#but thirteen’s master just makes no goddamn sense to me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

love-sapphirerose · 4 years

Text

Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon Episode 16 Review

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/yashahime-princess-half-demon/episode-16/.168486

I got a bad feeling about "Double-Edged Moroha" from the moment it started. You'd think, given that last week's episode randomly decided to break away from the story to have a flashback story time with Riku, that the show would take even a scant minute or two to establish things like context and pacing: Where the girls are. Why they are there. Some vague idea about how long it has been since that godforsaken misadventure with the Rapey Mountain Arsonist. You know, the simple stuff that helps the audience figure out what the hell is going on. But no, it doesn't even take a couple of seconds for Yashahime to start screwing up the most basic rules of “How to Tell a Coherent Story”, as we're plunged right into the middle of some anonymous mountain valley or something, with Moroha staring down Yawaragi, telling her cousins that there's some major beef going back three whole years that needs settling. If you don't recognize who this woman is, she's one of the Wolf Tribe members who has appeared exactly one time in the series before now, in a single frame from the very end of last-week's episode.

It honestly feels like something got supremely screwed up in the show's pre-production, and the Yashahime staff realized that they needed to cut an episode right out of the middle of the run, so they took the final scenes from the episode that led up to this climactic showdown between Moroha and Yawaragi, cut everything else that came before it, and slapped it on to the beginning of “Double-Edged Moroha”. Maybe that would explain the seemingly arbitrary placement of the Big Reveal episode from last week? The way it was written meant it could have been aired at almost any time and made an equal amount of sense (read: Not a whole lot), and the only information from “Farewell Under the Lunar Eclipse” that ties into “Double-Edged Moroha” at all is that Moroha ended up with Kouga and the wolves when her parents got sucked into the Black Pearl. If we hadn't gotten that single shot of Moroha being left to the wolves by Hachi, then “Double-Edged Moroha” would have come across as completely nonsensical. As it stands, it's now only 95% nonsense, which is technically an improvement. Good job, I guess?

If you couldn't tell, this was yet another episode of Yashahime that made me absolutely furious with how poorly written and executed it was, but in order to fully explain why, I'll need to cover the events of “Double-Edged Moroha” in chronological order, because the flashback-structure of the episode is stupid and pointless. We begin with the very last flashback, which shows us how Yawaragi attempted to train Moroha in the art of mastering her demonic transformations. We later learn that Kagome apparently placed a seal on these powers in some scene that we never got to actually see because the show was too busy failing at Towa and Setsuna's backstories, but Yawaragi decided to give Moroha the power to transform into Beniyasha with the rouge. Yawaragi then spends years yelling at Moroha for relying on the rouge too much and warning her about how too many transformations will result in her becoming a permanently bloodthirsty monster, so, uh, great call there, Yawaragi. Really thought that one through.

Anyways, one of the days Moroha goes berserk with her Beniyasha self and ends up calling down the wrath of a horde of

terribly-animated Birds of Paradise

before passing out. Instead of doing the logical thing and running away, Yawaragi just sort of stands there and decides they're screwed. That's when a weasel man (who is very helpfully named “Weasel Man”) wanders into frame from literally nowhere and offers to sell Yawaragi the Armor of the Iron Rat he's wearing, so that she can blow up the Birds of Paradise and whatnot. Not only is the completely random appearance of this obviously sketchy weasel not draw Yawaragi's suspicions at all, she also doesn't seem to find it odd that the guy can't even remove the armor himself without getting another person to unlock it with a key. Keep in mind that, for the entire duration of this stupid, stupid conversation, Yawaragi could have very easily just run away from all those birds and hid in a cave or something, but no, she casually takes the armor from the weasel, and wouldn't you know it, the darned thing is cursed to eventually crush its wearer to death unless they pay an exorbitant fee to the smithy rats for another key.

This is, to put it mildly, a very silly chain of events that do not paint Yawaragi in the smartest light, but we just have to roll with it, because that set of Iron-Rat Armor is precisely why Moroha has found herself sold into indentured servitude for the last three years. You see, Yawaragi decided that Moroha needed to complete the “crucible of Kodoku”, which has the eleven-year-old fighting a horde of demons in a spooky cave by herself to…get stronger, and master fighting without relying on Beniyasha, somehow? Yawaragi claims that Moroha needs to absorb the powers of the strongest demon in the cave, but she definitely did not do that, and we've never seen any of these so-called disastrous consequences of the Beniyasha transformation so far, which makes the entire venture basically pointless for our little heroine. For Yawaragi's part, the whole thing seems to have been an excuse to do some gambling with Jyubei, because she previously lost a bunch of ryou in the demon gambling house, which one apparently has to travel through in order to even get to the Crucible of Kodoku; also she needs, like, thirteen Ryou in order to buy a key for the armor that is going to eventually kill her. All of this leads to Jyubei offering to buy Moroha as his own little bounty-hunting slave, which Yawaragi accepts instantaneously, and there you have it: The ridiculous, contrived, and ultimately meaningless explanation for why Moroha has been trying to buy her way out of debt for three years.

Then, the second flashback, which is actually the most recent chronologically, shows us how it took Yawaragi three whole years to get to that damned hidden village of rats, only to discover that Konton arrived just beforehand and killed all of them. Whoopsie! We even get a nice shot of a dead rat mother cradling the corpse of her rat child – a weirdly dark moment that Yashahime certainly hasn't earned or anything – just to remind you that these Four Perils are super evil and powerful (despite the fact that they keep getting their asses kicked by a trio of teenagers who can barely be bothered to acknowledge their existence). Konton makes a deal with Yawaragi that he'll hand over the key if she kills Moroha and the others, and she accepts. “But!” Yashahime then asks, “Is she really going to betray her adopted daughter figure? Or is Yawaragi preparing Moroha for the final and most important lesson of her training?”

The answer is clearly supposed to be that second one, but Yashahime is just so goddamn bad at even the simplest character writing that the point doesn't land. Throughout all of these flashbacks, Moroha and Yawaragi have been dueling one-on-one, with Towa and Setsuna being told to sit uselessly on the sidelines, and Yawaragi keeps insisting that Moroha use her “creative imagination” to beat her, instead of relying on the rouge. This kind of falls flat when Moroha's victory just comes from her busting out a new special move, the Crimson Dragon Wave, which is neither a creative or imaginative resolution to the fight. Every Yashahime fight boils down to some combination of the girls' different special attacks, so why is this any different?

Way late in the episode, Konton suddenly teleports into the fight to gloat at Yawaragi. Nobody else really notices or acknowledges Konton's arrival, though you'd think this is the point where Towa and Setsuna would get off their butts and do something, because it isn't like Moroha's honor would be besmirched by kicking Konton's ass again. The show even forgets to include Konton in the next couple of shots of Yawaragi reacting to Moroha's attacks, even though it is absolutely critical that he be standing right behind her, because when Moroha unleashes the Crimson Dragon Wave, she whips behind Konton to hold him down in an act of self-sacrifice.

Here's the kicker, though: The guy can teleport. Yawaragi just saw him do this, and not thirty seconds earlier! So it shouldn't be surprising to anybody when Konton uses his Rainbow Pearl powers to teleport out of Yawaragi's arms and escapes anyways while the other girls throw some useless attacks at him. So, to recap: The audience learns that Yawaragi created the whole issue of Moroha's Beniyasha transformation in the first place, and she then spent years fruitlessly attempting to undo the problem, including purchasing a deadly set of cursed armor from a random weasel that was traipsing about the forest one day. All of this led to Moroha being sold to Jyubei, which was ultimately pointless because Yawaragi just ended up being coerced into attacking Moroha by Konton, and the one thing that might have made this entire cavalcade of terminally stupid decisions worthwhile – killing Konton – ended up being foiled by random Rainbow Pearl Powers. In other words, absolutely nothing of importance was learned, the girls are not one step closer to any of their goals, and Moroha inadvertently murdered Yawaragi for no reason. It is positively stunning when Yawaragi dies, and the show has the gall to play the moment off like some huge, emotional payoff…except Moroha is more or less fine by the time the credits roll.

Good Lord, this show is continuing to outdo itself in all of the worst ways. I won't damn it with the non-score of Episode 14, because “Double-Edged Moroha” at least has some halfway-decent looking action to try and distract you from how bad everything else is. I did, however, spend far too much time teaching myself how to use image-editing software so I could slap together this dumb meme that perfectly sums up my feelings about Yashahime at the moment. That said, it was probably more time and effort than anybody working on the show spent going over its sorry excuse of a script.

#anti yashahime #anti hanyo no yashahime #anti towa #inuyasha

16 notes · View notes

princesssarcastia · 4 years

Text

the republic shatters, but it does not Fall. and its not Ahsoka’s goddamn job to pick up the pieces, actually.

GUESS WHO SPENT ALL OF THIS WEEK HAVING LOTS OF STAR WARS FEELINGS. GUESS WHO JUST WROTE AN 8K+ WORD FIC ABOUT THOSE FEELINGS.

definitely haven’t been subsumed by thoughts of the Fall Of The Republic as a proxy for all my anxiety about the election, no siree.

anyway. In which Ahsoka takes Maul’s hand, convinces Anakin to sit his ass down, and then has to learn how to hand the fate of the galaxy back over to he people who fucked it up in the first place. And in which the author acknowledges Barris Was Right, Even If Her Methods Were Radical and Flawed, And Ultimately Detracted From Her Message.

will probably call this, “had we but world enough and time,” on ao3. edit: here it is on ao3, if you prefer.

—

Maul smirks and the feeling of it lingers in the wider office, grating.

But that doesn’t mean she’s wrong.

Her breath comes and goes in quick bursts, montrals shuddering lightly with exhaustion. The enormity of what they’ve done has started falling on her; the enormity of what she’s done, by the Force. But her hands are the kind of steady earned through a crucible of three years of constant battle.

Too much battle, Master Windu thinks, and Ahsoka narrows her eyes at him when she catches it and presses closer.

“You don’t lay a finger on him; none of you get to do that, not now.”

“Now that I’ve—” Maul starts to drawl, but Ahsoka cuts him off.

“Not helping, Maul,” she spits without taking her eyes off the threatthreathreat she can feel from Master Windu.

Ahsoka showed up out of nowhere with the enemy she was meant to capture as backup—or, she was his backup, they hadn’t quite straightened that out on the way. But it’s also that Anakin has—Anakin was—Anakin is—and Ahsoka was his apprentice for three years.

And whose fault is that? Ahsoka thinks desperately, and Windu catches it, and it’s getting harder and harder for them to keep their shields up, keep their minds from meeting in the Force; Master Fisto lies dead not ten feet from her, and she’s used to dead bodies, she is, but dead Jedi still feel anathema and the violence of it lingers in the Force here even though they’ve been dying in droves in the last stages of this pointless conflict all this pointless death she is a solider not a Jedi what was it all for?

“Come now, Lady Tano,” Maul says, an undercurrent of pleasure at the chaos he can sense from her—not that he’s any better, he likes chaos. It’s what he’s good at. But she’s not, and it dulls her keen edges.

She forces a slow, full breath in, and out, and her hands stay steady.

“This is not the Jedi way,” Master Windu says like it matters.

“No? Maybe not.” Ahsoka draws in another breath. “But I don’t think that means anything, anymore. There have been too many compromises in this war, Master Windu, for you to tell me here and now that Maul deserves to die for winning it.”

“Obi-Wan would agree with me.”

“Obi-wan isn’t here, master,” Ahsoka says like an accusation. “And can you honestly tell me you were going to do anything different? Why were you here in this office?”

“Arresting him, so he could be brought to justice,” Master Windu bites out, and Ahsoka knows she’s won, because it’s a lie.

That’s not what this was about.

This was about millions of dead clones and thousands of dead Jedi and hundreds of years of steady decay disguised as peace.

Another lie.

Master Windu sighs like the weight of the galaxy is pressing it out of him. And maybe it is; destiny fell hard on their shoulders today.

Now, they find out if they can bear it.

“Fine. We’ll do it your way, Lady Tano,” he capitulates, using Maul’s title for her to make a point. “For now.”

—

“How did you get away with being pregnant for so long?” Ahsoka asks hesitantly, as they wait together. “I mean, your gowns make a good effort, but…”

Padmé hums. “They weren’t meant to convince anyone I wasn’t pregnant; it’s,” she taps her armrest, “it’s a cultural thing. Padmé Naberrie is pregnant, but Senator Padmé Amidala isn’t. Our private lives are sacrosanct, on Naboo, and with Palpatine,” her voice breaks, and she clears her throat. “With Palpatine being the Chancellor for so long, Naboo culture was something most of the Senate understood.”

“Ah,” Ahsoka says, and it almost makes sense. “We never had a lot of privacy in the Order. Or in the GAR, but that was different,” she adds, shaking her head.

“How so?” Padmé asks, her eyes brightening the way Master Obi-Wan’s did, those rare moments in between battles when Anakin and Ahsoka could be lured into debating philosophy.

“I mean, we’re all Jedi, we all grow up together, learn together, live together. We’re Jedi,” she repeats, “and we—it’s—we blend together in the Force. There are things we just knew about one another, unless someone made an effort to hide, but then we knew that, too.” She makes a frustrated noise. “It’s not bad, though, it’s comforting. Usually we didn’t feel the need to hide anything from other Jedi, and it was comforting, to know that you could just be in the Temple, without any pretenses.

“Whereas the GAR,” Ahsoka twists her lips wryly, “the lack of privacy stems from the close quarters and the constant battle and movement. There’s no time for privacy when every second wasted means someone else dies. And a lot of the regulations meant there were things we had to report to our superiors. Everything, basically, because some senators who helped draw up regulations thought that our use of the Force meant our every thought and feeling was pertinent to the war effort.”

“I see,” Padmé says, and they sit with these things they’ve said, and all the things they haven’t.

Ahsoka can feel the question in the back of their throats, and she can’t tell if it’s coming from her or from Padmé, but Padmé is the one who gives it life. So kindly that it almost doesn’t feel like the dagger to her gut that it is.

“Is it still like that now?”

“I don’t know,” Ahsoka whispers, finally, because this isn’t something she can say loudly; not yet. “I don’t—not for me. It isn’t like that for me, anymore. But for everyone else?” She asks. “I can’t tell the difference between trauma and classified information and loss of faith in other Jedi, in the others.”

Or in herself.

—

When the find the chips—

Little gods and all the Force, too.

Anakin felt like he could have torn all of Coruscant asunder, and Ahsoka knew she wasn’t far behind him. A lot of the other Jedi weren’t far behind him; Aayla Secura and Plo Koon and Depa Billaba and the others who lived and died by thousands of brothers for three years.

But Rex isn’t surprised. That’s what finally breaks Ahsoka: the lack of surprise on Rex’s face and the grim way Cody asks if these chips really change anything.

She leaves the now-chaotic debriefing room and hurries blindly through the halls of the Senate, grasping at the Force for a safe place to land and fall to pieces.

She stumbles into a large set of offices, meant for a senator, maybe, but Ahsoka can’t quite grasp the lay of it with her montrals vibrating like they are; with her eyes so full of this last shattering betrayal, the final throw of earth in its burial.

“Master Jedi?” Someone calls sharply, but Ahsoka can’t answer them before she backs into a corner and sinks to the floor. Can’t correct them, say, I am no Jedi, because she doesn’t know truth from lie anymore.

“Master Jedi,” that same voice repeats more calmly, right in front of her and vaguely familiar. “Ahsoka, right?”

She desperately trills some affirmative, and it must be within their range of hearing because they say, “Okay,” and nothing else.

Slowly, in fits and starts, the physical creeps into her awareness. This is a senator’s office, and if she’s not mistaken, it’s the office of the man crouching in front of her. She recognizes him, vaguely, and might be able to name him with another minute of study.

“Do you know where you are?” He asks, radiating calm like a Jedi master without any of the awareness in the Force.

“Your offices,” Ahsoka bites out lowly, starting to feel a low burn of embarrassment. “Sorry, I’m—sorry. I’m sorry. I was just—”

“It’s fine, Master Jedi. There’s a lot of that going around,” he jokes lightly, except for how it isn’t a joke at all.

“The debriefing,” she says, the debriefing, because there’s only one, and if Ahsoka can recognize him then he’s definitely important enough to sit in on it. “You weren’t there,” she adds questioningly.

“Ah, yes,” he says mildly. “I’m afraid I’ll need to be briefed on the debriefing later by one of my colleagues; Senator Amidala, perhaps, her notes are usually impeccable. I was unavoidably detained by the Queen.”

“The queen,” Ahsoka repeats back to him, like Hondo’s stupid monkey-lizard.

“Queen Breha Organa,” he responds, and she’s grateful that still, all he radiates is calm, because her embarrassment now is strong enough to rival her desperate horror.

“Your wife,” she says like an idiot to Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan, one of the leaders of the delegation of 2000 and main architects of the Republic’s efforts to rebuild.

“Yes,” he says. “Do you drink tea?”

She takes a deep breath in, forcing her heartrate to slow. “I do,” she replies. You can’t spend any time in proximity with Master Obi-Wan without it.

“I would be honored if you would join me, then,” Senator Organa says, rising and extending a hand to her in one smooth motion that belies his heavy robes. “I think your perspective on these proceedings may be invaluable, if you’re willing to offer it.”

Ahsoka grasps it and pulls to her feet. “It’s the least I can do,” she says. “Seeing as I just had a panic attack in your office.”

“Wonderful,” he smiles at her, not denying it, and leads her away.

—

A galaxy cannot stumble up to the edge of oblivion and then step back gracefully, kindly, simply, easily, just because they notice it’s happened. An end is inevitable.

The Republic fell three years ago, thirteen years ago, seventeen years ago. Now the work is sorting shattered remains to see what is worth preserving, and what can be thrown out wholesale.

Saving isn’t on the agenda.

—

There are so few Jedi left, now, compared to what they were before. Perhaps half the Order has died, in three years of relentless violence, and those who remain feel brittle in the Force. The very young and the very old alone remain whole, and the disconnect is stifling.

Not all of those who remain stay. Entire lineages depart from the Temple, unable to contemplate trying to live as they had before.

Trying, and failing.

Tholme and T’ra Saa depart for parts unknown to the Order at large as soon as the last battle fades into armistice. Years of intelligence work and corralling those brave few Jedi who were willing to let the darkness swallow them whole have left them closer than the Code can abide. And Quinlan Vos follows soon after, to no one’s surprise.

Aayla…she stays. She stays, for now, but it’s a tenuous settling. As long as Bly is with her, she will endure.

But if she has to choose between the Order and Bly, or the Order and seeing her master again, the Order will lose.

—

Calling them Senate hearings would be a misnomer; the Senate doesn’t really…exist, anymore. With Palpatine gone, a crippling power vacuum sits at the heart of the Republic, leaving them, somehow, even more ineffective than they were before. No system trusts any other system well enough to vote someone else into the Chancellorship that, all of a sudden, seems too powerful for any one being.

But their bylaws are still legal.

If not for the Jedi’s efforts to negotiate armistices with the Confederacy, they would be completely unable to negotiate or sue for peace, left mired in a thousand little wars, shards of the larger conflict that shattered with Dooku and Grievous. The Jedi hold the peace of hundreds of worlds in their palms.

No one is particularly happy with this state of affairs. Not even the Jedi, though some of Bail’s colleagues doubt that to the point of insult.

This particular briefing is in one of the lesser chambers, with perhaps only two hundred key systems directly represented. A dozen Jedi and half that many clones have joined them to provide information and counsel on military matters, and all of their agitation is more palpable by the moment.

Master Windu, as Head of the Order, has spoken before the Senate many times; but today, he remains quiet and stone-faced, his hand pressed against his mouth as if to remind himself of his silence.

Master Kenobi, on the other hand, has exhaustedly pulled and pushed at conversational threads the entire time, lambasting falsehoods and correcting ignorance and on one very startling occasion baring his teeth at a senator who suggested—demanded—the Trade Federation be allowed a voice in these proceedings.

That motion died swiftly.

The famed negotiator is seemingly at the end of his rope when it comes to these proceedings, and Bail can’t blame him.

After the very first of these briefings, the one Bail missed, Master Skywalker was not allowed to attend, and the look on Ahsoka’s face when they learned of this made him think it’s for the best.

No Kaminoan representative has appeared after Halle Burtoni was swiftly recalled just before Master Shaak-Ti revealed what had been done to the clone troops, which Bail thinks is also for the best; if only because their safety could not be guaranteed.

—

Mace doesn’t understand it until he meets Padawan Vrosch.

Barely Padawan Vrosch; if not for the war, this little nautolan would still comfortably be an initiate, but needs must.

Padawan Vrosch is a padawan of the Temple. Masterless, and left that way too long because no master could take up their training after…after what always happens to Jedi in wars.

Padawan Vrosch’s master died very early on, after taking a padawan very young on both ends. They went to their master’s funeral, when they were still affording every Jedi lost in battle their own funeral, their own pyre and remembrance.

Most Padawans their age would have been at odd ends; but Vrosch quietly took up their own education, signing up for and attending classes as they came, joining initiates in their saber training, and patiently waiting for the day someone noticed them again.

They also found purpose in these intervening years, a much harder task: attending all the funerals held for fallen Jedi at the Temple.

“I was the only one there for my master,” Padawan Vrosch speaks solemnly up to him. “When he died.”

Mace settles down next to them in the gardens—still too quiet, too empty, too devoid of the sparks of brightness that made it easy to just be in—and waits, patiently, for what the Force is telling him he needs to hear.

Not just the Force. Mace has trained one Padawan to Knighthood already. A youngling alone shouldn’t stay that way.

“I know the war was important,” Vrosch continues. “The Jedi wouldn’t fight in it if it wasn’t.”

Their faith stirs some inkling of wonder and shame from Mace; he finds he isn’t so certain.

“But we’re Jedi,” they say insistently. “We’re all Jedi. We shouldn’t die alone, and we shouldn’t pass into the Force alone, and we shouldn’t be remembered alone.

“I can’t fight very well, Master Windu,” Vrosch whispers, their tentacles twitching listlessly, like this is a failure on their part. “But I could do this. We aren’t mean to be alone, Master Windu.”

Mace sighs and looks out over too-quiet gardens.

“No, we’re not, Padawan.”

—

“Where is he?”

Ahsoka has been avoiding Obi-Wan for this exact reason.

“I don’t know,” she says quietly, looking back at him steadily. Steady, steady, so, so steady; Ahsoka is steady because if she isn’t then it all falls apart. She’s certain and resolute because if she isn’t then she was wrong, and they Fall.

Obi-Wan runs a hand through his hair, pulling too-long strands out of his face. He’s eroded to the quick. They all are. But leaving on what should have been the last mission of the war, only to return to find the Republic and your padawan on the brink of collapse, your oldest enemy free and your former grandpadawan responsible for freeing him…

The one thing he could still be sure of had been Cody, and even that was taken from him. Now, he has only himself.

“He pulled us back from the Fall, master, and left without taking advantage of it. I don’t think we can ask more from him than that.”

Welcome to my world, Kenobi.

None of their shields are functioning anymore. Ahsoka gets Obi-Wan’s full impression of Maul, his sense of Maul’s whole self, and accepts it as another burden on her shoulders. She knew the second she took Maul’s hand that Master Obi-Wan would never forgive her, would never understand, and she did it anyway.

Before he can work through to quiet acceptance of another grievous wound from someone he didn’t expect—a burden that might finally break her—Ahsoka untangles them from each other in the Force and walks away.

Infinite sadness, the Force murmurs to her, but she doesn’t look back.

—

It’s like they hit the Republic and the Order and the Galaxy over and over and over and over and over again until cracks spread into their very foundations—and then each took the finishing blow inside themselves, in place of the things they all bled and died and Fell for.

And they all shattered instead.

—

When Ahsoka tells Rex what she wants, he drags her to Cody—who gives in with surprisingly little resistance, and then lets her watch his comm to Commander Fox and the face that he makes, because Cody outranks everyone, and Fox can’t say no. It almost makes up for stifling-fear-anger-betrayal from her time in Fox’s custody.

Sometimes, Ahsoka forgets that Anakin spent half a year serving with Cody the same way Ahsoka served with Rex.

They try to take her lightsabers at the last checkpoint, but she hands them off to Rex to safely hang from his belt. Not a single one of the men here can be trusted with them in her mind, even though that’s not fair.

The hard part of being self-aware is knowing you’re being irrational with no way to stop.

She waves the escort off, and to her surprise, they leave, though she can feel them linger just around the corner.

One beat, two beats, three beats of silence.

Fine.

Ahsoka settles onto the durasteel floor, lets the cold seep into legs and work its way up her lekku and down her montrals.

In, out, in, out, in…out…i n… . . o u t . .. . …….

Her-not-her-other expands and contracts in time with her lungs, and she becomes grassland; wind whips across the plains and she is the predator at the center, low to the ground, tasting the breeze and aware of every creature, every hidey-hole, every current. Daughter, the wind murmurs, and a convor’s cry echoes across the endless sky.

In the place between them, grassland and frigid desert meet, warm and cold winds mixing to create something more. Something terrible. They are not the same winds; the predator snarls, for it knows death rides on the cold.

Death and betrayal.

Barriss stiffens in her cell, and Ahsoka sighs. As it should be, she thinks, but also, that’s not why I’m here.

But also, Barriss, is that true? and justice is merely the construct of the current power base.

Barriss’ eyes fly open at that. “So, the rumors are true. You did help him,” she says dully.

“He helped me,” Ahsoka fires back. Sighs again. “But maybe it doesn’t matter.”

“Oh?” Barriss raises an eyebrow cooly.

With your help, the Jedi can stop Sidious before it’s too late!

Too late for what? The Republic to fall? It already has, and you just can't see it! There is no justice, no law, no order, except for the one that will replace it!

Energy crackles between them, and Ahsoka bites her lip.

“I think…” she hesitates. “I think he was right, Barriss,” she whispers. “I think you were right, too.”

Barriss’ breath catches in her throat, her eyes snagging Ahsoka’s until they’re caught in a deadlock and warm and cold winds rise, rise, rise together, and a squall erupts in the Force. At the edge of it, the clone troopers shift, discomforted.

“You can feel it, too?” Barriss asks desperately, and Ahsoka catches flashes of Master Luminara sitting where she sits now, beaten and drawn and blind.

In, out. Ahsoka expands the grasslands and points out the guiding winds to friend-not. These aren’t Master Windu’s shatterpoints, but they are everywhere: in the Senate, in the Temple, on the Star Destroyers, in the Jedi and the people and the clones. The Republic has shattered already. It just hasn’t fallen to pieces. The Republic is failing! The Republic is Falling.

Tears slip down Barriss’ face, relief-fear-sadness-righteous. Ahsoka trills, acknowledgement-soothing-fear-anger.

“What are we doing? What are we going to do?” Barriss throws out.

“What have we done?” Ahsoka counters. Blasters-energy-darkness-death-dying-agony-conflict-violence-pain-destruction-death-war-war-war-war.

In, war, out, war.

“It didn’t die with Sidious. I thought—but Maul was right, you were right. It’s all of us. And I don’t know how to fix it, Barriss, and I don’t think anyone else does, either.” She shifts, hugging her knees to her chest. The predator morphs, uncertain, into prey, akul-scented on the wind, nowhere to run; they can only face it.

“That’s because it’s not our job,” Barriss says, face darkening.

“Why not? We are j—” Ahsoka swallows the word. They aren’t. Barriss, expelled. Ahsoka, lost.

Barriss shakes her head sharply. “No, that’s not what I meant. We should never have—we—we’re peacekeepers!” She says indignantly. “And that doesn’t mean pacifist, but it also doesn’t mean warmonger. The jedi lost their honor the second they put us on the battlefield.”

Blasters-energy-darkness-death-dying-agony-conflict-violence-pain-destruction-death-war-war-war-war.

Death Watch surrounds her, too close, and it damns them; her lightsabers whirl out and catch all four of them in the neck at once. And on to the next before their heads roll to a stop. Bloodless, cauterized death-wounds, but the smell of it….

The grasslands are set ablaze, and the predator learns to run with the flames, instead of from them.

Barriss’ hands are never fully clean. Mud and viscera stain her skirts as she lashes out at the Umbarans to protect her men, and then drops to hold the men she couldn’t protect together in the Force, desperately failing to hold them all together, Master Luminara isn’t here no one is here it’s just Barriss and Death nipping at her heels.

Desert sands whirl and whip like glass shards, higher and higher and colder and colder until all that lasts is the storm.

And….and….

Anakin, only seven years older than Ahsoka is; Master Obi-Wan hadn’t even been knighted yet at his age. Ahsoka thinks about being thirteen and missing Temple classes for battles. Thinks about being fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and feeling death emanate from her lightsabers in the unifying force, stronger than any other feeling.

Thinks about being knighted at seventeen. Thinks about Barriss alone on the battlefield. Thinks about Katooni, and wonders if she’s a Padawan yet.

Thinks about half of the Jedi Order, gone.

When the guards come back for her, Ahsoka stands and works the kinks out of her muscles ruthlessly fast, too used to her surroundings shifting on a credit to let that kind of weakness linger. Barriss stares after her with water and hope in her eyes, because they both know Ahsoka is coming back. More questions lie between them than answers, now.

—

The debriefings turn into hearings, public ones. Ahsoka’s shoulders tense every time she sets foot in the Senate, feeling the searching-grasping-angry-false atmosphere. As inaction continues to dominate their government, some senators have started making noise about someone to blame for all of this. Like Sidious isn’t to blame; like they all aren’t to blame.

Whenever the noise overwhelms her, the directionless anger prowling for an easy target, she finds her feet taking her back to Senator Organa’s offices, again and again. It’s the will of the Force that he’s always there when she does, always with tea already waiting for them. The unifying Force swirls lazily in the space around them in a way Ahsoka can’t interpret; like the future has its eyes on this moment in its past.

They talk about the proceedings. About the war. About the peace talks some Jedi are still presiding over without any authority to back them. Ahsoka discovers that she has opinions about these that are uniquely her own, ones Senator Organa finds fascinating in a purely kind way.

Senator Organa opens up about the troubles Alderaan’s relief missions face, without proper authority and with the Republic forces’ attention off some of the usual hyperspace lanes.

Frustration is a bonding emotion between them. But the time they spend together is the only peace Ahsoka’s life affords her.

—

When Ahsoka left the Jedi Order, she felt the weight of all the work she wasn’t doing press hard on her shoulders, guilt twining between her legs and tripping her up every time happiness or contentment seemed in reach. It made it so easy to take Bo Katan’s hand when she reached out; so easy to take on Mandalore’s battles as her own, because it felt like war and inaction were her only options.

Ahsoka was decisive. Her actions determined the course of so many lives. So many troopers under her command, so many citizens depending on their victory; and for those brief, too-long hours with Maul, the whole Republic balanced on their backs.

Now, inaction has descended again. The weight of roads not taken and guilt encircle her throat like a collar. With Master Obi-Wan and Commander Cody and Captain Rex in the Senate every day, with Padmé and Senator Organa, the future of the Republic doges her every step, but she’s nearly powerless to help.

And it doesn’t help that her future with the Order is still up in the air.

Master Windu seems to have set her brief partnership with Maul aside until they know whether the Republic will fix itself, but having the threat of his disapproval hang over her head is worse than any swift punishment he could have devised. Like, for instance, barring her from rejoining the Order.

The Temple is her home. The Jedi are her people. Ahsoka knows she doesn’t want to live without them anymore.

But the Order has ground to a halt, and Ahsoka doesn’t know how to be still, anymore; her waiting is purely predatory, a simple watching for the next moment to strike.

Meditating has never been her strong suit, but she takes it up again anyway. It’s supposed to afford her clarity, if not peace.

In, out. In, out.

In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out.

Ahsoka lets out a frustrated huff. It’s so easy when she slips into the grasslands and the desert with Barriss; the both of them searching for answers no one seems to have, answers to questions too many people aren’t asking.

But on her own? For herself?

Not a damn moment of clarity.

She lets out another frustrated huff and pushes to her feet. Fine. Moving meditation, it is. In, out. Rise. In, out.

In, out. Left foot back, right foot forward, arm across the body. Ahsoka automatically pulls her empty grip in front of her face, instead of at her side, and lets her other hand act as both counterbalance and guard behind her.

In, out. In, out.

Forward, back.

Parry, attack, defend.

Deflect. In, out.

In, out. In, out, In….. out…. …. ……….

She alternates slow and fast repetitions and allows the living Force to flow through her, abandoning all thought toward the future.

In out forward back parry attack defend deflect in out; In, out, forward, back, parry, attack, defend, deflect, in……out……..

“Always in motion, the future is,” Master Yoda says from where he’s settled into the grass across from her. “Always in motion, you are, Ahsoka.”

In, out. The grasslands recede, leaving only Ahsoka. She dashes the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand and falls into slow, easy stretches, letting the moment extend between her and her oldest teacher.

When they’re both ready, she releases a last breath and lowers herself in front of him.

“Happy here, you are not.” His ears dip low. “Happy here, many are not. Leaving, many are, to find themselves outside the Jedi Order.”

Ahsoka says nothing, content to wait for him to ask, not sure she has an answer to offer.

He sighs. “Leaving, are you, Ahsoka Tano?”

“I don’t know, master. I don’t know…what I’m supposed to do now.”

Yoda offers no answers, either.

“Jedi, you are,” he says, but it feels like a question. He feels…uncertain, and it strikes Ahsoka like a blow. Yoda isn’t supposed to be uncertain; he’s supposed to be…Yoda!

We’re peacekeepers! Barriss’ voice says in her mind, and he and Ahsoka flinch as one.

But…

“Yes,” she mulls, “I am a Jedi.” In, out. “But I don’t know what that means anymore. What we stand for. What we’re supposed to do,” she repeats her earlier refrain.

Yoda hums. “Neither do I,” he says, full of mischief and sorrow for not having the answers younglings always expect from him.

“Jedi, you are; in the Temple, Jedi, you are. On Mandalore, Jedi, you are. And on Felucia, Alderaan, Naboo, Tatooine.

“Jedi, you are, always.”

It rings out in the Force. Daughter, it murmurs to her, and the cantor soars over the grasslands, free once again.

Her breath shudders out of her, leaving tears in its wake. She shudders, and cries, until it turns into great rolling sobs that wrack her whole body and seep into the Force around them, sinking into the grass and plants and trees.

Relief. It flows openly between her and Master Yoda. Relief-identity-purpose-forgiveness-Jedi.

“Searching, you are, for answers none have yet. Find them for ourselves, we must. Yes,” he hums again. “Find them for ourselves, we will, and then, know them together, we will.”

She wipes uselessly at her face, still crying. “But what about the Senate, the armistices, the clones—”

Yoda shakes his head. “Your job, this is not. Jedi, you are. Jedi Knight, I name you, Ahsoka Tano; now; always. But young, you still are. Heavy burdens, we have placed on the shoulders of all our younglings.”

“But you just said I was a Knight,” she protests, and he smiles at her.

“Younglings,” he grumbles playfully. “Younglings you all are, to me. Even Master Windu.”

A beat.

“Youngling you were, when sent into battle, you were. When send you into battle, the Council did.” He sighs heavily. “Great things, you have achieved, on the field of battle. Under Master Skywalker’s tutelage,” he emphasizes Anakin’s new title. “An exaggeration, it is not, to say that saved the Republic, you have, Ahsoka Tano; even if with the unlikeliest of allies, you did. But had to, you should not have.”

Half the Order, gone.

Fresh tears flood her eyes, and the beginnings of a dehydration headache start to throb.

“Many things, we will have to consider. What we have done, for the sake of this war. What we will do, for the sake of our future. Easier it is, for myself and other masters, to contemplate these things here, in the Temple. Easier it is not, for you.”

In, out. She breathes easier now than she has since the Temple was bombed months and months past. Now that Master Yoda…he…. Force, his approval still means so much to her.

“Need my approval, you did not,” Master Yoda chides gently.

“I wanted it, though,” Ahsoka realizes. In, out. With his approval, so much of her uncertainty is gone, the things that temper her will to act dissipating with the knowledge that she isn’t alone anymore.

Jedi aren’t meant to be alone.

A breeze winds through the physical world around them, and Ahsoka tilts her head up to feel it better.

“Here we will be, when ready you are to return.”

—

Unsurprisingly, she finds Skyguy at Padmé’s apartment. The two of them kind of abandoned any pretense when the war ended and he got to stay on Coruscant for more than a week. When his troops—and the Republic, nominally—didn’t need him on the field of battle anymore.

“I have something to tell you,” they say at the same time, awkwardly sitting across from each other at Padmé’s kitchen table; Padmé herself having retreated to her—her and Skyguy’s? —bedroom with her handmaidens to keep packing. Ahsoka doesn’t know everything about human reproductive cycles, but it doesn’t seem like Padmé can get much bigger without literally bursting, so she must be preparing for the end of it. She’ll be on Naboo for a few months.

Or at least, that’s what she says. Ahsoka suspects she may be back on Coruscant sooner, given the state of the galactic government.

They both gesture for the other to go first; they both pause awkwardly, waiting each other out, and Ahsoka rolls her eyes at them internally. Little gods, really? This is what they’re reduced to

And then they speak at the same time again:

“I’m rejoining the Order.”

“I’m leaving the Order.”

“What?” They yell, together, and Ahsoka growls at the both of them.

“You’re leaving the Order?” Ahsoka demands, finally speaking on her own.

“I,” Anakin blinks, and rubs the back of his neck like she’s blindsided him. “Yeah. I don’t think I can stay, Snips, not with the way things are.”

She raises her brow. “And how is that?”

He rolls his eyes at her, externally. “I’ve never exactly been a model Jedi, Ahsoka.”

“Banthashit. Everyone says you’re one of the best Jedi in the Order.”

“No,” he counters, “they say I’m one of the best Generals in the order. One of the best warriors. And now,” he turns to look in the direction Padmé went and his whole being softens in the Force, “I want to try and be one of the best husbands. One of the best fathers,” he grins, and it strikes Ahsoka that he’s so young. He’s so young, to have done the things he’s done. So young to be a father.

Holy kriff, Anakin Skywalker is gonna be a dad.

Visions of him jumping off of cliffs and being electrocuted run through her mind.

He catches the memories and grumbles at her. Sighs.

“I don’t think I want to try and be a better Jedi, is the thing. There is no try,” he says bitterly. “Only do or do not.”

“And you…do not,” Ahsoka says hesitantly.

“I love my wife,” he says. “I love my children. I love you, and Obi-Wan, and Rex and our men. But I don’t love the Jedi Order anymore, if I ever did.”

Ahsoka thinks she loves the Order as much as it’s possible to love something so integral to who she is and who she wants to be.

Were you not cast out of your Order?

I left voluntarily.

Yes, but you were motivated to leave by the hypocrisy of the Jedi Council.

Many things, we have to consider.

“So, what are you going to do now? If you’re not a Jedi.” Ahsoka asks.

Anakin leans back in his seat, crosses his arms.

What do you want with Anakin Skywalker?

He is the key to everything. To destroy. He has long been groomed as my master’s new apprentice.

The Force roils as he sees what she has seen, hears what Maul said to her; it’s always so responsive for him. Anger. Hate. Disbelief.

Yeah. Ahsoka didn’t believe it either, until Maul told her who Sidious really was. Until they got to Coruscant and Ahsoka could feel Anakin, his rage and fear and uncertainty. They barely got there in time, and the galaxy hung in the balance between Anakin and Ahsoka. He pulls the memory of that from her too, and visibly brings himself back under control.

“I’m going to Naboo with Padmé. And maybe,” he hesitates. “I think I’ll help Rex and the other troops out, too. With whatever their plans are. Some other Jedi are helping, too. Aayla, for one,” he adds when he sees her twitch in curiosity. “Padmé’s been helping them fight the Senate for citizenship rights, and they’re just starting a search for places to settle down.

“It’ll calm a lot of anxieties in the Senate when they find it,” Ahsoka says, mulling it over. “Having a standing army makes everyone nervous.”

Anakin snorts. “Sure. But it’s less that and more that they deserve it. They always deserved it,” he says lowly, the seeds of a greater anger taking root. “And if we tried to frame it like that, then some senators would say the troopers shouldn’t be able to leave until the Separatists decommission their droids.”

Something doesn’t quite make sense about that. Ahsoka thinks about what she’s caught of the recent debriefings, and can’t remember any of the senators talking about this as anything more than a distant possibility.

“Hang on,” she says, the pieces coming together. “What exactly are you planning, Skyguy?”

He grins, sharply this time. “Yeah, don’t go spreading it around. We, uh, requisitioned some medical droids and started removing their chips weeks ago. There’s nothing stopping them for doing whatever they want, now.”

“Holy kriff,” Ahsoka breathes, eyes wide. “How is this even going to—they’re still members of the GAR, can’t they get court martialed?”

“Not if all of them leave,” he smirks. “There’s no law or force in the galaxy that could tell them all what to do, anymore.”

She thinks about Anakin and Rex, Master Obi-Wan and Commander Cody, Master Windu and Commander Ponds. “Not even the Jedi.”

“Which you’re going back to.”

“I am a Jedi,” she says, and the Force winds around her like a satisfied lothcat. Anakin senses it and purses his lips. “A Jedi Knight,” she adds, and his shoulders sag in defeat.

“It suits you,” he admits, and leans back toward her over the table.

“Just because I’m a Jedi doesn’t mean I’m staying here, though. I’m not just gonna sit around, anymore, even if the Order isn’t assigning missions.”

He hesitantly reaches for her hand. “So, you’ll come to Naboo to meet the twins, when they’re born? It won’t be long now,” he says, not meeting her eyes.

She reaches back, leaning closer to snag his prosthetic hand, too. “I wouldn’t miss it, Skyguy.”

A beat.

“Hang on, twins? Two of them?”

He bursts out laughing, and the whole apartment brightens with his delight. “That’s exactly what Obi-Wan said!”

—

Ahsoka walks into Senator Organa’s offices on purpose, for once, and he looks up at her in surprise.

“I see I’ve finally caught you off guard,” she grins. “I was starting to think you had foresight, the way you’re always ready for me.”

“Well,” he smiles warmly and gestures for her to sit, “perhaps you’ve finally done something unpredictable, Master Jedi.”

He’s called her that this whole time, oddly enough, from the first moment she burst into his space in a panic. Always certain of who she was. It’s pretty telling in retrospect that she never corrected him.

“What brings you to me today?” He asks.

“You’re still having trouble with your relief missions,” Ahsoka states. “I want to help.”

Senator Organa’s brow furrows. “I was unaware the Jedi Order has started assigning missions again. Or the Senate, for that matter.”

“They haven’t,” Ahsoka grins. “But as a fully-fledged Jedi Knight, I’m allowed to offer my services as I see fit, even outside officially sanctioned missions.”

“That’s a very generous offer.”

“I want to help.” She repeats plainly, but it means something different this time. “And I know you want to help, too. I trust your judgment; and,” she shrugs, “Alderaan’s judgment, too.”

“And what kind of help is that, exactly?”

“Whatever kind of help is needed. Diplomacy, piloting, negotiating.” She grins again. “Aggressive negotiations.”

Senator Organa studies her, his hand coming up to his chin in a contemplative gesture. “I trust your judgement as well, Master Jedi.”

Ahsoka sighs in relief. “Well, that’s good.” Her backup plans if this didn’t work were pretty, uh, nebulous.

“You’ve been very occupied by the Senate hearings and the armistices; I suppose,” he says slowly, meeting her eyes directly, “I’m surprised at this decision. I thought you would remain on Coruscant until matters were settled.”

She tilts her head to the side and considers it. “Maybe, in another life. But I think I’m ready to let other people decide the fate of the galaxy again,” she says like it’s a joke, but feels relieved when Senator Organa doesn’t take it like one. “I think,” she continues tentatively, “I can finally trust that everything will still be here when I return. And in the meantime, there are people who need my help, and I need to help them.”

“You’re in luck,” Senator Organa says, pulling one datapad of many off his desk and thumbing it open. “Queen Breha just finalized the details of a joint relief mission with Chandrilla to Ryloth. They only accept aid now when it isn’t the military delivering it, but the hyperspace lanes between there and Alderaan are still tumultuous. And to be honest,” he admits, “we could use some help smoothing the transfers over with local officials, too.”

Ahsoka breathes out, and feels this mission sink onto her shoulders, displacing the greater weights that took up that space before. Greater, but not more important.

“I’ll put you in contact with the mission lead, they can give you details about departure times and what exactly they’ll want you to do.”

“Thank you, Senator Organa,” Ahsoka says as she pushes to her feet.

“I think you can call me Bail,” he says, extending a hand.

“Then I think you should call me Ahsoka,” she replies, taking it.

—

Anakin drags Rex and Kix and Jesse and Cody to Naboo with him, when it’s time, and Padmé thanks them quietly for bringing him back to her, more whole than he’s been since they rode into an arena chained together.

Time away from the politics of rebuilding a government and the Jedi Order—and the relationship between the two and the larger galaxy—has been so good for him that she can’t begrudge personal opportunities lost.

At least now, she knows he’s safe in more ways than one, working for something he really believes in.

—

Ahsoka meets Luke and Leia ten days local standard after they’re born at Varykino on Naboo, and loves them instantly.

A Feeling strikes her as she stares down at the pair of them, utterly enchanting and more powerful than anything she’s ever seen before. “Oh, they’re going to be trouble.”

“You think?” Anakin grins at her.

—

Barriss can feel it, somehow, when Ahsoka finally leaves Coruscant again. Like their increasingly frequent joint meditations have bound them together.

Her strength in the unifying Force has only ever brought her pain; foresight in the middle of a war is nothing but death and darkness. But as Ahsoka leaves, more settled than she’s been since Barriss utterly destroyed the trust between them, and between them and the Order and the Republic, the Force seeps into her vision once again.

Desert winds swirl, sweeping aside too-familiar sands to reveal what potential lies underneath.

Growth. New beginnings. Life.

Barriss sees:

Her hands sweeping over the head of an anxious youngling, murmuring sweet nothings as she applies bacta patches to the saber burns the little Twi’leck who slipped during their first training class, completely accidental.

“It’s going to be alright,” Barriss says with a smile, and she believes it. And the youngling believes her.

Barriss s e e s:

It is not so easy for the scars of war to fade.

We are not soldiers; but we used to be; but we shouldn’t have been.

When the Jedi Order shouldered the burden of galactic war for the Senate, their lauded foresight didn’t reveal the perils of the aftermath. What the real cost of war is for the soldiers who fight it: the ones who die for it, and the ones who have to live with it. Live with what they did in the name of something that was truly corrupted.

Too late for what? The Republic to fall? It already has, and you just can't see it! There is no justice, no law, no order, except for the one that will replace it!

The temple of the New Republic is not a sanctuary suffused with the warmth of a thousand years of brotherhood that they once lived in. It reflects its inhabitants in more ways than one.

It is an alert place, the tension of a thousand survivors of Civil War trained to be on their guard, always. At once a more insular place, disillusioned with the government they’re re-learning how to serve, even now, years after the fact, and a more connected place, with the Jedi more aware of the people themselves by necessity. There are some who will always be more comfortable in a battle than out of it, no matter how long it’s been, because they came of age in battle after battle after battle. But there are others who are finally growing up without a war nipping at their heels, corrupting them.

Jedi come and go more frequently than they used to. There are more Rangers and Watchman than there have been in hundreds of years.

But they are. And they will be.

Barriss sees:

Ahsoka climbs the steps to the Temple, her home, completely at ease, the echoes of her descending them in anguish and uncertainty long faded. Returning from a long, satisfying journey.

Barriss is waiting for her just inside the Temple walls and falls in step next to her. They make their way through the Temple together.

Younglings and Padawans and younger knights and older masters alike whisper in Ahsoka’s wake, as they always do; things they once whispered about her Master, and his Master before him: one of the greatest Jedi of the era. Sith-slayer. Negotiator. Warrior. Her adventures are easy stories to tell in creches, ones where the Jedi triumphs over many different types of evil.

The reality of them is more complicated, of course, but that is something saved for people who can bear it and learn from in; not fear it.

“She’s waiting for you,” Barriss says calmly.

Ahsoka groans. “Barriss, I haven’t even been home five minutes, can’t this wait?”

“You’re ready. She’s more than ready; she’s been waiting for you.”

“Am I? Ready, I mean,” Ahsoka says uncertainly.

They pause in the hallway, passersby parting around them without protest because it’s clear to everyone that the pair of them must stop here.

“Are you?”

She heaves a long, heavy sigh that slides into another groan. “To train a padawan?” Ahsoka hesitates. “Or to stay in the Temple again?”

Barriss says nothing, projecting the serenity she feels every day in the Temple; the serenity she feels when she’s with Ahsoka; the serenity that emanates from their current topic through the unifying Force.

“Because I won’t train a Padawan the way we were trained,” Ahsoka says harshly. “Always on the move. No solid ground to fall back on, no peace. That’s not who we are.”

“Not anymore,” Barriss replies, with that same hint of bitterness. In, out. She releases it as quickly as it appeared.

“I want her to know peace, Barriss. And love,” she adds petulantly, still stinging from her last debate with some of their elders over the Skywalker Clan, the one Barriss suspects played no small part in sending her back out of the Temple again. “Safety.”

“Well, you have your answer, then.”

Ahsoka looks at her blankly.

“Who better to provide those things than you? It’s not like you’d trust anyone else with her, at this point. Still ready to take the fate of the whole galaxy onto your shoulders, Knight Tano,” Barriss teases, gently, because that weight still aches for her friend even now.

“And you’re still ready to take its wounds onto yours, Healer Offee,” Ahsoka returns.

“It’s not like you’ll be alone,” Barriss says with exasperation, starting through the Temple again. Ahsoka keeps to her side automatically, her ‘sabers swinging at her hips. “You’ll have me, and Master Kenobi, and Knight Katooni, and even—Skywalker,” she settles on delicately. “Even if he should never be allowed near our younglings.”

“Maybe we can share her,” Ahsoka muses lightly, still protesting Barriss’ decision not to take an apprentice. Barriss lets it go for now, because she just won the argument.

They slow to a halt outside the Bear Clan’s quarters, and Ahsoka curses. “C’mon, I haven’t even showered yet!”

“You’re no good to anyone putting things off. Always on the move, that Ahsoka Tano. Always looking forward.”

Ahsoka sighs again, with a touch of finality, and relents. She turns to Barriss and tilts her forehead to bump into her friend’s. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” Barriss says, and presses into Ahsoka’s touch for a moment, before giving her friend one final push.

“Hey!” Ahsoka exclaims as she stumbles through the Clan’s doorway, but Barriss is already halfway down the hallway, her lingering amusement in the Force the only sign she was ever there.

—

Barriss sits in her cell and weeps unabashedly, full of relief for this gift the Force has given her: a future.

For her people.

For herself.

—

fin.

26 notes · View notes

goose-books · 4 years

Text

darklingverse & magic

as promised! a look at the magical system in my speculative fiction loose-retelling-of-king-lear WIP, which you can find out more about here and here! this is a terribly, terribly long post, so i’m sticking most of it under a cut, but i can guarantee there are at least a few fun diagrams in there. (all character images used are from this picrew by cinnasmores!)

shoutout to waya @harehearts for helping me work out some of the kinks in this by asking incredibly helpful questions... waya i will untag you if you want i just wanted to appreciate your contribution. also going to tag @suits-of-woe because you mentioned wanting to see this!

Jasper’s dad talks about it like oil. Petroleum has to be refined before you can put it in your car. Unrefined, it’ll just as soon kill you as anything else. The natural clock ticks. A mage hits twelve, or thirteen, or fourteen. And then it’s roaring under their skin, like an electric volt, like a fever, burning in them, fighting tooth and nail to get out.

It always gets out. You pick the route. Or you don’t.

The first thing Vee ever learned was duplication. Small objects only. Jasper was crawling through stacks of post-it notes for weeks. It was like an illness: Vee would get too itchy, his magic nipping at his neck, and he’d clench his fists and then they’d have another goddamn stack of stickies. “He has to get it out somehow,” Dad had admonished Jasper, when he’d complained. “Otherwise it’ll hurt him. I do it, too. The difference is I’m useful.” And he had demonstrated by snapping his fingers and cleaning all the house’s dishes at once.

Jasper is loath to give his father props for anything. But he was, on that particular occasion, right. Within a year Vee could flick his hands and shut windows, heat leftovers, unlock doors, send laundry skittering across the floor into the hamper.

It makes sense; Vee’s an infuriatingly quick study, magically and academically. And he inherited their dad’s style of magic. Easygoing. Quiet. Unobtrusive. Less explosive, more creative. Nowadays the worst that happens when he gets hot under the collar is that he spawns another houseplant and Jasper has to brush the leaves off the kitchen table.

Because Vee followed Dad’s instructions. He annotated all of his textbooks. He mastered it early, by seventeen, because of-fucking-course he did, but he was already in control by fifteen. Everyone learns to control their magic eventually.

Most people do eventually.

— darkling, segment iv: control

okay so let’s get into this!!!

isn’t darkling a modern king lear retelling? what do you mean, “the magic system?”

great question! darkling is, in fact, a modern king lear retelling (well, very loosely; it’s my city now and i reserve the right to do what i want). it takes place entirely in and around a city called dovermorry, an extremely isolated place secluded in the mountains, surrounded by wilderness for hundreds of miles, and only reachable via a single train through the mountains. dovermorry is loosely in the american northwest, sort of, i guess. by which i mean that’s kind of where i’m picturing it, but also it’s incredibly vague and honestly i don’t really know. dovermorry is, like, you know… [gesturing] it’s around. [kicking any kind of definable map under the rug]

the plot is set in the modern day with modern technology. the magic that exists is woven into daily life alongside said modern technology, which is the primary reason i’m calling darkling speculative fiction. most people in darklingverse aren’t actually heavily affected by magic (for reasons i’ll get into but which basically boil down to “they don’t have much”); however, dovermorry as a city is mostly known for being The Place Where Mages Go. most of the families in the city have been there for a long time; they’re old money families with powerful magic who use their inheritances to study increasingly esoteric forms of magic that aren’t very helpful in praxis. this is because dovermorry is home to the large and powerful Mage’s Guild, which is in charge of setting the laws around what kind of magic can be practiced in the city and by who. if you want to study magic at a scholarly level, you’d better pay your dues to the guild, otherwise you’re gonna get the boot.

every large city has a guild, but dovermorry’s in specific is Really Big and, unusually, has more political power than the actual mayor / government of the city. partially because leovald stayer, the guild’s president, is just… ughghhebwfbefbdsbfbdsfsd. That Way. in dovermorry if you’re not getting the boot you’re licking it

“wait, slow down. what is a mage anyway?”

well, technically, anyone! everyone in darklingverse has at least a little bit of natural magic (though it might be very little) that develops during puberty/adolescence! so by its literal definition, A Person Who Does Magic, everyone is a mage. that said, in colloquial terms, the word mage has taken on a connotation that basically means… exactly the kind of people who live in dovermorry. like i just said: scholarly, probably rich, probably a little elitist. so your average working-class person is TECHNICALLY a mage, but if you asked they’d say something like, “oh, mages are those hoity-toity folks who join guilds and stuff, WE’RE just regular folks over here.”

“you keep saying magic. what are you talking about. magic is a word that means so many things”

don’t worry, in darkling it just means [gestures vaguely]. re: everyone has magic, it develops in puberty, and there aren’t really specifications - it isn’t like some folks get fire magic and others get shapeshifting magic or etc. it’s more like everyone has a certain amount of raw energy inside them that can be drawn out and funneled into different tasks/spells. some ground rules:

1. you can’t change the amount of magic you have. your magic develops naturally, and maybe you get a lot of raw energy, or maybe you only get a little, but that’s what you’re stuck with and no amount of practicing is gonna give you more.

2. that said, magic is hard to control when it first develops - and practicing WILL help you get better at controlling it. so while you’ll always have the same base amount, you’ll get faster and more efficient about concentrating it into tasks.

3. re: amount of raw energy: that shit isn’t limitless. whether you have a lot or a little, it will eventually run out and you’ll have to wait for your juice to recharge. like a battery. you are a battery. how long this recharge period takes depends on how much magic you have, how fast you used it all up (if you push your limits to do something Really Big, you’re gonna be wiped), and also just how you’re doing physically in general? if you use up all of your magic in one go and you haven’t slept in a while, you might want to, like, sit down. drink a juice box. take a nap

4. while magic isn’t limitless, you can’t just NOT use it, either. when you aren’t using your magic, that raw magical energy builds up in you. and builds up. and builds up. and it does not particularly want to be in you. it wants to be out in the world, actually, and by god your fragile human meatsack is not going to stop it. so if you don’t choose a task to funnel your magical energy into (eg, i use my built-up energy to send my socks scuttling across the floor of their own accord to get into the laundry basket), that energy will eventually decide to just come out on its own. more on this later.

5. like i said, the mage’s guild of any particular city sets the rules, but there’s generally one core rule and that’s “don’t do necromancy.” like, obviously you’re not allowed to kill someone magically, but you’re also not allowed to kill someone NONMAGICALLY, so that’s kind of a given? but necromancy is something only a few very powerful mages can do and it is a BIG no-no. don’t fuck around with death, man. people don’t come back right, but also, just, like, let them rest, all right? let the dead rest.

[image description: the “society if X” meme, showing a futuristic “ideal” society full of green landscapes, smooth silver buildings, and flying cars. the text on the top reads “society if no one did necromancy.” the text on the bottom reads “this post made by the official mage’s guild don’t do necromancy you freaks bottom text.” in the corner you can see the imgflip.com watermark that i could have erased were i less lazy.]

“so what CAN you do with magic?”

the average joe? not much. again, there aren’t specific categories of magic; there aren’t any ATLA-style bending divisions. if you and i have the same raw amount of energy, there’s no reason we can’t both learn the same spells.

that said, the average person doesn’t have a lot of magic! it is much less dramatic than i’ve made it sound. there are not big magical firefights happening marvel-movie-style on every city street. if you want to talk to your friend, you use your iphone, not some kind of distance-speaking spell (which would be hard to maintain anyway and oh my god the phone lines are right there). the average person, on a daily basis, will use their small amounts of magic to heat their coffee up, or to wipe up a mess or spill, or to clean their floor re: the socks i mentioned earlier. (while writing this post, i had to begrudgingly admit that the socks were not going to scuttle anywhere, and i was forced to pick them up with my hands, manually. tragic, i know.)

again. dovermorry is the exception to this rule. most of the people in dovermorry have a little too much money and a little too much magic and not nearly enough chill. but dovermorry has also been festering like a petri dish alone up in the mountains for decades so what can you do.

“hold on, are you telling me that people in darklingverse didn’t immediately start wielding innate magic quantities as a tool of classism? sounds fake”

regretfully i cannot retcon classism out of darklingverse as it is relevant to the plot. this is because the plot is “Incredible: This Rich White Guy Has Never Been Told No And Doesn’t Know How To Handle It Without Crytyping!”

[image description: a picrew of leovald stayer, a pale-skinned man with short blond hair and an angry-looking frown, plus tears that i drew onto him with the paint tool in paint.net. beside his head is red crytyping text reading “ii’mm sso; so..rryy i didn’t[ mme a nit wwhy . are yu,,o suiiicdee .bai,,it,ing MMe gr;;acen im yuour da[d,,,”]

the general implicit belief across the country, but especially in highly stratified cities like dovermorry, is that upper-class people from distinguished noble families are just naturally born with more magic, and lower-class people are born with progressively less as we trip down the social ladder. is this kind of true, demographically? yeah but everyone’s got their cause-and-effect turned around. class doesn’t dictate natural magic so much as natural magic dictates class. the people on top like to be on top. and having jacked-up magic is a nice way to stay on top. so rip to the rich kids born with piddly little amounts of raw magic, because your family probably is not going to help you get places. and rip to everyone else born with piddly little amounts of magic, too, because unless you’re REALLY good at something nonmagical, you probably are not going to Strike It Big because those in power are gonna keep you down. and if you DO make it to the top you’ll be viewed as an exception that proves the rule.

there is some magic that is genuinely naturally harder to work with. the upper classes are personally really invested in making sure that kind of magic is painted as rough and lower-class. this is because it is threatening to them! and they do not want to be threatened. unless, of course, it’s them with the hard-to-handle magic. and then they’re fine with it.

“but didn’t you say everyone’s magic is basically the same?”

everyone’s magic can be wielded to do basically the same things. you can’t control how much flows through you. you CAN control where/how it gets out. and everyone’s pathways for how to let it out are basically the same (see the examples i mentioned above!). but some magic is a lot easier to control than other magic.

you can’t just not use magic, because if you don’t use it, it will use itself. it will Do Shit On Its Own. and that’s where this gets sticky.

so let’s get into that.

active vs. passive magic

now with fun diagrams!

[image description: a rainbow spectrum stretching from blue to red. the leftmost end (blue) is labeled “’passive’ magic” and “way down here you can mostly do fun party tricks.” the rightmost end (red) is labeled “’active’ magic” and “way down here you’re officially a ‘witch’ lol.”]

when i say active vs. passive magic, i should specify that this is not a strict binary! i’m about to use the terms in a sort of binary way to simplify this post down, but magic exists on a spectrum.* generally the less raw magic energy you have, the more “passive” your magic will be, but that’s not a hard and fast rule! characters vee and rory, for example, both have comparatively passive magic; however, rory’s is smaller and generally good for party tricks, illusions, and sleight of hand, while vee has more magic that he finds is really good for things like Growing Plants Really Fast and Making The Plants Do What You Want.

*i know this looks like some kind of metaphor for gender but i swear it’s not. you can trans your gender no matter WHAT your magic looks like i promise <3

i mentioned that if it builds up for too long unused, magic will Do Shit On Its Own. with passive magic, the Shit It Does is, like, accidentally growing a plant where plants shouldn’t grow, or changing your hair color when you aren’t looking. slow seeping magic that just kind of oozes out of you until you notice, “wait, shit, my hair didn’t used to be blue.” with active magic, if you don’t control it, it will Break Shit and it will not be nice about it.

active magic is - if we simplify both the magic binary and human genetics until they’re really really blurry - the dominant trait. if you made a middle school biology punnet square, active magic would be the dominant allele and passive the recessive allele. (i haven’t taken a bio class in two years no one get my ass for this analogy.) the child’s magic will take after whichever parent has more active magic. so, to illustrate that, let’s look at a normal family with a normal non-scandalous family tree. by which of course i mean the greenwoods. [canned laugh track playing in the studio]

here are ara, griffin, and medea (parents) charted by how active their magic is:

[image description: the same spectrum, now featuring three picrews of characters. ara, a dark-skinned woman with wavy black hair, freckles, and glasses, is placed leftmost, closest to the blue/passive end. griffin, a dark-skinned man with short black hair and glasses, is placed near the middle of the spectrum, slightly to the left. medea, a pale-skinned woman with spiky white hair, freckles, and gold hoop earrings, is placed rightmost, at the very edge of the red/active end.]

...and here’s how that went for them, progeny-wise:

[image description: a little family tree. ara and griffin’s child, vee, a dark-skinned person with wavy black hair, a worried look, and band-aids on his face, is labeled “quiet unobtrusive plant-based magic” in green text. medea and griffin’s child, jasper, a lighter-skinned person with spiky brown hair and freckles, is labeled “once accidentally shattered 50 champagne glasses at his dad’s birthday party” in red text.]

(yes, i know i said there aren’t any ATLA-esque magical divisions; that’s still true; vee just happens to get on really, really well with plants. much like jasper gets on really really well with entropy and causing problems on purpose.)

so the thing about “active” magic is that it’s usually more powerful, but if it’s too powerful it gets incredibly destructive. like i said earlier - if you’re part of the upper class, it shakes out fine; otherwise not so much. your choices with this kind of dangerous magic are to either fight it and keep it tamped down, or to lean completely into it and embrace your massive amounts of dangerous power. if you are rich, you can do that second thing! that’s what leovald stayer does, and he’s the president of the mage’s guild! good for him! [i say, through gritted teeth.] but if you aren’t rich, you had better try to keep that shit on lockdown, unless you want to be branded a reckless uncultured social deviant and - in most cases - a witch.

mages vs. witches

everyone with magic is a mage. only a few mages are witches. it’s like squares and rectangles, you know? you can hear gracen talk about that here in nice prose (plus baby cressida!), but the bottom line is that “witch” is shorthand for “woman* who has magic so powerful it’s unsafe, who uses it to break shit and be reckless,” and anyone with the “wrong” type of magic who doesn’t have a trust fund to back them up is getting tarred with that brush. they’re nothing like those elegant learned mages casting down benevolent laws from their ivory towers, you see.

*this isn’t a gender specific thing but usually women are the ones who get called witches because Women Should Know How To Control Themselves But Men Are Just Like That. god we love misogyny <3

tl;dr: misogyny and classism real. if you have hard-to-control magic that breaks shit then you’re destined to be a pariah UNLESS of course you’re rich and powerful and then it’s COOL that if you got too out-of-control you could collapse a building or cause a monumental storm or something. you know. cool.

[image description: the same magic spectrum. medea is still there, placed exactly where she was before. leovald’s face is also there, right above hers; in terms of magic, they are equally placed on the spectrum. leovald is labeled “runs the whole city” and medea is labeled “lives in a cave in the woods,” both in white text. there are three thinking emojis at the very top of the image.]

funny how these things work out.

in conclusion

in conclusion, if you’ve read all of this, you’re braver than the marines and have my undying love. if you’re down here for a tl;dr: magic is a natural force everyone is born with; some magic is comparatively harder to control; classism & other social structures affect the way a person’s magic is viewed (there are a lot of double standards); i really enjoy making little oc diagrams.

if you have questions, comments, etc, about this post or darkling in general, my ask box is always open! thank you for reading! [blowing you a kiss]

#i dream of hitting leovald stayer with rocks <3 #anyway this is terribly long but i had a friend scan through it and they said it was comprehensive and helpful so!#oh also i hope the image descriptions work i should start doing those... if anyone has concrit on that come shout into my inbox #this post could also be called 'reasons why jasper acts like a neurotic prey animal all the time'#though i did try not to delve into specific characters unless i was using them as examples. this here crash course doesn't need 2 get longer #max.txt #darkling tag #leovald stayer #ara greenwood #griffin greenwood #medea the witch #vee greenwood #jasper greenwood

24 notes · View notes

eisforeidolon · 5 years

Text

Episode: Moriah

So the Carry On montage kicks in and it starts off actually making the season look interesting … until about halfway through it switches over to contrived nonsense focused on Perpetually-Clueless-Nougat and Inexplicably-Not-A-Vegetable.

I really feel like it's a clear illustration of why for me this season takes the cake with “The Worst” in big frosted letters across it. I think twelve had some pretty good ideas, it was just that the execution left a lot to be desired as it shuffled to a vaguely unsatisfactory and perfunctory conclusion. I can't remember if thirteen ever felt like it was properly doing anything other than treading water, which was boring but in a stolid sort of way. This season? Just took every halfway interesting idea it had and gleefully dropkicked them all off a steep cliff of stupid.

As for this episode in particular, it picks up where the last left off with Jack having broken out - and holy crap are the effects terrible. Like, laughably whatthefuckweretheythinking terrible – it seriously looks like a low budget bad comic book movie regurgitated onto the screen. Yikes.

Not surprising at all that Dean is the one pushing to do the necessary thing and just get it done even if it hurts, while Sam says nothing but goes along and Castiel whines because he doesn't care if Jack is running around killing people indiscriminately. It is kind of hilarious to me that Castiel thinks at this late date he can just stare down Dean and make him change his mind. Even if Dean wasn't already pissed off at him, seriously? IS there some kind of defect where angels/partial angels are literally incapable of learning?

I had forgotten about the whole truth spell spoiler, so I was confused for a bit whether or not Jack was actually hearing people's thoughts or, since there was such a theme to them with several people being rejected, was hallucinating again and projecting his fears onto others. (It was giving me weird I'm Afraid of Americans vibes, tbh.) Though I guess actually it could still go either way?

I'm not sure what the point of Jack's whole truth spell actually is, though? Like the show is trying to build up tension to some kind of a climax – but wait! Let's pause in the middle for an exaggerated humor break! Again, this feels to me like the current writers have heard people say that the show is so good at juxtaposing humor and pathos and thinks that means they are – when it really refers to the show of yesteryear. They simply don't have the subtlety for it to do anything but wreck any momentum that's building. Not to mention that too often their “jokes” make no sense for the characters in their desperation for a cheap laugh. What does lying have to do with that bizarre nonsense with the woman with the staplers? Since when has Sam ever shown any affection for Elvis or Celine Dion? Sigh.

I did like the scene between Dean and the receptionist. I also did think it makes sense that Jack would go back to his mother's parents in trying to connect with someone who might not reject him - and they would have since realized what happened to their daughter. I actually think it does work well as a way to show Jack that he is just as guilty of telling lies, too.

I am not impressed with the writers whipping out a complete ripoff of the Colt via Chuck except guess what? Now it's also TEH MOST POWERFUL EVAR version of itself! With a dumber name! Yay. If I was even hopeful enough to create a season fifteen wish list? Not having every conflict come down to arbitrarily fluctuating powers or sudden ass-pulls of McGuffins to solve things would be right near the top under NO MORE FUCKING PELLEGRINO GODDAMN IT.

I still don't buy all this crap about how Jack is supposedly the Winchester’s child. Both from the stupidity of acting like he’s an actual child and from how the execution has been so much tell, so little show. Nor do I buy that Jack doesn't have feelings, as much as we've been subjected to him angsting all over the place the last two episodes.

I do otherwise like the conversation between Sam and Dean about what has to be done about Jack, though.

Castiel happily tosses over the Winchesters without a second thought? I am shocked, shocked I say! Okay, not shocked, but vindictively gleeful that what his bullshit ever fickle loyalties gets him is tossed the fuck aside by Jack. That I fully support.

Same with Dean not choosing to shoot Jack in cold blood. Jack just accepting that Dean intends to kill him and surrendering shows that despite how fucking weird his explanation of what happened was, Jack does regret and care about what he did. Obviously Dean is still upset about Mary, but it was that Jack didn't seem to care and was killing others which was the real problem, not that Dean was looking for revenge. Again, if everything hadn't been so contrived to get us here, I think this moment did really work.

Only to be pretty much ruined for me by the Chuck reveal. I don't like what it says about the entire thrust of the storyline of the first five seasons in regards to free will. I don't like what it does to the character of Chuck in service of yet again just trying to scale up to TEH MOST POWERFUL EVAR antagonist, that is totally more powerful and more scary than the last!

In a less abstract way, I don't like how obviously contrived the reveal itself is here. Okay, say it's true that Chuck has been playing them their entire lives. For that to be true, he'd need to have actually been good at it before now. A real master manipulator able to play a very long game – but this episode, he just suddenly becomes shitty and transparent about it for reasons? Why appear and intentionally try to goad them, why not just make the gun appear where they or an ally will find it? Why not further manipulate the Winchesters' beliefs about what Jack's doing with some decent frame jobs? The Winchesters don't even get to catch him out in a lie or a manipulation, he just suddenly goes full on I'm A Villain, Ask Me How!

What Dabb & Co. don't seem to get about twists – since they keep throwing them out willy-nilly seemingly every time they get bored? Is that a genuinely good twist doesn't just blindside you out of nowhere. It's unexpected, but after it happens, you can see exactly how it makes sense and all ties together. The impact of the shock being juxtaposed against the realization that it does totally work is what it gives it that WHAM! of impact. When it doesn't connect like that, it's just shock for the sake of shock. Which is weaker to begin with, but then when you do that over and over again, where your twists connect to nothing and mean nothing and a great deal of the time actually contradict the world's established continuity? Even the shock ultimately just becomes a disinterested WTF.

And of course, even putting all that aside, what this sets up for next season is just a repeat of all the things that didn't work with the Amara storyline. Remember how she was totally going to destroy all creation, but, you know, there were basically no consequences anywhere further away than Sam & Dean could drive or in more than one place at once? This is the lesson they never learned about setting your human protagonists against ludicrously overpowered entities - you can’t actually scale up enough and everything just comes off slightly silly.

#negativity for ts #writer incompetence #anti Dabb #anti mark pellegrino #a bit of #anti castiel #spn season 14 #spn 14x20 #long post

8 notes · View notes

scaryscarecrows · 6 years

Text

Roots and Leaves, Pt. 8

All done!

“-son. Master Jason.”

Fuck, Alfred’s dead? The end is extremely fucking nigh.

But, if he’s going to be selfish (which got him into this, you’d think he’d learn)…at least he has company in…wherever this is.

His hands still hurt, though, which he finds very unfair.

“You are no better at feigning unconsciousness than you were at fifteen, sir.”

He’s not tryin’ to…

Why does Death look like his old bedroom. Is this some sorta ‘ease into it’ area?

“There you are.”

“Alfie?”

Alfred hasn’t changed one bit. Jason will bet that his mustache hasn’t even grown, or shed a hair, or anything.

“How are you-”

Alfred.

He hugs him and he hasn’t changed, not one goddamn bit. Alfred hugs him back, one hand cupping his neck and the other moving firmly up and down his spine. Alfred’s here, everything’s gonna be okay, at least for another minute…

The hand on his spine moves and his head’s tilted up with a soft, “Oh, my boy.”

It’s over. Any dignity he had is gone. He presses his face against Alfred’s chest (fabric softener Earl Grey home) and doesn’t even try to pretend he’s not crying. He’s never been able to keep anything from Alfred anyway.

“M’sorry.”

“Oh, my boy,” Alfred says again, and those sturdy hands press against his head and neck. “There is nothing to apologise for.”

He tries to take a few deep breaths, to get himself under control for fuck’s sake, and can’t. He can’t do it anymore.

But Alfred is a literal saint, and he doesn’t try to coax him to talk or to sit up or to do anything at all, even after his jacket must be soaked through. He just sits there, marginally more slumped than he usually is, and rubs a hand in slow, steady circles over Jason’s shoulders.

At some point, he senses a presence in the doorway, but before he can straighten up it’s gone again and now, without that motivation, it’s easier to just stay here where it’s safe and warm.

He eventually runs out of tears but his face is now wet and swollen and hot. His nose feels like it’s swollen shut and he’s been reduced to careful, thought-out breaths that rattle in his throat and burn in his chest. Sitting up is too much work.

Alfred props him up anyway and rubs a cool washcloth over his face before letting him take it and hold it against his now-puffy eyelids.

“That’s it, Master Jason.” If Bruce is Sherlock Holmes, then Alfred is Watson. They don’t deserve him. “That’s it. Deep breaths, there we are.”

“M’sorry, Alfie,” he forces out, voice strangled. “M’sorry-”

“That’s enough of that.”

“But-”

“I won’t hear any more of that.” Oh, boy. That’s the ‘you’re on thin ice and should just shut up’ voice. Even now, it’s scary and he doesn’t have the courage to go against it.

A straw presses against his lips-limeade-and Alfred continues, a little gentler now, “I cannot imagine that you purposefully buried yourself for any reason, Master Jason. Am I correct?”

He laughs. He can’t help it. It sounds so nice put like that.

“No. No, I…I didn’t. I didn’t.” He is not going to start crying again. He refuses. Sheila flashes behind his eyes, blonde and blue and red, and he presses the washcloth down hard enough to hurt. “I…she s-said. She said she was out. Sh-she said she was out, Alfred, I thought…just once…”

“From the beginning, Master Jason.” Calm, but making it very clear that he doesn’t have a choice. “Who is ‘she’?”

He swallows, knows he’s imagining something squirming at the back of his throat. Alfred waits.

“Sheila Haywood,” he finally whispers. “I…Bruce’s files…she might have been my mother.”

He doesn’t have to look to know Alfred’s got that little frown between his eyebrows, the one that says he’s deeply upset. Jason presses the washcloth tighter against his eyes, sparking colors, and his wrist is tugged at until the colors die off.

“I just…she approached me, Alfie, I swear, I didn’t…I just thought…” He swallows again, forces himself to let the washcloth fall to his lap. “M’tired of bein’ second choice, Alfred.”

He doesn’t have time to brace himself before he’s pulled back down and somehow…folded…so that he’s tucked against Alfred’s chest like he’s thirteen again and still fits.

“Jason Peter Todd,” Aw, shit. “you have never been second choice, do you understand?”

But…

Look. He’s very well aware that he wouldn’t be here if Dick hadn’t had that fallout with Bruce. And oh, boy, has he ever learned the Joys of Being the Second Child-‘Dick did this’, ‘Dick did that’, and on and on and on. He’s come to terms with that fact, it’s fine, whatever.

But arguing that point (or any point) with Alfred is a Bad Idea.

And. And he’s here, now, because Bruce…Bruce came to pick him up, when he asked. So. That means something, doesn’t it?

His head hurts.

Alfred sighs at his non-answer but lets it go for the time being.

“What happened with Miss Haywood?”

He’s not moving. He’s staying right here until this is all over.

“Some moron tried to hold up the grocery store…”

* * *

Jason feigns sleep for the rest of the day, until Bruce is out on patrol. Sneaking past the Batman isn’t impossible, but it’s definitely hard and with his hands almost completely useless, well…

The last thing he wants or needs is a lecture on Trust and Rushing Into Things and Dammit, Jason, This is What Got You Captured by the Joker. He knows that, thanks, Bruce.

(And yeah, okay, he knows lectures are Bruce’s way of saying I Love You, but some people swear a punch to the face is an I Love You, so.)

Sneaking past Alfred, on the other hand…now that really is impossible.

He’s halfway down the stairs when there’s an irritated, “A-HEM,” from behind him. Crap.

“I was thirsty?”

Alfred gets this expression that Jason will swear means he’s envisioning smacking him upside the head with a rolled-up newspaper. Yeah. Okay. Game’s up.

“I just…I need some time,” he says, eyes fixed on a knot in the wooden banister. “I can’t face him, Alfred, not now.”

Not for a long time, probably. Not without a massive blow-up on both sides and it’s better if no one else is around to be caught in that crossfire.

And besides. Right now, he just…his apartment may be kinda crappy, but it’s not haunted by a stupid kid who swore up and down that

“Being Robin gives me magic!”

“This is the best day of my life.”

There’s too many ghosts in this house.

Alfred comes forward and pats his shoulder.

“At least permit me to provide you with a few easy-to-reheat meals.”

“I’m okay-”

“Humor an old man.”

That is a trap. That is a trap, it’s just better to nod and neither protest or nor agree. And he’s got time, before Bruce gets back.

“Thanks, Alfred.”

“Hm.”

He’s ushered towards the kitchen. It hasn’t changed a bit-still homey and warm and with those same comfy stools by the counter. He remembers having after-school snacks there and chattering a mile a minute about ‘so Mister Pierce set his desk on fire in chemistry and it was so cool I gotta try that y’think B’ll let me-?’

“If I hear one word about you being out before those hands have healed, there is no power on Heaven or Earth that will spare you, is that clear?”

He believes. He believes.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” An icebox appears out of nowhere. “Do you need a ride?”

“No, I, uh…I called an Uber. I didn’t think I could drive.”

“Wise choice.” Alfred sets the icebox down and grips Jason’s arms. “You will always have a home with us, Master Jason. Remember that.”

He is not going to start crying again. He is not.

“Thanks, Alfred.”

* * *

The Uber guy is more interested in his radio than in Jason and that’s just fine. It means he’s not going to pester him, which means that he can twist around to watch Wayne Manor shrink into the distance through back window.

When he gets home, he opens his e-mail. Nothing new, but Sheila’s are still there. He deletes most of them.

But.

He can’t. Even now, after everything, he can’t bring himself to hate her. Not really.

He moves the remaining few to his ‘save it’ folder, where he won’t open them by mistake, and goes outside for a cigarette. Lighting it’s a pain, and there’s a few minutes that he’s terrified that he’s going to light the bandages on his hands on fire, but he manages it, in the end, and leans on the railing to watch the cars go by below.

In another unit, he can hear Mz. Melinda May cackling and a handful elderly voices swearing and demanding she be thrown out. Maybe he’ll go over there tomorrow, make sure she hasn’t downloaded a crap-ton of computer viruses again. (And yeah, okay, he wants to know about the yelling.)

There’s a sudden movement in the shadows across the street and he goes inside, turns on the TV. He’s halfway through an episode of Chopped when a red bar pops up on the bottom saying, Batman recaptures Harley Quinn, more at eleven.

A knot in his chest he didn’t realize was there loosens up and he pulls his blanket tighter around his shoulders.

“Thanks, B.”

THE END

#Jason Todd #Alfred Pennyworth #none of us deserve Alfred #DC'd better not kill him or I will burn their offices to the ground #Roots and Leaves

19 notes · View notes

pass-the-bechdel · 6 years

Text

Dollhouse season two full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

100% (thirteen of thirteen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

44.96%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Eleven, six of which had a cast of 50%+.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Eighteen. Twelve who appeared in more than one episode, five who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirty-three. Twelve who appeared in more than one episode, four who appeared in at least half the episodes, and one who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Rubbish. As with the first season, the show suffers seriously for having no moral compass, it indulges in misogynistic violence and voyeuristic sex crimes as a mainstay, and any attempts to critique its own content are marred by hypocrisy and excuses (average rating of 2.76).

General Season Quality:

Also rubbish. While the majority of the cast are doing a fantastic job despite flimsy, problematic material, and there are a bare few episodes that could be considered good, altogether there’s no cohesion to the story, it lurches and fast-tracks and skips over anything that seems like it would have been a good concept to explore, and in the process it manages to lose any semblance of being about something. It’s just an excuse to stretch some acting chops on different kinds of character templates, and even that, it did badly.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

...so. I guess it’s a ‘nevermind, then’ on the exploration of any of the show’s own invoked themes re: personhood et al. I really thought they did more in that arena, but outside of a handful of single scenes sprinkled across the series, they really never did dig in to their existential concepts or anything that could approximate a broader narrative purpose beyond ‘let’s get Eliza Dushku to embody common sexual fantasies’. It’s ok to do some prompting of meta discussions for the audience and then leave them to fill in the blanks with their own musings, but not at the expense of bothering to say anything about your own subject matter. If you don’t have anything to say, then don’t ask people to listen to you. Keep your gross rape fantasies to yourself (or share with your therapist, damn), and leave the storytelling to people with a story to tell.

Everything that was wrong with season one is still entirely intact in season two, they fixed zero of their problems - they’re still fetishising and excusing rape, shamelessly objectifying and brutalising women, steeping the series in misogyny for no discernible reason, failing to achieve a basic moral underpinning to their content, underusing their quality acting assets while over-using their worst ones, and of course - as above - completely ignoring the need for a cohesive purpose to their own story or even just a ground-level sense that they knew what they were doing (or at least what they WANTED to be doing) with the arc of the narrative. Indeed, not only were all of the first season’s flaws intact, but season two even managed to make many of them worse! Off the top of my head, I’m not sure they made a single good character decision in the entire season, but I’m gonna save that conversation for the full series review so that I can properly compare the changes from one season to the next; there are plenty of other sins in season two to keep me busy for now. The lack of a moral anything (compass, backbone, compunction, whatever you want to call it) became a much bigger problem as the show attempted to escalate the scope of conflict with outside forces - largely, the Rossum corporation who runs the Dollhouses in service of their E-vil Plans - despite its own characters having committed all the same atrocities variously and knowingly, and the sketchy characterisation did a poor job of convincing that some magical moral something-or-other had taken hold between the seasons to give these characters new ethical dimensions that aren’t just blind hypocrisy. But, the biggest flaw of the season - relevant to all other issues but most especially to the lack of a central narrative theme or sense of meaning behind it - was the arc of the...’story’ that the season told. It was a Goddamn disaster, kids.

Pro tip: if you happen to, say, make a tv show that performs badly in the ratings in its first season, but you score a second season anyway, and you’re not confident that you’ll ever get a third...don’t try to jam all of the possible plot you imagined for a long-term series down into one season. It’s also probably a good idea to NOT end your first season with an ambitious flash-forward to an apocalyptic future which you are now irrevocably committed to bringing about in your regular narrative in spite of having only thirteen episodes to do it; a problem compounded by the inclusion of ‘flashbacks’ within that flash-forward, depicting events that you have now made canon only to turn around and nullify your own story by changing your mind about how to have it unfold (in the course of insisting on trying to make the whole thing unfold immediately, with plot that should have taken at least half a season to be explicated instead being fast-tracked into the subplot of a single episode). Don’t do that. Especially, don’t do that if you’re gonna ditch any kind of meaningful character arcs or thematic discussions or anything which would give your story a sense of purpose or cohesion or a mission statement of any kind (have I mentioned that yet? It’s mildly important to storytelling). Choosing to roll out a series of rapidly-accelerated plot events with all the nuance removed for streamlining is patently useless - you’ve removed everything that would make those plot events have value. That’s assuming that there were character beats (beats! Not beatings! This show has an excess of the latter; criminally few of the former) or narrative explorations or conceptual deliberations or somesuch in the original plan, anyway, and the first season did not do a great job of suggesting that there were (just...a better job than season two did). At any rate, better that you spend your time well and sadly never get to conclude the story like you wanted, rather than screwing over your own idea trying to just deliver the cliff notes. Cui bono?

Let’s consider what we got this season: thirteen episodes, and the first three are total Imprint of the Week fodder. A certain amount of episodic adventuring is expected, yes, but it’s a good idea to actually inject some useful plot machinations in there at the same time, and the first three episodes were very weak on both the one-off plot and the inclusion of significant long-term detail. The first two episodes are especially bad for being boring, inconsequential, and failing to capitalise on any interest drummed up by the end of the previous season; both also include teensy extra scenes of Senator Perrin pursuing his investigation into the Dollhouse, though neither creates any tension or interest around it, they literally just amount to ‘here is a guy, he’s gathering evidence’. It’s not exactly a thrilling or detailed introduction to the ‘Dollhouse plant in the government’ plot which comes to a head in a two-parter a few episodes later and then never impacts the story ever again. The story has no chance to build before it’s over: it’s introduced, it escalates, it’s nonsense, and then it’s done (the fact that the entire plot turns out illogical in the extreme really, really steps on any attempt at relevance or use). If you’re not gonna try and make the plot thread at least functional, why waste two whole episodes on it? You’ve only got thirteen, and you already wasted the first three!

I say they wasted the first three episodes, but arguably, it’s more than that: episode four was ‘Belonging’, with the unfortunate decision to explain how Sierra came to be in the Dollhouse by expanding on the existing rape narrative with her abuser, Nolan, and while the episode in itself mostly works (in spite of itself, really), it’s not of any long-term importance outside of some character building/expansion, which is not a complete waste of time but, also, is not turned to a particular purpose. We didn’t need to lose an entire episode on this; we could have built and expanded upon character while dealing with some meaningful plot content, instead of indulging that ol’ rape obsession some more. Similar flaws exist for most of the other episodes of the season - though not entirely useless, spending an episode on an unfocused and largely meaningless Alpha visit in ‘A Love Supreme’ or fast-tracking through Victor’s backstory with the overly-ambitious and ultimately irrelevant military tech in ‘Stop-Loss’ is not a good use of the limited time the series had left to tell its story. And then there was the terrible ‘Meet Jane Doe’, which gave us a time-skip and a bunch of rushed plot to do with Echo learning to master the many personalities composing her identity while Topher mocked up a doomsday device out of thin air back at the Dollhouse: the single most excessively stupid example of what should have been at least a half-season’s worth of plot, instead crammed down into a ridiculously contrived subplot in a single episode. If you’re gonna try and tell several season’s worth of plot in thirteen episodes, you gotta COMMIT, man: hard plot, every episode is essential, every one of them advances your central narrative in some significant way even when it appears you’ve just done an episodic plot, it’s all vital to the endgame. Don’t think you’re gonna tell a few years of story in three episodes, and spend the rest of the time on fetish fantasies. Don’t be that stupid.

As I noted when it happened, ‘The Attic’ is the only genuinely good episode of the season, and not least because it’s the only episode that does a passable job of making it seem like the plot has actually been going somewhere, for a reason, and with intention. It’s still very much a too-little-too-late situation, and the episode does all the heavy-lifting on introducing the puzzle pieces to complete the plot at the last minute, rather than having any of those pieces seeded at an earlier point in the series (the way that pre-planned things in a story that is going somewhere for a reason usually are). It gives us a last minute mystery to solve - who is Rossum’s shadowy founder? - though that turns out to be a very ill-advised mystery (for the calibre of the reveal, for the stupid convenience of having a shadowy founder to rail at, and for the obvious pointlessness of pretending that there’s a singular Boss Battle to be had that will magically dissolve the power of the corporation and its various pre-established players (Harding, Ambrose, and now the addition of Clyde 2.0 as well as ‘the founder’)). It also gives us a final mission - to take out Rossum’s mainframe - though that turns out similarly ill-advised in a more low-key way, since ‘we took down their computers’ is a patently idiotic way to ‘win’ (it’s laughable to pretend that any of the characters could be fooled into thinking that blowing up the Tucson facility would be anything more than an inconvenience to a global medical research corporation with thousands of employees and billions of dollars in resources and a trillion opportunities to store information on non-networked computers or on paper or in any of their numerous potential ‘legit’ published scientific proofs, etc, to say nothing of the fact that the physical tech and the people who built and used it are all still there, and yep, so are all those other Rossum higher-ups and probably even the founder himself, waiting on a harddrive to be put back into play). It all makes for an incredibly weak finisher to the ‘main’ plot, and that’s before we pointlessly bounce into the future again to show that, oh yeah, it WAS all meaningless and our characters are fucking morons who made no difference to anything with that explosion-y mainframe bullshit! The potentially-clever game-changer idea of including the flash-forward to the Thoughtpocalypse at the end of season one becomes a mistake now, when it calls for the waste of the finale on concluding a whole wild story development that the show never got a chance to actually develop at all. Eek. This is not how you storytelling, y’all.

Heavy sigh. Honestly, I really, really thought this show would give me more to talk about, because at first glance it looks complex and stocked with conversation starters and potentially polarising content. Upon analysis, however, the complexity is a sham, the show itself starts no conversations, and the content lacks the nuance necessary to create oppositional interpretations. Ironically, it turns out as empty as the dolls are, simplistic, lacking the self-awareness to reflect on itself and the basic comprehension to fathom morality. It has no personality, no drive, and though at times it shows glimmers of understanding that there could be more to its existence than catering to shallow pleasures, ultimately it never focuses well enough to follow that anywhere. Even its transgressions are bland and predictable, worth calling out - as aggressive misogyny and rape fetishisation always is - but not worth picking apart in detail (because - shock horror - it’s not morally complicated and full of shades of grey, it’s just bad and wrong: it’s very simple and easy to follow, Whedon. Get therapy). If the Dollhouse is all about giving people what they need, well, I think I know what Joss Whedon needs: to shut up, and leave the show-creating to someone who hates women less, and knows how to string an idea into an actual story, more.

#Dollhouse #Dollhouse season two #Bechdel Test #female representation #full season review

4 notes · View notes

bigskydreaming · 6 years

Text

You know what I need more of in the X-franchise, Marvel? Above all else?

Official adoption narratives. Especially of older kids.

The X-Men’s greatest strength as a franchise is that they’re one of the ultimate examples of the found family trope. Practically every single one of them is all about finding bonds within the X-Men that they couldn’t in their biological family, if they even had one they’d ever known at all.

And because of the weird nature of time in comic books and how they want to keep characters relatively young forever, they tend to shy away from storylines that would provide an easy comparison for exactly how old certain characters are supposed to be, such as having kids. It’s not easy, narratively speaking, to keep kids young forever, and its a lot easier to be vague on whether an older X-character is meant to be early thirties or closer to forty than it is to be vague on whether their child is meant to be seven or thirteen. Which is why even when they do baby storylines, inevitably they use time travel or accelerated aging or something like that to turn the baby into a grown character like with Cable and then with Hope Summers and assorted other instances.

So even though most of the X-Men are now assumed to be in their late twenties to late thirties age wise, and with this reflected in their teacher-student dynamics with current teen characters, none of the X-Men have really ever started families of their own, outside of the occasional storyline where evil scientists or supervillains result in an X-character getting a teenage clone or already adult child. And of course not having children is a perfectly valid choice for any adult, be they single, a couple, and regardless of how family oriented they are or not. But it bugs when you know the only reason none of the X-Men are parents by this point is just because Marvel doesn’t like dealing with the issue of young kids skewing their timeline.

And it especially bugs when you consider that there’s an extremely viable, simple and obvious way to fill this void with a narrative that’s 100% in character for all the X-Men, and that could use waaaaaay more representation in media anyway.

LET. THE. X-MEN. ADOPT. KIDS.

Especially older ones, the ones too often written off as problem children and trouble makers or ‘too old to really help’. The ones so often treated in media as though they’re basically glorified houseguests, just there to be materially provided for until they’re eighteen. Like there’s a cut off point after which older kids can’t possibly still want not just a guardian but a PARENT, not just a mother or father figure, but someone who wants to BE their mom or dad. Like adults can’t possibly form a parent child bond as strong as any biological one if the child doesn’t come into their life before they’re a teenager, when they’re still a cute little adorable tyke.

Give me Bobby Drake encountering a gay trans mutant teenager whose parents kicked them out of the house. Bobby Drake, with his own experiences growing up in an emotionally abusive and neglectful home, who knows that this particular child needs more than just being brought to the school and getting lost in the crowd, that this child needs someone who says you deserve a parent who loves you and I want to be that parent. Because hell, every kid needs and deserves that of course, but something about the way Bobby connects with this kid right off the bat, like he just knows that what this kid needs, he can be and hey, maybe this kid is what he needs too. His love life has always been a disaster, but kids? He knows kids, hey everyone says he basically is a kid, but that’s never meant he doesn’t know how to be an adult when someone needs him to be. And hey, he’s spent the last fifteen years mastering the art of the embarrassing dad joke, no sense in letting that go to waste.

Give me Ororo Munroe adopting a STEM-loving black teenager with thick glasses and a habit of babbling when she’s nervous. Which is often at first, but gradually fades as she outright BLOSSOMS under the attention Storm showers her with, her insecurities nothing in the face of the knowledge that this legendary superhero, a woman who has been both a goddess and a queen, chose HER, looked at her when nobody else ever had and said this is her, this is the child of my heart. Whose excited ramblings about math and physics might seem an odd match for Storm at first, but really is just another way of connecting with and understanding the world around them. And Storm in turn, who never really liked being called either a goddess or a queen, but who basks in the memory of the first time her daughter called her ‘Mom.’ Who is so used to be treated reverently, but from a distance, by so many people who don’t get that nobody really wants to be considered majestic all the time, that the first time her daughter musters the confidence to tell her that for all her many talents, Storm is apparently terrible at making pancakes, all she can do is throw back her head and laugh in delight.

Give me Kurt meeting his daughter when he evacuates a burning building one teleport at a time, too exhausted by the end of it to be anything more than utterly unsurprised by the crowd keeping their usual distance thanks to his appearance. All except for one girl, standing apart from the rest, pointing at him almost reverently. “You have a tail, like me,” she says, awed.

Give me Rogue and Remy, who have always wanted a big family free of expectations or agendas, everything they wanted for themselves but never really got to have. Who’ve been nervous about starting a family for a long time, Rogue uncertain about having and raising a baby given how unpredictable her control over her powers can be, Remy uncertain about how good a father he’d be....until the day they take down what they thought was a new mutant crime ring. Turned out really to be a couple of older criminals exploiting a bunch of teen and younger mutant kids with a variety of obvious mutations that make it an unfortunately safe bet the foster system isn’t too invested in figuring out why they slipped through the cracks. There’s one who seems to be the oldest, despite the fact that he’s barely five feet of foul-mouthed, defiant fury, and he’s still more than willing to pit his malnourished frame against the two older intruders trying to mess with his ‘family’. Rogue and Remy look at each other and just know, and when the whole group arrives back at the school, various foster families the X-Men reached out to are all ready and eager to make sure each of the children has someone they feel comfortable around to go home with....no one all that surprised when the only ones the scowling young pipsqueak deems acceptable are Rogue and Remy themselves. Who are more than happy to comply.

Honestly, they’d have taken the whole group in if they could, but its one thing to want a big family and its another thing to....start off with a big family right off the bat with zero actual parenting experience. Still, they’re more than willing to host any of the others whenever their newly adopted son asks if one or two can come over. It’s obvious seeing for himself that they’re doing okay helps settle him, after feeling responsible for them for so long. And who could blame him....Rogue and Remy are more than a little attached to all the little scamps by this point, they certainly see enough of them, and there swiftly comes the day that they realize they’re more reluctant to see them go back home than even the kids themselves. Remy heads to the living room where his son is camped out in front of the TV, stands between the two until he’s forced to look up at the X-Man crossing his arms, eyes narrowed. “You’re a little con artist,” Remy accuses admiringly. The scoundrel smirks. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I was still here first though. I’m not sharing a room.”

Give me a LeBeau household that’s crowded and cramped and chaotic and messy and so full of love it’s like a physical punch to the face the second you open the door to the sound of several kids screaming at each other, full Defcon 5. It’s not always easy, and its not always nice. Sometimes older kids do have behavioral issues, because that’s what happens when someone’s been nothing but screwed over for most of their life. But the kind of choice Rogue and Remy made that first day isn’t really a choice, and its definitely not one they’d ever take back, so they weather the ups and downs and the good and the bad, anchoring themselves with the memory of themselves at those ages, and what they would’ve given for someone who didn’t want or need anything from them and would never give up on them, no matter how much they pushed them away.

And Remy, who for all he’s seen and done in his life, never got around to joining in most of the X-Men’s baseball games. Or, well, learning to play it, really. But dads should be able to play catch with their kids, he figures. Oh, he doesn’t think they’ll be like, horribly scarred or anything if they don’t, but, y’know. Might be nice. So he seeks out Bobby and Sam and Jean and various others for what should be a quick tutorial, except for the fact that Remy seems to be bizarrely untalented at this one specific thing. Meanwhile, one of the girls is very into pink dresses and French braids and all the things Rogue most decidedly is not, but if her daughter wants to be a pretty princess, Rogue is not going to be the reason her daughter can’t be a goddamn princess. So she rolls up the sleeves of her bomber jacket and marches off to Janet van Dyne’s, because if you gotta learn how to braid hair, where else would you go, she figures.

Except two weeks later and they’re up after midnight at the kitchen table, Rogue practicing on a damn doll and about to pull out her own hair while Remy scowls at the glove he’s trying to break in, finding the whole process to be utterly stupid. He looks over at Rogue, about to melt the doll’s head off with the power of her ire. “Trade ya?” He asks hopefully. “God yes,” Rogue groans. “Why didn’t we think of this weeks ago?”

Which results in the other girls joining their mother in terrorizing the other X-Men families at baseball, with yodeling battle cries and a complete and utter disdain for any of the actual rules of the game, while most of the boys flock to learning to braid hair from Remy and their sister. Their own hair tends to be too short to do much more than tie it off in the back with a short little pony tail. “I like that shade of pink,” Rogue says to one, of the ribbon used. He rolls his eyes. “It’s fuchsia, Mom.”

“Of course it is, sweetheart,” she says flatly, shooting Remy an exasperated look. He smirks, unrepentant.

Give me a legacy generation of adopted X-Men children who want nothing more than to grow up to be just like their parents, because they’re secure in the knowledge their parents want nothing more of them than to be happy. Who grow up not safe, because the mansion or school or wherever the X-Men are based will never truly be safe, but none of them were really safe to begin with, and at least now they’re happy and loved and they’ll take that over safe any day. Give me a next generation of X-Men who are as diverse and varied as the X-Men should’ve all been from the start, if not for an industry and audience mired in racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc....but a next generation of diverse new characters who benefit from close personal ties to the most iconic X-Men, giving them a potential profile and staying power most other newly created characters can never hope to match. Except in the cases of new characters who capitalize on exactly those kinds of close personal ties, like X-23.

You’ve been using the X-Men to provide narratives about surrogate parent figures for decades now, with Wolverine and Kitty and then Wolverine and Jubilee, with various other characters in a number of dynamics. But with rare exceptions of stories that ultimately only last for a short arc or two or else never get mentioned again, like with Dani and Elixir or Northstar and his daughter, there’s hardly ever any instances of actual adoption or X-characters not just establishing a close mentor or guardian bond, but an actual familial relationship. The only one I can really think of is Cable and Hope, and like....spoilers, so....yeah.

Anyway.

Marvel looooooves to play up the tragic home life backstory for most of its teen or new mutants, with their being a huge number of characters over the years who’ve either been orphaned or disowned or rejected by their families because they’re mutants.

And you expect me to believe that in all this time, not a single one of these X-Men has ever looked at one of these kids and said “you know what? You need a home, I can give you a home, let’s make this happen”?

Nope. Fake. Unrealistic. OOC.

9 notes · View notes

yugirimistwalker · 7 years

Text

gray fly is pretty forgettable and unremarkable as an actual character but honestly his stand is pretty cool and threatening. theres really not much to say about him outside of his stand though so 3/10

again impostor captain tennille has like, no real personality, but his stand is also less remarkable than tower of gray so there’s even less to talk about here. it’s a shame because an aquatic stand has a lot of potential but it feels wasted especially considering how bullshit the actual fight is. 2/10

monky/10

really at this point none of the villains are remarkable (with the exception of kakyoin and polnareff and that’s because they become supporting characters) and the same goes for devo the cursed, but fortunately his stand DOES have its own personality, which is a shithead cursed doll who is also uncomfortably horny apparently. far from the best villain but i’d say this is the point where the fights start getting more interesting (for sdc at least). 6/10

rubber soul is a smug and extremely punchable dickhead but unfortunately there’s a later villain that pulls this off so much better. really he only serves to demonstrate the rule where it doesn’t matter how strong the stand is as long as you can defeat the user. that being said, his creepy kakyoin impression is very fun to watch so he gets bumped up to a 6/10

j. geil is the first unforgivably absolutely detestable villain, and it’s fitting that he’s a sneaky conniving coward asshole. he’s incredibly unlikeable but as well as that he’s a very threatening villain with one of the most satisfying demises in the series. fence/10

hol horse is an absolute fucking joy to watch whenever he appears. yes his stand is pretty dumb, but he’s simultaneously a total coward dumbass and a determined mercenary at the same time which doesn’t make him feel inconsistent but rather makes both aspects shine all the brighter when they come into light, but most importantly of all, he fucking respects women. 10/10 and the fact that he did not appear even more is one of the biggest crimes of stardust crusaders.

i didnt even know nena had a name but for reference this is the user of empress. i gotta say empress is pretty fun to watch, but this arc is really more about joseph. i’d say a 5/10 because she really gets less enjoyable once she gets arms and stops being a little shithead in favor of just punching joseph

zz is boring as hell and so is his stand. 1/10

enya is an extremely good creepy grandma and i dont like how it makes no fucking sense how she was defeated. qtaro/10

steely dan is the character i was talking about when i mentioned how someone pulls off rubber souls personality much better. his stand is way more interesting because it means he can be a smug asshole without jotaro coming up with witty retorts, and then when jotaro finally gets the opportunity to pay him back it’s no coincidence that it’s one of the most memorable beatdowns in the whole series. 8/10

be honest do any of you actually remember who arabia fats is? im not even going to rate this guy he’s literally 100% filler

mannish boy is a creepy baby with a fittingly creepy stand. as a character he’s... a baby, he doesn’t really do all that much, but as death thirteen he’s joyfully disconcerting and loves to fuck with people even if theres literally no reason to do so. 9/10

cameo is another villain i really cant say anything about. i mean... his stand is kinda conniving but not that interesting to watch and it’s really part of yet ANOTHER arc that only serves as exposition rather than to show an interesting fight. 1/10

midler is... ANOTHER villain without any real personality, jesus, i forgot how boring most of the sdc villains are when i decided to do this. vore/10

n’doul is the first of the 9 glory gods, and he’s a damn good introduction to them as a set of much more competent and threatening stand users. he’s smart, dedicated to his master, and has a REALLY fucking powerful and honestly scary stand. 9/10.

oingo is absolutely fucking hilarious and watching him try desperately to stay collected when dealing with polnareff and josephs bullshit is maybe the best fucking part of part 3. 10/10.

boingo is kinda boring in the sense that he only really serves to make oingo and hol horse funnier to watch, but he’s still a lovely character regardless. i’m giving him 8/10 just because oingo and hol horse are already fantastic on his own and i have NO idea why dio hired him considering how fucking useless his stand seems to be most of the time.

anubis should have a physical form outside of his stand so i can yiff him.

oh uhhh... he’s a cool cursed sword 7/10 now dont FUCKING judge me

mariah is, unfortunately, the start of by far the lowest point in stardust crusaders. as a character she’s similar to n’doul - dedicated and competent and cool - but unfortunately the arc she appears in is all about funny haha gay haha titty boob jokes. i’d love to give her above a 5/10 but the arc she appears in is so bad that i can’t. that being said, she’s a damn sight better than the next villain, because...

alessi is, hands down, the worst fucking character in jojo. j. geil at least had the decency to have a stand that didn’t reflect how fucking creepy he was, and also had the decency to die at the end, but the alessi arc is constantly uncomfortable to watch and nowhere near as satisfying as the j. geil arc. if they’d taken the opportunity to bring back young joseph like they should’ve done it could’ve been a fun arc to watch but as it stands this is not just the worst character in sdc but possibly the worst character in the series as a whole. 0/10.

thankfully daniel j. d’arby pretty much saves the part at this point by suddenly giving us one of the best arcs of all time. sure, as a character he’s far from the most interesting, but he’s still extremely entertaining to watch no matter whether he’s being smooth and snarky or in the process of ageing 20 years within 12 seconds. 9/10

pet shop is a cute widdle birb with a funny hat but really he’s not all that interesting outside of being a bird. 5/10

telence d. d’arby is the most realistic villain of sdc in that they’re an evil gamer. they’re similar to their brother, but the arc doesn’t really achieve the same tension so he can’t quite compare. 7/10

there is LITERALLY nothing to say about kenny g so i wont, but for reference he’s the guy who controls tenore sax, which is the stand that made dio’s mansion kinda fucked up. i don’t blame anyone for not remembering him

vanilla ice is the first truly terrifying villain we see in sdc. as bullshit as avdol’s death was, you really can’t deny that when a villain’s first action is to chop off his own head and his second action is to kill off a major supporting character with zero warning you’re dealing with the first and only sdc villain who has never fucked around a day in his goddamn life. 8/10 for sheer shock value.

dio is dio. what can i fucking say, he’s fucking dio. he’s smug, he’s strong, he’s smart, he’s a bastard shithead, and he will stop at nothing to fuck with people. i simply cannot get over the fact that he must’ve stopped time, walked down, picked up polnareff, put him down 2 steps, walked back up to the top of the stairs, got into the exact same pose, and then restarted time SOLELY to mess with him. i have no idea why he didn’t just kill him but i fucking love him for it. 10/10.

15 notes · View notes

theskyexists · 5 years

Text

series 10 finale

can i just say- that thing, that they do in series ten, that thing where

the universe rhymes and if you really listen, you can hear its music?

that’s some good shit

‘what does he call you? companions? pets? SH-nacks?’ god michelle gomez is just! so! good!

‘time lords are friends with each other dear, everything else is cradle-snatching’ pfftjlkdjsfkalkds she’s got perhaps...a point? (not really, but)

‘these are my disposables, exposition and comic relief’ FULJSDFJSDFJ MOFFAT YOU he really went there. HE REALLY WENT THERE HALJSDKD

‘we’re not functions’ ‘darling those are genders’

ok????? hahahahahaha

wow, doctor who meta dslafldk and then a dab

‘is this the emotion that you humans call...spanking?’

‘are you human’ ‘oh don’t be a bitch’ ljsdldsajlfjlkdf (moffat got so surprisingly woke that he knows exactly what he can have her say, damn. and michelle’s delivery what the hell so good hahaha)

oh no. no no no no. this is the moment she gets shot huh? what. no i. why do the Doctor’s companions in moffat’s era always die of being bravely stupid? (well..clara) like, not stupidly brave, but bravely stupid? i don’t like that narrative

why did Bill say that???? like i don’t get it.

jump in front of her??????? why. does he not stand in front of the damn gun?? why does he walk past it? why? dude?? now i understand why Thirteen keeps saying ‘STAY BEHIND ME, BEHIND ME’ always catching bombs to the face and shit.

those were some great flashbacks peppered in. ‘she scares me’ yeah well the Doctor was the one who fucked up here. he wasn’t fast enough. he didn’t reach hard enough for the right card in the pack.....but there was another time lord there - maybe she reached harder.

‘assumption!’ ‘deduction!’ ‘hope!’ ‘faith!’ ‘idiot!’ ‘always!’

this is the thing. like, the Doctor just lets her get shot and lets her get taken away - it’s barely believable.

yeah the crew went down, time dilation, they procreated, somehow they grew some shitty cybermen. (why does human society keep producing them?). YUP i called it.

365000 days, a hundred thousand years. yoikes. but if they have such fast lifts why is it a problem? and why go up to get the humans (yeah cybermen always wanna make more) i think knowing moffat we won’t really get an answer to these essential plot-driving questions

ohhh that’s chilling huh. makes you think they got some more anaesthetic but they’re still pressing the button - it just doesn’t make any noise any more.

but it’s hard to hear such pain.

and SUDDENLY, the theatre broadens - it seemed like just a part of the ship - narrow - but then we see the whole colony ship populated and a dystopia, this hospital just a building in a landscape. very cool.

How does the Doctor not realise that he hasn’t got TIME for explanations??? Bill is either dead or DYING RIGHT NOW BECAUSE HE’S WASTING TIME.

i do love this concept always have and it is executed well here - but look. the Doctor is written as very dumb to make it so.

‘how many more years’ YEARS????? oh my god. why does she close the window? interesting

fuckin bullshit. they never returned because time went slow for them. he KNOWS this, so why does he think it’s because the people were ‘weak’? he knows she came from command, that it’s possible to go up, because they took her! the conversion is only controlling her. so does she buy it? (I do like this guy, but he’s probably evil)

how has Bill remained SANE? years of this. years of this??? what an exceptionally resilient person.

yeah we’re not getting an explanation for why these people uh managed to go up and take her down huh? except ‘evil villain lied to everybody’ i think. oh well that can be satisfactory

wait. is he the master? is he the MASTER??? i mean i was considering it but.

he spent like 10 years living with Bill and it didn’t make a dent in his psychopathy hmmm. so the explanation is that the Master has taken over and wanted to fuck over the Doctor just for laughs. lol

why scarecrow them??? xD sometimes these aesthetics make zero sense in real life. do love how they went back to : look how these settlers went up to the solar farm! living a lovely life except they’re being attacked by cybermen.

so what im learning from moffat’s writing is - push your concept first thing you can - something incongruous - and something familiar to those familiar with the work.

woah that gloating wasn’t quite long enough for teh Doctor to have a win. i thought the Masters were having him on. (fascinating though, that he attributes the emergence of cybermen not to the Master’s presence but simply to the humans - and the Master’s responses prove him right. do feel like he messed with it all though...)

‘there’s only ever been one way to stop that many cybermen. me’ hmmmm hmmm, i always dislike the Doctor boasting like this. just pride. though i would welcome it for thirteen, just a couple of times.

‘i’m in two minds - fortunately the other one’s unconscious.’ hah

we gotta cut away from this because we don’t know how this unwieldy Bill cyberman got the Doctor into the ship.

The Master constantly veers between almost killing the Doctor and then kinda deciding not to because they’re having so much fun or caring about their complex relationship a bit too stupidly much. lotta storytelling packed into this ep, bit unwieldy.

great switch, making Bill look human again as we switch to her pov

where the FUCK did the Doctor get jelly babies

this is a beautiful scene, but also, goddamn, they made her into a cyberman and now she can’t be angry any more?? i mean that’s not very woke

they didn’t allow bill the opportunity to hit the Master?? AGAIN?? Bill should have been able to hit the Doctor AND the Master this season for the cruelty they showed her!!

I do think the Master is THE character for Moffat because all of the plot bullshit can be explained as: the Master is just that dramatic. like, why wait with Bill’s conversion until the pain part was developed and the Doctor would be coming down? could have converted her right there. and he only kept her around to rub it in the Doctor’s face. like all of that - somehow explained by what a particular person they are.

redirection, the cryptic, it’s one of the Doctor’s main tools for hope. the beyond, the in-between, that which we cannot yet know, may never know - that’s flux babey, that’s hope.

but ya can’t un-call the lifts? what. they won’t have ‘thousands’ of years if you run straight at the TARDIS.

so im not sure why they had time to build a weapon’s grade cyberman but not uh time to send lots and lots of them up?

AND NOW THEY’RE JUST GOING TO BURST THROUGH??? THE FUCKIN SHIP? xD ahahahaha why???

i do love how you SEE the Master use make-up while male. fuck gender roles! I do love the Masters’ dynamics hahaha

the Doctor always makes time for fuckin - explanations. the cybermen are coming up but WHATEVER!

that Master on Master kill was honestly hella tender and i loved it.

‘can’t find the words’

Bill was glad that her space granddad knew she was a lesbian- ha. somehow that....how did Moffat write that? seems uniquely gay but maybe he’s just drawing on - yeah gotta make sure that this time it is NOT read as romance.

NOOOOOO!!!!!! NO!!!!! MISSY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so...are they just not evacuating teh adults? like was it so hard to get them adult actors in the shot a few times too??? like wtf these kids aren’t like: MY PARENTS!!! before they blow it up? before the blow up a WHOLE countryside?

he didn’t get blown to pieces? fuckin bullshit lol

but BILL survived? enough to walk. I KNOW it’s for drama but it’s just lol

ok but Heather is SO CUTE HOLY FUCKIN SHIT. i don;t understand how this freak of sentient oil puddle got to create an immortal ethereal being - but WHAT EVS. (I can pilot anything, even you. what a come on lol)

where there’s tears, there’s hope, yes but you also gave him a tear huh, as a puddle-being, so you can track him hmmm

all the flashbacks to modern companions!!! i loved that!

i actually think the christmas special kind of ruins this real good finale!

i am gonna miss Missy, Michell Gomez did something truly incredible there. but i also liked the return of Simm!Master, and i loved their chemistry.

anyway i genuinely think this was a good finale. very complex, and very moffat. but mostly his strong writing, very little of his shitty tics.

GOOD STUFF!!

meanwhile cybermen are still coming up the colony ship converting people on every deck though, so that’s unfortunate.

#dsflkdjs #jsdlabjkd #jdskafjd #jdsafj #djsfakjd #jdskajd #jdkajdl #dw #my stuff #personal #i watched

0 notes

sage-nebula · 8 years

Text

Okay, well, I’m going to need to do fourteen more shrines, apparently, before I can get the Master Sword, thanks to there apparently being a thirteen heart requirement just to draw it, which is absolute bullshit.

And I know you’re thinking, “Scrawlers, you’re just salty because you want the Sword now and you instead have to go do more little mini dungeons,” but no, that’s not why I’m mad. I don’t care that I’m having my play time extended, especially since a.) I don’t want the game to end, and b.) getting the Master Sword is apparently optional for some reason, so technically I could go straight to Ganon if I wanted to, and could probably find a way to beat him regardless. (I’m guessing that they’re treating the Master Sword like the Fierce Deity’s Mask, which doesn’t make sense since it’s the Master Sword, but whatever.) I’m annoyed because this is kind of---no, scratch that, it is a pretty big slap in the face to Zelda lore, and that pisses me off.

The Master Sword was created by the demi-goddess Hylia so that her chosen Hero would be able to fight Demise. Straight up, that’s why the Master Sword exists. Because of this, the Master Sword is only able to be wielded by Hylia’s chosen Hero. No one else can draw it from the pedestals, no one else can wield it. The Sword of Evil’s Bane is strictly for the Hero. That’s how it has always been.

This game, however, seems to be changing that. Now, apparently, anyone can pull it from the pedestal so long as they’re strong enough. Oh sure, the Great Deku Tree says that ~it’s not about physical strength, but about what’s within~, but that’s obviously bullshit given that your hearts are your physical strength. Even if they wanted to suddenly try and make a play at, “no, your hearts represent your Determination!” (thanks, Undertale), that doesn’t make sense since a.) that’s never been established, and b.) it’s pretty obvious when you’re getting the shit kicked out of you that your hearts are your physical health. So with that said, this makes it seem like literally anyone could pull the Master Sword from the pedestal so long as they were strong enough, and yet the Hero---the one chosen by the goddesses to fight Demise---can’t. He can’t unless he has enough hearts. Despite the fact that this is his sword, made specifically for him, and that all other Heroes have been able to draw it no problem, he suddenly can’t because . . . he doesn’t have enough hearts.

That’s bullshit.

The Hero of Time was able to yank it from the pedestal after clearing the three kid dungeons to get the Spiritual Stones. I haven’t counted the pieces of heart in OoT in a long time, but I feel like it’s impossible to have thirteen hearts by the time you go to the Temple of Time and draw the Master Sword for the first time. And whether or not it’s impossible, the fact remains that you don’t have to. You can just get the three Heart Containers from the Deku Tree, Dodongo’s Cavern, and Jabu-Jabu respectively and still yank the Master Sword out of its pedestal. And yet you can’t do that in BotW? You have to have thirteen hearts first? Why? Is he not good enough to be the Hero? Is this because he died once? Is this because he spent 100 years recovering from being dead and the Great Deku Tree is a pissbaby? Like, really, I want to know why he can’t suddenly pull this Sword from the stone when it is quite literally his sword and, lore-wise, he should be the only one who can draw it, the only one for whom it slides free like it was stuck in soft butter rather than solid rock.

I’m sure that once I have the thirteen hearts and I manage to draw it I’ll get some blah blah speech about how now I have finally proven I have the Spirit of the Hero, but that’s too little, too late considering they’re slapping on a physical fitness heart requirement and completely ignoring the fact that Link has, by this time, freed all of the Divine Beasts and seen all of the memories and should therefore get the Sword as is custom because of the previously established lore. Like, hell, I could even see having a heart requirement to make sure you play through the main story first, but for fucksake, I did play through the main story, so why am I being denied this until I complete enough sidequests? If it were anything else I literally would not care, but the Master Sword?

And like---I get that they’re breaking formula with a lot of things, and for the most part I’ve loved it. I love, love, love, L O V E the fact that you don’t have to wear the goddamn green tunic, which I have been sick of since Wind Waker. I love the fact that the main dungeons are pretty short, because having to go through an hour long dungeon with a bunch of aggravating key puzzles was extremely tedious. I love that you can do things in any order. I love that you cook and eat food to regain health instead of finding hearts. I don’t love that your weapons break constantly and that you always have to find new ones, but I can live with that. I can tolerate it, whatever. All of those things are fine deviations from tradition. All of those things are fine to break formula with. But, again, the Master Sword?

The Master Sword is not like the green tunic. The green tunic really has no place in the lore aside from “well, it’s recognizable.” This is even lampshaded to an effect in Wind Waker, wherein Outset Tradition has boys dress up as the Hero when they come of age simply because that’s the outfit the stories always depicted the Hero wearing. Because of this, the tunic is not important. You can do away with the tunic and nothing will change, nothing bad will happen.

The Master Sword is different. As established, the Master Sword has a very, very important place in the lore. The Master Sword is as important as Link himself is. It’s as important as Zelda, or Ganon. It’s as important as the Triforce, though the Triforce hasn’t been in every game. Regardless, making the Master Sword “optional” to break from tradition and making it so that Link has to actively work to get it in this sense is . . . well, asinine, tbh. It’s one thing if the Master Sword was damaged and needed repair. We’ve done that before (to an extent) in Wind Waker, and that was understandable. But even then, Link was still able to pull the Sword from the pedestal because he is the Hero, and therefore the only one who can. Have the Sword be rusty, broken, in disrepair, de-powered, whatever, but to bar him from drawing it? To do that and then say “well, it’s optional anyway lol”? What’s even more ridiculous is that it’s been established about seventy different ways in this game that Link has to be the one to fight and defeat Ganon because he is the Hero. What they’ve somehow failed to realize while writing this narrative is that the reason why the HERO has to kill Ganon is because he is the only one who can wield the Master Sword, and the Master Sword, a.k.a. the Sword of Evil’s Bane, is a NECESSITY FOR GANON’S DEFEAT.

Like, for fucksake, this is not rocket science!!

I just---I’ve loved (or at least have been fine with) so many of the breaks in tradition, but this is the one that I can’t accept. The Master Sword should not be optional. I’m kind of---okay, let’s be honest, I’m really aghast that it is. I get the whole “you can go to Ganon straightaway” thing, but let’s be real: Even though that’s possible, it’s not feasible. You’re not going to win (probably) if you fight him with a tree branch. I mean, maybe if you’re really lucky, but odds are you’d die. Either way, I feel like the Master Sword should be a requirement, just as much as freeing the Divine Beasts is a requirement. The fact that it’s not, and that apparently this Link doesn’t qualify as a Hero enough to be able to do the one thing the Hero is guaranteed to do thanks to the goddesses, has actually made me angry.

It’s nearly 5am. I’m salty and pissy af. I’m going to bed.

#scrawlers takes a breath in the wild #loz spoilers #botw spoilers #legend of zelda spoilers #breath of the wild spoilers

22 notes · View notes

promdreamsofficial · 8 years

Text

Prom Dreams Side Stories Volume 7

...And with that out of the way, here’s the all new story, centered around a certain spoiler character that’s been leading (so far) in the survey for y’all’s favorite. Hooray! Major warning in advance for both spoilers and (somehow) more gore than usual!

For a brief moment, the two shared their mirth - then, suddenly, the laughter ceased, replaced by complete and utter silence as their world stopped in its tracks.

Prom Dreams Side Story Volume 7: Dolores Roth - “Obsession” by QZProductions

Despite his ice cold touch, I felt myself strangely moved by the way his fingers caressed my cheek. The look in his eyes no longer appeared to be that of hunger, but of tenderness. At first, I had feared that I was nothing more to this creature than its next meal, but as I felt myself drawn ever deeper into his radiant crimson orbs, I realized --

If Dolores could have rolled her eyes any further into the back of her head, she would have probably gone blind. Seriously, "orbs"? Who wrote this, she wondered, a thirteen-year-old? She'd read dime romance novels with less ridiculous prose than this!

With a sigh, she turned the page and continued reading, though she didn't know why she still bothered. Perhaps she simply wanted to see how this melodramatic train wreck would play out, or perhaps she wanted to find some reason why this schlock was so popular with her classmates, or --

"Hey, what's that you're reading?"

Startled, Dolores looked up from her book - she always was surprised when one of her schoolmates bothered to talk to her - and saw a dark-haired boy staring curiously at her. He must have been that new student, she thought - what was his name, again? Kyle, wasn't it?

"Oh, um... this?" She folded the corner of the page she was on and closed the book. "N-Nothing, really, just some trashy vampire novel, that's all. I don't even know why I'm forcing myself to read it..."

Kyle's eyes seemed to widen slightly at the words "vampire novel". Then, he furrowed his brow nervously. "O-Oh... that bad, huh?" He redirected his gaze to the book in question. "So, uh, what's it called, then? That is, if you don't mind me asking..."

Dolores held it up for him to see. "Eternal Blood: Waning Moon." She grimaced slightly. "I honestly don't get why it's so popular - the writing is awful, and the so-called 'love story' is just... blech."

When he saw the book's cover, Kyle gulped; then, he sank slightly into his desk chair, clearly embarrassed. "...Oh." He averted his classmate's gaze. "I see..."

"Mister Mason, Miss Roth," said Mr. Neal chipperly as he passed by the two students' desks, placing graded papers from the previous day on each of them, "I believe these are yours?"

"Oh!" Said Dolores, glancing at the "100" written in the margins of her assignment. "Um, thank you, Mr. Neal -- "

...Wait, she thought - Mason? As in...?

She glanced at the book's cover once more - sure enough, the author's surname matched that of her classmate's. It didn't take long for her to put the pieces together, or for her gut to sink in mortified guilt.

"...Oh," she stammered, "oh, gosh, Kyle, I-I didn't mean to say -- "

Kyle simply laughed sheepishly. "No, no, it's okay! Really! You didn't know!" He sighed in defeat. "Looks like my secret's out, though..."

Dolores frowned. "So you really are related after all..."

"She's my Mom, yeah." He waved his hand dismissively. "To be honest, though? ...I'm not really a big fan of her books, either. They're kind of, um..."

Amused by his admission, Dolores cracked a small smile. "Girly?"

"Well, yeah, I guess you could say that."

After a short pause, Dolores began to chuckle. Then, finding humor in their awkward exchange, Kyle joined in her laughter. For a brief moment, the two shared their mirth - then, suddenly, the laughter ceased, replaced by complete and utter silence as their world stopped in its tracks.

Like a video in reverse, the flow of time began to run backwards. The papers were removed from the desk, the book was opened once more, and the dark haired boy's attention returned to the blackboard. Then, the classroom began to move again.

Kyle turned his head, glancing at the girl beside him curiously. "Hey, what's that you're reading?"

From the corner of the room, unnoticed by the players onstage, sat the master of this fabricated world. She watched intently as her puppets played out the fragments of her memories, over and over and over again, hoping in vain to glean some sense, some shred of meaning out of it all.

In her heart - or rather, the withered remains of what was once a heart - she knew she wouldn't find the validation she sought. It was the one and only time she and the boy known as Kyle Mason had ever shared the slightest of connections; their one conversation that didn't simply consist of empty pleasantries or "let me get the door for you"s. From an objective view, it was nothing out of the ordinary - two teenagers crossing paths for the briefest of moments - but to her...

The scene froze once again on the two students' laughter. From her seat by the window, the true Dolores stared at the boy, her lifeless eyes cold and weary. That innocent smile, that careless laugh - surely it was no different from the ones he would have shared with anyone else. However, something inside of her wanted to believe otherwise; that, perhaps, in another, happier lifetime, this simple moment could have blossomed into something more.

And it was this thought, more than even the burning hatred that had created this world, that made the pain in her soul unbearable.

She narrowed her eyes, her expression contorting into a malevolent grimace as her shaking fingers clenched the armrests of her chair. No matter what she did, what she became, or who she killed, she could never completely destroy the seed known as "want" that this boy, this damned boy, had planted inside of her, whether he had realized it or not. And even for all that she still coveted him - or perhaps merely the idea of being wanted by him - she would never forgive him for what he'd done to her.

Slowly, she rose from her wheelchair, a somewhat arduous task even in her new form. With limping steps, she approached the image of Kyle, bracing herself on tables and bookshelves as she did so. When she finally reached his desk, she raised a hand in the air, willing the lifeless imitation to rise along with it.

"...You..." she growled, her voice laced with barely contained rage, "how could you... how could you not have seen - how could you not have known...!?"

A pulse of dark energy emitted from Dolores' hand; then, the form of Kyle lurched forward, impaling itself in its chest on her outstretched fingers.

"You should have seen it coming... you should have noticed the signs..." She wrapped her twitching fingers clumsily around her creation's false, yet still beating heart. "You were supposed to stop them, to make everything better again..." As blood ran down her arm and stained the ground, she glared directly into the copy's eyes. "Why didn't you save me!? WHY!?"

With a squeeze of her hand, a torrent of blood spat out of the hole in the being's chest. Its expression suddenly changed into one of pain and terror, as though willed to by its creator for her own twisted satisfaction. With a pained, guttural cry, its form contorted violently as yet more blood poured from its orifices - its eyes, its nose, its mouth, and even from brand new wounds entirely. Finally, when its tattered body had bled dry, Dolores removed her hand, allowing the empty sack of flesh and bone to fall to the ground, crumpling in a heap within a shallow pool of red.

She glared at it for a moment longer, until the body and the magic that had formed it dissolved entirely. Soon after, the other players on her stage followed suit, and she was left alone in the empty world of her memories. Exhausted by the sudden, intense use of her powers, she fell to her knees, breathing heavily as she stared at her own bloodstained reflection in the pool's surface.

Then, she began to laugh. It was a labored laugh, laced with as much weariness as it was with madness; her voice cracked and screeched under the weight of her despair and ever-crumbling sanity. When she finally fell silent, she hung her head, her frenzied, tear-filled eyes fixed to the floor.

"...Just as I thought," she muttered hoarsely. "This goddamned dream just won't stay dead, will it...?"

#prom dreams #prom dreams: a high school love story #RPG Maker #pixel horror #horror #gaming #prom dreams side stories #I've been sitting on this one for a long time I'm sorry #but hey there's only one more for me to write now!! :D

12 notes · View notes

too-many-fandoms666 · 8 years

Text

Ok so I have a new Oc because I’m watching Black Butler so I’m in a mood right now.

Her name is Genevieve and she’s a Demon like Sebastian. She was born and raised on the streets of Outlake, London but there was one thing, there was a massive genocide going on there. Outlake is where they throw all the crazies and abandoned them all, but what they didn’t expect was that the crazies were smart and reproduced.

December 20 1875

Dear Gen,

I know that when you grow up the something in me will grow and my split personality will become one, and not the good way. Your father was a good man I fell in love with him when he was sane, but as our disease got worst we had looked into it more. We we're thrown in here because the doctors didn’t know what was going on in our heads. What the doctors didn’t know is we all, the people who live here, have inner demons. Not the type that lives in your head but the kind where it feeds from your human soul. They will never leave us. You can either accept the fact that you have this and make amends with it so you can survive or let it take over your soul.

You maybe wondering why I’m writing this. My beautiful Gen, this is the day you were born. Just be sure that when our demons take over us and you will hate us forever, maybe even wondering why I let it get however far it’s going to go to, or why I even stayed with your father. You will find all the answers in this book. Cherish what you have in you, take good care of your demon.

From the bottom of my heart, your mother, Lily

June 14 1885

Genevieve found the book, read the first letter her mother wrote to her. She was very confused, there was a reason behind her terrible abuse, why would her mother let her father do the things he did if she knew what he was going to do beforehand. This isn’t the thoughts of a regular nine, almost ten, year old. Yet if you had lived the life she had you would understand.

Here stands Genevieve, a beautiful girl with gorgeous, long brownish hair, blue eyes. Innocents practically dripped from her. That was her human look. Everyone that she walked by fell in love with her, but her demon side, she was quite the looker.

Her demon side had short black hair, cut to under her chin, and bangs crossed her forehead. Her left eye had changed to a deep purple, with a pentagram draw into it. Her body slightly popped out her curves being shown. Nobody knew that she was nine, they all thought she was at least thirteen, because of this her father took advantage of this.

Everyday since she was six she was raped from her father. At four years old Gen had killed her first person, she didn’t know if it was something wrong with her or her demon was getting out if control but after she had killed the man, that supposedly harmed her mother, she felt like a weight had been lifted off of her chest. Like she was finally free. She was taught to fight, how to hide weapons, most importantly, how to kill.

As time went on the killings went on, she became stronger and stronger nobody had dared to be on her bad side. She barley drinks water and never eats, she doesn’t have time to do all that when her life is constantly on the line. The worst her father has ever gone was that he pinned her to the walls by stabbing a knife in the wrists, shoulders, stomach, waist, uterus, thighs, and ankles. Once she was all bloody he ripped off her shorts, which were originally pants but when her started growing out of the she took off parts of it to her knees, and will raped her. She didn’t want to know the worst he can go.

Yet he somehow did. When she turned 13 she didn’t bring in the amount of heads to her father that he had instructed her to. She just thought that he would just pin her to the wall again, but he didn’t, she had feared every bone in her. He got up from couch grabbed a bag he hasn’t seen before, yet her mother did. She saw a devil look in her mother’s eyes.

She was told to follow him and she did. They ended up on the tallest building in Outlake, her father had summoned everyone to watch.

“Spawn of mine step on the ledge.” She did

“THIS IS THE SPAWN OF ME, SHE HAD DISOBEYED ME. ME! HER GODDAMN FATHER. THIS SHOULD TEACH HER.” He had opened his bag and dumped it out. He took a knife to rip her shirt and shorts than stabbed her in the stomach and left the knife in there. He took a wire out wrapped it around her neck, wrapped it around her waist, so its tight wrapped crossing her left collarbone, between the valley of her chest, crossing her stomach to her right hip. Her back was already decorated with scars, burns, cuts, all because of her father.

“THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DISOBEY ME” he grabbed the wire that was hanging in the back of her neck and light it on fire. Kicking her in the back causing her to fall off of the building. The fire was traveling to the wire and with the wind hitting the fire, angering it more it started to grow bigger the further the fire went down. Genevieve started whispering for her demon side to come and help her, to save her, but she didn’t finish asking in time because her back collided with the broken car. The fire went down and everyone assumed she was dead. She was, what they didn’t know was her demon had turned and saved her. Though she was still passed out she was still living.

There was also a time where nobody is outside, that around 11 pm, Genevieve didn’t really know why but nobody left. Time had struck to 11 nobody had even cleaned up her body, to check if for some reason was even still alive. Nobody cared and if they did they would get the same treatment as her if they did checked on her. Genevieve got up and ran. She had taken off the wire, Her demon side had healed her already but her human side will be covered in scars. She had ran in the town to be surprised to find a tall man in a suit, Long black hair, fire red eyes, yet she sensed something about him. Than it hit her, Hes on of those doggy demons. Genevieve like giving all the demons nicknames. The type of demon he is they go on command by their owners, generally like a master and a servant, hence the doggy. She approached him,

‘Please I know your a demon and I know my kind and your kind doesn’t get along but I need help, I need a place to stay I just ran away from please don’t take me back. You can keep me so I can hurt the people that pisses you off” Genevieve felt pathetic, begging and asking for help, if her father knew this she would be taken out of the family.

“Hmm. I don’t know what the master will say but you’re kind of demon are trained to be assassins am I correct?” She nodded

“Come with me I’ll see if master will let you become his assassin. What’s your name?” “Genevieve” She somehow felt shy. Maybe its because she’s walking with a handsome man while only wearing a sports bra that barley fits her now and spandex shorts.

“Beautiful name. My master is 13 years old. His name is Ciel Phantomhive. I know he’s young but he is the Queens guard dog” His master was the same age as I was? She thought.

“You need some clothes and I’m assuming you don’t have any money, am I correct?” She nodded. “Well you should be glad that I could just quickly design and create dresses. Tell me whats your favourite colour?”

“The only colour I’ve worn was black so I’m used to it but I really like the colour purple.”

“Ok a Black and Purple dress. I was thinking maybe a shorter dress instead of the fluffy long dress, perhaps a knee length type because ladies wear long covering outfits yet your not a lady and I don’t think you want to become one.”

“Thank you for doing all of this. You could have said no”

“Well your young, I’m assuming the same age of my master and he needs friends of his age, and you needed help and that something really bad happened because demons don’t run away from fights.” That was the day when my life had changed.

so this is my OC from the anime black butler. I tag @teachingpanda @memento-amare @jadedhillon @rubywolf12 @dc-comics-imagines @dragonempress123 @fvckthebatboys @royslittleharper and @kori-the-cutie

8 notes · View notes

pckarchives · 5 years

Text

make confessions and we're begging for forgiveness.

to fiona’s credit, she didn’t lie.

she calls her brother as she heads out of the building, but she knows what he’ll say before he even says it. “–––i’d never do anything like that, kiddo. i wouldn’t put you or your friends in that kind of danger.”

fiona drags her fingers through her hair. “i figured as much. just had to be sure. i’ll call you if i find anything out, okay? thanks again for what you did today. we couldn’t have done that without you.”

“of course, fee. i love you, okay?”

fiona would like to call the relief that spreads through her bones ridiculous, but it doesn’t surprise her. she’s always needed her family’s love more than anything else, yet it’s remained the one thing outside of her reach. she doesn’t miss her life in ipswich, nor does she miss the lost family anymore, but knowing that she hasn’t lost this still soothes an ache that she wasn’t aware she still felt. “i love you, too. i’ll talk to you soon.” she hangs up the phone, her smile remaining for another second.

it’s while she’s still in this cloud of euphoria that she bounces away from the loft. the pack might not be able to feel her the way they can feel each other, but they would smell her anger. fiona’s good at hiding how she feels; it’s a craft she mastered long before she moved to beacon hills. she had to work out the kinks in her time with the pack, but feigning content and confidence is a required skill when you’re the pariah of the town. she knows how to keep the pack from getting suspicious, and the key to that is holding onto whatever happiness she feels until she’s out of range.

she rides her wave of happiness as reality tears before her eyes, loose fringes fluttering before her like a rip in an old cloth. she steps through with the words i love, okay still ringing in her ears, skin warmed by the reminder that she didn’t lose everything, and her heart skips at the idea of mending her relationship with her brother. they aren’t horribly estranged –– they could fix things. maybe he could move to beacon hills one day. the idea has her grinning as she leaves beacon hills and she knows that she’s nothing more than a beacon of joy.

that doesn’t change until she’s stepping through that tear and into her grandmother’s house. ( she doesn’t need anyone to tell her this is fucking dumb. she was the first to shoot down the idea of bouncing all the way across the nation, she knows it’s a bad idea. but her anger runs deeper than her sense does, and she doesn’t think. ) for the first time since she learned how to bounce, she feels dizzy, stomach twisting and turning, but she doesn’t let it hinder her. the sickness pales in comparison to the fire that heats her veins and taints her vision.

there’s puttering in the kitchen and fiona’s hands clench as she follows the sound. irene porter stands at the counter, her back to fiona as she digs through the cabinets. fiona says nothing; she knows that her grandmother knows she’s here. she felt the wards go off when she stepped into the house, and she’s not foolish enough to think her grandmother might’ve missed it.

“if you’re going to stand there, get over here and make yourself useful,” irene calls over her shoulder, voice so casual and unbothered, fiona almost thinks she’s innocent. almost. when fiona doesn’t move, the elder sighs impatiently. “you really can’t do anything right.”

“what the fuck,” fiona spits, “is your problem?”

irene takes a box of crackers and heads to her wooden table, the same one that’s been sitting there since fiona was an infant. the woman sits down and aims an unfazed stare at her granddaughter. “i could name a few.”

“i’m your problem! me!” fiona stabs a finger at her own chest, angrily advancing. “you have a goddamn problem, you take it up with me. you do not drag innocent people into our feud. jesus christ, grandma, they had a child!”

“then she was better off being caught than following your example.”

it’s not a confession. it is, at best, a deflection. but she doesn’t deny her involvement; if anything, she confirms it. fiona never said there was a girl involved.

anger swells faster than she can contain it, hot tears coating her eyes, and she lets out a frustrated shout. the earth reacts, though she hardly notices. the wooden table and chair that irene sits so comfortably in become sentient, their brown skin bleeding into her hands, gradually turning her to wood. it starts at her fingertips, turning her pale nails to wooden chips, melding her palms to the arms of the chair. it slowly spreads, the transmutation tracing its way up her arms. panic and fear cloud her expression as she tries to move, but it’s no use; she’s already fusing with the earth around her, and fiona is too caught in her fury to notice.

“what the fuck is so wrong with me?” fiona cries. the plants hanging from the ceiling grow, their lengthy arms spreading to drape across the floor, slithering their way towards the two witches. “what did i do that was so bad, you thought it was okay to kill everyone? you think i’m such a fucking sinner, look at yourself!”

irene tries to speak –– she tries to form fiona’s name, but the wood eclipses the left side of her body, leaving her mouth immobile. it finally catches fiona’s attention, but she makes no move to stop it. “i have hated myself for years because of you,” she says, her voice quiet and full of malice. “i thought i was wrong for not caving and lying about my sexuality. i thought so many times about whether i’d be happier if i’d just married a man and lived the way you wanted me to. but i wasn’t the problem. it was you. it’s always been you. but that shit? that’s over.” she shakes her head, willing away tears. “you are done taking control of my life. you don’t deserve that power. you don’t deserve the energy and happiness i’ve been wasting, looking for your approval. i’m done –––– we’re done, irene.”

finally, the spell reverses itself, slowly then all at once. irene gasps, choking as she tries to catch her breath and fiona only watches.

“i hope you find something that makes you happy one day,” fiona says, looking at her with pity. “because i’m so fucking happy these days. and this is the last time you’re ever going to take up a portion of that.”

fiona’s interrupted by the rush of air in the room as her sister appears. she looks to irene, then to fiona, eyes widening. “what are you doing?” she starts towards their grandmother, then––– “shit.” she takes three rapid steps towards fiona, grasping her shoulders tightly. “listen to me carefully, fiona. this–––” she gestures to irene; she’s all pale skin now, but the overgrown plants and the shortness of breath paint a picture of their own. “is an act of war. if the coven finds out, they will kill you. they will find you a hell of a lot quicker than you think, and they will burn you to death in the forest.” eloise speaks with a finality that would scare fiona on another day; as if this is a conversation that the coven has had before; as if they’ve had fiona’s capital punishment picked out from the day she came out. “i’m going to take care of this, okay? i’m going to make sure no one finds out about this. i’m going to wipe her memory, clean up the house. but you set off alarms when you came here, i––– fiona, i’m going to have to hurt you. but i’m doing it to protect you, and i really need you to know that, baby girl.”

fiona doesn’t have time to question it. eloise’s lips press against her hairline, rough and firm and sorrowful, before she steps away and slams her palm into fiona’s chest.

by fiona’s count, she bounces a little over thirteen times. not a single one is her choice.

it doesn’t feel like bouncing, the way she’s so used to. it feels more like she’s being popped in and out of place, with no time to figure out where she’s going, let alone take a break to refresh. her body tears itself to shreds, puts itself back together, and repeats the process again and again and again and again and again––––

she comes to a stop a mile away from the loft and dry heaves into a trashcan. nothing comes out of her, but she considers that a blessing. the heaving process hurts enough without the addition of actual content. she curls her fingers into the trashcan and sets a hand on her stomach, only to pull it away with a sharp inhale. it hurt.

she ducks into the nearest store ––– luckily, the same starbucks she’s been frequenting since she moved to beacon hills, so zach only waves at her as she passes ––– and hurries into the bathroom. she steps into an empty handicap stall, locking the door behind her and gingerly pulls up her shirt. the sight almost makes her gag, but she presses the back of her hand to her mouth to quell that urge. her stomach protrudes at the bottom, a drooping weight that hands above her waist. if the weight itself wasn’t concerning, the discoloration is. where the skin should be pale, it’s translucent to the point where she sees red, green veins lining whatever is pressing against her skin. with a shaking hand, she hesitantly pokes at the bulge and her vision swims. she grips the stall door tightly, forcing her breathing to even out and her tears to make themselves scarce.

the pain is agonizing and she feels––– she feels–––

empty. she feels so fucking empty, she wants to cry.

a tentative feel for her magic confirms what she’d already guessed: eloise sapped her magic. she knew what the bouncing would do to fiona, but if there was even a trace of her magic, it would have been tracked. “...fuck,” she murmurs, leaning her head against the cool door. it was dumb; she knows it was dumb, but she’d been so angry. she’d let her anger get the best of her, and she’d almost committed an act far worse than her grandmother’s own.

that wasn’t smart. that wasn’t fee.

she sucks in another breath and stands up straight. every minor movement aggravates the displacement of organs in her body, but she sucks it up. she’s walked off worse injuries ( kind of? ) worst case scenario, she calls liam’s dad and asks for his advice ––– as best she can, anyway. she knows she can’t ask the other witches about this; the last thing dominic or cass need to do is worry about her, and she’s not sure her body will take any supernatural intervention well at all. she can tell her parents, but ––– later. first, she has to get back to the pack. she has to tell derek she was right.

she straightens her clothing in the mirror and appraises herself with a critical eye. her floral skirt sits beneath the bulge of her stomach, and her brown knit sweater hangs low and loose enough to hide any deformities in her body. it all looks normal. she then works on fixing her face into a smile. she stands there tweaking it until it looks like her, a process she’s far too used to. she pushes the pain to the back of her mind and focuses on her happiness ––– they got cecelia. dominic and cass are so happy. nick still loves her. eloise saved her. eloise promised she’d take care of irene and fiona doesn’t doubt her at all.

everything is okay. everything is really, truly okay.

fiona all but skips out of the bathroom, forcing her body to acclimate to the pain, and orders a vanilla bean frappe. once she has her order, she starts the slow trek back to the apartment. the act of being okay is child’s play to her –––––– she’s got this.

#vi. para. › make confessions and we're begging for forgiveness .#v. type. › para .#i. gospel. › f. porter .

0 notes