#but did this actually happen within the canon the way it is now? not quite

[lowstakesvampires]

probably not how blood banks work at all, but shhhh we are ignoring that

[sukunasweetheart]

I refuse to believe Sukuna wouldn’t eat his lover’s body if they pass before him. There is no way he will let you rot away when you could be with him forever. Especially if it was by your own request. He will eat your heart raw and drink your blood like its ambrosia. Your soul will remain within him for all eternity uwu

ANON THIS IS SAUR BIG BRAINED..... THE WAY THAT THIS IS SO CORRECT 🥹🥹🥹🥹 i literally even had a fic idea similar to this 🥲🫡 i just love this concept, its so poetic and resonates so deeply with his canon character 💖

he'd carry a part of you with him forever through consuming you, the warmth of your blood spreading in his own veins as he drinks from your flesh, it tastes divine like nothing else, perhaps it's because he cherishes you so much, understands how precious you are to him, knows that this is the only chance he'll ever get to indulge in the pure, raw taste of you--

And knowing that this was something you wanted - to be consumed by him - makes sukuna's heart swell with pride, you wholly accepted him, and embraced him for all that he is. For that, he will dutifully devour you, just as you wished.

Each bite he takes, means another part of you is gone from his hands. Sukuna leaves nothing behind, even your bones are crushed up by his strong teeth before he swallows them up, too. It feels odd, to eat someone that he'd wholeheartedly loved as much as he did with you.

It's a messy, gruesome looking process. His four hands are tainted with your crimson blood, and the same has occurred around the edges of his mouth. He blinks, and your corpse has disappeared, as he's now eaten you down completely.

And yet, though he's fulfilled his desires and your request, and was fully able to enjoy the unique and delightful flavours of your body, sukuna feels strange.

He feels unsatisfied.

He had you to the last fragment, alone. So why is he still left with yearning?

Sukuna stares at his emptied, bloodied hands. Yes, empty... It's the first time he's felt empty after such a full meal.

He will never be able to touch you again, and that is almost unbearable to fathom, more than he realised. The only comfort he receives, is that your body is now within him, and he will carry you around to wherever he goes.

Doomed to forever to yearn after a taste, a person that he can never have again, sukuna picks up the bloodied kimono that he'd stripped you of from the floor, and leaves this place behind in silence.

-

This is just an afterthought, but imagine if you do actually pop up in his innate domain quite some time after, which surprises him 🤔 but then he realises that he probably ate you up with so much love that he'd unknowingly cursed you and took a part of your literal soul with him when he consumed your body--

He'd call you a sly thing, asking if you knew this would happen when you'd asked him to devour you with your dying breath. Yet he seems quite overjoyed by the fact that he can interact with you again

He would question you on why you're only showing up now, after making him grieve for so long (he wouldn't verbally say that last part 🤭) and you tell him its bc you're only a tiny fragment of yourself, it took a while for you to even develop this appearance of yours

You probably appear to him in his dreams or whenever hes just spacing out 😇

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Which dorm arc do you think was the best written? I liked the ignihyde arc the most if I have to be honest

This might be unfair to the other books (since most of them have fewer parts/less time for their stories + book 7 isn't even complete yet for me to judge), but I think the writing in book 6 is the strongest (as in, "most interesting" and "most narratively sound") so far. What gives book 6 a massive leg up over other books is that the conflicts addressed in book 6 were foreshadowed WAY in advance through other content like voice lines, vignettes (I believe Ortho's Precision Gear), and events (like Wish Upon a Star). It was sooo satisfying to see all of the payoff (and Idia breaking down)!!

I don't think the other books are bad by any means except for book 2, sorry not sorry Leona, I just feel that 6 had a lot of space to touch on more characters and their development than only the Ignihyde boys; I loved catching up with characters we've already met and seeing how they've grown or changed, even in little ways. Additionally, I personally prefer stories with "high stakes" and family-oriented drama involved in them, so they biases me quite a bit toward book 6. The high stakes and family drama angle is also true of book 7, but again, it's not out in its entirety yet so I'm going to reserve my judgment until it has.

Something that's unique to book 7 (and that I wish previous books did, even if it elongates them significantly) is actually deepening our understanding of every character within the dorm. I would have been so bored if book 7 focused solely on Malleus. I loved getting to learn more about what makes Lilia tick, and seeing how Sebek and Silver develop from their experiences. I feel like I didn't get a significant enough of a look into many of the other boys during the main story campaign... Instead, we're often told about things that happened without truly witnessing it for ourselves. I know, I know, that's the whole point of a visual novel--expecting a lot of reading. I still would have preferred like... more flashbacks and scenes demonstrating what we're being told rather than the dialogue doing it for us. Show me how Riddle's relationship with Chenya and Trey has changed since their childhood! Show me young Jack being inspired by Leona's play and wanting to be in the same team as him! Etc., etc., etc. I could always look to vignettes and event stories for more lore on each character, but those are always portrayed as "AUs", whereas the main story is what is 'canon" so it's sort of sad to see that we never get to look any closer at most of the supporting cast upon that bigger stage.

It’s exciting that we now get to see more of the boys since we’re now dream hopping for book 7; I’m just going to hold my judgment for now since I found the pacing uneven and a little quick for what we’ve seen of Pomefiore so far, especially when compared to the longer Lilia dream segment. Again, I find book 6 stronger in this regard but that could be because its scale is slightly smaller and it has fewer characters to juggle. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how book 7 wraps up—maybe it’ll completely win me over!

[skaruresonic]

Once more I must cite sources because folks assume you'll take their "nuh-uh" as a sufficient counterargument.

While there's no "official" count, the general consensus is that there are roughly 50 or more errors within the Encyclospeedia. Greeny has documented some of them, as well as CrystalMaiden77:

Sonic Encyclospeedia Errors: by CrystalMaiden77 on DeviantArt

These are purely factual errors. That's not counting the various formatting, spelling, and grammatical errors:

---

"The other writers don't currently have any way to ask for questions reliably" - Sonic Team regularly answer fan questions on Twitter, including Shiro Maekawa.

Dr. Crusher, Did you saw Shiro Maekawa response to someone... (tumblr.com)

"Silver has always been polite" - That is Flynn's own personal interpretation. And it's wrong.

Writings From A Field of Roses — Our monthly live show on YouTube, usually on the... (tumblr.com)

---

We've been having this long, drawn-out debate for years because there are many, many layers of inaccuracy, strawman, and ego-flexing going on, but I'll just drop this link to give you a crash-course on the broad strokes:

Encyclopedia Sonnica, ✂️ "Go read something else" (tumblr.com)

---

"ST have been using mandated material to govern Shadow as this edgelord over every writer in the past 14 fucking years" - Sonic Reddit invented the concept of Shadow mandates in response to Shadow's poor portrayal in IDW 19, which spread through fandom-wide games of telephone. There's no concrete proof they exist. Nor did Shadow-specific mandates seem to exist before issue 19.

The reason why IDW Shadow acts weird : r/SonicTheHedgehog (reddit.com) Behold, the reason everyone believes the fictitious... – @skaruresonic on Tumblr

The likelier explanation for why IDW!Shadow is a poor portrayal but Dark Beginnings is not is that Flynn receives more feedback on Shadow because he doesn't understand the character.

IDW Sonic "FAQ" - Google Docs

---

"Claimed games aren't strong enough when?"

Here:

---

If "98%" of references are "impossible to find," why are players complaining about the reference overload in Frontiers' message boards?

The constant attempts to reference past lore is kinda obnoxious. - Sonic Frontiers (gamespot.com)

Not to mention he straight-up plagiarized entire lyrics to a song from a fan band and did not credit them, just as a "reference":

Just in case you thought Ian Flynn putting song lyrics in dialogue was just a Sonic thing. : r/TwoBestFriendsPlay (reddit.com)

But you’re still standing here — Man, Flynn really hates #Playthegames, huh? What... (tumblr.com)

---

You're right, he doesn't hate Amy; he simply described her as "all over the place" and not-so-subtly put her and several other prominent girl characters down, calling Blaze the "singular kick-butt female character" among them, in order to imply his OC Tangle was going to fulfill a role none of them could.

His words. Not mine.

Game Informer Interview With Ian Flynn (lastminutecontinue.com)

---

“This is how Sonic is, by SEGA, and this is me basically spelling it out, for anyone who hasn’t quite figured it out to this point.” - Flynn

But you’re still standing here — “This is how Sonic is, by SEGA, and this is me... (tumblr.com)

---

Encyclopedia Sonnica, I was looking at some posts about Archie sonic,... (tumblr.com)

---

"He likes Team Hooligan? That's a problem now?"

It is if he's heavily implying his own fanon is games canon in a lore book that people pay for when it's not.

---

---

Lol the projection is strong in this one.

If he is a credible source on the basis that he, quote, is a "fan" of the series, then he should know something as basic how Chaos Control works within the context of the game in which the move debuted. You can't pick and choose. Either he's a credible source or he's not.

How Chaos Control works is not particularly obscure knowledge that only The Elitest of Sonic fans have.

The whole "Ian isn't an encyclopedia of perfect knowledge guys, come on" thing becomes especially ironic considering how vehemently you insisted the Encyclospeedia has no errors in it just because You Said So(tm).

Sure, Jan. Whatever you say.

---

"There are completely fair and respectful critiques of Ian Flynn out there that deserve to be heard and taken in. I am not saying his works are perfect and cannot be critiqued. This is just not how you do it lol."

I don't believe you.

Considering you lot go absolutely bananas whenever people contradict Flynn in any way, shape, or form, no matter how neutral the delivery or how heavily it comes attached with sources and screenshots...

...No. I don't believe you when you say you'll allow for "fair criticism," if there even is such a thing to you guys. Everything is considered "disgusting" and "mindless" hate to you, and this entire counterthread is proof of that. You literally opened your thread describing Greeny's points as evidence of a "disgusting" bias. Well, here I am, shoving the sources in your face. Look at them.

Oh, you'll "allow" the existence of opinions you hate, but only if you personally deem them acceptable enough? How very authoritarian gracious of you.

I have seen, with my own two eyes, someone complain that it's our fault that no one can bring up "reasonable criticism" without getting hounded anyway, as if the conclusion one ought to draw from that is Haters Suck(tm) and not that the call has always come from inside the house.

The harsh truth of the matter is this: people are not going to want to bring up any flavor of criticism around you. Ever. Especially not when you descend like a pack of hellhounds and stalk, threaten, and harass over the slightest disagreement.

People hide behind anons and have decided to confine Sonic discussion to private Discords because of the overreactions of people like you, who cannot grapple with reality and instead choose to project all that hate onto someone stating facts.

[pillowbugs]

so uh. that poto au i did just over a week ago.

was playing around with some ships to figure out who would fit the roles of the other characters, and landed on airplaneshipping for christine and raoul. preferably ignore all the plot that would have to happen to lead to this point. (the scene where the phantom shoots fireballs, except in the pokémon universe it's a full on battle against the phantom and his chandelure. for an added bonus, look up the name of the 'song' sung during this part of the musical.)

unmasked ver. (additional design notes under cut)

elesa:

christine's dress in this scene is light blue, which is a colour that is indeed present in elesa's design (her bw2 outfit moreso). elesa not wearing any yellow felt wrong though, which is why the layers underneath are yellow-tinted.

went with her bw1 hair colour because christine was blonde in the original book.

her cloak is mostly based off her bw2 jacket in shape; it's black with a red clasp, which makes it not only similar to the cloak donned by christine in the musical but also retains the same idea of the cloak being a visual representation of the phantom's (who wears mostly black) hold over them. (+ the other colour ingo is most associated with is red.)

however, because of the lighting, said cloak appears yellow on the side closer to skyla - more similar to her canon design, and being close to skyla in a way rids her of the darkness.

she gets to change her hairstyle as a treat.

skyla:

it wasn't common for women to wear waistcoats at the time (1900s), but sapphics in history quite famously fucked with a lot of gender norms.

actually both of these lovebirds are blue now. sets up a colour contrast between the lighter, friendlier blues of the couple and the darkness and reds of the phantom. (blue = friend and red = foe like it's fire emblem)

the way swanna is placed is intentional, to set up a more angelic imagery mirroring the phantom's darker version (more on that in a bit).

both women wear matching white roses in their hair. something something flower symbolism. but skyla does also have feathers in her hair, for obvious reasons.

swoobat because hearts :D

ingo:

was debating on whether to make him actually more deformed in this au, but didn't really feel in the mood to sit down and design it in detail for this piece.

there isn't much i can say about his outfit design given it's literally just mashing his usual uniform together with his butler alt from masters. though upon actually looking up the phantom's outfit, the end result is actually surprisingly close. not surprising given both wear victorian suits and primarily wear black.

my original concept for the au was that he still works with the subway, he just does it from the shadows instead of being a public figure - hence he still wears a train conductor's hat. though since the battle subway isn't a thing (or at least not in the form we know it) he doesn't have its logo.

his cloak is intentionally flared up in this scene, for a few reasons: 1) it looks cool, 2) it resembles gliscor (albeit it isn't present here) and 3) mirrors skyla with a darker angelic imagery - the original musical had the whole "angel of music / death" thing.

i actually went through quite a few variations of his mask before settling on this one, and even then i'm not entirely satisfied with it.

version 1: exactly the same as the one used in most advertising for the musical - decently terrifying, but considering ingo's main 'issue' is his mouth, which this (and the one actually used within the musical) doesn't cover, this would be completely useless aside from probably hiding his identity and especially his resemblance to emmet.

version 2: leaned more into the angle of trying to alter his expression, particularly to be smiling instead - to be more similar to his brother. also suitably unsettling, but this specific style wouldn't work if you looked at him from any angle besides this one though. also, from this angle, because his actual mouth is obscured, i was worried he would actually be mistaken for emmet instead (given generally fandom tends to make emmet the unhinged one - let ingo have some fun too, guys).

version 3, the one i went with: has patterns at the cheeks simulating the edges of a smile (and also has the black-on-white contrast); his actual mouth is hidden but visible through the cloth.

why is there a litwick on the gravestone? good question!

in all honesty, this was part me drawing blorbos into an au and part me conceptualising what the pokémon universe version of POTO would look like.

[grimalkinmessor]

Okay but Reigen's ability to lie and change masks at will means that he can be literally anyone Mob needs him to be at any given time. And he often is.

I was thinking about this because I rewatched the break-up episode and Reigen's words had always caught me a little off guard when he said all that stupid shit to Mob, because—and yes this is the point I suppose—he's never usually that harsh with Mob. Because the rod isn't what Mob needs, and Reigen knows it, and he usually tries to be the best shishou he can be whilst still lying to his disciple about everything else :'D So I considered Reigen insulting Mob and going after his friends to be largely out of character for him!

But, I realized that the series focuses so much on Mob's inner struggle that we don't get to see a lot of Reigen's. And for Reigen, who has had Mob all to himself for close to three years, the sudden influx of people taking Mob's time and attention would've been highly alarming and disquieting to him. Because for literal years, Reigen was the village raising the child.

Before the series started, Mob and Ritsu were still distant if loving. His parents don't seem to make much of an impact on is life either. And before joining the BIC, Mob had no friends either. He just kind of,,,existed. The only person he could've considered a friend was Reigen. Reigen gives him advice and life lessons like a parent, jokes around and heckles him like a friend, and scolds him when he's being dumb like a mentor. Reigen didn't raise Mob (he does still have parents for that and Reigen has only known him three years out of fourteen) but before canon he did seem to have a great deal of control and say-so over Mob's life.

And yes, again this is bad. It's unhealthy at best. But Reigen's options in the beginning were either fire Mob and send him away so that wouldn't happen, or keep him by his side and encourage him to make friends as they went along and Mob learned more control and social skills from him. The latter might've even been Reigen's original plan once he realized he actually likes Mob as opposed to him just being a random kid. But then, of course :) Reigen gets attached :)) Too attached, even :)))

Enough so that when the time comes and Mob actually DOES start to make friends, Reigen feels deeply threatened. Fondness has blossomed out quite nicely into codependence, and now Reigen—who is also deeply, incredibly lonely—cannot imagine a life without Mob in it anymore. He doesn't like the thought of Mob drifting away. Outgrowing him. So he opens his mouth and puts his foot directly inside, trying to alienate Mob from his friends and secure his spot as top friend dog once again. (Honestly as if there was any question 🙄).

Thankfully, Mob nips that shit in the bud IMMEDIATELY. Because again, he's been with Reigen for the past three years, and other than some of the other bullshit bout spiritual powers, Reigen has been largely very wise and helpful when giving life advice. It was very likely his OWN teachings and words about being wary of being manipulated and conned that helped Mob recognize it that fast.

So Mob leaves, and Reigen...crumbles.

Damn near instantly.

He tries to convince himself that he doesn't need Mob, that he's fine without him and that he never even cared about him in the first place—but later we see that the idea of Mob leaving him for good makes him actually, physically nauseous. That moment in the alleyway, with the moths around the lamp as my witness, was a moment of death and rebirth within Reigen's psyche. Again with the moths there that might be obvious lmao. The singular moth dying there might even be a reference to the fact that only one of Reigen and Mob's relationship problems have been addressed (and somewhat?? solved?? at least in the way that Reigen has acknowledged the need for change in himself on this front).

Idk, I just think it's interesting :3 He was alone in his friendship with Mob for a very long time, and I think he panicked more than made any sort of cold calculated move to be an asshole. He and Mob are similar in that way; they both found someone who needed and understood them, Mob with his powers and Reigen with his tricks and acts, both of them using their abilities for the other's benefit. I love the break-up arc so much, it's so much fun to think about 💖

[froggyfernycabbage]

Wildest Dreamings

So much happened before Elphaba went off to see the Wizard.

The Land of What-Might-Have-Been will unfold as a two-part narrative, reading between the lines to reveal the complete love story of Elphaba Thropp and Fiyero Tigelaar. This fic is primarily inspired by the musical and its film adaptation, with literary influences throughout. Wildest Dreamings will cover the canon events of Part/Act 1, expanding upon the characters and relationships we know and love.

READ ON AO3

Chapter 1

Chapter 2: Conferring with the Foliage

Fiyero Tigelaar had no idea where he was going. 

He and Feldspur had been traveling for hours along the Gillikin River, but as swirling trees took over the landscape and the sky grew darker, his sense of geography was shot. 

His inability to find the place was already making him resentful of Shiz University and all that lay within it. There couldn’t possibly be anything life-changing waiting for him on the campus grounds, and he had long abandoned the sense of hope that came with a new school.

Following his failed stint at the Academy, his mother and father had warned him that this was his last chance at a “good education,” whatever that meant. It had become quite clear to him that formal institutions of learning had nothing of value to teach, and even if they did, he wasn’t capable of understanding them. 

Frustrated, he urged Feldspur to a gallop. If he got lost enough, maybe he could avoid Shiz altogether and take on a new identity as a rogue gallivanter. At this point, even a life of crime sounded better than the torture of academia. 

He was so deep in these ruminations that he didn’t see the green girl crossing his path, too lost in her own worries to notice she was about to be run over. 

Feldspur stopped short just before they collided, but she was so startled that she toppled over onto the forest floor. 

“ Woah there, woah!” Fiyero called out, trying to catch a glimpse of his near victim. 

“I did not see her,” explained a spooked Feldspur. “Yeah, neither did I!”

From his vantage point, her face was still hidden, but as she pulled herself up, he couldn’t help but notice the rather pleasant shape of her backside. He scolded himself for such ungentlemanly thoughts, and dismounted Feldspur, who also tried to remind him of his manners. 

“You might want to, um… you know…” “Ok, yeah.”

He moved towards the girl as she brushed off her tumble, extending his hand in case she needed assistance. He was prepared to feel terrible if he’d actually brought her harm. 

“I’m so sorry miss, I didn’t see you there, you must have..”

As soon as he spoke, she turned towards him. The moonlight finally revealed her face, and Fiyero was dumb-stricken. 

“...blended with the foliage.”

He realized instantly how stupid he sounded, but prayed that maybe this green girl would find his idiocy at least a little bit charming. 

She did not. 

“Is this how you go through life? Just running amuck and trampling anyone in your path?”

Fiyero was as taken aback by her words as he was by her complexion, and he panicked. “No…” 

He could hear Feldspur chuckling at his expense, so clearly he was embarrassing himself, but some terrible instinct within told him to attempt humor again. “No, sometimes I’m asleep.”

He tried to signal to her that laughter was the appropriate response, but she merely stared at him in mild disgust. With a deep sigh, she launched into her well rehearsed introduction. 

“Alright, here we go. No, I’m not seasick.” They were firmly on land, why would she be seasick?  “Neither am I,” he assured her. 

She stepped closer to him as she spoke, which might have been intimidating if she wasn’t so petite. 

“No. I did not eat grass as a child.” She had to be toying with him now. “Oh you didn’t? I did!”

“And yes, I have always been green.”

It was the way she said that last bit, like she was preparing for mockery. He was intrigued.

“And the defensiveness? Is that a recent development?” 

Fiyero knew he’d finally said something clever, because she narrowed her eyes at him without response. He gave her his best smolder, historically foolproof, but she was immune.

As she turned to pick up her fallen lantern, Feldspur trotted up behind him, chortling at Fiyero’s utter failure to charm this young woman. He shushed his companion, but when he turned to face the green girl again, she looked at him with such disappointment it almost made him feel guilty. Surely she didn’t think they were laughing at her?  

Feldspur whispered,  “Should we ask her for directions?” which brought him back to his current predicament. He couldn’t very well expose his navigational woes to this girl who clearly hated him, but maybe there was a way to solve both of his problems. 

“I’m off for some more trampling, may we offer you a ride?”

Her strut was aggressive as she left him behind, and she answered without so much as a glance back, “No thanks. Get stuffed.”

He watched her walk away, trying not to be bothered by her rejection. 

“Wow, Feldspur, we have just been spurned by a girl.” “Ah, indeed.”

Shrugging off the ego hit, he smirked. “Guess there’s a first time for everything.” 

Mounting Feldspur, he figured if he followed the general direction of the green girl, he’d find his way eventually. 

As he rode, their collision replaying in his mind, he realized that he forgot to ask for the pretty foliage’s name. Who was that sweet creature he’d almost trampled? 

Fiyero hoped he might run into her again. 

[whateverthese2havetournament]

Whatever These Two Have 2024 - Casting Call

That's right, folks, we're at it again. I am reaching out for submissions to fill the bracket.

A submission MUST meet these criteria:

The characters are fictional. I should hope I don't have to explain what this means, but just in case: something is a work of fiction if somebody wrote it but it didn't really happen, or at least not quite like that. Fictional VERSIONS of real people are fine, but a persona that a real person adopts isn't the same thing. Saber yes, Calliope Mori no.

The characters are not actually gay. If these character have kissed, if these characters have had sex, if they are married to each other, if they're dating, if they're divorced, if even one of them loves the other in a way that's explicitly sexual or romantic in past present or future tense in any canonical capacity, they don't get to participate. This isn't for them.

The characters have something else going on. In spite of the above, their bond is... unique. Perhaps if they WERE gay it would certainly explain a lot, or perhaps literally being gay would actually be a dilution of what they have now.

Neither character is a child, or at the very least, there's some significantly explored period within the span of the canon where neither is a child, eg. a timeskip happens. Note I did not say "minor". Fact is, a lot of popular media heavily features teenagers and heavily emphasizes their relationships, and disqualifying half of all anime seems excessive, especially since, somewhat definitionally, there's nothing explicitly sexual about being on this bracket. Use your better judgement.

The characters are not a duplicate of a team from last year, though individual characters paired someone new should be fine.

They should also probably meet these criteria, but who knows:

The characters are, roughly, the same gender

The characters are two (2) in number

I will sift through the submissions with as little bias as possible, only disqualifying based on adherence or lack thereof to the above.

You are encouraged, but hardly required, to accompany a submission with pictures, anecdotes, clarifications, and/or propaganda. The more I know about them, the better I can summarize them for undecided and otherwise uninformed voters!

Lastly, I'm gonna put a cap at, let's say, three pair submissions per individual. Use the ask box, or the submission box, or genuinely any avenue that gets it in front of my eyes.

Submissions will be open until, let's say, the 20th.

[milksuu]

I’ve been on the Ezreal brainrot ever since I discovered Heartsteel. And my little brain has been scheming

How would a relationship with him work out if his partner is an idol too and they have to sneak out to have fun together??👀

(Btw, unrelated, but I love how you write, it’s super fun and easy to read)

Dirty Little Secret | (O1)

❥ prompt: Let's face it. You and Ezreal hardly have time for anything with your busy idol lives. Unfortunately, things get a bit messy after you first meet. Luckily, both of you share a secret hobby nobody knows about. And boy, does it come in handy. ❥ content/warnings: ecchi, drama bomb, forbidden romance ❥ characters/pairings: Heartsteel!ezreal x idol!f!reader , Heartsteel gang an: omggg tysvm anon! honestly, im so sorry but looks like your ask is getting a part two lmfao! guess i went overboard with my idea, and so, your actual req. will be fulfilled in the next part. i also blame all american rejects for my non-original title. thanks for understanding.

No one knew about Ezreal's secret hobby. When anyone asked where he was going with a black gym duffle bag, he gave everyone the same answer. "J-Just heading to the main studio to warm-up before you guys get there. Nothing else." Little did they know, that's not where he was going. Instead, he was heading to a photoshoot. A very specific kind: a cosplay photoshoot.

I mean, who wouldn't want to dress up as their favorite anime/manga character, superhero, or original fantasy creation? Even better, who wouldn't want to be photographed while doing it? Ezreal felt he could be anyone and anything. Adored with attention in more ways than one. Best part was, with so many cosplays to shift through, no one ever knew it was him. Except you did.

And that all happened because you went to that same photoshoot. It was a group event held in a public park, surrounded by retail shops. It was perfect for both slice of slice or nature-esque shots. It was by coincidence your character and Ezreal's character were canon together in the anime lore you were cosplaying. Which sparked you two being asked to pose romantically with one another, and pretend to be going in for a kiss.

You gave your consent and Ezreal tipped your chin up, his face mere inches away from yours. You squinted your eyes against his features and whispered. "You look kind of familiar." As if you had seen him walking around your workplace just the other day. Maybe somewhere else you frequented? You couldn't quite place a finger on it. Ezreal couldn't shake off the feeling either. He tilted your face another way for a different angle. He laughed nervously, whispering back. "That's funny. I'm pretty sure this is the first time we've met. Maybe we're at the same cosplay shoots a lot. And now we've just noticed each other."

You accepted the rational. Either way, you didn't want to press it, in case he flipped the coin around and started asking you personal questions. Cosplay and anonymity were one in the same for certain individuals—especially in your case.

After a couple more pictures, you parted ways. Ezreal felt his phone buzz. He checked his messages:

[Yone:] Where are you? You're late. I believe you said earlier you would be here before us to 'get in some extra practice'. [Yone:] Care to explain?

OH CRAP! Ezreal didn't realize how late the hour was. He'd been so distracted, he forgot to set his reminder. And now he was officially going to be late— or, well, late-er. Sweating bullets, Ezreal quickly let his fingers type:

[Ezreal:] i'm there! just in the bathroom. might be a while. lunch is kicking my butt. 😳🚽💩💩💩

[Yone:] Thank you for the TMI. Hurry up then.

Ezreal wiped at his brow. He was running on borrowed time. Yone was sure to find out if he wasn't back within the next fifteen minutes. Snatching his bag from the public lockers, he ran to the public restroom. To his utter surprise, there was a line for the men's restroom. Seriously!? That never happened. And it's not like he could waltz into the women's restroom (which, not surprisingly, also had a line). He went around, and found a private unisex bathroom.

VACANT

He flung himself inside, locked it, and striped away his cosplay. Something shifted in the corner of his eyes—it was you. And there you both were, standing in awkward positions down to your undergarments. You pointed at each other accusingly, and shouted at the same time; "I do know you!" You both recognized each other as idols; him being with Heartsteel, and you as a solo-artist. Even though brief, you two bumped into each other more than once at the company building.

"G-get out! I was here first." You blushed, taking your moon-wand and smacking him with it. "Ouch—it said vacant!" He cried out, trying to block your magical melee attacks. "It was your fault for not locking it. How was I supposed to know?"

"I really don't have time for this. Do whatever you want." You tossed your wand into your bag, fetching your skirt. You shot a narrowed look. "Just don't look over here, or else."

"Fine." Ezreal huffed, rubbing at his sore collar bone. "Don't look over here either."

With grumbles and protests, the two of you changed back to back. All the while, still bickering. He heard you struggling, turned over his shoulder, and found you trying to reach your back zipper. He sighed, helping you raise it to the back of your neck. You turned sharply. "I told you not to look but...thank you." You peeked down and noticed his pants weren't zipped up. You reached and returned the favor. He blushed, suddenly feeling self-conscious. He gulped. "Don't sweat it. Thanks for catching that for me."

A silent truce settled between the two of you as you finished dressing, and shared the mirror to freshen up. Ezreal realized you were also in a rush to get ot the studio as well. He called an Uber for the both of you. His phone buzzed and buzzed, blowing up with messages. He opened his group chat:

[Aphelios:] yone is pissed btw. rip ez. ☠️

[Kayn:] YEAAAA YONE'S GONNA GROUND YOU. 😈😈😈

[Sett:] Sorry, Ez. We tried to cover for ya'h. Hope you're alright. 😓

[K'Sante:] I'm sure he's fine. For now. Once Yone finds him, we may not see him again in one piece. hehe.

[Kayn:] HAHAHA HE'S SO SCREWED HAHAHAAAAA

[Sett:] Watch it, Kayn. Else im tellin' Yone you snuck out on the motorcycle last night.

[Apehlios:] i have footage from the house cam. 😏

[Kayn:] YOU GUYS BETTER NOT ISTFG 🤬🤬🤬

Ezreal sank down into the back seat. Kayn was right—he was so screwed. You watched his whirlwind of expressions from the side of your lashes. You couldn't help but feel bad for him. You were right on time for your schedule. And it was all too apparent he wasn't. You stared out the car window. It really was tough to balance certain things as an idol, and some were better at it than others.

When you both arrived at the Riot building, and walked passed the double swinging doors, there was definitely Hell to be paid. A bead of sweat ran Ezreal's temple. Finding Yone standing with his arms crossed, and looking down with a razor-sharp gaze.

"Is this why you were late?" Yone directed the comment towards you. Ezreal bit his bottom lip. Yone tapped his foot against the ground. "You have exactly five seconds, or I'm addressing your conduct with Alune. And if that happens, I promise, you won't like the result of our conversation."

He stumbled to get the proper words out. "No—I—it has nothing to do with her—I was just—"

"Ezreal did nothing wrong. I'm the one responsible for making him late." You stepped forward, garnering Yone's interrogative attention. "You see. I'm absolutely crazy in love with him." The whole lobby fell to dumbstruck silence. "I blackmailed him into going out with me today. I even went as far as to give him this hickey," you pulled down the top his shirt, revealing the bluish bruise against his clavicle from when you smacked him. "I took a picture of it. And told him if he didn't finish our date, I would tell all his precious fans he was taken. So...." you trailed off, unsure of what else to say. Ezreal's eyes were as wide as saucers from the blatant forgery of your lie.

Yone narrowed his gaze against you, as if trying to siphon the real truth. You only stared harder in return, solidifying your stance. Yone breathed out a tensive puff of air. "I'll be speaking to your manager then. Whoever it is, they'll be responsible for reprimanding you. In any case, don't you ever come near him again. Or else you won't have a career in this business—I'll make sure of that. Do you understand?" You paused, then gave a veiled smile. "Of course."

Before Ezreal could speak up again, Yone snapped a finger, pointing for Ezreal to head in the direction of the recording studio. He took a breath, as if wanting to say something—anything to you. But Yone spoke with a silent bite. "Don't make the rest of your team wait for you any longer." Ezreal nodded, bit the inside of his cheek, and walked away. About to turn into a hallway, he gave one last glance over his shoulder. Catching his stare, you placed a finger against your lips, before disappearing with Yone into an elevator.

And all Ezreal could think was: he really needed to see you again.

to be continued...

[saarovar]

Hihi I have a question!! How would you rate the travelers’ ability to sing (both games :D) from worst to best?

Hiiiii!!!! :D This is going to be LONG. But I have thoughts again so I will answer it now! :D I'm going to group them within just rankings as well, kind of like tierlists but for... people like me who do not know how to make tierlists. (Oh and Crick is included because I like Crick don't mind me. :3) Here we go! (SEE REBLOGS FOR THE REST I LITERALLY BROKE TUMBLR'S CHARACTER LIMIT AND IT WON'T LET ME POST IN ONE THING)

TERRIBLE: #17: Cyrus Canonically, he cannot sing, referring to singing as "his weakness" in his banter with Olberic and Tressa. Maybe vocal lessons would help, but he'd need to find a teacher who knows what they're doing. He's the type who likes to learn EVERYTHING, so I can't imagine him just not caring and brushing it off. I think he just doesn't know how -- he can probably pick up on the relative pitch of all the notes, but can't translate what he's hearing into stuff to do with his own voice; he probably has NO idea where his range is and frequently tries to hit notes too high for him; he can do falsetto but can't really control it well; and he kind of just decides he's going to try to hit a high note now when THE SONG DOESN'T GO THAT WAY PROFESSOR. #16: Partitio Also kind of canonically. If I remember correctly he was kicked out of the tavern or something when he tried to imitate what Agnea does and sing to cheer people's spirits. I feel like he has NO concept of where the notes are other than "that high note is higher than that low note," so Cyrus actually has a better ear than him, but at least Partitio doesn't try to hit quite as many high notes. Partitio also doesn't really know how to do falsetto, and just sings louder to try to hit higher notes (which does not work as well as he thinks it does). #15: Ochette Well... she's great at howling... if that's what you're looking for. I think she thinks that "the louder you are, the better you must be at singing" and that is exactly how she functions. She doesn't know what she's doing at all, she's just having fun... much to everyone else's chagrin. The good news? She generally doesn't try singing unprompted. The bad news? She WILL join in if someone else is singing. The party often ends up with mysterious headaches coincidentally soon after a duet between Ochette and Partitio, which also happens more frequently than it has any right to. #14: Throne She's bad. She knows she's bad. She won't sing for anyone no matter how much Agnea tries to encourage her to join in when the party is entertaining themselves on the trail or during "karaoke night" (or whatever the hell they have in Octo-universe) in the tavern. She's completely tone-deaf AND she's anxious about performing, so if she were to try it would be a lot of trailing off and shaky words that are kiiiiiiind of close to the intended note if you squint. She can't go into falsetto at all... no one knows if she CAN'T or if she just ends up too quiet for it to work whenever she tries. Also she has managed to "harmonise" with Temenos in tritones before and has no idea if she's actually that bad or if he did that on purpose.

BAD: #13: Osvald Never tried to sing in his life. I don't know what happened to actually manage to get him to sing for this particular scenario, maybe he was mind-controlled or something, but when he sings it... doesn't hurt anyone's ears? But he's incredibly monotone, only drifting the tiniest bit above or below his default voice if he decides the note is higher or lower -- it's more monotonous than if he were just talking, honestly. He doesn't insert any emotion at all, and if there ever came a time when he "sang" emotionally it's because he overheard someone say something that sounded kind of like Harvey's name and he got distracted. He would never do a duet with anyone, and honestly no one wants to try singing with him (he'd throw them off so bad).

#12: Tressa She doesn't sing to be "good," she sings for the fun of it. Loudly. But at least she's kind of close to the notes she's trying to hit for the most part, though there are plenty of times when she'll try to go for a note WAY out of her range and fail spectacularly. She's another one who tries to sing louder to hit higher notes, though she probably COULD do falsetto with someone to teach her how, she just hasn't figured that out yet. She and Alfyn have a blast doing duets, and the rest of the party (sans Therion) doesn't mind her being off-key, they just are happy she's having a good time. #11: H'aanit She's another "I don't want to do it don't make me" anxious one. When she tries, she's bad at it, but it's more the "never tried to sing before" bad than anything else. She's closer to the actual notes than Throne would be, but her voice wavers a lot and she ends up drifting away from the intended notes even when she might initially hit them. She won't try hitting high notes, and she won't try falsetto. She gets more comfortable if someone sings with her though, and (if the other person is good) she might be able to match their notes on occasion.

MEDIOCRE: #10: Olberic He's not really comfortable singing in front of other people, and feels like he needs to practice a lot to get good at it. If he doesn't know a song well, he'll pick the parts he does know and sing those ones (kind of like when there's a song that comes on in the car that you kind of know so you sing along to the chorus), but mostly mumbles or is quiet through the rest of it. Or he might just sing the chorus and say that's the song, that also works. He does have that one song that he knows really well that he will sing if prompted (probably learned and sang with the other knights of Hornburg), but that's going to get old really fast... but the first couple times he did it were really good! #9: Castti She doesn't really sing, she just... doesn't have the time... yeah, that's it. Too busy going around treating all the headaches the rest of the party have accumulated from the last Ochette/Partitio song... because that is very, very important work, what if they get sicker if she doesn't treat them? Okay, okay, more seriously, she's just another person not comfortable with trying, because she worries she'll be bad at it. She definitely hasn't had any practice or anything, and that's obvious if she were to try by herself, but she actually CAN do falsetto and can control it pretty well, though she might not be exactly perfectly on tune all the time. She's able to follow what other people are doing if someone else sings with her, and actually sounds pretty good if she has Agnea or someone to guide her, but she can't pull off the same level of skill on her own... but the fact that she can do it with others means she might be able to eventually! #8: Primrose She dances, she doesn't sing. She knows she's not an expert at singing, too, and she doesn't try doing it in front of people because she thinks it will ruin the dance. She does practice her dancing while singing (or humming) the song she'll be dancing to though, and it sounds on-tune "enough" to her when she's doing it. But it's always really clear when comparing her singing with the actual song that she's a little off, and if she were to hum the song to others they'd never be able to tell what song it is. If she ever were to sing in front of people, it would be alongside her dancing, so there might be a lot of pauses in weird places because she's having trouble multitasking and finding where her next step is going to be at the same time as remembering what the next word is (she'd get better at that if she seriously practiced both singing and dancing for a show though). #7: Crick He might be good if he practiced and were more confident in himself, but as it is he can never seem to get a song right and it frustrates him. When singing to himself he's actually better than he thinks he is, and can hit almost every note without thinking. When singing in front of people though he freaks out -- his voice gets super wavery and he can't hit any of the notes right, when he tries to go into falsetto his voice cracks and doesn't work, and he keeps forgetting the words. He's "good" but with a missing ingredient (confidence)... or he's "good" if you subtract an ingredient (other knights and/or inquisitors watching him), but as it is now he's stuck in mediocre category.

#6: Alfyn He's... kind of good, kind of bad. It really depends on the song and how drunk he is at the time. He loves singing alongside the other party members, and he'll always be really encouraging to those that aren't as comfortable with it (without pressuring them too much), so a lot of times when he sings he's joining someone else, trying to heighten the mood, or starting something off for one of the more nervous people. He can do falsetto, but he doesn't know where his range is, and if something is too low or too high he WILL try to hit it anyway and sound bad, but he has managed to get some songs down perfectly if they're right in the perfect point of his range.

[mrsbrookemunson]

I have a Sebastian Sallow request for you!!! Reader and Sebastian are the top two duelers at Hogwarts, and they’re each others enemies. They always bicker and try to one up each other. Everyone is sure they hate each other. But then comes the last championship day of duels, and in the duel before she’s supposed to fight Sebastian, she gets really hurt and Sebastian panics and rushes her to the hospital wing. They realize they actually like each other and perhaps some love confessions??

You're a real one for this - aka one of my favorite writers 💕 I changed up the request a little to make it more angsty—I still hope you like it 🥹 Also - hey guys! I am new in the Hogwarts Legacy writing community, but I've been known for my James Potter and Remus Lupin fics - along with some other fan favorites.

Warnings: *Not Proofread*, Canon violence (blood, injury, fighting), insecurities, slight dark!seb in this, mentions of gameplay (slight spoiler warning), fem!reader, she/her pronouns, "MC' insert, heavy angst in the beginning and a bittersweet ending (can be left up to interpretation) This is like a complete alternative of what happened in the game. Be warned *insert evil smile*.

Word Count: 2343

Darkness.

That's all she saw in that moment. She could hear her own heartbeat, the blood rushing through her veins, her own slow, shaky, weak breaths as the pain of breathing soon subsided into numbness.

Where did it all go wrong?

The image of his eyes nearly black as the night sky, and that haunting smirk on his face that she grew so fond over.

Fond. Now that was one way to describe. No - she didn't hate him, but he hated her. Her feelings were quite the opposite, that soon behind each bicker and snicker grew a warmth in her chest - a fire that she learned to contain within herself, it would've only been a matter of time till she burnt herself.

Was it love?

It felt like life threw her warnings left, right, and center - that love only causes pain. She didn't think the pain would be so bad to the point where it led to her death. Though, as she slowly accepted the darkness behind her eyelids, she thought... maybe death wouldn't be so bad if it meant escaping the reality of heartbreak. Until she was drawn back out again.

Where did it all go so wrong?

They've been together through so much. He was the only person - besides Professor Fig - who she thought listened to her.

Oh how he listened to her...

"Let me see if I've got this straight. You have Ranrok and Rookwood after you because of something you found at Gringotts - where you ended up via a portkey. You can see traces of ancient magic that you think Ranrok is trying to harness. And now you've been witnessing memories left by 'keepers'? Oh! And this house belonged to a Hogwarts professor - who was one of these 'non-quidditch' keepers - hundreds of years ago." He shifted on his feet. "If I didn't know you - " His smile, it could send her over a million times. " - I'd think you were pulling my leg."

In that moment she couldn't believe her ears - had there really been someone in her life that truly listened to her?

"You're not listening to me!"

"Why would I listen to someone so ignorant?"

She cursed at herself, hearing the slight crack in her voice, and from her vision becoming blurry with tears. "Maybe your uncle was right... you don't know when to stop."

"Oh, I do know when to stop."

It felt like it only got worse after that. He was always disagreeing and trying to start arguments with her. Not thinking before acting. Who once always listened to her soon became a brick wall. Maybe she should've voiced her worries, maybe then she would've been able to salvage the already broken pieces of their friendship.

But, she didn't.

Instead, she chose to turn her back on him and walk away. She chose to avoid him - to ignore him. The number of letters that he sent increased every day when she simply tucked them away without reading them. Her stomach twisted and turned doing so - but it was better than the outcome that most-likely would've happened if she chose to stay.

And when the year ended, winning the battle against Ranrok, losing Professor Fig, she had the slightest sliver of hope that he would've spoken to her - grieved for her - oddly enough, she wanted him to yell at her for being stupid enough to go into such a war without his help. But, he didn't - and she felt foolish for thinking he would.

Would they ever speak again?

"MC, Mister Sallow - up onto the dueling platform," Professor Hecat instructed.

She swore she heard him grumble something under his breath. She noticed how Sebastian's physique changed over the summer after their fifth year. He became taller, his voice got deeper, his eyes became darker, and his skin got paler. Merlin, he looked sickly.

She glanced at him, cautiously before stepping up onto the platform.

She lost. He laughed. How cruel.

"She thinks just because she won a battle against Ranrok, she's the best dueler at the school."

It spread like wildfire.

Lucan was all over it. It seemed as though the two best duelers competing against each other was his way of keeping students engaged in his little 'unsanctioned' club.

It became much bigger than that.

Darkness.

"MC?" she heard a voice call out. "MC?! Wake up!"

"What have you done?"

Time slipped away from her. Seventh year came around, and no progress was made between her and the boy she desired in a way that was almost like a lucid dream. He was right there, she could touch him, feel him if she wanted to - but she knew, if she gave in - she'd wake up.

She didn't want to wake up.

Her own body didn't listen and her eyes cracked open. It was too bright to truly process her surroundings and the pain came back as if she was hit by a train. Her head hurt and it became hard to breathe again.

Why couldn't she breathe?!

Sobs escaped her when she felt something sticky on her hands. She looked down and saw blood soaking through her dueling clothes. She started to hyperventilate.

Hands came to grasp her face and she was met with brown eyes. Not the dark - nearly black - she found herself getting used to. No. Brown. Brown like honey, golden like the sun, melted chocolate she wanted to drown - merlin they were beautiful. Such eyes didn't deserve to hold tears nor look so broken, they deserved to be crinkled by smiling and closed by laughing too hard.

"S-Sebastian?" she called out in a rasp.

He shushed her and ran a hand down her head to soothe her wild, untamed hair. His eyes then widened when he pulled his hand away abruptly to glance down at his fingertips. That's when tears began to fall down his rosy, freckled cheeks. "It'll be okay, we're getting you help, okay?"

She couldn't quite understand him, like she was underwater. She felt dizzy and her eyes were getting heavy again.

"No - no - no, don't close your eyes." He patted her face. "Please, don't close your eyes. I need you to stay awake... help is on their way," he paused. "Stay awake from me."

Her eyebrows furrowed. "Why would I do anything for you anymore?" she whispered.

His face contorted into one that expressed such hurt. "Wh - what?"

"After everything... why do you even care? You hate me."

His eyes widen. "H - Hate you? I never said - "

"Don't lie to me..." she cried. "You - you did this, didn't you?" She grew angry. "And to think I would've given you the world if you had just listened to me!" She struggled to raise her voice causing her to violently cough. "To think I loved you..." Her head rolled and he instinctively readjusted to keep her head steady.

"MC? MC?!" He shook her as he cried. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry - you're right - it's all my fault - "

"Step aside! Let us through!" Professor Sharp shouted over all the students panicked filled voices.

Professor Weasley, and Professor Hecat followed him.

Sebastian held onto her tight and attempted to wake her up once more. He pressed his fingers to her wrist, but couldn't find anything. Panic struck him like lightning, he leaned down to press his ear to her chest. Her heartbeat barely there. He watched as her skin was losing its color and he suddenly felt sick.

What had he done?

A couple days had passed and MC had not woken up, yet. But, she was alive... surrounded by gifts and 'get well soon' cards. Sebastian hadn't left her side and practically begged the professors to induce a punishment after she had woken. In this moment, he felt the need to be by her side.

The guilt was eating at him alive, already have gotten a lectured from the professors, Ominis, Natty, Poppy, Imelda - Hell, even Lucan was scolding him, adding the point that his club is ruined because of his actions. He couldn't stop thinking about what she said before she knocked out.

She loved him...

That thought sent butterflies throughout his whole body. And Merlin, he wishes she'd wake so he could say it back a million times over between apologies. Loved... Did she still love him? That dawned on him. He gripped her hand tightly in his as the fear crept in - this could be the last chance he has to ever act of feelings rather than insecurities.

When did it all go so wrong? he wondered.

"I love you too," he whispered to her in the dark infirmary. "I've loved you since you beat me in that duel to be honest." He chuckled, dryly. "My new charge." He smiled fondly over the memory. "That day we fought that troll, I must admit I was a little jealous. I wanted to prove to you that I could be your... 'knight in shining armor' as awful as that sounds..." He frowned. "But, you didn't need me. You never needed me." He shook his head. "You are stronger than you know." Tears began to flood his eyes. "I'm sorry I hurt you - I hurt you more times than I can count and - " He swallowed. "It will haunt me everyday pass death. Every time I close my eyes, it's a replay of what I did, a neverending nightmare where I see my reflection of who I've truly become. To the point i can't sleep or eat." He weeped. "Everyone was right. I don't know when to stop. And because of that I lose everyone around me... Maybe my uncle was right about me. Maybe I should just leave and never return." He raised her hand and gently kissed her knuckles. "As much as I'd miss Ominis, and Anne, and you - I'd probably be for the best... I'm just a disaster waiting to happen."

MC began to stir on the bed, her eyes fluttering open to meet his. "I did need you, you know," she whispered. "I needed you when it came to Ranrok, and when I lost Professor Fig - you were the only person I truly wanted to be there with me, but you weren't. And part of that is my fault... for so long - I just wanted you, it didn't matter what you had done, but I knew if I went to you my love for you would only grow and I knew that wasn't in the cards for us. You wanted so badly to save Anne, I knew I couldn't fit in there and it would've been selfish fo me to."

"I would've preferred you to be selfish rather than you shut me out."

"I never did such a thing! I tried talking to you but you'd never listen to me."

"Because i was angry - I was angry at where my life had become and who I was becoming and I knew if I opened my mouth I'd ruin everything between us."

"There was nothing between us!"

"I wanted there to be!"

"Well, I guess it didn't matter because look where we are now!"

He pulled his hand away to drag it over his face, using both hands to rub at his eyes. "What went so wrong between us?" he questioned, defeated.

They sat there in silence. It wasn't uncomfortable - but tensions were high. Thoughts coursing through both of their minds at a frantic, overwhelming pace.

MC closed her eyes to try and steady herself mentally. She sighed, "Sebastian I - "

"I want us to start over again, from the very beginning."

She looked rather surprised to hear him blurt out such a thought. "And what? Forget everything that's we've been through together?"

"No, but... we can at least try to move on." He sounded so hopeful. "At least give me a chance."

She laid back in her bed and observed him in silence. The way his eyes were practically pleading her to say yes, to give him relief of what she could tell had been weighing him down for the last two years.

"We'll get it right this time, I promise," he begged and reached out to grab her hand again. His dark circles became more prominent as they were glazed with tears. The moonlight seeping through the windows made him look like a crestfallen angel. "Please."

Her heart squeezed at the sound and sight. With hesitation she spoke, "My name is MC, I started in Hogwarts as a fifth year and crazily enough I can see traces of ancient magic and am known as the 'Hero of Hogwarts' because I defeated Ranrok and ultimately ended the Goblin War."

His smile left her breathless. Weak, yet so powerful. His shoulders lowered drastically with a shaky exhale. "That is a lot to take in... but I wouldn't mind listening to you talk for hours on hand if that's what if takes for you to tell me everything I missed."

"Quite the commitment you're willing to make..." she paused. "And your name is?"

He smiled a little wider. "Sebastian Sallow - and as a note - I am known for committing to something till the end. I don't easily give up."

She returned the smile. "Good to know."

"And to add onto that - I'd wait for you as long as the Earth spins until you are ready to accept me once again as who I once was."

She gave him a rather mocked look of suspicion. "You won't go changing on me, will you?"

He shook his head, hastily. "Never, this - what you see right here - this is what you're getting, nothing else."

She was crying along with him at this moment - but more in relief that she didn't have to carry the burden of her true feelings any long. And she knew - deep down - it would take time, step-by-step opening herself up to him as he would to her. But, she'll consider it yet another quest that she couldn't wait to finish, knowing it'll lead to the next part of their lives together. So, with a soft grin -

"How can I refuse?"

The end.

Should I make a part two - almost like an epilogue?

If you'd like to be part of my Sebastian Sallow taglist let me know!

| Requests Open |

[eilinelsghost]

I’m quite fascinated by the way that you “play chess with LaCE” (love that phrasing, btw) especially when it comes to Russingon. I’m curious how and why you chose to write it as you did, particularly what seems to be Maedhros’ choice not to marry Fingon? If you intend to expand on this later in the series, of course I’ll gladly wait. But if you can say anything now, I do love your commentaries - they’re always so insightful. :)

So! This is a finnicky one to answer. But I will do my best! This got long, so I'll break it up by each part of the question:

Let's Play Chess with LaCE

The "let's play chess with LaCE" tag is sort of a joke to myself. It originated because that's what the whole thing felt like when I started working on the series. I've talked elsewhere about how the entire Atandil story came about because I was annoyed by seeing several Finrod/Bëor posts and went back to reread the Athrabeth to marinate in how impossible it was....and then came out of that obsessed with the two of them and with half this story pre-formed in my head. The upshot of this was that a) I knew I wanted to write this story, but b) it was very important to me that it operated "within" canon rather than disregarding it, and c) that I needed to find some way to do this where Finrod was (at least not consciously) a complete hypocrite in the Athrabeth.

But the tag is sort of a joke with myself because it also represents how Finrod is throughout the narrative. He's just in a constant chess-game with his own convictions, with his shifting understanding of what it all means, and with what actions are "right" given those factors. This is becoming increasingly apparent in the current installments where he is trying to find ways of inhabiting both things at once without crossing into what he fears would be transgressing Doom.

But Balan, for all he will say that Finrod "understands far more of our lore than do I of his philosophy" (The Warning Sounds Too Late), can play chess just as well and is perfectly capable of calling Finrod on his bullshit even when (especially when) it's his philosophy. And (spoiler) he will.

Portrayal of LaCE in Atandil

As far as "why I chose to write it as I did," I assume this means re how exactly Atandil depicts marriage happening in a LaCE-compliant story, specifically in the latest installment with Fingon/Maedhros? If so, the simple answer is because this is what LaCE says. I know we often talk about it as being "you have sex, you get elf-married," but that isn't actually what the text tells us.

Here is the oft-quoted statement that Elves can and did "marry thus of free consent."

But.

It is caveated with a parenthetical and we can't ignore that. Because "save blessings exchanged and the naming of the Name" is a requirement just as much as the bodily union is a requirement.

Even in the original description of a traditional ceremony, we are told that "it was the act of bodily union that achieved marriage, and after which the indissoluble bond was complete" (emphasis mine). It was the final act in the sequence of acts that culminated in an Elf-marriage - the one that completes it, not the thing within which the whole is encapsulated.

Hilariously (given the "just have sex and you're married!" assumptions), the blessings that this parenthetical references are the ones of the father and mother (see the screenshot below where these are cited as the blessings attached to the naming of the Name).

Obviously this was not going to be possible in many of the quick wartime marriages the text is discussing, so presumably the naming of Varda and Manwë in witness is something that is either taken on by other representatives who stand in for the parents in a barebones ceremony, or by the pair themselves if alone - as evidenced by endnote 9 in the first screenshot which directs us to this regarding Beren & Lúthien:

All that to say, that is the reason I chose to write LaCE the way I did: because it's how I've always understood the text.

Fingon & Maedhros

Regarding Fingon and Maedhros specifically, I'm afraid I don't really have a detailed answer for you here besides "it worked for the narrative."

Having concrete evidence of a) the incompleteness of Finrod's understanding of this so far and b) the fact that this is something done in practice by people he knows well and is not just a hypothetical was going to be necessary to set Finrod in a prolonged wobble about his own convictions re the whole situation. I won't expand on that here because we will go into that in the story itself, but that's the strategic reason for the specific Russingon depiction in Atandil.

Speaking generally though, I don't have particularly strong Russingon feelings and so I struggled quite a bit trying to figure out how to approach this. They sort of exist by default in the background for me, but I don't really have a lot of well-developed ideas around them. However I checked with some other friends who do have a lot more Russingon insight and who have also adhered to the nonmarried option (credit to @welcomingdisaster and @thelordofgifs for the following thoughts), and they said this is because both Fingon and Maedhros are already bound to other things: Fingon's loyalty is foremost to Fingolfin and Maedhros' is to the Silmarils/the Oath.

And that is my best attempt at answering! Sorry this got absurdly longwinded 😂

As always, thanks so much for the ask! It was really fun to have a reason to try wrangling my thoughts on this into written form.

[wordy-little-witch]

Dropping random One Piece ideas bc this is it now. This is how I cope.

Buggy focused bc I love this little blue haired buffoon

Buggy

• AuDHD

• BPD

• gender is a performance and he LOVES THE SPOTLIGHT BABYYYY

• Buggy is actually a year or so younger than Shanks, and they both use this as an insult point for arguments. Buggy calls him old man, Shanks calls him a teeny tiny little clown baby, Buggy punches Shanks, Shanks cries dramatically, the works.

• in my perception between them, their relationship could go either way - I love the interpretation of them seeing one another as brothers, I love the interpretation of them being lovers, I think either one fits them and it's precious and depending on the Shuggy flavor of the day. It's never both at the same time though. One or the other.

• Buggy has always been terrifyingly flexible. It was waved off when he was very little, but it was only around the time Crocus joined the crew that he noticed Buggy was much more flexible than most kids his age. Turns out baby blue has hypermobility syndrome. The Roger pirates helped him learn wrapping techniques to help stabilize his wrists and knees and hips, his biggest problem areas, but after the Devil Fruit Fiasco, he can and will just drop a limb. Floating is so much easier on bad pain days.

• Buggy still wraps and braces his body when he can, but he also hides most of them beneath his clothes. Few have seen him freely in braces. Cabaji and Mohji are the most familiar with that. Ritchie takes his role thereof as a living, furry weighted heating pad.

• kinesthetic and visual stimming Buggy my beloved.

• sometimes he's just. Touch Alvida. Not in a weird way, just... her Devil Fruit makes her skin and hair feel absolutely DIVINE and he can spend hours just. Playing with her fingers or brushing her hair. He's embarrassed by it.

• he has a very meticulous skin and hair care routine. It's one of very few routines he keeps to. Not even being in prison stopped it.

• he's actually really damn good with money and running a business. The situation with the Cross Guild was a Bad Time, Bad Place, Bad Luck situation, which is honestly just his brand at this point.

• He was a warlord for all of a few months, but in that time, he did, in fact, have to attend a few meetings, and he did, in fact, make a friend! A friend nobody ever expected.

• Boa Hancock and Buggy are the most underrated Mean Girls Squad ever and I'll die on that hill, I think they'd be so funny as friends. Ask me more on my Boa Buggy Besties ideas please I am begging I love them so much

• Cross Guild happens, and it goes fairly similar to Canon, but Buggy quite literally within that three week time frame got the entirety of his loan back AND the interest and was like "hey so like. Did you still want this or-?"

• the mercenaries at Karai Bari are all very progressive. Buggy is a lax ruler, by most standards, but he puts his foot down firmly regarding bigotry, racism, sexism, etc.

• Buggy is not actually human, but he doesn't know that. He was orphaned at a VERY early age, was adopted by Roger pretty young, and he doesn't really remember much pre-piracy. He does know his genetics are a little weird, #ThanksCrocus, but not much beyond that. This may be Important later on if anyone wants some silly little concepts

• demisexual nblm, but once he catches feelings, he becomes a harlot harlequin

• once took off a limb and forgot where he left it. Has genuinely devoted microchipping his limbs.

• some people have comfort activities like hiking or painting. He makes bombs. It's very soothing and he likes the BOOM

• has a multitude of explosives btw; everything from large range, highly damaging, lethal weapons, to flashy, mildly inconveniences. He once made a batch of mini muggy balls full of itching powder just to see if he could and now it's his favorite thing to prank people with. ((Yes, he designed those while a Warlord. Yes, he tested it on the Navy. No, he was never definitively caught.))

• when he's busy, he ties his hair in a bun and puts pens, pins, etc in his hair, ends up looking like a porcupine or sea urchin.

• he has a really bad habit of hyperfixating for hours upon hours on end. Galdino, Alvida, Mohji and Cabaji have a rotation system to check on him if he hasn't been seen for 5 or more hours. They'll drag him away from his work (some more gently than others), make him eat, drink, etc. ((Alvida huffs and puffs about it, but she's also among the first ones to wipe a grease smear from his face, look him over head to toe and determine whether she's pulling the Girls Night card. She will die before admitting that she adores this bastard.))

• Buggy is allergic to pineapples.

That's all I got rn okay ily byyyeeee

[candyswirls]

An Eye for an Eye, A Pup for a Pup - Pt 9

Previous - Next - MasterPost

If you read chapter seven, I accidentally posted 8 instead. I have corrected it

Warnings: vomit, panic attacks, mishandling of a child, blood, canon typical violence

His pup choked as he cried. He’d been so distraught and still couldn’t bring himself to tell Finnja what had happened and what was wrong.

He’d gotten most of the story from Heppni.

Still, Imho refused to speak. The look in his eyes was growing distant.

“They will not harm you,” Finnja promised. “I will ensure of it. Even after you’ve become a bloodclaw.”

Imho slowly looked at Finnja, rage bristling within him.

“I don’t want to be a blood claw!” He finally yelled. “I don’t want to be a Space Wolf! I’m a Thousand Son! A son of Magnus! I chose to be an Astartes for him! Not you!”

He broke down further and sobbed into his hands.

Finnja sighed, staying near his pup.

“But you are also one of the last of the thousand sons legacy,” he told the boy. “Your geneseed will be passed onto another one when you come to the end of your life. Eventually no one will be able to tell who has Thousand Son geneseed mixed with Space Wolf. There will just be the knowledge that it’s there and it’s a part of the legion. They will not know what customs and ways came from the thousand sons.”

Imho glanced up.

“You will most likely become a rune priest and will be able to train others to do the same,” Finnja continued. “You and your fellow thousand sons neophytes will take what you know and pass it onto others who will come after you. It is up to you to carry on your legions legacy. As the Ultramarines did with the remaining second and eleventh.”

His pup glanced to the side, not wanting to listen but seeing the reason.

“The others speak of replacing the geneseed,” he muttered. “I still do not want that-that… I refuse to have the geneseed of another!”

Finnja stared. He would let his pup be angry right now. He would eventually relax and see reason.

“You have become quite bold,” he commented.

“Am I to be punished?” Imho scoffed.

“No,” Finnja said. “It’s good to see you have some bite to you. It will do you good. You must be careful to make sure that it does not come across as or be seen as defiance.”

His pup gazed off to the side and wiped his nose.

“Even if you want to be defiant,” Finnja added.

Silence enveloped the room.

“I will be back later,” Finnja told him. “The Canis flu is spreading again.”

“What is that?” Imho sniffed.

“A flu most neophytes get,” he answered. “Newer ones and your brethren have been catching it. If you feel off at all, let me know. It can be vile.”

His pup nodded and stood.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Imho said.

“Alright.”

He watched his pup leave, a feeling telling him something was off. He wasn’t telling him something.

***

As soon as he was out of sight and earshot he ran to the bathrooms.

Azkaratoth was just inside the door, keeping watch.

“Hurry,” he hissed.

Imho slipped in to see Risan, Kalophis, and Kek.

“Where’s Scamah and Chiram?” He inquired.

Kek answered, “They’re sick. Some flu.”

“Canis flu,” Kalophis answered. “Speaking of Canis, they’re planning on giving us that Canis Elixir. It’s what gives them their wolf like features.”

“Any news?” Imho asked.

Azkaratoth answered, “There is no way off. We’re watched. Nowhere to go. We’re in the middle of nowhere, gone to meet the warmaster.”

A thought ran through Imho’s mind. He didn’t know where it came from or why.

The Warmaster had betrayed them.

Kek teared up, “I don’t want to be a space wolf…”

“What choice do we have?” Risan scoffed. “It’s that or death.”

It grew quiet.

“We need to go,” Azkaratoth muttered. “They’re going to notice we’re gone. We have to keep meetings short. Slip out one by one.”

“I’ll go last,” Imho told them. “I… actually have to use the restroom.”

They nodded then waited to leave, one by one, at different times.

Risan was the last to leave. Imho sighed, going to a stall.

He looked out and around after he finished. No one was there.

He slipped through the hallways to a storage closet for the servitors.

He checked again to see if anyone was around.

He dove in and pushed what he could in front of the door then searched the trash chute. They were still there!

He had gathered a few items and hid them in there. They were unassuming. Several old candles, some grease from the food, and charcoal. But they would work.

He began immediately. Time was against him and he was already sweating profusely.

Using the charcoal he drew the circle and various runes. He’d done this hundreds of times. Ever since he was young.

He set the candles out in order, covering the tips in the grease. He sat in the middle. He focused and began reciting the chants and rites. Invoking powers of the warp to show forth his psychic power.

Wind began to flow and then… nothing. It wasn’t working.

He tried again. And again. And again. Again. There wasn’t even a spark or smoke.

Tears began to well as his denial ebbed away.

The door swung open.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” A voice bellowed.

Imho whipped around to see a space wolf he didn’t recognize. He scrambled back.

“COME HERE YOU DAMN WITCH!”

He screamed and instinctively tried to use his power. Nothing.

He was dragged out by his hair, another firm hand on his arm. He kicked and screamed as he was brought towards the feast hall.

He could barely hear others yelling and asking what was going on.

“He was trying to summon something!” The battle-brother yelled. “The proof is in a servitor closet down there! He blocked the door! I found out as I was doing my patrol! I heard him chanting!”

He pulled Imho forward by his hair again and Imho screamed in pain, trying to pull back.

“You’re going to wish you died on Prospero!” He yelled at him. “Dare to summon things on our ship!”

“LET ME GO!” Imho screamed in response. “LET GO!”

“We’ll see what the Russ has to say about this!” The wolf growled. “You little-“

The wolf suddenly lost his grip on Imho as a fist collided with his face. Tears streamed down Imho’s cheeks as he looked up to see what had happened.

Finnja beat the other wolf back with repeated punches to the face and then grabbed the other Wolf by the rim of his armor and slammed him against the wall.

“DO. NOT. TOUCH. MY. PUP!!” Finnja snarled. He spat out several words in his native tongue. By others reactions, Imho guessed they were curses and insults.

Another tried to interject, “Finnja he-“

Finnja bellowed with authority. Many tried to stand talk but most seemed to shrink at his tone. He’d raised and trained many of the battlebrothers.

“You are not wolf priests!” He snapped. “Neophytes are my domain! If there is a problem you come to me! You do not punish them yourself!”

The wolf he punched retorted while spitting blood, “He’s a witch! He was summoning!”

“That is for me to decide and Kva!” Finnja growled. “I gave you the same protection and treatment, I expect you to respect that amongst all neophytes!”

The wolf stared at Finnja, wanting to fight back. He looked like he was going to attack… then he relented.

Finnja turned around, muttering angrily.

Imho had never been more intimidated. The wolf priest fumed and the whites of his eyes seemed to have turned red.

He grabbed Imho by the arm and marched him back towards the apothecary.

He deposited Imho into one of the recovery rooms.

“Stay in here while I figure this out,” he ordered! “You are still in trouble!”

The door slammed and he heard it lock.

He held back tears until he heard the footsteps fade away then burst into sobs. He threw himself into the corner as he cried.

He’d lost his power, he was accused of heresy, and now Finnja was enraged. He had no idea what was going to happen to him but it couldn’t be good. What if someone saw them meeting in the bathroom? His fellow thousand sons could be in trouble now.

The Primarch would most likely be informed. Those with him would be under more scrutiny. Would he be killed? Servitorized? Maybe made a serf to one of these barbarians.

Nausea overcame him and he rushed to the bin in the room.

He felt like he was stuck in there forever. He cried so hard he choked and emptied his stomach once more.

He paced up and down. He hid under the bed and screamed and panicked.

He even tried begging at the door. No answer.

He couldn’t bring himself to lie down on the bed. He sat on the floor, against a wall as he sniffed and hiccuped.

The door finally opened. Relief and horror filled him.

It wasn’t Finnja. It was a wolf he didn’t recognize. Imho shrunk under his gaze.

“Come on,” he ordered. “The Russ wants to see you.”

Imho’s lip trembled. He broke down more as he stood. He held onto his arm, now bruised.

He kept his head down as he followed the wolf, terrified of what would happen.

He trembled as they continued towards where the Primarch resided. He wanted to go back and hide in the recovery room. He wanted Finnja, to wrap himself up in the Wolf’s cloak. He wanted his mother to wipe away tears and assure him it would be okay. To see Mshai with all his other aspirant brothers. He wanted his Father, Magnus the Red, to be here. To put his hands on his shoulders and tell him of the wonders of the warp and glories of the crusade as if nothing wrong had ever happened.

He broke down more with each passing thought, brushing away snot and tears.

They approached large wooden doors with various runes carved in the frame. He hated these runes. They made him feel sick. They looked childish and barbaric compared to Prosperan script.

Two wolves standing guard opened the doors as they approached.

Imho’s hearts sunk. The room was filled with older and highly decorated wolves. This was the Primarch’s council. The other Wolf Priests were in the room including Finnja. He saw the wolf that had dragged him out, now sporting a black eye, and the two Bloodclaws that had attacked him before. They were solemn.

Leman Russ sat on a large wooden throne, eyeing Imhotep. He couldn’t bring himself to meet the Primarch’s gaze. Should he throw himself down on the ground and grovel? Beg for mercy? He wanted to throw up again and his head spun.

“Imhotep,” the Russ spoke, sending chills down his spine, “Step forward, pup.”

He felt frozen and bit his lip. The wolf that brought him here gave him a push. He staggered forward, crying harder the closer he came.

He could see the charcoal and candles he used to the left of the Russ. He couldn’t breathe.

Leman leaned in closer and Imho stiffened.

“Would you like to explain yourself?” He asked in a steady tone.

Imho let out a sob and nodded.

It took a moment for him to compose himself enough to speak.

“I-I-I-I wazzn’ wasn-n-N’t trying to-o summon,” he cried! “It-I-I-t-t was a-a t-it wa-as a est-test! L-light the-the-the candles wi-ith your min-in-mind!”

Panic seized his chest and his breathing became erratic. A steady stream of tears dropped off his cheeks onto the floor.

“Why?” Leman asked. “What was the point?”

He took in a deep breath, “It’s m-me-meant to-to tes-est psychic pow-er. I could d-do it before b-bu-but I can’t! It’s g-gone! It’s gone! M-m-my power! Ever sin-since you stupid wolves killed m-my home and m-my mom!”

Imho choked and gagged. Someone stuck a rag in front of his face to catch what he coughed up.

He just snapped and yelled at a Primarch. He was dead. All he could see was space wolf armor tearing through Mshai and fellow neophytes. He could hear the screams in the streets.

He cried and spit into the rag, terror racking his body.

A hand steadied him.

The rag was taken away and Imho swayed as he stood.

He realized how large the hand was. He was petrified as he stared at the Primarch. He knelt near Imho, essentially holding him up.

“Breathe,” he said gently. “You are a Space Wolf neophyte. We take care of our own and are not cruel.”

He gasped deeply, his lungs suddenly working again.

“There, there,” Leman said as he motioned. “Kva.”

An intricately dressed wolf approached.

“Show me your scars,” he said softly. “The ones carved into you.”

Imho slowly removed his tunic. He was almost shocked as Leman took it from him.

Kva pressed ibis fingers into him. He could feel the wolf’s own psychic energy crackle under his skin.

“My lord,” one Bloodclaw asked.

“Silence,” The Primarch warned.

Imho flinched as stinging and sharp pain shot up his spine. Kva was quiet. He glanced once towards the bloodclaws and glared.

“These are anti-psyker runes,” Kva determined. “Trapping it with in. The way they were done and the sequence is like unto a curse. Runes affect one’s body and mental well-being. I know the sorcerers of Prospero held their psyker status in high regard, correct?”

Imho nodded.

He continued, “The ritual symbols are not meant for summoning. Just invoking one’s own power. I suspect that with some corrective cosmetic surgery and rune tattoos on top, your power will return to normal.”

Imho hiccuped with relief and hyperventilated. Perspiration ran down his back.

“Imhotep look at me,” Leman ordered.

He did so albeit shakily.

A finger lifted his chin to meet the Russ’s eyes.

“If you have a problem”, He said with weight to every word, “You inform Finnja. We do not tolerate witchcraft here. Kva is over teaching the ways of Rune Priests. You follow his ways. You either follow that path or you don’t use your powers at all. Do you understand? Speak out loud.”

Imho sniffed, “Yes, sir…”

“As for your punishment,” Leman said. “I cannot let this go. You are not allowed anywhere without supervision. You’re to scrub the floors of the first company barracks and other than cleaning in there and checkup in the apothecarium you’re confined to a recovery room. You don’t get to be with the other neophytes right now. I will not be so lenient if this happens again. Do I make myself clear?”

He nodded quickly, “Yes… My Lord.”

Leman nodded then leaned forward further. He sniffed his head.

“You’ll clean the barracks at another time,” he said. “I can smell the start of the Canis flu in you. You’ll be bedridden soon.”

His stern look softened and he slipped the tunic back over him.

“You have a home and safety here,” Leman said. “Take him back, Finnja.”

He patted him on the back before standing up again.

“Come on pup,” Finnja beckoned gently.

It took everything in Imho to not spin around and cling to Finnja. He walked slowly, Finnja’s fingers on his back as they exited.

He couldn’t help but hiccup more as they made their way to the apothecarium. Finnja placed him in the room he’d been in before and motioned for him to climb into the bed.

He rubbed his eyes. He was lucky. Very lucky.

Finnja brought him a large bottle of water.

“Drink,” he said. “You’re dehydrated.”

“I’m sorry for causing trouble,” Imho whispered as he took a drink.

“You’re my pup,” the wolf sighed. “I’m mostly angry that you weren’t comfortable enough to come and tell me. I can and will keep things in confidence.”

The wolf sat on the ground next to the bed.

“I’m sorry,” Imho whispered again. “It won’t happen again.”

“It had better not,” Finnja muttered. “You are incredibly lucky. I do not know how to iterate to you how much trouble you could have been in had some of my brothers not helped vouch for you. Especially Heppni who told the Russ of those two bloodclaws. They are getting punished as well.”

He didn’t raise his voice but there was great disappointment in it.

“You may not see it but the Primarch has a soft spot for you and those that came with you,” Finnja sighed. “He’s been in your situation. Drink more.”

Imho obediently took another drink as tears streamed down his cheeks.

Finnja reached out and caressed Imho’s cheek, “If something happens, tell me. My job is to protect and raise you up. Ensure you live.”

He leaned into the large hand. Finnja sighed again and pulled Imho off the bed into his lap. The wolf priest was dressed in his robes and combat briefs. Imho appreciated not having to lay against cold ceramite.

Finnja gently took his bruised arm.

“Was this me?” He asked.

“No,” Imho sniffed. “It was the other wolf.”

He rested his head on a bicep as Finnja rubbed circles into his back.

He dared to ask, “Will my culture get erased?”

“No,” Finnja answered immediately. “We have Fenrisian culture and specific ways of doing things but not all of us are from Fenris. The Russ does not take glee in being the emperors executioner. He misses his brothers even if he won’t admit it. You will still be Prosperan.”

“Thank you,” Imho whispered.

Finnja pressed a kiss to the back of his head.

“Rest pup,” the wolf said.

[kowaiitenshii]

[Sunkiller Lullaby Part Three]

Pairing: Darth Vader X Reader

Plot Summary: Finally, it’s time to enact your duties as Darth Vader’s personal attendant. What will happen as you accompany him in his everyday life? 

Warnings: Canon-level violence. Murder. Mentions of death. Mentions of alcohol. Alcohol consumption. Canon-divergent. Unburnt!Vader. Vader is his own warning. Descriptions of violence. Descriptions of injury. Descriptions of a wound. Reader is a former slave.  AFAB reader, feminine pronouns and descriptions used. Corruption. 18+ content to come in later chapters.

Words: 6k

A/N: First off, I want to say a HUGE thank you for all the love this fic has gotten. I had put off actually writing this for months, for fear that it wouldn’t make sense to others, or fear that no one would care to read it if I did. Just goes to show you, you’ll never know if you don’t try! Here is part three of this series, how many parts it will be in total; as of right now I’m unsure. But! I’m committed to writing this story out in its entirety, and I only hope you enjoy it!!

Part One // Part Two

Part III:

And then you wake up. 

Groggy, bleary-eyed and half awake, you groan in frustration. Of course you had to wake up, just when everything was beginning to get good. 

You can still feel the fluttering of the butterflies in your stomach and the ache of yearning in your chest as you stretch and slide out of bed. 

Sighing longingly, you decide to take a nice, hot shower before starting your day. 

You line the bottom of the shower with aromatic salts, deeply breathing in the steam in an effort to recenter yourself. The gentle caresses of the hot water wash away the leftover tension in your body, and you savour the feeling of it trickling over your skin in little rivers. 

Eventually to your dismay, the water begins to go cold. You begrudgingly start to towel off, examining your form in the mirror as you do so. Stepping closer as you dry your face and hair, you stop in your tracks when you notice that something is off. 

You lean closer into the mirror, peering at the point of interest. Your bottom lip is pinker than usual, almost like it’s slightly swollen. 

Your heart begins to beat faster, and as you pull down your bottom lip with quivering hands to examine the inner side, you swear it stops. 

A fine chill runs down your spine, your hairs stand on end when you see it. 

A small red mark on the inside of your lip. A bite mark. 

Your eyes go wide, and your hand drops from your lips thoughtlessly. You stare at your own reflection in terrified shock. 

How could that be possible? 

If it was all just a dream, then how could the effects carry over into the waking world? 

This question shakes you, leaving you locked within the confines of your own body, wrought with confusion. 

For a long moment, you simply stand there shaking, icy spears of dread piercing your chest. 

The only thing that finally snaps you out of your trance is the sound of familiar knocking at your chamber door. Realising you are still quite naked, you rush out into the main chamber of your suite. 

“One moment please!” you call out as you hurriedly begin throwing on the garments you had laid out the night prior. 

You almost regret your choice of clothes; the undress you chose is an obsidian black, low-cut, with long sleeves that drape over your arms and leave your shoulders exposed. The waist of the dress cinches in with ties in the back, and there are thigh high slits on either side of the skirt. You add an upper body harness for an additional touch of much needed stability, and you pray to the maker that the outfit is acceptable. You are rather nervous to wear a more revealing ensemble in front of your master, as if you had been a braver person when you picked it. 

That is, until you catch a glimpse of yourself in the rounded mirror of your vanity. The dress exposes you in all the right ways, while still maintaining an elegant sensibility. The fabric falls beautifully over your curves, and the harness hugs them in all the right places; sure to impress any who had the privilege of looking upon you. 

Finally, after brushing out your hair and deciding to leave it down, you call out for your droid friend to enter. 

“Come in!” you call. 

The droid enters promptly, carrying a silver platter loaded with your breakfast, and it pauses for a second when it sees you. 

“Looking lovely today, Madam!” it compliments you, bringing a smile to your lips. 

“Are you ready for your morning meal?” it offers politely.

Taking your place at the table, you nod. 

“Yes, please.” 

Admittedly, you aren’t very hungry this morning, your appetite soured by your recent discovery in the mirror. Picking at the morning’s selection of baked fruit pastries, sweet jams, and whipped creams, the droid takes notice. 

“Is everything to your liking, Madam?” it asks, cocking its head in curiosity. “I can bring you something more suited to your tastes if you find it lacking.” 

Blushing lightly, you shake your head, feeling a tinge of guilt for seeming ungrateful. 

“No, that won’t be necessary. Everything is perfectly delicious.” you reassure the kind droid. Everything is delicious, your mind is just stuck elsewhere.

“I just…” you pause, worrying your lip between your teeth as you try to find the right words, the droid looking at you with curiosity.

           “I had the strangest dream last night.” You admit in a hushed tone. 

The droid nods in understanding. 

“I am very sorry Milady.” it apologizes. “Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable? I understand that dreams can be troubling for a great many humans.” It offers generously. 

You simply smile at the faithful droid, appreciating its support as you shake your head. 

“No, But I am thankful for your offer.” you reply, the droid nodding in acknowledgement before it begins to tidy up. 

The droid leaves with the clutter momentarily, before returning to report the day’s agenda. 

“Lord Vader would like you to meet with him.” the droid announces. “He has several negotiations with the Empire’s trade and resource unions scheduled today.” 

Nodding, you figure that discussing meetings with Lord Vader is much more palatable than nearly having a rock dropped on your head. 

“I’ll meet with him now.” you affirm. “In his quarters I presume?” 

The droid nods, holding its hands together politely.

“Yes, Milady. Shall we?” it asks, gesturing towards the open door. You nod in response, rising from your seat and allowing it to lead you to your master, as it always does. 

As you arrive, you can sense Vader’s dark and snaking presence imminent in the room beyond, tickling at the edges of your perception. You take a deep breath to gather yourself, before bidding your droid friend a goodbye and entering the room. 

Standing ominously in the center of the room, Vader observes you silently for a long moment as you approach. His gaze has a weight to it, and you can feel it roving over your body; sliding heavily over the curve of your chest, the cinch of the harness at your waist, the draping of the skirt over your hips. You can feel warmth spreading over your chest, your shoulders, your cheeks, but you stand straight despite the fear of offending Lord Vader with your choice of garments. 

“Good morning, my lord.” you greet him, bowing gracefully. 

“Morning, young one. The dress suits you.” is all he says in response, and you take it as a success, a smirk creeping across your lips. 

“Thank you, my lord. I had hoped that you might like it.” you say with a careful smile, feeling a measure of relief at his approval. 

Vader gives you a nod in response, and you stride over to meet him where he stands. 

You look up at the blank visage of his face, expectantly awaiting his command. Unwaveringly meeting your gaze, he begins. 

“I have several meetings for negotiations scheduled today.” he informs you, as the droid had. “You are going to accompany me.” he states.

Your eyebrows raise for a split second with pleasant surprise, accompanying your masters during meetings was nothing new; it would be easy. 

“As you wish, my lord.” you affirm in a steady tone and with a gracious smile. 

You have attended meetings with several of your masters in the past, and you know that the most you’ll be doing is listening to something mildly disinteresting for a few hours. Considering everything you’ve been through, this should be a breeze in comparison. 

All you have to do is sit around and look pretty. 

And that is something that comes quite naturally for you. 

Vader nods down at you before speaking again. 

“You will accompany me as an ambassador.” he explains, his mechanical voice bouncing off the walls at you. “It is my belief that your image will be of aid in gaining favour for the Empire.” He says, still staring down at you. 

His praise, his belief in you is a feeling completely new to you. 

For so long, you had been burdened by masters that saw you as sub-human, less than a person. You had attended meetings as an object, a trophy, never an ambassador. 

The realisation begins to dawn on you that your treatment under the Empire will go well beyond your expectations, and you are grateful in a sickly sort of way. 

How ironic it is, that a Sith Lord is the most gracious and generous master you’ve ever had.

Smiling up at Lord Vader, you bow once more. 

“Thank you, my Master.” 

He tips his head at you in acknowledgement of your thanks. 

“Your duties will simply be to accompany me, nothing more. I will handle the negotiations.” He says, his gaze never leaving you. 

So it was exactly as you thought. Your only job was to sit around and look pretty. A welcome relief. 

“An easy task, my lord.” you chime. “I will not fail you.” you promise him in full confidence. 

“I should hope not.” he booms simply, before pacing over to the window with you following close behind. 

It is then that you realise the ship has begun to descend upon the flight-deck of a snow covered planet. The sun reflecting off of the thick blanket of snow below is bright and blinding, hurting your eyes and forcing you to shield them as you look. There are skinny, evergreen trees that stretch out for miles around the sprawling fortress, and you suddenly realise that you are severely underdressed for the frigid weather. 

Snow falls in fat flakes over the landscape littered with greenery, and you can only hope that you’ll be spending most of your time inside. 

Wordlessly, Vader walks over to the long white couch you had dozed upon the night before, slipping his fingers into a notch on the underside and pulling out a long drawer. 

Ah, that’s why his couches are so much firmer. They double as storage. 

You watch curiously as he pulls out a heavy, fur-lined cloak and shakes the dust off of it before silently striding back over to you, coming to stand directly behind you with it in his hands. 

Feeling his dark, menacing presence right behind your back, you bristle with the anticipation of his movements. Even though you know now that he would not truly harm you, it’s still hard to shake that expectant, anxious feeling that swirls in your gut. 

Like a deer in the headlights, you stand still as he drapes the weighty cloak over your shoulders, his large gloved hands reaching around your neck to fasten the chain. You have to use great self restraint to not flinch when his fingertips brush against the exposed skin of your collarbone, even though the touch is feather-light, barely a whisper against the skin. 

The darkly coloured furs that line the cloak are thick and soft to the touch, warming you up nearly instantly. It’s much too long for you, dragging the ground behind you like an elegant train. 

Of course it’s too long, it’s Lord Vader’s very own cloak. 

“It seems you’ll be needing this.” he says, his deep, distorted voice quieter than usual. 

You blush, your eyes tracking him as he paces back in front of you. 

“One more thing.” Lord Vader adds, and you notice a plain, black box in his hands that you hadn’t seen him pull out. 

Brows furrowed in confusion and your heartbeat quickening, you watch as he opens the box and presents its contents to you. 

It is a dainty silver circlet crown, adorned with blood red drops of crystal. They sparkle invitingly in the light, and you look up at Lord Vader’s severe countenance in disbelief.

It is the most beautiful, the most extravagant item you have ever been presented with. 

Vader’s commanding, droning voice snaps you out of your daze. 

“A symbol of your status.” he explains, removing the glittering circlet from its box. 

“I will not have anyone mistaking you for a slave.” he says, gingerly placing the crown on your head. 

A symbol of your status. 

Status. 

Something you have been without for countless years. Something you have so badly wanted, something your heart had ached for, devoured itself for. To be recognized, to be seen as more than a mere object or tool for your master’s whims. 

So many emotions wash over you in waves, it's hard to keep track of them. Relief. Gratitude. Grief. Pain. It’s almost too much, your chin wobbling as you try desperately to maintain your dignified composure. 

Placing a hand to your heart, you bow to Lord Vader. 

“Thank you, my Master. Truly.” you whisper gratefully, meeting his unreadable gaze. 

He simply nods in response, taking a long moment just to look at you. You stare back at him with softened eyes, truly hoping he can sense the sincerity of your words. 

You can feel the jerk of the ship docking, and you know that it is time. 

Silently you follow your master through the blank white corridors of the ship, taking a few deep breaths to prepare yourself. 

These sorts of affairs are really just for show on your part, and playing a part is one of the things you do well. Accompanying a Sith Lord in anything is risky of course, but in this moment, you feel safe. 

As you disembark, there are Stormtroopers and pale, tall aliens roaming about everywhere. Two of the smooth-skinned aliens dressed in regal, draping layers of garments greet Lord Vader, then yourself. You bow respectively back to them, and they usher the two of you inside the fortress, along with an entourage of troopers. 

They chatter to Vader about their success with some increased production rates as they lead you to a large, conference type room. Holding your head high as you walk, you revel in the unfamiliar sense of power you feel. To be seen as an active part of a whole, to be treated as such. 

The room you’re led to is wide and dimly lit, adorned by lavish crystal chandeliers that hang from the ceiling. There is a long black table in the center of the room, lined with seats that are filled by your master along with several of the pale aliens. Lining the carpeted walls of the room are several long couches, and there is a plush, velveteen chaise lounge against the wall directly opposite the head of the table where Vader sits. 

You recline lithely on it, fixing your eyes upon the table and listening as the meeting begins. The dark-eyed aliens chat idly about stocks, production rates, exports, and all manner of boring business type jargon. You pass most of the time in your own head, lest you die of boredom. For once, it is useful to have so many things on your mind to mull over. 

Your tongue keeps worrying over the raw spot on the inside of your lip, and you come no closer to an answer for the bite mark’s existence. 

Yet, there it is. Existing.

 You know it’s real because you can taste the tang of iron every time your tongue flicks over it. 

Despite being inside, the air on this frigid planet remains chilled. You shift under the weight of Lord Vader’s furred cloak, placing it over your legs as a blanket. The furs are so thick and so soft, you gather they must be of very high quality.

Bringing an arm up absentmindedly and stroking the soft furs across your cheek, you realise it smells like Vader. 

It smells strongly of the leather of his armor, of musk, and of a spice almost like pepper. It is a palpable reminder that it belongs to him, that you belong to him; and it sets you on fire. 

Who better to belong to? As uncanny and questionable as it felt, Darth Vader has been the only one who had actually seemed to put any thought into your care. He housed you in the finest room, gifted you the finest garments, fed you with the most decadent feasts. He had even proven his adamant refusal to kill you. 

He even cared that you’d not be perceived as a slave. 

A change in your mindset is beginning, you aren’t sure how it started, but you know it’s happening. A change in how you view the imminent Sith Lord that is your master; and in turn, you have begun to see the Empire in a new light. It is true that all your life you have been told the Sith were treacherous murderers who hungered for nothing but power, but now you have begun to question the validity of those tales. While the strict brutality of the Empire and the Sith was true… you are morbidly curious about the underlying traits that your master holds within. 

As the negotiations carry on, they seem to be going well. Production rates, revenue, and stocks are all up. 

Good for your hosts, you think. Darth Vader will let them all leave alive. 

Another tall, grey-skinned alien slips into the room, much more modestly dressed and carrying a golden platter of deep-red glasses of wine, and you eye them hungrily. It had been ages since your last taste of the stuff. She flits quietly about the room, offering the drinks to your hosts and eventually landing upon you. 

She asks you something in a language you can’t understand, extending the tray towards you. 

Your eyes flick across the room to your master, and he gives you a barely perceivable tilt of his head in allowance. 

Smiling, you gladly take one of the large glasses from the tray, thanking your hostess before taking a sip. 

Your eyes slide shut with great satisfaction as you swallow, the coldness of the wine is refreshing; it tastes sweet with the depth of fermentation and the sharp zing of alcohol. 

It’s immediately warming as it hits your stomach, a flush tickling at your cheeks. 

You gather that must be why they serve it on such a painfully snow-barren planet. 

Sipping languidly at the rest of the glass, you fix your wandering gaze on Lord Vader. You haven’t had many opportunities in which you could just sit back and examine your master, so you choose to take full advantage of this one. 

He is seated, looming at the head of the table, and the aura of those that surround him is one of subservience. It’s fitting, as his countenance and airs that surround him are so fierce and so commanding. He sits in silence for the majority of the time, and when he does speak they hang on his every word. 

As you look upon him, you come to the comprehension that he is equally as entranced in looking upon you. 

It is a small detail, one that everyone else in the room seems to miss, but you know without a doubt that behind that mask he is staring back at you. 

Wishing he had been the one to serve you that wine. Wishing he would be the one to share it with you. 

The sensation of staring at each other is that of fingers reaching for another, that tingle of warmth just before the touch. 

Swirling the wine in your glass, you decide to work a little bit of your personal magic.

With your eyes half-lidded and maintaining eye contact, you slowly raise the crystalline glass to your lips. You take a long sip, savouring the taste and being sure to make a point of licking your lips, before fixing them into a relaxed pout. 

Vader tenses visibly as he watches, and you feel a great deal of satisfaction when he is the first to avert his eyes, forcing his attention back onto one of the speakers. 

It is your way of testing the waters with Darth Vader, and you know now that you hold at least some modicum of power over him. 

A while later the negotiations end, and all is well. 

The alien species agrees to increase their productions and exports of their materials to the Empire by fifteen percent, and Lord Vader seems pleased. 

What production and what exports, you did not care to know. 

Everyone rises from their seats, and you gather that is your cue to join Lord Vader where he stands. 

The group of aliens lead you back to the flight-deck, chattering their praise and thanks at both yourself and Lord Vader. 

The deck is now bustling with people and Stormtroopers, all gathered to watch as you disembark. As you walk behind your master to the extended ramp of his ship, you get a deep, sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, which screams at you. 

Something is wrong. 

Something bad is about to happen. 

Time seems to slow, and your mind races. 

Inevitably, you act on those impulses which have been instilled in you; that is all you know to do.

 In an instant you leap in front of the turned back of Lord Vader as he enters the ship, successfully shielding him. Right then, a beam of hot plasma shot from a blaster knocks you clean off your feet, and Vader turns on his heel instantly. 

It hurts, Maker it hurts.

A fiery, searing pain spreads throughout the entire left side of your body as you lay on the cold ramp, and your head swims from it. The world fades in and out in black and white as the pain worsens with every pulse, until the inky blackness of unconsciousness consumes you. 

The last thing you hear is an anguished, savage roar tearing its way from Darth Vader’s throat. 

Fueled by anger, by the hatred of seeing your crumpled body laid on the floor, Vader shoots an arm out; instantly pinpointing the source of the blast and lifting the perpetrator out of the crowd in his invisible grip. 

A rebel in stolen Stormtrooper armor. A treacherous criminal. A fool. 

Without a second thought, he clenches his fist, revelling in the sickening sound of each and every bone in the perpetrator’s body snapping at once before allowing their lifeless body to hit the ground. 

It is what they deserve. 

With no care toward the opinion of others, Vader hastily gathers you into his arms before storming onto the Executor, the flight-deck erupting in screams and chaos behind him.

Ordering a commander to tell the captain to take off, he begins running with your limp body in his arms.

His heavy footsteps echo like thunder off of the sterile corridors surrounding him, and his breaths come quicker, but he does not hear them. 

The only things he can feel are the biting urgency to get you to safety, and his boiling anger.

Anger towards you, for being so careless, so foolish in trying to protect him, and anger at the Rebellion. Anger that you were hurt. Anger that the rebels would be so brazen in an attempt. 

Whatever he had planned for the rebels, he was now planning much worse. 

Frantically entering the key code for the door, he storms into his private chambers. 

With one arm he swipes everything off of his workbench, the objects crashing to the ground with a sharp sound that falls on deaf ears. He drags the worktable to the center of the room, before placing your lifeless body onto it, carefully cradling your head as he sets you down. 

Once you’re on the table, Vader looks over you as his chest heaves. It’s quite easy to spot the injury on the front of your left shoulder, dangerously close to the vulnerable parts of your chest. The blast had burned a hole straight through the heavy cloak you wore. 

He wastes no time in tearing his cloak off of your body, intensely focused on the task at hand. 

Making quick work of undressing you, he removes your harness and slips your left arm out of the sleeve, being careful to respect your modesty. 

Bare skin exposed, he examines the extent of your injuries. It is bad, there’s no doubting that. But thankfully, there is no exit wound. You aren’t bleeding, as the blast had melted through the cloak and cauterised the wound in the process. But the skin around the deep black mark left by the shot is dark red, and angry.

 He knows without a doubt that it is excruciatingly painful.

As he looks, an unfamiliar pit grows in his stomach. Not anger, no. Something else. Sorrow, remorse that you had been hurt.

He can feel the death of his peace of mind imminent on the horizon.

Why does he care?... A question for another time. 

Lightly pressing two fingers to your temple, he uses the Force to keep you unconscious. 

Not forever, just long enough to tend to you. 

Vader quickly paces into the room that houses his Bacta tank, gathering an arm full of medical supplies and pharmaceuticals. 

Laying them out next to you on the table, he gets to work. He painstakingly peels away every strip of burnt cloth, every piece of charred skin - lest it become infected. 

He checks your expression every so often, ensuring that you don’t awaken during the process. 

He sterilizes the angry lesion, then begins to dress it. As he covers your skin with gauzy bandages, he finally begins to come down. 

You were safe. He had kept you safe.

It was best not to waste his energy on worrying. 

He would make those who had done this to his very own possession pay. 

Carefully slipping your arm back into your sleeve, Darth Vader rises from his hunched position. 

All there is left to do now is to wait, and to plan. 

He and the Emperor would ensure their suffering. 

As Vader gazes down upon you, he seethes. Seethes at the thought that your smooth, powder-soft skin had been sullied. Seethes at the idea of anyone but himself causing you such pain, leaving such a scar. 

Yes. They shall suffer.

Vader spends a long while just watching over you, using the Force to keep a close eye on your vital signs. The blood flowing from your heart throughout the rest of your body, the oxygen flowing in and out of your lungs. 

Even then, as he watches the gentle rise and fall of your chest and the fluttering of your eyelids in your heavy slumber; He can still feel the ringing of the bells. 

That magnetic pull you have which drags him ever closer. 

Eyes snapping open and jolting upright, you nearly knock your head on Darth Vader’s helmet as he looms over you. An intense pang of pain stops you in your tracks, forcing you to wince and suck in a sharp breath through gritted teeth. 

“Easy, small one.” your master soothes, the sound of his voice gently bringing you back down to reality. You breathe heavily as the hot, pulsing pain flows back through you, and you glance around the room, your ragged body still reeling from the last moments you can remember. 

Immediately you recognize the sterile interior of Lord Vader’s chambers, your eyes tracking the mess littered about the floor. His tools, mechanisms, and machines lay discarded on the tile. Looking down at the table you’ve been sat upon, you realise it is Lord Vader’s own work table. 

He had thrown away everything so easily just for the sake of tending to you. 

Yet another uncharacteristic act carried out by your Master. 

In your dazed stupor, the scene is almost like a fairytale. 

You, the princess of the kingdom of evil. 

He, your knight in raven armor. 

Maybe. You think as you cautiously glance up at him. Maybe the rumours were not true; or perhaps this side of him was one that had been shown only to you. 

That could only mean then, that you were somehow special. 

“Are you alright, my Lord?” you ask, frantic eyes flitting over his ominous form for any signs of injury. 

“It is I who should be asking you.” Vader retorts. “What you did was reckless.” he says, a hint of scolding in his tone. 

Your head and shoulders drooping and your eyes falling to the floor, you feel ashamed.

“I am sorry, my Master.” you whisper. “I acted on impulsivities that still linger from my past. It is all I know.” you admit truthfully, your eyes locked on the ground and the fire of shame burning your cheeks. 

“It is my duty to ensure the safety of the both of us, not yours.” he asserts firmly, placing a heavy hand on your right shoulder. 

“It would take much more than a simple hit from a blaster to defeat me.” he says, a surprising hint of teasing in his voice, his other hand coming up and rapping on his shoulder plates with a repetitive thunk. 

It brings a tired smile to your lips, and you let out an amused huff. 

“I understand the truth of that now, my Master.” you jest, your eyebrows quirking up. 

There is a beat of heavy silence, and your eyes again fall to the floor cluttered with Lord Vader’s machinations. You feel a great deal of guilt at the sight of his possessions laying discarded everywhere all because of you. 

Slipping off of the table with difficulty, you begin to lean over to gather the pieces. 

Before your fingertips can even brush a single piece, Vader catches your wrist in a leather-clad hand. 

You stop in your tracks at the sensation of his grip as he pulls you upright, placing another firm hand against the small of your back to steady you. His touch at your back sends a fine shiver up your spine, and you feel far too close to Lord Vader for comfort.

Your heart rattles in your chest when he speaks again. 

“Let go of your past, girl.” he scolds. “I have droids for cleaning up after my messes. It is not your duty.” 

You’re unable to say anything in response, staring up at your Master with stars in your eyes. 

“I command you to rest.” Vader demands softly. “I did not labour over you just so you could reinjure yourself so quickly.” 

Feeling hazy, you give a faltering nod and swallow the tension in your throat. 

“I am relieving you for now.” he states, his voice rumbling through your body like shockwaves at this close vicinity.

“Retire to your suite for the night.” he orders, finally releasing you from his grasp. 

“Yes my Master,” you stammer, rubbing the wrist he had grabbed. “Thank you.” 

You shakily amble out of the room, your pace slowed by the pain and the thick exhaustion. Your trusty droid companion awaits you beyond the door, and it bows to you before throwing its arms up in shock at the sight of you. 

“Good heavens, Madam!” the droid exclaims. “Are you quite alright?!” 

Letting out a tired chuckle, you smile as you respond. 

“It is but a flesh wound, my friend.” you laugh. 

“Then we shall get you back to your chambers at once!” the droid declares. “Come! Come!” it urges you. 

You slowly follow your companion back to your suite, and all you can think about is the soft cradling of your bed, the slick silkiness of your sheets. 

As you enter the comfort of your suite, your legs feel as if they weigh hundreds of pounds while you drag yourself to bed. The kind droid brings you a hot cup of herbal tea before leaving you to rest, and you slowly sink onto your back in the middle of your mattress, letting out a sigh of relief as your body settles into it.

As exhausted as your body feels, your mind is wide awake with a thousand thoughts. 

Today was just so much. 

The dream. Your lip. Even just the meeting and everything surrounding it was a lot to unpack. The attack. The fact Vader had tended to you personally. 

Your mind swam with questions, with the acute newness of everything. At the same time, the aching of your shoulder and the soothing warmth of the tea was working to wind you down. 

After a while, the droid returns with a meal on an ornate bed tray, and it isn’t until you smell its heavenly aroma that you feel the churn of hunger in your stomach. 

“I’ve come with your supper and an announcement, Milady.” the droid chimes, allowing you to adjust yourself before it places the large tray over your lap. 

Your dinner is a hearty spread, consisting of a meaty soup with wide noodles in a clear broth topped with fresh herbs, a side of lightly sauteed greens, and freshly baked rolls. You marvel at it for a moment with your mouth watering before turning your attention back to the droid. 

“Due to the increasing boldness of the Rebellion, Lord Vader has deemed it necessary for a Sith Lord to attend you during the night.” the droid announces. “He refuses to have any further chances of your safety being endangered.” 

All of a sudden, your mouth goes dry. The last thing you needed was a Sith Lord watching your every move in the night; but you knew Lord Vader was being completely serious, and his word is final. 

You understand now, that he will stop at nothing to defend something - or someone - that was his. 

Letting out a soft sigh through your nose, you take in a deep breath. 

“Then so it shall be.” you concede, and the droid nods in response. 

“Splendid. I shall retrieve your guardian once you are finished with your meal, Milady.” the droid says with a bow before leaving you to your dinner. 

You wolf the food down with great voracity, thoroughly enjoying the much needed nourishment before dusting yourself off and walking the empty tray over to the table. 

You decide that if you are going to have a visitor, you are going to be presentable at the very least. 

Swiftly you change into a new set of sleeping robes, sighing happily at the comfort of the clean fabric. You hobble over to your vanity, taking a seat on the velvet-cushioned stool and looking at yourself in the rounded mirror. Of course, you look tired, although thankfully you didn’t look as bad as you felt. Your hair is mussy from the commotion, flyaways sticking out every which way. 

You get to work detangling it, being careful to brush with the uninjured arm. As you finish putting it into a messy updo, allowing stray locks of hair to remain loose, a familiar knock comes at the door. 

You feel your anxiety spike like shards of ice in your gut, knowing what awaits you beyond the threshold. 

As the door slides open and the droid and the Sith Lord enter, you feel as though you’ve been struck by lightning. 

Even beneath the dark cloak that shrouds his figure, his form is unmistakable, and you recognize him instantly. 

It’s him.

The one you dreamed of. The same figure. The same piercing eyes. You can even spot his scar in the dim light. 

Your ears ring.

It feels like your heart stops. 

And before you know it, you faint. 

Sith Divider Credz: @saradika

Taglist: @heyitsaloy @poisonedsultana @cryptidsrcool @mayhemories @sxoulchvn

@shyartisanvoidwagon @stxrrielle @jasontoddloml @heirtothekingdom @briqueenofthenorth

[batsplat]

if you were to direct a motogp movie (or make a one season of television) what season or rivalry would you make it about? and more interesting what artistic liberties would you take? it doesn’t have to be a straight up biopic bc imo those are often boring, instead it could be something like velvet goldmine (1998) aka fictional characters whose real life counterparts are pretty obvious, veering in like rpf territory. anyways👀

did you know. one time this guy put a curse on this other guy. and he never won a race again

anyway, look, I do feel like by this point that's the BORING answer from me, but obviously it's where my mind first went. I'm not sure I'd actually want it out there in film form because by now it's badly enough remembered that it's like, my cute little niche story, and I think there's something fun about the Wider World even within the motogp fandom not exactly getting how bonkers the whole thing was. (I know other humans have canonically watched motogp 2004 but I swear even journalists have forgotten some key key details and it's kinda annoying but also fun.) bold words from someone who's been blogging about it!! weird gatekeep-y instinct. but basically my job here is done as far as outreach is concerned - I wrote a very long post, now I get asks about it twice a week that allow me to think about it some more with the four other people who care, perfect balance. that rivalry doesn't need to go mainstream!! the whole point of it is that it's kinda cruel but narratively pleasing that it's gone under the radar, because it's another sign valentino won. but obviously, I cannot literally make a film about this, so the hypothetical repercussions I think maybe we can put aside for a moment here

okay I came back to this bit of the post after I increasingly got into of the spirit of coming up with dumb ideas, but it did make me flesh out what I'd even WANT from something like that. I'm with you anon, a lot of biopics are boring!! if you want to just know what happened, please just literally go and 'watch the races' and 'read books' like what are we actually getting here. you kinda want to give it a purpose for existing, right, a way of portraying real/mildly fictionalised events in a manner that is also taking some kind of stance on the material AND is doing stuff you can't do 'in real life'. thing is, look, you could make 2006 into a film, and I'm sure it'd be perfectly nice because it's fundamentally a solid underdog story (well, inherently winning a title with repsol honda is NOT being an underdog but you can write it that way), but also what are you doing beyond just telling people what happened? I feel like that generally about single seasons, they're not really doing anything for me. I was also turning around the biaggi/valentino rivalry in my head in part because that's the one valentino gave as his answer for 'rivalry he would turn into a film' (marc big wet eyes sitting right next to him), but like. a film about that rivalry from valentino's pov is fundamentally not something I'm interested in. you have all these isolated very memorable moments that make it work as a rivalry, like you can absolutely spin them into a dramatic yarn that goes through the genesis of their conflict to middle finger gate to punching gate to assen + donington + sachsenring + phillip island 2001 and it's basically *insert rousing music* successful coming of age. at most you can lean into the fact valentino became successful at being a dick. like idk it's fine but also what's the point? valentino is challenged in a sports context by biaggi, he's challenged because he realises his words have consequence and the press actually reports the words he says to journalists (the horror), but he is fundamentally not challenged on a personal level. that's the entire point, right? it's the ultimate comfort zone rivalry - biaggi is a dick who it is quite easy to hate and also reacts poorly to valentino's initial provocation. the animosity escalates and it is inherently fun to beat him. valentino is mean to him, but it's not like he even really crosses any lines to beat him. like you can make it into a film, and if you twisted the material a little bit you could make it satisfying, but I don't want to!

now the way the writing process of this post worked was that I was going to breeze through a bunch of non-sete/valentino rivalries and explain why I think some of them don't work for our purposes here, but then I ended up writing myself into changing my mind. so my take on the biaggi rivalry is that actually, you CAN make it work but it has to be from biaggi's perspective. basically, I think you've got to amadeus it (a web weave I have been thinking of making at some point btw). so,,, it's a meditation on talent and how unfair it all is, maybe minus the bit where salieri poisons amadeus (I know that doesn't happen in the film) or dresses up as amadeus' father to, y'know, make him write a requiem on his death bed. and it's not amadeus in that HERE, the clown prince gets a happy ending! but it's more like, in thematic terms, I think you have to zero in on this bit. biaggi didn't have parents who shoved him on a bike when he was three years old, he didn't have parents who were invested in his motorcycling career (or even necessarily particularly invested in him), he started the sport late and discovered that, yes, he did have a prodigious amount of skill in it - but one that he started honing far later than valentino did. he approached his career with a sort of grim resolve, surly and irascible and not interested in making friends with any of his competitors but very, very good. he goes away from the race track and dates all these models, he irritates fellow riders, he's not part of the gang and he's happy about it. he's very successful! four 250cc titles, wins his first ever race in 500cc at a time when doohan was very much winning everything. he's also just like,,,, an interesting and spiky enough character it's not hard to make him come alive

but then of course you have this gradual emergence of the amadeus character, the one who challenges his established position in the court of,, well... motorcycle racing, and also as the guy italians rooted for! and valentino's obviously, y'know, in so many ways the exact opposite from biaggi, and he's super young and cheerful and lively and is doing all his silly celebrations and is being a bit camp and goofy and treats motorcycle racing as a party (you really want to lean into the culture clash here, like in amadeus it's because you have stuffy austrian court vibes but here it's because everyone is having their bones broken every two minutes and just how... kinda grim a lot of motorcycle racing was). and he's also this innocent! yes, he insults biaggi, and yes, in retrospect we know valentino is kinda evil, but at the time he was a kid with a big mouth who was a little taken aback by how that biaggi feud sort of escalated beyond what he'd actually intended it to do! and biaggi just, hates him. and I think, sorry to the real man max biaggi here, but you've got to play with how once they're actually competing with each other, it's miserable how there's just this unbreachable gulf in talent. like, whatever biaggi does he cannot win! he isn't going to defeat valentino over the course of a full season! which is depressing and horrible and CRUEL, because there's this inevitability to the whole thing... and also! because valentino doesn't DESERVE it. and you don't have to go full salieri pleading with god to explain how god could give this CLOWN all this talent, but it's kinda the same vibe! how is it valentino, who is constantly just having a laff and canonically maybe wasn't the biggest gym-goer in the paddock and is just generally seen as, y'know, a bit of a dandy, this foppish clown who everyone loves and who doesn't have to work hard to be good - how is he the one who is winning so much!! it's miserable and unjust... and I think how you portray this is that you really emphasise the kinda, repetitive nature of the defeat. like, I think you probably want to make this into a non-linear narrative where all this biaggi backstory is communicated somehow but you don't just start it when he was born or whatever - you start it in 2001 when they're competing for a title and already hate each other. and then you heavy on the time loop vibes. the whole cinematic language and all that other shit should emphasise how all these weekends are structured in exactly the same way and if you're losing to this one guy, all these different weekends can start feeling the same. it bleeds into each other, it feels inescapable, you're trapped in this narrative you can't change... worst of all, you even return to the same places again and again - like play with that! biaggi keeps coming back to where they had the fist fight, to where valentino first insulted him all those years back. you play up the disorientation and the misery of it all, plus biaggi canonically gives us all this kinda messy freudian shit to play with like how he was dating 'valentina' and his relationship with her was falling apart because of how miserable valentino was making him. it's all there!!

ANYWAYS the way you conclude this story is!! welkom 2004!! so again we can artistic license this a little bit and, uh, ignore sete (though I do also think it's fun if you lean into biaggi being displaced as a rival and staring at them being friendly and happy with each other from the outside) - but the key bit is that valentino is finally making the big error. biaggi wasn't winning titles on a yamaha, since he left yamaha has gotten worse, now valentino is making this big mistake out of his own hubris. language of cinema that shit and make everything brighter and more hopeful.... the time loop is finally over, biaggi has escaped, this year will be different!!!! everyone in his circle agrees, valentino is fucked. step off the plane at welkom (pre season testing didn't happen in this universe) and it's literal dawn of a new day... staring out at the sun and finally, biaggi can move on, can live a new and different life. anyway. obviously we all know what's coming next - you have this big dramatic climactic race where biaggi throws himself at valentino again and again and again and he comes so close to winning it... but he doesn't. and you have valentino living his best life, being delighted, but the film is focusing on how like,,, we're bleaching the joy back out of biaggi's life, how actually he's returning to what he already knew. and it ends on the podium, with the camera focusing on biaggi on that fucking second step or zooming in or whatever (idk how cinema works) and it just finishes on this shot of biaggi dead-eyed in a bleak world, trapped again for eternity aka until the end of the 2005 season. done!! I'm not sure this is quite what valentino had in mind, but. well. that's how I'd do it

this is from the pushkin play from 1832 not the 1984 film but like. low key pushkin already kinda nailed the essence of sports rivalries in the 1830s and we just have to acknowledge that sometimes

right. so the casey rivalry is where I'm going to go completely off the wall. skip this bit to get to the slightly saner stuff. this is also one I fully admit to sometimes playing around with in my mind anyway, but. uh. I'm gonna be taking this one in just. well. places. I do have a vision here but I also don't quite know how to explain it in a way that doesn't make me sound like I've lost my mind, but well if you're still reading this then that's on you. so lemme get this out of the way: the classic sports biopic formula would work well with casey. if I had to point to a single rider I would sports biopic-ify, it's casey. so you have all this kinda,, obvious adversity that's easy to get across, and it's a narrative you can follow chronologically without too much trouble. you've got all the childhood stuff, the australian racing club not letting him join them, the move to britain, the rising through the ranks, it's also this very biopic-friendly 'nobody ever believed in him apart from like three people' stuff. and the premier class is also narratively satisfying, from the rocky rookie season to the kinda shock success to then all the lows of 2008 and 2009 and the physical ailments and the anxiety and then the switch to honda and the title and then him deciding to retire... that's all good stuff! you can absolutely biopic-ify it! gun to my head and sure, I can walk you through exactly what bits of his life I'd focus on and put in what order and so on, and I think ultimately you could make a very good sports biopic from that

[some mild gore to follow in this next section]

but also. thing is. that's fine. it's just not where I want to go here, because again I feel like at that point you can also pick up his autobiography and just read it - because what you're basically doing here is just filming that. and I get how this stuff works, you're bringing the story to a wider audience, you can show stuff in a different way in that medium etc etc, and that's all great but also I don't care about bringing stuff to a wider audience. I care about doing fun stuff in my brain. so what I'd actually do here is just, basically, go in the exact opposite direction and ditch all the realism. genuinely, ditch the live action stuff, we're going animated - what I'm interested in here is stuff where we need to be able to fully suspend our disbelief and lean into some surreal shit. I'm not going to bury the lede here: my idea is that you take that thing where casey said he hated how ducati was ruining the bike by letting valentino's yellow encroach on it and, basically,, just go all in on that bit. like come on, that is so singularly visually evocative, it truly captures a lot of what's going on thematically in that rivalry. (see also x and x for the most relevant casey posts.) casey sees valentino as the malevolent force, this infection! he associates him strongly with a specific colour, one that can be sickly or unnatural or just... evil. malignant, malicious, malevolent, all the m words. to casey, valentino is a personification of everything that is wrong with the sport. valentino is literally the walking manifestation for so many of his issues, from the dangerous riding to the lack of respect to the lying to the cult of personality to the obsession with image and the media to the backroom games to the politics to the injustice of how different riders are treated differently, like!! he's literally all of that! this is a topic for another post, but this plays out in a lot of kinda, weird and funky ways where it's a two way street and sometimes when casey talks about motogp you go 'actually I think that's just valentino?' (btw he also does this about 'europe' right I don't think those are europeans you hate casey that's literally just valentino) and sometimes when he talks about valentino it's kinda? this feels like it's about a little more than the bloke himself? and basically, right, I think you need to take this to its natural conclusion where casey used to admire him and look up to him and want to emulate him on track and then gets disillusioned when valentino's worshippers turn against casey and casey is the one to bring valentino down to earth and... listen, I think you need to play around with valentino being a literal god. and I think you need to have casey stab him to cover up the yellow on the ducati with blood

okay. look. the idea here, right, is that we're basically making the subtext text, and just digging into that process of 'bringing valentino back to earth', of taking on a god and having the audacity to succeed, and also treating valentino as this sort of. infection in his own mind. the bike is literally being infected!! casey may have left the ducati but he STILL has some fidelity and love for this project, those were his people he worked with, and now valentino is coming in and just twisting everything around himself!! but also I think how this functions is that, okay, so you have all this normal stuff that's the actual 'plot' in the 'real world', but the ISSUE with the real world is that there's a lot of stuff that just. isn't possible there. like the thing casey wants in that rivalry but is never going to have is... a captive audience. a big problem casey has in that rivalry is that he doesn't get the chance to actually say a lot of stuff to valentino. he starts using the media more and more and plays the game on valentino's level, but there's still this disconnect where mr straight talking is the valentino rival who valentino never really blanks or freezes out like... there's a disconnect! there's valentino the person, who casey never quite figures out how to just straight up hate, and then there's valentino the character, the racer, the rider, the god who casey DESPISES. but when they're doing small talk at pressers and podiums, casey doesn't get to talk to that version of valentino! he just talks to valentino the person, who obviously isn't literally a different person but is also not going to explain to casey where he's coming from, is he, and also isn't someone who casey can explain to where HE is coming from. and that gulf... it does bother casey. I don't think he can quite verbalise why either, but there's just... this creeping tension. I think it'd be easier for casey if valentino really were more of a caricature, just kinda a dick in all walks of life. and there's just these canonical hints of that... the way casey talks about how he's sure valentino as a guy is fine, but he never knew valentino like that, the whole 'I'd like to go with valentino for dinner to tell him where I was coming from in that rivalry' thing, like!! it's there

so basically EYE think what you should be doing is using the wonders of storytelling to actually. embrace that element. and just leave realism behind now and again. valentino is a god, he is literally worshipped, he's part of this pantheon that casey is trekking to reach. casey is brave enough to take him on in combat, he is the first one who is truly able to draw blood. he sees how valentino isn't just a god of joy or battles or speed or the SUN or any of that other stuff - he's a disease, an illness, a god who is also a false prophet... the worship never quite goes away, because who ever truly gets rid of their valentino rossi complex, but casey eventually is given the chance to face a chained valentino and kinda,,, ritualistically publicly humiliate him using the ducati as both this sick thing that has to be 'cured' and this symbol of valentino's failure. I'm sorry, visual language goes brr here, like chain him up, do weirdly eroticised torture idc!! (psst psst valentino's fucked up shoulder also extremely goes brr here, casey low key a teensy bit weird about valentino's injuries? his thing after the 2010 leg break where he goes 'why's everyone making such a big deal about this other people break their limbs too' and then after 2011 jerez immediately asking whether valentino's shoulder is okay in just a very obviously passive aggressive way. literally he opens with that, valentino isn't using it as an excuse or anything, for some reason it's already on casey's mind and I would politely contest it was out of genuine concern for valentino's wellbeing!! it's just kinda? I'm so compelled by it? I suppose it is kinda about how valentino's suffering gets taken more seriously than his own? how those absences are received differently by the motogp world? idk I find this fun because casey does know this is one thing valentino can't really be blamed for himself, so it just slips out a bit? but yeah, casey + valentino's injuries, nobody's talking about it but I sure will, let casey get weird and mean and a teensy bit sadistic about valentino's injuries in an artistic manner.) crucially I like animation as a medium here because I think it's easier to lean into surrealism when you don't have to hand hold the audience so much through the suspension of realism, also there's just some imagery you can do in cooler ways through animation where in live action it may just look. weird. (I think you can also do one of those things where you have a live action film with only those specific bits animated but also... why? it just feels like in live action you need more 'justifications' for things, like am I saying casey is having some weird hallucinations and is losing his mind? no I just want to have weird vision sequences ffs.) the colour stuff!! valentino/casey is big on the colour coding as a rivalry, to the extent casey is even, y'know, drawing attention to it in the literal text!! yellow and red are banger colours, valentino is big on imagery himself with all his sun + moon motifs, it's kind of all there to make the easy next step to kinda zany surreal imagery. ritualistic stabbing works better in animation, you can kinda get the blood to like. drip down and overwhelm the yellow illness that's slithered out across the bike

and. AND of course what this entire set up allows you to do is.... give them an opportunity to talk. they can't talk in real life! casey CAN'T give him his real thoughts on anything, and fundamentally valentino can't either. they're opponents. they're strangers who chat sometimes. it's not just that they aren't friends, it's that fundamentally they cannot be friends - because their ability to do their actual jobs depends on a certain level of professional distance. valentino of course does have a decent read on casey, and vice versa, because when you're figuring out how to defeat someone then (if you're valentino) you're looking to play the rider too. valentino's entire approach depends on focusing in on his rivals and attempting to throw them off, to make them unravel. he's watching casey closely!! the entire journey of casey's first three seasons in the premier class essentially becomes like, this god of their world focusing in on him. figuring him out. trying to gnaw away at him. obviously, animation also allows you to go big on the panopticon-y imagery which is kinda fundamental to their rivalry, because of their fundamentally oppositional stances to 'performing' for the ever present cameras where there IS a little bit of common ground in they have both struggled with it. but valentino isn't going to ever say that to casey! casey isn't going to open up to valentino! so if you give them,, you know, a different arena to express themselves, where casey actually has this external figure to talk to (as he's like, cutting him open I guess) whereas valentino actually is put in a position where he's allowed to respond, where he can taunt casey a little bit, where he can interrogate casey's approach and also the similarities between the two of them and how casey has been forced to become a little more like valentino to challenge him... because the thing is, right, valentino is so big on message discipline with his rivals and has completely stopped talking about that rivalry post mid 2013 that, first of all, you have this complete imbalance in who's been telling this story for the past decade, but second of all you kinda don't have a sense of what valentino would respond? idk!! I think this is mainly fun as a thought exercise for me specifically but also I do think it's kinda, digging into some of the bits that make this narratively work as a rivalry, how valentino in this rivalry is actually just kinda... removed. like he's not really emotional about it!! at most he's a bit bitchy, but even that just feels about The Game. it's the most extreme in this regard followed by jorge - but with valentino's other feuds you kinda... see a bit more an unguarded moment, see something a little more real there. the casey rivalry feels so uncomfortable precisely because valentino is a little... inhuman in this one. I mean, if you want to have valentino as some kind of cross between a deity and a monster in any of his feuds, this is the one. casey's just an obstacle to him. idk don't you think casey kinda wants to chain valentino down and stab him and make him see casey a little more... well, I think he should want it and I think it'd be fun to see and get them to talk to each other. ugh and also all the implications of making the faith vs non-believer elements more literal... casey the heretic!!!

there's some obvious stuff here you'd have to figure out, like 'how do you make this work as a narrative even to people who aren't familiar with casey stoner at all' and 'who the fuck do you think the target audience is here' and 'you do know this is not the kind of thing that would ever be made, right, go back to the casey stoner sports biopic like a sane person' but!! I do think it's material you can make work if you're just,,, efficient and smart in how you're actually telling the 'real life' version of the rivalry. also in my head this is. idk. an animated limited series not a film, which then brings in other stuff like 'episodic structure' because I'm fundamentally opposed to tv shows that think they're films. and look, I'm not going to write an entire film script treatment here, I just think a good writer can figure this stuff out. blood on the ducati is the framing device for everything else, simple. lots of animated floating eyes I reckon, first casey is watching valentino and then valentino is watching casey and the whole world is watching them... and it does bleed into real life just a little, where you're wondering whether casey is actually imagining/dreaming this stuff or valentino is or if they both know it somehow... you can get away with more ambiguity in animation. anyway, if you do want more thoughts on this one specifically for whatever reason, let me know because this one I do actually have more on

also laguna 2008 is a bit tortoise and the hare coded if you really think about it

[end of gore]

so. on to jorge. hm. the thing about jorge is that he was kinda writing a coming of age film in his own head, so like - yes, that's what you do go for? you can play it straight and follow how jorge has cast his rivals, or you can pin the whole narrative on the fact that jorge has cast them - the kinda artificiality of the narrative, the way jorge is this storyteller who isn't being recognised as much as he thinks he should be, isnt adequately appreciated. the way there's this three way discourse between what jorge thinks the story is and what the public thinks the story is and actual. you know. reality. I think this is a bit more light-hearted, like you know how the best stories about teenagers take their emotions seriously but also let them be kinda silly? because young people are silly! jorge was silly! he's got a lot of CHARM because he's so cocky and naive and full on and intense and awkward and kinda off-putting and tactless and a bit all over the place and so painfully, painfully young, like he's a good protagonist because that's a KID. but also, obviously there's also a lot of extremely not light-hearted bits of his story - everything about his father, his manager... idk this one's another one where, I don't just want to make it a generic sports biopic, and I'm trying to figure out the clear narrative arc here? I mean, you can point to the end of 2010 and really lean into him choosing victory on-track over popularity off it. the problem with 2010 is that it does not work as a dramatic season, yeah sure with the magic of biopics you can hack at it to shit but also. idk. what are we getting out of it. I think for narrative purposes you want to maybe narrow in, and end it at the end of 2008, with the switching of the numbers this kind of moment of emancipation? but also! this feels like we're straying a bit too far away from the fun sports elements and I don't want to REALLY suggest all the ways in which you could mine jorge's personal trauma in a jokey tumblr post, so I'm gonna move on from this one

the problem is 2015 just straight up doesn't work as a jorge-centric narrative, except in a very kinda comic way that leans into how absurd his role in that season was. 2012 as a season is a bit... y'know, it's fine. okay it's mostly terrible, but that's fine too. but it doesn't have a great narrative hook. which kinda leads you to the problem that I do think the valentino rivalry is more... juicy from jorge's pov, because for valentino, jorge is just kinda? an obstacle? idk he's more normal about it, it's just his job to destroy the guy, you know how it is. but also 2009 does work better narratively from valentino's pov, like it's the build up to catalunya specifically you can dramaticise... idk though, I do love catalunya but my heart isn't really in this exercise because I think valentino isn't really being... challenged here? it's a title fight where he's fundamentally using a set of tools he's already perfected, to beat a guy he doesn't really give a shit about. when the italian press is down on him pre catalunya, it doesn't spark any genuine self-doubt - it's just a handy source of extra motivation. there's no epic highs or lows that season, not real ones. and yes I know I was talking about making valentino who gets stabbed repeatedly to cover up an infection a moment ago, but that reflected real EMOTIONAL truths!! I'm committed to thematic fidelity more than I am to literal fidelity

genuinely I think the best way to tackle jorge is with the jorge/dani parallel journeys... what, film? tv show? maybe show actually - you don't have one coherent narrative Statement per se but you're constantly charting those journeys in reference to each other, really rooting it in their respective points of views, no neutral detached cinematic language like I want everything to be very much written to be from their eyes!! going from one to the other and back again. and you're charting these different journeys, right, and how they both captured different flavours of like... emotional successes and failures. I think it's actually about failure, yeah, about having to accept there's something you can't have and might never be able to get - whether that's universal love or a premier class title or whatever - but Actually, that might not be the end of the world. and during this process, they go from being enemies to tentative friends!! guys who realise they can maybe actually understand each other better than they thought!! this real moment of interpersonal connection. you have all these media narratives and the managers and so on and the fact they're competitors as these built in reasons why they've just been pitted against each other from the start... but y'know, again, it is also just a bit about maturing, about being able to set that aside, about making your peace with defeat and failure as an element of growing up. you can't win everything, maybe there's something you really really really want and you're just not going to get it, but at the end of the day it's kinda... yeah. self-acceptance. idk this is the nice one

so with marc you can go several different ways here I guess, and again he's also perfectly decent sports biopic material, probably second to casey in that category like yeah sure do the comeback story. but also, we do already have a very good self-produced documentary about what he thinks the narratives of his career are? idk this is also just a personal taste thing, I'll leave him to doing all the injury stuff himself, I don't have much to add there. we'll get to the obvious one in a second, but I was trying to figure out if there were other places I massively felt like you need the cinematic touch. and, again, the 2013 season is obviously very exciting!! but also, you have it covered in.,,,, multiple documentaries, I don't feel I have a take their either? his rivalries with dani and jorge aren't really substantive enough to sustain a bit of cinema. dovi... I mean, what are you saying there? what's the arc? I feel like if I tackled dovi, I'd go somewhere else and really go all in with the ducati stuff, and make it a bit more... you know, stark, stripped back, basically just the emotional component of how much he gave to that project and how he managed to beat away one rival after the next and how it all ended up falling apart in a kind of anti-climactic way? he's also good sports biopic material, but in a way I think the marc rivalry is the bit of his story I have the least to say on. so eg, 2017 is a dramatic season, but he's also kinda fine after it? he always knew it was a long shot, he tried his best and he got really close and then he lost. you can't amadeus it because dovi isn't (fictional) salieri. basically, I think what I'm saying here is that dovi is too well-adjusted to feature in this post. though I'd totally watch a film about his 250cc seasons, like it's a bit annoying because HE is the underdog who loses both title fights to jorge, but it'd still be kinda fun idk. I wouldn't really know what to do with the material but if someone made the film I'd absolutely watch it

right then. the thing about sepang 2015 is... yeah, sure, of course you can do it, it already exists as a narrative but... yeah, what are you adding!! idk I always think when you're adapting something, you kinda need to have a reason for it? I mean, what are you doing that's not already there in the footage? idk maybe this is just a sign of having been a fan of this sport for one too many years but to me the idea of sepang 2015 can get a bit boring (or maybe just repetitive) where I need a new TAKE on it to really get into the idea of fictionalising it. like where's the auteur's touch y'know, what can I still add to this!! but it also needs to WORK for someone who is new to the story, which kinda just makes you want to tell the story straight.... y'know the story is strong enough and COMPLICATED enough to stand on its own and it IS good but I don't really have anything interesting to say beyond 'yeah sure that'e be neat'. I can't tell you why, but I also don't think the casey approach quite works here? the idea of providing a framing device with which valentino and marc can actually talk to each other... eh. don't like that. hm. okay wait actually I just turned it around in my head for... a while and I think I've got an idea to make the worst motorcycle racing film of all time. so, my central stupid film-making gimmick here is just. centring the fact we're completely reliant on a few guys and what they're telling us in making up our minds, and our removal from that story and the imperfection of their perceptions and so on. so I think you kinda make a point of... not actually showing the motorcycle racing? like, you always show it by showing other people watching it, you're showing the tv screen rather than the actual racing. even in the cinematic medium, you're centring the theatrical aspects, where you drill it down to just a few characters. valentino. marc. uccio. marc's fuck ass manager. maybe a crew chief or two. keep it limited though, all the others are kept at a distance - you're constantly focusing in on the same few characters. and very early on you basically just like... get them to fourth wall break by telling you, the viewer, with their actual words how racing works for them, what meaning they take out of it - and again it's this remove because we're never allowed to actually feel the racing for ourselves (no helmet cams), and it sets up that as the tragedy unfolds, again and again we're just hearing from them what happened. it's all zoomed in on how claustrophobic the entire situation is, like doing the race direction room after the sepang 2015 is perfect for that kind of thing, and crucially they're only ever addressing the audience because they can't address each other. but fourth wall breaks also obviously draw attention to artificiality! I realise they are very much like, lame gimmick central, but also are these men not inherently about lame gimmicks... idk it's basically the same story but at least it feels like a kinda interesting way of telling it. kinda trite, but cinema allows you to get to the point and let valentino actually play with the camera... so literally take it into his own hands and lead it around and tell the story from his point of view. and you can play with how they do both change in what stories they think they're telling, how they're constantly revising their own stories, how their stories completely clash with each other... like. make them literal narrators. that's my pitch

so. one interesting pattern that has come up with my approaches to these rivalries is that with the exception maybe of the 2015 stuff, I feel like I'm more naturally inclined to treat valentino as a narrative device and centre his rivals. a big part of this is that valentino is a fantastic narrative device. he's kinda. this looming presence in every narrative in this sport where you can just sort of use him as a sort of way to poke away at all these other riders. the monster everyone loves who you are trapped with. BOO!! he's gonna eat you! which is fun! but ALSO, crucially, several of these rivalries aren't that emotionally challenging for him!! again, with casey right, he wants to beat him, but he's not having a crisis of faith over losing to casey. he thinks casey is annoying, he wants to beat him because he wants to win. valentino is casey's foil, but casey is not valentino's. valentino makes for an excellent personal antagonist to casey, but the reverse just isn't true. casey isn't forcing valentino to reexamine his approach except 'ramping up the levels of being a dick on-track' - like, yes, that's a serious competitive challenge, but also valentino is very comfortable in his own skin in that rivalry. sure, you could have valentino have some kind of massive revelation about the casey rivalry, but like. he doesn't in canon. he changes his behaviour towards casey in pretty predictable ways depending on what the relationship demands from his perspective at any given time. there's nothing more there

now, obviously you know where I'm going here. there IS a rivalry where you can make the argument he changes as a result of it, there IS a rivalry that tips him over the line and makes him to do stuff he hadn't done before that, there IS a rivalry that happens to coincide with a period of his competitive life that challenges him both personally and professionally. now, look, I have already talked about the sete rivalry. you know what I think about this rivalry - and if you don't, I really already have told the story here and here and here and here and also here. I think this works perfectly well as a narrative in its own right, and it's one you can tell from either perspective... but you kinda need both. I think again you probably naturally lean towards starting it from sete's perspective and that first proper meeting (I mean, idk if it is their first actual meeting, but it's the logical obvious place you start this story) with sete giving valentino advice during his first 500cc test and valentino just, y'know, ignoring him and being a cocky shit and then crashing. so you get to see sete being kinda exasperated by the whole thing. also, obviously ibiza is like, a key framing device here, like it's the most obvious in-your-face way of tracking their relationship with each other. I don't actually know how often they partied there together, but it must have been at least twice and if the commentators are to be believed it must have included 2003. artistic license and you can add one or two more times, but mainly you want to focus in on 2003 onwards right. so you've got this 2002 one where it's, y'know, high point of their friendship and in the name of narrative efficiency, you establish here that sete is looking to make the honda switch. the emphasis is on how valentino has been winning everything but on the flip side you're getting the first insight into his discontent. and there's a bit of a vibe of, what could you possibly have to complain about? like you are winning so much? so it's late one night where they've had this slightly unguarded alcohol-fuelled moment of genuine vulnerability but in the end it's actually characterised by how... unsubstantial the link between them is, because they wouldn't talk about this kind of thing with each other and they might both be similar in some ways but also don't gettttttt each other. it means you can return there as a location in 2003, where you've just had sachsenring and valentino's dramatic loss but they're still partying together and it's like. obviously In The Air that not everything is quite right... their relationship is already gradually altered and twisted because you're introducing this element of actual stakes and competition (obviously in 2004 they do NOT spend that time together, as far as we know anyway, and you can show them being very much not together at ibiza as a very obvious Oooh Things Will Fall Apart and maybe already haveeee)

and I do think basically I've already said what I think the themes here are,,,, several times by this point, so I'm not going to belabour the point. I think all of this fundamentally works as a narrative with like, minimal massaging and rearranging of the elements for dramatic effect. it's all there already, everything from sete's arc with the [insert non-tasteless way of covering a real life tragedy that fundamentally alters the course of sete's career] and how that leads to sete becoming the challenger and how he does want to win and his eventual downfall. with valentino, you have the element of liberation and self-discovery and... well, growing into your own but also kinda having the narrative drawing attention to how 'growing into your own' can involve becoming a fully realised character who is essentially quite cruel? you have this kind of... build up, right, towards this moment of revelation, where you lay bare who these two people actually ARE at sepang 2004, and then again at jerez 2005. valentino has gone his own way, he has freed himself from the chains of honda, he has embraced individualism and the chance to define himself and his own legacy and stand on his own two feet and not rely on the strongest bike or all this stuff within honda where they chose him as their flag bearer, for better or for worse... like he comes to his own here! he takes the step from 'great rider' to 'legend' because he gets to this dramatic moment of stepping into the unknown, he takes this massive risk that could have cost him so much, and it ends up elevating him. but it also puts him under duress, and in that moment he reveals himself - whatever sete did or did not do at qatar 2004, EVEN IF sete did all that shit, what you are left with is valentino vowing to ruin this man. valentino uses sete to make himself 'better', to fuel himself as a competitor. valentino turns sete into a tool in his own story. and again, thematically you've got all this stuff about how sete was managing the image of the rivalry and how valentino took advantage of that - how sete needed it to remain respectful and valentino was completely willing to abandon that. like, you have two protagonists who really are similar in quite a few ways, who think they have this shared understanding with each other, but when it comes down to it? they end up being super painfully different

now I can go on about this and how to play it straight, basically, you can just do that rivalry and I think it'd be cool and fun and very easy to arrange in a good narrative way. BUT I've kind of already. done that. like I don't want to suggest a film that is basically a nicer version of my tumblr posts. so I want to take this in a slightly different direction, and I think what we need to consider with this rivalry is this: what if you made the curse literal? basically, what's always kinda charmed me about this rivalry is that the curse should not work and all the misfortune that befalls sete after that is so comical that it's kinda... what do you do with that? and the answer is you just lean all the way in. my pitch is this: what if valentino sells his soul to the devil?

so, you know faust, right, and you know the bit at the start of goethe's faust where god and mephistopheles are basically making a wager over how corruptible this one human is. and faust is like... he's kinda disillusioned, he feels that everything he's dedicated his life to in academia is fundamentally hollow, gets very close to committing suicide. and faust has gone a bit new age-y, gotten into all this mystical shit and he's got this pentagram that ends up preventing mephistopheles from leaving his presence in their first meeting... and basically what the devil can give him is like, the chance to attain some true pleasure, and for that faust is willing to bet everything - so if faust can just have that, then maybe eternal damnation is worth it. and look, I'm not going to summarise the entire plot of faust here and it does go off the wall a bit with all the gretchen stuff, but the point is you have this version of the devil who is fundamentally a cynic and is attempting to win an argument with god by making this human succumb to his own nihilism. and what faust basically does is like, abandon his normal life where he's trying to live by normal virtues and goes off on this journey with the devil. and there's this little moment where mephistopheles,,, pretends to be faust and takes on the role of an academic adviser (you know how it is) and seduces this random student away from the word of god and sends him down a wretched path, which ends with this bit:

like, a big part of faust's tragedy is supposed to be about... well, hubris, of the relationship of god to man, of no longer being afraid of the devil... and obviously, this is all framed very much in terms of religion, but at the end of the day it's also about, you know, having purpose - faust is living a life that no longer has any meaning to him, all of his knowledge and studies now no longer fill the void inside himself. his nihilism opens the door for mephistopheles, and is what makes him willing to accept the devil's terms. now, and I am so very sorry to goethe here, I think we have some material we can use here to explore the valentino/sete rivalry. obviously, you can't do a one-to-one, you need to get rid of some of like, the depression and all that - there were times when valentino was feeling 'a bit low' in 2003, but not 'faust thinking everything he'd done in his entire life was pointless' low, yeah? also, unless you want to do a real long view here and even then it can't really be justified, there obviously isn't really a 'tragedy' here from valentino's perspective. like, he wins! this isn't valentino's tragedy, it's sete's! I was being a bit facetious when I said he was 'selling his soul to the devil', and you can kinda parse mephistopheles' motivations in different ways depending on what flavour and what interpretation of him you're dealing with here. you don't 'damn' valentino, you essentially just turn him into a tool of the devil!

so, this is how this works out in my head: the devil works more broadly as the manifestation of competitive impulses, the kind of 'how far would you go to win' question as a bloke who shows up and literally talks to the characters about it (magic of cinema). he's also engaging with valentino feeling like his victories no longer having meaning, with being disconnected from honda and from the entire culture there and just feeling like he's going through the motions. there's this element of like... opening the door to what is essentially a journey of self-actualisation, bringing him closer to being a 'god' but also allowing him to fully come into his own and become himself. to win on his own terms. I reckon ibiza is my preferred narrative device where the devil talks both to sete and valentino there (separately), first literally as a mysterious stranger and then... maybe not? he's talking to them at times of their lives when they're not at ibiza and it's not happening there in the physical world and they both end up kinda having to confront they're dealing with some potentially malevolent supernatural entity. but the important elements of the devil is that a) he's not going to do anything the humans don't actually ask for themselves, and b) everyone knows he's following his own agenda and you should be careful of the requests you make of him. so it's kinda like... essentially, the backdrop of this rivalry unfolding is they're constantly being challenged to decide what lines they're willing to cross. which culminates at qatar... and maybe you do have sete making like. a teensy mistake. a teensy error in judgement, one that is both real and deliberate but he could not have known would get that reaction and instantly regrets. and valentino, who is I think inherently sceptical of the devil coming to offer to help him and maybe does crank out the pentagrams (remember, the whole point of faust is that he was too arrogant to be scared of the devil, or one of the points anyway), in a moment of fury does decide - no, actually. I will take that step. I will curse sete. now the thing is, dramatically this is a teensy bit tricky because when you're talking about being damned by the devil, usually the consequences are a bit more severe than 'not winning a motorcycle race again' (yes, you can get into how sete did also seem genuinely cursed after that, cf his ambulance/bus crash situation, but again we are flirting with being in poor taste in this tumblr post). but the thing is, right, you have to lean into the silliness here! qatar 2004 is inherently silly, a CURSE is inherently silly, like real life is already silly here! you have to engage with the people where they are, and for these athletes all this shit is so heightened that the emotions are full on. like, valentino would've sold that guy to the devil! and to him not winning another race is basically the worst thing that can happen

so, obviously, you get to do the actual curse stuff. curses are inherently campy fun, the devil doing curses is campy fun, getting valentino rossi to crank out the pentagrams is inherently campy fun. you get to play around with this, right, like you know that bit in the brno 2005 race commentary where the commentators are talking about how valentino might as well have a little radio to talk into sete's helmet to remind him of how sete had fucked up at the sachsenring. OBVIOUSLY obviously obviously it is just so... idk scrunchy and fun to have this idea of valentino becoming a malevolent enough force to literally do that.... like damn the commentators did kinda eat with that?? ughhhhhh do you ever think about sete leading the qatar 2005 race for most of the way???? like that's SO fucked up because you literally have articles from about the race going 'hey maybe sete can break his curse' and then the commentators are talking about curses having one year expiration dates but obviously they!! do not!!!!! there's one race where sete goes off track and the commentators are talking about how valentino will surely have smiled into his helmet like that's so fucked!! it's so fucked!! but idk I think basically you have all this creeping curse-y stuff and devil stuff and then you get this twist and then it just becomes misery zone for sete until you sort of. compress the timeline and have him retire without getting into what happened at the end of 2006. and valentino just relishing in all his very worst emotions. and you've got sete who was the better man after jerez 2005, who took the high ground again and again and again and it did NOTHING for him.... and then he's cursed and his career is finished and the devil has had his fun getting mixed in with mid noughties motogp. and now obviously this is inherently kinda dumb and corny and silly but it's the devil!! mephistopheles to me is allowed to get up to dumb shit sometimes, let him have some fun!! idk I like curses being literal idc

I think the obvious critique here is 'this doesn't really feel like it gets the message of faust'. which, yes, is true - and obviously the way narratives are structured, a satisfying resolution isn't 'well selling your soul kinda slaps, actually'. and my statement to respond to this argument is as follows:

this is essentially canonically what happened. valentino DID do something kinda evil and it DID work out 100% for him and it DID kinda slap. at least when you add in the devil, you're making explicit the bit where it is a little bit bad. also, is sports not inherently about selling your soul for success... the story of valentino and sete is essentially about how we are twisted by competition, how pretending that we don't wish ill to our opponents is inherently dishonest. it is about lifting a facade for something that is already inherently there in the souls of men. this is obviously inherently a deeply cynical stance, but this is also a deeply cynical story beyond all the fun battles and camp dramatics. the devil is a cynic and he is basically the point of view character of goethe's faust - he's the one who is positioned closest to the audience. sports is all about living out some of humanity's worst instincts in a relatively low stakes setting, which means we get a free pass to have fun with a deeply cynical story that goes 'maybe selling your soul to the devil is fine, actually'

do I stand by this stance? not really, but the whole fun of storytelling is that sometimes you can just be kinda mean. I think goethe would get it... you can tell which character he enjoyed writing the most

the OTHER way you can do this is centre everything around qatar 2004 as like,,, the mystery box element...... okay look I have now made two posts that go WAY too deep on the 'what really happened' element but I do loveeeeee the whole thing like I would just make a film about that very end of the season and we show it from all these different angles as different characters narrate what happened... like fuck all the riders I want to hear from whichever mechanic used the scooter... the gresini mechanic who gave evidence to race direction.... various honda higher ups the crew chiefs like this is jb vs juan martinez it's war!!! obviously you still have the same emotional/thematic hooks as the general rivalry does but idk I would have a LOT of fun figuring out how to structure that, I loveeee mysteries... maybe I'd write it as a mockumentary yeah..... this one's just fun

anyway. a lot of stuff going on in this post, huh! you can probably tell I didn't edit this much. my classic tell when I edit my tumblr posts is I remember how 'paragraphs' work. unfortunately all I have energy for are like. a bunch of rants about things in my brain. I think when tumblr tells you that you've reached the maximum number of characters per paragraph and you need to figure out where to put a break, it's probably a bad thing? on the whole, my stance is I don't have anything AGAINST mildly fictionalised versions, but for me I'm always more of a.... well I want to take advantage of the full specificity of the events as they happened or just come up with a completely original story. kind of person. I know this ask probably wasn't looking for my 'what if you bled out valentino as he's strung up above a red motorcycle' vision but yeah. with a lot of biopics I'm always a bit 'well you could just read about this couldn't you' like I need stuff to take some kind of a stance on the material it's using... all my stuff takes a stance. that's all I've got. obviously all these stances mean that basically none of these things could ever be made. and I know what I said above but if they called me up to write the casey stoner biopic script treatment, I would also do that. if you've actually read to this point, give me a shout - you're a real one and I love you