#despite all the free time I have that I should be capitalizing on

[painted-flag]

TENDER, part 1/3 - Marcus Acacius

₊˚⊹♡ your father leaves on a campaign to germania, entrusting you under the care of his good friend marcus acacius. ₊˚⊹ marcus acacius x fem!reader ₊˚⊹ warnings: age gap and future descriptions of smut. ₊˚⊹ part one | part two | part three | ₊˚⊹ masterlist.

The cool night breeze brushed over your exposed skin as you stood leaning against the stone railing of a balcony in your estate. Though the night was peaceful, the insistent chatter of courtesans, senators, and high-ranking military officials underscored by the musical ensemble performing cut clean through the balcony doors. 

This was supposed to be your moment of respite, but even being outside could not free you from the stifling conditions inside. This was your home, yet you felt a stranger in it. Your father had hosted this celebration in dedication to his upcoming campaign in Germania. It was not unusual for him to go out and fight in some distant land, but it was the first time he was leaving after your mother’s death for a significant period. Weeks you could cope with, but months?

This time was the last moment your father would have in the capital for the better part of a year. Because of that, he had spent the majority of the night carting you around the party to eligible men in an effort to find you a husband before he left. It was not meant to be purposefully pressuring and you knew that, he only wanted what he believed was best for you. 

You did not wish to marry any of them. They were not in your taste, but your father did not see that. 

As you gazed wistfully into the night, the balcony door opened and the noises from inside got louder before it closed. 

A soft voice edged with a deep timbre shook your bones. “Forgive me, my lady. I did not know this place was occupied.” 

You turned around to see a man standing behind you. For a moment, you were stunned. He was older, though your father still beat him by a few years. His skin was tanned and his stature was strong. There was a leanness to his muscle that was not as ostentatious as many of the men in Rome tended to be. Despite that, you could tell by the way he carried himself that he was deadly if need be. You grew up around soldiers, you could recognize one when you saw them; they often never left the battlefield but continued to foster it in their minds. 

His hair was dark like the bark on dark oak trees, yet strong in colour. Though there were yet to be any silver strands in the thick volume of his hair, she could tell by the aged lines on his face that they were only a few years away from growing out. It sent a stirring in her stomach to imagine the silver patches in his hair and beard. Looking at his jawline, it seemed to be even more defined by the hair there. He was dressed in fine clothes like all the other attendants, but there was something about his form that screamed to a more humble nature. 

What startled you the most were the browns of his eyes that looked like bark on the trees in summer – dark but covered in a golden light that exuded nothing but warmth. They were captivating, he was captivating. 

“You are not disturbing me. Please, stay if you wish.” You spoke. There was a part of you that wished he would stay so you could talk to him for a moment. 

He paused for a moment and looked back at the balcony doors. With his head turned you could survey more of him and notice the hidden strength in his arms while you marvelled at the veins under his skin. When he turned back to you, your head came up as if you were not staring. If he noticed, he made no mention of it. 

“I could stay for a while,” The man moved to stand beside you and looked out at the darkening grounds below. “Forgive me if this is forward, but you do not seem to be enjoying yourself.” You could easily tell he was good at reading people, though you still had yet to receive his name. 

“You are sound in your observation. If I have to dance with one more eligible man in that room I should fling myself off of this balcony.” You said. He laughed at your words, catching on to the slight lilt in your teasing tone. 

“Surely, a beautiful lady such as yourself would be drinking in the attention?” He asked. You tried to pretend his words did not affect you as much as they did. 

It was your turn to laugh and you turned to lean on your side against the stone railing and face him. He was already facing you with those piercing summer eyes. 

“Not from boys like that.” You answered. 

His eyebrow quirked up, “Boys?”

“They are not as… mature as I like.” If it were not for the poor lighting, you could have sworn you saw the ball on his throat move as he gulped. The insinuation in your words was not lost on him. 

Handsome and smart. A good combination. 

It seemed as though your words caught him off guard, so you spoke more, “Surely, in the beauty of such a celebration, a handsome man such as yourself should be with his wife?” You wanted him to deny the assumption. However, you were not stupid. A man who looked like him was not one to stay solitary – women would have flocked to him in both his youth and older age. 

Though, to your great relief, his words comforted you. 

“No, my lady, I am not married.” You rejoiced on the inside but continued to act calm. Immediately after though, you felt stupid. He was beyond your years, beyond your experience. Why would he care for a young woman such as you, only in their twenties? 

The growing tension between the two of you was almost tangible. His appearance was entirely too alluring for you. The energy he gave off was both dominant and reserved, making you want to sink under his protection. 

Before anything else could be said, the balcony doors opened. Your father walked out, seemingly oblivious to the heat between you two. 

“Ah, Marcus! I was wondering when I would see you tonight. How are you doing, my good friend?” Your father’s hands clasped his shoulder in a friendly manner, face smiling and tinged red due to the wine affecting his system. 

“I am well. This celebration is rather grand. You have outdone yourself this time.” There was an underlying tension in his voice that went unnoticed by your father, but you caught it. Was it frustration? Why would he be frustrated in this moment? 

However, the name Marcus struck a chord of familiarity. You glanced at him again and took in his clothes and stature. While your initial observation about him being a soldier had been correct, it was only then that you realized it was slightly off. He was a general. General Marcus floated around your mind until it landed on something surprising. 

General Marcus Acacius. 

The most accomplished Roman general and a name your father had mentioned many times throughout the years. 

And you had just flirted with him. 

“It seems you have met my daughter.” Your father moved to stand beside you. 

You watched as Marcus’ face dropped, “Your daughter?” His eyes moved to you for a brief moment before returning to your father. 

“Yes,” Your father wrapped his arm over your shoulder and squeezed you to his side, “I do not believe I ever introduced you two. My wife tended to keep her away from the prying eyes of the public,” At the mention of your deceased mother, you cringed slightly. It was still a sensitive topic for you. It was also the truth; your mother often kept you away from events in the hopes that Rome would not corrupt you. 

“She is a lovely woman. Raised well.” Marcus responded though he kept his eyes on your father. It was obvious that he was avoiding looking at you and you almost yearned for the returning warmth of his eyes. 

“I hope you have gotten to know one another a little bit before I leave her to your charge.” Your father spoke. 

His words had you furrowing your eyebrows, “What?” Your father turned to you with an incredulous look, as if the answer was obvious.

“I told you I would be leaving you in the care of a good friend while I am gone,” He responded. 

You remembered it. You also remembered thinking it would be another one of his very old friends who had since retired and lived a quiet life. Never once did you think you would be handed over to the care of the most accomplished general in Rome who also happened to be a man you could not help but be very attracted to. 

Before you could respond, your father perked up as he looked inside through the open balcony doors, “There he is! Forgive me, Marcus, but I have been wishing to introduce someone to my daughter. I hope to speak to you later.” 

Your father tugged on your arm and dragged you back into the estate. For a moment, your gaze flickered behind to spot Marcus already staring at you. When he was caught looking, he turned back around to look out at the night sky. 

Now that you were back in the throes of people mingling with the sound of the band in the background, you could feel yourself beginning to itch. It was a feeling you would get under your skin with the looks of the other members of the aristocracy. They were suffocating. However, you played the game of a general's daughter and continued with a smile on your face. 

Your father stopped in front of a man, “Lucan, I was telling you about my daughter.” The man appeared only a few years older than you. His formal attire spoke military, low ranking, but enough to warrant some level of respect. Lucan was not bad-looking, rather pleasing actually. Youthful with an air of ruggedness in his short blond beard. His eyes were blue like the sky during the day, yet they did not feel as bright as the golden light in the dark browns of Marcus’ eyes. You bit your lip to stop yourself from thinking of a man you had only just met. 

“You are as beautiful as others have described, my lady.” Lucan grabbed your hand and placed a kiss on your knuckles. While the compliment was nice, it did not feel as good as Marcus’ voice calling you beautiful; there was something in his voice then that sounded more genuine. 

“Lucan Luctuca, I’d like you to formally meet my daughter. Perhaps a dance would be nice?” Your father's eagerness was not lost on you. It was obvious that he had been, in recent years, more desperate to find you a suitable husband. He could not take care of you forever and your presence in his house felt odd. The longer you remained unwed, the more members of the court believed you to be defective or undesirable. 

Lucan seemed to take your father's words seriously and took your arm from him to lead you to where many people were dancing. The two of you began as a new song started to play. 

“I apologize if my compliment sounded disingenuous. I was lying about your beauty,” Lucan began and you had half a mind to punch him because of his words, “If I am honest, beautiful is not good enough to describe you, my lady. However, I felt it would be untoward to say such a thing in front of your father.” 

“Thank you,” Your skin turned slightly red at his compliment and you could feel your face warm up slightly, “How is it that you know my father?” 

“He trained with my father when they were starting their service. I have grown up outside of Rome and have only just come here. It seems your father is intent on us getting to know one another.” Lucan spun you around. 

“My father is insistent on finding me a husband,” You responded. Over Lucan’s shoulder, you could see that Marcus had come back inside and was talking to a group of men. Yet, his gaze was locked on you as you danced with Lucan. He was clutching a goblet in his hands. If it were not made of metal, surely his grip would have broken it.  

“Then I hope I am a sufficient contender,” The musicians transitioned to another song, but you stayed dancing with him. 

“Well, I’ll have to get to know you better,” While flirting was fun, it felt odd to do it with Lucan. He was nice, from what you could tell. Level-headed and respectful to boot. None of it entirely mattered when Marcus’ gaze had yet to leave you. 

“Sounds wonderful,” Lucan said. 

The rest of the time that the two of you danced, you only slightly paid attention to what he was saying. The rest of the dance was spent trying to cool yourself down each time you glanced at Marcus and found that he was still looking at you. The men around him had gradually left until it was just him standing on the outskirts of the mingling groups and leaning up against a pillar. 

It was hard to pay attention to Lucan’s words when your whole body felt on fire. By the time the two of you separated, it was already terribly late and you were tired. You looked around for your father as you wished to bid him goodnight before retiring to your room. 

When you finally spotted him, he was standing with Marcus and talking merrily. You sucked in a breath and realized you would have to be near Marcus again. You wondered if the Gods were pulling a terrible joke on you. He was a man beyond your reach, yet your body felt such a connection to him despite only meeting a few hours prior. 

It was ridiculous. The two of you had what could barely be construed as a conversation and already your brain was picturing yourself with him. 

You approached both of the men, “Father, it is late and I wish to retire.” 

“Ah, well I hope you rest well,” Your father sipped from his goblet, “What did you think of Lucan?” At the mention of Lucan’s name, you could see Marcus turn to face you. His gaze was piercing the side of your head. 

“He was nice. Pleasant to talk to.” You responded.

“Mature?” Marcus asked. While seemingly innocent to others, but a little odd, the words stuck a chord in you. He was bringing up your previous comment about the men attempting to court you not being as mature for your taste. You could not tell if it was a subtle jab at you, or perhaps an attempt to undermine Lucan and bolster himself. 

Like the daughter of a military man, you too knew methods of war. 

“He was, General.” You stared him in the eyes while speaking and enjoyed the vein in his temple flex. He hummed at your response, a noise deep in timbre that sent a wave of warmth all over your body. 

“Well,” Your father was oblivious to the tension between you two, “Good night, darling.” He gave you a quick hug and you smiled. You nodded to Marcus to be respectful and began walking towards the door to exit the large hall. You were glad that this celebration was in your home, as you would not have to walk far to reach your room. The only downside was the nagging feeling in your head to go back out and spend the rest of the night with Marcus. 

It would be wrong.

You knew it would be wrong. 

Marcus was older than you and he was your father's friend. 

The air in your room suddenly felt hot and you scrambled to undress from the clothing you wore. It was quiet save for the distant sound of the party still going on, though gradually decreasing in numbers. 

You plopped down on your bed and let out a loud huff. Still, even in the privacy of your room, you could feel the searing heat of Marcus’ gaze. What disturbed you the most about it was that you liked the attention from him. You liked the thought of him undermining Lucan to bolster himself in your favour. That competitiveness and confidence lit a fire in your heart. 

You thought of tomorrow when your father left for his campaign. For months, you will be living at Marcus’ estate, under his guidance and protection. A part of you, the one loyal to your father, was dreading this. You did not want to do anything untoward that would disrespect both him and Marcus. 

However, the other part of you was thrilled to be in close proximity with Marcus. The dreamy side of your mind was hoping, maybe, that he could look at you the same way you looked at him. But that would be a betrayal to your father.

You wondered how you would survive in the coming months.

This was edited while I was doing the 12-3-30 challenge on the treadmill so I apologize for any errors -- I was sweaty and delirious.

[quibbs126]

*sigh* I don’t know. I don’t even really know why I’m posting this in the first place, I don’t really like it

I’d say what it is, but you can read what’s on the tin. I thought it’d be cool if I drew that g2 Optimus design, because I think it’s cool looking and Optimus might look good in black and red, and with pink eyes

This was my reference by the way

But no, I couldn’t figure out how to make him look right. I thought maybe I could try sketching him in another style, but no, that didn’t work either. But I finished the sketch and thought it looked halfway decent, but when I went to do lineart I realized it wasn’t. But halfway through lineart I just gave up and slapped it together, slapped some colors on him, wrote some stuff on the page, I guess to fill up the black spaces I know I wasn’t gonna fill with actual drawing, and now we’re here

It’s the fucking arms I tell you. I still don’t know how they’re supposed to work, and I don’t know how to pose them either. So they look like shit. But I can’t just not have them, so they have to be there

And I don’t really know what’s happening on the shoulders either, particularly the wheels. I know I made them too small but I don’t know how to make them look how they do on the toy either

I considered trying a more stylized art style since the 3D was fucking with me, but my brain couldn’t figure out how to do that either, so I’m stuck doing the same thing over and over again, drawing in circles and wondering why I’m not getting anywhere, while simultaneously being unable to figure out what I’m doing wrong

So now we’re here. It looks bad. The shoulder pentagons are too small. The face is too tall. The colors on the face are all wrong. The arm is all off anatomy wise. I forgot to color in the black on the back despite going in and adding lines for them. The grill’s off. The chest doors don’t look like doors the open up, they look stuck to the rest of him. He barely looks 3D because I’m bad at doing this

But I got far enough, and I knew that even I start over on a new canvas, I wouldn’t want to delete it by this point, so I might as well finish it instead of having it taunt me every time I see it. So here we are, as I’ve said multiple times

I really wish I was better at drawing Transformers. I should be at this rate, it’s been a couple months. But no, I don’t know how to improve and I keep staying with the same mediocre art, because I don’t seem to like trying. I do try, but it’s not improvement, it’s just me making the same mistakes over and over again. Like with arms and the joints

Why can’t I get better? Am I just not trying? I don’t know how to try better

I have thoughts I want to share with people because I think they’re neat, and I know any thoughts I do have will only gain traction and be seen if there’s art attached, at least here on tumblr, and because I am an artist, I have to try and draw them. Especially because I’m anti-social and a cheapskate, so I can’t ask someone I know who can draw Transformers good and I won’t commission anyone for it either. I’ll only get what I want if I do it. But I’m bad at doing it

So it’s either write it out and see some people like it, but it’ll only be for the next couple days before it gets forgotten and I too forget about it, and it’ll never do as good as if I did draw it, or draw it but not as good as it needs to be, so people won’t really care about it anyways. Because my flat drawings aren’t really good anyways, just mediocre, and I write too much on my drawings and go on tangents, meaning people probably aren’t gonna reblog it with their own thoughts on anything I said either

But this is just me being greedy anyways. No one’s entitled to give me their opinions, especially when I know my thoughts are stupid anyways. I don’t really know anything about Transformers, not like other people do, I’m just some casual person who just got here and should just go back to Cookie Run at this rate, but is stupid and keeps thinking that maybe she’ll get good at this and have opinions people actually care about

And don’t go on here telling me that I shouldn’t put so much emphasis on what other people think, so long as it makes me happy. It doesn’t work like that with me. Drawing the thing’s only half the fun for me, and sometimes that varies. The real fun comes from telling people about the thing I made, and the ideas I made for it, especially when they tell me what they think of it. If I draw something and nobody sees it, and I don’t tell anyone about it, what was the point of me drawing it? Even if I enjoyed it, heck when I do, I’m even more motivated to show it to people, because I’m proud of it, or that pride comes later when I see people really do like it. These things are intrinsically tied together for me, I can’t separate them

What’s even the point of all this? I’m just complaining at this rate about basically nothing, at least nothing to do with what I drew. But I don’t like what I drew. But I made it so I have to show it, at least to get a semblance of what I was going for out there. I’d like to think maybe if it did, someone better could get what I’m going for and do it better, and I can see it better, but no one ever does. I’m not good enough for that. Maybe some people did, but not anymore, I’ve grown too big for my britches. And also we’re not in the same fandoms anymore

And I write all this, but it feels almost performative. Like I’m putting on an act of frustration and disappointment and anger and whatever other emotions I can’t quantify right now. Because this’ll still be on the post. I’m still gonna post this. I’m still gonna diligently put my tags in it like any other post. Like I’m doing this for show. I’m not, but I’m making a deal of it publicly online, aren’t I? So I must be doing this for attention

*sigh* Well I suppose it’s my own fault

I’ll probably try to attempt this again some day, maybe even later today or tomorrow (actually probably not, I work tomorrow), because I never got out what I wanted, but I can’t figure it out right now and I’m too lazy to make it any better. So take this not very good quality art that I really shouldn’t even be posting, but hey, it’s content, isn’t it?

[strawberrystepmom]

ready to eat

pairing: Yami Sukehiro x F!Noble Reader

word count: 4.9k

contents: NSFW - minors and ageless blogs dni, I will hard block you. Takes place in canon universe, there is a slight age/experience difference insinuated between the pairing but reader is at least 25, reader has named magical ability (movement magic), so much banter, oral sex (f receiving and finishing and it's sexy)

cw: mentions of marriage and misogyny, virginity (reader is a virgin)

notes: brain rot has proven to be fatal so here you are. this is open ended and i would not consider it a oneshot bc i'd love to write more about these two. hope you enjoy! thank you for reading ♡ | crossposted to ao3, divider by @cafekitsune

you can find more about these two here, here, here and here 🖤

Nighttime is your time, a lesson you taught yourself independent of your instructors many years ago. 

Movement magic allows you the luxury of blending in with your scenery, rushing unseen toward a capital district that is on the opposite end of where your family has made their name. Nobody here would recognize you even if you were less discreet, cloak gathered around your face and obscuring any unidentifiable features, and the freedom is indescribable; better than every sunny day or freshly made tea dessert. 

You are free to be yourself. Unmarried, unattached, unimportant, it doesn’t matter. You stumble into the usual inn you make your domain until the sun rises, ready to watch the way people you have little in common with live. If anyone knew you’d get reprimanded, probably rightfully, though you have never quite understood the scandal that lies in being a well informed woman. Your mother was a gossip and isn’t that another way to become informed? 

It’s society's acceptable way, anyway.

You slink into the corner table, away from the crowd gathered nearer the bar, and slip your hood off of your face. No glances of recognition from anyone else, too engrossed in their own drinks and their own conversations, and you sink down against the back of the chair you’re sitting in. It’s nice to be anonymous, you decided months ago when you began doing this. You aren’t certain you want to continue being so inconspicuous when you remind yourself why you’ve been doing this to begin with - to gain even the slightest bit of the life experience that continues to elude you. To love and laugh and feel joy that you’ve been told only comes with marriage, something you are too apprehensive about committing to. 

It’s why you come namelessly into a district that does not belong to you or your kind. You hope that someone will find you interesting, a beaten path off their life’s track. Someone to laugh with or tell stories to. It’s all you’ve ever really wanted, a romantic to your core despite the decidedly unromantic life you lead. Caretaking, getting earfuls from your father about being a responsibility that the family no longer wants to have when taking your age and failed proposals into consideration. So lost in your own thoughts, you barely notice when a man slides into the chair next to you, glancing down at your hands and then at your face.

“You need to stop wearing whatever is making you smell like that.”

The interruption to your quiet evening makes you jump, no longer dissociating and now in the present. You recognize the man sitting next to you, a captain of a Magic Knights squad. Their faces are plastered all over the capital and you’re shocked that he stumbled into such a low brow establishment though getting a look at him up close convinces you that he may not be in the entirely wrong spot.

“Captain Sukehiro,” you offer politely, formal as ever. “I regret having to request clarification from a man as esteemed as yourself but what do you mean?”

The captain snorts, shaking his head in response to you as though your manners are piteous instead of a courtesy that should be extended to all. 

“Don’t call me that, Yami is fine.” He sniffs, stuffing a cigarette between his lips. “I’m talking about the shit you’re wearing that is filling every corner of this place. People don’t wear things that make them smell like bakeries around here.” 

Scrunching your nose, you lift your wrist to your nose for a sniff. He’s referencing the perfume you spritzed on after bathing and the way it sticks to you, the smell wafting around the table with every move you make. It hasn’t caught any eyes yet, thankfully, but he can see how this will end if you don’t correct your mistake now. 

“What are you doing around here anyway? I figured women of your, uh, breed or whatever stuck to their own districts.” 

Bristling slightly at his insinuation that you find yourself too good to hang out here, you square your shoulders and clear your throat. A low chuckle rumbles in Yami while he lights his cigarette, raising his brows and eagerly awaiting whatever argument you are clearly cooking up in that little head of yours. 

“I’ll have you know that I enjoy exploring parts of the city that I rarely see. I am out here thanks to my own curiosity.” Your eyes shift from Yami toward the rest of the tavern, a small smile on your face watching the patrons laugh amongst themselves. “I think it’s really wonderful that people are happy no matter how they were born into this world and I’m thankful to be able to experience this side of life too.”

The captain could spend all night laughing at your naivety if you’d let him but he doesn’t wanna let you dig any deeper of a hole than you’re already finding yourself in. You’re clearly a fully grown woman, even the doll-like roundness of your eyes and cheeks can’t convince him you’re under 25 judging from the way you carry yourself. You aren’t the first noble girl he has ever seen sneak off in an attempt to find herself yet it strikes him as hilarious you clearly believe it.

“So you aren’t like the other nobles? You see people as people?” The brusque individual takes a long drink from the mug in his hand, Adam’s apple bobbing while he swallows, your eyes fixed on the sheer size of his neck and throat. “What do you want? A prize?”

Even the enticing muscles of his body (how can one person have so many muscles bulging off of them anyway?) cannot distract enough to forget that he’s insulting you. You place your hands in your lap and fiddle with the edge of the cloak that covers the simple nightgown you are wearing, covering it enough that no one is suspicious about why you’re wearing nightclothes in the first place. 

“No, I’m simply telling you what I’m doing here because you asked.”

Sipping from his mug, the man glances you up and down. He swallows and squares his shoulders.

“Okay? That still doesn’t tell me what you’re actually doing here, you’re only talking about feelings and shit.” Another sip and he places his ale down. “So what are you doing here? Isn’t it a little late for your type to be out with the rest of us?”

He considers you for a moment. Not bad looking. Pretty, even. Not plain in the way some overly manicured noble women can come across and you clearly aren’t using magic to enhance anything about you or else he’d notice. He’s a pro at sniffing out transformation magic in women having seen so many who have taught themselves to dabble in the arts to subtly tweak their appearances. You sigh and he finds it impressively naive to do so, your shoulders pinching in while you exhale sharply out of your nose. 

“I’m looking for someone to help me.” Now this is interesting. He raises a brow, glancing you up and down. You lean toward him, creating a veil of intimacy in a crowded tavern, elbows resting on the table rudely. “I, um, I fear I’ll be woefully unprepared for my marriage bed once the time arrives and I want to avoid embarrassment. I’m already too old to be considered marriageable to most and my heart could not take physical rejection from my husband as well.”

“You’re a virgin and feel weird about it and now you’re makin’ it my problem.”

Gasping, your eyes widen and you shake your head rapidly. Yami smirks when he senses how quickly your heart is pounding beneath those layers of fabrics most in this place could only ever dream of seeing much less feel against their skin, curious enough that he won’t just tell you to get lost at this point. 

“Please do not repeat my predicament so loudly, Captain Sukehiro.” You whisper hiss, fighting the urge to kick him beneath the table as you do the rest of your fathers’ unruly issue you are the eldest of. “It’s not something I’m terribly proud of.”

The captain scoffs, humming to himself and adjusting his posture so that he’s leaning toward you instead of on the back of his chair, cigarette dangling from his fingers. You’ve captured his attention, at least for now, and he’ll give you all of it that you can handle. Pursing his lips, he glances around the bar for a split second before focusing on you, gray eyes locked on your pouting mouth.

“Then why is it your situation in the first place? Thought you nobles were too proud for your own good.” He flicks the lighter in his pocket. “And don’t call me that. Yami is fine.”

You should find it very rude that you are being asked so many questions and being made to suit so many demands made by a lesser born to begin with but the curiosity feels like deeply personalized attention, causing you to bloom in response. Hunched shoulders stretch out, the graceful posture you’ve spent what would amount to months of your life if you stretched the hours out perfecting appearing. No one at home is this curious about you outside of when you will no longer be around to tend the younger children your father continues to spawn and it feels different to be the center of a man’s attention. 

Not a weak, defanged little noble whose only function is to act as an additional limb for his father. A man with rough hands and battle scars and overgrown hair down his neck. 

“I haven’t felt a spark with any of the men I’ve been introduced to. They’re lovely individuals with proud lineage but it has always felt so…” you search around the room, lifting your hand to your mouth to idly nip at the cuticle around your thumbnail. “Forced. I don’t want to be with them and they do not want to be with me. Four men and none of them made me feel like I could spend the rest of my life with them.”

Once again, Yami chuckles at your predicament. Your cheeks heat in response, ears tingling and burning as that familiar feeling of being mocked encourages you to retreat inward. The awareness that you do not have to put up with this kind of treatment from a man beneath your station 

“Sounds like you’re hard to impress, kid.” A plume of smoke is blown over your head, the cigarette he was holding now dangling from his lips while he examines you with narrowed eyes. “Little darling won’t settle for less than a fairytale.”

Retreating further into yourself, you move your hands from your lap to fold your arms over your chest.

“I’m no child, obviously.” 

Your retort is as petulant as your posture and the man smirks, the corner of his mouth jumping, tenting his fingers in front of him and leaning toward you. Despite himself, he likes you. Your willingness to shit here and just shoot the shit with him has impressed him but not enough to let you off easy. 

“You’re here beggin’ for attention like one so I dunno about all that.”

Scoffing, you shift in your chair but make no effort to get up. You won’t be picked off by him that easily. 

“You know nothing about me, sir.” You raise your brows and shift your head to emphasize your point, arms still folded. A grown woman behaving like a little brat shouldn’t draw a man like this in yet he considers himself intrigued, stamping out the nearly depleted butt of his cigarette on the edge table in front of him. 

“Can’t argue with that. Keep talking.” 

He leans back in his chair and sizes you up, boots stacked on top of each other where his ankles are crossed and his long legs are extended out in front of him. It’s one thing to be keeping him here against his will because you won’t stop talking, it’s another when he is a willing audience. Your mouth runs dry and you gradually unfold your arms, placing them above your knee so you can subtly rid your clammy palms of the prickling sweat across them.

“I want to experience the things that a husband and wife are to experience together though I do not have anyone to enjoy them with.” Even the way nobles describe sex is stuffy and uncomfortable, Yami realizes, brows raising slightly. He lets you continue speaking before butting in, letting his arms dangle from the sides of the chair. “Perhaps it’s wrong of me to believe it will change my luck but I won’t change my mind. I have to know how to…perform.”

Perform is such an interesting choice of word. All of the sex the captain has ever had has been far less of a performance and more of a two person dance, locked in repetitive motions and tangled up as one form. He isn’t much for the sappy, intimate shit you’re clearly insinuating you’d like though he feels like he could help you.

“I’ll tell you what,” he starts, leaning back toward you and closing the distance to once again grant you some semblance of privacy. “I can show you how a man should treat a woman but I can’t promise you it’s how a husband will treat his wife, you understand?”

Your eyes widen and you nod once, picking up on his meaning immediately. Impressed by your sharp wit he smiles although it’s nearly as unfriendly as the ones exchanged at court and only slightly less smug. Leaning in toward him, your brows knit together, and you bunch your skirt up in your fists.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for, you know…” you trail off, frowning slightly. He pretends like he doesn’t understand what you mean, shaking his head and staring vacantly at your mouth. “I don’t know if I’m ready for you to take me.”

Another snort from him and your face heats like a wildfire. The two of you remained locked in this strange posture, whispering but not quite, discussing the terms of whatever is occurring here. Blood rushes from your face to your chest to your stomach, a familiar tense feeling between your legs making you shift uncomfortably in your chair.

“The only one who would be doing any taking in that scenario is me and you don’t have to worry about that tonight.” He tips his mug and finishes off the last droplets of his ale, sliding the empty vessel across the table top where it stops just short of you. 

“What if we never see each other again after tonight?” That sappy shit he was right to assume you wanted has surfaced earlier than he expected. He shrugs flippantly, arching a brow. “Then we never see each other tonight but at least you can say you know how it feels when a man takes care of you.”

Inhaling loudly, you weigh your options. 

You can always get up and go home, turn tail and run to where you will always be viewed as something akin to a decorative sconce on the wall instead of a human being. Your opinion matters not, you’re a glorified caretaker for your younger siblings, some of who are your fathers rightful heirs thanks to the boyhood the Gods so mercifully granted them. You can retreat and continue wasting away waiting for a man who thrills you enough that you can ever see him as someone deserving of being your equal. 

Or, you can consider Yami’s offer. He’s rough around the edges and speaks with no formality or regard and you like it. At least you think you do. He doesn’t care who you are any more than the others around you do yet he makes you feel the most seen anyone ever has. He’s interested in your words, your ideas, and even your pleasure - a realization that makes the knot in your stomach tighten further.

“Okay.” You concede. “I think that I’d like that.”

The man rises from his seat, smirking, tossing some coins down on the table in front of him for the drink. 

“I know you will,” he finishes, words dripping with honesty but not arrogance. 

He begins to head toward the stairs that will lead the two of you upstairs and your breath catches when he looks over his shoulder and raises his brows, signaling with a wave that you should follow him. You toss a few more coins on the table in front of you, uncertain of how much a room in an establishment like this would cost to begin with, and rush to follow him with your cloak pulled tightly against your body.

﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏

This room is nothing like your quarters at home where everything around you gleams in gold and marble and silk. It may be decidedly less impressive though it’s twice as cozy if you’re honest. 

The bed is barely large enough for two and there’s a well loved desk pushed against the wall, magical light flickering from the wall. Shutting the door unceremoniously, you swallow and feel the captain at your back, a large palm covering the entirety of the space between your shoulder blades. You don’t recall him seeming so imposing downstairs, glancing upward to meet his eyes. He can tell you are inexperienced solely by how skittish you’ve become beneath his fingertips, an intriguing shift from who you were sitting opposite him.

Boldly asking a man to pleasure you has told him everything about the person you are beneath the skirts and the trappings of society. If he waits long enough he knows that hungry girl will once again show her face to him and while he isn’t particularly patient, he believes it would be worth his while to wait. 

“Go sit on the edge of the bed.” He instructs right above your ear and gently shoves you toward where he’s commanded you be. 

You follow directions and sit, legs dangling off of the edge, unfastening your cloak and letting it rest on the bed. The knot in your belly remains tight, keeping you on edge with all of your movements while your walls throb weakly, arousal and curiosity bearing down on you with similar weight. Sukehiro towers over you, slowly unfastening his belt and cloak, leaving the leather goods and his katana on the desk. 

“I’m going to lick your pussy. Do you know what that means?”

Cheeks warming, once again surprised by his lack of decency, you nod once. You have read about this particular act more than once and have also heard about it secondhand from some of the married women you call friends although their reviews have been mixed. Books have always made it seem far more interesting, an exchange in the same way a kiss is between a man and the paradise between a woman’s legs. 

“Good, at least I won’t have to explain all the technicalities.” He approaches you slowly and squats down, now face level with your middle. You glance down at him and wonder if you should touch him, if he’d like it, if he’d want you to. “Lift your hips.” The next command gives you reprieve from overthinking and you do as asked, raising them enough that he can pull your nightgown from beneath your thighs, spreading them to fit between.

“If you don’t like something, speak up.” He glances up at you, holding your nightgown halfway over his face. “If you do like something, speak up and I’ll keep goin’.”

The linen of your nightgown stretches and tents in the shape of Yami’s head and shoulders when he pulls it over himself, too big to be fully covered by the fabric. His back is curled into a C shape and the muscles ripple while he positions you, hands that you can feel but cannot see gripping the outside of your soft thighs to keep you from deciding at the last minute you are feeling shy. 

It’s too late for you to fall back on the shy act now, your panties dangling off of one of your ankles. Even if you attempted, you know the man currently fixated on spreading you open with his fingers would surface from beneath your skirt and laugh at you. Your heart simply could not take the open derision and ridicule, already feeling overextended thanks to this evening’s excitement.

“Alright, you’re about to feel something different,” he warns kindly, puffs of his breath fanning out against the slickened skin of your labia. The low rumble of his voice sends another rush of wetness seeping out of your cunt, excitement mixing with terror while you await the pleasure you were promised. 

Your hips shift impatiently on the edge of the dingy inn bed, legs on either side of his still dressed torso. His tank top is untucked from his pants and he no longer wears his belt, discarding the unnecessary while remaining firmly in control of the situation. There isn’t much that makes his mouth water but the sight of warm and just for him pussy is doing just that, his tongue darting out to wet his lower lip.

His thumbs massage the outside of your thighs, keeping you as relaxed as possible, and he leans in to kiss the temptation he can no longer deny himself. A simple smack, loud enough that you can both hear it, yet the moan that escapes you is positively sinful. High pitched and breathy and immediately obscured, clapping your palm over your mouth to keep yourself quiet. 

“Nope,” he simply responds from beneath your nightgown, hand reaching up to remove yours from over your mouth. “What’d I tell you? Half’a the fun is hearing how much you like it.”

One of the thumbs that was rubbing circles into your thigh now does the same on the back of your hand, calloused digit occasionally catching over the surface of your smooth skin. It’s no shock that your hands are soft like your body and your hair and your eyes, it’s what your life was meant to be like the minute you assumed the role of it.  Soft and easy, no roughness to throw you off track.

Yami chuckles and lets his tongue feel you this time, dragging the wet muscle through your folds, rewarded with another of those breathy moans. You do not rush to cover this one, tilting your head backward and letting your eyes flutter shut to focus on the sensation of another lick. He takes his time to get to know you slowly, brushing the flat of it over your hole and dragging the arousal he receives as a reward upward toward your clit.

He doesn’t release his skills on your sensitive bud so quickly but a simple brush of the side of his tongue against it is enough to make you squeal, shoulders rounding in momentarily. Repeating the motion, you squeal again and arch your back, thrusting your hips forward into his face and dragging every bit of you he can see across his mouth.

“W-what are you doing to me, Yami?” You ask breathlessly, elbows propping you up on the bed and keeping you grounded. “I’ve never felt anything like this before.”

Your head swims with unfamiliar pressure, sparking a line from your brain to between your legs, all connected and you fight the urge to slump back onto the bed, too curious about the way that the light linen covering the man between your legs shrouds him. 

“Eating, obviously,” he mumbles against your body, tongue lapping against your clit. Your body reacts to each touch, thighs tensing on either side of his face, hips slowly bucking in pursuit of the feeling again and again. Your back arches and your moans are staccato babbles, elbows finally failing to hold you up when he gives your clit full attention.. “Oh my, wh–,” your back arches off of the bed before you can finish your thought, another rough lick to your throbbing clit followed by the warmth of his mouth while he sucks it between his lips, flicking the bundle of nerves with the tip of his tongue. 

There is no denying that you may be prissy and perfectly pampered but he was clearly correct in his assumption about you being more than meets the eye. The way your body responds naturally to his ministrations, hips grinding and toes curling and lips keening, tells him every little secret you’re too demure to spill. You want to have sex for enjoyment, to chase your own pleasure and have your own fun. 

He’ll never fault someone for that although he believes he can get you to admit it’s the truth. Maybe not tonight but eventually he’ll convince you to drop the “good wife” act. If he weren’t enjoying himself so much he’d grumble about considering a future where the two of you will meet up for this again, too lost in his own enjoyment of your pretty noises to realize how unreasonable this was to begin with.

“Please keep going,” you beg, a tearless sob thickening your voice. 

Yami doesn’t look up, well aware of what he is capable of, but he keeps his hand over yours and continues rubbing gentle circles into it. You flip your hand and face your palm upward, loosely tangling your fingers with his, your hips now dragging across his lips wildly. It’s messy and you are dripping like a peak season fruit, drenching his chin and sending little droplets down onto his tank top and chest. Moans increase in pitch when his tongue dips inside of you, lapping at your sweetness and drinking it down with satisfied grunts, though he can tell you’re close solely by how you ride his face alone.

You lack the words to describe how you feel, not that you are a stranger to self pleasure, but it’s different when someone else is showing you the maximum of how you can feel. Every inch of you buzzes with a pleasant awareness, nerve endings sparking like celebratory fireworks, and you lift yourself up with your elbows to glance down at the man making you feel more than you ever thought possible, your nightgown no longer around his head. You were so lost you didn’t even realize he shifted to holding your nightgown up above your belly button with the hand you aren’t keeping occupied, those astute eyes appreciatively watching your chest heave and face twist.

“Yami, I think,” you start and he chuckles, sucking your clit between his lips again, sending you over the edge and effectively making sure you know how exactly it feels when someone else makes you cum. 

Dots of light spark in the corners of your vision and you slump down onto the bed, too spent from the strength of your orgasm to remain upright. The perpetrator of your current state untangles your fingers from his wordlessly and he rises to standing, leaning over your exhausted body and propping himself up with his forearm.

“Good as you thought it would be?” 

Giggling, you nod. It’s all you can think to do, truly left wordless and thoughtless, grateful that what you read on the pages of the books you hide amongst your more chaste picks were somewhat accurate to how the experience feels. There has been no insinuation that he expects reciprocation so you don’t bring it up, quietly glancing up at him and noticing that the distance between your face and his decreases every few seconds.

“Now taste.” 

He closes the little distance left, tongue pressing against the seam of your lips. You grant him entrance and whimper when your mouth fills with the taste of his tongue, a mixture of acrid tobacco and ale and something you could only recognize as yourself. 

“Pretty good, right?” All you can do is nod dumbly, still splayed awkwardly across the bed. Should you leave? Should you stay? Is that pesky reciprocation going to come into the conversation now? Yami glances down at you with something you’d almost mistake for warmth in his cool irises, rolling onto his back beside you and folding his arms over his chest. “Are you going to head home now or what?” 

You shake your head, letting your flipped up skirt rest against your belly, the air of the room cooling your heated skin. “No but I’m not going to expect you to stay if you have other business to attend to. I will stay the night and leave before sunrise.”

It’s what’s polite. You did pay for an entire night, after all, and your raising will not allow you to be rude. Pushy and precocious at times but never outright disrespectful. The man next to you sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, turning his face to look at you. 

Maybe you are as pretty as he originally thought. It could be all the blood rushing from his head to his dick, a problem he is attempting to solve mentally by envisioning anything but the satisfying contractions of your cunt while it cums for him, but you glow even in this low light. 

“Only thing I have to do is go downstairs and drink and then I’ll just end up running my mouth and losing money.” 

You giggle at his honesty, turning your face to look at him. The gruffness only adds to his aura, as unrefined as a man can be, yet you really do like it. Even if the two of you sit here in silence for the rest of the night, there’s much you feel you can learn by simply gazing at him, a quiet battle of wills unfolding between the two of you like the mist that fills the city on a summer morning. 

Permeating, inescapable, potentially trouble.

[hussyknee]

Jesus is Under the Rubble

“This Advent, while global Christians prepare to commemorate the arrival of the Prince of Peace, our Palestinian kin in Gaza suffer unthinkable violence. Their cries of deliverance, echoing those of two millennia ago, seem to be falling unheard on the United States.”

— by Kelly Latimore icons. All proceeds from sales of this digital image will go toward Red Letter Christians trusted partners in Gaza.

Transcript: Christ in the Rubble A Liturgy of Lament Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church Bethlehem Saturday, December 23rd, 2023 We are angry…

We are broken…

This should have been a time of joy; instead, we are mourning. We are fearful.

Twenty thousand killed. Thousands under the rubble still. Close to 9,000 children killed in the most brutal ways. Day after day after day. 1.9 million displaced! Hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed. Gaza as we know it no longer exists. This is an annihilation. A genocide.

The world is watching; Churches are watching. Gazans are sending live images of their own execution. Maybe the world cares? But it goes on.

We are asking, could this be our fate in Bethlehem? In Ramallah? In Jenin? Is this our destiny too?

We are tormented by the silence of the world. Leaders of the so-called “free” lined up one after the other to give the green light for this genocide against a captive population. They gave the cover. Not only did they make sure to pay the bill in advance, they veiled the truth and context, providing political cover. And, yet another layer has been added: the theological cover with the Western Church stepping into the spotlight.

The South African Church taught us the concept of “The state theology,” defined as “the theological justification of the status quo with its racism, capitalism and totalitarianism.” It does so by misusing theological concepts and biblical texts for its own political purposes.

Here in Palestine, the Bible is weaponized against our very own sacred text. In our terminology in Palestine, we speak of the Empire. Here we confront the theology of the Empire. A disguise for superiority, supremacy, “chosenness,” and entitlement. It is sometimes given a nice cover using words like mission and evangelism, fulfillment of prophecy, and spreading freedom and liberty. The theology of the Empire becomes a powerful tool to mask oppression under the cloak of divine sanction. It divides people into “us” and “them.” It dehumanizes and demonizes. It speaks of land without people even when they know the land has people – and not just any people. It calls for emptying Gaza, just like it called the ethnic cleansing in 1948 “a divine miracle.” It calls for us Palestinians to go to Egypt, maybe Jordan, or why not just the sea?

“Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” they said of us. This is the theology of Empire.

This war has confirmed to us that the world does not see us as equal. Maybe it is the color of our skin. Maybe it is because we are on the wrong side of the political equation. Even our kinship in Christ did not shield us. As they said, if it takes killing 100 Palestinians to get a single “Hamas militant” then so be it! We are not humans in their eyes. (But in God’s eyes… no one can tell us we are not!)

The hypocrisy and racism of the Western world is transparent and appalling! They always take the words of Palestinians with suspicion and qualification. No, we are not treated equally. Yet, the other side, despite a clear track record of misinformation, is almost always deemed infallible!

To our European friends. I never ever want to hear you lecture us on human rights or international law again. We are not white— it does not apply to us according to your own logic.

In this war, the many Christians in the Western world made sure the Empire has the theology needed. It is self-defense, we were told! (And I ask: how?)

In the shadow of the Empire, they turned the colonizer into the victim, and the colonized into the aggressor. Have we forgotten that the state was built on the ruins of the towns and villages of those very same Gazans?

We are outraged by the complicity of the church. Let it be clear: Silence is complicity, and empty calls for peace without a ceasefire and end to occupation, and the shallow words of empathy without direct action— are all under the banner of complicity. So here is my message: Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world. Gaza was hell on earth before October 7th.

If you are not appalled by what is happening; if you are not shaken to your core— there is something wrong with your humanity. If we, as Christians, are not outraged by this genocide, by the weaponizing of the Bible to justify it, there is something wrong with our Christian witness, and compromising the credibility of the Gospel!

If you fail to call this a genocide. It is on you. It is a sin and a darkness you willingly embrace.

Some have not even called for a ceasefire.

I feel sorry for you. We will be okay. Despite the immense blow we have endured, we will recover. We will rise and stand up again from the midst of destruction, as we have always done as Palestinians, although this is by far the biggest blow we have received in a long time.

But again, for those who are complicit, I feel sorry for you. Will you ever recover from this?

Your charity, your words of shock AFTER the genocide, won’t make a difference. Words of regret will not suffice for you. We will not accept your apology after the genocide. What has been done, has been done. I want you to look at the mirror… and ask: where was I?

To our friends who are here with us: You have left your families and churches to be with us. You embody the term accompaniment— a costly solidarity. “We were in prison and you visited us.” What a stark difference from the silence and complicity of others. Your presence here is the meaning of solidarity. Your visit has already left an impression that will never be taken from us. Through you, God has spoken to us that “we are not forsaken.” As Father Rami of the Catholic Church said this morning, you have come to Bethlehem, and like the Magi, you brought gifts with, but gifts that are more precious than gold, frankincense, and myrrh. You brought the gift of love and solidarity.

We needed this. For this season, maybe more than anything, we were troubled by the silence of God. In these last two months, the Psalms of lament have become a precious companion. We cried out: My God, My God, why have you forsaken Gaza? Why do you hide your face from Gaza?

In our pain, anguish, and lament, we have searched for God, and found him under the rubble in Gaza. Jesus became the victim of the very same violence of the Empire. He was tortured. Crucified. He bled out as others watched. He was killed and cried out in pain— My God, where are you?

In Gaza today, God is under the rubble.

And in this Christmas season, as we search for Jesus, he is to be found not on the side of Rome, but our side of the wall. In a cave, with a simple family. Vulnerable. Barely, and miraculously surviving a massacre. Among a refugee family. This is where Jesus is found.

If Jesus were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble in Gaza. When we glorify pride and richness, Jesus is under the rubble.

When we rely on power, might, and weapons, Jesus is under the rubble.

When we justify, rationalize, and theologize the bombing of children, Jesus is under the rubble.

Jesus is under the rubble. This is his manger. He is at home with the marginalized, the suffering, the oppressed, and displaced. This is his manger.

I have been looking, contemplating on this iconic image….God with us, precisely in this way. THIS is the incarnation. Messy. Bloody. Poverty.

This child is our hope and inspiration. We look and see him in every child killed and pulled from under the rubble. While the world continues to reject the children of Gaza, Jesus says: “just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.” “You did to ME.” Jesus not only calls them his own, he is them!

We look at the holy family and see them in every family displaced and wandering, now homeless in despair. While the world discusses the fate of the people of Gaza as if they are unwanted boxes in a garage, God in the Christmas narrative shares in their fate; He walks with them and calls them his own.

This manger is about resilience— صمود. The resilience of Jesus is in his meekness; weakness, and vulnerability. The majesty of the incarnation lies in its solidarity with the marginalized. Resilience because this very same child, rose up from the midst of pain, destruction, darkness and death to challenge empires; to speak truth to power and deliver an everlasting victory over death and darkness.

This is Christmas today in Palestine and this is the Christmas message. It is not about Santa, trees, gifts, lights… etc. My goodness how we twisted the meaning of Christmas. How we have commercialized Christmas. I was in the USA last month, the first Monday after Thanksgiving, and I was amazed by the amount of Christmas decorations and lights, all the and commercial goods. I couldn’t help but think: They send us bombs, while celebrating Christmas in their land. They sing about the prince of peace in their land, while playing the drum of war in our land.

Christmas in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is this manger. This is our message to the world today. It is a Gospel message, a true and authentic Christmas message, about the God who did not stay silent, but said his word, and his Word is Jesus. Born among the occupied and marginalized. He is in solidarity with us in our pain and brokenness.

This manger is our message to the world today – and it is simply this: this genocide must stop NOW. Let us repeat to the world: STOP this Genocide NOW.

This is our call. This is our plea. This is our prayer. Hear oh God. Amen.

(Source)

I found these on Twitter a while ago. Original creator unknown.

I can't stop you ascribing hateful, paranoid meanings to these images, but they're not about blaming religions. Jesus was a Jew born to a community of Jews in Palestine, the cradle of the Abrahamic faiths. He was raised and loved by them, betrayed by their rulers* and killed by Romans. He's a Prophet of Islam. End of.

*Y'know, like how the people of the Arab and Muslim nations love Palestine and crying to help them, except their leaders are greedy and rotted to the core. The ruling class will always only serve the empire.

Edit: alt text provided by @this-world-of-beautiful-monsters

[anne20055]

it’s honestly insane how much dan and phil do to try to be as accessible to everyone as possible. and they litteraly only get better.

like for the three tours:

you can watch tatinof on youtube premium, and while that’s great, you still have to buy youtube premium. you could get it then cancel it, but then you’d only be able to watch it once.

for ii, they were able to put it on dvd, which is great! you still have to buy the dvd, but you can watch it as often as you want.

and then we have wad. first, he was able to do a screening with a pre and post show at the end of feburary, but you still had to pay at least $15 for it, and you could only watch it for 48 hours.

we all knew dan wanted a place for it to stay forever, but i think it’s safe to say that we all assumed we’d have to buy it one way or another. even when he announced it was going on youtube, there were people, myself included, that had a tiny thought in the back of their head that we’d have to pay for it, cause why wouldn’t you? our society runs on capitalism and this is a huge, insane, and expensive project, it makes sense for it not to be free, and yet dan made it accessible for litteraly anyone with an internet connection. i dont think people realize how huge that is, and i respect the hell out of him for it.

even with phil, we all joke about capita£ester cause of all the sponsorships (and it being fucking hilarious), but you can still tell, he doesn’t like to hold people hostage like that, even with society telling him to. even if he isn’t always as explicit as dan. even with the sponsorships, every time he takes the time to still make them as entertaining as possible as if to say “yeah i know this is awful, but hey! at least i didn’t put a paywall on all my videos and then take it down a day later cause people were calling me a capitalist pig!”

everybody should really appreciate everything they do, or at the very least try to do, despite all of society’s bullshit telling them otherwise

i’m proud to call them my dads

[possessesnightshift]

regarding the beautiful bisexual italian man who allegedly is responsible for the uhc shooting...

look, i totally get the impulse to obsess over this random guy and turn him into some kind of a working class hero. we're all desperate to root for someone who can take direct action against healthcare tycoons who make our lives so much harder.

but lately i've noticed a shift in the gravity of this discourse away from "why the hell did a man need to die to get pharmacies to stop rejecting all my claims?" and more towards "i want to hear the cute italian twunk moaning and gagging on it..." and like...

i do get it. not only is he just a very clearly attractive man (despite all the media trying in vain to find the worst pictures of him to show), but he has a grab bag of random personality traits that manage to make a lot of people relate to them, even if the claims are dubious at best

he was an avid reader, he was an elon musk follower, he went to an ivy league, he was a chronic poster, he had anxiety, he was a stemcel, he was bisexual, he had mein kampf on his goodreads list, he wanted a white girl to go bug on his dick...

all of these things combined are enough to make this man fascinating to almost anyone. some of them even make him sympathetic to a lot of people (even if stuff like the bi thing is most likely unfounded)

but i want to make something absolutely clear.

this is not. about. luigi mangione...

hell this isn't about ANY suspect that could be the perpetrator (we do not KNOW if luigi mangione can be found guilty until an actual jury goes into deliberation. otherwise we're just putting our blind faith into the nypd which is definitely sketchy, even if the evidence does seem to indicate it's him thus far...)

no this is about one man and one man only:

Brian. Motherfucking. Thompson.

even if this act had been done by some unglamorous 60 year-old trailer trash person instead of a fit, attractive 26 year-old, this shooting is still not about him or his politics or whether he should or shoudln't face justice

no this is about the fact that brian thompson was valuable enough to his company to be a multi-millionaire, but not so valuable that the meeting he missed due to his execution had to be postponed. not so valuable that his position wasn't filled in a matter of days.

this is about the fact that the unceremonious death of an "innocent" man was a better policy in terms of increasing people's access to health coverage than anything the democrats or the republicans advocated for in the past decade. it's the fact that brian thompson's death apparently hurt people very little and helped people a lot.

it didn't have to be this way.

they made it this precarious on purpose because they assumed they could get away with it.

gun to my head? i personally think luigi mangione doesn't deserve to see jail time even if he is guilty. daniel penny executed a black homeless man and he doesn't have to go to prison. kyle rittenhouse is a free man. meanwhile marcellus williams was proven innocent and executed anyway for the crime of not murdering anyone. you can't convince me there are no murders the state wouldn't just unconditionally support if it's in their class interest. if that's the way it is, we deserve to allow this man his "legal kill" that serves us in our defense against the violence of the capital class.

but even if he goes down, even if they make an example out of him, it does not matter.

because this story is not about the killer.

it is about the man who was killed...

and the question of why he had to die for our healthcare needs to be properly addressed...

enjoy the memes for this brief moment in time. but once the glamor and intrigue dies away and we can stop drawing horny fanart of the alleged shooter, we need to circle back to talking about brian thompson. he needs to be the centerpiece of this story. his actions. his ruthless drive to turn a profit. the community of billionaires looking out for themselves. THAT is what this should be about...

we are brushing up against severe disempowerment in the new trump administration. we CANNOT fumble this opportunity for class solidarity...

get it all out of your systems

and turn right back around and demand to know whether these ceo monsters are planning on rejecting our claims the moment this story has faded into the background

[myfriendpokey]

tunnel notes

i wrote some extra little notes and thoughts for the bonus tunnels in anthology of the killer, and then removed them before release; i didn't like the prescriptive feeling of leaving that stuff in the "final package" as if it was something people should feel obligated to engage with. but as of today it's been 30 days since the loader came out, so i figured i'd dump some of them online, for the benefit of whoever is interested in these things.

History: HISTORY IS A NIGHTMARE FROM WHICH I AM TRYING TO AWAKE is one of many famous zingers given to Stephen in Ulysses and I’ve always wondered if it’s especially Irish as a sentiment, Ireland sort of feeling like the “Oops! All Peasants” edition of European history as a whole – same misery, exploitation and death minus the occasional episodes of feudal colour or triumphant empire-building that seem to make the past tolerable for other people, and give them their own sense of demarcated time. But then I’ve never been much good on Irish history, which has always just felt like an interminable, indistinguishable series of massacres and betrayals and missed shots. Was I not paying attention or was this how it was taught in school? Well, it would have fit the style at the time – I was born in 1989, smack at the start of the famous end of history era. The 90s in Ireland meant the peace process and infusion of American capital to our backwards shores, all the more reason to cosign the idea of an abrupt and permanent break with a history notably lacking in the non-depressing or picturesque. All our history textbooks seemed to trail off at the point we’d joined the EEA. And even as this new modernity just started seeming like the monstrous antiquity dressed up in different clothes – hooded prisoners transported to torture sites through Shannon airport, our patchy social infrastructure dismantled by burghers, ghost estates and half-completed monuments scattered around like the ruin theory of value with more leprechaun imagery – there was still a sense that any change was off the table. You didn’t want to drag us back into history, did you? History seemed to have “ended” in the same sense Freddy Krueger did – done away with in ways that none of the grown-ups ever wanted to talk about, and now officially a non-presence, even if all the kids in town were mysteriously disappearing.

--

Art: One reason I wanted to do an episodic series is just to see what would turn up, if any recurring interests would build despite a minimum of planning. One of the themes turned out to be, “art” – or specifically modernist art – and I am curious about why that would be. A recurring tendency in modernism was the idea that only by destroying the world as it currently existed could we clear space for anything better to emerge. Under the cobblestones, the beach! But this was always attended by a kind of fear: that clearing away the old structures would just allow something even worse to emerge, unmasked. Under the cobblestones, more corpses! And that the bleakest tendencies of the period would now run free without even the emptiest symbolic constraints to chafe against. Max Ernst’s painting of the fascist victory in Spain, of a huge, grinning oaf rampaging over the landscape like a kaiju while a miserable birdlike figure remains haplessly grafted to its leg – is titled both “The Angel Of Hearth And Home” and “The Triumph Of Surrealism”. As if to suggest that these are each the same thing, as though a cause of creative liberation worth devoting your life to and an empty cliché of domestic repression had so little light between them as to not even be worth the effort of distinguishing.

Part of the reason works like that make their way into the games in little ways is because I just like them, and go back to thinking about them. But the status of modernism in the 21st century is an odd one; the most tentative and inventive parts got dropped, while the brashest and stupidest aspects curdled into a kind of official state ideology – the idea of “creative destruction”, which just seems to mean a vague sense that it’s punk rock to create ridesharing apps. The monkey’s paw curled and the emptiest version of the modernist credo became something we all have to live with.. and yet I still can’t help but be moved by the source works and the goofy, ridiculous temerity of that wish to transfigure the world. sometimes it feels like only way to keep faith with those ideas is to travesty them, to try returning to them some of that sense of fear and doubt without which they just sound like so many web design agency manifestos. Kept alive in the breast of so many grimacing waxworks, underground.

Another reason to put this stuff in a horror game: to try getting at that feeling in a dream of looking in the eyes of people you know, people you love, and seeing nothing there anymore, seeing them look right past you. An earlier horror game idea I used to think about would have ended with the protagonist being dismembered and eaten by Gertrude Stein.

--

The moral: I’ve seen people express a sense, now, that merely working in the negative is not enough; to just outline what’s bad without also trying to give a vision of the good, some glimpsed utopia to shoot for. For the benefit of these people here is an epilogue. Imagine it’s the future and the long nightmare of prehistory is over; history proper unfolds as the full expression of human powers unhindered by material subjugation. Some students are given an assignment by a professor to investigate the meaning of a term that no longer exists, the meaning of horror. Well, the students do their best: they watch lots of old movies, put on rubber masks, comb through old fragments of the world that was. They’re enjoying themselves and that enjoyment warps the process, they keep drifting into pleasure, unsure what’s meant to be funny and what’s not. They get lost, get confused, lose the thread, famous faces appear under the wrong names, espousing things that are the opposite of whatever they believed. In the end they all have to admit defeat: they hand in their assignment with a note saying that in the new world, we can’t even imagine what horror may have been. The professor reads their findings, nods, and gives them all an F. No moral.

[image source: James Ensor, "The Intrigue"]

[blue2jay]

Family Game Night

Summary: During a casual family gathering, your parents and siblings treat you like the “black sheep.” Leon uses humor and wit to turn the tables, making everyone see your value while keeping things light.

🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹

“Family Game Night”

The living room was buzzing with energy as your family gathered for “a little fun,” as your mother had called it. Board games, snacks, and banter filled the room—but it didn’t take long for the usual dynamic to creep in.

You sat at the end of the couch, quietly munching on pretzels, while your older sister Melissa basked in the spotlight as usual. Every joke she made was met with laughter, every win met with cheers. Meanwhile, your attempts to join in were either dismissed or brushed off.

Leon, sitting beside you with his arm casually draped behind your shoulders, picked up on it immediately. He’d been watching all night—the way your family interrupted you mid-sentence, overlooked your clever plays, and treated you like an afterthought. He wasn’t about to let it slide.

“Okay, next round!” your father called, handing out cards for the trivia game. “Let’s see who’s got the brains tonight. Melissa, you’re always great at these.”

Your sister preened at the praise, shooting you a smirk before turning her attention to Leon. “What about you, Leon?” she asked, her voice taking on a sugary tone. “I bet you’re good at everything, huh?”

Leon didn’t look up from his cards as he replied, “Not everything, but I am great at cheering Y/N on.” He flashed you a quick wink, making you grin despite yourself.

Melissa blinked, clearly surprised at the lack of attention her comment earned. “Right… well, I’ll just have to win this for the team,” she said, flipping her hair as the game began.

The first question went to you: “What’s the capital of Mongolia?”

Your mother scoffed, shaking her head. “Oh, Y/N won’t know that. Let’s move on.”

Leon tilted his head, clearly unimpressed. “Actually, I think she does.” He turned to you, a subtle smile tugging at his lips. “What’s the answer, babe?”

You sat up straighter, a mix of surprise and determination bubbling inside you. “Ulaanbaatar.”

“Correct!” your father said, surprised.

Leon smirked, clapping dramatically. “Ladies and gentlemen, Y/N, the trivia queen. You should’ve seen her take down a whole team at trivia night last week. She’s unstoppable.”

Your cheeks flushed, but you couldn’t help the small smile that crept onto your face. Your mother frowned slightly, clearly thrown off by Leon’s unwavering confidence in you.

The next few rounds continued, with Leon using his natural charm and wit to redirect the conversation back to you. When your brother teased you about a wrong answer, Leon quipped, “I think she’s just saving her brainpower for the hard ones. Unlike us, Y/N doesn’t need to show off.”

Your sister chimed in again, her gaze lingering on Leon. “So, Leon, what do you even do with your free time? Someone like you must have an exciting life.”

Leon shrugged, completely unfazed. “I spend most of my free time with Y/N. She makes everything exciting—trust me.”

Melissa’s smile faltered, but Leon didn’t seem to notice—or care. Instead, he turned to you, nudging your arm with his elbow. “Right, babe? What about those hikes you always drag me on?”

“Family Game Night” (Continued)

You laughed softly. “Drag is a bit dramatic, Leon. You enjoy them, admit it.”

Leon smirked, turning to your family with mock seriousness. “You should see her out there—leading the way, setting the pace. I’m just trying to keep up most of the time. She’s relentless.”

Your father raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Oh yeah,” Leon said with a nod. “And don’t get me started on her camping skills. If we were stranded anywhere, I’d bet my life on Y/N getting us out of it.” He looked at you, pride clear in his eyes. “She’s the most resourceful person I know.”

Your mother, clearly struggling with the attention being shifted toward you, let out a dismissive chuckle. “Y/N’s always been more of the… carefree type. Not quite as focused as Melissa.”

Leon tilted his head, his smile easy but his words sharp. “Carefree? I’d call it well-rounded. She balances work and life better than anyone. Honestly, I admire how much she cares about the people in her life and the things she loves. Not everyone can say that.”

Melissa tried once more, brushing her hand through her hair with a flirtatious smile. “It’s nice to hear someone defend Y/N so much. You really don’t need to humor her, though. It’s just a game.”

Leon’s blue eyes locked onto her, his expression unreadable but firm. “I’m not humoring her. I mean it.” He looked around the table, his voice calm but carrying weight. “You all seem to underestimate her, but I don’t. Y/N is one of the most capable, intelligent, and caring people I know. I’ve seen her pull off things that most people couldn’t dream of.”

The room fell silent as Leon glanced back at you, his lips curling into a soft, genuine smile. “I’m proud of you, Y/N. And I’ll say it as many times as it takes.”

Your heart swelled at his words, a warmth spreading through you as you looked at him. You’d never seen anyone so effortlessly shut down the constant dismissiveness your family threw your way—and do it with such love and admiration.

Your mother cleared her throat, awkwardly trying to redirect. “Well, I suppose Y/N does try her best. Anyway—”

Leon interrupted smoothly, his voice still polite but resolute. “She doesn’t try—she succeeds. You should give her credit for that.”

Your father grumbled something under his breath and flipped the next trivia card, clearly wanting to move on, but Leon leaned toward you, dropping his voice just for you to hear. “You’re winning this game, by the way. Let’s show them how it’s done.”

You couldn’t help but grin, feeling the weight on your shoulders lift. “You’re on, Kennedy.”

As the game continued, you felt a newfound confidence. With Leon’s encouragement—and the way he seamlessly lifted you up—you started answering questions faster, sharper, even getting a few playful compliments from your brother.

By the end of the night, when the final scores were tallied, you’d won.

Leon clapped loudly, grinning as he pointed at you. “The champ, ladies and gentlemen! Didn’t I tell you?”

Your parents and Melissa exchanged quiet glances, unable to deny the outcome. Even your mother managed a begrudging, “Well done, Y/N.”

When the game wrapped up and your family began gathering their things, Melissa stopped near Leon, her smile still sweet but a bit more forced. “It’s impressive, really, how you stick up for her.”

Leon glanced at you as you stood beside him, his arm naturally slipping around your waist. “It’s not hard to stick up for someone as incredible as Y/N. She doesn’t need me to say it—but I will, every time.”

Melissa’s smile faltered completely, and she turned away without another word.

When the door finally closed behind your family, you let out a long breath, collapsing onto the couch. Leon followed, dropping down beside you with an exaggerated groan.

“Remind me to never play trivia with them again,” he said jokingly. “I thought I was going to get disqualified for defending the reigning champ.”

You laughed softly, turning to face him. “You didn’t have to do all of that, you know. They’re… just like that.”

Leon’s expression softened, his hand reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. “No one gets to talk about you like that—not even your family. I know how amazing you are, Y/N, and I’ll remind you as often as you need to hear it.”

You felt tears prick at your eyes, overwhelmed by the love and support in his words. “You’re really something, Leon Kennedy.”

He grinned, pulling you into his arms as he pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “And you’re everything, Y/N. Don’t forget that.”

In that moment, wrapped up in his warmth and love, you knew that no matter what your family said, you had someone who saw your worth—and that made all the difference.

[pyrotechnicarus]

What program do you write your scripts in?

Google Docs, haha. It's definitely not the preferred or industry-standard way of doing it; it gives older writers at my program hives when I drop a Docs link in the homework folder. But I was raised on it and it's a great collaboration tool, so I haven't made the switch yet (and maybe never will? Actually probably will once Google inevitably starts charging money for it. But not quite yet!).

Through my school I have a free Final Draft license, so I use that for screenwriting (which has a lot more pesky formatting rules and things), but I'm not planning on buying it once my license expires because A. I don't write films that much and B. I can probably hard-code it into Google Docs for free.

If you're insane like I am and wanna use Google Docs for scriptwriting, here's some formatting tips under the cut:

We're gonna be using a page of the Ghost Story script to demonstrate!

I use Times New Roman because Deborah Brevoort recommended it as a more readable (and slightly more condensed) font than Courier. Your font should adapt to your style; I tend to write short, snappy lines with a lot of back-and-forth, so I use Times which is a common font style for comedy writers (despite not writing comedies.) If you write a lot of long monologues, Courier New might give you a better sense of how your script flows on the page. Basically, you want to space your writing so it comes out to 1 minute of performance time = 1 page of writing.

Scene headings are centered and in bold.

Stage directions that start a scene are left-aligned and in italics; in NAMT-standard style, these are center-margin aligned, like this:

But it's kind of your personal preference.

4. All names are centered and underlined

5. Any stage directions that take place during a scene and cue a line of dialogue are centered, in italics, and in parenthesis. If they can start eating whenever while they're talking, I'd put They start eating left-aligned between two lines of dialogue. However, it is important to me that Hao and Józef start eating before Hao says his next line, so I put it center-aligned.

6. When you get to a song it looks like this:

Basically, songs should be numbered and come after a stage direction (even something basic, like "He stands up.") The enter after the stage directions isn't kosher, it's a Google Docs thing I'll get into later. Then you close the parenthesis on the stage direction and put a page break. Songs should always start on a new page. This is because when you integrate the book and score, you can just take those lyric sheets out and put sheets of music in. Nifty!

7. Lyrics are always capitalized. When two people sing the same thing at the same time, you can put both their names over it:

But if they're singing something different, I usually put it in two columns (there is some debate among musical theater writers on what the proper notation for this kind of thing is. But columns are easy on Google Docs, so I use those. When I have four or more people singing different things on top of one another, I use a 1x4 table and make the lines between the cells invisible, haha.)

Google Docs Specific Formatting Stuff

Ok, so, if you're lazy like me and don't want to be hitting 800 buttons while you're writing to format everything correctly (and please, god, format while you're writing -- going back and doing it later sucks) you can use the Google Docs headings to format your writing! And it will even make a nice little outline for you!

So, the default of these settings (on the left) is useless and ugly. But mine looks like this (on the right!)

If you want yours to look beautiful and be useful like mine, you can format some kind of text the way you want it to (for example, I want all my names in 12 pt Times New Roman, centered and underlined.)

Then I go to some random heading and I hit "Update heading to match"

Now, anytime I type a name, I can go back to this menu and hit "Apply Heading 5"... and it will automatically make it centered, underlined, and 12 pt Times New Roman! I make one of these for all my categories of text: stage directions, song titles, scene headers, etc.

But, ok, you still have to open all those menus while you're writing. Well! See this thing?

All of these have keyboard shortcuts (the Windows ones will show up on a Windows computer). You can really easily hit them after each name/stage direction you type instead of fiddling around with font settings. You're a formatting machine!

And here's the bonus: If you do all this correctly, you can get a really nice outline like this one embedded in your document on the left (this is where the song titles on a new line come in; I make a heading style for them so they show up on the outline, but headings only show the start of the phrase that they are part of in the outline. Ignore the numbers being wrong, lol. There's a secret song 3 that we haven't released yet.)

And it's clickable, too-- like I can jump right to Your Face from the outline without having to scroll down 20 pages.

Is this all needlessly complicated and doing manually something Final Draft will do for you? Yes. But I'm set in my ways, and it's free, so maybe it'll be helpful to another Musical Theater writer out there working with someone else on Google Docs.

That's it! Thanks for the question.

[meepmeep19]

The First Time Tetchou placed Jouno above Justice:

The Airport Scene TM is so significant for SGK cuz it marks the first major instance of Tetchou placing something above justice (Jouno). And while it is a 🤌 of a scene, I actually think this was the SECOND time Tetchou prioritized Jouno instead of justice.

When was the first time? It was during the first couple years after Jouno joined.

As much I absolutely LOVE current Tetchou’s unyielding devotion to Jouno, I honestly don’t think that’s how he’s always felt. In fact, I think that he originally hated him and that these two were actually enemies to lovers. This gradual shift marked the first time Tetchou placed Jouno above justice. Lemme explain.

Jouno was literally everything Tetchou stood against when he first joined. An unfeeling, murderous criminal who was allowed to basically get away with it all scot free. Not even JUST getting away with it, no, this filthy criminal actually got REWARDED with actual Hunting Dog status. In other words Jouno literally escaped justice. Ofc, Tetchou was gonna absolutely hate his guts. He swore he would never see this murderer as a Hunting Dog. In his mind, the only way this injustice would be righted is when Jouno finally paid for his crimes and faced capital punishment.

But then something insane happens; the ex-mafioso actually changes. Tetchou starts to see him casually risking his own life to save innocent civilians. He starts to notice the very faint, slightly flustered (and cute) smile on Jouno’s face whenever said civilians would thank him for rescuing them. In just a year, Jouno’s dedication to the HD manages to rival even that of his own. And that’s when Tetchou realizes he was wrong about Jouno and that somehow, this man has actually started to grow on him. (Don’t get me wrong; Jouno does still have his sadistic side that occasionally riles up Tetchou, but it’s rly more of a minor annoyance rather than anything serious anymore.)

But that’s when reality hits him. Jouno’s recent change in behaviour still does not erase his crimes. At the end of the day, he should still be on death row. Nothing about this situation has changed; in the eyes of justice, Jouno is still a criminal. Tetchou should still hate him. It shouldn’t matter that Jouno feels just so fun to be around despite because of his cattiness or that he has an utterly adorable smile, or that he never hesitates to protect the weak, or that he’s just become so stupidly endearing to Tetchou that it’s honestly overwhelming at times.

And yet… it DOES matter. Somehow the thought of Jouno dying has gone from something jubilating to utterly terrifying for Tetchou. Try as he might, he just can’t see Jouno as a criminal anymore; all he sees is a Hunting Dog; a hero. But again, he knows he can’t like Jouno and still claim to be a follower of justice.

And so, Tetchou decides to make an exception to his justice philosophy. Realizing that he just can’t hate Jouno anymore (and rly, doesn’t ever want to) Tetchou Suehiro, CHOOSES to place his love for his beloved partner above his love for justice, for the first (but definitely not last) time.

[sixtynineinchnails]

I've been wanting to make this post for months and in light of the recent ex-presidential ear piercing now seems as good a time as any.

As a non-usamerican, as someone who is pro Palestine, as an anarchist: I am begging you with every fibre of my being to go to the fucking polls this fall and

VOTE.

Disclaimer: I don't live in the united states and I never have and I probably never will. I can never truly understand what it's like to be a usamerican and I'm not going to pretend like i could. I fully expect to get called a fascist or some shit for saying your should exercise your right to vote but at this point I don't care. I'm scared, we're all scared, and news like we've just gotten tonight is only going to compound the fear and chaos and conspiracy thought and fearmongering and hopelesspilled doomerism we’re all dealing with rn. I don’t want to make anyone’s day worse. I'm not looking to debate you. I just want to say some things that i’ve been thinking about for a long time now while a couple people might actually stop to listen.

The united states of america is the most powerful country in the world.

What happens in the united states government this fall will affect every single person on the planet, in some way, for better or worse.

You aren't just voting blue to avoid trump turning the united states into an alt-right theocratic dictatorship (which on its own is bad enough). You're also voting to avoid the right from gaining power (where they haven't already) in of other powerful democratic countries. You're voting to stop Palestine (and let’s be real, probably a handful of other places) from being wiped off the face of the planet with nuclear bombs. You're potentially voting to avoid a third world war. I'm not saying this to spread fear of these things happening. I'm saying this because if you're not already aware of how huge the scope is here: you're not voting to save your country, you're very likely voting to save the entire world.

I can't speak to how people feel everywhere (if you’re also a non-usamerican please feel free to share how this is/has/will affect your country in the notes) but I want to speak to my own for a bit. I can confidently say that what happens in america heavily affects the political and social situation here in canada. We would not have had a convoy of thousands of people drive across the country (which takes days to do) to occupy our capital city for a month and halt almost $4 billion in trade to protest, i kid you not, wearing a mask during covid, if trump supporters hadn't paved the way (and directly influenced canadians to follow in their footsteps). We wouldn't have had "concerned parents" protesting against sex-ed and LGBTQ+ inclusivity in schools (protests full of armed+mounted police which they brought their young children to during school hours) if trump supporters hadn't paved the way. There are people waving flags and signs around on street corners along major roads every single week everywhere from the largest city in our country to small towns of under 5000 people. I’ve heard of people who’ve spiraled into such severe conspiracy rabbitholes that their entire lives and personalities have changed in just a few years. Despite being canadian nationalists, these people and their patterns of behaviour are all a direct result of donald j trump and his followers. And no matter your political leaning, pretty much everyone hates our current prime minister, our economy is bad, even people with decent incomes can’t afford to eat, and everyone is frothing at the mouth for something to happen. If america votes trump this fall, I see very little hope that our country won't vote conservative (our main right-wing party). They will backpedal decades of LGBTQ+ rights and Indigenous peoples' rights and climate action funding and children's education and a whole pile of other important stuff. They have made it very clear that they will follow the exact same path as right wing america and there are a scary amount of people here who want that. And even if canada remains centre/left while sharing the largest land border in the world with a trump dictatorship....well I for one can’t see that going over very well either.

And that's just my country. I know a lot of other countries have been battling a similar spike in alt-right groups and conservative ideologies following the last trump presidency. I don't think any of us are truly prepared for what will happen in the event of another one.

Look. I hate biden too. In general I disagree with the very concept of colonial government and money and the division of countries/states/etc and the legal/carceral system and a whole whack of other shit that we have to live with right now. Someone’s said this before but if any of us thought that telling you guys to blow up a walmart would save your country from a fascist dictatorship I for one would encourage it. But none of us are actually going to blow up a walmart, and it wouldn’t solve anything at this point anyways. We all have to take action in whatever ways we actually can and will. Voting is one of many small, simple steps you can take, should take, fucking better be taking. It’s easy, it’s legal, if you mail in you don’t even have to go to the polling station, and if you really can’t vote for whatever reason, encourage everyone you know who can to do so. Hell, if I could vote on november 5th I would crawl my ass over the border on my hands and knees to do it. I'm sorry that the two options are a fascist police state and an even worse fascist police state run by a man who thinks he's a god, but not voting won't fix that problem. You're not going to establish a revolution by purposefully not taking part in social change, and encouraging others not to either. Not voting against trump = voting for trump. If you don't vote and that orange nukefucker takes over your country it is your fault. And we’re all going to pay for your inaction, especially the people in places like Palestine who will be in significantly more danger than they already are if trump gets his fake tanned hands on the situation.

Anyways. Keep fighting. Stay safe. Do what you can. Don't give up. There is always hope for a better future. And for fucks sake go vote.

Oh and if we do end up in the worst timeline this november and I see you anti-voting fuckers making "lmao time to move to canada" jokes...count your fucking days.

-

TLDR: usamerica is not the only place in the world affected by the actions of usamerica. If you’re still railing against voting at this point you’re pro-trump lmao.

[marvelmusing]

Game of Survival

Pairing: Darklina x Star Summoner!Reader

Inspired by the Hunger Games

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

“You know who we are?”

Despite the swaying of the carriage as it speeds down the Vy, you manage to remain seated as you look at the two people in front of you. Staring at the man who had spoken, you nod.

“Aleksander Morozova and Alina Starkov. The first, and only, joint victors of the Grisha Games.”

Each year, a region of Ravka is selected and its people are tested for Grisha power. A member of each of the seven Grisha orders are brought to the capital of Os Alta where they will be trained by a victor Grisha of the same order, before they are entered into the Grisha Games for the entertainment of the nation and beyond.

The Games are incredibly popular amongst the otkazat’sya, with the governments of Fjerda and Shu Han offering their own Grisha as tributes.  

As Ravka’s only shadow summoner, Aleksander had won his first Games at thirteen, the first year that had eight tributes competing instead of the traditional seven. His victory has allowed him to live in the capital as a mentor ever since, though no other shadow summoners have been discovered yet.

Considered far too young to watch the Games by your mother, you hadn’t seen Aleksander’s power on display as he emerged victorious after a vicious fight to the death with a tidemaker the same age as him.

But the year Alina had been discovered as the sun summoner, you were old enough to watch as she wielded her light ferociously against her opponents. As another unique summoner, Aleksander had been assigned as her mentor.

The year Alina had entered was an event for the history books. In a dramatic twist, the Gamemaster sent Aleksander into the arena and the audience had watched with morbid delight as he had slayed countless tributes to find a wounded Alina.

It was all the people could talk about, whether he would be able to find her in time.

When it came down to them as the final two in the arena, an announcement was made, and they became the first ever dual winners of the Grisha Games. People had been elated, celebrating in the streets, and the parties had lasted all night long.  

Some people still believe they should have fought to the death. There can only be one victor of the Games. But looking at the two of them now, their hands clasped together as they sit with their shoulders touching, you cannot imagine either one of them killing the other.    

“How long have you known that you’re Grisha?” Alina asks you.

“Since I was ten. My mother always knew I was different, so she made sure I was never tested. I don’t think she ever knew exactly how different I was.”

“You can summon at will?” Aleksander asks.

Briefly, you glance down at the silver cuffs that encircle each of your wrists, you’re allowed normal movement wearing them but they prevent you from using your power. Then you look back at Aleksander and nod.

He studies your expression for a moment, before he nods slowly in acknowledgement.

“Keep that to yourself for the moment. We’ll use it to our advantage.”

The months before Alina had entered the arena, support for her had been mixed. Some people thought her unique power of sunlight was a blessing that would carry her to instantaneous victory.

However, the footage from training sessions and interviews with her had many people convinced that she was a naive young woman with a limited grasp of her abilities.

Now, you wonder how much of that had been a manipulation technique crafted by the man in front of you, who had been subjected to the cruelty of the Games at a young age and has been dealing with the whims of the nobility ever since.

“You’ll be living with us for the next six months,” Alina informs you, though you already knew that.

“Next week, you’re to meet the King,” Aleksander adds.

Nerves bloom in your stomach at the thought of displaying your power to the Court and Aleksander seems to notice your apprehension as he settles his free hand over yours.

“We shall be right by your side.”

“Until it’s time for me to fight to the death against seven other people.”

“Until then,” he agrees. “We will do all we can to ensure that you are prepared for the Games.”

The sound of people gathered on the streets, clamouring for a look at the couple’s first ever tribute, reaches your ears and you’re tempted to cower away from the windows even though the decorative layer of lace acts as a curtain to shield you from their view.

“What do you want me to be?” you ask quietly.

They both stare questioningly at you.

In response, you nod in the direction of Aleksander and begin to explain.

“Before your Games you were small and unassuming, an intentional underdog. Afterwards you’re mysterious and aloof.”

Glancing at Alina, you observe the curious tilt of her head and the intrigued spark in her eyes.

“Before, everyone thought you were innocent and helpless, then strong and brave during the Games, and now you’re Os Alta’s darling.”

Nervously, you look down at your tattered clothing that had been torn during the struggle after your power had been revealed - when you had tried to escape.

Aleksander leans closer, hooking a finger beneath your chin so that you meet his dark eyes. His gaze flickers over your features as if he is attempting to memorise every inch.

“You are going to be undeniable in your power. You will show them that you are bright and beautiful and something remarkable.”

Alina brushes a few strands of hair from your face, smoothing it gently back into place as Aleksander traces a delicate line along your jaw to keep your eyes on the two of them as he continues to speak.

“They will all want you by their side, and not a single one of them will be deserving as your equal.”

His words have you spellbound by his casual confidence, as if he is speaking this all into existence.

“You are going to be our little star,” Alina says softly with a smile that has warmth blooming in your chest. “You’ll never have to hide yourself, ever again.”

Then the carriage jerks to a stop at the gates of the Morozova estate. A crowd has formed by the entrance, otkazat’sya commoners all eager to catch a glimpse of you.

Aleksander steps out of the carriage first, smoothing down the front of his black kefta as his dark eyes skim over the crowd.

He then extends his hand for Alina and the sound of the crowd intensifies at the sight of the sun summoner glistening in her black and gold kefta.

Inhaling shakily, you close your eyes and attempt to draw some strength from Aleksander’s words. You are going to be undeniable.

Head held high, you take Aleksander and Alina’s waiting hands as you step down onto the cobbled path. Some people in the crowd openly weep, whilst others make the symbol of the saints with their hand.

The reverent whispers of your name send a shiver down your spine and as you step through the gates Aleksander ducks his head down to murmur against your ear,

“We are going to change the world, little star.”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

marvelmusing Tag List: @dreamlandcreations @blanchedelioncourt @idaofinfinity @slytherheign @ellooo0ooo @vixenofcourse @dumb-fawkin-bitch @jane-arthur @ilikefictionmen @budugu @watersquirtpewpewboomm @mysweetlittledesire @dhampiravidi

S&B Tag List: @motheroffae

Aleksander M Tag List: @nyctophiliiiiaaa @jazmin2211 @wooya1224 @seronsalk @veescorneroftheworld

BB Characters Tag List: @rachlovesactors @noortsshift @aikeia @weallhaveadestiny @two-unbeatable-beaters

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

So I replayed Mother 3 very recently. Had a good time with it. Beyond everything else, I think that Mother 3 is actually a pretty good game, and one of Nintendo's better games in its line-up. Despite a lot of what I am going to say about it down below, coming from a perspective that has learned a lot since I originally played the game, this remains a very distinctive title for Nintendo. It is both intensely political and has some of the most prominent queer characters in their library, and in many ways, it is the type of game I want Nintendo to be making. It is a game that is actually saying something.

But, I think that I've found myself more critical of what exactly it's saying now than I have in the past.

The Politics of Mother 3

This is an interesting point to start off with, because Mother 3 is pretty transparently a very anti-capitalist work. It directly associates the introduction of money and capitalism to Tazmily Village by Porky and the Pigmask Army with the illness in society that takes root afterwards. This does immediately though beg the question of what exactly is the solution to the issue? If not a capitalist society, what is the best way for society to be ordered?

In strict accordance with its canon, the answer is an unknown. The climax of the game involves pulling the seventh and final needle, and causing the rebirth of the world. However, we the player are not given any indication as to what this rebirth of the world actually entails, merely being told during the fake-out end screen that everything is going to be okay. Lucas, the boy with the good and pure heart, pulled the final needle, so everything is going to be okay. Of course, we are only told this. Lucas, as a silent protagonist, is given no real motivations of his own, merely acting as a vessel for the other characters with moral statements: Alec, Wess, Kumatora, and the Ma[*******]. Lucas can really be argued to not be much different than Claus is. Lucas is given no real motivation to pull out the needles, and as a result, the end result of the world is similarly empty. You, the Player, Lucas's Porky Minch, are asked to imagine what a world that might look like.

Except. That's not really the whole story, is it?

After you beat the game, you get the title you see at the beginning of the post, replacing this one in the end card. On some level, this is obviously intended to be a callback to the titles of both Mother 1 and Mother 2, in particular with the image of the Earth acting as the O. But one must contrast it with the original title and there's an obvious message. By the end of the game, your rebirth has healed the world, removing its metallic pieces and allowing the natural world to flourish again.

Mother 3 is anti-capitalist, but it is also pastoralist, and I would even argue flirts with primitivism quite often. The replacement of the metal in the logo with wood here is not accidental, and it resonates with the themes and ideas that the game has been telling you for quite some time. While the fate of the world is ambiguous in the narrative, thematically speaking, Mother 3 has an idea of what the world should look like.

Life in Tazmily Village is quite simply by the time that Fassad and the Pigmask Army show up. There's very little in the ways of modern technology, and there's also no sense of money or a market. The items that you find in Thomas's Bazaar are all free of charge, and can be taken freely. This is deliberate, as is revealed very late into the story, as the village is full of survivors of an apocalyptic scenario and blamed their current lifestyles for causing it. They choose then to take on the role of a small, quiet village, the kind of lives they all wanted. While it is not clear whether that society was capitalist to the same extent as what would come afterwards, the message is pretty clear. The pastoral lifestyle that Tazmily exists in is considered the ideal, it is what several characters, including Lucas, fight for.

This, by itself, puts a bit of a conservative spin on the work as a whole. Mother 3 is not anti-capitalist in the same way that a communist or a socialist would be. It is not concerned with the plight of the workers, or even generally for society's well-being. You perform no meaningful anti-capitalist action in the entire game. You cannot improve the lives of the elderly that were placed in Old Man's Paradise, a decrepit and falling down nursing home. You cannot stand up for the exploitation of the workers of Tazmily Village. You engage with the capitalist system of shops and labor with no real alarm.

But where this gets really interesting is in the social messaging. A conversation that initially struck me as quite odd replaying this game was the conversation in Chapter 4 involving Mike in the nursing home.

Mike: I can't keep burdening Lisa forever, but I do have a Happy Box and nice-bodied girls like Nan and Linda here to keep me company, so I'm pretty happy in my own way. Linda: I'm sorry, Mike, but that's called sexual harassment these days. Mike: This is a hard world we live in now. How disappointing.

This scene is obviously meant as a joke at Mike's expense here. You're not really supposed to take his side here, but let's break this down a bit more here given the context of the entire game.

Mother 3 gives literally nothing to the Pigmask Army what so ever. The game never, ever, tries to play anything they do as a positive. The encroaching of capitalism and suburbanization is not presented as a net zero, it is presented as entirely negative. Nothing good came out of it, the world is worse off for it. Wildlife is mutilated for sport, people become engrossed in their pursuit of happiness (another point we'll get into shortly), and the people of Tazmily drift away from each other, becoming more rude and more curt to each other, especially towards those deemed "undesirable".

But the scene reads strangely in this context. The constant here is Mike's inappropriate comments about women's bodies, not their nonacceptance. It is explicitly marked as a change to the world that the concept of sexual harassment even exists, and there's no other source for it than the Pigmasks. The Pigmasks introduced feminism to Tazmily, and in the overarching narrative of the story, that's a bad thing. The game makes no concessions towards any good result happening, so every impact must be bad. While in a vacuum, the butt of the joke is Mike, the narrative actually vindicates him.

To give another example of the game's conservative bent, let's look at family structures that are present in the game. One might expect that family structures would be much more loose in the pastoral Tazmily Village than in the suburbanized Tazmily Village. After all, the nuclear family as it exists today is entirely an invention of capitalism, and specifically, came about because of cultural shifts after WWII in response to the growing Cold War.

But if you paid attention, the family dynamics don't actually shift at all. Families in Tazmily remain nuclear the entire time. This makes sense given the canonical explanation, that Tazmily was a rush job and these people were probably coming from a culture that had nuclear family dynamics, but it grates roughly with the idea that Tazmily Village is an ideal. What goes unstated is that the nuclear family is inherently a part of that. Sure, the gender roles become more clear past Chapter 4, where men go off to work and the women stay home, but in truth, it really wasn't that much different in the past.

Then there is the Happy Boxes. In the narrative of the story, the Happy Boxes are dubiously brainwashing devices. They emit odd lights and noises, and at least a couple of characters are enraptured with them to the exclusion of all else. They are the devices planted in Tazmily to begin its metamorphosis into a suburban town. But, there is actual brainwashing later on in the game, so I'm hesitant to merely take them at that. Rather, what do the Happy Boxes represent thematically? I believe the answer to that is propaganda.

Visually, the Happy Boxes resemble CRT screens, either TVs or computer monitors, and this is pretty consistent with their placement in homes as well, often being central to living areas. The introduction of television revolutionized the ability to disseminate propaganda to people, as now the same message could be sent to millions of people worldwide with basically no downside. in addition, there's no direct changes as a result of the Happy Boxes existing. People are more rude, more dismissive, and a bit meaner than they were previously, but they maintain their dominant personalities. Some people, such as Abbot and Abbey, are remarkably similar. The message in the Happy Boxes is a more subtextual one. The Happy Boxes are supposed to bring happiness to you, so the act of getting one is the desire for happiness.

This, to Mother 3, is a key poison. It is Fassad who sells the Happy Boxes to the people of Tazmily on the idea that we want to be happy, and there's nothing wrong with wanting happiness. This of course being Fassad, we are inclined to as the viewers see their words as deceptive in nature. Since the core part of Mother 3's politics is pastoralism and anti-capitalism, it makes pursuing happiness a moral ill. This is probably why there's no real sympathy given to any of the workers in the story. They were the ones who chose to pursue happiness, chose to get a Happy Box, and chose to listen to Fassad's words. They should have remained resolute in not getting a Happy Box. Working in the system is being part of it. It's being complicit.

(In a way that is, of course, separate from the ways in which the main party are also working in and complicit in the system.)

This isn't to say to end this that Mother 3's politics are wholly bad. It provides, for example, the important connotation that suburbanization comes at a cost. The happy, suburban lifestyle comes at the mistreatment of the elderly, the outsiders, and of queer people.

Oh yeah we haven't talked about that hu-

QUEERNESS AND MOTHER 3

So we're going to have to talk about the Magypsies. For the remainder of this post I am not going to call them that, because their name just straight out includes a slur used against the Roma, and given that they play into the mysticism tropes of them in media. This post isn't about that, but it is worth bringing up here and it's why I censored their name earlier.

(As an aside, there's an entire post to be made talking about specifically Fassad, and the ways in which he is coded quite bizarrely as Islamic, from Fassad's dress and name, to his focus on bananas, and his proper introductory chapter taking place in a desert and being in charge of a pair of monkeys. In addition, the fact that Fassad is associated with the introduction of money and being a propaganda mouthpiece is...concerning. This isn't strictly the point of this section but it would feel remiss to not include this in some place, and this felt like the best.)

What specifically the Ma[*******] are in the narrative is never defined. They are left somewhat gender ambiguous, although undeniably queer.

This, to me however, is limiting to an understanding of them, and honestly I think we should just say it here.

They're meant to be a facsimile of trans women.

Now, whether or not specifically they are trans women or are meant to merely be in drag is up in the air, and I don't think either option is actually good. Any claims of gender ambiguity go out the window given that they are all effeminate looking men, refer to each other as women, and face either general ambivalence or outright derision by other characters in the story. "Is it a he or a she?" is not really meant kindly. They are also in a whirlpool of homoerotic innuendo, and when discussing them being facsimiles, whether or not they are actually trans women or men in drag is pointless. Those are the same things when presented this way.

Mother 3 also doesn't really know what to do with them or how it even really feels about them. They are both intended to be comedic and also magical protectors of the land. They are part of the protagonist faction but are entirely passive, figures that merely guide and help awaken powers in the actual protagonists before being pre-determinately fridged as the story progresses. There is one exception.

Locria, or really, Fassad, the con-artist formerly known as Locria. The game reveals very, very late into the story through a floor in the Porky Tower and in Miracle Fassad's use of PK Starstorm that Fassad is very likely Locria, a traitor to her other friends and assistant of the Porky Empire. At no point ever is Fassad's gender or sex ever in question. He is referred to entirely with male pronouns, is discussed as a guy, and even once his identity is revealed as Locria, the mouse that he lived with still refers to him with male pronouns. This to me is kind of critical to my distinction of them as facsimiles of trans women, because there would be no reason to make Fassad explicitly always male. Fassad betrayed the others, and assimilated into what the capitalist army needed of him.

Or, well, that's a nice way of thinking about it. The Ma[*******] existed on the Nowhere Islands for much longer than the people of Tazmily Village. In Mother 3, there is basically no other meaningful signifier of queerness to be seen in the entire game. There are no gay men, there are no gay women, and there is no other gender ambiguity. Even Kumatora, who was raised by Ionia, is basically a tomboy in her appearance.

The people of Tazmily Village are seemingly completely unaware of their presence until later in the game, as it seems to be that they are completely unaware of queerness. The message the game tells here is that queerness essentially exists outside both the pastoral idealism and the capitalist dystopia that exist as the two main points of reference. They willingly self-sacrifice to see the world change, but while they are invested in the world not being destroyed, the time will come no matter what. They aren't shown to be reborn in the new world either, as none of the textboxes can be attributed to them.

Is it positive? Is it negative!? Who knows! I don't think I have come to particularly like their depiction in this game as a trans woman, they aren't really uniquely hated or loved by the game's narrative. If anything, the game just seems to regard them as existing, and pretty okay people, if not very weird in their queerness.

Conclusions I guess, I don't know, I wasn't intended for this post to essentially become an ess-

While I have a lot to say about how Mother 3 gives its messaging and what messaging that is, it is still a good game from the fundamentals. The characters are well written, the game has a good sense of tension and delivery, etc. I think the game makes missteps, and I do want to be clear here, I think this is a game with good intentions but limited by writers who are probably somewhat conservative and couldn't imagine what a better world would be. But it still takes a pretty massive risk by talking about what it does. In a gaming climate where Nintendo games often try to talk about as little as possible, in order to be consumable vessels for entertainment, I think Mother 3 stands out in a good way. This post isn't even going into the ideas of grief, loss, and motherhood that are central to the story as well. I just wanted to talk politics lmao.

[jeremy-queere]

Screw it, I'm posting SQUIP lore anyway

I just spent an hour writing the word "squip" over and over with varying capitalization nuances, so I am posting the exposition whether it is needed or not.

Okay. OKAY. ok. SO. In the pre-musical days where the Be More Chill novel was published and the internet was young and exciting, there was a tie-in website.

I lied. There were TONS of tie-in websites. They all existed in-universe and were ridiculously interconnected, and thank god for the wayback machine. Be More Chill was advertised - or as Jeremy says, "I wrote that above. I wrote Be More Chill too, with the help of my squip, under the name Ned Vizzini, which I figured was so dumb no one would think was real." The websites were linked as product testimonials or website ads (cheekily disclaimered as "Ads by Squipple").

I don't know if I can even collect all the website urls quickly without missing some but here's a spattering (with the link going to the wayback machine). Most of these websites aren't just a single page but an entire site:

Humiliationsheet.com for a list of Jeremy's daily mortification events

Squipette, a SQUIP - but pink!

Bemorechill.com, Jeremy's book website

InterSquip.com for people worried about cybersecurity - with or without a squip, take this pill and see who has one installed!

GenerationSquip.com - Sort of an unreality disclaimer that also serves as fan hype. (How do we know it's old? It suggests we "google 'squip'" and helpfully provides us with a hyperlink to the google home page.) It calls this "the squipiverse" a "100% participatory reality"

Squipped.com - a gossip rag collecting user testimonials about bad experiences with squips. It, like many of these sites, collected fan-submitted content - "Tell us about what happened to you when you came in touch with a squip! (If you don't have a story, use your imagination--we need ruthless tactics to fight the industry.)"

Squipnews.com - collecting SQUiP tips from the community in the fields of Business, Technology, SQUiP & Society, Health, and Entertainment

Iwanttobecool.org - Promoting the use of squips despite those naysayers Squipsters Against Squips. As the site poll asks: "How should we deal with anti-squip cyber-terrorists? - jail time - fines - physical dismemberment"

SQUIPusa.com - SQUIP-specific insurance which regrettably does not cover squipotomy or squipiatry, but does cover some SQUIP viruses: "SQUIPusa squipsters are now entitled to one free virtual session with an Intersquip squipnician for each week they have lost their "coolness" due to a National Squip Board-recognized virus. Valid up to six weeks"

Squipsoft.com, the parent company of squip technology. Its homepage addresses important questions like: how can you get good grades that aren't so perfect as to tip off the authorities? Use "Squipsoft School" which promises "guaranteed averages of 96.82 in every subject" except for Business Ethics or Compubiology. Or install SquipServer, which is an honest-to-god VPN ad: "Using a virtual private network (VPN) framework, this revolutionary technology turns your squip into a server capable of temporarily extending your coolness to up to three acquaintances."

CelebritySquip.com - "What percentage of American Idol finalists have squips?"

SquipWorks.com - Offering add-on tech for your squip like the MakeOut Optimizer 4.0 or the Nanolyzer (which picks up on social clues to one billionth of a meter).

SquipWorld - A more chatty experience of Squips spotted in the wild and other squip news.

Squipzophrenia.com - (I'm not endorsing the term...) - Information about the phenomenon in the novel where, if a SQUIP is turned on while the user drinks alcohol, it starts ordering them to kill people. This site has academic research on the subject and related Squip disorders. "However, [avoiding alcohol] is not a foolproof plan. Marijuana and mescaline can also cause squipzophrenia, although with the mescaline we're not sure and just think it might be the mescaline, you know?" Other squip disorders include "Loss of recognition of squip insertion i.e. 'I didn't take a pill, I'm just cool naturally!'" which can be cured via the Konami code; Squip flashbacks after a Squip is removed (which the site describes as likely false claims for the sake of "perpetuating insurance fraud"); the dangers of buying used Squips on ebay; or feeling that you can't live without your squip: "acute squipdependence. The solution is to surround yourself with calming bright plastic objects and remember that everything is fine."

Squipsters Against Squips - The notorious anti-Squip lobbying group advocating for a National Squip Registry.

Squipster - A squip-based social media platform that sadly doesn't seem to have made it to the public yet.

[arctroopertinky]

Look Towards the Future Ch3: Guilt

Captain Rex x FemaleJedi!Reader

Words: 7.9k

Summary: Guilt makes you do something you regret. Rex is hurt, but realizes something important.

Warnings: Nightmare / Hurtful confrontation / Self deprecation / Vomiting / Alcohol use

A/N: If you'd like to read ahead of what's available on Tumblr, feel free to click the link to the fic on AO3!

AO3 Link / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter / Master List

You found yourself in a briefing room with Anakin, Ahsoka, and Rex to discuss the events of the last mission. However, you noticed that the words that came out of your comrades’ mouths were muffled and ineligible. But, they all seemed extremely invested in their own conversation, so you thought it was best not to interrupt them. You were content simply standing there patiently, you felt strangely relaxed, but thought nothing of it. Then, they all turned to you in unison, looking concerned and perplexed.

“Y/n, I asked you a question, are you not listening to me?” Anakin asked you, sounding clearly annoyed.

“Uhh…” You couldn’t come up with a lie. “I a-apologize Master Skywalker, can you please repeat what you said to me?” You requested.

Anakin rolled his eyes. “I said; why didn’t you help us?”

You started to look confused. “Help you with what, Master?”

“Help us get off that planet alive, y/n.”

Your chest immediately tightened as fear corrupted your senses. “What...?”

Ahsoka interjected with a stark haste as they all began to march towards you at a steady pace. “You left us there to die! How could you do that to us?”

You jumped a mighty distance back in response to the gap closing between you and your interrogators. But they kept coming. “Please!” You found that you were sobbing, but you did not know when you started. “You know me, I didn’t leave you behind! I would never have done that to any of you!” None of them seem phased by your defense. “I had no choice!”

“Did you really?” Rex sneered . Your attention, which was on Anakin and Ahsoka, swiftly geared towards the clone, whose armor and helmet suddenly changed to that of your old Captain.

“I trusted you- no!” Rory leaned in extremely close to your face, aggressively hitting his index finger against your chest. “We trusted you! I thought we meant more to you, I thought I meant more to you!” You couldn’t see his face, but you could almost hear the tears falling from the Captain’s eyes, you could only imagine his pain. His anger.

“Please…!” You begged. Heaving in between words. “There was no way for me to save you…” You stared deeply into the Captain’s helmet, your mouth hung open in absolute distress. “I’m sorry, Rory…” The Captain showed no reaction to your words. Instead, he said nothing as he swiftly forced one of his hands around your throat.

“You should have died, not us.”

You shot up with a gasp, sweat glazed your body as your mind raced. You had another nightmare. Ever since the incident they threatened your sleep and corrupted many of your dreams. You clutched your shirt as your breaths ran at a panicked tempo. This continued for many minutes as Coruscant’s sun continued to rise, illuminating the bustling skies of the galaxy’s capital as your breaths finally began to separate more and more.

Once you regained control over yourself, you urged your body to swivel to the edge of the bed, placing one foot onto the floor, and then the other. Your quarters in the Jedi Temple used to look a lot… different. On your lone dresser used to be items you would collect from your previous missions. Sometimes, they were gifted to you from the clones of your lost battalion. But ever since the incident, however, you threw all of your items into a box and swept it under your bed. You quarters, that were once bright and inviting, now looked dull, as though nobody had been living there for some time. All that seemed to exist in your quarters now was the minimal furniture that the order sought to provide all jedi for their quarters. Despite the sunlight that made its way through the window, your quarters continued to maintain a melancholy substance to it.

You prepared yourself for the meeting ahead. To allow you to heal from your injuries, it was decided that it would be best to move the post mission briefing from late that night to late in the morning the next day. You were completely healed, but you moved about your quarters like a corpse. You forced your clothes upon you in reluctance, and you cringed as you felt your clothes bump against your scars, never letting you forget what had been tormenting your mind for weeks now.

You then equipped your robe awkwardly, you immediately pulled the hood over your head as if you wanted to hide from yourself and the world around you. You still weren’t used to wearing your jedi robes so much. Unlike many other jedi in the order, you preferred not to wear your robe very often. You only did so if it was necessary because you preferred how free you felt without your robe, all it did in your eyes was slow you down. Now, however, you wore your robe constantly. Your clothes covered up only most of your scars, so your robe was your tool to prevent you, and any others from seeing what made you feel so ashamed. Any sliver of a hopeful demeanor you had the day prior was swept away by your nightmare, both living and dreaming. Any thought that you might have done any good for the 501st was gone with it.

You buckled your belt around your waist, then silently approached your door as you heard it begin to exclaim with a hiss. Once it was open, you took a single step into the outside world. But then you paused in confusion before your hands instinctively reached down to feel your belt. You sighed and twisted your upper half to look back into the quarters. You forgot your lightsabers on the dresser. You lifted one of your hands up, attempting to call out to the force, asking it to bring the lightsabers into your grasp. But to your dismay, the force did not respond back, you couldn’t even feel it within you. The familiarity you lost the day before still did not return to you. Asking the force turned to begging turned to pleading as you strained your hand, desperate to see your sabers fly to you. You almost broke into a sweat as you felt the rest of your body straining the more you needed to feel the force again. But… nothing. Those sabers stayed in the exact spot you left them the night before. You didn’t want to cry, but you also did? But you couldn’t? You just stood there, staring blankly at your sabers. After a couple of brief moments, you lowered your hand in defeat, deflating the tension you allowed yourself to accrue. You reversed your step back into your quarters and grabbed your sabers, one in each hand. You looked down at your sabers as they sat in your open palms, eyebrows furrowed and mouth hung in an obtuse frown. Then, you closed your hands around the weapons, your grip tightening until it hurt. Your eyes squinted at the sensation before you attached your sabers to your belt. You took one last look at your empty quarters, and then at the box beneath your bed. You then turned to fulfill your duties, and your door snapped shut.

- - -

Upon the Resolute, you stared at the door of the briefing room. You knew you were about to be late, but the thought of entering through that door ate at your insides like an animal. You were hesitating to save yourself some comfort, but you could feel the prying eyes of dozens of clones as they walked by, locked on the lone jedi staring at a door. That was enough to push you closer. But before the door could detect your presence, you heard your name from behind you. As you turned to face the source of the greeting, you realized it was Rex, somehow just as late as you were.

“General y/n.” Rex said, approaching you kindly. “It’s good to see you this morning, how are your injuries?” He inquired. His helmet was not on his head, but was instead being supported by his right arm and hip as he held it in his hand. You noticed his warm smile that creased the sides of his eyes and flared his nostrils ever so slightly. He looked happy to see you, and you felt so guilty.

“I-... I am fine Captain, thank you.” You responded coldly. Finding yourself unable to face Rex, all you could think to do next was to turn yourself back towards the door to the briefing room before you could see the Captain’s reaction. You then entered the room, hearing the Captain follow you at a distance as he equipped his helmet.

The briefing room contained Anakin and Ahsoka, with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Mace Windu accompanying the pair. They all stood patiently in a wide circle as they looked over in response to the door rushing open, their eyes meeting you and the Captain.

“Master y/n, Captain Rex.” Mace Windu acknowledged. “Please come in, we are to discuss yesterday's mission.” You filed in and found a spot in the circle that was the farthest you could be away from anyone. You found some relief when you realized that Rex found a spot on the opposite end of where you stood. But, some more anxiety and guilt found you when you realized how easily he could see you.

The meeting dragged at an agonizing pace as you struggled to pay attention to the discussion at hand. All you could think about was your old battalion, and how you failed them. You thought about your nightmare and what Rory said during it; that you should have died. If there was something you could have done to save your troopers, you considered that maybe it would have been worth trading your life for theirs. The thoughts chewed at your brain. And what made everything that much worse was the Captain standing in the room with you. Even without the force you could feel his eyes piercing right through you. With hurt? Anger? Confusion? You couldn’t even begin to guess what he could have been thinking about you. You felt bad for how you brushed the Captain off, but the guilt you were feeling about your troopers dying while you were allowed to live made interacting with him too much to bear, despite how much you surprisingly enjoyed his presence during the battle. You felt like you were an embarrassment to the Grand Army of the Republic for your failure. And therefore, you didn’t deserve any of their kindness or their sympathy.

“Y/n?”

You snapped out of your thoughts. “W-what?” Your eyes zipped over to the Masters. They were waiting patiently for your response to something.

“Did you hear what I said?” Mace Windu inquired. His stance was dominating in comparison to Obi-wan’s, his eyes pierced yours with mysterious inquiry, making your insides curl at his seriousness. It took so much of yourself to look them in the eyes.

“I apologize Master, I did not hear that last part.” You admitted, trying to seem collected. “Would you mind repeating what you said?” Luckily, or unluckily for you, they showed no emotional response to your statement or your request.

“You seemed to have done a good job on your first mission back on the field, you were able to take down many battle droids.” Obi-wan started. “But we have also heard reports that at some point, you were unable to fend off a small portion of an enemy company. Can you please explain what led to this happening?”

Uh oh. This was an interrogation.

“Um…” You squeezed out, feeling sweat begin to permeate throughout your body as your eyes widened ever so slightly. Suddenly you remembered why the two masters were likely here in the first place; to keep track of you and your emotions.

You didn’t know whether to lie to the Master or tell the truth. “Well, what happened was…” You could feel all eyes penetrate yours as they struggled to maintain contact with the two jedi. Time was running out, and you had to say something. But, as you were about to come up with a lie on the spot, you were interrupted.

“General Windu, if I may.” Rex began. “General y/n made herself quite busy with the battle droids. She took down more in one mission than I ever could in a dozen.” All of the attention was on him now. “I saw it happen, while she was distracted a battle droid took a shot at her from behind at its first opportunity, then she was surrounded. I’ve seen this exact thing happen to General Skywalker and Tano many times, it’s nothing to fault her for.” You couldn’t help now but to look at the Captain. Your eyes, now as wide as they could be, stayed locked onto Rex. Your mouth slightly hung open in surprise and your lungs refused to take in any air. Did he just lie for you?

Then, their heads turned back towards you. Your eyes remained placed on the Captain until you realized what they were waiting for. They needed an answer.

“He’s telling th-the truth, Master.” You mentally screamed at yourself to stop the stuttering as you forced your eyes back onto the Masters. “A blaster shot took me down, and the droids took the opportunity to surround me.” Mace Windu clearly didn’t look entirely convinced, one eyebrow remained raised high above the other. He clearly wanted to say something, but Obi-wan peered over at the jedi master next to him with a bit of concern in his eyes before he decided to cut in.

“Well, we’re glad to see that you have fully recovered, Master y/n.” Obi-wan said, before reinstating his dialogue to the rest of the room. “I’m sure you all will be given another mission shortly, be prepared.” He advised. Anakin decided to start making half-joking statements about being the best general with the best battalion who is always prepared for their missions (a complete lie). As the two jedi went back and forth with their brotherly banter, you noticed that Mace Windu still had a look of suspicion in his eyes as he observed the quips being made, his mind was still clearly crowded in thoughts, and it made you extremely grateful that he decided not to interrogate you further.

- - -

Eventually, the humorous conversation died out, and everyone began to return to their duties once more. First it was Obi-wan and Mace Windu, the latter taking one more swift look at you before the door closed shut behind him. Next, it was Ahsoka, who stated she had some personal training to do before the day ended. Then, with the population of the room dwindling, you swiftly took the opportunity to take your leave. You tried to act as normal as possible, but you horrifically failed in front of Anakin and Rex. Now, all that was left was the General and his Captain.

Rex stared at the closed door restlessly. Both regretting that he lied to his superiors and feeling invigorated at the same time. His fingers twitched in his desperation to leave. The Captain turned to his General and gave him an impatient salute, then turned to the door and started his speedy escape.

“Hold up there, Rex.”

The Captain froze, he did what he was told as an anxiety creeped into his chest and locked it tight. He forced his body to turn back towards Anakin.

“Sir? Is there something you need?” Rex inquired. Anakin had a certain look on his face, one full of questions, but Rex couldn’t make out what the General planned on doing with it.

“So about what happened back there…” Anakin took a step towards Rex. “Did you lie for her?”

Oh shit.

Rex, lucky to have his helmet on, struggled to keep his eyes on his Captain as his attempt of an excuse came out as a bunch of stutters and ums and buts. After an agonizing moment of this, Anakin put his hand up to signal Rex to stop.

“Rex, buddy, chill.” Anakin approached Rex and placed a hand on his shoulder. “No one is in trouble, I just want to know what the hell that was about.”

Rex took a deep breath. “Well, you see- General, I-... She-...” As the stuttering continued, Anakin’s eyes gradually glazed over. Rex tried to make any sort of sense, he really did. But he seemed to be in no position to stop himself.

“Rex.”

Rex shut up.

“Listen…” Anakin rubbed his eyes with his index finger and thumb. “I don’t want to torture you for the details. Just… humor me for a moment.” Anakin requested. Rex took a big gulp, before nodding his head silently.

“Do you know what happened to y/n before she was assigned to this battalion?”

Rex took a moment to think on what to say next.

“Not exactly. But… I have theories.” Rex answered truthfully.

“Well just so you know, her entire battalion got wiped out in one mission.” Rex’s posture visibly stiffened. “Don’t try to ask me how it happened. The Council didn’t bother to give me the details.” Anakin begrudgingly explained to the Captain. The General took a step back from Rex, relinquishing his hand from the Captain’s shoulder. “I can tell when I shouldn’t involve myself in certain things, Rex. But… when it comes to whatever happened during yesterday’s mission… is that going to put you, or me, or Ahsoka, or any of your men at risk?” Anakin stared into Rex’s visor with a powerful intent. Rex had to respond.

“No, General.” Rex wasn’t sure if this was a lie. “Of course not.”

Anakin studied his Captain for a couple more moments, pupils dancing slightly as they observed each edge and shine of his visor. Anakin, whether he could see it or not, was looking right into Rex’s eyes, and that made him nervous. No, it made him feel guilty. But against Rex’s expectations, he saw a smile creep onto his General’s lips.

“Welp, I’m convinced,” Anakin stated with a pep. Rex, out of sheer confusion to this reaction, cocked his head slightly to the side.

“What?” Anakin shrugged his shoulders. “I trust your judgment Rex. If you say that everything is fine, I’m going to believe you.”

A smile began to develop underneath Rex’s helmet. “I appreciate that, General.” This warm exchange lasted for only a moment, before Anakin began to step towards the door.

“Listen, I have to go. But, Rex?” Anakin stopped himself as the door hissed open. “You’ve been looking tense recently, you should think about actually having some fun soon, instead of being such a square all the time.” Rex scoffed at the comment, but before he could make up some sort of comeback, Anakin was long gone.

Once again, Rex was the last to leave a briefing. He thought to himself for a moment, pondering why he rushed to your defense. His first thought was that you were simply part of the team now, and he always helped his own. But, Rex never lies, not when he doesn’t think it’s necessary. He could count on one finger how many times he has lied for the sake of someone else. Hell, he’s barely ever even done it to save his own skin. Why are you deserving of such a privilege? What made you so special to garner his attention in this way?

Then he thought about what Anakin said about your battalion, how they all died at once, leaving you to be the sole survivor. At that moment, Rex put himself in your shoes. If he were to lose his entire battalion in such a way, there would be no pretending anymore. He wouldn’t be able to put on an act, that he was the Captain that the Republic needed him to be. No… he would never be able to forgive himself if a massacre of that caliber were to happen under his authority.

The image of your exposed scars flashed through Rex’s head. Oh… you were definitely right there when it happened, weren’t you? The possibility made Rex’s heart burst. He took a mighty deep breath in, before huffing it out all at once. Rex wanted to sit with these thoughts, but unfortunately, he still had a lot of work to do, and it was time to act like the Captain he was expected to be. He would have to reconcile with these thoughts later. The door opened swiftly to reveal the Resolute. Before stepping out, Rex ensured that his armor was on correctly and his posture was proper. Once he was happy with how he presented himself, he exited the room, hearing the harsh hiss and muffled bang of the door as it closed behind him.

- - -

You didn’t really know what you were doing, waiting like this. You felt like a fool just standing here, body leaned against the wall near the briefing room. It hadn’t been that long, maybe only a few minutes, but each second felt agonizingly slow, as if time had slowed down just to torture you. Each time a clone walked past you, you kept your head down, refusing to even take a slight peak at the troopers. For all you knew they could have been saluting you, just to be met with your cold lack of a response. You tried to convince yourself that you didn’t care at that moment, but the possibility ate at your insides and refused to stop.

Suddenly, you heard footsteps that differed from any clone you’ve ever met. Despite their wide array of personalities, each clone’s footsteps had a similar ring to them that you familiarized yourself with extensively, enough to discern if one was walking near you without you even needing to check. But these steps clearly did not belong to any clone. You lifted you back off the wall as you stiffened into a professional posture. You tried your best to warp your face into a natural expression, but without a mirror you were lost to how you truly looked. Either way, there was no more time, the figure turned the corner for Anakin to be revealed.

“Oh…!” Anakin stopped in his tracks. “Master y/n, I did not realize that you were still around.” He gave you a warm smile, and you struggled to keep your eyes on his. “If you weren’t in a rush to get anywhere, you could have stayed in the briefing room for a bit longer. You know that, right?”

You plastered a smile on your face, mimicking the jedi’s. “Of course, Master Skywalker.” You quietly began. “I just needed some time to myself is all.”

Anakin’s eyes drifted about his surroundings. As it was the middle of the day, the staff of the Resolute strolled up and down this hallway quite frequently. If you really needed to be alone, Anakin knew that you knew that this was not the place to be. But, it wasn’t his business to call you out on your obvious lie.

“I understand.” He responded kindly. “But if you need anything, please let me know… Don’t be afraid to ask for help, okay?”

Anakin’s eyes looked deep into yours with an unwavering care. You felt bad about it.

“Thank you Master Skywalker, but I’m okay.” You strengthened your eye contact. “Truly.”

He looked at you for another moment, you could see a twinge of concern in his eyes. But yours lied for you, they looked back at his and told him that you were telling the truth. Anakin wasn’t completely convinced, but he backed off anyway. His typical demeanor returned to him and he bid you a good day before continuing his walk through the Resolute, out of your sight.

You sighed as you leaned yourself back against the wall, hands combing at your hair under your hood, slowing against the grain. But then you heard a new set of footsteps, one you were able to recognize. You stiffened but remained laid back against the wall, trying to act as natural as possible. You heard the footsteps approach your hallway, but then begin to fade away. You turned your head to see Rex, who you wanted to see, but he was walking the opposite way than you’d hope. You would have to get his attention.

“Captain.” You saw Rex halt in his tracks, then turn around to face you.

“General y/n!” Rex greeted, “I thought you left a while ago.” He approached you with energized steps. “Do you need anything?” He swiftly removed his helmet and perched it in between his right arm and his side. He clearly was trying to hide it, but he couldn’t help but let a smile creep across his face. This was going to suck.

You took a hard look at him, screaming at yourself to not let go of the eye contact. “Why did you lie for me back there?”

This clearly threw Rex off. “W-what do you mean, lie?” Rex’s eyes were the first to break the contact as they bounded back and forth between you and your surroundings. His feet took turns favoring one another and the smile quickly faded from his face. “I-I was just telling them what I saw, General. I…” His attempt at words faded into the background as you began to think. The obvious lack of honesty made you all the more upset at the current situation. This was dragging on long enough.

“Rex-!” You rubbed your eyes with one hand as his silence crept in.” “Just- please… I don’t know what you saw out there, and I’m grateful that you bothered to help me yesterday. But please, whatever you think you’re doing by lying for me…” you almost didn’t want to continue, but you believed that this was for the best, “just STOP.” You put your other hand up to exaggerate your point, your fingers outstretched in half-genuine frustration.

“Stop what, General?” Rex looked at your extended hand and back at you, his eyes bouncing between the two sights. Then, his eyes locked onto yours, and his eyebrows furrowed, telling you he was genuinely confused and hurt. His expression poked a hole in your heart. But you had to prevail.

“Stop trying to help,” you said plainly. You tried to make your face look more stern. Rex’s eyes widened a bit to express more hurt. “I don’t understand why you’re even doing this, we aren’t friends, and I barely even know you.” You crossed your arms and turned slightly away from him, your head angled towards the floor to hide the regret that spread across your face. “Just… stop it, before you start to make things worse.” You couldn’t bear to look back at the Captain. There were so many things you wished you could say instead of what you forced yourself to express. You listened as Rex’s armor pieces rubbed together as he shifted his posture. Then there was silence for a while, and you weren’t even sure if the Captain was there anymore, but you still didn’t have the courage to look.

“I apologize General,” Rex stated sincerely, but almost robotically, “I didn’t mean to bother you or intrude on your business.” Then there was a bit more uncomfortable silence, before you heard Rex finally turn around and walk away from you towards his destination. The familiar footsteps gradually died down, until they were finally gone.

You let out a breath you didn’t even realize you were holding in. You let yourself go from your defensive position to look up and confirm that the Captain was no longer in your presence. Then it hit you that you were all alone, and you were without a clone who cared once again. But, this is what you wanted right? To be alone, so you couldn't be a burden on another clone again? So you could focus on the retribution you owed to these men? The thought should have made you feel better, but the guilt continued to creep up your chest and into your throat as you found yourself walking back to your quarters in the Jedi Temple.

You found yourself once again ignoring the clones who acknowledged you as you walked past them. The progress you made from your first mission with the 501st had completely disappeared. As you made it to your door, the guilt within your throat seemed unbearable. Or maybe it wasn’t guilt… oh shit.

You practically threw yourself into the refresher down the hall as the vomit made its way into your mouth. You just managed to stick your face into a toilet before the liquid poured its way out. You had to kneel there for a few moments as your body attempted to wretch more and more nutrients from your stomach. Luckily, nothing else came out of you, but it surely left you winded.

Your hands gripped the seat as you struggled to lift yourself up from the floor, your arms shaking from your weight. As you stood, you peered downwards at the mess you created in the bowl below, and a look full of disgust and distress filled your face. You questioned your choices as the mechanism automatically cleaned up the mess you left. Was this really the right choice, to be alone? To tell the first clone to show you any genuine care since you lost the ones you held so dear to stop caring felt so wrong to you in this moment, despite the mental protests you presented to your heart. Maybe rest is what you really needed… You turned to leave the refresher, but you caught yourself in the mirror. Despite your mental objections you took a closer look, but you did not like what you were seeing. Instead of the confident and powerful jedi you were just weeks ago, all that was left was a broken woman. Dark circles haunted your under-eyes. Your eyelids were heavy from exhaustion but your eyebrows possessed a tireless anxiety that morphed the upper portion of your face.

You looked at yourself for a few moments, feeling even more dread and guilt build up inside you. Eventually you were able to tear yourself away from the sight, and you exited the refresher, heading towards your quarters. You hoped that getting some rest would undo the burden you felt within you.

- - -

Rex stepped out of the air taxi, his feet reunited with the ground beneath him as he peered up at his destination: fucking 79s. Ugh, why was he here again? Oh… right.

(‘Rex!’ Fives yelled to his Captain as he walked past. ‘What the hell man? You can’t even say hello to your brother when he greets you? That’s fucked up!’ Rex slowly turned towards his fellow trooper to reveal a face littered with depressive features. This caused Five’s joking demeanor to quickly diminish.

‘Rex… you good?’ Fives approached his Captain swiftly, ‘I haven’t seen you look this down since… I don’t even know how long! What’s up?’

Rex took a moment to consider if he should tell the truth. ‘Fives, I appreciate the concern, but I don’t think this is something I want to talk about right now.’

Fives clearly looked annoyed at the lack of his desired response. ‘Bullshit, Rex! There’s no way you don’t want to talk about this right now, you look absolutely distraught!’ Fives then looked as though he was deep in thought, before a devilish grin appeared across his mouth. ‘You know what you need Rex?’ Fives asked his captain.

Rex genuinely looked a bit confused. ‘No actually, I don’t.’ Annoyance poked through his response.

‘I think you need a trip to 79s tonight!’ Fives looked extremely proud at his ability to come up with this answer. ‘What do you say?’

Rex rolled his eyes. ‘No. Absolutely not. You’re not just going to drag me there just so I can watch you and the others get drunk again.’

Fives let out a hardy laugh. ‘Come on Rex! Maybe you should try getting drunk too for once!’

‘Yeah, no.’

‘Don’t be such a square Captain.’ Fives said, pretending to be annoyed. ‘You’re always so serious! About the mission, or the Republic, or staying focused… What is with you man? Just loosen up! You’re always so tense, maybe you’re even a little more tense than normal.’

Rex’s nose crinkled in reaction. ‘I am not always tense, I know how to relax without putting my ability to lead in jeopardy.’

‘Whatever you say, Captain.’ Fives rolled his eyes, ‘I don’t think that I’m going to convince you…’ Fives put his arm around Rex’s shoulders to prevent his escape, ‘so I’m deciding for you, you’re coming to 79s with me tonight!’

‘Please no.’ Rex begged.

‘Too late, the plan is set!’ Fives exclaimed as he squeezed Rex twice as hard. All Rex could do at this point was grumble in protest as Fives suddenly made himself sparse.)

Rex filled up his lungs before sighing it all out. The bright lights decorating the exterior forced him to squint as he regretfully made his way into the establishment. The inside wasn’t much better. Despite all of the bright decor it was way too dark, the music was loud enough to pound his chest, and dozens of clones and civvies crowded the interior around him, causing a need for him to push past them as they ignored his need to advance deeper. They were clearly annoyed at this, but Rex didn’t care so much, he just wanted to get this night over with.

“Rex, over here!” Rex heard a trooper yell. He cocked his head to see Fives and Echo sitting at a table together. Typically, more of his brothers would be a part of this entourage, but luckily for Rex he would only have to deal with two drunk troopers tonight. Rex begrudgingly made his way over to the table, dodging clones and the civvies they attempted to flirt with along the way, and took a seat with his brothers. Accompanying Echo was a simple glass of neat liquor, something that he politely sipped at every couple of minutes or so. Fives however, had a couple of glasses full of a liquor that Rex was unable to identify, most likely due to his inexperience. But, either way, his brother had multiple beverages ready at the table, patiently waiting to be drunk.

“Well well, I’m honestly a bit shocked to see you here Captain,” Fives said with a relaxed smile smudged across his face.

Rex scoffed at the comment, “and why’s that?”

“Because you looked the saddest I’ve seen you in a while,” Fives explained before taking a small swig of his drink, “I half expected you to hide in your quarters all night.”

“My goodness Fives, how many times am I going to have to tell you tonight that I’m fine?” Rex rolled his eyes at his brother as Echo gave Rex a slightly concerned look.

“We don’t have to be completely sober to see that you’re not doing well Rex. What, did you have a bad day or something?” Echo inquired.

Rex shifted uneasily in his seat, “yeah, you can say that.”

“Are you going to tell us what’s going on?”

Rex considered telling Echo the truth, but then Fives caught his eye. “Uh, no. I’m good.” Rex answered, realizing he did not want to talk about this with his clearly drunk brother. Echo lifted one of his eyebrows in wanting curiosity.

“Lay off him, Echo, I bet he got rejected by some girl.” Fives interjected. In response to the comment Echo and Rex turned to look at Fives with extremely perplexed and irked expressions. Fives’s eyes bounded between his brothers for a moment, their silence allowed for the pounding music to take center stage. Fives shrugged his shoulders.

“What? I’m drunk, sometimes crazy shit comes to mind and I gotta say it.” Fives then noticed the still full glasses of booze sitting on the table, and he looked back at his Captain appearing absolutely shocked. “Rex! I got these for the table!” Fives impatiently grabbed one of the glasses and shoved it in Rex’s face. Fives almost splashed the drink in his face, but the liquid managed to stay in its glass as it rocked up to the rim. “Drink up! I don’t wanna see your sad mug anymore!”

“You know I don’t really like to drink, Fives…” Rex responded. But Fives wouldn’t relent, the drink maintained its spot in Rex’s vision, completely blocking out his view of Echo and most of the cantina. Finally, Rex regretfully took the glass into his hand to satisfy his intoxicated brother. Then, with a big smile on his face, Fives brought his glass into the air for a toast. Echo lifted his half drunk glass as well, eventually followed by Rex, despite his silent protests.

“What are we toasting to, exactly?” Echo inquired. Fives’s eyebrows immediately furrowed in drunken thought. A response took a lot longer than expected to resonate within the trooper.

“Uhhh… I don’t know…” Fives’s eyes then lit up. “How about we toast to our latest victory… Here's to beating the Separatists!” Fives immediately shot his drink down his throat. Echo smiled and chuckled at his brother, before finishing the rest of his drink as well, being way more polite and patient than Fives. Rex studied his drink before slowly raising it to his lips to take a small sip. His nose and his eyes crinkled at the bitter taste.

Luckily, Fives was extremely preoccupied by getting wasted to notice Rex’s responsible drinking as he quickly gathered another drink into his hands. “Let’s do another toast, shall we?” He asked excitedly. “How about we toast to our new General, for taking down all of those clankers… and for not being too bad on the eyes either.”

Rex, who had decided to take another light sip before processing what his brother had said, blew out into his glass, causing some of the liquid to splash above the rim. The sound took Echo’s attention away from Fives’s drunken activities, his eyes grew a bit wider in reaction to Rex’s face being covered in the alcoholic liquid. Once Fives chugged his drink down, he slammed the glass to the table and let out a holler in reaction to the taste. A smile corrupted him when he looked at his brother.

“Damn Rex, that struck a nerve.” Fives slurred. He then leaned into the table in order to get closer to Rex, who was sitting across from him. “Don’t tell me you actually got rejected by a girl.”

“Fives, I didn't-”

“A fuckin jedi no less!”

For some reason the Captain’s face burned up at the thought as Fives laughed hysterically. He had never thought about you in that light before, but somehow a mere reference to it caused him to react in such a way. He immediately chalked it up to pure embarrassment. No one should be talking about a General in this way, you were owed way more respect than what Fives was shitting out.

“Fives!” Rex yelled, causing Fives to whip his head back towards his Captain. Echo cocked one of his eyebrows, Fives, however, looked mostly unfazed. The two additional shots had clearly worked their way through him quickly, his eyelids appeared heavier as he stared at his captain with a confused expression.

“What..?” His eyes blinked at two different times.

Rex’s hand cupped his forehead in frustration, before it slowly made its way down his face, flattening his nose as they met and taking the booze on his face with it. “You shouldn’t talk about the General like that.”

“Why not? She’s hot.”

Strangely, a bit of rage twinged from within Rex. Not enough to make him act out, but it was enough to make him suddenly sit up straight in his chair, causing Fives to react minimally. “She is our General and we owe her some respect.” Rex stated, trying to sound composed.

Fives blew a raspberry, “whatever Captain,” He saluted, his hand completely missing his head, “I didn’t mean to disrespect your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my-!” Fives was long gone already, heading towards the bar to grab himself more drinks. Typically, Rex would stop Fives to prevent him from getting too drunk, but this time he let the trooper go, not wanting to deal with him at that moment. Echo laughed as he witnessed Fives bound towards the bartender.

“Well, there he goes… I don’t think we’ll be able to stop him tonight.” Echo then looked back at Rex, whose face was still extremely tense from what the other trooper had said mere moments ago. Echo’s face softened into concern.

“You still don’t want to tell me what’s going on with you?” Echo inquired.

“No, not really.” Rex glued his eyes to the distance.

“Does it really have anything to do with General y/n?”

Rex thought about it for a second.

“I don’t think she likes me very much.” Rex sighed, immediately regretting saying anything at all.

“I thought she was warming up to us after the last mission, no?” Echo asked.

“Yeah, but today we started back at square one.” Rex’s eyes darted to his barely touched drink in his hand as he raised it close to his nose. He wasn’t sure why he was sharing so much. “I think I might’ve made her upset.”

“Well…” Echo paused, “I wouldn’t take it personally like that. She’s clearly been dealing with some heavy shit recently… whatever it is. So I wouldn't be surprised if she was upset at that moment, ya know?”

Rex nodded his head, wishing he knew what more could be said to make him feel better. Echo was right, but he didn’t know everything that had happened between the two of you earlier that day. Rex wasn’t about to tell Echo about it either, but he wished he wanted to so Echo could understand more.

“Do you like her?”

What?

“What?” Rex asked.

“Do you like the General?” Echo repeated. “You seemed quite upset when Fives was talking about her.”

Rex groaned, squinting his eyes as he cringed at the question. “I really wish I didn’t have to keep repeating this, but it’s not like that at all. She is new to our battalion and I simply want her to feel as comfortable as possible. That is it.” He said sternly, somehow not totally convinced of his words.

Echo looked a bit guilty, but maintained a smile on his face. “Okay Rex, I believe you. I’m just a bit drunk is all, so I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

A chuckle made it past Rex's uneasy feelings. “Don’t worry about it, Echo. If anyone is making me uncomfortable tonight, it’s Fives.”

Rex and Echo chatted for a while after that. Fives never came back to sit down, but they made sure he was still in eyesight as he kept drinking throughout the night with other brothers and as he attempted to talk to many women. As they spoke about whatever came to mind, Rex couldn’t help but feel conflicted about their prior conversation about you. He defended you and maintained that you were nothing more than what he hoped to be friends, like he wanted to. But for some reason he felt… off. There was this uncomfortable tightness in his chest that remained all night without any sign of withdrawing. He contemplated this feeling, but chalked it up to the guilt he was feeling about making you upset earlier that day. He really was feeling guilty about it after all, he never meant to offend you by helping you like that. He did not know what he really saw on the battlefield, but he saw an opportunity to step in during the briefing, but he guessed that he stepped in too far. The two of you seemed to have gotten along during the mission, but you treated him like a stranger before the briefing, and like some stalker after it. Rex then started to consider why he cared so much about you and about what others thought about you. He tried to ignore these feelings, this desire to know you, and enjoy his time with Echo, but the thoughts never stopped eating away at him.

He then checked the time, despite the continued high population at 79s, it was getting quite late.

“Hey, Echo, I should probably go.” Rex told his brother as he carefully got out of his seat.

Echo clearly had gotten to a comfortable drunkenness, his head rested in the palm of one hand as the other held a glass, and slowly nodded to the Captain. “Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow-” the clone was interrupted by the sound of Fives hollering in the distance, obviously having the absolute time of his life. Echo smiled, “don’t worry about him, I’ll make sure he gets back safe.”

Rex returned a smile to his brother. “I appreciate it, Echo.” Immediately Rex and Echo heard Fives let out another yell, which caused Rex to cringe in response. “I don’t think I can handle him right now…”

- - -

Rex sat in silence as he stared out the window of the air taxi. He watched as an endless line of vehicles made their way across his vision. Thousands of lights emitted across the city, all moving in unison with each other as they followed closely behind one another patiently. His eyelids were growing heavy, so in order to keep himself awake he outlined every detail he could make out of each air speeder he could easily see. Their colors, their models, even their imperfections to keep himself entertained. He was able to keep this activity up until he noticed the Jedi Temple in the corner of his eye.

His heart dropped slightly as he immediately whipped his eyes towards the temple. Despite the tension that persisted in his chest, he was able to mostly get his mind off of you and what transpired earlier that day. But now that the temple was in sight, there was no forgetting about it now.

Rex, with no other option now, thought about you. He thought about when he first met you, how timid you were. But then a smile lifted the corners of his mouth as he thought about your first mission together. He saw another side of you; one that was kind and social and brave. But now? You seemed to want even less to do with Rex now. Rex’s smile fell into a slight frown as he thought about what you said to him earlier that day. Then, Rex saw your exposed scars in his mind’s eye. If his theory was right, you bore witness to something Rex fears every day. He once again considered how he would feel if he lost his battalion, and began to feel extremely embarrassed as he recognized his sympathy for you was what drove him to you in the first place. He sighed at this realization.

‘I’m definitely making things worse for her,’ Rex thought to himself. Rex then remembered what Fives said about the two of you; how you were more than friends.

‘No.’ Rex immediately thought. A Jedi and a clone were not compatible in that way for endless reasons. Besides, there was no way he would ever want that, and it’s not like you could ever be friends, not like how bonded Rex was with Anakin or Ahsoka anyway. You made yourself very clear; it was not something you wanted, so it was never going to happen. And Rex knew he would have to learn to be content with that, despite how much, for a reason becoming known to him, it hurt.

[entropic-saudade]

For @wellofdean (we interacted on your post on my main, but I had most of this in my drafts on this account).

Re: My disjointed, hastily verbalized thoughts on The American Dream as queered (and unqueered?) by Supernatural

The thing about Supernatural is that the thing that keeps the boys from being unable to reach The American Dream (a house, a successful job, a nuclear family) is that compared to the systemic issues (and the fact that it’s all a dangling carrot of a construct anyway) that keep most people from reaching it, what prevents them is the fact that monsters exist—at least, this is a premise as outlined by Pilot. These are two white, handsome, (debatably) cis, (arguably not) heterosexual men, and it should be something that should come as easy to them as others presume it should (See: Wishful Thinking). But a demon burned Mom on the ceiling, and then Jess, so that world is not for them.

But then the show does some interesting things.

They align supernatural beings with corporations (Hell and Crowley, Zachariah and Heaven), in S7 they use Leviathan as the literal embodiment of Thomas Hobbes’ defense of capitalism Leviathan, the all-intrinsic, insidious, corporate greed of corporate America. Even a lot of minor monsters who don’t get half-season or whole-season face times face the same underlying issues that hunters and other Americans (and people in general) face: they just want to survive. They want to keep food on the table. It’s eat or be eaten. Often, especially in later seasons (most notably in S15), we see glimpses of monsters living in dumps for houses just living relatively normal lives before the boys come in and kill them. To the monster, society at large and the hunter is what keeps them from their Dream of family and home and stability.

Monsters like Garth, Benny, etc, have to either be reformed or cooperative with humans, or else they face death. (I want to write on Benny and Garth later bc they’re SO fucking interesting, even among the monster archetypes).

Then, consider the fact that, yeah, monsters exist, but they’re just a decoy/byproduct of the fact that there IS an overarching systemic force that keeps them from ever exerting true free will, (note Hobbes’ social contract says we sacrifice a little bit of will in exchange for safety, that’s the condition of society; the safety here being so long as the boys follow Chuck’s stories they’ll forever be reincarnated into the rat race; if they want real free will they’ll no longer be safe from permanent death): God.

So the show in Pilot establishes that the American Dream apple pie life isn’t for them. Sam wants it, but he feels like a freak no matter where he goes. Dean claims he doesn’t want it, but you brush past his layers and you see how deeply he just wants a family and home (which John says he wants for him too, despite being the major force keeping him from it. Of course even without John, the other forces above kick in, because the system keeping them from it is God—John as an absent god figure represents that from the get go). They talk about the “apple pie life” with fluctuating tones of want and disdain throughout the show depending on their circumstances, but any time they get close to tasting it (Sam’s time at Stanford, Dean’s djinn dream in What Is and What Should Never Be, Dean’s time with Lisa, Sam’s time with Amelia—notably those examples stop after the boys get the Bunker, which I have more meta about I’ll RB & tag later, because it’s the closest thing to a home the show allows them to have), it gets poisoned by their past and snatched away by their path to the future.

Which makes the themes of “family don’t end (or begin) in blood” so important. (Though… consider also that most of their found family dies or isn’t shown by the end).

The way they get their American dream— a home (the bunker), a job (hunting, legacies, a hacked credit card), a family (all their found family, including Jack and Cas) is unconventional. In Lebanon, when John “I want this to be over, I want Sam to go to school, I want Dean to have a home” Winchester tells Dean he wanted him to have a home and family, Dean fully accepts and verbalizes that this is the best the life is going to give them. And that’s beautiful, and they’ll do anything to protect that. They make their little found families repeatedly: Ash, who burns down with the Road House; Jo and Cas and Ellen and Bobby, their family photo burned after Jo and Ellen die in AHBL. Every version of family they get is torn apart but they don’t stop, to the point that God literally has to take away everyone- and they still don’t stop fighting.

There’s smaller ‘jokes’ throughout— Dean never getting pie (never getting the apple pie life), Mary’s pie being storebought instead of homemade as representative of the fact that her home life wasn’t “real”— it was borrowed time. Even the pie in finale, is horridly, literally, delivered as a pie in the face. A joke. The apple pie life Sam got in the end isn’t necessarily even because he wants it anymore (Sam tells Dean such throughout, though he’s a little harder to read), but because Dean wanted it for him. The life Dean got in the end was in death.

Going back to Kripke and The Hero’s Journey as presented in his era of S1-5, the ending really subverted the ideas from Pilot. Dean got the apple pie life (and suffered), Sam did the furthest thing possible from normal and TOOK BACK POSSESSION FROM LUCIFER TO JUMP INTO A CAGE HE KNEW HE’D BE LOCKED IN FOREVER to save the world.

Then you get Gamble doing some interesting things with Leviathan/monster as Capitalist force, literally bringing the Campbell in Joseph Campbell back with Mary’s extended family— notably, Sam only fits in among them at the time because he Wasn’t Sam, and Dean feels like an outsider both in Lisa’s home (on the surface he keeps it together, but the life holds on), and among them even when he is hunting. They make fun of him for the traces of the American Dream apple pie life (golf clubs, magazines… even things he can’t control, like the ‘delicate features’ he gets from his mother, who waged a normal life so badly she made a deal with a demon while he inhabited her father’s body—the force that kept her from a normal life. More later on Mary and how she’s revealed to not be able to stop hunting regardless). The Campbells get killed off, and we get Mary in the form of Eve, Mother of All, who likewise is trying to protect her children. Is soulless Sam’s return in Exile on Mainstreet a “call to adventure”, presented as more of the inevitable same from Pilot— one so close that it’s Dean’s fear, that Azazel is back and will continue the cycle with Lisa and Ben? Ultimately, it’s not Azazel, but other demons and the existence of monsters, those pre-existing systemic family forces that keep Dean from his supposed idealized version of a normal life.

Carver’s era does some interesting things with Amelia (whose flashback scenes are so brightly lit they bring to mind the false cheery lighting of Dean’s djinn dream in What Is and What Should Never Be, of the false light lighting in It’s a Terrible Life— to the point that some have theorized the whole thing was a cope hallucination by Sam), with Benny (who I have meta written about elsewhere I need to post on here— but Benny is one of the most self aware, narratively echoed characters who aligns himself with every member of Team Free Will in just a few episodes. The notable/relevant thing here is that like Sam, Benny the blood drinker is a freak among freaks, feeling like he doesn’t fit in anywhere, has no home, and when he tries to find it (Andrea Kormos, Elizabeth in Carencro), he can’t get it either), with even the angels being thrown from the only home they’ve ever known, with Cain and Death and Rowena and God as a broken family with Lucifer and Amara and Chuck-as-God.

And then you get Dabb’s era, bringing Mary Winchester/Campbell back, the chance to unfridge a woman and tearing all expectations about who she is down, never acknowledging her family was also resurrected at one point, the boys living as “Campbells” in Lebanon (which I loved, but the “I have a home and I have a family” gets kind of thrown away by the end), Dean’s “I have a home,” The Heroes Journey even being lampshaded in S15 with the episode with Garth (more thoughts on Garth and how that episode shows the only real American Dream on the show, and he got to keep it, doubly queered by the fact that they’re monsters who are also hunters). Dabb’s finale brought the Heroes Journey story circle back, quite literally in the sense that time is a flat circle and Sam and Dean are returned to their Pilot expectations— right down to their clothing choices in Heaven. (I know some people find that beautiful, and there is a nice symmetry to certain elements, and I understand the need to end the story that way, BUT it’s the broader story and structure and narrative and message that upsets and baffles me— it undoes Kripke’s whole “rip up the ending” bit, the subverted Hero’s Journey from S5, and combined with everything else in the show (not going to touch Heaven rn but I have Thoughts about that too), it sends the message that what meaning you create in life doesn’t matter (the found family (who we don’t see in the finale and barely gets acknowledged. SAM’s new family barely gets acknowledged, his son is a xerox of Dean and his wife is a blur in the background who doesn’t have any family photos in the home), the queered way in which they create the American dream doesn’t matter)— true happiness comes in death.)

Something something “the one thing I want is something I know I can’t have.” Cas’ confession is not only a confession to Dean but a show thesis. To me.