#and it was sort of a momentary release that never led anywhere

[curiosity-killed]

Currently Mu Qing/Xie Lian exes who were never actually together is just rattling around in my brain like a jumping bean

[notveryglittery]

birthday prince (4)

summary: patton knows that roman is the bravest, strongest hero of them all.  words: 1,500 / ship: royality (patton/roman) author’s note: this is part four of my Giving The Gay Anything He Wants series for roman’s birthday (june 4)! all ships are written implied romantic but i’m not stopping you from interpreting it otherwise. check the end notes on ao3 for credit on these gifts (bc i don’t know where to put them in this post)! i hope you enjoy!!

part 1 (roceit) | part 2 (logince) | part 3 (prinxiety) part 4 (royality) | part 5 (dlampts) read on ao3

— — —

The sun was relentless in its heat, beating down on Roman without remorse. It felt like he was baking inside of his armor. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck and he couldn’t help but squirm uncomfortably at the sensation. He held a hand up to his forehead to shield his eyes and squinted at the imposing mountain towering above him. He was mere hours from his destination and the prospect of being so close to completing his quest filled him with energy and determination. With renewed vigor, he began his ascent.

Time was lost to him as he progressed. He steadfastly ignored his aching limbs and focused instead on keeping his breathing measured. Each step was careful but sure, so as not to lose his footing or make a wrong move. Every so often, a cloud drifted across the sky, blocking out the sun, and providing him momentary relief. He passed by a number of trees, tempting him with shade and rest, but still, he pressed on. The higher he climbed, the more frequently the wind blew; this, too, helped keep his resolve up, encouraged by the breeze pushing at his back.

And finally, he found himself at the mouth of a cave. The sunshine only went so far before darkness engulfed the tunnel. He took a deep breath and marched forward. He drew his sword from its sheath and whispered “iluminar;” the blade lit up with a radiant glow, providing him a consistent source of light. While some rational part of him knew that he ought to move slowly and check for traps, the eager realization that he had reached the home stretch egged him on. Without really noticing, he’d quickly gone from a steady pace to a power walk to a dead sprint.

When he came skidding to a stop at the entrance of an open chamber, it was as if his heart was trying to jump up and out of his throat, and his breathing was strained. There, though, at the far end of the room and just barely discernible in the low light, was his love. A resounding thud interrupted him the moment he began to call out.

“Well well well,” purred his greatest enemy, “it certainly took you long enough.”

The Dragon Witch prowled back and forth, blocking Roman’s view of his dearest companion.

“Release him!” Roman shouted, darting along the walls of the cavern, and learning better the lay of the land as light fell upon the space. “And I might spare you!”

Her laughter was a rumbling echo, shaking bits of rock and dust from the ceiling. “You are funny, little prince. I’ve so missed your ridiculous demands.”

Roman stumbled, backed up, and leapt just in time to avoid the Dragon Witch’s tail sweeping his feet out from under him. From his side, he pulled a dagger. Without much aim, he threw it in her general direction, knowing at least that with a target as big as she, it would be hard to miss.

“Roman!”

Every thought rushed from his head at the sound of Patton’s cry. At the reminder of what was really at stake here, Roman came to a halt, and faced his foe. There was no saving Patton and leaving the Dragon Witch be. He had to defeat her in order to get Patton out. It was easier said than done, apparently. One beat of her wings had him knocked back and onto the ground. He slammed hard into metal bars and grunted in pain, blinking the stars from his vision.

“Oh, honey,” cooed a voice from above him.

An arm reached through its prison, one hand reaching forward to cradle his cheek. Lips pressed against his forehead, a kiss so gentle he wasn’t sure it was real.

“Show her who’s boss, sweetie,” Patton murmured.

As if by magic, all of Roman’s sore muscles and minor wounds were wiped away. He was emboldened by Patton’s gift, his strength invigorated, and he was certain now that nothing would stand in his way. He left a lingering kiss on Patton’s knuckles and retrieved his sword before standing. The Dragon Witch looked infuriatingly smug to have taken him down so easily and that, Roman decided, would simply not do.

As we expect most stories to go, our brave hero came out victorious. There were close calls — a claw too close here, teeth too sharp there — just as there were defining strikes — the final plunge of his sword into the Dragon Witch’s heart. She disappeared, scattered into ashes, and silence fell over the chamber.

“Woohoo! That’s my knight in shining armor!”

Roman startled, dropping his weapon, and darting for Patton’s prison. Without her presence to keep it locked, freeing him was no issue. Roman ignored that he hurt all over and instead, held onto Patton as if letting him go meant he’d lose him forever.

“I’m okay,” Patton reassured, taking Roman’s helmet off, and carding his fingers through his hair. “You did it! You’re amazing! I’m so proud of you.”

“Please,” Roman laughed breathlessly, clinging to Patton all the more, “it was nothing.”

Patton leaned back, taking Roman’s face in his hands. His expression was stern. “It was spectacular. I love you so much. You’re incredible.”

“Patton,” Roman whined, hoping he could blame his redness on exertion instead of blushing.

“Let’s see what treasure awaits you!” He exclaimed, allowing Roman some shred of mercy, at least.

He took Roman’s hand and pulled him along, further back into the cave. The hoard was piled all the way to the ceiling, a good 20ft of gold, jewels, and trinkets. Roman shed his heavy breastplate before they knelt down, groaning in relief at being able to move freely and stretch properly. This also meant taking Patton into his arms once more, hugging him to his chest.

“This is my favorite prize of them all,” he muttered, pressing his cheek to the top of Patton’s head.

Patton giggled. “You haven’t even seen all of your options.”

“Hmm, none could compare to you, my heart.”

“Oh, hush!”

Eventually, Patton did manage to convince Roman to at least look at what all was laid out before them. The first thing to catch his eye was a crown, embedded with gems of every color of the rainbow. It was bright and it fit him perfectly and he never wanted to take it off.

“I’m going to make special bobby pins for that one,” Patton said offhandedly. When Roman gave him a curious look, Patton returned it with a knowing expression of his own. “You wiggle, dear.”

If Roman wasn’t sure what Patton could possibly mean, it was proven hardly five minutes later. They found plenty more jewelry: bracelets with charms that all must have been picked just for him, silly bandz that looked like they might glow in the dark, and colorful hair clips in all sorts of shapes. His joy at so many accessories led to plenty of head shaking and hand fluttering; the crown only just barely stayed on and that might have had something to do with Patton keeping a careful eye on it.

“You were my hero today, Roman,” Patton told him on their way back out. “You are every day, you know?”

Roman shrugged in a noncommittal sort of way, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted to say thank you or disagree completely. His hand squeezed tight around Patton’s, though, trying to convey his gratitude. The sun was setting by the time they made it outside. It was chillier this high up on the mountain now and Roman no longer had his adrenaline to keep him warm. Not that he didn’t have something even better at his side to help with that…

“Wanna take the easy way home? I could go for some hot cocoa.”

“I like the sound of that very much,” Patton agreed.

It was only a blink and they were no longer buffeted by sharp winds but on safe stable ground instead. Whatever ailments Roman had suffered in the Fantasy Realm were left behind; now he only felt comfort, inspiration, and fondness. … Okay, maybe hunger, too.

Patton surprised him with another kiss on the cheek and then another to his lips. Roman didn’t let that one go, savoring the sweet taste of his one true love. While neither would have minded this lasting quite some time, their stomachs had other ideas in mind. They parted, giggling as their bellies growled noisily.

“Okay, okay,” Patton relented. “Dinner time.”

“Can we have pasta?”

“Sweetpea, you know we’re making all your favorites.”

“... Peach cobbler, too?”

“Duh!”

“I love you,” Roman said, as if Patton had just promised him the world.

“I know. Happy birthday, my knight.”

Going to bed that night with Patton curled up beside him, full on delicious food and drink, on love and precious reminders of everything he had, Roman couldn’t think of anywhere else he’d rather be.

[jurakan]

On Stupid Evil

So several times I’ve considered adapting the Notes I release every Saturday on Facebook for Tumblr. Here’s another Saturday Note, from this week, that I thought I’d post here.

I imagine absolutely no one will read it/care, but if that’s the case I’ll just go back to playing Fable III and move on with my life.

---

On Stupid Evil

You’ve heard of Character Alignments? Chaotic Evil? And Lawful Evil? And Neutral Evil? And I did a Note about Lawful Good? Well now we’re talking about Stupid Evil. This describes a character who isn’t just evil, they’re stupid about it. And it’s all too common.

The example that struck me most recently was the recently released Star Wars: Battlefront II. No, I’m not referring to the whole scandal with paid content (though sure, that could also count), but in the story mode, we are introduced to the Empire’s Inferno Squadron, led by Iden Versio. She serves the Empire faithfully even after the Battle of Endor, but leaves to join the Rebellion after seeing the horrors of Operation Cinder. What is Operation Cinder? Well it’s this plan that the Emperor had in place in case he died, which called for having these satellite superweapons go around to planets and raze everything on the surface. First on the list were highly-populated Imperial planets. Because if the Emperor can’t have them, no one can.

And yeah, people went along with it.

Alright, what actual benefit does this serve? Other than to convince our heroes that the Empire is irredeemably evil. These aren’t planets that hold Rebel bases, they’re Imperially-aligned planets. But they’re being destroyed for...reasons.

Star Wars has this problem, especially of late, in that it cannot seem to understand why anyone would join the villains. I’m not saying that villains have to be sympathetic, but they have to be understandable to a degree (unless we’re talking like, alien god monster things that don’t work on human ideas of morality, but even then you have to do something other than just ‘they don’t think like us’). The Empire, and the later First Order, is Evil with a capital ‘E’ and that’s it. People join up because they’re forced, I guess, and it’s not clear how or why the whole thing falls apart.

George Lucas’s Prequel Trilogy and Star Wars: Rebels tries to rectify this by showing that the public support of the Jedi was waning, that people wanted a strong leadership in their government to fight the inaction of the rotting Republic, and that most everyday people in the galaxy don’t really understand the whole Jedi/Sith thing going on. But then we have Rebels, which has only one sympathetic Imperial character who turns traitor and joins the Rebellion (Kallus), one Imperial officer who isn’t needlessly cruel for its own sake (Grand Admiral Thrawn), but the rest are glory hounds, violent nutjobs, and raging douchebags.

The Sequel Trilogy takes this even further by introducing the First Order, the “remnants of the Empire” that popped right the flip out of nowhere, have the resources to keep an entire fleet full of warships ready and troops to occupy several systems. Oh, and also have the engineering know-how to make an entire planet into a superweapon. It’s never explained how, but they just do. Nor do we know why anyone supports them. There is some sort of fanatical loyalty to the Supreme Leader, Snoke, but since no one has told us what his deal is, we don’t know why. All we know is they serve him and revere him for...reasons. It’s not even brainwashing, as Finn breaks away from it.

It’s just...Stupid Evil. There’s no reason behind their fanaticism, they just are evil and that’s their thing. There are pretty shallow allusions to the Third Reich, North Korea and the Islamic State, but nothing that really develops the antagonists other than Kylo Ren.

That’s...pretty inexcusable, considering how far into the saga we are.

And it’s becoming more and more common to paint villains this way. Gone are the days of the Assassin’s Creed franchise when the Templar villains have sympathetic motivations and understandable backstories. The main villain of Assassin’s Creed: Origins, Flavius, loudly brags about how happy he is that he killed a child and how racist he is against Egyptians. Compare this to Governor Torres, the villain of Black Flag that actively rallies against the slave trade and talks about uniting all people regardless of nationality or religion. At no point is it even clear what the heck the Order of the Ancients actually wants; after they find the ancient treasure they’re been after the entire game, the audience never finds out what they were planning to do with it other than vaguely “take over Egypt,” and the heroes aren’t particularly worried about getting it back out of their hands.

Fallout 4 has the Institute, who at least have the motivation of wanting to make the world a better place with their science. But they’re so stupid that they can’t work out that sending a bunch of androids to the surface impersonating people and killing anyone who gets in their way might actually make people see them as the bad guys. This is handwaved as ‘they’re a bunch of hard science types who don’t understand the need for PR’ but, like...there are people throughout the Commonwealth screaming about how synths (androids) could be anywhere, impersonating anyone, shooting anyone suspected of being a synth, and they don’t think that maybe they need to rethink their strategy? That’s just stupid.

And there are ways around this! It’s so easy to not make stupid villains.

Like I mentioned above, I played a lot of Fable III this week, and in it the main plot is to overthrow your character’s brother, the king of Albion, who is a tyrant taxing the people to death, executing people who protest against him, and giving industry over to a sadist who makes a ton of coin regardless of the unsafe working conditions. But you find out after deposing him that the reason he did so was because he had witnessed an evil slime monster thing from beyond our reality attacking his people, and had been informed that this unspeakable evil was coming back to Albion. He was a horrible tyrant, yes, but he was doing so because he was driven mad trying to raise funds and resources to defend his homeland an evil that he knows he won’t be able to beat. His decisions are bad, but he’s not in a right state of mind, and it makes sense given what he’s been through.

There’s also Reaver, who’s evil and a jerk about it for no reason though, so I guess we shouldn’t give the game that much credit when it comes to villains.

Remember Thrawn, I mentioned earlier? The Grand Admiral in Star Wars: Rebels that is actually competent and not needlessly cruel. Oh, he’s cruel, and he doesn’t care one whit about the average person. But he also realizes that it’s much more useful to get people to work with you than against you, and to extract information from every action, even a defeat. He quickly deduces Hera’s identity as a Rebel officer the first time he meets her in disguise by the context of where she is and what she’s doing. He frequently lets spies live when he knows about them, because he knows he can extract more information out of them if he lets them think they’re undetected. He always runs his battles so that he learns something about the enemy, whether he wins or loses. It’s about the long game, not the momentary victory. He’s a really good villain that way. Too bad the Empire decides that the Death Star should get more funding than his own schemes.

Lord, I really hope that he doesn’t get killed on this show.

I know that it might be difficult to gift every character with a well-rounded personality, especially when it comes to villains. And that’s fine! But there’s a difference between not being able to develop a villainous character, and making them just stupidly evil for no reason. Especially don’t make me sit and question why anyone would go along with these villains.