#here's where i go unhinged because the kicker to this thought when i had it was that the original legend about the lord of sidon is them too

[currentlyonstandbi]

that trope where two lovers are reincarnated over and over with no memory of their past lives but always end up finding each other because they’re destined to be together but with nigel and alex

[nevertheless-moving]

Could you talk more about your gumbo jar jar au or the frog one? 🐸

hm on close review the frog promise draft is a now redundant drabble from this au. Here it is in its entirety:

“I will never join you,” Luke said with a sneer of disgust.

Palpatine, as well as the nearby politicians, Jedi masters, and reporters were taken aback. 

“I’m afraid I don’t understand your meaning, Master Jedi,” the Senator said incredulously. “Do you mean to tell me that you consider yourself separate from the Republic? I know the Jedi Council had disavowed recognizing you but I never could have imagined...” he trailed off, leaving the crowd to murmur in alarm.

“I mean I will never join the Sith,” the rogue master replied calmly. “I imagine you’re responsible for the traces of the dark side I felt amongst the trade federation leaders.”

“The Sith...I see.” Palpatine took a step back, deliberately reassuring tone and alarmed expression clearly indicated that he suspected the man before him of insanity. “It’s been a very long day and you clearly intended to do good by my humble home world. Perhaps your fellow Jedi can take you to the healers so you can-”

“Why are you working alongside a Sith Lord?” Luke cut off the Senator and addressed Grandmaster Yoda directly. 

“A Sith Lord, you say?” Master Yoda replied. “A most serious allegation, this is.”

Basically, Luke derails the Naboo Crisis by absolutely annihilating the trade federation army, only realizing after the fact when and where he is. This means that Padme turns right around from Tatooine and never voices her vote of no-confidence. Now, Palpatine probably had contingency plans in place, but the public accusation by a Jedi of being responsible for the crisis in the first place, despite absolutely no evidence, hurts his image enough that he’s not going to win a vote, because people will think it’s a power grab. 

And it’s funny cause it’s true but Luke only barely knows that! He’s just accusing Palpatine of being behind the first evil thing he sees and he fuckin happens to be right!!!

Anyway Luke doesn’t focus on Palpatine; there are like 10,000 other Jedi around. He commits himself first and foremost to completing his training with Master Yoda because sometime Yoda just dies and fades into thin air so, you know! He’s not going to procrastinate on that again!

He goes before the council and humbly asks to be taken on Yoda’s student (this is right before Qui-Gon can ask about Anakin- literally, Anakin and Qui-Gon are in the waiting room). He gives several extremely vague banthashit explanations of who he is ‘I’m a follower of the Force,’ where he comes from ‘the Force sent me,’ and why they should train him when he’s way too old ‘the Force willed it.’ Yoda is somewhat impressed because those are some real unhelpfully wise answers and- here’s the kicker- Luke actually believes them! 

He is really committed to being a Jedi! Is 110% all about being a luminous being! This is several years after return of the Jedi and Luke has pretty much just been hanging out in force temples meditating with ghosts so he has quintessential Jedi vibes, he just knows jackshit about anything!

What really clinches it for Yoda is the fact that his robe pocket starts squirming and he pulls out a live Nabooian Salt Frog. And hands it to Yoda like, “These are one of your favorites right? :) I saw it and I thought of you :)”

Now Yoda- let’s step back a second. Yoda is old. Yoda, in his youth, was a bit more feral. He’s a top level predator and the order has always celebrated diversity and being true to your origins! He’s hunted with Tortugans on Shili! He’s unhinged his jaw with Besalisks on Ojom! 

But as the Republic’s boundaries caved in on themselves, he was more and more put into contact with Core senators who tend to be unnerved by more, ah, carnivorous tendencies. And the more he was put into high level positions by virtue of being really frickin old, the more restrained he became in his public behavior. 

Decades passed and younglings who only ever knew his more ‘harmless-prank’ feral tendencies were increasingly shocked and scared to see him occasionally unhinge his jaw to eat a scrocodile whole. Some of the prey-origin younglings from that field trip actually avoided him for the rest of the their lives.

So. Yoda is still a carnivore- but- in private. With his padawans and his closest peers. But his closest peers age and die and his padawans get younger and smaller as the decades pass. He took on two herbivorous padawans in a row and as a result restrained himself from openly hunting with another soul for around for 50 years.

And then there’s Dooku. ‘Ah a human,’ he thinks. ‘They hunt sometimes. Well. They’re omnivores at least.’

And Dooku is- and I’m not saying this to shame Dooku- but he’s prissy. He likes...neatness. He’s not afraid of violence but force forbid it’s untidy. So when Yoda, excited to get his ambush predation on, takes 14 year old Dooku who’s barely ever left the sterile confines of Coruscant on a trip to a swamp world- yeaaahh it doesn’t go well. Dooku- he doesn’t mean to, honestly. How would he even know that Yoda might be sensitive about things? He’s Yoda. 

But Dooku sobbing openly and puking a little in a bush and running away from Yoda because his Master is terrifying and gross. It... kind of puts the nail in the coffin for Yoda being open about that side of himself. He doesn’t really have it in him to try again. People’s view of him is too fixed, they can’t handle him also being a flesh creature so he focuses on the luminous side of him which is and always was, genuinely, more important than him.

And that’s been the last 100 years or so. The thrill of a live kill is just a little piece of himself that he meditates away and that’s ok. He has the force. He has the order. He’s old anyway, a real hunt would probably hurt his joints. 

And then in comes Luke, radiating Light and earnestness and Jedi serenity while also holding out a very tasty looking live frog. And Yoda realizes Dooku’s not around, he’s surrounded by a council he trusts and respects and likes, none of whom are 14 year olds, all of whom have seen the galaxy and seen worse. He is almost seizing the moment but there’s a little part of him that shriveled up when Dooku cried that’s having a hard time accepting this.

“Want it for yourself, you do not?” Yoda cackles, playing off the offer.

Luke smiles sheepishly and pulls out another live frog. “I was saving it for later. Forgive me Master, your senses are keen as ever I see.”

And Yoda...it’s not about the bribe, really, so much as the symbolism, and it’s not about the flattery either, but darn is the kid really pulling out the stops to make himself likable. And he is a kid, to Yoda anyway. Everyone is these days. What does he care about numbers when there’s a boy smiling like his third padawan, an adorable Rodian who took great delight in their more amphibious and wild missions?

Yoda snatches one of the frogs and slowly raises it in a parody of a toast. Luke does the same. The rest of the council quietly watches in various shades of bewilderment and bemusement.

They’re not actually going to eat that right? Mace thinks. Ugh I hate frogs the skin is so slimy. Shaak Ti thinks. I cannot believe they’re not even offering me one. Yaddle thinks.

And Yoda bites the head off the frog in a quick snap of his jaws, the rest following rapidly. Luke does the same- a slight assist from the force helping his less specialized mandible tear through skin and bone in a well practiced move. He chews slower, but finishes the frog soon enough, the rest of the council looking on with deep uncertainty and a tiny bit of hunger, but no actual fear. They’re Jedi Masters; they’ve eaten everywhere, it’s just a little weird for a human to be eating a live animal and Yoda as far as anyone knew only ate stew and also they were in the middle of a council meeting.

Yoda belches and Luke smiles genially.

“Take you on as my padawan learner, I will. Much to learn you have, much to teach you, I do.”

Luke beams. The council looks on in shock. 

“Master Yoda,” Mace Windu says hesitantly, “He’s clearly in his late 20s, at the earliest. If this is about the... frog thing-”

“Was a pleasant surprise, the frog. The reason for my decision, it is not. Had some training already, he has. Know each other before this day, we do. Taking over for a Master passed into the force, I am merely. Our custom, this is.”

Luke bows lowly and an initiate is summoned to escort him to the quartermasters and then the long-empty padawan suite next to Yoda’s chambers. 

Qui-Gon and Anakin are brought in and. Well. It’s a little hard for them to simply reject the boy after Yoda just pulled that stunt. He’s sent to the initiates dorm, eventually. Mace Windu has a headache from the shatterpoints blinking in and out of existence. Shaak Ti is delighted to discuss a hunting trip with Master Yoda and his new padawan learner Luke Svader. 

The force dances.

[adzandiel-blog]

Why Julius Caesar Was REALLY Assassinated (pt. 1)

Sometimes, it’s embarrassing when you claim to have known someone from the past1, but you’ve never actually met them in said past, and you completely forget about telling people about knowing said person.2 You know the feeling. We’ve all had that experience.

(This is Zan, by the way.)

But in this case, I can assure you that I was definitely in acquaintance with good ol’ Caesar. Not ‘friends’, mind you. Just acquaintances. I was more buddy-buddy with his pal Brutus. This is extremely relevant to what I’m about to tell you next.

First, I need to dig a bit deeper into an introduction on Aden’s and my part.

Both of us love books; books and reading and enjoying the—well, certainly not Heaven nor Hell—out of the written word. While in this modern day he mostly enjoys dystopian fiction and fantasy, whereas I‌ go for more of a science-fiction and thriller genre, our love for reading actually stems from the very beginning.3

Libraries, reading, Julius Caesar… You can probably guess where we’re going with this.

You’re right.4

The Royal Library of Alexandria, when it first opened in 300 B.C.E., was one of the first ever times that Aden initiated one of our meetings.‌ In fact, prior to that, we’d relied on sheer luck to ‘run into’ each other throughout the years, around the Earth. About three or four months after its opening, Aden sent me a message5 using a piece of parchment and some fire, and we’d agreed to meet in one of the main gardens.

And listen, I’m a demon and we’re not supposed to show positivity or happiness (I think they call it being ‘soft’ nowadays) and all, but when I saw the library for the first time… Holy fuck.

That’s just about the only way I could describe it—can describe it, really. I don’t have a really vivid memory of it, since it was… quite a long time ago, but I‌ can still remember my jaw dropping open.6

Fast forward two and a half centuries or so.

I’m visiting the Library again for a couple of rare scrolls. Couldn’t find ‘em anywhere else.7 And then I begin to smell something weird, right? Normally, I’m all for outdoor barbequing, but they didn’t exactly rave about corn on the cob back then. Also, I‌ was standing in the middle of a library filled with flammable paper scrolls, in a desert, with no fire extinguishers to speak of.

You can see how I‌ got concerned.8

So I’m rushing into the now very visible fire, which is right at the heart of the library, where the most valuable scrolls were (and where I could sense Aden was). It’s not blessed fire, and I’m a demon, so I‌’m able to step into the flames and stumble around until I got my bearings, and managed to collect three thoughts.

1) The Royal Library of Alexandria, with all its books and scrolls and stored wisdom, was currently going all up in flames, and there’s no way—even for me and Aden—to save it.

2) Aden was currently in the middle of the blazing inferno, probably trying to save as many scrolls as he could—but he’s not a demon, which meant that his human body was definitely not invulnerable to this fire; he could withstand some flame, but not as much as I‌ can. TL;DR: He’s dying.

3) Shit.

Let’s make that four thoughts.

4) Fucking shit.9

I find Aden. He’s honestly, truly, very near to dead. Not going to go into details.

Fuck.

Er. Aden here.

Zan got a bit emotional while writing the above. We’ll end this post here for now, but we’ll continue later on. After all, Zan can’t wait to tell you what really happened to Julius Caesar. It’s almost a bit of a grand gesture on my behalf, really—I’m still flattered. Not spoiling what happened, though.

Until next time, then? Thanks for reading. We’ll be back.

Like… give or take two and a half millennium. ↩︎

What I’m trying to say is, if you’ve never actually met Alexander the Great, and only observed him from afar as you plotted his untimely death, don’t go around telling people that you and him were buddies—because the next thing you know, you’re going to be at an occult gathering, and someone’s going to sidle up to you, mention a rumor, ask you what ‘your good pal Alexander III of Macadamia’ was like, and you’re going to very awkwardly reply with ‘not as nutty as you’re thinking’. ↩︎

Or, more accurately, the Library of Ashurbanipal. We used to be considerably fluent in cuneiform. Now we’ve lost touch with the language, although I’m sure if I look around in the back of the cafe, I’ll find a couple of old transcribed slates. ↩︎

Or you’re wrong. Why’d you even come and look at this footnote? What’d you expect it to say? ‘Huzzah, you tried’? ↩︎

It’d read something along the lines of: Dear Zan, there’s a lovely new library open in‌ Alexandria, Egypt, and I was wondering I‌ could convince you to explore it with me. Of course, there’s no need if you find our interactions excessively dangerous… And the note read on, with more to be unveiled, undoubtedly, but at that point, I was already looking for the nearest boat to Egypt. ↩︎

Aden, wisely, didn’t comment. Even if my jaw did seem slightly unhinged. Blame the Garden. ↩︎

Still can’t. ↩︎

And the real kicker here: Aden was working as one of the main librarians. I knew this because it was a huge deal back then—librarians have essentially the same status as High Priests, but with less sex magic going on—and because he’d sent me at least three notes, one of which consisted of nothing but exclamation marks. ↩︎

—shit shit shit shit fucking shit son of a motherfucking bastard oh fuck— ↩︎

[tgunn64]

Favorite Villains - Nagito Komaeda (Super Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair )

The Danganronpa series is one of my new poisons and one of my favorite things I played this year. A series of Clue esque murder mysteries, the game fuses incredible characters and storytelling with genuinely gripping mystery making for an unforgettable experience. The Killing Games are commandeered by the malicious Monokuma, but the second game in the series introduced a villain that possibly rivaled him in machiavellian scheming, living among the Killing Game contestants no less; Nagito Komaeda. When you arrive of Dangan Island through the eyes of the player character, Hajime Hinata, Nagito is the first person you meet; and striking to anyone that played the first game is his resemblance to the first game’s protagonist, Makoto Naegi (to be blunt, when I first laid eyes on him, I thought he was a post timeskip Makoto going by an alias--which due to several factors, is a testament to the DR series’ ability to mislead you, but that’s for some other time). Nagito even shares the title of the “Ultimate Lucky Student” with Makoto. Nagito winds up in the obligatory role of your early game companion who shows you the ropes. Everything seems pretty normal, until the first murder occurs and everyone follows suit into the class trial.

In Monokuma’s killing game, everyone must band together to identify the killer. If the group succeeds, the killer is executed, but should the killer hide their tracks and successfully pin someone else, it’s everyone sans said killer that dies. The stakes are high, and that’s why I love it, and one bad egg can throw everyone off. Nagito starts the trial fairly inquisitive and reasonable, but sometime down the road he begins to fall off the deep end. When things seem harder and harder to solve, he seems more and more anxious to simply put up a blind vote and let fate decide who lives and dies. It’s here that Nagito’s facade breaks. He’s not nearly as mild mannered as he let on before--he’s an unhinged idealist who is willing to put lives on the line to validate his ‘Ultimate Luck’. While Makoto was a hero who earned the title of the Ultimate Hope by pushing his friends to face adversity and take chances against the odds--Nagito aspires to do the same, but rather than encourage anything positive, he throws caution to the wind and thinks all should be left to fate, even life and death. He’s an intentional almost self parody on the part of the creators of the series. I love when a story challenges its own ideals and shows what happens if you take them a step too far. We learn soon that while Nagito did not commit the first murder, he did very intentionally set it up. He makes a cryptic comment to the first killing’s true perpetrator, Teruteru, saying he intends to be the first killer. This causes Teruteru to set up a plan to kill Nagito himself before he can carry out his murder, but Nagito was even further a step ahead, and arranged the situation so that Teruteru would instead kill the imposter of Byakuya Togami--setting the first class trial into action with no risk to himself. He did this because he wanted to put the Ultimate Hope into action and witness as well as be a part of its realization by solving the murder as the Hope’s Peak class before all of them did. When the new class has some difficulty finding their footing in the matter, Nagito is willing to shake up the formula and leave arcane comments just to fuck with everyone. Even if it means being the villain of the matter, he’s scarily eager to initiate Ultimate Hope. He also shares with Makoto a voice actor; Bryce Papenbrook, who makes Nagito sound unhinged and creepy with his excellent delivery. Nagito is cloyingly friendly, always edging toward something obtuse and puzzling. As dislikes as this makes him among the other Hope’s Peak students, he’s always a step ahead and with information that’s needed to solve a case, making him sort of a necessary evil more than once.

Like I said before, Nagito introduces himself as the Ultimate Lucky Student. While this title only applies as an explanation to Makoto’s presence at Hope’s Peak in the first game (as well as sort of a foreshadowing into the deeper Ultimate Hope), it’s much more literal for Nagito, and it’s one of the most interesting aspects of the character. He is extremely lucky, and very well aware of it. But, his luck comes in waves, so to speak, and it was a particularly off day when he lost his parents to a plane crash. That being said it’s come in handy when it’s needed to. During the fourth investigation, you spend a small portion playing as Nagito (to play as anyone besides the protagonist during the main story is fairly unprecedented), who decides to step into one of the challenges Monokuma set that’s optional for the Killing Game. The challenge is Russian Roulette, and the prize is important evidence during the trial. The real kicker, is that the more bullets you load into the revolver, and by proxy, lower your chances, the more valuable the prize will be. Nagito loads five bullets into the six hole chamber, and without even hesitating, the pulls the trigger. Nagito calmly survives and claims his prize, owing it all to his Ultimate Luck. But the point where Nagito REALLY earned my love as a villain was the penultimate chapter; where he runs the other survivors rampant trying to narrow down who the apparent spy is in their midst. He sets off bombs and and makes life for everyone a burning hell, threatening that he’ll carry on his chaos until the spy reveals themselves. When sheer force doesn’t work, he puts his brain to work, hatching what might be the most brilliant murder in the franchise. The victim? Himself.

Like most Danganronpa murders, the details are myriad and complicated; but what you need to know is that Nagito locked himself inside a warehouse and set things up so the second the others opened the door to look for him, a fire would ignite. Also present would be a set of fire extinguisher canisters that Nagito’s peers would use to put the fire out, each one throwing a capsule to do their part. When the fire is cleared, Nagito is found, dead. It first appears as a suicide during the trial, but the more everyone goes over the case, the less it adds up. Upon further investigation, the ugly truth is revealed. Nagito tampered with the extinguisher capsules, tainting a single one with lethal poison. This means Nagito didn’t die until everyone threw the capsules into the fire, which released the poison. I’ll never forget the dread I shared with everyone on screen when I realized that any one of the the group could have technically been Nagito’s killer because everyone threw a canister, and no one has any idea how to tell who it was. This at first appears to be a truly unsolvable murder, as it does appear to be Nagito’s intent--to leave everyone scrambling for an answer with death waiting if they answer wrong--but recall that Nagito wanted the supposed traitor snuffed out, by any means necessary, and that he had the Ultimate Luck. As if even uglier truths were swallowing each other one after another, everyone realized the safest bet would be that the poisoned canister, and by extension, the burden of Nagito’s murder, would fall with the outsider, who had actually grown to be a dear friend, Chiaki Nanami. Chiaki is sentenced to death for Nagito’s murder, like every killer before her, and Nagito’s will, from beyond the grave, is hauntingly carried out. This plan was not only among the most brilliant I’ve ever seen, but it’s a gut punch that puts you, the player, in a horrid place. The demented Nagito stood out among the stars of Danganronpa for gaming Monokuma’s plot like no one ever could, and all in the name of what you fought for in the first game.