#andor details my beloved

[hight0wers]

hair details, bix caleen.

[someinstant]

I mean, my dude scrapes his knuckles clinging to the cliff with Melshi in episode 11, and in episode 12 he has scabs on his hands. No one ever mentions them, but-- the body remembers. This is a galaxy where shit leaves fucking marks, in more ways than one.

It's a little thing, but I love that injuries matter on Andor. Cassian gets a blaster burn in "Reckoning," and he's still dealing with it two episodes later. He binds the wound immediately afterwards on Luthen's ship, and it's cleaned, bandaged, and checked/redressed in the camp on Aldhani. The other rebels immediately notice that he's injured and worry that it'll be a liability during the mission. People ask about his arm and how he's doing.

I realize part of it is that we're looking at a ramshackle fledgling operation without access to bacta tanks for quick healing, so instead we get patch-up jobs without pain relief because they need to ration their meds. But in a galaxy where we've seen people take a lightsaber to the gut and be up and walking the next day, it's good to see a show where even something as comparatively minor as Cassian getting shot in the arm can't just be shaken off as nothing.

[blinkbones]

Five 1-season series I watched recently, and why I recommend them/liked them:

Lessons in Chemistry

About the trials and tribulations of a woman who both fails and refuses to conform to the expectations of 50s-60s USA. The show is primarily character-driven and works on a rather… somewhat simplified and exagerrated mindset? It took me offguard at first, but was fine once I settled into the groove. My favorite part was, as I later found out, an addition for the show (compared to the book, which I haven’t read) → the neighbor being a black woman fighting for civil rights. There’s that one chunk that mixes the psychological/personal aspect of getting involved with the socio-political reality of asymmetrical struggles and I… loved how clever that was… I’ll be honest, in that the show is mostly a sort of drama/character exploration and the political painting part of it is secondary. But I mean, the drama is good, I bawled my eyes out a bunch of times, and it’s visually compelling. The protagonist reads somewhat as a modern woman dropped into the fifties and her relentlessness is actually refreshing. It’s a power fantasy in that sense – watching someone smart, fully confident in her own abilities, and what she’s worth, and owed… It’s nice. Just so that we’re clear – this show is the one I’m least confident pitching, because it’s odd in many ways and questionable in some – but I really enjoyed it and I won’t lie about that. I thought it was very good on the moment hahahaha

So give it a go if it intrigues you!! and come chat with me about the neighborhood subplots.

Cherry Magic (anime version)

About an unremarkable salaryman who starts being able to read others’ thoughts because he’s a 30 y/o virgin – but really, it’s actually about someone finding both love and confidence in himself. This is so, so sweet. Pretty funny, too. For all the silliness of the premise, the more profound core of the story is very nicely-wrought, it’s painted with a delicate touch and subtle hues. There are aspects of it that I think will hit harder if you are not a child anymore. I think I would have enjoyed it when I was sixteen, but probably not as much as I did being a worn-out adult, lol. I binged it while I was insomniac with dread, and it made me laugh like a teenager. It’s sincerely very fucking great and if you enjoy romances at all you’ll love it.

Scavengers’ Reign

About a handful of scattered space castaways on a beautiful, wonderful and terrifying planet. If you enjoy science-fiction for any reason whatsoever, I can only make this a very ardent recommendation. It has it all: the alien planet, the machines, the creatures, the cast of characters; but also the wonder, and the fear, never too far from one another. This show is a real underrated gem and I am very serious. For you, tumblr, my beloved freakopolis, it also has it all. I won’t say it – but it has what you want. […] This show is so beautiful. The planet’s ecosystem feels tangible and coherent and new and it’s beautiful and frightening most of the time. There’s something of the primordial awe of coming into contact with the intriguing unknown. Did I mention that this is an animated show?? It’s very good visually too.

Andor

About the birth of revolution – accross the galaxies, people getting tired of imperial abuse, and in the hero’s heart and mind. What I loved most was how grounded it was. This isn’t the usual star wars with god-elect heroes with a destiny. It’s about the sorry little bitches who look at their increasingly corrupted world and decide to try to do something about it. Or end up in there by accident. SO, so good. For that only I thought it was a banger. But then there’s everything else!! The worldbuilding (that prison!!)! The practical effects! The janky-looking tech everywhere! The gorgeous sets (the senator’s house HELLO <<33)! Heartwrenching details! An essayist! Not joking it changed my brain chemistry and there’s a bit of text I want to write down on paper for myself.

Machine

Mandatory « I’m sorry for all you bitches that don’t speak French » because I doubt it’ll get translated, or even subbed, anytime soon if at all. But god y’all are missing out. Machine is a freakishly fun take on the figure of the white woman being kickass through « kung-fu » (looked like every technique under the sun to me lol), yknow, Kill Bill-like? It’s also a very, very fun series about freaking Karl Marx and class struggle. Not joking, literally some fighting interspersed with karl marx quotes and also cycling. Again with a show that lays it on thick and, at first, it takes me off-guard, but I go with the flow and then it’s fucking fantastic. Suuuch a coup de coeur for me. Can’t think of a translation for it, but it means that it struck a chord and became a favorite of mine. Also made me realize I was less aware of where dreadlocks discourse is currently at than I thought (topic for a research afternoon for when I can catch a fucking break…) (bc the heroine has them). Et je m’en remets pas de l’influenceur gilet jaune lol, quelle pépite. Very mad that no one around me watched it.

Honorary mention: Jujutsu Kaisen s2

Total banger. You don't need me to recommend it to you.

[notasapleasure]

AO3 wrapped 3, 18, 29 😁

Took me a little while but I got there, thanks so much for the ask! (Ao3 unwrapped questions)

Consider this my belated contribution towards Sunday sentences/fic engagement I promised I'd do...

3. What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?

Because this question doesn't specify 'this year' I suppose I can still say part 1 of the Andor saga au, The Saga of the Coal-biter and the Skraeling. It's fpn, Brasso's pov, it's such a niche setting, it's a prequel to everything that happens in S1, it's more Brasso's growing up story than about Cassian, it's ridiculously, ridiculously niche, but it's basically a novel that I actually finished writing and I am so proud of it! I've spent most of this year working on part 2 and I'm desperate to get it finished before s2 comes out...

Link to the saga au on Ao3. Also search the tag #saga au on my blog

18. The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year?

As if I've written any other characters for years lmaooo, but this big struggle this year was writing Cassian and Brasso in the punching fic aka don't need any help to be breakable. It was such a pain to wrestle them into a position where Cassian had annoyed Brasso *just enough* to provoke a punch, but that they would both still be in the mood to fuck afterwards. I wrote and rewrote Cassian's wheedling and whining again and again, and the whole thing was a puzzle of paragraphs for months where I was shifting round each cagey sip of nog and trying to find a thread through that maintained the right balance of tension. I think it worked out ok in the end? I was so relieved to finish it I forgot to include a bit of closing dialogue I'd planned right from the start, but I think it wraps up ok anyway.

Link to punching fic on Ao3. It's affectionately called the punching fic because it's a premise @r0b0tb0y gently handed me like a small endangered mammal of 'what if their cover story happened but 'you fell and I helped you back to your chair' actually meant 'I hit you and we had sex about it''.

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

Is it cheating to say my favourite is one that someone else keeps mentioning? I love that the bit in the punching fic about sleep-paralysis Cassian's clenched fist and Brasso's gentle hold became a shorthand for them and their relationship to @distressednoise and I am therefore hugely proud of it:

A big, warm hand enveloped one of his fists, knuckles sliding over the skin of his torso as they forced their way between Cassian's hand and his body. The touch was careful, like Cassian was so brittle he'd break if bent too far out of position. Another hand cupped his face and Cassian imagined being able to lean into it, to be able to tremble with gratitude at the touch.

But I'm also really pleased with the (incredibly angsty) saga au prequel bits about young Cassian's life in Tollan that @distressednoise and @stripedroseandsketchpads challenged me to write. I was trying to avoid having to get too deep into the details of his past in the saga au because the level of unknowns was so daunting, but in the end it was really helpful to think about the specifics of his earliest traumas - and I do always love thinking about the contrasts between the boy Kassa and the adult Cassian, as well as what features of his personality have remained the same.

Parts 1 and 2 on tumblr.

A later snippet, set around chapter 5 of the saga au, also on tumblr.

Thanks again for the ask!! I didn't post a lot of writing this year compared to some previous years, but I have been writing away pretty consistently still. And I am always up for chatting about my beloved saga au if anyone wants to join me in the mess of my own making (aka how to tell Cassian's story via Brasso's perspective when Brasso wasn't there for huge parts of it).

[topsy-cryptid]

I expected to go into the Acolyte hating the broad strokes but appreciating the minor details, but this show surprised me by reversing that expectation! So, here's my review of the first two episodes.

The Broad Strokes:

The gorgeous visuals. Dare I say it? On par with Andor.

The pacing. Intrigue was set up and maintained! I'm not entirely sold on this show (see: Minor Nitpicks) but I'm still curious enough to see it through to the end.

The characters. Sol is the most likable character so far, with Osha and Jecki as close seconds. I dislike Mae, but that's just because she's a well-written villain.

White and gold color schemes my beloved. So elegant and dignified!

The premise. Most of the other Star Wars shows released this year were building upon previous shows (Bad Batch – Clone Wars :: Ahsoka – Rebels). The Acolyte is the first time the High Republic has been shown on screen, which is a tremendous undertaking. I think they did a fantastic job with the setting.

The fight scenes! Indara's fight with Mae is particularly memorable because it's so cool to see Force-enhanced battling in real life. Like, oh! Now I see what the prequels Jedi meant by "the Force is clouded"! This is what it looks like when they're at their peak!

PowerPoint transitions.

Balancing plot, action, and character moments. This is part of pacing, but it deserves it's own bullet point because this is massively hard to do.

The Minor Nitpicks:

"Our political enemies might use this against us." Tell me you didn't put any effort into political worldbuilding without telling me. What political enemies? I don't expect names, but I would like to have a broad idea of what the stakes are, especially if this is going to be an ongoing issue for the Jedi characters in this series.

Jecki was talking to Osha on the ship and even smiling, then Sol and Yord walked in, and Jecki's smile dropped, like she was doing something she wasn't supposed to. Why?

I've been getting into East Asian cinema, and going from that to The Acolyte makes it extremely obvious that these actors are Westerners. Something about the way they bow, and the way they request permission to speak. The Jedi's respect-based culture is not natural to any of these characters.

Every guy I went to high school with acted like that apothecary owner. I don't understand why Hollywood is obsessed with this character archetype, but honestly, I wouldn't mind never seeing it again.

Does Indara not know anything about tactics? Obviously Mae threw the knife at the bar owner to distract Indara. Really, Indara should have killed Mae when she had the chance, but her guilt and shock understandably stopped her. In that case, she should have changed her position on the battlefield to prioritize protecting the bar owner until Mae gave up and left.

Torbin's death had "video game player character commits suicide when their constitution gets too low" energy. It isn't insensitive to do it this way, it's just not how I would've done it. Suicide is not a foregone conclusion for poor mental health.

I'm sorry, I have to bring up the attachment discourse. The characters in The Acolyte are far too preoccupied with it. The Late Republic (prequel era) Jedi had the same rules against attachment, but they trusted each other to know what they were doing. For example, when Obi-Wan defends his former Padawan (Anakin) against Mace Windu in ROTS, Mace is skeptical but holds his tongue. When Master Sol does the same in The Acolyte, Vernestra immediately accuses him of attachment. Why? Why doesn't she trust Sol (a Jedi Master who has proven himself) to mind his own attachments?

Master Sol is moderately shocked that his former Padawan was accused of murder, and Vernestra goes, "I didn't know you still had feelings for her. :/" Not even the prequel Jedi were this critical. Yes, even Luminara.

Overall, I did like the show, and though my standards are low for it, I am excited for the next episode. I probably won't be reblogging much about it, but so far I appreciate this show as an addition to the Star Wars canon. Well, it's better than Ahsoka and Book of Boba Fett, which is good enough in my book.

[imgoingtocrash]

Hello there! It's your Rebelcaptain Secret Santa :) Hope you had a wonderfull week and that you have something great planned for the weekend. I'm probably around 1/3 into writing your gift, and I was just wondering: is there anything you absolutely DON'T want to see, any tropes that give you the ick, any characters you avoid? Also, on a completely different note: if you were to choose your top 3 favourite rebelcaptain fics, what would those be?

Oh hello!!! It's been a busy work week but that means money sooo we're going with it lol.

As for anything I don't want to see, I don't think there's anything?? I feel like my prompts were pretty vanilla so I can't imagine anything particularly shocking or appalling that you could do that would make me not want to read something. (And I love angst, so anything darker there is always encouraged rather than discouraged lmaooo)

Now asking me for my favorite fics on the other hand...I'm notorious for making detailed fic rec lists. That's dangerous.

For now, I'll do 3 all time favorites of MANY more, and 3 more recent reads (though some of them are older, because I'm back in the tag rn)

Top 3 All Time Favorites:

cassian andor nonsense + assorted nonsense timestamps by theputterer

I love this series. It's Cassian centric at first, and then it's about their relationship in the context of their pasts and I am just!!! Overflowed with love for it all of the time. I binged it when I first read it, and there are some oneshots in the verse that I come back to and re-read when I'm in a mood. (Blood Brothers, where Jyn gets to meet Cassian's Imperial brother, is a weird favorite, but I think I've re-read it like 4 times. I love that sort of 3rd person POV on a ship I just DO.)

only fools rush in by andromeda3116

I re-read this fic almost every holiday season, that's how much I love it. Fake dating trope, holiday vibes, bickering but well-meaning family that learns to come together. It's catnip to me.

Color My Cheeks by Copper_Nails (Her_Madjesty)

Another older but beloved favorite that I've re-read multiple times. One of the first fics I ever read in the fandom, and I think one of the first sex pollen fics I'd ever read. It's not just trope-y sexy fun, but the fact that it goes into the AFTER of a sex pollen event and what that means for them emotionally feels so unique and interesting. Now I'm thinking about re-reading it again. Sigh.

Definitely could give you more all-time favorite recs, but here are some more recent fics I've read:

Lost and Found by mosylu

As of today, just completed, and WOW what a journey! I left rambling, crazy comments on this fic almost every week for good reason. It was sweet, it was angsty, it was just!!!! Amazing. I'm probably going to come back to this one again down the road for sure.

Delivery Week by SleepyKalena

I've read quite a few Film/Production based fanfics over the years, but this one is for us post girlies!!! An edit bay meet-cute, bitching about color correcting/matching--truly this fic has it all and feels tailor-made to me as an editor, even if it's at an animation studio rather than live action.

spy games by skitzofreak

I'm basically reading through all of their star wars fics right now, so highly highly recommend this author as a whole. (The fact that I've apparently left kudos on some of them before and don't remember it at all is...funny.) This one is just a great, cute starter where Cassian and Jyn have an entire silent conversation in front of a bunch of recruits. So good.

Your asks remind me to send asks to MY giftee, so I'm so happy to hear from you each week! Have a wonderful week and good vibes to your writing progress! 💖

[maidenvault]

hey! so I just watched rogue one for the first time (and realised how much I actually love the Star Wars series.. it's a whole thing) and now am about to descend into the sw canon. but I thought I'd ask where the best place to start is? comics, spin offs, books etc! (for context I've watched the prequels, og trilogy but only the first of the newer movies because ugh. and I've watched a bit of the clone wars & loved it.) Any advice you have for me would be greatly appreciated!!

Hi! If you liked what you saw of Clone Wars, I'd definitely start by watching it to the end and continuing with The Bad Batch, which I think is the most consistent in quality of the animated shows and builds on things TCW did in really smart and rewarding ways. Because TCW is so long and honestly has a lot of tedious fluff in it, I've made a watchlist leaving out the skippable episodes for anyone who doesn't want to commit to getting through it all, as you really don't have to.

And if you love Rogue One, you should definitely watch Andor. Not my fave but it's as good as everyone says. Just a staggeringly good cast all around.

When it comes to the books/comics/games, I'm honestly not the best person to ask lol. I dabble in reading EU stuff and a lot of it's great, but I feel pretty strongly that SW loses a lot of its magic when it's not on the screen and the fandom takes all the deep lore a bit too seriously. Back when Timothy Zahn's original Thrawn trilogy was published we weren't supposed to ever be getting more films, so naturally it was a big deal to people that canon was expanding in this way and luckily those books were excellent. But these days the EU seems relatively non-essential, even if many would say it's better overall than it used to be, and some of it's contradicted by the movies/shows anyway. Idk, part of the appeal and identity of the classic canon to me is that everything about the world is kind of different-yet-familiar, using recognizable archetypes and all, it's really pretty simple as a story and not hard to understand. I think fans who get hung up on the supposed importance of world-building details or expanded-universe lore can lose sight of that.

This is a long way of saying it can be intimidating how much Star Wars there is, but you shouldn't be intimidated by it. There's nothing that's essential to read to be into the fandom. A lot of "canon" is little more than glorified fanfic and we can all discard the parts we don't like. Even fans who are more into the EU than I am would probably say there aren't a lot of bad places to start, and it just depends on what kind of Star Wars you want more of. I know the ongoing High Republic series is really beloved and supposed to be very consistently well-written. Lately I've really enjoyed reading Jason Aaron's Star Wars comic (set between ANH and ESB) and Kieron Gillen's Darth Vader which can be read alongside it. If you'd be interested in reading any Legends stuff (stories that are no longer canon as of the Disney era), the Thrawn trilogy is a classic of course, and the New Jedi Order series is a sprawling storyline that even some fans who like the sequel trilogy say is a better OT sequel story than those movies. You can easily google the reading order for any of those to know how to read them. If anyone wants to chime in with other recs in the notes, please do!

[potatoesandsunshine]

hiii anna:) !! for the fic ask game, 1, 18, 23, 27, 35, 38? lots of em but i know what we're about here on potatoesandsunshine dot tumblr dot com LOL

thank you abby!!! you absolutely know what we’re doing on this blog i will always talk about my fic

1. Compliment your writing!

hmmm i think i’m really good at setting! i used to have a really hard time figuring out how much description environments/scenes needed but now i think i usually strike a nice balance of details and ‘the reader can fill this in in their mind’ :) i’m really proud of this actually! 

18. What trope have you not written yet, but want to?

it has taken me so many years to even be comfortable writing a modern au... i wanna do an arranged marriage thing really bad because that’s my fav thing for a fic (‘how can they be pining when they’re married?’ nomnomnom i have eaten it before i will eat it again) and time travel is like the holy grail. someday we will have a long convoluted beau time travel cobalt soul agent au. maybe if i ever actually do my c2 rewatch :P

23. Where do you usually write?

sitting on my bed and it’s the best spot. on rare occasions i write at my desk, but usually it’s like wall->pillow 1 (has arms)->pillow 2 (vertical)->me->lap desk->notebook or computer.

27. Which fic do you think is your most adventurous?

hmmm as of right now i’d say it’s she moves through moonbeams slowly, which is all about ‘well why shouldn’t i hook up with the dragon who might kill me at any moment, she’s hot!’ but i also really went out on a limb with my andor ‘why not improve this failing marriage by adding a third member (toxic) (sexy) (doomed)’ au. luckily that seems to have found my beloved fellow sickos

35. Have you ever written a fic because you were inspired by a title?

yes but not as often as you might think! Fly, Dove! Sing, Sparrow! exists because i heard gimme gimme from thoroughly modern millie and could not get it out of my head until i used it, but that’s the only one i can think of right this moment. i’m definitely a Song Lyric Title person, but it usually happens idea first

38. Pick three of your fics and share a song to go with each

oh you know this question was made for me. i do a lot of little playlists for my fic actually and i tend to share most of them! they can be found here :) i’m gonna try not to use ones i’ve already done on those!

for like flowers and blue skies, my extremely silly elle/vivian d&d au, What Do You Want from Me Tonight? by Sidney Gish: And I'm born too tall to contort my spine into a ball / And I wanna disappear, but I'm not adequately small

for spend your days biting your own neck, the ‘what if beau got mind controlled?’ angst/fun fic, Limp by Fiona Apple: So call me crazy, hold me down / Make me cry, get off now, babyfor oh, lend a mending hand, I Don’t Feel It Anymore by William Fitzsimmons: No map can direct / How to ever make it home / We're alone, we're alone, we're alone

[lummox-exe]

hello just wanted to share the translation for this because I'm a fucking nerd an aurebesh/political theory enthusiast and I'm so fucking excited about this manifesto "Control is so desperate because it's so unnatural, tyranny r[equires]..."

pretty sure that's correct even though some of the letters are blurred. this first glimpse has me fuckin hyped to see more of it

[thegirlwholied]

retcons. they're a writing tool. they're not fundamentally a bad tool. though I greet them more often with an "ugh, retcon" than a "nice, retcon"-

and that's often because they're overwrites. sometimes carelessly so, the 'didn't pay enough attention to what came before'/'guess I changed it' route. And sometimes retcons are the 'that's not the story I want to tell now or I can do better than that' route.

Andor is doing the second type of retcon, and interestingly so, because there wasn't a whole lot there to retcon *and yet* they are managing to do that.

When Rogue One came out, Disney dropped a bunch of expanded universe material. The NEW expanded universe, because they'd already ditched the old one, to avoid conflicts; this new one could be consistent (ha, ha, ha).

In those 2016 detail books we got the facts on Cassian Andor's backstory: from the planet Fest (clearly carefully chosen for its old EU history), father killed during a protest against militarization on Imperial Academy planet Carida (another world with EU history), involved with a Separatist cell from age 6 on...

Anddd anyone who'd read those extended materials knew Andor the show was ditching that backstory within seconds of him dropping the name 'Kenari' in context that was immediately clear it was his home planet. I appreciated at least getting a nod to the backstory we had since 2016 with dropping that his 'cover story' planet was Fest. They definitely were aware and chose not to go that route. And that's OK! they have a story they want to tell, they're digging into some interesting themes and meanings and...

Well. Either way it's a retcon. A minor one that 97% of the audience will never notice or care about. And yes they're still keeping to the spirit of that key line in Rogue One-

"I've been in this fight since I was six years old"

- clearly the mining disaster on Kenari presumably happened when Cassian was six years old. So his childhood was ruined by the Empire then and he's been resisting them ever since, it's not that it renders it untrue it's just-

it's just that he's pulling a moral high ground with that line over Jyn whose life was also ruined by the Empire at eight years old and was raised as a child soldier by Saw Gerrera, a character whose very name is designed to evoke guerilla warfare...?

I mean a Cassian who's already been in prison and is scrapping by and sticking it to the Imperials all he can, drawing those character parallels between them even closer then are we, but the whole crux of that (excellently written & filmed I'm still not over it) argument hinges on Cassian's relationship with/committment to the Rebellion above all else. The show's retcon has just... shortened that relationship. By quite quite a bit.

And there is now some unintentional irony, from this retcon, if Jyn was actually (via Saw's cell) part of the Rebellion longer than Cassian.

...it's fine, it's fine, tbh watch them retcon Jyn's backstory soon enough, it's a very minor retcon and maybe future episodes will reveal Cassian has been doing more actual rebelling than it seems and... nonetheless. Ugh retcon.

[sil-te-plait-tue-moi]

Hey! I love your Ethan Hunt fic so much (as well as some for other fandoms you’ve posted). Do you have any fanfic recommendations you could send our way? 😊😌

hellloooo :))) first of all, thank you for reading my fics and also thank you for asking me about my opinions because god knows i love to ramble about em 😩😩

so here’s a few TOP TIER fics that i have sobbed and laughed and been gagged at:

𖡼.𖤣𖥧𖡼.𖤣𖥧

impossible to ignore by restless5oul (AO3)

it’s a derry girls fic (so sad the show’s over aha 😀🫶); james x orla which may seem like a weird pairing but i LOVE HERE; friends to lovers type of thing; basically, it’s a theory of what would’ve happened if james actually had left Derry but then reconnected with his past a couple years later :))

on sleepless roads the sleepless go by waveridden (AO3)

lindsey farris my beloved 🥲 she deserved so much better omg; this is a fic between mentor ethan who can see ghosts sometimes, and mentee lindsey who is a ghost; heartbreaking; gives a lot of insight and depth into her as a character; sometimes i go back and read it just because i never see any lindsey content 🫶

attitude adjustment by @purelyfiction

SMUTTT; outstanding, toe-curling, perfection, what can i say about this; a mere 1K words to literally make you scream into the back of your hand because wow; pete “maverick” mitchell is hot as a young guy but WOW my older guy thing really kicked up with top gun: maverick; this is the fic for older mav x reader.

the sun on both sides by @no-droids

SMUTTT; literally love no-droids so much i could scream; cassian andor x reader fic (yes, at one point, i was in the Star Wars fandom); friends to literally just fucking; it is a sex pollen fic soooooo dubious consent; very nice, very well-paced lmao

why can’t we be ourselves like we were yesterday? by TincturedPoe (FluxPoe) (AO3)

great study on william “bill” cage from edge of tomorrow: live die repeat (LOVE THAT FILM); depressing but so interesting; really well written and thought out; contains a relationship between cage and reader across several “jumps”; read all the tags before reading lol 🌈🫶😀

something unpredictable by Muccamukk (AO3)

supreme wlw top gun fic with phoenix x halo; absolutely great character development; perfect amount of realism in a relationship; we need to talk about halo more, i love her so much!!!!

𖡼.𖤣𖥧𖡼.𖤣𖥧

OKAY, well that’s that from me so far :) sorry that it’s pretty limited, but there are so many cool stories out there that i haven’t read yet, so PLEASE comment any of your own fic recommendations (title, pairing, creator, those kinda details)!!! I’d love to read them :D))

AND THANK YOU ANON FOR THIS ASK, I LITERALLY LOVED DOING THIS 🫶🫶💕💕😚🌈🫶

have a great day my loves, and please take care of yourselves!! :))

[old-archivist]

Antiva Köppen Climate Map and the Nerd Deep Dive to Go With it

Hello, I'm back and I have a nerd deep dive for you. This time featuring our ever so mysterious and romantic Antiva. Homeland of our beloved Zevran and Josephine. The coffee and trade capital of Thedas, and the site of demise of the fourth Archdemon Andoral. (I'm going to bring this up later. It's a rather big thing, to me at least.)

[Image Id: A multicoloured climate map of the fictional country Antiva from Dragon Age. Right side has the colour key for the climate zones of the map.]

This is going to be a really long post so everything is going under the cut. Topics being covered are:

Climate Zones

Trade

Flora

Fauna

Climate Zones

First thing you may notice is that this map is a little different from my original projects. Well, that is because I overlooked a rather significant detail:

The Fourth Blight ended in Antiva’s bean belt/tropical zone.

So what I originally projected to be tropical savanna and tropical monsoons, even a bit of rain forest, looked like this.

[Image ID: A multicoloured map, the top portion being largely green to denote a tropical climate area. Half way down turns orange denoting a change to a more arid and desert climate.]

I was expecting a more widespread coverage given the location of the area and all the potential precipitation levels. This was also back before most of my in depth research pertaining to the popular exports of Antiva, such as coffee.

But all of what I had planned, while plausible for the area, was likely wiped out during the Fourth Blight. The official maps I was referencing as a base line, to keep this as close to canon as I could, actually make it a fair bit difficult to realize this at first glance.

[Image Id: The Bioware Official map showing Antiva and the colours of the landscape.]

I thought it was a greyish-green type landscape. Mountainous perhaps but overall the appropriate climate zone. That is until I colour picked it and realized it was the same grey colour as the Sea of Ash on the other-side of the Gamordan Peaks southwest of Orlais.

In case you aren’t familiar with it, a Blight isn’t just devastating because of the Blight itself or even the darkspawn. When a Blight hits it impacts an area’s rainfall. Despite the arrival of an Archdemon on the surface heralding unnatural dark clouds, the clouds are simply to provide shelter from the darkspawn who fear the sun.

These black storm clouds offer next to no rain, and as time wears on, the surface water in the area evaporates. So rivers run dry, the land going through a desertification process from the sudden and prolonged drought that begins killing off plant life. The deteriorating climate leads to other effects as the Blight takes hold of the weakened plant and wildlife; mutating what has managed to survive.

This leads to many unnatural deserts and arid climates in Thedas, especially in areas heavily impacted by Blights. As we see with the Western Approach in Orlais, the Silent Plains between Nevarra and Tevinter, and the entirety of the Anderfels. And from these areas we can tell just how long it takes for areas to recover if at all.

So, given the area from Rivain to the Drylands shares that greyish colour, I thought it was best to regulate it as a hot steppe area. To clarify, steppes are dry, grassy plains which usually lie between tropics and polar regions. They have distinct seasonal temperature changes, cold winters and warm summers. Steppes are characterized as being semi-arid, which means they receive 10-20 inches (25-50cm) of rain in a year. Which means they have enough to support short grasses but not really enough for trees or tall grasses to grow.

This makes them mostly border climates in terms of transitioning from say tropics to deserts or mediterranean to temperate. It’s why you’ll see most of Antiva is covered in them. Because they have multiple climates that would need these transitioning zones, as well as they are a reasonable step in the potential climate recovery of Antiva after a Blight.

Now I was tempted to leave the savanna there, because traditionally they are closer to the equator and do differ from steppes in that they have hot, wet summers and only marginally cooler, but much drier winters. They also generally run warmer than steppes. I didn’t think that there was initially much reason to completely get rid of the savanna in place of steppes, given that there would be in areas that receive a lot of off-shore precipitation. But given that most of the coastal areas became mediterranean and that there was likely a lot of loss of long time water reservoirs such as lakes, rivers, and the like from the desertification of the Blight. It felt more reasonable that without the added precipitation from the large amounts of tropical rain forests and the retreat of the monsoon zones, that would dampen the recovery - even though it would be more accelerated compared to its inland counterparts. Those areas would become steppes. Because we can see such areas in Africa where the loss of rainforests and general deforestation impacts the surrounding areas.

So, what was a tropical savanna is now a hot steppe, what does that mean in the big picture? Well, for one it impacts the local flora and fauna - which I will go into more detail later; and also impacts what Antiva has to trade. A topic that will be in the following section as well. Aside from those, it impacts some of the surrounding climates.

While the Rialto Bay has its own off-shore winds bringing precipitation, it likely isn’t a lot given that I speculate that it has a cold current running through the bay. Generally speaking you will typically see mediterranean climates along cold currents and tropical regions with warm coastal currents. This is because it is more common that there will be less precipitation being blown in from the ocean. Cooler waters don’t evaporate as quickly so there is less moisture in the air. That would make most of the precipitation in the area coming from the northern shore from the Venefication Sea. Precipitation that would be lost as it goes over the tropical region on the coast, and presumably the small mountain range that surrounds the White Spire mountain. (Because mountains aren’t land features that naturally stand alone.) So if it has to cross the White Spire Mountain range, it would then leave all the steppes on the other side in what is called a rain shadow.

A rain shadow is often on the other side of a mountain, and is the side that typically sees less rain as the clouds need to release their moisture to climb higher in elevation. Now before the Blight this would still have been the case, but less so as there was likely run off water from the peaks that helped elevate the moisture to keep the area more tropical. But since the Blight, the loss of plant life, change in soil quality, and prolonged drought, it likely reached a point that there isn’t enough to revitalize the Blighted lands or alleviate the desertification. And thus the area turned more into steppes flanking the pockets of deserts and the Mediterranean coast.

I want to take this point to remind you that I am simply an amateur with an art degree who just really finds all this interesting, so I might be falling short in some areas and I highly encourage you to look into this stuff yourself. I also encourage you to have a dialogue with me about this if you think I missed something or should revise something.

That said, I also want to reiterate that desertification isn’t just a matter of sudden decrease in rainfall. I mentioned before but I want to say it more directly, that it also pairs with the degradation of the soil. With less nutrients in the soil, the area can’t support as complex or nutrient demanding plant life - such as trees and tall grasses. This means that there is less plant matter to hold it together, which leads to less water retention in the area for when it does rain, and that leads to an increase of soil erosion.

Soil erosion means things like mudslides, landslides, and massive movements of soil on areas of inclines; such as cliffs, areas leading into valleys, and on steep river beds. This also could lead to the change of rivers, the disruption of lake beds, and then an even further spread of the desertification.

So, what is the difference between hot and cold steppes? Not much really is the simple answer. A difference in average temperatures and sometimes altitude. The difference in average temperatures impact not only local plant life, but also the type of crops that could be grown there by farmers. If you want to see some real life locations of steppes for a better idea of what the areas look like or even a better understanding of all this climate talk I recommend visiting the Köppen Climate Classification Wiki.

Another caveat that should be mentioned in all of this, is that I cannot be sure of the overall landscape in terms of hills, valleys, and the like which have their own impact on the environment. While I have made some speculation based on the multiple maps Bioware has released as well as excerpts from Tevinter Nights and other Dragon Age additional media. They are just that, speculation. Which, for these maps I wanted to keep as reasonably low as I could because DA4 is lurking in the woods and could dramatically change a lot of this. If it does, I will of course be updating things because not only would that make all of this so much better but if you haven’t noticed, I like working on these maps.

Trade: Import and Exports

So, the Fourth Blight. Big, cataclysmic event, fourth of its kind, involved most nations in Thedas, went on for 12 years, and resulted in the extinction of Griffons and decimation of lands all across Thedas but most noticeably the Anderfels.

How does this relate to Antiva aside from the changes to the land I mentioned before. Well for starters, the Fourth Blight began in Antiva and was essentially the central point for the better part of those 12 years. There was a lot of destruction not only to the land but the country itself. It saw the end of the Antivan royal family at the time, the capital fell, and it decimated the infrastructure of the nation.

Yet when it was all said and done, Antiva turned its focus to rebuilding. Those efforts were more specifically focused on rebuilding the capital, Antiva City, as well as getting their sea trade industry back up. It is a coastal country and one that relies heavily on its sea trade to prosper. With a bulk of their towns and cities lining the coast, likely ports that make up part of their large trade routes, only two towns are shown inland. Further illustrating that Antiva is meant to be a nation of sea trade.

Which makes sense, given that it seems to be inspired by both Spain and Italy. Dragon Age media has depicted this in areas such as language, food, and some aspects of culture. These influences play heavily into what we know of Antiva. Both in the characters that originate from there and the snippets of lore.

This coastal country is known for their craftsmanship, wealth, and the Antivan Crows. Their primary exports being wines, coffee, spices, leather works, and jewels - rubies, diamonds, and pearls in the Rialto Bay. All these things are fairly easy to transport by sea, most hardy for long journeys and not easily spoiled. Key to trade that cannot be easily expedited. Leaving Antiva not lacking in stable exports.

But, I want to circle back to the climate for a moment and dip into a little bit of plant talk. Remember how I was expecting a much larger tropical zone in Antiva? That was due to one of their largest exports being coffee. To be so widely known for it, it would require they were able to get a steady and substantial supply of it. Even if it was exclusive to nobility, merchants, and the rich of other nations. Even as a limited supply good. It couldn’t be so limited that it was too rare to be heard of or shared by the few who could get their hands on it.

Initially, I thought Antiva lacked enough land space. Given that, Antiva is severely lacking in tropical climates save for the northern coast past the White Spire mountain. As you can see in the map below, it is roughly 450 mi2 (724.2 km2) of tropical land. I was under the impression that it was too little to produce enough coffee for them to be known for it as an export. It should be noted that the Arlathan Forest, likely rich in resources (and coffee trees), is widely avoided by all due to rumour of it being haunted, and isn't part of Antiva but Tevinter. It is simply included in the map due to its location and it being such a large area near Antiva that I felt it would be included in their map.

[Image Id: Multicoloured climate map of the fictional country Antiva from Dragon Age with a grid overlayed. The right side has the colour key for the climate zones as well as the scaling for the grid: 1 square equals 15 miles (1 Day travel)]

In regards to this map, it should also be noted that the scaling I used is derived from the fact that Ferelden has been stated to be about the size of England, roughly 50,301 mi2 (Roughly 130,279 km2). Which consequently would make all of Thedas less than 1/4 the size of all of Europe. (It’s 0.1791 the size of Europe, just saying.)

But back to coffee. My initial thoughts for its viability as an export were wrong. For, in traditional coffee farming, you can plant 450 coffee trees in one acre, and there are 640 acres in one square mile (247 acres in one square kilometer). So 450 trees times 640 acres is 288,000 trees. Multiply that by 450 and well, you’re looking at roughly 129.6 million trees. With each tree producing roughly one pound of roast in a yield and one pound of roast can yield 48 cups of coffee… Antiva can in theory produce up to 6.22 billion cups of coffee in a year.

Needless to say, Antiva can likely produce more than enough coffee. But! For a little fun speculation, and the fact that Antiva likely doesn’t grow just coffee in that 450 mi2 (724.2 km2), then how would they meet the quota of what they would need to export coffee. Well, I looked around the real world to see if I could find a plausible explanation, and I found one in Arabic coffee.

From what I found, it is suspected that the coffee plant in the Arabian peninsula, originally came from Ethiopia - as the earliest mention of it is from a legend of an Ethiopian goat herder. From there, some historians believe it was introduced to the Arabian peninsula in 675 AD, and it is certain that it existed in Yemen monasteries in the 15th century.

So, given that Antiva’s closest neighbour is Rivain, a nation with significantly more tropical land that could facilitate a steady means of production of coffee trees. I think Antivan coffee could likely be an import to Antiva if they could not produce enough coffee for themselves and to export it. So, once the coffee beans are in Antiva, the beans are roasted and prepared in a unique way - much like Arabic coffee beans, before then being exported.

In the map below, you can see that I have a part of Thedas shaded darker, I have included the Antiva climate zone map on top as reference. The shaded area of the map is all of Thedas that would potentially fall in the world's “Bean Belt”. Meaning areas that would plausibly be able to support coffee trees given they are a tropical environment.

[Image Id: A map of the continent of Thedas from Dragon Age franchise with the coloured climate zones of Antiva filled in. A top section of the map shaded darker than the rest.]

So as you can see, Rivain isn’t the only country that Antiva could get coffee from. However, I imagine it would probably be the easiest and cheapest in terms of cost, time, and shortest distance. Also likely the most reliable as from what I can tell Tevinter likely doesn’t have enough tropical spaces to support them, Seherron is a battlefield, Par Vollen doesn’t trade with anybody, and the Anderfels is one of the worst hit countries by the Blights. The Donnarks to the north of the Anderfels might be a suitable place, as Thedas gets their chocolate from there. However, I feel it would be far too expensive of an import to justify exporting it out.

Flora

So I know I just talked about coffee, and while we did dip into the whole where it grows aspect, it was primarily for whether or not it was a reliable export and if it wasn’t how to make it so. This section is more of a “Let's talk about what grows in Antiva. What we know and what we can guess.”

So as far as what is officially stated to be available in Antiva, we have:

• Coffee

• Cord-seed (Unsure of what this is exactly aside from a spice)

• Corn

• Grapes

• Olives

• Oranges

• Passion Fruit

• Pepper (Thedosian equivalent of cayenne)

All of these have been mentioned at one point or another as being found in, come from, or are grown in Antiva. All of which make sense with the mixture of tropical and Mediterranean climates that it has. As well as the sub-tropical/humid climates. The steppes would also be understandable given the potential variety of corn they could grow among other crops like olives.

So given the array of crops that we know, here are some of the following crops, also mentioned to exist in Thedas but not specific to Antiva, that might be found or grown in the country. All of these were based not on what is possible in a modern sense but in various time periods such as medieval and pre-industrial eras.

Almonds, apple, apricots, barley, beans, clover, cocoa, cucumber, date, fig, garlic, lavender, onion, oregano, palms, parsley, pear, pomegranate, rice, rosemary, sage, sugarcane, sunflower, tea plant, tomato, turnip, walnut, wheat

These plants fall either in the Mediterranean, subtropical, temperate, or tropical climates. Some even have multiple which would lend to their variety and availability throughout all of Antiva. Most of these plants are also easily cultivated in terms of technology that we know Thedas has and by extension, what Antiva has access to. Easy, reliable crops that would provide staples and most can handle a variety in soil quality as well if they were to be used as ground cover or as a crop to help restore the soil.

Along with their ease of production and availability, most of these crops would have multiple uses. From culinary to medicinal, as well as being hardy for long exports if fermented, jarred, dried, or processed in some minor way.

Antiva truly benefits from their variety in climate zones as well as the access to potentially large swaths of farm-able land in milder climate pockets. Something that occurs more towards the south and would likely be less affected than the northern regions when it comes to the effects of the Fourth Blight. Though only marginally so, which is why I don’t think all of the tropical land that Antiva has access to is dedicated solely to coffee trees. Because not only would monoculture farming like that be unheard of in the eras we are referencing, but also it would be a poor use of land for a largely trade based economy.

I say it would be a poor use of land because they wouldn’t want to flood the market and knock their own prices down. But also it would be a severe risk in a business sense. One of the negatives of monoculture is not only the increased risk of disease as all the plants are similar, close together, and are all weak to the same pests and diseases. But also because if they were to have a bad year it would have such a severe negative impact that they wouldn’t have anything to supplement it.

Monoculture farming is a modern concept, because in the era of technology that Thedas is in, they don’t have the tools to combat it. Even in our modern world we don’t have the tools to do so, we simply slow it down. But that is a separate conversation.

When it comes to agriculture in Antiva, and by extension most of Thedas. They likely rotate their crops and practice companion planting. Intermingling crops that will help restore the soil of nutrients that another crop took. Such as planting beans or any legume after or with a demanding crop like corn. Not only do the beans replace the nitrogen in the soil, but the corn can be used as a trellis for beans and peas that climb. Therefore maximizing the production of the land and producing two healthy crops.

Another reason they would practice companion planting is that some plants can fend off the pests or disease of another crop, or utilize space that would otherwise go unused. If you plant something like corn with beets or radishes in between the rows, you can maximize the production of the land.. Beets or carrots grow deeper than corn roots go. They also mature faster than corn so by the time they’re ready to harvest the corn is reaching a height that would otherwise shade out shorter crops.

Now most of these crops are Eurocentric, which is fine, however I believe you can reasonably add more variety given that Antiva is in a sweet spot of being close to the equator but also inching out of the tropic zone in the southern half. Allowing for a much wider variety than we might see.

Some crops I personally throw into Antiva that I think would be reasonable and fun are:

Alfalfa, aloe vera, amaranth, anise, bamboo, broad bean, cactus pear, carob, chickpea, durum, eggplant, emmer, hazelnuts, lentil, liquorice, loquat, mandarin, medlar, millet, persimmon, pistachio, quince, radish, sorghum, spelt, tuna (aka prickly pear), vetch, and water chestnut.

This is to name a few, as I’m still exploring the flora of other countries such as China, India, Thailand, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh.

There are numerous varieties of eggplant for example, that differ from country and climate zone. Same with radishes and legumes in general. Antiva, Rivain, and Tevinter are countries that I feel are so rich in diverse climates and in unique locations. As we can see with the existence of things such as figs, dates, passion fruit, and other flora.

Fauna

The fauna of Antiva isn’t largely known to us. We have mentioned that this is where lions originate from, that their crest is a golden drake which implies there were a great many dragons here at one point. There is mention of birds like the kingfisher, or sea gulls, which we know how varied and colourful that species of bird is.

We can also make fair assumptions in terms of what is common throughout the rest of Thedas, such as nugs, fennecs (which are seemingly modeled after fennec foxes which are native to northern Africa.). It is also reasonable to imagine things like:

Badgers, bats, boar, cobra, deer, duck, eagles, goats, hare, hyenas, the various manner of large spiders, giants, jackals, rams, deepstalkers, wolves, wyverns, bears, brontos, lurkers, adders, quillbacks, pheonix, raytooth, scorpion, vultures, and universal rodents such as rats.

Most of the fauna that has been shared in Dragon Age, has been depicted as specific to the underground, certain regions of southern Thedas, or exist in climates that simply don’t exist in Antiva. Something I hope will change in the future.

As far as speculative creatures would go, I have a few that are on my personal docket:

Beavers, gazelle, magpies, a variety of ox, pheasant, pilot whales, quail, leopards, cheetahs, addax, camels, oryx, buffalo, ostrich, lynx, foxes, african penguins, springbok, gemsbok, pallas's cat, caracal, przewalski’s horse, argali, dhole, pangolin, and bearded vultures.

I’m hoping to explore these animals to create some uniquely Thedosian ones in the future as they aren’t as easily plug and play for Antiva as some other animals are in say Ferelden or Orlais. Still, I think there is variety to be had here and would love to see it as filled as uniquely as other areas of Thedas.

Additional Maps:

[Image ID: Canon compliant map of Antiva, with a grid overlayed. Depicts trails and cities.]

You'll notice this is on a different scale than the one I shared above. This scaling is derived from the timeline that Varric gives on how long it takes Hawke to get to Kirkwall. It does make Thedas a smidge bigger but not much haha.

[Image ID: Non-canon map of Antiva, with a grid overlayed. Depicts trails, paths, and additional towns, cities, and circles.]

So!

That's the end! I want thank you for reading through all this and would like to thank all the people who helped me with this. As soundboards, math checkers, proof readers, and simply encouraging me to do this. I hope to continue making more such projects.

A big thanks to @indymillerart for helping me name towns on my meta map. Taught me quite a bit in the process as well! To @justabrowncoatedwench for helping me sort through the math of scaling both versions that I used. The 15 mile increments as well as the 38 mile increment. There was a lot of math and double checking. I'm infinitely grateful for.

And a big thanks to @ripflemeth for tagging along on the journey of making this. For proofreading and double checking things as I went.

Another side note: If you want to help out a lore nerd, if you have any information on the interactive map from the dragon age website back in 2014, such as location details in the Free Marches and north of that. Even Orlais really, please send it my way. I ask for my mapping project and my general nerdness. You can also see this post to figure out what I’m talking about.

Want to support the maps? Buy me a ko-fi Want to have high rez versions of the map for your own purposes? Visit my shop! Questions, requests, concerns about the next blight and its impact on the natural world? Me too. Send an ask!

[incorrectpizza]

Why 2022 will be a make it or break it year for Star Wars

Ok, so I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, especially with the Kenobi trailer finally dropping. I’m convinced that 2022 will be the year that either saves Star Wars for me or which pushes me to apathy, if not distaste, of the franchise.

While this is, of course, my personal opinion, I believe that this will be the same for many other Star Wars fans. So, hear me out. I’m going to be analyzing each of the major projects in 2022 and detailing why I think their success is so vital to the franchise. 

Putting the actual post under the cut because it got a little out of hand. 

Reblog & put your own predictions in the tags - I would love to read them!

THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT

I want to touch on TBOBF briefly because it was predominantly a 2022 release. I don’t think this show helped Star Wars as much as it could’ve. It proved to be yet another divisive piece of media; I’d say it got much more love, than, say, The Last Jedi or The Rise of Skywalker, but it also didn’t get the level of praise The Mandalorian did. And it stole some key moments that could’ve made the season premiere of that show a real banger.

OBI-WAN KENOBI

This show is arguably the most anticipated piece of Star Wars content since The Force Awakens. People have been begging for Ewan McGregor’s return to Star Wars ever since Disney bought the franchise. This show is likely to draw an outsized audience of “normies” as opposed to the other Star Wars content that’s coming out this year.

This show has an outsized level of hype and is playing with a LOT of beloved legacy characters (even more than the sequel trilogy?!) Already we have confirmed Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, Owen, Beru, and a young Luke Skywalker (albeit from a distance). There are a few others who are heavily rumored but not outright confirmed which I’ll refrain from listing here.

Obi-Wan and Darth Vader having another confrontation will almost certainly be epic, but if done sloppily it could really break lore. Same with Obi-Wan possibly interacting with Luke. 

On top of this, they are also dealing with some popular characters from outside the movies. The Inquisitors’ presence - emphasized so heavily in the very first teaser - could confuse or delight fans.

If they screw this show up, it could have a profound impact on the way people view both the Original Trilogy and the Prequel Trilogy (albeit to a lesser extent). 

To put things succinctly: Obi-Wan Kenobi is an extremely anticipated show which will likely change the way all of Star Wars is seen - for the better or worse.

ANDOR

This show isn’t as big a deal as Obi-Wan Kenobi, but it holds a unique place as the series that could most surprise Star Wars fans. In my humble opinion, Andor could be a shocking success that brings together fans of the prequels, animated shows, originals, books, comics and, of course, Rogue One. 

This slice of the timeline is full of possibilities: pretty much any character from the Prequels, Originals, or the time in between could show up. 

Perhaps the biggest question is “Will we get to see Jedi?” There haven’t been many concrete rumors about Andor, which means they could totally surprise us with some mind-blowing connections. Could Ewan McGregor have filmed an extra scene or two while he was working on Kenobi? Or maybe a younger Ahsoka Tano will show up here as Fulcrum? Kanan Jarrus hasn’t revealed his identity, but it’s entirely plausible he and/or Hera Syndulla could show up in their roles as young rebellion heroes. 

It’s not just Jedi that could show up, though. The show will deal with both the Rebellion and the underworld, opening up a world of possibilities. There’s the possibility of a clone trooper or two cameoing, or even young Boba Fett; Temeura Morrison is still very well connected with Star Wars. Maybe young Fennec Shand could make an appearance as well? We know she’s already bounty hunting by this time. A persistent fan hope is Star Wars Rebels’ Alexsandr Kallus, who would still be an Imperial agent at this time. 

Add in the odd, persistent rumors of George Lucas’s involvement, and you get a recipe for something special. 

Will Andor be a magical Neapolitan pizza with fresh tomatoes and mozzarella or a sad stale piece of cardboard covered in a dry, just-barely-tomato-esque paste and cheese that looks like it was chewed by a dog?

THE BAD BATCH

So, here’s the thing about The Bad Batch Season Two:

We know absolutely nothing about it.

Aside from the fact that it’s coming, there have been zero announcements, and few leaks or rumors, since the initial announcement of the renewal last year. The latest development? Bob Chapek actually left the show out of the list of the remaining content for 2022 during Investor Day yesterday, and Star Wars Insider changed the sidebar from “Coming Spring 2022″ to “Coming Soon”. 

Are there production woes? Could it be cancelled? Or do they just not have an easy spot to slide it into their lineup of content? We know courtesy of Michelle Ang that the show was recording lines months ago. 

This show is big for a few reasons. It’s not the most beloved Star Wars animated series by far, but it had a sizeable fandom. It’s also the only animated Star Wars on the horizon in the near future. 

Some of Star Wars’ best content has been animated. The Clone Wars and Rebels are both very well-loved. Visions had a fun breakout moment, and Resistance is severely underrated.

I worry that, if The Bad Batch doesn’t get a great second season - and a renewal for a third, if it’s been sketched out - it could be very bad news for Lucasfilm Animation and its fans. I’m thoroughly convinced that Resistance got cut short. If The Bad Batch doesn’t perform up to snuff, I’m afraid they might decide that animation isn’t worth it anymore.  With the Rebels sequel storyline moving to live action, there isn’t a very clear direction for Star Wars animation to go after The Bad Batch, and I’m afraid it could become scarce. 

LEGO STAR WARS: THE SKYWALKER SAGA

This game has been coming out for so kriffing long that Lego Star Wars fans could be extremely salty if it isn’t everything they’d hoped and dreamed. (I’m not a huge Lego fan, so this is pure speculation, but I can’t say I’d blame them.)

JEDI FALLEN ORDER 2

This is a long shot but if the Jedi Fallen Order sequel gets a killer trailer and/or a release in 2022, it could provide a lifeline to some Star Wars fans who are struggling to enjoy the other content. (I know it’s one of my most anticipated Star Wars projects).

BOOKS & COMICS

I felt weird leaving these out entirely, because they do exist, but there isn’t anything huge going on. Other than The High Republic, which I’m pretty sure everyone has either gone all-in one or abandoned by this point, we have just a handful of books that look to either enhance or cast a dark shadow over a few beloved characters. But these aren’t likely to make a huge splash, so I don’t see them making a big difference to the fandom writ large.

THE MANDALORIAN SEASON 3

I tacked this on at the last moment to remind people that we should’ve gotten a third season of The Mandalorian in 2022. If it weren’t for Disney’s firing of Gina Carano and subsequent rewrites, it likely would have premiered as scheduled in 2022. It could’ve been a fantastic banger of an ending to a year of epic Star Wars (if everything above went well and on schedule). But as things stand, it’s looking like The Mandalorian will come out in 2023 at the earliest.

[voidandradiance]

hello! from the fic writer thingy; 1, 8, 9, 17, 25, 36, 37, 41 and 42 !!!

1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)

oh boy uh. for dsmp, by far, can i sleep in your house tonight or like i've never been are my strongest works. best foot forward, and all that.

for mianite, though... i love the karma series but it's a Lot, so maybe vintage misery or stars burn out. peak identity theft for both of them, tbh, but they're Good.

8. What song would make a great fic (to either write or read)?

i've done most of the Splash Potion of Brainrot ones, but left on the list are:

the plagues from prince of egypt, 100 bad days by ajr, home to me by devil and the deep blue sea, thus always to tyrants by the oh hellos, dirty by grandson :)

9. How do you find new fic to read?

i subscribe to vav on ao3. and also scroll the wilbur soot character tag with dozens of excluded tags. and also read my friends' stuff.

17. What highly specific AU do you want to read or write even though you might be the only person to appreciate it?

my batshit insane tubbo- and andor-centric vigilianitee au, my fucking beloved. put those boys in situations. someone becomes a magical girl and i'm not telling you who.

25. What other websites or resources do you use most often when you write?

i have the mental illness transcription doc, which is roughly 80 pages of transcribed mianite dialogue written out in script format, and i reference that pretty often. i've also got a folder of about 725 screenshots of mianite references, so. yknow.

36. Do you visualize what you read/write?

....sometimes? i guess? i'm really fuckin bad at it when i do, but i end up sketching out reference maps or using screenshots bc my spacial awareness is a little bit Really Bad

37. Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

all of my mianite fics.

nahhh as far as dsmp fics go, i have to say just give me a happy middle is one that i loved and most people didn't. it was just posted at a weird time, i think? idk. food as a metaphor for love.

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

THIS ONE. THIS ONE RIGHT HERE. it was the first one of vav's ao3 fics that i read, and i lost my fucking mind. the imagery. the detail. the pacing. the quilt. OUGH i wish i could fuckin Do That with words. i dont care if yall warch mianite or not i am telling you to read the fic

42. Have you ever received a comment that particularly stood out to you for whatever reason?

the tipping point for me becoming a wilbur main was zanna zannolin's comment on save the world. so. yes. anyone who leaves long detailed comments analyzing symbolism or easter eggs or characterization, i would already die for you, but that comment specifically is one of the things that got me to start writing wilbur-centric stuff as a whole. thanks king.

[notasapleasure]

Sneak peek: Brassian (Andor) saga AU

Soooo. I thought I'd post the first three chapters here and let everyone just have a say, if they want? I will answer questions on whatever you like, no really, you want an essay, I can give you an essay.

I think probably the key thing is like...in this setting the essential community aspect of Ferrix can't be the Icelandic community as a whole, because to make it a story just about the Norwegian 'empire' coming in would mean either making it the usual 'noble viking pagan vs. xian creep missionaries' story (YAWN) or setting it later, like, several centuries later, which takes it away from the genre I'm playing with most, which can still include monsters and zombies and far-flung adventures at foreign courts. So Brasso and Cassian are outsiders in the Icelandic farming community, as are all the people you'd associate with them in terms of the good guys on Ferrix - Salman and his family (smiths), Bix and her family (wise-women), Maarva and Clem (well. you'll see.). The Ferrix community is the group of weirdos who don't quite fit in. &lt;3

In terms of the kinds of weirdos they are, well, I'm building a lot of it on specific examples from the sagas and tweaking details here and there. Ask me about any of it that piques your curiosity, please!

Thanks to @notfromcold for tagging me in the last sentence meme. This is somewhat more than a last sentence, but hey!

Also - it's first person, because Brasso decided it was going to be first person. And probably needs CW for period/setting typical bigotry and abusive parenting at the least - the trope of the coal-biter (a lazy son who disappoints his good viking parents before growing into a hero in his teens) is a common saga trope, but I've combined it with the 'son of the slave woman' trope (in a way that isn't 'wow I'm secretly a prince'), so Brasso's family isn't the nicest. It's emerged from various collective fanons I think, around his dad maybe/probably being a jerk and him having approximately a million sisters. Also from the saga stuff you can ask about if you want.

The Saga of the Coal-biter and the Skraeling

1. Coal-Biter

I was born the year they discovered Vinland the Good. My father was pleased - at long last he had a son to take his name. He had such high hopes for trade with the new land, and for me. His wife would have liked me more if I'd been hers, but she agreed to raise me alongside her brood of daughters nonetheless, and she was not unkind.

My sisters doted on me and scolded me by turns like the seething flock of geese in the yard - I would be their beloved plaything one moment and a hassle, a cuckoo to be resented, the next. Of course, I didn't know what a cuckoo was as a child, and my mother grew up far beyond the lands where they are found, so I only learned about these birds whose oversized young take over a nest and transplant the sitting chicks when I first travelled to Norway. But it was the same for me, nonetheless - I was disproportionate in that little house filled with fine, willowy people. I grew strong and broad, tall and dark, and my step-mother said I was of the people of Thrall, not like her children, born to the line of Snoer and Erna. Bearing that in mind, I could have done worse than be named as I am - Brastr, from my size and manner, became the more familiar Brasso.

At least, this is what my sisters liked to call me - my father found it babyish and inappropriate. I was still too young to know when his pride turned into scorn, but as I grew and grew, and remained perplexed by his obsession with 'going viking' or great deeds of a 'manly' ilk, he began to curse me and say I would never amount to anything. He would have disowned me, I'm sure, only he had paid handsomely for Sigurd, the priest of Thor, to confirm I was his when I was born, and then he had shown me off to all his peers at the public assembly, as my step-mother later told me. It would have been embarrassing for him to have gone back on such a confident announcement, I suppose.

So he called me Coal-biter. He came in from the yard one morning and, with frost-cold hands, claimed he was trying to wipe the dirt off my cheeks.

"I asked you to sharpen those knives for me boy, and you've spent the morning rolling about in the ash instead!"

I was sitting by the central hearth, away from the draught of the door, close to the good light so I could see what I was doing as I worked. He was right, I had not sharpened his knives. Truth be told, I did one and then realised how good it would be for whittling the small piece of driftwood I'd salvaged from the beach. I used the beautifully clean new blade to follow the contours of the wood, feeling the layers of it soften when I peeled then back as the callus on my thumb hardened. I still didn't know what shape lay within the salvage - something twisty and cunning. A fox, maybe? - but my father stopped me from finding out. He slapped it from my hands into the fire, and the knife landed in amongst the embers too - its bone handle was engulfed by clean new flames.

My cheeks burning - from the cold of his fingers, from the shame I felt whenever he wiped my face like that, from the anger at losing my project - I glared into the features of this old man who had once been a fearsome pirate and warrior. He didn't scare me, not even then, and I think that's why he came to hate me so much.

"Ash-boy! Coal-biter!" he barked, pinching my cheek and slapping my forehead. "You sit here in the dust all day with the women, getting under their feet while they do the work they need to do. Your skin is filthy with it, your hair is black as soot!"

I made some meagre complaint - "That's just its colour. You liked my mother's black hair!"

Naturally it got me another slap to the face.

"Pick it up," my father seethed, pointing to the metal blade glowing among the flames.

I shook my head and set my jaw. He loved to make impossible demands and I had learned to just ignore them.

He repeated himself, his green eyes bulging, his beard yellow from fire smoke, his mouth stinking from his rotten teeth.

"I already sharpened that one," I told him, reaching for the next knife and the whetstone.

I don't know how the stalemate might have ended - with him forcing my hand into the flames, with me stabbing him with the blunt old blade? - had my eldest sister not stepped in with the tongs and plucked the blade from the fire. She said nothing to either of us, but dropped the ember-red knife onto one of the flat stones they used for kneading bread and walked back to her weaving with a sigh.

Oh, our father would bawl and hollar at her too, but he wouldn't lay a hand on her, not when he hoped to find her a husband at the next local assembly. He left me to sharpen the knives, but he only ever called me Coal-biter after that.

A nickname like that spreads - he didn't spread it himself, that would be too shameful as well, but the serving men and women knew that gossip like that could get them an extra measure of cheese or milk or meat when they were on an errand to the nearby farms.

Have you heard about old Ásbjörn's son? He's a Coal-biter they say, yes - slow to speak, disobedient, spends his whole time lazing about the hearth, never does the jobs he's asked to do. No doubt it's down to his mother - what did Ásbjörn expect from such a creature? He might as well have fucked his horse.

I've heard them say it - I've pointed out that it takes a certain kind of imagination to come up with fucking a horse as an alternative to a serving woman, and asked them how they came to know so much about it. There's not much point picking on the servants though - I can let them take their entertainment where they find it.

So what if I was called Coal-biter? I preferred working at the fire to working out in the fields with Ásbjörn - the fire transforms things, it takes matter and makes it something else, turning wood to charcoal and rock to metal. In the fields it's damp and windy. You have to ride to get there, and I outgrew these little horses before I reached my teens. I feel top heavy on them, exposed and awkward.

I started spending time at Pakkur's forge whenever possible - he taught me how the fire worked, but I didn't really want its mysteries explaining. Instead I made myself useful scavenging old iron for Pakkur to reforge: I pulled the clinkers from wrecked boats and scoured the assembly grounds for lost items. It's amazing what the great and good leave behind after their courts are done and the silver has been exchanged - I've found brooches and pins, coins and buckles. Even a sword knop once - it had a little gold on it, Pakkur said, so we pierced it and looped a thong of leather through the back and I gave it to my step-mother to wear around her neck.

Maybe I should have given it to my birth mother, but I didn't think she'd be allowed to keep it. We don't have slaves anymore in Iceland - you hear that a lot. But when, like my mother, that's what you were before you were brought here, the freedom doesn't mean much. She's a servant, she could maybe be a servant in another household, but even now she doesn't like to speak the language - unless it's to complain about the cold - and she doesn't socialise with the others. I know so little about her - only that she was brought to this place that is so far from her home and so different to it, and the anger she holds in her heart about this isn't dimmed even when we exchange brief, shy smiles across the yard.

What could I do? It's my step-mother who was equipped to deflect my father's attention away from my work at Pakkur's, it's my step-mother who made sure I was dressed well and fed well. I knew she would appreciate the necklace, too - she learned that her position was in no way threatened by me or my mother now, and it meant she felt able to pity me somewhat. So when my father threatened to hand the farm over to his son-in-law she persuaded him to wait.

It was a kind gesture, though I didn't want the farm - I didn't really want any of it. I dreamed of worlds beyond my homeland where there were other things to do, things that weren't farming or feuding. Where I could go to the places called towns and see new faces on every turn, not the same old cast of petty smallholders.

2. Skraeling

Speaking of new faces, I was a teen when Maarva and Clem returned from Greenland with their curious cargo. It gave the whole island something new to talk about.

How should I describe Maarva and Clem? I hadn't known them terribly well before, they left Iceland first when I was young, excited by the prospects of the new land Leif Eiríksson had discovered.

As a kid I heard the rumour that Maarva had been a chieftain's daughter - somewhere remote and peculiar and filled with giants, like Gotland - and she'd certainly been married before Clem, but I imagine she'd have been terribly young. She'd travelled, so probably her first husband had been a trader in the east. At the summer assembly she used to tell us stories of elephants and lions, giant gold-hoarding ants and men with dogs' heads. She said she'd seen it all.

At some point she must have been widowed and left reliant on the mercy of a Norse colony far away, east and south, down near the centre of the known world. It was here she'd met Clem.

With his deep black skin, Clem was an enigma to most of us - he spoke Norse well, but saved his words for Maarva by and large. He was handy with the law, which he memorised as soon as he got here, and a fast friend of Pakkur's. He valued the old and the new equally, because in our society all was novel to him. He found our gods quaint and never tried to explain his own. He wasn't quick to violence, but the first guy who called him blámaðr to his face lost his leg below the knee in the duel that followed. After that, everyone was just happy to call him Clem.

Clem didn't tell stories of exotic animals or ferocious gladiators, but sometimes, in a wistful moment, he would describe stranger wonders: great round buildings shining inside beneath gold ceilings, like each one had a sun captured in the rafters. Lands where sweet fruit grew to the size of your fist, not like the fingernail-sized blueberries we foraged for, and where the air was as warm as our hot springs but scented with exotic flowers and perfumes rather than sulphur. Regular days and nights, good weather and plentiful food - it all sounded as absurd as Maarva's cynocephali and Blemmyes. I don't know that any of us believed Clem and Maarva's stories - few of the adults took this odd couple entirely seriously, and we tacitly picked up on that. But I've since seen those things Clem described, and I've ridden an elephant just as Maarva told me was possible. There was more of the world on their little farm, it turned out, than on the whole of my island home.

And there was even more of it when they came back from Greenland.

The stories had been coming back about skraelings for years, and we all knew them and repeated them and embellished them:

Don't play at the harbour, I heard a skraeling stowed away and it lives in the rocks and eats children!

They have one giant foot and they hop from stone to stone! They use them to crush grapes as big as your head and make wine that doesn't give you a hangover!

Their eyes are big and black like a seal's and if you look into them you'll fall under their spell!

Well. That last one might have been true.

Maarva and Clem brought back a skraeling child, or so we all supposed. When he finally chose to tell his story it went beyond the borders of even our knowledge of the world and our imaginative capacities. But for the first while, he was a skraeling to us, a boy rescued from his own land following some kind of disagreement at a trading meet.

Maarva's version of the story was all breeze and bluster; Clem's was cagey and lacking in detail. But what I first heard from our servants when they came back with timber bought and cut from Maarva's woodland, was this:

Our settlers had travelled from Greenland to Leif's trading outpost in Vinland. The skraelingar came with cloth, hide and food to swap for iron. On the occasion Maarva and Clem went with a party to trade, someone had resolved to swindle someone and soon blows were exchanged - no two people agreed on which side started it. The locals used flying rocks and sharp stone arrows with deadly precision, but they had no swords, and even those who weren't proud of it didn't deny that the Norse colonists had the upper hand.

In the telling, our servants claimed it was a blood-bath - the children who heard the story had nightmares for weeks. With relish, the servants described a boy abandoned amidst the carnage, sitting bewildered among dead bodies, too astonished to flee or fight back. Maarva had taken pity on him and adopted the child rather than leave him to starve in the forests of Vinland.

Later, when I was cynical enough to reconsider the context for Maarva's pity, I also heard a version where she single-handedly drove the skraelingar out of the camp. Something about beating a sword against her bare breasts, advancing upon the enemy and nearly tripping over the boy who had been knocked unconscious by one of the flying weapons. I was never brave enough to ask her about that take on events.

They called the boy Andar, claiming he stopped breathing when they found him and that Clem returned his breath, andar, to him. The boy soon made it clear he already had a name and it was Cassian. The nickname Kass - locked box - was a compromise he made with reluctant Norse tongues, but Clem was careful always to articulate the full word, and Maarva did try, when she remembered.

Cassian brought trouble to the Norse settlement in Greenland. He had not asked to be adopted or rescued, and presumably saw his new situation in a rather different light to how it was intended. Apparently, he made such a noise with his screaming and fighting that livestock miscarried and milk turned. The other colonists said he was a curse and he was the source of skraeling magic that was going to bring about their ruin. Maarva and Clem stood by him, but when, in an inarticulate fury, the boy smashed up a boat and an outhouse, they had no choice but to move away - or face the harsh vengeance of their neighbours.

So Maarva, Clem and Kass the skraeling came back to Iceland, and the unwary among us fell under a spell.

3. Tern

As a teen I'd grown tall, but hadn't yet fully broadened out, and I felt like there was nowhere on the island I could hide - I towered over most of the scrubby birch trees and spindly rowans, and no matter how poor the summer weather was, my skin darkened like roasted rye under the long hours of daylight. I was still a Coal-biter to the other boys, to my father and his friends, but when my sisters had visitors the women would gather behind their looms and giggle at me, whispering things behind their long white fingers. It made me uneasy, and I didn't know why, so despite the weather I resigned myself to staying in the outfields with the sheep, or I combed the rocky river beds for lost fish hooks I could take to Pakkur.

Pakkur was dark, maybe like me, though he claimed not to know where his family came from before settling in Iceland. He preferred to say that black was the colour of the forge: it was fitting that his hair and beard should be charcoal black and steely silver, and of course his skin tanned like leather in the blast of the furnace. He said it was a sign I should learn the craft too, but I never did respond well to anyone suggesting a path for me.

I was capable of all I had been tasked with, but it all somehow felt hopeless. I didn't understand where it was meant to lead. Wandering the riverbeds took me away from future concerns - farms and families and all sorts of distasteful responsibilities - where all I did was let my eyes comb over the different coloured rocks, seeking a tell-tale anomaly in the texture or tone that would bring my attention to a lost twist of iron.

During one such meditation I had wandered far from my father's lands, meandering inland through the lava-fields that ringed Clem and Maarva's farm. Maarva Kerski had a great big wolfhound called Bí, and when I heard barking I flinched, assuming I was about to be scolded for trespassing.

I knew Bí couldn't outrun me anymore - he'd been an old dog when they'd left for Greenland with him, and no one had expected him to return with them. But he still had a bark that could cause landslides - and maybe I had finally learned a guilty conscience from my father's strict lessons. I stood still as a tree in the middle of the stony beach and scanned the grey, craggy landscape for a grey, craggy dog.

When I finally spotted him, Bí wasn't even looking at me. I saw his long tail wag urgently by his shaky legs. He was poised at the edge of the lava field, facing into the uneven terrain with single-minded intent. Again he barked, and I saw when he did that a bird rose up from the rocks with a scream. It hovered momentarily and Bí barked again, and then the bird dove with fury and the small yell that followed was muffled by the breeze.

Without hesitation, I struck out towards Bí, eyeing up the furious bird as cautiously as he did. It was summer, and the terns had been nesting along the river. I knew the spots they used and I knew how to deflect their attention when I was egg-hunting. I also knew when it was better to avoid these areas because the eggs had hatched and the adults would defend their chicks like a hail of spearheads.

Someone in the lava field had not known about this, apparently. The tern dived again, and again I heard a miserable cry.

By now I think I'd guessed who it was, and I pitied the stranger who had come to this land full of murderous birds and abrasive, treacherous rocks. Until then I hadn't seen the boy. I'd heard all the stories and listened with weary exasperation - at least they'd found someone more peculiar than me or my mother to gossip about. I wasn't introspective enough to draw a deliberate parallel between this abducted boy and my mother's own past, but maybe I linked them subconsciously.

"Where is he, Bí?" I stumbled over the crumbly boulders until I could see what Bí could see. Curled  in a crevasse, arms over his head, was the boy I had heard called Kass. It was too far to see if he was injured or trapped, but the tern attacked him so relentlessly I could see he wasn't going to get up even if he could.

I pulled my sheepskin vest up over my head and shoulders, thinking of Maarva's story about the Blemmyes whose faces were in the middle of their chests. Had she told the story to the boy? Is that what he'd make of this tall, brown-skinned stranger stumbling headlessly towards him?

Slowly, carefully, I picked my way over the rocks, taking care not to step on fresh moss that would slip away under my weight, or to rely on thin, brittle spires of lava that would disintegrate if touched. No one in their right mind came out in a lava field, ever - where had Kass even been going?

As I drew near, I proved a more alarming prospect for the tern, and it changed tack to dive at me. I cursed as I felt its weight on my vest, its beak plucking at the sheep's wool, wings battering my hands and head. I shook it off and it came again, catching the skin of my hands with its claws or its beak.

"Bugger off!" I snarled, and when I was next able to concentrate I saw the boy Kass staring up at me with those dangerous big eyes the stories had warned us about. He was a handful of years younger than me I guessed, with sallow skin like mine and round, deep irises of a brown so dark it seemed black when I first looked. There was blood on his face, but the cuts were on his arms. His trousers had torn and his knees and palms were grazed, but he still looked like he might run rather than go anywhere I told him to. One small hand tightened on a fistful of gravel and stones and I stood still and shrugged beneath my ridiculous shield. Getting a handful of grit in the face for my heroics wasn't exactly what I'd bargained on. The tern battered me again, and again I flapped around to drive it off.

To my surprise, the boy's distant, fearful expression shifted slightly - like a glacier in the weeks before it calves, when something is about to slip. His lips twitched and he laughed. He pointed to his neck and said something in a strange, melodious language and laughed again.

"No, I don't have a neck," I said, with less good humour than I should have. "The terns pecked it away. Are you coming, or not?"

His eyes narrowed mistrustfully again, and to my surprise he repeated some of my words: "Coming? Not with you." He shook his head.

"Back to your home," I said in exasperation, expecting another collision with an angry bird at any moment. "To Maarva and Clem." There was a bark from behind, and I belatedly added, "To Bí!"

He winced, and I knew to expect the tern again, so I mostly deflected its blow this time. Kass studied me with more seriousness than I think anyone in my life had shown me to that point.

"Home," he said gloomily, and then reeled off a list of words that might have been synonyms - or curses. "Coming to Bí, ok," he finally stood up and brushed the dirt from his clothes, and I slipped off my vest and held it out to him, squinting up at the sky nervously as I did.

"Wear it - it's thick, their beak doesn't go through the leather."

His skinny arm dipped with the weight of it when he took it, but he held on and looked up at me piercingly. "Me..." he swung it over his head as I'd worn it. "But you?"

I shrugged again and waved my arms for good measure as the tern circled. It gave an angry shriek and swooped close to my hand, but not close enough for me to knock it away.

Kass watched and then beckoned me down to his level with a gesture.

I didn't follow at first, but when I finally crouched down, trying to explain that the bird would attack anyway, he put his foot on my leg without asking and scaled me like I was one of my father's horses, wrapping his wiry limbs about my neck and chest and making sure the sheepskin covered both our heads.

"Hup!" he laughed in my ear, and I had to laugh too as I got to my feet. He didn't weigh much back then and I was already strong, so I hooked my arms under his knees and hoisted him to a more comfortable position before beginning to pick a way back to Bí at the edge of the lava field.

That was my first lesson in how he got away with so much - he'd do what he wanted without asking, and be so utterly charming (not to mention right) that you couldn't be mad about it after the fact.

When we reached Bí the boy made no effort to get down but laughed delightedly as the old dog barked and bounced stiffly about my feet. He shouted "Hup!" again and I had to indulge him like I indulged my nieces and nephews - I broke into a lumbering run across the riverbed, moving quickly enough to make Kass shriek with happiness but not so quickly that Bí was left behind. We staggered and giggled our way like that back to Maarva and Clem's homefield, and I set him down to check the cuts the tern had given him. Bí circled around and then flopped in a dusty patch of earth in the doorway, his pink tongue lolling and his tail patting happily against the ground.

A house-keeper came out with a paste to clean the scratches and grazes Kass had suffered, and he turned sullen and wooden-faced until I took the stuff from her and she went inside with a sigh. He was a stoic patient, watching me flick grit out of the frayed skin of his knees and palms and not flinching at all (I noticed his eyes well up, but pretended not have seen it). By way of distraction, I gestured to myself with the rag. "Brasso. That's me. I live over there," I flailed an arm in an unhelpful manner. "Ásbjörn's farm," I added, out of grudging, cultivated habit.

His eyes flicked to the horizon and then he tried the word out: "Brasso." It was refreshing to hear my name spoken without reprimand or warning, and the pronunciation gave him no trouble.

I wasn't as cosmopolitan as this young thing, though. He pulled his grazed hand from my grip and pointed firmly at his sternum, holding my eyes with determination. "Cassian," he said.

It had an unfamiliar cadence, and it took me a few tries - "Kass-een. Kassa-en. Kass. Í. An. Cassian."

It was worth the embarrassment of getting my tongue tangled when he beamed and nodded at my eventual success.

Clem rode into the homefield while the boy was still laughing at my pronunciation, and the first I knew of this was the way Cassian's face stilled again and he turned silent and watchful. It didn't have the same sullenness as when the house-keeper had come out, though, rather it seemed a silence of waiting, of respectful curiosity.

"Hullo, made a friend have you, Cassian?" Clem dismounted and wandered over to us, his horse trailing after. He was tall, but he nevertheless always looked regal on the little horses. "You're Ásbjörn's son, aren't you?"

I stood and blurted out, "That's what he paid the priest to say, yes sir." I wasn't always so good at keeping my mouth shut in my teenage years - I was too accustomed to winding up my father, because it was so easy to do.

Clem just blinked politely. "Brastr, isn't it?"

To both our surprise, Cassian got up and stood between us. "Brasso," he corrected Clem.

Before I could explain that it was just a nickname, Clem opened his palms in apology. "Brasso. Of Harkastadur."

I nodded, wary of Clem's gentle expression and his scrupulously polite accent. I supposed he expected me to explain myself, so I shuffled and glanced at Cassian. "The terns were attacking him. I heard Bí barking and went to help."

Clem did not ask me how I came to be on his land, he just looked at Cassian and sighed. "Did you try to run away across the lava field again?"

The boy dipped his chin and scowled. Something possessed me to intervene, and I said quickly: "He was just by the river. The nests are well hidden this year. I guess...they don't have terns in Vinland?"

Clem smiled generously at my clumsy attempt to cover for a boy who probably didn't even realise that's what was happening. "They do have terns in Vinland. Leif's 'lucky' camp was plagued with them in the first year. Some artisan made a bunting of their corpses and we had to endure the smell of wind-dried sea-bird all summer."

I did what I did with my father and doubled down on a stubborn expression that defied the reality presenting itself to me. Unlike my father, it made Clem laugh and shake his head ruefully. "Look, as you're here and you helped Cassian out, I have some scrap iron you can take for Pakkur."

I glanced at Cassian, who studied me with renewed curiosity, perhaps wondering how I had managed to deflect a scolding he figured he was due.

"At least I know if he makes it across the lava field next time he'll find someone who'll take care of him," Clem said softly, noticing some frisson of hesitation.

I nodded dumbly, offered Cassian a little wave and followed Clem to the back of the longhouse. I was halfway home before I realised I'd left my sheepskin vest behind.

[remmysbounty]

Hello there. 💕 A Mandalorian prompt request for you!

16. reader is a Mandalorian, and they take their helmet off for the first time in front of Din.

Hey boo!!!! So this took me a lot longer than I was planning to butttt here’s your request :) Thank you so much for sending it in, I hope you like it... I will warn you it came out angstier than I was planning too but there is soft fluff at the end so I hope that makes up for it!

also thank you to both @elysiansith and @booksmusicteaandanimals for reading this fic for me, i love you both so so so so so much and am so happy that y’all are part of my aliit 

reveal heart and soul // din djarin x f!reader

You’d known Din ever since he became a foundling and you were sure you were in love with him just as long. He was the one person you wanted to bare yourself towards, reveal your soul to, but even now as you lay under the cover of darkness in his arms, you still wondered if he felt the same way.

He wouldn’t mean to make you doubt, and if he knew all the thoughts running through your mind, he’d probably say something, but instead, all you were met with was the tightness of his hand around your waist and a soft murmur that passed through his lips as he snuggled in closer to you.

You didn’t want to wake him, but the closeness of him only seemed to become a reminder of the tightness you’d been feeling recently in your chest. So quickly and quietly, you pulled yourself out of Din’s arms and grabbed your helmet before heading up to the cockpit.

When you made it upstairs, you didn’t put your helmet on like you usually would, instead you held it in your hands, watching as it was devoured by the reflection of hyperspace. There were times like these when all you wanted to do was chuck the armor away and live your life in anonymity, but you couldn’t just break away from the Creed, this is the way.

So consumed by your thoughts you didn’t hear Din come into the cockpit, the only thing letting him know that you weren’t wearing your helmet being the glint the reflection created. He wanted you to talk to him, to open up to him, he feels you slipping further and further away each day and he is terrified that one day he’ll wake up to find that you’ve left him entirely.

Staying still, he moved his sight up towards hyperspace so as to not accidentally get a view of you without your helmet on, “Cyar’ika, are you okay?”

You weren’t surprised that Din had joined you, but still, his sudden presence sent a jolt of shock through you. Deciding that you wanted to have this conversation face to face, you put your helmet on and stood up, “I’m fine, just couldn’t sleep.”

Din reached out and grabbed your hand softly, he was choosing his next words carefully and that worried you, “Have I done something wrong cyar’ika? I feel you slipping away from me.”

“I could ask you the same question, Din,” you whispered, hoping that Din wouldn’t let go.

With his other hand, Din cupped the back of your helmet and brought it forward so that it touched his, “I didn’t realize- I’m sorry cyar’ika,” Din’s hand tightened its hold on yours, “I just was trying to figure out how to ask you-“

“Ask me what?” Your voice was soft yet it cut through Din’s thoughts like a knife. 

“If you’d marry me,” Din’s voice was so soft at this point you were sure if it wasn’t for the noise enhancers on your helmet you would have missed those four words.

You brought both of your hands up to cup Din’s helmet, “Yes, I’ll marry you cyare,” the two of you stood there in that kiss, “can we do it now? I don’t want to wait anymore for you to be my riduur.”

Din chuckled at your enthusiasm to marry him, suddenly feeling lighter at your excitement, and could only tilt his head in a way that said yes, we can.

The light from the hyperspace was the only thing that accompanied the two of you as you whispered your vows to one another. Your hands hovering over the bottom of Din’s helmet waiting for him to give you the okay to remove it. The humming of the ship was the only thing that could be heard alongside the usual hiss from the helmet’s lock mechanism. 

Your eyes watered as they took each and every little detail of your riduur’s face, his doing the exact same when he removed your helmet for you. Your foreheads touched for the first time, skin-to-skin, and you realized that you never want to feel Din’s helmet ever again, not when you have the chance to see him in all his beauty.

--

translations:

cyar’ika: beloved/sweetheart/darling

cyare: same as cyar’ika without the ‘ika

riduur: partner/spouse/husband/wife

--

tags:

Tin Man:  @captn-andor @thewayofthemandalorian @magpie-to-the-morning @magicrowiswritingstuff @booksmusicteaandanimals @dinthisisthe-wayson @littlemisspascal @din-damn-djarin @captn-andor @academiax @ohwaitimthewriter