#i never know how to tag these things lol

[cross-d-a]

Fandom: Star Wars, Prequel Trilogy, Jedi Apprentice Series, The Wrath of Darth Maul, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: the Clone Wars; Star Wars: The Dark Side comics

Chapter: 1/?

Rating: Teen (for now?)

Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Relationships: Xanatos & Darth Maul & Ezra Bridger & CC-1010 | Fox; Feemor & Xanatos; Obi-Wan Kenobi & Xanatos; Mace Windu & Xanatos; Xnaatos & Clone Troopers; Feemor/Mace Windu (background)

Characters: Xanatos, Ezra Bridger, Darth Maul, CC-1010 | Fox; Feemor; Obi-Wan Kenobi; Qui-Gon Jinn; Bruck Chun; Dooku; Yoda; Orykan Tmarik; Clone Troopers; Jango Fett; Jaster Mereel

Additional Tags:  Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Alternate Universe -Canon Divergence; Crack Treated Seriously; That's Not How the Force Works; Xanatos-centric; Xanatos basically adopts Ezra and Maul and Fox and a bunch of clones; Yoda's Disaster Lineage as Family; Jedi Xanatos; Xanatos Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side; Jedi Culture & Customs; Jedi as Found Family; Clone Troopers and Jedi as Found Family; Yoda and Qui-Gon are Both a Loving Menace; Grandfather Dooku; Older Sibling Feemor; Older Sibling Xanatos; Teenage Menace Obi-Wan Kenobi; Darth Maul is a Little Shit; Ezra Bridger is a Little Shit; Fox is a Little Shit; (AFFECTIONATE); Everyone Needs Hugs; Everyone GETS Hugs; PTSD; Implied/Referenced Child Abuse (bc clones and Maul); Feral Behaviour, Fluff, Angst, Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies; Post-Battle of Galidraan; Jaster Mereel Lives; Xanatos and Mace and Orykan are judgmental besties

Summary:

Xanatos isn’t quite sure how he ended up becoming The Designated Babysitter of Feral Younglings but he resents Mace for telling him he deserves it.

Or: Xanatos does not Fall. Instead, he realizes that family is more than blood and that home is more than an empty house waiting for you to return. Home, he learns, is built from love. It is a pair of open arms, ready to catch you when you fall. It is teasing smiles and kisses pressed upon your brow. It is reassurances and promises fulfilled. It is someone willing to tell you the truth even when it hurts, and it is someone who will be kind to you when the whole galaxy is not.

Home is someone who loves you. So much so, that they’ll let you go.

So no, Xanatos does not Fall, and he thinks it’s all going rather well up until time-traveling younglings start falling into his lap.

[bananacat76]

ain’t nothin gonna break their stride….!!

[dailyloopdeloop]

loop and mirabelle. That's it that's the ask

DAY 84: enrolled in the gossip wars

[fleetways]

finally. the chimera baby super form

due to her particularly strong chaos powers, mira can obtain a mini super form with less than 7 emeralds. depending upon the number of emeralds, her appearance and personality can change quite drastically. this is her with either five or six.

obligatory poll link

[a2zillustration]

The final day

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[[ All Croissant Adventures (chronological, desktop) ]]

[[ All Croissant Adventures (app) ]]

[fandomsnrambles]

Huh, found an older art piece of the FSM as a child

My anatomy is meh here but oh well. The eyes around him are basically the onis and the dragons. Its the pressure he felt when they were making him chose sides in a war… yikes.

Rambling below cut (and sketch!)

I hc he ran away when he was 14-15. This is him as a kid, basically 14. Also, i thought it’d be fun if he looked like both his sons hence the two toned hair (personally think he made his kids asexually btw cause its hilarious)

I also like to think hes a lot like BOTH his sons personality wise.

ANYWAY that moment when trauma hits you like a truck. As a child soldier, you are robbed of your childhood (lloyd parallel fr) and then you run away making 16 realms, 2 kids and possibly humans as well. You ingrain it into your everyday life and never realise your coping methods are unhealthy until you suddenly realise you’ve hurt your sons, but its too late by then.

My angst material is focusing on the generational trauma here btw

I mean FSM runs from the pressure from everyone around him -> Wu and Garmadon feel pressure to uphold their fathers expectations and everyone elses -> Lloyd trying to uphold expectations from everyone around him…

(Also, so fun cause my lloyd design looks like his grandfather, OOF think of the parallels is what i’m saying)

This family makes me crazy…

Bonus,, sketch

[forcebookish]

the way that phoom is crying and how bittersweet this moment is for him but the look on vicha's face is just pure happiness

SOMEHOW THAT HURTS MORE??

forced to dance and re-experience his death every night for 23 years in a place that only reminds him of who he lost and yet he's just so happy to be reunited, in the most uncomplicated way, knowing that he's where they're meant to be for the remainder of eternity

because phoom thinks it has to end, but vicha knows it won't

[wonder-worker]

Thinking about Elizabeth Woodville as a gothic heroine is making me go insane. She entered the story by overturning existing social structures, provoking both ire and fascination. She married into a dynasty doomed to eat itself alive. She was repeatedly associated with the supernatural, both in terms of love and death. Her life was shaped entirely by uncanny repetitions - two marriages, two widowhoods, two depositions, two flights to sanctuary, two ultimate reclamations, all paralleling and ricocheting off each other. Her plight after 1483 exposed the true rot at the heart of the monarchy - the trappings of royalty pulled away to reveal nothing, a never-ending cycle of betrayal and war, the price of power being the (literal) blood of children. She lived past the end of her family name, she lived past the end of her myth. She ended her life in a deeply anomalous position, half-in and half-out of royal society. She was both a haunting tragedy and the ultimate survivor who was finally free.

[tiktowafel]

do you ever think about how all you used to draw when you were 10 was ponies and that you should still know how to do that, then get an idea and proceed to draw something like these in nearly one sitting and it turns out better than any drawing you've done in the entire past month

sooo anyway does anyone have cutie mark or pony name ideas for them?? lol

[lale-txt]

heartbreaking! one of your favorite artists makes fun of y/n fics!

[screwpinecaprice]

While venturing an ancient gem temple, they stumbled upon a modified light that can corrupt humans! Connie was able to fully move Steven out of the beam's range by pushing him off the stairs.

Commissioned by TheTinman1996! Thank you for commissioning!! 😁

[howtodisappearcompletelyand]

20/10 stars little guy

[cerealmonster15]

[vibrating a little too fast] Do You Understand My Vision Yet

[charcubed]

I NEEEED people—especially those with unfathomably large platforms???—to start doing just a tiny bit of internal evaluation before they log onto a blue website and say “I don’t want these queer characters to fuck in canon” or “I’d be fine if these characters never kissed again” or whatever.

This is a post about Good Omens and the prospect of Aziraphale and Crowley potentially having sex in season 3. It's a response to a tweet that I'm crossposting, but let it be known the above statement and this topic applies broadly across multiple fandoms too.

But anyway, in regards to Good Omens specifically:

I am seeing this take that essentially boils down to "Canon has now made it clear that these characters want to have sex with each other through subtext (i.e. Aziraphale and the ox), but I don’t want that to reach narrative completion because the idea of them having sex makes me uncomfortable or isn’t my personal preference” and it is, to put it mildly and delicately, A Very Bad Take.

This is rhetorical (and I do not expect or particularly want an answer), but: explain to me how and why queer characters who are unavoidably visibly queer (aka 2 "man-shaped beings") fucking on screen wouldn’t be a net positive, especially when you can indicate how canon has set it up.

Presumably, some people say things like this because ~they want to see them as visibly ace.~ Okay. But by some of these people’s own admission, there IS more evidence in canon now to indicate these characters crave sex with each other (vs arguing otherwise)... yet people would rather that be ignored/erased all for the sake of them feeling comfortable or feeling better about what canon shows or doesn’t show explicitly??

I’m sorry, but—speaking as an ace person, to be clear—your personal preferences for the story shouldn’t / don’t affect anything here. There’s too much in this.

Yeah, I understand on a personal level not having “representation.” I almost never see myself or my unique experiences and identity reflected in stories. And yet, I also understand that that doesn’t change any story or the world in which we live. Things like this are not said in a vacuum.

Any queer characters having sex on screen IS a net positive. It is rare and impactful, and openly calling for or hoping for otherwise when canon points to its potential is a detrimental alliance with purity culture, whether intentionally or accidentally. Because we live in a Goddamn society!

Who knows (other than Neil Gaiman) whether Aziraphale and Crowley ARE going to fuck on international TV. None of us do! But the subtext right now blatantly says they’re starving for it. And you don’t have to like the prospect of that, but honestly? We SHOULD get to see it play out. There’s no truly legitimate reason we shouldn’t ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Whether you "prefer" it or not.

And my ultimate hot take is… if someone balks at the idea of that or doesn’t understand the importance of it, despite even seeing the subtext… then they should perhaps unpack that? Just a thought.

Truly the way fandoms are managing to hit either “subtext doesn’t count :/ ” or “let’s keep it to subtext so it’s ‘open to interpretation’ :) ” nowadays depending on what corner one visits is MADDENING. Whiplash-inducing. Surreal. And so much nonsense you can’t pick where to start.

So! I do genuinely hope I'm not kicking off discourse but I felt this Needed To Be Said (and on more than one site). Because posts like “even if they never kiss again, we’ve won <3 “ make me want to be like…

These characters are YEARNING. Do not doom them and us to it. For once, we can reach for the stars and maybe–against all odds–pull them down. Embrace it!

---

[Update: after more discourse has occurred, I have somewhat elaborated on this further, from the POV of the significance of the queer themes in Good Omens and more specifically how they center illicit pleasure/desire]

[thedoctor91011]

Hey Lamp! Was wondering if you could do smth with Luffys childhood trauma? 👀

Like the crew's gotta figure out he was tortured by porchemy, or that the dude has a massive fear of fire from Grey Terminal/Sabo's death/Ace's death. Or maybe just that he's got some funky behaviors from being raised alone by his brother in a Jungle and dump

Theres like nothing on ao3 and I'm DYING for something 😭

The first time Luffy sees his brother again, three years after Ace set sail, he is consumed by flames. It takes him back, all too easily, to the night the Terminal burned. To smoke stinging his eyes like tears and the smell of burning hair and flesh and too-hot air burning in his lungs and the surety that Ace and Dadan had died. The knowledge that Sabo had. To years of clear nights where he jerked awake, panting, from sights not too different from the one before him now. But Ace is grinning, and the flames dance across his fingers like he is controlling them, and Luffy understands all at once. Ace is wearing his aren't I cool aren't you impressed did I do good face, and this must be a devil fruit. So Luffy grins and laughs and applauds when he is expected to. Zoro keeps glancing at him, and Luffy knows he's worried, but he says nothing. When Ace leaves again, Zoro drops it. Luffy is grateful. The fire is part of his brother now, so he's determined to love it too.

---

On Marineford, his crew isn't there to play the part for. On Marineford, Luffy is a little brother before he is a captain. On Marineford, he is a desperate child stumbling after a retreating back on Mount Corvo all over again, except this time it's Ace that needs saving. Ace that is alone. This time, Luffy saves him for once. Luffy breaks him free of the platform and San makes a key, and he has his brother back. Luffy is a captain again for one triumphant moment, ready to fight their way back out, victorious. Then, Ace's power returns. He pulls Luffy through the fire, and it brings him back to that night again, to being seven and small and weak, still too weak, and needing his big brother to protect him. He still finds himself wondering, sometimes, if he could have held out longer—run farther—if he hadn't remembered that. If he hadn't been so exhausted and hurt and then remembered being seven and protected. Maybe part of him had thought it would be okay to rest, just for a bit. He'd never know for sure.

---

Luffy is in Dressrosa and the man before his is achingly familiar, but he can't be. The person he reminds Luffy of is long gone, and he is alone. The last brother standing. But Luffy is still looking at him, and he can't tear his eyes away, and he'd never been good at denying things he wanted. He launches himself, sobbing, at Sabo—at who must be Sabo because even a decade later he still looks at Luffy the same way he always did. Sabo, who has a burn scar spanning half his face. Sabo, who Luffy believed had burned to death for years rather than days. Sabo who is real and solid and here. Who wants to help. Who wants just as badly as Luffy does to preserve what they can of Ace's legacy. Luffy is in Dressrosa and Zoro is giving him that look again as they run through the streets. He's still sobbing, and Zoro is worried and yelling at him, and a weight he's been shouldering alone for years is once again split between two. He'll tell his crew everything after.

---

He hadn't thought about it, at the time. Sabo being the one to inherit Ace's fruit had seemed fitting, had seemed perfect, even. The best possible outcome. But then Luffy sees him again and he is made of fire, and everything hits him all at once. The night of the fire, Dogra telling them that Sabo had been shot down, Akainu's searing fist piercing through Ace's chest, fire and magma dripping from his wound like blood. Any time Sabo uses his fruit, Luffy flinches before he can catch himself. Guilt gnaws at his chest. Zoro knocks their shoulders together when he sees, or Sanji slides him a snack, or Robin squeezes his hand, or someone else will notice and try to help, and he loves them for it but he hates that he needs it at all. This is his brother and that fire is all that they have left of Ace, so Luffy can't help but be ashamed for the slightest fear of it.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The whole discourse about the privacy/secrecy/support thing has been sitting with me for a few days (I mean other than it always does to a certain degree) thanks to all the excellent discussion happening and I know I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said a million times before, but I think what we're seeing and what we're going to learn (e.g. from TTPD) is that it wasn't just the support issue, but how it was shown/handled.

We've all gone out of our way to show that introversion =/= lack of support. Someone can be shy, reserved, etc. and still show up for their partner, whether in public or at home. To chalk any of the differences up to the clash between introversion and extroversion is unfair to folks who count themselves among either tbh.

@thisisctrying said something the other day that hit the nail on the head about how if that support had been offered in private, there very well may not have been a Joever to begin with, or at least not at this point in time. (Sorry for loosely paraphrasing, and for namedropping you! Long time listener, first time poster.)

If this were a case where the "shy" partner said, "I am really uncomfortable with the spotlight personally and do not want to court it, but I will support you in your ambitions and offer you whatever you need to make them happen and make the glare bearable," I suspect that would have gone a long way to making Taylor feel seen and comfortable in pursuing her goals in the way that she now has. Again, that might have been more akin to the balance that seemed to have been struck around 2019 from what we can see, but even speaking in a general sense, there are lots of couples out there, celebrity or not, that have similar approaches where there are highly driven people and busy careers involved.

(A famous example being Dolly Parton's marriage. Tbh I know next to nothing about her and Carl, but she's always heralded as an example in this regard, because her husband is famously uncomfortable with the spotlight and hasn't accompanied her to public events in decades, but she's said that she never minded that because that was always work to her, and what was important was that he supported her in pursuing all her career goals and basically ensured she had a place to call home to return to at the end of the day.)

We're kind of in a brave new world with her current relationship because it felt like, at least at the start, we were maybe watching her figure out her boundaries in real time as to what she was comfortable with or not and adjust accordingly. Like so many have said, I fully believe the extreme privacy thing was initially driven by herself and her experiences in 2016, and she needed that quiet time to recover from all of the things and figure out how to exist in the world again.

Stating the obvious, it seemed like eventually privacy was equated with secrecy, turning the relationship and the celebrity into the elephant in the room and something to never be spoken of to the outside world. People are free to choose whatever works best for themselves and their relationships, and for some the separate public lives might work, but the “kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath” theme is all over her work and it’s clear that it’s a sore spot for her, because she’s been made to feel shame just for the life she leads so many times in the past.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s pretty obvious something Not Great was happening behind the scenes, which didn’t just amount to “she wanted to be a public celebrity and he wanted to be a private hermit.” (Also, in case anyone forgot, this is a person who also chose a public-facing career who also has to engage in press for it, but I digress.) As her career reached new heights post-folklore, if she had the support at home to do all the things without judgment and with encouragement, and in turn offer the same support to her partner, she may have very well lived just fine with that, not unlike Dolly Parton’s case.

By reading between the lines in all the press since, as well as comments on tour and general ~vibes~ with TTPD teasers, it seems like one of the issues was that that was likely not the case. There was all the stuff that we saw — the reticence to acknowledge each other in the media (particularly on one side), the lack of public support even at events at which they were both in attendance for their respective jobs, the great lengths they went to not to be photographed together at events they attended yet no problem taking pictures with other friends and coworkers, the jobs that separated them, the withdrawing from the public even for work accomplishments, etc. Which could all be manageable if a couple chooses to do so together and are not inherently a sign of trouble in themselves.

But what we’re seeing now I think is a reflection of the things we weren’t seeing then, and it seems to indicate some very deep hurt. (I know, call me Captain Obvious.) And like so many have been saying, it feels likely that that part of that hurt is rooted in that very lack of private support where a person would expect it from their partner. Obviously as a Taylor fan blog I’m going to be more inclined to understand her side of a story, but tbh, it’s also because… this is sooooooo common, and something I’ve experienced in my friend group. (@taylortruther is right when she says most breakups are the same one way or another lol.)

One partner is resentful of the other’s success, or resentful that the other’s priorities begin to evolve as new experiences unlock new goals, or feels the other’s ambitions are not worthy of pursuit, and coupled with perhaps their own struggles in the same domain, it’s easy to see where that can chip away at the other partner’s morale and faith in the relationship. I know I’m just speculating here, but I also don’t think it’s totally unfounded. (Again, because a) I’m picking up what she’s putting down and b) it happens to sooooooo many women even among us dull normals.)

With all the pointed mentions about how much Taylor feels supported in her current relationship and how she in turn loves to offer the same show of support to not only her partner but other loved ones, how she’s stepped out more in the last year to a whole host of events, how she’s mentioned feeling like she locked herself away for years and she’s just proud of her partner and happy she can show up for him even if the chaos around it is unsettling, it paints a picture of what perhaps was happening before last year.

To feel like you’re all alone in carrying the weight of the relationship (or burden of it), of twisting yourself into knots to accommodate the other person’s boundaries (or insecurities) but not feeling reciprocity for your own has to be so painful. (The idea that it may have been even darker and to have a partner not only be unreceptive to your own needs but even perhaps resentful/dismissive/belittling of them is even more painful to think of. I guess we’ll find out when TTPD comes out if that was the case, too.)

At a certain point, that lack of acknowledgement will force your hand to be able to reclaim yourself. And it feels like the further removed Taylor in particular is from it, the more she moves from being sad about the life she felt she gave up by leaving, to angry at the life she felt she was giving up by staying. Especially being in a relationship now where it seems like everything comes much easier, where she can be open about the person she’s with and show up for them, all the stuff that seemed as challenging as climbing Mount Everest in her past is nothing more than a molehill at best in her current life.

TL;DR: I don’t think it’s privacy that inherently spells doom for a celebrity relationship like this; it’s the mutual support and respect that does. If Taylor had felt that in the later years of her previous relationship, I think we could be seeing a different, though not necessarily unfulfilled, person right now in 2024, who’d be happy on tour but whose personal life would look a little different. But it seems like by losing that support she lost parts of herself, and we’ve seen her reclaim that in spades in the last year, and perhaps to degrees she didn’t even realize she could from before all the Bad Stuff started happening in her young adulthood.

I know this was extremely long-winded and unnecessary, especially about total strangers we only know through scraps fed through the media, but I just always bristle at this idea that issues like these boil down to “personality differences,” as though one person wants to live in a city and the other on a remote island, or some shit like that. The whole support (and gender tbh) issue is one that’s just very close to my heart because again, I have seen it play out with so many of my friends in long term relationships and marriages and I just think people in relationships (and women in particular in some circles) deserve better than to feel like they’re being, well, tolerated.