#Possibly worst Forge fan ever

[stormandforge]

Me, still trying to understand what "technopath" actually means

[macaroni-rascal]

You know how I said that man would inevitably disappoint me? Well holy fucking shit if this isn't the only time he's ever delivered, and in the worst possible way. There won't be any CanNats fashion takes from me if he dares show his face there because I don't intend on watching. His blatant disregard for every human being he's ever come across is downright psychopathic and it's been filling me with rage for days. I can't imagine what that poor woman has gone through, carrying the trauma all these years, while watching him soar in his career and get praise, support and love from the blissfully unaware. I'm so sorry she went through that and I'm happy for her that she felt healed enough to expose him.

That said, Skate Canada wouldn't be Skate Canada if it did anything right. It's failed test after test, each of increasing difficulty, each time hiding behind a "due process" that is conveniently designed to fail survivors. But the sheer spinelessness it's been displaying in this case is such a low point, it's limbo dancing in hell. What baffles me is that it isn't even trying to cover its own ass, and I don't even know if it comes from hubris or sheer ineptitude and passivity. Even if it has no procedural recourse, the fact that no one, especially IAM, has had the cojones to go up to this fool and tell him in no uncertain terms that he won't be going anywhere next week is baffling to me. Their lack of self-preservation in this case should be studied by psychopathologists. I've felt for some time now that IAM has been losing its moral compass, but I was torn to shreds for voicing this opinion online, because this is apparently a lot of skating fans' emotional support coaching team. But they're human, and fallible, and in this case, they seem to be dying on a hill that's barely even a mound and it's bananas to witness. They so easily could've claimed an injury, announced a retirement and bounced, but they went to the GPF regardless, and their coaches at the very least went along with it, despite the fact that they were simultaneously screwing over another one of their teams in the process, in this case AlliSaul. I've long advocated against the disease that is skatingitis, which is the condition of not being able to see anything outside of skating, with the most severe case ever being Aljona. But how does this level of loss of perspective even happen? How far does one's head need to be up one's ass not to be able to read the fucking room to this extent? Are they truly that arrogant to think they can just show up at Nationals like it's nbd? At the very least, the other competitors don't deserve this shit to cast a pall over their event, which for many will be the last of the season.

I also can't help but think about how he inserted himself into Lolo's life, pursued her relentlessly despite her having a bf at the time, and he's now passed like a tornado through it, probably leaving her wondering what the hell it was all for. And the callous way he's treated her over the years, even calling her "a nobody" in the retelling of the tale of their tryout and decision to skate together, as if he is in any position to look down upon her. He had the right idea that time when he stabbed himself with a knife he himself had forged. How poetic, he should turn it into a hobby.

They weren't kissy at the GPF but she still made the decision to attend this event with him and pretend everything was hunky-dory, nothing to see here, business as usual. I understand wanting one last hurrah, but if this is a case of a trauma bond or codependency or whatever, why is nobody on her team looking out for her well-being? Why is nobody putting a foot down? What on earth do they think is going to happen? He's basically comicbook villain levels of vile. And to also think of all the collateral damage he's caused in the form of talented skaters quitting because he showed up to skate for Canada and they felt like there was no room for them to move up? Hell, Caro and Shane switched fucking countries at great personal expense and by all accounts Skate Canada made them pass through the Devil's Anus to do it, and now to watch it cower and dodge responsibility when it comes to something so fucking major? Seriously, when will there be a reckoning for Skate Canada? It's been losing the plot for a long ass time, doing clown shit even in a court of fucking law (thank god for that judge, though). What needs to happen? Does Sheldon Kennedy need to roll up there and bitch-slap some sense into them? What is the hold this raggedy-ass, good-for-nothing, held-togehter-with-paperclips, manbun-for-personality violent rapist have over them? He's done. Why go down with the ship? It's all disgusting and infuriating and disappointing and scary. All of these people have the integrity of an H&M t-shirt that falls apart after a single wash as far as I'm concerned. But I know nothing will change unless we hit them where it hurts, which is why I'll be contacting their sponsors, and I urge others to do so as well, because skating has been an amoral system for far too long and the victims are too many at this point, and clearly nobody cares about them. Something's gotta give. Anyway, I wish Marjo and Zak a very 4CC medal and Corpse Bride a good time at Worlds, amen amen amen.

Posted without comment because I have nothing to add, you've said it all.

[judas-is-so-so-silly]

13 and 24 because I choose ultimate violence 😈

Doing this for Ghost because I have opinions

Worst blorbo-ification - TOBIAS FUCKING FORGE. HE IS AN ACTUAL PERSON AND SOME PPL TREAT HIM AND HIS IMAGE SO WEIRDLY. Not to mention his children are on the internet and fucking SEE WHAT PPL SAY ABT HIM. For the love of god we can make jokes and say "oh yea hes an attractive guy" and say a lot of other NOT CREEPY things about him, but theres a point where it just comes off as weird.

Other than that for actual characters I would say Primo because he was a menace and there isnt enough gremlin representation of him. He used to pee on his ghouls, bros silly as hell and I only ever see him as either hot and sexy (true) or sweet old man (not true). He would be the most fun old man on earth PLEASE I NEED GREMLIN PRIMO REP

What topic brings up the most rancid discourse - the fact that the band is temporary. Literally all of the members (including tf) WILL NOT BE IN THE BAND FOREVER. BANDS BREAK UP AND STOP MAKING MUSIC. And tf is what 43 now? Hes not gonna be able to perform how we know it forever (I obviously hope he is willing and able to perform as long as possible) and there might be a different front man/woman eventually.

Ok but actual fandom talk I dont think a lot of ghost fans realize how old certain ages are and that some age gaps are only hot in concept. Of course all of the papas are smoking hot but let's be fr for a second(o), they probably struggle with old people things a lot more than we talk abt. Ofc you can make hcs and it's all fictional so you can do whatever I just think the fact that the papas are old isnt explored enough and when it is ITS SO AMAZING AGH.

[icannotgetoverbirds]

Severe fucking content warning

Content warning for literal fucking torture and abuse. everything else should be tagged. If I miss any content warnings please for the love of all that is holy tell me so I can fix it.

Psychological torture. Those are the words bouncing around my head this morning.

Did you know that sleep deprivation and social isolation are often considered to be tied for the worst tortures known to humankind?

Let me give you some more context. When I left mormonism, I lost everything in regards to my social safety net. Mormonism and my mormon friends and family were all I had.

It's by design, too; how is someone supposed to leave if their only safety net disappears when they do? Why would they even consider leaving if that safety net holds them perfectly because they can conform?

But when you can't conform, you fall through the cracks. As I did.

I didn't just lose everything, though. I didn't stop there. I also gained a neighborhood full of watchdogs who I was sure would herd me back to the cult at the first opportunity.

Going outside on foot was no longer an option - if any of my many mormon neighbors saw me, they would have Questions. If I gave any worrying answers, there was bound to be Visits. I wasn't strong enough to handle that.

Besides, I lived in suburban hell. Fifteen minutes just to get out of the neighborhood on foot, another fifteen to get to the nearest gas station. My depressed, broke self wasn't about to spend an hour walking for a round trip to the fucking gas station when I could barely handle doing my own laundry.

So I was trapped inside the house unless my parents or someone else with a car deigned to bring me with them on a trip. But it was fine at first, because I had an internet connection and multiple online friends; plus, I'd managed to forge one irl friendship with someone between deconverting and graduating high school.

My parents weren't happy about this for some reason (I have a working theory as to why and I'll get to it later). Their justification was that it was just generally bad for me to be spending as much time online as I was.

Of course, I wasn't doing great mentally, but they refused to believe that they could be at fault for that with their "mild" transphobia. Surely refusing to accept my newfangled, sinful identity on the basis of a false moral high ground couldn't possibly be the most significant source of my suffering; surely deadnaming and misgendering me couldn't be doing that much damage.

Surely refusing to assist the transitioning process in any way shape or form couldn't be a good enough reason for suicidal ideation. Surely I was just an undermedicated psycho for considering lighting myself on fire just to get them to understand my pain enough to... help me with the process of buying a binder with my own money.

Surely I just needed to get my act together and get over myself.

So, ever since that psych ward visit that treated me better than they did, they decided that I could only have internet access if I did enough of my chores around the house.

Doesn't sound too unreasonable until you remember that 99% of my friends were online. I tried telling them this, and their response was to encourage me to get back in touch with my old ward member friends. You know, from the cult I had just escaped. That, granted, my parents were still very much a part of.

(Remember that theory I was telling you about? That little tidbit is an important piece of evidence.)

So I was cut off from the world with significant regularity, having nothing but a flip phone to contact the one supportive friend whose phone number I had. That friend kept me alive and sane enough to stay that way for nearly a year as this hell dragged on.

At some point, my brother and his girlfriend moved back in with us. I guess they weren't a fan of all the sinning I was doing, because my parents had multiple talks with me about how I needed to give them more space (aka stop existing in the same room as them).

So, eventually, I was all but confined to my bedroom, since I could never sit them down to have a conversation about what times I was allowed to be downstairs and what times they would be occupying that space.

This all built up to the breaking point. I had just developed a new medical condition that left me basically bedbound in pain. I was forced out of bed anyways, because nobody was going to take care of me (probably due to the nature of the condition being considered 'sinful'). I did what I could as I could, as I always have.

There had been a misunderstanding about chores. My brother and his girlfriend were in charge of one bathroom, i was in charge of the other. Except I thought I was in charge of the wrong one. So while the downstairs bathroom stayed clean (despite me not doing much to maintain it), the upstairs bathroom became absolutely filthy.

It all came to a head when my brother yelled at me to take care of my responsibility. I finally figured out what had happened and explained to him why I hadn't been doing it, as well as why I wasn't about to start until I could actually, you know, stay standing for any significant amount of time. He yelled at me more and threatened to tell our mom.

I told him to go ahead, as any rational person would take one look at the situation and agree that I needed to rest. My only mistake was assuming that my mom retained any rationality for me.

So she called me and attempted to chew me out. mind you, i was ill and in debilitating pain already, so I put my foot down and asked her to save it for later. But I knew what was coming when she said we were going to "have a conversation" when she got home. She was going to take away my flip phone to force me to do as I was told.

My flip phone, 99% of the use for which was to call my one and only friend that i could access. My one and only friend who was the sole support in my life. The only person, the only thing keeping me sane.

That was going to be it for me. If she did that (and she'd done it before, so there was precedent), I was going to fucking kill myself.

So I locked her out of my room that night and tried to get a good night's rest in preparation for what would have to happen in order for me to survive.

At about 4 in the morning the next day, I packed up everything that i could carry and i walked out the door.

Every single thing I have been through since that day has been worth it to get out of that hell. I am still homeless over a year later and the only thing I wish I did different was to leave sooner and prepare better. Maybe get a nice duffel bag and do my laundry first instead of hauling all my dirty clothes in trash bags. I could've saved myself a lot of trouble by getting my documents together beforehand.

anyways. Befoer I came out as trans and not a mormon, my mother seemed fully supportive - or at least, like she was supporting me as much as she was capable of doing.

Afterwards? She never looked at me the same way again.

And so I have to wonder how two changes to my identity and lifestyle could wrench her away from kindness like that. How they could possibly cause such a significant change in how she treated me.

Here's the working theory.

Mormons prey on vulnerable people. Their missionaries are literally told to seek out the meek and weary and poor to "give them rest." This is also how they bring people back - they find out which inactive members are struggling without their safety net (which they often remove for the sin of inactivity/deconversion/etc) and those are the ones that they grasp at to try and bring back. Those are the ones that they reach out to, that they check in on.

So, how better to take advantage of someone's vulnerability than to make them vulnerable yourself? How better to make them vulnerable than to take away all of their safety nets? How better to tear them from their sin than to tear their sinful friends from them?

How better to break an apostate than to back them into a corner and bring in the walls? How better to turn someone towards your god than to give them no other choice except to be crushed?

And if they'd rather die than return to Jesus, well, then, at least you're sending them straight to the afterlife. Then they'll HAVE to see the truth. Then they'll HAVE to repent.

After all, all my mother needs to do to keep our family together forever is to keep me righteous. She already gave me a body. What loss is the rest of my life compared to the rest of eternity?

Better to die young than to live in sin. Better to be forced to come to Jesus than to choose to live free of him.

She wasn't a bumbling fool incapable of listening to me when I told her she was hurting me. She knew exactly what she was doing.

She abused me, TORTURED me, entirely on purpose. Entirely for the purpose of bringing me back to her god.

I have been tortured. I have experienced psychological torture. I probably have fucking brain damage from said psychological torture.

https://solitarywatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/SW-Fact-Sheet-5-Neurological-Effects-v230613.pdf

So, all that said, is it any wonder that I thought the streets would be better? Is it any wonder that I never want to see her again unless it's to use her grave as a gender neutral bathroom?

She nearly killed me. I think that was an acceptable outcome to her, too.

Certainly, the last thing she expected was for me to put my back to one wall and my feet to another and clamber out of that trap she made. Should've put a roof on it, I guess.

Anyways. If it seems like I've been less online/chipper than usual, it's because I've spent the past week coming to terms with this shit.

I love you all so, so much. Thanks for being there for me. Here's to staying alive; to escaping the trap; to finding our own families and leaving our abusers behind in the dust.

Here's to all of you. Y'all were worth the trouble of being homeless, easily.

[sapphire-weapon]

I can't say how long it's been this bad with A/eons bullying and harassing people who ship anything but A/eon [I've been in and out of the fandom over the past few years, but after RE4R, I got hyperfixated on RE so I've engaged more with the fandom lately than I ever have in the past], but coming from fandoms outside of RE (where what ship is endgame doesn't matter), I feel like at least a good 95% of the bully A/eon shippers came from those outside fandoms too where canon endgame ships seem to have more bearing on that media's quality than what the relationships in RE have. For example, Stranger Things is about one of the WORST fucking places for ship wars I've ever seen because the narrative of that show puts a lot more importance on character relationships and whether or not they'll work out than Resident Evil does. People in that fandom are used to fighting for their lives in ship wars over what ship should be the canon endgame for each character because they stress the importance of relationships and community between characters in that show so much. So I feel like it's possible that some of the newer A/eon shippers could've come from fandoms like that where they think they have to fight for their life for the endgame ship, because that vibe just feels so similar between fandoms. A/eon and Cl/eon are the new Twilight love triangle it seems. But regardless, it's no excuse for them at all to bully fans who don't ship A/eon (I've seen them bully some Cl/eons off of Twitter before even and now finding any content for that ship is so scarce over there these days). And I feel like with Death Island coming up, another piece of RE media like Infinite Darkness where Leon and Claire are present in the same location together and Ada is no where in sight and hasn't been since RE6 [aside from the remakes], it feels like they're losing some false hope for A/eon being an endgame ship when Capcom isn't about the romances in RE for the most part in the first place.

This has been going on since 1998 and I'm not joking.

And you know what other huge video game fandom was in vogue in 1998? Final Fantasy VII, which has the nastiest ship war in all of video game fandom history that still goes on to this day. Old Guard Aeon fandom was forged in the fires of ship wars, and they are stuck in their ways and will never, ever change.

You might think it's bad now, but you have absolutely no idea how bad Aeon vs Cleon actually was back in the day. You literally could not engage with the fandom as a Leon fan at all without taking a side. Those were your only two options. And, for someone like me, who didn't really fucking care about either of them, it was so, so exhausting.

There was no Leshley. There was no Chreon. There was no Serrennedy. Those were not options that were available to you. In fact, Resident Evil fandom (and survival horror fandom in general lbr) was actually very homophobic for a very long time until RE5 turned Chris Redfield into a gay icon with two of his alternate costumes (1, 2), and all of the gays finally started flooding in and saving this fandom from itself.

So, pre-RE5, you were either Team Aeon or you were Team Cleon and you kept your fucking mouth shut if you liked anything else, because you would get booted the fuck out of communities on LiveJournal if you mentioned it -- and, back then? That's all there was. You didn't have tumblr AND twitter AND tiktok AND whatever the fuck else. Fandom lived on LiveJournal. Period.

And don't misunderstand me. Back in the day, Cleon fandom was just as batshit crazy as Aeon fandom is today. I feel like Cleon fandom has mostly chilled the fuck out these days because the vast majority of them have accepted by this point that they lost the war, but back in the mid aughts? Oh, dear god, they were insufferable and just as cult-like.

Degeneration poured so much gasoline on the fire that RE4 started, especially when the director of that movie, when asked why Ada wasn't in it, responded with "She cannot be in everything."

And then Darkside Chronicles happened and made it SO MUCH WORSE because Aeon fans were pissed off that Claire was Leon's co-op partner for the RE2 campaign, and then Cleon fans were pissed off because the Leon/Ada kiss happened, and I just.

Seriously thank god for every single person who started playing these games solely because they wanted to take Chris to pound town. They are the real, true heroes of this fandom, and I am so, so, so, so grateful for them.

And, idk, maybe that's a huge part of the reason why Aeon fandom is still feeling so insecure -- because there was a fairly significant amount of time when it was possible that Capcom was going to tip the scales in favor of Cleon. Damnation and RE6 finally squashed that notion, and the ending of Infinite Darkness coup-de-grace'd it, but it was a real thing for many years.

And now with Leon/Ashley now also being a canon ship of sorts... all that shit is probably bubbling right back up to the surface. Because now, Aeon isn't The Only Canon Ship in Resident Evil anymore. Hell, Aeon isn't even the only canon ship for Leon anymore.

And after taking eighteen years of abuse and shaming and knowing just how nasty RE fandom can get, Leon/Ashley fandom better stay the fuck humble. I swear to god. Y'all motherfuckers just keep your fucking heads down and nod politely and say "Thank you, Mr. Capcom, for this wonderful gift." because no one in a million fucking years would have ever thought that we'd be the ones to become Leon's secondary canon ship.

And this next part isn't directed at you specifically, anon, but at all of my followers and especially the ones who've been contributing to the discussion tonight:

DO NOT fight with Aeon fandom, because I DO NOT want to see us become them -- or even become the second coming of Old Guard Cleon Fandom. Block them and let it go. I mean it.

[thestarlightforge]

I haven’t seen Velma yet, so I’m currently withholding judgment. But I fear the problem is not that it’s a bad show, but that Velma is not Devi Vishwakumar. (Or Dr. L.)

Now, I love Devi (and Never Have I Ever). She’s flawed, she’s loving, she really just needs to love herself—she’s so real. I also watched Mindy Project many moons ago, and I loved Dr. L, too. But Mindy Kaling lends herself towards these combative writing structures where characters’ flaws are often very, very on the surface and you have to dig for the good parts about them. Paxton H-Y was, it appeared, a womanizing a/hole. Trent was a lazy douchebag. Eleanor was a theatre stereotype and that’s it. Fab was a (probably autistic) closeted lesbian stereotype with no social skills. Ben was a rich, Hollywood-connected Jewish person (already a concerning bit of antisemitism) and a proud a/hole, lightly racist, rich smart boy stereotype. And then there’s Devi.

Once you spend some time with each of these characters, what makes them beautiful comes out. Paxton is a great brother, is tired of being constantly objectified, is a caring young dude and wants to be valued as a human being. Trent is one of the most oddly deep, philosophical dudes I’ve ever seen on TV. Eleanor has found some depth over the years. Fab had a fun, sweet coming out storyline, and then another with Aneesa where she learned to trust herself. Ben finally paid for his stress and his hubris, improved his relationship with his dad and friends, and is a much deeper guy now. Their friend group is much stronger for the turmoil it’s survived. Devi still has a long way to go, but she’s been through hell and learned a lot, too.

Kaling’s style works because, for the most part—Devi’s wheelchair moment being a horrible exception, and we breathe a sigh of relief she mostly abandoned that storyline because the research on how to do it elegantly was not there and it did not land—she knows the toys she’s playing with. She knows the tropes. So she knows how to upend them in interesting ways.

On the one hand, maybe people are right—maybe her style of storytelling doesn’t lend itself well to the Scooby Gang. But maybe, Mystery Incorporated fans are resistant to entertaining the possibility that Fred started off a lightly racist, misogynistic douchebag. Maybe the gang didn’t start off super close. Cartoons nowadays lend themselves to conflict, probably more so than when they were 90% marketed to kids, so theoretically, Mindy’s style of conflict-first should work. But people really love Fred, and Daphne, and Shaggy and Scoob. They remember them from the style of cartoon that dropped us into the middle of the story, when their emotional growth had happened already and their bonds were strong.

But maybe Fred got PTSD from Daphne getting kidnapped because they didn’t have a stellar relationship to start, but he realized how much of an ass he was and she came to be one of his favorite people. Maybe he became a golden retriever because he realized the error of his ways. Maybe they had such strong bonds in Incorporated because those bonds were forged with work and time and growth and change—and those are the best kinds of relationships, when they help each other grow into better people. We may be resistant to the Kaling way because it lays bare where our childhood heroes may have come from, and life is messier than the sweetness Incorporated served us. But isn’t it a good message, that even the worst douchebags can become how we remember Fred?

I don’t know. Like I said, I haven’t seen it yet. But it’s probably gonna give us lesbian Velma on screen for once, and Kaling is a pretty great writer, so I’m willing to give her a chance for at least a few episodes.

Okay, you can’t use Fred as the one to represent “awful, misogynistic, privileged white men” when that man was always a golden retriever of a human being.

In Mystery Incorporated, he cried because of how emotional he himself always is, he got instant PSTD in an episode where Daphane got kidnapped and for majority of the series, Daphane was just BEGGING for him to fuck her but he was oblivious and respected their friendship.

Shut up, Fred is a good boy.

[unohanadaydreams]

More discerning reading of the Bleach manga that is not at all deranged

So, absolutely canon that Isshin does not, in anyway, have real qualifications to run a clinic beyond *checks notes* basic battlefield first aid.

Urahara forged a certificate and made Isshin practice on gigai so no one would look to closely at it. This man learned by playing operation on fake corpses filled with Urahara Shoten candy.

What a weird ending to this flash back. The fact that Ryuken gets more time in this flashback then Masaki is criminal. I know letting women be genuinely impactful or important to the narrative is painful, but my god.

Also, so weird that Isshin even bothered to lie? What’s the point? Does she just not remember something being horribly wrong with her? Am I supposed to believe Ryuken didn’t spill the whole bag of beans to her or EVER see Masaki EVER again?

As though Masaki herself would allow that? Obviously she doesn’t love Ryuken romantically, but she does care for him and he was probably one of the only bearable parts of the Ishida household. You’re telling me a Kurosaki quit on someone?

Not to mention Urahara is too much of a troll to have let them go without mentioning what Isshin did while flittering his eyes around the room and beating his fan in little puffs like he’s saying some scandalizing gossip.

Here it is. The worst part of this arc. Aizen should’ve stayed responsible for Masaki’s death by doing experiments on Grand Fisher.

Not only does this crank back Ichigo’s development, but it is just so tacky!!!! The nazi imagery for the Quincies is clumsy and this is dumb. Especially when Yhwach goes on to strip the lives of his pure blood Quincy??? Also, the idea of an unclean Quincy is HILARIOUS when Yhwach can just bestow powers upon humans. He can just Make a Quincy pure Quincy.

Remember that one post I made about every villain having to do increasingly drastic things for Ichigo to play ball even though he supposedly is a character who is fighting them because of his own convictions?

It’s not enough that Yhwach is threatening the balance of the worlds and is going to collapse everything and almost killed his friends. He also killed Ichigo’s mom! Guess Ichigo’s heart is REALLY in the fight now!!!

*spits on this panel*

LMAOOOOOOO. I had assumed Mashiro stayed in the human world but this is AMAZING. I don’t remember this at all tbh.

Kensei rocked up to Yamamoto like “sure, I’ll come back to the institution that wanted to kill me because I wasnt a pure blooded shinigami anymore (I’m sorry I had to), BUT Mashiro has to be my super special girl still.”

Hisagi is truly living under the boot in every way possible. He is still doing all the work but is only a regular fukotaicho.

Also Hisagi having the confidence to tell Kensei he’s not allowed to bad mouth Tosen is amazing!!!! I’m sorry, my guy, but I can think of 1 extremely valid reason on why he does have the right.

First of all: Iba, you have no right to have the meatiest tits in the Seireitei, put those away before someone gets hurt.

Secondly, I’m pretty sure he would follow Komamura literally anywhere without asking, not just out of loyalty, but out of the idea that it’s unmanly to pry into another man’s business. He could be treading water in the middle of the ocean and only think to ponder after the first hour of kicking back sharks.

He is punching rocks outside of a suspicious cave and is just NOW questioning the turn of events. A true specimen.

I won’t mention Komamura or the the grandpappy dog because it’s disappointing and goes nowhere.

Akon is so committed to being cool and casual, when we all know that Mayuri would never give Akon the kind of leave time it would take for him to fully heal.

Also Akon himself knows very well this is the end of the world type shit and he’s certainly not going to be resting as it all escalates.

Why admit you are genuinely worried when you can just strut in claiming you missed the office.

These are genuinely so on brand and the fact that Akon can track how real shit is getting by whether or not Kurotsuchi is surveying them is so good.

Mayuri is the best unrelenting, neurotic creep to ever be a Captain because he is committed to macabre aesthetic and keeping horrifying close watch of Everyone in his division. Even Aizen wasn’t holding such a metaphoric gun to everyone’s head.

Akon 🤝 Mayuri, not having boundaries and deeming their curiosity and the act of discovery superior to acting conventional in almost any way. Akon is just more outwardly chill but his mind? ON.

Maggots nest men are just built different.

Genuinely can’t tell if he’s horrified or astounded here—probably both. Also I like how Kubo makes it clear that Kurotsuchi did a wardrobe change AFTER doing his funky experiments.

He spent half of those 24+ hours making his sunshine fit.

YEAH THIS IS WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT!!!! All these allusions and hints that Seireitei ending isn’t the world ending; just the end of Shinigami and how they operate. And that shinigami were also NOT the start!!!! That they are sitting on the bones of something they haven’t ever figured out how to contain. And this old dog is part of the leakage that still exists. No fucking wonder Aizen was so obsessed with evolution.

Like you can tell Kubo was so into this story line and wanted to expand on it because he started putting his whole pussy into the chapter name page when Komamura’s fight started whereas previous and a lot of subsequent ones were just blurry up close shots of a previous panel in the tybw arc.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

reading every article in my twitter likes part 3

part one part two

took a break to bake some cookies and read a few chapters of Darcie Little Badger's new YA novel, but now it's back to the grind. for those of you playing along at home, I've made it as far back as my likes from early November 2021.

article 41: "Twitter Is The Worst Reader" by noted Fonda Lee on the twitterish tendency to assume the worst of everyone - particularly women, people of color, and other marginalized folks - at all times. of particular note is this scathing observation of twitter mobs demanding apologies from the targets of their harassment: "Never in the history of Twitter have I ever seen an apology be accepted or actually reduce the abuse leveled. One hundred percent of the time, they are dissected for inadequacy and insincerity, held up as proof of the offender’s malicious intent all along, and used as kindling to further fan the flames."

pried from behind the cold and unforgiving paywall of the New York Times it's article 42: "The Mark Zuckerberg Aesthetic" by Amanda Hess. I'm so tired of this utterly banal cyberpunk dystopia. there's not even any neon. and I would rather swallow a live iguana than ever have to interact with Zuck's shitty little metaverse.

article 43: "We Were Too Stupid for Jennifer's Body" by twitter user @/SamFateKeeper. did NOT expect this to talk so much about post-9/11 conservatism but I love the journey I've been taken on.

anyway probably should have mentioned that we've crossed the line back into tweets from October 2021.

article 44: "Thackery Binx is not Trans Masc, Sorry, and Neither is Rufio, or the Concept of Jonathan Taylor Thomas" from Julian K. Jarboe's substack. what a buckwild analysis of... something? characters that transmasc dudes of a certain age tend to project onto? also just a fantastic series of digs at poor useless Thackery Binx.

article 45: "New roots: Black musicians and advocates are forging coalitions outside the system" by Jewly Hight at NPR (our first NPRticle!). incredibly exciting to discover so many of my faves in this article - Amythyst Kiah! Yola!! Lizzie No!!! - discussing the way they've fought for space in a genre so heavily dominated by white artists. also a lot of cool new names to know - go listen to Roberta Lea n o w.

you guys are not gonna believe this but article 46 is ANOTHER entry from Ijeoma Oluo's substack. this time it's "All Of the Outrage You Could Ever Want." it's about "cancel culture," it's about accountability, it's about hierarchies of perceived value, you know the drill.

article 47: back to BuzzFeed for another article by Scaachi Koul, "Emily Ratajkowski’s New Book Tests The Limits Of Self-Awareness." an unsurprising and very fair criticism of Ratajkowski's essay collection, which I am still very much looking forward to reading based on my great appreciation of her September 2020 essay in New York Mag about experiences with an exploitative photographer. I don't need to her to solve the conundrum of benefitting from her objectification; I'm content to pick a stranger's brain.

article 48: speaking New York Mag, we've got "You Can Still Say 'Woman' But You Shouldn't Stop There" by Irin Carmon. I've never in my life seen such an impressive collection of pissbaby justifications for refusing to use inclusive language to talk about reproductive rights. grow up lmao.

article 49: everyone stop sharing that fake Bible verse about how Jesus was transmasc and read this article by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg queering Joseph of the infamous technicolor dreamcoat.

article 50 (can you BELIEVE I've done 50 of these? 40 of which I've read over the course of a single Saturday?): the intriguingly titled "The Politics of 'Jewface'" by Rebecca Pierce at Jewish Currents. an almost undeservedly thoughtful response to some comments that, at a guess, Sarah Silverman did not think about for more than approximately 0.003 seconds before making.

[imposterogers]

I rlly like what they've done this episode and imo it's the best possible way they could've taken things post endgame. HOWEVER the problem to me will always be that steve's incomprehensible ooc ending has left everything after off kilter in a way that can't be put right without rewriting endgame. the way they've written bucky's feelings is well done and sam getting the shield is great but steve's gaping absence is undeniable. If he had died it would be like,,, a justifiable sense of offness? Like of course everything is weird if their friend was suddenly torn away from them but that isn't what happened the mf CHOSE to leave and apparently told them abt it beforehand. It's just unfixably wrong.

it’s really messed up to want your favorite character to have died but it would have made so much more sense? imo tony stark was the wrong character to kill off. he was already retired, and it would have been very easy to write around him. there was no major marvel project about his friends coming out. there was no reason a billionaire with a wife and kids and a business he can run from home would feel the obligation to continue being a superhero

steve on the other hand, pre endgame steve would never stop fighting as long as his body could allow it. even in the comics, when his body is aged to 90, he continues to fight. I’m not saying steve didn’t deserve a happy ending. because he did. but in my opinion nomad/fugitive steve was a content character. he had sam and nat by his side, he had bucky healing in wakanda. he had a family and a place in the 21st century that he had forged for himself. and he was fighting for what he believed in, not what the government told him he should believe in.

so I can see how this posed a problem, bc you want a show without steve focused on steve’s friends and learning to navigate the world without him. sending him back in time to an alt timeline was probably the worst possible choice. killing him (as emotional and sad as it would have been) would have forced this narrative without tainting/ruining his character and the relationships the character had. sam, being forced to navigate becoming cap alone. bucky, his anchor ripped away and finally experiencing what steve had already been thru twice—the death of his best friend.

how could they have done this? it’s very easy to imagine. steve hears sam’s voice in his ear. the battle ensues. but steve realizes the only way to end it is the gauntlet, and he knows it’s a suicide mission, but it wouldn’t be the first time. he jumps on the grenade and puts on the gauntlet. bucky rushes to his side. they both know he is dying. they exchange the same lines as what endgame actually gave us

steve: don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone

bucky, crying: how can I? you’re taking all the stupid with you

bucky: I’m going to miss you

steve, light slowly fading from his eyes: it’s going to be ok, buck....

(for all the st*ggy fans the fade out could have been steve dancing with peggy with fuzzy lighting, figuratively reunited)

how does sam become cap? WELL GET THIS!!! steve absolutely broken over the loss of his friends took to writing letters to them, and in one of them to sam, he writes how he always thought sam would be the best man for the job, and if he ever got the chance he’d pass the shield to him in a heart beat, and he regrets not doing it before it was too late

the beauty of it is that the show could have functioned almost exactly the same, just instead of having to remember the No Good Awful Thing steve did, they’d be genuinely mourning and learning to come to terms with his passing

[raina16]

There is no evidence he was anything but a good father. Not even the Oath. He didn't force any of his by then very much adult children to swear that Oath.

His 7 sons were all very much part of Noldor society. They had friends and were friends with their cousins, despite him having no love for his half siblings, he never stopped his sons from being close to their cousins. His sons were also all clearly encouraged in their own talents, of which they had a variety. While they had the above, he'd also spent plenty of quality time with them over the years as they spent time exploring Aman, something even their mother enjoyed for a long time(it's how she and Feanor met), so there is again, no evidence he lurked obsessively in his forges and only came to yell at them about their grades. Sounds like they hung out together and did fun things.

When they chose him, they chose him freely. If I recall correctly even when Maedhros and Maglor are talking about the Oath, near the end, they don't blame him for it or for their taking it. Most likely because they, unlike some Silm fans, know they were very much strong minded adults at the time and did it of their own free, if not entirely right thinking, will. They call it madness and it was their own as much as his. He's not responsible for theirs anymore than they are for his.

Don't forget they had their OWN reasons for feeling guilty about Finwe's death that would have led them to jump at taking the Oath, to do something, to have a goal. They were in Formenos and decided to go out riding which is why they weren't home. Sure they'd probably all be dead too but just like Feanor felt if only he could have been there instead of at the Valar's stupid party he could have maybe saved his father, his sons most likely felt if only they'd not gone out riding maybe they could have saved their grandfather.( I always thought that would be an interesting "what if?" What if they hadn't gone riding? What if Melkor had wiped out his father *and* his sons? I don't think he'd need to fight half a dozen Balrogs for half a day to spontaneously combust upon hearing that news. I've not yet come across a fanfic about what if they'd all been killed.)

Frankly even if you take the most negative view possible of the years from his exile until his death, that's an extremely tiny percentage of his life and his time as a father. It would be like if you had a parent who had been, while imperfect as all people are, encouraging and loving to you all your life and then when you were 35 they went off the deep end and died a year later after having done terrible things. It doesn't even come close to making them a bad parent and negating everything good they did raising you and frankly if you decided to join them, that's very much on you by that age, you had the tools to choose otherwise and chose not to.

Feanor's sons were not by any means isolated. They'd lived long years among their people and their people's various opinions. They're choices and opinions were their own.

Actual evidence suggests they chose Feanor because they loved him and they loved him because he loved them for who they were. There is little to no evidence otherwise but definitely evidence supporting that view(again their friendships with their cousins, their wide variety of talents, which show they had freedom and encouragement).

Oh and that whole "took no counsel ever except occasionally Nerdanel" is clearly not true. The writers of this tale are contradicting themselves. Lol It even says the reason he turned back at the Helcaraxe was because he took counsel. Meaning him and other advisors talked about it and decided it would be a very very bad idea to try to cross it. And that's him during his "worst" years, taking counsel.

[hyenahunt]

Conquest: Epilogue - 1

Writer: Akira

Season: Spring

Proofreading: royalquintet (JP & ENG)

Translation: hyenahunt & haranami 

Nagisa: …I have still yet to become God, so all I’m able to do is sing and dance atop this stage and hope I bring even the smallest amount of happiness to everyone’s lives.

[Location: Conquest Stage]

Ibara: (At long last, the big day is finally upon us.)

(After the incident, Eve went on what can only be described as a rampage…)

(And, as per His Excellency’s orders, Adam carried out a vast array of jobs and a countless number of performances to keep up with them.)

(Consequently, His Excellency — who’s now gotten a taste for this “God Mode” or such — declared on TV that he would “expel” Jun and I as well if we didn’t obey him…)

(Amongst other inflammatory statements.)

(I was planning on following his every command, anyways; there was no need for him to resort to threats.)

(Although, I have devised a plan that would allow me to break away if worse came to worst…)

(But that will be much more difficult to execute now that he’s made such a grand, public declaration.)

(Aghhh, he’s so infuriating. What on earth is he planning? Why has he chosen to behave in such an unhinged manner—)

Nagisa: …Fufu. This is fun, Ibara.

…I was always jealous. To me, it seemed like you were the only one who got to do what you wanted.

Ibara: Saying that I was “the only one” doesn’t quite reflect reality.

Those ES idols have been following their every whim lately — Trickstar especially, although this can even apply to His Eminence Eichi now.

Nagisa: …Yes. What was it that they did… “Tempest Fest”? That looked like lots of fun as well.

…It seemed like a very important event to Eichi-kun, or perhaps the entirety of fine . So naturally, I wasn’t able to join at the last minute.

…Not even those who found the event pointless would enjoy watching someone ruin it with a smile on their face, after all.

Ibara: Yes, it’s exactly as you say.

In fact, I’m sure that the reason His Highness Hiyori was so enraged after hearing this plan was because he felt that his bond with you was being severed for the sake of mere entertainment.

It’s aaaall about feelings… Every last one of you just acts based on your feelings and nothing else! I, for one, am trying to actually work here.

Nagisa: …Yes. However, “work” and “torture” need not be synonymous; if we can enjoy the work we do, that is naturally preferable.

Ibara: If everyone started affirming and agreeing with that, this world would become one wherein no one would work if they didn’t feel like it, and the economy would collapse.

Modern society is but a castle of sand. It is only able to remain standing because we all devote our labor and money to it, distributing burdens amongst ourselves.

Nagisa: …That’s right. If only there were a God who’d be able to shoulder everything.

…I have still yet to become God, so all I’m able to do is sing and dance atop this stage and hope I bring even the smallest amount of happiness to everyone’s lives.

Nagisa: …I do not find that painful at all. On the contrary, it is a joy, and I am extremely fortunate to consider it so.

…Ever since I was a young child, completely ignorant of the ways of the world, that has always been how I’d understand and communicate with him.

Ibara: “Him”?

Oh, good ― you’re finally here.

Hiyori: ......

Jun: Heya. Sorry we wound up cutting it so close...

Ohii-san's been taking on a stupid amount of work, so he'd put off everything else and let it all pile up to the point it was getting crazy outta hand.

Hiyori: Hmph, I'll hold onto anything and everything as much as I please and whenever I please, thank you very much.

And if I can't, then it's your duty to carry it, Jun-kun, so basically the fact that we're starting late is on you.

Jun: Goddamn. Honestly, sometimes... it feels like you reached out to me all for the sake of getting me to lug your bags around.

Hiyori: Even if that were the case, the fact that you even caught my attention should be a reason to rejoice, no?

Hiyori: Be it a simple bag-carrier or anything else, I aspire to pick out only that which is beautiful and lovable.

Jun: (Mm~... As I thought, Ohii-san still seems to be in a bad mood.)

(He may be talking normally with me and all, but he won't even look in Adam's direction.)

(This is supposed to be the final performance of Conquest and he's still acting like this — it's really not looking good.)

(The plan was for Adam and Eve to stand side-by-side despite their apparent fallout, and sing all together as Eden—)

(As a grand finale where we reconcile with the power of song, or love, or something...? That's how the outline for this goes, anyway.)

(The only songs we've got prepared are four-person numbers, too.)

(So if he doesn't at least patch things back up before the start of the show, we're gonna have a real problem on our hands...)

Ibara: (—That’s likely what Jun is thinking at the moment.)

(After all, our fans online have decided to take baseless rumors as official information for some reason; they’re all rather riled up at the moment.)

(Adam and Eve will both strive to earn as much L$ as possible for the duration of this performance…)

(And the subunit who earns the most will gain the right to henceforth lead Eden.)

(Of course, we’d never make such a change in reality. We’re simply adjusting to how the general public is viewing this event.)

(Well, we could have simply declared the rumors false and ignored them completely.)

(But that would diminish the fans’ excitement; it would be a poor business strategy, and as such I’d prefer to avoid doing so.)

(There will be nothing to worry about if Adam ― if His Excellency ― wins. There would be no need to relinquish leadership.)

(But Eve got something of a head start, so it appears that they’ve got the edge over us, if only by a bit.)

(As such, there was another last-minute announcement.)

(We’ll have all the fans gathered here vote for either Adam or Eve, whoever they think gave a better performance.)

(The administration will be the ones to calculate the number of votes, so I can simply have them make up some figures arbitrarily in order to ensure Adam wins.)

(Adam and Eve are supposed to have a true confrontation here in order to reconcile, so this isn’t the smartest way to do things…)

(If the fact that we forged the numbers was found out, the public would lose all trust in us. There’s simply no other way, though ― I can’t think of any other feasible tactics.)

(This is but a necessary evil. That’s all it is.)

Hiyori: ......

Nagisa: ......

Ibara: (It appears that there’s still a rather frigid atmosphere between His Excellency and His Highness. I’m sure the audience will be able to believe this more than a forced reconciliation―)

✦✦✦✦✦

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[mindibindi]

I read your essay reply to that anon and it was awesome! 👏 I thought you might appreciate the thing I’ve been calling Elliot in my head lately: Murderer-in-Chief 😂…because of what he keeps doing to Liv 🥺

That's funny, Anon, but unlike a lot of other fans, I don't have a great deal of animosity towards Elliot. Maybe because I engaged more with SVU 1.0, rather than 2.0. Newer viewers might be shocked to find out that, once upon a time, in a TV landscape far, far away, Elliot Stabler was the solid centre of Olivia Benson's life. He could be volatile, yes, but that's not all he was. He was kind, steady, intuitive, protective, predictable. He had an instinct for when she was in need of support and offered soft, supportive, non-judgemental advice. He knew exactly what to say, how hard (or not) to push and when she needed him most. He was a perfect model of masculine dependability. And his unconditional love and consistent presence enabled Liv to heal much of the damage inflicted on her by an absent, violent father. Elliot knew this. Which is why he would never in a million years have walked away from her like he did. Like, never. Just -- never. As in: N E V E R. It just never would have played out that way. But ever since it did, this character has been altered to the point of assassination, with his worst faults magnified and his best made invisible. But the flaw here is not in the character himself. It’s in the writing.

I think there are many reasons for this flattening out of Elliot’s character (and let's not kid ourselves that it hasn't happened to Olivia too). Initially, one of the ways that SVU reinvented itself after Christopher Meloni's abrupt departure was to throw some of its bitterness on-screen at his character, who was absent and therefore unable to defend himself. Plenty of fans bought the narrative they pitched about how damaging a presence Elliot was for Olivia. And, in a way, in bringing Elliot back now, they have had to match him to this version they (re)wrote, a version which only represents a sliver of what his character was in the show’s previous incarnation. Also, I think the show’s brand has changed over time, as it has needed to. They no longer go for understated complexity; their formula is more character-driven and sensationalistic. Partly, this is because the television landscape has changed so much in the past two decades. They’re an old dog that has had to learn some new tricks. Not only are they competing with cable channels, now they have to reckon with the massive streaming services on offer. They've had to go big in order to survive. I think the final reason they have gone big, splashy and sensationalistic with Elliot's return is that Christopher Meloni is an extraordinary actor. He is possibly the strongest actor they've ever had on SVU and his chemistry with Mariska is truly the stuff of TV legend. They give him this big, sometimes ridiculously big, stuff to play because they know he can carry it off. And honestly, he is the only reason it works. Because, as I said in my last post, there is not a lot of sense to be found here. There just isn't.

The writing is brilliant one moment and appalling the next. But Christopher Meloni plays his character with such a core sense of integrity. He carries Elliot’s history with him, including his love for Olivia, even if the writing doesn't. Personally, I still prefer SVU to OC because politically I think the content is far more important. But Olivia has been flattened out too, over the years. Around Elliot, she turns into this woman who rarely sets a boundary, never expresses a need or desire and has lost the fire to call him out on his bullshit (which she used to do all the time). She just sort of sighs oh Elliot... and forges wearily on. And look, you could argue that the years have not been kind to either of them, that time has exacerbated their worst impulses. El has become more erratic and Olivia woefully resigned. But imo, one of the things SVU 2.0 does better than 1.0 is allow for healing. It follows through on characters’ issues, triggers, and responses, creating complex and consistent journeys towards understanding and growth. I think we're getting a little of that here.... I suppose just putting Elliot and Olivia in the same room together is a good start! But they could have done and could still do so much more if they weren't so obsessed with big moments, with portraying Elliot as an inveterate arse and Liv as an all-suffering saint. I would have liked to see these characters grow richer as they grew older. I would’ve liked their many dimensions to expand rather than shrink. But I’m pretty sure I know where the blame for this lies, and it’s not with the characters.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Three Gates - on ao3 (for content warnings check Ao3) - on tumblr: pt 1, pt 2, pt 3, pt 4, pt 5, pt 6, pt 7, pt 8, pt 9, pt 10

- Chapter 11 -

Nie Mingjue was fond of saying that all plans ended when the battle began, and all things left to chance would immediately default to the worst possible option, and Meng Yao found the statement to be true: it went from bad to worse almost immediately.

They received an invitation, if one could call it that, demanding that they send a direct disciple of the junior generation to the Nightless City for what was euphemistically called ‘education’ – and of course the only direct disciples of any generation were Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang, respectively, Meng Yao having become a regular disciple the way all the cousins were. And since obviously Nie Mingjue couldn’t go, that meant –  

They were going to have to send Nie Huaisang.

Nie Mingjue, of course, was of the view that the only choices for a response were between “fuck you” and “fuck you and your mother”, but even he knew they weren’t actually ready for a full-fledged war with the Wen sect. For all their careful years of preparation, a war machine took time to get going; they would need to buy time to consolidate their efforts and to build a wall that the Wen sect would not be able to breach.

“They probably won’t slaughter us all at once, all of us from all the sects,” Nie Huaisang said, his fingers nervously running up and down his fan. “Right?”

Meng Yao nodded, and Nie Huaisang’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Well at least they won’t make me practice saber too much,” he offered, trying to lighten the mood.

“You’re not taking your saber,” Nie Mingjue snapped, and even Meng Yao turned to stare at him at that. “They’ll seize every sword and saber the second you walk in, claiming to keep it until you’ve done well enough to earn them back – that’s fine for the other clans, since their swords aren’t spiritual weapons the way our sabers are, but as far as I’m concerned no Nie saber will ever voluntarily enter the hands of the Wen sect. Go to the forges and have them remake a practice saber to look like Aituan; you can take that instead, and if they ask questions about why you don’t wield it right, pretend it’s your weak cultivation.”

It was a good idea, actually, albeit one that Meng Yao wished hadn’t been said in front of Wu Bixian, but luckily there wasn’t much of a window between receiving the Wen sect’s demand and receiving the Lan sect’s urgent cry for help – as anyone might have expected, Nie Mingjue immediately abandoned all reason and insisted on going there personally to help.

“If you must go, take only a small force; we can do the most good where we can be most helpful, while still fooling the Wen sect into thinking we are weak and unprepared,” Wu Bixian advised, and Nie Mingjue scowled at him, dislike of the idea written all over his face, but then Meng Yao spoke up in favor of that approach as well, and Nie Mingjue listened to him as he always did.

Sometimes Meng Yao wished he wouldn’t.

By the time they arrived, the Library Pavilion was alight, as were any number of other buildings; Meng Yao only hoped that Lan Wangji had managed to get the rest of his sect to believe his message in time to do some good.

He hoped Lan Xichen was nowhere nearby – that he had escaped.

That he didn’t have to see this happen to his beloved home.

Nie Mingjue was barking out orders left and right, Meng Yao darting around to try to make himself useful – Chiwen could be used to fight, of course, and often was, but Meng Yao knew his strengths; he was better off flying around to help direct or rescue people, especially since he could always pick up an extra sword lying around to fight with, utilizing Wen or Jin or even Jiang and Lan styles that he’d picked up over time.

He killed some, commanded others…he hated it.

He hated war.

How had Nie Mingjue dealt with this? While Meng Yao sat at home, devising logistics with a cold and unfeeling eye, Nie Mingjue put himself in each battlefield, Baxia at his side, wading through the blood and muck to win victory for them…

When Meng Yao got home, he would have to do something very nice for him to show his appreciation.

Meng Yao figured that would be it, that they’d get out as many people as they could before being forced to retreat – the Wen sect forces were even larger than he’d anticipated, and he’d anticipated being vastly overwhelmed – but somewhere in the smoke and ash and screams Wu Bixian found him and grabbed him by the elbow.

“Come with me,” he said. “We have a limited amount of time.”

“To do what?” Meng Yao demanded, sick and tired of Wu Bixian and figuring that the heat of battle would serve as an explanation for his uncharacteristic vehemence. “What’s left to do? The Wen sect will be victorious beyond telling: the Lan sect has largely fled where they can, Lan Wangji has already been captured – they broke his leg –”

No Lan Xichen in sight, though, and Meng Yao could only hope that he was safe, wherever he was.

“The second young master Lan is a worthy prize, but there are even better ones,” Wu Bixian said. “How long can Qinghe refuse to bow before Qishan Wen if it has no master to lead it?”

Meng Yao’s back went cold. “Now? You must be mad; you can’t capture Nie Mingjue here. There are a million pathways in and out of the Cloud Recesses, now that the wards have come down – even if you did catch him, he’d only escape, and then where would you be? Your cover blown, with nothing to show for it –”

“I’m the one in charge of this task,” Wu Bixian snapped, his voice taut with tension. “Your role is just to listen and obey –”

“You mean you’re messing up this task. If Sect Leader Wen wanted him captured here, he would have come up with a better plan –”

Wu Bixian laughed. It was an ugly sound, sneering, and Meng Yao stopped at once, hearing it. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to,” Wu Bixian said. “You want to save him up so that you can use him later, don’t you? You want to trade him in for a reward. You know what Sect Leader Wen wants…”

And so do you, Meng Yao thought, and everything took on a tint of red in a way that suggested that Chiwen’s rage was starting to seep back the wrong way through their bond, their rage becoming one in a way that was highly dangerous. You know – no. You knew. You’ve always known.

Somehow Meng Yao had deceived himself into thinking that Wu Bixian must not have known about Wen Ruohan’s abnormal interest in Nie Mingjue, that he had been corrupted by a desire for power or riches or something like that, but that he hadn’t really known.  

Wu Bixian was one of the previous generation, one of Lao Nie’s contemporaries; he married in before Nie Mingjue was even born. He would have seen him grow up, known him as the child he had been and the man he’d grown up into, and despite all of that he knew what Wen Ruohan wanted, knew and didn’t care, and maybe he had even aided and abetted some of the incidents that Meng Yao had had to so strain himself to interrupt or misdirect or stop.

“Well, I won’t have it,” Wu Bixian said, and bared his teeth. “You won’t get the chance to sell him. Qinghe Nie won’t be disgraced like that! It deserves better than that – better than that abomination that has been taking up the seat of sect leader. I told Lao Nie when he was born to put him aside, strangle him in his crib before he had a chance to bring shame upon us, but he wouldn’t listen –”

Meng Yao actually took a step backwards from sheer shock. “What are you talking about?”

He’d always known there were nasty things said about Nie Mingjue behind his back, mostly comments about him having been raised without a mother or just the usual cruel things that people say about children they have reason to dislike, but he’d never heard anyone call Nie Mingjue an abomination.

That was a word for people like him, sons of whores too poor to command their own fate, not for true-born sons of the gentry –

Not for Nie Mingjue.

Wu Bixian sneered at him. “They covered up the horoscope as best as they could, but they couldn’t hide his face, that ridiculous height or that even more ridiculous talent – look at you, you’re surprised. You thought Sect Leader Wen wanted him for something as simple as lust?”

“What does his height have to do with anything?” Meng Yao asked, utterly at sea. He could see jealousy over his talent, even envy for his features, but Wu Bixian wasn’t jealous. He was – he was protective, he saw Nie Mingjue as a threat to the Nie sect, the fervor of the converted burning in his eyes. “I don’t –”

“He’s a furnace,” Wu Bixian said, and Meng Yao took another step backwards, the shock expelling the breath from him as effectively as a hit to the stomach. “A yang furnace, as opposed to the more common yin furnace you find in women, but a furnace is a furnace, in the end; he was born for dual cultivation, and that’s all he’ll ever be good for. All of that talent, all of that cultivation, what’s the point? It won’t do him any good; it’ll all belong to the man or men that claim him – why do you think Sect Leader Wen has been so patient all these years? The occasional impatience aside, he’s been waiting for him to grow ripe like a farmer waiting for the harvest.”

He laughed, his voice harsh. “Well, I won’t have it. I won’t see my Nie sect disgraced like that, with the whole world knowing that our ‘leader’ will be eking out the rest of his miserable existence on his knees or his back for whoever’s come to take advantage – it was one thing when he was younger, when he would have only been disgraced and cast aside for a new son, but now…? No. Sect Leader Wen will get his victory over the cultivation world, which is what he really wants, and he’ll get Nie Mingjue’s head on a pike, but that’s all. That’s all he’s ever going to get.”

The fervor of the converted indeed. Lao Nie hadn’t cared about his son’s unusual constitution – he’d cared too little, even, thinking that he’d hidden the truth when in fact he was sold out by one he trusted – but Wu Bixian cared; he didn’t want the Nie clan to lose face, he didn’t want to risk the disgrace. He had betrayed the Nie sect to the Wen sect to avoid it –

He would kill Nie Mingjue to ensure it.

Meng Yao knew what he had to do.

“And you, you miserable leech, are not going to stop me just because you want the gain for yourself,” Wu Bixian said, and turned to lead the way towards Nie Mingjue’s last known location. “Of course someone like you’d think it’d be better to sell him than to kill him; you don’t understand honor at all, don’t understand face – you’re only part of our Nie sect through by your mother’s tricks. Of course you think that everything comes down to a deal to be made, something to be sold, you’re just what your blood says you are, a fatherless son of a whore –”

Meng Yao drove Chiwen into his back.

“Meng Yao!”

Meng Yao turned and saw Nie Mingjue, who must have realized he’d lost sight of Meng Yao and come to find him to make sure he hadn’t gotten hurt.

Nie Mingjue’s eyes travelled from Wu Bixian, choking out blood as he died, down the length of Chiwen and to Meng Yao’s hand that held him: his eyes were wide and horrified, confused, even betrayed –

Meng Yao had never told him what he was planning with Wen Ruohan. He hadn’t wanted him to worry. He’d known how much even the mention of the man disrupted Nie Mingjue’s sleep; he’d known that he would reject any plan that involved putting Meng Yao in danger.

He’d thought he’d have time to explain.

He’d thought – well. He hadn’t thought that Nie Mingjue would find him with his saber in the back of his own commanding officer in the middle of a battle, one of the few crimes that Nie sect law called to be met with immediate execution or else at absolute minimum immediate expulsion from the sect.

“Trust me,” Meng Yao said, a plea more than an order, and then he turned and fled.

[ficsilike-reblogged]

What’s in a Name?

A/N: This is quite possibly the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever written in my entire life. But it’s soft. Because Marcus Pike is soft and deserves all the love. Granted, I’ve only watched The Mentalist all the way through once, so...do with that what you will. 

Pairing: Marcus Pike x F!Reader (no y/n)

Rating: PG for mention of guns??? I just want to be on the safe side. Idiots in love. Falling in love with someone and not knowing their name. Cliche use of a Quote from Romeo + Juliet.

Word Count: 3.3k 

Summary: The five times Marcus Pike tries to learn your name and the one time he actually does.

Pike was unlucky in love. He knew it. He had started to accept it when things fell apart with Lisbon. His friends and fellow agents, the assholes, actually took pity on him and said he’d find the right person eventually. He just didn’t anticipate having to meet her over and over again.

... that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet... (Romeo + Juliet)

Sometimes, every once in a while, he actually hated his job. Sure, he got to go undercover, stop criminals, right some wrongs, and be called ‘agent’ on top of it. But, right now, listening to some sycophant rant and rave about the “superiority of Cubism over Dadaism,” he wanted to switch careers. There was supposed to be a sale of a stolen Cézanne happening at this gallery in Los Angeles and Pike had suspected the guy with the too-tight three piece suit and bad transatlantic accent was the ring-leader of the whole theft and re-sale. He just needed to not spork his eyes out until he saw money pass hands from the agent he’d sent in to pose as the buyer and the thief-turned-art-asshole. He thought it would only take an hour or two, busts like this usually did—but this guy loved the sound of his own voice so much that he had been going on a tangent about 20th century art movements for nearly four hours now and had somehow gathered a bit of an audience, too, debating with others, and the like. It was exhausting just listening to him.

“If you give me ten dollars, I’ll spill some red wine on his shirt and he’ll be forced to leave.”

Marcus looked to the left at the sudden voice and found a woman pretending to look at the piece in front of him, just like he had been doing. She was pretty, dressed in a high-end dress and sky-high, red-bottom heels, and looked every bit the part of an old money socialite. “Ten dollars?”

“I’d do it for free, but I need to receive some sort of incentive so I’m not just doing it out of spite. I heard that’s bad karma.” She hid her smirk behind the lip of her champagne flute.

“I’ve heard spite is a fantastic motivator.”

She hummed and squinted at the painting as if she cared. Maybe she did. “This is an awful piece of work. Truly, one of the worst I’ve ever seen.”

The man behind them continued to talk just as a waiter passed by with a platter full of red wine and she skillfully plucked one from him without missing a beat. She finished her champagne and handed Pike her empty flute. His eyebrows raised as she smiled at him.

“I’m Marcus.” He held out a hand for her to take. She shook it with a smile but didn’t give her name in return. She winked and walked away—right toward the mark.

And yes, she dumped red wine all over him.

There was a collective gasp and he watched the scene with a muted sort of fascination as she then managed to make the art thief smile with some joke she must have said and then he walked away to clean up. The crowd dispersed. The other agent was able to snag the thief and make the exchange and handcuffs were placed on his wrists all within a couple of minutes.  

Maybe he should have actually paid her the ten dollars. She really did just speed everything up.

But, when he looked around to find her, she was gone. 

                                                            **

The second time he met her was at an art auction in D.C. There was no sting. No operation. The Art Squad had recently helped the auction’s sponsor recover a priceless Van Gogh piece and they had insisted the entire Squad come to the black tie dinner and auction, foregoing the 1000-dollar-charge-per-plate the ticket usually cost. The food was good. The wine and champagne was obviously expensive and Pike was sure he’d see some of the art that was being auctioned off in his case files in the next few years. That was just the way of the world. He looked around at the displays and glanced at the sheets where people had written down their bids. Some people were being generous—most others were being cheap. 

He slowed to a stop in front of a small Dalí and then down at the auction sheet. It was currently up to only a few hundred dollars. He wouldn’t win, he was sure, but he could pretend to participate in this ridiculous auction.

“I didn’t take you for a Dalí fan.” Her voice was still smooth and he knew, instinctively, that she was smiling before he even turned to look at her. She was draped in sky blue silk and pearls, reminding him of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.

“I think he’s iconic, to be sure.”

She sidled up to him and looked at the small painting. “Thinking about bidding? It looks like everyone else is besotted with that original Warhol.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder to reference the crowd steadily growing on the other side of the ballroom.

But all he could focus on was the smell was her perfume. Expensive and floral, it seemed to fit her perfectly.

Manicured fingers handed him a Mont Blanc pen from the depths of her designer bag. “Best of luck, Agent Pike.”

As she walked away, he realized she knew his last name now—somehow—and he still didn’t know hers.

Pike tried to find her again in the mess of rich people, to ask her name and how she knew of his ‘agent’ status and last name. But all he managed to do was catch a glimpse of blue silk as she exited the venue.

“Do you know her?” A tired-looking man asked as he walked to Pike’s side. “She left a large donation and my boss will kill me if we don’t have a name to write in our next list of donors.”

“I…I don’t actually. Did she bid on anything? Maybe we could get her name that way.”

And for the next fifteen minutes or so, he filtered through the crowd, trying to ask inconspicuously about his Venus and if she had bid on anything. And, when he finally learned that she had bid on an Alphonse Mucha sketch. And he almost felt lucky. Almost!

Because, as he made his way over to where everyone was pointing, he saw only two scribbles on the sheet. Surely he could discern which one of the names was hers. 

One was Richard…

And the other one was just a scribble of blue ink, smudged beyond legibility.

                                                         **

(A few weeks later, he was delivered a package at his office. Inside was the Dalí he had bid on. On a slip of paper was a smudged smiley face and the word: Enjoy!)

                                                        **

The third time he met her was decidedly less glamorous. The Art Squad had been trailing a group of thieves across the East Coast when they finally caught up to them in Boston. Pike had hoped they’d be able to catch them in the act and be done with it.

Instead, what they found when they stormed into the art museum, was the thieves holding several hostages. And, of course with his luck, she was among them.

Her hands were behind her head and she was on her knees as one of the thieves pointed a gun to the back of her head. Boredom was, surprisingly, coloring her face but she smiled when she caught sight of Pike. “Hi, Marcus.”

“Hi,” he said in return, fighting a smile of his own.

The whole thing was over in just over an hour and the hostages were released and the thieves were carted off in the back of a police van.

And maybe now he’d finally learn her name.

He was the lead agent on the case so he had to answer a million and one questions from other agents, from outside law enforcement, from the press. And, belatedly, he watched his least favorite agent, Rhett Brown, approach his unnamed Venus. The agent was fine when given a gun and told to shoot—but how he’d managed to wind up on the Art Squad was a mystery. He’d lost or misfiled more paperwork than anyone else Pike had encountered put together.

Pike knew he needed to finish all of this nonsense—and really, he shouldn’t call it nonsense, this was important—if he wanted to even have a chance to get her name. But the local police asked a lot of questions (they were doing their job, he couldn’t blame them) and then the press conference dragged on (again, they were just doing their jobs). And by the time he finished, he jogged back to where the former hostages had been held as they were being questioned.

And, of course, she was gone.

Pike pulled Rhett aside and asked for his notes.

Rhett nodded and stuck his hand into his suit pocket and then froze. “Oh no.” He quickly patted down his other pockets and shouted at another agent, “have you seen my notepad, man?”

                                                            **

Pike was tired when he met her for the fourth time. 

The deposition had lasted longer than he anticipated, stretching long into the night. The case was a strange one, involving inheritances, forged wills, and a “disappeared” Jackson Pollock that “reappeared” across the country. The hotel was nice, however, and he slumped into a stool at the hotel’s upscale bar and ordered a pale ale.

It was set in front of him quickly and he drained half of it without much fanfare.

“I always thought you looked more like a whiskey kind of guy.” 

He nearly spat out his drink. 

She slid into the stool next to him and ordered a top shelf cognac. Her lips were painted a vibrant shade of red and left a mark against the glass as she took a sip of the amber liquid. “Long day?”

“You could say that. You?”

She nodded with a small smile. “What’re you doing in New York? More FBI business?”

“Something like that.” He took another drink of his beer and she watched him over the edge of her own glass. “How’d you know I was in the FBI?”

“We have friends in common. I know Charlie—you helped him get back his precious Van Gogh.”

“Ah, Charlie.” He nodded in understanding.

“Yes, he went on and on about the FBI agent who saved his marriage—imagine that, an entire marriage hanging on the edge of one painting.” Despite cognac being meant for sipping, she had already nearly drained her glass. “Imagine my surprise when it was you—the man from the gallery opening who basically gave me full permission to dump wine on a pompous asshole.” She watched him laugh as she took another sip of the dark amber liquid. “Charlie pointed you out when you came to the auction. The man can hardly remember his children’s names but he remembers yours.” She smiled and he could have sworn he’d never seen anyone so beautiful. “But I like the um…” she gestured at his chin and then placed her finger beneath her nose in a childish imitation of a mustache. “It’s a good look.”

He laughed—she was good at making him laugh. “I was undercover.”

“Oh?” It came out with another laugh. “Aren’t you mysterious?”

“I’m mysterious? You know my name and my job—and that I think Dalí is iconic. I know nothing about you.”

“What is there to know? I procure art for people who have too much money. I spend more time on planes or in hotels than I do in my little apartment in New Orleans. I like Humphrey Bogart movies and a good blanket.” She smiled before polishing off the last dredges of her drink. “See? Now you know more about me than I do about you. And it is all far less interesting.”

His heart had lodged itself higher and higher into his throat as each word passed her lips. “No…I-I think you’re really interesting and beautiful and I…I would love to know more.”

She was embarrassed, he could tell, but she still smiled. Her mouth opened to say something else and-

-a bellhop stepped to her side. “Your bags have been loaded into the car, ma’am.”

She turned and thanked him, pressing a few bills into his hand before she stood and grabbed her purse. She put a few more bills—far more than her drink could have possibly cost—onto the bar top and signaled to the bartender that she was paying for both their drinks before he could even think to stop her. “Thanks for the company.”

“Yeah. Of course.” He was in a bit of a daze as she leaned down to press a quick kiss to his cheek. The familiar scent of her expensive perfume touched his nose as she pulled back.

“I’ll see you around, Agent Pike. But really,” she once again mimed the mustache, “it’s a good look.”

He murmured his goodbye, head still pleasantly swimming, and watched her walk away.

It took him a full five minutes to realize he still didn’t know her name.

                                                     **

The fifth time he met her, he’d been stuck at O’Hare International Airport for five hours. Five hours in the worst airport known to mankind. His flight back to DC had been delayed and then delayed some more and then delayed some more. He’d only been in Chicago for a few days to help lead some training to the local arm of the Bureau. Nothing exciting. And now he was stuck waffling between two equally awful airport restaurants for dinner while he continued to wait.

“Hey stranger.”

He turned to see her walking toward him, a designer carryon being wheeled behind her scuffed sneakers. Her hair was up in a lop-sided bun and she had traded her dress for a pair of jeans and an oversized band t-shirt. And why was his mouth filling with saliva? She threw her arms around him in a hug that he quickly reciprocated, squeezing her around the middle as she laughed lightly in his ear. “It’s good to see you. I see you kept the facial hair.”

He laughed and scrubbed a hand over his patchy beard and mustache. “Yeah, I guess I did.” Pike cleared his throat, trying to not sound so smitten. “Where’re you heading now?”

“Home, thankfully. I’ve been go-go-go since I saw you last. It seems everyone wants to give works of art as presents this year. I’m kind of scared what Christmas is going to mean.”

He smiled, liking to know about her life, how she felt. “Been anywhere exciting?”

“Paris and Milan lose their charm after a while. But I finally got to go to Casablanca.” There was a near twinkle in her eye now. “I felt like I should’ve been running around in a trench and fedora, chain-smoking. God knows how many times I muttered ‘here’s lookin’ at you kid’ to myself like a loon.” She shook her head as she bit her lip. “Sorry. I ramble when I’m jetlagged.”

“It’s okay, really. I…I like it.”

She shoved at his shoulder with another laugh. “Careful. You’ll make me fall in love with you.”

“Would that be so bad?” The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them—something he usually did when he let his stupid, romantic heart take the lead.

She tilted her head as she looked at him with an almost shy smile playing on her lips. “No. No, I don’t think that’d be bad at all.” They looked at each other, each fighting a smile and stupid fluttering of their hearts for the near-stranger in front of them. She broke the little daydream by clearing her throat and glancing away for a moment. “And you? Been anywhere exciting?”

“Just Chicago. Had to lead some training. My flight’s been delayed for a couple hours. Hopefully, I’ll be out of here before midnight.”

“Well, if you’re looking for a good place to eat in this hellscape, I’d recommend the restaurant near C26. I’ve yet to get food poisoning from them—and the food’s pretty good, too.”

“You want to join me?” He asked, something optimistic blooming in his chest.

But her smile fell. “I wish I could. But my flight starts boarding soon.”

As if on cue, there was an announcement over the intercom. “Hello passengers and welcome to Flight 306 to New Orleans. Right now, we will start boarding with our group one passengers and active duty military in uniform.” 

“That’s me,” she said with a sigh. “But it was good to see you, Marcus.” She reached out and squeezed his hand.

He squeezed her hand for a moment, keeping her still. “You know, I still don’t know your name.”

She paused and then laughed, a full-belly laugh that quickly had him laughing, too. “It’s-”

A passenger cart beeped as it zoomed by, carrying a few elderly women.

“Group one, you’re free to board. Group one,” the announcement seemed to echo in the terminal, overly loud on the old speakers.

He swore he saw her lips move. He did!

But then she was squeezing his fingers again and walking away.

                                                     **

The cherry blossoms were in bloom. Aside from the terrible crowds they brought and the overall mugginess that came with the season, it was one of the things he liked about living in DC. He was sitting on a bench and watching the wind blow through the trees, rustling the pink and white petals gently. His lunchbreak was ending soon and he’d have to get back to the office. The other agents had caught on about his “mysterious lady friend” when he’d finally arrived back from Chicago and had been ribbing him about it ever since. (“How did you not get her name already, Pike?!” A question for the ages.) He crumpled the wrapper from his sandwich and tossed it in the nearest bin, preparing to leave the park.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, just for a moment.

But when he opened them, she was standing in front of him like something out of his daydreams. She smiled at him before helping herself to the space beside him on the bench. “I was told you like this bench when the blossoms are in bloom.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Your fellow agents are very chatty, you know.”

“You came looking for me?”

“’Course. I was in town. The auction I need to attend isn’t until tonight and…yeah,” she trailed off, embarrassment coloring her tone as she looked away from him for a moment. “Yeah, I thought I’d see you.”

His smile was so big he was sure it was going to break his face. “I’m glad you did.” He reached out and curled his fingers around hers as they rested on the bench beside her legs.

Her smile was shy but she squeezed his fingers in return as she kept looking out over the cherry blossom trees. “It’s pretty here. I’d love to wake up and just see this.” She waved her free hand toward the blossoms.

“Well, it happens every year. You can come back.” Or you could stay, his traitorous, lovesick heart whispered. But no, he wouldn’t say that. No yet, at least. He could take this slow.

But then she kissed him, quick and soft—he nearly missed it. And she was quickly leaning back against the bench, trying to school her features into indifference.

“What is your name?” He asked, question bursting forward.

She guffawed and pulled her hand back with an exaggerated flourish, fighting another smile. “I told you at the airport!”

“There-there was a transport honking and-and an intercom and then you left-!”

She cupped his cheek in her hand and the words died in his throat. She smiled again, fighting a laugh, and whispered her name.

He whispered it back, rolling the letters across his tongue carefully, pressing it into his mind to keep and hold.

He liked her name.

Part Two

[independent-variables]

hello my dear @neptunesenceladus, your fic rec list inspired me to finish up this one! and like this is. a lot of fic feel free to ignore this, i finished mostly so i could get my recs all in one place XD

ok, fics!!!

forge the iron in your veins by afearsomecritter (jsaer)

WHAT IF. JEDI WERE SENTIENT SHIPS. AHHHHHHH!!!

watch it grow, child of woe by afearsomecritter (jsaer)

Ok this one. This one. What if Jango got reconditioned while on Kamino and had to reassess everything he believed about personhood. 

Etiquette Lessons (Type A, Type B) by ghostwriterofthemachine

Coping Mechanisms (Type A, Type B) Or: how to survive being a thing, advice from Obi-Wan and advice from Anakin. 

Of the Echo and Change by be_brave13

Ok this fic is gorgeous. This is about Luke trying to figure out who his mom was and if his parents loved each other and basically follows him from planet to planet, from cameo to cameo, as he pieces together the details of Anakin and Padme’s lives. Made me laugh, made me sob. 

for everything there is a season (Mountain Man Jesse) by electric_dreamer

CLONES POST WAR!!! LET’S GOOOOO!!! This is about Jesse basically fucking off to live in the mountains and come to terms with some of the fucked up shit that went down during the war. The prose is gorgeous and Jesse’s characterization is so so good. 

you're gonna need two bullets (Jedi Maul AU) by deniigiq

Jedi Maul. Need I say more. 

The Adventures of Palpatine's no. 1 Fan Club by orphan_account

This is one of the funniest crack fics I have ever read. What if Cody became the new emperor but also suffered severe amnesia and forgot he was Cody. And decided to chronicle his journey as the new supreme lord of the galaxy via diary entries. I’m. 

sand (glass) by electric_dreamer

Again with fucked up Jedi/clone relationships. What if Bly was in love with Aalya but wasn’t sure if his feelings were programmed or not. 

grinding bones, making bread by pantoracore

A clone contemplates death and the Republic’s war machine. Absolute chills. 

Dreamweaver by Bookboy

Ok this fic. I’m. Hm. This is an entirely original cast and is mostly about how to survive slavery through deception and stories. Draws a lot from Fialleril’s work. The worldbuilding is rich and the characterization is fascinating. (Clonecest at the very end, none of the of the main characters but some background relationships.) 

little bird, little bird by deniigiq

‘17 takes care of a batch of tubies, through the best times and the worst times. 

thank you for our service by batchmates

‘17 and Fordo hang out on Coruscant. 

this space may be a threshold by Scourge_of_Nemo

This is Boba/Din, it’s an AU and I have no idea how to describe it but it’s like. Modern? But also not really, and also everybody is a part of this very elaborate LARP/WWE— thing. Idk. It’s about intimacy and it’s great. 

End Racism in the OTW | Saltwater by Coline7373

Training on Kamino : )

End Racism in the OTW | Last Week This Benduday with J'hon Olivah: Clone Soldiers by Petra

I’M SO. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS ON THE TIN AND I ADORE IT. 

May your troubles be less, And your blessings be more by Moisturize_Me

‘17 moves into his first apartment. Davijaan decides to sow chaos. This makes me laugh and sob in equal measure. Davi and ‘17… my absolute beloveds. 

Taxicab by nimblermortal

Numbers are not any less significant than names, as explained by a mathematician. 

love is with your brother by Petrichor (Mythmaker)

Rex is de-aged to Baby and Ahsoka observes the chaos, and also gets to take care of him and hang out with him and it’s just— sweet. 

Follow The Leader by DashRenders (Cydney)

Ezra makes a stupid joke about his and Sabine’s relationship and has to live with the consequences in the funniest way possible. I adore how their relationship is written here. 

Torn and Mended by Artemis1000

I have no way to explain my attachment to this fic but uh. It’s a crossover. With Mad Max. It’s Lando/Max. And. Yeah I can see it I need like a hundred more please. 

The Graveyarder by Trixree

Dogma joins the CG. Dogma is haunted. 

Both Haunted and Holy by imaginingstars

This is such a fun one, this is basically Fives doing his thing and saving the galaxy with the help of his siblings and a very handsome Jedi. Very sweet, always makes me happy. 

Masks and Ducklings by RMWrites

Chaotic Fox my beloved. This is basically Fox playing 5d chess with Sidious and impressing and terrifying some shinies in the process. 

knock, knock, it's housekeeping by deniigiq

Shmi needs to get a message to Anakin. What better way to get in contact than to join the war effort and befriend some clones. 

Carry the Debt by Anthem_of_the_Fates

This haunts me. This is a clone marching song, and it’s hopeless and beautiful and aching. 

Commander Cody: Marshal of the 7th Sky Corps by dio_icaurtica

The only Cody name origin story that matters. 

the better son. by deniigiq

Quinlan dealing with things and not dealing with things post-war. 

Father War by prouvairablehulk

What if Kote became a god. 

To Die, But Briefly by Waugh

This!!! Fic!!! Ok this centered on an original lead, she’s a Nightsister and she wants to make her way in the world, and it’s basically about her getting the hell off Dathomir with Savage and Feral in tow and almost immediately getting wrapped up in Phantom Menace era Sith and Jedi shenanigans. It’s some interesting Dathomir worldbuilding and really fun characterization. 

To Join in Love by menphina

When you’re a CG medic and you find yourself sort of maybe flirting with the guy in the drunk tank you’re stitching up. 

i live, i die, i live again by jaigeye

‘17 ends up on Tatooine, after the war, and with Obi-Wan. 

Battle Wounds, When You See Them That Way by ghostwriterofthemachine

Cal gets a tattoo. Psychometry does not mix well with tattoos. 

Steal the Soil of Her Life by ghostwriterofthemachine

Shmi origin story that broke my heart. 

dha munit by batchmates

Fox is not a safe person for children. Maybe. 

the house built on fresh snow by tiend

Very fun and very sweet. What if Jango and Shmi ran into each other during their time enslaved, and it changed both their lives for the better.

HELLO !!!

Having now finished binging all of your star wars fics, I come here asking for some recs. Just any of your favourites, bonus points if it will cause emotions (and tears).

Also can't stress enough how much I love your writing, it's so so brilliant <3

(this is neptunesenceladus btw, tumblr hates me and won't let me send asks with a side blog so you get this one)

HI!!! Good to see you, good to see you <3 Always happy to provide recs <3 <3 <3

I want you to know I went through my bookmarks and pulled like sixty fics and had a brief moment of panic, so this is not all of my recs just the first... thirty, or so. If none of these are appealing, oh boy, do I have more!

This list is not in any order other than bookmark order, most are on the shorter side, most are Gen and I am pretty sure all are complete. I tried to warn for stuff that could be a squick when I remembered.

False Dichotomy by nsmorig

Starting off strong with my favorite Cody fic of all time. If you read nothing else on this list I encourage you to read this (if the tags are not a squick) because it will re-shape your brain and shatter your heart into tiny pieces. Basic premise is Force Sensitive Cody gets captured by Dooku and survives torture, experimentation, and imprisonment while trying to figure out his relationship to the Force and to his personhood, and the ways those things are connected. 

What's in a Name by Sankt

This is about Fordo post war and it’s phenomenal characterization. 

The Last Poem of Jedha by schweinsty

How Bohdi Rook becomes a rebel and writes a poem. 

you're like a loaded gun by kazhan

Ok this is E and also Underage, so maybe it’s a skip, but it’s teen Boba/Cal trying to navigate sex and love and secret identities and it’s so fucked up and so good. 

chicken, cattle and cat by deniigiq

Obi-Wan and Maul living in domestic dis-harmony on Tatooine. What more could you ask. 

Little things [are the reason to live] by i_will_bite

Clone medics navigating a slightly hostile working environment and trying to make it less hostile T-T

Two brothers (and a kid) by meerlicht

What if. Waxer and Boil just stayed on Ryloth, with Numa. What then? 

with poise, with grace by andeemae

Stone falls through a hole in a roof and falls in love. Beautiful clone/OC romance and very cute kids, doesn’t shy away from the difficulties of being a clone in love with a civilian. Very much an inspiration for me.

second time around by This_world_of_beautiful_monsters

This is another one I wasn’t sure I wanted to put on here because it deals briefly with rape, but it’s such a wonderfully fucked up take on Anakin and Rex’s relationship. Or, how Vader views Rex. 

The Desert Storm by Blue_Sunshine

If you are looking for an epically long series to get invested in I highly recommend checking this one out. This series and its sister-series are some of the best characterization and worldbuilding for Jedi I have ever had the pleasure of reading and it is a fix-it in all the messy, hard, terrible ways people don’t usually write fix-its. 

Shape-Changer by Fialleril

This is a foundational fic for me. Incredible Tatooine worldbuilding. Inspired me to write the way I write. 

The Sun Is Bright, The Sun Is Blue by ambiguously

CUT AND SU ORIGIN STORY!!! 

most things may never happen: this one will by jaigeye

This is brutal but what if you were a droid and you had to dissect a person. 

Bad Deal by FettsOnTop (GTFF)

Boba/Lando my beloved. A brief look into their relationship and into Lando’s thoughts leading up to Han and them’s arrival. 

and the Force is with me by sauntering_down

Rex and Ahsoka and the way the war changed them, and what they can and cannot do in the aftermath. 

Twilight on Owl Creek Bridge by yellow_caballero

The Fox fic of all time. What if you were trapped in a time-loop with a ghost from the future but your life is so monotonous and simultaneously bizarre you don’t even notice. 

Fishhooks by yellow_caballero

The Boba fic of all time. This author does not write much for SW but every time they do it’s iconic. What if you were a teenager running away from home but also a perfect clone of your father created to be him but better but also his because you will never escape his body and his ownership and his love. What then. 

Staring into open flame by SLWalker

This is such a beautiful and heartbreaking read, it’s basically exploring what would have to happen for Maul and Obi-Wan to have a genuinely healthy and happy relationship post murder and bisection. 

Energy Drink Fox by carrinth

The crack comic of all time. What if Fox had space Monster.

lost cause by catboydogma

The foundational Dogma fic. The fic that got me wondering about how clones spend their time on Coruscant. 

the married au by dharmaavocado

Clone rebellion my beloved. Basic premise is the clones took over Kamino and then went out into the galaxy as a mercenary army of sorts. Rex and Cody are finding their place in the world, creating business partnerships, falling in love, manipulating public perception of clones. (Background clonecest, not between Rex and Cody.)

[stillness-in-green]

Part 2 of the response to this ask:

Part 1 was about where I think Geten’s story is going, and if I think it’s likely that Dabi will kill him; it dealt mainly with how those characters are set up in canon. Part 2 is far more about the fandom, and the assumptions people make that lead them to theories like the one above--specifically, the assumption that the League was always planning on bailing on the PLF. Hit the jump below with me and I'll go over why I think the common arguments for that are misguided at best, and willfully misreading the text at worst.

WARNING: Contains some generalizations about parts of the fandom that I have mostly taken steps to avoid seeing on my dash, so some of my characterizations may be out of date. I’ve tried to desalinate this post as much as possible, but as an unapologetic fan of the MLA and of Spinner (who I do not bring up incidentally), this is a topic I feel particularly strongly about. Apologies, but I Have Seen Things.

DISCLAIMER: I like Geten better than Dabi. I don't think he's better developed; I don't think he's a better character--I just like him better. This is largely down to the fact that I find the MLA fascinating from a worldbuilding perspective and its members compelling personally, whereas I’m less interested in Dabi personally than I am the Todoroki Drama on the whole, and have been tired of Fanon Dabi for approximately 83 years. I’ll also be the first to admit that my take on Dabi is pretty mercenary--hardly the irredeemable psychopath the Hero Stans on Twitter see, but nothing close to Secretly Soft Big Brother Touya, either. If that’s not your bag, you may want to skip this one.

So, here's a bullet point list of the reasons I have personally seen on why the League was always planning to turn on the MLA:

Dabi and Toga mention "getting started early," and Shigaraki mentions a plan, suggesting that the League had a plan in place independent of the one they arranged as the PLF.

Shigaraki says he won't forgive the Liberation Army for messing with peoples' feelings, so he would never really mean it when he forges an alliance with them.

The MLA is quirk supremacist, like Endeavor, so Dabi would never work with them.

Dabi is just using Skeptic against Skeptic's will; it’s not a willing partnership.

Mr. Compress rejects the PLF moniker for Shigaraki, ergo Mr. Compress didn’t genuinely associate Shigaraki and the League with the PLF.

Toga hated Curious, so she wouldn't want to work with the MLA either.

Twice would never forgive them for what they did to Giran.

[Error: argument about Spinner's opinion on the PLF not found.]

So, let's go over those, shall we? Note that a lot of what I'm going to lay out below isn't conclusive. What I want to establish is simply that the canonical evidence isn't conclusive, certainly not as much so as the people who support this view espouse.

|| Dabi and Toga mention "getting started early," and Shigaraki mentions a plan, suggesting that the League had a plan in place independent of the one they arranged as the PLF.

In responses to my recent Overhaul post, I defended Viz’s official translation as an accurate rendering of the dialogue in question. In general, I feel like Caleb Cook is pretty reliable in his translations, if sometimes kind of stiff or dry in localization. However, there are times he makes assumptions about lines--as indeed a translator for a currently-running series will sometimes have to--and sometimes, those assumptions don’t pan out. This is one of those times.

Dabi's line, "Shall we get started early?" is based on an assumption Cook made about a line that doesn't have an actual subject. In the original dialogue--Hayame ni hajimaru ka--there is no “we,” not even in the form of some implicit collective in Dabi’s grammatical inflection, nor is there a question of "should." All Dabi’s doing is musing that the start (again, there’s no subject, and so no indication of the start of what, or the start as initiated by who) is happening early.

Toga's line communicates much the same, save that she does specify that the schedule/plan/arrangement is happening earlier than expected--which is totally true, since her line is in response to Dabi observing that Machia moving must mean Shigaraki's awake, and Shigaraki was supposed to be down for another month.

Shigaraki's line, like Dabi's, lacks a subject to describe what exactly is supposed to start as soon as Shigaraki wakes. He's saying something that would, in a more stilted way, be, "I wake up and then it's the start, right?"

None of these lines suggest that the characters are necessarily talking about any plan other than the one the PLF laid out. Yes, it looks somewhat damning that Shigaraki's first action (after getting himself a cape, anyway) is to have Machia bring him the League, but heck, maybe that was always the plan. Just because Shigaraki wants to rejoin his comrades doesn't mean the rest of the PLF didn't already have machinations that they were supposed to set into motion the moment Machia left. After all, the plan as Hawks understood it did involve simultaneous attacks on major cities--maybe the League was going to be spearheading one of those attacks. Further, Shigaraki knew something was wrong from the moment he regained consciousness, and we don’t know how that knowledge affected the call he made. Hell, maybe the original plan was for the League to be brought to meet him somewhere in a chartered limo; we don’t know.

It's telling that this idea that the League had a Secret Plan to screw over the MLA rarely seems to account for Mr. Compress and Spinner being confused over the suddenness of events. The response to questions about this seems to be that the "villain trio" knew about it, so the ignorance of the rest of the League can just be handwaved--the important members knew, and that's enough. This is ungenerous towards both Twice and Mr. Compress, but I have got particularly little time for Spinner, the narrator of MVA and guy who decided to devote his all to Shigaraki, being disrespected in this fashion. More on that later.

|| Shigaraki says he won't forgive the Liberation Army for messing with peoples' feelings, so he would never really mean it when he forges an alliance with them.

Shigaraki does say he won't forgive the MLA, but consider what he did to the MLA and its leader. He destroyed most of their stronghold, killed scores of them, is directly responsible for Re-Destro losing his legs, and saw that vaunted descendant of Destro about six inches shy of full forehead-on-the-ground dogeza. The League Shigaraki commands killed a great many more of them, including one of their inner circle. He commandeered the Liberation Army, its resources, and its grand cause. I think it’s safe to say he’s more than responded in kind!

I'm not saying Shigaraki feels for the MLA the same way he does about the League, far from it, but I do think he's practical enough after two hundred chapters of character development not to throw them away out of spite. In Chapter 246, he tells Ujiko explicitly, "When someone offers me something, I take it," and, "I'm done taking the heroes lightly. I'll use everything I've got to obliterate the dregs All Might left behind." From a purely practical standpoint, if he intends to throw everything he has at the heroes, he has no reason to throw the MLA under the bus, and 116,000 reasons to keep them around. I'm altogether sure that, so long as they stood to be useful to his plans, he would have kept them around.

|| The MLA is quirk supremacist, like Endeavor, so Dabi would never work with them. + || Dabi is just using Skeptic against Skeptic's will; it’s not a willing partnership.

I hadn’t seen the second point in the wild, but I suppose it must be how the “The League will betray the MLA” theorists are getting around Dabi and Skeptic’s clear collaboration and how that collaboration totally scuttles the first point, huh? Hilarious.

Anyway, setting aside the fact that Dabi showed up to the one planning session we were shown when even Geten didn’t, there’s evidence in the canon that Dabi was working with Skeptic since even before the raid. Consider that Dabi’s video was filmed at the villa (the wall paneling and the style of the couch both match) and ask yourself where the camera he used came from. Once the filming was complete, where was the video stored such that Skeptic could access it from his laptop? If Dabi’d had it on an SD card and Skeptic was seeing it for the first time, why didn’t Spinner, Compress and Toga watch it alongside him? Surely Skeptic would need to watch it through at least once to know when to splice in the footage of Jin’s death for maximum dramatic impact? On that note, by far the most telling piece of evidence is this: if Dabi wasn't already working with Skeptic, then why was he wearing one of Skeptic's body cameras during his confrontation with Hawks?

Further, Skeptic's protest when he’s pulled onto Machia isn't that he doesn’t want to be with the League; it’s that he doesn’t want to leave Re-Destro behind. Once he's resigned that it's going to happen, though, he's cocky about his talents and complimentary of Dabi's big reveal, even if he is exasperated about the League's antics. It's ambiguous, I admit, but given that Dabi's wearing his cameras, he had to have known Dabi had a reason for them--and given that he is both abrasive and mouthy, I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have demanded to know what that reason was.

Hell, Dabi even thanks Skeptic for his editing work, which is more direct positive approval than he's ever shown anyone in the League (give or take the high-five with Twice, which, genuine or not, he would have known he was doing on camera). That much-vaunted panel of Spinner telling Toga to come back to the League? Dabi's grinning, which in isolation you could read as a certain rueful affection, but with the full context of the chapter, it becomes apparent that Dabi is grinning at Skeptic's laptop, seconds after telling Skeptic to "hurry up." Skeptic is, at that moment, probably gearing up the video to project nationwide, and Dabi’s more focused on that than he is Toga’s crisis, even when Compress directly appeals to him for aid. He tells Compress he doesn’t care, the same way he told Hawks he doesn't give a damn about the League.

Let me be clear here: I'm inclined to take Dabi at his word. I think Dabi hangs around the League because, for all that he says one man's conviction can shake the world, he also knows his own limits, and the League offers safety in numbers and an avenue to pursue his revenge. Maybe he finds them acceptable enough company, maybe he even does like them a bit despite himself, but I think any affection he might have for them is entirely incidental to his views on their usefulness. In the same way, while he's willing to bail on the MLA when the heroes attack, I don't think it was his plan to do so, especially not given his apparent immediate regard for Skeptic, as seen in the deleted scene here. Sure, he dislikes Geten, but ultimately, Geten is a stupid kid too tied up in his care for Re-Destro--who's now worshipping the ground Shigaraki walks on--to really be getting in Dabi's way.

Maybe if the MLA really were as quirk supremacist as Geten makes them out to be, Dabi would be actively looking for a way to see ‘em burn, but as I’ve said countless times before, Geten is not a reliable narrator vis a vis the MLA's doctrine. Now, obviously I don't expect Dabi to give them an unearned benefit of the doubt,(1) not after what he heard Geten say, but if Dabi has been working with Skeptic, it doesn't take a genius to realize that while Anthropomorph is a perfectly good quirk, it is categorically not what primarily defines Skeptic’s "worth" in the MLA societal microcosm.

Nothing that Skeptic does reflects the way Geten talks about "elevating one's ability" or "sheer strength" in the way that HeroAca fandom tends to understand as referring to flashy and offensive quirks. And yet, Skeptic is a ranked advisor warranting an introductory panel with RD's inner circle and Geten is not. Perhaps, just perhaps, this might have led Dabi to reevaluating his initial assessment just slightly?

|| Mr. Compress rejects the PLF moniker for Shigaraki, ergo Mr. Compress didn’t genuinely associate Shigaraki and the League with the PLF.

So, this one's pretty wild, because, in the same chapter that had people crowing about Mr. Compress's dialogue, Mr. Compress's actions show the exact opposite of the conclusion this theory would demand. Specifically, if it was always the League's plan to ditch the MLA, Mr. Compress would have darted right past Skeptic, ignoring the man's cries for help. He doesn't--he picks Skeptic up on the way past and (at least in the volume corrections) deposits him safe with Dabi in Spinner's scarf. Of course, Skeptic still stands to be useful, but if one acknowledges that Skeptic's usefulness is reason enough not to abandon him, then what exactly is the argument for leaving 116,000 perfectly useful warm bodies behind?

But let's set aside Compress rescuing Skeptic and focus on the actual point, because that point in itself is still flawed. Mr. Compress's thoughts on the PLF in the specific talk bubble in question are somewhat ambiguous. It's another case of the Viz translation making a couple of assumptions that are just that--assumptions.

Compress's words in the Japanese are as follows:

Chōjō Kaihō Sensen.… Viran rengo no Shigaraki Tomura ga…

Viz then renders the line like so:

The Paranormal Liberation Front's… No, the League of Villain's Shigaraki…

Note that in the Japanese, the possessive no is only included once, to indicate Shigaraki's association with the League. Further, the original doesn't indicate any negation in Compress's thoughts. Yes, he could be rejecting the PLF association for Shigaraki, but he could as easily be narrowing his scope to Shigaraki as the figure he represents to the League, rather than the figure he represents to the PLF--not rejecting wholesale, but rather becoming more specific. Compress might also be thinking first of the PLF as a general organization, then narrowing down to Shigaraki specifically.

Rather than reading this line as an indication that Compress regards the PLF as temporary, I was heartened by the fact that Compress thought about the PLF at all! If the League really had been planning to discard them this entire time, then there's no reason for Compress to have ever taken the Front seriously enough to have thought about them in that moment of crisis. You can carry this back further, too. In Chapter 258, when Twice is asking Hawks for help, he says that Spinner and Compress have been in meetings for days. Coupled with Compress's first thought about the entity that will carry out Harima's desired reformation being the Liberation Front (or possibly "the Liberation Front's Shigaraki"), this indicates to me that Compress was taking it seriously, not just gorging himself on sushi on the MLA's dime.

Indeed, back in Ujiko's lab, when it was just Shigaraki talking about his backstory and his dreams of destruction, Compress looks the opposite of impressed; we know from his narration in 294 that he liked the League because they didn't place any importance on one another’s pasts. Yet, at some point, his view shifted to believing that fulfilling his ancestor's ambition, his bloodline’s duty, really might be back on the table. We as readers don't quite know when that shift happened, but given, again, his initial mental invocation of the PLF, I think we can assume that it's tied to that alliance, those resources. And sure, when the moment of crisis happens and he's really defining who and what Shigaraki is to him, and where his values and priorities lie, it's with the League and Shigaraki as the leader of the League. But that doesn't mean he never had his hopes for the PLF at all, or was partaking in plans to ditch them.

Also too, this is a man who was lamenting the loss of their partnership with Overhaul, a man who personally maimed him, on top of killing a comrade. You're telling me the guy who shrugged off his animosity towards Overhaul would willingly allow the League to plot sabotage against even wealthier collaborators against whom he has even less reason to hold a grudge? Come on, guys.

|| Toga hated Curious, so she wouldn't want to work with the MLA either.

This one's easy: Toga pretty explicitly hated Curious, but she's even more explicit that she likes the MLA because she thinks the world they want to create is wonderful. She says this verbatim at the end of 225, after Curious has spent the entire chapter hounding her with explosions and intrusive questions. What turns her animosity on Curious is not some reveal that the MLA's world would be terrible after all, but Curious calling Toga's "normal" miserable and tragic. Essentially, she doesn't object to the world the MLA wants to bring about; she objects to being turned into a martyr for that world, especially when that martyrdom requires that the things that make Toga happy be characterized as horrific misfortunes.

Toga doesn't like Curious; she kills Curious. And then she comes into a position of leadership, and we don't know a lot about how that position takes her, but she seems delighted to be walking out onto the stage to be announced as such, and she makes active contributions to the discussion of the PLF's plans in Chapter 245. We are, again, given no indication that her lethal response to Curious means that she's planning to ditch the MLA on the whole.

Incidentally, Curious asserts what she does about Toga only in the context of the world as it stands. The world's rejection of Toga's normal, and the extremes that rejection drove Toga to, are what Curious considers tragic and miserable, not Toga's fascination with blood in and of itself. She clearly believes that, in the world the MLA envisions, Toga's life would not be so miserable because she would never have been oppressed to the degree that she snapped. And frankly, Curious isn't wrong. The only reason she is a villain in that scene is that she's willing to murder Toga to project that tragedy to the world. If she'd been willing to sit down and have a civil interview with Toga to print it in a relevant magazine, she would have been fine.

|| Twice would never forgive them for what they did to Giran.

You know, this is a totally fair point. It is, however, somewhat complicated by the fact that Giran himself never left the PLF. Now, there’s almost certainly something to be said about Giran’s whole information broker shtick being terminally compromised by his capture, his maiming, his client list being hacked, etc. He had a bunch of identifying items strewn all over the country that were covered in the national news, items that people who associated with him closely certainly would have recognized. Maybe he’s laying low for a while?

I don’t know why Giran was still around by the time of the raid. I can theorize about his pragmatism or what have you, but the canon really doesn’t give us anything to go on. Still, if he really hated the MLA all that much, as he would be totally justified in doing, it’s pretty bizarre that Horikoshi showed him twice in PLF crowd scenes post-Deika looking nothing worse than kind of confused and uneasy. Heck, you’d think he would at least have merited a better seat in the crowd for the big merger announcement.

Giran aside, the fact that Twice never does hit it off with anyone in his regiment is, I think, telling. If there’s anyone in the League that intentionally kept himself at a distance from the MLA because of hard feelings, it’s likely Twice. After all, if he had befriended anyone, he presumably wouldn’t have needed to go to Hawks for tutoring almost an entire month after Deika. That said, the fact that Twice does go running to Hawks for tutoring shows that he’s at least doing his best to act in accordance with what he thinks Shigaraki and the rest want. That doesn’t preclude the League having a secret plan that he’s either in on and playing along with, or hasn’t been told about because he might not be able to stop himself from vocalizing about it. Still, while absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, obviously absence of evidence is not evidence of presence. So, lacking any sign that the rest of the League is planning treachery, I’m not inclined to assume Twice’s lack of forgiveness is indicative of anything other than his own feelings.

|| [Error: argument about Spinner's opinion on the PLF not found.]

:: INCOMING SALT WARNING :: INCOMING SALT WARNING ::

This is the one that really gets to me. I have never seen an argument that the League is planning to betray the PLF that convincingly explains the fact that Spinner, to all available evidence, threw himself wholeheartedly into trying to make the PLF succeed. To be more precise, I have seen one explanation, and that explanation is that the plan to ditch the MLA was a secret that only Shigaraki, Dabi and sometimes Toga knew about, and to reiterate, that is bullshit.

In my experience, this is an explanation proposed by people who care about Spinner only insofar as he can be a Soft Gaymer Boyfriend or score them rhetorical points, but have little to no interest in his ongoing--and, indeed, increasing--importance to the League generally and Shigaraki’s arc specifically. The dude who talked about how Twice’s home was the League, who got through to Toga while still respecting her choice when no one else could, the guy who recognized the hollowness within Shigaraki but also bonded with him over video games, the man who Mr. Compress said was Shigaraki’s most devoted follower(2)--this man did not do all of that for people in this fandom to say, “Oh, well, the others probably just kept it a secret from him because they thought he’d be bad at lying.”

Really? “Bad at lying?” And that’s an adequate justification, is it, for Shigaraki letting Spinner toil for months under false pretenses? For lying to the man who adores him the most? Of course it isn’t, but the people who theorize this don’t really care about Spinner’s adoration for Shigaraki, or the fact that Shigaraki rewarding Spinner’s feelings by allowing him to dedicate himself unstintingly to something Shigaraki was planning to discard from the beginning would be a blatant abuse of Spinner’s trust.

I have never seen anyone try to argue that Spinner was in on a plan to betray the MLA all along. That’s because it’s patently obvious that Spinner--forthright, direct Spinner, who named the merged organization with Re-Destro, spends all his time in meetings, has a direct exchange with Re-Destro about the state of their plans, and is probably the reason RD started wearing polka dots--went all-in on the PLF. But for the people who propose the “the League was always going to bail” theory, Spinner and his labors are an afterthought.

Spinner is not an afterthought. Where Mr. Compress has been captured, Toga could hypothetically be peeled away from the League via Uraraka, and Dabi almost certainly will be peeled away via the Todoroki plot, Spinner’s driving motivation at this point is Shigaraki himself. He connected to Shigaraki’s nihilism, his hatred, but also his humanity--the humanity in Shigaraki Tomura, not in Shimura Tenko. His empathy didn’t spring from contrived psychic glimpses of crying 5-year-olds, but from long months of observation, doubt, and gradually deepening wonder. He’s the only person currently with Shigaraki that I can see caring enough about Shigaraki’s welfare that he might sacrifice his own goals and desires to help Deku save him.

Spinner is not an afterthought, and I refuse to build or entertain theories that treat him that way. So as to his opinions on the MLA? Despite having his own reasons to be leery of them based on how shabbily Trumpet treated him, he was obviously trying to make the Paranormal Liberation Front succeed, which means he must have believed that Shigaraki wanted it to succeed. Therefore, unless you’re prepared to assert that Shigaraki (and everyone else who was in on it!) was cruel enough to lie to Spinner about something he was devoting so much time and energy to, the inescapable conclusion is that Shigaraki also wanted the Front to succeed.

(Note: After letting a friend pre-read this, I have been informed that there is, in fact, one explanation offered for Spinner knowing the League was going to abandon the PLF but working his ass off on the venture anyway, and that explanation is, “Something something wants to prove himself because low self-esteem.” This is so ridiculous I can’t even bring myself to edit this post accordingly. Low self-esteem! Because nothing would alleviate Spinner's low self-esteem like toiling for months over something that holds no worth to the people he actually cares about, right? Right?? Bah. Humbug!)

And but so, to wrap all that up: I fundamentally disagree that the League viewed the Paranormal Liberation Front as a temporary arrangement, at least to the extent that they were actively planning to betray their newfound--new won--allies. The fact that I don't think the League intended to discard the MLA out of hand does, thus, influence my opinion that, whatever Geten's fate will be, I'm pretty sure it's not going to be, "He gets murdered in a way that resembles nothing so much as a sick revenge fantasy dozens of chapters after the last point when such a death would have been remotely tonally appropriate."

Thanks for the ask, anon! Sorry about-- *waves at all of this*

-------------------------------

(1) Not that Mr. “Burns Random Delinquents Alive For Not Measuring Up To His Standards For Villainy” has any moral standing to criticize others for how they determine the value of peoples’ lives, mind.

(2) Other translations for the verb in Mr. Compress’s Japanese line of, “You are the one who ____s Shigaraki the most,” include yearn for, long for, pine for, miss, love dearly, adore, idolize, and revere. “Most devoted follower” is accurate enough, but considerably less homo than some of the things we could have gotten there.