#a passionate apprentice

[mournfulroses]

Virginia Woolf, from a diary entry featured in “A Passionate Apprentice,”

[petaltexturedskies]

Virginia Woolf, from a diary entry featured in A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897-1909

[cocolechatnoir]

birthday girl 🥂

— Virginia Woolf, A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897-1909

[text ID: All the months are crude experiments, out of which the perfect September is made.]

[fl1pp1ngart1st]

*GOD* I Love This Fucking Arc!

[silusvesuius]

drew these on new years night when my beers were wearing off

drew this also tho it's nothing crazy but jic😸😸

they're so sugoi

[tennessoui]

prompt --- meeting in prison au (maybe Anakin is serving a few years for crossing the line in defense of his mom and Obi-Wan is a volunteer teacher/lawyer?)

[this is in response to a prompt game i reblogged a year ago, but hey! wanted some dark obi-wan this evening so i'm finally getting around to it!] [warnings for hints of non-con typical for a prison trope fic where one is a pretty boy, also for dub-con and power imbalance] [obi-wan is another prisoner here] [supposedly] [2k]

It’s not actually something one asks here, which comes as a surprise to Anakin. He’d thought—well, he’d always assumed that was just something you traded in prison, like deathsticks and dirty holos maybe. Information, what are you in for.

Anakin had been worried that first night in his cell, mind shuffling through a cascade of concerns and memories and landing on one that seemed inconsequential, stacked as it was against the other contents of his life, but gripped him with a fear he hadn’t felt since he was small. What would he say, when they asked him what he was in for? 

Massacre is what’s written on the record. It’s some variation of the truth as well, though Anakin can’t even remember his own crime. Just the sting of the sand, the heat of the dying day, the blood on his hands. Mostly true, though Anakin thinks of it still as justice. Vengeance. The reality of bartering on Tatooine. A life for a life. A village for a mother. 

He could say massacre. As far as crimes go, it’s one that carries weight, could earn him a certain amount of respect among his fellow criminals. 

But then they would ask him how he did it. He isn’t necessarily small, but he’s hardly a man. Nineteen years old and lanky with it. His master used to assure him that he would grow sturdier with age, grow into his frame. 

His master hadn’t even looked at him once during the trial. It had been the security guards on Coruscant who had cut his braid.

So his fellow criminals would ask how he did it, how he killed an entire village of Tuskens when he is nothing but a nineteen year old boy.

And he would have nothing to say. Because being a Jedi…even just a Jedi padawan, even just a failed, ex-Jedi…it would attract too much attention. Too much of the wrong sort of attention. After all, the Jedi Order was probably responsible for half the prison sentences of the criminals here, and Anakin doesn’t think that any criminal would be able to just set that aside. Even if Anakin had barely had a hand in any sort of galactic-wide justice.

Even if the Jedi Order and Anakin don’t exactly agree on what justice is.

So he’d been afraid, that first night in his cell. Afraid and made powerless by the Force suppression cuffs locked tight around each wrist. Afraid that they would ask, that others would find out that he used to be a Jedi and punish him for it. Beat him as if they could beat their captors through him.

But no one asked.

Apparently, information like that isn’t shared or bartered. No one actually seemed that interested. And no one asked that first day. Not that first week. Oh, Anakin was told sometimes what other people did, how they came to be here, the length of their sentence. But only by the criminal themselves. There were rumors he heard about others, sometimes. That was all.

It eases some of the fear he feels that first week, that no one calls him as a Jedi, that no one seems to care about his past.

And with that fear taken care of, he has room to realize something else.

He’s pretty—and those in his cellblock have taken to noticing.

It’s nothing much at first. Lingering stares on his face, his lips, during mealtime. Lingering stares during the communal sonics. Out in the rec rooms. In the yards. He has no cellmate, at least, an empty bunk on top of him at night.

Thank the Force for small mercies.

Lingering stares turn into loud whispers that make Anakin want to scream. Perhaps the Force suppression bracelets smother his connection with the Force, but they do little to dim his Force-gifted hearing. It’s indecent. It’s skin crawling, what they say.

It’s also incredibly useful. Surprisingly so.

“Don’t know why I gotta respect some sleemo’s claim,” he hears from across the yards as he bends down to put the weights he’d been using back on their rack. “Man’s not even in the block and the boy’s mouth’s made for it.”

“You don’t have to,” someone else says in response as Anakin forces himself to keep his shoulders relaxed and low. He feels like prey. A piece of meat, ready for the taking. “That’s your grave dug though. It’s not just any sleemo. It’s fucking Sol who’s got his name on him.” 

“Fucking Sol,” the guy repeats with angry passion. “Been here two months and he thinks he owns the place.”

Two months. Where was Anakin two months ago? On Coruscant. At the beginning of his trial. Realizing too late that he’d done something he would not be able to undo. 

“--cut off a guy’s arm with a sharpened piece of plastoid,” the other man is saying when Anakin tunes back in. “Cause he was fucking bored. He can own this shithole all he wants. I’m not getting on the wrong side of him. Even for a round at Skywalker’s ass.”

Anakin beats a hasty retreat from the yards after that, though he can’t help but turn the new information over in his head.

He’d been wondering when the heated stares from the other prisoners would turn into attempts to—touch him. It’d been growing as a fear in the back of his mind. Without the Force, his defenses were shot. He was strong and well-muscled, but some of his fellow prisoners could almost certainly hold him down.

But apparently—they won’t.

Because someone else—some mysterious prisoner, Sol—already has first dibs.

The thought makes Anakin shiver, and it keeps him up for half the night. 

“You’re up rather late,” a voice murmurs through the cell wall a few hours into his restless pacing. The sound jolts Anakin into sudden stillness. “Oh, no, please don’t stop on my account, darling,” the voice says.

Anakin blinks. That’s a Coruscanti accent, though the prison is located in the middle of nowhere on the edge of the mid-rim. “What do you want?” he snaps automatically, arms crossing as he stares at the wall in front of him. On edge. Prey. Powerless.

“To talk,” the man says. “Obviously.”

Anakin’s eyes narrow of their own accord and he steps closer. “No one’s been in that cell before,” he states. “You’re new.”

“Oh, well done, you,” the man replies in a tone Anakin can’t decide is grating or pleasing. “You’re an observant one, aren’t you, Anakin?”

“How did you know my name?”

“Darling, the whole prison knows your name, I’m sure,” the man says with a chuckle that makes Anakin’s skin dimple. Fear? “Though I would hazard to say I know a little bit more than they do.”

“What do you mean.”

“Your past, darling. Your Jedi roots.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Anakin snaps, even as his heart rate picks up. Jedi. He hasn’t heard that word in ages. He never wanted to hear it again. This man knows. This man knows.

Danger. Danger.

“I can hear your pulse from here, Anakin,” the man says, sounding calm. Sounding amused. Anakin blinks at the wall in front of him. Danger. Danger.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says again.

“Hm,” the man says. “You’re afraid, I take it. Of others finding out.”

Anakin pinches his lips together, quiet. Silent.

“No need for that though,” the man says, as if this is a conversation between two friends—not one of Anakin’s worst nightmares brought to life. “You are under my protection.”

The words make Anakin’s stomach drop. “Sol.”

“To some,” the man—Sol—agrees. “I’d rather like it if you called me Obi-Wan though. Obi-Wan Kenobi. For now at least.”

Anakin sneers though the other man can’t see it. His heart races even faster now. Sol—one of the most dangerous men in the prison, if not the most dangerous one. Sol—the man whose name carries enough weight that he was able to claim Anakin as his own—what, bitch? What, plaything?---even from another block of the prison.

Sol, who somehow managed to get transferred between blocks, to the cell right next to Anakin’s own.

Who wants Anakin. 

For what?

“What do you want from me?” Anakin whispers. He clears his throat, tries again, louder this time and more insistent. “What do you want from me?” “I do think that is for me to know, darling, and for you to find out,” Sol—Kenobi—replies, tone light. Amused still. “But we can start with the simplest thing. Tomorrow morning, during our recreational hour in the yard, I would like you to come to me.”

“No kriffing way—”

“So you would like them to know of your past, darling? I’m sure I could forget myself. I’m sure I could…renege my claim rather easily. If you would prefer a more…brutal touch. Touches.”

Anakin’s skin crawls. The meaning and the threat in Kenobi’s words is clear. Either Anakin does as he is told or the other man will take away the protection currently keeping Anakin unmolested. And he’ll tell the others that Anakin was a Jedi. How many would jump at the chance to fuck a Jedi?

It’s not an option. It’s not a future Anakin would survive. He knows this.

But can he really—submit himself to another man, to this man? This dangerous, cruel man?  

“I don’t know anything about you,” he says roughly. “I don’t…”

“You will learn,” Kenobi says, dark promise coloring his words. “I will be beneath the chromometer. Tomorrow in the yard. You will come to me then.”

“Do you wish for me to crawl?” Anakin snarls, anger and powerlessness raging through him. His fist hits the wall between him and his executioner. It changes nothing. 

“Did I ask you to?” Kenobi snaps back, voice sharp as a blade. A moment passes. Another. The man lets out a breath and then says, “I do not want a dog, Anakin.”

“Then what do you want?” Anakin asks again, voice breaking under the weight of it all. He has always hated traps. He has always hated being powerless. Imprisoned.

Kenobi is silent as he appears to mull over the question. “I want an apprentice.”

Anakin has no idea what to say to that, and so he says nothing. Kenobi too is quiet. He remains so for the rest of the night.

In the morning, when Anakin is released from his cell after a sleepless night, he looks automatically to his left, but the door to Kenobi’s cell stays shut with no indication that there’s anyone in there.

He comforts himself with the thought that perhaps he imagined the whole affair up until the moment he is led into the yards during the morning rec hour.

It is immediately and painfully obvious which of the prisoners is Obi-Wan Kenobi. Sol. Even without the instructions that he’d been given, Anakin thinks he would be able to pick out the other man, just from how the others treat him.

Sol stands alone, back against the far side’s prison wall, ankles crossed and a deathstick in his hand. No one gets within several meters of him, giving him a wide berth. Out of respect? Fear? Both?

Anakin swallows.

This is not the man he thought he’d be when he was younger. This is not who he wanted to become.

But somehow he is here. Somehow this is the man he has become. Somehow, after a decade of freedom, he has been found by a new master.

Sol’s eyes flash golden in the weak sunlight as he watches Anakin approach him slowly. He tilts his face to examine him, to look at Anakin examining him in turn. His beard is neat and well-kept, as red as his rather long coppery hair. His smile is crooked when Anakin stops in front of him. He’s shorter than Anakin. It feels like a hollow victory, especially when the man plucks his death stick from his mouth and places it between Anakin’s lips.

“Good boy,” Obi-Wan purrs and Anakin feels a roar of emotions roar up in him at the words. Sickness. Hatred. Anger. 

And strangely, out of place and unexpected, a thrill of excitement.

[gr33nhouse-ghost]

i like to imagine that the apprentices propose traps in a presentation night format. dioramas are required and they get graded at the end. there probably isn't a gold star sticker system in place, but amanda and hoffman are keeping track mentally of who gets better grades

[ragingadhd]

Collab with @burnin0akleaves ! Check out his side here! Tysm to him asking me to collab on this bc I had so much fun aaaa and his side looks so good so yes I am threatening you to go look at it

Damn don’t you hate it when your “friend” saves your life but won’t get off your dick for like 2 seconds for you explain that you in fact do not have multiple stab wounds to the chest?

This is legit one of my favorite scenes in the series (this whole book was made for the Whorace girlies I swear. Wait wdym Will and Alyss profess they’re love to each other?) I had so much fun making this!!

[pagesofkenna]

Two small moments, chapters apart, from Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, which made me want to tear up

The context is that Frieren is an elf mage whose party saved the world decades ago, but to her the adventure was a ten-year blip in her centuries-long life. She's trying to connect to people better now, as she and her new apprentice collect spells and do odd jobs which seemingly have no purpose... until you learn what the deeper context is

(right after those first panels they visit an old statue built to honor an old adventuring companion, which has rusted over with age)

[wehavewords]

“August over at last thank goodness! Never was there such a long month. If only September too were.”

Virginia Woolf, Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897-1909

[throughtrialbyfire]

𝐖𝐈𝐏 𝐖𝐞𝐝𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐲 ♥

hello!! <3 i'm on time! yay!

thank you to the lovely @skyrim-forever for tagging me this week!!

tagging the fantastic @orfeoarte @thequeenofthewinter @umbracirrus @wispstalk @dirty-bosmer

@oblivions-dawn @viss-and-pinegar @saltymaplesyrup @kookaburra1701 and YOU! no pressure as always, hope everyone's doing alright this week!

this is a long excerpt from chapter 36 of Cycle of the Serpent, where wyndrelis is busy doing some research, and meeting the "youngest bard at the bard's college", who i hope to give more life in the fic. <3

The library of the Bard's College was a large, open room, with a few chairs and the many vaulted windows which allowed pools of sunlight to form on the stone floors, lined with expensive rugs made by former students or commissioned for the college. A couple of marble busts sat on pedastals and stared out at the people who flitted in and out of the room, famous poets of Skyrim's torrid history, their faces forever preserved in flattering angles. The Dunmer made his way to one of the larger shelves, pressing a grey finger gingerly to the spines as he muttered their names under his breath. Each one left him more disappointed than the one before it, his focus glued to the backs of the leather-bound tomes. The Real Barenziah, The Askelde Men, Feyfolken, Songs of Skyrim… "What're you looking for?" The voice nearly startled him out of his skin, Wyndrelis jolting as he turned to face the speaker. A young, Redguard man stood with a hand on one hip, his dark blue, puff-sleeved shirt accented with gold bordering around the neckhole. His vest was an equally bright shade of gold, fastened with mammoth ivory buttons. Wyndrelis took in the sight of him, his bright smile, his cocked brow, and the extravagance of his clothing. "Do all bards dress so… Over the top?" Wyndrelis forced a nervous chuckle as the words left his mouth. The man waved a hand, dismissing the notion. "Trust me, when you meet Lady Ateia or Headmaster Viarmo, this will look tame by comparison."

He bit his tongue, not sure how to tell the man that he had met Viarmo, and gods, he was right. This was tame. When he turned his attention back to the bard, his hand was outstretched, and Wyndrelis awkwardly shook it. "Ataf. Youngest bard at the Bard's College!" "Is that so?" He thought back to Athenath, and gave the other a closer look, figuring them to be around the same age. "Um- Wyndrelis Femer." "You're one of the new students, then? I'd heard Giraud mention that we had some elves join. He was excited, I can tell you that. It's been a while since we had new prospective bards join." The Dunmer glanced to the bookshelf, then back to Ataf. "Hm, I see. Yes, um- myself and a couple of friends, we joined because one of them was already heading this way, so we figured…" he trailed off, unsure how to glaze over the details of the past few weeks without bringing up the dragons. So, he simply let the words die, and Ataf seemed satisfied enough with this answer. "That's great, genuinely. This war's made it hard for the college to get any new students, and… Well, anyways, enough rambling. What're you looking for? I saw you kinda peering over the shelf, is there anything specific?" The eagerness of the man unsettled him. Perhaps Wyndrelis was unused to people speaking so much. Aside from Athenath, this seemed to be the most talkative person he'd run into in a very long time. He shifted his attentions back to the shelf, scanning the spines and frowning. "Yes, but I'm not certain what the title is." "We can narrow by genre, if that helps."

It did. "History." "Oh, then you're in the wrong section." Ataf waved for Wyndrelis to follow him, the Dunmer knitting his brow. "The histories are over here. Largest section, aside from our poetry and song collections. I've been here a little while, so I've spent my fair share of time curled up in this very chair," he gestured to a worn, wooden-framed chair, cushioned seats flattened from years of use, "are you looking for materials for Giraud's class?" Wyndrelis shook his head. "I'm actually hoping I could learn a little more about this city. Or Haafingar Hold as a whole, I think." When Ataf lead him to a smaller corner of the shelf, he pointed to the right books. Wyndrelis' magicka formed in his hand as a soft, blue glow, before stretching out and grasping the first book, then the second, then a third and fourth, piling them up into the chair. Ataf stared a moment, flicking his gaze from the Dunmer's hand, then his face. "A mage, huh? So, why aren't you in Winterhold?" The curiosity seemed well-placed, but the fact he wasn't in Winterhold - or rather, had been prevented from heading there entirely - burned at the back of his neck, and across his cheeks and atop his ears. Wyndrelis shrugged. "I would be, but… Things got complicated, I suppose. And now I am here, and I'd like to stay a while." Ataf explained the sections of the shelves, where he could find what books, his knowledge of the college itself funneled into his words and his passionate voice. Clearly, Ataf had been at the college for some time, and his enjoyment of the place sprawled across his features and through to his words. When the conversation lulled and Ataf rushed to join another year-round student - a young woman named Illdi, Wyndrelis gathered - he sat in the chair, setting the books on the table next to him, and began to flip through the pages idly.

The days since the trio had arrived in Solitude had been a flurry of deeds to be done, deals to be struck, and responsibilities to spend their time wrapping up. Rarely, moments to breathe would seep into their day. Now that there was time, Wyndrelis had his curiosities, and the desire to satiate them like a burrowing hunger through his gut. And, of course, the nightmares. Wyndrelis seldom dreamt. This had been a fact his entire life. It was one that his siblings would joke about being his "curse" in their bloodline, as so many of them suffered vivid dreams, but he spent the majority of his life without, simply falling into blanketed darkness that sped him into the next day. Since arriving in Solitude, he had suffered nightmares, some very small and fragmented, as though washed up on a sea of black sand. Others vivid, warm, tangible. As though thrust like a fist into a toy fortress of wood, crushing peace to pieces. Some woke him, others he slept through. The first was of twin fires, of a clocktower in his hometown and the fires of Helgen. The next was of dragons, hundreds of them in all different colors, flying overhead until they blotted out the sky. Chief among them was that serpentine shape, the black-winged, red-eyed beast who'd lunged the rest of Wyndrelis' life thus far into chaos. That shape ever grew throughout the dream, until he outgrew Nirn itself, until the world was nothing but the size of a small berry that the dragon devoured. He'd woken up with a start after that one. It had been the night before they set out to Fort Hraggstad, and he'd been lucky not to wake the other two. He could still feel the cold sweat down his back as he reflected on it, and shuddered. All he could do now was seek answers.

[mournfulroses]

Virginia Woolf, from a diary entry featured in “A Passionate Apprentice,”

[petaltexturedskies]

Virginia Woolf, A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897-1909

[fl1pp1ngart1st]

Robin Needs Help.

[stitchwraith-stingers]

i love making up wc aus in my head yayayaya

[myfanfictiongarden]

Why Qimir is wrong- an essay

First of all I’ll like to say that the following observations are based on the six episodes we’ve seen so far of The Acolyte and I have no idea what will happen in the next two.

Also, Qimir is as hot as Mustafar.

There has been a lot of concern until now (especially if you judge it by the headlines of most YouTube videos) that this show might be all anti-Jedi centred and might praise to much the villains. Like so many speculations, theories and concerns right now floating through the internet I thought them unneeded and haven’t been proven wrong as yet. Most good stories rely on the fact that it is more interesting if you can understand from where both sides are coming from and, if we are going to stick to Star Wars, the prequels were basically nothing more then an attempt to showcase where Darth Vader was coming from. Everybody praised Avengers: Infinity War for having Thanos be a complex character, so why shouldn’t The Acolyte have witches and Sith we are curious to know more about? Does that automatically make the show be anti-Jedi and Light Side? No, no it doesn’t. 

But while I think the show has as yet a rather balanced outlook at characters believes and positions, and understands what is right and what is wrong, I do wonder at those from the audience who might think the show says “Qimir is right”

Well, I say “Qimir is wrong” And here’s why:

The most prevailing argument that he is making of why the Jedi are wrong, and that he (as a Dark Side user) has a right to exist is: Freedom. Everybody should have the freedom to do as he or she pleases, no limitations, follow your emotions because they are always right, power is a mighty weapon, no law should limit myself from expressing my individuality etc. But things aren’t that black and white as he paints them to be, aren’t they? Because “freedom” means responsibility, you CANNOT just do as you pleases, your emotions can blind you, the rules of society keep us united. It isn’t just about using the Force freely. It isn’t just the Jedi who are worried about Dark Side users, it’s the Republic. 

The reason only Jedi are trained to use their powers is to prevent another Galaxy wide conflict like there was 1000 yers ago. Not every child sensitive in the Force is excepted into the Order nor does every family agree to send their child away, and that is okay because if not used the powers do not limit the person in his path later in life, except prevent psychotic mass murderers from wrecking havoc. (Insert tumblr joke).

It is always brought up how Jedi are against attachment and romantic relationships- well I haven’t seen a Sith romance last very long, did you? Does their way of thinking really support a quiet family life? Did Anakin say yes to Padme when she asked him to leave everything behind and be there for her and their child? I see always this argument of “Jedi can’t love” as a fact and exclusively bad thing, when the concept of monastic life is anything but coldhearted and anti-love. All the Jedi we’ve met here so far have been nothing but kind- even Yord. Why couldn’t friendships be based on really deep connections? Why should the personal gratification of oneself be the way to limit oneself in life? Qimir said there is no romantic love, no family life possible as a Jedi- yes but only because (from a Catholic point of view) we know family love and the love between two people is the most noble and worthy thing to strive for, so when you exclude yourself from that equation it isn’t because you don’t value them but because you value them so much that you are making a sacrifice to forgo this path and give yourself up to spiritual servitude to (insert your faith) and society as a whole. This concept may look odd to people from a secular worldview, but to millions of believers (Christian, Hindi, Buddhist or Shinto) it is a very valid concept. 

Where does love have its place in Qimir’s worldview? Survival of the fittest? He tells Osha her feelings for Jecki would have always stayed on sided- so it was ok to kill her? Because my feelings alone are valid, everyone else is wrong? Isn’t that the lonely path?

"When you loose everything you're finally free"- Qimir, ep6 Teach/Corrupt