#again. for my purposes this is NOT canon but the whole situation is still absurdly funny to me so i had to make another joke about it

[relicsongmel]

*Dena voice* "Hey Syl you know that one 'mon you found in the woods when you were 8 that saved your life and is literally the whole reason you went on a journey? Well I randomly found it in an artificial wilderness at the bottom of the sea and we're besties now"

[forestwater87]

harvest, fog, & ghost for the autumn asks :)

Holy crap, there’s a whole bunch of asks I didn’t realize I’d received! This website is such a disaster . . .

Okay, so this was in reference to a post I rb’d a couple of days ago (that I had to hunt down because, again: terrible website, Tumblr. 0/10 stars I’ll never leave you):

harvest - what fictional character do you most identify with? Why?

Well, I used to say Gwen, because back in seasons 1-2 she had just enough personality and background to be extremely relatable to any Millennial nerd out there, but enough gaps in her characterization to fill in with all sorts of personal and emotional baggage from fanfic writers and I really enjoyed that. Seasons 3 and 4 really fleshed her out -- which was great, but as you’d expect she did become a bit less relatable the less of myself I could cram into her character. 

So can I say fanon!Gwen? Or like . . . my interpretation of fanon!Gwen, which is just me with a bit of canon spice peppered in for flavor? That doesn’t seem like a real answer.

OH! My fanon!Gwen is heavily based on Rebecca Bunch from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, an emotionally damaged and mentally ill disaster who spends a huge amount of time in her own fantasy world and has to learn how to scrape her self-esteem off the ground through music and friendship. I don’t have BPD, but I still find her absurdly relatable.

fog - how well do you think you’d do in a zombie apocalypse scenario?

Oh, not good at all. I have the survival skills of a pickle. Can’t farm, can’t mend, am not handy in the slightest, and don’t even think of asking me to fight. 

That being said, I’m totally stealing Grif’s zombie plan and heading straight to Alaska (which actually might be a bad idea with this whole global warming thing, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there). 

ghost - is there someone that you miss having in your life?

Honestly? Not really. Does that make me a monster?

There are people I wish I had in my life more -- friends who get distant and then, once you eventually reconnect with them, you wish you’d spent more time talking to them and then you stop talking to them again because keeping up conversations is hard and then it keeps going over and over again . . . which is literally every single person in my life, because I am garbage at maintaining communication with literally anyone. 

But people I’ve cut out of my life on purpose? That’s always been something that had to happen, and though I have some regrets on how I handled some of those situations and wish I hadn’t been such a big fat jerk, I don’t really miss them. 

Also I have exactly enough spoons for like, 3 steady friendships at any given time. Once we get past that I start getting overwhelmed and dropping the ball and then we’re back at that first scenario again. 

TL;DR I’m a mess.

[gondalsqueen]

AGAIN, FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT ALREADY READ THIS ON A03.

Chapters: 3/3 Fandom:Star Wars: Rebels Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla Characters: Hera Syndulla, Kanan Jarrus, Ezra Bridger, Sabine Wren, Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios, C1-10P | Chopper, Ryder Azadi, Mart Mattin Additional Tags: Fix-It, Jedi Night, Nobody Dies, Team as Family, Pregnancy, i have now spoiled the whole thing in tags, non-graphic description of past torture, you know--canon compliant, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, non-consensual drugging, you wanted to see kanan take care of hera post-torture right?, come on we all did, more hurt/comfort, very little other than hurt/comfort, allusions to oc death, Discussion of Abortion, but you can probably figure out what they decide on that one

Summary:

He was holding back the explosion. He turned to face her, hand outstretched—he STOPPED her, she hated the feeling of that formless grip on her body—damn him, he lifted her right into the air, DAMN him, he was going to get himself killed, he’d been PLANNING it.

But then what happened?

A fix-it fic for "Jedi Night." NOTES: Final chapter.  ... Hera woke with the afternoon glare shining into the cave, her mouth dry and her stomach growling to the point of sickness. At first she thought she was alone. Then she spied Kanan in the shadows, sitting against the stone wall with his head back and his mouth slightly open, asleep. He must have gotten up and come back while she slept. How long HAD she slept? They’d arrived at the new base just after dawn. Hey, pay attention, her stomach demanded. You haven’t eaten in days. A pile of gear lay in the corner. Hera tore through it until she found a canteen of water and a ration bar. She dug in without wasting any time on details such as who the canteen belonged to.

When she turned back around, chewing a too-big mouthful, Kanan was awake and facing her direction—his version of looking at her. 

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” she mumbled. 

“It’s all right; I slept plenty. You seem better.” 

She considered, flexing her shoulders—achy with the stiffness of sore muscles and minor bruises. Her chest was probably still burned, but the bacta had begun to do its work and it didn’t smart at all when she moved. “Much better.”

“Good,” he said, and she finally caught the tightness that had been in his voice this whole time. “Then we can talk.” 

Uh oh. She took another bite and chewed with laborious slowness. 

“Don’t give me that look,” Kanan told her. “You know what we’re talking about.” 

“You don’t know what look I’m giving you,” she responded around her mouthful of ration bar. 

“Yes, I do. Time to come clean, Hera.” 

She took a deep breath, pushing back the dread in her chest. Now she would have to make a decision. 

“Why didn’t you just tell me? Were you ever going to tell me?” 

“Yes! Of course! There just...wasn’t a good time.” 

“That’s not true.” 

She sighed and tried to hit closer to the mark. “It’s hard, Kanan. Okay? And you kept pushing me to give more to YOU, back off from the fight, and that put me on the defensive. I couldn’t talk to you until I’d figured out what I thought, myself.” 

“And now you’ve figured it out?” 

“Not exactly.” 

“I just...wish you’d trust me,” he said wistfully. 

Hera winced. 

“You kept not telling me. And I thought maybe you were going to take care of things without EVER telling me. And that hurt, Hera.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“And then you didn’t do anything about it one way or the other, for weeks, and...I didn’t know what was going on in your head.” 

“I thought you wouldn’t have to worry if you didn’t know anything.” It was a sorry justification. “Last time we went through this, you said you couldn’t tell.” 

“Last time it was just a scare; there was nothing TO tell.” 

“And...now there is?” she asked. “You can feel it?” 

He frowned, considering. “Not at first. I kept having these...pieces of visions that didn’t make sense. Dreams, really. I thought I was crazy. And then…” he laughed, a tired sound. “You stopped drinking caf, and I knew for sure.” 

“Oh.” She hadn’t thought about that. 

“But then later—after we got to Lothal—if I concentrated hard, really searched for it, I could feel it.” 

“Can you feel it now?” she asked, fear of she didn’t know what in the pit of her stomach. 

“You want to know if we lost the baby?” 

“Yeah,” she said quietly. 

He sighed. “Come sit down next to me.” 

She did, nestling into his side, and he wrapped his arm around her and let his hand rest low on  her abdomen. What are you hoping for? she asked herself.  

Kanan closed his eyes and let out a long breath. “Still there,” he said after a moment. “Definitely still there.”  

Relief AND terror. Great, that wasn’t confusing at all. “What does it feel like?” 

“Like…” He searched for words. “...Not a person. A glow. Something asleep and waiting. Getting stronger every day.” A little smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and she thought absurdly: This thing is my body, and I can’t even tell yet. He can feel it already. 

Yet. Already. Well, those were telling words. 

“You okay?” he asked gently. She nodded against his arm. 

“You told everyone.” 

She nodded again. She hadn’t thought that one through very well. 

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you wanted to keep it.” 

“If you knew better,” she said shakily, automatically, going for the easy joke, “We wouldn’t be in this situation.” 

But he didn’t take the bait, just reiterated, “WE are in this situation. Not you.” 

When she said nothing, he sighed and drew her closer to him, kissing the top of her head and letting his face rest there for a moment. The old Kanan brooding demeanor settled over him. Then he pulled himself together and asked: “So. Baby. Are we really going to do this, then?” 

Everything Hera had built up inside to keep herself going crumbled into a body-shaking sob. 

“Hey. Hey,” Kanan rubbed her arms. “It’s okay. It’s not that bad. We’re both alive. Nobody’s hurt. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing.” 

“Torture I can handle without missing a beat.” Hera laughed through the tears. “Pregnant? Kanan, I’m scared out of my mind.” 

“Talk me through it,” he said. “I’ll sit here and be scared with you, too.”

“I can’t see...us...with a baby. I keep trying to picture it a year out, and I can’t figure out how it works, Kanan. Because it doesn’t work.” 

He nodded sagely. “Doing the impossible.” 

“The irresponsible.” 

He rubbed her arm again and waited, his earlier anger gone, or at least put aside for the moment. He’d gotten a lot more patient in the past year. 

“But then I think—if he’s made it through the past few weeks, who am I to put an end to that?” 

“He,” Kanan said softly.

“Yes.” 

He drew in a deep breath and sighed, exhaling the weight of the galaxy. “Well...what do you want?” 

“I don’t know!” She’d been so sure that they’d decided already years ago, so sure that she was prepared for this, so wrong. “I think the right thing is to terminate. We’re already down to the wire in this war, we don’t have time, and we don’t have resources. And if we don’t take that Defender factory out, we’re done right here.” 

“Okay,” he said, clearly restraining that urge to argue. 

“If I’m...pregnant—” she said the word again to test it out— “the people around me are going to be...off. Overcautious. You practically sacrificed yourself yesterday, and it wasn’t even necessary. And I’LL be incapacitated at some point. I haven’t hung back yet, but that’s going to change soon.” 

“You think you are going to throw people off their game,” he reiterated, skeptical. “Zeb. Sabine. Chopper?” He gave her that significant look, then relented: “Okay, Ezra, maybe.” 

Hera stuck to her guns. “Yes. I do. Do you know what happened today?  They all panicked because I SAT DOWN.”  

But Kanan cut her off before she’d even finished her sentence: “They panicked because we nearly lost you and everybody figured out there was no possible way we could face life without you.”

How was she supposed to respond to that? She pressed her lips together, saying nothing.

“Hera,” he said too softly. 

“What?” she managed to avoid snapping. She wasn’t mad at him. She was just scared and in uncharted territory. 

“Your body doesn’t exist for the sole purpose of aiding the Rebellion.” 

“I KNOW that. But I dedicated myself to this fight. I took a command position. I promised.” 

“Wait,” he said. “It doesn’t exist for having babies, either. You…are really good about owning yourself in a lot of ways. You’re stupidly independent most of the time.” She opened her mouth to protest, but he wasn’t done yet. “But then you get these ideas of self-sacrifice. ...I haven’t heard a single word about what you want in all of this. Only what would be good for the Rebellion, or bad for any future children. What do YOU want?” 

“I don’t know. To fight against the Empire. Give people their lives back.” 

“Uh uh. That’s not what we’re talking about. What’s the point of having a life if you’re not going to use it?” 

“Well, what do YOU want?” 

“Mostly to live my life next to you,” he said. “And it’s not my body. But, if you’re asking me…” 

“I am.” 

“You already know the answer.” 

“You want to keep it.” 

He inclined his head just a little, a tacit acknowledgment. “But you’re still dodging my question. What does Hera Syndulla actually want out of her life?” 

She sighed, a ragged sound that he probably thought was her huffing. “Give me a minute.” 

“All right.” 

But she couldn’t really think it through with Kanan that near, so she retreated to the other side of the cave and paced. She liked the way things were now. Sabine and Ezra and Zeb and Chopper and Kanan—her family, all of them brilliant and competent. But things wouldn’t stay the same forever. Sabine and Ezra would grow up and go their separate ways. Even the idea that Zeb would live out the rest of his life aboard the Ghost was laughable. If they added a small, needy person to that mix, things would change, get more difficult, and maybe she didn’t want them to change. But that was stupid. Nobody could stop change. 

She still couldn’t see them with a baby, but they’d done okay by Ezra and Sabine, hadn’t they? What about when this one was older? She could picture Kanan patiently instructing him with a stick sword. She would teach him to fly. They would be careful and caring, and he’d grow up to be a good person in a galaxy that desperately needed good people. Sure, they wouldn’t stop fighting, but their support network was vast. He wouldn’t have to feel alone or abandoned when his parents went off to battle. And she could avoid the mistakes of her own childhood—a girl with no mother and a father she couldn’t possibly please, lost in a war that was much too hard for her.

And a little boy whose mother did everything in the galaxy to save him and broke when he died, anyway. You weren’t the only child in that family, Hera, she reminded herself. And now it was time to face some ugly truths, because she could, in fact, see herself and Kanan with a baby. Chubby legs, sweet little mouth, and that clean baby scent—it could be so nice. But she also knew what happened to babies in wartime, and that scared her to death. 

What do you want, Hera? Kanan had asked. And she didn’t know the answer because she was terrified, running scared from the fate she’d already seen. 

No, not fate. That was the past, her brother a different baby. Not fate, just chance. They still had a chance. And she was Hera d’nercathi Syndulla; was she going to organize her life around a fear of what might happen? Lose before she’d begun because she was so afraid of losing later? 

Remember who you are, she told herself. Remember who he is. Trust.  

“Okay.” She turned to Kanan, still waiting patiently across the room. “Let’s have a baby, then.” 

[laughingpinecone]

Trick or Treat letter

For fic, I like both surreal weird and the most bog-standard fluff. Iddy tropes are great as long as anyone’s characterization doesn’t have to bend over backwards to make them work. Can’t go wrong with found family and loyalty tropes, and situations that bring out any unique character traits.

For art, I like works that feel more like a book illustration than a book cover, if you know what I mean? Regardless of the level of skill and detail involved, I like it a lot better when the picture feels like a candid photo of the character(s) than when it’s a pose.

Prompt length differs wildly because some canons I’ve requested are mute 8-pages comics and some have just finished a controversial 18-hours run with a cast of 217, but I want them all equally. Whatever we matched on, it’s the fandom of my heart and I can’t wait to see your work!

<blue>House</blue> of Leaves (fic, trick)

If you're sitting on any kind of idea for HoL fanfiction, go for it, I'm interested. If you're looking for prompts, I'd like to see an expansion of the Navidson Record meta aspect of the book. We've already seen Zampanò reference anything from feng shui to fashion, so I'd love to see you pick a topic, ANY topic, and make up a short article (or a micro chapter by Zampanò referencing several articles) connecting it to the Navidson Record.

Arzach (fic&art, trick&treat)

For art, I'd like to see Arzach interact with his pterodactyl... grooming it, spoiling it a little, your pick. For fic, a short new adventure! Feel free to go as wild and nonsensical as you want. Again, focus on Arzach's connection with his mount would be nice.

Inland Empire (fic&art, treat)

Regardless of our personal reading of the connection between the three protagonists of the movie, we can mostly agree that they... succeeded... in... breaking a cycle... overcoming... some... things. Personally, I mostly see the Lost Girl being the 'reality layer', projecting her issues on a piece of fiction (Susan) and then the actress portraying those issues (Nikki), but I also see the merits in the more widespread theory that sees them as subsequent incarnations or whatever. Anyway. The thing is, they overcame whatever it is that they had to overcome (discussing the intepretations of which would exceed the purpose of this prompt), and I'd like to see them celebrate together. For art, a hug? A toast? Dancing together in the credits? For fic, anything that explores the connection between them, but on a happier note?

Ghost Trick (fic&art, treat)

DNW: Cabanela/Yomiel, Cabanela/Lynne, Sissel/anyone

Cute slice of life in the new timeline? My forever ship is Cabanela/Jowd/Alma, but I'm just as fervently into all the found family ties the game weaves between its cast. Any of my nominated characters interacting with Sissel is always a great idea, as is Pigeon Man mentoring Kamila in sciencey things, Cabanela and Pigeon Man being UFO conspiracy nuts, any variation on the bond between Jowd and Cabanela, and so much more...

Myst (fic&art, trick)

Ghost stories in the Cavern! Any of the nominated characters (or combination thereof) runs into something spooky. Any time period, and the spooky thing can reference D'ni history as heavily as you want (or not at all). I'd like to feel the Cavern as a setting, at its eeriest... For the record, I'm as invested in Atrus and Catherine as your average Myst player, and also have a big thing for the friendships/mentorships between Yeesha and Jeff, Yeesha and Marrim, Atrus and Marrim, and Anna and Catherine!

Obduction (fic&art, trick&treat)

I'm still at the phase where I need all the character interaction in any possible (gen) combination, so: any character interaction, in any possible gen combination, please. Hunrath can provide plenty of opportunities for both tricks and treats: tell me a cool little thing that once happened to Farley, CW and/or Josef that is specific to that setting. Did a seed swap in something special from the past or future? What weird thing did they witness on the Sorian horizon? Feel free to bring in anyone else, human or alien, who gets mentioned in the various documents!

Twin Peaks (fic&art, treat)

DNW: Dale/Audrey, Dale/Diane, Albert/Constance, Albert/Diane, Albert/Tammy (for a couple of these it wouldn't be a straight-up NOTP but it's so complicated that I'd rather DNW it entirely)

Treats only because the TPTR finale is still a fresh wound and I need them to be happy... I'm also waiting for The Final Dossier before finalizing my thoughts on Gordon (and on the aspects of Diane related to Coop) so I'm keeping him out of my prompts for this round.

Any cute little situation featuring one or more of the nominated characters would be great, for fic or art: Harry and his chickens? Tammy and Diane having a chat at the bar? Albert chilling? I love the whole cast, so anything featuring the nominated characters along with other non-nominated characters in their lives is also great: double Sheriffs Harry and Frank? Albert and Denise having a drink? Did Diane exchange a word with Constance? Did Tammy get Cynthia's number that day? For Harry, I ship him with Dale, Albert or both, and I'm invested in his ties to Frank and Doris (need me some positive Doris content!), Hawk, and Lucy. For Diane and her tulpa, I am mostly invested in her friendship with Albert (past and present) and her potential interactions with Tammy. For Tammy, I ship her with Cynthia (and... we sort of have word of god that she was checking out Candie but idk how that would work?) and I'm invested in her being Albert's and Denise's pupil and meeting other characters. For Albert, I ship him with Harry, Dale or both, and I am absurdly delighted by all the friendships and mentorships with the women in his life: Diane, Tammy, Denise, Constance. Also his friendship with Gordon, which is so very central to Albert, but as I said, I don't know what to think about Gordon until TFD comes out so I'm not requesting him for now.