#and while now i draw entirely for myself rather than other people im still incredibly touched by the way ppl interact with it on here

[kicks0u]

i absolutely love it when people leave tags on my art, it's so cute seeing people be happy about how i drew their blorbo and the genuine enthusiasm over something that i made

[no-droids]

Dove

Part 2 of 2 of The Locked Door Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 19.7K i apologize for NOTHING

Warnings: DUBCON ELEMENTS, SMUUUUUUT, religion kink, virgin kink, authority kink, degradation kink, praise kink, age gap, ohhhhh the list goes on y’all been here long enough

A/N: I have nothing to say for myself this time im sorry

***

Obi-Wan feels like he’s going to be sick.

Dinner in the grand hall was difficult enough, forking down mouthfuls of expensive food he’s sure was absolutely marvelous, if he could’ve tasted it.  The s’Ziscari clearly splurged on the celebrations—expensive food, expensive decor, expensive everything, down to the silk napkin he studied and fiddled with under the table as he awkwardly waited for you to finish your plate.

He felt uncomfortable, absolutely.  He’s felt uncomfortable ever since he shuffled into this blasted, Maker forsaken robe not long after he left your quarters earlier.

Not black, no.  Not like yours.  Not like what appears to be an overwhelmingly vast majority of the people he’s encountered so far this dreadful evening.

No, his robes are blue.

A strong, eye-catching royal blue, covering his body in waves of fabric—softer than anything he’s ever worn before and leaving him feeling incredibly exposed.  The far more practical robes he traded for these atrocious garments are made of a thick, scratchy wool, a testament to the Jedi’s philosophical rejection of fine or expensive materials.  And, against all logic—to somehow make matters even worse, the sash tying this uncomfortable piece of attire closed has no place to clip his saber, unlike the leather belt he usually wears.  As a consequence, he’s left simply carrying it around by his side.

Granted, for some unknown reason, his robes are still far thicker and longer and more protective than the… stars, the ultra-thin black silk wrapped around your body, but Obi-Wan is so self-conscious about his appearance that he’s not even allowing himself to look at you.  Obviously that doesn’t stop him from refusing to leave your side the entire night, and he finds himself rather grateful that only a very few number of s’Ziscari are fluent in Basic, if only to provide him with a valid excuse to socially detach.

Of the very few people he’s noticed wearing robes resembling his, they��re all far younger than him—much closer to your age than Obi-Wan’s, and stars, everything about this celebration is unbelievably unnerving to him—including, if not most of all, your response to it.  One of the reasons he knows the food was grand, apart from the immaculate plating and lavish dinnerware of course, is because you momentarily excused yourself from the seat next to him to dish yourself out a second helping.

Even now, even in the skybox seats of this distressingly packed arena, Obi-Wan struggles to keep down what little food he could eat while you stand tall next to him and seem completely unbothered by the situation—and by the Maker, it bothers him.  He isn’t used to this.  He’s used to you being the emotionally turbulent one, the one whom he has to pacify, and it twists his stomach with the way the roles have suddenly found themselves reversed.

“I think the blue looks nice, by the way,” you lean sideways to mention casually to him, and he knows.  He knows you’re just jesting, just trying to lighten the mood, but he feels the bile rising up his throat at the fact that you even commented on it aloud.  “Fitting.  Matches your saber.  Your face, though.”  The smallest hint of a smile tugs at your cheeks.  “It’s beginning to match the color of mine.”

“Thank you for that, young one; your sense of humor is positively delightful,” Obi-Wan gripes, clutching the metal hilt tightly in front of him with both hands while he gazes out at the stadium before him, bustling with black hooded figures and a rare flash of blue.  It does not escape his notice that in complete contrast, your arms are loosely meeting behind your back, your saber dangling in one hand while the other lazily holds your wrist.  Your body is… open.  Draped in garments somehow equally as opaque as they are revealing, presented to the wide panoramic view of the audience and stage with no qualms whatsoever.

“Wonder who I got it from,” you ponder with a tilt of your head, and… fair point.  “How long is this thing supposed to last anyways?”

“Stars—‘this thing’ can’t get over with soon enough,” Obi-Wan grumbles, his eyes anxiously flicking down at the empty stage in the center of the audience.  He’s struggling with butterflies and nausea like he himself is meant to have a starring role in this debauchery.  “They’ll have… acts.  Plural.”

“Heavens,” you sigh under your breath, and oh yes.  He agrees.

He’s also painfully aware that he should be using this free time to continue contemplating his decision about… matters concerning later this evening with you, but he’s already feeling massively overwhelmed as it is.  Right now, it’s all he can do to just breathe and attempt to face one trial at a time.

But then, as if the Maker is feeling just particularly malicious this evening, Obi-Wan’s stomach drops when something quiet flashes in the Force and the roar of the enormous crowd instantly falls to dead silence.  The ominous sign rockets through him and while a Jedi should not know fear, this might be the closest he’s ever felt to truly terrified.

“Ooh, dramatic,” you whisper, but regardless of your laissez-faire attitude, his heart is positively pounding as he watches the figures of robed Force sensitives slowly file out onto the stage, and everything inside him lurches at the realization that—

They’re all wearing blue.  Every single one of them is clothed in fabric that matches his current attire, the one that made him feel like a blot on the landscape the entire dinner and subsequent mass pilgrimage to the arena.  A bright splash of color in the midst of an almost inescapably giant ring of black.

You’ve stopped talking.  Truly, he has no idea if that’s a good or bad thing, not right now.  The Force sensitives join hands and create a ring in the center of the stage while every single person in the arena sits in perfect silence, and Obi-Wan feels dizzy.  He’s not getting enough air right now, but he doesn’t even want to breathe too loudly and somehow draw even more attention to himself.

Two of the blue robes break off from their fellow acolytes and meet in the middle of the circle, and to simply avoid having a heart attack, Obi-Wan very purposefully chooses to ignore—like he’s done multiple times this evening—the subtle flicker of curiosity he experiences at the significance of the color blue and what it symbolizes to the s’Ziscari.  He can’t even bear to watch the way the two of them slowly lean in and allow their lips to touch from under their hoods.

Maker, if he turned his saber on and stabbed himself with it, could he convince you it was an accident?  Probably not—no, definitely not, what a stupid thought to have—

“How does she wipe?”  He hears your voice whisper, and Obi-Wan’s facial expression immediately screws up in confusion.

He turns to you, his tone equally hushed but the bewilderment sharpening his consonants.  “How does who what—?”

Only—you’re not even looking at the scene unfolding in front of you.  Your expression is just as confused as his is, but instead of looking down, your chin is lifted and you’re staring directly across the arena at the viewing booth opposite to yours.  He still has no idea what you’re talking about though, not until he follows your line of sight and sees the way s’Zerthia has her jaw propped up in her hands on her throne, looking bored as usual, and how the length of her newly manicured fingernails curves halfway up her scalp from this angle.

“That’s dangerous,” you remark quietly.  “They’re like talons.  Gaudy little weapons she always has attached to her that she decorates, makes them seem less vicious than they actually are.  I see them.  I certainly don’t envy whoever she picks tonight to—��

You cut yourself off with a bit lip smile and turn your face away from him, and Obi-Wan is almost mystified by how casual you’re able to be about this. 

“Whomever she picks to…?”  He trails off with a sigh.  “Do I… Do I want to know?”

“Never mind,” you tell him quickly, lifting your chin once more while still clearly trying not to laugh.  You’re trying not to laugh, while… while that is happening in the center of the audience.  “It was, uh… tasteless.”

He blinks, wondering what that could possibly mean.  Everything about this is tasteless, the entire thing is just an absolute nightmare coming to life.

Though, after a moment of silence, Obi-Wan soon realizes he much prefers it when you fill the void.

“Members of the Royal Court take turns doing it for her,” he eventually replies, decidedly looking anywhere but where the man is slipping the blue robe from the woman’s body.  It takes you a second to register to what exactly he’s referring, but when you finally do, you snort.  It’s too loud.  A few heads closest to your isolated seats turn as Obi-Wan very quickly thrusts his elbow into your ribs.  “Quit being disrespectful,” he hisses under his breath.

“You just—!”  You quickly clamp your mouth shut and face forward again, trying not to smile in an appalled sort of way.  But then—“Oh,” you blurt, not loud enough for anyone else to hear in this open setting but still loud enough for him to glance around and be slightly anxious about it.  “Oh.  Wow.  I wasn’t… expecting…”

Obi-Wan’s eyes automatically flick down to the couple, only just long enough to catch a quick glimpse of stark nudity in the center of the arena before his gaze immediately bounces back up again and focuses on the incredibly interesting steel beam currently propping up the Queen’s viewing box, clearing his throat.  “I… did warn you.”

“Well, yeah, I expected them to…”  Your hushed voice trails off and you stay quiet for too long, too long to imply you’re still formulating an end to your thought.  You’re distracted by something, but then you appear to snap back to your senses and immediately clear your throat.  “I just wasn’t expecting… the, uh.  The… positioning.”

He says nothing in response.  It… it doesn’t give him great comfort, wondering how you could possibly know enough about this type of profanity to have expected a different sort of positioning.  The stark contrast between the color of his ceremonial robes and yours still remains completely unspoken, but it quietly pulls at the back of his mind nonetheless.

“What about it?”  Obi-Wan immediately hears himself prompt and oh, no, this is completely inappropriate.  Not only should he not be encouraging this kind of talk with you, but he also shouldn’t feel so… so negative, not about something so personal to you and something that’s certainly none of his business.  Regardless, he… still has this buried, unexplainable desire to know the truth about it.  Regardless of the indirect way he’s attempting to go about it, he wants to know the truth about whether or not you broke your oath, and while he recognizes it’s completely improper of him, the urge is still strong enough to manifest itself using his vocal cords.

“Oh, I don’t know, it’s just…  It’s…”  He doesn’t even have a visual reference for what you’re attempting to find the words to describe.  He doesn’t want to.  He just wants to know what you think about it.  “…Bold,” you finally settle on.

Bold.  It’s bold.  Perhaps Obi-Wan wouldn’t be analyzing your verbal responses so closely if he had something more interesting to look at besides the general coliseum-like structure of the large outdoor stadium, but there’s a certain horizon he just won’t let his eyes dip below right now and unfortunately for him, being so high up above the crowd, the upper hemisphere of his visual field remains relatively dull.

“Who would've thought,” he eventually sighs, blinking up at the star-splattered sky now and attempting to see if he can use the Force to break off a piece of a satellite and have it impale him in a tragic accident.  “Considering the s’Ziscari are such a conservative bunch.”

His eyes soon wander back to s’Zerthia, and—Obi-Wan startles to find her staring directly at him with a thin eyebrow dangerously quirked.  She motions two long fingers in a V shape at her eyes and then points down towards the stage, her expression expectant and waiting.

Obi-Wan’s teeth hurt at how hard he clenches them together, his jaw flexing but the thick blanket of his beard doing well to conceal it.  She’s playing with him, he realizes; he can see the hidden smile on her lips all the way from here.

Maker, maybe she’s right.  Maybe he’s—maybe he’s being ridiculous about this.  This is fine.  This is fine.  His stomach feels like it’s all his food might come up at any second, but he’ll do it, he’ll look.  He can at least just look, right?

His gaze slowly begins lowering, trying to take in just a few things at a time so as not to overstimulate himself.  Thousands of s’Ziscari lining the seats of the arena, almost every single one of them dressed in black.  Lower still—the platform leading up to the stage.  A perimeter of blue figures now sitting down in a circle and then, at its center, a… a naked man and woman.

Obi-Wan’s heart pounds as he struggles to comprehend the sight, never having laid eyes on a nude woman before.  She’s on her elbows and knees, forehead lowered and resting against the floor, and the man kneels behind her, one hand holding her hips and the other wrapping around his—

Stars, Obi-Wan wants to end it all.  Right here.  His aim will be true.

But then… oh, no, he’s an idiot.  He’s a complete dullard, because he forgot.  Consumed by his own sheer anxiety and unease, Obi-Wan stupidly forgot an extremely crucial detail of the incredibly little he’s been told about the Sh’inzith.

—the projecting.

All at once, he’s nearly knocked over by the strength of the two Force sensitives at the center of the arena as they deliberately cast their minds out across the entire audience, presenting every sensation and fleeting thought they’re experiencing in all its intensity.  Obi-Wan immediately works to reinforce his mental shields as soon as he feels the shockwave about to hit, but there’s thousands of Force sensitives present—all of them congregated into one relatively small area, all of them tuning into the same two signatures and then suddenly… amplifying them back until it’s impossible for him to shut out.

“Oh, uh—” he just manages to hear you mutter through the whirlwind, just the slightest hint of panic in your voice peaking through the symphony of whispered thoughts and pulsing sensations coming from the stage, “—that isn’t good—”

Obi-Wan abruptly stumbles backwards and gasps at the awful, wretched feeling of something brunt pressing up hard against somewhere elusive, somewhere he’s never felt before towards the lower part of his body, and his mind fights viciously against it as he feels you spin around and reach out for his rapidly retreating figure.

“Wait, no—it’s okay, M-Master, it’s okay, it’s—” your voice cuts off and your hands suddenly fist into the robes at his chest, your forehead dropping to his shoulder against the sharp sting just continuing to push and push and push, “—i-it’s okay, it’s oka—”

He trips over his feet in the chaos and falls back on complete instinct and you’re so tightly attached to him that you’re yanked forwards with the momentum, the two of you plunging to the ground in a clumsy heap of grunts and tangled limbs.  Obi-Wan immediately starts crawling backwards across the floor underneath you, still trying to escape the horrible, inescapable sensation digging into a part of his body that doesn’t seem to exist, but it’s like you’re of the same mind—you’re scrambling forwards in the same direction trying to get away from the same thing, frantically attempting to calm him and simultaneously deal with the agony yourself, and then suddenly—

Oh—oh, Maker—

Suddenly something gives and surges in, and then Obi-Wan gasps—his elbows buckling under him and as the both of you drop down onto the floor because stars, it’s nearly blinding with impression.  Not only the aching, hard fullness stretching sharp and deep somewhere in his lower abdomen—but now a new sensation.  A tight, wet silk he feels swallowing him between his legs, concentrated on a part of his body that… does exist, a body part that’s currently pressed up right between your spread thighs.

“Fuck,” you moan hot against his throat, trying to find somewhere to brace yourself next to his shoulders and push yourself up off him, and he tries—Maker, he tries so hard not to, but his hands shoot out to grab your hips before he even knows what he’s doing and then he’s dragging his lower body up into yours on instinct alone, clamping his eyes shut and groaning out a desperate sound he’s never heard himself make before as his head drops against the floor.

It’s staggering.  It hurts.  He can't even hear your muffled noises anymore, not over the roaring encompassing his mind and body.  All he knows is that your hips quickly jerk back and grind down into his in response, sending Obi-Wan reeling while you bury your twisted cry of pleasure and pain into his neck.

The sound of it breaks through everything else.

Obi-Wan’s hands shake violently as they suddenly release you and then frantically shove at your shoulders, trying to push you off without hurting you.  He can’t think, he can’t see, he needs to leave—

“Get away,” he rasps desperately up at the sky, blinking his eyes wide but somehow not seeing anything in front of him but blackness.  “St-stars, get away from me—”

Suddenly you’re flipping off his body and onto your back next to him, too quick for it to be a mechanical movement alone, and he doesn’t even have the space in his mind nor the processing capacity to figure out if he Force pushed you off him or if it was you who did it to yourself.  He just clambers to his feet and stumbles away in a terrified, graceless retreat, bent in half, limping and gasping and fighting for every step he takes.

***

Your Master was right to leave as soon as possible, you think.  You were wrong to linger here for just a second to try and gain your bearings, because the more you work to grasp and attempt to organize them, the more mindless and disorienting they become.

You eventually have to heave over and drag yourself after him.

The further away you get from the arena, the easier it becomes to block the projection, but Maker, it’s exhausting.  You’re resigned to start out with a crawl—one of those Jedi Core crawls you haven’t had to do since the Academy but this one exponentially slower, forehead dropped down and eyes closed, just focusing on alternating shifting your elbows and your knees forwards and dedicating the rest of your mental energy to just isolating your mind from the debilitating assault.

Consulars don’t usually see much of war—you tend to do absolutely everything in your power to avoid it.  It’s the Guardians who experience the horrors of combat most often, who deal with ambushes and onslaughts from enemies of the Republic.  But Maker above, every merciless thrust into that poor little virgin at the center of the arena is like a blaster shooting directly at you, but then couple it with the thousands of reflections and ricochets in robes lining the bleachers?  You’re in the trenches of a deadly battle you had no idea was even about to break out and you have no weapon of defense besides retreat.

When you finally get far enough away to be able to push yourself upright as much as possible and continue staggering back to the palace on two feet, you have no concept for how long it’s been.  You can still feel the projection vibrating and clawing sharply at the edges of your consciousness, but at least the majority of your thoughts are your own now, and it gradually becomes easier and easier to focus and speed up to a clumsy run.

Though, no matter how successful you eventually are at muffling the vibrant sensations and thoughts of the two Force sensitives behind you—when they cum, you stumble down to your knees again and have to bite the back of your fist to keep from screaming.

Maker, it takes you a minute to recover.  You don’t even cum, you just feel it—the burst of energy from the Force in every direction, the violent explosion from the stadium that feels like it should fracture the ground beneath you.

You’re able to get up after a moment, if only because they decide to take mercy and finally cut off the projection.  You know that it’s a temporary relief, that they’ll likely be at this all night, but you hope the palace will be far enough away from the arena to block out the sensations completely.  You wonder if Master Kenobi felt that through the Force or whether he was too determined to block it out that he was able to simply ignore the nuclear missile that just detonated less than a few miles away from him.

You force yourself forwards and you want to hurry, you do—but strangely, in your wild state of exhaustion, stark reality is almost as debilitating as swimming through that endless madness was.  It’s quiet around you but the noise of still air pulses deafeningly in your eardrums after breaking free from such a thick mental filter separating you from your surroundings.  You still have your lightsaber clutched in your hand, Maker rejoice, and your thin robes are skewed awkwardly across your body, but you eventually find your way to the doors of the palace.

Though, trying to navigate the empty halls back to your Master’s chambers takes you longer than it should.  His signature is cloaked spectacularly, concealed to a mere speck you wouldn’t even know was there if you weren’t so closely acquainted with it for more than a decade.  You follow the flickering pixel of blue light through the obstacle ridden darkness, adjusting the front of your robes with one trembling hand while you wipe your brow with the other, closing your eyes and doing your best to take deep breaths.  He’ll be spiraling right now.  He’ll need a boulder to cling to in this tsunami, solid ground to stand on while the stars are falling out of the sky.

You… find him in your quarters instead.

The door is open and his handsome profile is to you, the thick fabric stretching over his broad shoulders now an agreeable light cream, familiar and telling of his intentions.  His hands are moving.  Setting something down on your bed—your robes, you soon realize.  He’s laying out your Jedi robes neatly for you across the fur blanketing the large mattress.

Master Kenobi begins speaking as soon as you step foot into the room, the tone of his voice very clearly impatient after having waited for you for so long.

“Change out of those ridiculous garments,” he tells you hastily, neatly laying out your leather belt across your dark tunic without even turning his head to look at you properly.  “We must leave.  Quickly.  Also—tell me you didn’t forget your saber at the arena, because if so, I’m afraid it’s lost to us forever now.  Ilum is only three days from here, perhaps we can stop there on the way back to Coruscant to find you another kyber cryst—”

You drop the hilt of your lightsaber on the floor and step forward, cautiously reaching out for his figure as he continues to ramble.  “Master, I—”

Your hand is thrown to the side with a subtle flick of his wrist and you instantly jerk to an abrupt halt, holding your palms out in front of you and keeping completely still while he spins around, his jaw slack and staring at you wide-eyed.  He takes a few steps away from you in shock.

“I’m sorry—” he immediately gasps, reaching out towards you even though the rest of his body is still desperately evading yours.  “Stars, I’m so sorry—that was just… That was excruciating, young one.  Why would anyone ever willingly—?”

“It—it doesn’t always—” you cut yourself off just in time, clamping your jaw shut before you can finish your sentence.

“We must leave,” he says once more as he turns back to your mattress, not appearing to hear you at all and shaking his head, far too frantic to sound like he’s just reminding you alone.  “We can’t do that.  I can’t do that—”

“It doesn’t always have to be—”  Maker, what is wrong with you?  Your heart kicks up in your chest and somehow stutters to a halt at the same time.  It’s the lingering effects of the assault your mind just experienced coupled with your desperate urge to console him that’s making you so utterly careless, you realize, it’s making your tongue loose.

“Stars, what do you mean?”  Master Kenobi finally snaps, and your blood runs ice cold.  “How do you know that?”

It takes the sum of all your years of training to keep the raging hurricane of emotion from showing in any capacity.  You feel like he’s holding his saber to your neck with how dangerously little you’re even allowing yourself to breathe right now, how utterly and completely still you’re holding yourself in front of him.

Lie, a little voice in your mind supplies quietly, the little voice you keep locked inside an impenetrable box of everything you are but have never been allowed to confront, haven’t been allowed to openly think just in case someone is listening too closely.  Lie.  Lie, right now.  Your silence is giving you away.

Only—you can’t.  You shouldn’t.  It’s not fair to keep this from him, not when you’re asking him to do something so structurally compromising to his belief system.  If… if you tell him the truth, perhaps he won’t judge you too harshly.  Perhaps he’ll feel… reassured, knowing he’s certainly not the first Jedi to break a sacred vow when he felt times were desperate enough.

Besides.  This might be the only secret that could potentially get you kicked out of the Order, but… it still isn’t your worst one.

“Because.”  The word is out of your mouth before you can rethink it, barely above a whisper.  “I… know.”

He doesn’t respond, and no.

No, you were wrong.  You were wrong to tell him the truth, and the look on his face immediately shoots panic through your whole body.

He doesn’t look reassured.

He looks… alienated.

“‘It doesn’t always?’”  Your Master eventually repeats back to you, and fuck—the implication is instantly clear.  The implication is made so clear from the sharpness in his tone, the hard edge to it as he rounds out the vowels in the last word that makes your heart twist and throb in your ribcage.  He might as well have just asked you how many times you must’ve violated your code of honor to know the difference.

“It’s not.”  You clear your throat and flick your gaze up to the ceiling, feeling like he’s using the Force to squeeze your chest in on itself.  “That was the absolute worst possible sensation that can be felt during… It’s—it’s not like that.  It won’t… be like that.  Not.”  Are there tears coming to your eyes?  “Not… with me.”

Utter quiet.  So quiet that if you really concentrate, you can hear the distant sounds of the arena continuing on with the Ritual without you.  You bite hard at your lip and wait for him to say something, anything.  Yell at you, tell you how disgusted he is, banish you from the Order.

Instead, Master Kenobi quite suddenly… deflates.  He sighs—not a heavy, exhausted one, but a soft one.  A quiet, accepting sort of sound.

He slowly lowers himself to the edge of the mattress and closes his eyes, running both hands through his hair, and it’s just enough to give you pause.  You glance over at him, trying not to let tears fall beyond the plateau of your lower lids with the frantic downward movement of your eyes, and you’re only just barely successful at it.

“It’s alright,” he says gently.  “It’s… it’s alright, young one.  I… suppose I am in no place to judge.  Quite… quite literally,” he murmurs, gesturing to the space around him with a lazy wave of his hand.  Maker, his figure is too watery and unfocused to make out his facial expressions, but you don’t want to blink to clear your vision just in case a sudden downpour escapes.  “It’s none of my business and I shouldn’t have asked.  You’re… not my Padawan anymore.  I should have no reason to… even care at all, really.”

There’s something that feels… major in that, something monumental yet incredibly well hidden, but you’re still too full of blind panic to interpret it further.  Your breathing is shaky and you wonder, quite stupidly and not for the first time in your life, if it’s somehow possible to use the Force to evaporate the water in your eyes before it turns into tears.

“I am certain it took place in your younger years, a long time ago,” he continues calmly when you don’t immediately say anything.  “You did always have a… a rather unconventional relationship with the rules.” 

Your only response is a quick jerk of a nod.  Yes.

“Yes,” you immediately agree, hoping your tone sounds convincing enough through the lingering tremors.  “It was… a long time ago.  I’ve changed, since then.  Grown up in many ways.”

It’s his turn to nod, and you manage to calm down just slightly.  You’re still breathing too hard and you’re a bit too braced, too much of a stance to truly feel like relief, but your heart rate is beginning to settle back into a somewhat acceptable rhythm.

Master Kenobi looks over at you, and he says absolutely nothing about the traces of water still glistening along your eyelashes.  He just smiles softly and pats the space next to him.

You cautiously make your way over to him after a moment, feeling more unsure now than you’ve felt this entire mission.  You leave at least a half a foot of space separating the two of you once you carefully sit yourself down on the mattress, and you can’t even look in his general direction.  You just focus on the long, draping sleeves of your black robe as you look down at your hands and wait for him to speak first.

“Sometimes,” he eventually sighs.  “Sometimes I… feel like you’re the person I know best in the entire galaxy, you know.  I’ve… I’ve known you far longer than I ever knew my own Master, young one.  I picked you out of thousands, and I’d do it thousands of times again.  Sometimes—especially since the day of your accolade and subsequent absence, I feel like I can know exactly what you’re thinking, even from across an entire star system.  And yet somehow, you… always surprise me.  Even after all these years, I am just.  Consistently surprised by you.”

You don’t know how to take that.  You just sit there in a guilty silence, still unable to turn your head or offer any sort of response.

“I chose you as a Padawan because you surprised me, you know,” he reminds you quietly.  “I had certain expectations for you, and you did not meet those expectations.  Instead, you presented an alternative I’d never before considered, an alternative that forced me to reevaluate you—and by extension, myself—far beyond what I had previously.  That is not a bad thing.  It has never been a bad thing.  As is made blatantly obvious by the fact that I’m the one currently standing in the way of saving lives, and you’re…not.”

Maker, this is thin ice.  You don’t know what to say that’ll express hesitant agreement with his sentiment without making it sound like you’re not apologetic for breaking your oath.  You’re… well, you’re not, not really.  His response itself is causing you to feel far more turmoil than any legitimate regret for your actions.

“It was—” On instinct, you almost say it was a mistake regardless of the conflicts you’re just so happening to encounter on this mission, but something stops you.  You suddenly remember your place here, your goal.  To save the galaxy from the Separatists’ reign.  And, by extension… sleep with your Master.  You can’t call it a mistake if you’re going to ultimately try to convince him to do the same thing.  So instead, you scramble to finish your sentence with a different thought, knowing his full attention is pinned to you right now.  “…A long time ago,” is all your exhausted mind is able to come up with.

“Yes,” he gives you a small, companionable smile.  “It’s alright.  Your prior lapse—or, well… lapses in judgement… will forever be safe with me.”

And still, you don’t feel relief.  Not when Master Kenobi very quickly appears to look uncertain.

“I… apologize,” he offers after a moment, “if.  If I ever made you feel like… like you could not confide in me about any struggles or… or urges you may have been experienc—”

“Maker,” you suddenly interrupt with a frantic wave of your hands, everything cringing inside you, “Maker, we don’t have to do this.  None of it, it’s okay.  Know what?  Let’s just go home—screw the galaxy, I don’t care, just stop talking.”

He snaps his eyes over to you, a sudden bark of laughter escaping him before the rest of his face even seems to register something was funny.

It evolves.  Eventually he’s covering his face and stifling ridiculous little snorts behind his hands, trying to apologize in between the chuckles but laughing even harder.  It’s almost like… just a form of pure stress relief for him.  So far beyond traumatized that it’s revealing itself in a slightly hysterical way, even if what you said wasn’t hysterical at all.

“Now you have a mere glimpse into what my experience has been like today,” he finally tells you with a sparkling grin once he composes himself, lifting his chin as he looks at you and scratching his beard with a quiet flicking sound.  “Shall I keep going?  If this mission has taught me anything, it’s that no matter what, things can always get worse.”

“They don’t have to.”  You say it without thinking, the gentle reprieve caused by his laughter flowing through you in waves and making you throw caution to the wind.  The four words serve to shut him up quite quickly however, even though it was the opposite of your intent, and your smile drops.  Maker, just freely conversing with him about these things is navigating a minefield for his mental state.

“You… you say that, and yet even—” Master Kenobi eventually responds, cutting himself off with a cough.  “Even the things I’ve heard are meant to feel… pleasant, were just.”  He shakes his head and blinks his crystal blue eyes over at you.  “By all accounts.  Agony.”

“I know,” you nod.  “I know.  Projecting that specific situation was… sadistic of them.  A distortion of the truth.  Probably rooted in deep tradition, but also a great scare tactic if I ever saw one, playing with us by presenting the absolute worst of it before anything else.  It won’t hurt.  At all.  I promise.  In fact—I-I can make it feel—”

Maker, you don’t even finish your sentence, but you must think the general idea loud enough for him to understand.  You don’t actually have a specific word in mind—good, great, amazing, euphoric?—and yet, something quiet settles over you two at the silent implication, the mere whisper of the possibility of you pleasuring him.

And him… allowing it.

“Master, I—”

“Don’t,” he quickly tells you.  “Don’t call—You don’t have to… call me that.  Just for right now, it’s.  I don’t—” he takes a breath that sounds shakier than it looks, and then he paints an easy, fake smile on his face following the exhale.  You recognize that smile anywhere, though.  While you’ve never seen him wear it before, it’s the smile that politicians make when they’re about to present a lesser truth to you, a smile shown to you in negotiations all the time that signifies something… hidden.  He’s hiding something, something important, and you have no idea what it could possibly be.  “I don’t feel like I even deserve to be called that right now, young one.  Perhaps you should be the Master, and I the learner.”

“Ah yes, the circle is now complete,” you can’t help but jest in return, wanting to keep the tone light even though the subject matter is heavy.  “Is now when we trade lightsabers?”

“Indeed,” he smiles, this time more sincere, and… you can’t pinpoint when exactly it happened, but it appears you’re physically closer to each other now than you were when you first sat down.

“Do they, uh… actually expect us to…”  You clear your throat and wave a hand around, “…Project the entire time like that?”

Master Kenobi quickly shakes his head.  “No.  s’Zer—Queen s’Zerthia informed me that.  Ah.  For us, projection will only be necessary during the… well, she called it the ‘closing ceremonies.’”

Your eyebrows shoot up and you nod.  “I… see.”

It’s like you can physically feel his body start to break out into a cold sweat next to you at the sudden… realness of it all, the realization that it has to be getting late.  Close to midnight, if you’re not already pushing it.  It’s come time to make a final decision, you both know it.  You want to console him, offer him some kind of solace or reprieve, but stars, you just don’t know how, not when you’re this much of a mess about this, too, but for entirely different reasons.  You don’t have a single clue how to make him feel better about any of this.

“I just,” you rush before you lose the nerve, “I want you to know that—e-even if you feel like you’re somehow alone in this, you’re not.  Okay?  I’m… I’m really nervous, too.  I don’t… I don’t actually know what to do at all right now.  I don’t know whether to respect your apprehension or tell you it’s unfounded.  I don’t know if I should remind you what’s at stake here or whether I should avoid mentioning it at all costs.  I have no idea what position I should take, but I’ll—I’ll take whichever one you want me to.”

And it’s odd, because when you first launched into your confession, Master Kenobi gradually began to look more and more relieved, but at a certain point, something just goes horribly wrong.  You don’t know what you said, but whatever it was, it seems to rocket through your Master and suddenly his breathing stutters.

For a moment, you think he’s going to reach back, yank your neatly folded Jedi robes up from the mattress and push the dark fabric into your hands.  Tell you he’ll meet you at the docking bay posthaste, tell you not to linger, tell you that the mission was a failure.  But then—

“Before,” he suddenly says, the word almost startling you with how abrupt it comes out sounding.  Almost like he wasn’t quite expecting himself to say it either.  “Earlier today, you asked… you asked if there was anything you could do to… make this easier.”

“Yes,” you prompt immediately.  He won’t look at you, and for some reason your heart begins beating faster and the inside of your thighs are getting warm.

“I… I’m not sure I’ll be able to go through with this,” he admits with a whisper, his voice sounding so quietly reluctant, like he doesn’t want to say the words aloud but is forcing himself to.  “But… the Council put you in charge of negotiations.”

Your eyebrows furrow, trying to understand his implication.  What does that have to do with anything?  Is he saying that you’re supposed to be in charge, and therefore he’s defaulting to you?  “I’m not sure I—”

“The Galactic Republic…”  Master Kenobi enunciates very, very pointedly, still unable to look at you, “…put you in charge of negotiations.”

Specifying—or in this case, generalizing—doesn’t help much.  “I’m still not—”

“Maker, for—for the good of the Republic, young one,” he presses under his breath and finally flicks his gaze up to meet yours, sounding urgent and torn in equal parts.  “Negotiate.”

Stars, negotiate with who?  With—with him?  For the good of the…?  Is he asking you to somehow reason with him beyond what you’ve attempted to do already, or persuade him to do what’s right for—?

Maker—Master Kenobi is asking you to seduce him.

Shock paints your expression blank and his eyes instantly evade yours once more.  You have to sit there for just a second and double-check that you’re not dreaming.  None of this seems real.  All of it seems like an incredibly elaborate illusion of the Force, ever since you first laid eyes on him at the start of this mission.  You know you missed him but stars, did you truly miss him this terribly?  Your longing must rival something fierce to unconsciously conjure this wild of a scenario.  Is he actually here right now?  Have you been speaking to a ghost?  Are you actually here right now?  Are you going to wake up any second and remember he’s thousands of lightyears away and has been for years, risking his life on the front lines of galactic war while you’re left to play politics and negotiate treaties behind the scenes?

These thoughts aren’t safe to have in normal interactions with him, but nothing about this situation is normal, and while you know Master Kenobi has years of experience reading your signature, he most likely won’t be able to gauge the specific details of your thoughts when you can sense how intensely he’s focused on guarding his own chaotic mind from you.

So you let yourself think.  If only for a second, you sit next to him and allow yourself to just… think about him.  About how much you care for him, how desperately you ache for him—you let all these improper longings finally have their moment with you.  You let yourself confront it, crack the lid of the hidden box tucked away behind your consciousness and brave it, because if there was ever a moment to do so, it’s right now.

Your heart starts slamming up against your ribcage and your hands feel like they’re tingling.  He wants you to convince him to have sex with you.  He’s asking you to corrupt him.  He wants you to negotiate the galaxy’s survival with the last man standing in the way of its prosperity—a good man with strong, immovable morals, a man who understands the consequences that follow integrity around and won’t be easy to tempt.

“This was a bad idea,” suddenly comes Master Kenobi’s voice, quickly backpedaling after too long of a silence.  “I shouldn’t have said that.  Forget I said that, we should just g—”

“Would you like to meditate?”  You immediately ask him on a complete whim, shuffling back towards the middle of the mattress for the second time today.  You’re careful to make sure he doesn’t see you carelessly flick your neat robes to the floor with the Force, clearing the top of the large mattress.  “Let’s meditate.”

“Stars,” he breathes, shyly his head turning to follow you, “I’d love nothing more, but there truly just isn’t any time—”

You find it easier than you thought it’d be to pull a playful face at him, crossing your legs and straightening your spine.  “Please, you’re a Guardian.  You blue sabers practically invented battle meditation, did you not?”

He looks skeptical for a moment, as he has a valid right to be.  “Is this a battle?”  He eventually asks over his shoulder.

You say nothing in response to that, instead using the Force with a flex of your finger to tug at the loose cream fabric of his robe at his elbow.  “Come on, it’ll do us good.”

He looks conflicted for a second, but then ultimately decides to humor you.  “Alright,” Master Kenobi finally agrees, turning around and crawling towards you on the mattress, and you’re just quick enough to stamp down a flicker of arousal at the mere sight of it.  “It won’t hurt.”

“Of course it won’t,” you agree with just a bit too much air in your voice, but he doesn’t seem to notice it.  He just seats himself directly in front of you, facing you, crossing his legs close enough to yours that your knees barely touch, and—

—Maker, he’s lovely.

You purposefully let yourself think it as his eyes slowly fall closed and he takes a deep breath, beginning to tame the wild tempest of his mind.  You let the word flitter around your thoughts without instantly repressing it like you always do, and just the mere act of allowing yourself to acknowledge the truth is freeing.  He’s lovely.  He’s lovely.  You could scream it.

Your eyes trail down the lines of his ever softening, tranquil expression, not even bothering to pretend to meditate for his benefit this time.  Your gaze roams shamelessly across his face, the way his hair is combed back away from it.  The sandy, masculine beard leading down to the thick column of his throat, the broad lines of his shoulders draped in pale fabric, the way his chest slowly moves as he breathes.  Lovely.  Lovely.

And then you go… lower.

His abdomen is stretched long with how upright he’s sitting, his flawless meditation posture.  His thighs are spread wide in this position, pants stretched tight into an elusive drum over his crotch and preventing you from truly seeing anything—but stars is it a thrill even just letting yourself look. 

Especially knowing that the more his mind works to compose itself, the easier it’ll be for him to hear you.

You keep thinking, growing bolder the more you’re left alone with this box wide open.  You think about how lithe and strong his body is, how it would feel under your hands.  You think about all the different things you want to show him, all the… the mind shattering pleasure you can give him if he’ll allow y—

Master Kenobi says your name without opening his eyes.

It doesn’t sound the way you expect, though you don’t really know what you expected it to sound like.  A sharp, frustrated bark?  An exasperated, pleading attempt to get you to stop?

No—none of those.  It’s a quiet, low growl of a sound, and the clear warning in it absolutely burns a hole through you like he picked up his lightsaber and used it instead.

You take practiced breaths, trying to calm yourself down.  Stars, he just said your name, he’s said it so many times before, and yet hearing it in his mouth with that tone in this context feels like he just strapped rockets to your ankles and told you to stay put.  You’re impatient.  You’re turning yourself on, working yourself up, trying to get to where you can actually make a move on him after dedicating so many years to desperately repressing the longing to do so.  Once he told you to negotiate this deal with him, however, it’s as if every ounce of the impeccable self control you’ve practiced so spectacularly throughout most of your life slowly started to unravel.

Reaching out tentatively so as not to startle him, you wrap both of your palms around the bend of his knees and squeeze gently.  Master Kenobi displays no physical signs of—well, anything really, keeping his body completely rigid under your hands with no noticeable alterations in his breathing pattern.�� Biting your lip, you begin to slowly rotate your thumbs, making sure to keep your movements slow and perfectly symmetrical.  Complete relaxation is your ultimate goal here—coaxing your Master into a serene state where physical contact is desired, not obligatory.  He's so uncomfortable with the concept of intimacy in and of itself though, from the way his eyebrows start to furrow and his spine begins gradually tilting back and away from you, it's almost as if your ministrations are dampening rather than fueling.

“Relax,” you murmur, and stars, even though you make it sound quiet and gentle, it’s like the melodic lull of your voice appears to startle him more than if you’d just spoken normally.  Maker—it’s counterintuitive; how are you supposed to turn someone on when the mere state of being turned on turns them off?  “Relax with me, it’s okay—”

“But I just can't, young one,” he suddenly implores, his voice pressed up tight in his throat, his cerulean eyes popping open in frustration and something else—an honest, heartfelt emotion that's strikingly less familiar to you, even after years spent by his side: deep, hot, stomach-wrenching guilt.  You watch your Master’s palms run the length of his thighs; back and forth, back and forth—almost like a nervous tick, you think—and it’s oddly endearing, if not increasingly concerning.  “I just can't, this is all so wrong.  Don't you understand?  E-Even if the Council did provide a—well, a rather admittedly ineluctable blessing for this downright ludicrous endeavor, i-it’s… I don't…”  He takes a deep breath, and visually, it looks like he's attempting to collect his thoughts and composure, but you know your Master all too well.  You know what he's really doing, and at this point, it's almost… frustrating.

“What are you so afraid of?”  You clutch his knees and whisper quietly, interrupting him before he can verbalize whatever perfectly logical reason he's trying to formulate as to why you both should leave the planet immediately, what he's going to say to the Council if they ever inquire as to why negotiations ultimately failed.  He jerks his head up sharply to look at you.

“The Jedi fear nothing,” is his automatic response, though his previously intense gaze strays slightly from yours after a second of too much eye contact.  “Fear is the path to the Dark Side, you know this.”

“And yet you are afraid,” you remark calmly, studying the way he’s turned his face away from you completely now, how you can still see his jaw clench under the thick beard with his profile shown to you like this.  “I—I’m trying to understand, Master, but I—I don’t.  Even if this mission were half as important as it is, your loyalty to the Order would follow you right into an early grave.  But this?”  You remove a palm from his knee to gesture between the two of you, the mattress beneath the both of you, “fulfilling this mission and these terms to save the entire galaxy is too ‘downright ludicrous’ for the Great Negotiator?  I don’t believe it.  Tell me what you’re really afraid of.”

Only, he’s suddenly moving—away from you.  Turning and planting his palms to fur, beginning to climb to the edge of the bed and sweep his legs around under him, and your voice has an unintentional edge to it when you address his back.

“Do you know how many lives over I owe you?”  You ask, and he jerks to an abrupt halt, feet just shy of stepping on the floor.  “Do you have any idea the stockpile of mortal gratitude you’ve amassed from me?  How many times you’ve risked your death to save me from mine over the years—can you count them?  I have.  I know my debt to you, I know the weight of my life piled on top of itself over and over again.  I remember each and every one of them like they happened yesterday, and not once did you hesitate even slightly, let alone the way you’ve hesitated today.”

”And?”  Master Kenobi quite suddenly snaps over his shoulder as he grips the edge of the mattress, sounding sharp but not necessarily directed towards you.  “What is your point?”

“My point is that if you’d so readily trade your death time and time again to prevent that of even one other person, let alone a difficult Padawan who caused the Order nothing but grief for years, then what is it that makes the deaths of trillions—” you nearly say preferable to bedding me before you realize how incredibly harsh that would sound, but something about the way he seems to tense his shoulders and curl inwards implies he was following the general cadence of your agitated signature more than the specific content of your words.

He says absolutely nothing, but he doesn’t move to drop his feet to the floor, either.  If only you could punch a proverbial hole through his practically indestructible mental barriers, you'd see the real reason he's so flustered, why he's purposely attempting to deceive you.  Unfortunately for you though, they feel like they're made of triple-reinforced beskar, a countermeasure gradually increasing in strength the more you try to probe.

But then—all at once, something clicks.  Something… fundamental.  An understanding. 

Your Master is a gifted negotiator, yes.  But more than that.

He wields a blue saber.  Not a green one.

He’s a Guardian.  A warrior.  He fights.  It’s something that has never truly been part of your nature, no matter how much you struggled with it over the years—but it is a part of his, no matter how exceptionally he’s been able to mask it for even longer.

So, all at once, you stop pushing.  Your signature abruptly pulls away from him, gives him room to breathe and simply hovers within your own personal space, unassuming and careful not to disturb him.  You see your Master lift his chin and straighten his spine slightly, immediately noticing your absence and the constant pressure you’d been applying, and you honestly can’t tell if he relaxes or tenses up even more because of it.

Finally, when you feel like it’s been long enough, you slowly reach out and gently place your hand on his arm.  This time, there’s no underlying motivation attached, no inherent desire for him to fulfill any sort of obligation.  Just a warm, companionable gesture to reinforce the simple knowledge that you’re both in this together, for better or worse.

Please tell me, Obi-Wan, you quietly whisper to him through the Force, allowing your tone and energy to transfer through your open palm and into his troubled spirit as softly and gently as you possibly can—a caress more than anything even close to a sentence or inquiry.  Your usage of his first name is entirely unprecedented however, and your Master sucks in a sharp breath in response.

I don't… But then the subconscious, half-formed thought fades away almost as quickly as it’s offered to you from behind the solid, unyielding fortress of his mind.  “W-what are you doing?”

You bite your lip, wondering how honest you should be with him right now.  Though, you suppose, if you truly want him to confide in you, you should at least meet him halfway.

“You’re the locked door,” you finally settle on.  “This is me knocking.”

Obi-Wan turns around and blinks at you, looking for all the stars in this galaxy like that was quite possibly the last thing he expected you to say.  You can see the frantic thoughts pass through his eyes almost as if the clear blue was completely transparent, likely remembering all the times you’ve leaned on him for guidance, listened intently and learned from his wisdom and experience.  And now you’re a fully grown woman patiently offering him your ear, wondering if you’ve earned enough of his trust for him to do the same.

“I’m afraid I’ll form an attachment to you.”  The words tumble from his mouth even though his body all but whips away from you in the process.  “It’s unreasonable for the Council to expect this from me.  From us.  I’m afraid our relationship will forever be tarnished from this, that neither of us will ever be able to go back to the way things were before.  I’m afraid that regardless of whatever decision I make, I won’t be able to carry the guilt on my conscience and continue to call myself a Jedi and Guardian of the Republic.  But mostly, I just—I-I—”

Your heart is pounding as Obi-Wan buries his face into his hands and his muffled voice groans raggedly, “—I’m afraid I’ll like it.  I’m afraid I’ll want it again, and again.  I’m afraid it’ll follow me back to Coruscant, that I’ll save the galaxy but spend the rest of my days aching for something I’ll never be able to keep, and that’s petrifying.  Desire, passion, selfishness, possession; all of them lead to Darkness, and I can—I can feel it right now.  Your soul is so gentle, so peaceful, and yet you… you inspire such Darkness in me, dove.”

Maker, you’re trying so hard.  So hard to keep your legs from clenching together at the utter desperation in his tone, how his breathing has picked up now that the words have ripped themselves out of his throat, like the whole thing was physical agony even just to say.  You have to take a second.  You’ve been so patient this entire time, but stars—this one makes you need a moment.  You’re so glad his eyes are clamped shut behind his fingers right now because yours lose focus trying to mask the absolutely debilitating wave of arousal that sinks down hot through your stomach.

Even when you regain the ability to speak, the ability to form a safe and proper response to the bombshell he just dropped on you completely evades you.

You purposefully don't say that you're already helplessly attached to him, that the colors of the galaxy somehow lost their brilliance the day you graduated to Knight, the day you left his side.  You don't say that you want this so badly you can feel it in your neck, that it would probably break you in half if he said no to this now.  Though it's the honest-to-Maker truth, you know discovering this information will only cause your Master to further distance himself from you, and somehow that thought alone is a million times worse than being denied the opportunity to be this close to him.  Even… even if what you end up sharing is more emotional than physical.

So you take a deep breath to center yourself, and choose your words very carefully.

“A compromise, then.”

Obi-Wan suddenly raises his head, turning around to look at you and blinking twice.  “A what?”

“You told me to negotiate.  What do we do as negotiators, hm?”  You raise an eyebrow, giving him a gentle smile and trying not to curl your fingers into the fur underneath you with how hard it is to conceal your burning arousal.  Do it for him.  Do it for your Master, you’re in l—you… care about him, and you care about the things he cares about, even if doing so feels like it’ll rip you apart.  “We compromise.  Yes?  So, let’s find one.”

He shakes his head.  “I don’t see h—”

“If you were to…”  You cut him off and look down, trying to find the most delicate way to phrase this.  “If you were to… find other means to bring yourself to completion, would you be able to convince anyone listening that I was the one doing it?”

Obi-Wan doesn’t even blink this time.  He just stares at you, holding himself like a statue in front of you.  Finally, he seems to find himself.  “I… I don’t—I don’t know if I can.”

“You’re stronger in the Force than anyone on this planet, Master,” you encourage softly, placing a hand back on his arm and squeezing this time.  “I’ve felt it.”

“N-No,” he practically hiccups.  “No, I mean I-I… I don’t know if… if I can.”

Your eyebrows narrow, a mixture of confusion and concern coloring your expression.  “If you can…?”

He looks back at you almost desperately, his eyes practically begging you to figure it out so he doesn’t have to say it.  Finally, Obi-Wan sighs, seeming to collapse in on himself with its intensity.  “I—I’ve never… purposefully reached completion before,” he admits.  “I’m—I’m not sure how to.”

Your eyes widen, wanting to kick yourself for making assumptions.  Of course.  Of course he’d follow his oath to its strictest interpretation, why would you ever think otherwise?  “Oh, y-yes, of course not,” you stutter, sounding incredibly stupid and perfectly mirroring the embarrassed flush also painting your Master’s cheeks, “I didn’t mean to imply—”

“It’s alright,” he holds up a hand.  “We simply… view such things differently.  So long as you do not pass judgment, then neither shall I.”

You nod and look down at your hands, wondering how else you can attempt to tackle this predicament.  “What if I…”  You blink slowly, almost wanting to keep your eyes closed in case he’s offended by the idea but figuring you should have them open to read his responses.  “What if I… don’t touch you?”

Now he just looks confused.  “I’m sorry?”

You blush and clear your throat, obviously phrasing this wrong.  “If you can modify the context of your projection, then I can… get you there.  Without touching you.”

“How could you accomplish such a thing without tou—” Obi-Wan immediately cuts himself off when you lift your hand and close your eyes.

His thigh.  The right one—you focus on it.  There.  Right above the bend of his knee folding over the edge of the mattress, you concentrate all the energy from your fingertips and reach out, connecting the two together.  And then you take a deep breath and begin to draw your attention slowly upwards.

Your Master’s breath catches in his throat as you use the Force to delicately trail further up his leg, not laying a single hand on him as his muscles start to visibly tighten and quiver.

“Young one, I—”  His breathing stutters when you keep your hand raised but let your head tilt and drop down towards your shoulder with your energy, slinking down the inside of his thigh like water and getting dangerously close to his— “Stars, hang on—”

You blink your eyes open at him and continue concentrating right there, letting your focus melt warm and thick along the muscle and squeeze it—

“Maker—”  Obi-Wan gasps and drops his head back, his legs nearly spasming apart.  “Maker, hang on, I…”

“Do you…” You breathe tightly, flicking your eyes down to the way he’s fisting the fur under his hands and subconsciously flexing his hips up just the slightest bit.  Even though the Force, his body feels good.  Strong, sturdy, and braced tight under your attention.  “Do you want me to keep doing this?  I can… go higher.”

“You can…?  The—the Force isn’t—” Obi-Wan groans, his eyes clamping shut, “—isn’t meant to be used in such… in such… If I’m to break my oath, young one, it needn’t be so… so blasphemous—”

Trying to conceal the hot sparks of arousal deep in your stomach, you simply allow your metaphysical hand to continue resting right at the juncture of his hip and thigh, waiting for a real answer.  You bite your lip and wait for him to tell you to either cut it out or to keep going.  He doesn’t even have to say it out loud if he doesn’t want to—he can just slide it under the impassable door still separating him from you, the door you’re eventually going to get him to unlock himself.

His back is to you, so you can only see a bit of his face from this angle, but you can hear him loud and clear when he opens his mouth and whispers to you, barely louder than a breath.  “Go higher.”

Adrenaline rockets through your veins and slowly, your fingers curl in thin air while your gentle energy wraps itself around his cock.

Both of Obi-Wan’s hands instantly fly up to his face and he releases a tight, longing whimper into his palms, and you feel almost as desperate as he sounds.  You can sense the ghost of his thickness in your hand, and the way he’s already throbbing for it is like pure spice to you.

You can’t stop your crossed legs from shuffling and rotating your body to face his hunched spine more directly, just taking a second and allowing him to adjust to the sensation of you just holding him between his legs like this.  Your fingers rest gently along his pulsing skin while he hides from you, and if only to get a little bit more of a reaction for your own sake, your thumb just barely angles to delicately brush up under his frenulum.  

Obi-Wan shudders and makes a choking noise behind his palms, and oh good Maker, you really want to see his face.  You know it’ll probably never happen unless you take your own initiative, but you also don’t want to overstep and snap him out of this blissful reverie.  Still, something compels you to be so gentle about it that he hopefully won’t even notice. 

You start to slowly work the length of him and squeeze his cock a bit more firmly, but a tendril of your energy slowly slithers upwards, so quiet and full of caution that it hardly even counts.  Very carefully, you start to flatten the lifeforce from your other palm over his stomach and trail it up, gradually urging him to stretch his slouched figure upright and then eventually start to tip backwards, never once letting your focus on his throbbing erection falter.

Your courageous efforts bestow prosperous rewards.  Obi-Wan’s hands drag down the length of his face and he makes it almost too easy to keep pressing him back—back back back until his muscles give up what little fight they were putting up against it and his shoulders are dropping down to the mattress, his head falling into your lap.

“There we go,” you whisper under your breath, just loud enough to softly encourage him if he’s listening but avoiding a break in his focus if he’s not.  “That’s not so bad.”

“It isn’t,” Obi-Wan gasps up at you, his eyes tightly closed but his jaw slack and his handsome features screwed up in rapture.  “Oh, no, it’s… it’s really… rea—good.”

You bite your lip and your cunt flexes hard between your legs without your permission, feeling so empty.  If you’re being honest, only touching him through the Force causes your hand to become increasingly bold, also feeling too empty.  Obi-Wan’s head rolls to the side and he pants hot air against the thin black fabric covering your thighs as you tighten your hold around him just slightly and start to move up and down his cock in earnest.

“Fuck,” he whispers, the dirty word and rasp in his voice contrasting brilliantly with the proper Coruscanti accent and the crisp enunciation behind it.  “Fuck, this feels so good, I—”

His fingers grab at the fur covering the mattress top and pull at it, his adam’s apple bobbing sharp along the arching column of his throat as he groans and twists his head around in your lap.  He confesses it like it’s so wrong, but it can’t be wrong when he fits so perfectly in your hand?  How can this be wrong when it’s the only pleasure you can possibly give him that’s anywhere near close enough to match the way you feel when he’s around?  Even then, it’s but a fraction.

Your gaze flickers briefly from his face to check your progress with his body, and—stars, there’s a startling wet spot staining the front of his pale trousers, his cock tenting up shameless and needy for you to ache and throb just as desperately for in return.  Fuck, he deserves this, he deserves more—

“I can—I can make it better—” you can’t help but gasp, your eyebrows slanting upwards with need.  “Oh fuck, I can make it so much better than this for you, Obi-Wan—”

“You…?”  He blinks his stormy eyes open and sounds like he’s about to explode.  “This can be—” he chokes out, “—better?”

You can’t stop yourself.  Your pussy is clamped up so tight between your legs and Maker, you want to reward him for being so good to you, give him true adoration instead of phantom touches.  You don’t think before you’re moving out from under him and slinking down onto the floor, slipping in between his spread thighs.  You use the Force with a bend of your finger to tug his pants down just enough, just enough to let the swollen tip of his cock peak through the waistband, and then your head is dropping into his lap as you let it slide into your hot mouth.

Obi-Wan lifts his head and snarls at you—and something across the room shatters as you widen your throat for him and slowly sink down his length, curling your finger to stretch his hemline further as you go.  His fingers aren’t gentle when they fist into your hair and neither is the way he immediately twists it sideways, feeling like he’s trying to pull you off and shove you down on him at the same time.

You’re stuck between going as slow as you physically can to drag this out and giving him the best oral you’ve ever given to make him dream about this for the rest of his life.  You want him to want this as badly as you have for so many years.  You want him to fall into this Darkness with you, to crave you and what you can give to him so much that he’ll never want to leave you again.

So you make it wet.  You make it soft and slow and wet, switching between sucking gently at the tip and swirling your tongue around it, and then inching his length down your throat and swallowing around the thick girth of it once you can’t fit anymore in your mouth.  Obi-Wan is just an absolute mess about it—he can’t sit still, he’s tugging uselessly on your hair, whimpering out his bliss into the quiet room while you close your eyes and ignore his squirming, just taking your sweet time enjoying him and the way he feels.

He tastes exquisite.  Maybe it’s just because all your broken, stupid brain can think right now is slightly varying forms of my Master’s cock is in my mouth and it’s fucking leaking while you slowly nurse from it with your tongue, but stars—he tastes exquisite.

He’s swollen.  Throbbing.  Aching for you.  Releasing precum from the tip like his body is producing way too much of it after decades of neglect and just needs to get it all out at once.  Shifting and writhing underneath you but managing to never move his hips or cock a single inch away from the soft attention you’re giving him.  You can feel his smooth skin pulse against your tongue as you continue your lazy pleasuring, finally giving him what you’ve both been denied for so long and steadily swallowing down the spoils of your endeavors.

“—Wait, wait, Maker—stop,” you faintly hear gasped from above you not long after you even begin, and it takes the sum of all your efforts to unlodge his throbbing cock from your throat and pull away from him.

“I’m sorry,” you exhale automatically, trying not to slur your words as a bit of drool slides down your chin.  “I’m s’sorry, Obi, I should’ve asked before I—”

“Something’s… n-not right,” Obi-Wan interrupts you and lifts himself up to his elbows, his abdominal muscles heaving and a wild, frenzied look in his startlingly bright eyes.  “My stomach was—I-I felt—”

Heat blooms through you along with a realization, and your eyelids begin to droop slightly at just how sexy it is—the fact that this man, this fully grown, red-blooded, warrior of a man is currently teetering on the precipice of his very first ever orgasm, and you’re the only one with the power to give it to him.

You shuffle backwards slightly, grabbing hold of his thighs and squeezing to get his attention.  “Hey.  It’s okay, relax.”

Obi-Wan nods his head vigorously down at you, the exact opposite of relaxed.

“Listen to me,” you urge quietly, trying to ignore the sight of his thick, swollen cock twitching restlessly against his abdomen, precum still steadily dribbling at the tip.  Is your mouth watering?  “This is it.  You’ll need to start projecting when you’re ready.  It’ll be tricky, but not impossible.  You’ll just have to imagine you’re inside me when it happens.”

Obi-Wan shakes his head vigorously from side to side, vehemently opposed.

“No, I don’t—” He croaks, “—I don’t know what it’s like, I won’t be able to—”

“Doesn’t my mouth feel similar at least?”  You ask, looking down at his cock once more.

“I-I—” Obi-Wan sputters, “I don’t know, young one—you tell me!”

Okay, well.  He… makes a valid point.

You settle back on your knees even further, gazing at your Master thoughtfully.  His chest continues to rise and fall with heavy breaths, a thin sheen of sweat coating his temples and a mild flush high in his cheeks, but his eyes have regained a bit of their focus.  “You can just try to imagine the, uh,” you try, your cunt nearly convulsing with burning need at the mere sight of him, “the same positioning and sensation from… earlier?”

“Alright, I can…”  Obi-Wan nods, though his hands are shaking.  “I’ll do the best I…”

You can’t help but lean forward to press a soft, encouraging kiss to his thigh, and he jerks under your touch.  You try it again, receiving the same result, and it makes you pause for just a minute longer.

“I’m nervous,” he blurts unceremoniously after a moment of stillness, as if you hadn’t noticed.  “Oh stars, I’m nervous, I—”

“Obi-Wan,” you let your voice lull, your hands squeezing gently around the bend of his knees once more.  “Calm down.  Clear your mind.”

He hiccups and you wait.  You wait with your mouth a few inches away from his cock, waiting for his breathing to slow and for him to follow your lead.

Can you hear me?  You murmur through the Force, and he quickly whimpers and nods.  Focus your thoughts.

You gently kiss at his tensing thighs once again, and he doesn’t flinch away from you this time.  His breathing slows into a calmer, steadier rhythm, letting you trail your lips gently along the curve of his leg.

Will you let me try something?  You ask after a moment, opening your mouth just the slightest bit to brush your tongue out and taste his skin.

“Y-Yes,” Obi-Wan says quietly, his breath stuttering through the word.

And—perhaps you shouldn’t have, but you give him something; a suggestion, more than anything else.  You give him a… visual.  A reference to guide his mind through the Force.

You, still in your black robe, slowly standing up from between his legs.  Widening your stance to straddle his lap, pull you robes up just enough, and then adjust your hips just slightly over the head of his cock.

Obi-Wan inhales sharply at the vision, his eyes clamping tightly shut against it in vain.  He can close his eyes, turn away, hide his face all he wants—he can’t escape the way your body looks as it slowly begins to sink down on his.

At the exact same time, you lower your mouth around his cock once more, and you try to make it as close to the sensation as possible.  You don’t even move your tongue, you simply lift your soft palate and close your lips around his girth, beginning to carefully bob up and down along his length in time to the image you’re conjuring of you riding him.

Only, you already feel his balls tightening up and his body starting to go rigid with tension once again, and you can sense him still wanting to resist his approaching orgasm.  It’s okay, Master, you encourage quietly through the vision, it’s okay, just let it come easy.

“I—I’m not—” he shakes his head back and forth against the bed frantically, his breathing getting shallower and almost immediately picking back up to where it was before you stopped.  “I d-don’t want—”

Stop fighting, you tell him, continuing to mimic the sensation of him thrusting into your aching, neglected cunt with slow and steady movements of your throat.  Don’t run from it, let it take you.

He grits your name tightly in response and subconsciously begins to rock his hips up to match your unhurried pace, his ragged breathing gasping out into the quiet room and gradually increasing in volume and desperation the longer he stubbornly tries to hold out against it.

You know not strong enough to use the Force to coax it out of him.  You can’t alter your technique and break the illusion, either.  So you have to resort to desperate measures.

There’s enough remaining wherewithal to your mind that prevents you from permanently damaging his clothing when you tear his robes open with the Force and allow the metaphysical image of yourself to rip them apart with your hands.  Obi-Wan gasps when both versions of you reach up his bare torso at the same time and dig your nails into his chest.

Master—you demand, taking his cock down your throat as far as you can go and then clawing hard down his stomach—cum.

And thank everything good and right in the universe that he remembers at the very last second to start projecting, because being this close to someone as strong in the Force as Obi-Wan when he finally succumbs to his first taste of the Dark Side is just a fucking atomic missile straight to your nervous system.

It’s all you can do to just remember to keep swallowing.

The projection he casts out through the shockwave is utterly flawless—brilliantly composed, looking and feeling so authentic and overwhelming even from this distance that there should be no issue at all convincing any s’Ziscari in the wide vicinity who are tuning in right now.

Except—then you hear it.  Through the roaring pleasure of his thoughts, a flicker of his subconscious he’s unable to mask through the mind blowing bliss.

Is she…? Maker above, she’s drinking it—

A ragged groan tears through the silence of the room, his cock pulsing spectacularly on your tongue.  He just keeps cumming, and cumming, and so you just have to keep swallowing, and swallowing.  You suppose you should’ve expected this from a fully grown man who lived a life of celibacy, but what would typically be a rather short moment with anyone else subsequently goes on long enough to where Obi-Wan is actually able to lazily raise his head up from the mattress and simply watch you continue to swallow his load, dazed and reverent in his stare, glassy blue eyes trained on the hypnotic movements your jaw and throat make around him.  The remaining traces of whatever visual he attempted to maintain immediately flicker out of existence, replaced instead by the sight of your mouth around his cock, diligently taking down each rope of cum he gives you.

When he finally stops throbbing, you reluctantly let his cock fall from your mouth and slowly stand up as the botched projection fizzles out completely.  His gaze eventually follows the movement like he’s on a five second delay.

“So, uh…”  Your voice is hoarse.  “We… need to have sex.”

“Alright,” he agrees dreamily, his eyes lazily dragging down your body.  “Alright, we can have… I… Wait, what?”

“You, uh.  I know it wasn’t intentional, but you might’ve, uh…”  You  shuffle awkwardly from side to side, wondering why you’ve chosen now of all moments to become shy with him.  You’re literally still savoring the taste of his release in your mouth.  “You might’ve accidentally projected a very specific thought towards the end there and let everyone know that we weren’t actually doing what we’re technically supposed to be doing.”

“What did… what did I think?”  The question would likely be nonsense in literally any other situation, but you understand.  And truthfully, for the life of you, you can’t find it within yourself to feel even a little bit mad about it, not when it means you can continue doing this together.  You can’t even conjure up a single shred of disappointment in his failure, it’d just be a lie.

“Doesn’t matter,” you assure him, your heart continuing to pound.  You know you should make your next move now while he’s still so loopy, the post-orgasm bliss causing his signature to vibrate with pulsing endorphins as he blinks up at you slowly from the bed.  “Though we won’t be able to do it for a little bit, just uh.  Just for general… anatomical reasons.  But that should’ve at least counted for… initiating the Ritual, so I don’t think we have to worry about time anymore.”

Obi-Wan just stares at you, his Force signature feeling more serene and spaced out than you’ve ever sensed before.  Oh Maker, how you wish you felt the same.  You swallow thickly, still tasting his hard orgasm on your tongue, and then try not to clamp your thighs together with how embarrassingly turned on you are.  Anyone with any experience whatsoever would know exactly what you’re going through with just a mere glance—you’re biting your lip with your entire body is subtly crumpled in towards your swollen, neglected pussy—and your Master has been watching you struggle through it this entire time.

“Are you alright?”  He asks dumbly, finally managing to at least push himself upright, still completely unaware or unconcerned at his softening cock on full display for you and your starving libido.  “You’re… shaking.”

“I—won’t die,” is the only serious assurance you can make to both him and yourself right now that’ll ease your suffering the smallest bit.  The last thing you want right now is to come on too strong and snap him back to his senses, bringing everything back to square one.  “Just, uh… r-really worked—worked up.  Trying to just.  C-Cool it?”

Your fingers flex at your sides because no matter what you try, you just can’t stop thinking about his.  They’re right there.  They’re so close, so strong and thick and—

“Aren’t you…”  He trails off, letting his head tilt and then drop to his shoulder with a combination of confusion and exhaustion.  “Aren’t you going to…?”

“To what?”  You prompt shortly, your hands suddenly clenching into fists to deal with another violent wave of arousal at how unbelievably drunk he still looks.  Maker, you did that.  That’s all you.

“s’Zerthia said all—” Obi-Wan murmurs, blinking long lashes lazily up at you, “—all Jedi must… participate.”

Fuck. Just hearing him provide you an excuse to give into the boiling arousal causes you to suddenly break out into a sweat.  You don’t know if he wants you to get yourself off or if he’s indirectly implying he wants to help, but you’re so far beyond desperate that you jump at the chance as soon as he so much as hints at the opportunity.

Very slowly, you move forward and lift one trembling knee to brace next to his thigh on the mattress, and then carefully swing your other leg over his lap, lowering yourself into a straddle in the same exact position he attempted to project earlier.  You’re so unbelievably cautious about his cock, making sure you don’t accidentally touch it and jolt him awake.  Instead of your newfound proximity scaring him away like you feared though, he stays so… docile.  Still so relaxed from his very first orgasm that he even rests his large palms over the thin fabric covering your thighs, letting the loose silk drape and fold over his hands as he drags them up and down.

His eyes follow your trembling fingers as you work at the knot tying the material around your body, your cunt throbbing between your legs at how he’s just… staring.  His eyelids are dipped slightly, breathing so calm and slouched under you, pliant and waiting.

The thin fabric slowly parts only enough to reveal the valley between your bare chest to him, and you watch his eyes fall down the thin strip of skin and catch on the dark line of your panties riding low on your hips.  Maker, you can’t help but remember his terror at even glimpsing the two acolytes taking off their robes earlier—the way his eyes bounced around and how his cheeks lost whatever color they had left to them as soon as he finally made himself look.  Now, though.  Now he can’t seem to drag his eyes away from the soft flesh of your tummy, the way your nipples are still covered by the thin fabric of your slightly parted robe but are impossible to miss while your breasts subtly move with your breathing.

You gently call one of his wrists to your hand with the Force and Obi-Wan is either mentally or physically too weak to resist your will.  He allows you to catch his hand and slowly lead it downwards with both of your smaller ones to the part of your body that’s longed for his attention for years, though now it’s absolutely weeping for it.

You don’t want to scare him.  You don’t want to scare him.  Oh Maker, you need him to be brave for you right now, or at least just continue to be stupefied.  You can work with stupefied, but you cannot work with panic, especially when you feel your own wanting to rise up the more you drag this out.

When the tips of his fingers brush against the waistband of your panties, Obi-Wan’s hand pushes under it without your guidance.

You’re throbbing.  It’s been years in the making.  Unable to stop the way your thighs contract and you lift your hips against his palm as it steadily curves down the slope of your soft curls, the sight of the finish line so within reach makes you reckless and too quick.  You can’t help it.  When he gets hesitant and eventually slows down to a halt right above your slit, you don’t even think before you’re suddenly giving his wrist an abrupt shove with the Force, pulling his hand down before he’s ready and forcing his middle finger deep through the soaking cleft of your pussy.

Your shameless moan of his name comes out sounding so grateful—you pour everything you have into it and sag into Obi-Wan’s chest at the feeling, but he startles and all but rips his hand out of your underwear before you can stop him.  He was a hair’s breadth from touching your clit and the denial of it—the sudden turnaround from your goal is just so massively overwhelming that tears suddenly spring to your eyes.

You can just barely make out the sight of him staring down at his trembling hand between the two of you, your slick shining wet and hot along the length of his finger. 

“Stars,” he rasps, blinking his wide, sapphire gaze up to yours—and then he quite suddenly looks alarmed.  “Did I—Did I hurt you?”  Obi-Wan gasps, his energy beginning to outright seize with distress while you blink rapidly and try not to crumble on his lap.

“No—I’m sorry, it’s just—I’m just… oh, fuck, I n-need it,” you stammer.  “Oh fuck, I need it Master, I’m so sorry—I’m trying to be calm but—”

“What is it, little dove?”  He urges, reaching his hand up to your face and flicking his eyes back and forth between yours, sounding almost as panicked as you do from your desperation.  “What do you need?”

“Oh stars, Obi-Wan, I need you to just—” You can’t fit anything into words, a tear finally making its way down your cheek when you clamp your eyes shut in frustration.  You just need him to understand, to give you what you’ve been craving for so long—but when you blink your eyes back open, his troubled expression has suddenly resolved itself.

Your Master’s hands immediately grab tight to your hips and twist you around, easily tossing you back up onto the mattress.  The jostle of bouncing back into the soft fur startles you, but not nearly as much as when he climbs over your body and braces an elbow next to your head, gently placing the tips of his fingers to your temple.

He pushes carefully but firmly against your natural mental barriers, flexing the energy shields inwards gently enough to not hurt you but with enough force to let you know he’s entirely capable of breaking through should you refuse to let him in.

So you do.  You let him in without a single thought, never mind a second one.  Obi-Wan gasps as your shields all but collapse for him that easily, and then he’s finally breaching the surface of your thoughts.

“Oh—Maker above, little one,” he grits almost immediately, his forehead dropping to your shoulder and his other hand wrapping tight around your arm as he struggles to acclimate to the blinding distress you’re experiencing.  “Collect—” he groans as your cunt clamps down at the rasp of his broken voice, “—collect yourself.  I can’t—can’t think—”

Oh, no, it’s too much.  It’s way too much, even just having him inside your head without being able to read him in return—it’s too much for you.  You start hyperventilating and instead of wanting him out, you just want to drown out the sensation of everything else.  The endlessly pulsing, aching throb between your legs that you’ve been dealing with for so long, the way you can feel his cock dragging against your tummy from this angle and how much you already want it in your mouth again, the way your nipples are so hard right now that even this soft fabric feels so rough and sharp against—

Your robe suddenly rips itself off your chest, and you whimper up at the ceiling as you dig your fingers into thick fur and writhe under him, almost completely naked and just desperate for him to do something, to at least just use his hands or his mouth to make you feel bet—

Obi-Wan’s head drops and his blazing mouth opens hot around your nipple, his tongue rolling soft and slick up under the hard bud.

You choke out the first part of his name and you barely even have a flicker of a thought—a brief flash of a rabid, baser desire you’re not even able to consciously recognize before you feel his jaw opening and his teeth closing gently around it, biting down just hard enough to make you spasm bright and urgent between your legs.  “Oh, fuck—”

As soon as you feel the pleasure and twisting ache spark deep in your core, Obi-Wan flutters his eyes shut and wedges his hand back into your panties, humming low in his throat when your legs jerk apart for him.

This time, your clit is the very first thing he touches.

He zeroes in on it.  The tip of his finger starts to rub it exactly how you’d do it to yourself, exactly the right angle and speed and pressure that your body suddenly feels massively overheated and dizzy from it.  It blindsides you.  It makes sense he’d be able to do this, after all, but for some reason, the whole thing just absolutely blindsides you.

“Maker,” you whimper at the ceiling, soft and pitched high in your throat, eyes rolling back when Obi-Wan gently bites down on your nipple again and continues to work to relieve you even as every muscle in your body feels like it’s tightening up.

“Stars—” he whispers when he pulls away, “This—this feels incredible, Padawan.”

You moan and roll your hips against his hand, on cloud nine at just how he’s slowly allowing himself to become filthier with you, to lower himself in all his righteous beliefs and descend into delicious sin with you, and—

—wait, did he just…?

Your cunt clamps down hard with realization as he continues massaging your clit better than you’ve ever even done it yourself.  Maker, it shouldn’t turn you on so much but it does, hearing that word in this context.  Padawan.  Padawan, holding her legs open while her Master explores her pussy.  Padawan, moaning desperately as her orgasm buzzes deep down inside with a rising, threatening resonance.  Padawan, Padawan, Padawan—

“Oh, you liked that,” Obi-Wan remarks tightly, taking a second to tug on your clit.  You nearly start to cry again, your insides pulling up and going rigid at the sensation.  “I heard it, little one.  You like it when I call you that?”

“Oh I like it when you do f-fucking anything,” you choke out helplessly, your words starting to slur together.  “Oh fuck, you’re so amazing, you’re so good at everything, you’re the best Jedi in the whole entire galaxy Master, you’re so much better th—”

“My, you’re agreeable like this, aren’t you?”  Obi-Wan grits, his touches growing stronger and quicker and rocketing you straight to the edge of madness.  “Shall I take that to heart, my darling little Padawan?  Or did you say such flattering things to the oth—”

“Wait!”  You suddenly exclaim, desperately trying to push his hands away.  “Oh, nonononono—wait, wait, wait, I—I-I’m about to cum—I need to—”

His hand yanks itself out of your underwear once more and you take giant, gasping breaths and try to compose yourself at least somewhat, but then your Master is quickly scrambling down your body and using the Force to rip your panties down your hips—

“Obi-Wan, wait—” you choke out, “that isn’t—you don’t… h-have to…”

He looks up at you, dark brows furrowed in confusion.

“I’ll be able to—y-you don’t—”  You have to take a few gasping breaths and remember how to speak Basic.  “I used my mouth on you before because I… I wanted to.  If—If you don’t want to do that, you don’t have to.  It’s not… oh fucking stars above, it’s not n-necessary.”

“Are you telling me this because you don’t want me to?”  He immediately asks, though you both already clearly know the answer to that considering how exposed your wild thoughts are to him right now.

“Ah, no I, uh… I just.”  You try to clear the thickness from your throat and you feel your body tremble while you focus as much effort as possible into trying to explain.  “I just want to be sure I’m not taking advantage of you, that’s all, I—I want you to know the truth about these things.  It’s not… necessary, b-but.”

“But.”  He repeats the word meaningfully as he glances back down at your weeping cunt, nodding slowly to himself.

And then your Master leans in, flutters his eyes shut, and slides his warm tongue deep into the seam of your pussy with absolutely no hesitation whatsoever.

“Obi—Wan—!?”  You gasp, somewhere between a squeak and a squeal, your entire upper body launching upwards around his head as your clit is immediately enveloped into a slick, dexterous furnace.

Hold still, you hear his voice warn through the Force, sounding so much closer than you’ve ever heard him before.  Whether that can be attributed to the fact that the command came directly from wherever he is inside your head or whether it’s simply because his tongue is now tracing gentle circles around your clit as you whimper pitifully into the quiet of the dimly lit room, you’re not sure.  All you know is that his mouth feels like velvet between your legs and his beard is scraping across your thighs and your fingers have buried themselves in his hair without your conscious permission.

Hold still, young one, he urges once more, but you just close your eyes and moan shamelessly at it this time, opening your legs wider for him.  His voice, it’s… it’s maddening like this, coming directly from your own thoughts.  Deep, precise, somehow sounding so true, so much clearer and full-bodied without your pesky ears in the way.  Your hips are subconsciously rolling slowly against the lower half of his face when Obi-Wan apparently decides he’s had enough.

An invisible energy wraps around each of your individual limbs and snaps them against the mattress without any warning.  You whimper high in your throat, arms and legs held so firmly against the bed with the Force that your internal struggles aren’t able to be translated outwardly; he doesn’t allow your body a single centimeter to move under him, no matter how hard you fight it.  Which means you have to lay there and just take the way Obi-Wan’s hot mouth continues to lick and kiss at your clit slowly, taking all the time in the universe to properly explore you between the legs he’s forced apart.

“Obi—” you croak breathlessly at the ceiling, feeling a familiar heat start to burn hot and tight through your core, “Obi, I—I have to p-project—before I—ah!—before you—before you ma-make me cu—ugh, f-fuck—I have t-to—”

Then project, he encourages simply, gently fluttering his tongue over your clit.  You gasp and he hums, murmuring through the Force once more to you.  We’re not hiding anymore.  They’ll all know I’m using my mouth on you like this.  It’s alright.  Let them know.

You realize you’re going to cum the second you hear your Master’s voice say the words using my mouth on you like this while he slowly sucks on your clit, and you barely have enough wherewithal to gulp in a giant breath and begin projecting your signature as far across the palace and surrounding city as physically possible before your body shatters hot into searing euphoria under him.

Obi-Wan groans deep in his throat and holds you perfectly still under him as you cum with a ragged, hoarse wail of his name, giant waves of white hot bliss beginning to radiate through the Force from you with spectacular power.  The contractions are so much more pronounced when it’s one of the only sets of muscles in your body he’s granted permission to move.  It’s like everything is concentrated and multiplied there because of it.  You can feel each individual spasm your floor muscles make as they convulse against his tongue, how each blazing shot of ecstasy that shatters through your body wrings more and more wetness from your cunt into your Master’s mouth.

Never.  Ever ever ever.  Has anyone done something so mind blowingly sexy to you.  Nobody.  Ever.  He’s a virgin, you frantically remember as Obi-Wan purrs softly into the folds of your pussy while it cums all over him.

Your thoughts, young one, you can just barely make out his voice remind you gently, just as gently as he sucks on your clit through the aftershocks, somehow sounding even more aroused than he did before.

After allowing your projection to flicker out of existence with a putter, you’re completely dazed.  Incapable of moving regardless of the way he keeps you pinned with the Force long after he pulls away, slowly moves back up your body and waits while you work to regain your bearings.  You don’t even want to open your eyes right now, knowing he’s looking down at your peaceful expression while you work to catch your breath.  You’re too stupid with pleasure you almost don’t even process the soft touch of something against your lips.

You’re lovely.

The thought is so quiet you don’t even recognize it isn’t your own.  Not until he keeps pressing his lips to yours so sweetly, not knowing to do anything else when your mind is too fractured with ecstasy to unconsciously act as his compass like before.  Everything is innocent and gentle and not reminiscent of the fact that the robes you’re both wearing are wide open and your mouths tasted of each other even before he kissed you.

Instead of melting into the soft touches, though, they just start to burn you alive, the thick fog of your orgasm clearing more and more with each gentle press of his lips and your need for him steadily growing.  He’s kissing you.  Master Kenobi is kissing you for a few precious, heart stopping seconds at a time before pulling away, pausing to look at your face each time to make sure your eyes are still closed, before leaning down and carefully pressing his lips to yours again.

The only part you can’t stand is that he won’t even let you move your jaw to kiss him back.

Kiss me, Obi-Wan, you urge desperately through the Force, not wanting to interrupt to speak.

“I am, little one,” he replies between kisses, and the sincerity in his tone tells you he’s not purposefully teasing you.  No, this is him kissing you, genuinely, the only way he knows how to.

Let me— you start to struggle in earnest against his hold on you, —please, let me—

The warm breath from his nose puffs softly against your cheek with a quiet little sound from far back in his throat, and then you suddenly gain the ability to move from the neck up.

You immediately part his lips with yours and Obi-Wan pulls back just the slightest bit in response, but your neck lifts up to compensate as you lick deep into his warm mouth.  He gasps at the foreign sensation and loses his concentration for a split second, enough for you to break free of it completely.  Your hands quickly fly up to cradle his face as soon as they can move and your fingers hook around the thick beard blanketing his sharp jawline, urging him back down into you.

Your legs come up to wrap around his lower back and he sags against your strong will with a needy groan, dropping down closer and obediently keeping his mouth open for you to taste.  As soon as he presses his body into yours, his cock strains and drags against your lower stomach, already throbbing hot and leaking precum along the soft hills of your skin.

Maker, you want it but somehow you… you don’t.  You just want to savor tonight as long as you physically can, keep holding him and kissing him like this for another few hours at least before you try to take his cock, but he’s unintentionally grinding it against you while his tongue shyly dances with yours, needy and already raring to go in his own timid way.

Do you want it, Master?  You finally murmur to him, running your fingers through his hair and gently biting his bottom lip, scooting your hips up to let him rub himself against something better than your tummy.  You feel… ready.

The only response you get from him is a shuddering, helpless moan into your mouth and you hold him tighter to you, grinding your still sensitive cunt up against his cock while he pulls hard at the soft fur next to your head.  Your feel your soaking pussy lips part around the solid curve of his length and gradually coat the underside of him in slick with every gentle circle and roll your hips make, and Obi-Wan finally pulls away from your mouth to drop his forehead to your neck.

“Yes, I—” he moans into you skin, “Oh stars, I want it.”

With a gentle wave of your hand, you use the Force to drop his hips down to the proper angle and tilt the head of his cock to line him up perfectly.

And now this is the part you don’t want to rush.  This is when you take Obi-Wan Kenobi’s virginity.  You’ll savor just being able to remember this for the rest of your fucking life.  You’ll see him in Council meetings years from now and be reminded that you’re the only person in the galaxy to know the thickness of him as he rests heavy up against your entrance, the way his voice presses deliciously tight in his throat as he gasps out into the quiet room.  You’re the only one who will know that sound, that sound is yours, that sound belongs to—

“Padawan,” he grits, hips stuttering into you while you wrap your arms around his shoulders, “your thoughts—”

You groan up at the ceiling and your pussy tightens at the reminder that he can still hear you, but your body is just too bold and desperate for it.  Your thoughts begin to flare bright, growing more possessive by the second, and you can’t even wait for him this time.  Every single muscle in Obi-Wan’s body goes rigid when you tighten your grip around him and roll your hips up into his cock, letting it break you open nice and slow.

It stretches you wide with a deliciously sharp fullness and pleasure rips through you as Obi-Wan instinctively tries to lift off you and away from it, but you’re clinging too tightly to him.  Your whole body hovers off the mattress to stay with him. 

“You said—” he gasps, “—it wouldn’t h-hurt—oh—”

“It doesn’t,” you groan, continuing to tighten your legs and hoist yourself up, lifting your hips to take his cock deeper inside you.  “Oh, Maker, it feels so fucking good, Obi—feel it—”

His elbows shake where they’re locked and braced against the mattress but he drops his head and holds strong like this while you work your muscles to take him as far as you can from this shameful angle.  Your body feels like it’s on fire while you desperately cling to him and the length of your robe brushes against the mattress while you just keep trying to get him deeper inside you—

Suddenly something grabs hard at your hips and tries shoves you downwards and off his cock, but you want it too badly.  You summon the hidden strength of your energy and then channel it into your legs where they’re hooked around the curve of his lower back.

Obi-Wan chokes at the unexpected resistance and his elbows buckle, dropping you both down to his forearms with a jolt, but you’re too busy mentally clashing with each other for it.  The result is… well, it’s maddening.

Every time your pussy is able to swallow him more than halfway, you pull back and let his energy shove you down his length—but then dig back in right before you drop completely and use the Force to bend your legs and fight the uphill battle to his cock once more.  Your Master gasps, beads of sweat gathering at his temples while you fight him with every ragged breath in your body to keep fucking him.

Except—he’s the fighter.  And you should’ve known.

You’re no match for the sudden blast of energy from him, easily hinging your legs apart from around his back and then ripping you down off his cock with a wet sound, bouncing back down into the mattress once more.

In order to stop the desperate tears of defeat from coming to your eyes, you immediately clamp them shut and twist your face away from Obi-Wan’s, but he makes a low growl and uses the same ferocious royal blue energy to keep your knees pinned open and wide against the bed. 

And then drops his hips and rocks back into you, giving you those last few precious inches of his thickness you weren’t able to get at before.  It hits sharp nirvana up inside you with his thighs pressed tight to your hips like this.  His name rips itself from your throat while Obi-Wan clenches his jaw and starts to lose himself in the pleasure, holding you down into the bed with the Force while he allows your desperation to guide him to the perfect angle and speed to sate you. 

He’s so gifted, so strong in the Force, he’s able to use your mind as his anchor and give you pleasure beyond anything you’ve ever experienced.  And in return, you want to do the same to him.  You want to read his thoughts, instantly be able to give him everything he never knew he needed—

“You do,” your Master chokes out, “darling, you already—”

Everything inside you surges up at the admission, aching that much harder to hear him, to hear everything the way he can hear you.  The tips of your fingers find his temple, slick with sweat, and you press just hard enough to tell him your intent.

“Let me in,” you whisper, wicked arousal swirling tight in your lower muscles as they start to bear down on his cock.

“I—I can’t—” Obi-Wan gasps breathlessly, “I can’t—”

“Open—open the door, Master,” you beg, “please, open th—”

“Fuck,” he cuts you off, his voice rising in pitch while his his hips snap just a little harder against yours and his rhythm falters, “—It’s too good, Padaw—I’m going t-to—stars, are you—are you r-ready?”

Some terrifying, swirling darkness manifests itself deep in your thoughts.  It rises up, part of the desperate, hidden subconscious that you’re typically capable of stifling.  No, it says, don’t let this be over.  Not yet.  You don’t want to go to sleep alone, wake up and remember you’ll never have this again.  You need there to be a next time, and a time after it.

You try your hardest to push the longing downwards when you recognize it, but your Master is too quick, too talented to deceive when he’s this close to you.  He easily plucks it from your mind and expands it, enlarges the chaotic string of thoughts until you feel them pulsing at the edges of your consciousness.

And then Obi-Wan sees it all, immediately playing out in your memories as you helplessly watch on.  Every desire you buried for him unearthed, every whimper you stifled with the back of your hand when you touched yourself at night and thought of him amplified.  The years of repression, the blind hope that simply ignoring it would make it go away.  How hard you worked to deaden the burst of affection that radiated through the Force when you finally saw him after two years apart.  The circumstances behind the night you lost your virginity—not a long time ago, as he suggested before, but only just last year.  So desperate in your loneliness and longing for his presence that you began routinely sneaking around and fucking other Knights—Guardians with blue sabers whose souls were just marginally close enough to Obi-Wan’s, and you thought of him the whole time.  Every time.

But, perhaps, worst of all.  The… fantasies.

He sees himself dropping to his knees and congratulating you for passing your trials by burying his tongue inside your warmth and telling you how proud of you he is.  He sees you opening his trousers and slowly licking his cock while he meditates, trying to get him to break his concentration.  He watches the two of you fucking in every conceivable position, how incredibly ready you always are to take him when he needs it.  Most importantly, he recognizes your inherent, blazing desire to drag this out as long as physically possible, to permanently brand every moment in your memory to get you through his impending absence.

And then… then Obi-Wan does something unexpected.  Something incredibly uncharacteristic.

You watch as he morphs the fantasies right before your eyes.  He's still on his knees with his head between your legs, but now he’s telling you how proud he is of you for negotiating the mysterious, confidential deal that ended the Clone Wars.  You’re licking his cock as the ship autopilots itself through the week-long journey back to Coruscant from s’Ziscari, letting him slowly cum in your mouth as he sprawls lazily in the captain’s chair.  He’s taking you against the wall of your quarters after a mindless and dull Council meeting; you’re riding him quietly in his bed after lights-out at the temple; he’s rubbing your clit while he sits behind you and advises you on matters concerning your own Padawan you’ll be choosing sometime soon, two fingers deep and squeezing a bared nipple when he whispers in your ear how much he absolutely adores you.

Thoughts that aren’t your own begin to fill the empty spaces of your mind, a lovely pale blue tenor to harmonize gorgeously with the soft green alto of your own consciousness.  The resulting color of your combined energies fills your soul with Light, a stunning turquoise of a color you’ve never loved more, one you wish you could live in for the rest of your life.

For every debased thought of yours he sees, he shows you one even more revealing.  The way he used to dream of you at night, especially after a close battle where many Jedi and Clones fell, and then he’d wake up in a cold sweat with an erection pulsing feverish and so terribly shameful between his legs.  How he tried to shove a pillow down there once to somehow relieve himself of the aching hardness, and then had to rip it away and launch it across the room with the Force when he realized he’d been dragging himself against it and thinking of you.

“I’m gonna—cum—” your voice scrapes across your throat, and you can already sense him throwing his beautiful consciousness out like a net.  You match him with what little mental strength you have remaining, wrapping your arms around his shoulders and your ankles around his lower back and pulling him down into you.

Obi-Wan’s energy keeps swirling a brilliant aquamarine with yours, presenting his every subconscious thought to you, one right after another, so quick you can barely keep up.  How he’ll always be with you, no matter what.  How the Maker himself won’t be able to drag him away from you now.  How quiet jealousy still tugs at his heart just thinking about the fact that you broke your oath—before you both could do it together.

Everything swells up inside you and you scream when it finally crashes over, your blended signatures sealing themselves together permanently and then detonating in a debilitating shockwave that ripples the air around you.  You’re blinded and deafened by its vivid energy, powerful and dazzling every shade between blue and green and Light and Dark, all balanced perfectly together.

You lay there in the gentle afterglow afterwards and feel your pussy still clamping tight to him, pulsing in random intervals while Obi-Wan slouches into you and every muscle in his body trembles with the comedown.  Everything is right.  Everything in you sparkles.

“Stars, Obi,” you start chuckling up at the ceiling, the sheer joy overwhelming you and bringing tears to your eyes.  “Stars, did we just—”

“We just won the Clone Wars, my dear,” he slurs into the crook of your neck while his cock still throbs inside you, and you can feel the exhaustion creeping up his spine, every single thought in his mind completely dead at the moment.

“How long do you… do you think it’ll take before it’s over?”  You ask quietly, brushing your fingers through his hair.  Obi-Wan groans and buries his face deeper into your neck.

“Few months, maybe.  Time for s’Ziscari…”

He stays like that for just a second, and you press your nose to him and breathe him in, marveling at how utterly gorgeous his signature is right now.  Clear blue with the lightest touch of teal, rippling like quiet water in a crystal calm riverbed.

Lovely.

You keep softly playing with the hair at his nape, and then quickly wrap your arms around him when he goes to try to brace his forearms next to your shoulders and lift up just the slightest bit.

“Wait, don’t—it’s—”  You bite your lip and feel him sink back down into your body without another word, clearly having only attempted it for appearances.  “This is good, let’s just… stay for a second.” 

He doesn’t respond, he doesn’t even move, and—a few months, you think.  A few months of his absence, of wondering where he is but never being able to ask.  It burdens your heart, but you understand it’s necessary.

The Council may… grant me a position with a more permanent location after this mission, he responds quietly to your dip in the Force after a moment, too tired to even talk anymore and exhaustion weaving his every thought.  On Coruscant.

Your heart pangs with sudden hope, and you know he can feel it.  “They would do that?”

I could ask to oversee the s’Ziscari’s assimilation into our ranks, he offers alongside a stifled yawn into your collarbone.

He’d… request that?  To be closer to you?  But why?

He doesn’t hesitate before offering the words to you simply, not even considering them before they’re the only thought in his mind.  Because I care for you more than there are stars in the sky.  I always have.

Lovely.

No, no, not even, that’s just.  Love.  By itself.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan murmurs softly into your neck, and your soul feels like it grows wings.

You both lay there in silence for a long time after that, and it takes you even longer to realize he hasn’t succumbed to sleep yet, even as the aching fatigue weighs heavy on his back.  He’s resisting it, keeping his eyes purposefully open against your neck while yours are blissfully shut.

“Master,” you eventually whisper up at the ceiling, and his cock twitches inside you.  Oh stars, you’ll have to remember that.  “Go to sleep.”

I have one more confession.  The thoughts are slurred and distorted, barely conscious as he desperately tries to outlast the sleep trying to pull him under.  I didn’t even want to mention it before because I didn’t know how this was all going to go, but…  He blinks slowly against your neck even as his eyes droop, only just a few seconds from passing out with exertion.  The Sh’inzith lasts six days, dove.

Your eyes pop open in shock just as his finally fall shut, and Obi-Wan stops fighting.

[himeryuukinka]

[ LFRP ] Ane - ( Balmung, Crystal DC )

❝ there is a muchness about you. I wonder... what I must do to have such muchness in myself..? ❞

🔓-- A lock icon denotes the presence of an additional something significant to be discovered only via roleplay. The more locks there are, the harder it will be to learn! Build a relationship with her to discover these secrets she keeps to herself. 

This LFRP post is specifically for her geomancer verse. Check over here for access to the LFRP post for her canon verse. I can play both/either on Balmung/Crystal as necessary!

❀ General Information ––– -

Name: “Ane.” 🔓 🔓 🔓 Epithet: Of the Weeping Waters. Gender: Cisgender female. Age: 28. Race: Au Ra (Raen.) Birthplace: Yama, Othard. 🔓 Current Residence: The Itomori Shrine, Doma. Relationship Status: Single. Sexual Orientation: Demisexual. Occupation: Yaman geomancer.

❀ Physical Appearance ––– -

Hair: Incredibly long. Straightened with a hot metal comb. Typically worn loose with some hair elegantly looped and bound just above her shoulders, framing her face. Seldom changes style. Looks to be all warm black. 🔓🔓 Eyes: Warm grey. Clouded by cataracts. Somber. Height: 4 fm 8 im. Distinguishing Marks: Rounded, soft scales reminiscent of a koi’s. Geomantic circles tattoo’d on her palms, the bottoms of her feet, and upper back. 🔓 🔓 🔓 Common Accessories: Ornately patterned silver bands in the front two strands of her hair. Brass bangles around her wrists and ankles decorated with suzu bells that remain curiously silent even when shaken. 🔓 

❀ Personality & Tidbits ––– -

A solemn young geomancer hailing from the seaside village of Yama. Her sad and serious air lend her presence a degree of mystery, and her lifelong practice of tempering her emotions makes it harder still to know how she actually feels. Having dedicated all her years to her people’s form of geomancy, Ane thinks herself ill-suited for anything else, and so her entire sense of identity has become tangled up in the magicks that she wields. She believes that she exists for the sole purpose of using geomancy to help the people around her, leading the young woman to quickly throw herself headlong into danger without a moment’s hesitation so long as it is for the sake of someone else. 

Talents: Yaman geomancy. Weaknesses: Physical/close quarters combat. Unable to use offensive magicks entirely. Kindness directed at her. Virtues: Dutiful. Genuine. Tender-hearted. Gentle. Curious. Thoughtful. Meticulous. Flaws: Naive. Perfectionist. Reckless. Overextending. Emotionally clumsy. Silently self-destructive. Has difficulty detecting sarcasm and understanding certain idioms and forms of humor. Spiritual Views: Reverence for the Dawn Father. Respect and recognition for the kami. Hobbies: Cooking, though really only skilled in Far Eastern cuisines. Ikebana. Tending to the shrine’s grounds. Fears: Isolation. Being forgotten. Dying before she can train new geomancers. Temperament: Melancholic. Alignment: Neutral Good.

❀ Yaman Geomancy ––– - 🔓/🔓🔓

I thought this topic could use its own brief section as her clan’s form of geomancy is not the same as the geomancy seen widespread in the Far East, as well as having some very specific elements tailored to her personal use of it. Those characters who are well-learned geomancers have the potential to recognize her as specifically from Yama so long as we discuss it ahead of time, and those who are familiar with geomancy or nature-based magicks may be able to reason out what she uses but not where she is from -- or why her geomancy differs from the more common forms. As with everything, I am happy and willing to discuss IC arcane knowledge, but do please run it by me ahead of time. Her clan was very secretive concerning its branch of geomancy, and while not at all closed to visits from the outside world, this art is absolutely not common knowledge! Please take this information as OOC reference for how this magic works rather than IC knowledge! Thank you!

Magic Family: Geomancy. Tools: Sacred paper talismans. Arcane ink carried in blessed brass pots. Brushes. A single heavy, enchanted bell inspired by bianzhong. Rounded stones of various sizes and weights. Strengths: Magic cancelling through elemental balancing. Barriers. Weaknesses: No way to counter physical weapons or unarmed physical strikes. Lengthy barrier preparation. Entirely a supportive and defensive art. General Overview: An ancient branch of geomancy thought dead by many. Rather than drawing only from the elements of wind, water, and earth, Yaman geomancy draws also from fire. It has never been intended as an offensive art and cannot be conjured as a weapon in battle. Instead, it revolves entirely around elemental balancing -- aether of one element is met with an equal force and amount of its opposing element, effectively cancelling out harmful magicks entirely. A delicate art with a lot of room for error, it requires years upon years of practice to master as it requires a great deal of concentration; those sensitive to aether may display a natural gift for it, as they can more easily sense how much oomph to give a particular counterspell. Failing to meet an elemental force with a sufficient counterforce can result in the spell connecting without real issue (too little) or wounding the geomancer in the process with an unstable aetheric burst (too much.) Though, like its Doman and Hingan counterparts, Yaman geomancy still relies heavily on comparable channeling methods -- that is, the combined use of an enchanted bell and glyphs to summon a specific element or combination of elements. It is more reliant on physical totems, though, and so Yaman geomancers would carry paper talismans upon which to write what they required in combat. Ane’s Geomancy: Where hers differs is how she channels it, but I prefer to keep the specific details for roleplay discovery! 🔓🔓

❀ Traits ––– -

Extroverted / In Between / Introverted

Disorganized / In Between / Organized

Close Minded / In Between / Open Minded

Calm / In Between / Anxious / Spirited

Disagreeable / In Between / Agreeable

Cautious / In Between / Reckless

Patient / In Between / Impatient

Outspoken / In Between / Reserved

Leader / In Between / Follower

Empathetic / In Between / Apathetic

Optimistic / In Between / Pessimistic

Traditional / In Between / Modern

Hard-working / In Between / Lazy

Cultured / In Between / Uncultured

Loyal / In Between / Disloyal

Faithful / In Between / Unfaithful

❀ Additional information ––– –

Smoking Habit: Never. Drugs: No. Alcohol: Very rarely. Surprisingly good at holding her liquor.

❀ Hooks ––– -

Region-specific connections. Asterisks (*) for options open only through discussion with me beforehand.

❀ The Village of Yama* - The once-proud seat to an ancient form of geomancy now all but lost to the world in the wake of its destruction at the hands of the Empire. Villagers who Ane may have known prior to the deaths of most everyone on the Shore of the Blue Lily are a welcome connection. There is potential for other survivors apart from Ane and the small group of children she managed to save, though know that all other geomancers perished in the attack, whether by their own lack of experience or their remaining behind to cover the retreat of those who tried to escape, and so any Yaman geomancer characters would be strictly past connections only. 🔓 ❀ Doma, a Wartorn Nation - Doma is the nation that most often saw secret services rendered by Yama’s geomancers, and Ane continues to honor that as the village’s sole arcane successor. She spent much of her formative years traveling the length and breadth of Yanxia to better understand its people and their plight with the Empire, and so there is plenty of opportunity for Doman characters to either recognize her personally (had they met while they were both younger) or to have a suspicion about her duty as a geomancer. Doman characters have lots of avenues open to them, considering she has lived among them since the ruination of Yama!  ❀ The Island Nation of Hingashi - Similar to Doma, Ane sometimes travels to Kugane when necessary. While not a place she frequents, the potential is there -- but do not be surprised if she initially regards Hingan geomancers with distance and dislike. She does not take kindly to charlatans using her beloved art to take advantage of the desperate, and there’s no shortage of such people in the port city to fuel her suspicions.

General roleplay connections. Asterisks (*) for options open only through discussion with me beforehand.

❀ A Hidden World of Geomancy* - Other geomancers, particularly those native to the continent of Othard, would likely have intimate knowledge of Yama and its people, and Ane would be more likely to trust them implicitly with certain facts than with those outside this arcane circle. I like to think of geomancy as having something like a support and information network unique to its practitioners; geomancer connections have the potential to know things about Ane that others would not! 🔓 ❀ Those looking for stationary arcane wards. - Not too unlike the magicks employed by the scholars of Nym, Yaman geomancy involves the enchantment and careful placement of keystones around a structure or area to shield it from attack or approach. If your character is in need of long-term wards for their home or business, Ane will oblige. ❀ Those seeking someone to accompany them with mobile wards. - Far trickier and taxing to employ than stationary wards but certainly not impossible. Ane wishes to help as many people as possible, and so if you’ve a character looking for some extra protection on an adventure or dangerous foray into the unknown, she’s not one to turn down a request for aid. ❀ Those in need of elemental protection. - Perhaps Ane’s greatest skill. She’s more than willing to help keep people safe by way of her clan’s geomancy; those venturing forth into an intensely aspected dungeon or region could certainly benefit from her magicks! ❀ Generally, those looking to fight for those too weak or beaten down to fight for themselves. - Often branded as a goody-goody by her guardian, Ane is quick to help those in need -- and often without a thought for the effect it could have on her. She will mesh easily with characters of similar values and morality and struggle with those who do not. But that being said... ❀ Enemies and rivals who might challenge her beliefs or give her trouble are absolutely welcome. - Conflict has excellent potential to build characterization, and I am all about that! So if you play a more evil or chaotic-aligned character, please don’t be be afraid to come push her buttons. ❀ And of course, friendships. - I’m always down for great platonic relationships, especially those that grow into familial affection. ❀ Thought of something not listed here? - Drop me a line so we can talk about it! While typically centered in the Far East, I already know of ways and reasons she would be in Eorzea -- so if your character does not frequent any of the places she spends most of her time, we can easily fix that!

❀ OOC Information ––– -

Genres: I am not particularly genre picky; I gravitate most towards those scenarios that may result in interesting, long-term character development -- and hopefully for both/all parties! I am a sucker for angst with purpose, though I do also love fluff and slice of life scenarios. So long as the scene doesn’t run out of steam or feel strained/stressed, I am a happy bean. Playstyle: I am... not very skilled when it comes to in-game roleplay. I prefer to connect one on one or in very small groups (no more than five people) so I can put my all into making certain my replies are timely, tidy, and... well, good. I prefer to write on something like tumblr or Discord, but I can do my best to make in-game work! Length: I’m someone who leans most towards a paragraph at the absolute minimum, but I can produce pages if we’re roleplaying on tumblr or Discord. Server: Balmung for roleplay/visiting with in-game friends, though my PvE main is over on Ultros. Both characters are available under the name Ane Borel. Timezone: CST. Availability: In-game: most of the time, so long as you give me a ping and ask if I can hop on! Discord: Much of the same! Please do be aware, though, that this is subject to change as I’m interviewing for some jobs and my schedule won’t be so free in the future. I’ll update this post when necessary. Contact Information: Obviously you can contact me here! This is a sideblog to my main over at @sunlitpeony, where you can also message me, and then I can give my Discord out upon request/interest.

{ banner art by: the-xaotician }

[earthlyem]

i just recently finished up my freshman year of college at art school and so now seems like as good a time as any to talk about my experience and feelings about it and maybe lend a hand of advice if you are going into college this year, especially at an art school. because i feel like there is so much important stuff to cover im going to break into up into different parts of the process starting with…

moving

moving out was a big deal for me. growing up i never had a huge urge to move far away from home, i loved where i grew up and i loved the people…but  every college that ever peaked my interest was out of state. and as early as i could process the idea of a further education i would spit out colleges i’d hope to attend every night at the dinner table. and while a young child rambling about dreams of studying in paris to be a fashion designer while eating dinosaur shaped nuggets is easy for a parent to laugh at and then file into the back of their mind, a junior in high school taking college classes for drawing and animation talking about wanting to go to an art school is a little less easy to brush off. so after getting lots love and support from my family, friends, and teachers, and the financial aid of scholarships, I ended up deciding to attend an art school several states away to study visual effects and stop motion animation.

sooner than i could have ever anticipated the time came to move out. i loved this place, it shaped everything that i was, but after some unfortunate events throughout my high school experience i began to associate my beloved home with guilt and sadness. at this point, i was incredibly thankful i had chosen to move far away. with no one from my high school attending, and it being a good 15 hour drive away from my hometown, it felt like the perfect time to start over. be someone new, someone i always strived to be. the problem with that is we can’t run from our past. something i learned all to quickly at my new school. the physical move was easy, i flew down with a couple of suitcases and purchased all my dorm and school supplies the day before I moved in, which while rather stressful, ended up working out. i went in blind, so i was terrified of meeting my roommates. i would be living with three random girls, and with us all being here to pursue careers in art, i couldn’t help but be intimidated. im sure everyone who has, or will attend an art school feels the pressure. we’re used to being of the best, if not the best in our respective fields throughout our whole lives. and piling in a ton of talented people, where now you’re unsure of where you fall is petrifying. but alas there is really no need to fear. art school is about work ethic, not talent. Its about creativity and willingness to be free, experiment, express, the performance aspect is whats taught to you. if you love what you do, your professors will be able to channel that energy and turn your art into something polished and professional. seriously, i’ve seen people come from shaky sketch outlines, to fully rendered detailed pieces over the course of the year with the right ambition. but non the less i was still scared. in hindsight i had no reason to fear, my roommate was an absolute angel and really helped me through the turbulence of my first quarter, and made the craziness of roommate drama tolerable.

the first few weeks i had expected to be this big social clusterfuck and as a social person I was really excited to meet new people. unfortunately the reality was being holdup in the dorm, seeing others hanging out with people they met over the internet, and feeling entirely alone. i felt like there were very defined cliques established in the first week and i didn’t make the cut for any of them. packs of friends, all easy to see as they were almost perfectly divided by aesthetics, would go eat at the cafe together, smoke outside the dorms, go to parties, skateboard around the buildings, go to the parks and beaches….suddenly i didn’t think the social label assigned to me in high school seemed to fit so well. thats the scariest part of moving away, you are stripped of everything you once were to anyone but yourself. all the ways you were defined by the people you grew up with are gone in the eyes of every new person you meet. its intimidating, but it can be the most beautiful thing if you let it be..this is when it really hit me that when moving anywhere, even if its with a few people you do know, you’re given this huge slate to lay down exactly who you want to be, change the way the world sees you… but thats a big task…a lot bigger than i thought. and its hard, its hard to be this great big wonderful  person you feel like you are in your head when you don’t accept and embrace what brought you to that point. that guilt and anger and sadness and embarrassment was burned into me. i didn’t get to just throw it out the airplane window on my way down. it took me nearly the entire first quarter to sort through those memories, those events that ate away at me and altered my path of existence. because its not that the people i went to school with weren’t accepting people, many of us felt out of place at sometime in our life, and with that comes an deep empathy and care for others. i felt like i just couldn’t seem to put myself out there enough, or cross paths with the right people. it was towards the end that i looked up and saw the world i was building around me without even noticing. i had two wonderful roommates who listened to me and danced with me and ate with me and went to class with me, who held me up through all of it. I had amazing neighbors…just seriously the coolest people in the world. They helped me understand so much about myself and always had their door open so I didn’t have to feel alone. no one was isolating me but myself. and those cliques i mentioned, were just people, people like me who felt alone and scared, or were facing their own problems with moving and by labeling them i put up a wall, and excuse not to talk to certain people because i was insecure that i wouldn’t be artsy enough, or nerdy enough, or edgy enough… and i know that sounds cringy but i know so many people who felt exactly the same. with creative minds, comes creative ways of self expression and i guess the take away im trying to get at is that people are so much more than the aesthetic they have or the way they present on their instagram, something I think all of get lost in sometimes. my point is, moving is going to be scary for most, and even if you think you’re this huge mess that’s wearing all their feelings about the process on your sleeve… i bet no one even notices, because they are so far in their own heads feeling the exact same way. take a step back, say hi to the group of kids kicking around a soccer ball outside your building, or ask the people you sit next to in studio to grab lunch at the cafeteria, it seems scary because it looks like they already have groups and their all set they don’t need another, or your afraid it will be awkward… and well it will be. but life goes on, and a couple hard awkward minutes is worth not isolating yourself, or beating yourself up in your head for not being cool enough to fit in somewhere. you aren’t giving so many wonderful people enough credit when your write them off as though they won’t give you the time of day and it took a lot of learning and practice for me to understand that. you can hear advice, and agree with it, and even tell yourself you’ll implement it… but until you make your own mistakes and have your own trails with life advice doesn’t make as much sense, but heck idk maybe it can help.. i know i needed to hear this.  

so attached are some pictures of my dorm room and some stuff from my first quarter :) relax, don’t fear your move, or do either way it’ll end up just fine, and if its not fine, you’ll find the strength to move on from it    

[saints-row-2]

film watch day 31: Every Halloween Film

happy Halloween today i watched every Halloween film currently available to me. i couldnt get to rewatch Halloween 2018 but i already wrote about it a couple of weeks back so feel free to revisit that post. anyway, i watched ten Halloween movies today. It took around 17 hours. i started at 11:15am and im writing this now at 6 am.

so lets get to the post. for the most part i went in chronological order, except i chose to start with Rob Zombie’s remakes because i knew if i didnt id be finishing the day by watching them at the break of dawn and the idea of doing that was so fucking putrid to me that i decided to get them out of the way first.

Halloween (2007)

i hate this fucking movie. i mentioned in an ask the other day but im happy to repeat here, i dont hate the idea of expanding on Michael’s backstory. like the fact is we largely know his backstory, the issue is how this film chose to portray it. the original Halloween is frightening because its based around the idea that the seemingly safe, quiet suburbs are not as safe as they seem; you can be on a street youve known your entire life, only a few metres from your own home, and still at risk. the whole idea of showing Michael as a murderer when he was six is to tell us that anyone could be a threat, that our conventions that all killers are a particular kind of person is false.

Halloween 2007 says fuck that, we know what serial killers are, and theyre those poor kids who come from shitty neighbourhoods and have abusive parents and mothers who are sex workers. everything that Halloween brings to the table is fucking tedious, played out, and massively uninspired. it wants to bring us the truth about why Michael is like he is, but Rob Zombie’s only understanding of serial killers is in the cliche and exploitative. he has nothing honest about human nature to show us, only the exact same stories that have been fed to us by crime and horror movies past.

this film is incredibly loud and in fucking constant motion. even on steady shots of still scenes the camera constantly shakes, and in every other scene its always whirling around from tracking shot to panning over the scene to just idly zooming in and out of nothing. Zombie’s favourite shot is to have something large and out of focus in the foreground -- like some plants -- and to shoot the characters standing about six feet away muttering to themselves. every single fucking shot in this movie lingers too long, every scene drags a little longer than it needs to. this film moves with the pace that i would describe as “family guy gag”.

and this film is so loud. people are always talking or screaming, largely about nothing important or interesting. theres always music, but it never particularly adds anything; for reasons i fail to fucking understand the entirety of the original theme plays over mostly uninteresting tracking shots of a minor character walking around yelling filler lines about nothing.

the writing is horseshit. everyone in this film is vile, no one talks or behaves like real human beings. almost every exchange in this movie is the characters saying the exact same thing back and forth inanely, frequently punctuated by screaming FUCK as loudly as possible and talking about sex in a way that 40 year old men really really wished teenage girls talk about sex. Halloween (2007) is thoughtlessly gross and mean and nasty, disconnected from any kind of human sensitivity and empathy. it wants to be complicated and to be deep but its crushingly simplistic and stupid. the only thing that redeems it is that its not Halloween II (2009). speaking of which...

Halloween II (2009)

jesus christ this movie is so fucking boring. Halloween II is two hours long but feels like its about twenty hours long. i felt like i was watching this film for twenty days and twenty nights. i was trapped in an eternal purgatory with this movie.

i really cant fucking emphasise how boring this film is. endless scene after scene of nothing of consequence happening, uninteresting death scenes that add nothing, and Michael wandering around doing jack shit. Halloween II fucking made Michael Myers boring, and im saying this as someone who (as i repeat once every 8 seconds) has a tattoo of him. this film couldnt hold MY interest in two of my favourite characters of all time.

the big fun new addition from the first movie is the presence of Michael and Laurie’s mother as a kind of weird goth ghost guiding Michael to kill. i dont know why Michael had to be Jason Voorhees and be a mommy’s boy all of a sudden, but this addition brings absolutely nothing of interest to the film or to his character. its meant to be symbolic of fucking... something im sure, but it feels meaningless. somehow Michael and Laurie are both able to see and interact with this ghost and the ghost has an agenda to do... something? it feels about as intelligent and coherent as the bullshit cult of thorne shit from 6, but a lot less fun. at some point Michael Myers apparently has mind control powers?

not to repeat myself a hundred fucking times but this film is insanely unpleasant to watch. every scene someone is screaming, generally wailing “fuck you bitch” at anyone in their vicinity. this is two hours of people howling swear words at each other and not infrequently making rape jokes. Rob Zombie loves rape jokes! almost as much as he loves putting sexual assault in his movies over and over again for no reason.

there is nothing to enjoy in this film. theres nothing to gain. there is too much slow-mo and far too many strobe lights and absolutely nothing of any intelligence or grace. Halloween II is a thirteen year old boy in a korn T-shirt calling his mom a bitch while he draws zombies on  the back of his homework, which he will get an F for because the only thing he wrote was “reading is for faggots”.

Halloween (1978)

what the fuck can i say. this is one of the greatest horror movies ever made, if not the greatest. its one of my favourite movies. its forty years old and still just as chilling and frightening as it ever was. it has some shot composition and cinematography thats up with the best ive ever seen, all while being shot on a budget of $300,000. it does more with less than just about any film, launched the slasher genre, shot Jamie Lee Curtis to stardom and created a pop culture icon that stayed strong for decades. its a masterclass in tension and suspense, a lean-cut perfectly paced film with heaps of atmosphere and character.

i love this film with a frantic passion that makes me unable to talk about it in a particularly helpful way. i cant “review” Halloween. I love this film beyond reason and sense and you either get it or you dont.

Halloween II (1981)

Halloween II is largely one of the less remembered entries in the franchise; its a decent enough movie, neither matching up to the highs of the original or the lows of the later films. its a pretty enjoyable little film, created under the logic of ‘well the first one did well, lets do the same thing again’. Carpenter wrote the script but didn’t direct, and while the film has a solid story, the directing lacks his signature flair. its hard to pinpoint, because the film is generally fairly well-shot, but lacks a kind of eye for shot composition that Carpenter made look easy, doesnt have as much patience for suspense.

on its own merits, theres still some great shots and great scenes in the movie. and a lot of really cool kills; II got a lot more creative with what Michael was capable of, and i think the boiling water drowning kill is rightfully pretty infamous.

this was the last Halloween movie Carpenter wrote, and it was the film where the idea of Laurie and Michael being siblings was introduced. and believe me ill defend this fucking decision to the grave. adding the human connection between Michael and Laurie gives a whole other layer to their relationship thats so fascinating to me, and i love that other films try to expand on the themes of family. in general, deciding that this film would continue to focus on Laurie and not do what later slashers did with bouncing around between different casts was a great fucking move, ironically for a franchise that was intended to be an anthology.

quietly exploring the aftermath of the first film was a good idea for a follow-up, and i especially really enjoy Loomis’ role in this movie, and his discussion about who Myers is. the biggest disappointment for me personally is that Laurie lacks a lot of presence in this film. Curtis is great, as always, but the movie dawdles on some side characters who are too disconnected from her to get a sense of what shes going through.

all that being said, Halloween II is decent. the ending is really great, with some really powerful shots. Michael bleeding from the eyes of his mask after Laurie shoots him is one of the best fucking images in horror and him swinging blindly as Laurie and Loomis slowly orchestrate his death is a fucking amazing scene. i have an immense fondness for this movie, with all its flaws. it brings a lot of really cool concepts to the table, and i think it deserves some appreciation.

heres a question tho; where the fuck were Laurie’s parents. theres a suggestion theyre missing, but theres no explanation why and we never hear from them. did michael kill them too? hello? mr and mrs strode? your daughter just fucking killed a guy and all her friends are dead. where the fuck are you.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Halloween III is infamous as being the Halloween movie that isn’t about Michael Myers at all. when it first released it was wildly unpopular and remained so for quite a while, but has had a surge in popularity over the last few years. i think just about every horror critic i know now considers Halloween III one of the best in the franchise. and to be fair to it, its a great little movie. not a slasher at all but rather a conspiracy thriller, Halloween III is all about the mystery of what the Silver Shamrock mask-making company are really up to, and why people are disappearing. its a weird and creative little movie, with some really fucking great practical effects that turn it from just being a thriller to being an all-out horror film. it has a few too many ineffective jumpscares and some of the plot twists are kind of disappointing and feel a little too much like the easy option -- and then others are so wildly bizarre no one would see them coming because theyre fucking completely out there. but i kind of love that sort of nonsense in a horror movie. like lets just have a fucking good time in here for once in our fucking lives.

Halloween III is not a perfect or even a really great movie, but yknow, fuck it. the idea that only perfect films are worth watching is dumb. i appreciate the weird shit this film tried and i think it deserves a lot more respect than what it got; if it had been released under another title it probably would have gone down as a classic instead of being derided for years, you ask me.

now things start going rapidly downhill

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

Halloween 4 is when Jamie is introduced as the new final girl; Laurie’s seven year old daughter, after Laurie herself died off-screen in a fucking car crash. the decision to kill off Laurie came from Jamie Lee Curtis decided not to return to the character and instead of recasting her, they went with just having her… die. off-screen. in the franchise where the previous two movies were about her triumph and determination to stay alive. like its the casual thoughtlessness of this that, the idea no one would give a shit a character returned, that in my eyes epitomises how fucking little anyone cared about this franchise going forward.

man the idea of Laurie dying completely irrelevant to Michael… thats a lot. anyway continuing on his quest to erase anyone related to him, Michael starts targeting his niece Jamie for the three movies in the franchise. this is where the series started rapidly losing any grip on reality. while Michael always had some kind of superhuman elements to him (he took six bullets to the chest and survived in the first movie) these became increasingly wildly exaggerated. now hes crushing peoples skulls with his bare hands shit like what the fuck. first of all do that to me and secondly, it was this kind of slide into unreality that let the supernatural elements of the series creep in further until you end up with the shitshow that is Halloween 6. like it was the decrease in the impact of violence and human life that really fucked this franchise over.

this film is not great. its a definite decline in quality after 2 and was on the slippery slope downwards. it has some high points, primarily in Dr Loomis. Donald Pleasance is a better actor than most movies deserve and brings gravitas to a role that in the hands of a less capable actor would be laughable. his sincere plea to Michael at one point to just kill him instead of going after Jamie is honestly fucking tragic.

outside of that, the film isnt massively interesting. Michael himself isnt particularly threatening or engaging, and his mask looks like shit in this film. the characters in this film are largely very stupid, also, which doesnt help anything much.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

if theres a Halloween movie people talk about the least, its this one. II has the sibling twist, III is the black sheep, 4 is the return, even 6 gets talked about for its troubled production history. no one has anything to say about Halloween 5. and thats mostly because there is fucking nothing to say about Halloween 5. it is a relentlessly fucking dull movie that pads out its 100 minute run time with endless unnecessary scenes of shit that does… nothing. this film is dull in a way that i find incredibly detestable. i cant even watch it through a haze of impassioned anger like i can with the also incredible dull Halloween II (2009). its just fucking boring. every single scene drags like its trying to walk on two broken legs. the plot is so bare bones its nonsensical. it constantly adds new characters and new elements but all that does is makes it more incoherent and confusing. watching this movie i literally found my fucking eyes glazing over in my skull. if this film was edited correctly it would be twenty minutes long. i cannot fucking emphasise enough how much of relentless slog it is. Halloween 4 was dull but even that had the lifeline of ‘some cool ideas’. Halloween 5 is nothing. Halloween 5 is puddle dirt water.

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers

if Halloween 5 is puddle dirt water Halloween 6 is just a fresh hot glass of piss. there are two versions of Halloween 6, the director’s cut and the theatrical release, and both are wretched. this film went full ham with introducing the supernatural elements, telling us that Michael was his whole life psychically controlled by a pagan cult called the Cult of Thorne in order to make Halloween scary again or summon the devil or who fucking cares. this movie is fucking insufferably dull, totally absurd, and wildly unsympathetic. i loathe Halloween 6 and every terrible, stupid plot decision it makes. Paul Rudd defeats Michael Myers by drawing druid symbols on the ground and Michael just gives up and lies down. theres a baby that does nothing and serves no purpose. Halloween is apparently banned in Haddonfield, which makes this more closely related to Footloose than Halloween i think. this film takes itself incredibly seriously while spouting nothing but total fucking bullshit drivel and i dont believe that anyone involved in this movie, from the cast to the cameraman to the guy who served the lunch had any faith in this movie outside of the vague hope it might make money and i wish this movie had been burned at the stake. also i hate Paul Rudd.

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

oh thank fucking god finally some good fucking food. Halloween H20 took the decision to retcon all the sequels (except II) twenty years before Halloween 2018, proving that everyone knew 5 and 6 were fucking mistakes.

this film loses a lot of the Halloween feeling in favour of making a more generic late 1990s/early 2000s style horror. theres nothing particularly interesting about the way this movie is directed or shot, the music is largely very generic, it has a generally uninteresting glossy quality to it that studio movies always do. its very obvious this movie was inspired by Scream and it looks a lot more like Scream than it does Halloween. all of this makes me kind of sad, but other films in the franchise have proved that other directors generally are not capable of imitating Carpenter’s style so maybe its better they dont really try.

what H20 does so well, and the reason i love it so much, is that it explores the relationship between Michael and Laurie, which is something im endlessly fascinated with. this was the first movie to have Laurie shake off her fear and rise up against Michael, and while it doesnt do it with quite as much depth and intelligence as Halloween 2018, it still has a fucking good crack at Laurie’s character, and its still powerful watching her turn on the man who terrorised her for years. Michael is great in this movie too; while he has a terrible mask, watching him back on his shit as a furious force of nature who wants nothing more than to destroy anyone who gets in his way.

honestly i kind of enjoy having a Halloween in a different style; theres something fun about seeing characters recontextualised and done with justice and empathy. most of the Halloween sequels before this one (and after, looking at Resurrection) are shallow, unconcerned with any kind of emotional depth or personality. and while a lot of the stock filler characters in H20 who are lined up for the chopping block arent that interesting and dont particularly standout, watching Jamie Lee Curtis’ performance and seeing her interplay with Michael is enough. and most of the side characters arent particularly annoying, which is more than i can say for half this franchise.

this film also has what is one of my absolute favourite endings in a movie ever; the final confrontation between Michael and Laurie has a particular interaction between them that i absolutely adore and that alone is enough to make this movie one of my favourites.

H20 isnt perfect; it weirdly feels like a blueprint that Halloween 2018 would later refine into a better movie, but the idea its going to be completely disregarded for Halloween 2018 in the future makes me a little sad. in the face of so many fucking mediocre and awful Halloween sequels it did the right thing in trying to focus on what actually mattered; the connection between Michael and Laurie, although i dont feel like it succeeded in making Michael as scary as 2018 would much later. that said, the shot where Michael and Laurie just stare at each other through the glass of a window? that gives me chills every time. and hearing the Halloween theme kick in as Laurie marches off into the school with an axe looking for Michael is so fucking triumphant.

i love H20 even if Michael’s mask looks like his hair was dunked in a bucket of water and then gently blow-dried. i have no idea why it looks so fucking stupid in this movie. why is it so hard to get Michael’s mask right. you wouldnt think it was that fucking hard. anyway, i really fucking love Laurie Strode a lot, which didnt help to make Resurrection any easier to swallow.

Halloween: Resurrection

so whats the obvious thing to do after you have a movie where the power and emotion all comes from the emotional catharsis of seeing a woman get her vengeance on her tormentor? you, uh, make a sequel in which she is immediately defeated and pointlessly killed after its revealed her victory at the end of the previous film was entirely false, and then you never return to focus on her and instead introduce a horde of entirely uninteresting stock characters. yeah, makes sense.

Resurrection is fucking incredibly stupid, in the kind of fucking hysterical way only really bad horror movies can capture. theres absolutely nothing of Halloween in this other than the presence of Michael, who just as easily could have been replaced with anyone or anything. the story has a group of people on a reality show staying in the Myers house to… stay there? its not entirely clear what the challenge is meant to be, other than to just be inside the house, which i imagine gets to be pretty dull viewing pretty quickly. theres no suggestion theyre like, hunting for ghosts or something along those lines, theyre just… looking at stuff.

Michael slopes around this movie like he doesnt fucking understand where he is or whats going on, an entirely out of place relic of better times past while the cast cavorts around him doing nothing of interest and having no plots or characterisation to speak of. the film has exactly two or three funny moments, including the legendary ‘Michael Myers getting electrocuted in the dick by Busta Rhymes’, but youre way, way better off just looking that up on youtube instead of watching this movie. there is an hour of pointless plot development about characters no one cares about until Michael starts fucking killing people. this movie shouldnt exist and we should all go back to pretending it doesnt.

and thats it. thats all the halloween films. i can die now.

[resbang-bookclub]

AMA Transcript: Simple Melody

For our final AMA of Resbang 2017, @alliope, @bbbutterfingers & @daciafu stopped in to answer questions about their Resbang, Simple Melody! Here’s some of what went down:

Q: My first question for Allie is what inspired you to do this AU?

Allie: Well I've generally had the idea for an Over the Garden Wall AU for a while, not necessarily for SE, but as the first check-ins deadline was approaching I ended up rewatching bits of Over the Garden Wall and it just kinda clicked? Mainly I think it came from Crona's betrayal and Beatrice's betrayal and everything fell into place from there. I thought the eerie atmospheres would work well together! So I ended up scrapping my previous idea and wrote 3k plus a summary like three days before the first check-ins, rip.

Q: For butter/dacia, what went into how you decided which scene(s) to art?

butterfingers: HM well there was some chitchat when we started about what kind of work we wanted to do and I said that I loved the Boom comics covers, and then I shouted WHAT IF I MADE  COMIC BOOK COVERS! and I think Dacia went WHAT IF I DID BACKGROUNDS and I guess we just approached it as if we were doing something comic-y haha!

Allie: You two were the power duo.

daciafu: I've always been in love with the style of the backgrounds of OTGW since that's where all those cozy and spooky feelings of fall and the Unknown really shine and I'm honestly HORRIBLE at designing backgrounds so I wanted to take the challenge and push myself to get better! Mimicking other people's styles really helps me break down how they make their choices and teaches me how to make things look Decent so I was super hyped to pick up the OTGW style! And then when Butters and I were trying to figure out What Do and she said she wanted to tackle covers, I decided to do background-heavy scenes. 😊

Q: What is generally your guys’ process (writing for Allie and arting for butters and dacia)?

Allie: Well, I wrote in little scenes, like I would get an idea for a scene and just go for it, the fic wasn't at all coherent until maybe a few days before posting. This actually posed a problem since linking scenes took longer than I thought it would. Because I had most of my scenes written, I thought I had more finished than I really did. By the end of Resbang, I had 56k written but only 20k remotely post-able. I'm a super obsessive planner though, so my whole fic was outlined in detail early on, which was nice cause I knew what I was doing lol

butterfingers: I loved going through Allie's notes, I was always excited to see how they'd connect the dots! My art process is as follows: scribble something, put it aside, look at it a lot throughout the day with the thought that maybe I can surprise myself into seeing something new, find something I hate, fix it, rinse and repeat. For this project I actually... have a friend who works with Boom Comics and she was able to hook me up with a nice little gallery of illustrations for the OTGW comic so I got to go through and put together my mood board for it 😊

daciafu: I read over the gloriousness that was Allie's draft and immediately picked out some neat scenes or wanted to reimagine the classic OTWG ones. I spent a lot of time studying first! Looking at the art books, and poring over the show’s scenes and kind of getting a feel for the color palettes, textures and compositions. Then I watched a tutorial on Youtube where someone just deadass uploaded their painting process on a piece of official art that made it into the show. So that was EXTREMELY helpful to watch the way they painted back-to-front and kind of blended the planes without like, losing depth?? The internet is so, so wonderful. And then I got to work! Started with a soft brush for lineart so it wouldn't be too prevalent, moved onto base colors, then shading, and then really trying to establish textures and make the atmosphere Just Right(tm).

butterfingers: Genius!! Oh damn that sounds like such great advice vis à vis backgrounds. /takes notes

Q: You sound like the dream art partner Allie, I weep for my artists and my last minute HERE IS 10K I JUST TYPED UP BC IM A MESS.

Allie: Ahh geez, these two were the dream partners honestly, like I'm so glad they could gather stuff from my notes, cause I've always got everything together in my head, but then it gets out there and it's a mess, these two deserve all the love.

butterfingers: There was one thing I regret that I didn't have the chance to draw and it was like a throwaway line somewhere in your notes about Maka presenting Soul with a praying mantis and him freaking out. I resonated with that so hard hahaha.

Q: What was the hardest scene for you to write?

Allie: The hardest scene to write that's actually posted was anything with Justin really, I don't get his character and it was tough to write him. There were a few scenes that were hard to write because I rushed them, but I wouldn't say they were genuinely difficult scenes, I just gotta rewrite 'em! But overall the ending scene I'm still struggling to write and there's a dream scene that occurs which has been difficult to write just for making it dream-like enough?

Q: And what was the hardest to art? :o

butterfingers: I had a hard time with Maka's expressions. I had many scribbles designing a Ragnarok lantern, too, but it was very fun!!

Allie: Your design for the Ragnarok lantern was so good, I still cry over it.

butterfingers: Ahaha thank you! He was very Calcifer inspired ;)

daciafu: I struggled quite a bit with the first one I painted, just because it was all so new to me. I had to base color 3 different times because the soft lineart bothered me if something extended too far, or there was white background peeking through. And then reimagining the texture in the leaves and the ground to try to separate the planes there but also wanting them to be cohesive was a bit of a headache. If I had to go back and do that one over again I think I'd be more prepared to deal with the foliage lmao.

butterfingers: Your textures were very excellent, that was a quality I struggled with as well!

daciafu: The first one I painted was the Golden Light scene where Maka and Soul are leaving the woods and entering the fields.

butterfingers: Trees r hard.

Allie: They all came out so incredible though, I'm in awe of how you were able to create those leaves.

daciafu: Omg ;;;;; At the same time trees are so organic and flowy and the chances of getting them wrong are pretty slim considering they can get janked as hell lol they're super fun to just zone out to. "I’ll just put a happy little leaf here, ooh and how’s about another one right next to it. They can be happy friends. Oh look, the squad showed up!!" Channeling my inner Bob Ross... but yeah you can just do whatever with them and they somehow come together.

Q: Daciafu how do u.....background, like you did so well and all I hear from art friends is various levels of pterodactyl screeching when the word background is mentioned.

daciafu: I heavily based the Leafing the Forest scene and the church scene after stills from the show so I don't get composition points there, but I built the pumpkin fields just based off of the environment’s design elements. I really wanted to push the depth of that scene but also give it that same never-ending quality to it, and I'm super happy with the results. Another note is that I omitted the characters entirely while building the backgrounds. Since I'm usually a pretty character-heavy artist, I wanted to tackle it like I was preparing the scene for an animator later. And then once they were done, I added in our sweet kids. Doing it that way first really helped to cement the characters in the space rather than my usual "character is done, how can I put them in an interesting physical space?" struggle lmao.

Q: Did you guys feel like your writing/arting changed at all or that you learned anything/picked up new skills/honed old ones etc. etc. during Resbang?

Allie: Gosh yeah, it changed a lot. In hindsight a bad idea, but this was the first fic I'd ever written with intention of posting and the longest piece I'd ever written. Before this I had written very little and my longest piece was maybe 10k. Throughout Resbang I've learned most of everything from the ground up, it's taught me a lot about my limits, how I work and writing in general. I've definitely improved a lot from the experience!

butterfingers: Let me tell you all about the airbrush tool that I discovered during Resbang. Amazing. Incredible.

daciafu: I learned how to paint backgrounds!!! Which is something I've always wanted to get better at. And I got super comfortable in Clip Studio (I'd just gotten it) as well as using texture brushes, so overall it was a very helpful and wonderful experience as a Resbang participant and as an arteest.

Q: Oh that reminds me butters, what program do you use?

butterfingers: Paint Tool SAI for the most part, and then Photoshop for color correction, borders, and, like, finesse things! :)

Q: Did you guys listen to any music that inspired you or helped you create?

Allie: Ah, yeah! I had a playlist actually! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjTCaFkFU6rkD1edJwCZmHvJiUwlSUeGZ

If you want I can explain some bits of it? I use music a lot when writing aha. I like to associate certain songs with characters and character relationships, so most of the songs are connected to a particular part of the story. The Monroe Transfer, Wayfaring Stranger, and Mountains were all more general atmosphere stuff. Blame was very much related to Maka, which may not be apparent now, but yeah. Ragnarok I actually connected a lot with Willow Tree March. Soul was probably closest with A Lady. Crona had a lot of songs, but Neptune was most specific to them, as was probably Ghost Towns. Some character relationships I associated with certain songs, Crona-Ragnarok and Soul-Maka were both pretty connected to Always Gold, especially that dang last line "there were holes in you, the kind that I could not mend" oh man. Crona-Maka was definitely We Could Be Friends, Bloom, and Spell. Meet Me in The Woods I thought was a pretty good group song! Those are just some general bits of my thinking with the music aha.

daciafu: Definitely checked out Allie's dope playlist. For most of my working time, tho, I was either listening to TAZ: Commitment or MBMBaM oddly enough lol. I will forever think of Justin's uproarious laughter whenever I look at them lmao.

Q: Were any of the relationships difficult to characterize?

Allie: Mmm this may sound weird but early Maka-Crona was weird for me, cause they were kinda at that point where they want to (or at least Maka wants to) like each other, but they don’t like or trust each other at all and it's a weird spot for them. I'm used to writing them as at least interested by one another, if not enemies or already fond of one another, so this felt like a very odd place to start with them.

Q: Do you guys have future plans for writing/drawing? Aside from polishing and posting the rest of the fic!

Allie: I have,,, too many plans,, I need less plans,, someone please take them away from me, I can't be trusted with them,,,, I do want to do a sequel for this when I get it finished, playing on the detail about crows memory lasting five years so. Beyond that I have a SoMa fic to finish for the prompt challenge!! I'm working on a gift for Crescentcrona, which is a fantasy Kirona fic called Eat The Rich. I have polyam week fics that I'm cleaning up, I think my favorite so far is a Azusa/Naigus/Sid/Mifune one for Through The Seasons. And God I have so many CroMa fics I want to write, I gotta fill the AO3 tag. I think the biggest one right now is a wings-related soulmates au that I've been working on on the side since October I think?

daciafu: Yo there's one scene that I'm like sUPER hyped to do if Allie does the sequel because I already know exactly how I wanna draw it but I wasn't able to fit that in near the end, and it didn't end up in the first part. But there are a couple of other scenes Allie and I workshopped that would be super fun to do and I would love to draw them. Other than that, my drawing plans are pretty much working on commissions as they come in. Surprisingly my queue has been maxed out and I just got a full time job so of course now I'm like.... hm.... I'll get 'em done eventually!!

----

That’s the end of the AMAs for the 2017 season! Thanks again for reading along with us, and see you next year! :)

[hellxpuppy]

All

ADA WONG: Do you have any secrets nobody knows?

totally. sometimes i feel like i come off as an open book but there’s a lot ppl don’t know about me that i’d rather keep to myself anyway

ALBERT WESKER: How far would you go to achieve your dreams?been contemplating going into debt from college just so i can become a concept artist or a character designer, but that’s pretty much the furthest i’d go?? i’d do anything for my art as long as im not hurting other people. not a very vengeful personALEXIA ASHFORD: How smart are you? What's your IQ?idk, IQ stuff isn’t really that important to me. everyones smart in different waysALEX WESKER: What scares you the most?losing all or most of my friends (kind of what made breaking away from austin really hard) but also goddamn ALIENS and also unseen creatures. i guess that could also be apart of my alien fear because when i was little i had a fear of aliens that could shape shift and turn invisible, it got to the point where i would get so paranoid that i couldn’t be in the living room by myself

ALFRED ASHFORD: Do you have any siblings?yes! most of you guys already know, but i have a sister and a brother, they’re almost a year younger than me (we kind of look like triplets its funny) and they’re twins. unfortunately i also have an older half brotherANNETTE BIRKIN: How loyal are you?im very loyalARK THOMPSON: Would you ever want to be a detective?i think it would be very interesting! i like detective shows a lot. akfjkds im also pretty good at clue ;)ASHLEY GRAHAM: Are you related to anybody famous?i don’t really think so! i know my parents have met famous people in passing but i dont think we’re actually related to anyBILLY COEN: Ever committed a crime?

i accidentally vandalized one of my neighbor’s houses once. they weren’t very nice people thoughBRAD VICKERS: How do you respond to a crisis situation? Do you panic?it depends on what the crisis situation is i think!BRUCE MCGIVERN: Do you have an accent? If so, what type?im just a plain ol americanCARLA RADAMES: If you could be anyone, who would you want to be?i’d want to be myself! i know this will sound cheesy but getting to learn to grow and experience my own life is wonderful, even if i gotta live with mental illness and trauma. i like living as myself, and i don’t want to be anyone elseCARLOS OLIVEIRA: Do you wear your heart on your sleeve?HFHDKhfdkkfs... yeah probably but not entirely. i do react in huge ways, but not so much externally as i do internally, which is what people mostly see online. honestly that’s a question to ask one of my close irl friends jfjdsCHRIS REDFIELD: Are you fighting for anything?yep!! :) we all kno what it is CLAIRE REDFIELD: Are you a workaholic?claire... yeah but only if my add/adhd latches onto it, or if im just super passionate about the project in general. i think the greatest examples of this is when im sitting in a chair 6 hours straight just drawing or if im cleaning for over half the day. you wont catch me doing that with homework unless im panickingCHIEF IRONS: Any creepy quirks?i dont really know what this meansDAVID KING: Are you good at handy-work?i’d like to think so! i like lifting things for people, opening things that are hard to open, i like to clean, weeding out the yard/garden, i mean im also a pretty good painter imo.. i like being a handy lesbianDEREK C SIMMONS: Any current obsessions?been hyperfixating on the village by m night shyamalan for like uuhhh 2 weeks now??EXCELLA GIONNE: How fashionable are you?hfhfslfkjldfgd im EXTREMELY tacky, i mostly just match colors instead of materials. im not very fashionable but i wish to be in the future!! i have a pinterest board dedicated to my personal butch outfit inspirationFONG LING: Do you like attention from the opposite/same sex?hello ladies.....HELENA HARPER: How cynical are you?i don’t think i am in the least bit, caring about people is my gameJAKE MULLER: Would you sell your grandmother for fifty million dollars?no :(JAMES MARCUS: What's your favourite animal/insect?OWLS AND PENGUINS JESSICA SHERAWAT: Ever used charm to get what you want?jlfjksdfs im not proud to admit this but yes but not in an attractive way, more like in an endearing wayJILL VALENTINE: How headstrong are you?i can be a pretty stubborn person if i dont want to do something or if i dont agree, but i try not to let that get in the way of things?JIM CHAPMAN: Would you consider yourself sassy?sometimes but it’s not a defining traitJOSEPH FROST: Favourite breed of dog?i REALLY love german sherpards they look so adorable and i love huskies too! love those big babies... funny thing is though is that im so afraid of big dogs that being around them can be really hard even though i love them... also goldens are adorableKEVIN RYMAN: Favourite type of alcohol?all types suckLEON S KENNEDY: Do you spend a lot of time on your appearance?not really lol like i said earlier all i try to do is match colors at least more than i do with materialsLISA TREVOR: Any physical quirks?i can make some REALLY weird faces. i have this one face that makes berto lose his mind it’s greatLUIS SERA: Are you a player?nopeMOIRA BURTON: How often/much do you swear?wayyyyyy too often LMAO whenever i swear on here and censor it that’s just me trying to tone it down while also getting the point across because sometimes i just dont like sounding too aggressive and i get worried about freaking people outMORPHEUS D DUVALL: How far would you go to be beautiful?man i dont really care at all anymore, i just want to get buff and have a haircut im satisfied withNICOLAI ZINOVEIF: Ever betray anybody?only with tiny funny things, but never on a large, serious scale. i know where my loyalties and priorities lieOSMUND SADDLER: If you could; would you want to lead a cult?lesbian cult lesbian cult lesbian cult lesbian cult lesbian cultPARKER LUCIANI: What nationality are you?im a white americanPIERS NIVANS: Would you sacrifice yourself for somebody else?definitelyRICHARD AIKEN: Do you like reptiles? Do you have a favourite?i love them! but i dont know too much about them so i dont really have a clear fave. i DO love snakes thoughSHERRY BIRKIN: How dysfunctional is your family?pretty dysfunctional lmao... my siblings went to go talk to the judge last week because my dad was trying to alter my parents divorce agreement. i wasn’t allowed to be there because i turned 18 recently, and they’re still 17. one of the dumbest things about my dad trying to do this is the fact that even if he got the agreement altered, it wouldn’t have mattered because by the time it would be implemented my siblings would already be 18 as well. i feel like my dad was just trying to do this to be vindictive towards my mom in some way. also i hate my older brotherSHEVA ALOMAR: Any tattoos?i have this

but they’re pointing more outward! sorry for the large image. i plan on getting more in the futureSTEVE BURNSIDE: Ever been in love?yeah. i feel like i might be again but im not really sureVINCENT GOLDMAN: What's the most evil thing you'd do?i don’t know i dont like doing evil things :( probably the most evil thing would be beating up bigoted assholes and bullshit men but i dont count that as evil, any sensible person would do the sameWILLIAM BIRKIN: Do you like Science? What's your favourite scientific discovery?i LOVE science! i love genetic and biological sciences. last year i became incredibly fascinated with the concept of cloning and the CRISPR-cas9 while i was taking a genetics class

[cake-of-awesome]

im in a very bad state right now , i dont want to talk to anyone, but ruminating wont help anything either so im just going to write all of my anxieties down and see how that goes

for the past few weeks i feel emotionally haywired. like im short circuiting or something. i have emotions, i know i have emotions, i can express emotions, but its like im expressing emotions without really knowing what im expressing or why, or expressing them waaaay out of line.

like, i went to the movies today and there was a local commercial before the movie previews, it had a baby smiley,  and i wanted to sob right then and there, there was nothing sad about the baby, nothing was wrong with the baby or anything bad was going to happen, but i wanted to sob at the smiling baby

i alternate between coming off as sarcastic or condescending to coworkers, being super angry and defensive whenever my mom speaks to me to just not feeling anything at all, being unfocused, having a hard time motivating myself to do anything at all and just

basically feeling too many emotions to nothing at all and its so stressful

my only guess is that this is another hormonal surge, and that i’ll probably have a period again sometime next week

which ok, thats fine, or not, honestly i should do some research into birth control and actually learn what the hell it does in terms of dealing with hormones

but, big picture wise, i should ALSO be going back to therapy. i NEED to do this yet i still dont, and its realy hurting me, i know i should, i know it can help me with identifying my emotions and learning better coping methods in properly expressing them rather than bottling them up or letting them run loose, i know it can help me rewire my brain so that im not always thinking so black and white all the time too

yet i dont

i need to admit that part of me just hates doctors. that i have anxiety dealing with them and clinics, i need to admit i do have somewhat of a fear of it since having cancer and having to deal with all of those visits

im so programmed to just saying yes to anything that goes on just so i wont stay there any longer, which is so incredibly hurtful in so many ways. i know i can do better

but the one time i did end up being truthful to my therapist and saying yes!!! i do think about killing myself every!!! single!!! day!!! i almost got thrown in psych ward. i dont want to go in there. i cant go in there. i know it can help and get me the meds i need but god i dont want to go back into the hospital please

but i need help. but the longer i put it off the more anxiety i have about coming back, having to answer questions on why i didnt make an appointment for 5 months now

i mean sure part of it its because i hate talking on the phone, that the only time i can call is either when im at work, cause they close right when i get out and arent open util an hour after im in work

part of me also gets anxious talking with my therapist, the topic of gender comes up a lot since during the first sesson i said iddnt know and it makes me really anxious cause fuck??? i dont know. i barely have a construct of an identity as a person, much less a gender. 

i feel like my entire identity is an outline of a person, the kind you draw on paper like how you outline your hand and the inside of the hand is all hollow and the outside is just as blank

i dont know, i dont know anything and i dont want to talk about this, at least not yet

but i also dont want to say anything either cause i just want to get out of there as soon as possible

i also feel like a lonely loser spilling my beans (or a select few beans since i constantly lie while in those sessions)

like everytime i go in there i realize just how lonely i am, i dont have many RL friends to hang out with, and those that i do i never have big conversations , our relationship is the lazy kind where we’re only friends bc we used to be in the same highschool or we’re cousins somehow or w/e

i wish i had someone i could hang out with on a regular basis and have those deep conversations and feel valid for whats going on, but thats on me, im the lazy one who never goes out to meet new people or tries to keep up with friendships and make sure that they thrive

if i want those kinds of relationships i need to get out there and be vunerable, be open, stop bing afraid of getting hurt or not being understood or rejected, adult relationships are a lot harder to maintain than in school, cant rely on classes and lockers to build a friendship, i need to put in effort to maintain a connection with others

but its so much effort, and so frustration when my invites are rejected bc one person has to work at night and another is busy planning a wedding or graduating or whatever

its no wonder i’ve relied on internet friendships to maintain a semblance social life. its easy and convenient, and always there.... which means the anxiety of being out of the loop due to working long hours and that people are only putting up with me because i’m there and can be easily replaced if i m too much of an ass, is always there too

I cant let this anxiety control my life and relationships though, real life or online. people are social creatures and at the end of the day most people just want to have a good time and not have any drama, and most likely, so long as i try to be a decent person who respects others things will be okay

and part of being a decent person is having empathy and sympathy

if im this stressed out, im never going to be able to pick up on what other people are feeling and connect to what they’re going through

which means being in tune with my emotions, knowing what im feeling and knowing when to express them and how intense to express them

i know therapy can help with this, and i know calling is scary, and making an appointment and going to an appointment is just as bad. but if i want to get better andbe a better person that means doing scary things

maybe i can write down some bullet points from this  post and bring it next time i go in and see how that goes

[brokenmusicboxwolfe]

On a post where I talked about my nephew (and the difficulties with my brother)

runningbarefootthroughtheforest said: No ideas, just wanted to say Im glad your nephew has someone like you in his life, even if you are ‘banned’ from him. It sounds like you bring sunshine to his life, and even if thats a rare occurence it may make a world of difference to him <3

Thanks for being so kind. 

I wasn’t planning to really reply (thought I REALLY appreciated hearing that), but I was in a mood tonight. I got started writing, and now it’s 2am and I’ve got this endless rambling about my relationship with my brother no one in their right mind wants to hear about. Rather than erase all that typing (and venting) I’m just going to put it safely behind a click to continue....l

Being there for him used to be one of the ways I would make myself go to my brother’s when I knew what was in store for me there. (The other was to help my parents with that construction job building the extension to my brother’s house.) I had my nephew described as “lighting up like a Christmas tree” when I showed up and that he seemed so much more engaged when I was there. I dunno how much I credit that to me, but I did feel like it was worth enduring a heavy dose of verbal abuse. 

The thing is, it has been so long since I have been able to see him I expect he has forgotten me now. I got to see him for a minute over a year ago when took Mom half way to spend time recovering from her hospitalization at their house (I’ve mentioned our living conditions...). He didn’t show any signs of recognition anymore. Yesterday Mom called me while my sister-in-law was out (Mom won’t call me when they are around to avoid ranting) and I could hear my nephew talking to himself as he played, his voice like a little bird chirping. I realized that I have never actually heard him speak in person because he was a totally non-verbal then. I’m afraid as far as he is concerned I don’t exist.

I know people wonder why I was banned from my brother’s house. “what did you do?” Saying, well the first time I was told never to come back I played a Wallace and Gromit DVD. It was so baffling how me playing it in a room alone could get him shouting I was “the most selfish bitch alive” for my choice of DVD, but there you go.

A few months later I did start going back, but that time I tried to photograph my parents beside the house extension we were putting in, and my brother thought I wastaking a photo of him andmy nephew. He hates photos being taken and threatened to smash my camera, started with the insults, called me a coward when I went into the house to get away from him rather than fight, then mocked me when I came  back out rather than wake my napping sister-in-law. I started crying (trying soooo hard not to) and he lay into me for that. I always told my parents not to defend me since it would reinforce my brother’s peculiar “you love her more” narrative and it would make him more vicious, but it made me feel extra alone as he was attacking me, all in my face and snarling like he would get. I muttered “Sometimes I could just  kill you” which was NOT meant as a real threat at all, and he knew that very well. Still he announced I was to leave or he would call the police and he could say I threatened his life.

And that was that. At first My parents and I thought it would blow over. It didn’t. We thought holidays would be an exception. They weren’t. We thought when Pop got sick he would relax about it. Nope. So that’s been that.

The thing is, it shouldn’t be a surprise. For years he’d been saying he loved Mom, loved but also hated Pop, and just hated me. I think partly Pop and are were disappointments to him, like we should be whatever fantasy he had of what we should be and if only he could bully us right we’d change. Pop and I did tend to think alive, where Mom and my brother thought a bit more alike, the basic mental wiring. But it was a way of seeing us, Mom the one who sacrificed (like about getting a PhD) to join Pop here, Pop the person working so many ambitious projects (like the submarine or the journey round the world in the boat) that never actually were finished, and me the smart sister turned utter loser (and college drop out to his multiple degrees). I knew he hated me, and maybe he was right to at least have no respect for such a pathetic creature, but I somehow had managed to believe that down deep he loved me.

You know, when he was a teenager he pointed a loaded gun to my head saying he was going to kill me, and I was totally calm about it. Part of it was the adrenaline, but part of it was a trust that while he was emotionally freaking out and might accidentally kill me, he did not really want me dead. Would I be so fearless now when I no longer trust his love is in there somewhere waiting to be talked down? I dunno.

Now, for the record, my family was NOT physically or emotionally abusive. Heck, my parents never even spanked us. We were never grounded, given time outs or bullied. While my father would break things when really upset, he NEVER, EVER hurt anyone or threatened to hurt anyone. My parents were  confused how sibling rivalry and child defiance of a father could become so monsterous. They wondered what they did wrong. The thing is, it really wasn’t entirely some failing in out part.

Amazingly my brother was an incredibly sweet child. He constantly told us he loved us, gave us drawings he made and wrote “I love you” on, hugged us, kissed us, laughed and ...  He was exactly the opposite of what he is now.

I can track it, the step by step path that led to this point.

It begins at school. When he entered first grade to be precise.

In first grade my brother got good grades, despite my parents questioning whether he was having difficulty reading. The teacher would reassure them that he was doing just fine....and then he failed first grade. When my parents wanted to know what had happened, the teacher said my brother had seemed so smart she had assumed it would work out. **sigh**

So my parents did what you would expect. They started working with my brother. They had always read to us (and I read as long as can remember) but now they started using work books, flashcards, and anything else that they thought might help. To my brother this was like being punished while I was off doing other things, and how he felt about me began to change.

Now I get this bothering him. I was bothered too. I knew my brother needed help, but I also knew they were spending all this time with him but so little with me. No one helped me with my homework, because I didn’t need it. I was “fine”, I was always “fine”. Where as my brother as a toddler would try to run (and made it once!) across highway 64 with all it’s traffic, laughing as we chased him, toddler me (when I couldn’t find my father and grandfather who were working and supposed to be watching me...the place it big) decided to walk home and famously was spotted by people carefully crossing that crazy busy highway and walking back along the side of the road. I was seen as gaving good judgement, bright, blah, blapg. Stephanie is always “fine”. 

The difference is that while I saw the attention my brother got when no one even cared what I did in school, (they even let me sign my own papers because they were busy and knew I was doing fine...I HATE that word fine!) and was unhappy, I didn’t get angry at anyone. I understood, and other than a few bouts of grumpiness at my parents wishing that they would pay atrention to me a bit. But to my brother it was different. He was angry, and most of that anger settled on me because I was “fine”, a sort of feeling he had that I must be loved more since I wasn’t the one suffering.

Then it got worse.

His second grade teacher was horrible to him. She picked on him and bullied him continually. In front of the whole damn class she would called him stupid and mock him. He was NOT stupid! He was dyslexic!

My parents had to work to persuade then to have him tested. This was not even on the radar of out hick town school in the early 1980s. They had to bring someone in to test him, and when it proved the suspicions it proved no help at all. See, the teachers had never heard of such a thing, so to them “dyslexic” meant “stupid”.   They considered kids “normal”, “smart”, or “stupid” with no nuisance at all. And that damn teacher kept at it, more intently than ever.

Worse for my relationship to him, the teacher and her aide had another angle of attack. “He’s not smart like his sister!” Do you know how horrible that is, constantly comparing a kid to another kid? In first grade my tracher had started that, telling the class “Why can’t you all be like Stephanie?” “You should try to be smart like Stephanie” Do you know what that does? It does NOT make the kids you want to change change, instead they glare at that kid you are comparing them to with pure hate. And now the little brother that had loved me, was being bludgeoned with me as a weapon. 

He didn’t tell us any of this at the time. He was far too scared of her. It slipped out bit by bit over then next few years.

One day he hid to try to avoid going to class. I found him and talked to him, trying to be reassuring and comforting. You see, I was having an awful time in school, being bullied every day. I thought, three years older than him, I understood and I was being encouraging when I was saying if I could do it I knew he could. And then I told Pop where he was.

My brother still brings this up as a huge betrayal. It is one of the worst things I ever did to him, though I did it out of love and ignorance.

So it began. My brother’s resentment and hostility. A bubbling rage began to build. He started seeing as opposite, if something was tough for him he would insist it was easy for me. To this day he insists I was popular and happy in school! It’s nuts. Mom laughs at the thought. In that one year in kindergarden I went from so outgoing I spoke to anyone to so introverted I couldn’t make eye contact or order in a restaurant. I went from normal weight to the fattest kid in the class, for the first time in my life started wetting the bed, began to jump at the sounds like someone with PTSD, and would come home crying, begging my parents to tell me why everyone hated me. I was picked on for everything including my breathing! But he didn’t remember preschool me so he didn’t know I’d changed, and he was so lost in his own pain he couldn’t see mine.

And it went like this. Now I am NOT minimizing what he went through. While I had many teachers that openly delighted whenerever I made a mistake and, bafflingly, saw me as some sort of threat, clearly what he went through with that teacher was worse.

Let me be clear again, my brother was NOT stupid! He was one of the top five students by graduation, in college he studied chemistry where he was the only undergraduate working on a project, one a national prize, and after getting his degree went right back to get a degree in computer programming. He could very well be smarter than me!

But elementary and high school were hell. For both of us, to be honest, we just manifested it differently.

 I can only imagine the constant “she’s smart, you’re not” pressure he was under. I know even as an adult his default when upset was to call himself “Stupid!” “Idiot!” Or “Moron!” No matter how often my parents and I tried to tell him otherwise, he never believed us. He was constantly tense and chewed his fingers until they bled. And behind his eyes you could see the pain and rage. He got so he would not want anyone to see him show emotions, even taking his gifts at Christmas into his room to open. He got aggressive and growly, not just in a teen boy way. He would let anyone hug him anymore, not even Mom. We wanted to hug him, we knew he needed a hug, even wanted a hug, but if you tried he’d slug you and leave a bruise. 

With me his aggression just got worse. Violent, not just slugging. Not when our parents were around, of course. Then it was just verbal.  He was disgusted by me. I’d become withdrawn more, fatter, and, as I used to say, “terminally insecure”. Maybe he couldn’t stand my increasing loser status because if I was supposed to “better” than him according to the teachers, then how terrible must he be? He needed me to be better than Inwas, just as he always blamed our parents a bit for not saving him from that teacher, despite the fact they hadn’t known at the time what was going on.

One quick point: what happened to my brother inspired Pop to run for school board right after that. He thought it was the best way to help both my brother and others like him. I think the last straw was seeing that abusive teacher won “teacher of the year” the next year. When Pop asked why they said it was because they were all sorry for her  because just before the vote she has a baby that was born with a serious birth defect. Sympathy is one thing, but “teacher of the year” for a woman that tormented my brother and changed him so completely? In one year he went from loving me to hating me, smiling to scowling, not questioning his own intelligence to never believing in it! So Pop went to the school board, became chairman, and what to you know, the way they treated my brother turned around over night (though how he felt didn’t)! But what about other kids without elected parents?

Anyway, the school years were not happy. Add my brother’s tendency to hold grudges and to lash out when hurt to the target painted on my back by the big mouthed teachers and I became his verbal, and sometimes physical, punching bag. Our parents would be working and he would go into jerk mode. Locking himself in my room to trash it. Calling me the most hurtful things he could. There are still holes in my door from a sword. (Yes, sword. We have a few...) When he would start getting rough I’d pin him, because though we did eventually end up the same height, I was bigger than him. He was skinny and I was just plain stronger. But once restrained, then what? In his rages he would snarl he would hit me when I let go, and eventually I’d have to. My dilemma was I was the big sister, the one that had always tried to protect him and never wanted to hurt him. When I was about 8 I got a blood vessel in my eye busted fighting a bully that was picking on him. I couldn’t hurt him, but when I’d let go he’d keep his promise. As my parents and I would say, he would never pull a punch.

Now my parents would try to get him to stop being such a jerk to me, but it only ever made him meaner. If they were defending me, he semed to think, that must prove they loved me more. They were working and we were on our own, but together out here on the farm, much of the time. Oddly being unsupervised had worked out great when we were little, but as we got older and the relationship got worse it was not great at all.

It’s so weird, looking at old photos. All those happy ones when were little. There isn’t a photo of me NOT smiling until I started school, and there isn’t one where he isn’t smiling and usually hugging me until that year with the teacher. Like OMG! He honestly seemed a different person. By our teenage years there are almost no photos of me smiling, and the few that show my brother smiling are rather threatening. 

We did have one powerful bonding moment one day. We just started talking, just spilling out all the horrible things and bullying we went through at school, that hell hole. We ended up sobbing and just holding each other. It was so intense I actually believed it was a breakthrough, a turning point out of the darkness. Nope. I made that mistake many times over the years.

And yeah, the gun incident happened. I survived, and between that and another incident when he nearly shot trespassers (that had permission we didn’t know about) when scared, I let my folks know I didn’t think he should be around them anymore. It was atypical for the family so it was startling, but his judgement worried me. 

But then came what was the worst turning point for many years. I dropped out of college. It would take a while to explain, but it would make me the sole non-college in the family and the source of shame. It was unforgivable sin. While my brother had given up physical violence (and never hit me again) the verbal abuse got ....unrelenting. How bad did it get? When he would drive home I would hear the car and feel a full on hyperventilate “run away!” panic attack. He’d come home from college and I’d shake at the sound of his voice. I won’t list all the things he said, but it boiled down to my worthlessness.

That said, he still would seem to love and want my company. He asked me to go on trips, like to Germany and Montreal, and despite the fact I would always swear never to travel with him again afterwards. He gave gifts that showed thought, cards, and moments of sweetness would slip out.

Still, I began to notice something else. When things were good, he was wonderful, but when things were stressful he’d get mean. 

Believe it or not, there were a few years I got my hopes up that hehad outgrown it, or worked past it or let go of that childhood rage or...something. He was great, no longer tormenting me. The only teasing was affectionate, without the cruelty. He did little kindnesses, joked, showed concern, and smiled. It was like having the little brother that had been so close to me back. Even at his wedding the two of us kept giggling uncontrollably every time we looked at each other. 

It didn’t last. It took a few years, but it started building up all over again. I expect it was the stress he was feeling with a new marriage to someone with rather set ways ,interpersonal conflict on the job, a new house he’d bought, eventually fatherhood, and the initial denial anything was wrong with the nephew followed by the difficult reality. Then there was the fact that had set in that I was no longer the fattest in the family, but he was...something else to hold against me. 

So the point is, by the time he had a lot of things eating at him. He was having health problems I worried were stress related, that certainly didn’t help his mood. And there I was, unmarried, no kid, only working with Pop not a “real” job as far as he was concerned (HA!), none of the things weighing on him. Clearly, he would assume, my life must be better. That ignores my lived reality, but he always has ignored my point of view. As far as he was concerned I’d somehow cheated. And if my parents let me get away with it, well then, they must love me more.

So he promises to make my newborn nephew hate me. He picks on my continually. When I have a breathing attack and my heart goes nuts, he says to film it if I’m dying so he can watch it over and over laughing. He refuses to help us more than five minutes on the house extension, shouting “I can’t work with you people!!” And on and on. So why did I not see this final break coming? 

He isn’t happy. Even hearing about him through Mom I can tell that. I wish I could help him, but I never could. 

What’s strange is the fact I didn’t feel relieved by the break. Not seeing him meant sparing myself the weekly emotional rollar coaster, the walking on eggshells waiting for the moment he’s have a go at me. Instead I fell apart. I used to never cry, but I started then. I’d have meltdowns over it, thinking my life had hit the lowest it could get...the loss of my brother and nephew.

Of course, Pop started getting sick almost exactly then, and six months later he was diagnosed. It’s all been down hill from there! So I guess when you think you’ve hit rock bottom it might just be a bounce along the rock face as you keep plummeting.

My brother is still furious at me, and honestly I would  apologize whether I feel I did anything wrong or not if I thought it would do any good. But I know him. If I apologize he would take it as proof he was right. He doesn’t do forgiveness, more like gloating and justification for further jerk behavior. I’m not even exactly sure what he would want me to apologize for.

I’ve tried asking Mom for advice, but he baffles her and she says there is nothing I can do. Pop couldn’t help when he was alive either, not only because he didn’t understand it but he was enduring his own continual insults from my brother. I watched Pop sit there sobbing after a phone call with my brother, while Pop was sick but not diagnosed. That makes me angrier than any of the things my brother ever did to me. Apparently, to this day my brother is angry at Pop for not finishing the extension. Well he died damn it!

 The point is, all these experts that lecture how you must go to any length to have a good relationship with your siblings, tell me how the hell I can fix this. All those years of putting up with it, trying to make peace, trying to talk, reflexively saying I was sorry, occasionally arguing back intently and generally enduring sure didn’t help........

[allofbeercom]

Things I Wish I Could Tell My Younger Self About Calvinism (Or: How to Be Less of a Jerk)

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When I first understood the Doctrines of Grace (more commonly known as Calvinism and/or Reformed theology), I felt like I had entered The Matrix (minus Keanu Reeves).

It was as if multiple puzzle pieces were clicking into place and a single, unified picture was becoming clear. Things that seemed somewhat confusingly jumbled, like the various covenants, Israels rejection of Christ, and weird statements in the book of Romans, suddenly came together, like in a television show when an enlightened detective starts drawing lines between various mug shots and newspaper clippings while heart-thumping music plays in the background.

Picture this, except with pages of scripture

All this was a big deal to me, and I quickly came to the conclusion that it was my mission from God to convert every person in existence to Calvinism. As you can imagine, this made me quite a pleasant person (insert record scratch noise).

As Ive gotten older, slightly more godly and slightly less annoying, Ive come to a few realizations about the place the Doctrines of Grace should hold in my life.

I wish I could go back in time and communicate these things to my younger self, although my younger self probably would have fiercely debated my older self and then come away concluding my older self was a moron.

What would I tell my younger self?

Calvinism Matters, but Its Not Everything

I treated the Doctrines of Grace as if they were the sum and substance of Christianity. As if when Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, he said, Be sure you believe in electionand total depravity!

This full-throated zeal for all things Calvinist caused me to look down on those who were far more godly than me yet maybe didnt agree with me on every point of doctrine.

Sure, youve given your entire life to serve orphans and widows in Cameroon, but you dont believe in election, so whats the point?

Meanwhile, Im sitting in my living room, wearing sweatpants and sipping coffee while I readSystematic Theology.

It was absolutely pathetic.

I still believe that the Doctrines of Grace arecrucially important to understanding Scripture, but there are other astonishingly important elements to following Jesus.

Like love. Mercy. Justice. Generosity. Serving. Compassion.

Calvinism should NOT be the dominant theme in everything I do as a Christian. Rather, it should the background track, like the bass line in a Daft Punk song. Or, as John Newton said:

I am more of a Calvinist than anything else; but I use my Calvinism in my writing and preaching as I use this sugar. I do not give it alone, and whole; but mixed, and diluted I think these doctrines should be in a sermon like sugar in a dish of tea, which sweetens every drop, but is no where to be found in a lumptasted everywhere, though prominent nowhere.

Its Not My Job to Convert the World to Calvinism

For a brief time, I became the Mormon missionary of Calvinism (minus the weird name tag and odd underwear). I thought it was my job to convert all people to the gospel of Reformed doctrine, and if they didnt convert, I became frustrated.

If someone disagreed with me, my brain began generating thoughts like this:

Why cant they see it?!? They must be spiritually defective! They must be, like, a baby Christian or something! Have they not accepted John Piper into their hearts? Maybe if I just speak louder and longer, I can convince them of the truth.

I foolishly assumed that it was my God-given responsibility to make sure that every person I knew fully agreed with everything I thought. As if I somehow had cornered the market on all sound doctrine and biblical understanding.

This is incredibly ironic given that the very heart of Reformed theology says God gets all the glory because he is the one ultimately responsible for all the saving, changing and preserving. Its like Alanis Morissette said: Isnt it ironic?

Yes, yes it is.

I dont debate about Reformed theology much these days. Ill happily discuss it with someone who wants to, but I know that I cant convince or change any person.

If you want to chat about Calvinism, lets grab a beer (a requirement of being Reformed) and well hash it out.

Calvinism Is Not Required for Godliness

Some of the most godly, prayerful, loving, generous people I know, do not believe in Reformed theology. These people are so godly and so spirit-filled that they make me look like a headhunting pagan who plays with ouija boards for fun.

The truth is, godliness and Calvinism dont necessarily go together. Calvinists have a somewhat well-earned reputation as pompous, self-righteous windbags who would rather write 10,000-word screeds than actually serve someone.

When I was younger, I assumed that a person who didnt embrace Reformed theology was somehow less mature or godly than me. I look back and shudder.

I was the windbag.

I was the one who loved hearing myself talk.

I was the one who liked to toss around fancy theological words (double reprobation anyone?).

It was both terrifically ungodly and tremendously obnoxious. If you were at the business end of my weaponized Calvinism, I apologize.

I still fully embrace Reformed theology, but I now realize that its no longer necessary for godliness.

When John Wesley (an Arminian) was asked whether he thought he would see George Whitefield (a Calvinist)in heaven, hesaid, No. Then he said:

Do not misunderstand me, madam; George Whitefield was so bright a star in the firmament of Gods glory, and will stand so near the throne, that one like me, who am less than the least, will never catch a glimpse of him

I feel the same, but in the opposite direction. I expect I wont see many of my fellow believers in heaven who dont believe in Reformed theology because they will be much nearer the throne than me.

Calvinism Isnt The Solution for Every Problem

When I first truly understood that God is sovereign over all things, that was a great comfort to me. God is working all things together for my good. God is the one responsible for saving people. God is in control of governments and presidential candidates (thank goodness!).

But too often, I treated the Doctrines of Grace as the cure-all medicine for every spiritual problem.

Youre struggling with worry? Dont you believe God is sovereign?

Youre struggling with anger? Dont you believe in total depravity?

Youre worried about whether youll make it to the end? Dont you believe in perseverance of the saints?

You get the point. Calvinism became my miracle pill that I dispensed freely. No matter the circumstances, I was always quick to whip out my bottle of Reformed theology from my fanny pack of systematic theology (I think that analogy works).

I somehow failed to grasp that truth always goes down better when its preceded by grace, love, compassion, and the bearing of burdens. Grace is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine of truth go down. Love, compassion, and empathy make it so much easier to hear truth.

Now I still talk encourage people with those same biblical truths, but not before I spend plenty of time simply listening and bearing burdens.

In the End

When Jesus returns and all is said and done, I dont think well be debating the finer points of theology. Well be so enraptured with the glory of God that not much else will matter.

Until then, Ill seek to continue to learn from those who are more godly than me. By Gods grace, in 10 years Ill be less of apompous windbag than I am now.

Now if youll excuse me, I need to drink a craft beer while listening to a John Piper sermon.

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from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/things-i-wish-i-could-tell-my-younger-self-about-calvinism-or-how-to-be-less-of-a-jerk/