect her but only keep her in the dark; hank at the bottom of a self-destructive spiral; dick barely picking himself up from rock bottom, and kory falling apart at the seams. 

so anyway, that’s it on this edition of Emmram Tries To Give A Grand Unifying Theory of Titans; let’s move on to the actual episode.

2. rose’s story could’ve been so good, you guys. actually you know what, scratch that (she types, on a computer while having 20+ years’ experience in knowing how to use the backspace key), it’s a great story that got muddled in the process of the show trying to tell a number of great stories all at once. this season has been inexorably building up to dick grayson becoming nightwing, using his unreliable narration to build up suspense as we see him battle personal hangups and the fallout from literal decades of trauma to gain a sense of equilibrium and a renewal of purpose (it can be argued that even now, on the cusp of actually putting on that dang costume, he hasn’t really learned anything--but i’ll get to that later). if this is the main story that this season is trying to tell, then taking two gigantic detours for episode-long flashbacks and building up to jericho’s death as much as they did makes perfect sense. it also makes sense to set slade up as a foil to dick, in that they are both caught up in their heads and make self-absorbed decisions to protect their ‘children’ but dick comes through with the realisation that that’s a crock of bullshit. 

but that’s not the case, is it? there are so many things going on at once but they’re all orbiting around this throughline of ‘dick becoming nightwing’ and so we only get the barest glimpses of some relatively complex character motivations and development going on with the others. 

2.25. in this episode’s flashback (we’re still getting flashbacks! in literally the penultimate episode of the season! god i have never wanted to take a red pen to anything more) we come to a number of weighty realisations: the extent of rose’s powers, her feelings of otherness, her desire to connect with her father so that she doesn’t feel alone in her otherness, how desperate she is to connect with him--so much so that she’s willing to throw away her entire life and undergo physical mutilation in service of his revenge plan--and how...learning exactly how her brother died and... being with jason??? made her change her mind??? ok that last one’s a bit muddled, but i’ll try and make sense of it.

as far as i can see, there are four big turning points in rose’s story so far:

a) that moment in the car when slade invites rose to join him and reveals that he’s basically been funding her ‘normal’ middle class life till that point. i can imagine how destabilising that realisation might be to rose, and why she might think going along with slade, no matter how weird and how abrupt, is how she’s going to live a life true to who she is

b) but imagine actually being taken in by the titans, being given shelter and support and succour by a group that her father had described as ruthless and manipulative. i can imagine her still being on board with slade’s plan, but maybe the reason she didn’t do all that she could’ve possibly done while at the tower to sabotage the titans might be because she’s actually interacting with these people, and while they might be a Hot Mess, they aren’t actively cruel or vindictive. i wish the show had woven in more scenes of rose interacting with the others, of her learning intimate things about their pasts, of her bonding with the younger titans’ struggle with their own ‘freakish’ natures. rose hardly seems to have any presence at all after her intro episode, and that’s a pity.

c) dick’s confession about what actually happened with slade and jericho. it’s more complicated than she was lead to believe--her father was actually complicit in her brother’s death. it’s a very confusing moment for rose, who’s already (probably) feeling the first stirrings of guilt, unsure, really, about her devotion to the father and brother that she’s known only for a little longer than the titans themselves, and slowly coming to the sick realisation that slade used her as a pawn in his game against the titans. 

d) jason latching onto rose is understandable--he saw her as the only person making the effort to connect with him when he was feeling vulnerable and rejected by almost everybody else. jason practically bleeds a need for connection and acceptance. i don’t think rose anticipated that jason would come with her, or be as attached to her as he is--but she sees in him a sensitive and struggling soul baring his heart to her, and in herself the kind of deception and secrecy that she’d originally wanted to rebel against. so she finally comes clean with him, and thinks they should help the titans against her father.

i mean. i might be making some assumptions (actually i’m making a lot of assumptions, to be fair), but i’m just trying to work with what the show’s given us, which is... not insubstantial, but haphazard enough that it’s easy to forget that rose exists sometimes. 

3. i fell asleep right after watching this episode for the first time, and apparently at some point before actually sleeping i appear to have had some kind of Great Insight about it because in the notes app on my phone i typed in “dick bruce concept of justice” with no further explanation.

i’ve spent the better part of this evening trying to retrace my train of thought, and i think it went like this: essentially, i was curious that dick was so broken up about jericho dying that he banished himself to a five year long lonely journey to seek penance that ended with him voluntarily getting himself arrested, but didn’t seem all that cut up about zucco dying or basically ordering the deaths of the scientists at the asylum in 1.07. betraying jericho and the older titans’ trust in him is a far greater burden on him than being responsible for the death of people who have wronged him or hurt the people he loves. but this is also a man who has internalised batman’s mission and ethos for the better part of his life, so he can’t actually come out and admit that. instead the two things come together to form one conclusion: he killed jericho, and he must be punished for it. 

(i also imagine locking himself away in prison was a result of growing up under the influence of batman--who responded to trauma by embarking on rigorous, brutal, solitary journey of penance and extreme self-discipline. batman doesn’t ask for help. batman goes to the batcave and rides it out.)

so when dick finally breaks himself out of jail, it isn’t because he’s come to a great realisation about his self-destructive behaviour (although he’s aware of it on some subconscious level); it’s because he realised the thing he was punishing himself for didn’t actually happen. he hasn’t really learnt a lesson. to be fair, he would need some pretty intensive therapy to untangle the things running through his head, so it seems quite believable that this is the way he gets back on his feet in time to be nightwing.

4. i know people think that the conversation between rachel and kory was awkward, and uh, it kinda was a little bit, but it makes sense that they can talk like that to each other. rachel wants to protect dick but feels confident enough with kory to lash out at her; kory is unafraid to be vulnerable or sad around rachel which just feeds into the trust that rachel has in kory. i don’t know, i thought that conversation was a nice way to both re-establish this dynamic and give some insight into what kory’s feeling.

5. god, mercy graves--a family woman!--tenderly wiping the blood off gar’s chin after having turned him into her own personal killing machine is just... so unsettling on so many levels.

5.5. it continues to KILL me that gar had so much faith in the titans right up to the very moment he had his fucking skull opened up and his brains messed with against his will: an undeserving loyalty to a family who took his easygoing acceptance of their shitty treatment of him at face value and essentially threw him to the wolves. how do you even start recovering from this? i feel like we’ve gone past the point where a few heart-to-hearts could help.

6. man, hank spiralling the way he did was too brutal to be anything but deeply uncomfortable. i’m sure the teenager who bought hank’s suit from him was supposed to inspire hank and remind him of his place and purpose as a titan, but it came off as kind of a cruel joke. hank has been putting his body out on the firing line over and over and over again, and his lesson is to be told that he isn’t putting himself out there enough? yikes.

7. stu and lily and their collective disdain for dick grayson’s drama are my new favourite characters on the show and deserve their own damn spin-off. MAKE IT HAPPEN DC