#except that the creed is her own sense of goodness

[bestworstcase]

First i want to say that i love your rwby analysys, but i just discovered your blog, so can you explain to me why you hate Ozpin so much? Like, every minor thing he does and says must have some malicious intention behind it, but everything Salem does is part of a big plan that means that she's not actually evil?

ooh it’s been a while since we had one of these! 1. i think perhaps a closer read of my salem analysis is called for, because you’ll notice that i am, er, not shy about noting that salem is evil and this is in fact a central tenet of my reading of the narrative; i just don’t think she’s a one-note genocidal lunatic and it is extremely obvious that the narrative is heading in a "the brothers were and are wrong, and salem wants them gone" direction; 2. oz is second in my heart only to salem and cinder, which sort of speaks for itself in terms of "this character did bad things!" not being remotely a bad thing in my book, 3. and speaking of cinder, i get exactly as cranky about uwuified fanon sad wet rag ozpin who’s never done a thing wrong as i do uwufied fanon poor wittle cindy who doesn’t want to hurt people but salem makes her do it for exactly the same reason, which is that it strips out everything that makes these characters narratively and emotionally compelling in favor of mashing them into gutless marshmallow pod people for the sake of… i don’t know, making them neat and bland and easily digestible, i guess? uwu?

4. this is an ozlem house

5. i don’t think ozma has ever acted with malicious intention; rather, he’s been coerced into this situation where his faith in his god, his intense desire to do the right thing, and his terror of what will happen if he fails or disobeys—in combination with a divine curse that is literally designed to prevent him from being able to change or break free, because he has a reflection of himself monitoring his thoughts and actions all the time—are at war with his true desire (he wants to be with salem) and his conscience (he knows that salem was right about what is necessary to fulfill his task, that uniting the whole world under one creed is impossible except by genocidal conquest, and he cannot bring himself to do it because it’s wrong). he’s trying very hard to do the right thing in a situation where he genuinely believes his only options are to commit genocide for his god or sacrifice the whole world for his love and he is desperate to figure out a third option that does not end with "rocks fall everybody dies;" thence the lies and manipulation and all the miserable moral sacrifices he’s ever made.

6. the reason this is an ozlem house, in the sense that my reading of the narrative in its entirety is predicated on the ozlem reconciliation, is that salem and ozma are two sides of a coin: she is doing terrible things in pursuit of a world where the gods aren’t holding a knife to remnant’s throat and he has done terrible things for the sake of the same. their conflict isn’t evil-vs-good, but apostate-vs-zealot; salem believes the gods can and must be defied and ozma believes her defiance is doomed to failure. salem tells him that in order to unite the world he needs to spread his word and crush all who deny him; as the king of vale, ozma uses the divine relic of destruction to lay waste to not only his enemies but even his own allies, thus he forges the vytal accords that established the united global order in which the story takes place. he’s a better person than she is—because she’s been living in exile for thousands of years and her capacity for caring about other people has withered away to almost nothing as a consequence—but they are in every sense equals.

7. the narrative is overtly not on ozpin’s side? he has a whole atonement arc about it in atlas—& this is why i made the comparison to uwuified fanon cinder earlier, because the framing with regard to ozpin is very emphatically clear that he does a lot of things that are not good, and are in fact pretty sinister and in some cases (amber, pyrrha) outright evil, and he has to make the choice and put in real meaningful effort to be better. i don’t think there’s anything to be gained from ignoring what is plainly in the text of the story, especially when rwby is categorically disinterested in sorting its characters into neat little good-or-bad boxes. there’s no such thing as pure evil—that’s been the explicit textual conceit since volume one—and the implied converse is that there’s no such thing as pure good, either. (which is a conceit that ozlem exemplifies.)

8. i threw a fucking PARTY when we found out salem razed vale, i get the vapors every time i think about what sort of narrative escalation we can expect in V10 given that something as huge as razing vale can happen off screen to set the stakes for vacuo. not that i don’t also adore characters who are good or who (like oz in v7-8) grow and change to become better, because i do, but i really can’t emphasize enough how much i Do Not hate fictional characters on the basis of them doing awful things. what i want from a character is for them to be interesting, which ozpin is. what you’re perceiving as me hating on him is me dissecting him under a microscope because i love him to bits.

9. the ozlem screeds will continue until morale improves

[mylordshesacactus]

Tag Game - Writing Patterns

List the first line of your last 10 (posted) fics and see if there's a pattern.

1.Smoke and the sharp tang of blood drifted over Teldrassil. (Reunification, Warcraft)

2. It was a nameless backwater moon in a nameless backwater system, and Ahsoka had never wanted to be anywhere less in her life. (Riposte, Star Wars)

3. Padawan learner Barriss Offee scuffed her heel idly against the duracrete. (When These Moments Have Passed, Star Wars/Fox and the Hound fusion)

4. “Going somewhere, Lady Crowley?” (Shadows and Goldclover, Warcraft, E)

5. It’s a good place for an ambush. (some desperate small creature, Warcraft)

6. Sunrise on Rannoch was—Tali’s chest constricted painfully. (Housewarming, Mass Effect)

7. “Again,” the instructor ordered, voice crisp. (Quicksilver, BG3)

8. The world grows quiet. And their time grows short. (Truesilver, BG3)

9. A boy dreams of a wolf’s whelp. (an unkindness of ravens, Assassin's Creed: Valhalla)

10. FOREWORD (By Miranda Lawson) | In 2196, a young asari named Ashethe Matolis was granted asylum by the Alliance. (257 Years Of Unanswered Correspondence With An Ardat-Yakshi Monastery, Mass Effect)

-

I think the most prominent pattern here is that I definitely have a strong preference for opening "with two feet down", as my high school mentor and creative-writing teacher put it. Not necessarily in medias res, though I do love doing that--but immediately grounded, placing the reader IN the scene from the first sentence.

As such a lot of these involve sensory details, an immediate touchstone for the character's physical location or surroundings, or both. The worst thing you can do for immersion is have your reader spend several hundred words either unable to picture the characters in context, or THINKING they're picturing the context correctly and then out of the blue dropping that they're actually somewhere completely different.

(Unless you're deliberately misleading the reader in order to deliver a punchline, obviously, but I think that should go without saying.)

I also tend to make my opening lines direct and to the point, and rarely open a fic with a full paragraph. In order to give the reader that sense of standing on solid ground--essentially of "landing with two feet down," falling into the fic and looking around to see where they are--you gotta give that opening line a little room to breathe.

The only exceptions on this list are 4, 9, and 10, and honestly, only 9 really counts!

-> The structure of 257 Years is an epistolary fic, so it actually IS serving as that immediate sensory grounding--It's establishing from the very beginning the sense that you are, in-universe, picking up a book and opening it to the front page.

-> Shadows & Goldclover is my fun little Tess/Lorna porn, and the setup is in fact that Tess is startling her in the garden. So the initial brief disorientation (I do immediately give some setting details in the next paragraph) is exactly the sensory experience I want my readers to have, it puts them in the same headspace as Lorna

-> Unkindness Of Ravens is, genuinely, one of the best stories I've ever written and I hope people are willing to give it a chance even if they're not really asscreed people--it stands on its own just fine as an exploration of fictional Norse queerness. And in that case, the deliberate sense of....an unmoored, vague, disoriented lack of any solid physical setting, is exactly what I was going for! It's a prophetic vision; it should feel otherworldly. I deliberately avoid giving the reader ANY solid ground until after the scenebreak..at which point they are IMMEDIATELY given sensory details and a place name, because the whole thematic point of the fic is Valka being brought in from the cold and finding acceptance, security, and a place to belong.

[wulfhalls]

I feel so conflicted when it comes to sol. I hate him, I love him. He allowed mae to take the brunt of the blame for his mistakes. He ruined osha's life and right to the bitter end wouldn't fully admit to it. But also he was a child who got indoctrinated into the jedi who teach stoicism and repressing emotions so it makes sense he has no idea how to express emotions and desires in a healthy way. He's such a messed up lil guy.

licherally crazy thing to tell the girl u just orphaned that her twin sister/other self was responsible for it like....... these bitches ARE EIGHT YEARS OLD 😭😭😭 sol wake uppp!!!! and the thing is the worst thing is when he says he did it out of love for her he's telling the truth!!!! really makes u think makes u wonder what he went thru to arrive at this point. the jedi are like controlled emotions and suppressed desires is how we move and sol is like ok cool im down with that except when I think a ranndom small child I stalked thru the woods on some bumfuck nowhere planet should be my daughter but other than that very specific scenario I'm sooo down with the creed yall #save the children so the children can join our government sanctioned military space wizardry cult and not lead their own 🙏 anyways lee jung jae was soooooo good. just. brimming with humanity and sincerity u cant help but want to forgive him for everything but then. u remember the war crimes and YET.

[coolgirl32]

Things people didn't know about Jacqulyn Creed

Jacqulyn is a year younger than Victor even though she's only 5'1 she looks exactly like a teenager but that's not true she's only a year younger than Victor that makes her a thousand years old of course she also has a baby face which to be honest doesn't do justice from when she looks like a teenager people always think that she's either Victor's niece or Victor's daughter but of course they always tell people her actual age and she's really Victor's wife of course it's funny but it's very weird people think it's weird but when they realize she's not really his daughter or his niece explains everything.

Jacqulyn has autism of course back then in the 1800s no one knew what autism was so they just thought she was just weird until years later in the 2000s Victor and Jacqulyn both found out she had autism she didn't really know but it's okay because it's okay to be different.

Jacqulyn Love's both sweet and salty things she also loves baking and cooking her husband even said that her cooking tasted like it came from heaven of course it was a little exaggerated but it was actual honesty from her husband and it felt good of course however she sometimes experiments with foods.

Her and her husband only had one daughter Clarice but she died when she was 8 years old nowadays Jacqulyn and Victor are starting to think about having another baby but she's just too scared to have another baby because you know PTSD of course her and her husband talked about it and they were actually considering having another baby and of course they did have a baby well too twins a boy and a girl.

She can run really fast faster than Victor she can also make her claws look more human she also has really good hearing and a really good sense of smell and good eyesight she also has a really big heart not literally figuratively she's basically one of the most kindest mutants in the world of course people think that would make her an easy target but no she's smart as well really smart also she has a really bad temper problem but she learns to control her temper more often.

She sometimes enjoys reading a book on her phone or an actual book and those times would be either at home when her husband is at work or when her and her husband are on a road trip either way she loves to read and sometimes write books of her own.

I hope you all like this also please do not copyright or repost this without my permission also don't be afraid to request any fanfic I will take any fanfic except yandere

[biblicallyaccuratebeskar]

Metal Home

Read Chapter 20 Here

Also on AO3

Chapter 21/22: ~1.6K words

Cyar’ika

Mhi solus tome

Mhi solus dar'tome

Mhi me'dinui an

Mhi ba'juri verde

We are one when together

We are one when parted

We will share all

We will raise warriors

——

Cyar’ika does not mean “womp rat” in Mando’a.

Din Djarin was accustomed to being alone. In fact, most of the time he preferred it.

The baddest bounty hunter in the Outer Rim, the one who shot first and asked questions later. The one who never removed his helmet. Legends grew on him over the years like moss. He never did anything to guide them or disprove them, rather choosing to just sit with them like a constant companion. The only companion he’d ever welcomed with open arms. There were times where weeks would pass and he wouldn’t say a word.

While most of him carried on, driven by the simple purposes of his Creed and his survival, a small, vulnerable part of him was wary of the endless nature of it. Din knew that at one point or another the profession would catch up to him. He’d fumble a trigger, or maybe pass around a corner too early or too late. Being a bounty hunter meant an early retirement was inevitable. You stopped when you died.

He’d accepted this many, many years before. Nothing made him want any different. What did he have to lose but himself?

And then she was there.

It was an instantaneous shift for him, from the moment she flashed him a fucking grin after knocking out the guy who captured her, totally disobeying his only order. When he found her asleep in his pilot’s chair, curled up as if afraid to take up space.

He couldn’t name it at first, why he was so curious about her, why he felt warm underneath his armor whenever she was near. It was like a fight or flight response except he didn’t want to do either of those things, stuck in such an intense limbo where he could nearly feel his bones vibrating.

It was that curiousness, that strange tug in his gut when he looked at her that made him offer her the job. He even shocked himself at that, but the thought of her walking away for good outweighed his good sense.

For someone who loved being alone, he was amazed at how comfortable how felt around her, how comfortable she made him feel. It was like she’d always been there in the Crest.

She made him laugh. Din Djarin did not laugh, hadn’t for years maybe. Laughing wasn’t right until she stumbled in, snarky and smiley. It was bizarre the way she’d encourage him to laugh so freely, knowing all the right buttons and cues to make him crack. It was even more bizarre how he found himself trying to make her laugh right back. And what a reward it was, that laugh, whenever he earned it.

And then there was the blindfold. Dank ferrik, that blindfold. The first night she wore it he could barely breathe, laying there on his back staring at the ceiling with his own eyes. He never told her this, but he didn’t get a wink of sleep that night. Din was frozen, awake and afraid like a child was afraid of the dark, trying to match his breathing to hers.

Life became more of a life with her around, but nothing was making sense anymore. He was, in a word, confused. It didn’t click until she got hurt.

Helpless. He felt helpless, useless, when he saw that wound in her back and the fear in her eyes. The weight of her was heavy in his arms as he ran back to the Crest. It was the first time he cried since his parents died, furious hot tears blurring his vision as he scrambled to stop the bleeding. He just sat there after closing the wound, watching her chest slowly rise and fall. Din desperately wished it was him and not her, his heart bleeding out all the same.

Only in that moment, when he was confronted with the prospect of her mortality, did he realize he loved her. Wildly and totally.

Larkin showed him no mercy. It was like she could see right through his armor. She understood him deeply against his will, and fought for him fiercely against his wishes. She was his greatest annoyance, his greatest weakness. She was the soft parts in between his plates of armor. He would rather live without her then have anything like that happen to her again. He’d rather run like a goddamn coward than not be able to protect her.

Telling her to stay on Reius was nearly impossible. To him, it was like cutting off his dominant hand. And then she had the nerve to refuse, call the Crest her home, and come back with him with her head on his shoulder. It was the most exasperated and the most relieved he’d ever been.

Perhaps the weirdest thing about their time together was his complete lack of surprise that she was kare’tigaanyc. It made sense to him. He was always suspicious about how she dragged him back to the Crest when they’d first met. That, and her fighting style was unlike anything he’d seen before. She told him she taught herself, which he believed, but he was always thrown by how lucky she was. Even if her aim was off, it seemed like her shots always made their mark, like she willed them to.

He knew something was going to happen at one point or another. And it did. For a man who enjoyed the quiet he knew not to trust it. Did he expect that change to be a million credit bounty and a month on the run? No, but if it was for her he didn’t care.

Even caught between the old Empire and the New Republic he dared not let himself waver. He’d failed her before, and frankly the look in her eyes alone when she considered turning herself in was enough for him to face down an army for her.

He was well aware going off alone on the Crest from Cloud City was a bad idea, but it was what he could offer. If Larkin was safe, he could figure the rest out. He would.

They caught up to him far quicker than he thought they would. He should have swept for trackers before leaving, but he was too distracted, too focused on the wrong things.

The forces were too great in number for him to even consider going down in battle. In custody, the guards would jeer at him, drunk on their power, finding joy in locating places that weren’t beskar to hurt. At one point, he stopped fighting it, no longer able to think straight as his body throbbed.

It was the first time that Din ever felt lonely, truly lonely. She was a tattoo under his eyelids, her kind eyes haunting the alleyways in his soul he’d condemned long ago. He both longed for her and wished she’d forget about him, go live a life far away from the pain that followed him around like a shadow.

He thought the rest of it was some injury-induced hallucination. Suddenly she was there, like a goddamn angel in a poorly fitted stormtrooper uniform. The shot. The explosion. The shrapnel lodging itself into something of his that was soft and open, the blood. But then her hands. Her eyes. Din knew he was dying and he didn’t regret a damn thing.

When he woke up in the med bay, the florescent lights blazing into him, he knew he’d woken up into a new chapter. He was familiar with the feeling of knowing you could never go back to the life you lived just hours before. There was mourning in that. This time, though, as he took Larkin’s hand in that bright, unfeeling room, he knew it was a step in the right direction. Wherever she went, he would follow.

Larkin was his antithesis and his mirror in all the right ways. He loved her at her darkest and loved her in her moments of triumph and happiness. She was the piece that fit cleanly into the hole in his chest he didn’t know he had.

It was clear from the moment he met her that he’d be willing to die for her. It was, after all, a part of his job description. He wasn’t afraid of that.

What he was afraid of was that Larkin made him want to live. Life was so fragile. He learned that at a young age and was reminded of that when he couldn’t recall what his parents looked like, the sound of their voices escaping to the dark forgotten parts of his brain. Life was fleeting and so exposed, almost too scary to consider until he remembered why.

He reveled in seeing new worlds through her eyes, trying new foods she picked out special for him to try. Hours could pass where he would just watch her fix something that wasn’t broken on the Crest, cursing with a smear of oil on her forehead. Her voice, her scent, the way she simply moved throughout space. It all beckoned him to be brave.

Din would always be afraid of losing her, but with time he learned this fear was the price he had to pay to love her so desperately. And love her he did, with every bone and fiber in his body. Where he ended, she began.

Cyar’ika did not mean “womp rat” in Mando’a. It meant “beloved.”

He’d tell her someday.

[exoticalmonde]

The Cruel Prince - Tumblr Book Review (19.08.23)

Hello big and small readers, those who are interested in the books because of the tags and those who enjoy seeing others freak out over something they like as well. Welcome to ExoticAlmonde’s monthly book review, where long after Covid I struggle to get back into reading as much as I used to. 

I’m greedy for attention and I want to share with potential bookworms my literary accomplishments between updates about my own works. So, this will become a thing. Might be more often than a month, but the overall goal is to just not let myself go. 

To Note:

I’m no good at giving proper judgment over anything, probably that’s where I should start from today. I like way too many things and am soft for obstructive criticism in the sense - I feel the need to immediately praise something good even if I share something unsavory about it prior.

Some of the works I will be talking about are translated into my mother tongue, so sometimes there could be differences between the tone and scenario that took place and how I personally understood it. 

So with all of that in mind, here’s what I think about this month’s book - The Cruel Prince (from the series ‘The Folk of the Air’) by Holly Black.

ATTENTION: Spoilers 

How I obtained the Book: 

The Cruel Prince.

It was definitely popular back in my day when it came out in 2019. The first time I tried to read it actually was the first time I went to the seaside with a group of friends. We had just graduated and it was the first year of uni behind my back. I felt more accomplished than I ever realized I would feel. 

I actually got it in English the first time. My first book in English was ‘Assassin’s creed Black Flag’ but this was the second one. It’s because me and mother Almonde love reading the same style, so it’s not befitting to get a book I know she would like in a language she doesn’t understand when I know she’d want it. 

A guy friend of mine brought HIS in my mother tongue. So, then, over the course of being at the beach my friend and I realized that we would prefer the others' book. And we switched. 

So that is how I ended up collecting the full series in my mother tongue. The last three weeks. I’ve had the Second book for a while but the Third was actually a very insecure obtainment. I didn’t know if I will like it, so—

Ah, but there is no shame in that, considering I got to read it much, much later. Much... Much after the hype train.

How long did it take to read: 

I grabbed it anew on the 29th of June for another seaside escapade. Unfortunately my friend had a lot of plans for me, so I never get to reading it in depth the way I wanted. 60 pages in, I had to leave it behind between errands and then picked it up on the 14th of August. All 337 pages read for a total of 4 days.

Book cover and alternatives: 

The cover of the version I have is this, except the synapsis is different for mine because that is how differences between translated versions work. 

Here is what it says:

Jude was seven when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

To win a place at the Court, she must defy him–and face the consequences.

As Jude becomes more deeply embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, she discovers her own capacity for trickery and bloodshed. But as betrayal threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.

Of course I want to be like them. They’re beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever.

And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

Alternatively, this book cover pops up when you look it up.

Personally, I have a gripe with white book covers like these because they turn yellow way too quickly. Mayhaps it's how they produce them here. I'm also more interested in soft covers because seriously, hard covers are like +10 in any currency. For every 4 of those I could get 1 for free. 

That aside, I adore the font, the barren branches and the beetle. It's, I think, photoshopped together pretty nicely. Though after being spoiled with original commissioned art for other writers' novels it's lackluster but overall memorable. You see this and think 'Yeah, Cruel Prince'. 

‘If you are so imaginative what would you have for the book cover then, Eve?’

Glad you asked. I have no idea. I’m biased towards the works of Charlie Bowater, so there are some scenes from the book that might look fantastic involving the main duo. Actually, my only gripe is the crown. I probably need to re-check and come back to this paragraph but I thought the crown itself is made out of branches/thorns and the one on the cover is… 

Mm, with that said, I haven't seen any interviews with the writer, so maybe she has explained why she chose that but OVERALL - memorable and it looks good when all three books of the series (four, as of now) are put together. 

Actually, it's impressive that it's the same crown all around. That's really nice.

The story: 

As stated, The Cruel Prince tells the horrible tale of a pair of twins - named Jude and Taryn Duarte - who were kidnapped from their family home and were dragged into the fairy realm by their mothers' ex husband Madoc.

Who was, understandably, absolutely enraged she disappeared back into the human realm, remarried and got two new kids, since he was actually made to think their home burned down and found two corpses - that of a woman and a child.

He did have a child with her initially. It's very difficult for female elves to carry an offspring, so eventually you learn that many would pick up a human wife to keep the population going. Her name is Vivienne. The kid. 

And like with any fairytale you learn that fae folk are very unaccomodating to people. So we got:

Magic fruit

Salting all food to break magic food as a must

Music that makes humans dance until they die of exhaustion

Wine that makes them fantastically drunk 

Magic spells to control humans

Brainwashing humans into thinking they are somewhere nice (human trafficing)

Overall racism towards humans is roiling because they are mortal, easy to kill and utterly unimportant and numerous in the face of the better, prettier, more elegant and rich fae.

Jude sticks out as a person who is very selfless and headstrong. She's stubborn as a muel for what she wants and she knows exactly what she deserves. This girl wants to be a Knight in the fae lands and wants to embrace a part of this life she's grown to love-hate despite the bloody past her childhood is matted with. 

Apart from that, she remains very human in the emotional sense. She's afraid and knows it, so to survive she hides it behind an infuriating facade of striving that sometimes brings more bad than good. Simple and easy, yet she keeps slipping. Accident after accident, after a couple bully scenes and after belittlement you can see she's getting affected by it because deep down, yeah, she wants to be like them since they're obviously better. When surrounded by all this negativity and being uncontrollably different it's much easier to submit to the mass opinion of your flawed nature. And through the story it's potentially getting better due to a small turn of events. 

Her ability to don dresses and dance and still come out and think 'Wow, can't wait to wear armor' is a classic and worn-down state of girlhood in teen books but that's exactly what I read it for.  Jude is famous for a specific look of hers and even a certain artist comes to mind when it comes to the look of ‘Jude’, however I’m really curious to see what her other dressed looked like: the one she wore to the crowning ceremony and the one she wore to the other crowning ceremony where it actually worked out.

Contrary to her desire for military accomplishment, her sister wants to fall in love with somebody and be a part of the fae the other way you can imagine - marriage. We even learn she has somebody who has been wooing her and for a split moment you feel like 'Okay sounds good if it works out' but you know it might not. All throughout the book any note of love between species is a little off in a way and with such a dramatical start... You aren't sure you want that now. 

Madoc leaves me in shambles. 

Maybe with him I shall introduce the world of the fae which is full of any folk creature you can probably imagine like bog spirits, fairies and half-person half-creature people.

We've got kelpies, we have selkies, trolls, goblins, we have redcaps. And not the type of red caps you can imagine (like me - thinking garden gnomes), but red cap comes from these types of fae that relish dipping their special li'l hat in their victims' blood. To make it reddish brown. 

That happened to Jude's mother. It will happen again. Madoc keeps it under a glass cover like some relic. He freaks me out but he is also obviously some type of father figure. Jude reminds us every time something happens that he DOES love them as his own children, he does what he thinks is best for them and gives each of the sisters their individual type of training. Jude being more combat and tactical planning while Taryn gets their stepmom Orianna to teach her etiquette and elegance of the fae. 

The fae lands are also split into many types of kingdoms, the main one of which the ruling Kingdom of family Greenbriar.

Dark fae, Light fae, Under-The-Sea fae, you name it.

But I suppose it's important to note that not all fae are against people. 

You could find some of them being genuine lovers. Some of them eat chinese take out together. Some fae would rather live in the human world - like Vivianne who has a girlfriend there. 

DID I MENTION, this is tagged LGBTQ? Well, it is. We have all kinds of couples happening and it's endlessly endearing. 

We also have romance that Jude can indulge in with a man named Locke, whose foxian eyes and smooth talk is way too enticing to look away from, especially when he’s been treating her better than Cardan’s group for long enough to earn the benefit of the doubt. 

But in book one, we get to have a real look mainly at Jude and her arch nemesis, the youngest prince of the High King, Cardan Greenbriar. 

He is the cruel prince. It's about their hate between them, about their incapability to sit together in class without him being fussy or some kind of nuisance. Him, and his band of high faelings, who have absolutely nothing better to do than get high off golden pollen, wine and bully the life out of Jude. 

During a contest where knights have to prove themselves in front of the royal family, Jude arrives, without the blessing of Madoc. She's allowed to participate but not compete for the attention she has so much desired and it’s crushing to watch. 

From time to time it really gets me with how it feels like a kid anticipating asking a parent for approval. And even when refusing to allow her to compete over dinner Madoc isn't cruel or mean. He explains why she's not allowed to do that and she reluctantly follows his command in spite of me expecting she will not. 

After winning though on her side of friendly spars and games, Jude encounters Cardan and they have a little carfuffle. That's what gets the second eldest brother Dain into Mardoc's office. 

But instead of scolding her, he offers a position. Work from the shadows. Work for Dain. And when he is on the throne she will be able to have a title and the comfort she wants. Overall Dain’s character reveals a good and worthy king to the fa nation who would be such a better option than Cardan or his other brother that’s interested in the power.

So through that we get invited into a bizarre world of underground, almost found family-esque group of people, all without a proper name:

- The Roach

- The Bomb

- The Ghost

Jude's yet to earn her title, so they call her by her name most of the time. She's a fast learner and suddenly she belongs. Juggling with sneaking out, learning more battle tactics with Madoc, ingesting poisons for immunity and different other exercises with the gang alongside going to school and doing as well as to not rouse attention... Wow, sounds like me. 

Gym, school, food poisoning, meeting family. The cycle continues, am I right? 

But with all great things come the problems. 

You see, the High King is getting old and he's experiencing some vague sense of probably dying, so there's a Ball that's going to happen in some time. The crown of this High King is inherited only by whoever he thinks deserves it. And since the crown is sacred and cursed, nobody can put it on if it was not bestowed by a direct descendant. 

Everything lead to Dain being the future ruler. everybody supported him, including Madoc who is a very good friend of his, his entire family, the guard, other fae and Jude, who has also been allowing others to assume the reason Dain is visiting her so often is because she has some sort of intimate interest in him. 

Well, in truth, it’s not really like that. 

Jude, through her time of training, went through a lot. She managed to sneak into the first eldest prince’s castle and stole a letter from his office. Unfortunately there she encountered a scene which I think would entirely change the way she views Cardan. 

You see, he’s getting abused there. Struck with a stick until he can’t get up from the floor, belittled, all because he has been showing subzero interest in using a sword, or learning how to use one in general. 

His words about how he doesn’t want to be a murderer will echo back some day, but for now it’s just a very dramatic and unfortunate scene. Makes you want to pity him. Bullies always come from a difficult place, otherwise why even put up the effort in being a disturbance.

Beforehand, Jude had snuck into Cardan’s bedroom by mistake and accidentally found a book she’s been missing from the human world - Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. She steals it from him because why would he even care about that book right? He hates humans, it shows with every word, look and gesture.

After returning from that mission Jude realizes that things aren’t as simple as that. In that book was tucked all the evidence she needed to understand just how deep Greenbirar’s hatred towards her specifically ran.

That’s the least of her problems. Suddenly one of Cardan’s cronies - Valerian - turns out way too vengeful out of nowhere. He almost kills Jude once, orders her through magic to commit suicide (which Dain had enchanted her to not be affected by since that was one of her conditions when she wore to follow his commands) and then in a fit of drunked rage had crawled through her window and attempted to murder her himself. 

The outcome of that fight was traumatic to say the least. And it all comes from Cardan probably getting tired of Jude’s existence overall. 

And that is enough to distract us from anything else that was brewing around Jude until the focal point - Madoc’s betrayal. He actually sided with the eldest son, Balekin, to seize the throne. In one night, more than half of the Greenbriar family has been murdered because everybody from the youngest sisters to the King and his Consort refused to crown this fratricide. 

Jude was not supposed to be there. Her family had been escorted outside the ballroom before anything while she was stuck in the crowd and witnessed everything. Mind reeling, she realizes that Cardan, in a blink, would become the most anticipated person to show up at the party. 

Of course he’s gone. Drunk in some corner and probably not even knowing what’s happening. That’s the opinion we’d all have after 200 pages of ‘What’s his problem’ scenarios. In the end, Cardan is the one who finds Jude hiding under a couple tables because in the outside elves are continuously partying despite the stench of blood and the presence of royal bodies on the podium. 

They make for the exit and end up in the hideout Dain had prepared for his shadows. Except, she’s not even there to help. It turns into helping after a couple conversations since the long and twisted tale of the royal family and all that happens in the shadows spills out only when Cardan is tied to a chair with an arrow pointed at his heart. 

Consorts poisoned, child murder and the King toyed with believing Dain is the better option - this entire story is not at all as clean. Cardan wants nothing to do with the throne. All he wants is to live peacefully somewhere away from here and to drink himself into oblivion while nobody ever looks for him. He’s not a threat to the throne but he is a pawn. 

While devising the plan Jude goes back home to Madoc as if nothing happened, because she wanted to know just how much any side is willing to give for Cardan and her life’s improvement in the fae realm. Instead, she gets a face full of her twin sister Taryn and the man Jude had been spending some romantic time with - Locke. Having… Been engaged. 

Ouch. I personally expected Taryn would do something bad like marrying Valerian and then when he was killed by Jude she’d be momentarily weepy because her betrothed ran away and never engaged with Madoc about her hand, but instead… Locke. 

Well, now her mind about Cardan is definitely made up, right?

Wrong. He’s still a pawn. 

Jude’s pawn. Since her young brother Oak ends up with a backstory that nobody anticipated. And blood which allows that cute seven-year-old to put the crown upon the head of whoever he’s told to. He’s the perfect person to be crowned by Cardan in return, to escape into the human world so he’d come back liking humans more and would be more willing to rule righteously.

They had a plan I never thought I could see summarized in 4 points which begin with: 1. Get in and 4. Get out. Anything in between I am pretty sure was a ‘depends on the situation’ scenario.

It worked though. Technically. Oak, the little brother, was meant to be crowned, but at the last minute, Jude changed her mind. The only way to save the throne for his grown-up little brother is if someone is already sitting on it and protecting it. 

And with the risk to truly turn this semi-ally into an enemy she’d never imagined she’d have at this scale, Jude allows Oak to crown Cardan before they escape. As a better alternative, the fae folk are actually willing to support HIM even if he’s also not the ruler everybody was hoping to have. 

The final pages sent chills down my arms. jude wanted to go apologise for betraying Cardan in this way and forcing him upon the throne he hated so much. As it happens, nothing of the like comes out of her mouth and we end up with one of my favorite quotes. 

Memorable Quotes: 

—

“In Faerie, there are no fish sticks, no ketchup, no television.”

(This is how the novel starts.) 

—

“It's shocking," he says, as though he's giving me some great compliment. "I know humans can lie, but to watch you do it is incredible. Do it again.”

(Fae folk cannot lie, so when encountering humans some of them can sense the lie. In this particular instance I probably laughed until teary-eyed because Dain was treating Jude like a monkey. ‘Do it again.’ he says.) 

—

“Guard your mortal heart.”

—

“I am no murderer,” says Cardan, surprising me. I would not have thought that was something to be proud of.

—

“I stand in front of my window and imagine myself a fearless knight, imagine myself a witch who hid her heart in her finger and then chopped her finger off.”

—

“Get down here before you’re recognized.”

“Playing hide-and-seek under the table? Crouching in the dirt? Typical of your kind, but far beneath my dignity.”

He laughs unsteadily, like he expects I am going to laugh, too. I don’t. I ball up my fist and punch him in the stomach, right where I know it will hurt. He staggers to his knees. The goblet drops to the dirt, making a hollow clanking sound. “Ow!” he shouts, and lets me tug him under the table.”

(... *stifling a chortle*) 

—

“Faeries make up for their inability to lie with a panoply of deceptions and cruelties. Twisted words, pranks, omissions, riddles, scandals, not to mention their revenges upon one another for ancient, half-remembered slights. Storms are less fickle than they are, seas less capricious.”

—

“I can feel the moment he gives in and gives up, pulling me to him despite the threat of the knife. He kisses me hard, with a kind of devouring desperation, fingers digging into my hair. Our mouths slide together, teeth over lips over tongues. Desire hits me like a kick to the stomach. It's like fighting, except what we're fighting for is to crawl inside each other's skin.”

—

“But I will not stand in front of your happiness. I will not even stand in front of misery that you choose for yourself.”

(This line is spoken by Madoc when speaking to Taryn and jude about Locke. He thinks that Taryn shouldn’t be marrying him. He won’t stop her from doing it though. Jude at this point has better problems than Locke.)

—

“So I am to sit here and feed you information,” Cardan says, leaning against a hickory tree. “And you’re to go charm royalty? That seems entirely backward.”

I fix him with a look. “I can be charming. I charmed you, didn’t I?”

He rolls his eyes. “Do not expect others to share my depraved tastes.”

(Devastated.)

—

“How will I know when I’ve learned it, since I don’t know it now?” he asks.

The question sounds like a riddle. “Come back when returning feels like a hard choice instead of an easy one,” I answer finally.”

(Baba Oak ends up living with Viviene and her girlfriend in the human world for a while and this is a conversation they have with Jude. I used to find him a little spoiled and too much of a rowdy brat /affectionately/ but now I really do like him. I wish to know what happens to him in the future.)

BEST QUOTE OF THE ENTIRE BOOK: 

“He rises from the throne. “Come, have a seat.” His voice is replete with danger, lush with menace. The flowering branches have sprouted thorns so thickly that petals are barely visible.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks. “What you sacrificed everything for. Go on. It’s all yours.”

Overall Experience:

Very pleasant. I'm happy to have given it another chance and I will continue next month's (if not sooner) book commentary on 'The Wicked King'.

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐⭐

4/5 stars

Seeing the quotes, I've become envious of the English version. It's so prettily worded, all of it. I need to learn.

[saltintheseaa]

The Sparrow, a review:

My main issue with this book is it assumes the colonialist white savior mindset which approves of the missionaries’ morals as pure, and suggests that God’s inexplicable betrayal was the only reason Sandoz fucked up so badly. The book implies that were it not for God choosing to torment Sandoz, the alien mission would have gone smoothly. But that is soooo not the case.

First- the alien anthropology in this book is too shallow. The book and the missionaries themselves assume they know everything about the Runa. Apparently, the Runa are just naturally less intelligent and can’t be interacted with as humanity’s equals. But that’s exactly the wrong perspective to approach/describe/create a foreign culture. You cannot establish a hierarchy of dumb/intelligent, primitive/civilized, etc— anything which assumes the superiority of one group over the other. They’re merely different, is all, neither is better or smarter or more moral than the other. You must approach with humility, with the intent to learn, not with the assumption that they are the ignorant ones who must be taught. Because they’re the ones with the knowledge of their world’s moral and social intricacies, not you.

The vapidity of the alien worldbuilding made more sense when I learned that Russell wrote this book because she was asking herself… “What if Columbus had good intentions? What if… Europeans’ rape, pillage, murder and destruction of indigenous Americans in 1492 was good, actually??”

It was never actually about aliens. If you posit that the Runa represent the indigenous peoples of Latin America- part of a long literary tradition of equating POC with animals- the racism reveals itself. The aliens aren’t a real culture. They are a convenient symbol for indigenous people, for the questions Russell is asking herself. Russell is not actually seriously thinking about the indigenous peoples’ perspective. She’s just concerned with the missionaries. The indigenous Americans are not human to her.

Russell is clearly trying to say *something* with race in the book. Emilio is Spanish and Taino, he’s descended from the colonizer and the colonized both. He’s coming to Rakhat fully cognizant of the moral and historical implications of doing so, and he genuinely believes he can overcome that past. It’s also notable that Sofia, whose people were ousted from their homeland by the Spanish, is the crew member who resists the Jana’ata most forcefully.

But again it doesn’t work, in fact it comes across as extremely insensitive because Russell is writing from the wrong perspective. She doesn’t actually understand or empathize with colonized peoples because she still agrees with the missionaries’ goals. She fails to understand that imposing one’s own worldview, one’s own principles, on another person can be an act of violence in and of itself. So, eventually, Sofia’s rebellion just comes across as white savior-ism.

But! Despite everything I just listed, I liked this book. A lot. First, I really appreciated Russell’s writing style. It’s simple but full of clarity, and in intense moments it becomes astonishingly lyrical and poetic. I will not forget the sentence “I stood naked before God, and I was raped” for a long long time.

Secondly, the central question of the book is so fascinating. What if the principles you live by, your personal creed that saved your life and enriches your spirit and has let you do so much good, the essence of all the goodness in your soul— what if that beautiful life-saving morality became the weapon which causes unbelievable pain and destruction, for both yourself and others? What if your moral truth is wrong? What a terrifying possibility to confront. What an impossible truth to swallow. Especially when a messianic figure must ask himself that question— what are the answers except nihilism or madness?

In this way the reader’s faith is also tested. Will their belief sustain itself under this question?

Unfortunately that central question is weakened by the fact that Emilio is not approaching with pure intentions. Because Christianity and Catholicism and missionaries have an objective in mind— conversion— which inevitably corrupts their interactions with the aliens.

At the end of the book, the Father General posits that Emilio’s suffering has brought him even closer to God— that God may be that wisdom gained from disillusionment after unimaginable trials of pain. After all of one’s beliefs and morals have been stripped away, God is what is left. (The Aeschylus quote summarizes it better than I did.) That conclusion would be so much more convincing, though, if Sandoz’ mistakes hadn’t been so obvious. But because, again, Russell is writing from the wrong perspective, the Father General’s conclusion rings hollow.

The actual, accidental moral the story presents is: Please learn more about indigenous cultures and societies before forcing your own beliefs upon them. Never assume you know better than they do, refrain from action until you’ve learned as much as you can, and accept the knowledge you are given.

Also— if that is who God truly is, then why should we worship him? What is so good about God that justifies Emilio’s unimaginable suffering? There’s a frightening and deeply sinister and almost insane logic in Christianity, based on their idea of Heaven, that the end justifies all the means. (Rather than a reward for a virtuous life, it seems that the idea of Heaven became the Catholic Church’s justification of inequality and a tool to keep peasants and colonized peoples complacent.) Regardless of that digression— I disagree. There’s nothing inherently beautiful about suffering, and any faith which believes that such suffering is necessary to achieve divinity is really just desperately trying to rationalize that suffering. To say, It was worth it, because Heaven awaits. But sometimes pain is just pain. It doesn’t bring you closer or further away from God. It just is. Perhaps God lies in that realization, that acceptance, that resignation? Or is the Father General correct, and there is something in that divinity that really does justify all of Emilio’s pain?

But— even still— The Sparrow was a great first read. Wanting to know what happened, what caused Emilio’s downfall, and my mounting slithering horror as I approached closer and closer to the truth— genuinely impactful, genuinely memorable. And I really loved Emilio as a character, both before and after the mission. Russell’s writing made me feel so much compassion for him.

The flaws of this book are the same flaws inherent to Christianity and Catholicism, which is an impressively incisive achievement even if it wasn’t intentional. I don’t regret reading this book, and I will be thinking about it long after I post this review.

[ultraericthered]

Anime Update

Finished AIR. As I've said before, Jun Maeda has an "ending problem" and this was sadly no exception. I knew Misuzu was going to die and I really don't think she needed to die in order for this story to work, but strangely enough that wasn't what bothered me most about this ending (I mean, at least it made for hilarious parodies in Eternal Fighter Zero and Kaginado!): it was the literal last minutes that really took me out of it. Yukito/Sky flying off to find Kanna's next and possibly final reincarnation would've been a good enough note to close out on. I could not make any sense of what came after that. What was even being talked about there? Who was that boy and why did he and that one girl go off for their own story while Misuzu and Yukito were on the beach? Why did we need to see any of that???

Started the final arc of Hunter x Hunter, and you can tell it's the final arc because Ging is there and finally getting present day exposure. He's one of the members of the Zodiac Council even though he physically doesn't match his Zodiac animal, but then again neither does Pariston Hill, and can I just say how hilarious I find it that the Zodiac Rat in this equation is a genderbent Paris Hilton? Quite the inspired choice on Togashi's part! The special election for Chairman has begun, but more crucially, Hisoka and Illumi have returned!

And I've watched through the first 7 episodes of Black Cat. Gotta say that I totally forgot how ridiculously, shamelessly Early 2000s this anime was. There is zero tonal consistency in this work, and you get the sense it's not even trying to reign itself in enough to have it to start with. It just does whatever it wants to do, living up to its ideals of freedom to live by how your heart compells you to live, even if it has to do so by coming off-script from the source material. And that last part has kind of a 50/50 chance of working out, I've observed.

Other stray observations:

It's sort of hilarious how different a character Train is when we first meet him versus how he is for most of the remainder of the story. He's this super stiff, cold-blooded, no-nonsense edgelord assassin who gives off so many Cloud Strife vibes and wears a black coat to go along with his nickname and number. It's so not what we get from him once he defects from Chronos, joins up with his new friends, and even stops wearing black despite still being the titular "Black Cat."

Sven and Rinslet are the consistently amusing characters here, but I'll admit to getting a bit distracted by the amount of times Sven brings up coffee while speaking with Brandon Potter's voice in the dub - it kept making me think I was watching Godot all of a sudden!

While Saya was a genuinely charming and likable character, I'm not a fan of how completely straight she plays two common sexist tropes - Manic Pixie Dream Girl and Stuffed In The Fridge respectively. I'd have liked for us to have gotten a little more of out of her before she got murdered, and for who she was and what she was doing with her life to matter for much more than just Manpain even afterwards.

Also hate to say that, as enjoyable as he is to watch, Creed Diskenth is a pretty weak antagonist here. His design and fashion sense is unremarkable, his screentime is fairly sparse, we have so many more prominent antagonists like that "Tyrant" guy, Preta Ghoul, Torneo Rudman, No. 1 and her Chronos superiors that he's lost in the shuffle for a good while, and there's not a whole lot of character and motivation to him except for "Jealous Gay Villain Trope". The one really interesting thing done with him is his betrayal of Chronos and ambition to lead a revolution upon the world, but in execution that comes right out of nowhere, being revealed to us in a hastily dropped "We live in a society" tirade. We at least could've seen him and Shiki conspiring together earlier on! It's only at the very end when he comes to kill Saya that Creed suddenly becomes terrifying, setting the tone for him to become Sephiroth-looking Apostles of the Stars leader Creed when we next meet him, who is absolutely amazing.

Eve is adorable and precious. That's all that needs to be said on her.

[ramrodd]

On the Historicity of the Book of Acts (feat Dr Bart Ehrman) (Craig Keen...

COMMENTARY:

Giggles, as Literature, the Book of Acts is absolutely, inerrantly reliable, As History, who the fuck cares. Post Modern historians cannot identify the influence Aristotle had on Alexander the Great, Apollo 11 is absolutely inerrantly, harmonically, dipped in the blood of the Lamb reliable evidence that Aristotle had a huge influence on Alexander the Great.

You guys are trying to define the Hallelula chorus by applying state of the art acheological protocols on fixing the position of each discarded ticket stup in the audiotorium of Carnegie Hall after a Christmas production of Messiah (players to be named later)

Post Modern Hittoric Deconstruction creates a creative glass curtain between the broken pottery of a culture and how the pottery was handled in the culture, the difference between Hemingway and F. Scott. Except, of course, Papa and Fitz were the leading edge of Post Modern Literary Deconstruction, if you don't count T. S. Eliot.

The question is, is To Kill A Mocking Burd reliable? Or Gone WIth The Wind? Absolutely, in terms of Post Modern Literary Deconstricution. Dr. Molly Worthen achieved her epiphany by breaking through the creative glass ceiling to engage the inerrant epistemology of Jesus and the Bible. Her journalism, N.T. Wright and the Holy Spirit led her to Resurrection.

Is Atlas Shrugged reliable? It is if you're an agent of Project 2025. Post Modern Historic Deconstruction makes Atlas Shrugged a viable alternative interpretation of current events. It/s as good as any. I mean, if it makes sense to Tucker Carlson, it's USDA Approved Project 2025.

A question nobody ever asks is Where, exactly does Luke, a Greek, fit into a Jewish narrative? You claim the "We" passages demonstrate no particular individual as the author. If you are correct that most scholars agree with you, it supports my thesis that Post Modern Historic Deconstrucition has made PhD in Christian literature and apologetics uniformly stupid and you are the high prince of academic pratices and standards.

The “We” passages mark the moment Luke and Paul crossed paths and became a constnat item in luke's medical journals. The question you guys never consider is, how the fuck does a Greek end up in the middle of what everyone from Albert Schweitzer, assumes is a Jewish narrative.

Robyn Faith Walsh and John MacDonald are very close to a Post Modern Literary Deconstricution break through with their thesis of the Gospel of Mark as a literary project.

Exactly.

The Acts of the Apolstles is put together exactly like Truman Capote's In Cold Blood was put together: research and journalism writing. And, for that matter, the Gospel of Mark,

As a physcian trained under the Hipporactic Oath, he journaled everything, It was part of the pleasure of being a physician for Luke: he liked to write, to turn an elegant phrase if only for his own amuement,

But why does Luke compose the longest complete narrative of Jesus from beginning to the source of the Apostle's Creed, the centuiions of the Italian Regiment, who were justified by faith with the Talking Cross of the Gospel of Peter. Luke was traveling with Paul from just after Paul's escape in Phillipi until they got to Caesarea, when Luke begins to compose an amicus breif for Paul's defense in Rome when he is introduced to Cornelius and is resruited to do the research regarding the origins and significance of the covenant of the Talking Cross in regards to the divine status of the stoic culture of the Italian Regiment as the Republican State subordiante to and separate from the “Church” of the Roman secular humanism. Hebrews is a military intelligence finding based on the Bibliography of the 18 documents that predeed it, The connection of Socrates Hemlock to the Cross, Romans 13:1 – 7, Hebrews 13:17, and the authority of Manlian Discipline is straight as a laser to the Justice behind the stoic equity of the authority of the centurion in Matthew 8:9.

So, as History, how do you calculate In Cold Blood? And why Luke?

It has to do with the Pro-Choice interpretation of the woman with the 12 year hemmorage as the basis for Planned Parenthood as the rational application,

Luke is a gynecologist. In a universe where women are unclean by definintion, and beyond unclean during their peiords, Greeks don't share Peter's misogyny, Luke had seen more Hebrew pussy than any of the annoited saints in either covenant except David and Solomon (and, maybe, Saul). I mean, rumor has it that Daved was the the Milton Berle of the Patriarchs: it had to do with Ruth's DNA.

But none of them wanted to deal with any woman during her period. And, for luke, it was just another day in Paradise. And Paul employed Luke like Truman Capote employed Harrper Lee to get interviews with the wives of the people he needed to talk to, including the wives.

And that's how Luke put his two volume study together for Theolophilus, which was delivered by hand before Philippians in 61, CE. Paul had a successful defense before the Praetorian Guard, but the Guard couldn't answer for the Emperor and Paul's timing was bad,

As near as I can tell, your little conference is designed to shape Pauline Theology to fit the Cnristian Nationalism of Pope Benedicts conservative theology.

N.T. Wright's interpretation of Pauline Theology and Pope Francis's Liberation Theology are had in glove. It's why Dr. Molly Worthen had her Born Again epiphany,

[mistwraiths]

3 stars

Overall, I think Blood Scion was done pretty well to showcase the horror of child soldiers, anticolonialism, the eradication of a people and culture, and more. For me, this book was hard to get through.

I would have really loved learning more about the Yoruba culture and religion, and I assume there will be more in the next book. I would have really liked seeing Sloane train with her magic but unfortunately it is really just glossed over. I found the aspect of each Orisha having a music really cool and that shower scene was very good. As for the rest of the worldbuilding, I struggle a bit to understand everything. We also get thrown more names of organizations like Blades, Shadow Rebels, Black Wolf without really learning much about them.

Again, there is so much that this book covers with children being forcibly conscripted into the war and forced to fight their own people. On top of that, there's so many assaults and near assaults, on top of killings and horrific acts. Sometimes they feel like their constantly happening so much that we don't get time to actually sit with the emotional and devastating impact. However, in situations such as these, odds are they do not have any choice but to continue on. This book absolutely doesn't shy away from the brutality and horror. We watch Sloane continue to grapple with her guilt and horror.

The pacing felt really slow to me too and the timeline in the book really didn't fit well to me with all the things happening. I don't understand why they'd only train them for a month. And Sloane was whipped over 30 times at least so I don't understand how she was still able to train. It briefly mentions she reopens her scars but then how can it even heal if you're constantly reopening them. She's being starved, healing from her wounds, fighting with her magic, planning to steal and break into the Archives, and constantly training and fighting for her life. It's a LOT for barely a month. The reveals are pretty easy to spot too and it's a shame that they make the book a bit predictable.

I didn't find Sloane all that likable, and that's okay. I don't think we really got to really know her as character as much as see her try to survive a horrific time. A character doesn't have to be likable and honestly I don't think she had a chance to really shine except slightly in the beginning. I do think however she was a bit irritating in her constant assumptions that no one could possibly be like her, a Scion, and everyone is quickly following in line during the training by verbally saying the creed or doing things they have to. It feels like she doesn't consider that other people are just trying to survive too? They have no power so they just have no choice. That maybe not everyone wants to kill their own people or allies. Sloane is constantly shocked when she comes across situations where people are doing what they can or actually think the same way as she but they're not vocal about it, or other Scions like her. Or the spies, she's furious that one of the spies allows terrible things to happen. And its like yeah they have to, how else are they going to spy??? Honestly, my biggest gripe was that Sloane acted out too much in the Fort when it's stated like little dissents gets you killed so it kind of was jarring.

The romance happened super out of the blue to me and I didn't understand why nor did I like it. The whole male character paying too much attention to the female character making him the romance option, despite not being all that personable or good never made much sense to me. I really could have gone without it.

I kind of did like the ending. I think a lot of people didn't. I do think it dragged on in two different parts. Like sorry, a declaration of how they are terrible isn't needed. Just burn them down. I liked that things didn't work out. The book kind of just ENDS, I don't remember them really fleeing or saying we're going to go here. I assume since it's hinted at they're going to the Shadow Rebels and maybe meet her aunt.

Again, this was a good book full of dark themes and brutality.

[inbarfink]

I’ve seen some interpretations of the Rocky Horror Picture Show that compare Frank to the Christian Devil and/or the Serpent of Eden. And… it’s not like that doesn’t make sense. Frank is a tempter who stands against the restraint of the explicitly Christian morality of the mainstream culture our protagonists come from. The Criminologist even calls his temptation of Brad and Janet a “forbidden fruit”.  But… I just think that’s not the only angle one can take when looking at Frank. Frank is many things both as an in-universe person and a narrative character. But we are first and foremost introduced to him, before we even get a chance to see him, as a Frankenstein Pastiche.

Is it any wonder that he does such a good job of playing God?

Like any good Postmodern Prometheus, Frank creates new life, but this goes beyond just Rocky. It’s Brad and Janet who are kind of the Adam and Eve in this comparison, and while Frank didn’t literally create them with mad science - he did re-make them in his own image.

(And after first turning them to stone - a form of earth - and then back to flesh)

Also, if we're looking at the Frankenstein's Place as a sort of twisted Garden of Eden -  a place where Brad and Janet lose their innocence, gain greater knowledge and understanding of themselves, commit a transgression by giving into temptation, and then get cast down to Earth unsure of what to do with what they have learned - then Frank as the Master of the castle, who first welcome Brad and Janet but eventually then targets them with furious punishment, fits much better playing the role of God than a random snake or even the Devil himself. 

Yes, it's a weird-reverse-sort-of-God whose creed is exactly the opposite of the Conservative Christian God in whose church Ralph and Betty got married - but this is already a weird-reverse-sort-of-Eden as well. Adam and Eve started off so 'innocent' in that they felt no shame about their nude bodies, and when they lost said innocence is also when they started feeling the need to cover up. Brad and Janet’s 'innocent' state has them dressed very modestly, and their 'corruption' is marked by them... well, they're never fully naked, but certainly gradually get more confortable walking around in their underwears or lingerie.

And following the narrative thread of this weird-reverse-Garden-of-Eden, the real Forbidden Fruit isn’t actually Frank’s dick, it’s Rocky. The Garden of Eden was this wonderland of earthly delights where Adam and Eve could pertake of any fruit they desired.... except for the Tree of Wisdom. That was the one pleasure they were forbidden from. And the Frankenstein’s Place is similarly a paradise of desires - just less of a fruitbowl and more of the Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll variety - but the one thing you can’t do, the one person you’re not allowed to have sex with... is Rocky.

And I think the interesting question here is ‘why is Rocky the one thing that’s off-limits in Frank’s Fantastic FuckCastle?’.  Because, well, if we look at it from an Eden Perspective, here’s what the Serpent had to say about the subject of the Fruit of Knowledge:

Eating the Forbidden Fruit isn’t just about succumbing to mortal pleasures about godly morality or whatever, it’s about becoming kinda like God. And maybe that’s the real reason why Frank’s so upset about the idea that Rocky has slept with someone else. It’s less actual romantic jealousy and more... galling at the idea that someone else can tempt his Significant Other to cheat on him. That’s his thing!

And like, espacially since Janet has that line in “Touch-A-Touch-A-Touch-A-Touch Me”

Which I always read as a kind of admission that she’s like... exploiting Rocky’s desire for an emotional connection for own sexual pleasures. She is maybe falling into this very Frank-Brand of hedonistic manipulativeness. Her newfound knowledge of her sexuality is making her more like ‘God’ in a way, and now this God is pissed about that idea.

And this also does places a ‘Serpent’ figure in our Garden of Eden and that’s Riff-Raff. It’s through his manipulation of events that Janet get offered that Forbidden Himbo in the first place. He probably wasn’t really counting on it directly, more like just causing random chaos in the hopes of distracting Frank long enough to prepre for the coup. But still, without Riff-Raff and Magenta’s tormenting of Rocky, he wouldn’t have fallen in Janet’s lap like this.

And I think, this is taking very directly from the Christian interpetation of the Garden of Eden myth, where the Serpent is retconned as Satan. Riff-Raff is, after all, a resentful servant planning to usurp his master out of jealousy and uses the humans as pawns in his scheme to do that. If Frank is playing God, than Riff-Raff is clearly playing Devil here!

And, like the pitchfork is OBVIOUSLY a reference to the American Gothic motif but... there’s no reason why you couldn’t also connect it to a Satanic motif? Especially as, with Frank being a Reverse-God who preaches for sin and pleasure, Riff-Raff is a Devil of... well, I dunno if he necessarily believes in all of that sexual conservatism stuff - but he’s certainly willing to use it as an excuse for his personal beef with Frank! Either way the point remains, the pitchfork ties together the concepts of traditionalism and sexual shame, as symbolized by American Gothic, with the Devil.

[mandoinevarro]

NO APPOINTMENT, NO MEETING

Rule Maker, Rule Breaker: Chapter 4

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3

Words: 9.4k

Rating: E

Warnings: so ok descriptions of blood (it’s only one sentence and I don’t think it’s too bad but just in case), remembering trauma/triggering memories, angst. now for the fun part: SMUT, one (1) thigh spank, a sprinkle of dirty talk, a dash of praise kink, spitting, oral (f receiving), vaginal sex, maybe cockwarming but for like two minutes

a/n: happy 2021!!! only one chapter left after this one so enjoy. for the hornies who only want fun and sexy times: scroll to the bottom and work your way up, smut is like 3/4 in.

……………

In the blue morning light, Nevarro is almost beautiful.

The deserted lava fields spread in flat terrain as far as the eye can see, bumps and dips where magma cooled creating waves like a black ocean. Among the tide, obsidian turtle shells shimmer like dark mirrors, where Din Djarin studies his face. It startled him when he crawled from the tent to take the pram inside; when he glanced at the ground and the ground glanced back. His face cloudy and warped by irregular volcanic rock, he barely recognized it. It’s not rare for his features to blur in his memory sometimes, especially when he’s out working for days at a time unable to catch a glimpse of himself. Vanity is not one of his many shortcomings—hiding your face for decades is a mighty vaccine against it.

But today something’s different. The reflection peering up at him belongs to a stranger. Relaxed eyebrows, a hooked nose (has the curved always been so pronounced?), lips that faintly curl up. Content brown eyes. His mirrored counterpart is a sentient being below him, plump with blood and oxygen. Alive.

He looks happy.

However, morning weighs heavily on Din, he can see it in the bags below his eyes. It stings like a hangover, like the only hangover he ever had, back when he was an eighteen-year-old idiot and used the credits of his first bounty to get a flask of spotchka from some seedy bar. He remembers sitting in his crammed quarters at the old Covert, chugging the bottle on his own, methodically forcing himself to swallow against the burn. Waiting. Waiting for the alchemy to kick in, for the magic toxins that flushed drunks’ faces, lubricant that oiled their scowls into easy smiles. Waiting to feel what everyone else felt, just for a moment.

Lifting his head, Din peers ahead. Shadows of the city’s buildings creep above the horizon like a bad omen. The opposite of a promised land. Hunchbacked buildings stain the blue-gray sky, abruptly interrupt the intricate lava patterns, Nevarro the planet versus Nevarro the city. Din’s stomach crumples. One, maybe two hours by foot. One, maybe two hours, and last night will fade into a distant memory, a collection of ghost sensations.

But not yet. Right now, last night is still real. You are still real.

Crawling back into the tent, he licks his lips for the millionth time today. He can still taste you: that thick, salty-bitter taste, so much better than he could’ve imagined. He hopes it stays on his lips for a long time; or, at least, that he can replace it soon.

Inside, you’re curled up with his cape, a blooming bruise above your shoulder peeking out, the baby’s pram hovering next to you. He sits down, careful not to awake either of you, and runs a finger down your shoulder, feels the skin prickle. He buries his nose on the back of your hair and inhales: rain and earth as usual, but his soap too, a part of him that clings to you. Lips on the crook of your neck, Din smells himself on you, wonders if you’ll want to wash his scent away, or if you’ll want it to stay on you. You stir, your soft exhales gain a rasp. Din smiles. You do snore, after all.

He’ll have to wake you soon. He knows. He knows. You need to talk about last night. You need to have the frank conversation that you’ve both been postponing for way too long, back when you floated in dead space, no deadlines, no rush at all to make decisions. But things have changed, and he knows what he wants now, and he knows it can’t wait. Yet every time his fingers brush your shoulder to nudge you awake, he pulls them back. He’s never seen you so peaceful, not moving except for your expanding and contracting chest, the light fluttering of your lashes. All the fight in your body gone, those tall bridges around you down and inviting. So different from when he met you.

If there’s one thing Din’s good at, it’s sniffing out trouble. He had to be, if he wanted to make it in the Fighting Corps. In the Bounty Hunter’s Guild. He can sweep a room with a mental black light, spot the people who flare up white and bright, the ones he needs to stay away from—or approach, depending on the situation. And that day at the cantina, the first time he laid eyes on you? You glowed with it. Talking big game in Karga’s booth, laughing with your pretty smile and shuffling cards, you beamed with trouble, bright as radiation and just as dangerous. What needed to happen was clear as day. The Mandalorian needed to turn on his heels immediately, strut out of that bounty hunter hive without a second look, and never, ever, ask about you.

He’d been there before.

Mandalorians, despite common belief, are not made of beskar. Not on the inside, at least. They’re all warm blooded organics, burdened with flesh and internal organs and skeletons; pain and pleasure receptors. Older Mandalorians cautioned younger ones when they came of age and finished their training, when they were ready to become providers. Tall stern warriors, his superiors, warned that there would be temptation, situations that would make him doubt the Way. “Even the briefest taste,” Din’s former Alor said with that cavernous voice he had, “can be the point of no return.” And he was right.

Outside the Covert, there was so much…stimuli. Voices and colors and movement, a twenty-four-hour beehive, the galaxy buzzed and vibrated to no end. It was equally wonderous and grotesque, like a circus. The strenuous noises that rattled his ribcage, the strong smells, the different food, his senses had never felt more exhausted. The faces…stars, the faces. How muscles stretched in a big smile, the glint of teeth, the deep creases between eyebrows that signaled anger. Always moving, always changing, Din hadn’t seen so many uncovered heads since he was a child. His first few weeks outside he’d stare at people for hours until they scurried away or tried to fight him. Tried.

Then, when the initial shock wore out, he noticed other details. The way children’s eyes filled with admiration when they’d look at their parents, how that dimpled girl in Alderaan would blush and stutter whenever he bought something from her stall. And Din would wonder, despite all warnings, what it’d feel like to be one of them. To share so much of himself with the outside world. With time, curiosity morphed into obsession, obsession into desperation, and soon enough he found himself with Rand and the others, running rampant in an already chaotic galaxy.

One war, two decades, and a thousand regrets later, the curiosity died down. The helmet helped him tune out the outside world, made it easier to retreat into his memories. The galaxy seemed duller by the day, emptier. Lonelier, though he didn’t dwell on it.

That is, until he met you.

Until his resolve circled the drain and he asked Karga who you were and where to find you, walked into your store without an idea of what he’d say. Behind the counter, eyes shining and that silky voice asking what you could do for him, you reset the galaxy for him. Every time he visited you felt like his first day outside all over again.

But last night—that was stronger, set in stone. It felt like commitment. Something was born last night, something burgeoned in his chest and took root. Din can feel the fullness in his body, like he grew an extra limb, similar to the swell that tangled in his insides when he went back for the kid. He doesn’t have a name for it yet, but it reminds him of the day he swore the Creed. The fresh sense of purpose, the carved-out path in front of him, knowing what needs to be done:

When the siege is over, he’ll take you with him.

“Are you watching me sleep?” you mumble, cotton mouthed. “Kinda creepy.”

Din chuckles, then remembers. Stars, his heart stops beating for a second. Dread and natural reflexes throw his palm whip fast over your closed eyes. Maker. What the hell was he thinking, sitting next to you without the helmet. Maker, one second too late and you could’ve opened your eyes and—

“Didn’t see anything. Promise,” you say with a smile and pull his cape over your face. “Cover up.”

He pats around for the helmet (where the hell did he drop it last night?), finds it abandoned by your feet. When he fits it around his head, the familiar padding hugging his skull, he swears it feels heavier than it did yesterday.

“You decent?”

“Yeah.”

You lower the pseudo blanket, sleepy eyes and easy smile. As if you purposefully want to make it harder for him to strike up a conversation. But do I really need to— Yes. Yes, he does. He has to know where you stand and ask the big question: If you’d be willing to leave with him once the siege is lifted. Stars, his hands are sweating. But he can’t imagine you’d say no. Not after last night.

“Listen…”

As if on cue, whimpers and sniffles float from the closed pram. Great timing, kid. The baby’s ears droop like wilting leaves when Din places him on the ground, and the little bundle waddles with his eyes cast down until he reaches your ankle.

“What is it, kiddo?” you ask softly, your voice gentler than Din’s ever heard, sitting up as you hug his cloak tighter around your shoulders.

“I think…” Din begins, watching the baby sniffle and hug your bandaged calf. “I think he’s apologizing.”

A pair of eight-ball eyes blink at you, shiny with unshed tears, and Din feels an ache deep in his chest. This sweet little kid, all he’s been put through…

“Oh, don’t worry,” you coo, as one of your hands wriggles out the cloak and cradles the baby’s cheek. Your thumb brushes away a fat tear. “I’m tougher than your dad.” You wink at Din: Just kidding. But it’s true. Living in this planet for so long, all on your own. “Tough” is a survival skill for you, not a choice.

Also…dad. He should probably correct you. Din is not the kid’s real father, even though he’s caught himself thinking about the baby as his son once or twice, when he’s not too aware of his inner monologue. But he can’t bring himself to tell you the truth. Actually, he belongs to a race of wizards that I’ve been quested to deliver him to. Can’t adopt him if I’ll eventually give him up. Not when the kid’s shedding quiet tears into your leg and you’re doing your best to soothe him. Nevarro’s not child friendly, and Din can’t imagine you’ve got much practice with baby stuff, but he can tell you’re doing your best. And that’s enough to spread warmth through his chest.

What a troop you must make: Mandalorian bounty hunter, black market dealer, magic green baby. You could set up a three-person circus and retire. Yet the image tugs at a memory tucked away in his mind, something familiar but blurred.

His rumination’s cut short when Din notices the kid’s pudgy hands extending strategically on either side of your right leg, his eyelids beginning to flicker. Shit, shit, shit.

“She forgives you,” he tells the kid hastily as he scoops him and lays him on the open pram. He doesn’t need to be the little womprat’s real father to tell he was about to whip out his favorite party trick: healing witch powers. So far it doesn’t look like it permanently harms him, but it does weaken him, and Din can’t take chances. Plus, he skipped the part about the baby having supernatural powers when he told you his story, and there’s not a hell of a lot of ways one can explain fresh wounds disappearing.

“So,” you say after the baby’s settled in his pod. “What are we going to do,” you start, and Din’s throat knots with dread and excitement, “about the jammer.”

Oh. Stars, straight to business

“You said you have one.”

“I said I might have one,” you answer, grabbing for your discarded skirts. You fumble with them under the cloak, one hand clasped tight around it. It’s funny—after everything you’ve shared, you won’t undress in front of him during the day. “I mean, jammers aren’t picky like motors, they’re more one-size-fits-all.”

“But we still have to rewire it,” Din completes, wiping dry drool from the kid’s cheek with his thumb.

“Right.” Holding the cloak with your chin while you clasp your tunic, you seem to slowly draw your way out of a maze. That restless abacus in your head adding and subtracting. Your brows relax, and Din knows you’ve figured it out. “But I’ve got my equipment in my workshop, and we’d save time not having to remove it from a ship. And, no offense, but the Crest’s jammer was an antique. Way more complicated than newer models.” You finish dressing and hand him the cloak. “Only problem is the potential trooper stakeout outside the store.”

“I’ll take care of troopers.” Din takes the cloak and hesitates. It’s day nine, that time bomb still ticks in his head. Could it be that easy? Could you really do all this in one day? “What if we don’t finish on time?”

“Then,” you say, “we’ll figure something out.”

We, Din thinks, and smiles. Somehow, that’s all the reassurance he needs.

≈

Nevarro couldn’t look more deserted if tumbleweed rolled in the streets. The city’s a populated ghost town, no man’s land that’s filled with men. Well, men is a strong word. How did Viszla put it that time? We live hidden like sand rats. Yes, rats seems more fitting. Packs of them, scurrying around the former Covert, stealing Mandalorian armor to be bartered for scraps. Karga didn’t have to spell it out when he told him about people finding the Covert. Mando is familiar with the ways of the Outer Rim: Anything unclaimed is up for the taking, and beskar’s too tempting to resist. Knowing doesn’t make his blood boil any less, though. If Din focuses, he can almost hear their squeaking echoing from the sewers, the scavengers of this gray rock serving themselves to the abandoned armor of his people.

Movement to the left. The Mandalorian draws his blaster and bars you with his forearm, to see…a tunic. A short tunic. Tiny red lights. A Jawa. He exhales and sheathes the blaster. Stars. With the vembrance turned off, he has to rely on bare eyesight to scan for danger.

The Jawa drags a sleigh behind him. On it lies a dead or unconscious trooper (it makes no difference to these creatures), its gloved fingers drawing traffic lines on the mud and ash of unpaved streets. Red stars below the cowl focus on you for half a second, the bounty hunter’s hand approaches his blaster, and…

…and the Jawa waves at you, says “hello” in its squeaky language. You wave back, smiling, and the lump of shadow continues on its way. A neighborly gesture that in this context is plain bizarre.

“Old friend of yours?” Mando asks, walking again.

“Associate,” you correct, running a finger along the kid’s left ear until it twitches and he giggles. “Jawas scavenge parts straight from the wreckage, eliminate the middle man. And they don’t report to the New Republic.”

You mean steal from the wreckage, Din almost says, but bites it back. He supposes he can’t judge you for trading with Jawas. Prospects on the Outer Rim are bleaker than ever, and everyone’s got to eat. Especially during a siege.

Maker, sometimes he can’t believe he convinced himself to leave you here. Marooned in the type of place Core World citizens only talk about with shaking heads and disapproving voices. The type of place that makes people feel better about their lives, because hey, it could be worse, at least I don’t live in Nevarro. Granted, Din didn’t know then there’d be a siege. After the fight, after he bid goodbye to Cara and Karga, he hovered on the atmosphere for longer than was safe, gazing down at your store’s roof from the Razor Crest’s cockpit. His head a seesaw, weighing his options and unable to make a decision. You were still so close. He could fly back down to the surface, knock on your door, and take you away with him like he did with the kid.

Would you say yes? Reject him?

But most importantly: what about his quest? What kind of life would you lead travelling with him, a fugitive of the Empire and the New Republic? Life for Din has been defined by survival. Every day he’s had to get up and fight; fight to an inch of his life, fight with concussions, frostbite, shattered ribs. Knife wounds, blaster wounds. Personal wounds. He didn’t want that for you. You’re young, clever, resourceful. After that day, maybe you’d decide Nevarro was too dangerous. Maybe you’d pay your passage on a cruiser and start over in the Core Worlds, make your luck own there. Find a good man, if that’s what you wanted.

So he started the thrusters—the same ones he bought from you so long ago—and jumped into hyperspace with a semi clear conscience. This was best for everyone. You probably wouldn’t have accepted his offer, anyway. For five months he lived with his decision. And then he learnt about the siege.

In the sky, a string of river pearls forms a pattern like a necklace. Imperial cruisers, tie fighters, every ship that Guideon commands, solemnly presiding over Nevarro, itching to shoot down runaways. They’re too far up in the atmosphere to make out anyone in the surface, but Mando grabs your arm and coaxes you behind him all the same, his grip on the pram tighter. The memory of that imp’s blaster on your forehead is still too fresh. The dried blood on your legs.

Din glances back at you briefly. You catch his eye and smile—not grin, not smirk—but smile, a pretty, kind smile that would put to shame any of the imaginary Naboo girls you were so worked up about two nights ago. He should know, he’s been to Naboo, and none of the women there had your kaleidoscopic face, those hints of life that send his pulse on a sprint. The Mandalorian wonders what else you could be hiding under that sharp tongue, behind those clever eyes.

“Mando,” you call and point at a blackened mass to your right. “Nursery’s this way.”

All buildings in Nevarro emerge from volcanic rock, pushing away from clumps of hardened magma. They’re half-manmade, half-volcano hybrids—it’s a useful layout that gives their structure grip against constant earthquakes. It also, however, makes the buildings look like tumors growing on the navel of an ill planet. Your store’s the only one that’s never looked malignant, more like a sprouting flower than a parasite.

And now, the cantina too. Burned to a crisp, blacker than night, the former Church of Nevarro seems to have been swallowed by its unwilling host: the volcanic rock it was built upon. It’d be near impossible to know there’s a cantina inside, if not for the wide window peering inside. And it’s far from impossible for you or Mando, who know by heart where all the doors stand. He pushes one open for you, and together you walk inside.

“Thumb on the bottom, middle and ring fingers on the top, index to the side,” instructs Cara from behind the cantina’s crisp black counter. “The other side.”

Greef Karga sits on a stool opposite her, fumbling with a deck of cards. “Got it. Then what?”

“Then…” The veteran moves aside a flask of ardees and places a matching deck on the bar. “Pressure with your index, release the thumb.” She acts out her instructions and creates an arched ribbon spread on the surface. The Mandalorian can’t remember the last time he walked into the cantina and didn’t see the hypnotic patterns on cards, didn’t hear the wing-flapping noise of their shuffle. Although if he thinks about it, it makes sense that sabacc is the local sport around here. Dumb luck is the only god in the Outer Rim, where inhabitants gaze perpetually at their uncertain future and never look back. Tomorrow they’ll get a better hand, yesterday’s lost credits are forgotten. Everyone here seems to shed their past like snake skin.

“Nice spread, Dune,” you call. Greef and Cara follow your voice, realize they have visitors. “You should job hunt at Canto Bight.”

“Oh yeah?” replies the ex-shock trooper with an impish grin, both elbows on the counter and a rag over her shoulder, all bartender swagger. “What do you know about Canto Bight, hot stuff? Heard you’ve never been off this rock.” She spies a sly glance at Mando, enough to confirm that she’s annoying him on purpose, openly flirting with you. He squares his stance, rolls the helmet to pin her down with the visor, but (he really should know this by now) it does little to intimidate her.

“No trash talk before nightfall, ladies,” quips Karga, walking towards the pram. “And certainly not in front of babies. Hello, little one!” Said little one coos and lifts his skinny arms to be lifted by the Guild Leader, who sits back down delighted at having the baby’s favor, the little rascal on his lap. “He likes me!” Greef Karga smiles wide, flashing those white glinting teeth that’ve always reminded Din of a wolf’s. He’s not happy to leave the kid here, but he can’t take him if there’s a stakeout in your store. Beggars can’t be choosers and so on. But Cara’s here, and Din knows he can trust her with the baby. Though not with you, evidently.

“Tell you what, Mando,” Cara continues, apparently not done peacocking around you. “We arm wrestle, just like last time. Winner gets a flask of spotchka and the opportunity to take the lady to Canto Bight after you lift the siege.”

“Help us lift the siege and I’ll consider winning that flask.”

Dune lets out an long whistle, giving you a complicit look. “Big words.”

Your eyes rake along the Mandalorian’s armor slowly, boots to helmet, a dark tint in your eyes. Din flushes, the oppressive heat of his clothes suddenly thicker.

You shrug and answer, “Big man.” Your fingertips dance idly around the nape of your neck, which makes Mando think about last night, about his tongue on your neck and the purple bruises he sucked, the salty taste of flesh, the heady one between your legs. The memory steers blood into…into awkward places. Which, knowing you, was your intention. Maker, he needs to talk to you about teasing him in public.

“Help you how?” asks Greef, lifting the baby into the counter, whose six little claws hold on to two of his gloved fingers.

“Look after the kid, we won’t be more than a few hours.”

“Sure thing!” booms Karga, at the same time as Cara says, “Fuck no.”

You fold your arms at the veteran. “You scared of an infant, Dune? It’s only one of him, and…” you squint at the cantina’s black shell, like something’s out of place in its burned remains, “…two of you. Where’s—” you start, before glancing at Mando and swallowing the second half.

“Duma?” supplies Karga, tapping the corners of the deck on the counter. “Don’t know, probably boiling beskar to make broth. Rumor has it she’s running out of supplies, fast. Did you ever take her up on that deal?”

Your eyes shoot vibroblades at him, your mouth a flat line.

“What deal?” Mando asks.

“Nothing,” you reply, still glaring warnings at Karga, who sighs, shakes his head, and tickles the baby’s tummy. The kid giggles and kicks half the deck off the counter. “Nothing important. We should get going.”

Outside, you guide the Mandalorian through a maze of back alleys, the ugly underbelly of a planet that’s already the galaxy’s own underbelly. Mando glues a palm to his blaster’s grip, lifting it only as muscle memory to turn on the vembrance and activate the setting to scan footprints, frustrated when he remembers his own piece of equipment would immediately snitch on him. Yet you glade past dark corners that beg for their own knife-brandishing mugger with the grace of someone frolicking in D’Qar’s moorlands, postcard-calm.

Once in your store’s backdoor, the Mandalorian ventures a glance at the front street. Empty. Like the rest of the city, it’s like curfew was declared, not an imp in sight. Certainly not a stakeout in process. Behind him, you push the door open, the busted security panel no more than a prop to discourage robbers.

“What?” you ask when he doesn’t walk inside.

“There’s nobody here,” he answers, studying the connecting alleys like a web of arteries, waiting for a trooper squadron to materialize and ambush you.

“It’s quiet too quiet?” you tease with a lopsided grin. “Lay off the thrillers, Mando. Come on.”

You step inside, he hesitates. “Could be a trap.”

Hands on the doorframe, leaning forward, your face almost touches the helmet. “Then you’ll shoot them and we’ll be back to square one. Not much of a choice here, Mando.” Those pretty eyes, your shining, wet lips. It’s a siren’s call he knows he shouldn’t answer.

The Mandalorian follows you inside.

It takes him a moment to recognize his surroundings.

Your store hibernates in the dark, stale air floating around its vault. Your store, which used to buzz with drills and neon lights and life around the clock, looms like a beast’s hollow belly, crypt-still. Lights off and furniture wrapped in sheets, it looks abandoned, the way all those family houses in deserted villages were hastily vacated during the war. He wonders how long you’ve been out of business because of the siege. Because of him.

You walk across the reception in tomb silence. In the reception signs hang next to the front desk—store policies that gave Mando more than one headache—dark and colorless, like they turned in their badges and no longer preside over this place. Only “NO IMPS” twitches, one or two agonizing flashes of neon green, before it shuts down like its colleagues. Six rules in total, although in Din’s opinion there’s a seventh that foregoes the need of a sign: “NO QUESTIONS”.

That’s a rule that everyone in Nevarro—bounty hunter or not—subscribes to. It’s the rule you followed when the Mandalorian walked into your store, still crafting some half-assed excuse about thrusters when he came face to face (helmet to face?) with you. You never asked about New Republic guidelines or what he wanted them for. Not even for his name. No questions when he came back two weeks later. No questions as weeks passed and then months, as tension thickened between you until his internal barometer cracked.

No questions when his thinning resolve broke one night. That night. He pushed you onto your workbench, you undid each other’s belts, pawed at each other’s sides. No questions when he slid into your wet heat, when he had to stop for a second to avoid a heart attack. No questions when he finished inside you, blood roaring in his ears, your sighs clouding his visor, your hand gently pushing him back.

And then, his question: “Where are you going?”

“Upstairs,” you answered, pulling your trousers back around your hips.

It dropped on his head like freezing water. Upstairs. Upstairs to your apartment, to rest. Alone. Meaning your encounter was a one-night stand, a shortcut to let off some steam. Stars, you were basically swinging the front door wide open for him, putting away a couple of wrenches and switching off the lights to signal the night was over. The Mandalorian didn’t need questions to know he’d overstayed his visit.

But…what if he’d spent the night anyway? Maybe the next morning he would’ve been upfront with you, confess he’d wanted you for so long and that he wanted it to evolve past one furtive encounter, that he wanted it to be real. No, he probably wouldn’t have. As a bounty hunter—as Mandalorian—there are things he simply can’t have. Things that are better off unspoken, better off—

“Tucked away,” you say behind him, making the Mandalorian jump.

“What?”

“The planner.” You walk behind the front desk. “I was saying I don’t remember leaving it here. I thought it was tucked away in some box.”

Oh.

It is strange. A light sheen of dust covers the counter, yet the planner is glossy clean, a painted depiction of the Manarai Mountains on its cover. A souvenir from Coruscant. He wonders who brought you that. It tugs at something sweet but sad in his chest, the fact that you have to rely on others’ cheap souvenirs to explore the galaxy. That’ll change as soon as this mess with the siege is settled.

You flip through the planner, empty for the most part but for a few scribbles on the first pages. It’s dated 5 ABY, four years ago. The Mandalorian knows from experience that your appointment rule works mostly to turn away unsavory clients. Or to get on his nerves.

“Look at that,” you murmur as if reading his mind, your finger pointing at nothing on a page. “You don’t have an appointment, Mando.”

“We don’t have time for this,” he answers, though he knows he’ll make time for it anyway. It used to drive him up the wall whenever you refused to see him using that stupid excuse. But, as with everything with you, it was more complicated than that. It took longer than he’s willing to admit to understand that it was a game. That you liked him riled up, after the push and pull, the hot and cold, the challenge. You had a taste for difficulty. Although it didn’t take as long to figure out that he liked it too. “Just let me in.”

“I don’t know,” you drawl, glancing at the dull signs on the wall. “Rules are rules.”

The Mandalorian has played this game with you enough to know what you want. He thinks of all those memories in this building. You, pinned between his armor and the doorframe; him, sitting on that battered couch upstairs with your hands on his knees. Even those calm nights, when you’d only sit and talk and make him laugh, and sometimes he’d get a laugh from you too, if he didn’t try too hard. All the sweating and the panting and the talking that these walls have witnessed. Maybe there’s time for one last memory before you both leave this planet for good. Not maybe—there’s definitely time. If this were an ambush, you’d be dodging blaster shots by now.

“So bend the rules,” he says slowly, gripping his edge of the counter and dropping his voice to the low register that gives you goosebumps. “For me.”

Your eyes twinkle like copper at the fact that he’s playing along. “And what do I get in return?”

This time, he doesn’t hesitate. “Whatever you want.” Perhaps he’s known for a while, in the back of his head where he could ignore it, but last night the idea rushed to his front lobe. He’ll give you anything you want.

“I want…” you begin, mischief shining in your eyes, before a shadow clouds them. Slowly, your face goes soft, a special kind of longing in your pupils. You swallow, your voice becomes throaty, and the words sound truer than anything Din’s ever heard: “I want you. I just want you.”

He almost trips on his feet when he rounds the counter, his head already swimming. The hunter crowds you with his body, backs you up against the counter until you’re caged and looking up at him, hooded eyes and parted lips. Hot stuff. Cara’s shallow pet name. When he heard it he thought it was inappropriate. But now. As your mouth nestles on his clothed neck and breathes hot, damp air through the fabric—a mild sensation for most people, he guesses, but almost a mating call for him—he realizes it’s not untrue. The name fits you like a glove, hot stuff. It’s just…incomplete. If he’s learnt anything these nine days is that there’s so much more to you, enough sailor knots of emotion and personality inside you to loop around the galaxy if unraveled.

“Touch me,” you breathe, rubbing up against him, searching friction. “Please, please, touch me. There’s nobody here, we—we have time.”

Gloved palms on your waist, down to your hips, lower to your ass, Din tries to fondle you as best he can. He pins you between the counter and his hips, your leg curls around his back and holds him closer. His erection starts to bulge against your belly, your breaths start quickening, your hearts start pumping faster. The tell-tale signs that indicate you’re both ready to go hit all their usual beats. But something’s missing. There’s a step you’re skipping, something…something he’s not doing right.

Tentatively, you press a small kiss on his covered neck, and he can only feel its frustrating whisper, a promise of more.

A lightbulb flicks on.

Mando holds your hips and spins you around, the desk’s edge on your waist. “Bend over,” he grouses next to your ear, his voice sand-coarse. “Don’t turn around.”

Gloves off first. One palm cradles the back of your neck, feels you shiver. His left hand runs down your back and around to your tummy, savoring all those warm, secret places on you, the way your body opens up to him on instinct. The power trip when he cups your heat through your skirts and you moan into the counter. You nestle your hips on his lap, and he stiffens on command, a tug between his legs that he knows is far too insistent for foreplay. Stars, it’s like he’s conditioned to get hard in this store.

“Don’t—” he chokes out “—not so fast. Or I—I won’t—”

“What?” you pant. Din hears the grin laced in your voice and knows it’s bad news for him. He drops to his knees and both hands walk up your bandaged calves, squeeze the tops of your thighs. “You…you don’t…” He throws your skirts over your back. You inhale sharply at the cold air—or at his hands pulling the soft flesh of your backside. When he removes the helmet, your pitch sounds broken up, more desperate. “You d-don’t want…”

It’s a small victory when he parts his lips against your clothed core and it’s you, for once, who chokes on words. Small victory, but he’ll take it, especially after the way his cock twitches in his pants when he smells you. He kisses you again, just a peck over your clit, and your legs shake. Fucking…stars. If this is how you feel when you tease him…well, he gets it. You mewl and push back on his face, but he hardly thinks you want it that easy.

“Stop moving,” he tells you sternly, with a voice he’d use on quarries.

A shiver runs down your spine. “But—” You break into a whine when his open palm slaps the side of your thigh. It’s probably the surprise rather than the sting that makes you inhale sharply, and a combination of both that dampens the cotton between your legs.

“Stop moving,” he repeats, mouth pressed against your core so you can feel the vibration; that, he learnt from you. “Or you don’t get my mouth.”

Above him, you let out a displeased little grunt, too throaty to mean much. But you open your legs wider and brace yourself on the front desk, grant him full access to you. His index hooks on your underwear, moves it aside, and he buries his lips deep into the softest part of you. Din barely hears you gasp. He circles both arms around your thighs and pulls you closer, until his tongue is buried between your folds and you just have to take it. Fuck, it’s just…decadent. The taste, the smell, how soaked you are already, your little purrs and whimpers when he sucks on your lips. They’re not things he ever thought he’d get to feel. He doesn’t deserve any of it.

“Mmm, stars, Mando,” you sob, sneakily rutting your hips like you just can’t help it. He allows it, but only because he’s so rock fucking hard he’s practically doing the same thing. His cock trapped down one pant leg, he squeezes his thighs to try and soothe the ache. “Move—move up a b-bit.”

“No,” he grunts, and licks a slow line from the spot right below your clit to the back of your slit. It wasn’t so long ago that it was your mouth on him, you teasing him mercilessly inside this very store, him moaning and grunting and losing his mind. That’s how he wants you: sloppy, desperate, begging.

“Maker, don’t t-tease,” you moan, but it only encourages him. His tongue slides deep inside you where you’re hotter than sin, enjoying how your walls swell and tighten around it. You’re so fucking wet, he could push into you right now and relieve the pressure building between his legs. But not yet.

“Beg me,” Din groans, mouthing at the inside of your thighs and sucking tiny bruises there. You moan above him, deep in your throat, and he wonders which one of you is more turned on right now. “Put—fuck—put that smart mouth to use. Beg me.”

For a moment all he can hear is your labored breathing, the wheels turning in your pretty head, laying out a plan to make him give in faster. Then, soft and sweet, you hum, “Mando.”

One word. Probably the word Din hears the most, so generic and impersonal that everyone from friends to strangers to enemies call him that. That word coming from your lips makes his heart sprint, his cock pulse and scream at him to hurry up. Stars, but if it was his name—his real name—on your lips, soft and purring like you pronounced his nickname, he knows he wouldn’t be able to hold back a second longer.

“You always make me feel so good,” you continue, arching your back a little to test the waters. “You’re so—so good with your mouth, stars. Want you to kiss me again—kiss me everywhere. Taste me like yesterday—” Your breath catches when he sucks on your inner lips again, closer to where you want him. Maker, if you keep talking like that… “Used to th-think about it all the time, how—mmm—how your—your tongue would feel. Never, ngh, never thought you’d use it th-there, though.” Din laps at your cunt, drinks from it. Fuck, he can’t remember the last time he got this hard. An airy laugh before you continue. “You can be so d-dirty sometimes. I’d let you do—do anything to me.”

Really, Din doesn’t know what pushes him to do it. He doesn’t know what makes him pull back and spread you open with his fingers, stare at your glistening, deliciously swollen folds, and spit at their very top. You moan raggedly above him, a complete mess of sobs and whimpers, as Din simply stares. He watches the trail of spit run down your slit, the lower it goes the more precum he feels sticking to his trousers. Half-drunk on your words and your slick, Din thinks: What did you do to me? Maker, you have him wrapped around your finger.

Saliva trails down until it teardrops on your clit, clings to it, and he doesn’t need another sign. His lips latch on to your bundle of nerves and suck. You sob and whine and cry, rocking your hips hard against his mouth, and he continues sucking through his teeth. Your knees give out, but he holds them before you can hit the ground, holds you in place as he feels you give him everything, your pussy clenching around nothing. Slick trails down his chin, all the way to his neck, and—shit. He’s going to burst in his pants just from feeling you cum in his mouth.

It takes every last ounce of self-control he has left to detach his lips from your cunt and stumble to his feet. You’re still shaking, still panting, but he can’t hold it back a minute longer. Fuck, not even a second longer, he needs to have you right now.

It’s a struggle to get a hold of his fly, fingers trembling and teeth grinding. When he finally pulls the zipper down, the sound snaps your head up.

“Are you—Mando, are you going to—”

“Yes,” he grunts, digging into his waistband for his cock, lining it up against your cunt. Stars, he’s so pent up, it hurts to touch it. “Is it—is it o-okay, can—can, I—”

“Oh, fuck, yes,” you mewl, pushing your hips so tightly against his groin the head of his cock catches against your entrance. Fuck. “Please, please, please, put it inside, let me feel your big, thick, co—”

One hard shove, deep enough that he feels himself poke your cervix, and he’s cumming—hard. His spine doubles over and he grunts and moans into your hair, giving you short, stunted thrusts as he fills you to the brim. You were already so swollen before, now you feel unbearably tight, squeezing his cock so harshly his eyes roll back on his skull. And his balls keep pulling up and giving you more of his load, his teeth grinding so hard they might crack. One last thrust, nice and deep so his cum stays inside you, and his palm presses down on your eyes. Din uses that hand as leverage to turn you around and tilt your head like you showed him, just enough so he can reach your lips. And he kisses you.

Your bodies spasm and throb against each other, you clench around him involuntarily and he flinches, too sensitive to handle the aftershocks of your orgasm. Still, he could stay like this for days. Gently sucking on your tongue, running his along the roof of your mouth, feeling how your lips curve against his in a smile. Then, an alarming thought. Maybe this is the only way to do it that feels right now—sex, he means. With the helmet off, his lips on yours, his nose on your hair. Bare hands drawing circles on your hips. Every sense devoted to you. Even the briefest taste can be a point of no return.

You peck his lips and flutter sweet, short kisses around his jaw, working your way up to his ear, where you whisper, “We’re running out of time.”

The jammer. Those words are quickly becoming the bane of his existence. “I know,” he whispers back, but presses one last, long kiss to your lips that feels inexplicably sad, like a kiss goodbye. Din shakes the thought off his head. He’s too pessimistic sometimes.

You both hiss when he pulls out, slowly so he won’t hurt you.

“Keep ‘em closed,” he tells you before removing his hand from your eyes. For all he knows you could open them right there, and there’d be nothing he could do about it. Somehow, however, he’s certain you won’t. His trust is rewarded when he pulls the hand back, and your eyes are screwed shut beneath it.

It takes an awkward choreography to straighten yourselves. You try to pull your own underwear back on, but in your position it’s near impossible. So Din kneels behind you once more, fishes his helmet from the floor, tucks himself back into his trousers, and lifts your panties until they hug your hips. You push your own skirts down before Din’s upright, which results in the long fabric covering him like your furniture. You share a quick laugh before standing straight and facing each other.

“You can open them.”

Now, he tells himself, watching your sated smile and blinking eyes. The words are on the tip of his tongue: When this is over, would you like to come with me—

“If there’s a jammer here,” you say, before he can get a word out, “it’s in the workshop.”

You walk around him and open a door behind the reception desk to reveal the staircase that leads to your apartment. Din’s still telling himself that he’ll just ask you later, when you climb one step—and stop. You turn around like you can sense he’s about to ask, for the second time in this store, where you’re going.

“Gotta get some stuff from upstairs, but I’ll be down in a second.” Your voice wobbles, your foot hesitates on the step. You’re nervous. “But if you find the jammer before I come back, don’t…don’t leave.”

“Of course not.” Maker, of course he wouldn’t leave without you. Do you really think he would?

The workshop is darker than the reception. A single window, currently boarded up, so he has to use the helmet’s light. The cone of white light creates a sinister effect, like creatures lurk everywhere it doesn’t touch. Rubber tubes hang from the ceiling like lianas, circuit boards glimmer green like leaves, and yellow sensors blink from several components. Your own little ecosystem watches him dig into boxes of clutter to search for a jammer. Stars, he’s never known how you manage to find anything here. It’s probably best if he waits outside; he wouldn’t be able to find his own ship in here without you.

He’s turning to the door when the helmet’s light catches on a dark glint, like it reflected on a mirror. It stops him on his tracks. Din’s not sure what prompts his feet to carry him toward your worktable, where the mystery item lays center-front. He sees himself reflected on the dark T-visor. It’s a helmet. It’s a blue Mandalorian helmet.

At first he’s confused. Surprised to see a Mandalorian helmet here—and is it even a Madalorian helmet? Yes, yes it is. His brain lags behind his eyes, goes through different scenarios, each less likely than the last.

Is there another Mandalorian here? Did the Alor bring this? Is the Alor a client?

And then, truth.

It falls abruptly on his back like atmospheric pressure, gravity that crushes. A hot rush of blood enveloping his head, poisoning his thoughts, a ringing in his ears so sharp he thinks he might pass out. A million thoughts in less than a second—convoluted, scrambled, furious. Then an image, so clear that the Maker himself might’ve played it for him like a holo: Thieves, scammers, criminals scurrying through the tunnels of the Covert, the empty halls where his people built a refuge, where they could feel safe. The pile of beskar armor unguarded—the high price that brave Mandalorians paid to help Din, help the child—served in a silver platter for these scavengers, these fucking honorless lowlifes.

His gloved fingers grip your worktable so hard his knuckles might crack—or the table. But the Mandalorian can’t feel the pain on his joints, not when his bloodstream’s turned to acid, when it feels like somebody jammed live wires into his head.

This fucking place. This planet with its fucking people, their fucking cynicism, this fucking landfill for hazardous waste, this piece of shit skughole—

Above, the Mandalorian hears footsteps. Your footsteps. You.

He looks down at the helmet, the empty T-visor limp and black, dead. You did this. Thinking of you clears the red cloud from his mind, trades it for a gray one. A headache creeps behind his eyes, his shoulders go slack. He feels hollowed out. Like a spoon reached inside his chest and scooped away everything essential, left him a carcass. Like something died here today.

You did this.

And then the helmet is not a helmet, but a severed head. A head with a pool of blood around it, guts sprayed all over, and there’s the corrupt smell of blaster residue coming from his neighbor’s house, the taste of copper after biting his tongue running, the durasteel giants shooting red death, the deafening explosions, his parents’ screams, his school going up in a cloud of smoke, his father holding him, whispering one last sentence that he can’t hear through the sounds of war and carnage, his mother’s cheeks stained with tears and dirt and blood, their blurring faces, the darkness, the fear.

Holding the helmet, Din feels tears sting in the corners of his eyes, then hot on his cheeks. Nobody understands, why can’t anybody understand? The warrior that owned this helmet is lost forever, condemned to live like a phantom, empty without the Creed, without the Way. It’s worse than death. It’s the curse that most of the Covert was forced to carry, to walk this galaxy like living dead, violently stripped of everything that mattered. And the relic of their sacrifice sits in your workshop next to the rest of your junk, ready to be sold off to the highest bidder, somebody who’ll want to hang it in their wall like game they hunted, and how could you do this to him, how could you, how could you do this—

“Find anything yet?”

When the Mandalorian turns, his helmet’s white light locks you in place like quarry. Like guilty quarry.

You squint and raise a palm to shut out the bright beam. “Stars, Mando,” you laugh. “Are you trying to blind me? Turn that off.”

Your words are muffled by the rushing blood that wraps around his ears, loud as a waterfall, but he can understand them. The Mandalorian grips the helmet tighter between his hands and keeps the light on so you can see what he found, what he knows about you. The ugly, festered truth about you.

Once your eyes adjust to the bright light and they’re able to stay open for more than three seconds, you give him a quizzical look. The visor gives you nothing, so you drop your gaze to the hard evidence between his hands.

And you have the nerve to look even more surprised. Furrowed eyebrows and everything to add to the performance.

“Where did you get that?” you ask.

A thousand responses climb into his head in a savage, foul clutter, like army ants. I should ask you the same, where do you think?, how much are they giving you?, was it worth it?, what’s wrong with you?, what’s wrong with this fucking planet? He opens his mouth, but they swarm in his throat all at once and tie a knot around his windpipe. More tears on his cheeks, another attempt at words—nothing.

Finally, quietly: “How could you do this to me?”

The crease between your brows digs deeper, and there’s genuine worry in your eyes. Of course you’re worried, he just caught you red fucking handed. “Mando, I really don’t understand—”

“Me neither,” he hisses through his teeth, “because this is a Mandalorian helmet, and you’re no Mandalorian.” The first insect out, the rest follow like a waterfall, crawling out his mouth. “How long did you wait after I left to steal this from the Covert? An hour? Five minutes?”

Trapped under the light, where you can no longer hide in shadows, you look stricken. The harsh light shines on circles under your eyes, creases where you frown. Bleak features he never noticed before.

Your voice is low and icy when you say, “I never stole anything from the Covert.”

“Scavenge, loot, I don’t care what you people like to call it.” How could you, after everything, how could you.

“Listen to me,” you say steadily, but your eyes are hot coals and your jaw is set, your own anger rising. Good. Masks off. He wants to see who’s been hiding under his noses these nine days. All those fucking months. “I didn’t take a thing from the Covert. I have no idea where that helmet came from.”

The Mandalorian is barely listening. He’s heard more than enough lies for two lifetimes, he sure as fuck doesn’t need yours. Instead, he focuses on the one thought that manages to float in the red sea of anger and despair. He holds on to it like an anchor, clutches it until his palms bleed, but truth hurts.

“Duma.” He doesn’t ask this time around—he tells you. He knows and there’s nothing you can do about it—nothing he can do about it. Greef Karga’s words shine painful light on fog. Boiling beskar…did you take her up on that deal? “You’re selling it to her.”

“Stars, of course not.” The stoniness of your features melts for an instant, hurt revealed underneath those layers. You look devastated, tired. Maker, you’re good. Those hours of sabacc are sure paying off. “Why won’t you believe me?”

“How can I believe you?” he snarls, his head suffocating in dark quicksand—grief, anger, betrayal all clogging his nostrils, making his head throb. How could you how could you how could you. “When I know what type of people sprout from this planet, I make a living hunting them. I know you—” his voice breaks, but the words keep flowing and he hardly hears them “—I know the kind of company you keep, I know you have no principles, I know you can’t commit to shit—”

“Commit?” you snap, face hardening cold and twisted like the magma outside, but he knows too well what lies beneath the surface. Lava, hot and bubbling, your anger as raw as his. Rawer. “You wanna talk about commitment? I waited for you for five months!” The light from the helmet no longer makes you squint, but it turns your eyes red and watery. “You left. You left me here to starve through a fucking siege that you caused—”

“I came back for you!”

That gives you pause. Then you shake your head. “No, you came back because that piece of shit official asked—”

“He asked to meet me in Belderone.” Belderone, same sector as Nevarro, not even ten minutes away in hyperspace. “Told me Nevarro wasn’t safe because there was a siege, so I insisted we meet here.” The memory drains him. How worried he was about you, the type of worried that stirs bile in the stomach. How guilty he felt. “To see you again. Make sure you were okay.” The Mandalorian looks down at the helmet in his hands, a strange mirror staring up at him. Harsher than the one from this morning. His ears ring, his mouth tastes sour, his rising headache plateaus into an unbearable, incessant throb. A ghost limb aches somewhere in his body, all over it. He wants to leave your store, your planet.

How could you?

Mando doesn’t raise his head to look at you when he walks out the workshop. You don’t stop him when he reaches the main door. You don’t stop him when he walks out to the street.

The sky is jaundice-yellow when he steps outside. Gone are this morning’s blue hues, suffocated by the sickly coughing of a million volcanos, by their fumaroles and their sparks. For all the Mandalorian cares, this planet can burn.

On his way to the cantina to pick up the kid, he stares at the marker that identifies the entrance to the city: that crooked, arthritis-ridden arch. Beyond it, he spots the outline of a ship. A sleek civilian shuttle, probably a rental. The official isn’t stupid enough to fly a Republic starship past siege lines, so if the tiny shuttle fooled Guideon’s platoon in the atmosphere, well, it’ll have to do it again. Tomorrow, they’ll just have to tempt fate and avoid tempting the batallion of Imperial cruisers. Or fly out in the Crest and hope they can jump into hyperspace before imps pulverize them. All he wants is to put as many lightyears between him and this planet.

Din’s head pounds when he walks inside the cantina. The only thought hammering against his skull: How could you.

…………

Edit: Chapter 5…’tis the end

Taglist: @rosetophighlander @hellomothermoon @newyorksins @leo-moon @benedrylcumbersnatch @corrupt-fvcker @seratoninforyouseratoninforme @multifandomlife22 @justanotherblonde23 @abysshaven @equalstrashflavoredtrash @16boyfriends-and-me @ihaveashield @dinispunk @bananaagurl @mstgsmy @absurdthirst @cowboy-kylo @roxypeanut @heyitmelexie @readsalot73 @krazykatkay456 @elusive-danger-noodle @lola-wolf @nikkiparthena @lifeisapitch15 @teaofpeach @auty-ren @anewrule @hyp-oh-critical​ @pascaliprincess​ @geannad​ @coaaster​ @frietiemeloen​ @yourbucky084​ @brynnstudies​ @elfwoodfae​

im pretty sure i forgot someone so please message me if i did!

[assassins-and-hidden-blades]

Miracles -- Part 3

07/04/2021: Here it is!! The one, the only, the... 6.1k words of purely self indulgent protective!Jacob (lowkey been doing it for everyone and their mother except for when with the reader and idk why bc i dig that shit too)

I really hope you guys enjoy this, because I loved writing it!! There's a chance I could sneak in a last chapter if people wanted that? Feedback would be greatly appreciated!! This is super long, so sit down and get comfy :)

Pry these commas from my cold, dead hands tho. Also, I HC Jacob to be predominantly left-handed, but that's just me aha.

Warnings: Bit of violence, swearing, corporal punishment, arson (without giving too much away)

Tagging: @marshmallow--3 // @missingfrye // @ct-5445 // @iceboundstar // @rahdaleigh // @pink-polarfox // @b3k1720 // @itseivwhore // @sofiewithat // @missbenzayb

Assassin's Creed Mobile Masterlist

Red Dead Redemption 2 Mobile Masterlist

Part 1 HERE, Part 2 HERE

The night was cold.

You retreated further under the blankets, turning to rest your head on your beloved’s chest. You wore an oversized shirt, and he wore a loose pair of breeches. His arm pulled you closer, fingers stroking your bicep. In turn, you traced the Rook painted on his chest. “Jacob?”

He turned to gaze down at you, lips inches from your forehead. “Yes, my love?”

“My family have written to me; they would like me to visit them in Warwick.”

“Your family lives quite far,” Jacob remarked, smiling adoringly at you. “Will you and Lily be alright travelling by yourselves?”

You sighed. “That’s the problem.” Sitting up, you gently grasped Jacob’s hand, playing with his fingers. “They don’t know that Lily exists, and I have no chance of telling them that I have a child without the status of ‘wife’.”

“I see…” Jacob watched you trace the lines on his hand. “Is there anything I can do?”

Propose, you idiot.

“Could you look after Lily while I’m away?”

“On my own?” His fingers tightened around yours.

“I trust you with her, Jacob. You’re the only one I can trust her with.”

He sucked in a breath. “Are you sure?”

“Stop doubting yourself.” You kissed his temple. “Besides, she adores you; she’ll listen to you.”

“Alright then. It’s decided.”

“Thank you, my love. However can I make it up to you?”

Sensing the humour in your tone, Jacob winked. “I can think of a few things.”

You laughed to yourself as you blew out your candle, the darkness enveloping the room as you pulled yourself closer to Jacob, the security of his arms lulling you to sleep.

----------

Before you knew it, you were packing a carriage with your luggage, setting off for the journey ahead. Jacob was standing in the doorway of your house, Lily resting on his hip. “Mama, do you have to go?”

“Sweetheart, if I don’t, then horrible Aunt Susan will come marching all the way down here herself, and we don’t want that, do we?” Lily shook her head, giggling.

“She’s not the only one who’s going to miss you.” Jacob wrapped his arm around your waist, pulling you into his side. Smiling, he dipped his head to lock his lips with yours.

“Yuck!”

The both of you pulled apart, chuckling.

“Well, I best be going. Don’t get into any trouble; I know what you both are like unsupervised.”

Sharing mischievous looks, they began to wave as you got into the carriage.

“Bye, Mama!”

“Safe travels, my love!”

You watched as they recede from view, the picture of your perfect family playing in your mind as hooves against cobblestone played in your ears.

As soon as the carriage turned the corner, Jacob turned to Lily. “What do you fancy doing?”

Lily giggled. “I have school!”

Jacob mockingly rolled his eyes. “That is the worst answer I’ve ever heard.”

“Are you saying I can skip?”

As much as he’d want to say yes, you would have punted him six ways from Sunday. “‘fraid not, love.” He took her inside. “But I can promise that afterwards, I’ll take you to get iced cream.” Lily cheered in victory before she hopped down, scurrying to collect her things for the day ahead.

----------

Jacob walked Lily to school that morning, keeping her on his left and away from the curb. He grasped her hand firmly, lest she get lost in the rushing crowd. When he approached the building, he saw various parents saying goodbye to their children, as well as some children arriving on their own.

He knelt down to her height, tidying her windswept appearance with a reassuring grin. “You have a good day, alright?”

Smiling widely, she nodded, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Thank you, Papa.”

Wait, what?

Jacob’s breath caught in his throat. Lost for words, he kissed her head and returned the hug tenfold. “I love you, angel.”

“Love you too!”

The bell rang moments after, causing Lily to pull away. “Don’t be late!” Waving, she ran to catch up with her friends and disappeared into the building. Standing up, Jacob cleared his throat and tugged on his waistcoat to compose himself, though he could barely stifle his grin. The warmth in his heart engulfed his chest. He walked past the rest of the parents as if he were walking on clouds, his happiness fixed for the day.

----------

“What’s got you in such a good mood today?” Evie asked her brother, watching incredulously as she found him tidying his train carriage.

“Oh, nothing.” Although his tone was dismissive, his face told a completely different story.

“Did you… have a good night?”

“Oh, no.” Chuckling, he sifted through the papers on his desk. “Y/N’s headed to Warwick.”

Puzzled, Evie tilted her head. “Free beer?”

“Nope.” He popped the ‘P’.

“Come on, then; what is it? You can’t expect me to keep guessing forever.”

Restraining himself from jumping for joy, he turned to his sister. “Lily called me ‘Papa’.”

Evie’s face lit up. “Oh, Jacob, that’s lovely! Does this mean you’ll…” She mimicked opening a ring box.

Blushing, he nodded, a toothy grin plastered on his face. “I’m excited, Evie. I… I need to sit down.”

He leaned back on the sofa, tossing his hat beside him. Running a hand through his hair, he sighed. “Are you alright?” Evie took a chair to sit opposite him.

“I… I’ve never felt this much joy in my life.”

“Jacob Frye, you’re practically speechless.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

“You have to buy the rings before Y/N comes back.”

“I will. Maybe Lily will want to come with me. Not yet, though; I don’t want to spring the news on her immediately.”

Evie began to talk about the type of engagement ring you would find the most appealing, but Jacob had all but zoned out. He was fidgeting with the iron band on his right index finger, engraved on the inside with the Assassin’s Insignia. Barely thinking, he removed it and switched hands, sliding it on his ring finger.

He was going to get married. You were going to be his wife.

“What if she doesn’t say ‘yes’?” A sudden anxiety clutched his heart as he looked up in worry.

Evie was stunned into silence. “What are you talking about?! Of course she’s going to say yes!”

“She has a child to think about; what if she doesn’t want to get married at all?”

“Jacob,” she sighed. “She knows you’d do anything for Lily. You’ve done it right from the beginning.” He shifted in his seat as a phantom pain clutched his side, remembering his tussle with Thomas Lynch. “She would be insane not to want someone like you as a husband, and as a father to her child.”

“When did you learn to talk like that?” Jacob smirked.

“When you’re the eldest, you learn a thing or two.”

“Bullshit.” He scoffed, but wordlessly thanked her for the reassurance.

“Knock knock.” Eyes fixed on the doorway as Henry peered around the corner. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I need some papers from Jacob.”

“Right; which ones?” He stood up and closed the two meter gap to the pile of half sorted paperwork.

“The ones on James Brudenell.”

“Who?” He frowned.

“Lord Cardigan.”

“Oh, that prick…” He thumbed through the various files, quickly getting to the end with no sign of the desired intel. “I must’ve left it at the house. I’ll head off there now and bring them to you tomorrow.”

“Can you not come back straight away?”

“I need to get to the school; there won’t be enough time. I’m taking Lily out for that new iced cream.” Evie quirked her lips into a knowing smile. “What?”

“Oh, nothing,” she shrugged.

Shaking his head, Jacob grabbed his hat and opened the door, watching the train slow into the station. “See you tomorrow.”

“Don’t forget the--”

“The papers, yes, I’ll get them!” By then, he had already jumped onto the platform, disappearing into the crowd.

----------

On the stroll back to the house, Jacob checked his pocket watch, planning his time accordingly. He’ll find the papers, finish the paperwork that should’ve been completed two weeks ago, and head to the school.

The street seemed unusually quiet at this time in the afternoon, but Jacob only grew concerned when he noticed a lack of Rooks. Usually, there would be more and more scattered around the closer he grew to the house, but so far he could count them all on one hand. A scuffling from behind him pricked at his ears. He spun, brows furrowed, but the road was empty, save for a carriage calmly trotting past. He used it as a reassurance that he was probably acting paranoid, and continued where he was heading, albeit at a faster pace.

The secure feeling he felt upon approaching the house eased the weight on his chest. Pulling out his key, he wasted no time in disappearing inside. It was quiet without you, and there was the familiar longing he felt in his heart. Sighing, he mentally crossed off another minute until he could hold you in his arms again.

He moved upstairs and into his study. At the prospect of spending more time with him, you jumped at the chance to make a spare empty room a working office. He hung his jacket and hat on a coat rack, taking a seat at the desk. The natural light coming through the window landed perfectly on the wood, illuminating the workspace without the need for candles. Jacob searched his drawers, finding the file with relative ease. He grabbed a dip pen, opened an ink pot, and quickly began scrawling details down.

He was lost in thought at the memory of his encounter with Lord Cardigan when a crude knocking hit the door downstairs. Jacob froze, focusing on the noise outside. All business was kept around the train; he sternly told Evie and Henry not to give out the address to anyone. The only other people who would have had an idea where he was were the Rooks stationed around the street, but they were loyal -- were they not as trustworthy as he thought? Who was at the door?

Harsher thuds against the door made his heart leap. He moved slowly; inch by inch, he stood and crept towards the door, pulling out the cane from his coat as quietly as he could. His boots barely made a sound as he headed down the stairs, hand calmly turning the knob to open the door.

On the other side stood two gentlemen, waiting almost expectantly. “Can I help you?” Jacob asked, tone laced with suspicion.

The two exchanged looks before one started to speak. “Pardon me, sir, but would you be interested in purchasing some humbugs? We’re opening a new shop not too far from here. We thought we could go from door to door to begin our business endeavours.”

Eyes flitting between the two, unease began to set in. “No, thank you.”

“Understood. Have a nice day.” The other tipped his hat and turned to leave as Jacob slowly shut the door again.

“What…?” He’s had bankers act more persuasive than these men. They did not seem that interested in sales. His eyes scanned the room, as if that would give him answers to a most peculiar interaction. In a second, his heart jumped as they landed on the clock. If he didn’t leave now, he’d be late to pick up Lily. He grabbed his coat and hat from upstairs and burst out of the door, rushing in the direction of the school.

----------

He made the journey by the skin of his teeth, jogging almost the entire way. As soon as he approached, the bell rang, and children began to flood out of the doors. He stood by a tree and scanned the children as they continued to rush out. A few moments later, Lily emerged, nervously clutching her hands together as she scanned the adults around her. Jacob frowned and walked towards her, concern growing. He could see the upset growing as she at first couldn’t see him. “Lily!”

As soon as she heard her name, her gaze immediately landed on the source and took off running towards him. He knelt just in time for her to jump into his arms, face hiding in his neck. “Hey, are you--” He was cut off by the sound of sobs. “Okay, alright, it’s alright, angel.” Confused, he picked her up and went to sit on a bench overlooking the playground, shushing her gently.

Cradled in one arm, Jacob used his free arm to reach into his pocket, bringing out his flask. “Take a drink, sweetheart.” She gingerly took the container, taking a few gulps of the fresh water inside. “Now, tell me what happened.” He tried to speak softly, to not provoke more tears.

“I didn’t do it! They think I did, but I didn’t!”

“What didn’t you do?”

“Throw a rock.”

“Even if you did do that, it’s only a rock.”

“It hit the teacher!”

Jacob was silent for a minute. If they thought she pelted a rock at the teacher, there would have been harsh punishments…

“Please believe me; I promise I didn’t do it!”

Shocked, Jacob pulled her closer. “Of course I believe you! Why wouldn’t I?” His eyes landed on her fists, which have barely opened since he saw her, save for the flask. “Can I see your hands?”

She nodded, and Jacob shifted her against his shoulder so he could use both hands as he slowly uncurled her fingers. Her palms were a stark red, the clear markings of a cane riddled her skin almost completely; and they looked like the instrument hit hard. He quietly asked for the other one, inspecting them with the care one would give to a newborn, brows furrowing at the sight. Lily watched his eyes moving constantly across her hands. The thought of letting her father down ushered tears to the surface. Jacob’s eyes caught hers watering. “Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry…”

“You have nothing to be sorry for, love. Do you know who really did it?”

Nodding slowly, she pointed to the playground to a boy who was laughing by a group of children who were playing with marbles. “Oliver.”

“Okay.” The two of them stayed there for a while as Lily continued to calm down.

Just as Lily began to smile at Jacob’s conversation, a shadow overcame the both of them. Jacob felt her recoiling into his side. He looked up to see a weathered looking man with a styled moustache and a stiff looking suit, a hand against the back of his head. “So, she’s yours.” The slight tone of disapproval channeled an urge of protectiveness inside him. He sat Lily behind him on the bench as he stood toe to toe with the teacher.

“Is there a problem?” Jacob’s eyes assessed the man from head to toe, noting the thin cane that he leaned on.

“You should be ashamed of your daughter’s behaviour.”

“Why? She did nothing wrong.”

“On the contrary…” Turning around, he removed the cloth on his head, revealing a jagged cut along the back of his head.

“It wasn’t me, sir! It really wasn’t!” Lily was begging for her teacher to believe her.

“Then who was it?”

Lily stood up on the bench still hiding behind Jacob’s shoulder but managing to equal his height. “Him.”

Her finger showed Oliver laughing at someone who had tripped over a skipping rope.

“Do you really think that she would do something like this?” Jacob raised an eyebrow.

Neither agreeing or disagreeing, he instead gestured with his cane. “I’m watching you, Y/L/N.” Jacob narrowed his eyes. “I would be mindful of your attitude towards my daughter.”

Grumbling, the teacher turned and walked away. “Oliver!”

“Th-Thank you.” A sniffling from behind him softed his face and melted his heart.

“Let’s go, angel. There’s some iced cream with our name on it.”` He hoisted Lily on his hip and headed in the direction of home, hoping that the anger would dissipate with each passing step.

----------

The house came into view shortly after Jacob left the sweet shop, two cardboard pots of the cold dessert in their hands. “This is delicious!” Lily was almost her normal self again over the journey home, relinquishing details of the day as they closed the short distance to the house. Placing Lily on the floor, he took out his key and pushed it into the lock, turning the knob. Without turning the key, the door opened. He must’ve forgotten to lock it when he left the house earlier. Brushing it off, he opened the door the rest of the way and stepped aside for Lily to enter first. He checked the rest of the street one more time for anything out of the ordinary before shutting and locking the door behind him, acting safe rather than sorry.

A slight smell filled his nose as he walked into the room. It was barely there, but he could smell something. Unfocusing his eyes, he watched as colours flooded his vision. Looking around, he couldn’t spot anything strange right away, but the smell was in the air and it set him on edge. Shaking his head, he rubbed his eyes. He had felt more emotion in one day than he had for a long time, and his body had worn him out. “Are you hungry, Lily?”

She sat at the kitchen table. “A little bit.”

“Anything you particularly fancy tonight?”

“Hmm… Sausages and potatoes!”

Jacob chuckled at her excitement. “Consider it done, my lady.”

----------

Dinner was over and done with by the time the sun set below the skyline. Jacob helped Lily get ready for bed before tucking her in. “When’s Mama coming home?” she asked, playing with Jacob’s hair.

“Hopefully in a few days; Warwick is surprisingly far, even by carriage.”

“Thank you. For believing me.”

Jacob smiled sombrely. “I will always believe you. That also reminds me…” He reached into the bedside drawer and pulled out a small pot of salve. “May I?” Lily offered her hands, and Jacob gently rubbed the ointment over her raw skin.

“It’s cold.”

“It’s supposed to get rid of the pain. How do they feel?”

She nodded. “Good.”

As he returned the salve to the table, he took a breath, steeling himself to give either the best news or the worst news.

“How would you feel… if I asked your mother--”

“To marry you?!” Her eyes widened, her smile reaching her ears. “Yes!”

She jumped out of the covers to hug Jacob tightly. He reciprocated, closing his eyes to savour the moment. “Please ask her,” she whispered.

“You don’t have to tell me twice.” Giggles filled the air as he pulled the covers over her again.

“Thank you, for letting me in.”

“You make Mama happy. That’s all I want.”

Jacob sighed, a small smile playing on his lips. “You’re wise beyond your years.” He leant down to kiss her forehead. “Goodnight, angel.” He stood up and blew out the candle.

“Goodnight, Papa.” Lily didn’t miss the way Jacob’s eyes crinkled as he smiled, shutting the door quietly.

He poked his head into his study, sighing when he saw his half-finished paperwork that needed to be handed to Greenie the next morning. Every fibre in his being resisted, but he knew his procrastination would catch up to him eventually. So he sat down, lit a candle, and tried to wrap everything up in as little time as possible.

About half an hour went by before Jacob finished the long overdue paperwork. Struggling to keep his eyes open, he went downstairs to the spare room he kept his bedclothes in. He fell backwards onto the bed. “Just five minutes…” he bartered with himself, resting his eyes.

----------

A scream made his blood run cold.

Bolting upright, Jacob immediately noticed plumes of smoke coming in from underneath the door, the burning smell inviting a cough from his lungs.

The house was on fire.

He lunged for the doorknob, the metal quickly searing his skin. His fingers clenched around the knob reflexively. “Ah, fuck!” He shook out his hand, watching as the flesh blistered in front of his eyes. Turning around, he dug around in the chest of drawers for extra clothes to wrap around the knob, turning and pulling swiftly before the heat travelled through the fabric. The door burst open. Jacob ducked as the flames whipped around the open space, newly fed by the released oxygen. Fresh smoke engulfed the room; Jacob inhaled a lungful as it blew towards him. He cleared his chest as he fanned the smoke away. Wrapping the clothes around his arm as a guard, he braced himself and ran upstairs, only one thing on his mind.

“Lily?!” The flames had almost completely engulfed the lower floor; he was surprised and relieved that he had managed to dodge any falling debris. “Lily!” He covered the metal with the clothes as he reached her door, slowly peeling the door away and slipping through as small a gap as he could, avoiding the mistake he made earlier. He closed the door behind him, the air luckily cleaner in her bedroom. “Lily, where are you?!”

He checked under the bed, and began to grow panicked when he couldn’t find her. He heard the scream, but nothing else. What if…

He swallowed, trying to ease the tight band in his chest.

Opening the wardrobe, he practically collapsed in relief when he saw Lily cowering in the corner. “Come to me, angel.” She dived into his arms, quivering in fear. “It’s alright, we’ll get out. I need you to be brave for me, okay?”

“Okay.” Her voice was shaking.

He looked around for a quick exit, eyes landing on a window. He led Lily over and unlatched it, pushing it with his uninjured hand, albeit with difficulty. Leaning out, the air cleansed his lungs. He hoisted Lily onto the windowsill to give her fresher air, holding her to make sure she doesn’t fall out. She clutched onto him tightly. He noted how it opened into an alleyway. He heard the bells of police and fire engines around the front of the house.

“HEY! OVER HERE!” A man peered around the corner. “HEY! HELP!”

“We can’t fit the ladder through here! You have to go around the front!”

Jacob blinked. “Have you gone mad?!”

“There’s a small window around the front, looks like the landing. You better make a move before it’s no longer an option!”

“Can’t you just climb down?” Lily mumbled, mind in shock.

Jacob inspected his blistering palm; it felt as if he was still holding the doorknob. Slowly, he put pressure on his hand against the windowsill. The pain immediately bubbled up his arm. Biting his lip, he tried to pull himself onto the windowsill. With his weight, it was maybe possible, since he could drop higher than normal and roll once he hit the floor. With Lily, that wasn’t an option.

“I can’t risk it.”

“Well?!” The man was still there, watching him.

“Be ready!” Jacob pulled Lily into him. “I need you to breathe into this, alright, angel?” She nodded slowly. He gave her one of the shirts wrapped around his arm. “Close your eyes.”

“Should I count to ten?”

“It shouldn’t take any longer, love.”

Taking a second to compose himself, he wrapped his hand up and opened the door, squeezing through as little as he could before shutting the door again. He made a beeline for the end of the hall, dodging the flames as they grew nearer, licking the edge of the wooden floor. Reaching the window was the easy part. The hard part was opening the damn thing. It felt heavier than it usually did, and he strained his free hand to push it to the top. Outside, firemen were already level with the window, waiting for the two of them to emerge.

“One of you at a time.” Without hesitating, Jacob leaned out of the window, one arm reaching Lily out of the window, while the other stopped him from falling out himself.

Just as the firemen approached, Jacob heard a crack above him. “Take her. Take her now!” The urgency in his voice paid off, as he jumped out of the way of a falling support beam, blocking his way out. He hit the floor, covering his face as embers flew around him

Lily crying out caused his heart to flip, but he managed to catch a glimpse of her safely in the arms of the firemen. “No! PAPA!” His anxiety eased slightly, but only just. He scrambled to his feet just as the beam crumbled completely, blocking the window from view.

“Shit!” Coughing, Jacob looked around for another exit. His mind thought back to Lily’s bedroom; he could probably climb down carefully one-handed if he was quick enough. His study also seemed to be the furthest from the rest of the flames.

However, he was on borrowed time.

Downstairs was fully demolished; there was no way out there. Upstairs was closing in on him fast, the heat beginning to singe the hair on his arms and sear his skin. He ran for his study, narrowly avoiding falling debris. As he slammed the door shut, he was relieved at the sight of the room being unscathed. For now. He looked over the papers; they were definitely worth taking.

He emptied his desk of the files and stuffed them in a satchel that hid under his desk. He worked tenderly with his burned hand, careful not to aggravate the wound more than he already had. He coughed some more as he slid the satchel over his head, tightening the strap so it would lay fast against his back. As the cold leather touched his skin, he hissed. The flames must have licked him on the way in. He turned to check how much time he had left.

The fire had crept inside the doorframe, taunting him in a turbulent tango.

Jacob hurried for the window, looking for the latch. His fingers felt around the edge, but he couldn’t feel anything. He tried pushing, with no luck. Does this window not even open?!

Frantic, his non-dominant and uninjured hand went for the first thing that he could always rely on.

Two wide shots rang out, cracking the glass in a spider-web mosaic. He moved to shatter the glazing, but the world began to spin. Knees wobbling, he fell against his desk, hitting the floor. Coughing hurt, breathing hurt, thinking hurt.

But he was so close.

He blinked away the world that spun around him, shakily getting to his feet. He threw the force of his whole arm into the window, the gun providing the force to break the shards completely. Clearing the way for his hands, Jacob holstered the gun and slowly began the climb onto the roof.

He wasn’t dying. Not today.

Wincing every other second, he pulled himself half-heartedly onto the tiles. Jacob took a second to try and stabilise his vision, securing extra fabric around his hand. He manWeuvered his way around the burning holes, hoping instead to find a way down that doesn’t involve jumping or falling.

Unfortunately for him, that choice was made for him.

A tile came loose under his foot. He slipped, the edge of the roof coming almost too soon for him to react. His fingers grasped the gutter, which did nothing but snap under his weight. Upon hitting the ground, Jacob managed to roll, but instead of ending on his feet, he slumped across the floor. Groaning, he lay still as he recollected himself. To anyone else, he looked dead.

A pained cry set his heart pumping again, yet he didn’t realise at first that the cry was because of him, not for him. Light footsteps rushed over to him. “Pa? Papa?” He felt fingertips dance across his cheek. “Please wake up!”

He reached for the source of the voice. “I’m okay. Are you alright?” He managed to open his eyes to check over Lily’s state. Her eyes were bloodshot, her skin was dirtied in soot, and one of her hands was bleeding. “Has anyone said they would help you with this?”

She shook her head, the worry not leaving her face. “I’m scared.”

“Don’t be; it’s over now.” He began the arduous process of standing up; from his stomach to his hands to his knees to his feet. Offering his hand to her, Jacob led the two of them out into the street. When everyone gathered in the street saw them, they cheered. Rooks quickly came to assist Jacob and pick up Lily, but he waved them away. He limped his way to the ambulance wagon waiting in front of them. Lily was hoisted onto the end while Jacob leaned heavily against the side. Lily faced him for reassurance.

“Mr Frye, sir!” He tilted his head as little as he could to get a view of who was calling his name. “Are you alright?”

“I’ll be fine; just a bit singed.” He tried to joke, but the pain in his face betrayed his laidback attitude. He grasped his ribs, as if it would ease the burn on the inside. “Where’s Evie?”

“As soon as we heard what happened, we sent for her. She should be here any minute now.”

“Lily goes with Evie. As soon as she shows up, take her to the train. She’ll be safe there.” Another hard cough shook his chest.

“With all due respect, are you sure you’re well?”

“I’m… I…” The floor was ripped from under him. Jacob’s knees buckled as his vision went black. After a few seconds, he came to. The Rooks had caught him on the way down. Disorientated, he blinked, trying to process what was going on around him.

He heard a familiar voice. “Where are they?” Rooks wrapped Jacob’s arms around their necks, pulling him to the edge of the wagon. He barely registered arms pulling him from behind to lie down. He noted how he was staring up at the stars.

“Evie!” A young, panicked yell drove Jacob to sit up, but hands pushed him back down against the wood.

“You don’t want to make things any worse, Mr Frye.”

His body jolted between consciousness and unconsciousness as Evie came into view. She also looked worried. “Jacob? I’ve got Lily; she’ll be safe. I’ll come to the hospital as soon as I can.” Lily was snuggled against Evie, a bandage wrapped around her hand.

“Let’s hope I don’t fall off.” It was weak and hoarse, but there was humour in his tone.

“You better not.”

“Take the bag.” He gestured to the leather satchel underneath him. Slowly, she undid the strap and pulled it out from under him, barely able to avoid causing a wince. She looked inside to find the papers in impressive condition. “It’s the paperwork Greenie asked for.”

Jacob’s smile was weak as the wagon began to drive away. The rocking of the cobblestones was rough, and although jarring, also brought comfort. He fell in company with the stars as his consciousness left him yet again.

----------

The next time he became lucid, he immediately noticed that he could breathe better; oxygen was easier to take in than before, and although not perfect, kept the lightheadedness away. He opened his eyes slowly, blinking to adjust to the light. The feeling of rough gauze was not unfamiliar to him, so he assessed the wounds on his back based on how rough it felt to lean on.

He brought his burned hand up to see that it had also been wrapped neatly. Although that was the majority of his wounds, his entire body ached. He leaned back into his pillow and closed his eyes, assessing the situation. Approaching footsteps made him roll his head to the side, and a doctor appeared with a clipboard. “How are you feeling, my boy?” He asked with a pencil in his mouth, flipping through the various pages.

“Like I’ve been run over by a carriage. Multiple times.”

“I’m not surprised; you inhaled half a factory.”

Jacob prepared himself for the question he knew he had to ask but would hate the answer to. “How long has it been?”

“Oh, a few days, give or take.”

“How many days are we giving or taking?”

Just then, a door opened on the far end of the ward, a few people rapidly approaching. As they turned the corner, Jacob’s heart sank a bit. You were hurrying towards him with the look of a mortified wife, but he dreaded what you thought would be more mortifying: your house burning down, putting your only daughter’s life in danger…

“Thank God!” You swerved around the bed and kissed him, one which conveyed a hundred different emotions, the most evident being relief. After the initial shock, Jacob’s fingers came to your jaw, lightly directing as he kissed you deeper.

He slowly pulled away, worried eyes scanning your face. “I’m so sorry, Y/N, I haven’t the foggiest what happened--”

“You’re both safe; that’s all that matters.”

“But the house…”

“I’ve been prepared for disasters like this for a while. Everything I couldn’t stand to lose went in a fireproof box. There’s nothing gone that I can’t replace.”

“Papa!” Your eyes widened as you exchanged an impressed look with Jacob. Lily had crawled onto the bed and nestled her way into Jacob’s arms.

“Are you alright?” Without speaking, she nodded, deciding to play with his hand, fidgeting with his fingers and tracing the lines. Jacob looked to Evie, who followed her in.

Shepulled a concerned face, coming up to her and putting her hands over Lily’s ears. “She’s been crying herself to sleep, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night calling for one of you, sometimes both. She’ll heal, I’m sure, but for now I think time needs to pass. I investigated what could have happened that night; it wasn’t you.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they were Templars; pisses me off though.” He turned to you. “If you hadn’t visited your family…”

“Don’t ponder the ‘if’s, Jacob. It leads to all sorts of grief.” You threaded your hands through his hair.

Evie nodded. “All I know is what happened, not necessarily who did it.”

“Go on.”

“The house was rigged to burn down. Someone must’ve broken in, set down some oil or gas, and set it alight. It all happened very quickly -- it’s a miracle you got out when you did.”

At the explanation, Jacob ran a hand down his face. “The fun never stops.” He shifted to stand up.

“What are you doing?” You put your hand on his shoulder.

“I’m going to find whoever did this, and I have a feeling I know exactly where to start.”

“Not in this state you’re not.”

He stood up, much to your protests. “Honestly, Y/N, I’m…” His vision went black immediately, blood rushing to his head.

You quickly caught him. “‘Fine?” Sitting him down again, you brushed his hair out of his face. “Just take it easy.”

“I have errands to run.”

Evie whispered something to Lily, who gave the couple a mischievous grin. “We can do it!”

Jacob smiled, catching on. He leaned down to Lily’s ear. “Pick something Y/F/C,” he whispered. She nodded, grabbing Evie’s hand and running away.

The both of you laughed as Evie was dragged out of the ward. “What was that about?” You raised an eyebrow at the secrecy.

“It’s a surprise.”

Rolling your eyes, you joined him on the bed. “Don’t keep me waiting for too long.”

Jacob smiled to himself, the familiar excitement climbing. “I won’t.”

[kalinara]

For me, I do think Din's tribe is a cult. Or at the very least, it has cult-like elements. But it's not really about the helmet. Or at least, the helmet isn't the real problem. After all, there are plenty of real world religions that have complex rules about modesty that don't always make sense to an outside observer.

The thing is though that those customs, in the real world, usually make sense to them. And generally, there are ways and workarounds for situations where following the custom to the letter would result in someone's death.

For me, the point where Din's Tribe went from "strict religion" to "cult" was in the first season finale, where Din had an injury that would have killed him, had he not been convinced to take his helmet off by a droid. It took one spray to save his life, but if IG hadn't been there and it was just Cara and Greef, he'd have died.

The Book of Boba Fett reinforced that for me, because at no point do they ever ask Din WHY he removed his helmet and violated their creed. If they'd asked, Din explained, and they still found him apostate...well, okay, that's fair. (I don't think Din had a choice in the first instance, but I do think taking the helmet off to say goodbye was a much clearer violation.) But they didn't ever ask. NO exception is good enough.

Din was raised in this group. They found him as a traumatized child, and he was basically raised, at least as far as we can tell, in near complete isolation. He doesn't know anything about Mandalore as a whole, the history of any group but his own, and arguably he doesn't even know that. He's taught that there is a very strict definition of what a Mandalorian is, and is never told that there are other groups of people have a different definition and different practices. We can't really say that young Din CHOSE the customs of the Children of the Watch, when he never knew there was a choice at all.

I actually liked that Din didn't take off his helmet in season 3 though, because I think it was a nice, subtle-for-Star Wars emphasis that it wasn't the traditional values that were the problem, but the extremism and the lack of flexibility. One of the best parts of season 3, for me, was seeing the Children slowly become part of the larger Mandalorian society, through the efforts of Bo and Din. They learn to accept Bo and her allies, and their ways, without giving up their own identity. They don't feel as much like a "cult" by the end of the season as much as people who just have their own way of doing things, and that's ok.

IMO, Din really should never easily take off the helmet. It should always be something special and important. But I do think he should have the ability to do it if and when he really wants to, without having to worry about losing his home and family in the process. And it seems like it's going in that direction.

Need to know exactly why Din Djarin's helmet rule arc was reversed and I need it to not be blamed on Pedro Pascal's busy schedule

[deimcs]

thoughts on the kenways!

Thank you legend for yet another opportunity to cry ♡

Okay so, the fact that ubisoft chose to give us a generational saga but then decided to make it as traumatic as possible it was really some kind of twisted power move from their part. and they did it BACKWARDS even, for even more brain damage. This got impossibly long so, more under the cut.

When we get introduced to Edward, it’s hard to believe he’s ever going to be a functional human being, least of all a father. His growth and progression is actually not linear at all and you know what? I love that. He doesn’t magically change his attitude the moment he’s introduced to the Assassins. He’s selfish, he’s greedy, he’s shallow, he’s out there to have fun and make money! He never made that a secret but what makes him so endearing is that’s not all he is. Bit by bit you’re introduced to his past and through his past you start to see his present in a different light, the more the story advances the more we are introduced to all his other qualities, the same ones Mary sees in him even if he can’t. He cares. A LOT. He cares for his men, he cares for his friends, he cares for Nassau, for the islands, for the people living there. He trusts Adéwalé with his life and actually listens to his counsel. He cared for Caroline too but the game doesn’t try to excuse the way he acted towards her, it was still love but with an unhappy ending! 

I love how ingenious he is, how funny and resourceful. He’s very charismatic obviously but despite his rambunctious  personality I never felt like he overshadowed the people around him. He’s very warm and welcoming in that sense, he THRIVES in a community and languishes in isolation. The losses he goes through have an actual impact on him, as the game progresses he grows more somber, more serious. It’s a jarring comparison to the Edward we see during the first acts.

But it culminates in something soft, if bittersweet. He starts off wanting to devour the world. He learns to compromise. We all know the infamous song scene, by then he sacrificed everything and still lost against the tide of history. His is a conscious surrender, loaded with meaning. Absolutely love how they highlight the fact that he was a good loving father. Far from perfect, with a messy past but still protective and respectful. He deserved to watch his children grow, he would have offered them a choice, I know that. The ultimate paragon of freedom until the very end.

Then comes Haytham and of course he’s the tricky one. I haven’t read Forsaken, this is a stain on my Assassin’s Creed obsessed record I know but I know what goes down behind the scenes, more or less. He’s tricky because his entire character is actually a big what if? 

What happened when he was a kid wasn’t his fault, Birch’s betrayal wasn’t his fault, I truly believe he loved his father, he loved Jennifer too in a way despite their differences. First among many the fact that they knew Edward very differently, I think. So I can’t actually fault him for becoming a Templar, ultimately he was indoctrinated. But when it comes to Connor I can’t really approve of his choices, at all.

What he did once he became an adult it’s on him and on him only. He wasn’t totally callous, we know that, but he was extremely manipulative and every bit the polarized man he once accused Achilles to be. I don’t think him so stupid to actually believe taking away people’s free will was the answer, his biggest weakness was that he acted like he was so sure of himself even when his morality was evidently on the fence on some matters. Kaniehti:io proved that, his son did the same.

Honestly? It was foolish of him not to accept Connor’s curiosity and tentative olive branch the first time. He’s a proud man, too proud and that was his downfall. Acting so condescendingly towards his son got him nowhere. He thought Connor to be naif, childish, incapable, easily manipulated. He underestimated him because he saw the Assassin before he saw his own child or even just a person and that dug a chasm between them. He kept rejecting him and trying to assert his authority on him as a father within the same breath, like pick a struggle! It was on him, things could have gone differently if he stopped thinking himself invincible for one second.

Then we have the love of my life, my dear Ratonhnhaké:ton. Literally a good soul. He’s such an incredible character and I wish more people would see that. The fact that so many in this fandom write him off as cynical and stoic doesn’t sit well with me at all, let me tell you that. Once again we’re just ignoring the character development? Not on my watch. The thing is with all the assassins, they all end up losing something, having the person they were at the beginning of the game beaten out of them, for good or bad. That’s just the pattern, they are all changed by the end and Connor is no exception. That fact that he had to go through such horrifying things at such a young age is bound to traumatize a person. People like to talk about his anger but you’d be surprised how little it actually appears throughout the game. His personality is gentle, a little awkward at times, determined, incredibly nurturing. This man rebuilt an entire village, he rebuilt an entire brotherhood, he learned to sail, to fight, to hunt, to speak the language of those who slaughtered his people without a second thought, their customs and rituals. He adapted over and over again, always making space for others if they were willing to take it without abusing it. 

The only times he snaps is when people are doing just that: taking advantage. Of him, of his land and the people he loves. It’s a rightful anger, a protective anger, an anger that settles boundaries. It’s healthy, it’s important and I was just so happy to see it portrayed the way they did!

He’s a gentle giant, who deserves respect because he literally changed the course of history and he just got more death and pain in return. His story is particularly important because it tells a tale that it’s not just his but of his people. It’s cultural and it’s very real. 

Him too, starts off softer around the edges and he’s forced to harden by the end of it. It’s not lack of character, it’s literal trauma! Edward would have loved him so much.