#Shores of the Nine

[hardcoregamer]

Some locations in video games are instantly recognizable, not just by the fans of the game, but even by people who haven’t played the title. The most iconic of these locations have been instilled in the video gaming industry until the end of time and even non-gamers can recognize them.

[jackfromthefairytale]

people don't appeal to my pussy but you know what does? filthy filthy breakdowns

[tennessoui]

For the prompt list, nanny/single parent obikin would be amazing!!

(from this prompt list)

(the first time I answered this prompt two years ago, the nanny anakin au was born)

so to do something different, here's some gffa widowed anakin, nanny (sort of) obi-wan!

(2.5k)

It is hard to find time to grieve. There are too many things to do. Too many appointments to make, too many decisions Anakin isn’t sure he’s qualified for. Some decisions are easier than others. For example, the funeral will be on Naboo. There will be two services: a public one to honor Padmé’s public service, and a private one to honor who she was as a person. The casket will be closed, because his wife died when her cruiser exploded. There isn’t much left to bury anyway.

But some decisions are harder. Which flowers should go on her casket. What songs would she want sung and who should sing them? Would she prefer her grave closer to her ancestral home or the home she created in her adulthood?

If she told anyone the answers to these questions, it wasn’t Anakin. But then, the people who knew her best, who loved her most, died with her. Sabé, Rabé, Saché, Yané, all of her handmaidens—an assassination such broad strokes that it was impossible for it to fail.

So Anakin chooses Yali lilies, because Leia’s eyes linger on them the longest. He chooses a small Nabooian folk band to play after her service because their music is the first thing to make Luke lift his head from his coloring books in days. He formally requests that her body be buried among her ancestors, and the Nabierres agree immediately.

And he keeps telling himself that he will grieve, but there is so much to do. 

And then—then there’s after the funeral. Then there’s the rest of his life, sprawling out before him in a long, hazy road. 

There are more decisions to be made.

There are people who have opinions on them now, people who sat back and let Anakin muddle through flower arrangements and kriffing seating charts, who now step in to peer over his shoulder, monitor his every breath.

Should he really move the children back to Coruscant? Does he truly plan to continue to work as a mechanic in the Mid-Levels? Should he not think of the children, their needs? How can he support them on the thin amount of credits he makes? Would it not be better for the children to live on Naboo in the care of their grandparents and their extended family?

It would be what Padmé would have wanted.

Anakin cannot care about what Padmé would have wanted, because she isn’t here. Not to argue with him, not to make her wants known. She is dead. She doesn’t get to haunt him in the waking world too.

“What do you want?” he asks plainly, sitting down across the table from his two children. The twins blink back at him. Leia has finished her cereal. Luke has barely touched his.

“Bacon,” Luke says.

Anakin hadn’t meant for breakfast, but he figures it’s as good of a start as any. “Alright,” he agrees.

He stands once more and goes to the kitchen. It’s not exactly his domain. It was never Padmé’s either. The way Padmé grew up, food was made once you requested it—by droid, by cooking staff. Not by the hand of a Nabierre.

The way Anakin grew up, food was cobbled together carefully, sparingly no matter how much you requested it. And no matter how you cooked it, it always tasted a little like dust, which took the joy out of experimentation.

But the serving staff have been dismissed for the past two weeks to give the family time and space to grieve in private. 

(Padmé’s parents have been given a schedule for visiting hours for that exact reason.)

Anakin locates the pan; then, he locates the package of bacon strips.

When he glances up, both twins are watching him over the edge of their barstools, tiny faces showing both skepticism and incredulity.

“I want to know what you want to do,” Anakin says, raising his voice as he places the pot over the heating plate, the meat in a moment later. “Do you want to stay here with your grandmother and grandfather? Do you want to go back to Coruscant?”

The twins are quiet. Anakin twists his neck to look at them again, and they’re looking at each other, silently communicating the way only twins can.

“Where will you be?” Leia finally asks, looking at him with narrowed, suspicious eyes, bottom lip already jutting out.

Anakin blinks. “Wherever you are,” he answers.

“You won’t leave too?” Luke asks rather tremulously.

Anakin takes the pan off the heated plate and turns it off with a decisive flick of his wrist. “Of course not,” he says. “Come here.” He crouches down and barely has enough time to open his arms before the twins are there, pressing in as close as they can get to him. He holds them back just as tightly in return.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he promises into Leia’s hair. “Not without you two.”

���-----------------

It becomes apparent fairly quickly that this is, by necessity, a lie.

The twins don’t want to stay on Naboo, which Anakin is secretly incredibly grateful for. He doesn’t want to either, but he knows he’d just be called selfish should he express the opinion.

But the twins don’t want to go back to Coruscant either. This makes sense as well. It would be incredibly jarring for them to go back to living in the quarters they shared with their mother, her Upper Coruscanti apartments in the nicest district of the planet, without her there.

Anakin wishes it were as simple as sticking a pin on a planet and deciding to uproot the entirety of his family to live there. 

But it’s not.

Perhaps if he were still young, nineteen, newly free and in love with the taste of that freedom, it would be.

But he’s a widower now. He has his children to think about, their futures. Any planet he chooses must have what they need as well. 

And they are four year olds who have just lost their mother. Their needs are numerous.

What makes the decision for him in the end is that his boss knows a man from Stewjon, who is willing to hire him. Who is willing to pay a premium for his expertise with mechanics.

Anakin doesn’t know the first thing about Stewjon, other than that it’s an ocean planet in the Inner Core and his dead wife always said the Senators from Stewjon were so frigid and tight-lipped because they spent the first few days of each visit trying not to be seasick on the Senate floor.

Anakin isn’t sure why this is the very first thing he tells the man—his potential boss—he meets behind the counter in the mech-shop on Stewjon.

He’s left the children with their grandparents for the week—long enough to fly from Naboo to Stewjon, meet with his potential employer, interview, apply his work practically, and fly back out.

He’d explained to both twins why they had to stay on Naboo. He’d explained many times. That hadn’t changed the betrayed look Leia had worn as she saw him off. It hadn’t wiped the tears from Luke’s eyes.

“Ah, well, I can’t say I’ve heard that one before,” the mechanic says. He sounds amused, and Anakin is incredibly shocked to hear a Coruscanti accent. Everyone he’s spoken to since arriving planetside has had such a heavy brogue that he’d honestly struggled to understand their directions to the shop—Kenobi & Sons.

Anakin lets himself look again at the man behind the counter. He’s rather clean for a mechanic, he decides. His beard is red, a common factor around these parts apparently, but his beard is short and neat, trimmed to accentuate the strong lines of his jaw. His eyes are a stormy blue, the kind of blue that matches the Stewjoni ocean.

“Between you and me though,” the man smirks and leans onto the counter with his elbow. His tunic is dark gray, white starchy fabric peeking out beneath the v-necked collar. “I’ve never been a fan of Stewjoni politicians anyway.”

“Oh?” Anakin asks, sidling a step closer to the counter. The man has the beginnings of gray at his temples, and his eyes are lined with wrinkles. They don’t make him look old though, Anakin decides. They make him look…well-lived.

“I’ve not a head for politics much at all,” his future employer shakes his head slightly with a small smile. His eyes flick up and down Anakin’s face, lingering on his lips and then lingering longer on the scar over his brow. Anakin feels rather flushed under the inspection, and he shifts his weight forward until he’s leaning up against the counter too.

There’s something about this man that’s rather…magnetic. It pulls him in. It makes him want to linger.

Good characteristic for a shopkeeper to have, though Anakin privately decides that the man before him has a face that’s wasted on mechanics, buried under some ship’s underbelly in a backroom.

“Me neither,” he admits, a moment too late to sound anything but highly distracted. It makes the man smile again though, a flash of straight white teeth.

“Is there anything you do have a head for then?” he asks. His tone is light, airy, rather teasing.

This is the strangest interview Anakin has ever had.

“Um,” he says. “Well. There’s mechanics.”

“Oh?” The man’s eyebrow lifts at an elegant angle. He props his chin on the palm of his hand and looks up at Anakin through his eyelashes. “Then why come here to us then?”

“Um,” Anakin says, and not because the man looks rather unfairly flattering like this, amber eyelashes in sharp relief against the blue of his eyes.

They’re interrupted by the sounds of clattering in the backroom, stomping and cursing. The man before him straightens with a slight sigh and picks up the closest flimsipad. “And what brings you in here today, sir?” he asks rather loudly, pitching his voice back to the other room of the shop pointedly. “Problem with your speeder? Serving droid? Cruiser? If it’s your astromech droid, I regret to inform you that I’ll have to refuse you service on account of the fact that I don’t particularly care for them.”

Anakin thinks he splutters, but whatever noise he makes is definitely drowned out by the rather irritated shout of Obi-Wan! that comes from the back.

A moment later, a man storms through the door, looking annoyed. "We will service an astomech if that's what's broken, Obi-Wan."

Now this is a man that Anakin can believe is a mechanic. His nails are blackened with oil, and his bare, burly arms carry smudges of the stuff. He’s much broader than the man—Obi-Wan—that Anakin had been talking to. He’s bald with a reddened scalp and a rather large red beard that’s the antithesis of the other man’s in every way. His clothes are dirty, loose, and the color of ash. He looks older too—whereas Obi-Wan could easily be in his thirties, this man must be pushing fifty.

He snaps at Obi-Wan in a language that Anakin doesn’t understand. Obi-Wan shrugs and hands over the flimsi pad without argument.

“Um, actually,” Anakin says, feeling incredibly wrong-footed. “Which one of you is Kenobi?”

“I am,” both of them say. Obi-Wan’s smirking slightly. The other man’s voice is louder, carrying that Stewjoni accent so obviously lacking in Obi-Wan’s speech.

The older man closes his eyes as if he’s praying for patience. “We both are,” he says. “Though if your ship’s malfunctioned, sir, I’m the Kenobi you want to see. This one’s good for naught but magic tricks.”

“I have been told I’m rather good at other things,” Obi-Wan turns his smirk full-force at Anakin, dropping his eyes to Anakin’s lips once more.

“My name is Anakin Skywalker,” he says very quickly in a very normal tone of voice that is most definitely not a squeak. “I’m here to interview for a position. As another mechanic.”

“Oh,” the older Kenobi says.

“Oh,” the younger Kenobi says in a much different tone.

The older Kenobi pinches at his nose for a moment before turning around the counter and offering his hand. “Ben,” he says. “Ben Kenobi.”

Anakin takes his hand and shakes it, eyes traveling back to Obi-Wan. Is he supposed to shake his hand too?

“I’m the Son in the sign,” Ben says gruffly as if that answers his question.

“I’m the reason it’s plural,” Obi-Wan adds, busying himself with the contents of the counter. From what Anakin can tell, the man is just messing up the carefully organized piles of receipts. 

He decides that he would rather not get the job than point this out to Ben.

Ben huffs out something in Stewjoni that sounds downright insulting, but that doesn’t stop Obi-Wan from smiling sunnily up at Anakin. “My brother enjoys bitching and moaning that I came back home when I was seventeen, but he’s awfully quick to foist his children off on me when he’s called to shift at the rig offshore and Marci’s off-planet too.”

Anakin blinks. He feels like that’s the safest answer.

“Only thing good that blasted Jedi Order ever taught you was how to handle younglings,” Ben says, and then spits on the ground as if the words themselves have left a bad taste in his mouth.

Anakin blinks and wonders if he should say something to remind the brothers that he’s here. For an interview. “And my magic tricks,” Obi-Wan rolls his eyes slightly before catching Anakin’s eye and winking. With a wave of his hand, a flimsi-sheet flies over the counter and into Anakin’s chest. He catches it unthinkingly. “Would you like to sign in, sir?” “Get out of here,” Ben barks, snatching the flimsi from Anakin’s hand and pushing it back to the counter. “Like I said, the only one’s impressed with that is the younglings.”

“I don’t know, your man looks impressed,” Obi-Wan says slyly, even as he pushes himself away from the counter and around the edge of it.

Anakin isn’t sure what he looks like. He doesn’t think impressed is the word he’d use though.

When Obi-Wan brushes past him, the static electricity in the air jumps between their shoulders. Anakin feels as if he’s been shocked.

Obi-Wan must feel it too because he stops only a few inches away and looks at Anakin. For the first time, his expression is open. Curious. Considering.

“Get!” His brother insists, and Obi-Wan obeys, throwing one last look over his shoulder at Anakin before he slips out the door.

The shop feels somehow much bigger now that the other man has left. Ben sighs and rubs a hand down his face. He looks older now. More worn. “So that was my brother,” he tells Anakin wearily. “Who you would most likely see frequently if you were to take this job. I would understand completely if you would like to start by talking compensation.”

[idkaguyorsomething]

Come read Ursula le Guin, we have:

Omegaverse

"Are clones fucking each other doing incest or masturbation" debate

Airports aren't real, therefore you can use them to travel to other dimensions

Hillbilly Encanto wars

That one short story they based a Star Trek episode off of

Local hypnotherapist tries to achieve world peace by making his patient have very specific dreams (it backfires)

"his autism of terror"

Reverse monsterfucking

Wizard boy coming-of-age but it's actually good

Fuck Capitalism

If you're interested in reading any of these, respectively there are:

The Left Hand of Darkness

Nine Lives

Changing Planes

Gifts

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

The Lathe of Heaven

The Dispossessed (no, I don't know what she meant by that)

The Wife's Story

A Wizard of Earthsea

everything she ever wrote, ever

[aquareegia]

have you ever heard a breakdown so filthy, it feels like it's slapping you in the face, running you over with a truck and throwing you down the stairs all at once or are you normal?

[tinydancerfreelancersblog]

[ruinedholograms]

(1978-1989)

Hiroshi Yoshimura - Green

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

Fumio Miyashita - Wave (Sounds of the Universe)

Laurie Spiegel - The Expanding Universe

Angel Olson - Aisles

Howard Shore - Videodrome

Brian Eno - Ambient 4 (On Land)

Brian Eno - Apollo (Atmospheres & Soundtracks)

Vangelis - Blade Runner

The New American Orchestra - Blade Runner (Orchestral Adaptations)

The Reds | Michael Rubini - Manhunter

John Williams - The Return Of The Jedi

Michele Mercure - Pictures of Echoes

Tryanglz | Brad Fiedel - The Terminator

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Left Handed Dream

David Byrne & Brian Eno - My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts

Giorgio Mororder - Scarface 

Piper - Gentle Breeze

V/A - Pacific Breeze

Steve Hiett - Down On The Road By The Beach

John Williams - Superman: The Movie

Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine

Piper - Summer Breeze

Pixies - Surfer Rosa

[queer-and-nerdy]

greetings, this is linnie's (@wellgoslowly) emo metalhead roommate aaron (resident george karim kinnie) here to drop some random lockwood&co headcanons that will likely only make sense to a niche audience. thank you and enjoy.

projection central here.

Lockwood

Barbie vs Oppenheimer: Barbie

A James Hetfield kinnie 100%

His favorite Sleep Token TMBTE song would def be The Apparition but he cries himself to sleep listening to Rain and thinking about Lucy

His favorite Ghost song from each album are Con Clavi Con Dio, Idolatrine, From the Pinnacle to the Pit, Dance Macabre, and Spillways. His favorite ghoul is Mountain and his favorite ghoulette is Aurora

Cried so hard he threw up when "So Much For Stardust" came out (average Fall Out Boy enjoyer)

AGGRESSIVE Metallica defender

Lucy

Barbie vs Oppenheimer: Oppenheimer

The definition of a Rob Trujillo kinnie

Her favorite Sleep Token TMBTE song is Rain for sure. She cries listening to Euclid. Vore is on her sleep playlist

Her favorite Ghost song from each album are Stand By Him, Per Aspera Ad Inferi, Cirice, Life Eternal, and Respite on the Spitalfields. Her favorite ghoul is Swiss and her favorite ghoulette is Cirrus

Recovering My Chemical Romance listener (still listens to them regularly)

Unironic Rob Zombie enjoyer

George

Barbie vs Oppenheimer: Insidious

Kirk Hammett kinnie. I mean look at him

His favorite Sleep Token TMBTE song is Take Me Back to Eden. Maybe a basic answer but it goes hard so he gets a pass

His favorite Ghost song from each album are Ritual, Jigolo Har Megiddo, Deus In Absentia, Witch Image, and Griftwood. His favorite ghoul is Sodo/Dewdrop and his favorite ghoulette is Cumulus

His favorite metal (as an umbrella term) bands are Ghost, Ice Nine Kills, Avatar, Metallica, Slipknot, Lorna Shore, Sleep Token, Avenged Sevenfold, Kiss, Judas Priest, and Type O Negative (because he thinks Peter Steele is hot)

Pretends to be a Megadeth/Dave Mustaine defender to piss off Lockwood (he likes both of them equally and thinks the feud is stupid)

Stephen King is his guilty pleasure - he loves Pet Semetary but cries each time he reads/watches it

please let me know if there's an audience for this lolol

[tj-crochets]

Future quilt idea to use up scraps from the quilt I’m currently working on!

Posting it so I don’t forget it, it’s basically a 6x6 grid of 6” finished blocks, a mix of solid squares and four patch blocks. I’m thinking either two colors or two shades of one color, each starting in one corner and overlapping in the middle (possibly with the center row from corner to corner as 9 patch blocks instead and expanding the 4 patches one row towards the corners?)

[foliosriot]

𝐑𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐑𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐒

𝐑𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐒 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐒: closed

𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂 𝐑𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐒

i write mainly fluff, angst, and nsfw/smut. but i will gladly write gore, violence, and horror.

if your request includes non-con (or anything in relation including consensual non-con), homophobia, transphobia, racism, or any other type of hate speech, discrimination, or any type of romanticism of mental illnesses/disorders, you will be ignored! i will never write anything that could potentially hurt or cause harm to any group of people.

under no circumstances will i write any bandom ship fics. i no longer partake in writing (or even reading) those fics due to past bandoms i’ve been in ruining them for me. so, if you request something like “noah x ruffilo” or “ricky x vinny”, it will be ignored. i am not comfortable writing that sort of thing anymore.

when requesting, give me as many or as little details as you want! just gimme what you’ve got and we’ll see what comes of it.

have fun! you are welcome to request whatever you want, as long as it’s within the guidelines. do not hate on someone’s request if and when it is shared. personally, i think that hurts the requester more than it does me. be kind and have fun with requests.

if you request anything i refuse to write over and over, or you are bullying other people, you will be blocked. no exceptions.

𝐖𝐇𝐎 𝐈 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄

bad omens + crew

motionless in white

lorna shore

jesse cash

ice nine kills

sleep token

𝐏𝐒𝐀: if you have any questions, feel free to DM me or send in an anonymous request! i will have happily answer anything you may be wondering about!

𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓.

[4typercent]

The Sick New World schedule is finally out!

Who are you excited to see?

I may be spending the day at the Gold Stage and the Red Stage. I'm choosing to miss Sleep Token because I'm seeing them in Montreal in May, but it breaks my heart...

[tevantarlos]

New Fics: 6/27/24 - 9/7/24

6/27/24: Fandom: Chicago PD Pairing: No pairing, Linstead friendship Fic: No Place But Beside You

6/28/24: Fandom: Chicago PD Pairing: Linstead Fic: Some Love Never Dies Fandom: Chicago PD Pairing: Linstead Fic: Scary

6/29/24: Fandom: Chicago PD Pairing: Linstead Fic: Leap of Faith 7/1/24: Fandom: Queer as Folk (US TV 2000) Pairing: Britin Fic: Nothing's Ever Perfect

7/2/24: Fandom: Queer as Folk (US TV 2000) Pairing: Britin Fic: Anything for Love 7/3/24: Fandom: Queer as Folk (US TV 2000) Pairing: Britin Fic: Never Felt Better Fandom: Queer as Folk (US TV 2000) Pairing: Britin Fic: Tell Me Truly

Fandom: Chicago PD Pairing: No pairing, Upzek friendship Fic: Let Go of the Past

Fandom: Queer as Folk (US TV 2000) Pairing: Britin Fic: Clinging to the Past 7/4/24: Fandom: Queer as Folk (US TV 2000) Pairing: Britin Fic: Buying Flowers

7/5/24: Fandom: Brooklyn Nine-Nine Pairing: No pairing, Jake & Rosa friendship Fic: No One Else But You Fandom: The Rookie Pairing: No pairing, Bradpez friendship Fic: You're An Idiot 7/8/24: Fandom: Queer as Folk (US TV 2000) Pairing: Britin Fic: Needing Each Other

Fandom: Silk Stalkings (TV 1991) Pairing: No pairing, LoLance friendship Fic: Until the End of Everything

Fandom: Law & Order: SVU Pairing: No pairing, Rollaro friendship Fic: Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day 7/9/24: Fandom: Criminal Minds Pairing: No pairing, Jeid friendship Fic: I've Got You 7/24/24: Fandom: 9-1-1 Pairing: BuckTommy/Tevan/Kinley/Kinkley Fic: How Lucky I Am to Have You

7/30/24: Fandom: Wildfire (TV 2005) Pairing: Krunior Fics: Simply Magical, Who We Used to Be

8/1/24: Fandom: Wildfire (TV 2005) Pairing: Krunior Fic: Simply Beautiful 8/15/24: Fandom: Wildfire (TV 2005) Pairing: Krunior Fic: Simply Sweet 9/4/24: Fandom: Bitten (TV) Pairing: Claylena Fic: Somewhere I Belong Fandom: Chesapeake Shores (TV) Pairing: Trabby (Trace/Abby) Fic: If I Had It My Way

9/7/24: Fandom: Sullivan's Crossing (TV 2023) Pairing: Caggie Fic: For You I Will Do Anything

[faithoftheart]

Photobomb

My attempt at @smilesobrien's DTIYS. Not sure what's going on in the original image, so I decided Seven and B'Elanna went on shore leave together. They paid one of those guys who sells photos at tourist spots to take their picture, and Neelix photobombed them.

It's also Day 1 of Trektober. The prompt is "Shore Leave."

(It's still not midnight in this time zone!)

[laventadorn]

i sincerely think it’s a terrific literary experience to read something that makes you feel like you’ve learned something extremely profound but can’t explain in the slightest. ursula k le guin said “the artist deals with what cannot be said in words . . . the artist whose medium is fiction does this in words: the novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.” the paradox of that is in itself amazing. i love to read a thing that is — not confusing, that’s not the right word, because confusion can make you feel helpless. rather, something that transmits to me some depth of meaning that i can’t begin to explain. i feel like i’ve touched or heard resonant truth, but what the heck was it? i know it, but i can’t put it into words.

[whatareyoudoingwithamaserati]

I could fix jepexx. Someone get his cringefail ass over here right now I need to lock him in a room and make him listen to electric callboy and dangerkids and architects until he repents for his sins and starts a pair of patch pants

[yourlocalalle]

I should probably try to get some followers on here hi I like Waterparks, Ice Nine Kills, Weathers, Lorna Shore and a bunch of other bands