#and I think something in my brain exploded

[averagetransdaughter]

"Hey, aren't you ___'s mom?"

You turn, just about whip around to see a girl about your daughter's age. Not just any girl, though... One of your daughter's friends, wasn't she? The last time you saw her would have been...

Right. How could you possibly forget? She stayed over at your house while your daughter was home for the summer, spent a whole weekend together with her, even.

Your cheeks go rosy, and the girl before you raises an eyebrow.

When she visited, your dearest daughter spent each night whining, squealing, and moaning. Your house was filled, suffused with the soundscape of a cheap porno—all because of this girl.

She asks, "Is something the matter?"

You blink a few times, fumbling over the words sent scattering through your brain like bowling pins. You say, "U-um, yes, I am..! You visited her last summer, didn't you?"

The girl nods, a wry grin contorting her lips, as if she heard a joke you aren't privy to. Though, you have the strangest feeling you know what she's smiling about. She says, "Haha, yeah~ I had a ton of fun. You probably knew that, though, didn't you?"

Breath catches in your throat, and your heart plummets. Is she seriously asking what you think she's asking?

You sheepishly reply after gathering yourself, "What do you mean..?"

The girl looks a bit surprised. "You know," she says, "she was really noisy when I fucked her brains out, so I thought you must've heard. You didn't?"

You shake your head, perhaps a bit too intensely. If she noticed your suspicious behavior, however, she doesn't let it on.

"Gosh, really..? I worked so hard to really get those out of her, too. Thought you could use some material, you know? A lonely woman like you must have a craving or two."

"I have no idea what—"

"So you didn't hear it, and you didn't spend your nights with your ear pressed up against the wall and your fingers stuffed inside yourself listening to me wreck your daughter's cunt?"

Her eyes trail down your figure, lingering at each and every curve. Not just salacious, but hungry.

"N-no..." Is all that you can squeak out.

"You didn't imagine that those fingers were my cock, stretching you out just like I did with your daughter?"

A small gasp escapes you, pent-up need exploding out like a catastrophically high pressure steam engine. That was your mistake, or, well...

Would it really be right to call that a mistake?

The girl wraps an arm around your waist, subtly pulling you closer. She laughs, and gives your ass a small squeeze.

"Come with me, 'kay?"

[spinchip]

I stopped watching ninjago when I grew up, but I introduced my friend to it and she got obsessed even though she doesn't have any nostalgia. She annoyed me for like a year to rewatch it and I'm on season 6 rn, and I'm dying. I love zane so much. I've been thinking about him constantly. I made fanfic, I never write fanfic. I'm this close to picking back up pencils and drawing. How do you deal with obsessions with that robot? Because I do not believe that staring at an old minifig of him for half an hour while zoning out is the behaviour I want going forward

youre doing it, my friend. Write that fanfic. bust out that sketchbook! He's infecting your brain? Time to make that everyone else's problem too. inflict blorbo onto others. Knock Knock, hello, have you heard the good word? About character froim my shows?

Zane is a carbonated soda trapped in the shaken up plastic bottle of my mind. he makes me want to explode. i gotta unscrew the cap and teensy bit ever now and then and let off the pressure.

But theres also something so special about Zane that makes people crazy. i've had my Ao3 account for EIGHT years, the first 3years i wrote 11 fics total for several different fandoms. in 2020 i discovered ninjago and have published TWENTY THREE ninja fics to Ao3 (this is not counting the things ive written here and never cross posted !) My second longest fic i've ever written was for ducktales 2017 with 7 chapter and a total of 12,000 words.(unfinished. rip)

The fanfic that surpassed that? Never the Dark. A ninjago fic centered entirely around zane with 19 chapter and a total on 109 THOUSAND words. (Will be finished.) im not joking when i say i used to be so certain that i didnt have the dedication to write long-form fiction. I used to think i couldnt do it. Zane ninjago changed my brain chemistry !

you gotta get him out of your head you gotta man.

seriously, make that art. write that fic. post 100 million text posts or edits or whatever about your obsessions its the only way to survive.

when you post your first art or your fics you should absolutely send it to me. we'll celebrate the obsession together.

[hyperions-light]

Reflection Ruesday

Thank you @becausedragonage, once again, for hosting this game! And thank you @pixiedurango and @biowaredisasterbisexual for the tags, too!

What to do: Go through your writing, art, gifs, etc. that you started but never finished and find something you love. Brush it up a bit if you want and share it.

Okay, I *actually* went through the WIP folder, for this one. It's Star Wars! Did anyone know I liked that? I have three lightsabers in my room lol. Is anyone surprised I liked the Disaster Lineage? WHAT are those ppl doing lol.

The likelihood I will ever publish this is like... 3. out of 100. Which is too bad, because I enjoyed the concept.

I think the premise was like... when Palpatine told Anakin to kill Dooku, something else happened? Like Dooku or someone had rigged one of the lightsabers to explode in the event of Sidious' (inevitable) betrayal. So Dooku lived, and then all the stuff about what Anakin did on Tattooine came out, and the Jedi sent him back there to do restorative justice stuff. And Obi-Wan went, too, because he felt responsible. Anyway, I was going to explore like, what restorative justice might look like from a Jedi perspective. And space politics, because the Order 66/Clone Brain Chip thing hadn't been resolved in this universe. Idk, I don't remember exactly what I wanted to do, but it was going to also be about the desert, and connect the monsoons to the idea of restoration + understanding. Consequently, it was called monsoon. Here's the first couple sections, minimally edited.

-

Anakin could count on one hand the number of times he remembers it raining on Tatooine. When it did, the ground would turn to thin mud, the arroyos would rush with water, filling so quickly they would sweep away anyone who wasn’t careful. The clouds always came suddenly, quickly; one moment, you would be running errands under a murky sky, the next you would be soaked. For some hours the sky would ring with thunder, pierced with barbs of lighting, and then, just as suddenly, it would stop. The Hutts had a word for it in their language, but the right word, learned from the People and translated into Basic, was monsoon.

Anakin watches Obi-Wan step onto those hated sands, reaching up to adjust his leather pack. He turns to Anakin and tips his head towards the dunes.

Anakin takes a breath, and follows him out, pulling his goggles down and his mask up over his nose. The ramp closes behind him. He hears the engines hum to life as their pilot prepares for liftoff.

No way out.

A Jedi shouldn’t feel such animosity towards a place. It is only land; it is only dirt. But Anakin cannot help but resent it.

He hates the way the grit gets in your food here. He hates how your mouth feels when you haven’t had enough to drink, all filmy and sticky. He hates the relentless beating of the twin suns, their endless assault on your flesh. He hates the way all the speeders and droids get too hot to touch if they’ve been outside for too long. That there’s no land here that doesn’t defy you— either the sand will slip beneath your feet, or you’ll encounter hard, cracked dirt, too difficult to penetrate and too dry to be of use to anyone. He hates the plants here; that they never offer any softness or shade, that you have to know how to trick usefulness out of them. He hates that every animal is spiny or rough or poisonous or violent or some combination of those.

When he’s back here, he always thinks of the Hutts on their litters being carried by straining slaves. The chains some of them wore— only for decoration, to make visible their servitude. To him Tatooine is slime and sand, the scent of pungent smoke and cloying perfumes. He would rather be anywhere else in the galaxy.

But he has to be here.

The Jedi found out what he did to the Sand People.

Obi-Wan won’t tell him who did it, but he suspects it was Padmé. A burning rage courses through him at the thought of her betrayal. That she would jeopardize his place in the Order, which she knows he values, that she would betray his trust like that. His wife.

He clenches and relaxes the fingers of his left hand rhythmically, as the storm of fury sings in his blood.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, a touch of warning in his tone.

Anakin breathes deeply, exhales slowly.

They keep walking. The sand slips beneath Anakin’s feet, each step leaving a small hole in the perfect dunes, shortly to be washed away by the winds.

He’d been surprised when the Council had made their decision about his punishment. He’d been convinced they’d kick him out, or lock him up, or maybe even execute him. But they’d started talking about restoration and restitution; about making amends. Anakin can’t say he’d been listening too closely after hearing he wasn’t going to be killed or something. He’d been watching Obi-Wan.

Really, he thinks that’s why he agreed to all this. Because Obi-Wan had just looked so… heartbroken. So disappointed and lost. He was mostly closed off in the Force, but Anakin can read people well when he wants to, and he could feel how Obi-Wan was… bleeding. As if it was he whom Anakin had attacked in those sands.

Sometimes, he and Obi-Wan step on each other’s feet. They disagree, they get annoyed at one another. But Anakin loves him, so much and so desperately. He was the one who put everything on the line to train Anakin, even though he’d just lost his master. He was the one to advocate for Anakin to be knighted, to help with Ahsoka and back Anakin up when he needed it. For all that Obi-Wan can be a stick in the mud sometimes, he’s so necessary to Anakin’s existence that he would do anything, endure anything, to keep Obi-Wan with him.

He’s not sorry, not really. Well, not most of the time. Most of the time, when he thinks of the Sand People, all he can see is his mother suffering, dying. He can only remember that consuming rage; the way it felt to have vengeance. To know that they had paid for what they’d done, and that no one would ever suffer at their hands again. That satisfaction.

He knows it was wrong— or, against the rules, anyway. Against the Jedi Code. And he can understand… if he thinks about it at a remove, he finds it repulsive. He’d kill someone who did that, or he’d want to. He’s killed people for less.

He wants to feel sorry. Or he wants to be absolved. One or the other; he feels unbalanced knowing that it was ‘wrong’ but not being able to feel it. He wants to either have the people he cares about on his side, or to agree with them that he fucked up. He hates this… grayness.

They stop at the ridge of a dune. Anakin pulls his mask down and takes a carefully rationed drink of water. Obi-Wan says they have plenty, but he’s never lived here.

The vast, golden stretches of the Dune Sea are interrupted some ways in front of them by an enclave of tents. Reluctance wiggles around in Anakin’s stomach, but as Obi-Wan continues the march towards the camp he doesn’t complain.

They walk the seemingly endless path through the rest of the afternoon, and into the night. Sometimes Anakin wonders if the distant lights are getting father away, instead of closer.

Obi-Wan finally allows them to stop around midnight, underneath a rocky outcropping. Anakin collapses into a heap immediately letting out an exaggerated groan.

Normally, this is when Obi-Wan would start their playful banter.

But he is silent.

He sits, cross-legged, in the sand. The moon is bright enough that Anakin can see the dark circles beneath his eyes, the worried set of his jaw.

“Get some sleep,” he says, “I’ll keep watch.”

“It’s okay. I can—“

“Sleep, Anakin.”

Anakin frowns.

“Obi-Wan, I won’t… I couldn’t hurt—“

“Go to sleep, Padawan,” Obi-Wan says, in his stern Jedi Master voice.

Anakin swallows back his hurt and curls up in the sand, head pillows on his pack.

He watches Obi-Wan’s face as he drifts off to sleep.

-

Dooku is meditating. It is not the same without access to the Force, but the basic principles still hold true. It is a calming exercise, a way to organize one’s thoughts.

The Halls of Healing are always slightly too cold. He had almost forgotten, for how long he’d been away. It’d been trivial, at first, through the overwhelming haze of the pain medication. Now they’re trying to wean him off of it, and the minor irritation has once again made itself known. It needles at him, like the beeping of the monitoring equipment, and the pull of the Force-suppressing cuffs tying him to the bed.

He might have been able to overcome them, if he were at the height of his power. When he was the most miserable, the most vengeful, half-mad with grief and rage.

But now he is content.

Of course, there is the old sorrow of Komari and Qui-Gon, and poor dear Sy, whose death was his own doing. It never leaves him. But now he has avenged them, at last. He has broken the dark. He has forestalled the future that kept Sifo-Dyas paralyzed with terror on so many occasions.

He cannot find it in himself to care particularly what happens to him now. It is not the Jedi way to kill a— quite literally— unarmed opponent. Perhaps they will simply imprison him until he dies. Exile was the traditional punishment, but the methods of permanently removing one’s connection to the Force that accompanied it have been lost.

Honestly, he had expected to die with Sidious. The Force must have been with him, in that moment, to have only left him severely injured.

He opens his remaining eye to find his Master— the first one— sitting in a chair next to his bed, regarding him sadly.

“Master Yoda,” he says slowly, still becoming used to the way words feel with his face so badly damaged. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Padawan,” Master Yoda answers, a peculiar heaviness to his voice. “Come to speak with you, I have.”

“You have questions, I imagine. Or, perhaps, the Order does? The new Chancellor?”

“Many questions, there are,” Yoda says, in that maddeningly vague way of his. “Prepared to answer them, are you?”

Dooku shrugs his good shoulder.

“You may ask. I suppose we shall find out.”

Yoda harrumphs grumpily, adjusting his grip on his gimmer stick.

“Knew, you did, that Chancellor Palpatine was a Sith Lord?”

Dooku briefly considers whether this could be used against him in some way, but, as Sidious, Grevious, and poor Asajj have all met their sorry ends, decides it’s not of particular consequence.

“I did not. I knew him as Sidious only. As I told Master Kenobi on Geonosis, I knew he was a senator of some import, for how much information he was able to provide for me. Rest assured, had I known he was Palpatine I would have made an attempt on his life much sooner.”

“Revenge, you wanted? Your motivation, it was?”

This, he thinks, he will not answer in full. There is still the matter of the clones. He does not know if the chips that Sidious ordered put in their heads, or the ‘failsafe’ his late master had spoken of once are still active. It would be imprudent to admit to trying to destroy the Senate. And, with Sidious’ influence abated, he is… undecided about harming the Order any further. He cannot precisely recall his logic in agreeing to its destruction.

“One of them,” he says.

Yoda looks at him, unimpressed, but Dooku cedes nothing else to him.

“Other threats to the Republic, you know of?”

Ah, now they arrive at the point.

“Yes.”

Yoda’s gaze fixes on him, staring intently.

“Tell me, you will.”

“I don’t think I shall, no.”

Yoda scowls.

“Better for you, it would be, if you cooperated. Help you, I could.”

“Master Yoda,” Dooku says, offering a necessarily lopsided smile, “let us not delude ourselves. In all likelihood, the Republic will execute me, or imprison me for the rest of my natural life. There is very little you could do about that. But, with the proper application of leverage, the Senate may be persuaded to be lenient.”

Yoda narrows his eyes.

“Satisfied, are you?” He asks. “Satisfied, with what you have done, you are? Happy, with the suffering you have caused?”

Dooku blinks.

He laughs.

He doubts it’s a pleasant sound, but it is nonetheless genuine.

“Master, I have rarely been more content. Sidious is dead; the Republic is in shambles; my children are, at last, avenged. With my death, the Dark shall be no more. As for the collateral damage,” — he shrugs— “I am a Sith, after all— it is simply part of our nature.”

“Part of your nature, it was not,” Yoda rebuts quietly.

“ ‘Was’ being the operative word.”

Yoda sighs.

“Once, I would have been quite devastated to disappoint you,” Dooku says contemplatively, “if that is any consolation.”

“Disappointed? Disappointed, I am not.”

Yoda hops down from the chair and walks toward the door.

“Grieve for you, I do. Sad, I am, that I could not spare you the pain that led you down this path.”

Dooku’s brow wrinkles in consternation.

Master Yoda closes the door behind him, activating the forcefield and trapping Dooku inside.

-

So that's an interesting experiment that'll never get done! Oh, well! Good practice!

Hmm, let's see... I don't know who has tags, already? @ofcrowsanddragons (welcome back!) | @uchidachi | @operative-arrow | @dymme | @flowersforthemachines | @wardensantoineandevka | @bygonesigh | @the-sparrohawk | @lottiesnotebook | @erin-unknown | @wukodork | @basedonconjecture |

I'm going to stop there, and not make my usual interminable tag list lol, but if you want to do it, go for it! This game is about sharing <3

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

Director: So my interpretation here of the relationship is that Bea and Benedick - oh hey that’s so funny your name is Ben ha ha anyway - totally slept together at one point and Benedick treated it as casual and wouldn’t commit and that’s why they’re like that at each other.

Winter: *stuck on the images THAT immediately gives him*

Jones, face in hands: Could we maybe give my character a backstory that WON’T remind half the county of the times I forced them to dump me because I was too focused on my job?

[thatnununguy]

What if I built a robot version of you that makes it obvious that I completely misinterpreted your entire character? Haha, jk.... unless.....

[thekittyokat]

you ever just have a lot, a LOT of feelings all at once about a character and not even remotely enough words or brainpower to FORM the words to describe everything you're feeling. so it feels like you may explode. yeah

[cerealmonster15]

yknow i understand that the memes are Not That Deep and it is fun to make jokes and relating w/others about like "oh no i started another wip when i have 90000 other wips im neglecting!!! i had another idea when i should be working on the projects i already have!!!" and i get that it is a good habit to like, finish what you start and the want to see things through and such. like shore i relate 2 these too. but ☝️! i must ask. is it really so bad to have many ideas. is it really so bad to have several idea pools to bounce back and forth from when perhapeth you get stuck on the current one youre on and wanna mix it up a little. IS IT SO WRONG to not finish a wip. must everything be a completed project that is pretty and cleaned up and perfectly done?! i do know, as i said, that it is Not That Deep. but also i do worry that perhaps for some people, it Is That Deep. i would personally like to reject the concept that all ideas must be completed start to finish in a nice little order otherwise it's "not right" or whatever. sometimes you start something and it doesnt really go anywhere! that's fine. sometimes you put it away for a few days or weeks or months or years and then you come back to it later!! whats wrong w/that. who is putting deadlines on these things, if they are in fact hobbies. business is i guess another story but im not TALKING about business. i am talking about fun teehee hobby time. cutting away imaginary rules and putting false pressures and having FUN why is it so SHAMEFUL to have many ideas and working on them as you GO!!!! be free. do whatever u want FOREVER!!!!!!!

[ragnarlothcat]

I know I’m a chronic overthinker but I’ve been in the same fandom for three years or so now and I was reflecting that writing seemed so much easier when I first started out. Just looking at my output since 2021 shows a clear trend: I’ve been writing much less and it’s been taking me way longer.

I figured that I’d gotten a little burned out and that three years is a long time to focus solely on the same two guys making out and that there’s a limit to the number of situations I can put them in before I start to get bored. But I don’t think that’s quite my problem because even now, a million years later, I have ideas for dozens of fics and AUs that would be interesting to explore or funny to write.

No, it’s that I’ve let the larger fandom overwhelm me and it’s left me constantly second-guessing my writing. And I don’t mean that I’ve gotten nasty comments or asks, because I haven’t! All the other fans have been consistently wonderful and fun people with really valuable insights. And it’s not that I’ve been obsessing over stats or comments or worrying about going against popular headcanons. I mean, I’m just as excited as anyone else to see an AO3 email in my inbox but I’m also perfectly happy posting niche fics for an audience of me and my three weirdest friends.

It’s more that after so long engaging with other fans and other fics and the general meta, I’ve ended up writing too self-consciously. I’ve read so many interpretations of canon events, analyses of characterization and comparisons between fiction and real-world politics over the years, and I’ve enjoyed them because I genuinely care about these stories and these characters! I like seeing what everyone else thinks and then considering their points of view, no matter how bewildering they might seem at first.

But now it feels like I’m writing almost defensively, like I have to justify every choice I’m making based on this enormous and contradictory body of information. Three years ago I’d have written a scene in a few thousand words and moved on to the next plot point with my momentum intact. Now I’m constantly wringing my hands over things like physical details (I guess he’s not exactly a redhead) or broader social implications (is this trope misogynistic?) or finicky logistics (these locations are too far apart for this scene to make sense) or controversial character nuance (does writing this guy as a kind, doting husband make me an abuse apologist???) and the result is that I’m paralyzed with indecision and a ridiculous need to support everything I write with a lot of context that isn’t especially fun to write or, I suspect, especially fun to read.

I’m aware that this problem is entirely in my own head and that no one has asked me for any of this. And it’s not that all those questions aren’t interesting and important things to contemplate. But I miss the days of sitting down at my laptop and going “wouldn’t it be funny if these dorks played a video game together?” and then writing exactly that.

I don’t know. Were my fics better three years ago? I kind of doubt it. I’ve looked back at some of them and if nothing else I now have a better grasp of what tense I’m supposed to be using. But I definitely had more fun writing those older stories, which maybe feels more important.

[beetlehoven]

tw? cartoon gore but it's not like im good at it so it's rlly not detailed. and it's stupid

logan thoughts tyy. his bones are weeeirddd and i wouldn't like to be in that situation

but maybe i wouldn't mind a logan hand glove actually like just slip it off like scchlp as a souvenir tyy luv u hairy smelly boy logan

[m340700]

he should be fine

[kelpermoosee]

Knocking them over and watching them scramble to get up with those big ass heads

[lemongogo]

oo u want 2 draw soo bad..

[vaguely-concerned]

I know this is just insane shipping brain goggles and probably not objectively true in any way, confirmation bias in action klaxon and I acknowledge this fully and freely, but I swear to god that rook's thank you lines to lucanis in battle sound so much more weirdly... flirty than the ones for anyone else hfsjk. (in a fashion somewhere halfway between mannerly and😏. 'thanks, lucanis (politely restrained yet with carnal intent)')

[ganondoodle]

i often really do feel like an .. unwanted part of the fandom, i dont draw beautiful landscapes, i have unpopular but strong opinions im constantly annoying about and rarely change, dont like/dont draw the pretty young popular twinks and hot gurls to fanboi over nor do i turn characters into one, the opposite moreso, draw only one ship no ones heard of really, got little energy to interact with the few people that are nice to me and send me asks so it probably looks like im ignoring everyone and unfortunately but still rarely get so stressed i get overwhelmed and emotional about pehaps seemingly minor things and spiral almost into a breakdown feeling super embarrassed about it afterwards but the damage is already done and i look like a freak or agressive weirdo

[floorpancakes]

ok but im rly into the idea of till having a new era that brings the light back to his eyes and drives him forward if he gets to escape the arena. idk where he'd go from there but i want to see ivans sacrifice both haunt him and drive him to actually live his damn life after being the captured bird refusing freedom cause of mizi. once he knows she's alive with the resistance he might be able to actually experience other things and widen his world and if that happens and he puts his personal sense of rebellion towards the human cause OR settles into finding some other way to feel fulfilment that isn't a single person that could be deeply fascinating to me i think

[violasmirabiles]

theres a dog at the office and im not gonna lie his presence is easing my anxiety