#and strangely familiar

[jedi-starbird]

Alpha-17 and Obi-Wan being friends (derogatory) on 17's part and friends (threatening) on Obi-Wan's part is such an underrated dynamic

They could be so funny and terrifying, like Obi-Wan went through a soul shredding experience with Alpha-17 as his only company. They're friends because what else are you gonna be after you witness each other at absolute rock bottom from torture.

It's like 'dog put in cage of cheetah who's threatening to go crazy', except the dog is a grizzly bear and also threatening to go crazy.

Emotional support trooper except the trooper in question has never done any sort of supporting in his life and is actively an emotional distress trooper to a great number of the CC batch.

I want them texting everyday, I want Obi-Wan mailing handmade BFF bracelets to Alpha and Alpha sending pics back of him flipping off the camera but still wearing them, I want Alpha using Obi-Wan to keep track of and occasionally terrorize his cadets, I want 17 ending problems in the GAR (like Krell) before they begin because Obi-Wan has him shipped out on a personal transport at the first opportunity, decked out with slug-throwers Obi-Wan got him for his decant-day.

Natborn officers think this is all just an odd indulgence of General Kenobi, the Vode, however, correctly identify it as a goddamn threat and their danger assessment of Obi-Wan ticks up significantly.

When Alpha arrives on Kamino, Shaak Ti presses a shiny new comm into his hand. It has the Jedi Order symbol painted onto it alongside a smiley face sticker, and it pings immediately with a new message: Hello! I hope you're settling in well!

Alpha stares at the message, stares at the singular contact named 'OWK' and then stares Shaak Ti in the eye as he pitches the comm straight into the ocean. Shaak Ti's serene smile only grows larger as she calmly reaches into her robes and pulls out an identical comm, only this one has a frowny face sticker, and presses it into his hand. It lights up: I'm afraid we've bonded, Alpha :). Alpha shuts it off and pockets it with resignation.

Cody arrives on Alpha-17's personal recommendation.

A-17: He's the most difficult little bastard I have. You're perfect for each other. OWK: Thank you, he's very handsome :3 A-17: No. Stop.

The first thing he asks once he gets comfortable is who his general is texting so much that has him swinging his legs and twirling his hair. Cody assumes it's Anakin, given they seem joint at the hip anyway, but little does he know Obi-Wan's ability to consistently have the Weirdest Relationships Ever.

"Oh, it's Alpha-17, I understand you're familiar with each other?" Hmm. OK. Cody.exe is experiencing a processing error, please hold. He exits the room instead of answering. The next day he peeks over the General's shoulder when he's texting and sees walls of rambling messages from Obi-Wan. Alpha-17 replies every hour with a single text: Lose this number. Obi-Wan giggles. "He's so funny." he says.

When Obi-Wan meets the rest of the CC batch, Cody makes sure to stand perfectly angled so that he can record the reactions when his general cuts off their introductions with "Oh, no need, Alpha-17's told me all about you." It's always immediate FEAR.JPG followed by a slow spiral of What The Fuck.

What do you mean by that General. What does that mean Cody. What do you mean they text. No. Cody. What the fuck is happening, Cody. Alpha-17 doesn't have friends he has enemies and enemies he tolerates enough not to shoot on sight.

OWK: Wolffe reached for his vambrace? when I mentioned you A-17: That's where he keeps his spare knife. OWK: Hm that does explain the way he eyed me up, ambitious. A-17: Clearly not enough, he should have followed through. I taught them better.

[undeadtokyo]

[canonkiller]

do it all for love

[lgbtlunaverse]

It's always been my personal belief that Wen Yuan was brought into the lan clan under the guise of being one of the many war orphans they no doubt had at that point. He wears the cloud pattern on his ribbon that marks him as a member of the inner family so either the lan clan is very woke about adoption and Lan Wangji formally adopted him (which I don't think he did both because sizhui says "you were like a father or older brother to me" which sounds like that dynamic was unofficial. And because adopting him would've put a-yuan in danger, which lwj would obviously refuse. It was known who wwx's actual parents were and he wasn't even formally adopted, just a ward, and still everyone was gossiping about him secretly being a bastard. A-yuan would be seen as proof of ~hanguang-jun's mysterious wartime affair~ and there'd be rampant speculation about his parentage, no doubt scandalous since they're trying to hide it. You can see why this is very very bad.) Or they were convinced he was the offspring of some late inner clan members. Born in unsafe times and therefore hidden away with non-cultivators for his own safety, only for his parents to perish before they could go back for him, or whatever backstory the Lan brothers came up with.

But that leaves the question... whose wartime orphan did they think he was? The number of inner clan couples who were of child-bearing age before dying in the war was likely numerous but it can't have been that high. Low enough to narrow down a list of potential parents. Were there Elders who looked at Sizhui and thought "well there's a solid 12.5% chance you're my grandson?" Were there other orphans who wondered if he was their younger brother?

That kind of speculation is safer, because everyone agrees he's a Lan child, so there's no chance of someone concluding that he's a secret Wen spawn.

But I'm thinking of a young Lan Sizhui growing up with his almost-solved mystery. With some of his peers and teachers taking an interest in him, wondering if he's their little brother, or nephew, or grandson, and not being able to give them the answer. Who gets very used to staring at people's faces, trying with all his might to see something familiar in them, and never succeeding. Until years later, long after he stopped trying, when he meets a strange fierce corpse and something in his mind says i've seen you before.

[rose-finches]

[ a memory from the city of flowers ]

I've seen some discussion on what if trein met lilia in his youth, only for him to see Lilia again decades later at NRC and I find it so funny

[discordiansamba]

there's also this time travel idea I've been rotating since this morning in which a Rin from a failed timeline is sent back to the past by Mephisto... and then, upon arrival, is promptly put in charge of raising his infant self + Yukio... also by Mephisto.

(the man saw his chance to do something really funny and took it.)

some assorted thoughts about this one, in no particular order:

upon arrival, Mephisto instructs older!rin to pick a new alias- no, you can't pick Rinka. that would stand out too much. so in all of his cringy sixteen year old glory, Rin names himself Noctis on the spot, bc it sounds cool as hell and he definitely won't regret it when he gets older.

(he absolutely does)

yukio: dada.

noctis: huh!? no! i'm your nii-san, yukio! i'm way too young to be a father!

(noctis struggles valiantly, but he is fighting a losing battle. or: rin's teen dad arc.)

older!rin is the white haired version of himself, to further differentiate himself from younger!rin. of course, this does not stop the two of them from having an uncanny resemblance, so any time the twins introduce him as their foster father, people just look between Noctis and Rin and are like. doubt.png.

Shiro is still roped into becoming the Paladin by Mephisto. as far as he knows, Yuri's twins are being raised by some other unfortunate soul. imagine his shock when a few years in, he comes across a pair of familiar children at a local park under the care of someone who looks equally as familiar.

for a brief moment, Shiro mistakes him for Satan- but it can't be. Satan would never make that kind of expression. but was there another Azazel clone running around other than him? there's no way this guy isn't one, right? that resemblance is uncanny.

(older!rin's cover story is that he's a misfit Azazel clone who got a little too much demon in him, and was thus raised away from Section 13.)

and then he finds out that the guy is only nineteen. Shiro does the math. Mephisto put a sixteen year old boy in charge of taking care of children- which, well. fuck. okay. he's definitely intervening.

(or: becoming friends with his father is a little awkward at first, but Noctis comes to enjoy it, eventually.)

Mephisto gives Noctis a new demon sword and puts him to work right away as an exorcist. no using your own flames, though! we can't let people know there's two of you running around!

Noctis goes and picks up Kuro like, first thing. sorry old man, but he's stealing your familiar. he's really open about being an exorcist to the twins, since he knows he sucks at lying- and the less of it he has to do, the better.

he understands why his old man did it, but he doesn't want yukio to become an exorcist. instead he tries to introduce him to friendly demons like kuro and the greenmen, so he knows they're not all scary- and does not realize he himself is doing like, half of the heavy lifting there.

(rin and yukio both know their foster father is a first generation nephilim. yukio suspects that noctis really is their father, but just refuses to admit it for some reason. is it because he doesn't want them to know they're nephilim too? rin's strength makes it pretty obvious...)

this, ironically, leads to the outcome where both of the twins tell him that they want to join the exorcism cram school in high school. noctis' brain just does a record scratch. hwuah? huh? unexpected outcome????

the older his younger self gets, the more noctis begins to understand why shiro didn't tell him the truth until he couldn't hide it any longer in the original timeline. plus. you know. he has the additional wrinkle of being rin from the future, which is just SO awkward.

noctis gets into fierce arguments with mephisto about changing the past. he wants to prevent things like what happened to shiemi, or the lab in inari, but mephisto counters with the hard to argue fact that if they do prevent those things from happening, the timeline could very quickly spiral out of control. the future could get worse than the one you came from.

mephisto: but since you enjoy being a father so much, why don't you raise kamiki-san's younger sister?

noctis: hwuha!?

(additional child acquired)

mephisto also ropes noctis into teaching at cram school as a swordsmanship instructor, just in time for a familiar batch of cram school students to enroll...

noctis: wow... they're all so young...

noctis: wait. FUCK.

(despite that, he doesn't look a day over 25 even though he's actually 31. it gets on shiro's nerves constantly. you don't have any right to complain about getting old! you don't even get back pain!)

mephisto: I'm surprised you are not trying to prevent me from recruiting shima as a spy.

noctis: nah, that's like enrichment for him.

(noctis watching rin and shiemi interact like. i am going to be the world's most embarrassing father about this.)

(or: older!rin's journey from "don't call me dad" to "fuck it. i'm their father now")

[chasing-faith-and-fate]

Moon 33

Moon 32 bonus | Moon 33 bonus

[sysig]

Two skeletons in a trench lab coat (Patreon)

Bonus:

He’s very careful! Everything was fine before you interrupted!

[epicqtefail]

crying my eyes out i'm having a rough art day and WHO THE HELL IS THAT?? WHO ARE YOU???

this bastard's your spittin' image

[tayasigerson]

I don’t think I mentioned this on Tumblr yet, but I’m making a little fan comic. It’s 16 pages and I have 4 1/2 pages done. Here’s a preview; can you guess what it will be about?? 🤔🧐😗

[achaotichuman]

Cassian strikes me as the kind of guy who would physically overpower Nesta in order to cake her face at their wedding.

[the--firevenus]

"Magister, no—" - hammie probably

Lorsan when will you be playable please I'm on my KNEES.

[thirdity]

If poetry introduces the strange, it does so by means of the familiar. The poetic is the familiar dissolving into the strange, and ourselves with it. It never dispossesses us entirely, for the words, the images (once dissolved) are charged with emotions already experienced, attached to objects which link them to the known.

Georges Bataille, Inner Experience

[sapphosewrites]

While I deeply, truly enjoy Lower Decks and will be sad not to have new episodes any more for that reason, I actually think it's a good thing it's ending where it is. It's okay for stories to have limited lifespans, and if it kept going, the characters would continue to ascend the ranks, meaning it wouldn't really be about the lower decks anymore.

I just hope other Trek properties can follow some of its example, that you can have nostalgia bait and lots of references and a focus on interesting, compelling original characters who experience growth and development within a primarily episodic story structure.

And Spock doesn't even have to be there.

[midnigtartist]

Full chapter and multi part fic for Familiar and Strange is UP. If you read the pilot chapter there's some new stuff in here for you so go on a give it a read.

Will either release the second chapter in a week or like maybe this Monday who knows.

Give it some love in the comments or in my inbox this au has literally ruined my brain chemistry

Familiar and Strange (7325 words) by Midnigtartist Chapters: 1/8 Fandom: Critical Role (Web Series) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast, Widomauk - Relationship Characters: Caleb Widogast, Mollymauk Tealeaf, The Mighty Nein (Critical Role), bren ermendrud (flashbacks), lucien tavelle (flashbacks) Additional Tags: Capital Mage AU, Slow Burn, Canon Compliant, except for the stuff I change, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, take my hand I promise it'll be fun Summary: Two years ago Bren Aldric Ermendrud was a mage helping Lucien preform his ritual. Two years later, he meets Mollymauk Tealeaf in small town at the edge of the Empire. After realizing Molly has not memories of his past life, Caleb see an opportunity to keep the Tomb Takers off their trail, while also securing an ally within the Mighty Nien. This is where I'll be releasing the full chapters of Familiar and Strange going forward!

[crystallizsch]

Hi, request here. Ignore it if you want. I'm not sure if you did this already and I'm too lazy to check, but could you put Jamil in Playful stage (whatever it's called) dress and Kalim in the masquerade dress

playful dress jamil & masquerade kalim!!! :DDD

so uhhh here’s my really rough and simplified take on it??? i hope the colors look at least decent bc i was so indecisive on that part 🧍

and thank you so much for this idea!! i’ve especially been meaning to try to imagine kalim’s masquerade outfit so you gave me an excuse to do so!!

anyways i was REALLY going back and forth between sticking to the theme and just putting them on what i think looks good and i think i just. managed to do a small compromise.

also forgive me the only thing i know about about playful stage is the fox man. i haven’t seen the story 💀 (i kinda only know that it’s based on pinocchio)

so i just went off every character's playful dress outfit and took inspiration here and there (and mostly from kalim's)

also i noticed the ribbons vs tassels in the outfits, dont know what that’s about so i just. settled with tassels.

same thing with kalim i just took from jamil's masquerade outfit but flipped it and made the headwear pointier.

and i just took a few artistic liberties here and there ;;;

also i highkey avoided the elaborate patterns because im not too confident with coming up with them 😖

that’s about some of my thought process??? i’m fine with any questions if any!!